Fred's Ultimate Sandwich: BLT with SGD

I want more Ultimate Sandwiches! (Thanks to Hannah for the idea too)

This is the Ultimate Sandwich of my 9 year old son. I am glad I was able to take a picture which captured every ingredient. This is essentially, a BLT with added sausages, and garlic dip... so starting from the bottom we have "lettuce" (although in this case, it's watercress and baby spinach), garlic dip, crispy bacon, sliced tomatoes, and sausages. At the time of writing, he is demolishing it with fervour ..

Fred's Banoffee Cheesecake

My son wanted to adapt a recipe for lemon baked cheesecake, so we omitted the lemon and added mashed bananas to the mixture. After it had baked and cooled, we just drizzled toffee sauce over it, and served with a dollop of sour cream.

I suppose, adding more sliced bananas and/or chocolate in some form or another would also be good.

Meatball and Butter Bean Stew, with Mash and Creamed Leeks

Another gorgeous, steaming, savoury consoling bowlful of joy! I made this stew much as I always do. Take care to use some good stock. Stir in flour at the beginning when you are frying / sweating the vegetables, this will help it get nice and thick. Let it cook very slowly, for a lonnngggg time. I made my meatballs using a method picked up from my friend Kirsty's mum: add a handful of dry stuffing mix to the mince, and an egg. Mix well with your hands and form walnut-sized balls. Just drop them in before it all goes in the oven. The stuffing mixture seems to season them perfectly without taking over (you would never guess it was there) and also keep them nice and firm so they don't fall apart. Finally I added a tin of butter beans (plus their juice) about an hour from the end.

For the sweet, buttery side-dollop of creamed leeks (something I remember my Nan making, I think) I cooked sliced leeks very gently, not letting them brown, in butter for about half an hour. I then added a spoonful of flour, stirred it in, and gradually added splashes of milk and stirred until I ended up with soft leeks in creamy sauce.

Chicken Korma

This was made in a similar style to the chicken tikka masala I did last year.

Fry 6 large onions slowly until very soft. Add half a jar of korma curry paste, and dollops of ginger & garlic paste. Cook it all for about an hour, until very soft. Add a tin of coconut milk, then blitz with a stick blender. Add water to dilute, if too thick. Add about a cupful of ground almonds, and a cupful of cream. Add salt to taste, and sweeten with a spoon or two of sugar.

I made chicken tikka pieces to add to the basic sauce. We ate it with rice, bread, and a side dish of potato, chickpea & spinach.

Paella For My Valentine

Check out the love-heart pieces of red pepper! The paella contained turkey, sweet chilli meatballs (minced pork, mixed with a dollop of sweet chilli sauce) and the prawns cooked in garlic butter were added at the end. Add a squeeze of lemon too.

Meatball & Cannellini Bean Stew, with Cheesy Mash

Cauliflower Cheese

Always make more sauce than you think you should, and put more cheese in than you think is sensible.