GYROS, OF A SORT

Last summer, our family holiday was a fortnight in Greece.  Lots of memorable foodie moments,

one of which was the delicious 'Gyros' street food.

 Traditionally made with pork but I made mine with beef skirt - as I said, Gyros, of a sorts.

Pretty darn good, if say so myself.

If you fancy a try, this is how 

I marinated 1.5Ib of beef skirt in finely chopped clove of garlic and a table spoon

of red wine vinegar and left for an hour.

 Meanwhile, I made up a few pizza bases in the bread maker 

but you could just buy some round pittas.

And made a kind of guacamole dip by mashing four cloves of chopped pickled garlic
with one avocado and a simple onion and Greek yogurt dip.

Char grill the beef skirt in a griddle pan for 3-4 minutes each side depending on

how rare you like your meat. 

Remove from the pan onto a chopping board and thinly slice.

Load up with the dips, a few leaves of rocket, sliced tomato and cucumber and

top with the beef skirt and a handful of chips - homemade or from the local chippy!

HOMEMADE MINI SCOTCH EGGS

Believe me. Once you've made your own scotch eggs, you'll never buy a shop bought one again.  I guarantee!


     Ingredients

     4 (free range) eggs

     1kg pork sausage meat (or 10 sausages as I did)

     3tsp mayonnaise

     Grating of Parmesan

     Coating

     4 slices of stale bread (crumbed)

     2 eggs (whisked)

     Flour

     15-20 portions

Start by browning off the bread crumbs ready for coating the scotch eggs. 

Soft boil 4 eggs but so they are still a little gooey in the middle, 4-5mins should do it.  Once boiled put them straight into cold water changing a couple of times to get the eggs nice and cold (this stops the york going dark around the edges)

De-shell the eggs and chop up mixing in the mayonnaise and grated Parmesan.

Split the sausage meat into portions roughly the size of half a sausage.  Take one and flatten it out making sure there are no holes or tears and then dollop a tsp of the chopped egg into the middle.

Carefully pinch the edges of the sausage meat together and gently shape into a ball without squashing out the egg.  Do the same to all.  You should end up with between 15 and 20.

Heat up some oil in a pan.  You can either shallow or deep fry these. Take the first scotch egg and

roll it in to the flour, dip in the whisked egg, roll in the breadcrumbs and then pop into the hot oil.

Fry off all the scotch eggs, placing into a preheated oven at 160 degrees as they are done.

Cook until golden on the outside, turning regularly

Cook for 10-15 minutes or until the sausage meat is cooked through.

Break one open to test if you are unsure.

Best eaten still warm - Enjoy!



BIG BURRITO!

In the big smoke yesterday and treated myself to some tasty street food at Berwick Market, Soho. A delicious chicken, rice, fried bean and guacamole burrito put together by the lovely team at Freebird Burritos. Loads of fillings to choose from, spicy or not. Hit the spot!

SATURDAY NIGHT IS PIZZA NIGHT

Saturday nights are a firm favourite in our house for homemade pizza.  Thin and crispy with whatever topping takes our fancy (or what the contents of the fridge allows!) In this case, tomato, ham and mozzarella.

Pizza, sofa,TV, perfect!