I think I have always loved Porcupine Meatballs. They are so called because the raw rice that you mix into them swells when they are cooking and looks like little prickles sticking out all over when they are done!
Like little porcupines. I can promise you there is no real porcupine in these! I do know some people eat porcupine, but not me!
Ordinarily Porcupine Meatballs are cooked with a tin of tomato soup. This is very old school and probably the way our mothers and grandmothers made them.
Today I decided to mix things up a bit and give them a BBQ sauce to bake in, with MOST delicious results. We love, LOVE BBQ!
These meatballs are so easy to make. You simply mix everything together in a bowl and shape into balls.
There is no pre-cooking of anything involved You don't need to cook the rice first. You don't need to brown the meatballs first, and because they are made with rice, they are also gluten free.
The sauce is also very easy to make. You just whisk everything together and pour it over the balls. No pre-cooking involved there either.
And, if you use gluten free ketchup and mustard, the sauce is also gluten free, making for a totally gluten free, delicious entree!
I looked to my mother for inspiration with the sauce. She always used to cook leftover ham in a similar sauce, for sweet and sour ham.
I largely leaned on that when making up my sauce. I didn't add any herbs to it like she always did, however.
Wait, I lied . . . there is a bit of dry parsley in the meatballs. I have used grated onion, but you could just as easily use onion powder.
Once you have made these a few times you can feel confident in making them your own. You can try new things, making adaptations.
Just form the meatballs, pour over the sauce, cover with foil and bake. Its as simple as that.
I like to uncover them for the last fifteen minutes to colour them up a tiny bit. It helps them to brown a bit nicer and gilds the lily so to speak.
They are absolutely flipping delicious! I kid you not. I think I am going to throw out the tomato soup recipe and make them like this from now on!
Out with the old and on with the new! Not all change is bad. These totally taste better than the originals!
I just love it when I experiment with recipes like this and they turns out so successfully. They don't always. Sometimes I have some pretty spectacular failures. T
hat's the name of the game. When they do work out, however, all I can say is WOW! I hope you will try these tasty concoctions! I think you are going to love, LOVE them!
*BBQ Porcupine Meatballs*
Serves 4
Meatballs:
500g extra lean ground beef (1 1/4 pound)
1/4 tsp paprika
180ml water (3/4 cup)
60ml cider vinegar (1/4 cup)
2 TBS regular BBQ Sauce, your favourite brand
50g soft light brown sugar (1/4 cup, packed)
1 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Preheat the oven to 190*C/375*F/ gas mark 5. Have ready an 11 inch by 7 inch baking dish. Set aside.
Whisk together all of the sauce ingredients until smooth. Pour into the baking dish.
Lightly mix together all of the ingredients for the meatballs. Gently shape into 12 meatballs. Place into the baking dish, turning to coat them in the sauce. Cover tightly with foil. Place onto a baking tray (just in case it boils over) and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour, uncover and bake for 15 minutes longer, or until the rice is tender. Serve hot.
I served these with some baked jacket potatoes and English peas. They went down a real treat! I just know they are destined to become a favorite with you as well!! Bon Appetit!
I think I have been carrying on a love affair with peanut butter my whole life. I come by it honestly. My father also loves it. My bedtime snack of choice has always been a slice of bread or toast (whole wheat these days) and peanut butter, and I can remember as a child when my mom was cooking the Sunday morning bacon and eggs for the rest of the family, I chose to have peanut butter on toast with my bacon instead of eggs.
These are gorgously tasty cookies and quite different than the usual peanut butter cookie. You should smell them when they are baking!
The recipe is adapted from a cookery book entitled Canteen, Great British Food, and makes only 15 to 20 cookies. That is not a problem from where I am sitting. We are a small family and I am not supposed to be eating things like this.
Oh the smell though . . . when they are baking. Absolutely Heavenly! Bliss! Actually as far as biscuits go, although quite high in sugar (most cookies are), they contain healthy carbs in the way of oats and whole wheat flour.
