So I’ve had a rather festive weekend. I’ve been to see ‘A Christmas Carol’, Spotifed my 3 favourite Christmas songs (Fairy tale of New York, Stop The Cavalry and All I want for Christmas) and starting on my Christmas food. I’m going to my mums this year so I won’t be making Christmas cake or pudding, but the few things I can’t live without are: my Christmas chutney and really good mincemeat. 

I blooming well love a bit of chutney on Christmas night when you have a bit of cold turkey, ham and pork pie, and this Christmas chutney kicks the arse of every one I’ve ever tasted! It’s so good that I’ve put it in my book. I daren’t post the recipe for fear of getting throttled by my editor but I will give you my mincemeat recipe, OK maybe not mine, its my pal Barney’s who I used to work with at BBC Good Food Magazine. It needs a couple of weeks to steep but is worth the wait and while there are some good ready made mincemeats out there making it yourself will be worth the effort and when I say effort, its merely bunging a bunch of things in a food processor and blitzing it together. 

Barney’s Blitz and blend mincemeat

 

• 50g blanched almonds
• 100g candied peel
• 1 Bramley apple , peeled, cored and chopped into large chunks
• 50g stem ginger , plus 2 tbsp syrup from the jar
• 50g glacé cherries
• 50g ready-to-eat dried pineapple
• 225g each of sultanas/ raisins /currants
• 140g shredded suet
• 225g light muscovado sugar
• ¼ tsp each powdered ginger/mixed spice/nutmeg
• grated zest and juice of 1 orange
• 150ml brandy or dark rum

I don’t know about you but when I grew up, and having such fussy eater sisters, on asking my Mother what was for dinner the response was generally ’something with mince or something with chicken’. I guess I’ve taken that with me as you can bet your bottom dollar that in my shopping basket every week there will be a whole chicken and a couple of punnets of beef mince. 

The thing is, while I can think of a million things to do with chicken, I have to confess to being one of those weirdos who prefers to hack my own chicken into pieces rather than buy those revolting looking chicken pieces from the supermarket. For the record though, once you nail that skill the world is your oyster when cooking chicken! But when it comes to mince it tends to be the old favourites: Spag bol, lasagna, Chili con carne, Cottage pie, Minced beef and onion pie, Meatballs, Moussaka, hamburgers and frankly while I love all of the above I can’t help but feel a little bored by them.

This afternoon, on being faced with 500g of beef mince from the butcher, (20% fat since you asked) I was sat staring blankly at it having to ask myself a series of ‘mince related’ questions. Has there been any new innovative recipes with minced beef? What other cultures cook with minced beef and what do they do with it? I searched the web and came up with a few I hadn’t heard of before. ‘Bobitie’, which is a South African dish of gently curried minced beef with dried fruits and a baked egg custard top similar to a moussaka it seems. ‘Sloppy Joes’, which should be renamed ‘Sloppy NO’ as it’s a tacky combo of chilli mince topped with garlic bread. Those darn American’s!!! Actually speaking of Americans, my Mum used mince to make meatloaf with a mushroom sauce and it was pretty awesome. I was thinking of trying this but using wild mushrooms a bit of sherry and some cream just to bring it into this century. I think that might actually become quite special.

It seems lamb mince has a little more going for it as it is a meat that seems to be used in more ‘World’ cuisines. Lets go back to the Moussaka, It’s essentially not a Moussaka unless its made using lamb meat. In India - or Pakistan to be precise - they have a stonking dish called Mutter Keema which is a gently spiced curry, I suppose a bit like an Indian chilli con carne (but not as tomatoey) and studded with green peas which burst in your mouth rather than kidney beans. 

I twittered my mince problem and had some really great responses. The thing that stood out most was kofta. My father ended up retiring in Northern Cyprus so we got to eat a lot of Kofta in our teens. I bloody love it and again its a dish that works best with Lamb mince, but I wanted to try this a little differently. So I had decided what to try for supper…

I spiced the mince with, shallot, garlic, ginger, turmeric, garam masala, freshly chopped coriander and a lot of salt. Shaped it into meat balls and fried it off to brown it. While that was going on put some more shallots, garlic, ginger, chilli, ground cumin, ground coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, cardamon and cinnamon and blitzed it with some oil and salt to make a paste. Once the meatballs were done, I whipped them out and fried off the paste until the room was awash with the smells of the East. I like this kind of cooking it’s full of buzz and energy with all these wonderful smells! When the paste had lost most of its water and started to go a little golden I poured over a can of chopped tomatoes and some beef stock, put the meatballs back to the pan and let it bubble away for 30 minutes. 

