Scallops and Prawns with a fresh tomato sauce - Saturday October 27th 2012

Another quick easy delicious fish dinner.. little scallops fried in a butter, with warm water jumbo prawns, and a fresh tomato sauce..just skinned tomatoes chopped and fried with an onion in a little garlic oil, a splash of water and a splash of balsamic vinegar at the end. 15 mins cook time, so no longer than it took to cook the spaghetti.

Oven baked Hake with Herb Caper Butter - Friday October 26th 2012

Friday Fish... deliciously simple oven baked hake, with a dill parsley and caper butter sauce. 30 mins top to bottom including prep time makes me happy.

Beef and Chestnut Stew with Horseradish Dumplings - Thursday October 25th 2012

I think this is perhaps the winteriest stew you could imagine!

I cleaned out the freezer, so this was all the bits of beef and ox kidney that had been in there long enough, with plenty of root vegetables, some good beef stock (made with Essential Cuisine beef stock powder, I am getting VERY fond of these stocks) and plenty of thyme. Pressure cooked again, just 20 minutes was enough to make lovely tender beef. Chestnuts added to warm through and then dumplings.. mmmmmm...these are the fluffiest lightest dumplings you can imagine... mmmmmmmm

And if you are very nice to me I'll get A Greedy Piglet to tell you how I made them...

Prawn and Dill Risotto - Tuesday October 23rd 2012

It is quite autumnal outside, so I felt contrarily in the mood for something light and fresh to remind me of the summer we didn't have.

Prawns, peas and broad beans in the freezer, onions and leeks in the fridge, Riso Gallo Vialone Nano rice (the best for fish risotti I think) and Essential Cuisine Fish stock in the cupboard, Marsala in the drinks cupboard, and my fab Odalisque Risotto recipe on  A Greedy Piglet to use as a base.  With the addition of lots and lots of dill at the end.

Smashing.

Offally Good Calf Heart Braise with Roots and Mash

A very old frugal favourite from my childhood, a calf's heart braised with carrots, turnips, swedes. You can read how I made it over on A Greedy Piglet.

If you have never eaten heart, this is the time of year to give it a try! Cheap and tasty! 

Frugal Sunday Dinner: Mince and gravy, spring greens and mashed potatoes. Sunday October 21st 2012

Why is it so difficult to make a plate of mince that tastes lovely and savoury look delicious and not a dog's dinner?

Smokey Cod with Cheese Rarebit topping - Saturday 20th October 2012

A very nice skinless boneless piece of smoked cod loin, topped with a welsh rarebit. Very cheesy!

Gammon & Chick Pea Broth with Rump Steak and Saute Potatoes - Thurs October 18th 2012

Some more of the Gammon broth with different vegetables and chick peas today - purple curly Kale and sweet potato as well as the standard carrot and celery. Delicious!

Followed by a grilled rump steak and some saute potatoes. More delicious!

Gammon and Butter Bean Broth - Wednesday October 17th 2012

A cheap little ham hock, dried butter beans and some root veg, pressure cooked, with the addition of some steamed potatoes and the last few french beans makes a bowl full of deliciousness.

Pump Street Bakery's Butternut Squash & Apple Soup - Tuesday October 16th 2012

Whilst up in Suffolk for Aldeburgh Food Festival, we popped into the cafe at the Pump Street Bakery in Orford, possibly my favourite bakery these days. Such amazingly good food, and a really good vibe. This is good food made by people who adore good food.

I speak to Joanna on Twitter, so asked her how to make the butternut and apple soup that I had for my lunch there:

Here is the recipe that she tweeted for me:

soften onions and leeks in olive oil, add cubed squash, sauté, add veg stock and diced apple
simmer til squash cooked, then add some apple juice, blitz and season well!

So I worked out my own proportions, and came up with this:

Delicious! and not bad looking if I do say so myself!

(It was a fast day for 5:2 diet today, so this was dinner with the addition of a ham and cheese omelet. )

Horse Mackerel with Kohlrabi & Golden Beetroot Salad - Monday October 15th 2012

Rather pleased with the Horse Mackerel. Dead cheap, bit fiddly to prepare, but really very tasty. You can read all about them over on A Greedy Piglet if you like..

And a new salad to add to my repertoire, which went very well with the slightly oily fish, julienned kohlrabi and golden beetroot, with Crush lemon dressing and some chopped dill. Very yummy!

Grilled Mackerel fillets and Salad - Sunday October 14th 2012

Very nice fish on the fish stall at Walthamstow Farmers Market today, so I treated myself to a nice fat mackerel, and a couple of horse mackerel (more of them tomorrow..).

I filleted it myself, and because I am lazy about pin boning, cut each fillet into two channeling out the pinbones as I went. So each of us had 2 nice slim fillets.

It is still eat up the fridge in this house, and I had salad to use up, and a bag of salad potatoes (baby Maris Pipers) from the farmers market last week, so these I boiled and then tossed in a beurre blanc made with my grapefruit vinegar instead of wine. (A little too sweet, next time I will use half and half with white wine) and flavoured with fresh dill.

Saturday Gammon Fry Up - Saturday October 13th 2012

Nice little bit of gammon, Sainsbury's Basics, salty but still tasty, and at 45p for the two pieces I am not going to whine about that. You eat excellent quality or you eat cheap. Today was about eating cheap.

