Marinated Herring and Crisp Bread
Kerri was out this evening, so it fell to me to organise dinner for myself. Ever since we got back from our recent holiday to Sweden, this situation has resulted in my eating marinated herring. Which happened again this time too!
I found this herring in dill marinade in Waitrose, produced by Elsinore. It is apparently Danish but tastes very close to the Swedish style. Probably all the dill. Anyway, I had this with some crisp bread (which we bought from a Scandinavian shop in London a while back and is not actually very crisp any more), some cream cheese and some sliced tomatoes and cucumber.
Simple, but I found it rather delicious and had to stop myself just eating the herring from the jar with a fork. The cream cheese mellows the sourness of the marinade and the cucumber and tomatoes freshen it up, with the crisp bread giving it a bit of crunch. Good combination.
Veal Lasagne
I planned this as a lighter, summery alternative to the rich, meaty lasagne I usually make. I love lasagne but it can be a bit heavy when it’s warm, standing in the kitchen for hours making a ragu and then turning the oven on to bake the lasagne is not something I really want to do when it’s hot either. So I thought I’d use veal because it’s lighter than beef, white wine instead of red, lots of fresh, fragrant herbs and vegetable stock instead of beef.
Of course, when it actually came to the cooking, the skies darkened and the rain fell in one of the biggest downpours I’ve seen for a long time. Suddenly, the comforting beef lasagne full of red wine and cheese was very appealing and my lightweight version seemed like a stupid idea. Rather than turn the ragu into lasagne, I put it into the freezer and ate cheese on toast with a blanket wrapped around me.
Until tonight which, admittedly, hasn’t been the warmest or sunniest of days but it felt more like a veal lasagne day and, well, I’ll be honest, there wasn’t anything else in the freezer. It was just right though, the ragu was lighter and more fragrant than the beef version and the white sauce and cheese topping provided just the right amount of comfort for a slightly dreary August day. I’m looking forward to making a winter version of this, just not too soon I hope.
Veal Lasagne
Serves Four
300g diced veal (I got this from Waitrose, it didn’t specify which cut)
300g minced veal
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 sticks celery, diced
1 medium carrot, diced
Large handful chopped herbs (I used parsley, oregano, majoram and thyme)
2 bay leaves
1 large glass white wine
1 tablespoon tomato puree
Salt and pepper
Scraping of nutmeg
1 large tin chopped tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
3/4 pint milk
1 tablespoon worcester sauce
Brown the meat in batches and then remove to a plate. In the same pan, soften the onions, garlic, celery and carrot with the herbs and the bay leaves. Return the meat to the pan and deglaze with the wine.
Add the tomato puree and allow it to caramelise slightly. Season, grate in the nutmeg and then add all the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for around two hours or until the meat is tender.
I made this ahead of time and then froze the ragu. To make into lasagne, make a white sauce and then layer up with the pasta and ragu so that you have plenty of white sauce for the top. Sprinkle with grated cheese, cook on 180 degrees for 45 minutes and then rest for 15 minutes before serving.
Lamb Rogan Josh
“Isn’t that a waste of lamb?” my mum said to me when I told her I’d used the half-leg of lamb I found reduced in Waitrose to make a curry. I didn’t think so but then I love Indian food and lamb is my favourite of all curried meats. I have successfully used leftover meats for curry before but you don’t get the deep, meaty flavour that comes from using raw meat that has been browned and left to cook down with the bones. I suppose I could have used neck fillet or shoulder but that would probably have worked out to be more since the half-leg was reduced to £5.
I first thought about leaving the lamb whole but I really wanted to make sure the flavours penetrated the meat so chopped everything up. And then I cooked it. And cooked it and cooked it. The instructions simply said “cook until tender” but I sort of forgot about it while I busied myself with other things around the house. Which meant that the meat was indeed tender but somewhat stewed. It didn’t affect the flavour but the appearance was rather reminiscent of bad curry-house dishes that have been cooked to death. The texture was different too but just different, not worse. We ate it with a kind-of saag aloo that Stephen made with some new potatoes and some methi rothi that a friend gave us. These were really good but I forgot to note down the brand unfortunately.
