The best (yet) naan recipe

200g pizza ‘00’ flour (or plain flour, but something with a bit higher protein is better, this was 11%)

1/2 packet (2.5g) instant yeast (or 5g if you in a hurry or it is cold in the house)

1 tsp salt 

1/2 tsp baking powder 

75g kefir (or plain yoghurt, if it is v solid add a little water)

50ml lukewarm water

1 tblsp milk powder

15g soft butter

Make dough by putting everything together and kneading for 10 mins. It should be not too soft and sticky, fairly easy to handle and stretch well.

Cover and leave to rise until doubled in size (about an hour when in warm room)

Form in to 4 balls by tucking the sides under and gently rolling under your hand, and put in oiled tray covered to rise again (about another hour)

When doubled in size, shape by hand by stretching the dough until most of it is approx 1/2 cm thick. The thinest bits will be almost see through and there may be thicker bits.

Cook the first one you did first so they all get a bit of a chance to rise again a little

Cook (in oven, in frying pan, on bbq)

I cooked it on my cadac bbq on the pizza stone. 

You can do very similar in a dry iron frying pan, but I find this doesn’t work well on our induction hob as it keeps turning itself off when it thinks it is too hot. I guess the pizza stone is about 250°C, I wet the naan on one side before slapping it on, a bit like they do in the tandoor and put a lid over it for a few mins, once cooked it peels off fairly easily and I flip it over to cook the top side. You could try a pizza stone or iron pan in the oven too, maybe with a little splash of water at bottom of oven as steam helps the initial rise…

Next up I’m going to try it in the roccbox. The last time I tried that I had problems with it puffing up like pitta with just one large bubble (great if you want pitta!). But I’m hoping this has been solved with a dryer dough, the knocking back and the hand shaping… we will see!

Update : 

Tried same recipe cooked in the roccbox pizza oven.

I ended up stretching it thinner to stop it blowing up pitta like and it came out super great!

Chocolate Fondue Recipe

150g dark chocolate

100g double cream

Splash of some spirit (Quattro, whisky, whatever)

Lots of chopped fruit.

Heat the cream in a pan, don’t boil. Add the chocolate and stir until melted.

Put in to the fondue pan

Yorkshire Blood Cake (black pudding cooked in a loaf tin)

400ml pigs blood (I used dried 80g dried blood 400ml cold water)

200g of diced pork back fat (or belly pork or sausage meat or lardons)

100g pearl barley (dry weight)

100g rusks (or bread crumbs)

½ large onion – finely diced

(you can vary the spices as you wish but you need salt, pepper, cayenne and nutmeg/mace as a minimum in my opinion)

1tsp ground pepper

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp ground coriander

2tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

2 ground up cloves

2lb loaf tin or 3 x 500ml foil trays

Rehydrate blood

Cook the pearl barley

Gently fry the fat and remove from pan

Gently fry the onions in the fat left in the pan. Don’t brown them.

Mix everything together and put in to a greased loaf tin (or foil trays) It should be quite a thick mix which will keep the fat suspended.

Cover in foil and cook in bain marie in 170°C oven or in steamer until set solid. The loaf tin will be about an hour and the foil trays being smaller will take less long.

You can also cook covered in foil in a steamer.

Let it cool and then cut in to slices to fry.

Looks pretty gross before cooking! With fresh blood it looks a lot redder, but easier to get hold of the dried, and easier to work with too…

Thes photos have more wheat than I now have in the recipe…

Scotch Pie Recipe

Filling 

500g lamb mince (or 450g mince and 1 medium onion, can also use beef or mutton mince) 

1 tsp mixed herbs (optional - I prefer my pie plain with no herbs or onion) 

1 tsp nutmeg (or 1/2 tsp ground mace)

4 tbsp stock or gravy 

1tsp black pepper 

Pastry 

100g lard (or vegetable equivalent)     

250g plain flour 

115ml water 

1tsp salt 

Special Equipment

 4x10cm spring form cake tins  You can also form the cases round a jar and then wrap baking paper round them, but it is a lot more tricky this way as the pastry has to have much better structural integrity. It’s quite thin and more tricky to do than for pork pies…   

Method

Make the pastry 

Heat the lard and water gently until the lard melts. Don’t boil, just heat until the lard is melted on a lowish heat.

