Trés Bon-Fire

"Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot." Traditional.

Good old Bonfire Night was tonight, once again, let down by our Welsh weather.   Plaaning ahead, and rather than attempting any 'outside' jollity in the face of biting winds and lashing rain, we opted for a night in front of the fire. Indoors.

Food for Bonfire Night is a pretty easy piece, really; things along the lines of bean casseroles, sausages, chili, cheesy toast, baked potatoes and always, always, something really sweet and sticky to follow.  Tonight, and (voluntarily) housebound, I prepared a pot of chili and some rice for supper.  I also added, for later, a plate of my special Bonfire Hotdogs to munch while we watched a fireworks display on the television, before letting the children loose with a couple of dozen glowsticks in lieu of sparklers; a truly wonderful idea as it turns out; no buckets of water, no stress about potential injuries nor any (imagined?) need to constantly lecture the poor kids AND more gratification time than your average sparkler!

 'Bonfire' Hotdogs

These are great for bigger gatherings or parties on a budget, as the treatment you give the sausages somehow manages to make even cheap bangers taste a whole lot better than they really ought to.  Good sausages can be transformed into an almost-gourmet trea; great for barbecues or even for eating cold as part of a 'posh picnic'.

8 thick pork sausages
8 rashers streaky bacon
4 tbsp barbecue sauce (e.g. HP)
finger rolls, to serve

Skin the sausages.  This is easily done by scoring lightly along the length of each sausage, then peeling away the skin and it really makes a difference, trust me!  Wrap each sausage in a rasher of streaky bacon, then place on an oiled rack over a baking tin.  Brush each sausage, quite liberally, with barbecue sauce.  Bake at a low temperature (130°c fan, 150°c conventional ovn for 30-40 minutes until well cooked.  Slip the sausages into top-sliced finger rolls and return to a very low (i.e. as low as possible) oven to keep warm and crisp the buns slightly in the meantime.

Cath xx

Leaving Well Alone...

Coronation Chicken is one of those true classic dishes that (almost!) everyone likes and yet people will keep trying to 're-invent' it. Ahem, not unlike Christmas lunch, then. In the same way as I can't abide the annual, seasonal onslaught of 'new alternatives' for Christmas dinner, shoving confit of duck, individual venison-and-cranberry pies and heaven knows what else, I can't stand seeing perfectly delicious dishes 'updated for the 21st century, when no-one is fed up with them in the first place! So here we are, no cubes of fresh mango, no anchovies, no shaved coconut and no cherries. All of which I have seen included in pretenders to the throne of this wonderful dish. Even the anchovies. Yes, I know...

In true Distracted fashion, however, you will find this to be a rather less labour-intensive option, no poaching of whole chickens and no making of mayonnaise. Sometimes, I agree, homemade mayonnaise is very much what you want but I, for one, fail to see the point of all that effort if you will subsequently 'curry' it and obliterate the delicate flavour of the vrai article.

For this outing, our contribution to a Bring & Share Harvest Lunch at church, I cooked the chicken yesterday (breast fillets, on a rack over a roasting pan of water, covered in tinfoil - 25 minutes at 200°c) and chilled it until this morning, when I sliced it it neatly and folded it into the sauce, before plating it up for the buffet table. You can, of course, use any leftover cooked chicken; shredded roast chicken in this sauce does make a rather superior sandwich filling (and see also my Coronation Chicken Rice Salad).


Easy-Option Coronation Chicken

500g cooked chicken, cooled
200g mayonnaise
150g Greek yoghurt
40g mango chutney
30g tikka masala curry paste
toasted flaked almonds
chopped parsley
watercress

Slice or shred the chicken, according to what you have and to what degree of finish pleases you. For a celebratory buffet dish, I like to see definite slices; for a more homely affair or a sandwich filler, I'm less fussy. Set aside while you prepare the sauce.

