Recipe: Cheese & Bacon Meat Loaf

When Simon and I first met, I wasn't terribly proficient at cooking. In fact, the one thing I felt confident about making was lasagna--which I completely and utterly ruined on the first time I attempted to cook it for Simon. Simon loved to cook, and had a terrible habit of taking over in the kitchen because he was convinced he could prepare something better or quicker than I could. It took him a while to relinquish control and let me chop onions the way I preferred, and just as long for me to start finding recipes that appealed to me and develop my own love of cooking.

This meatloaf was one of the first things I made for Simon after we moved in together in our third year of university, and in spite of how simple it is (I don't change a lot from the original recipe) it quickly became one of his favourite meals. I can nearly master his favourite roast potatoes (courtesy of Delia Smith) and we've served this meal with a variety of side dishes: green salad, roast asparagus, and braised cabbage.

I'm fairly certain I first came across this recipe on AllRecipes.com when I was searching for Amish-inspired meals, since I'd come across some appealing dishes in some Amish novels I'd read. I'm not sure how authentically Amish it is, but it's a great comfort meal and incredibly easy to make. 

Adapted from Taste of Home.

Serves: 3-4

Prep. Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

2 slices of bacon

500g of minced beef

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 small onion, finely chopped

8 Ritz crackers (or similar), crushed

100g of Emmental or Gouda, cubed

1 tsp of dried sage

1 egg, lightly beaten

Salt and pepper, dependent on personal taste

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 175C/350F. Fry or grill the bacon until cooked but not crisp, then drain on paper towels before breaking into pieces.

2. Meanwhile, combine the remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl, making sure that the egg coats as much of the mixture as possible. Keep a few pieces of cheese aside to place on top of the meatloaf.

3. Transfer meatloaf mixture into a loaf tin and top with bacon. Cook in oven for 30 minutes.

4. Top the meatloaf with the remaining cheese and cook for a further 5 minutes.

6. Serve with roasted potatoes and your preferred vegetable side. Salads, asparagus and cabbage work well!

Recipe: Sweet Potato, Chorizo & Kale Enchiladas

It's no secret that we love enchiladas, or sweet potatoes, or chorizo. So when I spotted a recipe for sweet potato and chorizo enchiladas on Pinterest, I knew that we had to try it. Given how simple the original recipe was, I played around with the ingredients a fair bit and came up with something that suited our tastes. Other than waiting for the sweet potato to soften, this is a relatively quick and easy recipe to throw together. Enjoy!

Adapted from Budget Bytes.

Serves: 2-4
Prep. Time: 20-30 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 bird's eye chillies, finely chopped
Approx. 450g of sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into half-inch cubes
1 tsp of chilli flakes
1 tsp of smoked paprika
1 tsp of cumin, ground
1 spicy chorizo sausage, chopped into rings, then halved
A few handfuls of kale, stems removed and chopped
4 large flour tortillas
One portion of your favourite enchilada sauce (we like this one)
Grated extra mature cheddar cheese

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 190C/375F. In a large frying pan, fry the garlic and chillies until they become fragrant. Add the sweet potato and spices and cook until the potato softens. Add the chorizo and cook until it starts to brown, then toss in the kale and cook it until it wilts. 
2. Pour a little of the enchilada sauce into the bottom of a casserole dish and spread it around until it covers the base evenly. Fill each tortilla with a quarter of the sweet potato mixture and roll tightly so that nothing escapes when placed in the enchilada dish. Once all four enchiladas are in the dish, cover them with the remaining sauce and as much grated cheese as suits your taste.
3. Cook in oven for 20 minutes, and serve with your favourite toppings: spring onions, fresh coriander, sour cream, etc.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Pinto Bean & Chorizo Stew

Although this recipe works best with pinto beans, you could substitute your favourite kind of beans (haricot, cannellini, kidney, etc) if you can't get hold of pinto beans. Tesco sometimes sells canned pinto beans, but we often buy a bag of dried beans and cook them in our slow cooker before freezing them in 2 cup portions. 

If you use beans that you've already prepared (either by slow cooking or soaking overnight) you'll probably want to reduce the cooking time so the beans don't disintegrate. Canned beans tend to be firmer and need more time to cook.

Adapted from AllRecipes.

