peter gordon's baked squash with coconut cream, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, chillies and coriander

Wow - Look at these little beauties! Who can resist experimenting when the front of this month's Delicious comes resplendent with four stuffed squash oozing with a Thai-style stuffing? Not me, although it does take three or four days for Ana to forget I've got it planned. Serendipitously we have it whilst Saint Hugh is convincing some firemen to go vegetarian for a week.


As it happens, I used to cook an HFW squash baked with gruyere and cream. Oooh, it was good, although terribly bad for the waistline. Anyhoo this version is infinitely lighter, and the zingy thai flavourings compliment the earthy squash really well.

I could only get small pumpkins this week, but I think Acorn or Onion squash would work much better. Even Ana liked it, and that includes my off-recipe inclusion of spinach. Maybe I'll try some recipes from the Peter Gordon book Brenda lent me now...

Food of the Milos
A glamorous continental breakfast at Julia's today of a chocolate croissant, followed by a hearty sausage, mash and veg for lunch. Crikey, that's two sausage-based meals in two days, he'll turn into one soon. Lucky he had some frozen meatballs and pasta for dinner - phew!

sources
baked squash with coconut cream, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, chillies and coriander - Peter Gordon, Delicious, November 2010, p109

spinach, tomato and chick pea curry

Somewhere along the line this week (I suspect either Sunday or Monday) we seem to have skipped the projected moroccan lamb shanks, on the basis we're too knackered/tired to cook them for three hours. With a brand-spanking new Midsomer to look forward to, tonight is *not* the night for noodling in the kitchen.

The quickest thing left on the menu is the new-favourite-experimental spinach, tomato and chick pea curry. Which is perfect, even if Ana does contend I can't cook rice.


She even ruins Barnaby's investigation by correctly predicting the incestuous relationships, and who murdered whom. Unusually this doesn't follow her usual method of suspecting everybody, and she gets it pretty much first time.

Food of the Milos
It's a Julia day today, so it's the usual cheerios, apricots and raisins breakfast at hers, before chicken and veg pasta after nursery. Back at home it's last night's Tana Ramsay-endorsed experimental sausage casserole. Frankly it was a triumph, including the cabbage, so we'll be having that again soon, although hopefully we'll have better luck with the mash.

sources
spinach, tomato and chick pea curry - Waitrose Recipe Cards, Early September 2010

tana ramsay's sausage casserole, with savoy cabbage and butter beans & bill granger's sweetcorn chowder

After two days of basically eating cake and sweets, we're back to normal. Albeit an experimental normality as tonight we're having a sausage casserole stuffed with cabbage, leek and mushrooms to see if we can expand Milo's veg intake beyond tomatoes, mini-versions of things, potatoes (particularly in chip format) and broccoli.

Naturally it contains one of his five-a-day sausage portions, but interestingly it also contains pancetta, chorizo, and butter beans. It comes from Tana's Family Cookbook, and it seems an ideal pre-buy test.

Things go swimmingly. You basically whack it all in the pan and leave it simmer, giving me plenty of time to make 2 litres of this week's lunch soup, Bill Granger's sweetcorn chowder, and still be ready to make mash in time to watch Whites:


However, for some reason whilst my potatoes go lovely and tender in the soup, in a shorter period of time, the ones bubbling away on the hob simply refuse to cocking soften. In the end, a full hour after I started them, I end up mashing them in the saucepan in the front room so I could watch TV. And they gave me a blister from the mashing. Lucky the stew was so divine, and with enough portions for us to have seconds, Milo to have some tomorrow, and put two pots in the freezer for him later:


Food of the Milos
The post-birthday come down doesn't seem to him as hard as us. He has his usual breakfast (today with cheese), eggs and cake for lunch, and chicken stew with apple sauce and tarragon for dinner. Again, he's not amazed by it, but neither did he refuse it, so we'll count that as one in the bank to try again.

sources
sweetcorn chowder - Bill Granger, Every Day, p246
sausage casserole, with savoy cabbage and butter beans - Tana Ramsay, Family Kitchen although I half inched it from Delicious circa 2005.

sauteed chicken with cider & tarragon

It's day one of Milo's two-day birthday extravaganza, and because it's absolutely tipping it down we're already onto Plan B for the Family Birthday, erm day.

Not that he knows we originally planned to go the Wetland Centre's adventure playground of course, and the lure of playing in Eddie Katz with Amelia, Kayosaurus, Mikeplodocus and Matt and a large sack of wonderful presents is more-than satisfactory from his point of view.

Knackered from extensive running about like a loony, we've just got time for lunch at Strada before the McCarthy's have to head back to the Island, and the arrival of my mum who bears not only more gifts, but an amazing pirate treasure chest-themed cake she made:


Incroyable! It's an excellent end to a really good if knackering day - particularly for those of us who spent half of it stuck between two soft-play rollers, half way down a spongey castle.

With monkey in bed, and Ana wrapping presents and making party bags in the drawing room (although Ana does insist on calling it the lounge), I knock up another batch of our new favourite Waitrose-approved stews, sauteed chicken with cider and tarragon:


This time we *do* have it with tarragon, which definitely rounds the flavour out a bit more, and rather than double cream and cider we make it more Milo (and diet) friendly by using creme fraiche and apple juice. Once again, I make marvellous mash! The perfect accompaniment to Downton Abbey...

