Marie Cookpad

  We've had some really cold days this past week or so, with heavy frosts on the ground in the morning and the days haven't warmed up too much either.  Before things get a chance to warm up the sun is setting and things are chilling up again! Wintry, cold, damp  . . .  these days call for proper comfort food.       There is nothing we enjoy better on a cold damp night than a hot bowl of soup or stew.  Todd's very favourite is a stew.  Stews are lovely. You can make them with beef, or lamb, pork, chicken . . . venison.  Almost any kind of meat is good in a stew. Today I used beef.   My vegetables that I use for stew are pretty simple.  Onions, garlic, carrots, parsnips, swede (rutabaga)  . . .  humble vegetables, comfort vegetables . . . winter vegetables.  I like to cut them into a pretty uniform size.  I find there is something really mindful standing at the counter peeling and chopping. My mind is usu...

   If you are a regular reader of my page you will remember that a few months back I went with a friend to a Moroccan restaurant for lunch one day and fell totally in love with Moroccan food  . . .  exotic North African food which is big on flavour, aroma and spice.    A Tagine is a type of a Moroccan stew which has been named after the clay pot it is traditionally cooked in. Wide and round at the base with a lid that is tall and tapered at the top with a small circular opening which is designed to return  a lot of the condensation to the bottom of the dish, resulting in a stew which is rich, moist and luscious.  You can of course replicate this effect by adding a paper cartouche to an ordinary flame proof casserole dish with a lid.      A cartouche is merely a circle of crumpled grease paper with a hole cut out of the centre.  It works just as beautifully.  Today I used my Le Creuset casserole dish with a cartouche. ...

  With Saint Patrick's Day being on Sunday I thought it would be fun to make a smaller batch of Irish Stew for the smaller family.  This recipe will serve 3, or 2 people generously.  Or two people on the day and one with the leftovers the day after.     Its a simple and yet attractive stew, using simple methods and simple ingredients, because lets face it . . .  the Irish were basically a very poor people, a humble people, without artifice, and many did not have stoves or ovens, but cooked over an open fire on the hearth.   This is a recipe I adapted from one I found in this book.  It is originally meant to feed four people generously.  This is a great book by the way.  I have had it for a few years now and every recipe tried has been a real winner. Its from the Love Food people.   All you need for it is some stewing lamb  . . .  you could use neck fillets if you wanted to, I just used cubed stewing lamb I got at the ...

  One of my favourite television shows, long before I even dreamt of moving over to the UK was a British soap opera called Coronation Street.  I started watching it when I was still at school and had no idea that I would one day be living in the North West of England in a brick terraced house.  Funny how life turns out!   It was a show my Aunt Freda loved as well.  One of its charms for me was the gritty reality of it.  Not very many people on it were wealthy  . . . no were they drop dead gorgeous, like in the American soaps.  Plus they had jobs that they worked hard at . . .  for the most part they were ordinary working class folk.  I believe it is the longest running soap on television in the world.    A lot of the social life in the show centred around the Rover's Return Pub, which also let out rooms as a B&B on occasion.  True to life there.  Most communities over here have their own "local" as a pub is loving...