Sloppy Joe

A sloppy joe is an American dish of ground beef, onions, sweetened tomato sauce or ketchup and other seasonings, served on a hamburger bun.

1 tbsp Olive oil 2 Garlic cloves, minced 2 Shallots, chopped 1/2 Green bell pepper, diced Salt and freshly ground black pepper

450 g Ground beef 180 g Tomato sauce 100 g American barbecue sauce 2/3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp Hot sauce 4 Homemade burger buns, split, toasted, and buttered

1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add in minced garlic, shallots, and green bell pepper. Stir until fragrant and tender, about 3 minutes. Season it with salt and black pepper.
   
   
2. Add the ground beef to the vegetables. Stir and cook about 5 minutes, until the meat is no longer pink and fully cooked. Add tomato sauce, barbecue sauce, Worcestershire, and hot sauce into the skillet. Stir to combine. Simmer until thickened.
   
   
3. To serve, spoon and pile sloppy meat onto the toasted, buttered bun bottoms and cover with bun tops with your favourite side dish or pickles.

Sloppy Joe 番茄酱牛肉碎汉堡

Zucchini Salad with Black Pepper Peanuts

A combination of zucchini, bell peppers, sundried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and peppery peanuts in a honey vinaigrette. With a couple slices of German pumpernickel bread, this makes a healthy, nutritious, and yummy lunch.

Salad	Dressing
180 g Zucchini, diced 2-3 tbsp Sundried tomatoes©angiesrecipes, diced 1/3 Green pepper, diced 1/3 Yellow pepper, diced 3 Cherry tomatoes, diced 2-3 tbsp Black pepper peanuts	2-3 tbsp Red wine vinegar 1 tbsp Olive oil 1 tbsp Honey Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large bowl, toss together the first six ingredients. In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine the salad dressing ingredients and shake well. Pour over salad and toss to coat.
   
   
2. Layer a serving bowl with some salad leaves, and add in the tossed mixture. Cover and chill for 1 hour before serving.

Zucchini Salad With Black Pepper Peanuts

Cranberry Oat Bread

Ok, I must admit that I am a true bread lover. I could have bread for breakfast I, for breakfast II (yes, I need two breakfasts a day :-) ) bread lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. My husband finds it amusing one who grew up eating rice adores bread so much.

There is a great choice of bread for all the tastes and costs available in Germany. But not many things beat a homemade artisan bread and don't you love the smell of fresh bread right out of your oven?

I first discovered this bread in Heavenly Housewife at From Donuts to Delirium and I was immediately intrigued. You can also find the original recipe from Dan Lepard's cranberry oat bread recipe at Guardian

75 g Instant oats ©angiesrecipes, plus extra for the crust 175 g Dried cranberries©angiesrecipes 375 ml Boiling water 450 g Spelt #630　flour©angiesrecipes 7 g Salt

3 g Cinnamon Finely grated zest of 1 lemon 50 g Unsalted butter 6 g Instant dry yeast Olive oil, for kneading

1. Put the oats and cranberries in a bowl and add the boiling water. Leave for 15-20 minutes, until the mixture is warm. Spoon the spelt flour, salt, cinnamon and zest into another bowl, rub in the butter, toss the yeast through, then add the oats and berries, and mix well. Leave to stand for 10 minutes.
   
   
2. Oil your hands and a 30cm patch of worktop, knead the dough on it for 10 seconds, then leave for 10 minutes. Repeat this knead-and-rest sequence twice more at 10-minute intervals, then cover the dough and leave for 30 minutes.
   
   
3. Pat the dough into a rectangle, roll up tightly and squeeze, seam-side down, into a large, deep, 19cm-long loaf tin. Or use any loaf pan you have. Leave for an hour until risen by half. Heat the oven to 210C/420F. Brush the top of the loaf with water, press on a handful of oats, cut a gash down the middle and bake for 50 minutes. It will scorch on top, but that's typical for fruit bread.

THANK YOU!

Elin at Elinluv's Tidbits Corner	Jay at Tasty Appetite

Cranberry Oat Bread

Exciting endive

This is a marvellous and very flexible thing to do with endive or chicory (or are they the same thing?) that you can adapt for vegetarians or carnivores. It's also very easy to prepare ahead and doesn't take long to cook.

