Changing Food… One Meal At A Time!
Spring
Jan Fullwood Food Consultant
(aka JamJarJan)
NOTES FROM A CHAOTIC KITCHEN
Welcome to day to day life in a chaotic well used kitchen…..
A constantly evolving kitchen: always busy, full of cooking and creating (dinner, treats, mess) for work and for play, for family and friends.
Let me introduce myself and my family:
- A Food and Recipe Consultant who is ‘never knowingly under-catered’, I’ll whip up a five-minute muffin mix at a moment’s notice. I’m constantly creating, evaluating and eating, always cooking and learning something new.
- Long-suffering Hub who just wants a clutter-free kitchen (and longs for a bit of peace and quiet). Happiest in the garden.
- Eldest cheffie son and his patisserie chef girlfriend who cook catering quantities of delicious food at every opportunity for us to sample (hard job, but someone’s got to do it)
- Protein & carb obsessed younger son set for uni (cooking not his forte - self survival skills urgently required)
We all eat to live. Let me help you live to eat.
What's in Jan's Pan?
April 2025
With the promise of longer, brighter days and celebrations galore in this household, kitchen chaos reaches unknown heights here in April.
As Easter fell later in the month it coincided with both boys birthdays for a full on weekend of Hot Cross Buns, epic cake making, pizza parties, chocolate egg hunts (never too old), big Easter dinners and celebration meals.
We had pork on Easter Sunday, courtesy of Cheffy Son (I know - what 21 year old cooks their own birthday meal? Only in this house). But with lamb being the traditional Easter meat, I've shared details some of the lamb dishes I’ve enjoyed recently, including my go to slow roast lamb recipe and a leftover lamb version of shepherd’s pie.
We squeezed in an Easter holiday trip to the Devon branch of the family, so read on for reviews of a few of our favourite restaurants in the Regency coastal town of Sidmouth, should you happen to be heading that way - good food's certainly not limited to London.
I’ve also included a round up of the epic trip we enjoyed to Malaysian Borneo at the end of March - it's official, Malaysian food is my new favourite.
With a melting pot of Asian cuisines, from coconut-laced curries and rice, laksa and noodles, sensational seafood to exotic fruits and colourful desserts featuring the flavours of coconut, palm sugar and pandan, I was in foodie heaven.
Pass me a karipap, it's time for a Kopi Susu and a Kuih Ketayap - I'm hooked!
What's in Jan's Pan
Pizza, birthday cakes, hot cross buns
This month the kitchen has churned out lamb dishes, porcetta, pizzas, celebration cakes and hot cross buns, with everyone creating their own corner of chaos and coming together to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Elaine Boddy’s sourdough Pizza dough recipeFoodbod sourdough did the trick for Student Son’s pizza party. This sits happily in the fridge ready to roll and finish with the toppings of choice. It was the first firing of the pizza oven so it was a little damp and steamy which meant the pizzas took a little longer to puff to perfection (minutes rather than the usual seconds), but with the promise of better weather that’ll soon be remedied.
The newly turned nineteen year old certainly had no complaints (but the birthday booze may have sharpened his appetite somewhat..)
Gone are the days when I made two elaborate novelty birthday cakes in short succession, such are the benefits of having a patisserie expert in the family. The 21st birthday masterpiece was a triple layered caramel cake topped with chocolate confectionary.
My go to chocolate cake is Angela Nilsen’s Ultimate chocolate cake which is squidgy, rich and very indulgent. Maltesers and a few gold stars elevated it to birthday cake status (hiding a couple of baking and coating boobs along the way, but don't tell).
I like to try a different hot cross bun recipe every year in search of the perfect bun and Nicola Lamb's hot cross bun recipe from her incredible baking book Sift is definitely up there. Made with the tangzhong method, which sounds suitably exotic and complicated, but is in fact just a cooked roux of flour and water to help to prolong the shelf life, which does seem to help, should they ever happen to last that long….
Suffice it to say that we are now suitably sugar-fuelled and cake is largely off the menu for May.....
Amazing Malaysia
It's official - Malaysian is my new favourite cuisine.
