Category Archives: British

April 5, 2012

Easter: What to do with all those Hard Boiled Eggs – Baked Scotch Eggs

By 5iveDollarFeasts

I confess. I am a 32 year old man and I still like to dye Easter eggs. Luckily, the last four years I have had my niece to use as an excuse for dying eggs, but I’d be lying if we said I didn’t dye eggs almost every year before that. (Although one year in college we had an Easter beer hunt instead. We all had a different six pack of brew that someone hid around the apartment. Ah, college.)

Of course now that I’m older my eggs usually look more like this:

So, if you either have kids, or you you’re a closet Easter egg dyer you always have more hard-boiled eggs than you know what to do with. Here are some ideas to use up all of those eggs (deep breath): Deviled eggs, egg salad, chef salad, Caesar salad topped with eggs, put a sliced egg on you burger, make some udon or ramen soup and place the halved eggs on top, make a brunch pizza topped with heirloom tomoatoes and sliced eggs (maybe add some capers, lox, sour cream and/or red onion at the end,) serve them sliced over English muffins topped with hollandaise, maybe pickle some eggs if you’re adventurous, Chinese tea eggs, or breakfast mice for the kids. (whew.)

Or you can make my personal favorite, Scotch Eggs. Scotch eggs originate from, you guessed it, Scotland, but are now a traditional pub menu item and are commonly made in the South (of the U.S.) The idea is to make a healthy food like a hard boiled egg as bad for you as humanly possible. First you wrap it sausage, then you bread it, and then you traditional deep fry it.

I tried to make it a bit healthier by baking the scotch eggs. I managed to keep most of the crispiness of the deep fried egg by brushing the scotch eggs with olive during the final minutes of cooking. If you wanted to make you eggs even healthier you could use turkey or chicken sausage in place of pork.

Baked Scotch Eggs

1 lb ground pork sausage (or 1 lb turkey or chicken sausage)

1 teaspoon dried sage

(If you don’t find sausage, you may use ground pork or turkey. Just be sure to season it with salt, pepper, and thyme as well as the sage.)

4 large eggs, hard boiled

flour for dredging

2 large eggs (not hard boiled)

approximately ¼ cup water

2 cups panko breadcrumbs

2 Tablespoons olive oil

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
  2. Mix the sausage thoroughly with the sage (or ground meat with all the spices above) and divide into four equal portions.
  3. Peel the hard boiled eggs, dip them in water and coat them in flour. Wrap each egg evenly in a portion of meat, being sure they are covered completely.
  4. Make an egg wash by beating the raw eggs with the water.
  5. Dredge the sausage coated eggs in flour, dip them in the egg wash and then coat thoroughly in breadcrumbs.
  6. Bake until golden brown on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees; about 30 minutes.
  7. Brush each scotch egg with olive oil and return to the oven for 5 more minutes.
  8. Serve for brunch.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Breakfast, British, Pork, Recipes

March 15, 2012

St. Patrick’s Day – Bangers & Mash with a Scotch Ale Onion Gravy

By 5iveDollarFeasts

Bangers and Mash
I want to be clear. I love Corned Beef and Cabbage, but you probably have you Corned Beef recipe by now if you celebrate St. Patty’s often. But, if you  want something different this year, or, if you’re like me and you throw a huge St. Patty’s party and want more than one option for your guests, or maybe you’re going to a potluck, my Bangers and Mash recipe is one of my favorites. I make it year round.

Bangers are a style of British or Irish peasant sausage that is made with rusk. And since that explains everything nicely, I’ll move on to the recipe.

Bangers & Ma- what’s that? You have know idea what rusk is? Why that would make it a peasant sausage or what that has to do with the name ‘banger’? Oh, I’m sorry, I am shocked that it wasn’t clear.

Well, rusk is basically bread. Specifically a wheat product used in the stuffing of the sausage to help the meat go farther. More rusk, more sausage. Hence, why it was good and cheap for the peasants. Rusk has the tendency to expand while cooking, causing the casing to pop very suddenly, creating a banging sound. To avoid this you should pierce each sausage with a fork several times to let the juices escape a little and keep the sausage from splitting (this is not a good practice for sausages without rusk. The rusk soaks up the juices of the meat, keeping the sausage moist, where piercing a regular sausage would dry it out.)

See, that was simple really. You would have figured it out on your own, right? Right.

