Liver Stew - for cats!

I am a mad cat lady- I only have one cat, but she's the love of my life (along with my husband of course). I feel bad sometimes that I don't have more time to spoil her but she does seem to be quite happy.

Not long ago I decided I would treat her to a home-cooked meal - and I don't mean giving her some leftover chicken off our plates (which does happen). I've actually got a little cookery book called Cat Treats - and it's all about cooking for your cat!
Of course, anything a cat can eat, a human ought to be able to eat too - it just might not be the most palatable to our tastes. I posted a picture of this liver stew on Facebook and a friend commented that it just needed some bacon and onions and would be really good!

(By the way if you didn't already know, onions and garlic can be toxic for cats.)

I bought some liver in the supermarket when it was reduced to mere pence - I hate liver so put it in the freezer knowing it was always destined for the cat!

To make 2-3 portions of this liver stew, you need:
100g liver
1 tsp sunflower oil
3 tbsp. water
15g peeled, cooked potato
1 tbsp. crème fraiche
1 tsp freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley

Cut the liver into small cubes and fry in the oil. Let it brown, then add the water and cook for two minutes over a medium heat.

Mash the potato and mix into the pan along with the crème fraiche and parsley. Allow to cool - it's not good to give this to your cat hot, but I did let her have it when it was slightly warm, and she absolutely loved it!

 

 

Sausage and Mash Pie

 

 

This is an easy way to jazz up sausages and if you have a fussy eater who likes sausages, you can make them one of these while you have something else yourself like a fish pie which is what I did on this occasion.

 

First cook your sausages (fry or grill) then cut into chunks and put into a small ovenproof dish (I made individual pies but you could make one bigger one). Meanwhile bring some potatoes to the boil in a pan of salted water to make your mashed potato.

I had a sachet of spaghetti Bolognese recipe mix - basically a packet of seasoning - which I must have bought once to try and had never used, so I decided to make up a bit of the mix with water to make a sauce for the sausages.

 

Pour the sauce over the sausages.

Mash the potato and spoon over the top then place in the oven for about 20 minutes until the top of the potato turns crispy.

 

Serve ideally with some green veg if your fussy eater isn't that fussy!

Ecuadorian Potato Cakes with Peanut Butter Sauce

Quite a strange flavour combination, I hear you say... and you would be right, but it does taste good!

I came across this recipe for the simple reason that I was googling recipes from countries participating in the World Cup and this was one of the first ones I found for Ecuador. It sounded interesting, so I thought why not..... I wasn't overly impressed by the potato cakes themselves but the flavour combination with the peanut butter was a lot better than I expected.

All quantities are rough as I was making plain mashed potato for my boyfriend at the same time and used half of it for these llapingachos, or Ecuadorian potato cakes. I adapted the recipe a little.


For the potato cakes:
around 3 large or 6 small white potatoes, enough for 2 people, boiled and mashed then allowed to cool
half an onion, diced
1 tbsp oil
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup grated cheese
 1/4 green pepper, diced

For the peanut sauce:
half an onion, thinly sliced
1 cup milk
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
salt, pepper


Boil the potatoes and then mash. You need them to be cool enough to handle so either make these an hour or so before your meal or mash them the day before.

Start making the peanut butter sauce at the same time as the potato cakes- see below.

Fry the onion and green pepper in the oil then put in a large bowl with the mashed potato. Keep the frying pan on the stove as you will use it in a minute. Add the egg yolk and grated cheese and mix well. Using either a wooden spoon or your hands, take a large spoonful or handful of the mixture and press down into the frying pan. Cook for 5 minutes on both sides until browned.

To make the peanut sauce, place the sliced onion and milk in a small pan. Bring the milk to a simmer and simmer gently for ten minutes to infuse the milk with the onion flavour.

Remove from the heat and strain to remove the onion then stir in the peanut butter. Return to the heat and bring to the boil, stirring, until the mixture thickens, which will only take a couple of minutes.

Spoon the peanut sauce over the potato cakes to serve.

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World who has an innovative blog challenge based on the World Cup. Ecuador is playing tonight hence the recipe!

