Bengali yoghurt fish - Anjum Anand

Just back from a fabulous fortnight holiday in Madeira - perfect weather, lots of relaxing and far too much food. Madeira is perhaps not the greatest of foodie destinations but we ate very well whilst there and enjoyed the wonderfully fresh produce available to us.

More on Madeira at a later date, but for now I want to talk curries. My husband is a huge curry fan and, I have to say, that I'm pretty keen too. This was not always so. As a youngster I shunned anything with the remotest kick and steered well clear of all spicy food. It wasn't something we ate at home and it took some time before I changed my ways and started to experiment. It was some years before I began to understand that curry does not necessarily equal hot! The curries we enjoy eating at home are never 'hot'. They have outstanding flavour from the many different spices involved and sometimes a little heat from chilli, but rarely do we break a sweat.

I have a personal love of Thai curries and I can never resist a really good Thai green curry, ubiquitous though it may be. It was a staple of my university days and a dish I suspect I will always cook. I also tend to lean towards mild, creamy curries enriched with coconut milk or yoghurt. But this isn't to say that they are always unhealthy. When cooking curries, we try to choose lighter, less-fattening ingredients and add lots of vegetables.

Last Christmas, in order to be a little more 'authentic' in our curry-making, I bought my husband a lovely book by Anjum Anand. 'I love curry' is a modern mouthwatering collection of curries and accompaniments. Every dish is photographed and Anjum includes a nice introduction for each recipe explaining how each recipe evolved. Best of all, her recipes tend to the lighter side. They are not swimming in oil or ghee and are the majority of recipes are fragrant and delicately spiced though she had some more punchy powerful curries too. She also explains the different stages involved in creating an authentic curry and how to balance the final dish (how to add heat, 'tame the flame', add sweetness or acidity etc...).

We tend to cook mainly meat or vegetable-based curries but recently we tried our hand at one of the many fish-based curries. I used to live with someone with Indian roots who made the most fabulous fish curry (a family recipe handed down over the years) - somewhere she gave me the recipe and I must find it to re-create it. In the meantime though, this did very nicely. The flavours were delicate and aromatic and it made a lovely mid-week dish.

Here is the recipe, with a few tweaks (mainly using slightly less oil and our preferred amounts of chilli - Anjum always gives a choice so you can alter a recipe to taste.

Bengali yoghurt fish

Recipe adapted from 'I love curry' by Anjum Anand (p83)

Serves 4 but easily halved

Ingredients:

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 small onion

10g peeled weight of fresh ginger

2 plump garlic cloves

1/4 tsp chilli powder

2 tsp ground coriander

2 green whole green chillis, stalks removed

2 small tomatoes

2 heaped tbsp Greek yoghurt (we used low-fat variety)

600g firm white fish fillets (we used cod)

Handful fresh coriander

1. Finely chop the onion, grate the ginger and garlic to a paste. Blend the tomatoes to a puree in a blender and set aside.

2. First, make the sauce. Heat the oil in a saucepan or casserole. Add the onion and cook until soft and golden. Add garlic and ginger pastes and cook for a few minutes, stirring often. Stir in the spices and whole green chillis and season with a little salt. Pour in the pureed tomatoes and 150ml water and cook until liquid has evaporated and sauce starts to take on a rich, dark red colour, stirring all the time. Stir in the yoghurt until well blended.

3. Pour in a further 200ml of water and bring to a gentle boil - simmer and stir for around 5 minutes until the sauce has the consistency of single cream. Taste and adjust seasoning with more salt or chilli powder.

4. Chop the fish into fairly large chunks and add to the sauce - shake until the fish is coated. Cover the pan and cook gently for around 3-5 minutes (depending on thickness of fish) until the fillets are cooked through. Sprinkle with chopped coriander and serve with rice.

I thoroughly recommend other recipes in this book and can't wait to try others. Next on the list are a tamarind duck curry, a hearty meatball and pea curry and aubergine in a creamy peanut sauce. The tarka dhal is one of the best I've tasted  and there are great ideas for accompaniments, chutneys and starters

Chinese plum sauce

More plums courtesy of my colleague. This time I made a gloriously glossy Chinese plum sauce. Flavoured with ginger, garlic and star anise, this sauce will have add oriental flavour to many dishes over the coming months. It is brilliant as a dipping sauce or to serve with crispy duck pancakes, but there are more imaginative ideas too. No doubt I'll be using it as a base for many a stir-fry, but I'll also try using it as a baste for a pork joint and a glaze for roasted ham.

