Potholes. Patching holes.Is it the answer?

They say a picture is worth a Thousand words, in this case it might be true and I think proves my point. sorry words below.

Possibly one of my most successful picture themes last year was Potholes. Sad I know but they are the bain of every ones life, and cause countless damage to all forms of transport, that use the road.

One road near me is  particularly bad. It is officially a side road, although used  a lot by people travelling between South of Redhill and Reigate.



A year or so ago the council surfaced dressed it, making what was a reasonably good road a nightmare. Now a reasonable proportion of this road is in a very poor state of repair.


This has been particularly brought to light by a large hole that appeared in  March 10. The council were quick to act and put cones out and within a few days repaired the hole.

Now comes the crunch. It is February 2011 and low and behold where the previous pothole was, a new hole has appeared, admittedly not as bad as the last, but still there.

Clearly filling holes doesn't work as can be seen by these images, please give us back decent roads, after all we pay Enough Road Fund Licence to drive on them, surely we should be entitled to have roads that are not going to destroy our vehicles.

I realise all the arguments about the money from car tax going to central government, but maybe it is time to look at this again and ring fence some of the money,to give us a decent surface to drive on, after all they take enough from fuel duty for everything else, use car tax for road repairs.

Beef Tataki Salad

This has to be be one of the quickest Steak salads to make. Fry your steak to your liking, personally I like my steak still mooing as they say, but that is up to you.

To assemble salad. Finely slice radishes and Red Onions and mix with Rocket.

To Make the dressing mix together 2 tbsp Soy sauce, Juice of 1/2 lemon and 1tsp of sugar. Sesame seeds can be added if you fancy.

Then just eat.

Roast Gammon Shank

I mentioned this cut the other day when I did the ham and veg soup and it really is a cheap way of getting ham.

The recipe I use is in the initial recipe I mentioned in the soup and can be viewed here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/bakedham_2810

Nearly all the recipes I cook come from using Google and I simply type in the food I have for the night and see what comes up. Yesterday I ended up with curried Mackerel, as I had some mackerel in the freezer and it needed eating. It may sound weird but it was great. Recipe was from goodfood .com. I don't normally like curried fish. I find the  flavour of fish is too delicate to adulterate with Curry paste, but because Mackerel has such a robust flour it was brilliant and with Oven baked cubed potatoes and onions also coated in curry paste it was to did for. Will be showing recipe and pictures on here soon.

Anyway back to the Baked Ham. Not much to say really but as they they a picture tells a thousand words. Here it is.

Try it out. It's a great recipe and for the info Morrisons sell Gammon shanks on the meat counter and I am sure all good meat retailers sell at all good Butchers and other supermarkets stock it as well.

Egg and prawn open sandwich

This is a recipe inspired from the restaurant at Ikea.




A very quick light lunch which doesn't require much effort. The bread traditionally would be rye bread, but as I didn't have any to hand I just baked a slice of brown bread in the oven until crisp and golden.

At the same time I boiled an egg until hard boiled some where around 7 minutes.

For the seafood sauce, mix some Mayo with Tomato sauce and a splash of Worcester sauce and Tabasco.

Now to assemble the dish, tear or cut the lettuce into strips and lay on the bread. added sliced tomato to his.

Now slice the eggs and lay on top of tomatoes along with a few prawns. Lastly top with the sauce add a few more prawns and sprinkle with paprika.

Vegetable and ham soup

This recipe was kind of throw together from what I had in the Cupboard.

Originally I had bought a Gammon shank, which is a very cheap way of getting a small joint of Gammon. I got mine from the butchers counter at Morrison, but I am sure they are available at other outlets.

This was soaked in water over night before adding to a saucepan with around 500 mls of Cider, an onion a few cloves, peppercorns, a carrot, garlic and 2 tbsp Brown sugar along with a bay leaf or two. This was then topped up with water and gently simmered for around an hour until cooked.

Strain off the stock and use as required.

The meat was then covered in melted marmalade and lemon juice , before being baked for around 20 to 30 minutes in an oven at 190C.

This is a cut down version of the gammon recipe,  I got this from the BBC Recipes but it can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/3y8wu5q .

To make the soup.

You need 

 Leek thinly sliced

Onions sliced

Garlic crushed

potato, cut into 1in cubes

other Vegetables. I used celeriac, but you could use swede, turnips, parsnips or any other firm vegetable.

I gently fried One leek with some onions and Garlic until they were soft. The Potatoes were then added along with the cubed celeriac and any other veg you wish to use. gently continue to fry for a couple of minutes then add the stock and some more cider. 

Cook until the the potato and other veg is cooked and serve.