Cooking Tips

When making mashed potato replace half the potato, or thereabouts, with swede.

This will make it healthier because swede is very low in carbohydrate and very high in fibre. It is also cheap and adds some flavour so it makes good sense all round.

Swede takes a little longer to cook than potato so start it a few minutes before the potato other than that just prepare it as normal.

Marry a good cook. Everything else then becomes irrelevant.

Czarcasm wrote:

Marry a good cook. Everything else then becomes irrelevant.

I certainly did that!

Always start with a good stock, get chicken carcasses (free range pls) and fry them, get beef bones and roast them, you will need to go to proper butcher for these items but they will cost pennies. Boil up the bones with onion, celery, carrot and herbs for hours season well. Remove bones and strain the rest through a sieve.
Reduce the stock until its really tasty. Makes the best soup you'll ever have also a risotto made with proper chicken stock is just another level from a stock cube.
If you cool the stock it will go like jelly you can then freeze it in pint portions and use it straight from freezer if needed.

A variation of Frannies mash is to replace the swede with a good dollop of double cream and about an oz or two of butter and good freshly milled pepper, it's really healthy if made from good quality ingredients.

What is the difference between a swede and a turnip?

spelling?

Les Miserable wrote:

What is the difference between a swede and a turnip?

Not much. They're interchangeable, really, but swedes are yellow and turnips are white, swedes are bigger than a normal potato and turnip is smaller. Turnip cooks more quickly.

Perfect marinade

This just can't go wrong.

3 tablespoons olive oil (any oil really)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons honey (more if you like but don't scrimp)
3 tablespoons tomato purée
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (just to give it a zing, more if you want it hotter)
2 cloves garlics finely chopped

Stir it all up into a smoothish gloop.

Marinade meat or fish of your choice. Cookbooks always say "for at least 2 hours" but I usually find life a bit too short to be that together and just bung it in. It won't hurt in the fridge though if you want to prepare in advance.

Pop chicken breasts, pork loins (these work really well), lamb steaks or whatever into the marinade. Bung it in the oven for an hour at gas mark 5.

Serve with whatever you like in terms of carbs and veg. They'll all go just fine.

Arrange on plate as best you can and spoon some gloop over as personal taste demands.

(If cooking fish then stick gloop in oven for 45 minutes and bung fish in for 15 minutes at the end. You'll need something firm in texture like prawns, mussels, monkfish or tuna - if you use squid bung that in right at the start - cod or plaice or something will just disintegrate.)

Just call me Delia.

when cooking mince dont break it up when putting it into the pan to cook. The worse thing you can do too it. Instead placethe mince in a hot frying pan straight from package and then leave it. fry each side for between 8-10mins pending on how big your pan is then gently break up the mince as you normally would to finish it off.

this method will result in better tasting mince as your not losing the flavour from the water evaporating in the steam and the fat leaves the meat more.

try it out

My way best, leave it to the wife.