So, this principle is based on a lovely thing I found in Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, where you caramelise the cut face of some endive, slather it with a creamy mixture and then bake. The ingredients here are my own concoction, but you can use whatever you've got that's close.

Caremelised endive:
For 2

2 endive
40g butter
2 tsp caster sugar
some thick-ish cream or creme fraiche
thyme or chives/parsley/coriander
breadcrumbs of any description
salt and pepper
bacon or pancetta

1 Pre-heat your oven to 200C. Slice the endive into halves.

2 Melt the butter and sugar together in a frying pan gently and when it starts to bubble, place the endives face-down in the pan and fry until brown - about 2 minutes. Don't worry if the butter goes brown. Remove and arrange face-up on a baking sheet.

3 Mix together your topping of breadcrumbs, cream and herbs and bacon or pancetta. I lightly fried the bacon I used first - needless to say, it would be just as nice without. Spread a few teaspoons of the mixture onto the top of the endive.

Cook for 20 minutes. Bingo.

From Morocco with love

My husband is a bit sad at the moment. A book of his newspaper columns is being published this month and someone just wrote a really, really mean review of it.

It's not like he's not used to people being mean to him. He'd never complain about it publicly because he knows that's just what happens when you put yourself out there: people crap all over you. And, as he always says, it's not like he doesn't give people a kicking all the time - it's not like he's not, basically, just asking for it. But, all the same, just in private, it brought him down a bit.

It pains me when my husband is down, because he's usually such an irrepressible, bouncy, energetic, bomb-proof chatterbox. It's usually me moping around nursing this little hurt or that little slight - I am Eeyore to his Tigger.

So last night, I thought I would host for him a sort-of-morrocan feast in the garden, with mood lighting and very spicy food. Maybe even a tablecloth; definitely some strong drink. I even decorated our vine with glass hanging tealight holders - a wedding present from The Pescetarian:

One of my husband's favourite restaurants is an old place in the south of France called Chez Grandmere, which serves merguez sausages, carrots and celery cooked in a thick broth and cous-cous cooked in stock.

There's no way I was going to be able to accurately render the cooking at CG, where they cook over hot scented charcoal, working to Grandmere's secret recipes.

But I was going to do my interpretation of it, with lovely merguez sausages purchased this weekend from the Twleve Green Acres butcher stall at the Parliament Hill Farmer's Market, carrots and celery boiled nearly-whole (to retain their sweetness) in a strong chicken stock and a moroccan couscous thing with sultanas and pine nuts and a minted yoghurt.

I imagine that most of you will be weirded out by the whole vegetables, but they do really bring something earthy and exciting to a dinner like this. If you want to do it, choose smallish carrots and cook them whole, like Fergus Henderson does, in order to retain their sweetness. It's important that you cook them in a proper chicken stock - bought concentrate won't do (and you know how slack I am about that kind of stuff).

For a convincing morroccan-tasting couscous add to your dry grains:

A pinch ground cumin
A pinch ground coriander
A pinch paprika
sultanas OR chopped dried apricots
toasted pine nuts

Give this dry mixture a stir and then pour on your boiling water or stock from cooking your vegetables and leave to cook. When ready, sprinkle over a handful of chopped coriander.

I mean, it probably takes more than a dinner to cheer you up after a really bad review but at least he knows that someone loves him.

Scones

These are damned easy. Why the hell have I not made them before? Definitely give them a whirl if you haven't already.

To maximise your enjoyment, I have for you two tips:

1 When you're rolling out your scone dough, roll it out very thick - at least 2cm (I advise having a quick look at a ruler or something because 2cm is more than you think it is). This is because although scones rise a bit while they're cooking, they don't rise loads like, say, fairy cakes. So if you want a big, hearty-looking scone, right from the start they have to be pretty substantial.

2 Don't let them hang around. If you're having people over and you want to give them a cream tea, either make up the dough the night before or in the morning, store it in the fridge and then about an hour before you want to eat, roll out the dough, cut and bake.