The dough is a bit sticky when you go to roll it into balls. But not so sticky that it is impossible to work with. Just roll them and put them onto the baking tray. Do leave plenty of space in between as they do spread a LOT. I baked only 8 at a time, spread out on a medium sized paper lined tray.
The original recipe called for a bake time of only 8 to 10 minutes, but I found that to be far too short. I baked them for 15, which was just perfect. They were crunchy without being hard, and having just a tiny bit of chew in the middle. The peanut garnish on the top is my own addition. These are great!
*Oaty Peanut Butter Cookies*
Makes 15 to 20
60g plain wholemeal flour (7 1/2 TBS wholewheat)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
75g porrige oats (scant cup)Optional - a few whole salted peanuts to garnish each cookie
Preheat the oven to 165*C/325*F/ gas mark 3. Line a large baking tray with baking paper. Set aside.
Cream together both sugars and the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the remaining ingredients, mixing well together.
Roll in your hands into walnut sized balls and place spaced well apart on the baking sheet. Flatten slightly and top each (optional) with a few more salted peanuts.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown on the edges. Leave to cool on the baking sheet for 15 minutes before scooping off onto a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat as necessary until all the cookies have baked. Store in an airtight tin.
If you are looking for a great cookie to bake for a weekend treat, or to pop into the kids lunch boxes next week, or even just to enjoy with your morning cuppa, and you love peanut butter as much as I do, you can't go very far wrong with these tasty biscuits! Crisp, sweet and salty, they go down a real treat! Bon appetit!
My husband is a very old fashioned man with very old fashioned tastes. If I want to make him extremely happy all I have to do is to make him a Rice Pudding. He adores rice pudding more than any other dessert execept for maybe apple pie and custard.
He is not overly fond of lemon desserts but when I saw this recipe for a Lemon Rice Pudding in a book I have called The Vicars Wife Cookbook by Elisa Beynon, I really wanted to give it a go. It sounded really nice and it was dead simple.
She won a cookbook deal in a Waitrose competition way back when I was still working at the Manor, and this book was the result of that. I have had the book for quite a while now and I am ashamed to say, this is the first time I have cooked a recipe from it. This pudding is an adaptation of the one in this book.
I really need to spend some time going through the book and seeing if there is anything else I might want to cook from it. It has never really been one of my favourites. Sadly today I discovered that she actually passed away in 2015. Its a really tragic and sad story. She was only 45.
Back to the pudding it is everything that a good rice pudding should be . . . it is rich and toothsome . . . comforting and the lemon flavours are an exciting twist to an old favourite. Even Todd who does not normally like lemon desserts said it was delicious.
It couldn't be any simpler to make. Short grained rice gets stirred together with whole milk and single cream (half and half). . . some sugar and lemon zest . . . and then baked long and slow in a low oven, giving it a stir every now and then. I used Paella rice because that is what I had and it worked very well.
At the end of it cooking it still looks quite thin, but you stir some lemon curd into it, either homemade (if you have it) or a good quality store bought one . . . and it magically thickens up so that it is just the right thickness. this is rich and lemony. I only had one taste and I could tell that this will even be fabulous served cold from the refrigerator. Todd practically licked the bowl clean!
*Lemon Rice Pudding*
Serves 4 - 6
Preheat the oven to 150*C/300*F/ gas mark2.
Stir the rice, cream, milk, sugar and lemon zest together in a 1.2 litre/1 1/4 QT shallow baking dish. Place into the oven. Bake for 1 1/4 hours, stirring in the skin ever half hour. It will not look overly thick at the baking time, but don't worry about that. Stir in the lemon curd and more sugar if you think it needs it. Let stand for a few minutes and then serve. Not sure how it works but the lemon curd thickens it up very nicely.
If you are looking for a really simple, and delicious pudding to make for your family or friends this weekend, this will surely fit the bill on all counts! Rich and comforting. Bon Appetit!
Capers are an ingredient that I always, always have either in my larder
or in the refrigerator. I just adore their tangy flavour and the
flavour boost they give to dishes that they are used in!
