Category: Recipe

I never tire of eating beans, steak and mushrooms, so it is a really good idea for me to pair them all up with cauliflower. If you are tiring of this months eating theme, it is quite alright to slip in a few chicken meals. Is there an excuse for not including cauliflower? Perhaps, if there is an emergency, or perhaps, if the person in front of you takes the last one off the shelf.

Is loathing cauliflower an excuse? Most definitely! Include a different vegetable for the month. Carrot, or cabbage would make a good substitution.

The home made gravies are progressing quite well. I now have 2 cups of gravy in the freezer. That will be enough. The really pleasing thing about the Port and Cream mushroom sauce recipe is that it has words like “approximately”, “roughly” and “near enough” in it. The ratios of Port, cream and gravy are “approximately” one to one. If you have a bit more of one than another, it will be “near enough”. I find that two cups of gravy match up quite well with 600 Mls of unthickened cream, which is the size of the cream container. It would be quite annoying to have 100 Mls of cream sitting in the fridge just to get a perfect one to one ratio. If you want a lot of the sauce increase the amounts of each of the port, cream and gravy by “roughly” the same amounts.

On the day of cooking the sauce make sure that the gravies are thawed out. If you forget it is possible to heat them from frozen, but that is a lot more fuss so its much better to remember to thaw them out. The amount of mushrooms required ranges from as few as you want to as many as you can squash in the boiler saucepan. We mix some fresh ones with canned champignons. I like to use a reasonable quality of port, but any brand will do.

I start by mixing the gravies together and bringing them to the boil. Then add the cream and the port and mix all three. Then put in the mushrooms. Bring them to the boil. I use a boiler that has a few inches of empty space up the top, a too full boiler is difficult to manage. It is really important to stir the mixture a lot to avoid it sticking to the bottom of the pan. Decrease the heat to quite low so the sauce is simmering nicely, not boiling too frantically. Keep stirring, very frequently for the next 10 or 15 minutes. The alcohol in the port mixture will evaporate out. After this keep the sauce simmering and stir it reasonably frequently. Gradually it thickens up as the water from the homemade gravies (or commercial brand preparations) also evaporates out of the mixture. This process may take an hour, or longer if you are making a larger amount. The sauce may be served immediately, or it may be reheated on moderate heat stirring very frequently, near to the meal’s serving time.

The sauce is just as nice on steak as it is on chicken. We just choose this month’s eating theme to cook it due to it incorporating mushrooms. The really good news about this sauce is that if there is any left, and that is a big if, it freezes well for some other time.

Here is the recipe for “Steamed sultana pudding” adapted from the original.

Place the following ingredients in a good sized saucepan: one cup of milk, three heaped tablespoons of butter, one cup of sugar and one cup of sultanas. Stirring all the time, bring them to the boil and let them boil for a few minutes. Stir in one tablespoon of sifted sodi bicaronate so the mixture froths up and set it aside.

Grease an enamel bowl with butter. In a soup-style saucepan which has a lid bring about an inch of water to the boil. Mix a cup and a quarter of sifted SR flour into the frothy mixture and place it all in the greased enamel bowl. Cover the bowl with foil and put a large rubber band on to keep the foil in place. Really carefully drop the foil covered enamel bowl of mixture into the boiling water. Place the lid on the soup-style saucepan and let the enamel bowl of mixture cook in it on low heat for one and a half hours. It is really important to check the amount of boiling water frequently and replace any that has evaporated, particularly if the lid doesn’t have a good seal.

Using a spatula ease the pudding out of the greased bowl onto a plate. Cut into 8 portions.

Serve with ice cream.

After leftover portions have cooled down, they freeze well.

Pancakes are great value to assist slow weight loss. Each month we choose an eating theme that features a different fruit and that is the star of the pancake stage. Night after night, after night…

But not tonight! It would be reprehensible to have an Apply without some Apple Crumble. Here is the recipe adapted from the traditional. We don’t need to stew the apples because we have our culinary BFF (Best Friend Forever) steamer.

Apple Crumble

Peel, core and slice 8 apples and steam them for 15 minutes. Then place them in a casserole dish. Rub together 50 grams of butter, 3/4 cup self raising flour and 1/2 cup brown sugar so it looks like bread crumbs. Place the mixture on top of the steamed apples. Cook at 180 degrees for 25 minutes (try 20 mins for a fan forced oven). It makes 8 small serves.

It’s lucky the apple crumble freezes so well because after the novelty of it is over we will be quite keen to resume our usual pancake desserts, this month with steamed apples, night after night after night…