Beef Brisket
This has been on my “things-to-cook-soon” list for ages. I’m a big fan of slow-roast dishes and thought this might be a good alternative to our favourite slow roast shoulder of lamb. Well, I’m not sure if we did something wrong (seasoned and braised in a couple of pints of stock and wine at 160 degrees for three hours. There were carrots, onions, celery, bay, garlic and some dried herbs in there too) or if we just had a poor piece of meat but we really didn’t like it.
The gravy had plenty of flavour but the beef itself was tasteless and dull. We bought a larger piece of beef than we needed for today’s lunch so that we could use the leftovers tomorrow which I’m hoping will be better. I can’t see us cooking brisket to eat this way again though.
Pizza with Jerusalem Artichokes
This was so good, we ate it two nights in a row. Admittedly, we did have pizza dough left over, as well as a surplus of artichokes but this really was worth cooking again.
Unlike the artichokes we cooked when making salad, we didn’t parboil these but just sliced them finely on a mandoline and then fried them quickly over a high heat. This method worked much better, resulting in crispier artichokes which soaked up less oil. It also produced a much more concentrated, nutty flavour which worked very well with the sweet salami. A scrape of lemon zest provided a good balance on the first night with capers instead tonight. The lemon just edged it.
We use Jamie Oliver’s pizza dough recipe which we’ve documented here, I experimented by adding a little more sugar (maybe another quarter tsp) and yeast (7g instead of 6g)this time which seemed to work well resulting in a crispy, light base.
Pla Rad Prig (Fried Fish with Chilli Sauce)
This doesn’t look as attractive on the plate as I was hoping for. We had some trouble getting the skin on the mackerel to crisp up for some reason, perhaps we over-crowded the pan. While we presented it on a plate, we actually ended up flaking the fish onto some jasmine rice and mixing in the sauce. That would have looked even less pretty though so I suppose I should be grateful that we have this picture.
I’ve been craving mackerel this week, most likely because there’s been so much focus on sustainable fish in the media lately (you can read more about it here). We had a surfeit of Thai-style vegetables left over from earlier in the week and this recipe from “Thai Traditional Cooking – The Mother’s Recipes” seemed perfect. It specified whole, white fish but there was definitely enough punch in the chilli sauce for a stronger tasting fish like mackerel.
It wasn’t as quick as the prawn dish we cooked on Tuesday but it didn’t take a lot longer. It had that perfect balance of hot, sour, salty, sweetness that Thai food is known for and kept us full all evening. £2.75 for those four mackerel fillets so easy on the wallet too. A good January dish.
Pla Rad Prig (Fried Fish with Chilli Sauce)
Serves Two
4 mackerel fillets
2 shallots, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
5 small, red chillies, chopped
1/2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp tamarind juice
2 tbsp water
Oil, for frying
2 spring onions, sliced
Start by cooking the mackerel fillets in some oil. We used a Jamie Oliver method that we saw on TV recently: fry the fish skin side down until the flesh on top has almost cooked through. Turn, cook briefly and then remove from the heat.
While the fish is cooking, pound the chillies, garlic and shallots together in a mortar and pestle until you have a rough paste.
Heat the tamarind juice, sugar and water together until boiling. Add the pounded ingedients and cook for two minutes. Add the fish sauce and then pour over the cooked fish.
Dress with the spring onion and serve with jasmine rice and some vegetables.
Adapted from “Thai Traditional Cooking – The Mother’s Recipes” by Maria Kanignan Saunders. Neither of us know where this book came from and the only online reference I can find for it is on Amazon, listed at £35. It’s a good book but it’s very small and probably not worth that much.
The orginial recipe called for 10 small, red chillies which I thought sounded too much so I halved it. This was about the right kind of heat for us but it could have taken a little more so increase if you like extreme heat. There was no water in the original recipe either but there didn’t seem to be enough liquid from just the tamarind so we added that in too.
Barnsley Chops with Jerusalem Artichoke Salad and Boulangere Potatoes
I didn’t think I’d eaten Barnsley chops before but, as it turns out, I ate them once before with a salad very similar to this one. The salad was slightly different this time, I par-boiled the peeled Jerusalem artichokes before leaving them to cool and then slicing them. I then fried them and added them to some cooked grean beans and some toasted hazelnuts. Some goats cheese was then squidged on top. I was planning to crumble the goats cheese but it was too ripe for that.
The “salad” was really good and worked well with the lamb chops but I think it has potential as a stand-alone dish or as a starter. We added a drizzle of oil after taking the photos which brought everything together.
The boulangere potatoes were not so good. I thought since I was cooking them in smaller dishes I could get away with a shorter cooking time but it seems I was wrong. An old post tells me I usually cook them for 3.5 hours which seems a really long time but I do remember them as being very good so next time I’ll remember not to rush things.
Prawn Noodles
Not a particularly imaginative title I know but I was at a bit of a loss to describe this dish. It wasn’t true to any particular cuisine since there were so many flavourings going on but it tasted good which was enough for me. And it only took 10 minutes to cook! The kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off when we sat down to eat and took a fair while to clean up but, 10 minutes! From start to finish!
