Recent recipe roundup

Apple and pork meatballs (Tesco) 

Decent, the sage and nutmeg give the pork a lift, but it maybe needs breadcrumbs to soften - the all-meat meatballs were a little bouncy. The suggested 16 come out a bit big but any smaller and the apple would make them fall apart I think.

Chicken tagine (Good Food)

Good in principle (the toasted spice blend smelled great) but came out very badly. The amount of liquid in the recipe must be a typo - 750ml made a watery mess. The onion, tomato and preserved lemon turned to mush, the spices were drowned, and there was no browning of the chicken. It was such a disaster I completely forgot to add the feta and pomegranate seeds when serving! Several comments mentioned the liquid issue but as the rating overall was over 4 stars I didn't check the comments before cooking. Should have trusted my instinct as it felt like a lot when adding it.

Rhubarb and rosemary scones (National Trust)

Absolutely delicious. Not a flavour combo I would have thought of but really works. If you are not feeding a whole tearoom I would halve the recipe, though. Would make again, if only to see what they are like when not kneaded to death because I forgot the sugar at the rubbing-in stage and had to add it to the dough. D'oh.

Brown butter cookies with rhubarb and white chocolate (The Boy Who Bakes / Bon Appetit)

Guess who got given rhubarb? Not the most obvious cookie mix-in but I needed something more handheld than a scone to take to a gathering. And brown butter is always a winner. I decided to adapt this recipe, using white chocolate and stem ginger (in syrup) as the mix-ins and a cluster of ginger-syrup-roasted rhubarb dolloped on the centre before baking. The flavour combination was fantastic (could have taken more ginger if anything) but I should have cooled the butter more before starting the mixing, or refrigerated before baking. The dough was incredibly soft going into the oven and so the cookies coalesced into a (tasty) blob while baking and had to be rescued with a palette knife.

(Side note, the original recipe calls for "chocolate wafers" which I was confused about as an ingredient, but on watching the recipe video it turns out they look like chocolate buttons, but made of posh chocolate for baking purposes. At least one commenter used actual wafers but said the cookies came out well!)

Slow-cooker pork and sweet potato

A recipe from Ultimate Slow Cooker which I adapted to suit available ingredients.

Ingredients (2 generous servings / 2 moderate servings and a littl'un):
300-350g pork shoulder, large dice
1 large sweet potato, peeled, 2cm dice
1 bramley apple, peeled and cored, 2-3cm dice
1 medium to large onion, 1cm dice
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 stock cube of choice
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch chilli flakes (optional)
salt, pepper, oil as needed

Method:
Brown the meat and remove from pan/slow cooker inner
Soften onion and garlic with spices.
Add crumbled stock cube, sweet potato, apple, and return pork to pan, mix well to distribute.
Add chopped tomatoes to cover.

Cook on high for 3-4 hours or longer on medium.

Even without the made-up stock cube as per the recipe, there was plenty of liquid. I ladled some out to put in the long-grain rice I cooked to go with it. Super tasty!

More family dinners: leek & ham gratin, cod & chorizo stew

Thought I'd try something different: leek and ham gratin with rosti topping (Delicious mag). Was OK, but not brilliant.

1) I misread the instructions which say to chop the leeks in thirds. I just cut them into rings.
2) the additional surface area to the cut leeks then soaked up all the butter so there was nothing to make the white sauce with.
3) maybe my cloves were a bit strong, but the sauce was quite heavily garlicky!
4) the rosti topping was really dry - I was a bit stingy with the butter as I'd used more of it earlier.

I think I'd try it again but with a mash topping. The rosti were a faff that didn't turn out to be worth it.



Thought I'd try something else different: cod and chorizo stew (BBC Good Food). Ding - winner!

The only thing I did differently was to add a bit more paprika when cooking the onion & chorizo, and add a dollop of sun dried tomato paste. It all worked brilliantly. Would try it again, especially with a cheaper fish like basa. Family had potatoes and I had cous cous (not enough potatoes...) - both worked.