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// Mike

Recipe - Cottage-ish pie

I must get it out straight away, there's no hiding it. This is one of the best dishes I've cooked and eaten for quite some time. I know it's considered bad form to brag about your own accomplishments but in this case I don't give a flying f... It was just awesome. ;)

If you just try one of my recipes ever, make this one it. It's a perfect winter warmer and such comfort food that you'll be able to take the hard knocks of life with a smile on your face for quite some time.

I call it cottage-ish pie since I did freestyle it a bit as per my usual way. The baked beans adds a bit of a different texture while the grated carrot adds some crunchiness as well as some extra liquid so it doesn't get too dry. Dry cottage pie is just not very nice.

As you notice from the ingredients I added Dijon mustard to the mash. It gives it a nice bite and changes the colour a little bit. If you don't like Dijon, why not try adding some horseradish sauce? Hey, go the extra distance and score extra kinkyness points by using Wasabi!

Enough waffling, over to the recipe...

Ingredients (serves about 4)
For the topping
A large batch of creamy mash, use about 800g potatoes to make it
Dijon mustard (optional)
Salt
Pepper

For the filling
500g beef mince
1 onion, diced
Garlic, finely diced - to taste
Frozen peas, one to two good handfuls
1 large carrot, grated
1 can of Heinz baked beans
Tabasco (optional)
Worcestershire Sauce
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

Method
Preheat the oven to 200c.

Heat the olive oil in a non-stick pan on a medium heat. Add the mince and let it fry for a little bit. Once the mince starts to colour add in the onion and garlic.

Let this fry for a while until the mince is cooked and most of the liquid has cooked away. Add salt, pepper, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce to taste. Stir in the frozen peas and let them warm through for a minute or two.

In the meantime prepare the mash, don't forget to stir in two to three teaspoons of a good size worth of Dijon mustard. Make sure to make the mash nice and creamy. Season well.

When the mince starts to look ready, add in the baked beans and the carrot. Stir through and turn off the heat.

Pour the mince into a 2 liter oven safe casserole dish. Spoon the mash on top and make sure to get an even layer. If you feel like it, use a fork to make some nice patterns.

Put the casserole dish in the oven until the mash starts to get a nice brown colour as well as turning a bit crispy. This should take about 25 - 30 minutes, but keep it there until you feel happy with the look of it all.

Enjoy!

Recipe - Chicken in a tomato and chipotle sauce

Well, I'm back...

After having had a busy weekend with a bonfire party and the NFL game in London I now feel like I'm getting a cold.

Someone a couple of Twiglets short of a full bag had decided that it was a good idea to have the pre-match tailgating party outdoors. In London. In October. Great. I wonder what the odds was for rain?

Not even the medicinal beers I prescribed myself seems to have helped to keep the cold away. Must remember to have more beers next time in order to avoid the cold.

I've always found that spicy food helps when you got a cold, at worst it all it does it clear your sinuses.

I used three dried chipotles which gave it quite a good kick. As always, freestyle it to suit you and your tastebuds. If you want to tone down the heat you can always try and remove all or most of the seeds.

You can serve this with rice, or why not in tortillas or over some nacho chips?

Ingredients (serves 2 - 4)
2 chicken breasts, cut into bitesized chunks
2 onions, halved and sliced fairly thinly
Dried chipotle chilies, to taste
Garlic, finely chopped - to taste
1 green pepper
1 can of sweet corn
1 can of crushed tomates
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Cooked rice

Method
Start by rehydrating the chilies as per the instruction on the package. Once rehydrated, slice the chilies in a fashion to suit you. Preserve the liquid you rehydrated them in.

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan on medium heat and add the onions. Once the onions have started to brown you can add the chicken pieces. Add the garlic and some seasoning.

Fry the chicken until it starts to colour nicely. Then add the chilies and the pepper. Let this fry for a minute or two and then add the tomatoes, sweet corn and about 200 ml of the preserved liquid. Stir well.

Cover the pan with a lid. Once it's boiling turn down the heat and let it simmer until the sauce thickens nicely.

Serve with rice, or whatever you fancy really.

Enjoy!

Cheese and Bacon Pasta Salad

This is another posting that I don't really want to call a recipe. This is more meant to be a sort of inspiration.

The reason behind this dish is that I needed to clear the fridge of some stuff that is about to expire. I'm invited to a big bonfire party on Saturday and Sunday will be spent at Wembley watching Chargers v Saints. That's American Football for those of you who aren't interested in sport. ;)

Well, back to the fridge clearing. I had a rummage around in both the fridge and the cupboards and came up with this, a simple pasta salad. I prefer cold pasta salads, so this was served cold.

