Just Passing through with a few Handy Cooking Tips

Just passing through and sharing some handy tips to make tasty meals or snacks. Hope you enjoy!

1. Black Pepper Sauce, (great with steak or chicken)

Ingredients: Good quality chicken gravy granules or powder. Juice from the meat, crushed black pepper corns, fresh cream or creme fraice.

Method: Make gravy as to the instructions on the packet, add juices from the meat, add black pepper corns to the required flavour and keep warm until ready to serve. Finally add cream or creme fraice to taste.

2. Crisp Roast Potatoes.

Ingredients: Good quality potatoes ie: King Edwards, Navan or Maris Piper

Method Part boil even sized chunks of potato in boiling salted water. Drain in a colander and shake about so that the edges of the potatoes get scuffed. Turn onto a tray to go cold. Sprinkle the cold potatoes with a small amount of cornflour until lightly coated. Heat oil or goose fat in a tray in the oven on a high setting until smoking. Very carefully add the potatoes to the oil and place tray on top shelf in the oven. Turn once until golden brown. Yummy.

3. Quick bolgnaise sauce:

Ingredients: 2 tins of chopped tomato's, garlic, dried Italian herbs, 1/2 pint of strong chicken stock (you can use stock cubes for this, approx 4 cubes to the 1/2 pint) small pinch of chilli flakes, salt and pepper to season.

Method: Combine the chopped tomato's and chicken stock in a large sauce pan. Add garlic to taste and a good dstsp of dried Italian herbs, salt and pepper, and chilli flakes. Blend with a hand blender until a smooth sauce consistency. Allow the sauce to sit for a couple of hours to mature and taste again. Re-adjust seasoning, garlic etc. Don't worry if the sauce has too much chilli flavour at this point. Add sauce to cooked meat or chicken and serve. If the sauce is too hot or too much tomato taste add a knob of butter to melt just before serving.

4. Sausage rolls

ingredients: 1/2 lb lean sausage meat, finely dice onions, and other veggies ie pepper if liked and 1 egg. Slices of bread from your favourite loaf.

method: combine all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, and roughly mix together, add seasoning to taste, (you can use garlic, diced apple, chilli or mixed herbs or mustard at this point to if desired.) Beat the egg and introduce in small amounts to the bowl until you can mix the sausage meat into finger sized portions. Take the slices of bread from the loaf and roll very thin with a rolling pin. Cut into a shape as to easily cover your sausage finger. Lightly egg wash the bread, place the sausage finger inside and roll into a sausage roll. Egg wash the bread again and bake in a moderate oven until golden brown or shallow fry in oil.

5. Quick Creme Brulee

Ingredients: Quantity of fruit to make as many individual creme brulees as you require plus a little left over for decoration, I like rhubarb and ginger. (apple peaches and pears are also tasty in this dish) Creme fraise, castor sugar and small amount of demerara sugar.

Method: Roast the fruit in even sized pieces covered with a small amount of castor sugar and a knob of butter until soft to the touch. (if using ginger, grate a small piece into the fruit before putting in the oven.) Take fruit out of oven an fill the bottom of the individual heat proof serving dishes, allow to cool. Beat the creme fraise lightly and almost fill the space on top of the fruit in the individual dishes. Just before serving, lightly sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top of each dish and flash under a very hot grill until the sugar has caramelised (you could also use a blow torch for this if you have one. Serve immediately with a little of the roasted fruit on the side.

That's all until next time I am just passing through