Greenvale potatoes: sometimes the simplest ideas are the best

 Potatoes aren't something I feel drawn to specifically blog about very often, yet they're so versatile and more now than ever I cook with them a lot. Whether finely sliced and cooked in my Minced beef hash, or chopped and chipped with chicken kievs, or as my favourite - baked and mixed up with boursin and leeks with leftover Sunday roast - we use them a lot. It's no surprise that they're cheap, I'll use them to bulk out casseroles and make meals go further.

A couple of weeks ago the nice people at Greenvale asked me to trial a bag of their potatoes. Oddly I've been thinking of repurposing an old pillow case into a potato bag as where I store them, if they're left in the plastic from the original packaging they seem to sprout super quickly.  Funnily enough said plans to repurpose a pillowcase went out the window as I thought "Oooh potatoes in a paper bag." Simple and so much easier.

 I'm now on my third bag of Greenvale potatoes - they work really well as a multi-use potato, with nice fluffy middles, but outsides that pleasingly crisp up in the face of some hot oil and a hot oven.

My two current favourite potato centric recipes are below -

Garlicy, cheesy, baked potatoes (quantities per person)

1 baked potato
2 Tbsps garlic and herb boursin
1 leek
Knob butter
Spoonful milk
Black pepper
Cheddar

Finely chop some leeks and cook down slowly in pan with a lid in a little butter and some water. Stir occaisionally so that they don't stick, but otherwise I just let them do their thing until they're really soft.
Meanwhile prick and bake your potatoes in a medium oven - about 150 degrees C for an hour to an hour and a half depending on how big the potatoes are
Take the potatoes out of the oven, and using a teatowel to protect your hands cut each in half lengthways
Scoop out the middle into a bowl and mix up with the boursin, cooked leeks, a spoonful of milk and the black pepper
Refill the potato skins and sit the potatoes on a baking tray (I line it with tin foil)
Scatter grated cheddar on top and return to the oven for 20 minutes or so

Serve with leftover roast meat, sausages, BBQ - or y'know just as they are. 

 Home made healthy(ish) chips - serves 2

1 medium potato per person, chopped into chip shapes
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C and put a baking sheet in to heat up too
Chop your potatoes up into traditional chip shapes and put all the potatoes into a sandwich bag or similar
Measure in 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and using your hands on the outside of the bag, shake, shimmy and massage the oil so that all the potatoes are covered
Tip the chips onto the hot baking sheet (they should sizzle as you add them)
Cook for half an hour, or until the outsides are browned and crispy and the insides are lovely
Serve with ketchup

Minced beef hash

When I was at uni I always said that if I were to write a cookbook it would be 101 ways with mince. At the start of each term, mum and I would go to the butchers and buy 2lb of minced beef which we'd portion up in freezer bags for me to use. I was lucky to go to university with slightly more than a working knowledge of the kitchen. Unlike one of my flatmates in the first year who genuinely survived on beans on toast - with beans and sausages on toast for highdays and holidays. No word of a lie. Every day.

Many of the recipes I use then, I still use now - with some tweaks thanks to either additional equipment (God bless the food processor) or my own changing tastes (no more dried garlic). One that I never made at university was minced beef hash - I actually made a tuna hash with red pepper which I keep threatening myself with revisiting.

I saw the origin of this recipe on a Jamie Oliver programme, and scrawled down the ingredients and a kind of method a couple of years ago. I've since then kept to the rough idea of it, but changed it up fairly significantly.

Minced beef hash - by me (with some help from Mr Oliver)
Serves 4

4-5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
500g minced beef
4 sticks celery
4 carrots
250g chestnut mushrooms
1 red onion
Worcestershire sauce
Salt
Pepper
2 small baking potatoes (I work to half a potato per person I'm feeding and have been known to double this when money is tight and there are extra people around the table).
Olive oil

First off, use a food processor or knife to thinly slice the celery, carrots, mushrooms and onion and set aside
Now brown your mince in a little olive oil in a non stick pan
Add the thyme, rosemary and a good grind or 12 of pepper
Add the veggies and stir well so it's all mixed up
Add the Worcestershire sauce - about 6 tablespoons (you'll notice we've not added salt so far - this is why)
Now using the food processor or knife, thinly slice the potatoes - add these into your pan
Put a lid on and let it simmer for 30 minutes or until everything has cooked down

Now this can be served so many ways - it's already got potatoes so you don't need an extra carbohydrate, but it goes epically well with garlic bread. Or so I'm told. Ahem.

The other way I cook this is exactly the same, but instead of adding sliced potatoes - bake up a potato per person in the oven and then after an hour or so, remove the potato. Split in half and take out the cooked middle. Mix this with the cooked minced beef, and pile it back it, topped with grated cheese. Heat through for about 20 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and crispy. Epic. The mince goes a lot further this way so this much ends up serving 8. 

