How To Feed A Man Recipes

How to Feed a Man is written by author and talented cook and mother of three, Stasha. Stasha simply aims to share her beautiful collection of home spun recipes and inspirational thoughts on feeding those you love while entertaining at home.

This lifestyle cookery book includes original recipes, poetry and art that will inspire you to get in the kitchen. From Mama Burgers to Sticky Painted Lamb and her much loved Carrot Cake; Stasha’s dishes are both easy and straightforward, even for culinary beginners!

Stasha says, “How To Feed A Man should make you want to cook for yourself and those you love around you. It’s for everyone and anyone to read from and cook from; whether they pick up and enjoy reading through my bath recipes, my thoughts on angels or want to make my Teriyaki chicken for dinner! The title is a homage to the men in my life: father, son, brother, lover but you only have to read the index to realise that the man can be wife, daughter sister or friend. How To Feed a Man is about love, life and family.”

Best Carrot Cake Ever!

This cake really is as the title says, and as Carrot Cake is one of my absolute favourites, I should know! I would even go so far as to say it’s actually dangerous to have sitting
around if you’re a lover like me, as it’s totally IMPOSSIBLE to stop eating!

Sadly, it’s soooo moreish that the sexy idea of dressing like a Bunny Girl and seductively pouting whilst pouring the tea and feeding the slices, ends up with the great ‘Big’ Bunny Girl costume feeling really rather tight: My suggestion, just wear the heels!

Ingredients

• 250gms self-raising flour
  
• 170gms muscovado sugar
  
• 170gms soft brown sugar
  
• ½teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon
  
• 1 teaspoon mixed all spice
  
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  
• 75gms dessicated coconut
  
• 300gms grated carrots
  
•  3 large eggs
  
• 175ml sunflower oil
• 2 x 8 inch spring loose bottom baking tins
  
• Big mixing bowl
  
• Cooling rack
  
• Cake stand
  
• Pallet Knife

For the Filling and Topping

• 180gms (6oz) or roughly
  
• 1 x 200gms tub of Philadelphia cream cheese
  
• 180gms (6oz) very Soft Salted Butter
  
• 8oz Icing sugar
  
• Walnut halves, 1 pack

Method

1. Pre heat your oven to 150ºC/300ºF/Gas Mark 2
2. Another reason why I love this cake so much is that although there are a lot of ingredients, it’s ever so easy to make, and really quite beautiful BECAUSE of the ingredients…
3. Start by rubbing butter all around the inside of your tins, then take about a tablespoon or so of flour, and sprinkle the inside of the tins. Give them a shake and a turn and a pat here and there, and you end up with beautifully coated tins.
4. Take a lovely BIG mixing bowl, and start by sifting the flour into it. Once that’s done, add the sugars (watch how they move in the bowl... magic!) and then add the cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice and bicarbonate of soda.
5. Now, get your hands in there and give the whole thing a good mix, perfuming the air and breaking up any lumps of sugar. (This is important because you don’t want to find lumps of sugar in your cake after it’s baked, so keep shaking your bowl, watching as the lumps come up to the surface, and then crumble them with your fingers. Keep doing this till you’re satisfied.)
6. Next, add the coconut, and stir that in.
7. Now comes the hard bit, when I say hard, I mean the hardest part of making this fabulous cake, which is grating the carrots! Hardly back-breaking labour, but still, enough to feel it in your arms and with the amount you’ll be eating, any form of pre-workout is good! I find it’s best to grate over a plate, and also for quickness and arm cramp’s sake, grate the carrot on its side, as opposed to its lengh.
8. Once that’s done, add to your big bowl of delights.
9. Next, and finally, fill your measuring jug with the required amount of oil, add the
   3 eggs, give it a little stir to break the eggs up, and then, using your fingers, simply make a little well in the centre of your mixture, and pour in the oil and eggs. Now it’s just a question of mixing, and mixing and tasting... who could resist tasting...
   and mixing...
10. Divide the mixture as evenly as you can between the two cake tins, without giving yourself too much grief as to whether you’ve been exact, just do your best, and put into the oven, close the door, and wait for an hour, or just under if you have a really fast oven...
11. Meanwhile, make the filling/topping.
12. Now, I have to admit, this is actually DOUBLE the amount a normal human making a normal cake would use, but I am not part of that race, and remembering that this is a “Sexy Sexy Bunny” and Britney “Gimme Gimme” cake, I simply HAD to give it the required debauchery it so deserves... So I did.
13. Mix the cream cheese, butter and sugar in a bowl, I find a firm spatula is good for mixing, although I’m sure a wooden spoon would suffice, beat nicely, and again, once mixed, taste… Mmmm, how naughty is that!!
14. Once your cakes are cooked, the top feeling springy to the touch, remove them from the tins and leave to cool on a rack. (And I do mean leave to cool. I’ve been so impatient on several occasions that I’ve iced before the cake was cool, thus melting the icing and had to keep pushing the top half of the cake back on because the bloody thing kept sliding off... Icing was everywhere and I was totally covered BEFORE the sex kitten event. Funny,
    but not good.)
15. So once cool, we ice. Now, don’t get too worried or hung up on the exactness of this.
    I promise it will work out just fine. Take a lovely big dollop of the icing and spread all over the flat side of one of the cake halves, and spread right up to the edges. Take the second half of the cake, and place it on top of the iced half. There you have your filling.
16. Place the cake on the cake stand, then put another big dollop on top of the cake, and using your pallet knife, spread all over the cake. The sides are the hardest, but not so hard that you can’t do it, just hard that you may have a little more finger licking to do, which really is not such a bad thing. Just keep on playing with your trusty pallet knife, using it this way and that to get the sides all nicely covered, and any leftover icing just gets added to the top.
17. When all the icing is done, and you’re feeling very proud of yourself for a) not eating all the icing, and b) making it look so lovely, add the walnut halves to the top of the cake, making sure that each slice will be served with a juicy nut atop!