I had never
ever heard of them prior to moving over here to the UK. Mind you I hadn't discovered pizza until my late teens, nor Chinese
food! I had a really limited experience with food when I was growing
up.
It was all simple but good. Nothing fancy smancy, and I guess I
carried that somewhat into my adulthood . . . with a few new
discoveries along the way, of course!
Capers are the small flower buds of a Mediterranean shrub called
Capparis . They are picked by hand which means they can be fairly
pricey but they're a versatile store cupboard ingredient, and are good
for adding a distinctive sour/salty flavour to many savoury dishes.
Also a little goes a long, long way flavour wise, so they are not a bad
investment as they will keep virtually forever in the refrigerator so
long as you keep the berries submerged in the pickling liquid if you
have bought the pickled ones and salt is a natural preservative so the
salted ones keep virtually forever as well.
Really small, peppercorn-sized capers, called 'nonpareille' are
available, but the slightly larger ones are more common. Capers are
preserved a number of ways - either in salt, wine vinegar, brine or
olive oil.
The brine-pickled type has the sharpest flavour and is
slightly less versatile than the salted type. For a more sophisticated
caper flavour, you can try the elegantly stemmed caper berries, which
are a little milder and sweeter than the standard type.
I have a bottle
of those in the larder, which I have yet to use. I think they are more for dinner party garnishes, and we don't have many dinner parties.
They go really well with mild flavoured proteins such as chicken and
mild flavoured fish . . . and they are great in tartar sauce!
They
actually help to bring out the best in these things . . . and when you
mix them with lemon, it's a combination that just goes WOWSA in your
mouth!
This dish here today is one of my absolute all time favourite chicken
dishes. I could seriously eat it every night of the week . . . well,
maybe not every night, but fairly often anyways!
The chicken is so tender in this . . . because it cooks so quickly and
that sauce is just to die for. Buttery and lemony . . . with just the
right amount of salty piquancy!
I just adore this and I think you will
too. It's quick and easy and just fancy enough to be considered
special.
*Chicken with Lemon and Capers*
Serves 4
12 TBS cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces divided
2 TBS finely chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
80ml chicken stock (1/3 cup)
1 sp sugar
3 TBS fresh lemon juice
1 tsp parsley flakes
fine sea salt
pepper
2 heaped dessertspoons of non-pareil capers, rinsed and drained
For the Chicken:
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (or use cutlets)
2 TBS grated parmesan Cheese
45g flour (1/3 cup)
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
olive oil
8 ounces (1/2 pound) angel hair pasta, cooked and drained to serve
Heat a swirl of olive oil in a large pan over medium high heat. Once it is hot add the chicken and brown well on each side. (About 3 minutes per side. Don't overcook) Remove to a plate and then keep warm in a low oven.
Add 1 TBS of the butter to the pan. Reduce the pan to low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds until fragrant. Add the chicken stock, sugar, parsley flakes and lemon juice. Increase the heat and bring to the boil. Cook until the liquid is reduced by about half. Turn the heat down to very low. Start whisking in the butter a bit at a time, letting it melt before adding more. The sauce should form a thick silky emulsion.
Stir in the capers. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.
To serve divide drained pasta between plates. Top with chicken pieces and spoon sauce over all. Serve immediately.
This is absolutely gorgeous. Just looking at the pictures makes me want to eat it all over again! I just know you will love it too! Bon Appetit!
This chocolate cake is "The" chocolate cakes to end all chocolate cakes. I always struggle with showing my chocolate bakes in a positive light. They are incredibly difficult to photograph! This is especially disappointing when you know what you have baked is incredibly moist and delicious!
How do other people cope with the "Chocolate" bake? I would love to hear any suggestions you might have that would help me to take better photos. But then again . . .
Its all about how it tastes . . . not how it looks and this tastes incredible.
This has been my go-to chocolate cake for years now. I can't remember where the original recipe came from. I strongly suspect the back of a tin of cocoa powder . . .