The ingredients this time was as follows: Cooked pasta, crispy smoked bacon cut into small pieces, diced Emmenthal cheese, a can of sweetcorn, diced red onion and finally some diced red pepper. Finish off with some freshly cracked black pepper and you're there. Serve with some kind of dressing you like.

Easy to make and even easier to freestyle...

Enjoy!

Recipe - Honey and balsamic vinegar marinated chicken stirfry

Stirfries are awesome if you're a little bit short on time. It's quick to prepare and cook and it's quite hard to fail with them to be honest.

The only thing that takes some time with this recipe is marinating the chicken and that really doesn't need you for anything. Just put it all into a freezer bag, pop it into the fridge and then take it out a little while before it is time to cook. Sorted.

I served this with rice, but you could just as well serve it with noodles for example. Have some soy sauce or sweet thai chili sauce on the side.

Ingredients
Boneless chicken breasts, cut into chunks and/or strips
Runny honey
Balsamic vinegar
Carrot, cut into sticks
Bambo shoots
Peppers, sliced
Spring onions, sliced - both white and green parts
Lime juice
Sesame seeds
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Cooked rice

Method
Put the chicken pieces in a freezer bag together with honey, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Mix well to make sure it coats all of the chicken. Put in the fridge for at least an hour, or even better -over night.

Heat the olive oil in a non stick frying pan or wok. Once really hot pour in the chicken, together with all of the marinade. Let this fry until the chicken starts to caramelize a bit. Add the carrot and bambo shoots, keep frying and stirring. After a minute or two add in the peppers and spring onion as well as some lime juice to taste. Taste and add salt, pepper and more lime juice if needed. Fry and stir for a minute or two more, add the sesame seeds and let them cook with the rest until they start to pop.

Serve with rice or noodles.
Enjoy!

Recipe - Scottish Casserole | Recept - Skottegryta

Talk about a trip down memory lane. This was a attempt to recreate a dish they used to serve for lunch at school when I was a kid. Yes, they did actually have things like kitchens and stuff when I was a kid. ;)

This is called Scottish Casserole, Skottegryta in Swedish, and I guess it was a reference to the notion that the Scots are known for being a bit tight on the money as this is a very frugal dish. These days we all know that it is just a national stereotype that the Scottish are tight bastards. *Nods towards Mr Lynch, a very nice and generous manager of Scottish descent* :)

I searched for a recipe for this dish on Google but all I could find was people posting that they couldn't find a recipe for it. Helpful, really helpful. So I had to try and remember what it tasted like and then figure out how to cook it.

So, this is what I came up with. Use it as a base and then work from there. I could almost say, freestyle it.

Ingredients (serves 2 -4)
400ml beef stock
500g beef mince
1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into 3mm slices
1 onion, halved and thinly sliced
Olive oil
Butter
Salt
Pepper
Pickled gherkins, sliced

Method
Preheat the oven to 200c.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the seasoned mince until nicely browned.

Grease an ovenproof dish with butter.

Layer the potato slices,onion and mince in the buttered dish - finishing with a layer of potatoes. Pour the beef stock over it all.

Place the tray in the middle of the oven and cook for 60 - 75 minutes or until the potatoes are nice and soft and cooked to your liking.

Serve with sliced gherkins.

Enjoy!

Recipe - Tropical Sunshine Pork Burgers

When I woke up this morning the rain was whipped against my windows by the strong winds. Not the best start to a week to tell the truth.

The autumn is here now and it's dark when I go to work and almost dark by the time I leave work to go home. Time for a little bit of tropical sunshine to lift the spirits...

As always there's loads of room for you to freestyle things. Add coconut milk, onions, rum or whatever takes your fancy in the marinade. Anything that makes you to feel happy really.

Ingredients
Boneless pork chops, pork loins or similar
Bread rolls
1 can of pineapple rings
Lime or lemon juice
1 - 2 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
Pepper, thinly sliced
Mayonnaise

Method
Make the marinade by pouring the juice from the can of pineapple rings into a freezer bag, add lemon or lime juice, the garlic, salt, pepper and paprika. Pop in the pork chops and make sure to mix it up properly. Leave the bag in the fridge for up to 24 hours, the longer the better.

Heat the grill in the oven (or use barbecue alternatively a ridged frying pan). In the meantime remove and drain the pork chops. Put the pork chops on a grill pan and put in under the grill until nicely browned, turn over and finish off the other side.

Once cooked remove from the grill pan and trim off the fat etc. While you are trimming the pork chops, grill the pineapple rings until they start to brown.