So far I've used it twice to make a delicious sauce to serve with duck breasts. Just heat in the pan you've seared the duck breasts in (minus the fat), add a little water to thin and bubble for a bit before pouring over the duck. It is so handy to have homemade sauces in the cupboard for nights when time is short - the duck dish makes a great dinner party main course with minimal effort. Roasted baby potatoes and carrots pureed with a little ginger and cumin went really well alongside.

I researched various different recipes, but eventually chose one from my favourite preserving book which is written by Thane Prince. It is called 'Jams and Chutneys - Preserving the Harvest'. As well as jams and chutneys, it also has great recipes for drinks, sauces, pickles and jellies. The recipe makes around 1 litre of sauce and keeps for up to a year. Decanted into pretty bottles and tied with a lovely ribbon, this sauce would make a lovely Christmas present for a foodie friend or a nice alternative to a box of chocolates when visiting friends for dinner.

Chinese Plum Sauce
From 'Jams and Chutneys - Preserving the Harvest by Thane Prince'

Ingredients:

2kg ripe plums (any colour but I used red)
750g white onions
Cloves from 1.5 heads of garlic
20cm piece of ginger
250ml light soy sauce
1 litre rice wine vinegar (not to be confused with rice wine)
1kg light muscovado sugar
6 star anise

1. Firstly, prepare all the ingredients. Roughly chop the onions and garlic. Peel and chop or grate the ginger. Grind the star anise in a pestle and mortar.

2. Halve the plums and remove the stones.

3. Put all ingredients except for star anise and sugar into a preserving pan. Bring to the boil  and simmer for 20 minutes until the ingredients are very soft.

4. Push the mixture through a fine metal sieve - hard work!! If you have a mouli, you'll be grateful as it will make much shorter work of this somewhat tedious and surprisingly strenuous task. Push through as much as you possibly can.

5. Return the sieved mixture back to the cleaned pan, add the sugar and ground star anise and bring to the boil, stirring all the time as the sugar dissolves. Simmer for 30-60 minutes until you have a thick, glossy sauce. Pour into sterilised bottles and label when cool

Baked Sea Bream with Potatoes and Thyme

What a busy month. I can't belive that we are almost in June - what happened to May? I've been busy with a new job, recovering husband (from a slipped disc), weekend guests, our wedding anniversary and buying a new house. I've been busy cooking and have lots to share but time to do so has been scarce. Here's hoping for a more relaxed June!

We've been enjoying lots of fish recently. Inspired by a favourite recipe book (Mitch Tonks - 'Fish'), we tried out an interesting dish with two beautiful gilt-head bream which my husband picked out at our local fishmonger. Sea bream is becoming a real favourite of ours - flavoursome without being too 'meaty' in texture. We find that a whole fish is just right for my husband but a little too much for me - it all depends on appetite. Bream can take some pretty punchy flavours and this recipe is full throttle with red peppers, roasted garlic, thyme, olives, tomatoes and chilli. It had a distinctly Mediterranean feel to it and was superb with a full-flavoured southern French rose.

This is an all-in-one dish with potatoes cooked under the fish, a garlicy tomato sauce with roased red peppers all topped with crispy chilli-flecked breadcrumbs. We like a bit of greenery and served some green veg on the side too, but it wasn't really necessary. Mitch Tonks' recipe used a rather startling amount of oil in which to cook the potatoes. I couldn't bring myself to use as much as he suggested (200ml) and next time I would use even less. I've put the quantity I used here, but I did find the potatoes a little oily. We were also out of olives which was a shame, but it was delicious without too.

Baked Sea Bream with Potatoes and Thyme

Adapted from 'Fish' by Mitch Tonks

Serves 4 (although we ate the lot between 2, using smaller fish, half the quantity of garlic and fewer potatoes)

Ingredients:

4 waxy potatoes such as Charlotte

1 red pepper

1 head garlic, unpeeled

3tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling

1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

2 sea bream, about 450g each (or smaller if only 2 of you). Ask the fishmonger to scale and gut!

6 whole canned tomatoes

1 pinch dried chilli flakes

50g black olives (optional)

50g fresh, coarse breadcrumbs drizzled with olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 240C.

2. Peel (or scrub) potatoes and blanch in boiling water for a few minutes. Drain and dry and set to one side.

3. Place the pepper (whole) into a roasting tin with the whole head of garlic. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast in the oven for approx 15 minutes. Remove the garlic from the tray (checking first that the cloves are soft and squidgy). Return pepper to oven and roast for 5 minutes more or until soft and blackened. Place pepper in a plastic bag, seal the top and leave to cool.

