Cooking tips

[hammerman]

I get bored senseless with reading endless lists of ingredients for recipes and instead, i prefer to "sex up" the normal food i cook. For example...

When cooking lamb, brush the outside with mint jelly several times during cooking...it's sweet and minty and just sets of the outside

Add chopped garlic and dried thyme or rosemary to roast spuds at the beginning of cooking.

Brush chicken drumsticks with orange marmalade several times during cooking...particularly good on the barbeque.

Boil gammon joints in cider, cola or ginger beer then for the last half hour, cover the joint with grainy mustard, cover the mustard with brown sugar and put in the oven, uncovered for 20 mins.

simple curry...stir fry chicken breast chunks in one of the pataks curry pastes...about half a jar for 4 peaple. Add a tub of "Rachels" coconut yoghurt (from Tescos) or normal Greek yoghurt and simmer until the chicken is cooked. Add more garlic/sugar/chilli/ginger etc to your taste.

If you're having rice with your indian, add 10 cloves, 10 cardamon seeds, a star annisse and a good spoonful of cumin seeds and cook rice as normal. At the end of cooking...drain and remove the cardamon, star annisse and cloves.

[hammerman]

Please feel free to add some

[quinie]

Re gammon joint how long do you boil it and what oven temperature,please,hammerman? I've never cooked one.Must admit I hate long lists of ingredients!

[hammerman]

I boil a 1.5kg joint for about 2 hours with enough liquid to cover the joint. You will have to keep topping up too as you'll lose some liquid through evaporation.

As for oven temp...i just put it in at 180-200....i usually cook everything at 200 !!!

[quinie]

Thank you. It sounds delish