An OXO Mothers Day

Recently those good people at OXO contacted me to ask if I wanted any help making Mothers Day a fun and special day by sending me one of their ‘Mother’s Day Magic’ Meal kits.  I was looking for a bit of inspiration anyway, the kids had been nagging me about wanting to cook a meal for her anyway, so I accepted.

Later that week the package turned up, games and stuff to keep the kids occupied, some memorabilia  to keep all my knick-knacks and recipes tidy, a food voucher, and more OXO cubes than you can poke a stirring spoon at.  Oh, and some scoring cards, apparently our cooking was to be judged, no pressure then.

So the day of Mothers Day Eve (as my lot refer to that Saturday) arrived and with a vague plan of action and a list of ingredients written on the back of takeaway menu, off we went to the shops.  Ingredients were chosen, flowers were picked and booze was stockpiled.  We were ready.

The morning came around, gifts were given, homemade cards were cooed and ahhed over and full English was cooked and consumed as I explained to the Mrs the plan of action.  After I had done my own dutiful son duties and after we had been to the restaurant for the already booked (although not by me to my shame) Mothers Day lunch, we would drop her to her own Mum so she could have a few drinks with her and we could make our meal par excellence.

For starters we had plumped for homemade tomato and basil soup which was always going to be a messy affair with a six and eight year old helping out.  Much to Kaedes disgust I wouldn’t let them do any of the chopping but I did make them chief throwers-in and stirrers.  After sautéing the onions, carrots, garlic and celery we added our toms, salt and pepper, basil, two of our OXO vegetable stock cubes and 1.5 litres of boiling water.  We then let that bubble away to be dealt with later on.

For the main course we were having venison in red wine pie with roast potatoes and tender stem broccoli.  A bit of a gamble on my part as I had no idea how the kids would react to eating Bambi, but fortune favours the brave and all that.  After chopping up all the ingredients, including two beef OXO cubes and the best part of a bottle of wine, the kids took it in turns to throw everything into the HomeCooker (thank you Jamie Oliver) and all seemed to be going swimmingly until disaster struck.

In her haste to put the carrots in before her brother, Kaede had knocked over a bottle of olive oil and before you know it we had our very own Deepwater Horizon situation.  Five tea-towels and a large glass of wine later and the oil spill had been dealt with.  Whilst the pie mixture was bubbling away the Mrs returned and luckily for us, was none the worse for wear.  I decided it was about time she spent some quality time with her offspring and gave them the finger puppets to make, leaving me in relative peace to sort out the rest of the dinner.

I part boiled the roast potatoes and before I put them in the roasting tin I gave them a liberal sprinkling of some crushed up chicken OXO cubes, just to give them an extra special tang.  I then blitzed the soup and much to the kids disappointment, I remembered to keep the lid on every time, they were hoping for a tomato volcano eruption.

The kids seated the guest of honour attended to her every needs (topped her glass up) and starters were served.  The soup was a hit and we were rewarded with a score of 9 but you’ll have to take my word for that as I was so busy rushing around I forgot to take any pics of our triumphant scores.

Next up was the mains and I started to do the pie, pots, veg juggle – all whilst slurping away at a moderately large glass of wine, multitasking at its best.  I personally thought the pie looked the business, initials added at behest of Nate, but the truth would be in the tasting.

Another huge success (even if I may say so myself), the kids devoured theirs like food was being outlawed tomorrow, but I fear that next time they watch Bambi they will be on the side of the hunter.  The potatoes were some of the best I had ever served and I will definitely be repeated the stock cube trick in the future.  We scored another 9, with an addendum that it would have been a 10 but there was no ‘0’ supplied with the scoring cards, ironically something I was grateful for when I first opened the pack.

Empty plates were returned to the kitchen and whilst the kids entertained Mum with some magic tricks, me and my trusty Gaggia started making dessert…home-made Minstrel ice cream.  Obviously I didn’t home make the Minstrels, I just battered the hell out of them and added them to the ice cream mid-way.  I was tempted to somehow add a stock cube but I feel it’s a cardinal sin to muck with ice cream too much - I love Heston but if he serves me up beef ice cream I’m not going to be happy.

Although it was never in doubt, I can report that the ice cream was a hit and received the more than obligatory score of 9. 

I decided to leave the clearing away and washing up for the next day as quite frankly, I was feeling so full and had put on so much weight during the day that my face had gone from looking sarcastic to jolly.  The triumphant chefs stood up and received a one woman round of applause and we finished the night off with a game of Frustration.

Many thanks to OXO for all the free goodies and Charlotte at Ketchum for putting it all together for me.

A match made in heaven

I recently received an invite from Neil McGuigan, chief winemaker at McGuigan Wines, and John Torode, MasterChef host and chef, to launch their new recipe collection.  They had collaborated to produce the perfect food and wine matching service and wondered if I would like to come along to watch John cook and Neil whet my appetite.  I thought long and hard about it but to be honest, they had me at ‘hello’.

So off I trotted to a swankier part of London than I normally frequent, all ready for a taste bud explosion, or at least some free grog and nosh.  Upon arrival a rather large, and rather delicious, glass of Sparkling Pinot Chardonnay was thrust into my hand and the tone was set from there.  When the host himself popped over for a quick chat whilst refilling my glass, I had to admire him for not only his winemaking skills but his ‘fill the glass to the top’ approach to pouring.

As all the Entrees were being passed out there was no end of people making sure you had a choice of wine perfect for the dish.  With the Thai Pork Lettuce Cups a Black Label Shiraz, with the hummus with spiced mince lamb I was offered the Classic Cabernet Sauvignon and for the Arancini I ended up drinking a Black Label Sparkling Shiraz.  This was the first time I’d drunk a sparkling red and I became an instant fan, it mucks with your head at first but believe me, you get used to it very quickly and it will certainly be added to my wine cellar; and by wine cellar I mean fridge.

Dragging himself away from waiter duties, Neil McGuigan gave us a quick speech outlining their objectives for the collaboration and what it was all about.  I knew the traditional rules about when to drink wine; red wine for red meat, white wine for white meat and fish, and bubbles for whenever the kids go to bed, but I was keen to hear Neil’s position on this.

To paraphrase, with more and more people now drinking wine and willing to stray away from the traditional rules, they decided it was fine time to make our lives easier and created food and wine matching service.  On the back of every bottle of McGuigans wine there is a QR code, scan that with your smartphone and you’ll be taken to a website ( www.mcguiganwines.co.uk ) where you can answer some questions about your food and drink preferences.  Once you’ve done that you’ll be emailed a free PDF full of recipes specially designed by John Torode and with each recipe Neil has suggested a perfect match plus 2 other suggestions that would also fit.  

We were then treated to a quick masterclass by John who demonstrated one of the recipes, a beef fillet wrapped in mustard dough, which tasted gorgeous with the Reserve Shiraz that had miraculously appeared in my hand.  Things started getting a bit messy from thereon in, I tasted a lovely Classic Semillon Blanc, two rosé wines, one sparkling and one classic.  The Sparkling Shiraz was revisited a few times as was the Sparkling Pinot Chardonnay, I’m a sucker for those bubbles.  

 

Eventually a little voice inside my head started reminding me that I had two parent-teacher meetings in the morning and that maybe it was time to call it a night.  With great reluctance I bade them all farewell and summoning as much grace as I could, carefully walked down the fairly long staircase miraculously without mishap.

I woke up the next morning knowing I had had a good night and mercifully I was hangover free.  There were a few blank spots from the night, one of which was who on earth were the people with me in this picture?

When mum asked me how the night went and I shamed-faced admitted that I got slightly drunk she replied, and I swear this is the truth, “I hope you didn’t embarrass yourself, we drink McGuigan wines all the time.”

Later that day I tried the matching service out myself and found it very user-friendly and easy to navigate.  My PDF was duly emailed to me and I have to be honest, there are a load of really good, but relatively simple recipes in there including Vietnamese Beef Salad, Spanish Fish Stew and Green Curry BBQ Chicken.  There are also some really good wine suggestions to go with them, some of them are what you would expect, but a lot will give you a cheeky surprise. 

Many thanks to Neil McGuigan and John Torode for feeding and watering me, thanks to Sabah from Lightbrigade for the invite and a special thanks to all the McGuigan girls for keeping my glass well and truly topped up all night.

Jamie Oliver HomeCooker

A couple of months back I was invited to Jamie Oliver’s ‘Fifteen’ restaurant for the launch of the HomeCooker, a new kitchen appliance co-created by Jamie and Philips.  The HomeCooker is a multi-functional device designed to make your life easier when cooking homemade meals. It can stir, steam, sauté, melt, simmer, stew, boil, and even fry whilst cooking unattended - giving you some quality time back.  That was the blurb anyway, so I was intrigued to see it in action.

The HomeCooker comes with a book of 25 recipes created by Jamie Oliver and the two they demonstrated were Classic pan-cooked breakfast and the homemade toasted granola.  Watching them cook bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes and a fried egg all together in the one machine was unreal and tasted gorgeous.  I’m not the world’s biggest granola fan but I do appreciate that it must be a pain to homemake, especially when you’re trying to toast the nuts, seeds and oats in honey, but the HomeCooker made short work of it.  They were also demonstrating the cutting tower that is part of the range, it has 5 cutting tools that can slice, shred or julienne straight into the cooker and it was making short work of everything they were putting in it.  I came away impressed with what I had seen and began scheming a way of making the Mrs buy me one.

A month or so later I got a call asking if I would like to try out the HomeCooker myself and I gladly accepted, especially as I hadn’t yet convinced the Mrs to treat me.  I had already figured out how it would fit into my life to make things easier and now I got to put that to the test.  I love to cook stews, goulashes and the like, most often standing out in the kitchen alternating my time between stirring the pot and slurping the wine and hopefully this would free up some time for something else.  I didn’t have the chopping tower to test, but to be honest  I’m quite proud of my knife skills and I’ve got it down to only once a month where I cut myself deeply enough to require a superglue repair, so I wasn’t that worried.

The first recipe I picked from the book was the slow cooked Hungarian beef goulash, with a cooking time of 230 minutes.  The instructions were easy to follow and with the timer and temperature control sorted with a quick touch of a button we were on our way.  I found it hard to resist the temptation to stir, distrustfully watching the stirring arm slowly whir around.  I genuinely spent so much time watching the process, keeping an eye on various ingredients to check if it was all being stirred randomly, that the Mrs started to mock me “You get given a machine that does all the work for you and you just stand there staring at it. Div”.  I tartly responded that the recipe called for sour cream and we only had normal so could she just stare at that for a while?  I soon had the kitchen to myself again.

The machine was cooking the food at a much higher temperature than I would normally have used myself, with everything at a constant high bubble, but due to the constant stirring nothing was burning or getting stuck to the bottom of the pan.  This resulted in a lot of the ingredients melting away into the goulash and creating a beautiful thick sauce.  I can only again apologise for my photos (I think I need Philips to invent me a cooking camera), that do not do the food justice.  The goulash was gorgeous, wolfed down by all and has become a firm favourite.

I decided to try it out with a few of my own recipes and vowed to not stand and stare at it, instead spending the time saved doing something more constructive like playing the Xbox, watching the TV or when things got desperate, playing with the kids.  The timer gives off a fairly loud beep once it’s counted down and auto shuts-off so nothing gets burnt.  First up was Spicy Meat Gumbo, a recipe that normally requires you to stand over the pot as you turn onions, celery and peppers into the roux that forms the base of the dish.  The HomeCooker handled itself well, I kept myself away from the kitchen and the resulting dish was beautiful (if not badly pictured and presented).

Next up was Ox cheek stew, I love cooking with this meat, especially when cooked for 3 hours or so, making it the perfect recipe for the device.  Again the HomeCooker didn’t let me down, the onions melted away and created a really rich and thick sauce.  I was in cooking heaven.

