Pimp my leftover roast beef.

Pimp my leftover roast beef.

by R.T ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Picture it; you busted your ass making a gorgeous roast beef dinner. The meat was perfection, the veggies were divine, the gravy, oh magnificent. It’s 24 hours later and you’re stood in front of your open fridge, staring at the remnants that remain; cold, sad, uninspiring. You feel yourself reaching for your phone, the faint voice cries in your head ‘just fucking order a pizzaaaaa’.

STOP. Halt. Wait. Okay I’m the absolute first person in line for a pizza but are you really going to let this pathetic little piece of beef and his roasted veggie friends mock you like that? Sit there in defiance as they know that they’ve beaten you? Oh hell no.

Get those little bastards out of the fridge. Time to show them who’s boss. Bitches, we’re making pie. Not only are we making pie, but we’re making roast beef and veggie pie with motherfucking home made cheesy pastry now LET’S GO.

What you need:

For the pastry: see the rough puff pastry recipe.

Aged cheddar

For the pie filling:

Leftover gravy (if you don’t have this, see below)

1/4 onion, finely chopped

2tbsp butter

2tbsp flour

1-1/2 cup of stock of your choice

1tbsp lea and perrins (I refuse to list the actual sauce’s name because you’re all going to butcher the pronunciation).

Leftover veggies

Leftover beef from this recipe

Handful of frozen peas

Handful of mushrooms

What to do:

First up, make your pastry (or use some store bought puff pastry, pansy). While it’s resting in the fridge, see below.

If you’ve got enough leftover gravy to generously cover your leftovers, then pour a drink. Otherwise do the following:

Heat a pan over medium heat with a drizzle of olive oil; add the onions and a pinch of salt and some pepper and then cook to soften them up. Once soft, add your butter and stir to melt, then add your flour. As you stir the flour in you’re definitely going to have a moment of ‘oh god I’ve fucked it up’ but you haven’t I promise. Things will turn clumpy, but clumpy is the goal. Clumpy, with no white flour anywhere in the pan (this will take about 30 seconds or so).

Add your stock a small splash at a time, it’ll start to loosen the clumps but stir as you go, and as you add more stock you’ll notice this turning into a thick bloody nice sauce. Once you’ve used all your stock, season the sauce some more and add the Lee and Perrins. Stir again, and get fancy with adding more flavourings and herbs if you like. Once you’re happy with the taste, pour it into a jug and set aside until you need it.

At this point, clean the pan out and put it back on the heat with some olive oil; while it warms up, chop up your mushrooms (I don’t like to chop them too fine here), and run the knife through your leftover roasted veggies too. Once the pan is hot, add the mushrooms and veggies. Season and stir every now and then; the mushrooms will start to brown a bit and the leftover veg will come back to life. After the mushrooms start to brown, throw in your peas and cook for another few minutes. Once the peas are done, take off the heat.

Now chop up your beef (in any god damn way you want because who’s the boss? YOU’RE the boss) and mix the beef, the veggie mix and the gravy all together in your pie dish. Set that mamma jamma aside while you get funky with the pastry.

Roll the pastry out (you’ll only need about a third of what you made with the recipe; keep the rest covered in the fridge for using over the next few days). Roll out a circle about 1cm thick, and just slightly bigger than your pie tin. Before cutting it to an exact, aesthetically pleasing circle, grate your cheddar over the pastry (just enough to cover the centre part of the dough) and then fold the outside back over the cheese to cover it all up. Use the rolling pin to roll it out again (some cheese might poke through but who ever cared about that?).

Now (if needed), cut the right size circle out from your pastry. Beat an egg in a small dish and brush a little around the edges of the pastry (to help it stick to the tin) and then place the pastry, egg side down, on your pie tin (it’s okay if the filling mounds a bit and your pastry lays on top; in fact that’s best). Press the pastry on to the edge of the tin and, if you’re feeling posh, seal it more with a fork around the edges.

Since you’ve faffed around with this pastry for a while, pop the pie back in the fridge while your oven heats up to 425f.

Once the oven is ready, get the pie out and, with a paring knife, slice a few slits in the pastry (in whatever pattern you want) to allow steam to escape. Brush with the rest of the egg wash and throw it in the oven for about half an hour, or until the pastry has puffed up and is golden.

This bugger will be steaming and bubbling when you take it out so for gods sake leave it a moment before diving in.

Scoop, serve, munch, enjoy.

Bonus Snacks

Bonus Snacks

by R.T ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In my fish-less fish cake recipe I eluded to bonus snacks and I would the absolute worst person on this planet to deny you of such promises.

