Recently in Food Category
A truly interesting guy. At least he makes himself *sound* interesting. ;-)
The Cottage Smallholder
I found the website last night when looking for a recipe for slow roast belly of pork. I have to say, there are a lot of recipes I'm intending on trying and gven how prolific they are, it's going to take me a while!
Now have a new home at the Recipes Blog which will hopefully encourage me to put more of my recipes in there. Suggestions are welcome also :)
Stolen unashamedly from a copy of Men's Health for fear I'll loose the magazine and not be able to make it again...
Stats
Serves: 6
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cooking Time: 3 hours
Ingredients
3 tbsp olive oil
6 lamb shanks, trimmed
3 carrots, sliced
3 sticks celery, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
150ml balsamic vinegar
2 bay leaves
2x410g cans cannellini beans (butter beans are better though!) drained and rinsed
Method
- Preheat oven to 170c/gas mark 3. Heat the oil in your pot. Add the lamb shanks in batches and brown all over. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Put onion, carrots, celery and garlic in the pot. Add lamb, tomatoes and vinegar, and stir. Season with salt and pepper and add the bay leaves. Boil, cover and cook on hob for 5 minutes, then in the oven for 1.5 to 2 hours.
- Remove the dish from the oven and add the beans. Cover and put back in the oven for a further 30 minutes, then serve.
Boots Sandwiches, but not! I tried the "Chicken Fajita Salad" yesterday, which was very nice except for the chicken tasting like Bavarian smoked cheese. The bean salsa stuff actually had some flavour and kick to it, which was quite remarkable given that things like that are usually bland and flavourless. I'm in shock!
Procurement. That's what's annoying me about Boots and their sandwiches at the moment. (I'm still not sure why I decided to be kind enough to classify my postings about Boots Sandwiches as "Food")
Why can't they (being Boots) order a decent quantity of sandwiches? Surely they can't have sold out to the point where the fridges are virtually clear by 12.30 on at least 3 out of 5 working days? And if they, consistently, do then surely it would be logical to have additional stock available to replenish with.... It's all well and good having a range of "Seasonal" sandwiches which give customers a choice of something other than chicken. But, if they're constantly out of stock, (other than the Brie & Grape variety) then I can't buy them! :'(
Well, to an extent they have redeemed themselves! Boots have a new "seasonal" range of sandwiches which are nothing short of fantaastic. Having been thorougly un-impressed with their previous offerings (see here and here) I tried their newly released "Seasonal" sandwiches and have to admit to being thoroughly impressed. Butter-basted Turkey with other goodness, Pork, Salmon with cream cheese and dill and (as yet un-tried) Brie & Grape. The first three are all fantastic and a nice departure from the usual choices of chicken, chicken and, erm, chicken. Now I've just got to hope and pray that the next "Seasonal" set are as good as these.
Finally -- something worth eating at lunchtime from Boots!
I really do hope that no one from Boots do a google search on the term "Boots Sandwiches", at the moment, the top search result on both google.co.uk and google.com is a 'blog entry I made a while ago relating to how completely foul a new sandwich they'd added to their range was/is. Saying that, maybe if somebody does it'll be a kick up the arse to make what should be a nice sandwich edible!
Note to self: Must get round to going to this restaurant.
Bah. Are they trying to poison me!?!? They have a new Ham & Emmental Club sandwich which sounds like it might be quite nice. Wrong. The "mustard mayo" in it is so overpowering that the sandwich tastes of nothing BUT mustard. Won't be buying that again!
This is nice spooned over pork chops before you cook it in the oven. It's probably quite nice with cheese and biscuits too, but I haven't yet tried that!
Ingredients
2 large onions
4 teaspoons crushed dried chillis
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 pint of water
1/8 pint of malt vinegar
50g butter
1. Chop the onions up, coarsely
2. Place them in a saucepan with everything else bar the vinegar and cover.
3. Simmer on a low heat for 30mins, add the malt vinegar, simmer for 10mins and use.
Simple, tasty, and a damn sight cheaper than the product it's based on!
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