500g of Diced Lamb (large chunks if cutting from the bone).

2 Rashers of Thick Cut Back Bacon, diced (or basically 1/3 of a pack of bacon)

1 Onion (or Shallots of you’re posh)

2 Garlic cloves crushed

2 Carrots

1/2 a pack of button Mushrooms (or a few normal mushrooms cut into chunks)

250ml of Red Wine

250ml of stock (I use 1/2 beef and 1/2 chicken – it works for me and never have lamb stock around anyway)

2 Limes (or Lemon juice)

Tomato Puree (1 – 2 table spoons)

Salt and Pepper

Rosemary and Thyme

Set up

1 large frying pan to brown the ingredients and then a large casserole dish that can be placed on the hob or a very big pot.

Cut the Carrots and Onion into chunks. Dice the Bacon. Salt and Pepper the raw Lamb (I like to use quite a lot of salt and pepper here, a good table spoon of each). Boil the kettle and stir up the stock.

Ready to go

Heat some olive oil in the frying pan and drop in the Lamb, fry for 5 minutes until browned. Move the Lamb into the casserole dish with a bit of olive oil and leave on a low simmer (which will be more like a sizzle for now).

The frying pan should still have plenty of oil in it and place back on the heat. Add the onion, garlic and the bacon and fry for 5 minutes until the bacon starts to crisp and the onion starts to brown.

Then move the onion/bacon to the casserole dish and stir in with the lamb. Add a heaped table spoon of plain white flour and stir in, this should soak up the excess oil and coat everything in a sticky mixture which means you’re ready to add the liquid. Immediately start pouring in the stock while stiring the contents of casserole dish (but pour slowly to gradually build a sauce from the sticky mess).

You should end up with a reasonably thick brown sauce – time to add in the wine. Just pour in the wine and a heaped table spoon of tomato puree and mix well. This should thin the sauce and now you can turn up the heat a little to bring it to a hot simmer or a low boil.

Here is where I add the mushrooms and carrots to the frying pan to give them a quick blast. After 5 minutes add the remaining veg to the casserole dish, squeeze in the limes and sprinkle in the rosemary and thyme, give it a good stir and leave to simmer for 30 – 45 minutes depending on how impatient you are. It’s worth mentioning that this is no where near long enough if you want really tender lamb, for a dinner party or if you’re trying to impress then increase the liquids to 300ml and leave on the low boil for 30 minutes before adding the rest of the veg then move the casserole dish into the oven for 45 minutes on 180 celcius.

I forgot to mention the chili powder – just a sprinkle as you don’t really want to taste it but it does seem to bring out the flavours.

I’d serve with some steamed broccolli and mashed 0r sauteed potatoes.

So to make this work we need to cheat, the crispiness of these strips actually comes from crisps (UK) or potato chips (US) – the trick is selecting the right crisps to use. This recipe came from my friends in the Bahamas and they used some American crisps I adore called Funyuns, I even brought a bunch of bags back with me so that’s what I’m going to use, in place of these you could probably use any onion ring crisps but I’ll be sure to update this post with options once I’ve had a play. Anyway, back to business…

500g Chicken Breast

2 Eggs

White Flour

1 Large Bag of Funyuns (or equivalent)

Plenty of Oil (we’re going to do our best to deep fry these but you can seive and store the oil for later use)

Table Salt to season

Chop the chicken into strips, roughly 1/3 of a chicken breast. Then you need to set up a little production line for preparing the chicken, I set up 3 plates in a row followed by a wooden chopping board.

Plate 1: Beat the eggs into a yellowy mix along with a spash of water, then pour onto the plate – this will be the first dunking place for the chicken strips.

Plate 2: Cover the plate with plain white flour – this will be where you coat the strips after they’re been dunked in the egg mix.

Plate 3: Use a rolling pin to grind down the crisps in the bag so that there are no chunks left and cover the plate with the ground crisps – this is where you coat the egged and floured strips in yummy Funyuns.

