Bubble & Squeak cakes

Apparently it's going to snow later on this week in England and it's already so cold that my poor wee car is spluttering and coughing when I try to start her in the mornings. With that in mind (the snow not my car) here's a nice winter warmer. Can be an accompaniment or a main event. Nice served with sausages (tescos finest aberdeen angus beef for me please!) or with a poached egg or two. I'm not giving weights of things, you know what to do and how many you are cooking for, I always make this based on instinct and possibly a little greed...

mashed potato
cooked and drained savoy cabbage
onion
garlic
mushrooms
worcester sauce
black pepper
plain flour
olive oil
a glass of sherry

Turn up the heating, put on a jumper and open the sherry. The sherry is to drink as you cook and is not added to the cakes - sherry is like alcoholic central heating. Tescos Muscavado is nicest...

Fry onions, garlic and mushrooms until soft but not coloured. Add few dashes of worcester sauce.

Combined onion mixture with mash and cabbage and black pepper (if not a fan of worcester sauce add salt at this stage too).

form into cakes about the size of your palm.

dust in flour (you can leave this off if you are a coeliac or have a wheat allery but it adds to crispyness

fry in oil, low heat, until crispy and golden brown on outside and until you think inside is hot. If you do with warm mash it's easier, cold mash needs a bit more cooking.

ta dah. cosy from the inside out...

Rustic white bean soup


This is a great one when you don't have a great deal of time or many fresh ingredients in the house.

small red onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
fresh rosemary and sage (very easy to grow in any garden or window box)
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of baked beans
1 tin of canellini beans - drained
1/2 pint of stock - vggie or chicken works best
glug or two of olive oil
drizzle of balsamic

sweat onions, garlic and rosemary in the oil.
Add everything else at the same time
bring to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes
serve with crusty bread.

Now this can have anything else in you want to use up so if you have some mushrooms, or maybe courgette, pepper etc, just chop failry small and add at the sweating stage. the trick is not to have too much going on flavour wise. The baked beans sound weird but the sauce gives a really nice sweetness to the soup and also means there are two different sizes of beans in there which looks nice. You can also make some fried bread crumbs wtth sage, but like very rough and smaller croutons, to scatter on top.

serves about 4 very hungry or 6 normal hungry!

Ok, not so much recipe a day as recipe when I can be bothered!

Things I have enjoyed eating/ drinking recently include;

Starbuck's gingerbread latte - a christmas thing, try it, you might like it...
Pam's ginger chicken - our friend Sunila's approximation of her mother's approximation of her mothers' ginger chicken. I may have to share this one soon, it's stunning.
The black pudding and spiced pear starter I had at Blackfriars cafe the other night - yum.
Dominic's cream of tomato and lemon thyme soup with chilli. great stuff!
Possett. I deffo have to post this soon so you can try it round Christmas time, perfect to drink at twilight, preferably whilst watching the box of delights...
discovered a new chocolate brand called Khocolat (I think) anyway, they do cardamon and orange flavour plain chocolate - divine!!

Recipes soon, I have quite a backlog of things I've cooked recently...