Hot Stuff!

I thought it was about time that I explained the title of my blog to you! Basically, I am a chilli nut. Addict, freak, devotee, maniac - there are lots of ways to describe it, but whichever way you look at it, I'm hooked!

It must have started in childhood. My mum is Hungarian and always put spices in things like stews as we were growing up. Even though the '70's wasn't a culinary hotspot we still had curries - albeit made with apples, sultanas and a spoonful of mass-produced "curry powder". That was all that was available in those days:(

Then, in the 1980's, an Indian restaurant opened in our village. It was new and adventurous and we loved it, ended up eating there as a family almost every Friday night for at least a decade. I started with chicken Kashmir and the occasional korma, then tried to be a bit more adventurous and ended up thinking a madras gave quite a decent kick!

But my university days firmly cemented my love-affair with curry and chillies. My group of friends loved nothing more than hot food, and we lived in Birmingham so had a vast selection of Indian restaurants to chose from. Needless to say there were beer-fueled incidents where we might have encouraged the consumption of hotter and hotter dishes, and we even devised the term "technical curry" (or TC for short) which was basically a trip to The Dilshad stone-cold sober to taste the food properly. In those days it was definitely a student hangout by the way, nowhere near as posh as it looks now!

And it then evolved. I learnt how to grow chillies, pickle them, dry them; discovered more ways to use them, shared seeds with friends and with the advent of the internet came even more information and chilli-shopping and cooking opportunities. So it's no surprise that 2012 finds me firmly hooked. To the extent that when we got a new kitchen a couple of years ago, we chose the artwork around chillies. I even have a ristra hung on the back of our loo door! It's rare that I go a day without eating chilli in at least 1 meal, and my favourite snack is still a Pataks chilli pickle sandwich.

I'll leave you with a photo of my favourite corner of my kitchen; and next week I'll snap my current stash of chill-related products - if I can get them all in the same shot! Happy chilli-eating folks!

The picture on the left is captioned "Pain is Good" and comes from a limited edition chilli sauce label. On the right is a framed article from The Guardian in 1991, entitled "Blowing hot and a little chilli". And several bottles of chilli oil and sauces somewhere on the middle shelf!






 

Menu Planning Monday.

Blimey, Monday came around pretty quickly this week, doesn't time fly when you're having fun!

In no particular order; this week will hopefully be as follows;

Spicy tomato and lentil soup with ciabatta rolls

Jerk chicken with nutty slaw (although out of jerk seasoning so the Husband has chucked pesto on the chicken instead, the jury is out on this one at the moment)

Green cous-cous salad (with broad beans, peas, peppers and anything else green we can find in the fridge; it was meant to include watercress but he came home from the supermarket with cress instead - I haven't stopped laughing yet although hate cress so it'll better not end up on my plate!)

Lamb kleftiko with lemon roast potatoes

Ham hock and green bean salad (this is the one I'm most looking forward to)

Penne with courgettes, sage and parmesan

The pasta dish will definitely be eaten on Saturday evening as the Husband is doing a 54 mile charity bike ride on Sunday so needs to carbo-load. Am leaving Sunday evening free as he gets a takeaway for his efforts!

Now, let's see what Mrs M has planned for this week...


ETA The pesto-chicken and nutty slaw (minus the peanuts as he forgot to read the recipe) turned out very well in the end...

It's the weekend - is that really the sun?

Well folks, absolutely stunned this weekend - the sun came out on Friday and stayed out all weekend long! Yippee!

We had no plans for a change so things just evolved - started with Mr Moo bringing some friends home from school on Friday and a bit of a party ensuing when the parents came to pick them all up. One couple brought some champagne to celebrate my good news and it got a bit messy after that...ended up with 7 kids running around the garden almost naked whilst all us parents just laughed at them and cracked open another bottle. Had we been sober we might have been a tad concerned that they were too cold but instead it was just plain amusing, especially when some of them started jumping around with garden chairs on their heads and the others manhandled all the scooters and cars up on top of the climbing frame. And that was just the kids, lord knows what the adults would have been capable of had we not been sensible and called it a day before too many tears were shed!

The rest of the weekend was mainly everyday chores like the supermarket, library and washing. I did a good bike ride by myself on Saturday afternoon, 16.5 miles which was a decent effort but nowhere near where I need to be in order to feel comfortable at my epic ride in just 4 weeks time. We are lucky in that we live near the beach, with a great cycle path running along the coast for a few miles; makes for pretty scenery while you're riding, and the headwind creates good resistance training.

And it was the start of the BBQ season too - twice this weekend! We just crashed in the garden on both afternoons/early evenings, cracked open a bottle or 2 and watched the kids play while we put the world to rights. Well, started planning our summer holiday which is just as important. Our brains and bank balances weren't in full operating condition so the kid's food was pretty boring stuff like burgers in pitta bread, but I did find some pork steaks in the freezer which BBQ'd up a treat with some really hot salsa, and Lidl had a stonking offer on aubergines - tonight it's steak marinaded in pepper, cider vinegar and tarragon with griddled aubergine slices in chilli oil and lemon juice. Happy days!