20 Minute Lamb

We are talking pretty literally here, which is a very good thing if your man decides to tell you at the 11th hour he is bringing the Boss and Mrs Boss home for dinner…

Now for this lamb you will need all the usual suspects for the marinade, which will then become a lovely gravy… You literally start this lamb 20 minutes before you serve, so have everything else ready. If you are making salads, then dress the avocado and tomato, but not the green till the last minute. I have served this many times without potatoes or rice, but if you like, throw a few sweet potatoes in a moderate oven as soon as and before anything as they take a couple of hours, and serve them with lashings of butter! Have your strawberries all ready in pretty little bowls, and cream gently whipped.
Remember, you are an organised and totally in-control Super Woman x

Ingredients

• Serves 3-4
  
• 3 or 4 baby racks of Lamb
  
• 4 fluid ounces Kikkoman Teriyaki Marinade
  
• 2 tablespoons Dijon Mustard
  
• 3 fluid oz Olive Oil
  
• 1½ to 2 juicy lemons
  
• Couple sprigs of thyme, or rosemary or even oregano
  
• Black pepper
  
• Little salt just before cooking

Right, now it’s called 20 minute lamb because it takes roughly
5 to brown, 10 in the oven, and the all-important 5 to sit.

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas Mark 6.
2. Make the marinade in a large, flat dish so your lamb can sit pretty in it. Make sure you really give them a good Swedish massage, and even a little prick with a fork here and there to really let those flavours sink in. 
3. When you’re ready to start, and your oven is nice and hot, make sure you have a smallish oven tray also hot in your oven ready to receive these little lambs.
4. Pre-heat a large frying pan, and when it’s smoking hot, place your lamb racks in the pan, and allow them to brown up nicely, but watch them …
   5 minutes or so later, take the hot oven tray out of the oven, put the racks in, and pour over the marinade…
5. Into the oven it goes, for 10 minutes.
6. After the 10 is up (don’t panic, I know it does not seem a lot, but it is just right, these are only little guys), take the lamb out, and what I do is place the racks straight onto a lovely chopping board, and spoon a little gravy over each one, and pour the rest of the gravy into a sauce boat should needs be.
7. Now LEAVE them to settle for 5 minutes, call your guests to the table, and present your lovely lamb on the chopping board, and proceed to carve the racks at the table.

£19.95 RRP from www.howtofeedaman.co.uk , Amazon and Selfridges