So here we go:

for 12 small scones or 6 large

225g self-raising flour
large pinch salt
40g butter, cut into small pieces
1.5 tablespoons caster sugar
about 150ml milk

1 Preheat the oven to 220C. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl. Then rub the butter into the flour until the flour looks like breadcrumbs

2 Add the sugar and mix around a bit

3 Add the milk one sploosh at a time and mix round with a knife until the mixture comes together to form a dough. Smoosh this around a bit with your hands until it seems to be all of a piece.

4 Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and roll out to a thickness of AT LEAST 2cm. Cut out scone shapes with a scone-cutter. Funnily enough, scones sort of shrink about 0.5cm  in width as they are cooking, so go for a slightly larger pastry cutter than you actually want your scones to be.

5 Put the scones on a lightly greased baking tray and bake for between 12-16 minutes on a high shelf

You could turn these into fruit scones by adding some currants or mixed peel between stages 2 and 3.

If this all seems a bit boring and easy, Delia Smith has a slightly more advanced scone recipe, which utilises buttermilk.

Zucchini Buckwheat Pancakes

These zucchini pancakes are prepared with grated zucchini and a hint of cheddar cheese. Serve them with a dollop of sour cream. This is much easier to persuade your kids or your picky hubby to eat their veggies. And if you are growing zucchini, then this is also one very delicious way to use up a lot at once. I used the mild cheddar, which is matured about 4 months, for the recipe, but Feta, or parmesan would work great too.

300 g Zucchini, grated 2 Shallots, finely chopped 2 Eggs 60 g Cheddar, grated 1 tbsp Parsley, chopped 1 tbsp Spring onion, chopped

1 Garlic, minced 3 tbsp Buckwheat flour©angiesrecipes 3 tbsp Wholewheat flour Salt and pepper to taste Oil for frying

1. Grate the zucchini into a mixing bowl. Stir in the finely chopped shallots, eggs, cheddar, parsley, spring onion, and garlic. Stir in the buckwheat and wholewheat flours, salt, and pepper.
   
   
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Drop tablespoons of the batter into the skillet. Cook the pancakes two minutes on each side until browned. Place the pancakes on a sheet pan and keep warm in the oven. Continue to pan-fry the pancakes until all the batter is used.

Zucchini Buckwheat Pancakes

Half-American pancakes for the weekend

I have deleted this post because I made these pancakes again this morning and realised that they are DISGUSTING. The perils of cooking with a cold.

The ham (below) really is nice, though - confirmed by Giles.

A ham is not just for Christmas

I'm an impatient luncher - 1pm seems to roll around just as I'm in the middle of something actually semi-important. To break for a laborious chop-boil-fry-blend-arrange lunch means that I often sidestep the whole business and eat only a tiny piece of cheese. Then I wonder why I feel faint but also quite snappy come 4pm.

My solution to this is to usually either have a cold roast chicken or joint of beef on the go in order to hack bits up to add to a salad or put in a sandwich or just eat slathered with piccallili (have I spelled that right?) standing in the kitchen. Today I thought I'd bake up a ham to nibble at over the next four days or so.

I got a nice 1kg organic bit of gammon and soaked it for 8 hours to get rid of the worst of the brine and then
baked it with a mustard, maple and sugar glaze.

My glaze:
2 tbsp English mustard
1 tbsp maple syrup, either mixed in with the mustard or drizzled over the gammon
2 tbsp demerara sugar

For the method and the cooking times I was working to this Delia recipe, which suggested really quite frighteningly short cooking times for my gammon - a measly 20 mins per pound, which worked out at only about 55 mins for my large piece of pork.

Here's my gammon

Taking the skin off to slap on the glaze - not actually that easy

Glaze on... back in the oven...

Yum

I, like most British people, am a bit scared of underdone pork, so I left it in the oven for an extra 25 minutes. If I get trichinosis, you'll be the first to know. Actually, the Royal Free Hospital's A+E department will be the first to know, but I'm sure they've got WiFi.

Anyway, if you're the kind of person who doesn't like to play Russian Roulette with their food, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver both have fantastic glazed-gammon recipes, which include a good long stint of boiling before the gammon goes in the oven.

