Light Meals and Weekend Treats from an English Woman in Berlin
There is something so indulgent about this Pork Belly Roast with Baked Apples. This recipe perfects that beautifully soft and juicy flesh under that crisp and crunchy layer of crackling. And yet it is a meat that is still relatively cheap and so easy to prepare. It does require a little cooking time but what I like about it is that you can simply shut the oven door and sit back for most of it, while the meat roasting away will fill your kitchen with that beautiful home cooking smell….
In the past I have found lunch the most trickiest of meals to plan for. While I have mentioned in my previous blog post the all too often temptation to eat out in the evening after a long day in the office, I actually find the eating out at lunchtime far more tempting. The first issue has always been that I have mostly worked in central Berlin. I am often surrounded by plenty of restaurants and cafes to go out for lunch and my colleagues have always felt the same, resulting in me wanting to go out not just for the delicious food on offer but also to socialise and not be left in the office alone…
I think that a good tomato sauce is the first thing that every cook should learn. It is incredibly useful! When I first went to University (a very, very long time ago now …!) I couldn’t cook a thing. I would constantly buy those ready made jars of tomato sauce to throw over some penne or spaghetti. Thinking about it now this was a lot more expensive than me simply making my own and I could have probably saved myself a small fortune considering how often I actually ate tomato pasta! I soon came to start making my own sauce and I have never looked back….
For all my non-British readers I should straight away clarify exactly what Toad-in-the-Hole is! Simply put it’s sausages cooked in a thick batter (similar to a Yorkshire Pudding). It is a true British classic and one of my favourite comfort foods. It is also an incredibly cheap meal to make and is perfect for using up all those odds and ends in the cupboard and fridge. Which brings me onto the main theme of this blog post – Happy New Year!
Last year when I wrote my first Happy New Year blog post of the year I said how I wanted my blog in 2017…
The days between Christmas and New Year can be something quite special. A lot of us have been fortunate to take a few days holiday and to be able to sit back and properly relax and there are plenty of friends and family around to catch up with. But what really defines these few days is the fact that any kind of meal plan or healthy and acceptable eating goes completely out of the window. Every meal is followed by a cheese board that just doesn’t seem to be going down, there is a constant flow of leftover party food such as sausage rolls and we are all desperate…
Poor old Brussels sprouts, they get such a negative reputation this time of the year. Always a compulsory side dish for the big Christmas dinner yet ridiculed for being the food that nobody really tucks into and instead stuffed inside a Tupperware box on the off chance someone is to make a Bubble & Squeak on Boxing Day. While sprouts are not particularly a vegetable that I would go out of my way for, I actually don’t mind them. But what I can’t stand is how we all feel a Christmas dinner isn’t right unless we have them but then a lot of us don’t actually eat them….
Personally I like to stuff the bird, whether it is a Roast Chicken for a Sunday Roast or a Turkey for Christmas Day, the stuffing keeps the meat soft and moist. But I know that a lot of people do prefer to cook the stuffing separately. If I am cooking my stuffing separately then I like to make it in a tin, like this Apple, Sage and Pistachio Pork Stuffing but it is also nice to serve them as little balls and scatter them alongside the carved up turkey. That way everyone can get a scoop of delicious stuffing to go with the main meat of the feast….
This is a recipe that can be used right from the start of the festive season when everyone is starting to cook something a little special in the kitchen, right to the end of the holidays when we are all rummaging in our fridges wanting to use up all those leftovers. These Cranberry and Stilton Stuffed Mushrooms can be made as a starter for the first dinner party of the season, served as canapés for your Christmas Eve drinks and nibbles or served at New Years Eve to make the last celebratory dinner of the year go out in style….