Serve your bangers over mashed potatoes (the ‘mash’) and top with a gravy made from beer and carmelized onions. The onions take 50 minutes to an hour to carmelize and cannot be rushed, so while this recipe is not hard, leave yourself a good hour and a half to cook.

Bangers & Mash with a Scotch Ale Onion Gravy

2 Tablespoons olive oil

½ stick (1/4 cup) butter

6 to 12 bangers

4 to 6 onions, sliced pole to pole

2 sage sprigs, leaves removed and coarsely chopped

1 cup scotch ale (Scotch ale is a type of pale ale, but with dark roasted nutty overtones. Often called Wee Heavy or Kilt Lifter)

½ cup chicken stock

salt and pepper to taste

  1. Brown the sausages over medium high heat in the olive oil, 3 to 5 minutes per side. After flipping the sausage, pierce the cooked side of the sausage several times with a fork to keep the rusk in the banger from splitting the casing.
  2. Remove the sausage from the pan and turn heat to low. Add the butter. After the butter is mostly melted, add the sliced onions and a sash of salt (to help them cook faster.) Turn the heat to medium and cook the onions, uncovered, stirring occasionally for 50 minutes to an hour until a rich golden brown. The long you roast the onions, the richer the flavor.
  3. Deglaze (this is a fancy word that means, add liquid and scrape up any brown bits at the bottom of the pan) with scotch ale and chicken broth.  Add sage and then nestle the half cooked sausages back into the pan. Raise the heat to high and bring to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes or until the gravy is reduced by half.
  4. Serve sausages over mashed potatoes and top with gravy. Pair with beer or even a very flavorful white wine.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in British, Holidays, Irish, Pork, Recipes, Sauces

December 1, 2011

Ninja Food: Ninja Men Cucumber and Dill Cream Cheese Sandwiches and Ninja Face Cupcakes

By 5iveDollarFeasts

I live and work in Los Angeles. That means that a lot of my cooking is done for the primary L.A industry: Film. I cook on set most of the time and feed hungry casts and crews.

Recently, I was asked to provide refreshments and snacks for the premiere of an independent movie (aptly screened at Downtown Independent,  which was a lovely venue. If you have a chance, I highly recommend catching a movie there sometime) called Office Ninja written and directed by Bin Lee.

Bin contacted me to me to make some Ninja themed snacks on the cheap so people attending the premiere wouldn’t go hungry until the after party.

My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to keep 200 Hollywood types, on a budget of only 200 dollars, satisfied from 7 until 9 until they could head down the street for the open bar and pizza party . That’s not a Five Dollar Feast, that’s a 1 dollar feast!

While I did this for a Premiere party, I wanted to write a blog about it, because Ninjas will always be popular with kids and adults, and if you ever wanted to throw a Ninja themed party, these snacks would be a lot of fun to serve. Of course, you can just follow the recipes for delicious sandwiches and cupcakes. You need not Ninja-fy them.

I’m not going to lie, it was a challenge, but it went off very well, and the whole event was quite a success (although, the credit for that goes to Bin’s wonderful film…alright, I’m sure the open bar at the after party didn’t hurt, either.) Most of the photos on this page were taken at the event and are courtesy of Brenda White.

While coming up with ideas, I did find a restaurant in New York that has a Ninja Theme, and while I enjoyed learning about a restaurant where the waiters might serve you or assassinate you, the food on their menu seemed a little out of my price range. (I couldn’t afford to buy one grapefruit per person, let alone fill them with dry ice and their own mini swords.)

So, I went a different route. I found these wonderful Ninjamen Cookie cutters on Amazon for $7.99 and ordered them. (Well, they were $7.99, when I bought them.) I had used the trick of cutting sandwiches with cookie cutters for children’s birthday parties before (a little sliced banana and Nutella cut into animal shapes makes a great healthy birthday treat the kids love.) So I used the trick again and made my favorite high tea sandwiches, Cucumber and Dill Cream Cheese, ninja style.

I also wanted a dessert for those with more of a sweet tooth. I like the idea of cupcakes, but transporting 200 cupcakes in my car (I really need a truck) did not seem like a good plan. But then I remembered my mini cupcake pan (I bought it more for making small cornbread cakes.) I’m not really a pastry chef, but I figured even I could create little Ninja faces on them. (Trust me, if I could do this, so can you.)