I’m currently embarking on a tiny mission to start reducing food waste. I say tiny, because I really don’t feel like I’m actually doing anything but with THIS little trick, I can hold my head up high and expect my award for environmental protection any fucking day now.

All we’re doing is eating the peels of the root vegetables that we would normally throw out. Roast them as you’re prepping the rest of your dinner for a bonus snack of goodness as you go (or save them up in an air tight container for another time if you’re a psychopath).

Isn’t it a-peeling? (sorry, I’m really sorry)

What you need:

Peels of whatever you’re peeling; Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sweet potato; most root vegetables should work here.

Olive oil

Salt/pepper

Seasoning of choice

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 400f (this is what I roast a lot of vegetables at anyway, so chances are my oven needs to be at this temperature for the rest of the dinner); adjust as you need.

When peeling the vegetables, I like to pay a little more attention to get bigger peels (as opposed to the speed peeling demon that I normally am). Gather the peels and chuck them on a lined baking sheet (or roasting tray; whatever you were going to use for dinner anyway).

Drizzle a good amount of olive oil over them (for about 2 potatoes and 2 carrots worth of peels, I use 2tbsp of oil). Season with salt, pepper, and anything else you like. I’ve used my bougie British only seasoning that I’ll never find anywhere else (how’s THAT for a carbon footprint), but garlic powder, cayenne, piri piri, ras el hanout, WHATEVER go mad, it’s your life.

Toss thoroughly to coat each piece of peel and take a moment to evenly spread them out as they tend to stick together a titch.

Roast in the oven for about 10-15 minutes or until crispy; tossing once or twice as they cook. When they are fresh out of the oven, take a little more of your seasoning of choice to sprinkle over and toss while the peels are still hot.

You’ve just made peel chips, bitch. Now go and be the hero.

Crunch, munch, enjoy.

Roasting Up Ol’ Bessy

Roasting Up Ol’ Bessy

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As a British citizen I can graciously admit that there’s not much that we do right. We’ve got issues. These shortcomings can all be forgiven with a few facts; 1) we gave you Ribena (and kept the Marmite to ourselves), 2) we gave you Queen (I guess we share that with Zanzibar) and 3) Sunday roasts.

I am the leader of the ‘make Sunday roasts a thing everywhere’ campaign because not only does it get you in the kitchen, but it gives you leftovers and if you don’t go out of your fucking mind knowing that you’ve got leftovers for the next couple of days, then you probably don’t belong here.

Roast beef was intimidating to start with (because I’d rather not eat at all than have to eat overcooked roast beef) but with a little know how, we’ll make a killer meal. There’s about 50,000 cuts of beef to choose from but I typically roast a sirloin or outside round; no real reason, it’s just what’s available at the butchers and NOT bloody expensive. When it doubt, ask the bloke behind the counter because guess what? This is kind of his thing.

Let’s get cracking.

What you need:

1.2-1.4kg cut of sirloin or outside round (it’ll feed 2 people plus a crap tonne of leftovers)

Salt/pepper

1/2 an onion

4 cloves of garlic

What to do:

You do actually need to think about timing here. You want dinner at 7? The roast needs to rest for 20 minutes- half an hour before you carve it. The roast itself needs about 1 3/4 hours to cook. I’m shit at maths so I’ll leave that to you.

An hour before you want to have the roast in the oven, get it out of the fridge. Room temperature meat is what you want here. With about 15 minutes left to go, get your oven preheating to 475f and cut your half an onion into chunks to lay in your roasting tray; this will be what your beef rests on as it cooks. Bash the crap out of your garlic cloves but leave them in their skins as you chuck them in between your beautiful onion trivet.

Now prep the meat by tying it up with butchers string (if it’s not already tied up for you; this is just to allow it to keep it’s shape while it cooks). If you need to tie it up, literally just wrap the string around the joint and tie it along the roast in a few different places.

There will most likely be a fat cap along the top of the joint; make sure it’s facing up and score it with a paring knife in a few places. Drizzle with meat with olive oil, and rub a generous mixture of salt and pepper all over the fat cap, and then all over the rest of the beef (give it some love, old Bessy here died for you so perhaps be nice to it and give it a good rub down).

Place the roast, fat cap up, on top of your onions and garlic. give one last drizzle of olive oizzle and pop it in the centre of the oven. Set your timer for 10 minutes, and once the timer has gone off, drop the oven to 275f (you won’t need to get the roast out, leave it in). Set your timer for 1 1/2 hours.

Why the hell did I make you do that? By starting this off h-o-t, we brown the beef a bit and help seal in juices. Yes, you can sear the beef in a hot pan instead before putting it in the oven but I can’t be bothered to faff around like that. This works too, sue me.

