What to do when it's been a seriously crap day

Today has been utterly rubbish.  The unending, ongoing, relentless awfulness that only really happens in January; when it's wet and cold and you're tired and just when you think you've got everything under control and generally heading in the right direction, and you've tentatively started to feel optimistic about things, something else gets thrown at you.

Today my car had to go into the garage because the clutch failed yesterday (£600 worth of joy), the Very Tolerant Boyfriend got delayed in Gloucestershire which turned his 14 hour day into a 16 hour one, I fell down the stairs and finally our lawyers called this morning to tell us that EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD had gone wrong with our house purchase and our exchange on Friday was going to fall through.  Fortunately the Lawyer was wrong, but that's never the sort of voicemail you want to pick up and it took quite a lot of shouting from me and (mainly) the Very Tolerant Boyfriend, or as I suppose he's been promoted to, the Very Tolerant Fiancé,  to get it sorted out.

So we're till moving on Friday and this evening all we really wanted was some comfort food and a large drink.

So this evening while waiting for the Very Tolerant Fiancé to get back from his very long day, I knocked together something warm and soothing (while drinking a very large gin).

Slow cooked pork belly
Low on imagination and energy, I kept this as simple as possible.  I heated a tablespoon of oil in a casserole dish and placed the pork belly skin down in the hot oil.  I fried it for ten minutes until the skin crisped up and then flipped it back over, turned the heat off and when the oil had cooled added a bottle of cider (I used Thatchers), some sage, salt and pepper.  I then heated the oven to 180C and cooked for 30 minutes before reducing to 120C for another two hours.

Bourbon and maple baked beans
I got the idea for this from a slow cooked vegan recipe and completely bastardised it (spoiler - it's not vegan anymore).
1lb black beans (dried)
1 cup tomato sauce
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 cup coke
1/4 cup bourbon
2 tblsp maple syrup
1 packet lardons
1 cup water
2 tsp spice mix (really must write up the recipe for this at some point)
2 tsp garlic paste
2 tsp worcestershire sauce.
1 cup water
2 tbsp tomato puree

I had soaked the beans overnight, planning to make them in the slow cooker and then I had all the other rubbish to deal with today, so I skipped the slow cooking.

I fried the lardons off in the bottom of a cast iron casserole dish and then just threw everything else in and cooked it down for a couple of hours.  I have more beans than we will ever be able to eat, but I'm sure they freeze fine and they taste amazing

And then I served it all with some jacket sweet potatoes.  I'll probably need to run a couple of extra miles tomorrow but it was amazing.

Slow cooked Quinoa and Black Bean Chilli

This is really brilliant vegan chilli. Not least because you can just stick it in the slow cooker and leave it for three hours.

½ cup uncooked quinoa
15 oz can black beans
½ container 28 oz diced tomatoes
¼ cup chopped red pepper
¼ cup chopped green pepper
1 shredded carrot
½ onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
½ small chili pepper
2 teaspoons chili powder
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 ½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
½ cup sweetcorn

Once I'd made it,  I opted to serve it as a burrito so I made up an easy guacamole with half an avocado, some chilli, salt and lemon juice smooshed together.

We had ours with yogurt and cheese,  but vegan substitutes could be used. 

Butternut squash and Lentil curry

This is a really hearty vegan meal. It's meant to be a slow cooker recipe, but it worked just fine making it this way.

1 tablespoon ground cumin
3 teaspoons garam masala powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons salt
2 bay leaves
3 teaspoons vegetable oil,
1 large onion, diced finely
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cans of diced tomatoes
6 cups water
2 cups red lentils
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and seeds removed then cubed into 1" pieces
1/2 cup coriander, chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Pop the diced butternut squash in the oven after tossing it in a little oil and some chilli flakes.  Roast until soft.

In a cast iron casserole dish, heat some oil and soften the diced onion with garlic and ginger. At the same time rinse off and sieve the lentils.

Add all the spices and the tomato puree to the onions and cook together until they start to caramelise. Then throw in the rest of the ingredients and cook together for 30-40 minutes or the lentils are tender.

Serve with chapatis and dressed with more coriander and some yogurt (or soy yogurt for vegans).

I forgot to take a picture of this because I was too busy eating it.  It was amazing.

Boozy bread and butter pudding

Today some lovely friends cooked an amazing Sunday Roast. I offered to take along some dessert, but I was a bit stumped for ideas until I remembered that I had frozen the left over berries from making the Christmas bramble whiskey.  So I just needed a suitable vehicle for whiskey sodden fruit.

I wanted something where the fruit was an added extra rather than the main ingredient, as I (fortunately) guessed that the fruit might be quite strong.  So I opted for a brioche bread and butter pudding.

1x loaf of brioche, sliced with the crusts cut off
600mls full fat milk
100mls double cream
2 oz sugar
4 x eggs
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Whiskey soaked fruit

Arrange the sliced bread in a greased pie dish, after completing each layer sprinkle on a little cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and a few (seriously not very many at all) whiskey berries. Then add the next layer. 

Continue like this until the dish is full.

Heat the milk and cream together but don't boil.  Separately whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale.  Add the cream/milk mixture to the eggs and sugar, stirring so add not to cook the eggs. Strain the custard and pour over the brioche layers.  Allow to sit for 30 minutes and then bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.

Don't eat of you're driving.

Sunday night cocktails

I thought that while I wrote up some recipes from the last week, I might treat myself and the Very Tolerant Boyfriend to a Sunday night cocktail. 

We were given some homemade sloe gin for Christmas by one of friends, which I thought I would use as the base for a Sloe Fizz. My Christmas sloe gin was slightly sweeter than I'm used to so I upped the lemon juice content to compensate.

15 ml sloe gin
15 ml gin
15 ml lemon juice

Shake over ice and pour into the bottom of a champagne flute. Top up with sparkling wine.

Courgette 'pasta' spicy tomato sauce

So after a terribly decadent weekend in London where we ate all the meat; including amazing roast bone marrow, a spectacular chateaubriand, the best crackling either of us has ever eaten, a veal heart, we needed to get back on the healthy eating for a while.

This evening we experimented with pasta made from spiralised courgette ribbons.  After the courgette was ribboned we fried it with a tiny smidge of butter.

The sauce was simply some diced onions, red peppers, a tin of tomatoes, tomato puree, a couple of tablespoons of red wine, garlic, some diced chorizo and some green peppers cooked until thickened.

Non pasta, pasta bake

So things took an unexpected turn last week which postponed our cooking plans a little bit. We're back on track with the vegetarian cooking with this non pasta, pasta bake.  The original recipe called for spaghetti squash which I've never been able to find in the UK,  so I substituted with some butternut squash which I spiralised into squash noodles.  

This worked really well and then I cheated on a second meal by using the leftovers to make burritos.

1x butternut squash spiralised
1x courgettes diced
1x carrot diced
1x onion diced
2x clove garlic minced
1x bottle passata
1x ball mozzarella
1x cup grated parmasan
1x tsp oregano
1x tsp  Italian herbs

Mix the veg and spices together loosely with your hands.  Pour over the passata, then top with the cheeses and some grated pepper. Bake in the oven for 45 mins at 180C.

The Very Tolerant Boyfriend topped his with a fried egg.