Lamb Rogan Josh
From Camellia Panjabi’s “50 Great Curries of India”
Serves Four
700g lamb, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt
2 teaspoons chilli powder
1 teaspoon paprika
100ml yoghurt
250g shallots (I used onions)
Oil
4 cloves
2 black cardamoms
4 green cardamoms
2 bay leaves
1 blade of mace
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
Boil the lamb (and any bones) with the garlic and some salt in 2 pints of water for 20 minutes. Remove the meat and set aside, reserve the cooking water.
Fry the onions until lightly browned. Add the cloves, cardamom, bay leaves and the mace and fry for one minute. Add the coriander, fennel, ginger, turmeric, chilli powder and paprika with two tablespoons of water and stir continuously for two minutes.
Add the meat, cook for five minutes. Lower the heat, add the yoghurt and cook for another five minutes.
Add salt and the reserved cooking water (topped up with tap water if necessary to make 800ml). Cook until tender 🙂 Remove the mace and serve.
Broad Bean and Pea Soup
I picked up a couple of bags of reduced broad beans on Monday, intending to use them for dinner tonight. We ate some last night and they were definitely past their best so, not wanting to throw them away, I started to think of other things to do with them. Initially, I thought I’d make them into pesto but, at the last minute, changed my mind and turned them into soup.
I thought this would be fairly quick to make but it ended up taking quite a while, it was worth it though because the end result was delicious with all the flavour of broad beans (and peas) without the floury texture. The Gruyere croutons were of course really good too.
Broad Bean and Pea Soup
Serves Two
1 large onion, chopped
2 sticks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 sprigs thyme
500g broad beans, removed from the pods and double podded
500g peas, shelled
Salt and pepper
1 litre vegetable stock
2 tablespoons yoghurt
Baguette, sliced
Grated Gruyere
Start by softening the onion, celery and garlic in some olive oil with the thyme. Add the beans and peas, season and add the vegetable stock. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes. Just before the end of the cooking time, top the baguette slices with the grated cheese and grill until the cheese has melted.
Remove the soup from the heat and discard the thyme sprigs. Blend until smooth, stir in the yoghurt, top with the cheese slices and serve.
Veal Estofado
Leafing through a back copy of the Jamie magazine at the weekend, I came across this dish which appealed to me instantly. During our World Cup series, we cooked Greek stifado which we both loved, not only for it’s flavour but also for the ease in which it was produced. The Greek version used pork shoulder but this version uses veal which we’re both keen to eat a lot more of now that we’ve found a good supplier. Not only is it an industry that’s worth supporting but, if you can find it, it’s very cheap. This cut, known as osso bucco or shank, was just £3.04 and there was more than enough for the two of us.
As with the pork version, it was super simple to make and produced a rich, deep dish that you would be forgiven for thinking used lots of complex spicing or lengthy browning and simmering techniques. I cooked this in two stages, the browning and initial simmering with the lid on yesterday and the more gentle simmering tonight when we got home from work so there was some effort involved but nothing too taxing. The veal took on all the flavours from the spices and other ingredients, was meltingly tender and had the added bonus of producing some brilliant bone-marrow which we spread onto torn up bread while waiting for the vegetables to cook.
Jamie reckons you can adapt this for any time of the year by using seasonal vegetables which I don’t entirely agree with. We ate broad beans and peas with ours which were lovely and summery but this is still a fairly hearty dish, even with bread taking the place of something more wintery like mashed potatoes. It was however perfect for the damp and dreary weather we had today which was a lucky accident really but one I’m more than happy with.
Pot Roasted Chicken
After a weekend of disappointing food, I was lucky enough to have the day at home today to rectify things. In desperate need of something satisfying and comforting, I had originally planned a roast chicken but decided at the last minute to pot roast it instead and see if I could come up with something a little lighter.
It was very easy, just a case of seasoning and browning the chicken before adding some a couple of chopped potatoes, a sliced onion, a few whole cloves of garlic and a big bunch of herbs to the pot along with a glass of white wine and the same of water. Cook breast side down at 190 for 50 minutes and then remove the lid, turn and cook without the lid for another 30 minutes or so (depending on the weight of your chicke). Let the chicken rest, remove the potatoes and discard the onions, herbs and garlic. Reduce the liquid down to something similar to gravy and then serve with some summer vegetables.
