Lazy Pork Ramen

I love Wagamamas. I was always a ginger chicken udon kind of girl but then I discovered their pork ramen and I was hooked. It was the tea stained egg and the crispiness of the pork that made me try it and my gosh it is delicious. I was craving it this weekend and looked up a recipe. The recipe I found was very long and involved with 12 hours to make stock and 3 hours to roast pork. I couldn’t be doing with it (even thought I am sure if you have the time it is totally worth it) so I used it as an inspiration but totally changed it. This is my cheat’s ramen recipe and it hit the spot. It wasn’t quite Wagamamas but it was damn tasty.

Spiced Winter Vegetable Cous Cous

I mentioned a little while back about cooking a birthday dinner for my friend Jenny, when I shared the dessert recipe ‘Chocolate Heartache Cake‘. Well here is part of the mains, we had grilled meat (steak or chicken) with this spiced winter vegetable cous cous, an Ottolenghi recipe (bound to be delicious) shared by one of my favourite blogs, Orangette. It was so good that I also made it as a side dish to accompany the rhubarb and ginger roast belly pork that I cooked for mother’s day; which I promise to share soon, it would be criminal not to (it was to die for). Don’t be put off by all the ingredients and stages in this recipe, once you’ve cooked it once, you’ll have it down. It isn’t complicated at all, there is just a few spices involved; it is worth it though, trust me.

Sweet Potato Cakes

After the excesses of Christmas I was looking for a nutritious light meal to make and turned to Deliciously Ella, a blog with endless delicious and nutritious recipes. Ella Woodward (writer of Deliciously Ella) has her first cookbook coming out this month, I’ve pre-ordered it and I am eagerly anticipating its arrival! Sweet potatoes are very popular in our household, whilst I still have a soft spot for normal potatoes, J loves sweet potato and I can’t deny how fantastically good they are for you. I first spotted this recipe on the Deliciously Ella app and couldn’t wait to try it. One sweet potato cake with a salad makes a great light meal and two with salad or vegetables would be a great and filling meal. We ate these with a baby leaf salad and a tahini dressing (tahini, lemon juice and a drop of water).

It was a huge hit and we saved the other two for the next day’s dinner, as we knew we were going out for a big lunch with family. I’ll definitely be making these again soon, it is nice to have a few more lunch options.

Spiced Pumpkin Soup

So I know I said in the last post that it was time for an onslaught of Christmas recipes BUT I just had to share this one last Autumn recipe. I guess I still haven’t quite let go of Autumn and accepted that Winter is here (although the new chill that has descended means it definitely has). I love Christmas but I’m less enthused by the prospect of Winter, even if it means layers of clothing, jumpers and boots (a great silver lining though!). In the UK, pumpkin purée isn’t the easiest product to find in the shops (I think it is a bit of a cheat too but sometimes needs must); this year I finally got myself organised and bought the most enormous pumpkin (two actually but I carved one) and puréed it. I did this by cutting it into 4 pieces, scooping out the seeds and baking them at 180°C for an hour. Once they’ve cooled down, scoop the flesh off of the skin and put in into a food processor until smooth. I used little pudding pots to store the pumpkin in 1 cup portions in the freezer, enough to see me through the year, hopefully. I’m buoyed by knowing that the next 12 months won’t be lacking in pumpkin. I used a quarter of the pumpkin purée to make this soup (as I didn’t have enough pots to store it all!).

I used a soup maker this time, so I will also put the soup maker adaptations into the recipe below. I found the recipe in my new festive cook book ‘A Perfect Christmas‘, you’ll be hearing a lot from this book over the coming weeks!

Cocoa Drumsticks with Chili-Coriander Butter

As a total chocoholic, I like to try and sneak cocoa into as many things as possible, especially savoury dishes. My favourite cocoa enhanced dishes are chili con carne and bolognese; I’ve never tried it with a chicken dish before, until I was inspired by this recipe on Paleo Leap. I changed it up a bit to use ingredients I already had but the general idea is very much the same. I roasted the drumsticks as opposed to grilling them because I was serving them with roasted vegetables and it made the whole thing easier, I’m all for easy food. These were very tasty,really quick and easy, a definite addition to the ‘again’ list.