Being conned or am I unrealistic!

Every so often I make a pasta bake and one of the ingredients I used is bacon.  However, being mindful about having too much fat I cut this off before chopping it and dry frying it.
I have long resented the fact that meat and bacon, in particular, is packaged in such a way that the amount of fat is skillfully hidden! Embee would love me to cook the fat until it is really crisp and tasty; and whilst I might agree it is definitely not good for our expanding waistlines so this treat is rare!
I decided to take a look at the amount of fat I was actually paying for but throwing away.

Sometimes I use basic bacon pieces and yes they are cheap so you might say you get what you pay for and you would expect it to be fatty!

However, I couldn't believe I was actually throwing away over a quarter!

The next time I made the same dish I decided  to go for a quality bacon and it looked reasonably lean in the package. Not so; when I came to prepare it I soon realised the fat had been carefully concealed.

This pack of British bacon contained an even higher amount of fat (i.e. 4 gms more than in the basic pack) and it cost almost three times as much!
So my little experiment didn't really help me, whether I buy cheap or expensive bacon I'm still paying to throw more than a quarter into the food recycling bin. Maybe I need to stop buying bacon for my pasta dish but then it does make it tasty and this way I can get Embee to eat cauliflower, when it's all topped in a cheese sauce!! And before anyone comments on the fat content of cheese, I only cook this about once a month in the interest of our cholesterol levels!

Leek,Potato,Bacon Bake

I have been making a lot of comfort food this winter and when I saw a recipe for this bake I knew it was one that we would enjoy. It is a cross between creamy dauphinoise and pommes boulangères (potatoes cooked in stock). I used it as a supper dish but equally it would make a good side dish for chicken, or other meat.


This recipe comes from the BBC Good Food Magazine.
Recipe:
600ml/1 pint vegetable (or chicken stock)
6 Leeks (thinly sliced into rounds)
1 kilo/2lbs 4oz Potatoes (thin sliced)
3-4 rashers streaky bacon (I used back bacon and 6 rashers as it was a main meal)
25g/1 oz butter
salt and fresh ground pepper
3 tblsp double cream (optional- I used Crème fraîche)

Method:
1. Heat oven to 200c/fan 180c/gas6 (400f)

Put stock in large pan, bring stock to boil add leeks and potatoes.
Bring back to boil for 5 mins, drain well reserving stock in a jug

2. Meanwhile butter baking dish

Layer leeks and potatoes, higgledy-piggledy (season layers to suit tastes)
Scatter bacon over the top.
Pour over 200ml of reserved stock, then spread over the cream and cover with foil (can be made a day ahead and chilled).

3. Bake for 40 mins, uncovering halway through so that the bacon crisps (remember thin slices of potato or they will not cook evenly).
Serve with a salad and enjoy.

Just to make it clear; the light in my kitchen is not good for photos and the bacon was not overdone as it looks here.

Archives:
2008: Recuperating

Comfort food for a cold day.....

I was actually planning on posting this last week, but I saw that my daughter, Beccy had posted a similar pasta recipe so I decided to leave it for another day. I know I am repeating myself because Sam made this when she was staying with us back in September. However it is such a tasty, easy little dish that is just right for a cold day that I am sharing it with you again. This time I used a brown harvest grain loaf for the topping and it worked just as well as white bread crumbs. I did have a little disaster with toasting the walnuts~ if I'm honest two disasters but it was third time lucky because I stood over them! I can hear you saying how wasteful and it was but I've definitely learned my lesson and won't be making this mistake again!
Method:
3 finely chopped leeks
5 rashers of English bacon
2 gloves garlic (minced /fine chop)
1 tbsp butter

~ saute together slowly over medium heat with lid on, until leeks are soft
~ turn heat to high for last 2 mins cooking time to crisp the bacon.
~ meanwhile cook pasta in salted water, drain, keeping some of the pasta cooking water.
~ toast a handful of crushed walnuts in a dry pan until golden
~ mix together: 1 cup or so white breadcrumbs, finely chopped parsley (I used quite a lot of parsley because I grow it and it's full of iron), grated parmesan, black pepper. Add a slug of olive oil and stir with crumb mixture until just moist.
~ stir a glug of double cream (I actually used single cream this time around as that was what I had in the fridge) into the leek mixture & grate in a little nutmeg. Add the pasta, with liberal glugs of reserved pasta water to keep moist and stir well to mix up all the ingredients evenly.
~ if your pan is not ovenproof, transfer it to one that is and then top with the breadcrumb mixture and put under grill (broiler) until the top is golden.

