Grandpa's Birthday

My husband and father in law turned the tv on just now to watch a programme about how long a piece of string was. Seriously. It's party central over here. Sigh.

I then secretly found myself fascinated by the chat for all of five minutes when the discussions and answers ranged from '12 inches' to' infinite'. I have nothing more to add on the subject though. Without jumping from a window.

With three little children off again today, I decided to investigate; it seems between 40-60% of the children at the school have been off at least twice since September and are easily reinfected; their seems to be trouble building immunity. I looked at their diet; lots of fruit, vegetables, homemade food, fresh juices and water. What to do. Any suggestions, my worthy, clever bloggy friends? I'll be homeschooling them soon, at this rate.

Grandpa is 84 today. He had the choice between eating out or in and if in, braised beef with dumplings, mince and tatties, rigatoni al forno or another meal of his choice. He chose rigatoni al forno because he'd never had it before...he's a cool old dude...and a Victoria sponge for dessert. The meat sauce was prepared first and simmered for an hour before I started to make the bechamel sauce. So often, meat sauce is cooked quickly when it should be treated like a stew. Go on, you're worth it!

Meat sauce
The meat sauce could be made using my usual tomato sauce but I went for something a little different and a bit chunkier this time. I blended an onion and 2 garlic cloves in the blender and fried in olive oil for 10 minutes. I then added 500g minced beef steak and browned. A good handful tomato puree and two tins of chopped tomatoes were tossed in opened of course and after stirring and bringing to the boil, I added in a splash of good red wine....there is no point using something you wouldn't drink by the glass...and stirred once more, brought to the boil, added a sprinkling of sugar, salt and pepper and simmered on a very low heat for 1 hour with the lid on.

I checked the sauce after the hour, added a good grating of nutmeg...at least a quarter of a whole one....checked the seasoning and sprinkled in a few pinches of dried herbs...oregano, thyme, bay etc. The lid was put back on as I got on with the bechamel.

Bechamel
Melt butter in a pan over a medium heat. I cut around a thin slice of butter per 100g of pasta to be cooked but really, truly, measurements don't matter with this sauce; the more butter, the more flour...the more flour, the more milk etc.

Once the butter has melted and began to foam, add the flour and stir constantly until a roux is formed (looks like a soft paste). Add a dash of milk and incorporate into roux. It may look a little curdled, don't worry, keep stirring! Keep adding milk, a little at a time, quickly stirring all the time. Don't panic! It may not look good but it will. Eventually, it will look like thick cream although you can make this thinner if you prefer...just add more milk. Once the desired thickness has been achieved, let it simmer for a minute, then add white pepper, some salt (I always use unsalted butter, check taste first before adding any salt if your butter is already salted) and a really good grating of nutmeg.

Mix the pasta into the bechamel sauce and then throw in half of the sauce. Mix well and pour some more on the top. Package up the rest for later. Add a good handful or two of grated Parmesan. We also added some cheddar and Gruyere. At this stage, we usually bake the pasta but everyone was champing at the bit and I just served it instead. This was 500g pasta and it will easily feed 8-10. We all had two servings and the rest was packaged up (two dishes full) for another date and frozen.

The kids helped to make the Vicky sponge and dad made the butter icing.

How do you know if your kids are feeling better? Just look at their faces.

And if in doubt, just watch them playing teddy bear picnics behind the couch.

I have so many fruit cake, bread and loaf recipes and this is one of the simplest. Most of the recipes for fruit loaf are simple and this one is boiled first. I made it for supper last night and so that there was some for breakfast for grandpa as a nice start to his birthday.

Feel free to swap the sugar for muscovado as this is lovely in this cake.

Ingredients
200g sultanas
250ml milk
200g sugar
125g Marg (marg works well in this but feel free to use butter)
250g Self Raising Flour
1 egg
1 teaspoon cinnamon or mixed spice

Put sultanas, milk, sugar and marg in pan, bring to boil stirring all the time. Once it has come to the boil, turn off and remove from ring. Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Fold in the flour and mix, add the egg and mix again. Pour into greased loaf tin and put in a pre-heated oven at 160 degrees for 1hr. Leave to cool before serving. How simple is that?

Helen's dessert....skinny cow lolly...actually delicious.

A gift from Barry....kids couldn't wait to open them and of course, disgusting. Hope you don't serve these in your restaurants, Barry!

Bank Holiday Monday

On the last Bank Holiday Monday, I took the kids to The Burrell where we met up with friends to take part in a decathlon. The kids had great fun and then we all piled back to mine for food. I like to make pasta fresh but I decided to be prepared as I didn't want to come back and spend an hour cooking plus I knew the kids would be champing at the bit for their tea! I made in advance a large lasagna, a large Macaroni Cheese and I made the linguine with lemon and feta fresh. I prepared a fresh loaf by slicing it about a third of the way down and filling it with garlic butter. I bought a garlic pizza and added some fresh rosemary and sea salt before cooking it. There were 6 adults and 7 kids.

When I came home, I put the oven on and quickly prepared some antipasti and olives plus a small round of Camembert. I didn't put out bread because there was a lot of food and bread for the main course and I didn't want anyone filling up. The children who didn't want antipasti got stuck into a large bowl of Doritos!

The pre-cooked lasagna was placed in the oven and 25 minutes later, the macaroni was put in. Then, I cooked the linguine. The lasagna was brought out to the table first and the bread was put in its place in the oven. I prepared some cucumber, tomatoes and yellow pepper for the kids as an accompaniment and tomatoes with pesto as an accompaniment for the adults.

The food went down a treat and afterwards we had home-made lemon cupcakes and lemon cake.

I'd definitely do this again as it was suitable for everyone and perfect for a 6pm tea. Next time however, I would not pre-cook the lasagna; I'd prepare it all as usual in the dish but then cover it in clingfilm and put in fridge; the pasta becomes a bit too hard and slightly burnt round the edges if pre-cooked in a large dish. The macaroni cheese was fine but next time I'd prepare the cheese sauce but not cook the pasta until we were ready to eat it. The heat distribution, possibly just in my crappy oven although it is fan assisted, meant that I had to rescue the dish before it started to brown but the middle was only warm and not yet hot.

Lemon cake recipes to follow.