4. Divide the garlic into individual cloves, but do not peel. When the pepper is cool enough to handle, remove skin and seeds, reserving any juices.

5. Pour the olive oil into an ovenproof dish (large enough to hold both fish). You need enough oil to coat the bottom of the dish. Arrange the potato slices over the bottom and sprinkle with sea salt and the thyme leaves.

6. Rub the fish with a little olive oil and salt and arrange on top of the fish. Bake in oven for around 12 minutes.

7. Remove fish from oven and arrange the garlic cloves and olives around the fish. Slice pepper into strips and arrange in the dish too. Squeeze tomatoes over the fish and potatoes to release the juice and add these to the dish too. Pour any juices from the pepper over the fish and sprinkle the chilli flakes over the top. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top of everything and bake for a futher 8 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are golden brown.

8. Place the dish in the centre of the table and dig in!

Nigella's Slutty Spaghetti

Pasta puttanesca is probably my favourite pasta dish. Loosely translated as 'prostitute's pasta', it is a punchy concoction of tomatoes, chilli, olives, anchovies, garlic and capers. Reasons for the intriguing name are various with many suggesting that it is the sort of dish made by slovenly people who can't be bothered to go to the market to buy fresh ingredients and rely on a storecupboard full of jars and tins instead. I prefer to think that the brazen, salty, firey flavours of the dish are akin to the character of the ladies of the night who used to frequent the backstreets of Naples (from where this recipe originates). Whatever the reason, I love it. Furthermore, I generally have all the ingredients required just ready and waiting in the storecupboard.

I've blogged about this dish before, having used Delia's recipe, but haven't actually cooked it for ages. I was reminded of it recently when flicking through the new Nigella book; Kitchen. True to form, the recipe is accompanied by an image of the Domestic Goddess herself wrapped in a silky crimson gown and comes with a suggestion that it should be eaten with an 'untipped cigarette clamped between crimson lips'. I'm not quite sure about the logistics of this (and didn't try), but the image brought a smile to my face.

As if by chance, the theme for this month's 'Forever Nigella' food blogging event is 'Ciao Italia'. Hosted by Sarah from Maison Cupcake, bloggers are challenged to celebrate Nigella's greatness by cooking a recipe from one of her books which falls in line with the monthly theme. Last month's chocolate-themed round-up was truly spectacular!

The assembled ingredients - storecupboard staples

So, last night I cooked up Nigella's version and can heartily recommend that you do the same. I was cooking for one so I adjusted a few things but rather greedily used a whole tin of tomatoes and almost finished the lot. I made a couple of very minor additions - a finely chopped shallot added at the start (simply because I found it, looking lonely, in the bottom of the veg box) and a little fresh basil stirred into the sauce at the end. Unnecessary but tasty. I'd probably just stick with the suggested parsley next time though - it is traditional and marries very well with the gutsy flavours of the sauce.

The recipe can be found on Nigella's site. Just click here for all the details.

Harissa Turkey Burgers

We're just back from a fantastic holiday on the Suffolk coast. The weather was unseasonally wonderful - we ate lunch outside, picnicked on the beach and have even come home with slight suntans. Incredible! We took advantage of the row of fishermen's huts on the beach at Aldeburgh to feast on deliciously fresh fish each night and enjoyed every minute. I'll be sharing one or two of our fishy feasts later in the week, but today I want to tell you about the turkey burgers we enjoyed with our Greek Salad a few nights before we headed off.

We love burgers in all their forms but, in an attempt to be healthy-ish, we try not to indulge ourselves too often. We are always on the lookout for healthier alternatives to some of our favourite dishes and this prompted me to make some burgers from turkey breast mince. To spice these up somewhat, I added a generous dollop of harissa which gave these burgers a fantastic, exotic flavour. Paired with crisp little gem lettuce leaves and a smear or coriander-flecked yoghurt, these were extremely tasty. My only criticism would be that they were perhaps a little on the dry side - the downside of opting for a leaner meat.

This is what I did....

Harissa Turkey Burgers
Makes 4 burgers

Ingredients:

450g turkey breast mince

1 red onion

1 generous tbsp harissa

Burger buns, rolls or small ciabatta
Iceburg lettuce
4 tbsp plain low-fat yoghurt, creme fraiche or mayonnaise (or more, if you like)
Generous handful coriander

1. Place mince in a large bowl. Grate the onion into the bowl, add the harissa (use more or less to taste) and stir together thoroughly. This is easiest done with the hands, if a little messy.

