Day 16 – Corned Beef Hash

People who are scared of flying go on specially organised flights to help cure their fear. Those scared of spiders go to the zoo to meet tarantulas. I decided to make a dish out of corned beef to get over my tinned meat phobia.

The dish I made is Corned Beef Hash, the kinda thing people used to eat on camping trips huddled under tents in the rain. It is not the most elegant looking dish but is great comfort food…

• 1 tin of 340g corned beef
• About 700g of potatoes
• 2 medium onions
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes

How to cook:

Preheat oven to 200° C

Boil the potatoes and mash

Chop the onions and saute in a little oil till soft.  Add the tin of chopped tomatoes and simmer till reduced – about 20 or 30 minutes

Break the corned beef into small pieces and add to mashed potato. Then add the tomato mixture to the potatoes.

Transfer the potatoey-beefy mix to a small baking dish then serve.

You could grate some chedder cheese on top and put in the oven till it creates a tasty crust.

Day 6 – Pound Shop Dinner Party

El Maestro came up with a great suggestion yesterday: I should host a dinner party only using ingredients from the pound shop. I have found six willing guinea pi…cough…guests and so in a weeks time will be the World’s First Pound Shop Dinner Party!

So any suggestions and recipes of dishes I can create for this wondrous evening would be gratefully received. I will also be adding a recipe page to the blog in case you are crazy enough to want to recreate anything you read about

Baked beans and rice?

Corned beef and tikka masala sauce?

Madeira cake and tinned tomato?

Day 4 – Morganatic Wives

 

 You know how it is. You go into the pound shop for your usual tin of meat and come out with a novella by 19th Century American writer Henry James.

There were three books to choose from. A guide to French B&Bs (the 2003 edition naturally), a history of BBC Radio 4’s the Today program and The Europeans by Henry James. Since I wasn’t planning to time travel back four years for my next holiday and since I already listen to too much Radio 4 to be reading about it as well, I picked up The Europeans.

I haven’t read any Henry James before despite The Turn of the Screw having sat on my bookshelf for quite a while now.  The pound shop is the Land of Firsts. My first can of corned beef, my first taste of dehydrated ‘shaped’ beef (more on that another day) an now my first Henry James.  The blurb on the back:

Eugenia, an expatriated American, is a morganatic wife of a German prince, who is about to reject her in favour of a state marriage. With her artist brother she travels to Boston to visit relatives she had never seen before, in hopes of making a wealthy marriage.     

 I had to look up morganatic in the OED:  

 A marriage between a man of high rank and a woman of low rank who retains her former status, their children having no claim to the father’s possessions or title.   

So like Charles and Camilla. Will post a review of The Europeans when I finish it.