Serves: 4-6
Prep. Time: 15 minutes
Cook. Time: 3-5 hours on High, 5-7 on Low

Ingredients
2 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled into powder
3 (300g) cans of pinto beans, drained and rinsed (or 6 cups of precooked pinto beans)
1 spicy chorizo sausage, chopped
1 (500g) carton of passata
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tbsps of cider vinegar
2 tbsps of pickled jalapeno peppers, including juice
2 tbsps of white sugar
2 tsps of smoked paprika
2 tsps of chilli flakes
1 tsp of cumin, ground
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
1 bell pepper, chopped
4 spring onions, chopped

Directions
1. Place all of the ingredients, except pepper and spring onion, in the slow cooker and mix until thoroughly combined. If the passata doesn't completely cover the ingredients, fill one of the pinto bean cans with water and add to the slow cooker. 
2. Cook on High for 5-7 hours or on Low for 9-10 hours.
3. About five minutes before serving, stir in the pepper and spring onions. 
4. Once the pepper and spring onions have started to soften (you still want them to have some crunch), serve on top of cous cous. 

Recipe: Slow Cooker Taco Soup

We used our slow cooker a lot when we were students, but we've not had the opportunity to put it to such good use since moving to Edinburgh. A slow cooker is great for feeding a crowd or preparing freezer meals, but since we just have a tiny ice box in our current flat, we have limited space for freezing leftovers. Still, this is one of our favourite comfort meals to make in the slow cooker, and it's relatively easy to throw together, even if the ingredient list does look pretty extensive.

You can adjust this recipe to suit your taste--it works well as a vegetarian meal if you remove the mince and add more beans or corn, and if you find it difficult to get hold of pinto beans, haricot or cannellini make a good substitute. This isn't a very spicy meal, but you can skip the chillies and some of the spices if you really can't handle the heat.

Adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking.

Serves: 4
Prep. Time: 15 minutes 
Cook Time: 3-5 hours on High, or 6-7 on Low

Ingredients 
Soup
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 onions, chopped
3 bird's eye chillies, finely chopped
500g of minced beef
1/2 tsp of paprika
1 1/2 tsps of cumin, ground
1/4 tsp of chilli flakes
2 tsps of dried chives
1/4 tsp of dried oregano
1/4 tsp of dried dill
1 tsp of celery seed
1 tsp of dried parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 (410g) cans of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 (300g) cans of pinto beans, drained and rinsed (or 2 cups of precooked pinto beans)
2 (400g) cans of chopped tomatoes
1 (326g) can of sweetcorn
1 can of cold water
1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp of lime juice

For Serving
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Sour cream
Guacamole
Tortilla chips
Fresh coriander

Directions
1. Preheat slow cooker. Fry the chopped garlic, onion and chillies in oil until they start to brown. Add the mince and cook until completely brown. 
2. Add mince mixture to slow cooker. Sprinkle all of the spices and herbs on top of the mince mixture, including salt and pepper.
3. Add the beans, tomatoes and corn to the slow cooker. Fill one of the tomato or kidney bean cans with cold tap water and add to mixture. Add balsamic vinegar and lime juice.
4. Stir contents of slow cooker until mixed through evenly and cook for 3-5 hours on High or 6-7 on Low.
5. Serve topped with grated mozzarella cheese, sour cream, guacamole, tortilla chips and fresh coriander.

Recipe: Spicy Black Bean Soup with Avocado Sauce

I was planning to post the link to this recipe in one of our Recent Meal posts, only to realise that we deviate from the original recipe a fair bit. We love black beans, Mexican food and anything spicy--and this recipe is definitely spicy. If you find regular chillies a bit too hot, this probably isn't one for you, as it really isn't the same without the scotch bonnet. But unlike a lot of our recipes, this one is pretty quick to make. 

Adapted from Okie Dokie Artichokie.

Serves: 2

Prep. Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

Soup

1 red onion, chopped

2 spring onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 scotch bonnet chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (preferably red)

2 teaspoons of cumin, ground

2 teaspoons of chilli flakes

2 teaspoons of ancho chilli powder

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 cups of cooked black beans

1 cup of vegetable stock

Avocado Sauce

1 avocado, ripe

1/2 cup of fresh coriander, finely chopped

1 lime, juiced

1/2 cup of single cream

A sprinkling of paprika

Salt and pepper, to taste

To Serve

Feta cheese, crumbled

Lime wedges

Fresh coriander

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, fry the onions, garlic, chilli, spices, salt and pepper until the red onion turns soft and translucent.

2. Add the black beans and stir to combine. After 30 seconds, add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil before reducing to a simmer. Cook until the beans are hot.

3. While the soup is simmering, mash up avocado with a fork, and mix with cream, coriander, lime juice, paprika, salt and pepper. If you prefer a completely smooth sauce, you could make it in a food processor, but we prefer our sauce a little chunky.

4. Remove soup from the heat and blend with a hand-held blender until it has the desired texture. We prefer our soup to still have some chunks in it, but you can make it completely smooth if you prefer. If you don't have a hand-held blender, you could transfer the soup to a standing blender.

5. Top each bowl of soup with avocado sauce, crumbled feta cheese and fresh coriander, and serve with hot rolls and lime wedges. 

