The towering birthday burgers we made this weekend contained (from top to bottom of the burger):

• Toasted top bun
• Fresh tomato salsa
• Parma ham
• Mature cheddar
• Homemade burger patty
• Fried egg
• More cheese
• Another homemade burger patty
• Fresh guacamole
• Toasted bottom bun

This followed a massive bowl of tasty chicken wings with Reggae Reggae sauce, and was accompanied by some pink cava sangria. Once we recovered from the food overdose, we topped it all up with some birthday cake! Oooofff…

A few weeks ago, however, he came across a real gem – a recipe for homemade chicken wings.

First, a bit of background on why we both got so excited over chicken wings. Back in Ottawa, there is a place called The Honest Lawyer. Back when I lived in Ottawa, they had an “All you can eat” wings night on Mondays, and we occasionally found ourselves there. Even Andrew had the opportunity to try them on his visits to Canada. Problem is, they’re the kind of wings that ruin it for you. No other wings have ever cut it for us since. (Note: It’s quite possible that my memory has romanticised them and that they weren’t THAT great) In the UK, wings aren’t a very big thing, you can get them in frozen portions or in the American-style restaurants but generally they’re rubbish.

So finding that recipe was hugely exciting for us – we would be able to make them at home! So we popped down to the supermarket, bought chicken wings (which needed to be cut as per the video – wing, drumstick and tip – it takes a while but you’ll get to grips with the best way to cut the pieces apart without leaving bone shards fairly quickly)

The video outlines the bulk of the recipe, which we followed (even though it seems to be an awfully long time to cook such small bits of chicken, it’s necessary to make them nice and crispy.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht7mK5dX0es[/youtube]
What we did differently is the coating sauce. We made two variations:

• Dijon mustard, honey and chilli flakes
• Maple syrup and Reggae Reggae sauce

As both are full of sugars, watch very closely when they’re in the oven. After all your efforts, you don’t want to see them burn to a crisp! I have to say my favourite one was the Reggae Reggae sauce version.

Total junky treat, but once in a blue moon, it’s so yummy… If you make your own, let me know how they turn out!

Are you most like…

Jamie Oliver
Healthy family fun, you want to change the world and have high ideals. It isn’t always about the final result but about the process and the social change involved in what you do. Grannies think you’re cute and blokes envy your success. Everyone else just thinks you own a funky campervan.

Gordon Ramsay
Unquestionably skilled, you want the best for the other party but sometimes struggle to get your message through without offending first. You enjoy authority, are opinionated and get your way every time – often by being the loudest in the room. Most of the time people think you’re a tosser, except when they think you’re brilliant.

Heston Blumenthal
You’re a bit of a nutter – in a good way of course – and love experimenting and pushing things past their limits. You often opt for the “acquired taste” option, which leaves half the population baffled, and the other half in awe.

James Martin
You’re not bad at what you do, but you realise that luck and being born with a silver spoon in your mouth may have helped you fast-track in life. You’re charismatic when you feel like it, but when you can’t be bothered, you throw the toys out of the pram and show your true colours.

Ainsley Harriott
You like to have fun in life and it shows. You’re less worried about the quality of what you do, and a whole lot more about catering to as broad an audience as possible. You make up for the quality with humour and altruism.

Nigella Lawson
You’re charming, you know it, and you use it to your advantage. Hedonistic pleasures are no strangers to your life and you know how to have a good time, yet remain thoroughly classy.

Delia Smith
You once had it, but now you’re not to sure where and how you lost. In fact, you’re probably not really sure of where you are right now. You occasionally make dodgy time and money investments, finding yourself entirely out of your depth. Regardless, everyone thinks you’re kind of sweet.

Keith Floyd
You talk absolute rubbish most of the time, but people love seeing you because you’re always a good laugh. As long as life is accompanied by an oversized glass of red wine, you’re satisfied. Somehow your drinking, more than your cooking, has made you a legend.

Who did I forget?

Last year, in September, we went for a long Autumn walk locally to pick up berries. We came home with a nice harvest of sloe berries, crabapples, rosehips and a handful of tasty little apples. There were also wild blackberries but I ate those on the way home…

I had my heart set on making homemade liqueurs for the first time, and was curious to see whether they’d be as good (or better?) than the ones we buy in shops. It’s only once the fruit and sugar was dropped in the large glass jars and that I’d clipped the lids shut that it sank in – I’d have to wait many months before finding out whether they were any good.

Now, a year later, I’m thrilled with my homemade liqueurs crop and can’t wait to give them away in beautiful little bottles as Christmas presents. And the best part of it? It was really easy to do!

Making your own fruit liqueurs

You will need:

• Fruit or flavourings
• Base liquors
• Sugar or simple syrup
• Large, clean glass jars

Choosing the fruits or flavourings

First, pick or buy fruits you’d like to use to make your liqueurs. Berries, plums, peaches, apples work very well, but if you’re feeling creative, try herbs, vanilla, espresso coffee beans or even chilli peppers.

