Oatmeal Dog Biscuits

Holly’s grumbling tummy problems are continuing and in desperation I’ve had to withdraw all commercial dog treats from her diet.  I made her a batch of sweet potato and oatmeal biscuits which she loved and were unbelievably simple to put together. 

I’ve made a few variations on them: honey and cinnamon; tummy bones with fennel, parsley and mint; and nightie night bones with chamomile tea.  She loves them and sits in the kitchen patiently waiting for them to cool ....... and by patiently I mean barking almost incessantly! 

These biscuits have no preservatives in them so they need to be kept in the fridge.  I find a 1lb oatmeal batch makes about 32 bones so I freeze most of them and defrost a handful every few days to keep them fresh.  The actual number of treats you make will depend on how thick or thin you roll out the dough, and the size of your cutter.  I have used a giant bone cutter to make big thick bones as a kind of home-made dental cleaning treat.

The basic recipe is :

1lb porridge oats

8 fl oz water

Options inclusions are:

8 oz carrot/butternut squash/sweet potato

4oz honey and 2tsp cinnamon

1tsp each parsley, fennel, mint

Chamomile tea in place of water

To make veggie bones simply peel and dice the carrot/squash/sweet potato, cut into chunks and pop in a blender with most of the water.  Blitz to a puree and add to the oatmeal, using the reserved water to rinse out the blender and then add that to the oatmeal (waste not want not!).

For the herb bones, grind the fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle and add with the dry herbs to the oatmeal and mix well, then add the water.

For the honey and cinnamon bones, I added the honey to boiling water and then allowed it to cool, add the cinnamon to the oatmeal and stir in before adding the liquid.

Kneed to form a ball of dough, adding a drop or so of water if necessary.

Roll out to your desired thickness and cut shapes.

I bake mine at 150^oC (300^oF / gas mark 2) for approximately 20 minutes each side.  Actual cooking time will vary depending on the size and thickness of the treats, they need to be cooked until they are hard.  The giant bones were cooked for 30 minutes each side, brought out to cool for 15 minutes and then put back into the cooling oven to bake hard.

Golden Turkey and Country Vegetable Soup

The beauty of cooking a giant turkey for Christmas is all the lovely leftovers you can look forward to in the weeks ahead!

We’re enjoying a lovely cold wintery spell here at the moment, we even had a brief fall of snow this morning ...... blink-and-you-missed-it brief, but snow nonetheless!  Perfect conditions for a spot of kitchen pottering and soup making.

This is one of those quick to cook soups, not a long slow cooking stew, gratification comes quickly!

For three serves I used :

1 small leek

2 small potatoes

2 baby turnips

1 large carrot

2 corn cobs

Appx 1 cup leftover cooked turkey (or chicken)

1  pint of chicken stock

1sachet of Philadelphia creamy peppercorn cooking sauce

Peel and dice the vegetables and sweat gently with a big knob of butter for 10 minutes or so.

Favourite cheats!

Add the chicken stock, the chunks of turkey/chicken and season with salt and pepper – go easy on the pepper because there’s pepper in the Philly sauce.

Simmer gently for 20 minutes and then add the Philly cooking sauce.  Bring back to a simmer and cook for a further 5 minutes for thereabouts.

Best served with good crusty bread on the side, on a bitterly cold day!

Vaguely Thai-ish Salmon and Rice

This dish owes much of its inspiration to Delia’s Summer Collection.  Limes and coriander remind me so much of summer, and of one particularly golden summer – 1994; which I have just realised was all of twenty years ago!  Back then, I was still living in my first home, and the previous autumn we had had my dream kitchen installed, all limed oak and the palest of pink painted walls.  That summer lives on in my memory as one long golden, sunny summer of parties and entertaining!  I’m sure we had our fair share of rain (in fact, I’d be staggered if we didn’t!), but I don’t remember any!  In those days fresh limes and coriander were impossible to get hold of in the small town that was my home then, I used to have to buy them in Cardiff.  How much has changed in the intervening years!

I digress too much!  We’re enjoying quite a sunny spring here at the moment, which had me leafing through my Delia Summer Collection, and set me to thinking about fresh limes and coriander.  I had hot smoked salmon fillets in the freezer and the rest just came together, in the way that only an addled middle aged brain can join dots sometimes!  Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

For two of us I used :

2 hot smoked salmon fillets (any cooked salmon would do)

1 cup of basmati rice

1 lime

1 lemongrass stalk

1 bunch of fresh coriander (cilantro)

Pare the lime zest in thick strips and bend/snap the lemongrass stalk in two.  Add both to a saucepan with the rice and cook.

While the rice is cooking, wash and chop the coriander and flake the salmon roughly (not too small because it will break up further when you combine it with the rice).

Drain the rice, remove the lime zest and the lemongrass – this is easier done using two forks, easier still if you use a muslin bag!  Rinse the rice with boiling water, drain again and then return to the saucepan.

Add the flaked salmon, the chopped coriander and the juice of the lime.  Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Sausage and Chicken Pie with Sage and Onion Stuffing

This pie is pretty much Delia Smith’s recipe from the Complete Cookery Course.  I added some leftover sage and onion stuffing and adjusted the sausage layer slightly!

This is a lovely way to use up leftover cooked chicken and stuffing, and stretch the dregs of Sunday’s roast dinner one more day.  If you don’t have any leftover stuffing, you can make it fresh – the method I give below is the way my friend’s lovely late mother-in-law used to make it.

