Minced Beef Wellington

I made this for dinner last night, and as it wasn't a spectacular success, I wasn't sure whether to blog about it. But I decided to add it anyway, if only to remind myself how it turned out.

When I say it wasn't a success, it wasn't that no one liked it, because it was eaten and enjoyed. But I wasn't sure the time and effort it took was worth the result. Although as I discovered the next day, it tastes much nicer when it's cold.

(This recipe is from Jamie Oliver's book Ministry of Food.)

Firstly fry all the chopped vegetables in a large frying pan, in a little olive oil. Add a generous handful of frozen peas - or sweetcorn, which is what I used. Put them in a large bowl and allow to cool.

Add minced beef, egg, salt and pepper; and I also added a couple of shakes of Worcestershire sauce because I couldn't see how this wasn't going to turn out to be very bland otherwise!

Roll out the pastry to the size of a small tea towel (according to JO) or if you've got the ready-rolled pastry, defrost 4 or so slices.

Shape meat mixture into a sausage shape - or if you've got the square pastry, it's going to be several sausage shapes. Put the 'sausage' at one end and roll it all up. (If you have a tea towel-shaped bit of pastry, place it along the long edge.)

Roll it up completely...

...and then seal the ends. I used egg along the edges, but in the end I decided I would have been better with no 'glue' as the pastry was quite gummy already and the egg was making things more slippery.

I ended up making some little pasties aswell.

Put them on a baking tray, brush with egg and cook at 180 C for an hour. In the photos in the book, there are no slits cut in the top to let out steam, but I thought it was better to have them.

The cooked pies aren't very pretty! There was quite a lot of leaking out of the holes. But they got eaten up, with tomato sauce, and were quite filling.

I suppose my problem with this is that the filling was a little bland (I know I didn't follow the recipe exactly but I don't think that would have made a lot of difference) but then I'm not a big fan of meat pie in any form - I find they often have an unappetising 'steamy' flavour - so maybe that's why it didn't appeal to me much.

Part of one of the long 'wellingtons' was left over, and I kept it in the fridge overnight. We ate it at lunch time, and it was actually *much* nicer cold. So I would suggest this would make a good lunch dish or picnic food, cooked the day before.

Ingredients:
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 potato, finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely chopped
2 large flat mushrooms, finely chopped (I left this out)
2 cloves garlic, minced/grated - I chopped mine finely
4 sprigs rosemary, leaves stripped and finely chopped (I used one sprig)
a big handful frozen peas (I used frozen corn)
1 large egg, beaten
500g good quality minced beef
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
500g puff pastry, or 4 or 5 sheets of ready-rolled

Meatball Casserole

This isn't exactly a glamorous or exotic meal, but it's tasty and easy to make and includes lots of vegetables. It can be adapted to whichever flavours you like and also to the vegetables you have.

Make the meatballs by mixing together the meat and other ingredients. Roll into smallish meatballs and fry in a little oil until the outsides are browned. (Or cook them in the oven at 200 C for 15 mins or so, which is what I usually do because I find it's less messy.)

In the meantime, soften the onion in a little oil in an ovenproof pan, then add the other vegetables and fry gently for a few minutes.

Blend the cornflour with a little stock and add to the pan with the remaining stock. Bring to the boil, stirring and cook for a minute.

Add meatballs, put a lid on and cook in the oven at 190 C for 30 - 40 mins. I have a big Scanpan casserole and I can reduce the oven temperature to around 120 C once it is all heated through.

When cooked, add a little more salt and pepper if needed. Serve with bread rolls.

Ingredients:

meatballs:
500 g lean minced beef
half an onion, finely chopped
2 tsp dried mixed herbs
1 egg, beaten
handful of porridge oats, breadcrumbs or semolina
good squirt of barbecue sauce
salt and pepper

rest of the casserole:
half an onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 red capsicum, de-seeded and sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
couple of big handfuls of green beans
2 tbsp cornflour
500 ml beef stock

Spaghetti Bolognese

This has been voted the favourite dinner in our house, everyone enjoys it!

It's one of those meals that most people can make, and there are many different versions. This one is easy to make, and using the passata rather than whole/crushed tomatoes makes a smoother than usual sauce. You can use two large tins of crushed tomatoes if you prefer.