Beat the mayonnaise and yoghurt together, then stir in the mango chutney and the curry paste. If it is anything less than runnily silky, let it down with a little freshly boiled water to reach the desired consistency. It needs to sloppily coat the chicken and ooze very slowly across the plate, not bind it into a sticky, homogeneous mass. Fold in the sliced chicken, and chill this for anything from one to four hours to let the flavour develop. Pile watercress onto a seving dish, then top with the Coronation Chicken. Scatter over some toasted flaked almonds to add that desirable bit of crunch and then chopped fresh parsley to finish the dish.

Cath xx

Favourites Old and New

This first course is a 1950s American favourite. Retro-Food.com informs me that the Lipton company first printed the recipe for its 'California Onion Dip' on the back of Lipton onion soup mix packets in 1954.

I first came across the idea in my copy of Kitschy Canapés by Babs Harrison and recently rediscovered it while book-trawling retro catering ideas for my 30th birthday party later this year. As the vrai Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Soup Mix is un available to us limeys, I substitute a sachet of Knorr French Onion Soup mix. Mixed with a 300ml carton of sour cream and chilled for an hour or so, it makes for something that is way more than the sum of its parts. Things become classics for a reason, don'cha know..?

Speaking of which, may I present my new best thing. After a Facebook-based conversation with an old (the friendship, not the friend) mate, I was introduced to this, and could hardly wait to cook it for dinner tonight to accompany some plain-cooked Lincolnshire bangers.

Daniel's Favourite Potatoes

new potatoes
mustard
mature cheddar

Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain them and 'crush' lightly with a potato masher, to break them up but not too much. Mix in some mustard (I used wholegrain, but Daniel's original uses English mustard). Bung in a dish, top with cheese and melt it, in the oven or under the grill.

This is the sort of food you SCOFF!

Rhubarb, What Rhubarb?!

Our rhubarb plant seems to be staging a rebellion. Against what, or whom, I have no idea but the crop this year has been sad to say the least. After last year, with rhubarb jellies and fools all summer long, I don't know what's going on...

So this afternoon I set to the plant and harvested what meagre crop I could, enough to make this cake at least. The mixture itself is made like muffin batter, but I much prefer this in a single cut-and-come-again slab. I grind the hazelnuts myself at home, using the mini-blender - you can substitute bought ground almonds if you'd rather.

Rhubarb & Ginger Cake

340g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp ground ginger
100g ground hazelnuts (and see above)

Stir all these 'dry' ingredients together in a capacious bowl.

250g light muscovado sugar
1/4 pint sunflower oil
2 large eggs
1/4 pint milk

Combine all these 'wet' ingredients in a jug, then stir into the dry bowl.

300g rhubarb, diced very small
2 tbsp demerara sugar

Stir the rhubarb into the batter. Scrape into a greased rectangular tin - about 30x20cm I suppose - and sprinkle the surface of the cake with demerara sugar. Bake at 180­°c for 45-50 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Cover the surface of the cake after 15-20 minutes to stop it from browning too much. Cool on a wire rack.

Friends of ours got married yesterday, on a truly

glorious June day. I have never been to a nicer wedding, nor to one that took such good care of the youngest guests. The children really enjoyed the arts-and-crafts table set up in one corner of the reception venue, and they loved the fact that they had party bags to bring home! Craig and Amelia - here's to you and your future together. You deserve all the happiness you can imagine.

No Basket Required

Chicken and Chips is, to us, a pretty perfect Friday night feast. I made my Crisp Chicken, supplemented today by Nigella Lawson's 'Fast Fries' from Nigella Express. I used maincrop potatoes instead of new and cooked them in the oven instead of frying them. I find that I am always less harried by food that is out of sight (and the reach of children) in the oven than on the hob. I am hugely grateful for the idea of breaking up the spuds by bashing them with a rolling pin. Totally therapeutic! Also, because the potatoes are bagged up, there's nothing more than the oven tray (not even a knife) to wash up after making these.


