Sussex was breathtakingly beautiful last weekend. The frost didn't thaw all day despite blinding sunlight. In the woodland, the trees cast blue shadows on the ground, reflections of the duck-egg-shell blue sky cracked intermittently by flight paths. It was the kind of day where it hurts to draw a breath, the air is so cold and so pure. The kind of day when all you want afterwards is to come home to a big warm stew that's been cooking whilst you've been out.
When I was thinking about what I wanted to cook, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to make a curry or a tagine. Logic ruled in the end, and drew me closer to the slow-cooked option so that I could leave it on the hob whilst I was out, but I had a hankering for the spice and creaminess of the curry so I decided to create a happy compromise: my masala-tagine.
Ingredients:
100g lamb shoulder (when boned)
1 large carrot chopped into discs
1 large sweet potato chopped into rough chunks
1 large onion
50g soaked dried apricots
1 scotch bonnet
1 tin coconut milk
1 tin chopped tomatoes
100ml chicken stock
2 tsp gara masala
1 tsp chinese 5 spice
To serve:
Steamed curly kale (with maldon salt and olive oil)
Peshwari naan bread mmm
Recipe:
Chop your onion and place in a pan on medium heat with olive oil, gara masala and chinese five spice. Cook for 3-4 minutes until caramelised, stirring all the time. Once your onions are a little brown, add the lamb and brown the outsides for a further 5 minutes. Meanwhile prepare your vegetables and put your casserole dish onto a low heat. Transfer the contents of your pan and your veeg into your casserole with your chopped tomatoes, chicken stock and coconut milk. Bring the mixture to the boil and then turn it down to simmer on a low heat. Check back after 1/2 hour and if enough liquid has reduced, put the lid on, turn the heat down lower and cook for another 3 hours. If you don't have the time, you can cook for less long but you might need to take the lid off to reduce the liquid some more for the last 20 minutes of cooking.
...and for desert.
Melt in the middle chocolate puddings. Are. So. Easy.
Who knew? The trick is to make a chocolate cake mix and a chocolate sauce mix, then pour one ontop of the other. It's not a matter of under-cooking a cake as I may have naively once believed (shh. don't tell).
Ingredients:
- 150g self-raising flour
- 4 tbsp cocoa powder
- 50g ground almonds
- 100g dark chocolate , roughly chopped
- 200g caster sugar
- 175ml milk
- 50g butter , melted
- 1 egg
And for the sauce:
150g muscavado sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder
Recipe:
Now this is just too easy. Heat your oven to 180 degrees. Mix your dry ingredients for the puddings in a bowl, then mix your wet ingredients in a separate one. Combine the ingredients and spoon into 6 different ramekins. Then make the sauce by placing your sugar and your cocoa in a pan and stirring 300ml of boiling water into it.. Yes, that bit is easy too. Now pour the sauce over the top of each of the ramekins equally, place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, lower the temperature to 150 degrees for the final 10 minutes.
Serve hot with vanilla ice cream.
Pud mixture shots are probably as good as the pud shots themselves.
Keep this one in mind for wintry nights even if you haven't been galavanting around the countryside in a cringeworthy, stereotypical way.