Prawn Noodles
Serves Two
Oil, for frying
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic
1 red chilli
1 green chilli
Pinch of dried ginger (fresh would be good but we didn’t have any)
Prawns (we used shell-on prawns but the shelled type would be less of a faff)
Thai-style ribbon noodles (we used the Sharwood’s “Ready to Wok” type)
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
Handful coriander, chopped
In a wok, start by frying the onion, garlic, chilli and ginger for a couple of minutes and then add the prawns. As the prawns start to colour, add the noodles and stir to incorporate.
Add all the liquids, stir again and then put the lid onto the wok. Cook for about 3-4 minutes with the lid on, sprinkle with coriander and then serve.
Marvel at how quick and easy this was to cook. Then eat.
Leftover Roast Chicken with Cannelini Beans
I say this often but one of the very best things about a roast chicken is the amount of leftovers it generates. If you were left with lots of turkey leftovers after Christmas then this may be a bit too soon for chicken leftovers, luckily we managed to avoid that by going on holiday.
We decided to combine the chicken with some leeky, mustardy, beans. I cooked the beans on Sunday while the chicken was cooking so all I had to do tonight was soften some leeks and garlic, add the beans with some oil and mustard (raspberry mustard in this case, if you were wondering what those funny pink specks were) and then stir in the chicken. I added some extra kale for a bitter note to counteract the sweetness of the mustard.
Roast Chicken
As is tradition, we celebrated arriving home with a roast chicken on Sunday. Not all that interesting to read about (there is some more interesting stuff to come soon) but something we always look forward to after being away.
Duck Breast with Fondant Potatoes
We’ve been away on holiday so, what with Christmas and two weeks in the sun, we’re now even further behind with posts than we were. I have a lot to get through but this seemed like a good place to start. While away in South Africa (more on that to follow), we visited the Springfield wine estate in Robertson and tasted their Pinot Noir. It was suggested as a good pairing for duck, we agreed and packed a bottle into our suitcase so that we could try it when we got home. We didn’t wait very long before trying it. I’d frozen some bolognaise sauce which we ate when we arrived home on Friday night, this duck was Saturday’s dinner.
We cooked the duck breasts simply and made up a sauce with some of the Pinot Noir to accompany it, making sure we had plenty left to drink with the finished dish. The wine did indeed work brilliantly (I’ll ask Stephen to add some techinical stuff here) but the really great thing about this was the fondant potatoes. We’ve got these very wrong in the past but these were brilliant. The best part was that the potatoes were particularly floury which meant lots of soft pieces at the bottom of the pan which had soaked up plenty of butter and garlic. We ate those with a spoon after dinner and, to be honest, I could have easily just eaten a plate of those.
Sirocco, Kalk Bay
When we were last in South Africa, we went to Sirocco a few times for coffee. We could never resist their croissants despite usually always having had breakfast already. They served them with olive oil, which I thought was strange until I tasted it and grew to love them. I was lucky enough to be away for my birthday and, when Stephen asked me where I wanted to have breakfast, I knew immediately.
Sadly, they don’t serve the croissants with olive oil anymore (although I’m sure I could have asked for some on the side) but just with butter and jam. The croissants were as good as I remember though and I even tasted and enjoyed some of Stephen’s omelette. It was served with feta cheese and mushrooms and had a serving on toasted sourdough with squashed avocado on the side. One to repeat at home, definitely.
Oh, and you see those guys up there? They played happy birthday to me as I returned from the toilet. A lovely, sunny birthday.
Potjiekos
Potjiekos (according to Wikipedia) translates as “small pot food” and is the traditional South African method of cooking outside using a small, cast-iron, three-legged pot. The pot sits on the ground and heat is provided by a small fire that’s lit under the pot (or potjie).
I’ve never had potjiekos before but have heard a lot about it. With Stephen’s Aunt and Uncle visiting, it was the perfect opportunity to dust off the pot and light the fire. Stephen’s Mom has a couple of potjiekos recipe books which we paged through but, in the end, decided to do our own thing. We settled on lamb as the meat and started with the usual onions, celery and garlic as the base. Nutmeg, cloves and bay leaves provided the aromatics with butternut squash and baby onions going in later. There was also dried fruit (South Africans are OBSESSED with adding fruit to savoury dishes which can be a challenge for haters of the sweet and savoury combination) and both potatoes and rice (they’re also obsessed with double or even triple carbs, which I didn’t find so challenging) to finish things off.
So, it’s basically a simple stew or casserole? Well yes, I suppose it is but it’s quite a difficult thing to cook. First off things need to brown so the fire needs to be fierce and then you want the stew to simmer for a long time so the heat needs to be kept constant. Stephen opted to keep some charcoal burning on the braai that he could add when things looked like they were cooling down. I think technically that’s cheating, according to what I read in the cookery books but it seemed entirely necessary to me. There was also a lot of discussion over whether the pot should be stirred or whether ingredients should just be added in layers according to their cooking time. We chose to stir.
And what of the taste? Well, it did taste a lot like a simple stew or casserole (apart from the fruit, I definitely don’t put fruit in my casserole) but that’s no bad thing. More than that though it was a really enjoyable way of cooking. We all sat outside while Stephen tended to the pot and, much like the fondue, it was all very sociable. The one thing that really stood out for me was the addition of rice to the pot. I normally serve and cook rice on the side but cooking it with the meat meant it worked as a natural thickening agent and it soaked up all the lovely flavours from the rest of the pot. Something I’m definitely going to try now we’re home and back to cooking indoors again.
