Spicy stir-fried rice

It's quite hard to cook one portion of rice for a meal and it hardly seems worth it - cooking two portions so you have leftovers is much smarter. And leftover rice is the basis of a plate of stir-fried rice - the secret to making it properly is to use cooked rice that has been chilled as when it's straight out of the cooking pan it's too warm and damp to get a good result.

This dish doesn't have to be Chinese in style - I don't own a wok and if I'm going to scramble an egg it'll be for my breakfast rather than for this. I take my inspiration instead from spicy rice dishes such as nasi goreng or kedgeree. As well as using up rice, I take the opportunity to clear out my fridge to use up some veg. Then all I need is some spice paste of some sort.

This is quick - just 5 minutes to prepare and 5-10 in the pan.

What you need: 
1 portion of leftover cooked rice, chilled
1 small chicken fillet, cut into bite-size pieces
2 spring onions, sliced 
1 small carrot, cut into julienne strips
A handful of peas
Oil
Curry paste of some sort, about a tablespoon
1 egg (optional)

What to do:
Prepare the veg and chicken. Heat about 2tbsp vegetable oil in a wok or sauteuse and get it very hot. Toss in the chicken and stir-fry it for 4-5 minutes then add all the veg and fry for another 2 minutes. Stir in a generous tablespoon of curry paste and fry for another minute. Lastly, add the rice - break up any lumps and fry it for a good 3-4 minutes so it's thoroughly reheated and all the chicken pieces and veg are evenly distributed through it.

If you're very hungry, top it with a fried egg Indonesian style - well-cooked rather than soft.

Cook's tips:
The chicken doesn't have to be fresh - frying off some leftover cooked chicken or diced lamb works fine, or use cooked prawns. Likewise, the veg are flexible - use diced pepper, sweetcorn, mushrooms or edamame beans, whatever you have to hand.

Cooked rice needs to be handled with care as it's possible to get bacillus cereus food poisoning from it. Chill it quickly after cooking, put it in a bowl and store it in the fridge. And be sure to reheat it thoroughly to kill off any toxins.

Which curry paste? If you're using an Indian one, go for mild rather than fiercely hot. I made this one with some rending paste. If you can find it, nasi goreng paste is the clear winner, but Thai curry paste also works - I use less than a tablespoon of the red sort and avoid the searing heat of the green.

Hare au vin

I regularly cook rabbit - finding hare is much harder but a good butcher should be able to supply it (and I know Lidl sometimes has packs of hare legs in its freezer section). There's a lot of meat on a hare, particularly the hind legs which are its powerhouse and thus have plenty of well-developed muscle. The forelegs are less meaty but still pack flavour, so if you have them then chuck them in the pot too.

I was lucky enough recently to attend a butchery class on game and learned how to skin rabbits and hares plus butcher them. It was bloody but fun and I came away with a new skill. The pics are here. I brought a prepped whole hare home to joint. The legs went in the slow cooker - the breast fillets are in my freezer and will go into a game pie at some point.

This recipe is based on the classic French coq au vin (which uses a rooster rather than a chicken) and makes 2 portions, so you can freeze one for another day.

What you need:
Hare legs - 2 hind (and 2 fore, if you have them)
1 bottle of red wine
1 bouquet garni
2-3 bay leaves
4-5 slivers of dried orange peel
Freshly ground black pepper
6 sun-dried tomatoes
A couple of sprigs fresh thyme

12 dried prunes
6 baby onions or shallots, peeled and left whole
12 dried porcini
Tomato purée, about a tablespoon
Salt and pepper

What to do: 
Marinate the hare overnight with all the aromatics and the bottle of wine. Next day, add the rest of the ingredients - cut the onions in half leaving the root intact if they are a little on the large side. Then cook in a slow cooker for around 8 hours, or in the oven at 120-140C for around 5 hours. Check the seasoning and adjust if needed. Serve with plenty of buttery root mash (here, I used turnip, swede and carrot).

Cook's tips:
Keep an eye on the liquid levels during cooking and top up if it looks like drying out. The gravy should finish up thickish and glossy. The meat should be falling off the bone by the end of cooking - watch out for very small bones, particularly from the forelegs.

Making dried orange peel is very easy. Use a vegetable peeler to pare strips of rind off the fruit, taking care to avoid the pith. Spread the peel out on a baking tray and leave to dry naturally for 2-3 days (if you have an airing cupboard, it's ideal). Then store in an airtight jar. They keep for ages and are a good flavouring for red meats, particularly venison and game.