To start tonight's meal, I adapted one of my favourite party snacks. I know, I know, "life's too short to stuff a mushroom" and believe me I agree with you, but this way makes it quicker, honestly. I make no apologies for using 'Bacos' rather than actual bacon - I know they're as proceesed as you can get, but I do have rather a soft spot for them (and see here for more on this subject). No matter, though, here we go.

Cheese & Bacon Mushrooms

mushrooms
'Bacos' (or cooked bacon, if you'd rather)
chopped parsley
grated cheese

'Pull the stalks out of the mushrooms and put them, cup-side up in an ovenproof dish. Don't throw the stalks away, will you - there's always 'shrooms on toast or an omelette to be had with the leftovers! Sprinkle 'Bacos' into each hole and cover with chopped parsley. Blanket the whole lot with grated cheese, grind over some pepper and bake at 200°c for 20 minutes. Serve with salad leaves.

Quack-amole

I love avocados, though I'm sure my hips don't thank me for that. They are (she writes in her defence) full of so-called 'good' fats and extremely good for the skin and hair if the (mainly self-appointed) experts are to be believed. Incidentally, the avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable, though much like the tomato I always think of it as the latter.

While we are all recent converts to Mexican food, I've never been particularly keen on traditional guacamole (i.e. with tomato in it) and I remain indifferent. As I have taken to adding soft cheese to this, for a milder flavour and to lighten the calorific load, this has no business calling itself 'guacamole', nor would I presume to do so. I feel that the food I cook must have some integrity, however silly that may seem. Avocado Dip it is.

I usually serve this as a first course with tortilla chips or, occasionally, with hot toast. Breadsticks and crudités accompany it well as part of a buffet spread and, if you want something a bit more celebratory, it also goes very well with smoked salmon.

Avocado Dip

I pinched the idea of seasoning the lemon juice before adding it to the other ingredientsfrom one of Nigella Lawson’s books, though I forget which.

2 or 3 avocados, depending on size
2 fat spring onions, very finely chopped
100g low-fat soft cheese (or 0% Greek yoghurt if you prefer)
juice of ½ to 1 lemon, to taste
a good pinch of salt and a twist of pepper

Mash the avocados well, then add the spring onions. Beat the soft cheese until smooth, then stir this into the avocado mixture. Stir the seasoning into the lemon juice and then pour it in, mixing well. Scrape the dip into a halfway decent-looking bowl, then cover the surface with clingfilm immediately and keep it there until seconds before you serve it. The lemon juice helps the dip to keep for a little while before turning brown, but don’t push your luck...

After our first course we enjoyed a pasta bake made with 200g of pasta, cooked and mixed with some leftover cooked chicken from Sunday's roast and some tinned sweetcorn. It was all bound together with a cheesy sauce and baked with more cheese atop.

Weekend of Supreme Fabulousness

Saturday morning started early for all of us; Karl on the morning shift at work and off to Y Morlan in Aberystwyth to set up for the Breastfeeding Group's birthday bash, which I've mentioned before. I was helping to (wo)man the cake stall and had also baked the Boob Club a birthday cake. Chocolate cake, chocolate icing, pink and sparkly decorations - after all, there's nothing more girly than breastfeeding, is there?

Everything seemed to go very well and Christopher was particularly excited, not only by having his face painted as a lion, but also by winning win a book on the tombola and a tube of Minstrels in the raffle.

Saturday night was a big night for me and after dinner I did one of my favourite girl things; spending a considerable time getting ready to go out; my first real night out in a very long time. By real, I mean girls, uber-glammed up, ready to party and best of all for me, no driving! Hubby paid for me to taxi it home so that I could do something really out of the ordinary; go into a bar (actually, four bars) and have an actual drink (or 4, or 5). Tequila and tonic being my favoured tipple of late - ice and a slice, natch. I stayed out well past my bedtime and felt fabulous for it - yay!

(Much later)

Today has been a lazy, relaxing day for all of us. Karl's had a day off so we've enjoyed a real family Sunday, complete with full-on roast chicken dinner, with apple crumble to follow.