Rick Stein's Garlic Mashed Potato

Before Christmas I went to see Rick Stein Live at the London Palladium. It was a live cookery show combined with a Q&A. Rick Stein, the celebrity chef, was being interviewed on stage by fellow chef Brian Turner, sharing anecdotes and commenting on video clips of television programs he had made. In between, he cooked a variety of dishes helped by his son Jack, who is a chef at his father's Seafood Restaurant in Cornwall. Some lucky members of the audience even got to go on stage and try the food Rick cooked!

One recipe stuck in my mind because it looked simple but very tasty. We watched a clip from a programme a few years back (several years in fact, judging by how much younger Rick looked) which may have been in Cyprus or Greece. Rick was speaking to the camera next to a local woman who was pounding potatoes in a giant pestle and mortar to mash them. Olive oil and a lot of garlic was then added - Rick commented a few times that you can never have too much garlic - and mashed into the potato. I decided to recreate this at home a few weeks later.

My pestle and mortar is only meant for herbs so instead I used the pestle with the potatoes in a large glass bowl. They were boiled until soft.

Crush with the pestle

Add a generous glug of olive oil, salt and a lot of garlic -  I'd recommend roasting the cloves of garlic first then scooping out the middle. I think I used four cloves.

Mash again until creamy. It's hard to get the potato completely smooth using a pestle so I'm not sure I would do it this way again but it's fun for a sort of rustic feel. Surprisingly, I'd never added garlic to mashed potato before, and wouldn't normally have used this much if it hadn't been for the Rick Stein show, and I thought it was really good.

Tuna Burgers

I got the idea for this from a recipe book cunningly titled "The Burger". It includes grated courgettes which I don't like, and is served with a mango salsa, which I couldn't be bothered with, so this is just a plain tuna burger. It's easy to make and is a nice chance from a beefburger. It is also a different way to use up leftover mashed potatoes.

 Put a tuna steak in a food processor and chop.

Add some chopped spring onion, a little chopped red chilli if desired, and some leftover mashed potatoes.

Finally add 1 tbsp of mango chutney and pulse until blended.

Turn the machine off, then remove the mixture from the food processor and shape into a patty.

Fry in some Fry Light and serve either in a bun or naked, with French fries or some veg.

Roast Chicken Stuffed with Garlic Mashed Potato

I saw this recipe for roast chicken stuffed with garlic mashed potato in the Mail on Sunday's You Magazine a long time ago, and it has resided in my box of magazine cuttings ever since - mainly because I love roast chicken cooked the traditional way, and doing anything else to it seemed sacrilege! But I finally decided to make this and was pleased with the outcome - though next time I will probably go back to roasting my chicken plain and simple.

Peel and boil potatoes, then mash them.

Mix in some creme fraiche and crushed garlic

Stuff the mashed potato inside the cavity of the chicken

Roast in the oven - calculate the cooking time based on the weight of the bird and the mashed potato together

When the chicken is cooked, carve and allow the mashed potato to be exposed - then scoop out with a spoon. This was very tasty but I missed my roast potatoes!

Idaho Potato Cake

 

Idaho is famous for its potatoes, I suppose in much the same way that Jersey is - and it even goes by the nickname of the 'potato state'.

I guess I'm cheating slightly as the potatoes I used to make this don't come from Idaho, but the recipe itself is called Idaho Potato Cake - I found other cake recipes using mashed potato but only one of this name, so hopefully the particular recipe is traditional to the area. In any case, I have at least been to Idaho, and have eaten Idaho potatoes, which must count for something!

Last September I went on an American road trip with my boyfriend and his mum and we crossed eight states, one of which was Idaho.

When we stopped at a petrol station I spotted a snack I had to try - a chocolate bar named after the famous Idaho potato! It's sort of chocolate-covered marshmallow sprinkled with coconut flakes and the shape is supposed to resemble a potato. Apparently this candy bar has been made since 1918 which is pretty amazing.

I also ate an Idaho potato when I was in a nice restaurant in Las Vegas - in the Rio hotel waiting for the Penn & Teller show to start. I forget what I ordered now - I think it was fish of some kind - and it came with a choice of sides, one of which was a baked potato and the menu specifically mentioned it was an Idaho potato. It was very nice too, as was the show (and I got to meet Penn &  Teller afterwards!).

So anyway, those are my Idaho-based credentials for making this cake! Now for the recipe itself, which I found online at Taste of Home. It turned out to be a lovely, fudgy-sort of cake, though if I made it again I would probably leave out the nuts. I also made a chocolate glaze to go on top and found this is particularly good served warm.

