My Favourite Meal

This is my favourite meal ( if someone else is cooking, it is a different story )

Shepherds Pie
450g (1lb) Minced Lamb or Beef
450-675g (1-1½lb) Mashed Potatoes
285ml (½ pint) Stock, Oxo does me.
1 Onion
1 Large Carrot (Optional)
Cornflour
Salt and Black Pepper
Pre-heat oven to 180°C: 350°F: Gas 4.
Finely chop the onion and dice the carrot, if used. Or son will not eat it.
Fry minced meat until lightly coloured and remove from the pan and drain well. Add the onion and carrot, cooking gently until the onion is transparent and season to taste. Return the meat, add the stock. Add a little cornflour mixed with a few drops of water, stirring well. Bring to the boil and stir until thickened. Transfer the mixture into a casserole dish. Cover the mixture with an even layer of mashed potato. Cover and bake for 30 - 40 minutes. Then remove lid and cook until top golden or you can grill.

Manchester Tart

600ml (1 pint) Milk 110g
(4oz) Shortcrust Pastry
3 tbsp Raspberry Jam
3 tbsp Custard Powder
2-3 tbsp Desiccated Coconut
2 tbsp Sugar
Pre-heat oven to 200°C; 400°F: Gas 6.
Roll out the dough and line a baking dish. Blind bake (prick with fork and place a piece of greaseproof paper with some baking beans on pastry). Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool. Spread the jam over the pastry base, sprinkle with coconut. Boil the milk and whisk into the sugar and custard powder (follow manufacturers instructions). Or if you are bothered make your own. Pour into the pastry case. Sprinkle with coconut. Hide so you dont have to share.
Eat cold.

Battery farming and cheap chicken for all

I am getting a little bit fed up of people who say we should do away with battery farming. Take Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for example and his Chicken Out campaign . He is trying to persuade everyone to eat free range chicken. This is all fine and good but it is not practical. Our appetite for chicken is insatiable. Half the meat we eat in the U.K. is chicken. Chicken actually outnumber us in the western world by three chickens to every person !!!!

Okay, so battery hens have short lives (often only about 42 days) and their conditions are a bit miserable but they have a good conversion rate i.e the proportion of feed they eat to the meat they produce. This means that chicken is cheap to buy and in plentiful supply.

It means that families can eat healthily even on the lowest budget. It means that we don't need to feed our children on cholesterol filled meat, burgers and junk food because we can provide a healthy diet for them. When we are talking about the welfare of people and the welfare of chickens there is really no contest!

The idea that we should all eat free range chicken is a nonsense. It would take an area the size of the Lake District to be devoted to chicken farming and nothing else! Free-range chicken campaigners should face facts - it just wouldn't work! ( Unless everyone cares to rear chickens in their back gardens!)We need battery farming to feed the nation. No one would want to go back to the old days when the only time you could afford a chicken was at Christmas, if you were lucky.

The same applies to eggs. We need to produce eggs by battery hens if everyone is to be able to afford them and if they are to continue in plentiful supply. Nutitionally, battery-raised eggs aren't much different to free range or organically produced eggs.

So I would say to the "fluffy bunny" brigade who love to be so sentimental about animals that low cost meat is necessary. We farmers have to face facts. We can't afford to be sentimental about the animals we rear or you would all starve!! Farming is a business like any other. The days of having a few hens scratching round a farmyard are long gone.

Face facts, we are running out of fish so we need fish farming, we haven't enough room for free range hens so we need battery farming. Fish, hens and eggs are good, healthy staple food.

Some of the celebrity chefs, such as Jamie Oliver try their best to tell us that organic free range chicken actually tastes better.
Well, here is a recipe we have at home a lot. Try it with a battery chicken - one of Tesco's special offer cheapest - and try it with a really expensive free range organic chicken and you won't be able to tell the difference.

Curried Chicken and Rice

30grams( 1 oz )butter, 4 chicken breasts boned and cut into strips, pinch of salt, ground black pepper, 2 chopped onions, 2 crushed cloves of garlic , 85g (3oz) mild curry paste, 225g (8oz) long grain rice, 3/4 pint chicken stock, 400g can of chopped tomatoes, 340g (12oz) cauliflower florets, 60g (2oz) raisins, 115g (4 oz) frozen peas, 1/4 pint( 150ml )natural yogurt

First you melt the butter in a large flameproof casserole and cook the chicken in it over a moderate heat for about 5 minutes and move them to a plate and season them.

Next , fry the onions and garlic in the casserole until softened. Add the curry paste, rice, stock, tomatoes, cauliflower and raisins and slowly heat until it boils. Then reduce the heat. Cover the casserole and simmer for 15 minutes. You will need to stir it now and again.

Put the chicken back in the casserole, stir in the peas and put the lid on. Bring back to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until the rice is cooked and the liquid has been absorbed. remove from the heat, stir in the yogurt and serve.

You can find more chicken recipes a forum called The Catering Forum . This is a forum for anyone interested in food and cooking and they share all kinds of hints and recipes.
If you are trying to save money on the housekeeping or have very little in the store cupboard try a website called "Not Beans Again" where you just key in your ingredients and they produce a recipe for you.
So, have I changed your mind? What do YOU think?