Mix the salt in to the flour in a bowl 

Add the water/lard to the flour and mix in to a soft dough. If the dough seems too soft mix in a bit more flour, it can depend a bit on type of flour. It should be pretty soft but firm enough that you can roll it out and lift the piece in to the tin. It will get firmer as it cools also.

Take out of bowl and knead a little until smooth (not loads like bread, just a little bit)

You need to work the dough while it is reasonably warm, but it holds its heat well so no rush.  

Divide dough in to 4 pieces. 

Then take about 1/4 of each piece to be the lid.  

Butter the tins. Roll out each big piece and put it in a tin, make sure there are no holes, it should come nearly to the top of the tin. The dough is quite squishy so just smosh a bit on if you get a hole and squidge it around until it is the right shape in the tin. 

Shape each lid in to a circle that will fit inside the case, it should be a little smaller as it just sits in there. 

Put the lid on a plate and put in the fridge with the cake tins while you make the filling.  

Preheat oven to 180°C  

Add salt and pepper to the mince to taste (approx amounts in the ingredients list) also add the herbs if you want. Remember if you use gravy it will probably add a bit more salt. Add the gravy and stir. 

You can fry a little piece to make sure it is sufficiently seasoned. 

The mixture shouldn’t be sloppy, you just want the liquid to help the meat bind together.  

Put 1/4 of the filling in to each cake tin, it should not come anywhere near the top of the pie crust, probably it fills it half way.    

Cut a hole in each lid and place over the meat. Don’t seal to the sides, there should be a tiny gap all round the lid.   

Place on a tray in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until lightly browned.  I like mine a bit peely wally, but you can cook longer for a browner pie.

Let them cool a little before removing the cake tins.  Eat hot with chips and beans or cold with salad (or however you want!).

General Haggis Recipe (meat or vegetarian)

Filling - lamb/lamb lung and offal/Veggies 1kg (this is the cooked weight, so when using meat 1.25kg raw meat)

Fat -  200g butter (or vegan alternative) + 50g flour (cornflour if wanting gluten free) or 250g suet

Pinhead Oats (also called steel cut oats) 350g

Onion - 2 medium approx 400g

Liquid 600ml - veg or meat stock. When making veggie I used the cooking water from the lentils and some marmite, some veg stock and maybe worcester sauce. For meat ideally use the liquid you cooked the meat in

Spice  - eg

2tsp salt approx, you need to taste the mix. Salted butter or marmite will also add salt

3 tsp ground pepper (or 1tsp pepper and 2 cayenne pepper)

1 tsp ground coriander seed

1 tsp nutmeg (or mace)

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp vinegar (but not needed when you use olives in the veggie version)

For the vegetarian option you can use anything you fancy for the filler, but consider how much flavour lamb has, you need to add this somehow.

Popular flavour enhancers are marmite, worcester sauce or soya paste, consider the volume of liquid if you use worcester sauce.

250g black beans (cooked - I used Cassegrain tinned haricot noire with Lemon grass and combava leaves)

100g mushrooms

180g carrot (2 largish carrots)

250g cooked green lentils (125g dried lentils)

150 g cooked black lentils (75g dried)

30g peanut butter

40g olives 

Cook the lentils (reserve the liquid to use with the stock), grate the carrot, chop the mushrooms and olives small and mash the black beans

Mix everything together all these ‘filling’ ingredients

Fry the onions gently in the butter until soft not brown

Mix with the veg mixture and add the liquid, flour and pin head oats.

Add all the spices.

Mix well

Should now be sloppy but not wet.

Put in to foil trays or loaf tins and cover with foil and cook in a 140°C oven for 2 hours (or steam in a pan)

When cooked the pinhead oats will be soft and have grown a lot in size (maybe 3 or 4 times the size they started off) and the mix will no longer be sloppy, it may be lightly browned.