We returned from an epic adventure in Malaysia at the beginning of April, our first long-haul flight since sometime B.C (before children).
Borneo did not disappoint, with orangutan sightings (and lurking leeches) in the rainforest, and so many delicious dishes to try.
I've put together pictures of just a few of the incredible foods we sampled in the hotel restaurant and the local food market, with plenty of fresh coconut to wash it all down.
I learnt to make onde-onde, a sweet treat made from a ball of glutanous rice flavoured with pandan and coloured green. Filled with palm sugar, they are cooked rather like gnocchi until the balls rise to the surface, and then rolled in coconut. Much of the sweet dishes are made with these ingredients, all brightly coloured.
Fish and seafood is wonderful, along with fruits such as pomelo, pineapple, melon and dragon fruit, the street markets are vibrant and buzzing and with lots of satay and grilled chicken. Corn seems to feature too, with the kernals flavoured with all manner of things, including biscoff flavoured and oreo of all things (random!).
The hotels we stayed at catered for all tastes so we had the opportunity to try Korean, Chinese and Japanese cuisines. I was interested to try the congee for breakfast, a rice porridge served across Asia, though I confess I drew the line at the black century eggs that come as part of the savoury condiments to add on top.
Western breakfasts were available too, but we soon noticed the lack of pork, and found that bacon was made from beef or chicken, as a large proportion of Malaysians are Muslim. we discovered too that Malaysia continues to ban the import of pork and pork products from certain countries following the outbreak of African Swine Fever in 2018.
The hotel made mean French toast too, all washed down with Kopi Susu, the Indonesian favourite coffee, mixed with sweetened condensed milk.
Back home, we had our fix with a Malaysian themed takeaway for our anniversary meal from StrEats Hertford. Chef Tig travels extensively to research his street food, which he sells from his home in Hertford (order it direct then pop by to pick it up), so he really knows his Rendang from his Nyonya curries.
He can also be found at the weekly Street Food Heroes which is now based at All Saints Church in Hertford for takeaway food and music
I also found my new favourite Malaysian sweet treat on my latest visit to Borough market. Kaya is a coconut curd (think lemon curd made with eggs but flavoured with coconut and Pandan leaf). I found Madam Chang’s Kaya on the Asian market stall, and was thrilled to see it has a Great Taste 3 star award which guarantees that it will be tip-top quality. That’s my weekend pancake topping sorted, can’t wait to tuck in!
I'll be going along to Norman Musa's Malaysian supper club at Divertimenti in Knightsbridge next month to carry on my new obsession, and recreate some of the amazing dishes we had out there, so will report back next month.
Luscious Lamb
Easter generally calls for lamb, and I've enjoyed some great lamb dishes over the last month.
The Doper lamb in Kota Kinabalu in Borneo was amazing. We were there during Ramadan and so every night was a feasting night. This lamb was cooked in a covered pit of stones throughout the day, meaning it was tender and smoky once everyone sat down to eat after the amazing sunsets signalled it was time to eat.
I always buy my lamb from the 'lamb man' on Hertford market. Peter Gear, of Highbury Farm, has owned the family farm in Wood End, near Ardeley for 30 years, so I always like to support him (he bemoans that stocks of lamb are down from 20 million to 13 million across the country). Quality is key.
We tend to eat less meat but buy the best possible when we do. I slow cook a leg or shoulder so that it falls off of the bone and ensures every morsel of meat can be enjoyed.
Slow Cooked Lamb
Heat your oven to 170C/Fan 150C/Gas 3.
Put a 2kg shoulder or leg of lamb into a roasting tin on top of fresh rosemary, mint and garlic. Drizzle with oil and season well, add 250ml of stock or wine to the pan, and cover tightly. Leave to work its magic for 3-4 hours until the meat is tender and falls away from the bone - you should just need forks to pull it apart.
It's worth cooking more than you need for the sole purpose of providing plenty of leftovers. I love it wrapped and served with hummus and salad in flatbreads.
