Something For The Weekend: A Full English Breakfast

Vegetarians, look away now.  It's a meat feast.

A full English typically contains: bacon, sausage, fried egg, black pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes, and beans.  Served with tea and toast it really is true to it's name; if you're not full afterwards, you've got problems.

 
Making this at home can be quite a challenge for the first timer.  Save it for the weekend - it takes some time.  Planning is key.  You need to have enough pans, know what your going to cook in each and where and get the timing right.  The microwave can come in handy for beans and tomatoes (if using plum from a tin).  I think I got it right last weekend when I cooked the bacon, sausage, black pudding and tomatoes together in my grill pan, beans in one saucepan and mushrooms in another.  I also threw a few hashbrowns in the oven, which is not exactly British tradition but it's sometimes included in cafe breakfast which makes the Irish in me very happy.  The husband thinks potatoes for breakfast are a no-no.

This breakfast has taken me a few years to get right - and it's by no means perfect.  But everything is ready nearly on time and most importantly tastes great - yes, even the black pudding (admittedly I can't eat the whole thing - it tastes great but then I begin to think about what I'm eating and I'm easily put off).  Now if I could just figure out a way to minimise clean up...

Oh yeah - go to the cafe! 

Pork Stuffed Peppers

We have a small group of friends (3 couples - including ourselves) who often get together.  We usually take turns hosting at one another's homes, sometimes making a 3 course dinner and other times we order a takeaway.  The point is to make time to see each other, catch up on the goings on in our lives and food, whether home cooked or not, is always a welcome part of that.

Very rudely, we were nearly two hours late for the last gathering over the Christmas holidays (for shame) but our very kind friends still let us in and fed us some fantastic food.  A cheese and onion pie, stuffed peppers and a Guinness cake to top it all off.  It was absolutely delicious - especially that cake!  I do plan on trying it out and sharing the recipe on here at some point but a few weeks back I was looking to make something with some pork mince that I hadn't used when making tourtière over Christmas, when the stuffed peppers came to mind.

I didn't use a recipe.  I just scoured the fridge and cupboards pulling out what I thought would work well.  The tomato sauce is the juice from a can of plum tomatoes and I used a half a jar of salsa- a can of chopped would do the same trick, I'm sure. 

I fried the onions, chopped green chilli and garlic in a little oil for a few minutes.

 

Then added the pork mince and once cooked, stirred in the tomato juice, salsa and added a little beef stock and let it all simmer.  I then added a couple tablespoons of dried stuffing mix to thicken it all up.  Rice would bulk this out nicely too, easily doubling up the filling to serve a big bunch.

Not it's most appealing stage but the final product did taste pretty darn good.

I cut the tops of of the peppers and sliced a little off each bottom so they would sit up in the dish and I used half of the mix to stuff them.  They were pretty big peppers - half of the mix would have easily done 4 small peppers but I was being greedy (as usual).  The leftover mix made another meal the next day which I'll share this week.  Gotta love a double duty dinner.

I popped them in the oven for about 30 minutes, just until the skin started to brown and bubble, and served them with my man's favourite side dish, cauliflower cheese. 

It might be our turn to host next - and I'll be keeping the menu simple, something that can be kept warm because pay back's a bitch.  And in the meantime, we'll work on our timekeeping!

Roasted Pepper and Garlic Soup

It snowed!  It finally snowed!  It happens about once a year, usually in winter, though this is often dubbed "The Big Freeze" by the media.  People panic, lose the ability to drive or be able to leave the house because they are "snowed in" by two centimetres of the fluffy white stuff.  Working in an office a few years ago, I was the only one who made it to work in the morning and I had walked the 45 minutes to get there.  Leave it to the Northern Canadian to get to work in the snow.  It stems from my mother never allowing us to take a "snow day" - if the school was open, we were going and a few feet (yes feet!) of snow weren't going to stop us.  So you can imagine how confused I was to be alone in the office and find out the culprit was a few centimetres of snow.

 

We had to get out quick yesterday before it melted.  We drove up to the hills in hopes of some good shots but the fog had other plans. 

A little stick throwing and fetching...

And once back home, the husband and I had one of our psychic moments as he asked if I fancied soup and a grilled cheese for lunch while I was in the process of googling roasted red pepper soup recipes.  He was thinking more along the lines of open a tin of Heinz but I swore it wouldn't take me long and a half an hour later we had this:

When I get an idea for something I'd like to make, I begin by searching for recipes to see what ingredients are similar and where in the recipe has the chef put their own spin on it.  If an ingredient is present in most recipes I take that as a must and the others I feel I can play around with.  With this soup it was pretty much peppers across the board but every recipe differed on the rest of the ingredients.  So I decided on a tri-coloured pepper soup, with garlic and tomatoes - it's what I had in and I preferred to keep most of the red peppers I had on hand for stir-fries later in the week, like this one.

I also like to have a look at timings; how long should this roast for, how long should I cool this etc.  I thought 20 minutes for the peppers but searching for a few recipes had me doubting myself - one said 8-10 minutes, another said an hour??  I stuck with my 20 minutes at 200°C and did the peppers and garlic together and they turned out just perfect.  I drizzled a little olive oil and salt and pepper over both sides but roasted them skin side up.

If patience is something you possess, I'd suggest letting the peppers cool before peeling but since I feel no pain (and possess very little patience) I went straight in there - the little orange one refused to shed it's skin so I let it keep it, and my fingers couldn't really take the heat anymore.  The garlic popped right out of their little shells, they were so much more co-operative.

I then fried a little red onion in some oil, added the peppers, garlic, a little dried thyme, a tin of chopped tomatoes and some chicken stock to cover.

I let it simmer for about 10 minutes, let it splash up on the walls, whizzed it with a handheld blender and served it up alongside a grilled cheese.  It tasted so creamy and lovely, almost like I'd poured cream in it.  Though we both agreed a cheese sandwich was not its best compliment and that a crusty bread or crunchy plain salad would be much better.  The cheese just seemed to bring out the bitterness of the tomatoes.  Not sure if the parmesan cheese on top had anything to do with it either.

Now this is where you put your own spin on it - swap red onion for white, add some celery and carrots, stick to one pepper colour, choose different seasonings, maybe basil or oregano, add more peppers and omit the tomatoes.  There are so many options with soup, which is why I've chosen to share this one as this blog acts like my own recipe book.  I will definitely be making this soup again, just as it is!!