Let cool and can be frozen at this point. 

To reheat cook in oven at 150 for about an hour mins. I like to leave the foil off for half that time so it goes a bit crispy, but this may not be highly traditional.

Serve with mashed potato and mashed turnip - or any veg you want!

Ready to out in the trays and cook

Cooked (twice) and ready to eat.

Failed to take a pic of it on the plate as too busy scoffing :)

Soft bread rolls recipe

1 egg plus warm water to make 150g of liquid 

1 tsp active dry yeast 

250 g bread flour 

15 g sugar 

1 tsp salt 

25 g soft butter

Knead everything together for 10 mins or whatever you normally do for bread

Put in a bowl and rise until doubled in size. Approx an hour.

Divide in to 4 rolls in an oiled oven tray and let double in size again

Cook in the tray for about 20 mins until lightly browned

Choc chip cookie recipe

165g self raising flour (or plain and 1/2 tsp baking powder)

 75g sugar

70g butter (room temperature)

1 egg

110g chocolate chips

Mix everything except the choc chips together, don’t over mix.

Add choc chips and stir until combined (it is a stiff mixture)

Take balls of dough and flatten on to a baking tray (with baking paper if you want). Should make approx 15 cookies

Cook at 200°C until lightly browned, approx 10 mins.

Unleavened Flatbreads

250g plain flour

50g butter

180g milk

Melt the butter by warming the milk slightly and mixing the two together.

Put the flour in a bowl and add the butter/milk mixture

Mix until it comes together in to a ball and knead gently until evenly combined

Wrap and rest for 30 mins

Divide into 6 pieces and form each one in to a bll.

Roll out the balls on a floured surface until they are 3mm thick

Fry each side in a dry pan for 1 to 2 mins each size until it is cooked with brown spots on it

Stack them on a plate on a warm, but not hot, oven as they are done to keep them warm and moist

Rough puff pastry

 250g plain flour

250g cold butter cut in to 2cm ish chunks

Cold water

Makes enough for 4 individual pies (my dishes are 13x20cm)

Put the flour in a bowl and add the cubes of butter making sure each one is coated in flour so they don’t all stick back together.

Use pastry cutter to roughly work the butter in to the flour (like making short crust but you want plenty of lumps of butter still so don’t work it for long.

Add enough cold water that the dough just comes together, you can still see lumps of butter.

Put in fridge for 30 mins (or up to a few days) 

Roll out to 1cm thick and twice as long as it is wide. Fold each end in (like an envelope)

Turn through 90° and roll long again (not wider) till 3 times as long as wide.

Turn 90° and repeat twice more

Put whatever filling you are using in your pie dish (this one was beef and mushroom)

Roll out to the size of your pie dish, brush with milk or egg and bake at 180°C for about 30 mins or until golden brown on top.

Vegetarian Lasagne

I read the Delia recipe but made something not the same as I didn’t have all the ingredients and I put it together like I do my meat lasagne. I think it would be nice with bacon or chorizo in if you wanted a bit of meat.

Brilliant way to use a whole marrow that isn’t too courgette like for variety when you are swamped with them ;)

Makes enough for 8 people (or 6 if you don’t serve with much else…)

For the filling

2 onions

1 pepper

4 medium tomatoes

1 clove of garlic

6 courgettes or 1 marrow (I used a round courgette and most of a marrow). This looks like a lot but cooks away to nearly nothing…

200 ml tomato puree

200g black olives (stoned)

A block of ricotta cheese

If you don’t want it to be vegetarian add some bacon!

To make the lasagne

600ml béchamel sauce (you can buy it ready made in the supermarket in France, I presume in the UK too if you can’t be bothered to make it)

Grated cheese (emmental and cheddar or what ever you fancy…). I use a good covering og emmental and then a bit of cheddar on top.

Lasagne sheets

Dice the onion, pepper and tomato. Put in an oven tray with olive oil and crushed garlic.

Cook at 170°C for about an hour until the onion is translucent and the liquid has evaporated.