Once the timer has gone off, get the beef out and take the internal temperature; I look for 130-135c (for medium rare). If I’ve hit that, I scream, dance, death drop, then get the roast out of the oven and cover with foil. Let it rest for at least 20 minutes, but half an hour is best; if you’ve not hit that temperature, put it back in for another 15 minutes and check again.

I’m not going to tell you what to serve this with; I typically roast some potatoes and carrots, but do what you want. To be frank, even topping this on some good bread with tonnes of horseradish would be fucking epic. And don’t worry; we’ll be pimping up some leftovers in good time.

Carve, munch, enjoy.

Pimp my Pillsbury Pizza Dough

Pimp my Pillsbury Pizza Dough

by R.T ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Baking is life. Making dough is everything. The act of taking yeast, flour, salt and water and making something like pizza dough is nothing short of a fucking miracle. So when this whole covid crap kicked in, I though ‘you know what? I could get some more yeast and some bread flour; we’ll be set’.

Little did I know that the entirety of Canada has decided to work on their application videos for the Great British sodding Bake Off and there is not a scrap to be found. Anywhere. Shelves are BARE my friend, and I was left with no choice at that moment but to head to the back cooler and hang my head in shame as I pick up a roll of *gulp* Pillsbury pizza dough.

This shit is strange; the fact that you practically have to explode the package to get the stuff out should be a red flag but we’re going to press on and I will show you the mastery that it took to make a decent pizza out of this weird smelling, wet and spongy mix. Times are tough my friends.

What you need:

1 roll of Pillsbury pizza dough

Sauce: if you already have pizza sauce (or pasta sauce), use 3tbsp of that. If not:

3tbsp of Passata (strained tomatoes)

Salt/pepper

1tsp oregano

1/2tsp sugar

Toppings:

2 sausages of choice (I get pork and apple from the butchers)

1tbsp of ‘nduja (spicy pork sausage paste; sounds gross, tastes amazing).

6 thin slices of spicy salami (Soppressata is king)

incase you can’t tell, we’re going for the ‘add so much meat you can’t see the base’ method.

2 cups of grated Mozzarella

Drizzle of Balsamic vinegar

What to do:

If you look at the directions on the dough, they suggest to pre-bake and then bake again once topped for a short amount of time at a higher temperature. I prefer to keep the temperature the same and do the second bake for longer to ensure that is actually turns out like something that resembles pizza. With that being said, preheat the oven at 400f.

With an unreasonable amount of anxiety, get the dough out of the tube by popping it. Unroll it onto a lined baking tray and just stretch it out a bit more with your hands. Marvel in it’s weird smell and damp, spongy texture. If you have some semolina or cornmeal, toss some underneath the dough to help give a crispy base (I was not blessed as such). Throw it in the oven for about 5 minutes.

While the dough is in the oven, get a frying pan on medium heat and squeeze the sausage meat out of the casings and into the pan with a drizzle of olive oil. Add your ‘nduja and break it all part a little as it cooks on a medium-high heat. We want this to end up a little gnarly, a little crispy and a lot bloody delicious.

Once the dough has had its 5 minutes, take out of the oven and set aside for a moment. Mix together the sauce ingredients in a small bowl if you don’t already have a seasoned sauce at hand, taste to make sure you didn’t fuck it up and set that aside.

Once your sausage mixture has cooked and is starting to look gorgeously reddish from the ‘nduja, take off the heat. It’s time to top this mamma jamma.

Start with spooning the sauce on the base and then top with a generous and even layer of the mozzarella. Tear apart your salami and place that on the pizza next, then top with your sausage mixture. Finish with MORE cheese because we’re animals.

At this point I still wasn’t convinced that this would totally pass so I drizzled some balsamic over the pizza, taking extra care to add some to the bare dough around the edge. The balsamic I had was a golden pineapple (hello bougie) so it didn’t have a dark colour, but added a nice element of ‘huh that’s good’ to this pizza.

Bake that in the oven again until the base is browned around the edges and your cheese is gorgeously bubbling and sizzling with the fat from the meat (for me, it was around 15/20 minutes). Marvel at your work, you’ve done well my friend.

Slice, munch, enjoy.

Corn Chowder

Corn Chowder

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Before you come for me, know that I am fully aware this probably doesn’t technically fall under the ‘chowder’ heading but ‘Corn Soup’ just sounds bloody awful, so here we are.

I initially started making this when I had become over-zealous in my farmers market shop and had far too much corn than I knew what to do with. Obviously it tastes better with fresh, local corn blessed from the BC sun and exorcised of all demons but we can’t all be Ina Garten so just grab a bag of the frozen stuff and let’s get cracking.

