Pyrex Slows Things Down with their New Slow Cooker

Slow cookers are the 'in' way of cooking these days. You just put things into the pot and forget about it for a few hours.  Pyrex, known for their great glass cooking dishes have brought out an enamelled cast iron slow cooker.  It is great for simmering due to its superior heat retention properties. It comes in different sizes and is suitable for a range of cookers. Mine is the 20cm - 2.2L which is the smallest and holds loads.You can use it on the hob or pop it into the oven. They are easy to clean and come in a vibrant red.

I wanted to cook some sauerkraut after trying some of Ren Behan's Polish bigos.  I have long loved sauerkraut from my days living in Austria and Germany.

I started with a little bit of olive oil,

then into the pot I added some chopped smoked bacon, a piece of choritzo and a red onion finely chopped and sauteed until the onion was getting soft and the bacon and choritzo was cooked.  I tipped in a jar of sauerkraut, a red pepper and three carrots grated into the pot. 

 

 

 

To this mixture I added ground pepper, sea salt, caraway seeds, a tablespoon of tomato puree, paprika and a glass of water. You want some moisture but not too much so that you keep the texture since you do not want to boil the kraut.  Instead of water you could add a glass of white wine or a lager.

A couple of sprigs of thyme from my allotment and the whole pot went into the oven on a lowish to medium heat for about two and a half hours.  The smell in the house was absolutely heavenly!

I served the sauerkraut with a homemade potato salad and bratwurst.  We sat outside on a summer evening, dinner on the plate and a glass of wine in the hand. Perfect!!

Home Cooking with Jamie Oliver and Philips

I have been lucky enough to be sent the new Jamie Oliver HomeCooker by Phillips .  This new machine is only for sale at John Lewis stores and when I recently saw one I immediately wanted one!

It is made up of a central heating base, a large capacity pot with stirrer and then several more sections to use to cook pasta, steam potatoes and much more. You can cook rice pudding, roast potatoes, goulash, risotto and the list goes on.

The HomeCooker’s PerfectTemp feature and QuickSet timer mean you can also control the heat to perfection and set times up to 99 minutes so you can get on with other things whilst you  meal is stirred and kept at the exact temperature.

I decided to christen the Home Cooker with a ragu sauce for our favourite - tagliatelle.  First of all I prepped all my ingredients such as the onion, celery, peppers.  I am using a large, thick piece of bacon that came in one of those cooking packs of bacon.  For my main meat I am using a pack of Pelham and Talbot cubed chuck steak.  Pelham and Talbot recently send me their casserole box which comprises of 500g of cubed chicken breast, 500g of cubed lamb, 500g of cubed pork and the 500g of cubed chuck steak.  They send this box to you all ready vacuum sealed and ready to put in the freezer.

 

 

Next I prepared a vegetable stew hoping to use up all the veggies in the bottom of the fridge including a butternut squash.

 

 

 

Following this I started a simple sauce for the evening's spaghetti.

 

I love this machine and see me using it for loads and loads of recipes. I will be trying the recipe in the accompanying cookbook for risotto soon too.

There is also a machine that goes with this called the Tower and it slices, dices and shreds straight into the cooking pan.  As soon as I receive one of these I will write about it too.

Many thanks to Phillips for sending me this machine.  You can only purchase it at branches of John Lewis Partnership and it retails for £249.95.

Slow Cooking Weekday

It's cold and not very spring like today and really calls for some nice warming food!

I have two recipes on the go, a slow boiling chicken stock made with the remnants of Sunday's roast chicken, courtesy of Farmison (I received their March monthly meat box recently packed full of beautiful products like bacon, pork chops, rack of lamb, corn fed chicken and more.) Their meat is free range and each part of the selection is wrapped ready for freezing. I put most of the box full in the freezer but kept the whole chicken out for last Sunday lunch.

The meat on the chicken was moist and tasty and full of flavour that seems to be missing from the average supermarket chicken.  We got 5 portions out of this plus a lovely carcass for soup.

I put the carcass into my stock pot, added celery, onion and carrots. Some salt flakes and pepper corns and ready to boil. I let this slow boil for a couple of hours, strained the stock and then readded the carrot, celery and bits of chicken. Blitz this with my hand mixer, check the seasoning, add a couple of drops of Tabasco sauce and delicious!!

At the same time I started off some beef ribs that I bought at the farmer's market on Sunday. I the ribs in my slow cooker at 09:00 along with carrots, onion, carrots and parsnips all cut into slightly thicker lengths than usual but I wanted them to mirror the ribs.

I poured about a cup of leftover red wine (I know how can you have left over wine!) and a cup of water, Lea & Perrins worcester sauce, soya sauce and salt & peppercorns.

I pretty much left this alone all day and about 20:00 added a Knorr beef gravy pot and put on the potatoes and broccoli.

 

Easy, delicious one pot cooking so I could get on with things and less washing up. And best of all, Mr R has some to take for his lunch tomorrow!!

 

 

 

Month End But Still a Feast!

To day is the 28th of February and the end of the month.  I have mentioned this year already how I am trying to make the most of my well stocked cupboard and full freezer and today is a perfect example of that.

Tonight's supper is from the freezer: sausages; from the pantry cupboard: Tin of chopped tomatoes, tin of haricot beans; salt and pepper and garlic spices from the kitchen cupboard and from the fridge: onion, celery, cherry tomatoes, chopped carrot and chopped parsnip.

I put this in the oven on a low-ish heat for about an hour and a half and then wacked the heat up high for the final half hour and it turned into this:-

I served the casserole with some Ainsley Harriot golden vegetable rice which I cooked in the microwave (I did say it was a kitchen raid dinner!)

 

Mr R was full of praise for his dinner and did especially enjoy the glass of wine to go with it!!