Dice the courgettes/marrow and put in a bowl with 1tbsp salt for a couple of hours. Stir occasionally if you can. Liquid will come out. Rince the pieces thoroughly and put in an oven dish with some butter and half the tomato puree.

Roast for an hour at 170°C or until no liquid is in the bottom of the pan (may take longer)

Cut the olives in half and the feta in to cubes.

Mix together the filling ingredients including the rest of the tomato puree. Add salt and pepper as needed.

Put 1/2 in the bottom of a dish and cover with lasagne sheets

Put in the rest of the filling and cover with the rest of the sheets.

Then the béchamel and top with cheese

Cook for an hour at 180°C or until the top is crisp and brown 

Instructions

I used all the yellow one and about two thirds of the green one. If the marrow has large seeds then scoop them out and just use the surrounding flesh.

Courgettes before roasting, they will end up only a fraction of this volumn.

The filling needs to be reasonably dry so the lasagne doesn’t come out all sloppy. So make sure you roast the veg for long enough. 

Cooked!

Mexican black bean veggie burgers

1 onion

1 pepper

Some garlic (crushed - I used 1/2 a clove as didn’t want to make it over powering)

Good splosh of olive oil to cook the onion and pepper and garlic in). 2 tbsp maybe)

Some Mexican spice (I used 20g pack of old el paso guacamole spice)

2x 400g can of beans (the beans will weigh less when the water in the tin is drained off, I think my tin said the beans weighed 250g)

1 egg

1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used panco)

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil (or walnut oil, or whatever you have)

Salt to taste - the spice pack i used had salt in it so I didn’t need much more)

Cut up the onion and pepper and cook in a roasting tray with oil at 180°C until soft and there is no liquid (except some oil maybe) in the bottom of the tray.

Open the cans of beans, drain and put in to an oven tray. Cook at 180°C until the beans have dried off (no liquid when you stir them). About 20 mins.

Mash the beans with a fork, leaving some large lumps. They should be very soft and easy to mash after the roasting. 

Dice the cooked onion and pepper up small, I wizzed them briefly in the chopper.

Stir everything together and chill the mix (to firm it up)

Should be a firm mixture you can make patties from. If not add more breadcrumbs.

Shape in to burgers and BBQ (or fry or grill). 

If you want to bbq them you may need to do it on foil or a tray or BBQ mesh as they are a bit crumbly.

Serve with avocado, tomato and lettuce in a bun

I forgot to take a photo before scoffing! So here is one of the preparations to BBQ them, and of the oven ‘dried’ beans.

Naan Recipe

I can never really settle on a recipe as results vary, I think more due to the cooking technique than the dough recipe. Generally a wetter dough is better I think…

 270g plain flour

120g warm water

2tsp dried yeast

110g yoghurt (kefir)

3 tbsp soft butter

1 tsp sugar (or some honey)

Salt

Some butter (to brush with when cooked)

Knead everything together.

Rise for an hour or until doubled in size

Divide in to 8 pieces and form into balls

Rest the balls for a few minutes and then roll each one out till maybe 15cm in diameter.

Cook in pizza oven (or on a hot skillet - butter it a bit first)

Spiced Honey Loaf

160g Flour

160g honey

60g butter

1.5tsp mixed spice

5g baking powder

70g milk

60g brown sugar

Preheat oven to 155°C

Gently heat the butter, honey and sugar until liquid

Mix the dry ingredients together

Stir the milk in to the liquid and add the liquid to the dry ingredients

Butter or line a bread tin and pour the mixture in.

Bake until a skewer comes out clean, 45mins to an hour

Delicious plain or with butter

Mincemeat Recipe

240g suet

240g bramley apple grated

120g candied peel

120g marmalade

240g raisins

240g currents

300g brown sugar

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Juice of 2 lemons

Zest of 1 lemon

220ml brandy or whisky

Mix everything together in a bowl and leave overnight.

Put in to sealed jars 

Keeps for months, gets better with time (presumably up to a point!)

