Mystery Dinner
We have a blackboard in our kitchen that lists the items in our freezer. Sounds a bit anal I know but, even though it’s a really small freezer, I’ve becoming pretty good at filling it full of stuff. We have a selection of different sized freezer bags to use in said freezer, the type that has a handy space to list what’s in the bag. Alongside the freezer bags, there are various permanent markers in the kitchen drawer for doing the listing. All sounds very organised doesn’t it? And it would be, if I remembered to write on the bags and update the chalk board.
Which is how we came to find ourselves sitting down to something we had to look up afterwards to find out what it was. I had meant to defrost the mystery bag this morning but forgot so, when Stephen got home he took the bag out of the freezer and started to slowly heat it through. Thinking it was bolognaise sauce, he put some pasta on to boil too. It smelt like bolognaise sauce to me too but then I looked at it and wondered if it might be leftover lamb rogan josh, since the texture of the meat seemed more lamb-like. It didn’t smell like curry though so we served it up with the pasta and tasted it. Not a particularly strong flavour, possibly veal? Really not sure, until I checked back through the archives and realised it was probably lamb ragu. From January.
It tasted alright and I’m sure it won’t kill us but if I’d known it was so old I wouldn’t have eaten it. Needless to say, the chalk board is all up-to-date now.
Slow Roast Shoulder of Lamb – The Leftovers
The best thing about cooking a half shoulder of lamb for just two people? The leftovers.
You don’t need a recipe for this: just heat up a wrap, add some hummus or tzatziki (or both), some salad and the lamb, roll it up and eat.
Slow Roast Shoulder of Lamb – Moroccan Style
Due to our successes with slow roasting a shoulder of lamb with garlic and rosemary, we thought we would try a different slant on it this weekend and give it a Moroccan style treatment. We had half a shoulder and the evening before cooking it, we rubbed it with a spice mix and left it in the fridge overnight before cooking in the usual way. It worked brilliantly, giving the same succulent, deeply flavoured lamb except this time it had a spicy crust and aroma. We served it with couscous and turlu turlu (which is a roasted vegetable dish from the Moro cookbook).
Slow Roast Shoulder of Lamb Moroccan Style, serves 6:
Spice mix:
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp sweet paprika
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground fennel seeds
1/2 tbsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 whole shoulder of lamb
1 whole bulb garlic (2 if you love garlic!)
1 preserved lemon, mostly rind, finely chopped
Half a handful of olives, coarsely chopped
400ml chicken stock
Small bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped
Smaller bunch mint leaves, finely chopped
The day before you plan to cook the lamb, prepare the spice mix by mixing together all of the spices. Score the skin of the lamb shoulder lightly and then rub it all over with the spice mix, working it well into the meat. Wrap the shoulder tightly in foil or cling film and refrigerate it overnight.
On the day of cooking, preheat the oven to 150C. Break up the garlic bulbs into individual cloves, but no need to peel the cloves. Sprinkle half of the garlic into the bottom of a lidded casserole big enough to hold the lamb shoulder. If you don’t have one big enough then you can do it in a roasting dish and cover it with foil. Unwrap the lamb shoulder and place it on top of the garlic cloves, then sprinkle the rest of them on top of the lamb. Put into the oven for 3.5 to 4 hours with the lid (or foil) on. There is no real need to babysit the lamb, it will quite happily cook itself slowly, but it’s fun to check on it now and then as you can smell the delicious spices drift through the kitchen.
When the lamb is cooked, remove the casserole dish from the oven and remove the lamb shoulder to a large plate and cover it with foil to keep it warm while it rests. Be careful when moving the lamb, you might need to get a large spatula underneath it to prevent it from falling apart. Take the roasted garlic cloves out of the casserole and put them onto a plate, then squeeze the delicious roasted garlic out of the skins. Pour most of the oil out of the casserole, then put it onto the hob on a medium heat and add stock and the roasted garlic pulp. Bring the stock to a simmer, scraping the bottom of the casserole with a wooden spoon as you do so, to mix in all of the delicious lamby bits.
Then add the chopped preserved lemon skin and the olives, the coriander leaves and the mint leaves. Let it simmer for a while, stirring often. The lemon should add both a sourness and a bitterness to the sauce, to balance out the herbs and the sweetness of the caramelised lamb juices from the casserole. You can thicken it if you like, but we generally don’t. Check and season with salt and/or pepper before serving.
Then pull the lamb apart with a couple of forks and serve with the sauce and whatever else seems appropriate – we went with barley couscous and “turlu turlu” roasted vegetables and chickpeas. Delicious!
Turlu Turlu
Serves Two
2 courgettes, sliced
1 aubergine, sliced into wedges
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
1 large carrot, sliced into wedges
Oil
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 large tin chickpeas
75ml passata
Handful parsley
Handful coriander
Salt and pepper
Mix all the vegetables apart from the courgettes together with the oil, garlic, spices and salt and pepper. Spread onto a baking tray and cook in a pre-heated oven (220 degrees) for 45 minutes, turning every 15 minutes. Add the courgettes and cook for another 15 minutes.
