Jamie Oliver Has Good Idea Shock

There are some TV chefs (cooks is a more accurate word for most) I actually like - HF-W, for one. There are others - Nigella 'another bucket of cream please' Lawson, and Jamie 'fry it pukka fella' Oliver - I cannot abide. Strange then that reading a recent JO recipe gave me a headstart on what proved to be an excellent dish.


Probably on the BBC website, or maybe The Guardian (he's a Londoner so The Guardian - to which I subscribe btw - acknowledges his existence, unlike restaurants outside the M25) I read what was clearly a plug (surely not) for his recent discovery of vegetables. Doesn't he know HF-W planted his flag on such produce some time ago, even introducing common people to them? The recipe used lentils with other ingredients to make a non-meat basis for shepherd's/cottage pie (the end result more like cottage to my mind, for what it's worth).


Sternest Critic having been welcomed back to the fold with a huge T-bone steak on Wednesday (he's been off teaching diving in foreign climes), Thursday was his introduction to our present mainly vegetarian regime. Without the recipe to hand I worked from general principles and vague recollection: the 'meat' base was made with lentils (cooked from dried), to which diced carrots, fried onions red and white, garlic, chopped mushrooms, tomato puree, tomato sauce, smoked paprika, and - JO's good idea - some Marmite were added. I overdid the Marmite, as The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in eternal pain) pointed out, perfectly correctly (as if it needs saying). The lid was made with potatoes, parsnip and turnip, mashed with some grated cheddar and mezzo-luna-ed parsley, and a layer of grated cheddar put on top to finish it - and when that had browned up in the oven the pie was ready.


Normally I'm one for not substituting stuff for meat in vegetarian cooking - let the veggies speak for themselves - but this mixture made for a meaty texture, and was very savoury. Marmite has B12, so addresses one of my concerns about cutting out/back on meat and fish. It also imparts a terrific umami taste. But I added a bit too much, and it slightly overshadowed the lentils. Nil desperandum, it will be corrected next time, and there will be a next time, as it was enjoyed by all. Trouble was, we struggled to find a name for it: Crofter's Pie? Smallholder's Pie? Cheaty Meatless Pie?

End of the Summer that Never Was

It is cold and nasty outside, the last day of a September every bit as wet and wild as 2012's summer that never was.

In spite of the vile weather that began in June and has barely let up since, we did grow plenty on our allotment and in the garden. As ever, though, I failed with tomatoes, with only a few reaching ripeness. Today I gave up hoping that the remaining green ones would even manage a blush of pink, so I picked the lot - lot being about 20 marble-sized fruits - and made them into a salsa.

As anyone who has read other posts here will know one of my favourite cooking verbs is 'to zap'. These enjoyed that treatment, along with some of our own coriander seeds, a red chilli seeds-and-all, some parsley,  and salt and pepper. Very very hot, unlike the weather.

That salsa (with some yogurt, it really is damned hot) will coat chicken breasts for baking tonight, to be served with a spinach salad to help the cooling process and offer some green defiance to the unkind elements.

Chicken Burgers Needn't Be Sad

Saturday's evening meal here tends to be a bit more relaxed, finger food stuff, and this week we went down the burger route. That need not mean some vile mechanically recovered slurry dried and reprocessed with 50 per cent salt. I used £3 worth of Sainsbury's chicken thigh fillets zapped to a coarse consistency, with some onion, a whole red chilli for a bit of kick, parsley and par-cel from the allotment, and freshly-ground spices -pepper, cumin and fennel, the lot held together with a large egg and seasoned with salt.

The only drawback to cooking these is that unlike say lamb or beef burgers you really need to make sure they cook all the way through - raw chicken is not good for you. So they were made as flat as was practical, and then fried over a medium heat in a bit of olive oil and turned regularly until the outside was crisping up nicely. I have to admit to putting them in the microwave for a couple of minutes at the end to make sure any nasties had been killed off.

Served in the flat-breads about which I wrote some time back, and with a simple salsa of tomatoes, green chilli, parsley and onion turned into mush by the spice grinder there was plenty of flavour and the crispy outside was a treat.