Our essential trimmings for a roast chicken are nothing new; roast potatoes (still K's job, I'm afraid), bread sauce, lots of veggies and sage-and-onion stuffing. Proper stuffing, which is so easy to make that I'm almost evangelical about it. My mother-in-law demonstrated her fab and very simple stuffing and I was hooked. You can, clearly, adapt this to include different flavours. My most regular departure is to make sausagemeat stuffing by adding 100g or so of sausagemeat to the mixture. In distinctly larger quantities, this is the stuffing I use for our Christmas turkey.

Sage & Onion Stuffing

150g white breadcrumbs
fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
1 small onion, peeled and halved
olive oil

Put the onion into the food processor with about 150ml water and whizz to a nubbly liquid purée. Mix with the breadcrumbs and sage and turn into an oiled dish. Bake for around 40 minutes at 200°c until crisp and browned on top.

Birthday Boy

What a busy weekend! Christopher had a lovely birthday, and his party went off without a hitch in the end. Six children was a nice number to have; they all played really well together with no squabbling or fighting (which makes a refreshing change). I decided that they were probably still a bit young for full-on party games, but luckily the weather brightened up for the afternoon so they could play in the garden.

The party tea seemed to go down very well. I decided against making the usual sandwiches as, in my experience, they make a huge mess before remaining largely uneaten. Instead, I made a huge tomato-and-cheese pizza and cut it into squares to eat cold. The menu was, thus:

• Pizza Squares
• Cocktail Sausages
• Cheesy Bites
• Raw Carrot & Pepper Sticks
• Grapes & Raisins
• Salt & Shake Crisps (sans salt)
• Dinosaur-shaped Chocolate Biscuits
• Marshmallow Top Hats (see below)
• Birthday Cake!

Marshmallow Top Hats

These are a family classic, and a party favourite from my childhood. Particularly favoured by my brother, I now make them for my boys as a party treat. 'Scotbloc', or cake covering, is the taste I grew up with, so that's what I use. You can use proper chocolate if you'd rather.

100g chocolate cake covering
12 marshmallows
12 Smarties

Melt the scotbloc and pour a little into the bottom of each of 12 petit four cases. Place a marshmallow centrally in each and dab a blob of chocolate onto the top. Fix a Smartie to this and leave the top hats to set.

We've got quite a lot of bits left over, but as Hubby is on leave for a while from tomorrow, he'll find something to do with it all, I've no doubt.


All in all, a great day for all of us, and a pleasantly old-fashioned birthday party. I suppose I try to base the parties I give for my boys on the ones I remember, full of love and laughter, from when I was a child, but I don't think that's any bad thing. I've been warned, by friends with older children, about the competitive kind of party-giving that seems to take over once children are at school, and which seems to say much more about the parents than the children. I loathe the whole idea of it: 30-plus guests, a fortune on 'entertainment', professional caterer-standard food and party bags to rival the goodies given out at the Oscars? Not if I can help it. Sorry, rant over.

Enjoy being 3, my darling Christopher. Mummy xx

Bump!

Well, it's Christopher's birthday tomorrow and I'm taking a break from blowing up about a million balloons and finishing off preparations for his party. The cake is finished and I am so proud of myself. When Chris asked for a Mr Men cake, he initially wanted "all the friends", but I persuaded him to choose his favourite one. It worked out really well; I'm thrilled that the cake looks just like good old Mr Bump!

Underneath the icing the cake is my birthday standard; a vanilla-flavoured sponge, filled with some of my homemade blackberry jam. I keep a jar of golden caster sugar with a few cut-up vanilla pods in it for baking, but you could add a teaspoonful of vanilla extract with the eggs instead, if you prefer.