Coconut Macaroon Recipe

125g Coconut flakes

125g honey

63g powdered milk

30g Cold water

Mix everything together

Squeeze in to walnut sized balls and put on to baking tray with baking paper

Bake at 170°C for about 10 mins until golden brown (they brown up very fast and it may take less long than this, so watch them carefully)

Honey Coconut Bake Recipe

These were going to be coconut macaroons made with honey instead of condensed milk, but they didn’t 100% pan out as intended. Possibly because I put too much honey in! They are delicious though, so we are going with it!

250g desiccated coconut

350g honey

50g white sugar

50g dried milk

2 egg whites

Preheat oven to 170°C

Mix together the coconut, honey and dried milk

Whip the egg whites until stiff then add the sugar and whip a little more

Fold the coconut mixture in to the egg mix

Scoop the mixture in to dollops on grease proof paper on a baking tray

Bake for approx 20 mins until cooked through and golden on the outside

Allow to cool and then scrape from the baking paper as best you can :) it is very sticky, so they stick themselves back together ok if a bit falls off.

Super Easy Fishcake Recipe

 This is more of an idea than a recipe!

It’s mashed potato with chives and tinned mackerel mixed in and some salt and pepper. Then make in to patties and dipped both sides in semolina then fried in olive oil.

Quick and easy if you have left over mashed potato and some tinned fish in the cupboard...

Served with sweet chilli sauce.

Honey Cookie Recipe

 This makes a lot of cookies. I divide in to 3 and make 1/3 now and freeze the rest in 2 lumps to use later...

250g butter

150 light brown sugar

250g honey 

250g plain flour

400g rolled oats

1tsp baking powder

1tsp salt

Melt butter honey and sugar together (don’t overheat).

Add the flour, oats, salt and baking powder and stir till combined

Freeze 2/3rds of the mix and make the rest in to cookie shapes on a baking tray (with some baking paper)

Cook at 170°C for about 15 mins or until lightly browned.

Pork roast in milk

This is soooooo good.

We used a bone in ankle from the front leg (not really sure what the cut is called - I guess it weighed 1.5 kg, skin on)

1/4 a lemon cut in to slices

1 onion cut in pieces 

1/2 litre of full fat milk (we used jersey milk which is extra creamy)

Salt the pork and leave for a few hours.

Put everything in a roasting dish (I have a large oval pyrex dish I use) with a lid and cook at 170°C for about 3 hours until the milk has curdled and caramelised and reduced to a thick (though somewhat lumpy!) sauce. If it seems to be cooking away too fast you can add a little more milk and if it isn’t reducing enough you can take the lid of for a while.

We had it with bread and cabbage, but also good with roast potato, mashed potato, or whatever else you fancy...

Mango Chutney

 This is the many many manyth go at creating the perfectly balanced mango chutney which is nice and sweet but sharp too without tasting too vinegary (Doug doesn’t like vinegar too much)

1kg ripe mangos (weight after peeling and taking the stones out)

500g sugar

3 tblsp vinegar

1 tsp citric acid (or 2 if you like it really sour)

Zest of a lemon grated or chopped small

Juice of a lemon

(I used a seville orange for this batch instead of the lemon)

The spices can vary quite a lot and I tend to just use what I have...

2 tsp turmeric 

1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg

4 cardamoms, 3 star anise, 5 juniper berries, a bit of cinnamon bark, 2 tsp of mustard seeds, 5 cloves all crushed up, not to powder, to kind of reasonable sized bits. You can powder them but the chutney goes more brown and I prefer the look with it orange, you have to pick the bits out as you eat! Alternatively you could boil them for a while in water and then strain the water in to the mango.

Cut the mango in to chunks (I do about 1cm to 1.5cm, but larger or smaller as you fancy). Add the lemon juice and zest and a little water and cook over a low heat until the mango is quite mushy (probably an hour or more). Add a little water if it seems too thick and it might start sticking.

When there are just a few in-tact lumps of mango remaining, add the sugar, citric acid, spices and vinegar. Cook on a slightly higher heat until the remaining lumps go clear/translucent all the way through and the mix is thick. It will set slightly more as it cools, but not like jam so it needs to be quite thick when you stop cooking it.

Put in to clean jars, cool and eat!