Heat the pasatta and chickpeas together and then stir in the cooked vegetables, Season, add the herbs and serve.
Mexican Corn Soup
I spotted some pancetta bones for sale at Union Market a little while ago and thought they would be brilliant for adding flavour to soups and casseroles. It was mid July at the time and definitely not soup or casserole weather but the seasons seemed to have changed very quickly this year and, almost without warning, it’s time to embrace the colder evenings and get down to some Autumnal cooking. This isn’t something that fills me with much pleasure, I don’t like the colder months and try to hang on to Summer for as long as I can. The one thing which makes that transition a little easier is the arrival of different produce and the opportunity to start cooking all those things that you’ve been craving but don’t want to eat when it’s hot outside.
It might just be coincidence but the arrival of the cooler weather has coincided with my feeling like I’ve got a cold coming so I thought some chilli would be a good way to clear my head. The chilli oil from this Mexican soup was really good so I made some of that while the pancetta bones were boiling away and becoming stock.
The result was pretty good: the pancetta bones had made plenty or richly flavoured porky stock which formed the base of the soup and was echoed in the bacon we added at the end. There was fresh chilli cooked with the garlic and onions as well as dried chillies in the oil which, alongside lots of freshly ground cumin, provided a good counterpart to the super-sweet corn and it all worked together to form a cohesive dish. I would have preferred slightly less sweetness though and shouldn’t have allowed the onions to caramelise or used the sweet cure bacon which can add too much sweetness. Not a bad way to welcome Autumn although I couldn’t help thinking I would have preferred that corn hot from the barbecue, eaten outside with some chilli butter.
Mexican Corn Soup
Serves Two (with a little left over for lunch)
4 rashers bacon, diced
3 heads of corn, hulled
1 onion, finely diced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
1 litre stock
Start by frying the bacon until the fat has rendered. Remove from the pan and blot on some kitchen paper.
In the same pan, fry the corn for about five minutes, or until soft. Remove from the pan and blot on some kitchen paper.
Add some more oil to the pan if necessary and add the onion. Cook for about five minutes before adding the chilli and garlic. Cook for another couple of minutes.
Next, add the cumin, stir and cook for about two minutes.
Add the corn back to the pan, pour on the stock, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and cook for 10 minutes.
Remove from the heat, blend until smooth, add the bacon and serve with the chilli oil.
Chilli Oil
2 dried chillies (I used ancho, the book specified pasilla), stemmed and seeded
Olive oil
1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon oregano
Salt
Cut the chillies into 1/8 inch slices. Heat the oil over a medium heat, add chillies and the oregano and stir for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the vinegar, 1.5 tablespoons of water and a little salt. Leave to stand for half an hour, stirring occasionally.
Mussels with Garlic and Cream
We ate mussels in Brussels. Obviously. If you like mussels then that’s one of the reasons to go to Brussels. There’s beer too of course and chocolate but the mussels are excellent; at least the ones that we had were. When we were in the restaurant waiting for our mussels, we realised that the way that they cooked them was different to the way that we usually cooked ours.
Most recipes that we’ve seen say to soften your onions, celery, garlic, etc, then add some wine or stock and then add the mussels and remove the pot from the heat as soon as all the mussels have opened. In the restaurant, they seemed to leave the mussels on a lot longer than that and they had been delicious, so we thought we would give it a go. Also, Kerri had ordered hers with garlic and cream, and they added both of these at the end of cooking.
So we softened a little finely chopped onion and some coarsely chopped celery and then added some white wine and fish stock. When the alcohol had cooked off the wine, we seasoned with a little black pepper and added the mussels. Then we put the lid on, turned the heat right down and waited for 15 minutes. While the mussels were cooking, we briefly fried some finely chopped garlic in a little oil and then added double cream. When the mussels were done, we added this garlic and cream mixture to them and stirred.
Mussels with frites are obviously very good, but we thought that bread would be very useful to soak up the sauce and we were right. The mussels themselves were tender and delicious and hadn’t dried out from the extended cooking time. Certainly the way that we’ll cook mussels next time we have them.
Prawns in Romesco Sauce with Cabbage
At the recent opening of Union Market, I spent some time talking to Simon of Olives Et Al who provide the olives, artichokes, anchovies, etc. There were plenty of samples to taste and liking them so much, I’ve been buying them most weeks since. I love olives but am often disappointed with the supermarket and deli offerings which are often soft and tasting only of the herbs they’re seasoned with. Simon’s olives actually tasted like olives and were firm and meaty in texture.
Simon kindly offered to send me some samples of some of their other products and a couple of weeks later, a box full of stuff arrived on my doorstep.
One of the jars that caught my attention straight away was the romesco sauce. We’ve made this before and enjoyed it with fish, I even tried it with pasta which wasn’t a huge success since my version was rather dry but I still think it has potential. The Olives Et Al version was much wetter than the sauce Stephen and I made and it looked like it would work well with some rice to soak up all the flavours. Remembering the fish from last time, we also added some prawns and some cabbage, peppers, onions and tomatoes that were hanging around in the fridge. Another dollop of the romesco sauce and we had a quick and easy, Spanish style dish.