To add a note of spice to the marinade, try a cinnamon stick and 2-3 star anise.

Madeira - more than just cake

I've had a holiday. In Madeira. My usual three aims of a trip abroad are meandering round cities exploring museums, churches and other places of interest, hiking and walking, and food. Ah, yes, food.

I was mostly disappointed in Madeira's culinary offering (the eponymous sponge cake is not actually from Madeira, by the way). I had quite a few meals best summed up as meh, not least because many local dishes were not very interesting and side vegetables were generally cooked to disintegration point.

The local scabbard appears abundantly on menus in a variety of styles. It's mostly served deep-fried in batter and served with banana, or cooked in a sauce with tropical fruit. The latter was how I tried it (no pic) - the fish was mushy and overcooked and hard to find under the creamy, gloopy sauce. I couldn't identify the fruit - it might have been mango, or apricot, or papaya. Who knows?

The other famous local dish is espetada - cubes of fillet beef barbecued on a laurel stick.

The first time I tried it, the meat was overcooked and sinuous. But then I found a decent restaurant (O Portao in Funchal) that served this - beautiful tender, rare beef, a chef sauce to a secret (I asked!) recipe that really zinged and crunchy veg. A win.

I also had the grilled limpets at O Portao, cooked with butter and garlic. Limpets also appear in risottos in Madeira, as with the fresh tuna I had in Seixal - if you like mussels, you'll like them.

I also tried the hunter's rabbit stew at O Portao - another winner. A whole small rabbit jointed and cooked in a piquant tomato-based sauce with rice, cabbage and veg. This was possibly my favourite meal, although the huge pub lunch of beef in Madeira sauce with chips was also pretty damn good.

Out and about, the best street food I had was in the hills above Monte, where a cook was baking flatbreads stuffed with chouriço on a metal sheet over a gas flame. Slathered in freshly made garlic butter, they made a filling snack for just €2.

The local poncha was disappointing - while called "rum", the alcohol content is a mere 25% and it's so sweet you don't feel like you're getting a hit of anything.

Much more interesting was my exploration of Madeira wine. A trip to Blandy's was on the cards - in 45 minutes I'd learned all about grape varietals, fermentation processes (very different to sherry) and styles. I'd always found Madeira wine to be too sweet so I was pleased to discover that the style made with the sercial grape is really dry.

And so to the real Madeira cake - the bolo de mel (literally honey bread), made from molasses from the sugar cane that grows abundantly on the island plus honey and fruits. Light, spicy and crumbly, it knocks spots off its imposter.

Lemon and ginger pork skewers

Lemon and ginger are natural bedfellows, providing a blast of heat and sweet-sour contrast. I used to buy a ready-made marinating paste when I lived in France but on my last couple of trips back I've not been able to find it. I've been experimenting for some time with a homemade version.

It's nice to be back, by the way. I've not been living on takeaways in my absence (well, ok, one or two) - it's just that life got in the way.

What you need:
125g fresh ginger
2-3 very thin-skinned lemons
Vegetable oil
Sea salt
2 slices belly pork

What to do: 
Make the lemon and ginger paste. Peel the ginger and cut it into small chunks. Chop the lemons and discard all the pips. If a lot of juice runs off, set it aside. Put the ginger and lemons into a food processor, with a generous pinch of salt and a good glug of the oil, then blitz into a smooth paste. Thin it with a little lemon juice if very stiff.

Cut the pork into bite-sized chunks, put into a bowl and rub a heaped tablespoon of the paste in. Leave in the fridge to marinate for 2-3 hours minimum, overnight if possible.

Thread onto 2 metal kebab skewers and grill for about 10 minutes, turning frequently. Serve with sweet potato and coriander mash.

Cook's tips: 
The easiest way to peel ginger root is to scrape the skin off with the tip of a teaspoon. It comes off very fast. The lemons need to be very thin-skinned because they have almost no pith and this uses whole lemons. If you can't find thin-skinned ones, you could use preserved lemons, but the paste will be much sharper in taste. Don't be afraid to tinker with the proportions if you want more heat or more lemon. And you may need to add more salt to taste.

