HYWEL'S COOKERY PAGE

Chocolate Fondue

300 g Milk chocolate (Swiss works well, Galaxy is great, Cadbury's isn't so good)

60 g sweetened cooking chocolate (with Cadbury's use Bournville instead, you can use that for the others too)

125 ml Whipping Cream

65 ml Rum (optional)

Probably serves 4, more after a big meal.

Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl placed over a pan of gently boiling water. It is better if the base of the bowl doesn't touch the water; if it does you'll have to stir more vigorously to make sure the chocolate doesn't get burnt. Once the chocolate has mostly melted, add the cream and the rum. You can use an electric fondue or slow cooker if you prefer but the first time you do it watch it like a hawk to make sure the chocolate doesn't burn.

Serve by putting the pan of water with chocolate bowl on the table.

Serve with fruit (strawberries, slices of kiwi fruit, chunks of banana and fresh pineapple (not tinned!), melon and cherries are popular) and chunks of slightly stale vanilla sponge cake to dip in the chocolate. The sponge has to be a little stale in order to make sure it doesn't disintegrate!

Don't even begin to think about how many calories there are in this.

Satay Sauce

You can buy various sorts of Satay sauce but it is much easier- and nicer- to make your own.

1 tablespoon lemon juice (fresh is best but Jif lemon will do)

1 squirt of garlic puree or 1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce

4 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

pinch of salt to taste

Mix the ingredients in a bowl or right there in the cooking pan. Add a splash of cold water then heat, fairly gently at first, stirring to break up the clumps of peanut butter. When it is all starting to get a bit dry, add more cold water, at some point the texture of the sauce will change completely and the peanut butter will sort of dissolve in the water. Turn the heat up full and stir continuously, until the sauce thickens. You can do this several times, and it doesn't matter if the sauce gets a few brown burnt bits at the edges as these just add piquancy.

Works well with prawns (stir fry some onions and peppers or carrots in a frying pan or wok, add two cups of frozen peeled and veined prawns and the sauce ingredients. Cook until the sauce thickens; the prawns should have cooked to perfection without drying out at about the same time the sauce thickens).

Also works well with chicken.

Lime and Coriander

Juice of 1 lime

2 teaspoons of soft brown sugar

2 tablespoons light soy sauce

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 handful of fresh coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Mix all the ingredients together and use as a marinade or cooking sauce.

Works exceptionally well with grilled or stir fried chicken or turkey, and as a marinade for barbecued chicken kebabs. For indoor kebabs, marinade the chicken in the sauce (ideally overnight but 20 minutes will do if you are in a hurry). Put the chicken in a baking tray with cherry tomatos, mushrooms, peppers, thick-sliced onions, courgette, etc.. and cook under a high grill truning every five minutes or so until everything is a nice brown and the chicken is done, or place in the oven at gas mark 7 for about 20 minutes.

Pork and Cucumber

(based on one my Mum used to cook- thanks Mum!)

2 lean pork fillets, fat trimmed off

1/2 cucumber, diced

2 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

1 teaspoon cornflour mixed with 3 tablespoons of water for thickening if desired

Stir fry the pork in a wok or frying pan with a little oil and the light soy sauce. When the pork is browned all over, add the cucumber and stir fry vigorously. Add the dark soy towards the end. Stop when the pork is just cooked and tender; do not overdo or it'll be tough. Add the cornflour and water mixture gradually to thicken the sauce if desired. Serve with rice.

Hywel's Apple Chicken Casserole

Serves 6

One 2 1/2 lb chicken

Handful of new potatos

Handful of small sweet parsnips, sliced

1 onion, chopped

2 small eating apples, chopped

1/2 pint of water

2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons of cider vinegar

3 tablespoons of apple juice

1 tablespoon of apple brandy (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

Cook the chicken for 1-1.5 hours on gas mark 5 in a casserole dish in the oven, with the potatos, parsnips and onion in the bottom of the tray.

Boil up the water and other ingredients, boil on the hob for a few minutes. Skim the fat off the juices of the chicken. Add the apple mix and cook in the oven for a further 30-60 minutes.

Serve with bread for dipping.