Ah, dinner time.

It's meat spring rolls, king prawn Thai green curry and mushroom-fried rice for dinner, washed down with large amounts of Prosecco. And a Hotel Chocolat Eton Mess slab for afters. Yes folks, it was good news at the hospital today - not perfect, but the C-word has been ruled out. I just hope my curry is as hot as they promise! 

We even broke out the posh glasses...

Tune for Today...

There's a Rat in Mi Kitchen - or to be more precise, in my cavity wall, although that doesn't have quite the same ring about it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c42z3LAGyTM&feature=related

To be fair it might be a squirrel, or even a cat - the bloody thing has got very sharp nails and keeps us awake at night with it's scratching, to say nothing of the potential damage it's doing. We think it's coming in from next door's loft, and no way is he in a position to get the party wall totally blocked up. To do it from our side would mean dismantling half my office and I don't think my boss would be chuffed. Help!

On yer bike!

I've always loved cycling - from the day my friends dad taught me how to ride on a Chopper aged about 9, through the many hours I used to cycle around the local park and lake with my sister and other friends in our teens, to the day I met the Husband and discovered he was a bike-aholic! I was rather overweight at the time, and he bought me my first proper bike, with lots of gears and everything, and taught me how to use them properly. At first I struggled to do 2 miles on a flat road, then within a couple of months I'd got up to speed; when we went on our first weekend away as a couple, to Yorkshire, we naturally took our bikes.

Now, as I'm sure you're aware, Yorkshire is rather hilly. And I was a heavy smoker at the time so was not exactly mega-fit. But on the first full day there I plotted out a long circular route and we duly set off. A third of the way round, we stopped at a pub for a drink and a snack; the Husband thought he saw the writing on the wall when I asked for a soft drink rather than a beer! He suggested we turn back then, to make the journey shorter for me. But I was so determined to do it, forced him to carry on, and several hours later we eventually got back to where we were staying. 26 miles of sheer bloody-mindedness and serious hills; I was so proud of myself, and thoroughly deserved the many beers we sank that evening!

Fast-forward a few years and we are currently trying to get our kids hooked on cycling too. Not having a huge amount of success so far; Little Legs has, well, far too little legs, and Mr Moo is lazy so quite happy to stay on his trailgator which I pull and do all the hard work for him. That in itself makes each ride a tad harder for me so burns off more calories! We'll persevere though...

And this leads me to today. Well, to be precise, June 9th. I will be doing a bike ride for a charity that is very close to my heart, Camille's Appeal. A mere 100km through the streets of London. And to make it more fun, it's gonna be overnight! Am thoroughly looking forwards to seeing London at night; it's a circular route so goes all through the City, East End, Covent Garden - past St Pauls, Canary Wharf and the Houses of Parliament - from Crystal Palace to Alexandra Palace and back again. Bear in mind that I've been ill for much of this year including having had surgery, and can count the number of times I've been on my bike on one hand, so I have some serious training to do over the next few weeks. But, like Yorkshire, sheer bloody-mindedness will get me through. Wish me luck folks!

Dinner tonight.

Love it when a plan comes together! Tonight we had part of a dish from Jamie's 30 Minute Meals, and certainly one that will be done again. For the record I rarely follow a recipe to the letter, and find that Jamie's menus are massively over complicated for mid-week meals; the sheer amount of olive oil he adds to everything also puts me off a tad. So tonight was a bastardization of a green chicken curry, plus the Husband made half this afternoon and I made the other half this evening just to shake things up a bit!



Rough recipe then;

Kimchi Slaw;
Whack half a savoy cabbage, a red onion, bunch of spring onions and a few carrots into the food processor on "slice", along with a the juice of a lemon, couple of chillis, knob of sliced ginger and some sesame oil. Not exactly near Jamie's recipe which calls for radishes and Chinese cabbage, but hey that's what was in the fridge and needed eating up.

Crispy Chicken;
In a small blender whizz up a Scotch Bonnet chilli, large knob of ginger, lemon grass stalk, huge bunch of fresh coriander, lots of lemon juice and some dark soy sauce. Marinade the chicken in this for an hour or 2, then pop into a hot frying pan for half an hour, turning every so often. Again was very different from Jamie's version as I left out the sesame seeds and honey, but this version was stonkingly tasty.

And that was it! The original meal also included lettuce leaves to wrap the chicken in, a green bean and coconut milk sauce, prawn crackers and a noodle dish, but frankly this was enough for a simple mid-week meal. Enjoy!

Oh, and think I need to work on my photography skills - or maybe get the camera out rather than rely on my phone!