Wiiiiiiiiiii

Am rediscovering Wii, as it is too cold and dark to go cycling in the early mornings, and I’m too much of a wuss to do it in traffic.

I set it all up in the living room, then decided that as we no longer wanted the ancient television in the kitchen, I’d take it up to the bedroom and set up the Wii there (we put the telly on Freegle and got not a single enquiry – clearly an ancient 14″ CRT beast is too dreadful to contemplate, even for free).

In the meantime, Pete moved all the home entertainment stack yesterday, in order to relocate the television from its mount on the chimney breast, to a new mount in the alcove. Except the new, clever, cantilevered, tilt and turn, tea making stand is utterly useless, and will have to be returned, so in the meantime, the big LED tv is back on its original stand, perched ever so slightly precariously on a hi-fi trolley.

By this time, I’d discovered that the first location for the bedroom Wii kit was hopeless, as it was too far away for my ancient eyes to see it clearly; I moved it all somewhere else in the room, and discovered that the combination of my ancient eyes, and the ancient small screen, meant I couldn’t play Wii Tennis as I couldn’t see the ball. So we’ve just put it downstairs again.

How did all the wires get so tangled in less than 24 hours, FFS?

In other news, it is a year yesterday since we moved to Hull. I don’t understand what’s happening to time these days – it’s all been zipped. To celebrate the anniversary, we had lunch in Beverley, and finally hung our ancient wooden guillotine on the wall above the fireplace. Time to get the knitting out.

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

Guinness soda bread

I saw this – with apple and cheese – on a Hugh Fearnley-Eatsisall programme a couple of weeks ago, and was so intrigued that I bought a couple of bottles of Guinness to try it. The second was destined for a beef stew, but more on that story later.

We eat a lot of soda bread – it’s quick and easy, and my Irish blood just loves it. Having eaten a mega fry-up for brunch yesterday, we didn’t want much for supper, so I thought I’d give it a go.

We decided that we certainly didn’t want the apple in it, and as we’d had cheese scones (with pigs in blankets) for Saturday supper, we didn’t want another cheese bread. So I winged it a bit thus.

200g strong white flour
250g wholemeal flour
50g oats
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
250ml yogurt and milk (about 4 parts to 1)
250ml Guinness (Pete obligingly drank the rest of the bottle)
About 1 tbsp sunflower oil

Put the dry ingredients into a bowl, make a well in the centre. Mix together yogurt/milk/Guinness/oil, pour into the well. Use your hands to mix together, turn out on to a floured surface, and knead as little as possible, until you can form a ball.

Put it on a baking sheet, bake at gas 8 for 35 minutes (which was just a couple of minutes too long in my oven).

I always, out of habit, leave my soda bread to rise, and this one had about an hour.

Readers, it was sublime. We had it with cheese and apple for supper (brie for me, strong cheddar for Pete), and it made gorgeous toast for lunch today. I’ll be doing that again.

The original recipe is here, should you wish to try the cheese and apple version.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

beef in ginger and orange

How to turn 500g of stewing beef into six portions? Add 100g of bacon bits, a stack of butter (lima) beans, and a load of veg, thus.

I used shallots in this – if you’re going to do this, they are much easier to peel if you soak them in boiling water for 10 minutes, and you get lovely shallotty water to add either to your casserole, or to your soup pot (the latter for me yesterday).

Cooked off the bacon bits, put them in the slow cooker. Browned the beef in batches, added them too. Fried off the whole shallots until they were caramelising a bit, the into the pan went four chopped carrots, half a courgette and some garlic. They were lobbed into the slow cooker, and then the pan was deglazed with …

Horror! No Stones Ginger Wine! And only 9 in the morning, so offy not open, and I bet the local mini Sainsburys wouldn’t have it, and besides – it was pouring with rain. I improvised.

Deglazed the pan with about 3/4 pint of fiery ginger beer. Added a slosh of brandy for good measure, and the zest and juice of an orange. Added a teaspoon of grain mustard and some season. Brought to the boil, bung in the slow cooker, switched it on.  Went back and added the beans (which had been soaked and boiled the day before), and some herbs from the garden.* Waited for six hours while the smell drove us crazy.

We are having some for tonight’s supper, with dumplings, and the rest will go into the freezer.

* Somewhere – no idea where – I found some reuseable cloth bouquet garni bags, which are dead handy for such occasions, because you don’t have to bother stripping the leaves from woody herbs, or finding the bay leaves afterwards. But do remember to fish it out before someone accidentally tries to eat it.

I also made the Christmas cake yesterday – 1 kg of random assorted dried fruits and a load of Cointreau. I always base it on this Nigel Slater recipe.  What with that, the stew, and the soda bread, the kitchen was an olfactory no-go area yesterday!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.