Clean the fruits or flavourings to get rid of any grit or residue that will be unwelcome to the liqueur.

• For apples and peaches, cut the fruit in pieces, removing the core or pit.
• For berries like sloes or blueberries, put them in the freezer for a few hours. This will cause the fruit’s skin to burst open, letting out more flavour once it is steeping in the liquor of your choice.
• For rosehips, top and tail them and slice them in two.
• For herbs, vanilla and chilli peppers, they can be left whole, as they’ll look prettier in the glass jar. However, if you intend to strain the flavourings out before giving them away, it’s possible to cut them into pieces to allow them to steep quicker.

Choosing the base liquor

You may want to experiment with the base liquor to use, but vodka and gin are the most popular ones. Vodka adds very little flavour to the mix, giving the fruit the whole spotlight.

Others, like gin, are the staple alcohol to use with sloes to make the traditional sloe gin.

Preparing the mix

Once your fruit or flavouring is clean, chopped or partially frozen as necessary, it’s time to mix it up!

First, clean your glass jars in very hot water or put through a hot dishwasher cycle. Any residue could add unwelcome bacteria to the mix and ruin your liqueur.

Then put the fruit and sugar in equal parts in the jar. The rule of thumb for berries and apples is one part fruit, one part sugar to 3 parts base liquor. Of course, this will vary depending on the flavour and ripeness of the fruit you’re using, and the flavour you want to achieve.

Caring for the liqueurs while they steep

Keep the jars in a dark, cool cupboard. For the first few weeks, you will need to shake the jars every 2-3 days to ensure the sugar is completely dissolved.

From there onwards, it’s a waiting game. After 2-3 weeks, the base liquor will have changed colour and be sweetened by the fruit. With chilli peppers, now is a good time to begin tasting the liquor to test the flavour.

With berries, 3-4 months will give a rich flavour, but I’ve waited as long as a year to bottle some of them.

Bottling the liqueurs

If you’re intending to drink them yourself, the liqueur can stay in its original glass jar along with the fruit or flavouring. If you want to give them away as gifts, filter the contents out using a muslin cloth, coffee filter or strainer.

You can buy decorative glass bottles or reuse wine bottles and decorate them with a homemade label.

Using the steeped fruit

If you’re feeling brave, you can use the steeped fruit in a recipe like a trifle, but be careful, the fruit will be flavoured by the alcohol and be quite strong. As my friend Simon says, “you’ll need to have the constitution of a goat” to ingest the steeped fruit without using it in a recipe.

Enjoying your homemade berry liqueurs

Drink the liqueurs straight, on ice or drizzle over fruits or ice cream. Substitute your own fruit liqueurs when recipes call for similar liqueurs when making cocktails. Most of all, enjoy the fruits of your labour!

Resources

• Glass jars & decorative bottles from Colouredbottles.co.uk
• Make your own base liquor using this alcohol-making kit if you feel brave

The chicken nuggets are as healthy as you want to make them, and leave plenty of room for creativity – and whatever you have in your cupboards.

Vero’s homemade chicken nuggets

Ingredients

• Chicken strips, chopped into large bite size pieces
• Plain fat free yogurt
• Juice of half a lime or lemon
• Fresh mint or coriander, chopped finely
• Bread, preferably a little bit on the dry side
• A handful of crisps of your choice (I usually use Pringles)
• Parmesan, grated
• A bit of your favourite spices (I put in sweet smoked paprika, Aromat salt and pepper

Let’s get cookin’

Turn the oven on to 190 degrees celcius and find yourself a baking tray. Mix the yogurt, lime/lemon juice and mint/coriander and set aside in a bowl.

Put your stale bread, crisps, Parmesan cheese and spices into a food processor and whizz to turn into breadcrumbs.

Now, time to start the action chain. Take your pieces of chicken, dip them into the herbified yogurt, then into the breadcrumbs. Cover with breadcrumbs and press the mountain on top of the chicken to make sure it’s well covered. Put the piece down on the baking tray. Continue until you’ve done all the pieces.

Put in the oven and turn after about 10 minutes. Usually, I leave them in for about 15 minutes, but all depending on the size of the pieces and the mood your oven is in, you may need more or less. Just cut one piece in half when you suspect it might be ready, and for Dog’s sake, don’t leave them in til they go dry!

Enjoy with some Fiery Guava sauce or some fresh yogurt and mint sauce. (Just don’t reuse the one you used to cover the raw chicken in, that’s not good for you!)

What’s that I hear you say? Om nom nom nom! That’s right!

Every BBQ must be accompanied by appropriate drinks. To me, that means a great big pitcher of cold, juicy sangria. After last weekend’s humongous BBQ/Garden warming party where pitchers of it were drunk faster than I could make it, I thought I should share my (not-so) secret recipe.