The pot roasting method means that the bird will remain moist and tender even if you find yourself forgetting about it and wandering off to do something else. The additon of plenty of herbs, wine, onions and garlic adds plenty of flavour and the seasonal vegetables ensure the dish is light and perfect for the weather. It won’t ever replace roast chicken with roast potaotes and stuffing as our favourite comfort food but it comes pretty close.
Steak
When I got home from work on Friday, Stephen was busy in the kitchen preparing something of a feast. I hadn’t been very hungry during the day and when he asked me what I would like for dinner, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t expecting a starter of crab toasts, an amuse bouche of minted pea soup and a main coutse of steak, mushrooms and onions and brocolli.
It was all delicious and luckily I had found my appetite and was able to enjoy it all. I think I’ll employ the same tactic next time Stephen asks me what I want for dinner and see what happens.
Chicken, Avocado and Radishes with Lentils
Stephen and I both arrived home earlier than usual this evening which gave us more time to cook dinner. We’ve been eating a lot of things-on-toast lately so it was nice to spend some time in the kitchen and some more time eating in the garden.
We didn’t want to devote the whole evening to cooking though and we also needed something that would double up as lunch tomorrow and this worked well. While the lentils were cooking, we fried the chicken and then mixed the two together with some olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar and some herbs. A little seasoning and then a handful of radishes and a chopped avocado and we were ready to eat. Not quite as quick as something-on-toast but a whole lot tastier.
The Sportsman, Seasalter
We took the day off work on Friday and went down to Whitstable for the last day of the oyster festival. Since we were so close, it seemed silly not to go back to The Sportsman in Seasalter for lunch as we had enjoyed it so much last year.
The menu seemed shorter than I remembered previously but that’s no bad thing, I often find it difficult to decide what to eat when I’m out so a short menu makes things much easier. It didn’t take us long to decide what to order and both of us opted for fishy starters. To Stephen’s delight, they had herring on the menu which they had marinated themselves. He enjoyed it but it was slightly too herring-y for me. I did enjoy the firm texture though which struck me as being very different to the tinned variety.
I ordered the slipsole in seaweed butter as I hadn’t had either before. I was surprised when the fish arrived without any vegetables and while I appreciated the simplicity of the presentation I would have liked something else with it to cut through the richness of the fish. The seaweed butter was very good with a hint of garlic as well as the salty, seaweed flavour but it didn’t hold my interest for very long.
Sticking firmly to the fishy theme, I ordered the thornback ray which is the same dish I had last year. It was as good as I remembered, firm and meaty with a rich, nutty flavour from the butter it was cooked in and an acidic sauce to balance it all out. Having eaten so much fish to start with, it was a bit of a challenge to get through such a huge portion but I struggled on with just a little help from Stephen.
Stephen’s turbot was supposed to be brill but unfortunately they’d run out. In contrast to my dish, the turbot was rather small and there definitely weren’t enough vegetables but it was well cooked and the sweet, salty bacon was a real high point.
Both dishes were served with some mashed potatoes and some crushed, new potatoes which were fine but mashed potatoes seemed too heavy for lunch on a hot day and I was really disappointed that there weren’t more vegetables available especially since they’re so abundant at this time of year.
In hindsight, I think we should have spent more time studying the menu and started with something meaty to dilute the fishiness. And perhaps I shouldn’t have eaten all the brilliant bread so quickly and saved some to go with my slipsole.
Proscuitto and Pea Pesto Pizza
As we had so much pea pesto left over from yesterday, we had to come up with creative uses for it. Pizza topping sounded like a creative use, so that’s what we did. We used our usual pizza base recipe, then topped it with the pea pesto instead of a tomato sauce. The pesto was a little hard to spread, but we got there in the end. Then we added roasted cherry tomatoes (that we had roasted with a little salt and pepper while the dough was rising), prosciutto and Laverstoke Park buffalo mozarella and sprinkled with fragrant dried oregano. Popped into the oven on our pizza stone at maximum heat until the cheese was bubbling and the various bits had browned.
The pea pesto base worked very well and obviously created a rather different pizza to the usual type that uses a tomato sauce base. The roasted cherry tomatoes did supply some of the sour tomatoey sweetness to balance out the nutty pesto. The prosciutto and mozarella were brilliant as usual and the oregano gave it all a delicious herby fragrance.