An important note for delicious, easy and cheap cupcakes: you don’t need to make them from scratch. Just doctor a boxed cake mix. By “doctor” I mean replace the water with buttermilk and add some vanilla. You get a cupcake that tastes home made without the time and expense of starting from nothing.

I also cut some of a Trader Joe’s Wasabi Roasted Seaweed Snacks into Ninja Stars and served them with wasabi crisp peas. Of course, I made plenty of coffee and water as well.

I almost bit off more than I could chew, cooking for 200 people without an assistant (even just snacks and drinks) and I never would have succeeded without enlisting my brother’s help. (Yeah, that’s right. My parents had three boys and we all cook. That’s how real men roll.)

Still, it was worth it to see our logo printed on the red carpet’s Step & Repeat. (That’s the background with all the logos on it you always see celebrities standing on front of.) That’s Bin Lee in the photo doing his best imitation of my sandwich poses.

Cucumber and Dill Cream Cheese Sandwiches

1 stick of cream cheese, softened (alternatively, you can use a package of whipped cream cheese)

approximately ½ cup of plain yogurt or sour cream

2 Tablespoons fresh dill, chopped (or on Tablespoon dried)

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

2 slices of bread

salt and pepper to taste

  1. Mix the dill, cream cheese, yogurt (or sour cream,) lemon juice, salt and pepper together until well blended. Taste and adjust flavors appropriately. (The yogurt or sour cream should only help to thin out the cream cheese, the mixture should still have a cream cheese flavor.)
  2. Peel the cucumber and then slice very thinly.
  3. Layer one side of sandwich with cucumbers and spread the other with the cream cheese mixture.

Ninja Style: Simply cut the sandwich with a Ninja Cookie cutter. Press down firmly and remove the edges.

Doctored Yellow Mini Cupcakes

1 box yellow cake mix (I found Pillsbury mix for $1.07 at Target)

Buttermilk in the amount of water called for on the package

Eggs as directed by the package (you can also add an extra egg for even moister cupcakes)

Oil as directed by the package

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1. Follow the directions on the back of the cake mix box for cupcakes. Replace the water with buttermilk and add the vanilla extract. For mini cupcakes, subtract five to seven minutes from the normal cupcake baking time listed.

Ninja Style: Decorate with Chocolate Frosting below. Add all the colors of food coloring to get the frosting as black as possible to simulate the ninja mask and eyes.

Chocolate Frosting

1 cup butter, softened

3 cups powdered (or confectioner’s) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 Tablespoon Evaporated or Condensed milk (or whole milk)

a pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter)

  1. With an electric mixer or hand blender, beat the butter on high until creamy. Add the vanilla and salt (if using) and blend it in.
  2. Slowly add the sugar a little bit at a time on low speed until all of the sugar has blended in. Increase the speed to high until you have a frosting like texture. Add the milk as you go to help blend the sugar.
  3. Add the cocoa powder on low speed again. Taste as you go. Stop adding cocoa powder when the frosting is chocalatey enough for you.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American, British, Desserts, Sandwiches, Vegetarian

June 9, 2011

Imperial Indian Game Hens

By 5iveDollarFeasts

Enjoy a dish inspired by, of all things, the British occupation of India for $5.34 per person.

There are many great mysteries of the universe. What is a Black Hole exactly? Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried? Why do you always get one regular fry every time you order curly fries? And, finally, how do they come up with the price for Cornish Game Hens?

Seriously, how?

I want to know, because there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind it. Sometimes a pair of hens costs more than fifteen dollars. And sometimes they cost $3.91. No, this was not a clearance price. It wasn’t even a sale price. At least there were no sale signs in evidence on the packaging or in the aisles. And it was the exact same store only a month apart. What can possibly account for this discrepancy in pricing? I honestly believe there are mystical powers at work here. Mischievous supermarket gnomes must sneak out of the deli department and slash the prices of game hens to wreak havoc on the meat department’s bottom line. I can think of no other explanation.

Okay, okay, I’m getting a bit carried away. But the difference in price is no exaggeration. My point is this: identify the items in your local stores that fluctuate in price heavily, and snatch them up when the price drops.  Frozen game hens taste just as good as fresh once they are defrosted (assuming, of course you store them in the freezer properly and don’t allow them to get freezer burn) and will keep almost indefinitely.