This makes about two jam jars' worth of paste. It'll keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks and it freezes well. You can stir it into tagines and curries, or pretty much anything where you want a hit of heat and sour. It's also very nice with chicken, either grilled fillets or rubbed into slow-cooked thighs (slash the meat to get the paste right in). I've even rubbed it over a whole chicken for roasting.

Use pork fillet if you prefer a leaner cut, just be sure to reduce the grilling time so the meat doesn't overcook and turn dry.

Dutch-style meatballs and beans

Meatballs are a staple of the Dutch diet - I learned this fairly soon after beginning what turned out to be a 9-year sojourn in Amsterdam. Tiny little ones floating in a bowl of tomatoey vegetable soup, great fist-sized ones grilled or fried and then drowned in gravy, bite-sized and casseroled with beans...

The latter forms the basis of a dish called gehaktballen met bruine bonen, which translates as mince (literally "chopped") balls with brown beans. Every Dutch person will have their own recipe for this but the core ingredients are the meatballs and beans, onions and tomatoes. Brown beans are native to the Netherlands and hard to find elsewhere - kidney beans or pintos are good substitutes.

I like this dish because it relies on storecupboard staples - everyone has beans and onions to hand - and it's fairly quick. It's also hearty and filling, ideal for cold weather (last week, as my city bathed in sunshine and enjoyed a balmy 11C, I was eating salads. Go figure). This is a cheat's version using sausages that I make when I have no meatballs to hand, or mince to make any.

What you need:
2 beef sausages
1 onion
Small tin of kidney beans
2 tomatoes
Tomato purée
Worcestershire sauce
Seasoning

What to do:
Peel the onion and, leaving the root intact, cut it into 8 wedges. Heat a generous splash of vegetable oil in a sauteuse and fry the onions until they soften and start to caramelise. Cut the sausages into meatball-sized pieces and add to the pan.

Rinse the beans well and cut the tomatoes into wedges. As soon as the sausage pieces have browned, add the beans and tomatoes to the pan. Squirt in about a dessert-spoon of tomato purée and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Add enough water from a freshly boiled kettle to create a thick gravy, jam a tight lid on the pan and leave it to cook on a low hob for about 20 minutes until the tomatoes are collapsing.

Cook's tips:
The sausages should yield 8-10 pieces. If you're making meatballs, you want about 6-8 and they should be the size of an apricot.

A half-tin of tomatoes replaces the fresh tomatoes if you have none. Adjust the amount of tomato purée in that case.

Parsley is often added to this dish, both during the cooking and as a garnish.

Parmesan roasted chicory

Chicory is very underrated. We don't eat much of it here and it mostly seems to get sliced into salads. Its slightly bitter taste may be a reason for its unpopularity - across the Channel it's eaten widely and braising or roasting it mellows the bitterness and wilts the leaves into a soft, lush heap.

This very simple dish has only three ingredients and is surprisingly filling. I usually make it as a standalone meal but if I'm really hungry I'll grill a lamb chop to accompany.

What you need:
2-3 chicory heads
Olive oil
About 1 tbsp grated Parmesan

What to do:
Heat the oven to 180C. Halve the chicory heads lengthways and put cut side up in an oven dish. Drizzle over a little oil and season lightly. Cover with tin foil or a lid and bake for 30 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and remove the foil. Sprinkle over the Parmesan and return to the oven uncovered for another 30-40 minutes until the chicory has caramelised round the edges and the cheese has formed a crispy golden crust.

Cook's tips:
Make sure the chicory, either white or red, is super-fresh. Once it's on the turn it becomes more bitter. 

For a more substantial meal, you can add some chopped bacon or lardons before you put the Parmesan on. You can gratinée it by mixing the cheese with breadcrumbs.

You can roast fennel this way too - use 2 small bulbs halved or 1 large one quartered. Fennel is a natural partner for pork and good quality sausages are a good match here - you can roast them in the dish with the fennel once the foil is off.

Beef rendang

I've rejoined the #foodiepenpals gang after a break last autumn. I was very happy with my matches this month and overjoyed when I learned my parcel would be arriving from the Netherlands courtesy of Dutch food blogger Eefke. I lived in Amsterdam for 9 years and while my spoken Dutch never rose much beyond basic I acquired a vast love for Indonesian food, which is as widespread in the Netherlands as Indian food is here (going out for a rijstafel [literally rice table] is the Dutch equivalent of us going for a curry).