Recipe: Sloppy Joes

One of our favourite places in Edinburgh is the Games Hub; a cafe on Lauriston Place where you can pay £2.50 to stay as long as you want, and play as many board games as possible. They serve very reasonably priced food, from standards like toasties and wraps, to their soup and dish of the day. Their dish of the day is often Sloppy Joes, which is where I was first introduced to this meal. After having it a couple of times at the Games Hub, I determined to figure out how to make it myself, but struggled to find a recipe that I completely liked the look of. I ended up combining several recipes I found online, so I'm afraid I can't credit this one to any one source in particular.

This recipe contains a lot of vinegar and mustard, so if you don't like that much of a tang in your food, you might want to cut down on the quantities of those. You can add more brown sugar to off-set the vinegar if you do find you use too much.

We usually top our Sloppy Joes with extra mature cheddar cheese (which is the standard cheese that you can always find in our fridge), but on this occasion we used Velveeta. Ages ago, I asked a Texan friend what Velveeta was, since I'd seen it mentioned in a couple of recipes. Recently she posted us a box so we could try it. It's basically like a big block of the individual cheese slices you typically put on top of burgers, which my family always referred to as "plastic cheese". It actually works really well with Sloppy Joes!

Sloppy Joes

Serves: 4
Prep. Time: 10 minutes
Cook. Time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 bird's eye chillies, finely chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 pepper, deseeded and chopped (bell or sweet)
3 ribs of celery, chopped
500g of minced beef
1 (500g) carton of passata
1 (400g) can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup of ketchup
1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
1.5 tbsp of brown sugar
1 tbsp of white vinegar
1 tbsp of cider vinegar
2 tsp of dijon mustard
1 tsp of American mustard
1 tsp of cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to taste
8 burger buns (two per person)
Cheese of choice, sliced

Directions
1. Heat some oil in a large saucepan and fry the garlic, chillies, onion, pepper and celery until the onion and celery starts to soften and turn translucent.
2. Add the mince and cook until browned.
3. Add the passata and kidney beans and stir until combined. Then add the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, vinegars, mustards, cayenne pepper and any seasoning you desire before stirring the mixture again.
4. Simmer until the sauce and beans are hot. While the mixture simmers, toast your burger buns--either in the toaster or under the grill. 
5. On a grill-safe plate, top each half of the burger bun with some of the sloppy joe mixture, before adding some cheese. Place under the grill until the cheese melts and begins to bubble.
6. Serve with hot sauce, if desired! 

Recipe: Black Bean & Sweetcorn Quesadillas

This is a relatively quick and easy recipe, but the scotch bonnet makes it very hot, so this isn't for those who wince when they eat anything containing chilli powder. And I say "very hot" in terms of most normal people's heat rating--honestly, this is just standard hot for us ;) We try to use red scotch bonnets as they're the hottest, followed by yellow, then green.

Sadly, black beans aren't terribly popular in the UK. You can buy cans of them in Morrisons and most health food shops (Real Foods, Holland & Barrett, etc) but they tend to be relatively expensive. If you know you like them, it's more cost-effective to buy a big bag of dried black beans (found in most supermarkets and any health food store) and either soak them overnight or cook them in the slow cooker, before freezing them in reasonable portions (we tend to go for two cups per bag). 

Black Bean & Sweetcorn Quesadillas

Adapted from a Cooking Light recipe found at MyRecipes.

Serves: 2 (with leftovers or second helpings)
Prep. Time: 5 minutes
Cook. Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 scotch bonnet chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 pepper, deseeded and chopped (bell or sweet)
1 (400g) can of chopped tomatoes
2 cups of cooked black beans
1 (326g) can of sweetcorn, drained
1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp of lime juice
1 tsp of cumin, finely ground
1 tsp of paprika (smoked or ordinary)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup of fresh coriander, finely chopped
100g of Mexicana cheese, grated
4-8 large flour tortillas (depending on how full you fill your quesadillas)

Directions
1. Heat some oil in a medium-sized saucepan and fry the garlic, scotch bonnet and pepper for a few minutes. 
2. Add the chopped tomatoes, black beans and sweetcorn, then the vinegar, lime juice and dried spices, as well as any salt and pepper you desire. Stir to combine.
3. Bring the mixture up to boil, before reducing to a simmer and adding the chopped coriander. 
4. Heat a very small amount of oil to a large frying pan. Once the oil is able to run about the pan like water, quickly fry a tortilla on both sides. Remove this tortilla from the pan and replace with a second one. Once you've fried it on one side, flip it over and top it with some of the black bean mixture and cheese. Once the tortilla appears to be cooked on the base side, top with the other tortilla and transfer (carefully) to a plate. Assemble the other quesadillas similarly. 
5. Cut into quarters with a pizza cutter and serve with sour cream, salsa and lime wedges, if desired.