Chopping Board: Season the chicken strips with salt and lay them to rest on the wooded chopping board.

Once you’ve prepared all the chicken strips from plate 1 through to chopping board you’re ready to turn on the magic. I use about 200 ml of cheap olive oil in a small but deep frying pan (about 2cm depth of oil) allowing for 3 strips to be fried at any one time. Heat the oil for a couple of minutes so that it sizzles nicely when you drop in the strips. The strips should take about 3 to 4 minutes on each side but it really depends on the temperature of the oil and the size of the strips, let them turn a golden colour and ensure they are thoroughly cooked but don’t let them burn or turn too dark brown.

It should take about 15 minutes to fry the lot, perfect time to throw some french fries in the oven and check on the coleslaw you made earlier

I’m going to have fun with this recipe and will update soon with the crisps that I try – I think Monster Munch will be my next test!

- 1 x White Cabbage
- 2 x Carrots
- Lots of table Salt
- Ground Black Pepper
- 4 x Limes
- 1/2 cup of Mayonaise
- 2 Tbsp of Whole Grain Mustard

Prepare the Cabbage

Chop the cabbage into fine strips, salt in a large bowl and let stand for 2-3 hours. This removes a lot of the water from the cabbage and provide the consistency you need for good coleslaw

Drain the cabbage of excess water and keep nice and salty (you may even need to add a little more salt at this point).
Grate the Carrots and add to the bowl.
Add the Mustard, Mayonaise and ground Black Pepper, then squeeze in the 4 limes.

Mix up well in a large bowl and let stand in the fridge for an hour to ensure the flavours infuse. Then enjoy with some salty french fries and Crispy Chicken Strips.

Pizza Base (x2)
- 225g Flour
- 100g Grated Cheese
- 100g of Warm Water
- A Sprinkle of Salt (and/or Garlic Salt)

Mix together in a big bowl and kneed until it turns into a ball of dough of about the same consistency. Flour the table surface and roll out into a thin base. You should be able to get 2 thin crust bases out of this dough but this has to go into a frying pan so make sure you have a big pan handy!

Pizza Sauce

- 1x Tin of Chopped Tomatoes
- 2 Tbsp of Tomato Puree
- 1/2 an Onion Diced
- 2 Tbsp of Olive Oil
- 1 Clove of Garlic (or a good sprinkle of Garlic Salt)
- Sprinkle of Salt and Pepper

Dice the onlion and add to a small saucepan with the Olive Oil and Garlic to simmer. Once the Onion softens add the Chopped Tomatoes, Tomato Puree and Salt and Pepper, stir and let simmer down to the consistency you like your Pizza Sauce.
I like my sauce thick so I tend to throw the sauce on first and simmer for about 20 mins, you can also add half a cube of chicken stock to give it a bit more flavour

MAKE THE PIZZA

Pour enough olive oil into a large frying pan to cover the base of the pan and heat just enough to sizzle when you add the Pizza Base. Place the Pizza Base into the pan and heat until the base goes crispy (the dough should start to bubble nicely and the base should go crispy without burning).
Spread the sauce over the base while still in the pan (usually about 1/3 of the sauce should suffice for each pizza base). Add some toppings of your choice (e.g. peperoni, ham, sweet peppers, mushroom…) and grate cheese over the top. I usually go for extra sharp cheddar but this is really up to you.
Take the pan off the heat and throw under the grill for 5 minutes to melt and brown the cheese and slide the pizza base out of the pan ready to serve!

Because you’ll be making 2 pizzas and often only have 1 large frying pan you can slide the first pizza onto the grill shelf once you’ve topped it with cheese and start frying the second base. 5 or 6 minutes should be good to top Pizza number 2 and swap it onto the grill and take out Pizza number 1 to cut into slices (I use a large rustic wooden chopping board for this as it keeps the base nice and crispy). You’ll have to play around depending on the size of your oven but either way you’ll have two great little pizzas to serve and some lush pizza sauce left over for dipping… mmmmm… Pizza…