Here are the Eat the Week recipes from this inaugural episode.  Eat the Week is a 10 episode series hosted by Simon Rimmer, chef better known for Sunday Brunch, showing how you can make great meals using frozen food.  The programme is sponsored by Iceland frozen food stores.

Episode 1 recipes on Eat the Week were: Potato Bravas and Pork Chops with Rarebit, Cheese and Potato Pie, Smoked Haddock Rarebit, Haddock and Chorizo Hash, Smoked Haddock Mornay, Easy Mississippi Mud Pie,  Earl Grey Bread & Butter Pudding, Salmon and Prawn Cannelloni, Tandoori Lamb Chops, Roasted Squash Salad with Steak or Salmon and Mulligatawny Soup.

Any cookery programme is great to watch if they’re the ingredients you have and like – for me I just like watching food.  There were a few recipes which are similar to recipes I cook, but there’s often something small you can take away from other recipes. There’s a link to the full recipes at the end of this “review”.

Tandoori Lamb Chops

I didn’t take too much notice of the chops, to be honest.  I don’t tend to eat many chops at all – but what caught my eye was that they were served on Biryani Rice.  The leftover rice was then used to make a Mulligatawny Soup.

To make the biryani rice he fried onions with a paste of blitzed garlic, ginger and red chilli.  He also added turmeric and garam masala.  Raw/washed rice was then added to the pan, with some stock and a couple of bayleaves.  That was stirred and then left to simmer for 20 minutes.

• My Food Cheat: I’d microwave fry the onions and use the microwave to steam the rice.

Mulligatawny Soup

Mulligatawny soup is simply a curried soup – Simon Rimmer used some of the leftover biryani rice, that he blitzed up with more stock.  Half of that mix was then blitzed in a food processor and added back to the rice/stock, along with some cream.   While I like soup, I don’t like it enough to make it often, I also don’t have cream in the house, so I’d be highly unlikely to ever make this.  But the idea of using leftover rice mixes to make soup is one I do sometimes, but without cream 🙂

• Food Cheat: I make a similar soup by reheating the rice and stock in the microwave.

Salmon and Prawn Cannelloni

I’ve always loved cannelloni – they used to sell tins of it about 30 years ago which I’d eat often. Cannelloni is pasta sheets rolled up with a filling inside, covered with a white, or bechamel, sauce and baked.

Simon Rimmer used a mixture of frozen king prawns, ricotta cheese, a little bechamel and salmon .. but I wasn’t really taking notice as I don’t use fish much and never prawns of any size!.  Simon made a bechamel sauce and a pesto sauce.  I’m not big on pesto, but he blitzed that from basil, pine nuts, a bit of garlic, finely grated parmesan and extra virgin olive oil. I tried pesto once, didn’t like it 🙂

The filling was rolled in fresh pasta sheets – Simon put the filling on the short side, when Michaela in the show made the recipe she put it lengthways, so either/or is good enough.  Put a little bechamel sauce in the bottom of an ovenproof dish, put a layer of the rolled pasta filled with the filling in, pour bechamel sauce over the top, then dollop some pesto over that, then sprinkle the top with grated parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs, then drizzle the top with some olive oil and bake for 40 minutes.

• Food Cheats: I make a microwave bechamel sauce. I’d use dried pasta and just soften it in boiling water before adding the filling and rolling it.  I’d also microwave this whole dish, for about 10 minutes, adding it to the oven, or under the grill, just for 10 minutes to brown at the end, although I’m prepared to skip this bit if I am not overly bothered about a crispy top.

Easy Mississippi Mud Pie

This is just a dish of calories!  Crush up biscuits and butter to make a cheesecake style base and press it into a shallow oven proof dish.  Melt chocolate and butter together. Mix eggs with muscovado sugar (that’s dark brown sugar), then add the chocolate/butter to the eggs/sugar mix and combine thoroughly.  Pour the chocolate mix into the biscuit base and bake.  Leave it to cool.  He also made a toffee sauce from melting chocolate, golden syrup, cream and icing sugar together and pouring over the top. This takes 2 hours to set.  When you add it all up, this is a recipe you have to make ahead!

Cheese and Potato Plate Pie

This is just a pretty standard cheese and potato plate pie made using a metal “camping plate” or any ovenproof household plate – any ovensafe dish can be used if you don’t have one though, e.g. a casserole lid or even a sponge tin!

Simon made a basic pastry, including a little paprika.  The pie filling was soft cooked cubed potatoes, sliced red onion, a cheese mix of cheddar, parmesan and curds (although he did say use the cheese you’ve got).  Having made/rested the pastry, he put down a pastry base, put the filling in, added the lid, crimped the edges with a fork, cut a small hole as a vent for steam and gave it a quick egg wash.  The pie cooked for 30 minutes in the oven.

• My Food Cheat: I’d microwave cook the potatoes, which takes about 5-6 minutes, or even use a drained tin of potatoes at a push.

Earl Grey Bread & Butter Pudding

This bread and butter pudding just uses Earl Grey tea as part of the mix. It’s the usual “spread butter onto bread, layer in a dish with sultanas/similar, make a sauce and pour it over, bake in the oven”.  This takes about 30 minutes to bake.   For me, I rarely have tea in the house, just the occasional gifted tea bag, or a free sample…. but I do make the occasional bread and butter pudding.  There aren’t really any food cheats to making it though… and, in my opinion, it is best done in the oven for the 30+ minutes it takes.

Potato Bravas and Pork Chops with Rarebit.

This recipe used frozen haddock and fresh pork chops served with a simple rarebit style cheese topping  made from mature cheddar cheese, mustard and eggs and this was then pressed into shape and placed on top of the haddock and the chops.  The chops were pan-fried (Simon’s cooking tip was to snip the edges of the chops with scissors to stop them curling up while frying), then topped with the cheese mix and placed under the grill, whereas the haddock was defrosted and put into the oven with the cheese topping.

The potato bravas part used chopped potatoes and chorizo cooked in an ovenproof pan on the hob, then add a chopped chilli and some canned tomatoes.  Simon Rimmer said to make this a vegetarian potato bravas recipe, just use smoked paprika instead of chorizo.

The potatoes were served onto the plate, then the pork chops and haddock put on top of that with their rarebit topping.

• My Food Cheat: I’d just use the rarebit topping to put on top of a beef burger!

Haddock and Chorizo Hash

This was similar to a corned beef hash, but used haddock and chorizo and, to be honest, I wasn’t really watching.

• My Food Cheat: I make a microwave corned beef hash and would use similar methods to make this, although I’m unlikely to make this dish ever because there’s too much food in the world and you can’t eat everything, especially when it has ingredients you rarely buy!

Roasted Squash Salad with Steak or Salmon

I mentally switched off by this point.  This show is an hour long and it was close to the end and I don’t cook/eat hot salads, or squash…. it was roasted cubed squash with leaves and salady bits here and there.  Not a salad fan in the main 🙂

Episode Recipes from Iceland

All the recipes for this Eat the Week episode are on the Iceland website, where they give you all the ingredients, the measurement and weights and cooking times.

Update: They have removed the recipes from the Eat the Week programme, which had been at groceries.iceland.co.uk/eat-the-week/episode-01

There are recipes here I’d eat, but I found this episode quite “fish and chorizo and pork chop” heavy for my typical food.  It’s a good watch though!