Split the bread rolls. Spread the lower half with some mayonnaise, put a pork chop on top of that. Finish off with a pineapple ring, a pepper slice and the top half of the bread roll.

Enjoy!

Recipe - Twice cooked racks of loin ribs

My favourite way of cooking ribs is on the barbecue where I can slowcook/smoke them until they are falling of the bone and full of smoky flavour.

Since I moved I had to go through a very emotional divorce from my beloved gas barbecue, forcing me to find out a new way of cooking a couple of racks of ribs. Just putting them under the grill would just result in them being hard and nasty to bite in to. What I figured out would make it possible to have the fall-off-bone-goodness combined with a nice crispy surface.

You should really make your own barbecue sauce for this but I had a bottle of Jardine's Texas Smoky Mesquite Cooking & BBQ Sauce that was begging to be involved. Who am I to say no to that offer...

I used jerk seasoning but as always, freestyle it. Use fresh herbs, lemon or whatever takes your fancy.

Don't forget the kitchen towels and the bowls of lemon water, this is finger food at its stickiest. Awesome... ;)

Ingredients
2 racks of loin ribs
Olive oil
Salt
Garlic, crushed or thinly sliced
Jerk seasoning
Barbecue sauce

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 250c.

Put some kitchen foil - enough to wrap a rack of ribs in, shiny side up, on your chopping board. Place a rack of ribs on the foil. Drizzle with olive oil, scatter with salt, put on the garlic, apply spices/herbs etc. Seal the foil parcel tightly and place on a baking tray. Repeat for the amount of racks you are cooking.

Put the tray into the oven. After 30 minutes, turn down the oven to 125c and keep the racks in there for another 90 minutes or so. Remove from the oven and open the foil parcels carefully to allow the racks to cool down. Turn off the oven.

Once they've cooled down sufficiently, 15 - 20 minutes, brush the meaty side of the ribs liberally with barbecue sauce. Heat up the grill in the oven and once it's hot put the racks under the grill. Let them grill until the sauce caramelizes, about 2 - 3 minutes.

Slice and serve with for example some more barbecue sauce to dip in, coleslaw and freshly baked bread rolls.

Enjoy!

Recipe - Creole Cordon Bleu

This is an old favourite of mine, one that I haven't revisited for a fair few years. Something that needed rectifying.

It's a very rich dish and I'm sure that your doctor would have a stroke himself if he looked at the ingredients. But hey, sometimes you need to treat yourself a bit. You can't eat things like this every day, but every now and then do cook somehting like this just to keep yourself happy.

Ingredients (serves 6)
6 skinless chicken breasts
Creole/Cajun seasoning
Olive oil
275g freshly grated parmesan
100g finely diced smoked bacon, fried
75 finely chopped spring onion
500 ml double cream
1 tsp black pepper
100g cold butter
Cooked white rice

Method
Preheat the oven to 180c.

Sprinkle the chicken breasts with the seasoning. Heat the oil in a pan on high heat and cock for 6 - 7 minutes, turning once. Transfer the chicken breasts to a baking tray and put into the oven for about 5 minutes.

When the time is up, turn on the grill and sprinkle the chicken breasts with a couple of tablespoons of parmesan cheese and put them under the grill until the cheese has melted.

In the meantime put the bacon, onion, cream and pepper in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Keep it simmering for 5 - 6 minutes to reduce, then stir in the butter on tablespoon at a time. Once the butter has melted, stir in the remaining parmesan cheese.

Put the rice and chicken on a plate and cover with the sauce.

Enjoy!

Credit Crunch Eggs

With the current economic crisis we all have to be more frugal. We cannot use our Beluga just to feed our chihuahuas, we need to make sure to find more uses for it than that.

Jokes aside, this is a classic nibble from when I grew up. I'd say that most Swedes in my age have eaten these little goodies. They're a really nice little starter or hors d'oeuvre and they're dead easy to make.

Cook some eggs until hardboiled, and let them cool down fully. Once cool, slice them in half. Put a dollop of mayonnaise on each half and finish off with a spoonful or so of caviar. I used lumpfish caviar, but heck - use some expensive stuff if you can afford it. If you want to be extra fancy you can make some with black caviar and some with red caviar.

Keep them in the fridge under some clingfilm until it's time to serve. Make sure to take them out a little bit beforehand so that they aren't too cold.

If you are serving them at a party or want to impress - use a icing piper to apply the mayo in a nicer way than I did with these. To be honest, I made them as a snack for my self at 22:15 in the evening so I didn't really care much about the looks of them. ;)

Enjoy!