Bit of a long title isnt it Lou? Yes. But scrambled eggs have always been a minefield to me. I used to spend forever cracking eggs on a Sunday morning, mixing them up with milk and even water as my mum said that was the Italian way. But I just couldnt get it right, the insipid colour, the flowing ounces of buttery milky liquid messing with my toast and creating a soggy rubbish breakfast. I longed for the consistency of the macdonalds breakfast egg – I’m classy me! Or the stoic honesty of the Scottish breakfasts I got as a kid, but no joy. Then one day it just came to me (after a breakfast at Claridges dont you know?!). Just ask a chef. So I did and from there on, my eggs have always been the best. If you’re in need of a dose of protein and not quite so hungover that you need the melting wickedness of a fried egg then this is your best bet. It doesnt bloat you up and it wont make you feel like you gotta walk it off sharpish. This is a good healthy breakfast to have everyday I reckon.

 Ingredients for 1 person:

3 medium-large eggs

A drop of whole milk – literally!

A small knob of butter

Seasoning

Cook:

Crack all your eggs in a SMALL sauacepan, it has to be small so you can get good whisk and spoon action in that space. Whisk up with a fork but not into a frezied froth as this will make the mix too thin. Just fork whisk it until the yolk is mixed up with the white. Add your knob of buuter and that drop of milk and a generous crunch of the salt and pepper grinder. Now have you got 5 minutes? As you need to tend to your eggs. Stir constantly with a metal dessert spoon on the lowest heat. When it begins to catch, just use your spoon to keep dragging it away from the bottom of the surface, never actually letting it catch. Now this is the secret of perfect scrambled eggs, you keep turning that mixture over until it begins to get thick and when it’s got that glossy raw look, take it off the heat and plate up onto your side plate or small bowl with some buttered seed-loaded toast on the side. It’s the slight rawness that gives it flavour and its the richness of the egg because you have not added to it that melts in your mouth. The butter creams it slightly and that bit of milk just does something, I dont know what! I absolutely load it with coarse black pepper and savour every luxurious bite. Absolutely luscious…it beats that sliced blamange egg you get at those buffet counters hey guys?

Lou Prew

Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients:
500g  minced lamb
1 large potato
1 sweet potato
1/4 butternut squash
1 carrot
1 corgette
1 onion
tomato passata
1tsp cumin
1tsp ground coriander
1tsp cayenne pepper
1tsp paprika

Method:
Chop all the root veg into small cubes and set to boil in salted water, meanwhile fry the onions corgette and minced lamb in a little olive oil with half of the mixed spices, once the mince is browned off add some tomato passata and leave to simmer.
Once the root veg is boiled soft, drain and add to the pan with the remaining spice mix sprinkled over and the remaining passata, add a little water if it seems a bit dry, simmer for a further 10 minutes and serve with pitta bread.
If you have a few mouths to feed make a side of cous cous or basmati rice . MMmmmmmm – lets munch

Lamb Fusion

Camembert

Ingredients:
A big round of Camembert
Olive oil
Garlic
Ciabatta or pannini bread
Fresh thyme or basil

Cook:
Turn up your oven to a hearty 180 and let it get toasty. In the meantime pull out your beautiful, awesomely fragrant Camembert from the fridge and unravel it taking care not to discard of it’s packaging or rip it in any way. I like my cheese and if I can, I’ll buy the best that I can afford and this means Waitrose seeing as they have have such a spectacular selection. How smelly do you like it? This is another consideration. Personally, I want my fridge to stink for one day and I want to sense the luxury that awaits my mouth to devour it. Mmmmm, cheeeese!

Jeez! Back to cooking! Yes, so there’s a few that I would opt for…Brie de Meaux, mmmm, Chaumes, or Beaufort, mmmmmm but for just a tasy regular munch, go for a standard Normandy Camembert. Take a sharp knife and make some little cuts in the top of your cheese, place in here some sprinklings of crushed garlic but not too much, gently place some thyme or basil or whichever fresh herb you’ve opted for into those cuts and then like an expert, place your thumb over the olive oil bottle and drizzle over your Camembert. Gently re-wrap your cheese loosely and leave to one side. Take your ciabatta or pannini and cut into delicate, slim slices. Take a clove of garlic and rub it over your slices, again drizzle lightly with olive oil and place pieces around your Camembert on a baking tray. Take your whole ensemble and bake up in that piping hot oven for ten minutes.
This dish is best served up on a generous plate, cheese in the middle, crispy garlic toasts surrounding it and something ace on the telly.
Finally…
Nothing goes better with creamy, indulgent cheeses than a velvety, deep-flavoured and full- bodied red, a Merlot is the perfect bedfellow.
Visit your drawer, pull out the corkscrew and pop open that baby, pour into your wine glass, breathe in, sup up and dip your very French slices into the condensed gorgeousness that is your baked Camembert. Voilà!

