Well it's late March already and almost one 1/4 of the year down, the Summer is slowly falling away and I'm beginning to look at recipes for the cooler months already. After the trip to India last year I think I'll be using the recipe books I picked up in Mumbai and Delhi.

This will be something I work on and get right, I got this made for me in so many places when the restauranteur found out I couldn't eat the normal Roti or paratha.

RAJASTHANI - MISSI ROTI


Ingredients:

150 gms Wheat flour (replace with GF flour mix)
1 tsp Red chilli powder
250 gms Besan (chickpea flour)
1 tsp Dhaniya Powder (coriander powder)
3 tbsp Ghee
2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp Jeera (cumin seed)
1/2 tsp Kaala Jeera (black cumin)
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Ajwain (similar to caraway)

Preparation:

Mix the wheat flour and besan together, add oil, salt, red chilli powder, dhaniya, jeera, kala jeera and ajwain. Mix well. Make into a stiff dough, then roll into small and thick rotis and cook both sides till browned in patches on a pre-heated flat plate or griddle.

Brush missi roti slightly with melted ghee. Serve hot with your favourite curry or dips.

Try it, you'll like it

cheers

Well apparently promises are made to be broken as I promised myself I wouldn't take on a blog unless I could commit to a post once a week and here I've missed several posts/weeks through all the usual excuses, too busy, other people take up my time etc when really I've been doing other things.

So in the immortal words of Chopper Crowe - harden the f up Masters!

So heres the latest missive from the life of me.

And it has been busy, no mistake about that, a long time (in our world of Zoe being home - then bang she's away for the best part of 4 weeks on the trot) and in the meantime Eve has started Uni, doing courses that I don't understand but then for her last couple years at Wgtn College I had no idea what half the prizes where for at prizegiving, Best Male Student to understand crochet styles of the late 1970s, what's with that?

Bryn's playing every sport possible and with the blurring of the lines now common for this time of year, he's got rugby trials, requests to play 20/20 cricket, weekend cricket has become 2 day, golf on Mondays for the College and Sundays at Judgeford.

Me? - I hear you ask, well work is back to it's near manic best so besting the tide there and holding the XT line as strong as I can, though getting the pity look for the first time in 19 years of mobile sales is tough to take.

Food has  been a constant, room to play a bit especially tonight, only Bryn and I at home so a Hugh Fearnly-Whittsingstall recipe comes to mind. White beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic and spicy sausage - strangely all available in my kitchen so away we go.

Both red and white onions, finely diced and into the stock pot, three cans of cannellini and butter beans (la Italiana brand) go in on top once the onion is sweated off, then those tomatoes that are close to past their best, judicious slicing and dicing there, and a small amount of chicken stock (store bought but still - Campbell's so can't be bad) salt, pepper and some oregano follow plus smoked paprika.

Then the meat - pre-cooked sliced cabanossi and GF pure beef sausages and at the end a handful and a half of arborio rice to thicken the stew/soup?

Taste a few times to make sure the rice ius cooked through, nothing worse than chalky rice netween the teeth and we are good to go, adjust seasoning and serve  as is, perhaps some crusty bread (but we have none) so GF Burgen corn & poppyseed toasted will do nicely.

So not wildly exciting but good use of what's at hand to deliver something different to the usual weeknight fare and reasonably quick from start to finish.

Just a random thought - perhaps this is a wet style risotto, Venetian style......

Christmas glamping 2009 - 2010

Every year for the past 7 or 8 Christmas holidays we've packed ourselves up with camping gear and taken the ferry north to south (New Zealand is two major islands named imaginatively North Island and South Island) with a fully laden station wagon and for the past several years a fully laden trailor hanging on the back.

After all a three room tent for us, the small tents for the kids, the cookers, gas bottles, gas fridge, pots, pans, utensils, chillibins, solar powered lights, airbeds, kitset wardrobes, tables, pantries and on and on.......all takes up room.

Camping (or as we put it glamping, glamourous camping) is a full on experience, a friend suggested we didn't camp as much - we moved house for a week or two. I mean really, just because we take a gas powered fridge, a two burner cooker, a three burner cooker, a food chillibin, a drinks chillibin, pots, pans, roasting trays, glasses and so on doesn't mean it's over the top.

The Jersey Bennes being sauteed

What may be ever so slightly excessive are the meals we have while at the campsite. Having loaded the chillibin with a frozen butterflied leg of lamb to act as the slicker pad (works really well) that's the option for night one. Here's where I reveal the 'must have' accessory for camping, ziplock bags.

The perfect tool to marinate, save and reuse everything. In this instance, the lamb went into a large bag with garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, various herbs and back into the chillibin for about 3 hours.

The blackboard menu

The two burner was fired up to parboil the jersey benne potatoes in the cast iron dutch oven, these are then cooled and sliced - two non-stick pans readied and the potatoes go in to saute and brown and then back into the dutch oven to keep warm (over a low flame) while the lamb finishes.

The lamb is now on the two burner with the grill plate across the two burners and the lamb is sitting under the lid of the oval roaster (keeping heat and moisture in) and then rests there with the burners off while the rest is being readied.

Then carve and serve with the potatoes and green beans, oh and of course some well chilled rose from a local vineyard in the Moutere valley to drink alongside. Perfect end to the day.