The most important ingredient to get right is the meat. I use minced beef, and I make sure it's good quality. Don't get the churned-out stringy supermarket mince or the sauce won't work properly. My local butcher is part of a small supermarket so it packages up some of its meat supermarket-style, but it's good quality and also low-fat.

Some people I know, including my mother-in-law, who has an Italian background, use a veal/pork mince which tastes good and has a lighter flavour than the beef.

Fry onions in a little olive oil in a big, heavy-based pan until soft, then add some chopped garlic. Stir around to heat through, then push to one side.

Increase the heat, add some more oil, then put in the mince. Chop into it with a wooden spoon to separate it out and turn it to brown the whole lot.

When the mince is all browned, mix it in with the onion/garlic, and add the tomato paste, dried oregano, basil, a teaspoon of sugar, some salt and pepper.

I always use a generous amount of dried oregano and a smaller amount of basil. In summer I use fresh basil, but dried works well too if fresh isn't available.

Give it all a stir and warm it through.

Pour in the tomato passata and stir through. Half-fill each passata jar with water, give a shake to get all the passata and pour into the pot. Bring to the boil, then reduce to simmering point. The sauce will be quite watery, but it's going to simmer for a couple of hours so it will thicken as it cooks.

If you don't have a spare couple of hours, it can also be simmered for a much shorter amount of time, but don't add as much water.

If you have some red wine, add a glug of it to the sauce as it will make it a little richer, but I very rarely do this as I normally don't have any wine.

I have a splatter-proof lid to avoid mess, but otherwise just leave the whole thing uncovered and simmer gently for as long as you can.

When the sauce has reduced in volume and is looking richer and thicker, give it a taste and add some more sugar, salt or pepper if you think it needs it.

Serve with pasta - spaghetti, penne, rigatoni, whatever you like.

Stir some sauce through the drained pasta in its pot before dishing up, then add a blob to the top of each serve.

Add some grated cheese - our favourite is pecorino.

Serve with salad and crusty bread.

This makes enough sauce for 10 or more serves, so will normally be enough for two meals for most families. It tastes even better the next day, and also freezes very well.

Ingredients:
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 kg minced beef, good quality
- 300 g tomato paste (approx) - (called tomato puree in the UK) I either use a 250 g jar or a couple of 140 g tubs.
- Herbs: 2 or 3 heaped tablespoons dried oregano; 1 or 2 heaped of dried basil, or a generous amount of chopped fresh basil; fresh chopped parsley if you have some.
- salt, pepper, 1-2 tsp sugar
- 2 jars (around 700 g each) tomato passata

Cannelloni

This is a meal I've been making for a long time, it's a bit of a family favourite.

You need to make a really tasty sauce to start with - a tomato sauce, or bolognese, or a tomato and meat sauce. Whichever type it is, it needs to be reasonably liquidy as the pasta will absorb quite a lot of the water as it cooks.

The meat sauce I make starts with fried chopped onion and garlic (peeled, squashed and added to almost-cooked onion) and then add a couple of chops. Brown either side of the chops.

Add jar of passata and can of tomatoes, add 2/3 of the empty passata jar's worth of water. Season with salt, pepper, sugar and herbs. Simmer for as long as you can - 2 hours plus is ideal.

After an hour or so, remove chops from pan and take all meat off bones. Cut meat up into small pieces and return to the sauce. Continue to simmer the sauce. The longer you do this, the more tender the meat will be.

Towards the end of the sauce's cooking time, mix together ricotta, a beaten egg, salt, pepper and some chopped parsley - or rocket or baby spinach.

Fill the canelloni tubes with the ricotta mixture - I use a rounded dinner knife for this - it fills around 17 or 18 tubes. There's no need to cram the tubes tightly with ricotta, just as long as the filling goes right through the tubes, it doesn't matter if there are spaces.

Lay the filled pasta tubes in a large baking dish. Leave a bit of space between the tubes as they will swell as they cook.

Add the sauce to the baking dish, lift up each cannelloni tube to allow some of the sauce to go underneath. Cover the pasta and pour over a little extra water if the sauce seems a little thick.

Cover with foil and seal the edges. Cook at 180 C for 25 - 30 mins. Test the cannelloni with a knife to see if it's cooked through.