2. Shape the mixture into burgers, brush with a touch of oil and grill, griddle or BBQ for around 15-20 minutes until cooked through.

3. Meanwhile, chop the coriander and mix into the yoghurt (or creme fraiche or mayo). Make more if you feel like it - there were just two of us. Toast/warm the buns and split in half.

4. Assemble the burgers! Layer them up with the lettuce, burger and coriander yoghurt mix. A big slice of tomato wouldn't go amiss either.

Greek-ish salad

I call this vibrant salad a Greek-ish salad as I have zero Greek credentials and everywhere I look there is debate and criticism on what a Greek salad really is. It seems that a number of Greeks get quite hot under the collar about this, perhaps their most famous national dish. Some insist that the salad should be onion-free whilst others say that finely sliced red onion is a vital component (and that this is the way their mother/grandmother/great-grandmother made it). Controversy also surround the use of cucumber which, to me, has featured in all 'Greek' salads I've ever tasted. There is also disagreement about herbs - fresh or dried? Dressing - plain olive oil, olive oil and lemon juice or something more elaborate?

My take on all of this is that there is no such thing as a truly 'authentic' recipe. There are recipes. There are variants. All are valid. There is no such thing as a 'wrong' recipe. There are many ways of creating a good 'Greek' salad. This version is mine and it contains the things that I love and the combination of flavours that work for me.

I served this alongside some harissa turkey burgers (recipe to follow) and it was a real hit. Wonderfully fresh, vibrant and crunchy and beautifully colourful too. If you can get those knobbly, hard-skinned cucumbers for this salad, so much the better. You'll definitely need to peel them and cut out the seeds but they are crunchier and (in my opinion) much more flavoursome. Obviously this salad is all about the quality of the ingredients - it would be miles better when tomatoes are actually in season. I was lucky enough to find some on-the-vine tomatoes with plenty of flavour in my local supermarket but I know this would have tasted much more wonderful with fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes, still warm from the sun! Go for the best feta you can afford too - there is quite a difference in flavour.

My Greek-ish Salad

Serves 2 as a side dish

Ingredients:

Half a red onion

1small  lemon

4 good-sized tomatoes

Half a long cucumber or a whole knobbly, crunchy one

100g good quality feta cheese

small handful Kalamata olives

4tbsp good quality extra-virgin olive oil (Greek, if possible!)

1 tsp dried oregano

salt and pepper

1. Half an hour before you want to eat the salad, slice the onion very finely and place in a bowl with the juice from the lemon. This will soften the onion and take away some of the harsh flavour of raw onion.

2. In a small bowl, measure out the olive oil and sprinkle in the oregano with a good sprinkling of salt and pepper. Set to one side.

3. Chop the tomatoes into bite-sized pieces and remove the seeds and mushy middle bit (unless you love seeds and mush, in which case feel free to leave them in!). Peel the cucumber and remove the seeds/fleshy core. Chop the crunchy flesh into small pieces. Cut feta into small cubes and olives into rough quarters.

4. Assemble the salad just before serving. Throw tomatoes, cucumbers, feta and olives into a bowl and mix gently to combine, season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle softened onions over the top and pour over most of the lemony juices over the salad. Use your judgement here - I found I used just under the juice of a whole lemon! Finally pour over the oregano oil which will mingle nicely with the lemony juices.

5. Devour and mop up the gorgeous juices with crusty bread!

This salad would be great with so many things - a side dish at a barbecue, alongside some simply-grilled fish or chicken, a summery lunch time dish, with grilled and marinated lamb chops....

And here is my lovely Sinbad enjoying the Spring-like sunshine in the garden. Absolutely irrelevant to this recipe, but equally lovely...

Sinbad, the husband and I are off on holiday next week. We're heading to Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. we plan to eat lots of fish and plenty of picnics (probably in the rain, knowing our luck!). Look forward to sharing it all on our return!

Pea and watercress purée for fish

Last Friday I asked the husband what he fancied for supper. His response? 'Chips'.

Hmmm. Anything in particular he wanted with his chips? 'Anything'.

Not brilliantly helpful, I have to admit, but I aim to please and so chips were on the menu. As it was Friday, it seemed somehow appropriate to have fish and, as we try to be healthy-ish, I bought two trout which we steamed to serve with our chips. To accompany this fishy feast, I made a vibrant pea and watercress purée which really was the star-turn of the meal. I often make a plain pea purée to accompany fish but I actually like this version better - the peppery watercress adds a bit more interest and somehow tempers the sweetness of the peas. On making it the second time, I was didn't have quite enough watercress and so I added little rocket which also worked well.

