I do love a good stew, especially now the nights have grown cold. Having something warm and comforting to come home to is just the ticket after a hard nights work. I made this last Monday when you need something extra special to get you through that first day of work. I served it in a giant Yorkshire pudding as it was international Yorkshire pudding day. I used lamb chops that I bought at the foreign food market for this. I’m not sure they were really the right cut, as they were a bit thin so I will try something else next time. But by the time they had cooked they were soft and tender and the stew was full of flavour. Lovely lamb stew served in a giant Yorkshire pudding with an episode of Downton Abbey to watch and Monday isn’t looking so bad.

Ingredients

Stew

500g of lamb chops

1 carrot

1 onion

1 stick of celery

3 potatoes

1 bay leave

1 small bunch of fresh herbs (if not used dried)

1/2 a large courgette

3 cloves of garlic

3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

440ml of Guinness (or dark ale)

2 liters of stock (I used vegetable)

Yorkshire pudding

140g plain flour

4 eggs

200ml milk

Directions

The start of a good stew is always a good stock. I never throw away any meat bones without making them into stock.  Add an onion, some celery, a carrot, and a few cloves of garlic to some water boiling water and it’s done. You can also save all your vegetable peelings and scraps in a little pot in the fridge and add those in too. I store all my stock in the freezer, so I always have some on hand. If you don’t have stock you can just use the cubes instead.

Cut your lamb into bite sized chunks, then toss in seasoned flour. Fry them on a medium heat in a little oil until the sides have browned then remove from the pan. Do this in small batches so you don’t overcrowd the pan.

Chop your onion and garlic and fry off in the meat pan for a couple of minutes, then chop and add the carrot. Fry for a further minute before adding the carrot, onion, garlic and meat chunks to a large saucepan. Add the  Worcestershire sauce, herbs,stock, and can of Guinness, and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat as low as possible. Let the stew simmer for an hour,stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick on the bottom. Then chop the potatoes and courgette add them in too. Simmer for another hour or two. I know this sounds vague but it depends upon the cut of the meat. It needs to be cooked until it is soft, tender, and falls apart from the bone. Add salt, pepper and more herbs to taste.

For the Yorkshire pudding I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe and it never fails me. To make the batter, put the  flour into a bowl and beat in four eggs until smooth. Gradually add 200ml milk and carry on beating until the mix is completely lump-free. Season with salt and pepper, then pop it into the fridge for 30 minutes or more. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Then put some oil into the tins and put them in the oven to heat up. I used some of those little disposable round foil tins that you seem to find everywhere. They only have a 2cm inch edge but it didn’t seem to stop them rising.  Once the oil is hot, pour the batter into the tins. Place the tins back in the oven and leave undisturbed for 20-25 mins until the puddings have puffed up and browned. Fill with your stew and serve immediately. Voilà delicious lamb stew.

Since my success of cooking  belly pork in the rice cooker I have been eager to try a whole chicken. I have had one sitting in the freezer for the last few weeks and was keen to put it to good use. My iherb order had just arrived so I decided to use up some of my newly acquired spices. I had some tomato juice sitting in the fridge and I decided to add sweet potato and beans instead of my usual vegetables of choice. It came out brilliantly, so full of flavour and a nice change of pace. If you like, you could try this in a slow cooker, in the oven or on the stove. You can switch up the spices and vegetables if you like but I would certainly recommend you give this one a try too. So easy to prepare and full of flavour, the perfect week-night dinner.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (defrosted)

1 can of kidney beans

4 small sweet potatoes

1 onion

6 cloves of garlic

1 green pepper

3 peppers (one red, one yellow, 1 green)

2 tablespoons of Cajun seasoning

2 tablespoons of mexican seasoning

1 tablespoon of mixed herbs

1 litre of tomato juice

1-2 litres of chicken stock.

Directions

Slice the onion and garlic into chunks and put in your rice cooker. Put in the whole chicken and add a tablespoon of each spice. Top up with one litre of chicken stock and the litre of tomato juice. Press cook and leave for about 2-3 hours. After the time has passed cut the sweet potatoes into chunks and add them to the pot along with the kidney beans. If the liquid is looking rather low top up with more stock then leave to cook again for several hours or overnight(I went to work at this point). Remove the chicken from the pot and strip the meat from the bones. Chop the peppers and add them back into the pot along with the chicken, the mixed herbs and remaining two spoonfuls of spice. Leave to cook for one more cycle or about 45 minutes. Serve alone or with quinoa and green vegetables. Voilà a healthy hearty home-made meal.

I love a good a good stew on a Winter’s eve. There’s nothing better than a hearty chicken and vegetable stew filled with dumplings. This is also a great recipe to use up any leftover chicken or turkey you have lying around. Forget the sandwiches and sort yourself out a great big stew. I’m a big fan of dumplings, especially if they come swimming in gravy. At first I thought you couldn’t make dumplings without suet so I got a box sent from home. However I since tried the same recipe with ice cold grated butter and they worked just as well.  This is going to be one of my favourite dinners for quite some time to come as it’s so cheap,easy and tasty.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken cut up into 4-6 pieces

1 large onion

1 large carrot

5 cloves of garlic

4 potatoes

1 courgette

1 bay leaf

1.5-2 litres of chicken stock

1 tablespoon of mixed herbs

7-8 mushrooms

A glass or 2 of wine (optional)