Birthday Cake

200g vanilla sugar
200g soft butter
4 large eggs
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of flour after each. Sift in the rest of the flour and combine gently. Divide the mixture equally between two 20cm greased and base-lined sandwich tins and bake at 190°c for 20 minutes. Remove the cakes from the tins and cool them on a rack. Sandwich the two cakes together with jam. I brush the top of the cake with a little apricot jam to help the icing stick to it.

Hubby is at work late this evening, so it was just me and the boys for supper. I got some more of my huge Mexgrocer pack of corn tortillas out of the freezer and made quesadillas for us, using a mixture of grated cheddar and mozzarella and some leftover roasted vegetables from last night. You could use whatever you fancy, I suppose. Within reason.

Quesadillas

corn tortillas
grated cheese
leftover roasted vegetables

Heat a non-stick frying pan. Use the tortillas to make a 'sandwich' with some cheese and vegetables. Plop the tortillas into the pan and dry fry for a couple minutes until the cheese is melting. Flip the quesadilla over to toast the other side too, then slip it out of the pan and onto a board or something to rest while you cook the rest. Cut into wedges to eat; I had a dollop of soured cream with mine, but Chris, being a boy, wanted ketchup. These were fantastic finger food for the boys, but particularly for James; the cheese sticks everything together so he can't pick it all apart, like he so often does when I give him a 'normal' sandwich.

What a weekend!

A 'big' weekend always leaves a lot of tidying up and things, but this weekend we had James' christening, so it was a really big one.

On Friday night, my brother and his girlfriend stayed, before heading to a B&B for Saturday night. I cooked a version of Nigella Lawson's One-Pan Sage-and-Onion Chicken and Sausage from her book 'Feast'. I used a mixture of chicken thighs and drumsticks, marinaded them, along with some wedges of onion, using olive oil, Dijon mustard, lemon, fresh sage from the garden. I added the sausages just before cooking, giving them about an hour at 200°c. Some baked potatoes and cabbage was a nice simple accompaniment to a really good supper. We drank (rather a lot of) white wine and played Trivial Pursuit.

On Saturday the real work started. We were expecting about 30 people at the house for drinks and a buffet after the service on Sunday, so I tried to keep things quite simple. I made some pastry and lined two tart tins, plus I fried bacon, cooked leeks and chopped up cheese ready for the fillings. I wanted to assemble and bake the tarts fresh on Sunday morning, as I don't think they are at their best when they've been refrigerated. I also got the pâté that I prepared in advance a few weeks back out of the freezer to defrost.

On Saturday evening we had a takeaway and played Scrabble before I drove my parents, my brother and his girlfriend back to their B&B, then came home to get the house ready for Sunday. We crashed into bed just before midnight, then James woke us up again at 5. Thanks, James! I lay in bed trying to sleep for an hour or so, then gave up and left JD doizing with his Dad while I got on with it all.

I cooked the tarts; cheese & bacon and leek & caerphilly and put together a large platter of cold meats. A cheeseboard of Welsh cheeses and a basket of small granary rolls supplemented the home-made dishes, along with the usual suspects like sausage rolls, pork pies, crisps and crudités.

James' godparents arrived early to help out. We got them on babysitting duty while Hubby and I showered and got ready. Karl drove down to the shop in the village to fetch the ice we'd ordered. We filled an empty plastic toy trug with the ice, and put the wine in to chill while we were at church. There's never enough space in the fridge at parties, is there? So this was a great wheeze. The service was lovely and James was really well-behaved. I'm used enough to the bilingual services now to sing along with the Welsh-language hymns, even if I don't always know what I'm singing about!

After the service we all trooped back up to our house, squeezing everyone in. Drinks were handed round, with tea or coffee, plus sparkling water and orange juice to supplement the sparkling wine that my parents had very kindly provided. After everyone had eaten and drunk, we opened all James' lovely gifts with him, plus Christopher opened the presents that people had generously brought for him, lest he feel left out. We toasted James' health and then cut his christening cake, which went down very well. All in all, a brilliant day. I could sleep for a week now, mind, shame I can't...