It is dense . . . and moist . . . and very chocolatey. If anything it tastes even better the day after you bake it . . . when all of that chocolate ripens and gets ooey scrummy, delish.
*Dark & Delicious Chocolate Cake*
Serves 12240ml milk (1 cup)
Preheat the oven to 180*c/ 350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a 9
by 13 inch baking tin and lightly dust with flour, shaking out any
excess. Set aside.
Whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add the eggs, milk, vanilla and vegetable oil. Beat with an electric whisk for 2 minutes on medium speed, stopping to scrape up the sides and bottom. Beat in the hot coffee. The mixture will be very thin.
Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until the top springs back when lightly touched and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow to cool completely in the tin, placed on a wire rack.
Beat the butter for the frosting until fluffy. Sift together the cocoa powder and the icing sugar. Beat into the butter, alternately with the milk and vanilla until smooth and of spreading consistency. (You may need additional milk or sugar. Use your own judgement) Cut into squares to serve.
Every time I bake this I am incredibly grateful that I have neighbors and friends that don't mind me gifting them with it. Todd is not a fan of chocolate cake at all, and I am not supposed to be eating it at all . . . but every now and then a gal just has to do what a gal has to do. When the kids were growing up it was never around long enough to be a problem! You could also bake it in layers if you wanted to, just reduce the baking time to about 25 to 30 minutes if you do. Bon Appetit!
Every Monday evening the members of our church hold what is known as Family Home Evening. It is a time which is expressly set aside to spend time together as a family and will usually consist of a prayer, a spiritual thought, a fun activity and something tasty to eat. These Heavenly Ham & Cheese Hots make the perfect "something tasty" to eat!
They are so simple to prepare and you can make them up a few hours ahead of time, brushing them with the butter mixture just before baking.
They are so very simple to make. I buy soft dinner rolls that are attached and I leave them together, without breaking them apart. Like one big soft roll composed of smaller rolls.
I then use a sharp serrated knife and cut them horizontally through the middle, trying to keep them as intact as possible. The bottom half gets put into a buttered baking dish.
I spread this with a mix of mayo and ranch dressing and then begin layering on thinly sliced ham and thinly sliced cheese . . . then the top halves get put on top of everything.
A mix of melted butter, mustard, brown sugar, poppy seeds, onion powder and worcestershire sauce gets brushed over top and you pop them into the oven to bake . . .
Until they are heated through and the cheese gets all melty and the buns are golden brown and toasty. Then all you have to do is cut them into individual sandwiches and serve. You can do everything but brush the melted butter mixture over top well ahead of time, which makes them perfect for things like Family Home Evening! I serve some potato chips on the side and maybe some pickles and everyone is a happy camper!
*Heavenly Ham & Cheese Hots*
Makes 12 sandwiches
Nothing new here, just some tasty hot sandwiches that are great for pot lucks and game nights!
175g butter, melted (3/4 cup)
1 TBS creamy Dijon mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp soft light brown sugar, packed
1 TBS poppy seeds
1 tsp onion powder
12 soft dinner rolls, unseparated
110g mayonnaise
110g ranch dressing
1/2 pound thinly sliced baked ham
1/2 pound thinly sliced emmenthaler cheese (swiss)
Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a 9 by 13 inch baking dish.
Whisk
together the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, poppy seeds
and onion powder. Set aside. Whisk together the mayonnaise and ranch
dressing. Set aside.
Keeping the rolls as much
in one large piece as possible, cut the in half through the middles.
Place the bottom half (halves) into the prepared baking dish. Spread
with the mayonnaise mixture. Lay the ham slices evenly over top. Place
the cheese slices over top of the ham and place the tops of the rolls
on top of the cheese. Brush the butter mixture all over top, pouring
some down the sides of the dish, etc. Use it all up. Cover lightly with
foil.
These actually work very well for any type of get-together. Game nights. Bon-fire night. Halloween. They are so tasty, you might be tempted to have a get-together just so you can make them! Bon appetit!
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Welcome, I'm Marie
Canadian lover of all things British. I cook every day and like to share it with you!
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