Added bonus? This isn’t terrible for you. There’s veggies, only a little amount of cream and hell you don’t even need to garnish with the bacon if you don’t want to (you’re fucking mad, but that’s your choice).

What you need:

3-4 ears of corn (or the majority of a standard frozen bag; save a little aside for topping; you can throw it in the pan with the bacon).

3 yellow potatoes; medium size; peeled and chopped

2 carrots; peeled and chopped

1 small onion (whatever colour, don’t be racist); finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic; finely chopped

1/2-1 whole chili; finely chopped (if you don’t have fresh, just use a teaspoon or so of red pepper flakes for some heat)

1tsp of Sage; finely chopped

1tsp of dried Oregano

3 cups of vegetable stock (I use mushroom)

1/4 cup of cream

2 rashers of bacon; chopped and fried until crispy

What to do:

In a large pot, add a knob of butter and a tablespoon or so of olive oil on a medium heat. once melted add the onion, sage and chili. Season with salt and pepper (the salt will stop the onions from browning). Cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and oregano and cook for another few minutes until it’s smelling damn good.

Next, throw in the potatoes (seriously, try aiming for the pot from across the kitchen, it’s fun). Once you’ve realized what a shit shot you are, add the rest of them AND the carrots. Stir them amongst the onion mixture. You’ll notice that some sticky goodness will start collecting at the bottom of the pan and that my friend, is “fond”. Fond is our friend. You could say, we’re fond of it (thank you).

Now it’s time to add the corn; stir and cook again for a few more moments (if you’re using frozen corn, cook a little longer as adding these tiny little ice cubes will cool down the pan a bit).

Take your stock and pour into the pot, you want the level of stock to come up just level with the ingredients. Bring it to a simmer on medium-low, cover it and go keep yourself busy for about a half an hour (you want the potatoes to be fully cooked, preferably starting to mush up a bit as you stir the mix).

Once you’ve achieved mushiness, grab a stick blender and blend the soup OFF the damn heat. Be careful because, surprise surprise it’s fucking hot and if you’re not careful you’ll somehow end up with a bad burn on the top of your foot (?). My adventures in the kitchen know no bounds.

Once blended, add the cream, taste for seasoning and dish up. If you’re feeling a little Gordon Ramsayish today then take the bacon and leftover corn to garnish the soup with.

Garnish, serve, munch, enjoy.


Rough Puff Pastry

Rough Puff Pastry

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Okay so you know that rough puff pastry that USED to be here?

Ignore it, forget it, it’s dead to us.

When covid-cooking up some pie yesterday I came across a much easier and less faffy way to do this so HERE WE ARE.

Pastry can be a bitch, but make it your bitch.

Read the recipe, be the recipe, you are the recipe.

The key to properly good pastry is achieving peak flakiness. The only way to do this, is to handle the dough as little as possible; your hot little hands will melt the butter and you won’t realize how crap you did until you’ve baked the lot. There will be tears.

The solution? Don’t faff around and perhaps don’t do this in the dead of summer.

So on that optimistic note, let’s get puffing!

What you need:

250g plain flour

1tsp salt

250g butter, room temperature but not soft, cut into cubes

150ml of cold water

What to do:

Measure out your flour in a large bowl and mix in 1tsp of salt. Next, add your butter.

Begin by using your hands to coat the butter pieces in the flour, and then start rubbing the butter and flour mixture together with your fingers. The butter will start to break up, and as you go you’ll notice this turning into more of a breadcrumb/wet sand consistency.

Once you’ve hit consistent bread crumb size pieces throughout, make a well in the centre and add SOME of the water to start with (depending on the alignment of the stars and Saturns moons you might not need all 150ml). Only add enough water to bring the dough together into a shaggy (but complete) ball.

Now kneed it in the bowl just a little to smooth it out, form into a disc of sorts and wrap that bitch up in some plastic wrap. Pop it in the fridge to chill out (ha).

Your dough will be ready to roll out and use in a half an hour. If you’re totally over this, that’s okay! The dough will keep for a few days in the fridge anyway.

Cut it out, bake it up (probably at 425f; the time depends on what you’re making), munch and enjoy.

Moi, explained.

Moi, explained.

by R.T ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Expletives, sarcasm and food is what you’ll find here.

Recipes that make you scroll through a novel before giving you the actual god damn recipe is what you WON’T find here. 

Our relationship with food is a strange one; mine is no different. Society likes to make food the enemy of women, it makes us bigger and we’re not allowed to be bigger.