 

Meal Planning Monday: Wandering free...

Last week's Meal Planning Monday post remained in draft all week - it was just that successful. This week I'm going to try and do better, so I'm starting by writing it on Sunday and for once, after I've done a shop. I know, wonders will never cease.

This week, is another busy week for me at work, so it's really only a part week of planning, but that said - some is better than none, so here goes.

Monday: Was going to be courgetti spaghetti, but we were at Mum's today helping around the house and have the leftovers of a roast chicken to use up. We'll be having a curry, that my Dad taught me how to make, it's a quick cook, chicken and spinach. And there's a recipe for lentil daal (or is it just daal?) in this month's Red Magazine that I'm going to try aswell. Blogpost to follow. Promise.

Tuesday: I'm at Guides, so I'm going to whack some potatoes in the oven (a la Delia) to bake and have them with leftover chicken, salad and some veggies. I've got a fennel bulb to use up, so could do with something nice to do with that to go with. *Googles*

Wednesday & Thursday: I'm working away from home so no cooking will be taking place - I'll be taking my own fruit supplies though, as I'm still finding opportunities to eat fruit or veg are severely limited when staying in hotels.

Friday: We're off to M's parents so will be eating with them when we arrive.

Lunches will be - chicken salad for me, and sarnies for M.

Breakfasts will be - fruit, yoghurt and grape nuts. Although this morning was so cold I made up some oatmeal porridge with the bag of coarse oatmeal I had popped in the pantry for Parkin making. It made really tasty, more textured porridge, so I'll pop the recipe in a post this week.

I also need to make the chicken carcass into stock, but if I don't get a chance, I'll pop the whole thing in the freezer and do it when I do have some time.

A bit of a mad dash through the week there. Be sure to pop over to At Home with Mrs M to see what everyone else is up to.

Crappy cooking...

I'm having a week of it. At least the alliteration has returned, I guess that's something. No? Well, my back is bad again, I've resorted to Raul Esparza in Company to cheer myself up. I've also decided that "Marry me a little" if taken out of context has both the most beautiful sentiment and also is just stunning (although I concede Lauren, I hear the nasalliness - it's a word! - just before the final crescendo).

For the uninitiated... from 2007s amahzing Broadway production of Company... Raul Esparza singing Marry me a little (although I actually prefer "Being Alive" that would be too much of a tangent even for me!)

So crappy cooking, well it's more of a case of unattractive cooking. This week, I decided to make cabbage soup; I promise I'm not dieting, it's just the veg box people have decided to fill my box with brassicas - a one person box contained; broccoli, curly kale and a head sized cabbage. Nice. In my attempt to introduce some more vegetables into my diet (well you try being on co-codamol for 8 weeks and tell me how you feel!) and in response to the spat of chilly weather we've had this week I thought I'd make the soup I linked to here. In true thrifty, credit crunchy style I increased the quantity to use up all the brassicas, and froze half. However, I should probably have eaten some first. I'd also used my clearly honed cookery skills to know that adding some extra vegetables (carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower) would only enhance the flavour, and also substituted pancetta for bacon owing to the crapness of the local supermarket. However, that's a whole other post and the reason for the distinct lack of houmous in this one. But don't get me started. No, really don't.

Where was I? Oh yes, so I've merrily adapted the soup, and it looks, well, erm... green? So I decided to blitz it. Although not directed to in the recipe I thought it might perk it up a bit. So now I have well, erm... green sludge. With eyes closed and a deep breath I tasted some. Salty. Now, it's a family joke that I don't add salt to anything. But I do like the saltiness of things like bacon and marmite. We're talking sea salty. Oyster salty. And don't say potatoes, it already has potatoes in it. Not happy. In fact distinctly grumpy about the soup. But budget constraints mean it needs to be eaten. So far I've found that diluting the soup with boiling water before heating through tempers the saltiness slightly. Enough at least.

I decided that the soup needed bread. And I haven't made much (any?) bread since I moved into the new place. So last night I decided on my usual half and half loaf, with a few tablespoons of linseeds in (co-codamol again). Only I didn't think about the quantities I was using at all, just dumped them in the breadmaker and let it do it's job. And I ended up with a mishapen blob of bread. Nice. It tastes great. Yay! At least an improvement of the soup of DOOM there, but does look like the offcuts from a bakery or something.

So a week of crappy cooking... tonight I'm having Delia baked potatoes. Hopefully even I can't mess that up. Hopefully. And should I ever be able to find any tinned chickpeas, I'll post about houmous and pitta bread. Promise.

The weekend may hold some excitement, if the back permits I'm going on an outing to Borough market, so fingers crossed a report will be on it's way!