Beans, Beans, Good for the Heart...... {One Pot Boston Baked Beans}

Exceptionally good for the heart are beans. Also good for the heart and general well-being is food that is natural with no artificial additives, step in to the spotlight Kikkoman Soy Sauce. I love Kikkomen sauces especially their soy sauce, mainly because I think it tastes great and I love the fact it is made from all natural ingredients. When the lovely people at Kikkoman asked if I would like to create a recipe using their soy sauce I jumped at the opportunity, especially when they said they didn't want it to be an Asian dish as they want to show the versatility of soy sauce in all variety of dishes. This is great for me as I often use soy sauce to substitute for Worcester sauce as I prefer the taste - just as savory but not as strong. 

After having a ponder, as one likes to do I decided to use the soy sauce for my classic American, one pot, winter warmer dish: Boston Beans. The savouriness and richness of the soy sauce really helps bring out the smokiness of these BBQ style beans. Often you find recipes for Boston Beans call for bacon or pork belly as the meat but I like to go for chorizo as I think it adds so much more flavour and colour to the dish. You can be flexible with what beans you use, cannellini beans work well for this dish. I just love the way you basically throw everything into the pan and leave it bubble away in the oven whilst your house smells of lovely BBQ food - it's the perfect comfort food as the dark night draw in and would be a great addition to any bonfire parties! 

Boston Baked Beans 

150g chorizo, cubed

1 onion, finely diced

1 tin (400g) kidney beans 

1 tin (400g) haricot beans 

1 tin (400g) butter beans 

3 TBSP soft brown sugar

2 TBSP black treacle

4 TBSP Kikkoman soy sauce

2 TSP English mustard powder

½ TSP smoked paprika

400g chopped tomatoes

300ml chicken stock, or you could use beef if you prefer

crusty bread, toasted

cook the chorizo and onion in a large pan or casserole dish until the onions are soft and the chorizo crispy. Stir through the beans, sugar, soy sauce, treacle, mustard powder, treacle, paprika and chopped tomatoes. add the stock making sure beans are covered. cover pan with a lid and either cook in oven at 180OC for two hours or simmer on the hob for the same amount of time, until beans are soft and the sauce had thickened. Serve on the toast.  

***Thank you to Kikkoman for asking me to be involved in this recipe challenge and sending the bottle of soy sauce to create this recipe***

Turkey Shawarma {Arabic Street Food}

I have waxed lyrical about the health benefits of using turkey in your cooking on this blog before and so when I saw that "I Love British Turkey" was launching a blogging competition I knew that I had to get involved. The competition is also run alongside The Red Tractor standard which is something that I have been passionate about since my university days (I did go to Harper Adams after all). I like that as a consumer I can see a little logo on the back and can be assured that I am buying quality British produce, whilst supporting British farmers and as British food is some of the best in the world it's win win really! 

Back to the challenge - the theme was "Arabian Nights" and I spent a great deal of time thinking about what I could do... maybe a tagine or a moussaka (both delicious of course) but I wanted to do something a bit more funky and fresh and a bit less "stereotypical". So I started to think more along the lines of street food and I suddenly came up with the idea of doing a Shawarma, which is a Arabic wrap. I usually make the dish with the more traditional chicken or lamb which is served hot in a warm wrap with crunchy veg and a garlic sauce. However, in my version I like to just make a garlic oil with a good quality British rapeseed oil and let that lightly coat the salad and add a bit of a kick!  Knowing how versatile turkey is I was confident it would take on the spicy, aromatic flavours of the dish perfectly and it did. Don't be put of with the long list of ingredients everything gets thrown in to a couple of bowls, so to speak, so this dish really doesn't take long at all.  So here you have a very fresh and incredibly tasty Turkey Shawarma - enjoy!

Turkey Shawarma

For the meat: 

400g diced turkey

1 1/2 TBSP HillFarm rapeseed oil (Red Tractor logo) 

200g Greek Yogurt (Tesco - Red Tractor logo)

1 egg, beaten lightly 

Juice 1/2 lemon

1 TSP Ras el Hanout

1 TSP cinnamon powder

2 TSP freshly ground black pepper 

Couple of pinches salt

1/2 - 1 TSP red chilli flakes (to taste, i like mine spicy)!

3 cloves garlic, crushed

Thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated 

For the garlic oil:

150ml HillFarm rapeseed oil (Red Tractor logo) 

2 cloves garlic, crushed 

Squeeze of lemon juice 

For the salad:

1/2 Iceberg lettuce, finely sliced 

1/4 cucumber, shaved (with a peeler)

1 tomato, halved and thinly sliced 

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced 

3 TBS coriander, chopped 

3 TBS pomegranate seeds

6 small or 4 big wraps or flat breads (pita bread would also work well) 

Marinate the turkey in all of the ingredients listed for the meat. You want to marinate it for at least and hour preferably a few. Heat a non stick pan and cook the turkey until it is cooked through and quite dry - this is where the yogurt cooks out don't be alarmed if it looks a bit grainy whilst you cook just stick with it. This usually takes around 10 minutes, keep stirring as it cooks. 

Take the oil and crushed garlic and whisk (or blend in a blender), add in the lemon juice to taste and season - you should have a lovely sunshine yellow sauce which is heady with the smell and taste of garlic. 

Assemble the salad ingredients and toss with about a TBSP of the garlic oil.

To make your Shawarma, warm the wrap in a dry pan. Add the salad and then top with the meat and a drizzle of the oil. You can also add a few dollops of yogurt or hummus, both work well. Serve immediately and preferably with and ice cold beer or iced tea.