Lou Prew

Ingredients:
4 Chicken Breasts
1 Lemon
Half a bulb of garlic
Bunch of fresh sage
Butter
olive oil

Method:
Peel, par-boil and put your potatoes in to roast….
Chop up the garlic and some of the sage heat a pan with a mixture of olive oil and butter and add the chicken breasts, turning occasionaly until browned and sealed with sage and garlic coating the breasts.
Transfer the whole lot into an oven dish and place alongside your potatoes,
Once all cooked through take the juices from the dish and thicken with some cornflour to make a delicious lemony herby gravy and serve.

Lemon Sage Garlic Chicken

Ingredients:

500gms mince beef
1tin of peeled tomatoes
1tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce
1 large red chilli
paprika
cayenne pepper
chilli powder
1 large red onion
2 clove of garlic
marmite

Method:
First dice the onion and finely chop the chilli and garlic keep the seeds if you like it hot.
Then add them to a large pot on a low heat with a little oil sweating the onions untill soft.
Season the meat with salt and pepper add a tea spoon of chilli powder , tea spoon of paprika and a dash of cayenne pepper . Mix together then add the meat to the pot mixing all of the ingredients together then add a table spoon of marmite . keep turning the mince until browned now add the tin of kidney beans and tomatoes, add another tea spoon of chilli powder, 1 1/2 of paprika and a little cayenne pepper.
Simmer with the lid off on a low heat stirring occasionally , the longer you you do this for the better but i would say a minimum of 45 mins.

Chilli by Leebo

Roast Chicken

Ingredients:
1 Whole fresh chicken ethically reared
Four whole onions
White potatoes with hardly any skin (m&s do great potatoes)
Broccoli
Spring greens
Garlic
Butter, seasoning & gravy granules

Cook:
Start your oven, on 180• wash your chicken and trim it’s backside. While washing it, push your palms down on it’s back to break it’s bones and flatten it slightly,this aids an even cooking process and allows more flavour. Slather some vegetable oil all over the tin and heat on hob for a few moments. Put your chicken in the centre of your roasting tin face down and sear on the hob for a few seconds to seal the skin then turn it over and place in oven,setting your timer for 1.15hrs cooking time. This is about average for a good sized chicken and for it to be moist. Lovingly peel your potatoes and as opposed to cutting in half cut them in half longways. It’s more attractive on the plate to have generous sized pots. Par boil the potatoes for about 8mins, drain the spud water into a vessel for later. Drench the pots in vegetable oil, add butter and a generous squeeze of garlic purée and season. Swirl around with a metal spoon until all potatoes are covered. Open the oven and place your glistening, delicious-smelling potatoes all around your chicken. Take your onions peel them and place around the tin.
Trim your broccoli end and then break into sprigs. I always chop the stalk and include this too believing that there’s nutrients in that bit. Place a quarter of water in the pan, cover and put aside. Take your spring greens, wash thoroughly, chop into slices and throw into your saucepan. DO NOT FILL WITH WATER! Biggest mistake people make is to drench their veg with water. Nooo!
Take about 3-4 cloves from a bulb of garlic, crush and throw into your greens. Slip a knob of butter beneath it all then season with coarse black pepper and rock salt. Cover and leave aside. Disappear for a bit, in my case sort out the rows over the gaming in the front room, seek out my 3yr old diva daughter and remove the expensive makeup from her hands and retrieve items shoved down the amenities. Put a stack of washing away then return downstairs to crack on with the Chardonnay. Oh! it’s only 5pm? What the hey! Chin chin!
Back to cooking…
With about 15 minutes till end of cooking time. Boil up your broccoli, bearing in mind there’s hardly any water in there it may sound like it’s dry boiling. Just keep an eye on it. When the water boils away, turn off the gas and let it cook in it’s own steam – steam = flavour. Turn on your greens, let them sizzle and get hot with the help of the butter. If they catch a bit, don’t worry it all adds to the flavour but turn the gas off after 3-4mins and cover. Your letting the garlic, butter and seasoning infuse the delicious al dente veg. When the cooking time is up, take your chick out, transfer onto a large plate and let her rest. Set out plates. When serving up, cut your chicken generously and in simple moves. My family is made up of three fussy herberts but luckily each likes breast or leg. Cut the leg first and literally cut the whole leg including some of it’s undercarriage as that’s where the tastiest dark meat is. When cutting the breast, again cut in one svelte move, you are serving up a whole side. Go close to its spine and cut in one move. Give the wings to whomever wants them. While doing this a lot of juices will have escaped onto the plate, pour these into a fresh saucepan, add your potatoe water from earlier and boil it up, and add your gravy granules to make a tasty gravy. Add as many or as little as you like depending on how thick you like it. Now, serve up your glorious green broccoli next to your chick, lay next to that your beautifully crisp and golden pots, then spoon up your garlic infused greens. Finish your dish by pouring over the steaming hot gravy with all those natural juices. Breathe in all those simple luscious flavours, perfectly cooked veggies and moist succulent meat. You’ll find this to be a hearty and reasonably healthy roast dinner, not just for Sundays I say!