The recipe can be found here so I won't repost it as I followed it to the letter. But you hardly need a recipe - simply boil some peas, add watercress (minus woody stems) at the last minute until it wilts, drain (reserving a couple of tbsp of liquid) and whizz with a finely sliced spring onion or two. Warm back in the pan and season to perfection!

Chipotle chilli beef

 Both my husband and I love a good chilli con carne. It was, I think, the first thing he ever cooked me. Those were in the early days when I thought that he could only cook items made with mince (chilli, spag bol and shepherds pie were the first three meals he made - much as I loved them, I was relieved when a beef and ale stew made an appearance).

The only problem with our love of chilli is the eternal debate as to what makes a really good chilli. We have quite different opinions on this matter. For him, chilli must be made with minced beef. Whilst I will concede that minced beef is the more traditional option, I actually prefer mine to be made with actual chunks of meat. Slow-cooked casserole-style.

We also disagree about what else should go into a chilli. My husband is keen to add whatever may be in the fridge/cupboards. This often involves sweetcorn. Much as I like sweetcorn, I do not like it in my chilli. Nor do I want carrots. Or mushrooms. Or courgettes. For me, onions, garlic, kidney beans and bell peppers are all I require.

Our final chilli dispute erupted one evening when I dared to served jacket potatoes alongside my chunky meat chilli. This was a step too far for my beloved. For him only rice will do. We do agree on the toppings though - guacamole, soured cream and a little grated cheese.

Last week, whilst taking stock of the surfeit of jars occupying 2 full shelves of my fridge, I spotted a half-used jar of chipotle chilli paste. This was last used to great success in my chipotle chicken stew. I decided to adapt my regular chilli recipe and use the paste to add a smoky richness to the dish. The result was something of a triumph - the flavour was fantastic and it was, I think, one of the best chillis I've ever made. A couple of squares of good dark chocolate added at the end also added an extra dimension as did the long, slow cooking. I couldn't help feeling that it would be rather good made with diced venison too. Another time, perhaps?

I can only apologise about the terrible photos - there must have been a smear on the camera lens...

Chipote chilli beef

Serves 4

Based on this BBC Good Food recipe

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

2 bell peppers (one red, one green)

2 heaped tbsp chipotle chilli paste

1 tsp ground cumin

500g diced stewing beef

1 400g tin tomatoes

1/2 pint beef stock

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp dried marjoram

410g tin of red kidney beans (or feel free to use other beans - black beans are good too)

2 squares good quality dark chocolate

To serve: your choice of soured cream, guacamole, fresh coriander, grated cheese, rice, tortillas etc...

1. Pre-heat oven to 170C*. Roughly chop onions and slice the peppers.

2. Heat a little oil in a casserole and then gently fry onions until they are transluscent and soft. Add the peppers and crushed or finely chopped garlic. Set to one side.

3. Add a little more oil to the pan if necessary and brown the meat on all sides. You may need to do this in batches so as not to overcrowd the pan. Set meat to one side and put vegetables back into the pan.

4. Sprinkle over the cumin and marjoram and spoon in the chipotle paste. Give a good stir to combine and cook for a minute or two before re-adding the meat and stirring to combine.

5. Pour in the tomatoes and stock. Add sugar and plenty of salt and pepper and give it all a good stir. Bring up to simmering point.

6. Place lid on casserole and pop in the oven. Cook for at least forty-five minutes, but preferably longer at a lower temperature* if you have the time. Check on it every now and again and add a little more water/stock if it is drying out. After this time, add the kidney beans and cook for a further 15-20 minutes with the lid off if the sauce needs reducing somewhat.

7. Before serving, check the seasoning and add salt and pepper as required. Stir in the dark chocolate and sprinkle with fresh coriander before serving.

*As with many beef casseroles, this is better the longer and slower it is cooked. I brought mine to the boil on the boiling plate of the Aga and then tranferred to the simmering oven for 2 1/2 hours.

Do you know your onions?

Recently I was contacted by the folk responsible for promoting British onions. To be honest, I was a little surprised that such a product should be in need of any form of promotion and was interested to discover an entire website devoted to this most humble of vegetables.

Humble,  maybe. Indispensible, certainly. Barely a day goes by in which I don't chop and onion to begin the base of a soup, stew, pie or roast. If I run out, I panic. Without onions, I am somewhat lost in the kitchen. To me, they are a vital flavour-adding essential which forms the bases of so many dishes I prepare.

Onions grow extremely happily here in the UK and buying British is something I try to do whenever possible. The British Onion people were kind enough to send me a box full of onions and challenged me to produce my perfect recipe for onion gravy. Along with a plentiful supply of onions, they included some storecupboard staples which I might like to use in my gravy. I was also encouraged to include my own 'secret' ingredients if it pleased me.

The challenge made me smile as it made me think of my husband who, given the choice, would have gravy with everything. Whilst I couldn't contemplate a Sunday roast without gravy and I do love a rich onion gravy with my sausages, I don't feel the need to have gravy with every piece of meat or pie that comes out of the kitchen. My other half does. Even shepherd's pie which to me seems most peculiar as it is essentially meat simmered in 'gravy' with potato on top.

So. I knew this challenge would make him happy. A very unscientific straw-poll amongst friends revealed that everyone has their own idea of the perfect gravy. Some like it thick, some like it thin. Some like it pale and some like it dark and glossy. Some like 'bits' in it. Some prefer it smooth. Which sort should I make?

I decided to please myself and make gravy in the way I most enjoy it. But then again I was stumped. The type of gravy I like with a roast chicken (pale, quite thin and made mainly with roasting juices, a splash of white wine and a touch of redcurrant jelly) is totally different to the gravy I like to pour over my sausages (thick, dark and glossy with lots of onions). How to decide what to make?

In the end, I present you with two gravies. One is the kind of gravy I make when I'm roasting meat - in this case, beef. The other is a rich onion gravy I made to serve with venison sausages and mash. Both were delicious. Both involved British onions. One used the onions as in a 'supporting role'. The other is entirely about the onions.

Firstly though, you might be interested to see inside that box...

There were familar ingredients I turn to regularly for gravy-making: Worcestershire sauce, Marmite and tomato sauce. There was also a pot of English mustard and an intriguing jar of mushroom ketchup. Sadly, I'm no longer able to eat mushrooms so this is something my husband will be experimenting with at a later date. I bet it would add an excellent savoury quality to the gravy though.

So first up, we have a plate of sausage and mash....

All that is missing is the onion gravy. Let's make some shall we?

Red Onion Gravy

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 red onions

1 tbsp olive oil

2 small knobs of butter

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp Marmite

1 scant tbsp plain flour

350ml boiling water

1 tsp redcurrant jelly

1. Cut onions in half and slice. Heat oil and small knob of butter in a heavy-duty casserole dish. Add onions and sugar and sweat for a few minutes until just starting to soften.

2. Place lid on the casserole and continue to cook onions on a fairly low heat for around 15 minutes until really soft and sticky. Aga-users might like to do this in the roasting oven, rather than on the top.

3. Boil the kettle and pour approx 350ml boiling water over the Marmite and mix together to create 'stock'. Sprinkle flour over the sticky onions and stir well to incorporate. Gradually add the Marmite stock a little at a time, stirring well to combine after each addition and bubbling on quite a high heat. You may not need to add it all, you may need to add a little more, depending on how thick you like your gravy.

4. Add the redcurrant jelly and season well with salt and pepper. Bubble away for a 5 minutes and adjust seasoning to taste. If it seems too sweet for your liking, add a little Worcestershire sauce. If not sweet enough, add more redcurrant jelly.

5. Just before serving, add a little knob of butter and stir in. This is not essential but does make for a lovely, glossy gravy.

6. Pour into a jug and pour liberally over sausages and mash!

Gravy to accompany a roast:

This is the method I use most often. In this instance I was making gravy to accompany roast beef, but I've included alternatives for other roast meats...

Gravy-making starts before the roast even enters the oven! Chop an onion or two into quarters and, if you have one, a carrot into large chunks. Place these in the roasting tin and sit the joint on top. These vegetables will provide extra flavour to your gravy.

Once the meat is cooked, set aside to rest on a carving board, covered in foil.

Pour excess fat out of roasting tin (leave around 1 tbsp along with the juices) and set on top of the hob on a medium-high heat. Sprinkle over a tablespoon or so of flour and mix into the fat and juices, taking care to scrape up all the sticky bits from the bottom of the tin.

Add a good splash of wine. White for chicken, turkey, pheasant or pork. Red for red meats and other game. Bubble away, stirring and scraping all the while.

Next add stock. Often I will use water from the vegetables mixed with the relevant stock cube for this. If a poultry joint came with giblets, I boil these up whilst the bird is cooking to create a flavoursome stock.