Vero’s Pitcher Perfect Sangria Recipe

Ingredients:

• 3 parts red wine
• 1 part orange juice
• 1 part pineapple juice
• 1 part lemonade (Sprite or 7-Up to the North Americans)
• A good glug of apricot or cherry brandy
• Lime, lemon and orange cut into small pieces
• A splash of grenadine (optional, but a good addition if your wine isn’t so fruity/sweet)

For this recipe, don’t worry about using your best bottle of vintage red. A reasonable supermarket’s own brand red wine will do the job just fine. We tend to use Shiraz, since it’s less heavy than, say, a Merlot.

When getting lemons and limes, leave them out of the fridge the day you make sangria and roll them around under your palm before cutting the fruit. You’ll get much more juice out of them that way.

If you’re expecting to be on a marathon drinking session starting with a lunchtime BBQ, you might want to lighten up the recipe with more juices to avoid feeling woozy too early in the day.

Alternative recipes:

White sangria:
Substitute red wine for white wine, use apricot brandy instead of cherry brandy for a lighter, tannin-free sangria.

Cava sangria:
Substitute red wine for a bottle of Cava or sparkling wine for a celebratory, bubbly sangria.

Bellini sangria:
Using red, white or sparkling wine, replace brandy with Archers peach schnapps and put in pieces of soft, juicy peaches instead of lemons and limes. This makes a less acidic, sweeter alternative to the classic sangria recipe.

Looking for more great summer cocktails? Check out Cocktail Happy for loads of great, easy drinks recipes!

Now, what mystifies me is that while she’s targeting time-poor people, she’s unquestionably aiming for the top tier richer people. Last week, when she made her fish pie involving frozen pre-mashed potato cakes, we estimated the cost of the meal at nearly £15! For that price, you could get a delicious Marks & Spencer meal that you can stick in the oven and enjoy just as much without having to fight with frozen potato lumps and pre-smoked, pre-cooked salmon!

I suppose she’s shooting for the even-smaller niche market of those who need to pretend they’re eating “homemade” food to have a clear conscience!

Seriously… pre-mashed potatoes… Delia, honey, you can’t be serious!

While we all need to watch what we eat to avoid ballooning in weight or croaking too young from clogged up arteries, the people above need to be doubly careful since there are serious immediate implications to giving in to food they shouldn’t have – I should know, lovely Lynsey at work nearly sneezes her brains out if she eats anything containing gluten!

When I cook for friends, I love to introduce them to new food, without serving anything TOO weird… But when someone mentions allergies, it stops me right in my tracks. Uh oh, must really watch what I put in this dish! I would feel awful to cause a friend the kind of physical discomfort that comes from a bad reaction to nuts, for example.

However, there is a nuance. There’s real allergies, and then there’s what food sissies call “allergies”. When I hear “Oh, I’m allergic to red peppers, I once had a bad experience with red peppers”, whereby they mean they don’t particularly like the taste of them, or they ate a dish which contained bad prawns which gave them the runs, and to which they associate red peppers.

That. Is. Not. An. Allergy.

Comprendes? That’s a food dislike. It’s no more serious than my sister Julie disliking mashed potatoes and spending many childhood evenings alone at the table after dinner, left there to finish her potatoes if she wanted dessert. The only thing that could have killed her there was boredom.

A one-off bad experience with fish shouldn’t be a reason to stop eating seafood altogether. It makes my blood boil that people cover their picky taste with a medical condition such as food allergies.

If you’re one of these people, do yourself a favour. Next time you go out to a good restaurant, somewhere that serves quality food, try something out of your comfort zone. Maybe give salmon a go again? I’m not saying jump straight into the raw oysters, but don’t cut out an entire range of food from your life simply because you’re too weenie to try it again.

Now, how about a chilli fried scorpion to top off that burrito?

But while watching Hell’s Kitchen (the Marco Pierre White version, not the Gordon Ramsay one), which is a worthless show by the way, I saw an interesting advert by Asda which got me thinking.

Fish is a type of food many people have issues with. It’s wet. It’s slimey. It looks at you funny with its beady eyes. It can smell funny sometimes. So Asda found a low-cost solution for that problem.

They simply put the fish in a sealed bag which can be put straight into the oven, but also add a few bits of herbs and some lemon. This means a non-foodie can easily get a lovely steamed-in-the-bag meal without the hassle of touching fish.

Asda didn’t need to reinvent cooking or teach anyone to cook. Simply remarkable.

So here it is…

• 1 1/2 measures pomegranate juice (not the concentrated stuff, just the drink)
• 1 measure vodka
• 1/2 measure Cointreau orange liqueur
• sprinkle of caster sugar

Shake it all with lots of ice in a cocktail shaker, and pour into a nice cocktail glass. Enjoy!