Here are the Eat the Week recipes from the second episode.  Eat the Week is a 10 episode series hosted by Simon Rimmer, chef better known for Sunday Brunch, showing how you can make great meals using frozen food.  The programme is sponsored by Iceland frozen food stores.

Update: Eat the Week was aired again on Sunday 22 April 2018.

In episode 2 the recipes were:  Rogan Josh Beef Brisket, Victoria Sponge, Slow Roast Duck, Sweet Potato and Chickpea Falafel Wrap, Goats Cheese Bonbons, Rack of Lamb with Creamy Potato Gratins, Carrot, Pea & Mash Pie, Pork Schnitzel, Rocky Road, Sausage Frittata and Spanakopita.

Any cookery programme is great to watch if they’re the ingredients you have and like – for me I just like watching food.  The food this week wasn’t the sort of recipes I cook, but there’s often something small you can take away from other recipes. There’s a link to the full recipes at the end of this “review”.

Rogan Josh Beef Brisket

The beef brisket was seared in a frying pan, then the onions were part cooked in the same pan. The onions were put into an ovenproof dish with the beef on top. Rogan Josh paste was smeared onto the meat and some veggies and stock were poured in before the whole lot was slow cooked for 4 hours. But that wasn’t the end – more ingredients were added and it took a further 40 minutes to cook, so this is a really long-winded recipe. Not for me 🙂

• My Food Cheat: I’d just put it all raw into a slow cooker for six hours, dispensing with having to juggle bits of meat in and out of a hot frying pan!

Victoria Sponge

This is just a huge and tall Victoria sponge but with goat’s cheese butter cream. Simon made a strawberry compote to use in the cake layers. The sponge recipe was pretty standard. The goat’s cheese butter cream was made with equal quantities of unsalted butter and goat’s cheese soft cheese. Added to this was a lot of icing sugar! Not being a fan of goat’s cheese in any form, I wasn’t really watching this recipe.

• My Food Cheat: I make a microwave sponge cake, which is sufficient in quantity for one person to eat!

Slow Roast Duck

This recipe doesn’t use a whole duck, but six duck legs. The duck legs are rubbed with a fairly simple spice mix and then roasted in the oven for nearly an hour.  It’s served with an oven-roasted cabbage and some fried potato scones.

Personally, this isn’t a recipe I’d ever use, duck’s not my thing, nor are “legs” of any poultry 🙂

• My Food Cheat: I’d reduce the cooking time by microwaving the duck legs and the cabbage to give them a head start.

Sweet Potato and Chickpea Falafel Wrap

Sweet potatoes were chopped and roasted for about 40 minutes, before being peeled and mashed up with cumin, coriander, cinnamon, flat leaf parsley, cayenne pepper, juice of half a lemon, flour, mashed chickpeas and chopped mint.  This mix is then rolled into balls and baked for 10-12 minutes.  They’re served with a sauce and tabbouleh and wrapped in shop bought flatbreads.

Goats Cheese Bonbons

In this recipe beetroot wedges were roasted for 40 minutes, then served alongside balls of goat cheese that’d been coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried.

Served with sweet German mustard as a dip.

I don’t have a deep fat fryer and am not a fan of goat’s cheese, so this type of recipe wouldn’t get a look in in my house 🙂

Rack of Lamb with Creamy Potato Gratins

This recipe used a frozen rack of lamb, cooked as per the pack instructions.  It was served with sweated down mixed frozen peppers and sliced onions and some Iceland shop-bought ready made Cheese & Potato Creamy Gratins.

Carrot, Pea & Mash Pie

This isn’t a recipe I expected to see!  It uses frozen veg and frozen mash – the frozen veg are cooked in a saucepan of gravy before being topped with frozen mash and baked in the oven for about 30 minutes.

• My Food Cheat: I’d use the microwave to steam the veggies and use instant gravy.

Pork Schnitzel

These pork schnitzels are flattened pork loins with ham and cheese, dipped in flour/egg/breadcrumbs and then shallow fried until browned. It’s served with a cauliflower cheese, that takes ~30 minutes in the oven – the cauliflower is roasted, then the cheese sauce is poured over it to with parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs on top and the cauliflower cheese is grilled to brown for 10 minutes

• My Food Cheat:  I’d made a microwave cheese sauce and I’d part-cook the cauliflower by microwave steaming it before putting it into the oven to cook in half the time.

Rocky Road

I’ve never been a fan of Rocky Road – to me it’s a combination of too many mixed up sweet items in too large a piece.  Simon’s Rocky Road melted the chocolate and then added golden syrup, butter, mini marshmallows, chopped digestive biscuits, frozen blueberries and dried cranberries.

Having combined that lot, it was then pushed down into a 20cm tin and left to cool and set.

• My Food Cheat: I’d use the microwave to melt the chocolate and mix it with melted butter and golden syrup.  You have to be careful melting chocolate, so I’d melt the butter first and add in the golden syrup, then use a low microwave heat to slowly melt the chocolate and stir often.

Sausage Frittata

This recipe uses cooked sausages, with eggs, cream, onions, flat leaf parsley, garlic, frozen spinach and grated parmesan.  The onions and garlic are fried, then add the sausages.  Mix the eggs, cream and parsley and pour those into the pan. Add the cheese to the pan. Cook for a few minutes before transferring to an oven proof dish and baking in the oven for about 15 minutes. Serve warm.

• My Food Cheat: I’d cook this in the microwave oven, before finishing in the oven to brown, if required.  I cook sausages in the microwave oven, from raw they take about 3-4 minutes. You can cook microwave onions, one onion takes about 7-9 minutes.

Spanakopita

This was a cheese, onion potato and spinach pie made with ready-made pastry. It used frozen mashed potatoes and the onions were fried, with the spinach added towards the end to wilt the spinach. This made a large dish (250mm x 60mm) and it was lined with pastry, the filling added, then a pastry lid popped on, a quick egg wash and into the oven for 35-40 minutes.

My Food Cheat: I’d cook the onions in the microwave oven, so there’s no need for a frying pan at all.

Episode Recipes from Iceland

All the recipes for this Eat the Week episode are on the Iceland website, where they give you all the ingredients, the measurement and weights and cooking times:

Update: The recipes have since been removed, they had been at groceries.iceland.co.uk/eat-the-week/episode-02

Personally, I didn’t find this episode showed me food as good as episode 1 – but we’re all different and we all like what we like.