Spiced Roast Lamb Chops with Roots and Alliums

I love lamb though my husband doesn't eat it so I don't cook it very often. But when I was looking through my Sophie Grigson recipe book Country Kitchen I decided it was worth cooking this dish even if I had to make him something else!

The book is divided into seasons and this recipe comes from the autumn section; even though I think we are probably in winter now it is really good for this time of year.

You can find the recipe on the Good Food Channel. It uses tamarind pulp; I wasn't sure where to get that from but was able to buy tamarind paste from the supermarket which seemed close enough. It gave the dish a lovely unusual flavour - a little sweet and sour at the same time.

I had a packet of nigella seeds in the cupboard - I can't remember where I got them from, I think it was a Turkish supermarket. I mixed the tamarind, oil, garlic, water, turmeric, cumin seeds and nigella seeds and drizzled it over some lamb chops, chantenay carrots, red onion and potatoes.

That's pretty much all you have to do; roast it all in one pan in the oven and allow the juices and flavours to mingle. Delicious!

Goat's Cheese Filo Pastry Parcels

These goats cheese parcels are delicious and easy to make. We had them as our starter on Christmas day but they would also be a nice idea if you were cooking a romantic Valentine's day meal perhaps. The recipe came from the AllRecipes website and you can find the full recipe by clicking on the link.

Preparing the red onion filling:

Lay out the red onion filling and a slice of goat's cheese on some oiled filo pastry

Gather up like a parcel and secure with a piece of spring onion

Ready to go in the oven

Lovely golden brown, our starter for Christmas dinner

When you cut into the parcels, the goat's cheese is beautifully soft and slowly oozes out. The red onion is a sweet but tangy contrast that works perfectly - I really enjoyed these and am sure you will too!

Festive Cheese Ball with Nuts and Cranberries

 I recently came across the concept of cheese balls or 'cheese bombs' which are typically served over Christmas in America; they consist of soft cheese and other ingredients shaped into a ball. I thought it would be fun to make one, but it did turn out a lot softer than I expected so I'm not sure if I did something wrong. It was tasty, anyway!

I used this recipe on the Tesco website.

You need:

300g soft cheese

2 cups mature Cheddar, grated

2 tbsp red onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp mango chutney

1 tbsp crushed garlic

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup chopped nuts

Mix the soft cheese, Cheddar and red onion in a bowl.

Add the mango chutney, garlic and Worcestershire sauce.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In another bowl, mix the chopped nuts and cranberries.

At this point you are supposed to be able to form the cheese mixture into a ball, and roll it in the nuts, but I found it far too wet and sticky. Instead I mixed the nuts and cranberries into the cheese mixture, which made it a little less sticky and a bit easier to form into a ball, but it was still extremely soft.

I wrapped it in two layers of clingfilm.

Finally I wrapped it in greaseproof paper and twisted the top - I got two of these out of this quantity of ingredients. It didn't turn out quite as I expected and isn't really something you could give as a gift but it would make a nice starter or addition to the buffet on either Boxing Day or New Year's Eve. You can spread it on crackers or eat with bread sticks.

I am sending this to Feel Good Food, a monthly blogging challenge hosted by Victoria at A Kick at the Pantry Door and guest hosted this month by JibberJabber.The ingredient she has chosen is cranberries.

I am also sharing this with Cheese Please, hosted by Fromage Homage, as the challenge is to make a festive cheese snack.

Pissaladiere - Food 'n' Flix: A Good Year

This month's Food 'n' Flix challenge is hosted by Tina at Squirrel Head Manor and she has chosen the Russell Crowe film "A Good Year".  It's based on a book by Peter Mayle, who also wrote "A Year in Provence" and this story is also set in the same region. It's the story of Max, an investment banker and fairly unpleasant character, who inherits his uncle's house and vineyard in Provence. Going back there to sort out the details, and intending to sell the property, Max remembers the childhood summers he spent there, and meets a charming French woman, Fanny, played by Marion Cotillard. Their first meeting - where Max's careless driving knocks Fanny off her bike - makes her behave very coldly to him for some time (there is a very funny scene where Max falls into an empty swimming pool and Fanny helps him get out by filling it with water). But she eventually warms to him and unsurprisingly they fall in love. At the same time Max decides to keep the house and make a go of the vineyard, but a spanner is thrown into the works when his uncle's illegitimate daughter arrives, with her own claim on the estate. Of course, it all ends happily - you will just have to watch the film!

I decided to cook something from Provence in honour of this film. Pissaladière is a Provencal tart made using puff pastry and topped with slow cooked onions, olives, anchovies and herbs. I'm not really keen on anchovies so I decided to use anchovy paste in the recipe. I also don't really like olives either, but I did include them for authenticity!

It's pretty easy to make - first chop an onion and sweat it in a knob of butter and add 2 tbsp. brown sugar.

I used anchovy puree instead of anchovies; I rolled out a piece of puff pastry and thinly spread the puree on top. When the onions are softened, add 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar or 1/2 tbsp. balsamic glaze.

Spread the onion mixture on the puff pastry and top with some sliced olives.

Bake in the oven until the puff pastry is risen and golden. I love the sweetness that comes from the sugar and balsamic glaze.

I'm sending this to Food 'n' Flix as my recreation of a Provencale meal.

Peri Peri Chicken Burger with Spicy Potato Wedges - and the proper way to chop an onion

I made this for dinner with my boyfriend one evening based on a recipe from the Giraffe recipe book. I marinaded the chicken in a homemade peri peri sauce which I served in a bun with spicy potato wedges.