A great thing to do with the skin, which you remove half-way through cooking in order to spread on your glaze, is to put it in the oven alongside the gammon, well-covered with salt and grount-nut oil and roast for about 45 mins until you get crackling - turn once during cooking.

Zucchini Ribbon Caper Salad

The lemon juice and olive oil dressing makes this zucchini salad tastes fresh, while capers definitely add flavour and interest to this summer squash salad. Super simple and absolutely delicious!

• 2 Small zucchini, peeled into strips
  
  
• 2 tbsp Olive oil
  
  
• 1/2 Lemon, zested
  
  
• 1 Garlic, crushed
  
  
• Salt and pepper
  
  
• 1 Tomato, deseeded and julienne
  
  
• 1 tbsp Capers
  
  ©angiesrecipes, drained and rinse

1. Toss the zucchini strips with the oil, lemon zest and juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Set aside for 30 minutes to marinate.
   
   
2. Divide between 2-3 plates and top with capers, tomato julienne. Drizzle any extra dressing over if desired. To garnish, sprinkle a pinch of dried parsley over.

Zucchini Ribbon Caper Salad

Death becomes me

It's got to the point where I can't really bluff through it anymore. The fact is, I've got a terrible cold. Awful. I haven't been able to taste anything since about 11am on Monday when the snot in my nose reached a critical mass.

It's my fault - I failed to deploy my First Defence when I first felt that fatal "uh-oh" back-of-the-throat tickle. Anyway, not being able to taste anything (plus a coldy weakness in my brain) means that even if I could drag myself to the kitchen to cook something, I wouldn't be able to tell you if it was nice or not. So I'm going to have to talk about something else today.

You may have noticed that I've got the radio tuned to Capital FM. Well, I say "tuned", but it's a digital radio so you just press a button and there it is. Anyway, it's on Capital FM not because I drive a white van in my spare time or am a third year at boarding school in the home counties, but because of my last job.

I wasn't that crazy about my last job - as evidenced by the fact that I'm not doing it anymore - and when I was there, in order to drown out various things that made being there especially unbearable, (the sound of my desk phone ringing, people asking me to do things etc), I used to listen to the radio through my computer, on headphones. It's possibly the most anti-social thing I've ever done in an office - aside from consistently refusing to wear shoes.

Anyway, the only radio station that came through loud and clear without endless "buffering" was Capital FM. So that's what I listened to for at least three hours a day, five days a week for about a year.

Then I left and quickly realised that because of that constant association of work with Capital FM, I now can't do anything unless I'm listening to it. I can't write, cook, tidy up or really concentrate on anything (except TV) unless Capital FM is on, somewhere. Strange. But true.

This postcard always makes me laugh, even though I can almost always be bothered with food.

Hollandaise

So, it's asparagus season again! Hurrah. And, just as snails are an excuse to eat epic amounts of butter and garlic, so asparagus is an excuse to eat hollandaise. Which, come to think of it, is only really epic amounts of butter and eggs. Is every seasonal food really just an excuse to eat butter and/or garlic?

While you're thinking about that, let's talk more about hollandaise. I've never made it before today and, on a whim, I decided not to reach for Delia Smith - usually my go-to girl when I'm scared and confused in my kitchen. I reached for another cookbook and found myself with a recipe that turned out to be a bit weird.

I mean, it worked out okay in the end... I suppose... I mean, it's mostly butter, how wrong can it go?:

but it wasn't hollandaise like old Ma Walker makes. It was more the consistency of mayonnaise... and I detected one or little lumps in it. This cannot be right.

First of all, the recipe said that when you clarify butter the residue settles at the bottom of the pan you're melting the butter in, but mine sort of floated on the top AND settled at the bottom.

Then it instructed me to rest my bowlful of egg yolks and vinegar over a pan of simmering water. Result: very nearly scrambled eggs had I not whipped the bowl away just as I realised what the hell was about to happen.

In all, it was stressful. And stress is not something I like to feel so near a 5-ring gas stove. I'm not even going to post the recipe, so umimpressed was I. Serves me right; back to Delia I go.