Friday nights = Lazy nights

Friday tends to be our take out or random junk in front of the tv/computer night, and tonight was no exception. One of my childhood favourites was mayonnaise with fries from the local fast food van and I've never quite lost my hankering for them so this is loosely based on that.

• half a packet of potato wedges or 4 to 5 large potatos peeled and chopped into junks
• 2 tablespoons mayonaise
• half a teaspoon of a strong English mustard
• either 2 bacon rashers, fried or grilled til crispy and chopped into thin strips OR a good sprinkling of baco bits

Cook your potatos, mix the mayonaise and mustard together in a bowl and then add the cooked potatoes. Divide into two bowls and add the bacon and salt/pepper to taste. It makes perfect comfort food to be shared whilst snuggling up during the winter.

Childhood comfort food - Bratkartoffeln

Outside the snow has been falling for the past week. The world is coated with a thick white blanket so its time for comfort food. The type that transports you straight back to safety of your childhood.

One of my staples for a quick winter supper is based loosely on a childhood favourite, Bratkartoffeln. Every saturday my mother and I would walk into town for some shopping, ending with lunch in the cafe of Hertie's department store. Each week would follow the same pattern, we bought chocolate covered dried apple slices from the deli around the corner. I got a smurfette from the toystore (with hindsight I was a weird child, in all those trips I never once bought a male smurf). Then we climbed up through the store to its restaurent at the top, where we shared fried potatoes mixed with crispy bacon and melted cheese.

As it a quick dish, I tend to "cheat" slightly by using potato wedges rather than peeling my own potatoes (lazy I know).

• half a pack of potato wedges
• 3 rashers of bacon
• 1 red onion
• A chunk of tasty cheese, I like Gruyere

Partially cook the potato wedges either in the oven or in something like a Tefal Actifry. Meanwhile, dice the onion and lightly fry in oil. Grill the bacon in the oven til crispy and grate the cheese.

Transfer the potatoes to the onion pan to finish cooking. Then chop the bacon into mix. Add the grated cheese and pop under the grill until the cheese turns lovely and gooey.

If you want to be a little decadent, you can add a fried egg to the top or if you are really hungry it goes great as an accompaniment to a good steak.

Sopa de Lima

We all link food to memories, the first time we taste something fantastic lingers. Everytime you then create the dish, the smells and flavours send you straight back. For me the first time I had Sopa de Lima, it was love at first mouthful.

It was rainy season in the Yucatan, you could set your watch by the downpour. We were staying in a tiny little hotel just outside Chichen Itza. The restaurent was a patio covered with an awning and the menu choices were limited, yet all the food was delicious. There was something romantic about sitting there with rain pouring off the canopy drinking ice cold beer.

The soup came in chipped china bowls, but its smell was captivating, so fresh and tasty. Now everytime I need a comforting chicken soup, its Sopa de Lima with its healthy burst of vitamin C I crave. Like all great soups there are many variations on the recipe. Every restaurent and family in the Yucatan seems to have their own unique spin on the dish, some use turkey, some use chicken, some add lemons. 

Over the next few dull grey winter months I intend trying a few of the them, plus adding a touch or two of my own, recreating the heat and the feel of those months in Mexico.

Marmite Cheese

Whilst wandering around Asda at 7.30 this morning, (dont ask), I happened to spot some marmite cheese lurking on a shelf. Now the only question is:

Do I need to add more marmite to my cheese on toast now, or will the marmite flavoured cheese be enough? 

Roasted Pork Belly with garlicky potatoes and red cabbage

Autumnal weather calls for autumnal food. Its been raining here for the last couple of days and the fog is hardly lifting. Seems as if the weather is practising for a haunting halloween.

Pork belly

2 heads of garlic

3 to 4 large potatoes

Red Cabbage

Salt

Olive Oil 

Preheat the oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Cover the pork in olive oil and rub with a good handful of salt. Place in a roasting dish with your potatoes and the garlic and pop into the oven.  Cook for an hour and a half, the pork skin down on the garlic.

Increase the heat to 180 °C (355 °F), turn the pork over and cook for a further 30 minutes or until the skin is golden and crunchy.

Peel the roasted garlic, chop into slivers and serve with the roasted potatoes. Serve with a large helping of red cabbage.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

John Keats

October is here and its most definately misty, the haar is edging off the sea most nights leaving a chill in the air. My food thoughts are turning towards pumpkin pie and thick gravy covering huge slabs of beef with yorkshire pudding. Autumn and winter are my two most favourite seasons, perhaps because they house my two most favourite festivals, halloween and christmas. Nothing beats hurrying home in the cold, wrapped up warm and being greeted by delicious hot food. In fact the only depressing food related thought  on the horizon is the dreaded sprout. Still need to find a way of making them palatable before december the 25th.

Marmite Monster

Im a bit of a grazer, I like to snack, small meals offering different tastes are far better than one large plate of food. This in part is why I love tapas and mezes, the whole concept appeals to my snackling side.

Which brings me to Marmite, whilst I realise its an acquired taste and you could argue its colour and texture, not to mention the smell could be classed as offputting, to me, its childhood in a jar. Even when we lived in Germany, there was always marmite in the larder. When we traveled anywhere marmite sandwichs was always on the menu, not to mention the marmite and buttered toast before we even left home.

One of my favourite comfort come snackling food is a very simple marmite on toast with a fried egg splatted on top. When you cut into the egg and the yolk spills out intermingling with the marmite and the buttered toast, Im five again and sometimes thats no bad thing.

Marmite

Marmite has to be one of my favourite foodstuffs. Nothing beats marmite on toast coupled with lashings of melted butter. Its my ultimate comfort food.

It takes me back to my childhood. It was the only thing my father could make so when he was left in charge, it was all we got to eat. Now when im feeling down or cant be bothered to cook, its the marmite I reach for.