For the peri peri sauce you need:

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp paprika

2 tbsp olive oil

But first things first - slice some potatoes into wedges and place on foil in a large roasting tin so they have enough room to sit side by side.

Sprinkle with paprika and cook in the oven at 180C for about an hour, turning once or twice.

Now make the peri peri sauce. I learnt the proper way - or at least, the fastest way - to chop an onion when I took a burger-making class at the Atelier des Chefs. Cut the onion in half then place it on your chopping board cut-side down. Using a small sharp paring knife, finely slice through the onion lengthways, stopping just before the top, so the slices are still attached and sort of fan out.

 Then slice through across the other direction and you will have a finely diced onion. Handy tip!

The easiest way to crush garlic is to use the flat of a large knife. Place the knife on top of the garlic clove and bash down on the knife a couple of times to flatten the garlic.

Then use the very tip of the knife in a scratching motion to finely shred the crushed garlic.

Place all the ingredients for the peri peri marinade in a bowl and mix.

Place the chicken in the marinade and coat.

Cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes with the marinade poured over the top.

The potato wedges should be done...

I decided to serve my spicy chicken in a bread roll with the potato wedges - it tasted really good. If you have time you can leave the chicken in the marinade overnight.

Burger Making Lesson at L'Atelier Des Chefs

For my boyfriend's birthday I booked us both into a burger-making lesson at the Atelier des Chefs near St Paul's in London. He loves burgers and I'd much rather he ate homemade ones than supermarket versions, and - I hope he won't mind me saying this - he doesn't know how to cook, so it would be helpful if there was something he could make if push came to shove! Also, I thought this would be a fun activity for us to do together.

I've been to the Atelier des Chefs before (their Oxford Circus branch) a few years ago on a corporate cookery evening, which I really enjoyed - the idea is that you learn to cook a meal then sit down and eat it afterwards. They offer all sorts of lessons of different lengths and at different prices, ranging from a £15 "cook, eat and run" where you can make a burger and eat it on your lunch break, to a French cooking masterclass for £144.

We got really lucky, as I had booked the class for what was probably the first sunny Friday of the year, so the other people who had reserved a place (you don't pay in advance) didn't turn up - they were probably having a drink in the pub like the rest of the Square Mile seemed to be doing! So whereas the week before, we were told there had been 15 people in the class, on this occasion there was... just us! I've no idea how much we would have had to pay for a private cookery class but the £36 each for the burger making lesson (which also included making potato wedges and onion rings with a glass of wine thrown in) was definitely excellent value!

Some of our ingredients

After washing our hands we met our chef, who explained what we would be doing and that we would receive the recipes afterwards by email (which never happened but I found them on the website). Then we got right down to it, being shown the right way to chop an onion, then crushing garlic and herbs and cutting up the potatoes into wedges. We seasoned the potatoes with a cajun spice mix and salt, and drizzled them with oil, and they went straight in the oven.

To make the burger we had to remove the fat from a huge steak, which was very hard - when it came to trying to remove a very thin film of fat running along the side of the meat with a very sharp knife, I managed to cut myself, and had to leave the rest of the work to my boyfriend and the chef while I bled into the sink!

As well as the steak we cut up chunks of pork fat which was going to be minced together.

I was quite pleased to see the mincer we were using was a KitchenAid attachment; I want one for my KitchenAid now! I didn't really see it in use as I was busy turning over the potato wedges, which were looking very tasty at this stage, but I caught a glimpse of my boyfriend merrily mincing steak for our burgers and took a couple of quick snaps.

We also made a barbecue sauce, which was amazingly simple. Fry onion and garlic then add all the other ingredients to the pan and simmer: bay leaf, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, cayenne pepper, cider vinegar, water, salt, dijon mustard and sunflower oil. You barely need to do anything and it tastes delicious.

The minced beef and pork fat was mixed in a bowl with herbs and large flakes of sea salt. We got our hands in and mixed it then shaped it into a giant ball.

Then we shaped it into five patties, to feed ourselves and the kitchen staff.

Next we moved onto the onion rings. We'd already sliced some onions into thick rings, then oil was heated in a deep fat fryer. We mixed a beer batter, dipped the onion rings, and carefully slid them into the fryer; they took less than a minute to cook then were lifted out and allowed to drain.

Here are the cooked onion rings

The burgers only took a few minutes to fry on each side. My mouth was really starting to water now!

Finally the potato wedges came out of the oven and we were ready to serve. The buns had been lightly toasted in the oven in the last few minutes while the potato wedges were cooking, which is something I haven't done at home before but it was really nice. We filled our buns with a burger, rocket, onion and tomato for those who wanted it.

And here it is, in all it's glory - a completely homemade burger, spicy potato wedges, beer-battered onion rings and barbecue sauce. I think my boyfriend, who has never even chopped an onion before, could barely believe he had made all this!

Here I am enjoying the fruits of my labours.... the food was delicious, probably one of the best burgers I've ever eaten, and I made it myself! The potato wedges were much better than the ones I make at home, so I will have to bookmark the recipe, and the barbecue sauce was tangy and worked perfectly with the rest of the meal. The onion rings were also probably the best I've ever had. The class was really good fun - the chef was highly skilled but also a good people-person and we had a great time learning from him and asking questions and chatting as we went. I highly recommend the Atelier des Chefs and I'd really like to try out some more of their classes!