You can add coriander leaves to give a more exotic taste, or use cider instead of water for a much more robust winter meal.you may need to add a bit more sugar if you use dry cider; taste it and see.

Spare Ribs with Maple Syrup Sauce

1 kg of spare ribs with lots of meat on

125 ml maple syrup (the genuine stuff is infinitely better than imitation maple flavoured glop)

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon of tomato puree

2 tablespoons of lemon juice (fresh is better but Jif will do)

1 teaspoon mustard (English or French according to taste, or wholegrain if you like)

Cook the ribs in the oven for 30 minutes at gas mark 6; drain the fat then add the sauce ingredients. Cook for another 30 minutes, turning and basting the ribs occasionally. If you are lazy you can just add the sauce straight away; the juice will taste better but will be fattier and will probably be more watery too. You can thicken it at the end by pouring it out into a frying pan and boiling vigorously for a few minutes to boil off some of the water.

The length of time this dish takes to cook is critically dependent on how big the ribs are and how well they are arranged in the cooking tray- be careful, test them regularly.

Simple Sweet And Sour Sauce

3/4 tin of pineapple chunks (or use fresh pineapple ideally)

1 tomato, chopped

2 tablespoons malt vinegar

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 tablespoon cornflour

3 tablespoons water

Put sugar and vinegar in a pan, heat and stir until sugar has dissolved. Add tomato and pineapple, cook gently for a few minutes until the flesh of the tomato disintegrates into the sauce. If it gets too dry add a splash of water. At the end, stir in a little of the cornflour and water mix, bring to boil stirring, keep adding cornflour&water mix until it is thick enough for you.

Serve with rice or noodles and chicken, fish or pork; chicken and cod in batter works really well and makes a very simple but tasty meal.

Hywel's Famous Mushroom Soup

6 big field mushrooms, chopped

1 oz butter

1/2 pint milk

1/2 pint water

1 small onion, finely chopped

salt & pepper to taste

1 tablespoon cornflour dissolved in a little of the milk

Stir fry the onions over a very high heat in the butter until they burn and go a bit brown. Add salt, pepper and mushrooms. Cook over a medium heat, covered until the mushrooms start to sweat their juice. Add the water, cook for five minutes. Add the milk, bring to the boil, simmer until the mushrooms are all soft and the soup has gone really brown. Stir in cornflour mix and heat until thickened; if soup is still too thin add more cornflour but as walys mix with small quantity of liquid before stirring in to avoid lumps.

Serve with fresh-baked garlic bread.

The key to this soup is LOTS AND LOTS of mushrooms. Your cooking pan should be almost full of mushrooms before you start cooking!

Goan Fish Curry Rice

Picked this idea up when we were on holiday in Goa; I have modified the recipie a bit to include only ingredients from our local Tescos!

4 chunks of white fish (cod, coley, haddock, etc.)

3 cups of frozen prawns OR a bag of mixed seafood (mussels, calamari, prawns, etc.)

1 red pepper

1 onion

Sauce:

3 green chillies, deseeded

chunk of fresh ginger, roughly chopped

4 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon coriander (dried)

1/2 teaspoon tumeric

1 tin of coconut milk (400 ml?)

1 cup of water

salt and pepper to taste

Put all the sauce ingredients in the food processor and blend. If you don't have a food processor just crush the garlic and ginger and chop the chillies then mix everything in a bowl.

Stir fry the red pepper and onion in a little oil until slightly burnt at the edges. Add the sauce. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, to reduce the sauce a bit. Add the fish, cook until fish is just done but don't overdo or it will get tough.

Serve with white rice or white rice & wild rice mix.

I am a bit of a curry wuss, so you may wish to add a couple of red chillies as well.

Salmon Ciabatta Salad

2 salmon fillets

Iceberg lettuce and/or bag of mixed salad lettuce

Generous handful of fresh coriander leaves, torn apart by hand but no need to chop

handful of cherry tomatos

Part-baked Ciabatta bread (any other sort of fresh bread would also work)

Grill the salmon under a high heat, turning occasionally. If necessary, reduce the heat to allow it to cook through properly.

When it is cooked, remove the skin and roughly divide into chunks with a fork. Mix with the salad, coriander leaves and cheryy tomotos. Eat with your fingers with the ciabatta. Yum!