The cooked cannelloni ready to serve. Top with some cheese and eat with green salad and crusty bread.

Ingredients:
Sauce:
1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic
500 g chops - beef or veal
1 jar passata
1 small tin crushed tomatoes
dried oregano and basil - fresh if possible but dried is fine
1 tsp sugar
Filling:
500 g ricotta
1 egg
salt, pepper, chopped fresh greens such as parsley, rocket, spinach
1 packet cannelloni tubes

Schnitzel/Escalope

A really simple and tasty meal which I cook often, as I know lots of people do.

I first ate this in France as a teenager, and it was the most delicious thing I'd ever eaten! As I was in France it was called escalope and was probably made with veal.

At my local butcher they sell beef cut into very thin slices which is what I normally use.

As it really needs to be eaten straight from the pan, I usually serve it on its own before or after some salad or green vegetables and bread. I think ideally it needs to be the only thing on the plate and in your mouth, so you can really appreciate the delicate flavours.

Dip very thin slices of meat in seasoned flour (dust off excess), then in beaten egg and then fresh breadcrumbs. Lay crumbed meat on a tray and cover. Keep in the fridge for at least half an hour. (This isn't essential, but the crumbs are more likely to stay on the meat during cooking if it's all well chilled.)


Fry in a medium/hot pan in a little oil until crumbs are golden and then turn over to cook the other side. The first cooked side will always be the prettiest for some reason! If you have a good non-stick pan (like my lovely new Scanpan) the job will be very easy.

Serve with a squirt of lemon juice and eat straight away.

Mini Meatloaves

I saw these in Nigella Express and thought we could have them for dinner and have the rest in sandwiches the next day.

They are almost as quick and easy as putting fish fingers in the oven, and much less fiddly than making meatballs.

Mix all ingredients together and divide the mixture into 12 balls. Shape into mini loaves and sit them on a lined baking sheet.

Cook for 30 minutes at 200 C

The cooked loaves (meatloaf never looks pretty) ready to be dipped in lots of sauce and mayonnaise.

Ingredients:
500 g minced beef
500 g sausagemeat (I just used beef)
80 g quick cook oats
70 g (or a huge squirt) A1 steak sauce (I used bbq sauce)
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp Worcestireshire sauce
1/2 tsp salt

Pot-Roast Meatloaf

This recipe is from Jamie Oliver's 'Ministry of Food' which I bought from a charity shop in England. I'd had a flick through it before in a book shop and didn't find it very interesting, but now I own it I realize it's quite a good recipe book.

I've made meatloaf before, in a loaf tin, with not much success, but this one turned out really well. It was very tasty, didn't fall apart when sliced, and had an interesting sauce to go with it. It's a good way to feed a few people with 500g of minced beef.

Heat oven to highest setting. Fry the onion gently for several minutes in oil, stirring frequently, with salt and pepper, cumin and coriander. Put in a large bowl, add cracker crumbs, oregano, Dijon mustard, minced beef and an egg. Mix thoroughly with your hands and form into a loaf shape. Rub with a little oil, and put in a casserole pan or baking dish with a lid (I used my Scanpan casserole).

The uncooked meatloaf ready for the oven

Put meatloaf in oven and immediately turn oven down to 200 C, and cook for 30 mins.

The cooked meatloaf

Meanwhile, in a large pan gently cook onion, garlic, chilli, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, in a little oil, stirring occasionally. Add Worcestershire sauce, chickpeas, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. Bring to boil, simmer for 10 mins. Test and add more seasoning if required (I added a tsp of sugar).

Spoon sauce around the meatloaf and sprinkle over pancetta or sliced bacon and a few rosemary leaves. Return to oven for 10-15 mins.

The meatloaf and sauce ready for serving. One of those tasty, but not very photogenic meals.

Ingredients:
for meatloaf:
1 med onion, finely chopped
1 level tsp cumin (I didn't use this)
1 heaped tsp ground coriander
12 Jacobs cream crackers (or SAOs if you're in Aus), finely crushed
2 tsp dried oregano
2 heaped tsp Dijon mustard
500 g minced beef - good quality
1 large egg
for sauce:
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 - 1 fresh red chilli (or a dash of chilli powder)
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
400 g tin chickpeas, drained
800 g tinned chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp fresh rosemary leaves
12 slices pancetta or a few slices of smoked bacon cut into strips

Beef Casserole

I saw this casserole on 'Nigella Feasts' although I can't find the recipe in the book 'Feast'.

