All over Prague, restaurants served delicious richly spiced grilled meats and kebabs. My inner carnivore was in heaven but I couldn’t work out the spicing. There was come citrus, a little chilli, garlic and herbs.

Not to be beaten by the mystery I headed for the market near to our hotel and many of the food stalls were selling spice mixes (labelled Steak Koreni) for meat. Case solved – I brought some back to try and ran the ingredients label through an online translation site.

There’s now always a jar of this mix in my cupboard to turn a midweek pork chop into something a bit special. It’s amazing for barbecues too – now that the summer seems to have arrived early.

To make enough to keep in a jar for a few meals, mix together two teaspoons each of:

• Sea salt
• Mustard seeds
• Dried thyme
• Coriander seeds
• Cumin seeds
• Dried onion or onion powder
• Black peppercorns (one teaspoon)
• Chilli flakes (up to you – two makes it quite pokey)

Grind together a couple of teaspoons of the mix as a dry rub for griddled or BBQed meat or mix with a little oil and lemon juice as a marinade. The smell as it’s cooking will bring tears of joy to the eye of any enthusiastic meat-eater.

Lamb and leek sausage casserole

I had a new year’s email from the nice chaps at WordPress this week with lots of useful facts and figures about my blog.

I sort of keep an eye on the stats I see in terms of how many people are reading, but I don’t really have much of an idea whether what I write is being read. It’s nice to think it might be and I was surprised and chuffed that my recipes have been viewed nearly 6,000 times in 2010 (enough to fill 14 Boeing 747s apparently!). So thanks to all who dropped by to pick up and easy tea or two. Probably mostly my mum, though.

Still, spurred on by the thought that I’m not alone, I thought I’d share the list of most popular easy teas for 2010 – everybody else is doing new year countdowns…

1. Sausage Casserole

2. Cheat’s Chicken Casserole

3. Fish pie

4. Speedy beef Stroganoff

5. Slow Roast Moroccan lamb

I made the cheat chicken casserole last night so that’s at the top of my favourites list right now. Heartily recommended to keep out the recent arctic chill and only about 15 minutes’ work involved.

Interesting to see that comfort food makes up most of the list – I had the sort of 2010 where I needed lots of that too. I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve for this month, starting with a few all-in-one ‘trayroasts’. I’m also trying to find more interesting things to do with fish as I want to eat more of it.

Happy New Year!

You can use beef mince or casserole/stewing beef for this – the later makes a really hearty chilli stew which is good for tacos or fajita wraps.

So, fry the mince until browned. Remove to a dish and fry an onion and a roughly chopped red pepper and chilli in the juices from the meat along with two cloves of garlic. Once the onion is on its way return the meat to the pan and it’s time to add some spices.

For a 500g pack of mince, I use a good two teaspoons of cumin, about five of paprika and one of turmeric. If you like it hot, add some chilli powder and a pinch of cayenne too. Let this cook for a few minutes before adding a tin of tomatoes a few squirts of tomato puree and enough beef stock to generously cover the meat. Get this up to the boil then back to barely simmering and cook for about an hour. Check it regularly to make sure it doesn’t go too dry or stick to the pan.

You should end up with a thick, spicy, unctuous sauce which is great with rice and a little sour cream on the side. It keeps very well and I think is often better a day or two after being made. Great to make a batch on the weekend and keep it portioned up in the freezer too for a really quick tea.

I’m using cooked leftover chicken for this but lamb and prawns (cooked) both work well too. If you want to use raw meat/prawns, cook them in a separate pan while the sauce is cooking.

First make the spice mix. Either use pre-ground or toast whole seeds and grind yourself. You need a good teaspoon of: cumin, coriander, black pepper, chilli flakes, garum masala, mustard seeds, turmeric and cardamom seeds (the black seeds, taken out of the green husk). Obviously, vary the heat by adding more/less of the chilli to suit you.

Creamed coconut needs to be reconstituted with boiling water. For this, though, use stock instead for better flavour. Make up a pint of stock and stir in chopped up creamed coconut until it’s thick and creamy. Add a squirt of tomato puree – the mix will go an alarming pink colour, but that’s normal.

In a wide frying pan, fry and onion until soft then add garlic and ginger (if you don’t have fresh, use some ground ginger in the spice mix) and fry for another minute or so. Now add the spice mix and give it another minute. Your whole house should now smell fantastic.

Pour in the coconut stock and give it a good stir to mix with the spices. The turmeric will bring the colour back to normal. Add the cooked meat and simmer for about 20 minutes to reduce and thicken.

Serve with basmati rice and a few home-cooked poppadoms.