Easy Peasey Cheese Sauce

Decided to make sausage and bacon tagliatelle with a cheese sauce for dinner.

Feeling lazy and not wanting to do a bechemal cheese sauce from scratch, I started to use this recipe as I didn't want to always want to use cheese sauce from a jar. But after a long shift at work, completely from scratch sounds exhausting so I wanted to play around with a few microwave recipes.

Easy Peasey Cheese Sauce (for 2/3 portions)

100ml Double Cream

150g mature cheddar (or a little more for taste) cut into chunks or grated

1/2 tbsp soft cheese (for the tagliatelle I used garlic and herb)

Method

Put all of these ingredients together in a microwavable bowl.

Put in the microwave on full heat for 2 mins then stir.

Put on again for a further 1 min and stir again.

Now it is ready to pour on top of your selected cheesy dish. For example, mac and cheese, lasagne, cauliflower cheese, chicken and broccoli pasta bake, potato gratin or add some blue cheese to pour over steaks. 

Before                                                After  

Cleaning tip: 

Wash up as much as you can whilst waiting for things to cook, will save having to face a massive pile to tidy up after you've finished eating.

Hash Brown Recipe

I'm always searching for something different to attempt to cook, so dinner doesn't get repetitive and boring. I can only be one added extra item that can make the difference to a simple meal.

The other day I planned to make a cooked breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, mushroom and toast. Easy. Then I realized we had no bread, hmmmm... not a good start. What could do? All I needed was something stodgy to bring the breakfast together. Something to do with potato I considered but didn't feel like chips.

If only we had some hash browns, now that would be great. Then I googled the recipe to see how hard they would be to make and in fact they were actually very simple plus I had all of the ingredients.

Hash Browns (will make 4/6 hash browns depending on size)

Ingredients:

2 medium/large potatoes

1 white onion

1 egg

1 1/2 tbsp Plain Flour

Salt and Pepper to taste

Oil or butter for frying

What to do:

I first peeled then washed the potatoes. I used a tub grater to grate both potatoes and to catch it all. Then I finally chopped the onions.

Placing both potato and onion into a bowl or jug (or whatever you prefer to mix with), crack the egg into the mix then and the tablespoons of plain flour, add a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Mix these all throughly together and that surprisingly is the basic mix.

 Heat up a frying pan on a medium heat, so as not to burn them and give time for the potato to cook through, with oil or butter depending on your taste (I used the pan from cooking the bacon, which I feel adds extra taste to them). Spoon the mixer into a frying pan. Leave to cook for five minutes then flip over to cook for a further five minutes. I gave mine a second frying on both sides to further brown them off again this all depends on preference, the longer you leave them the more crispy they become. Then they are ready to serve up with the rest of your cooked breakfast selection.

I found the original recipe to mine here http://allrecipes.com/recipe/57783/emilys-famous-hash-browns/

Cleaning tip:

Lay a piece 2 piece of kitchen roll in your cooling frying pan, cooking trays or grill to soak up the oil and fat. This saves less from getting down the drains and blocking it as it solidifies as it becomes cool.