I’m not usually a big fan of ready-made sauces but this was very convenient and worked well with the rice. The sauce itself had a good flavour without overpowering the delicate prawns and had plenty of tasty, crunchy nuts. While our own version didn’t work particularly well with pasta, I think this one would do because it had an oilier texture. There’s half a jar left so that may well make an appearance soon.
Prawns with Romesco Sauce
Serves Two
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 green pepper, sliced
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Splash white wine
2 tablespoons romesco sauce
1/2 tin tomatoes
1/2 savoy cabbage, finely shredded
Prawns
Start by softening the onion and garlic in some oil. Add the green pepper and allow this to soften too.
Deglaze the pan with a large splash of white wine and allow this to cook for a couple of minutes so that the alcohol burns off.
Next, add the paprika and the romesco sauce, along with the tomatoes and stir. Add the cabbage and allow this to almost cook through, about five minutes. Finally, add the prawns and cook for 3-4 minutes. Serve with rice and more romesco sauce.
Mexican Fish and Black Bean Wraps
I always knew it was going to be challenging to get this to look attractive, I didn’t think the picture would come out quite as badly as this though. It’s a truth universally acknowledged by all food bloggers (well, Stephen and I at least) that the quality of the picture often bears little relation to the quality of the dish itself and this definitely proves the point since these were really very good.
We used our usual refried bean recipe and added some baked fish, much like we did here. The beans caught slightly while they were cooking but rather than ruin the flavour, the smokiness seemed to improve things. I wouldn’t recommend intentional burning but you could attempt to replicate that flavour with something smoky like paprika.
Chicken in Fried Onion Sauce with Mustard and Fennel Cauliflower
It’s been so long that I’m not sure anyone is still reading, if you are then thanks for being so patient while we’ve been off enjoying ourselves. The Summer has been brilliant fun but not much of it has been spent in the kitchen. We have of course been eating and, as is now second nature, photographing our food but we’ve been sticking to old favourites and not quite getting round to writing about them. There’s quite a backlog to get through and I wondered about giving up altogether but I can’t imagine a life without Dinner Diary so we’re back. I suspect things will change slightly since although we don’t have quite so much planned for Autumn, we’re still much busier than we have been in the past but, for now, we’re going to try and catch up and then see what happens after that.
I was going to start yesterday but we had roast chicken for lunch which is probably the dish we eat most often and neither of us could get excited about photographing or writing about that. Although we’ve cooked this before, we used the leftover chicken from yesterday instead of the raw chicken in the recipe and it worked well. Curry is one of my favourite ways to use up leftovers and this is a quick recipe that does just that, the dark browned onions add a depth of flavour that suggest a longer cooking time and the tomatoes and coriander lend fragrant notes which are just right for the last of the warmer weather.
To go alongside the leftovers, Stephen suggested the cauliflower dish which meant things took a little longer but it was a good way to turn something we’ve eaten before into a new and more interesting dish.
Cauliflower with Fennel and Mustard Seeds from Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery
Serves Two
1 cauliflower
Oil
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 tablespoon black mustard seeds
1/2 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons water
Cut the cauliflower into florets and soak for 30 minutes.
Heat the oil and then add the fennel and mustard seeds. As they start to pop, add the garlic and cook until light brown.
Add the turmeric and cayenne pepper, stir and then add the cauliflower, salt and water. Stir and cook on a medium heat for 6-7 minutes.
Steak and Pickled Mushrooms
Kerri was out tonight so it was up to me to cook my own dinner and I found that I was craving STEAK. But in an attempt to be reasonable and not over-indulge after last week’s continual over-indulgence, I bought a smallish steak. Which meant that I over-cooked it while being distracted by the smoke alarm.
Served with a baked potato which was good and some pickled mushrooms that we saw being cooked on Saturday Kitchen this morning. They were good too. Just the steak was a bit overdone.
I can’t remember the exact recipe for the mushrooms (it will be online somewhere) but I just made it up as I went along and it was something like this:
Slice some button or small chestnut mushrooms. Fry these in a little olive oil with some thyme sprigs. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in a splash or three of sherry vinegar and keep cooking until the vinegar has almost evaporated. Then turn off the heat and they are finished. On TV they added some more oil at this point and used them as a dressing, but I didn’t.
Tom Yum Goong
While searching to see if I had already posted this recipe, I came across this post, the opening line of which reads “The plan was for something light and spicy to counteract the amount of heavy food we’ve eaten over the last few days”. Not that we’re creatures of habit or anything but that was the exact reason we came to be eating this on Friday, the night we got home from a week of heavy food in Devon.
Habit or not, this dish is perfect for when you feel in need of something fresh and restorative and is also great if you’re feeling like you might be coming down with a cold, as I did on Friday. I felt fine on Saturday and while I don’t think this is magic soup or anything, there’s definitely something to be said for eating plenty of chilli if you’re feeling less than brilliant.
We had a stir-fried noodle dish with this too, recipe to follow.