Dumplings

200g of all purpose flour

100g of butter (ice cold)

5-7  tablespoons of ice cold water

1 teaspoon of mixed herbs

1 teaspoon of sage

A pinch of salt and pepper

Directions

Cut your chicken into 4- 6 pieces then coat in seasoned flour and fry in a little oil  for a few minutes until it has browned on all sides. Remove the chicken from the pan and throw in the chopped onion and garlic. Fry for about 5 minutes or until translucent then add the chopped carrot to the pan and cook for a further two minutes. Put the chicken, carrots, onions, and garlic into a large saucepan then top with the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Meanwhile chop the potatoes into chunks then add them to pot once the stock is simmering. Add a bay leaf and a tablespoon of mixed herbs and a little pepper. Throw in a glass of wine if you have some lying around, red or white is fine. Leave to cook on a low simmer with a lid on top for about 2 hours. Make sure the chicken is covered in the stock. After about an hour you can add the chopped courgette and mushrooms.

To make the dumplings mix the herbs, salt, pepper, and flour together and then grate the butter into the flour. Gently mix it together. Add the cold water a spoon at a time and very softly bring it together in to a loose dough. Do not work it into a ball, keep it loose then break off lumps and roll them gently to form balls. Add them to the top of the  stew, then cook for another 20 minutes. The gravy may be a bit watery so mix two or three tablespoons of cornflour or flour in a bowl with about a cup of the stock. Mix it thoroughly before adding it back into the pot to let it thicken. Serve by itself or with extra green vegetables.  Voilà a Winter warming stew.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to try some of the delightful treats from the Fog City Cafe. The Fog City Cafe is a restaurant in Incheon that also offers an amazing home delivery service all over Korea. I know I’m very fortunate to live around the corner from Itaewon, where I have a world of cuisine and ingredients within my reach. However there are too many people living in the middle of nowhere that do not have a multitude of restaurants at their disposal. For those of you that really live in the back-end of beyond you may not even have a Homeplus . So home cooking is pretty much an impossibility, especially if your household is sans oven.

Luckily for you a very lovely man called Bob Weimer has come up with a way of getting foreign food to the masses. Visit their website to take a look at the delivery menu, send them an email with what you would like and get it delivered to your door. Real food without even leaving your sofa, great huh?

The sour dough bread is incredibly good. When you open the box you can see immediately what great bread it is. It has a great crust and irregular texture that sour dough should have. Deliciously fresh and a slight sour taste. Paul Hollywood would be proud. No under baked loaves here.

I also tried the stew. Big chunks of beef, carrot and potatoes in gravy. Always a winning dinner in the winter months. Incidentally it goes great with the bread.

Also available for delivery are a variety of burritos, salsa, clam chowder, vegetable soup, and chilli and beans. All which would warm you up on a cold night. You can place your orders through their website. The orders takes 2 days to arrive from when you place it. So if you order on a Monday it should arrive on Wednesday. Not a bad return.

If you live near the Incheon area you may wish to pay their restaurant a visit. The menu is rather vast including  pizzas, pastas and baked goodies. They have also just started an extensive new breakfast menu on weekends and have a selection of wine and cocktails.

Full delivery details and prices can be found on their website.  The Fog City Cafe restaurant is located in  Incheon at Jung-gu Jung Ang-dong 1 Ga 19-1 ban-si, Incheon. You can check out their  facebook page for full directions or give them a call on 032-766-9024 .

It’s getting pretty damn cold outside at the moment and there’s nothing like a nice bowl of hearty stew to warm you up. I’m really loving pumpkin at the moment so I decided to make a pumpkin version. It really adds a good flavor to the broth.  All the taste in this stew comes from the homemade stock. Stock is insanely easy to make and practically free as all you do is boil up the leftover bones and carcass in some water. You can add a bit of onion, carrot and celery too if you have some extra lying around. But I find the bones work fine by themselves. I usually make my stock in the rice cooker since you have to check it much less frequently as it cooks on a lower heat. You need it to cook it for about 3-4 hours to get all the flavor out of it. I fill my rice cooker pot almost to the top with water then throw in the bones and let it do its magic. You should come out with a good pint or two of stock at the end. When it’s done taste it, to see how much flavor it has. If it’s not all that tasty you can add a stock cube to punch it up a bit. If it tastes good on its own leave it as is. The quality of stock is generally down to the quality of chicken, but even if you have a cheap one it’s still worth making. I must note that my picture is a bit iffy here because I couldn’t find the charger for my camera, this soup is insanely good so be sure to give it a go.

Ingredients

1 chicken (whole, roasted)

1 pumpkin (small Korean green one for 3,000)

2 red peppers

1 onion

5 cloves of garlic

200g of green beans ( I used frozen ones from the foreign food mart but canned would be ok)

2 red peppers

1 chicken stock cube

1 tablespoon of mixed herbs

Directions

Remove your cooked chicken from the bones and set aside. Use your bones to make the stock above. Cut your pumpkin into chunks and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes so you are able to remove the flesh from the skin. I like to cut half up as chunks for the stew and mash the other half to thicken the stock. In a large saucepan fry your onions and garlic for five minutes or until they have softened. Add your chicken, stock, and pumpkin, and bring to the boil. When the stock is boiling, add the chopped red pepper and green beans, and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the green beans are done. Serve with delicious homemade bread. Voilá an easy and tasty stew to warm your winter.