I asked Eefke if I might have some Indonesian ingredients as a treat as it's extremely difficult to find them in the UK. I also asked her not to send me any stroopwafels or speculaas, as I'm not keen on Dutch biscuits. Her reply made me laugh - she was relieved not to have to send these as that was what she usually sent to other penpals.

The parcel I was sending was to another Mancunian, Kelly, who cooks at Earth Café in the city's Northern Quarter, so I offered to deliver it in person. It's always lovely to meet other foodie penpals, the more so as it's a rare opportunity. She gave me a free slice of the café's signature beetroot cake in return and it was really tasty - beets are quite sweet so lend themselves well to cakes and desserts.

My Dutch box, when it arrived, was wrapped in this gorgeous paper - all windmills and tulips in a typical blue and white Delftware design, hinting at the treasures inside.

Well, I was not at all disappointed! It was crammed with lovely Indonesian spice pastes, a crushed peanuts and spice mix, and a satay sauce mix. There was also a bag of emping melindjo - similar to prawn crackers, but made with the ground-up seed of a native plant (the rest of it is eaten as vegetable in Indonesia) and sprinkled on the side of a plate. One of the spice pastes was for rendang, so that was the first one I cooked.

Rendang is a hot, spicy dish of beef or sometimes chicken, cooked very slowly in coconut milk. You can't hurry a rendang - it needs a lot of time even though the prepping is very quick. The reward is a deeply flavoursome and aromatic curry with a sauce so thick you could probably plaster your walls with it.

Beef rendang

What you need:
300g lean stewing steak, in bite-size cubes
1 onion
200ml coconut milk
2 shallots, roughly chopped
1.5cm fresh ginger
1.5cm galangal
3 garlic cloves
1 stalk fresh lemongrass
2 small fresh chillies, deseeded
1/2 tsp turmeric
(OR 50ml readymade rendang spice paste)

What to do: 
Make the rendang paste: Peel the shallots, ginger, galangal and garlic. Take off the tough outer layer of the lemongrass. Roughly chop all these plus the chillies then put into a food processor with the turmeric and blitz until you have a paste. You may need to add a little vegetable oil to help it on its way. Use a tablespoon of paste to marinate the meat in a bowl - use your hands to coat the beef thoroughly. Leave it at least an hour, overnight in the fridge if possible.

Chop the onion very finely and fry it gently in a little vegetable oil until it starts to soften. Turn up the heat and add the meat, scraping all the marinade out of the bowl and letting it brown. Pour in the coconut milk then turn the heat down again and let it simmer very gently for 2-3 hours until all the liquid has evaporated and you are left with a very thick sauce coating the meat, which should be just about falling apart.

Serve with some plain basmati rice and a topping of Indonesian-style crispy onions.*

Cook's tips: 
If you can't get hold of galangal, just double the amount of ginger. Add an extra chilli if you want a lot of heat although my view is that rendang should be hot enough that you need a hanky for when your nose starts to run but it shouldn't be so hot that your mouth starts to really tingle. Leftover paste will keep in the fridge for a few days in an airtight jar but it also freezes well.

Crispy onions garnish just about every Indonesian dish that hasn't been topped off with satay or gado-gado sauce. You can buy them here in the supermarkets but they are really easy to make and won't have the additives that bought ones contain. Peel, quarter and slice an onion. Toss the onion first in a little beaten egg then some plain flour. Heat a couple of inches of vegetable oil in a deep pan and fry the onion in batches until deep golden brown. Drain well on kitchen paper and leave to cool.

You can make the onions while the rendang cooks. I don't advise using a deep-fryer if you have one as the oil gets really dirty. You can strain off the leftovers into a jar very carefully, leaving all the sediment and bits behind - it's fine for frying veg or meat in the first stage of cooking a dish.

Leftover crispy onions can be stored in an airtight container - they make a great topping for salads. If they go a bit limp, spread them on a baking sheet and reheat for 10 minutes maximum at 200C.

Warm watercress and black pudding salad

I love the peppery taste of watercress although it's not always easy to find even in season (if I see a bunch or bag of it for sale I snap it up fast). As well as delicious in soup, watercress can also be wilted or stir-fried but it also makes a substantial supper salad. This takes only 15 minutes to make.