Add stock slowly, stirring well between each addition. Quantity will depend on how much juice came from the roast and how many people you are serving. For this beef joint, I used about 400ml stock for four of us.

Once stock is added, add the 'extras'. For interest, this is a very rough guide to what I add depending on the joint:

Beef - 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce or 1tsp dark soy sauce, 1 tsp tomato ketchup and a 1/2 tsp of English mustard.

Lamb - 1 tsp Marmite and 1 heaped tsp redcurrant jelly

Chicken and feathered game, including duck - 1 tsp redcurrant jelly and 1 splash Worcestershire sauce

Vension - 2 tsp redcurrant jelly and splash Worcestershire sauce

Pork - 1 tsp Marmite, pinch dried sage

These additions are all dependent on taste. I always taste as I go and add a little of this or a little of that depending on what I feel it needs. If the gravy tastes bland, I add a little more of something! Remember to season with plenty of salt and pepper.

Strain the gravy into a jug so that you have a smooth gravy (though the onions and carrot to taste quite delicious as a cook's perk!).

Serve with roast meat and all the trimmings....

Chipotle chicken wraps

I've got a bit of a thing for Mexican flavours at the moment and, in particular, an ingredient that is new to me: chipotle paste. For years I've been making Mexican-style dishes which, while good, lacked a really authentic Mexican flavour. Chipotle paste has changed all this. Made from smoke-dried jalapeno chilli peppers, it adds a fantastic smoky heat to dishes.

Over the past fortnight, I've made this tasty dish twice which shows how successful it has been! It is a fairly basic tomato-based chicken stew, enhanced by the addition of chipotle paste and lots of coriander. A very low-fat recipe which you could simply serve with rice. I preferred to serve it with tortillas, allowing people to help themselves to plain rice, guacamole and soured cream. The resulting wraps were rather messy, if I'm honest, but with lots of paper napkins on standby, noone seemed to mind.

Shredding the chicken is, I would suggest, crucial in the success of this dish. It somehow soaks up the sauce, making it more tortilla-friendly. It would work well with leftover roast chicken too, I suspect.

The original recipe is here on the BBC Good Food website, but I added regular bell peppers and doubled the quantity if sauce. The chipotle paste is fairly vital to the flavour of this dish - I found mine in Waitrose and it is made by Discovery. I'm looking forward to using it in other dishes - any suggestions?

Chipotle Chicken Wraps

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts

1 medium red onion

1 large yellow bell pepper (or green, or red, or a mix!)

3 cloves garlic

1 tsp dark brown sugar

2 heaped teaspoons of chipotle paste (or more, if you like it spicy)

800g tinned chopped tomatoes

Fresh coriander
Small bunch spring onions

To serve:

Corn or flour tortillas (2 per person would be a 'sensible' suggestion, but you may find that hungry people want more! We managed 3 each.)

Guacamole

Soured cream

1. Chop onions into small pieces and fry in a little oil until soft and starting to turn golden. Slice the peppers and add to the pan, frying until starting to soften. Finely chop or crush the garlic and add this for the final minute or two.

2. Add the sugar and chipotle paste to the pan and stir well to coat. Pour in the tomatoes and then add the chicken breasts (whole and unbrowned). Cover with the tomatoey sauce as best you can and simmer gently for 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Note: you can do this in the oven too. Stir occasionally and add a little water or stock if the sauce is drying out.

3. When the chicken is cooked, remove from the sauce to a plate and shred with two forks. Stir the shredded chicken back into the sauce and heat through.

4. Serve, scattered with plenty of coriander and chopped spring onions, either with rice or with rice, tortillas, guacamole and soured cream (and anything else that takes your fancy!).

Cornish Pasties

It is the New Year. I've spent the past few weeks over-indulging on a pretty serious scale. The time has come to reign it in, eshew the slab of Christmas cake for a health-giving platter of fresh fruit, abandon the crisps and dips for a carrot baton and leave the rich, hefty dishes of the festive season behind in favour of fresh and dainty salads. Sound familiar?

In theory, the idea of starting the New Year afresh with healthy options aplenty is a good one. But I've just never been much good at it. I mean, does a salad really appeal when the temperature is sub-zero?

January, for me, is perhaps the most depressing month of the year. The bright lights and glitz of Christmas have vanished without trace, everyone plods back to work and there seems to be little to look forward to. Unless you have some exciting holiday booked. Which I don't... So, I think January is a time to go easy on yourself. Save the dieting for the Spring when all seems more hopeful and cheery. The days are warmer and those lighter meals are just what the body craves. For now though, hunker down with some comfort food. Warming soups, stews and pies don't need to be swimming in fat but they deliver the satisfaction that we crave on these dreary, wintery days.