But food nourishes us, it gives us comfort, warms us up and cools us down. It helps us climb the highest peaks, or in my case, watch people climb the highest peaks on telly.

Food needs to be celebrated. We are so lucky to have ingredients to cook with, let’s enjoy it. Explore every spice, herb and method. Life is too damn short to allow yourself to get wrapped up in the total fuckery that society wants us to pay attention to.

Eat. the. food.

Fish-less Fish Cakes

Fish-less Fish Cakes

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We’ve all been there; you’ve panic-bought a couple of extra potatoes (because THAT’S what your life indoors depends on) and you’re noticing that they’re not exactly at their prime anymore. Time to use them up, yeah?

I’ve really gotten into making these potato cakes (basically a fish cake without fish- hence the name). The beauty is that it really doesn’t take much to make them delicious; just ensure that whatever you’re mixing in is small (or chopped up that way) to ensure a sturdy, independent potato cake that don’t need no man.

Boil ’em, mash ’em, mix in some tasty shit and let’s make potato cakes.

What you need for 9 cakes:

4 yellow potatoes

3 cloves of garlic- finely chopped

2 or so handfuls of frozen peas

3″ long block of bacon (ish)- cut into little cubes or about 4 slices, chopped up small

1/4 cup of cheese- I prefer west country aged cheddar or simply something with less moisture than the typical nuclear orange stuff – shredded or cubed small

Seasonings of your choice

1 egg

About 2 cups of bread crumbs (panko are best here)

How you do it:

Firstly, get the kettle on. Make a cup of tea, you can use the rest of the water to add to the pot that your potatoes will boil in (or skip the tea part, but know that I’m judging you for it).

Peel the potatoes, and KEEP THE PEELS for gods sake; I’ve got another recipe for those (did someone say bonus snacks?). After peeling, cut the potatoes into small chunks; I typically aim for .5″-1″.

Add the potatoes to the pot, pour over the water from the kettle (topping up from the tap to cover the potatoes if need be), salt the water and bring to the boil on a medium/medium-high heat. Boil these buggers until tender, about 15 or so minutes; (stab one with a paring knife- if the potato falls off the knife and back into the water immediately, they’re good). Strain and leave aside for a moment.

Take your now empty pot, whack it back on medium heat and add your chopped up bacon- keep the pot at medium/medium low to allow the bacon to render and turn crispy (because we’ll all know if you burnt it, Barbara). I like to add a small drizzle of olive oil to help this process along.

While your bacon is cooking, tip your potatoes into a large bowl and mash the living shit out them.

Season with salt and pepper, add a generous knob of butter and a splash of milk to loosen it up a bit. Get fancy and add any other seasonings or spices that you like. Paprika would be great, red pepper flakes would be fab, Oregano would be bougie. I use a special seasoning blend from the UK because I’m high maintenance.

Once your bacon is almost done, tip in your garlic and your frozen peas. The water that releases from the peas will help to de-glaze the pan a little but if you still find you’ve got some tasty goodness stuck to the pan, throw a drizzle of Marsala in there (or another wine, or stock, whatever I’m not your mother). Take off the heat.

Tip the bacon etc into the potatoes and stir to mix, then add your cheese; taste to adjust seasoning and pretend that you’re on the Food Network.

With slightly damp hands, start making cakes (or roundish patties) out of the mix and pop on a lined baking sheet as you go; I got 9 cakes that were about 3″ wide and about .75-1″ thick but if you’re more delicate than that, make them smaller.

Once all formed, chill the cakes as you prep the egg and breadcrumbs (good luck finding space in the fridge). Just beat an egg in a shallow dish, and in a second shallow dish, dispense your breadcrumbs, season with salt, pepper and other spices and give a quick stir to mix the dry ingredients.

Get your beauties out of the fridge; with one hand, pick up a cake and lightly coat it in the egg – move it to the breadcrumbs and use your other hand to handle the cake in the breadcrumbs and back to the baking sheet (keeping this ‘one hand wet, one hand dry’ method just means less mess and I think we can all get behind that). Once all are coated, wash your god damn hands and put the cakes back in the fridge for about 10 minutes.

Place a large frying pan on medium heat; add a knob of butter and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Once melted and starting to bubble, get your cakes out of the fridge.

I only like to cook the ones that I intend to serve right then (I typically serve 1 or 2 per portion). Any extras can be wrapped and frozen at this point.

Place cakes in the heated pan and cook for a few mins per side at medium heat, or until golden on both sides. I like to place the cooked ones in a low oven to keep them warm as I prep the side (bakes beans, what else)?

Serve, munch, enjoy.