so far this week, we've fared a lot better.
On Saturday we had saucy spare ribs, and I must admit the sauce was from a Good Food recipe, and was truly scrumptious. However, due to an oversight, I ended up pressure cooking the ribs, and tho they were tender, I think they could have been better with the original marinade overnight cook slowly in oven procedure. I had planned the meal with Litl'Un in mind as she loves eating meat off a bone more than little cut up neat pieces of meat on a plate, but her dad had taken the girls to visit an Aunty, got stuck in traffic and got home late for dinner, as well as Litl'Un falling asleep in the car cos she'd tried to skip her nap. Moral of the story, if she misses her nap, no car journeys before dinner! She did eventually get stuck in to the meal, but I don't think she enjoyed it as much as she could have done.
On Sunday we FINALLY had the Weisskohl Gemuese! Basically a white cabbage is shredded up. Half is placed at the base of a stockpot, and half a cup of water is added. Then a pound of pork mince is mixed with an egg, a finely chopped onion and a presoaked Broetchen (German bread roll) or 2 soaked slices of white bread, heel ends if possible. This is then all mixed together with what would seem a LOT of salt and ground black pepper. It's then put on top of the cabbage, patted down, and the other half of the cabbage layered on top with another half cup of water poured over. Bring this to the boil, and simmer til the cabbage on top is done, about an hour, and then mix up and re-season. It does take what seems like a lot of salt, cos the cabbage blands it out, but the lots of black pepper makes it a wonderfully warming winter broth/stew.
On Monday we had spaghetti "lentilese" - a ragu using red lentils instead of meat, which both kids and grown-ups loved. I served it with a celeriac "remoulade" basically grated celeriac with a mayo/white vinegar dressing. Crunchy and yum.
Tuesday, the GodPapa cooked, tho I gave the kids some meatballs and potato wedges that were left over from the Sunday bits and pieces lunch, because of our Brownie having to be in place at 5.15. GodPapa had a beef stew underway, trying to follow the Sainsbury's/Jamie Oliver/Feed your family for a fiver recipe printed off the website, but to be honest, it was NOT really easy to follow as a beginner, yet I wouldn't expect anyone but a novice to want a fully written out recipe for something like this, maybe just a recipe card with the ingredients and a rough plan. But they'd fleshed out a recipe for the website, but it left out important timings, and information, just saying "when done" and "meanwhile" and so on. It was fine, but he didn't know to make the pan hot to sear the meat to give it a good flavour, and it wasn't thickened cos we didn't use the dumplings bit of the recipe as we were running out of time. It was pretty bland, so he asked me to flavour it up, and basically it was rather uninspiring a recipe to give someone. The end result was tasty although there was WAY too much, and we had to take some over to other GodPapa for his dinner or we'd drown in the stuff. Of course, I had planned to have leftovers today, when I'm now alone with the kids all evening on Thursdays, so that's handy in that respect. I'm adding a swede/celeriac/squd mash.
I've already blogged the fragrant and delicious chicken patties, and on Friday, if the Other GodPapa is feeling up to it, we may have a fish pie... (can't recall if he knows this yet, I'll know soon when he reads this...)
My evening today shall consist of baking, I'm hoping to bake a birthday gift for a faraway friend with a special cutter I bought online. I'm just hoping it'll travel ok! Also something for playgroup, obviously, maybe mini choc chip cookies... (I have some mini choc chips!)
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