Vegetable Stir-Fry with Red Pepper, Bamboo Shoots, and Chestnut Mushrooms

Made with brown basmati rice, cooked for 25 minutes to half an hour in boiling water with turmeric, powdered ginger, and some Chinese five spice. Plus finely chopped scotch bonnet chilli (one half only! Remove all the seeds) and a little sunflower oil to prevent sticking.

The vegetables were: three cloves of garlic, diced, two dessert spoonfuls of bamboo shoots, preserved in oil, chopped chestnut mushrooms, half a stick of celery, chopped, two spring onions, diced, half a dozen green beans, chopped, and a quarter each of red and yellow pepper, chopped. If you have any liquor left over from a jar of grilled peppers, marinade the vegetables in that for an hour before cooking.

Rinse the rice and drain. Allow to cool. Then add the rice and the chopped vegetables to a wok with some preheated sunflower oil at a medium to high heat, depending on how you like to cook a stir-fry. Stir frequently for about four to five minutes (judge the result by eye).

Serve on a spiral of dark soy sauce. Also good with some egg noodles. Delicious!

Egg and Sweetcorn Mayonnaise Salad

A simple salad made with two boiled eggs (five minutes in boiling water), 100g of chopped green beans (seven to ten minutes in a separate pan and brought to the boil in slightly salted water); plus two thirds of a standard tin of sweetcorn, drained of water.

Peel the eggs once they are cold, and slice. Add to a bowl, and mash up with the edge of a wooden spoon or a spatula. Add the drained sweetcorn, plus three dessert spoonfuls of mayonnaise. Stir together thoroughly.

Cool the chopped green beans in cold water, drain, and add to the bowl. Stir together. Add some white pepper and stir again. Cover the bowl, and put in the fridge for an hour or so.

Chop up part of an iceberg lettuce and dress the leaves with freshly ground black pepper, and some lemon juice (about one quarter of a small lemon).

A versatile dish. Serve together as is, or with chopped cherry tomatoes, or finely grated carrot.

Full English Breakfast, with Chestnut Mushrooms

Smoked bacon and hash browns, served with fried tomatoes, chestnut mushrooms, toasted potato bread, and one fried egg, sunny side up. Add black pepper and tomato ketchup (or mustard, according to taste).

The mushrooms were cooked in butter in a separate pan, followed by the egg. Everything else was cooked in a medium sized skillet. The bacon was cooked first, and at a medium heat, then the chunks of boiled potato, and the tomato quarters.

An English breakfast now sometimes includes baked beans or tinned tomatoes, depending on where you are. The bacon sometimes is replaced with pork sausages.

Omelette with Cheddar Cheese

Made with two eggs in a standard omelette pan. Includes red onion, shredded tomato, cheddar cheese, and lots of rosemary.

Fry chopped red onion and the shredded tomato, until the onion begins to brown. Turn down the heat and add two beaten eggs. Cook for five minutes.

Fire up the grill, and add thinly sliced cheddar cheese, and three or four pinches of rosemary.

Transfer the omelette pan to the grill, and cook until the cheese is melted and the surface of the omelette is a pleasing golden brown. Turn the pan left and right occasionally to ensure even cooking. Watch it closely!

Can be served as it is, or with ketchup or a brown pickle.

Peppered Pastrami Hash

The potato hash was made with two large baking potatoes, cut into  eight pieces and boiled for twenty minutes with a little table salt.

The dish was prepared because there was some peppered pastrami in the fridge which needed to be used up. The other ingredients were two red onions, a third of a red pepper, two cloves of garlic, half a scotch bonnet chilli, with all of the seeds removed, tomato puree, and some vegetable stock.

Cut the pastrami into small pieces, and chop all the other ingredients into pieces. Stir-fry the onion and the red pepper in sunflower oil until the onion begins to brown. Add the pastrami, the garlic and the chilli. Stir-fry for another five to ten minutes at a medium heat, then add boiling water, the tomato puree, and the vegetable stock.

Spoon onto the mashed potato, and serve. Needs no further pepper! Can be served with a little plain yoghurt.

Blueberry, Black Grape and Strawberry Fruit Salad

A three berry fruit salad, soused in white wine, scotch whisky, and sugar. I used about 150g of Strawberries, 100g of grapes, and about 50g of blueberries.

Halve the strawberries, and half the grapes. Add the strawberries, grapes and blueberries to a bowl and pour in a glassful of white wine, a shot glass of blended scotch whisky, and a dessert spoonful of granulated sugar. Stir together.

Best served after a couple of days in the fridge. Stir occasionally, so that the fruit is evenly marinaded in the alcohol and sugar.

Serve with double or single cream. Delicious! Hard to go wrong with a strawberry based fruit salad!

Beef Chilli with Brown Basmati Rice

Brown Basmati and black wild rice takes longer to cook than ordinary basmati (at least thirty minutes), but is easy to prepare if you use a timer. Stir frequently, and add a little sunflower oil to the water, to avoid sticking.

The beef chilli was made with ground beef, garlic, scotch bonnet chilli (half of one, with the seeds removed), onion, tinned tomato, red and yellow pepper (diced), and a diced half head of brocolli. I cooked the onion, garlic and the chilli first, until the onion began to brown.Then I added the ground beef, and cooked that also until it began to brown.

 I added boiling water, some beef stock, and the other vegetables. Cooked for another fifteen minutes before adding the tin of chopped Italian tomatoes. Cook under glass at a low heat for at least an hour, stirring occasionally. If you have two hours available to prepare the dish, you won't regret it: the beef will be wonderfully tender.