So, if you are looking for health food, I'm sorry to disappoint. Instead I bring you... The Cornish Pasty.

A few years ago, I wouldn't have imagined myself ever making such a thing. I like a Cornish Pasty as much as the next man (or woman) but it isn't really something I get particularly excited about. Enter my husband. If you asked him to describe his 'last supper', it might well include a pasty (along with roast beef, yorkshire puddings, all the trimmings, cheese galore and a syrup sponge pudding). When holidaying in Cornwall, he felt positively hard-done-by if a pasty-less day went by. He also taught me that there are pasties and pasties. Once I'd tasted a few, I bugun to take his point. There is a world of difference between a good pasty and an indifferent one. The quest for pasty perfection peaked my interest and I vowed to try and make one at home for him upon return.

Upon return from said holiday, it appeared that we'd eaten a few too many pasties and it seemed rather an indulgent treat to make at home (we were on a pre-wedding diet). I forgot all about it. Fast-forward 18 months and I was flicking through an old copy of Aga Living Magazine and came accross a very simple-sounding recipe for Cornish Pasties. The time had come to give them a whirl...

A little further research led me to another recipe in my Aga Bible book. I was then befuddled. The recipes were quite different and I was at a loss to know which to follow. One suggested skirt beef, the other rib-eye. Quite a difference, I thought. Rump would surely be more tender in the pasty but I'd always understood the pasty to be an... economical... treat for tin and copper miners. Skirt would fit better with this and certainly seems the traditional choice according to the interweb. We only discovered this after a trip to the supermarket though, so rib-eye it was!

Recipes differed on vegetable ingredients too. Potato, swede and onion are what we both feel 'should' be in a pasty so we stuck with this. Seasoning is key too - plenty of pepper in particular, and then add some more. Ours could have had more even though I felt like I'd overdone it.

As for the pastry, I went for the a simple recipe but the magazine suggested a pastry using half butter and half lard. I suspect this would have been better but was pretty pleased with mine. This recipe made vast pasties. A true feast. Next time, I'd make smaller ones. Otherwise, these were absolutely delicious. Not the best or most authentic perhaps, but pretty good for a first attempt!

Cornish Pasties

Adapted from Aga Living and Aga Bible

Makes 6 (or more smaller ones)

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

342g plain flour

226g butter, cold and cubed

1 free range egg

salt and pepper

For the filling:

250g skirt steak or rib-eye steak if you are feeling fancy (we were!)

300g potato, peeled and diced

150g swede, peeled and diced

2 medium onions, finely chopped

1-2 tbsp beef stock

salt and pepper

1 egg, beaten, to glaze

1. Make the pastry. Simply put ingredients in a food processor and pulse until it comes together in a ball. Only add a touch of water if it is very crumbly. You can also do this by hand, rubbing the butter into the flour and adding the egg to bind. Wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for at least an hour. Bring to room temperature again before rolling out.

2. If cooking on a regular oven, pre-heat to 200C. If you are using the Aga, take a moment to revel in the lack of pre-heating required!

3. Chop meat into small cubes and brown in a little oil. Set to one side and add onions to the pan to soften for a few minutes. Add to beef. Add the stock to the pan and scrape up all the little bits - pour over the meat and onions. Add potatoes and swede and mix to combine. Season very well with plenty of salt and pepper.

4. Roll out the pastry and, using a 20cm plate, cut out 6 circles. Put some of the filling in the centre of each circle, brush the edge with beaten egg and bring the two sides of pastry together to form a semi-circle. 'Crimp' the edges of the pasty with your fingers to make a wavy edge* and transfer to a non-stick baking tray (ideally lined with Bake-o-Glide if using the Aga).

5. Brush pasties with remaining egg-wash so that the bronze nicely.

6. Bake...

Aga users: bake on floor of roasting oven for 20 minutes and then move to bottom set of runners with cold shelf on 2nd set to avoid over-browning for about 30 mins.

Conventional cooking: bake at 200C (fan) for 20 minutes and then turn down to 160C (fan) for a further 30 minutes.

*Traditionally, the crimped edge is not eaten. Miners didn't have the opportunity to wash their hands before eating their lunch and their hands were often ingrained with poisonous arsenic - the chunky edge was held during eating and then disgarded.