My next choice was something that cooks quickly but demands a lot of stirring, Chorizo and tomato pasta.  A fairly simple meal that just requires you to fry up the chorizo and onion, then add the dry pasta and tomatoes.  Unfortunately this is a meal that always leaves a sticky mess at the bottom of my pot as it requires almost constant stirring at a fairly high heat and well, I’m easily distracted.  The HomeCooker handled this with ease and due the simple temperature controls I could easily switch from 250 to fry the chorizo to 175 to get things boiling, to 130 to finish things off.  Job done, sorted.

Since the initial experimenting phase I’ve now integrated the HomeCooker into my normal cooking routine and it gets used at least twice a week, sometimes more.  It also comes with a pasta insert and steaming trays and I’m looking forward to using them to make my life even easier.  I have to be fair, I do enjoy cooking and I don’t really consider myself to be a lazy cook and my initial worry was that this device would turn me into one.  My fears were unfounded as on those days where traditionally I would find myself without enough time to prepare a proper dinner resulting in me just reaching into the freezer for a ready meal, were replaced with me throwing the ingredients for bolognaise or chilli into the HomeCooker and letting it do it’s stuff and that can only be a good thing.

For the technically minded amongst you, the 3 litre stainless steel bowl is dishwasher friendly and more than large enough for family size cooking, the temperature range is from 40-250 degrees and the 99 minute timer can run up or down.  More information about the product, including recipes can be found at www.philips.co.uk/homecooker.  The Philips HomeCooker is the first product in the Philips Jamie Oliver kitchen range and is exclusively available at John Lewis.  Thanks to Philips and Samantha from Ketchum Pleon for the event invitation and the use of the HomeCooker.  And as usual I am going to have to move home before they send the courier round to pick it back up again, I’ll leave it with a neighbour, honest.

A Warner Christmas

This week a Christmas goodie bag arrived from Warner Brothers for me.  I waited until everyone else had left the house as my lot are like hyenas sniffing around an entertainment carcass whenever boxes like this arrive.  Safely on my own I opened Santa’s sack and out popped 3 DVD’s.  The Dark Knight Rises, New Year’s Eve and Polar Express, something for each one of us.

Obviously I snagged Dark Knight Rises, the final instalment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy.  Nolan’s Batman is a dark and moody version and steers clear of the cheesiness of previous incarnations.  The special effects are breathtaking especially the overhead shots of Gotham City as it turns into a warzone.  I won’t give anything else away, but it’s a must see film and had me gripped from start to finish.  Watch out for a star turn by Tom Hardy as Bane, with Michael Caine and Gary Oldman returning to their rolls of Alfred and Commissioner Gordon.

I got a bit sneaky with ‘New Year’s Eve’, I’m not a massive fan of ensemble rom-coms (I obviously need to get more in touch with my feminine side) so I suggested to the Mrs that she spend a nice evening on her own with a glass of wine, some chocolate and a DVD whilst I go out and do some last minute shopping.  She readily agreed and having already finished my Christmas shopping anyway, I popped down the pub for a few hours.

The Mrs thoroughly enjoyed the film which basically I host of stars in intertwining stories all based in New York on New Year’s Eve.  I may even give it a sneaky watch myself, but obviously when nobody else is about, I have to keep up appearances.

Finally there’s Polar Express, a motion capture computer-animated fantasy film that had become a Christmas Classic since its release 8 years ago.  It features Tom Hanks in a variety of rolls and the kids had been hassling me since it arrived to put it on for them.  I didn’t really intend to watch it, I had decided to use the time to tackle their bedrooms, or at least read the paper, but I found myself drawn in to the film and ended up sitting with them and watching it through to the end.  It’s a great feel good movie and one I won’t mind watching more than once, which is a good thing as the kids want to watch it again already.

So there you go, 3 films to cater for everyone in the household and all would make great gifts for Christmas.  Many thanks to Warner Brothers for the freebies and have a Happy Movie Watching Christmas.