Voilà the end result is a most satisfying meal, albeit very calorific!!

Archives:
2007: Top 20 toys of all time

Who cooked dinner?

How do you get someone else to cook dinner? It's quite easy really........

I have it on very good authority (I won't divulge a name!) that I do not have an ideal kitchen for cooking. So when you start making dinner and you are chopping with the wrong knives on the wrong type of chopping board (despite having been told years earlier by same person that wooden boards harbour germs), you are trying to cook pasta in too small a pan, and you ask for advise on ingredients it's so much easier for the expert to take over and give you a cooking lesson. I know my place, I'm much better at keeping down the washing up and clearing the kitchen afterwards. As I explained, as far as Embee is concerned a meal should be thrown together in about half an hour!!! Oh I nearly forgot, you need to make sure the cook has a kir royale at her side, but watch your own glass as it might disappear before your eyes when the chef's own supply has run dry!! The end result was a very tasty pasta dish adapted from a Cookiecrumb idea over at I'm Mad and I Eat.

photograph copyright sam breach

Method:
3 finely chopped leeks
5 rashers of English bacon
2 gloves garlic (minced /fine chop)
1 tbsp butter
~ saute together slowly over medium heat with lid on, until leeks are soft
~ turn heat to high for last 2 mins cooking time to crisp the bacon.

~ meanwhile cook pasta in salted water, drain, keeping some of the pasta cooking water.

~ toast a handful of crushed walnuts in a dry pan until golden

~ mix together: 1 cup or so white breadcrumbs, finely chopped parsley, grated parmesan, black pepper. Add a slug of olive oil and stir with crumb mixture until just moist.

~ Stir a glug of double cream into the leek mixture & grate in a little nutmeg. Add the pasta, with liberal glugs of reserved pasta water to keep moist and stir well to mix up all the ingredients evenly.

~ If your pan is not ovenproof, transfer it to one that is and then top with the breadcrumb mixture and put under grill (broiler) until the top is golden

Serve with a glass of champagne.

photograph copyright sam breach

There was a little over and Embee has his lunch ready for tomorrow!!

Lessons Learned: (I have to show the cook I've un-learned what she previously taught and remember all this new stuff- not sure if this old brain box will retain too much -it's a bit like a sieve collects every thing but then lets some things drain away!!)

* use chef's knife, not pairing knife
* glass chopping board will blunt knives- use wood or plastic
* no oil in pasta water~ oil will stop sauce sticking to pasta.
* toast walnuts to bring out the flavour
* keep pasta water to thin out pasta sauce
* breadcrumbs ~ add a great easy crunchy topping to all sorts of dishes ~ a great way to use stale bread. Other ways to use up breadcrumbs include soaking in egg and mixing with sausagemeat for farcis stuffing or for Ajo Blanco.

I think I will be making this again and trying it with a different pasta.

No archive 2006

Quick and tasty

About ten days ago I saw this over at I'm Mad and I Eat. Anyone who follows Cookiecrumb will know that she and Cranky are very good at concoting something from nothing. So the other evening when I was desperately looking for a quick meal with little preparation (because I'd spent too much time blogging and had not left enough time to cook the planned meal) I remembered her post 'Visible Pantry Line' and decided to do my own variation as I had some bacon and mushrooms to use up and I always have onions and walnuts. I used tagliatelle as that's what I happened to have and I decided to omit the cheese (I can't remember now if embee added any). It made a very tasty, if calorific, meal and is very easy to adapt.
I started frying the onions then bacon, mushrooms and finally when almost cooked added the walnuts. Voila the end result.... I hear you saying 'that's not a very healthy meal' and I would agree but occasionally a little bit of what you fancy does you good!!!!!! and you can serve it with a healthy salad.


Thank you Cookiecrumb you are an inspiration for a lot of my meals.