I heated the remainder of my last lamb through the rich tomato sauce of Georgina Hayden's Imam Biyaldi recipe from her latest book Greekish, delicious with the hassleback aubergine, simply scooped up with sweet gem lettuce leaves.
Cooked lamb gives simple shepherd's pie a whole new texture and takes it to another level. Here's my version, with mint sauce and an optional feta cheese potato topping.
Lost and Found Lamb Pie
Heat a drizzle of oil in a large deep pan and fry a chopped onion with a couple of diced carrots for 5-6 minutes until softened. Add a couple of cloves of crushed garlic and soften for another minute.
Stir in 300ml of your preferred stock (I like to use a red wine stock paste), and any gravy you may have leftover from your roast with a splash of Worcestershire sauce to taste
Add around 450g of the shredded leftover lamb, season and allow to simmer to soften the lamb and veg and reduce and thicken the sauce (add more liquid if it's too dry). Meanwhile prepare the potato topping.
Cook 900g peeled and diced potates in salted water for 15-20 mins until tender, then drain in a colander and allow to steam. Return to the pan and mash with 50g butter and enough milk to give a soft consistency, around 3-4 tbsp. Crumble in 150g feta if you fancy, to give a salty cheesy tang to the topping and some fresh chopped mint.
Stir 100g frozen peas with 2 tbsp mint sauce or mint jelly into the lamb mixture and pour it into a 1½ – 2 litre ovenproof dish. Dollop the potato on top an spread to cover the lamb. Fluff it with a fork to allow for crispy bits on top.
Cook in a preheated oven 200C/180C Fan / Gas 6 for 25-30 minutes until piping hot throughout. Tuck in and be pleased you saved that lamb. Bo Peep would be proud.
What's on Jan's Restaurant plate?
There were high tides in Sidmouth this April during the Easter visit to the family Down West. There are some great eateries in the West country, so to prove that it’s not all about London (see my recommendation for Fallow restaurant in the Haymarket below), here's a round up of some of my favourites around Sidmouth.
Our early start to miss the pile up of traffic around Stonehenge (it's the pull of the stones) always demands a slap up breakfast at the end and we usually head for the breakfast at the Otter valley dairy and field kitchen just as you come into Monkton on the way to Sidmouth or the Donkey Sanctuary's cafe The Kitchen for what we affectionally call a big donkey breakfast (no donkeys were harmed in the making of this).
We tested out new Italian restaurant Roma, whose sister restaurant Myca's seafood and grill is just up the high street. Roma boasts a view of the sea through its huge picture windows and whilst not a particularly intimate or cosy restaurant, it was perfect for a family meal out. Whilst by the sea, eat the seafood I say, so I had the seafood risotto topped with salmon, scallops and prawns. The dish was creamy and the rice was perfectly al dente as risotto should be. Definitely a great addition to the town. You can't beat a beachfront restaurant, and the Mitch Tonks restaurant, Rockfish is due to open at the end of the esplanade in October. A great location, but it has been delayed yet again due to planning problems in the old Drill hall.
We visited Exmouth and discovered that another beachfront restaurant, Micky's, set up by Michael Caines of nearby Lympstone Manor has been taken over by Swim Cafe Bar which has a branch in LymeRegis. For those that follow chefs in the restauarant world I was interested to learn that Michael is now also consultant chef at the Stafford Hotel (where Cheffy Son first worked), taking over from Lisa Goodwin-Allen who has recently announced that she is staying at the Northcote in Stafford, under new management.
Back in the Big Smoke, the birthday and anniversary celebrations included a visit to Fallow Restaurant, Cheffy son's favourite breakfast haunt in the Haymarket. Having tasted their breakfast menu I can see why. My wild mushroom, asparagus and basil pesto on toast had the most perfectly cooked poached egg wobbling precariously on top which oozed exactly as it should once cut. I love their concept of ‘conscious gastronomy’ ensuring minimum waste, and the Cheffy pair love the signature croissant puck served with savoury fillings - the sweet and savoury combo works surprisingly well. I’ll definitely be back to try the set lunch menu sometime. The Fallow tallow is a must!
Happy dining!
Comments