Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

So when I went round to my buddy Karen's a couple weeks back, she cooked cottage pie and it was delicious. Inspired, I made my own at the weekend, with intent to use it during the week when I was too tired to cook. Pretty basic recipe but I list it here for your amusement.

I gently fried some onions in a pan with a little butter and added the mince, stirring it round occasionally until it was browned. I added salt, pepper, several glugs of Worcestershire sauce, a good splurge of brown sauce* and a beef Oxo cube and let it simmer for as long as it took me to cook the potatoes. When the potatoes were mashed (with salt, pepper and butter), I put the mince into a casserole dish and covered with the mash and left it to cool before refrigerating. It sat for two days and I'm sure it helped :) Tonight I cooked it for an hour in a medium oven (Gas mark 6), and the mashed potato went fantastically crispy on the top! It was DEEE-LICIOUS! The crispy soft potato and the very flavoursome mince were perfect *licks chops happily* I shall be making that again :)


*Brown sauce instead of ketchup because I appear to not be able to tolerate tomatoes any more. Or rather I can but I prefer to avoid it where possible. The brown sauce seemed to work just fine :)

...proof you're both philistines :D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/sausageswithmarmalad_83685.shtml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/3335777/How-to-conquer-Christmas-with-an-Aga.html (scroll down, the sausages recipe is about two thirds of the way down)

I got my new sick note from the surgery today *gigglefits* My Doc apparently had a moment because she's signed me off for five weeks! Bwah! That covers me for another 3 weeks from now *glee* Better than I hoped!

In other glee, I actually did proper cooking last night and it didn't suck! I had some chicken pieces to use up so I adapted something I saw Nigella do (all this daytime TV has advantages). I chucked the pieces into a roasting tin with some roughly chopped onion, pepper and small potatoes (all roughly the same sized pieces), threw in 4 cloves of garlic, tossed everything in olive oil, dried thyme, salt and pepper and then roasted it until the chicken was thoroughly cooked. Deee-licious! That's not to say it can't be refined, it can. Next time I'll parboil the potatoes so they roast properly and I'll figure a way to use the juices in the pan better too. I'm thinking maybe de-glazing the tray with some white wine would turn it into a nice sauce. It was pretty tasty as it was, all garlic-y and thyme flavoured :D I also now have left overs enough that tonight and tomorrow's main meals are all sorted *glee*

No Private Practice for me to download today *pout* but I've watched the new episode of Criminal Minds which was the follow up to last week's episode, and very good it was too! New Bones to look forward to this evening on Sky and because we're now in sync with the US, I'll be able to natter about it to jenni411 later when she gets online. Glee!

And now for food and more tea. Gleeeee! :D