Finally I dressed the rice with a few pinches of the spice Sumac, which imparts a subtle lemony flavour to the rice.

Sweet and Sour Pork

Stir-Fry vegetable mix from the Co-op. Pork from the freezer. Actually pork chops, which I divested of bone, and then stir-fried in sunflower oil.

I added thinly sliced Scotch Bonnet chilli, spring onion, and diced red pepper. Stir-fried for fifteen minutes, until the pork was properly cooked, turning occasionally.

The  sweet and sour sauce was shop bought from Aldi, which includes tomato puree, chilli, vinegar, and sugar. Heated in a separate pan, to which the pork and other vegetable ingredients were added. Allowed to simmer under glass until the stir-fried vegetables were ready.

The stir-fry vegetables were cooked in sunflower oil for between five and seven minutes, depending on the heat, befor being decanted to a plate, followed by the sweet and sour pork. Delicious!

Pear and Strawberry Fruit Salad

Slice the pears vertically to  remove the central portions containing the seeds, and then chop into small chunks. Remove the leaves from the head of the strawberries and halve or quarter them (still early in the local season, so these strawberries came from Spain).

Souse in a bowl in a mixture of white wine (about 150ml) and sugar. Cover and leave in the fridge for two days, giving the occasional stir.

Serve with double or single cream. Delicious!

Beef Korma

Made with stir-fried beef strips, peas, scotch bonnet chilli, garlic, and a korma sauce made with turmeric, cream and ground coconut.

Cook the beef until it begins to brown, Add the chopped chilli (1 chilli should be enough) and the garlic. After a couple of minutes add some boiling water and the garden peas. Allow most of the water to evaporate.

You can make the korma sauce from scratch with the turmeric, cream, ground coconut, coriander leaf, and a little sugar (chopped dates are an alternative), or you can add a commercially available korma sauce. Add cumin if you like.

Cook for another seven minutes or so, stirring the mixture frequently.

Serve with boiled basmati rice.

Pork and Bacon Soup

Stir-fried diced portions of pork loin and smoked bacon, cooked until golden brown. Added two chopped red onions and four medium sized carrots, plus a stick of celery.

Stir-fry for eight minutes or so, and add boiling water. Cook under glass for half an hour, then mash the vegetables. Add vegetable stock, and the herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano).

Simmer for another half hour to forty five minutes before serving with panini or potato bread.

Rib Beef Stew with Green Beans

Stew made with cubed beef from a rib beef joint, roasted in the oven at 160 deg C for two hours (the weight of the joint was 725g). If the joint is cooked inside a wrapping of aluminium foil, there will be juices which can be saved for the gravy.

The joint was cubed after it had cooled to room temperature. No electric knife needed.

The gravy was made with half a dozen carrots, two red onions, a pinch of spelt, a clove of garlic, and a stick of celery. The chopped vegetables were cooked under glass for half an hour until tender, and then blended. After blending, add a pinch of paprika, some white pepper, and a pinch each of coriander, rosemary and thyme.

Finally add beef stock, plus the stock from the joint, and cook for another half an hour after adding the cubed beef.

Serve with boiled potatoes, cooked in a little salt, and some steamed green beans (or brocolli, according to choice).

Penne Pasta with Mussels and King Prawns

Sea food from Sainsbury's. Penne pasta, with squid rings, mussels, prawns. Cooked with red onion and garlic, and dressed with grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. The pasta was cooked in salted water, along with olive oil.

The onion and garlic was cooked in two knobs of butter for three or four minutes. Then the seafood was added, and stir-fried frequently at a high heat, for a further four minutes or so.

Add the sea food and the pasta together, and then decant into a pasta dish. Dress with Parmigiano Reggiano, or some similar grated cheese. Serve with lots of white pepper.

No herbs, no spices (apart from the white pepper). Delicious as it is.

Fast Quiche Salad with Chilli Beans

Shop bought quiche from Morrisons, with red onion and spring onion, and cheddar and red Leicester cheese.

Served with sliced tomato and raw carrot, and a serving of red kidney beans in a chilli sauce.

So one item in a box from the fridge, another in a tin, with only two other ingredients to prepare. Ready in two minutes!

Singapore Fried Noodle with Pork

Singapore style rice noodles prepared with turmeric and coriander (from Morrison's), and served with thinly sliced pork loin, onion, orange pepper and half a scotch bonnet chili.

The pork was stir-fried for ten minutes in sunflower oil, and a couple of splashes of rice wine. The vegetables were added, and stir-fried for another five minutes or so.

The pork and vegetables were decanted to a small pan on another hob, and the wok was cooled and cleaned. Then a dessert spoonful of sunflower oil was added, and a high heat applied. When hot, the noodles were added, and stir-fried briskly for four to five minutes, depending on the heat.

The noodles were decanted onto the plate, where there was a spiral of dark soy sauce, and some white pepper. Add the pork and vegetables, and serve.

Smoked Haddock, Poached in Milk

A simple meal, which used to be a favourite in Scotland, but which is not much made anymore: smoked haddock poached in milk. Served with peas flavoured with mint.

The smoked haddock came from Morrison's supermarket, designated as an 'angel cut' haddock, and sourced from the north Atlantic. The package warned about bones, but there were none at all.

Heat milk in a skillet until it boils, then turn down the heat and add the haddock fillet. Cook for ten to twelve minutes, and half of that time under glass. The peas (tinned) were prepared in a separate pot. I added chopped mint. Serve the ensemble with lots of white pepper. Utterly delicious, and a memory of good food in the sixties.