I chopped an aubergine into chunks, tossed it in some salt and fried it of in hot oil until it had gone golden. You have to do this to aubergine otherwise it tastes revolting. If its been fried it becomes gelatinous, gooey and caramelised and quite possibly my favourite vegetable. Aubergine went into the pan and cooked for a further 20 minutes. Its was blooming marvelous! In fact so good that I am going to write it up for you guys. Anyway this whole thought process has inspired me. What ingredient gets you going a bit potty or simply bores you and you’d like to have me work some magic on. Let’s start a new food revolution of boring ingredients - watch this space.

After our fish and veggie couple of days Dean was like, ‘I am man, I need meat, can we have a meat pie?’. No need to ask that question twice so while shopping in town we nipped into Selfridges to pick up some really lovely beef shin. I always use beef shin in my stews. I kind of figure if you’re going to make a stew who cares if it takes 2 or 3 hours, it’s still bloody ages so get the best meat for the job, and the best meat is shin.

Coincidentally I had promised the lovely guys at Jus roll that I would try out their new all butter shortcrust pastry. I had some in the freezer waiting to be used so what better opportunity? I’m torn with ready made pastry. Pastry has been my nemesis for years. Its a proper pain in the arse, breaking all the time, shrinking, always making too much or too little. When I wrote my book it was the thing I really wanted to tackle and during that process I grew to love making it, especially now I know how easy it is to make. A few store cupboard ingredients and voila - pastry. So to spend a couple of quid on the ready made stuff that was not the real buttery deal seemed a bit of a waste. I’m all for shortcuts, but I am very sad we are losing the ability to cook in a skilled way and most of these products are no match for the proper stuff. It frustrates me that some people don’t even try. That said I don’t know anyone, even the big chefs who doesn’t use ready made pastry occasionally and now Jus roll have made an all butter version of their pastry I thought maybe it was time for me to push these views aside and give it a go.

So I slow cooked the beef with shallots, carrots, garlic, red wine, ale, stock, thyme, bay, star anise, cinnamon and cloves - which produced a wickedly rich stew. I let it cool overnight, then whacked it between my all butter pastry crust. In the oven for 45 minutes and out comes a really scrumptious looking pie. I knew instantly this pastry was good as the second the oven door opened the wafts of butter were as strong as the wafts of stew and the pie crust was crisp, flakey, then crumbly when cut into. Damn it. It was really good. As good as the home made stuff? Well I don’t know if I would be able to pull it out of a line up so maybe, yes. And it rolled out easily too.

So am I converted? Not completely, you can’t beat food made with passion and fresh is always best (plus I aspire to be able to make pastry without scales like my Mum), but I am certain that I will keep a pack or two in the freezer for those times when you just can’t be bothered. I’m a modern woman after all.

Another day, another dinner party. Well, kind of. One of our best friends Alex came round with his friend Emily. Emily is a vegetarian. I have nothing against vegetarians, other than not understanding quite what they like to eat. I love vegetarian Indian food, I love vegetarian Italian food, but being faced with cooking for a veggie I went blank. I know there are a million dishes I could do, but none of them chose to pop up in my head I know it’s not rocket science but honestly guys, not a sausage (excuse the pun!).

It was driving me potty. If there are any vegetarians out there what do you cook to impress when you have mates round. Everything I could think of was a bit, well, everyday. Us meateaters are easy. You can have us drooling over ourselves with just the mention of a beef wellington, pork belly or slow roasted shoulder of lamb!! Just what dishes make you veggies go weak at the knees!!?

Thankfully I was writing up some recipes for the website and the key ingredient I’m working on this week is Puy lentils. As it happened I needed to test a vegetarian moussaka so I decided to go all Greek and started it all off with a little spot of mezze. I made a posh hummus topped with caramelised onions (I totally cheated and bought the hummus). I fried a sliced onion until caramelised and merely plonked them on top, try it, its always a dinner party pleaser and people think its ingenious! Its not, its just hummus topped with caramelised onions but it transforms it into something pretty swanky. This accompanied pan fried hullumi with lemon and extra virgin olive oil (oh yes, I would have babies with hullumi if it was possible), marinated grilled veg and pitta.

The moussaka was good. The reason I was writing it up for the website was I wanted to showcase the best ways of using puy lentils and I had had a vegetarian moussaka before and found it pretty good for a veggie dish. I’ve popped up a few pictures of how it was done but you’ll have to wait about a month for the recipe. A pretty nice meal I thought, but I still felt like I was shortchanging them, something was missing. The meat it seems.