You need:
1 cup of butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup cold mashed potatoes
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup of milk
1 cup chopped nuts
100g plain chocolate
2 tbsp golden syrup
50g butter


Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy

Add the eggs and beat well

Beat in the mashed potato and vanilla

Add the flour, cocoa powder and baking soda

Finally add the milk and the nuts - I used a packed of chopped mixed nuts

Pour into a square cake tin and bake at 180C for about 40-45 minutes though check how it is cooking in the centre and adjust the time accordingly.

Cool on a wire rack

I decided at the last minute to make a glaze and didn't weigh out my butter but think I used about 50-60g. Melt in a pan with the chocolate and add some golden syrup; it will turn into a glossy, syrupy glaze.

Pour over the top of the cake and leave to cool/set.

I decided to cut the cake into squares to serve. I told some people it contained mashed potato and they were a bit dubious but then tasted it and said it was great. I didn't tell a couple of people what was in it and asked them to guess and they were very surprised when they found out it was potato! Even my boyfriend, who doesn't like nuts and is very suspicious of my cakes after my bacon experiments, gave this cake a firm seal of approval.

I found it was very nice served warm with a splash of cream.

I am sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge that I co-host with The More Than Occasional Baker, Ros. The letter we have randomly chosen this month is I and I think an Idaho potato cake is a pretty good entry! There's still time to enter as the deadline is the 25th and we've got a great prize on offer from Dr. Oetker.

I am also sending this to Credit Crunch Munch as this cake is a great way of using up leftover mashed potatoes if you have made too much for dinner! The challenge is hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All.

Cheesy Mexican Chicken

This dish is awesome, and not as unhealthy as I first imagined. It's taken from "America's Most Wanted", which is a great recipe book that aims to recreate dishes served by the main US restaurant chains. I have to admit I bought it partly for the section on the Cheesecake Factory! I've never even heard of most of the chains featured in the book but the recipes look great nonetheless, and I think the idea of being able to cook a near-replica of something you would get in your favourite restaurant is brilliant. It's cheaper than eating out, especially if you have a whole family, and sometimes it's just nicer to cook at home.

I had to adapt it quite a bit as I used a small supermarket and couldn't get hold of some of the ingredients. Also, neither my boyfriend nor I really like (bell) peppers so I used some but not as much as the recipe suggested. I made it again a few weeks later when I did have some more of the right ingredients so I am combining both recipes - both heavily adapted from the original still - into this one blog post.

In the recipe book this dish is called TGI Friday's Sizzling Chicken and Cheese; I have no idea how close my recipe is to the original as I don't think I've ever eaten at a TGI Friday's.

Mix 2 tbsp crushed garlic, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 tsp dried chilli flakes, sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Marinade two chicken breasts (to serve two) for three hours in the fridge. In the meantime cook some potato and mash it.

Fry onion, red pepper and the chicken breasts

Remove the chicken, peppers and onions from the pan and spoon the mashed potato into the pan, flattening a little.

 Return the peppers and onions to the pan on top of the mashed potato. I just did it on one side as my boyfriend doesn't like peppers or onion.

Place four slices of cheese (eg Kraft cheese slices) on to. The recipe actually calls for 1/2 cup shredded chihuahua cheese and 2 slices American cheese, but I couldn't get anything even remotely similar to chihauhua cheese from my small local supermarket.

Finally place the chicken breasts on top and serve.

The cheese melts beautifully onto the mashed potato and the flavour combination with the marinaded chicken is delicious.

So delicious in fact I decided to make it again.... this time I managed to get hold of some spicy Mexican-style cheese.

I also used red, green and orange peppers this time

I marinated the chicken in oil, chilli flakes and garlic as last time, but used mini chicken fillets instead. I then fried them with the peppers

After making some mashed potato I removed the chicken and peppers from the pan, pressed down the potato and left it for a few minutes, then sprinkled the grated Mexican-style cheese over the top.

Then some slices of American cheese

Return the chicken and peppers to the top and serve. I'm not sure cooking it this way with the spicy cheese made all that much difference but it was fun to try and this is a tasty meal however you cook it. I wonder if TGI Friday's dish is anything like this?