Annie's "boh" Chick Peas

Another recipe somewhat related to the previous one…

Tomato sauce (homemade with tomato, onion, garlic etc, or from a bottle if cheating)
Spices: cumin, cinnamon, a little cayenne pepper if desired, and "massalé" (coriander, turmeric, cumin, aniseed, mustard seed, fennel, cloves).
Chick peas (250g) ready boiled.

Combine all ingredients and heat through. Serve with rice and spinach with cream and nutmeg.

Stuffed Courgettes, greek style (à la Annie)

Round Courgettes x (number of people x2)

Minced beef
Tomatoes (plum, chopped)
Onions
(Garlic)
Spices: cumin, cinnamon.
salt, pepper
grated cheese

Cut the tops off the courgettes and dig out the middles. Par-boil them in salted water. Keep the middles aside. In a frying pan gently fry onions, then add beef until cooked through. Add garlic (if desired), tomatoes, courgette middles (chopped up) and spices. Reduce liquid.
Take courgettes out of water and fill middles with tomatoey mixture. Cover tops with grated cheese and bake in oven for 20-25 minutes at around 180-200ºC.

Yum.

Porridge

Sunday morning porridge how Daddy makes it:

Ingredients:

for each person add the following quantities:

1 oz medium oatmeal
7 fl oz water
1/3 teaspoon salt

1. Put the oatmeal and water in a non-stick pan. Soak overnight.
2. Add the salt.
3. Bring to the boil gently and cook for 5 minutes or so.
4. Serve hot in warm bowls. Serve a jug of cold milk separately, and a selection of brown sugar, maple syrup, black treacle etc.
   

For porridge how Mummy likes it, stir a dessertspoon of plain yogurt into your bowl of porridge, and drizzle ginger syrup over. Have a small cup of cold milk alongside, into which you dip your every spoonful of hot porridge. This keeps the milk from getting hot by contact with the hot porridge.

Haggis

Haggis always bursts, in my experience. So here's my solution to the problem:

Ingredients:

1 haggis
A large saucepan of water.

1. Place the haggis in a pudding basin. Put on the lid, or tie on a paper cover.
2. Put the basin in the pan of water.
3. Bring to the boil and boil gently for an hour or more.
4. Lift out the basin, remove the haggis and serve on a plate (the contents will burst out when you cut off the end, if the end hasn't already burst loose).

Serve with bashed neeps (that is mashed swedes with butter and black pepper) and potatoes, boiled or mashed.

lemon sorbet

1.5 pints of water
12 oz sugar
rind and juice of 4 lemons
2 egg whites

1. Pare thins strips of the lemon peel off, just the yellow surface, not down to the white. Add them to a pan containing the water. NB It's not clear to me whether it's better to squeeze the lemons first or later.
   
2. Add the sugar to the pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved.
3. Boil rapidly for about five minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and allow the syrup to cool.
5. Squeeze the juice from the lemons. Add it to the cooled syrup.
6. Strain the syrup into a suitable freezing box.
   
7. Add the egg whites (just as they are, not beaten).
8. Gently break up the egg whites with a fork to disperse them.
9. Place uncovered in the fast freeze section of the freezer.
   
10. About two or three hours later, check to see if it is mushy. Don't be too impatient: it needs to be really almost frozen.
11. Decant the mush into a large basin (chill this in the fridge first, especially in warm weather).
12. Whisk it until it's all white and frothy. In my view a hand rotary whisk may be better than an electric one.
    
13. Spoon the froth back into the ice cream box (you may need two), put on the lid and place it in the freezer. It will be ready in an hour or two.

This makes more than two litres in my experience.

Gingerbread men

4 oz butter
4 oz soft brown sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
8 oz plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger

Oven 190º C, 375ºF, Gas 5, Fan oven 170.

1. Cream butter and sugar.
2. Beat in syrup.
3. Stir in flour and ginger.
4. mix until it forms a soft dough.
5. Roll out on floured suface to about 1/4 inch thick.
6. Cut out shapes, the larger the better.
7. Decorate with raisins for eyes etc, if required.
8. Grease baking trays.
   
9. Put the gingerbread on the trays. Bake for 10 minutes, till golden.
10. Allow to cool a bit until they're firm enough to transfer them to a rack to cool.