Lou Prew

Pil Pil Prawns, Spanish style

This is more a gumpo than a fine soup.

Ingredients
Carrots and their juice roughly chopped
6 large vine tomatoes
6 chestnut mushrooms finely sliced
6 spring onions sliced
I whole bulb garlic crushed roughly
Tomatoe purée tube
1 large teaCup of olive oil
1 birdseye chilli very finely chopped (more depending on your fire needs)
Enough tiger prawns to feed your family (frozen is fine)

Cook.
Simmer all of the above ingredients (bar the prawns) on a gentle heat until all of your ingredients are softened and cooked through. Add the tiger prawns, stir well and let it all bubble away gently until the prawns are cooked. Ladle up this gorgeous, sumptuous mess into large bowls and serve with warm ripped up baguette. Absolutely delicious, Mediterranean good food, low in bad fats, filling and good for you!
-Lou Prew

Lou Prew from Chis

Ingredients:
1 scotch bonnet chilli
3 cloves of garlic
1 thumb size piece of ginger
1/2 tsp salt flakes
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp ground all spice
1 tsp ground cloves
1/4 nutmeg, grated
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp malt vinegar
2 tbsp molasses or dark unrefined sugar
1 chicken or 1 kilo pork belly (or whatever you decide to “jerk”)
2 tbsp groundnut oil

Jerk Ingredients

Method:
In a pestle and mortar (or if your lazy like me use a spice blender) put the garlic, chilli, ginger, salt, thyme, spices and grind to a paste, then add the vinegar, oil and sugar and a few tbsp water until all combined and a smooth creamy paste.
Score the chicken (or whatever your using so as the paste penetrates deep into the meat) then put into a tupperware container or ziplock bag or a dish covered in cling film and allow to marinate – turning occasionaly for at least 4 hours – preferably overnight.

Jerk Chicken

Cook on a barbeque preferably one with a lid, and for added flavour put some all spice leaves or bay leaves or thyme or all of the above on to the charcoal to create an aromatic smoke (there are pre made smoking chips you can get)

BBQ Jerk Pork

BBQ Jerk Chicken

JD pate

Ingredients:
500g Chicken livers
Small Onion
Few Mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
few sprigs of thyme
2 tbsp Jack Daniels
2 tsp Worcester Sauce
Ground pepper
Sea Salt
Olive Oil
Clarified Butter (or Ghee)
Few Bay Leaves

Method:
Heat a little olive oil in a pan with the thyme and garlic,chop the livers and fry till cooked medium rare and put into the blender.
Then in the same pan soften the onions and mushrooms in some more oil just before they are cooked through add the Jack Daniels and Worcester Sauce and increase the heat.
Add all this to the chicken livers in the blender and pulse. – The more you blend the smother the pate.
Spoon the mixture into a few ramekins or pate dishes and place a few bay leaves and pepper corns on the top.

JD Pate

Then put a few knobs of clarified butter into the pan and melt, pour the melted butter over the top of the pate to seal it.
The butter acts as a seal and the pate will keep for up to 2 weeks in a fridge, however once the butter seal is broken you have about 2 days to eat it.

- ENJOY

Vietnamese Pork

Ingredients :

grease proof paper
tin foil

 pork shoulder   1-2kgs serves 4-6
3 red chillies (finely chopped)
1 onion
finger of ginger 2-4cm
fish sauce 1 table spoon
3 cloves of garlic
light soy sauce 2 table spoons

for the stock:
Cinnamon sticks
red onion
1 Chilli
chicken stock 500ml

Method:
first you start with making a paste for the pork, grate the onion, garlic and ginger into a bowl then add the chillies , fish sauce and soy and.
mix this together until a paste ( potato masher is handy or a food processor makes easy work of this).
once the texture is like a sloppy peanut butter.pat down the pork with kitchen towl to remove excess moisure.Rub the paste into the pork putting the majority of it on the fat on top. then place ino a baking tray.

preheat oven at 180 o

second prepare the stock, you can use a homemade chicken stock if you have it or one of the good stock cube/liquids are fine. add 500ml of the stock to the baking tray  then add two cinnimon sticks , the chilli whole and an onion chopped in half.

cut the grease proof paper to the size of the topside of the pork place on the pork against the paste like a grease proof roof, this is to help the fat crisp.then wrap the foil over the whole thing finishing it wrapped around the tray.put in the oven for 2hours  after 2 hour turn the temperature to 120, remove foil and baste the sides of the pork place back into oven for 30mins or until pork is crisp ( if you have trouble crisping the fat remove crease paper and pop under the grill). take it out of the oven and leave to rest for 15-20mins then serve.drizzle the stock over the pork.

we served ours with roast potato’s and a pineapple salad.

Vietnamese Pork