This way, the next time you want to make game hens for a nice dinner, you don’t have to pay the non-gnome-slashed hen price. Spareribs, pork chops, and ground lamb are other products I have noticed have some tendency to vary greatly in price from week to week. (Just make sure not to over pack your freezer. Your neighbors might get tired of storing your meats for you.)

After finding the ridiculously cheap game hens, I decided to bring them home, stuff them, roast them in the oven and glaze them.

Major Grey’s chutney is a style of chutney that was created during the height of the British empire (you know when they owned India, large sections of Africa and, I don’t know…the US?) and uses mangoes, raisins and tamarind to get it’s unique flavors.  I happened to have a Trader Joe’s version of this chutney (called Mango Ginger Chutney) in my cupboard, so I decided to use that as a theme for the meal.

I had already used this chutney for a renal friendly recipe I designed for the Live & Give newsletter and decided to modify it for use on the hens.  I used the same curry rub on the hen, then I roasted them. I glazed them with a mixture of the chutney and butter toward the end of cooking. I also added a little of the chutney into the pilaf I stuffed the hens with, giving the whole meal decidedly British and Indian flavors.

Below is the recipe I used to make the game hens.  You can also visit Renal Support Network to view the recipe for just a single chicken breast.

Imperial Indian Game Hens

2 Cornish game hens

1 box of wild rice, rice pilaf, or orzo pilaf (I used the orzo pilaf, again from Trader Joe’s because I had it on hand, but any will do)

1 jar Major Grey’s Chutney (It is a style of chutney, not a brand. I used a very similar Mango Ginger Chutney from Trader Joe’s. Yes, I shop at Trader Joe’s a lot.)

2 Tablespoons butter

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

olive oil

green onions, chopped (optional. I did not use green onions this time, because I was running low on budget room.)

Dry Rub:

1 tsp. Curry Powder

1/2 tsp. Paprika

1/2 tsp. Onion Powder

1 tsp. Garlic Powder

1/2 tsp. Ground Ginger

1/2 tsp. Cumin

salt and pepper to taste

  1. Prepare the wild rice or pilaf as directed on the package. Add 1 Tablespoon of chutney and the optional green onions at the last five minutes of cooking time.
  2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
  3. Prepare the dry rub by combining all the dry ingredients.
  4. Rub the hens with the dry rub and olive oil, (Make sure to loosen the skin from the breast of the hens with your fingers and get a good amount of rub underneath the skin of the hens)
  5. Stuff the hens with your prepared wild rice or pilaf mixture.
  6. Place the Hens in a roasting pan and cover them tightly with foil. Roast at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
  7. Meanwhile, Prepare the glaze by melting the butter into the remaining chutney in a small saucepan. After the butter has melted and the chutney has heated through (about 5 minutes,) add the lemon juice and remove from the flame. (Do not continue to cook after the lemon juice has been added. Lemon juice can become very bitter if overcooked.
  8. After 30 minutes, uncover the hens, return them to the oven and roast them for 15 more minutes or until beginning to brown.
  9. After 15 minutes, spoon half the prepared glaze onto the hens. Return to the oven for 10 more minutes. Baste with the remaining glaze, and then roast 10 more minutes or until the hens read an internal temperature of 160 degrees. Serve the Chicken hens on a plate, passing pan juices on the side.

Again, this recipe works just as well for single bone-in chicken breasts as well, and is quicker to prepare.  You can view the recipe here. If you do not have kidney disease or high blood pressure you may add the salt back into the dry rub, and reduce the lemon juice, if that is your preference.

Accounting: 2 Cornish Game Hens $3.91 +  Trader Joe’s Orzo Pasta Pilaf $1.99 + Trader Joe’s Mango Ginger Chutney $2.29 + 1 bottle of Charles Shaw Pinot Grigio $1.99 + ½ head of romaine (chopped into a salad) $.50 + lemon (still from neighbor’s tree) = $10.68

Comes to $5.34 per person! (I’m sorry, I failed to get it quite under five dollars this time. But, there was plenty extra pilaf for two more birds, so with the purchase of 2 more birds and another bottle of chutney, you could make dinner for four for $4.10 per person. Also the chicken breast alternative can also be more affordable.)

Kitchen Basics Used: curry powder, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, ground ginger, cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil, butter


5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in British, Chicken & Poultry, Recipes

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