Some of my favourite home made recipes
- Details
- Published: Monday, 20 March 2017 14:10
- Written by Stephen Cassidy
- Hits: 2196
I just love cooking so here are some of my favourite home made recipes. From Thai to Greek and Irish to Dutch.
From the age of eleven I was cooking regularly with my mother in her kitchen. At sixteen I started working as a butcher's apprentice on the famouse Moore street in Dublin city center. After 7 years I left to go abroad and for the next 14 years I worked in restaurants around Amsterdam.
When the internet came around I started working in the IT and have worked as IT manager, webdesigner and conference photogragh for many years. All through the years I have visited many coutries and learn't to cook a wide range of recipes. I just love cooking and taking photographs so below I have photographed some of my most favourite tastes.
You can see all my recipies on Facebook @stephenscooking or follow @stephenscooking on Twitter
Yesterday I decided to make myself scones. I then thought clotted cream and jam would be good, but in Holland you cannot just buy clotted cream. The Dutch have recently learned from the High Tea rage what clotted cream is, but still I cannot find it in the shops. 
Your going to need surprisingly very little to make the scones: 230 grams self rising flour. 110 ml milk. 40 grams butter. 30 grams sugar. pinch of salt. 1 teaspoon of vinegar. 
Cut up the butter into small cubes and add them to the flour. Mix the butter with the flour using your fingers to get it into a sandy texture. Now add the salt and sugar and mix them in. 
Pour the vinegar into the milk and add it into the mixture. A few years ago I read a reply from someone in a forum about adding vinegar to dough to make it crumbly. It really does work. Many years ago when I worked in restaurants we used to make a sort of sour dough for American biscuits. When I had no sour milk I used to use vinegar with milk. 
And mix it with a fork. You do not need to knead this or over mix it. Just get it to all stick together and it's ready to roll out and cut. 
On a flour covered surface roll lightly while keeping your dough around 1,5 to 2 cm high. Now is a good time to set your oven to 225 degrees and let it get hot. 
If you have a proper cookie cutter great, but I only have a small drinking glass. The problem with using a glass is, it misses the small air hole making cutting dough much easier. Always try and cut as close as possible to the sides and the last cut scone. You can take all the bits and roll it out again to make an extra 1 or 2 but do expect less quality, as rerolling with tighten your dough. 
Put the scones on cooking paper or a greased tray and brush with milk. When you have brushed them with milk they need to go straight into your PREWARMED oven at 225 degrees C for at least 15 minutes. 
Making imitation clotted cream. There are various methods for making your own clotted cream. In a lot of countries it's very hard to find if you can find it at all. I read a recipe where a lady puts 4 liters of cream in her oven for 12 hours to make clotted cream. For this recipe you will need no cooking just: 80 grams of crème fraîche, 60 grams of mascarpone and no oven. Just mix and that's it. 
Put the crème fraîche into a small bowl and gently mix it loose. You really do have to do this slowly. Now do the same for the Mascarpone and gently add them both together. I then get a tablespoon and put it under the hot tap for 20 seconds and just gently turn the mixture a few times to let it lightly melt the two together. You will find that if you mix it too much that it gets loose and doesn't look that good. 
It should look something like this 'imitation clotted cream', heavy cream or Devonshire cream. I do, as one should apologies to any people from Devon who would find anything but the original cream real. I have found that most Turkish shops sell another good alternative called Kaymak. 
When the scones are ready and you have your clotted cream, the only other ingredient you need is... 
Jam. 
That's it... Fresh baked scones with homemade clotted cream - surprisingly nice.
Special for vegetarians this colourful fresh spicy bean salad. Goes well with a potato salad on a warm day. 
You will need the following:
1 tin of Black eyed peas, 1 tin of corn, 1 tin of chick peas, 1 tin of kidney beans, 4 small tomatoes or one large one, 1 small onion, 1 lime, half a bushel of coriander, 2 green chilli peppers, I'm using red, 1 tablespoon of honey, 6 or 7 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 red paprika, Salt & Pepper. 
Drain and rinse of all the tins of peas and beans then mix them all in a large bowl. I usually mix this sort of stuff using one of those spoons with a hole in it. The holy spoon I call it. 