What you need:
A small bag of watercress
1-2 slices black pudding
2 rashers of bacon, snipped into pieces
A few walnut halves
Parmesan shavings
Walnut oil
White wine vinegar
Seasoning

What to do: 
Wash the watercress, drain then pat dry. Fry or grill the black pudding and the bacon. The bacon needs to be crispy. Drain on kitchen paper

Make a light dressing using a dessertspoon of walnut oil, a teaspoon of white wine vinegar and a little salt and pepper. Put the watercress on a plate and dress it. Scatter over the walnut pieces and crispy bacon. Crumble the black pudding into a small heap in the middle and scatter over the parmesan shavings.

Cook's tips: 
Make sure you wash the watercress thoroughly even if it comes ready-washed, as occasionally it can contain a water-borne parasite called liver fluke (watercress is grown in water).

If you don't eat meat, some roughly chopped hard-boiled egg is a tasty alternative.

Walnut oil is strictly for dressings - it has a wonderful distinct nutty flavour that can really lift a salad. A small bottle will last ages.

Oat-crusted pan-fried herrings with chard and beetroot

Herrings rolled in oats and then fried is a traditional Scottish dish although not one you see much of these days. It's a pity, as herrings are cheap, plentiful, tasty and nutritious. And as mackerel is currently off the menu for most people keen to eat oily fish, herring is a good alternative.

In Scotland, herrings eaten this way are traditionally fried in lard or dripping and served with fried potatoes, and maybe a heap of fried onions too. I use butter here and plate up with some fresh veg for a healthier alternative.

What you need: 
2 small or medium herrings
Porridge oats
Seasoning
Butter
Swiss chard
2 small cooked beetroot

What to do: 
Get the fishmonger to prepare the herrings - they need to be scaled, gutted, heads off and filleted. At home, rinse the herrings well under the tap then pat dry with kitchen paper. Use a pair of tweezers to remove the pin bones (see tips) and a sharp pair of scissors to snip off any remaining bits of fin.

Spread some porridge oats on a plate or chopping board, season lightly then roll the herrings in them until they are well coated. Wash the chard, chop the stems into 1cm slices then shred the leaves. Boil a kettle, fill a saucepan with the boiling water and steam the chard stems for 5 minutes.

At the same time, heat a knob of butter into two frying pans. Put the herrings in one pan and fry over a medium heat, taking care not to burn the butter. In the other pan, sauté the beetroot slices. Turn over both the herrings and the beetroot slices after 5 minutes and add the chard leaves to the steamer.

Everything should need about 10 minutes apiece and be ready at the same time, but if not turn off the heat under whichever pans you need to while the rest catches up.

Cook's tips:
The main reason a lot of people won't eat herring is the bones - they have a lot (and much as I love kippers I rarely eat them because I spend as much time picking the bones out as I do eating the flesh). However, you can get rid of almost all of them if you spend a few minutes pinboning them before cooking. The pin bones are the bigger ones that often get left behind during filleting, the ones that stick in your throat if you're unlucky enough to eat one. The very fine bones, which are almost hairlike, won't kill you - they can tickle a little in the mouth but they won't stab you.

Don't let the butter get too hot or it will burn, and so will the oats. I tend to have the heat up slightly higher under the beetroot while keeping a very sharp eye on the herrings. The fish is done when the flesh has turned from translucent red to creamy white. If you cook the herrings flat (kipper shaped) they will be done in 5 minutes but I prefer to cook them with all the flesh on the inside so the oats are only on the skin.

Valentine photography competition

So, tomorrow is 14 February and many lone gourmets will be doing their best to avoid the relentless commercialism of Valentine's Day. Perhaps, like me, you prefer to snub overpriced "romantic meals for two" in restaurants where the maître d' will try to hurry you to vacate your table quickly in order to give it to another couple. Perhaps you prefer to cook something special at home for your significant other. Maybe you're not planning to do anything at all, whether coupled up or not.

Whatever you're doing tomorrow with food, I've had this great Valentine's Photo Challenge competition brought to my attention. All you have to do is photograph tomorrow's dinner and upload it to the n0tice website for a chance to win a hamper of meat.

(C) j.segers on Flickr

The rules don't seem to exclude singletons who lovingly prepare solo meals, so get snapping. The rules are on Foodie Sarah - you do need to register on n0tice first then go to the Valentine board to post your pics. You have until Sunday to enter.

Full disclosure: I have no commercial relationship with either n0tice or Farmers Choice or any official links in any capacity to the competition. Foodie Sarah is a work colleague.