Food of the Milos
Over-excited by opening presents and seeing various grandparents, uncles and a smallish cousin food isn't a priority today. He has some scrambled eggs for breakfast, spaghetti and ice cream and strada and then several handfuls of sweets and a slice of my mum's cake for dinner. Not his finest culinary day, but he was very funny

sources
sauteed chicken with cider & tarragon - Waitrose Food Card, September 2010

catch ups

Hello, just thought you'd like to know I've *finally* caught up with my outstanding posts, if you don't count tonight that is. I'll do that tomorrow.

So, if you want to delve into the recent past you can 'enjoy'

• Last night's experimental zanzibar chicken;
• The unexpected arrival of my dad on Friday night;
• Another edition of the Milo Cookery Show (just for you Super Sarah);
• Hanne's Last Supper (in Blighty for September).

Also, did you know if you searched in google for "Chilli Bean Burritos", we're number one? Strange but true. As Lucyfer Gusson points out, you can't buy that SEO juice. Urrgh - vile girl!

zanzibar chicken

What's your favourite dish? I'm not going to cook it but I'll order it from ZANZIBAR!

Today is all about preparing for Milo's birthday on Monday. We've got some shopping to do, we need to get him some winter school shoes, tidy the house and we need to diminish the washing mountain. Ana Louise takes care of the latter two whilst I knacker him out in the wave pool and water slides at Brentford Fountains, that's foxing teamwork. In fact we are there for just short of three hours of sliding, bobbing in the waves and generally splashing, and he sparks out in the car on the way home, which is useful even if it does mean we have a later evening than usual.

Later, with the shopping, shoes and Strictly done, a very good little boy goes to sleep and we have an experimental curry from this month's Delicious, whilst watching Sense & Sensibility from my new costume drama collection.


It's a pretty rich dish, and the tomatoes, basil and cloves make it taste completely different from other chicken curries I've cooked. Personally I loved it, but I think next time Ana would prefer it with pureed ginger rather than chopped, which is a fair point. The chillis come from my plant outside, which has gone mental, and the basil is from Milo's basil seeds.

Incidentally, I know I made the claim this year's June edition of Delicious was the best single issue, but looking at this month's made me think that maybe my favourite issues are the November ones? Some many of our dishes come from these issues it *must* be the best? Tomato curry, little mash pies, beef stew with pumpkin, cep and potato stew, lamb karahi, sage and sausage pasta, pumpkin minestrone, and thai fish and pumpkin curry have all appeared from November's pages, and there are at least six dishes I want to cook in the next week or so, including tonight's dinner. Any takers, or indeed disagreers?

Food of the Milos
Despite the three hours of swimming, Milo doesn't eat an awful lot today, but what he does eat is pretty spectacular. I design his breakfast into his own heraldic shield, however he misses the point and calls it 'breakfast pie':


That's apple, banana and raisin 'cakes', a marmite crumpet and four grapes. No lunch, but a bribery packet of jelly dinosaurs during the shoe fitting, and then sausage, beans and chips for dinner. He is a very good boy, and hugs me and Ana in Sheen High Street, whilst inviting us to his birthday party. It's a monster party apparently, but we don't have to be scared because he'll look after us - aaaaah!

sources
zanzibar chicken - Paul Merrett, Delicious, November 2010, p64

hearty vegetable cottage pie

No post last night because I was getting thrashed bowling by a transsexual called Fiona at Shoreditch House.

That's how we roll at work, and by the time I got back from the dodgy East End I was so tired and full of Peroni and pizza I could only manage Ana's left-overs. Which for the record were 1 (one) prawn and 1 (one) spoonful of Old Fashioned Chicken Curry sauce from the take away her and Kate had in my absence. She really knows how to spoil me, however I didn't have to wait too long to wreak my terrible rewenge!

Somewhat unexpectedly my dad pitched up tonight as he'd been rained off working in Sudbury, so naturally rather than driving to Portsmouth in the pouring rain he came over here to get dry, have dinner and take advantage of the inflatable bed. This is of course fine and dandy, particularly as Milo doesn't get to see him enough, but he's unashamedly useless during the dinner-bath-bed routine, and smokes like a chimney.

The combination of this, relentless army stories from the 50s (front row, sat to the right of the guy in the khaki uniform, if you're interested), and the fact I get home 45 minutes late means Ana is less-than-pleased.

I was planning to do a pumpkin and spinach curry but there's *definitely* not enough for three, so given Ana wants to watch strictly, and I've heard all the army stories, I decide to make the vegetable cottage pie on the basis we can all have it, Milo can have it tomorrow, and I can go to the pub with dad whilst it slowly cooks in the oven.


We're all winners, the pie is a pretty top defence against the awful weather (particularly with a cheesey crust), and Dad comes up with some never-before-heard-by-me climbing stories that are genuinely hysterical - hurrah!

sources
hearty vegetable cottage pie - Delicious, January 2007, p28