Mia's Makings

During the winter months we stock up on game birds, such as pheasant and partridge. Both birds offer very lean meat and it can end up a bit dry. The star of today's meal was the bigger of the two birds. The classic way of cooking pheasant is by wrapping it in bacon. It was suggested that I did that this time, but as there was no bacon rashers in the house, I had to find something else to do. Because I have successfully cooked pheasant with honey before, I decided to use that as a base and try something I had seen on Facebook. Instead of the usual honey, butter and parsley, this recipe featured honey, butter, garlic, oregano and thyme. Sounded like a nice combo and it was.  One of our family members doesn't eat game birds, so I also cooked a couple of chicken fillets. In all honesty, the recipe was for chicken and it worked better with the domestic bird due to it being more tender. Both were nice though, only the chicken was nicer. That's good news for those o

Last year we went to visit friends in Missouri, USA and although we ate a lot of amazing food while out and about, my absolute favourite meal of the week was home cooked. It was a healthier take on ziti, which traditionally is a pasta dish. This meal featured cauliflower instead of pasta. Our host had however adapted the original recipe and used Italian sausage rather than beef mince. It was such a stunningly tasty dish that I stuffed myself silly and couldn't move afterwards.  In my defence, I had eaten two platefuls of cauliflower, which was very healthy. Never mind that the cauliflower came with sausage and lashings of cheese, three different kinds of cheese... La la la la, not listening to the less-healthy-talk. It was lush enough to cause a food coma and that's all that matters. This is one of those great dishes that you can adapt to your taste, as long as you like cheese. It needs cheese. In fact, ziti depends on it. What I mean is that you can swap and chang

I have been cooking and experimenting in the kitchen for almost as long as I remember. Over the years I have made many less than excellent meals, most of them while following a recipe, but also many lovely ones. When I go wildly freehand, I tend to have an idea of what to serve when I start cooking. Not today. I started with a plate full of seafood, but that was pretty much as far the plan went and my brain blankly refused to come up with any decent ideas. The problem was that dinner time was approaching rapidly and I had hungry mouths to feed. Today's meal could have gone horribly wrong and halfway through I had serious doubts, to the point where I actually left the kitchen for a while. I sat down and simply crossed my fingers before returning to check on the progress of the crazy creation. What I'm about to tell you now is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was alone at home with my son, who is pretty good when it comes to appreciating my