Chop you chillies into small chunks. 
Chop the paprika into small pieces. 
Same with the tomatoes chop them up into small blocks. 
And again with the onion, chop them into small pieces. 
Cut your lime and coriander leaves. 
Now just mix it all together and squeeze the lime juice and add the olive oil. Now it's time to add salt and pepper and give it a good mix. 
When it's time to eat take it out of the fridge and give it one last mix around before serving. Mexican spicy bean salad. 
I was standing in the supermarket listening to two 20+ year old girls discussing, if they buy pancake mix in a bottle would they be able to make them! Shame on their parents for not at least teaching them the basics of cooking. You always need to have a packet of plain flour in your cupboard, as a basic food stuff or as survival foods. (for students trying to survive). 
Ingredients: 100gm flour, 1 egg, 300ml milk. 
Weigh your flour, 100gm. 
Add an egg. 
Add 300ml milk, I prefer full fat milk it's better for cooking. 
Mix the ingredients well with a fork or mixer. 
The trick is to have a really hot pan, most pancakes go wrong because the pan is not hot enough. I'm using an iron pan, you can use not stick but I try and keep away from the chemical layer 
Pour the pancake mix slowly into your pan while turning the pan at the same time, keep the layer thin. 
You can see from the edges when it's time to turn your pancake. Try shaking the pan back and forth to loosen the pancake and when it's ready flip it over. 
The second side will fry quicker than the first side so keep an eye on it. It's a good idea to turn the pancake another time on each side to crispen up the edges and dry out any missed mix. You will know when it's ready as it will just slide around the pan. 
It really is a lovely soup that warms you up and fills your belly. Snert is usually eaten with dark brown rogge bread or slices of brown bread. This is the type of soup you could make the day before as it thickens up to a level where you will need to add more water. 
Start with 1 ltr of water - 250gm split peas - 1 carrot - 1 onion 1 or 2 small potatoes - 3 slices of bacon - half a leek 3 spare ribs - half a celeriac or turnip rooted celery - half a bunch of celery leaves - smoked sausage - brown bread - salt and pepper if needed. 
For 4 to 6 servings: Place all the ingredients into your boiling water, just leave the spare ribs as they are you don't need to trim or cut the meat off. You can now let this simmer for about 1,5 hours, you need to cook it until the peas are totally soft. What I actually done on this occasion, due to shortage of time was to cook it for 30 minutes and then put it into my pressure cooker for 25 minutes. 
Start with boiling your water and cut up all the ingredients into small blocks. Keep the sausage, celery leaves and bread aside until we are nearly finished. 
When your soup is nearly ready take out the spare ribs and trim off all the meat. Remove the grizzly and fatty bits and then cut them eat into small pieces and place it back into your soup. 
You do not have to follow this step but I like to get the food mixer and give it a 30 second zap. It brings out the green colour of the peas and makes it less like stew and more like soup. 
Cut up a bunch of your celery leaves and a add them to the pot. Now cut your sausage into thin slices and add it also to the pot. It's good to leave it on simmer for another 15 minutes to soften up the leaves and get the juices out of the sausage. 
You can see that giving it a zap with the mixer bring out the green colour. 
The summer is behind us and we need warm foods. Yesterday I made red Lentil soup. It's a really simple easy and cheap recipe for any time of year. (vegetarian dish) #soup #vegetarian 
To make a medium sized pot of lentil soup I use 250 gr dried lentils, a tin of tomatoes or 6 fresh tomatoes, 1 large onion, 2 medium sized carrots about 200gm, 1 tbs tomato puree, 2 vegetable stock cubes for 1 ltr water, from the garden I used a few sprigs of time, parsley and celery leaves, salt and pepper. And that's about it. 
Dice the onion and carrots and add them to a medium sized pot with approximately 1 to 1,5 liters of boiling water. Add the stock cubes and leave it on a low heat simmering for 40 minutes. 
After the soup has been simmering for 40 minutes add the tin of tomatoes, some pepper, and a spoonful of tomato puree and then taste it to see if it needs salt. You might not need salt as the stock cubes contain enough sodium for 1 ltr. Take out your blender and give the soup a good 30 seconds to 1 minute whizz. It should turn orange. 