Baked beans, oven fried chips (not frozen ones, King Edwards cut into chips, par boiled, and then sprayed with olive oil and baked for 45 mins on high heat) and a fried egg make a good transport caff style dinner!

Eating from the fridge - more Minestrone with Meaty things Friday October 12th 2012

Lots of minestrone still left from Thursday. And still plenty of food in the fridge. How come I have so much food in the fridge on a Friday??

So today we have soup followed by ham and pate, more of yesterday's cheese with cheesy soda scones and crackers and salad.

Oh, and my home made chilli jelly.

All very tasty.

Eating from the Fridge - Minestrone and Cheese - Thursday October 11th 2012

I have been buying too much food again, and it is time for a few days of largely eating from the fridge.

Today we are having soup, a minestrone type broth with just about all the veg I have in the fridge, and some butter beans and chorizo and smoked paprika and soup pasta.

And I have lots of cheese. And plenty of crackers.

It's a Thursday Cheesey Fridge Feast!

Lynne's Dinners is scrubbed and ready to go again!

Thank you all for your patience.

All the malicious code has been scrubbed clean from all my sites and we are back in play. So it is time for more dinners.....

Hang on...

Off we go.......

A Greedy Piglet is feeling sickly...

**PLEASE NOTE** 

I had a rotten nasty malware attack on Monday October 8th at the website where A Greedy Piglet my main blog is situated,  and although the site has been cleaned up, Google is still flagging this site as dangerous. 

Please do not visit A Greedy Piglet for the moment unless you have up to date virus and malware protection on your computer, although as far as I am aware it is safe.

All my other blog sites are safe and sound, so you are ok here, and at A Greedy Piglet - the bare minimum which is hosted on Tumblr.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sausage Patties with Kale and Mash - Thursday October 4th 2012

There are times when I love a sausage. OK, you are quite right... ALWAYS I love a sausage. But sometimes I love a sausage with no skin. Does that make any sense?

I think some good quality sausages come in skins that can be a little tough. Nothing wrong with that in its own place (probably at breakfast time when my teeth are sharper) but I have a very fond place in my heart for sausage patties made with sausage meat.

I discovered these the first Christmas I cooked on my own, when with two of us even stuffing and sausage rolls didn't use up all the sausage meat I had bought.   So I patted it down into little flat burger shaped, dusted them in a little flour and fried in just a little oil until toasty and cooked through. I really love the way the outside goes slightly crusty and very flavoursome, and now buy sausagemeat for the purpose. These ones are more oblong as my sausagemeat today was in a nice oblong shape, but if I buy sausagemeat in a tubby tube, then I just cut pieces from the fat sausage about 2 ins thick, flatten them a little and off we go.

If you don't fancy your local sausagemeat, but have ace sausages in their skins, no problem just slit the skins and slip the sausages out. Flatten them out into roadkill sausages and treat them the same way.

I made these with creamy mashed potatoes, carrots and lovely sprightly fresh Kale from Aldeburgh.

Retro dinner! Homemade meatballs and fresh tomato sauce with pasta shells - Weds October 3rd 2012

Meatballs! Now there is something that takes me back a bit, one of the first things I used to cook when I was married and we had almost no money.

I made some last week when my grandson came for lunch, and had frozen the remainder. They cook easily from frozen, just thrown onto a baking tray, cooked until golden and then added to a fresh tomato sauce.

Onto some cooked pasta - large lumaconi snail shells - some parmesan and dinner is ready.

(apologies for the photos, no matter how I tried all the pictures I took were slightly out of focus, must be a meatball kind of thing...)

Pinney Smoked Sardines and Old Smokey Coleslaw - Tuesday October 2nd 2012

Part of my haul from Aldeburgh Food Festival, some smoked fish from Pinney's of Orford.  I bought some smoked sardines, as I had never had these before.

They are delicious but there are a couple of things to be learnt..

a) they look as though they are ungutted, but in fact they have been gutted through their gills, so only have their roes inside. Phew.

b) Unlike fresh or canned sardines, the skins are tough, and need to be removed before eating. The bones are tiny except for the main backbone, but you may as well fillet the fish for serving as they will be easier to eat and look nicer on the plate. As you can see, I didn't discover this until we were eating them as I had plated them whole, just with their heads taken off, assuming the skin would be tender and edible.

The coleslaw is shredded golden beetroot, carrot and red cabbage, with added poppy seeds, and dressed with my grapefruit vinegar and a splash of olive oil. Seasoning this time was some of Toezapper The Urban Spiceman's Old Smokey seasoning that complemented the fish beautifully.

Slowly Re-roasted Slow Roast Lamb - Monday 1st October 2012

It's October. It's definitely got a tingle in the air now. Autumn is firmly here.

Mashed potatoes it is then...

With the leftover part of the Slow Roast lamb from Friday roasted again until piping hot. Kale, potatoes and carrots from Aldeburgh over the weekend.  Not complicated. Just delicious.

Crab. Sunday September 30th 2012

Just plainly dressed Crab. A teeny bit of salad, mayonnaise and very fresh white crusty bread and butter.

Home from Aldeburgh Food Festival with this little chap in my bag, bought from Brinkley's Fish Shed on the quay at Orford, he had been swimming in the sea on Saturday morning.

You little beauty.