Basically I need help and I want it from you guys. Mind-blowing dinner party vegetarian dishes. Give it to me…

Today was a good day. I was sent a package that I feel is safe to say ‘life changing’. A superb company called ‘Fish for thought’ (www.fishforthought.co.uk) have come up with the rather nifty idea of sending spankingly fresh fish straight from the Cornish seas to your front door. Too good to be true I thought, but at midday there was a knock on the door and low and behold a vast package filled to the brim with the freshest fish I’ve seen in London!

With fresh crab meat, lobster, scallops, oysters, mussels, gurnard, grey mullet and a wild sea bass fillet as big as my arm! It arrived with no fuss and fresher than I could guarantee from my local fishmonger - and my local fishmonger is one of the best in London - so thats saying something.

I called up my fellow foody mate Sunny and told her to get her arse over to me after work as we were going to cook up a fishy storm! Boullabaise was on the menu, a proper swanky version, with lobster, scallops and the crab meat.

Before that, my boyfriend Dean cracked open the the oysters, Sunny made a mean shallot vinegar and we slurped them down. They were the finest, (and biggest) oysters I’ve ever had. Sweet and buttery. That with a few glugs of Prosecco are definately the way to go for a random Thursday night in. Bing, Sunny’s husband (eventually) arrived and we got on with the main course. You have to check out Bing’s website, he’s a very talented and famous illustrater don’t you know!!! www.mrbingo.org.uk

The boullabaise, (a summer dish I know) showcased the seafood perfectly. We sweated down some onions, shallots, fennel and garlic, added some fresh tomatoes, wine, sherry, fish stock, saffron, orange zest, bay and let that bubble away for a while before adding the fish (gurnard, silver mullet, mussels, scallops, lobster and crab). I poached it until it was cooked then put the fennel herb in. It was amazing, (So good I forgot to take a photo). Served up with some grilled soured dough baguette and a rouille made from roasted red pepper and red chilli, blended with mayo, garlic, shallot, vinegar, (hey, we had some left from the oysters) and salt.

For pudding I made a pavlova all made from Store cupboard stuff and the odd bits and bobs. I shoved some Greek yoghurt on top, pears, (I’d like to say poached but I cheated and used tinned ones in juice), covered it in a chocolate sauce, (Green and blacks 70% melted with double cream and honey) toped with toasted, and chopped hazelnuts. It was pretty special to say the least. Next time I’d go all out and go for loosely whipped cream instead of the yoghurt.

I am loving having mates round and cooking up a storm while having a good old chin wag. Anyway, bye for now off to bed feeling very pleased with myself.

I teamed up with the BBC on a project called Grub club which is trying to get students cooking, not only to encourage a healthy body but also a healthy mind. We know that a vast percentage of students have a few slip ups during their time at uni, be it from having too much fun and drinking too much or using drugs, down to finding the pressure getting to them and finding themselves stressed, depressed and unable to snap themselves out of it. It is also a time when young people are at their most vulnerable and can find themselves faced with an eating disorder like anorexia, bulimia or over eating.

We feel that by giving students a focus, in something that will become a life skill, that they will become more in tune in what is put into their bodies. I want to take away the idea that cooking is a chore and show how much of a wicked way it is to relax after a hard days graft. Pop open a bottle of plonk, get your pals round and have a natter while whipping up something that’ll be good for your body and mind. It’s great for social skills too. Having really fun ‘come dine with me’ inspired dinner parties is a cool way to show of what they have learnt, and a bit different and more ecconmical than going down the student union every day. Plus its cheap and student need cheap - lets face it!

Anyway, the campaign is going swimmingly and I have have some serious fun cooking up a storm in some of the UK’s uni’s. We have been to Bath, Southhampton and Roehampton and have yet to go to Barts. It’s working as I am getting more and more requests for cool student recipes and the response at the events has been amazing. If you want to join up to grub club yourself simply go to www.bbc.co.uk/headroom and press the grub club button to sign in. You can see what events are going on round by you.

I have uploaded 8 of the recipes I have written for them so if you are looking for something full of flavour that’ll be from fridge to table in about 15 minutes check them out!

I am excited to say that I am now fully in control of my blog meaning I will be blogging really regularly from now on. I’m a bit crap with technology so it was a slow start but now I am on it and will be filling you in on all that goes on in Gizzi World, and giving you loads of info on what I love and loath and giving you the low down onwhat I’ve got coming up as well as my thoughts on any foody news that happens, as it happens.

For now though, thank you all for your posotive comments. It is so cool to get feedback from you all as it is you guys that are going to help me craft this site to be the ultimate website for foodies. Give it to me, good or bad, I really want to hear it!