No real recipe, just thinly sliced beef rump steak marinated in sesame oil, soy sauce and honey, seasoned with a little freshly ground black pepper – I’d have used white pepper ideally, but since it’s not something we ever have in the house, that was difficult – which was then thrown into a wickedly hot wok, along with some sliced red pepper, mange tout, bean sprouts, spring onions and noodles.  A bit of extra soy sauce and toasted sesame oil was added as final seasoning.

Day 2 of the ‘apple a day’ experiment saw me eat two apples – one for breakfast and one after dinner. Lunch was leek and potato soup.

Cottage pie

So far 2009 has been mixed, with regards to the quality of my food intake.  A quick glance at the food diary shows a distinct lack of home cooking, partly due to the fact that the family are still trying to get over the Christmas cold/flu that’s affected practically everyone we know, and partly due to the leftover Christmas snacks available for easy, but bad, appetite suppression.

Since we are now back into the realms of normal routine – back to work A.G.A.I.N. – it’s time to try and get back into good habits.  Today, I decided to make cottage pie for dinner.  To be more accurate, I’d decided to make shepherd’s pie, but lamb mince was unavailable at Waitrose this morning, so beef was used instead.

I make no claims for authenticity or otherwise of my recipe (although I’m not convinced anyone could reasonably claim to have the definitive recipe anyway):

Ingredients:

• 500g minced beef (I went for the 10% fat option)
• 2 carrots, chopped finely
• 1 onion, diced finely
• 1kg King Edward potatoes (I suspect you could probably get away with 25% less, and other mashing spuds like Maris Piper would be perfectly acceptable)

Method:

I took my largest Le Creuset saucepan, got some olive oil up to a pretty hot temperature, and browned the minced beef.  Given the quantity involved, I did it in batches to keep the temperature nice and hot, so that the beef didn’t just stew.

After tipping the beef out somewhere safe, I used the same pan to sweat the carrots and onions until nicely soft but not mushy, then added the beef back in.  I sprinkled about a tablespoon of plain flour onto the mixture, let that cook for a good minute or two, and then poured, ooh, about 500 ml of water freshly boiled from the kettle.  I let that bubble away until I got a lovely unctuous gravy with the meat, then poured that into my pie dish.  I let it all cool down before sticking it in the fridge, to ’set’ the mixture.  It makes whacking the mashed potato on top that much easier.

Speaking of which, obviously you need to do some mashed potato to top the pie.  It’s hardly rocket science, but for the record, peel and chop your spuds into small cubes, then boil that in salted water until soft and mushy (but not completely falling apart).  Drain, then return to the pan for a little bit more heat to drive out any excess moisture, then mash it up.  I added a generous knob of butter to my mash and glug of extra virgin olive oil.  I was going to stick a handful of grated cheddar cheese into the mash, but the missus wasn’t keen on the idea.  (If I was making mashed potato as a side dish, I’d also add a good few glugs of full fat milk to make it lovely and creamy, but for a pie topping, I want it fairly stodgy.)

When your mashed spuds are done, stick them on top of the pie, and smooth out with a spatula.  If you’ve cooled your meat mixture, it should be a piece of cake, er, pie, to do this bit.  I realise now I should have made a video to show the technique I use to get my mash topping right, as I’m struggling to find the words to describe it.  Ho hum.

Stick your completed pie in a hot oven for about 25-30 minutes.  Finish it off under a hot grill to get a lovely crispy topping.  I’d recommend putting the pie dish on a baking tray, by the way, in case the meat mixture bubbles over, like mine did.

A late one, in the office: bagel with chives-laced Philadelphia cream cheese

Lunch:

Ebi gyoza and beef ho fun, from Miso Noodle Bar in Richmond (a working lunch).

Dinner:

Chorizo risotto, made by P.

Toast with ham, although A, as usual, decided my breakfast was more interesting than hers. I managed to barter with her (no mean feat, since she is only 16 months old) and got a strawberry in return for a piece of ham.

Lunch:

A fry up, consisting of sausages, streaky bacon, fried eggs and fried bread. Heart-attack-tastic.

Dinner:

A stew I made just after breakfast and had left in the slow cooker all day. Stewing steak was chucked in with onion, swede, new potatoes and chicken stock. Not one of my best, I must admit.

Two slices of toast with saucisson a l’ail. A, the adventurous little girl that she is, decided she also wanted to try some saucisson.

Lunch:

Beef sandwich, using the leftovers from last week, with mustard and mayonnaise. A few of those new Pringles rice jobbies on the side. Oh, also nicked some of A’s Marmite sandwich. I haven’t eaten Marmite on anything other than toast for aeons.

Dinner:

A lovely chorizo risotto made by P. Followed by a more successful attempt at popcorn. (Last night’s was a bit on the burnt side.)

Hot cross bun + green tea.

Lunch:

Met up with a friend from work for dim sum at Wing Yip. Amongst the food consumed: har kau (prawn dumplings), paper-wrapped prawns, beef cheung fun, fried dough stick cheung fun, mixed meats with crispy fried noodles, turnip paste with dried meats (A’s favourite), and loads of other things I can’t remember.

Dinner:

Since dim sum is always so filling (or we always order too much), we never really bother with dinner. Having said that, we were peckish enough to make some tuna mayonnaise and sweetcorn baguettes to munch on during Grand Designs revisited.

Breakfast:

Toast with marmite again, although slightly less than two slices were consumed, since A always wants to steal some of my breakfast if I happen to time it wrong so that she’s nearly finished her own food.

Lunch:

After breakfast, I roasted up the beef toprump that we were supposed to have Sunday, then failing that, yesterday. For lunch, we just took slices from the beef (which was lovely, by the way – well worth spending a couple of quid extra on the organic joint that had been matured on the bone for longer than the norm), and stuffed them in a baguette with a smear of mustard. I ended up having two large baguettes, with a tin of Heinz tomato soup as well.

Dinner:

Home-made meat feast calzone. Basically, a normal pizza dough (which is basically bread dough) folded over, containing some mozzarella and various cured meats, like prosciutto and salami. Rather than put the tomato sauce into the calzone, I spooned it on afterwards. It was nice, although I think I’ll chuck in more mozzarella next time and work extra hard to thin out the dough when I roll it. I’m also contemplating buying a pizza stone to assist with the crisping up.