For the stuffing :

3 or 4 thick slices of bread, crusts cut off

½ small onion

2 generous handfuls of fresh sage (or 1 dsp of dry)

Salt and pepper to taste

Simply pop everything into a blender or food processor and blitz.  Heat a little goose fat, duck fat, chicken dripping (or olive oil!) in a frying pan and sautee the stuffing for a few minutes until it becomes slightly crispy.  Set aside to cool.

For the pie :

1 pack of shortcrust pastry

8 good meaty sausages

Appx 1 cup of leftover cooked chicken

Appx 1 cup of leftover stuffing

¼ tsp ground mace

½ tsp sage

Salt and pepper to taste

The dish I used is a 7” diameter quiche dish.

Skin the sausages and place into a large mixing bowl as you go.  Season with salt and pepper, add the sage and mace and then mix together with your hands.

Roll out your pastry and line the base of your dish, spread half the sausagemeat over the pastry, then add half the stuffing, all of the chicken and season with a little salt and pepper.  Add the rest of the stuffing and finally the remainder of the sausagemeat.  Roll out a pastry lid and top and finish your pie.

I cooked mine at 180^oC / 350^oF / gas mark 5 for an 45 to 50 minutes.  If the pie begins to brown too much pop a folded sheet of greaseproof paper on top.

Welsh Rarebit

This is probably far from the definitive Welsh Rarebit, but it’s how I make it, and I’m Welsh!!  In truth, like most things, there are as many recipes as there are families in Wales.  Some include beer in theirs, I don’t.  If you would like to try one of these recipes with beer, there’s a link at the bottom of the page to Delia’s recipe.

This is a lovely supper/snack recipe, and the quantities below will serve one person generously.

1 egg

½ tsp English mustard powder (or made mustard)

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Salt and pepper to taste

3 or 4 oz strong cheddar

1 spring onion or half a shallot

1 small celery stalk (outer stalk preferably)

2 thick slices of bread.

Beat the egg together with the mustard powder, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper.

Finely chop the celery and spring onion or shallot.  Add to the egg mix.  Grate the cheese and add that too.  Give everything a good stir to combine well.

Toast your bread, cover a baking tray with foil and place the toast on top.  Spoon the cheese mixture evently over the bread and pop under the grill (broiler).  Cook until the cheese is puffed and golden.

Delia’s recipe can be found here :

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/main-ingredient/cheese-/welsh-rabbit-rarebit-with-sage-and-onions.html

Pumpkin Cinnamon Dog Treats

Like most dog owners, I sometimes find myself with a poorly pooch on my hands.  Holly has quite a sensitive stomach so these episodes are not infrequent!  I had heard that pumpkin was helpful in settling down tummy upsets in dogs so went on a search for a suitable cookie recipe.

I found this lovely recipe, and charming story while hunting one day, and adapted it very slightly to suit us.

The original recipe can be found here :

http://simmertilldone.com/2009/10/07/retriever-retriever-pumpkin-eater/

The recipe and method I used was :

2 eggs

½ cup mashed butternut squash

2tb dried milk powder

Scant ¼ tsp salt

Generous ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

2 ½ cups brown rice flour

You need to prepare the pumpkin well ahead of time by peeling, steaming and mashing.  Drain in a sieve for several hours, or overnight, before using.

Beat two eggs and add the prepared pumpkin, beating well together.  Add the milk powder and beat again, then beat in the salt and cinnamon.  Add the rice flour and combine with a wooden spoon, and then your hands.  If the dough is a little dry and won’t come together properly, add a teaspoon or two of cold water.

Roll out fairly thinly and then cut into shapes.  Place on baking parchment on a baking tray.

Bake at 200^oC (400 ^oF / gas mark 6) for approximately 30 to 40 minutes – until the biscuits are firm to the touch.  Leave to get cold before giving to your dog.

Tuna and Courgette (zucchini) Pasta Bake

 This is one of my 10 minute specials!!  You could either have it as a sauce with pasta, or put it together one evening ready to pop into the oven on the following evening.  To be honest, it’s worth making double the quantity and popping one in the freezer.

For two of us I used :

One large courgette (zucchini)

1 x 160g tin of tuna (in spring water by preference)

1 x 450g tin of chopped Italian tomatoes

1 small bunch of parsley

Seasoning to taste

1tsp garlic olive oil

200g of cooked pasta.  Actually, you could use fresh, as it will cook in the sauce.

Prepare the courgette by cutting slices away from the core (which can be discarded).  Cut the slices into strips, and then into smaller pieces, roughly the same size as a piece of penne.

Saute the courgette in the garlic oil for a few minutes, seasoning with a little black pepper as it cooks.  *Add the tinned tomatoes and then the drained can of tuna.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Bring to a simmer and then turn out the heat.

Add the tuna sauce to the pasta, and then add the chopped parsley.  Turn into an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with grated cheese.

Bake in a hot oven for appx 20 to 25 minutes.  I cooked mine at 200            ^oC (400 ^oF / gas mark 6) for 25 minutes.

* If you are preparing ahead of cooking the following day, allow the courgette to cool before adding the tinned tomatoes and drained tuna.  After draining the cooked pasta, rinse with cold water and combine with the sauce only when the pasta is cold.

From cold you will need to increase the cooking time to 30 to 35 minutes, until piping hot in the middle.