I've never used Guinness or orange in a casserole before, so this recipe appealed to me. Normally I would add lots of other vegetables too, but I decided to follow the recipe exactly today.

In a casserole, fry the onion and carrot gently in some oil for several minutes until softened a little.

Meanwhile, shake the beef in the seasoned flour. Remove the veg from the pan and fry the beef in batches in some more oil until browned (more or less) then remove the beef from the pan.

To the pan, add the water and Guinness, the herbs and the orange zest and juice. Increase heat, add the vegetables and beef and once it has come to the boil, put a lid on and simmer for 2 1/2 hrs either on stove top or in oven at 150 C or so. (Once my Scanpan casserole is heated through I can simmer stews at 110 C.)

Richly flavoured with a slightly bitter tang, although pleasantly so - and it was the first time my children all ate up their casserole without fuss!

Next time I'll be adding more vegies (green beans and sweet potato would be nice).

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
2 large carrots, sliced
1 kg chuck/stewing steak, diced
1/4 cup flour, with salt, pepper, good sprinkling of allspice
1 cup water
1 cup Guinness/stout
1/2 orange (zest and juice)
2 bayleaves, couple of leaves of sage or sprinkling of dried sage

Sloppy Joes

The finished sloppy joe - like 'savoury mince' in a roll

This is a very easy and tasty meal that I've been meaning to make for a while, and reading Coby's blog finally persuaded me to try it. I remember Sloppy Joes from the Roseanne TV show - I think she and her friends open up a shop that serves them.

All you have to do is process bacon, onion, carrots, celery, garlic, parsley and oregano until finely minced, then fry it for 10 mins until soft. Add minced beef and brown it, breaking it up as it cooks. Stir in tomato soup - or if you prefer (which is what I did) the equivalent amount of passata, a slosh of milk and a little sugar - and some Worcester sauce. Put lid on and simmer for 45 mins. Serve in rolls (or as Nigella says: "apply to face")

The finely minced bacon and vegetables frying

The finished sloppy joe sauce

This is a similar idea to hamburgers, but the flavour is quite different. It reminds me of 'savoury mince' - a bit of a 1970s meal I think. I'll definitely be making this again.

Ingredients:

4 rashers pancetta or 2 rashers of streaky bacon
1 small or 1/2 medium onion, peeled and quartered
2 small -medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp parsley leaves
1 tsp dried oregano
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 stick of celery, roughly chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
500g minced beef
1 x 400g can Heinz tomato soup, or same amount of tomato passata, slosh of milk and a little sugar
Good sprinkling of Worcestershire sauce
8 buns or soft bread rolls

Mini Beef Burgers

Mini beef burgers - go well in mini bread rolls

This is one way to make dinner without adding more heat to the kitchen in hot weather, and without having to fiddle around with the barbecue (if you saw our garden at the moment you'd know why I don't want to use the barbecue).

I set up my electric frying pan on a little table outside the back door, and cook sausages or beefburgers for dinner.

As Coby was saying in her blog, mince is useful for feeding several people with not very much money.

Today I was making mini burgers - I sometimes make them normal size and put them in a roll with onion and tomato - but making them smaller means they cook faster, and for some reason less meat goes further - maybe because they're 'cute' and 4 or 5 small burgers look more filling than one big one! We eat them with salad vegetables, bread rolls or sliced bread, and plenty of tomato and barbecue sauce.

There are lots of different ways to make these, but this is how I make mine:

500 g minced beef (good quality, and not the extra lean type or the burgers may be dry)
1 egg
1 good handful of fresh breadcrumbs (I grate frozen white bread)
A good sprinkling of herbs and spices eg. dried oregano, mixed moroccan spices, allspice
A generous squirt of barbecue sauce
salt and pepper

Squish the ingredients together with your hands, form into small patties - about 24, and fry in a little olive oil. (Leaving the patties in the fridge for half an hour or so before cooking them helps prevent them falling apart in the pan.)