Boys Don't Cook

Jambalaya style One Pot  Before I even get started here I want to make it very clear I have no claim to Creole/Cajun-American, African, French, Spanish or any other cuisine that this dish has its colourful roots in. I just know it tastes great, is moderately healthy, and is a quick and hassle-free dish to always have in your back pocket! The name literally means mix up or ‘jumble’ - the dish has culinary historians connecting it with Jolof Rice, Stews, and even Paella, and as such the ingredients vary wildly.  My take uses ingredients you would also find in Valencia style Paella, simply because that’s the things I most often have in the fridge, but you can swap and change things as you like. Most sausages could replace the chorizo (although add the paprika back), and garden peas could be swapped for black beans , or okra. Oh - I’m going to say “Dutch oven” in this one, maybe, this is an Americanism I think that I’ve started using, I mean a Crock Pot, or large heavy-based, enam...

  Carbonara! I have it on good authority, from literally every Italian I have ever asked the question of (or taken to a UK based pasta restaurant for that matter!) Italian Carbonara sauce should NOT contain cream, milk, or any of the stuff that supermarkets put in the suspiciously chalk-white ‘carbonara’ sauce.  In fact it should have four ingredients: pasta, eggs, parmigiano cheese, bacon I had absolutely no idea about this, I turned my nose up at carbonara as a child because I didn’t like creamy sauces (I was a real problem eater, maybe because I didn’t know what went into food?) I didn’t like eggs, I didn’t like… well you get the idea.) It was actually the wonderful folks over at Two Chubby Cubs that opened my eyes to a real Carbonara. When I was trying to lose weight by sticking to the Slimming World diet. I swear I wouldn’t have even been able to even start that program without their brilliant blog, and I did lose a little weight as a result, but you can’t diet forever! ...

  Three's a party! One of the things I was very surprised to find when I started learning to cook, mad scientist style (throw things together, and inflict them on my long suffering wife/friends/family) is that behind a lot of global cuisine is a base of three basic ingredients, and that once you get started with these as a base, they drive almost everything you're cooking, from British stews, Italian ragu, Mexican Chili, even Indian cooking.  Most cultures have evolved some version of what I call the Holy Trinity (pardon my blasphemy vicar!) but is actually called --in French cuisine-- a Mirepoix (“mear-pwoh”, is how I say it, but don’t take my word for it). This is a base of three* (sometimes more) diced vegetables that can form the starter for a huge range of dishes and sauces, and more interestingly; every culture has their own take on this principle (even if they don't have their roots in Cordon Bleu ideas), usually in a ratio as: twice as much of part A as parts B and ...

Lets get saucy!  A lot of common 'white' sauces derive from a technique of combining liquid fats, with flour to form a Roux - then gradually stirring in liquid, to form a thick sauce. Lets start with the Béchamel sauce, the jumping off point for a host of classic (read: French) sauces

Ahhh B... Gravy!  Gravy is a staple of English cooking, but the basics aren't so much different from a "Roux" - you'll use to make the base of 'White' sauces, This method can even be adapted to make US style 'Biscuit' Gravy Everyone told me I needed it, but no one showed me how to make gravy...  If you believe the adverts you put a popular stock cube into hot water and a 3-piece dinner appears by magic.  Surprisingly, it's not that simple, but it’s also not as hard as you’re made to think, as it turns out.  Gravy (at least as I understand it, and I'm a boy who doesn’t cook),  is a rich meat sauce, served with a lot of British dishes, made of meat and vegetable juices.  My favourite way to make gravy is to make it AS YOU COOK... so while you have the veg, the meat, and anything else browning off in the pan that’s the best time to make magic happen: English Savoury Gravy Ingredients: 3 tbsp plain flour (corn flour will work but you will need abou...