Cheesy Cottage Pie

The humble cottage pie isn't the most glamourous of dishes, but it is the perfect antidote to a miserable Sunday evening. Mash potato is the ultimate comfort food, add melted cheese and juicy beef into the mix and you've got yourself a delicious dinner!

Serves 4-6

500g beef mince

1 onion, chopped

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

4 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tbsps tomato puree

250ml red wine

500ml beef stock

1 tbsp plain flour

A couple of bay leaves

Worcestershire sauce

For the topping:

900g floury potatoes

Butter

Milk

100g cheddar, grated

1. Fry the beef in a little oil for 10 minutes until it has begun to brown. Add the onions, garlic and carrot and cook for a further 10 minutes until softened. Add the flour and fry for a few minutes, next add the red wine. Bubble away until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add the beef stock, tomato puree and bay leaves. Turn the heat down, cover and simmer for 1 hour. Taste and add the Worcestershire sauce and seasoning
2. At this point you want the sauce to be nice and thick, so that mash can sit on top of it rather than just melting in. If you need to reduce it further, remove the meat & vegetables with a slotted spoon, you can discard the bay leaves at this point. Then put the gravy over a reasonably high heat and simmer until it has thickened
3. Meanwhile, boil the potatoes for 20 minutes or until soft. Mash with the butter and milk and season. Pour the meat and gravy into a large dish and top with the mash - make sure you rough the mash up with a fork so it goes nice and crispy. Grate the cheese over the top and bake for 45 minutes. Serve with your vegetable of choice, I went for stir fried cabbage with caraway seeds

Caroline's Chocolate Cheesecake

Well really it's the Hummingbird Bakeries cheesecake, but Caroline was the lovely lady to introduce me to this amazing recipe. Aside from the 1,000,000 calories per slice and the fact that you'll feel like some sort of tragic Bridget Jones character when you buy the ingredients (two big bars of chocolate, biscuits, cream cheese and butter), it really is worth making.

My main recommendation for this recipe is to use a good quality spring form tin. Mine cost a fiver from Argos and was pretty useless as the base didn't fit properly, resulting in butter leaking out all over the fridge. There is now a gross ring of congealed butter on one of the shelves which will stay there until I have the time and the inclination to clean it. Bleugh.

You can find the recipe here

Buttery biscuit base:

200g melted Green and Blacks - yum!

One baked cheesecake:

The finished article:

Chocolate Birthday Cake!

It was lovely Chris' birthday last weekend, so I made him the most chocolaty of chocolate cakes. I don't actually like icing so this cake is perfect, as the topping is basically just melted chocolate. As far as I'm concerned it's the best chocolate cake recipe EVER! I'm not sure where it was originally printed, but it's a hand me down from my madre. Anyway, I command you to make this cake:

For the cake:

165g self-raising flour

165g caster sugar

165g soft margarine

3 large eggs, beaten

1.5 level tsp baking powder

1.5 tbsp milk

2 rounded tbsp of cocoa powder

1. Butter the cake tins and line the bottom with baking parchment. Put the oven on to preheat to 170 degrees
2. In a large bowl blend all the ingredients with a hand mixer until smooth, but do not over mix
3. Divide into the prepared sandwich tins and bake for 25-30 min until a knife comes out from the middle clean

For the topping:

One small tin carnation evaporated milk

115g light muscovado sugar

115g chocolate broken into pieces

55g soft butter

Few drops vanilla essence

1. Combine the sugar and evaporated milk in a small heavy based pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, stirring often
2. When dissolved bring to the boil and then turn down and simmer for 5 minutes without stirring
3. Take off the heat and add the remaining ingredients. Stir briskly until it all becomes smooth and glossy
4. Leave to cool (but not chill) before spreading on the cakes

 Cakes cooling:

Chocolate topping:

Finished cake for Creed:

Sausages with Red Onion Gravy

Despite the fact that it's June, we've had some pretty awful weather recently. Sunday before last was more like a dreary winters day than mid-summer, so I decided to make my favourite comfort meal; sausages and mash. There's something about smooth, creamy mash with crispy, meaty sausages which tastes so delicious. We added butter, milk and wholegrain mustard to the mash which was a great addition. I also made a red wine and onion gravy to go with the mash and served it with plenty of vegetables on the side, perfect food for a cold and rainy day!

For the gravy:
1 red onion, sliced
Knob of butter
1 heaped tsp plain flour
1 tbsp redcurrant jelly
1 large glass of red wine
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
A few sprigs of rosemary

1. Gently fry the red onion in the melted butter until soft. add the flour to the onion and fry for a further minute.
2. Add the red wine and allow to cook down until the alcohol has burnt off. Add the redcurrant jelly, balsamic vinegar and rosemary and leave to gently simmer for 10 minutes
3. If the mixture gets too thick add a little stock or water to loosen it. Serve poured over plenty of mashed potato

 Lots of gravy: