Piccalilli
We watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Everyday programme last week and it reminded us that we had planned to make piccalilli this year, in time for Christmas. Since we had a quiet weekend planned, we added the ingredients to our shopping list and made it up on Sunday afternoon. Aside from the overnight salting, it was quick and easy to make and it’s now sitting happily in our pantry (I wish, when I say pantry, I mean tiny, over-stuffed food cupboard) maturing where it will need to stay for about six weeks.
Like the sloe gin and sloe chutney we made a couple of weeks ago, we don’t know yet what this is going to taste like. The recipe made three large jars with a small amount leftover which we put into a smaller jam jar. This is the perfect tasting size and can be cracked open ahead of Boxing Day for a taste test. Of course, by that time, it will be too late to tinker with the flavours so we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.
Piccalilli
1kg vegetables – cauliflower, radish, green beans, cucumbers, shallots
50g salt
30g cornflour
10g ground turmeric
10g English mustard powder
10g ground ginger
1/2 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
1/2 tsp crushed cumin seeds
1 tsp crushed coriander seeds
500ml cider vinegar
150g granulated sugar
50g honey
Cut the vegetables into small pieces. Place in a large colander over a bowl, and sprinkle with the salt. Mix well, cover with a tea towel and leave in a cool place for 24 hours, then rinse the vegetables in water and drain thoroughly.
Blend the cornflour, turmeric, mustard powder, ginger, mustard seeds, cumin and coriander to a smooth paste with a little of the vinegar. Put the rest of the vinegar into a saucepan with the sugar and honey and bring to the boil. Pour a little of the hot vinegar over the blended spice paste, stir well and return to the pan. Bring gently to the boil. Boil for 3-4 minutes to allow the spices to release their flavours into the thickening sauce.
Remove the pan from the heat and carefully fold the well-drained vegetables into the hot, spicy sauce. Pack the pickle into warm, sterilised jars and seal immediately with vinegar-proof lids. Leave for about 6 weeks before opening. Use within a year.
Recipe from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Everyday book (according to the channel four website, I have the book and couldn’t find the recipe though).
Cavolo Nero Pasta
Another week without any posts. This is becoming embarassing. And, as is usual when this happens, there isn’t anything particularly worth waiting for.
This had potential but I can’t quite remember what that potential was since it was so long ago that we ate it. There was chilli, garlic and anchovies in here, along with some mushrooms and some cavolo nero. And that odd looking pasta that, while tasty, was impossible to eat.
This is our second attempt at using cavolo nero in a pasta dish and it was much better than last time. I think I just need to stop trying to be healthy and throw a load of salami and mozarella at it. And write it up more quickly so I can remember what I did and what I need to do next time.
Raan
This is something Stephen has been wanting to cook for a while. I hadn’t heard of it until recently and I don’t recall hearing him mention it either but my knowedge of Indian dishes is very small and I have a very bad memory so this isn’t unusual. I first heard about it a little while ago when a friend told us his mum used to cook it on special occasions during the seventies. I couldn’t find a lot of information online when I was searching for a recipe but it did strike me as being something of a celebratory dish, simply because of the time and effort required to mix up the spices and leave the meat to marinate. It’s not something you’d have time to do after work anyway.
We marinated our lamb leg overnight, as per this recipe, but I saw several other recipes that suggested a two-step marinade: dry spices for 24 hours followed by the wet marinade for another 24 hours.
Like a lot of slow-cooked dishes, once you’ve made up the spice mixes and done the marinating, the meat then sits happily in the oven leaving you time to get on with other things. This is one of my favourite ways of cooking, especially on a Sunday when there are so many other things that need to be done. Once we’d finished all our weekend chores, we sat down to the raan which we served with chapatis, dal and spiced cauliflower.
The long, slow cooking meant that the flavours of the spices melded together perfectly with no one flavour overpowering the other. Not too hot but with a good kick and plenty of fragrant notes to lift the rounded, earthy flavours.
Our sauce had dried out quite a lot which I really liked, all those sticky, pan-edge pieces that are crispy and chewy at the same time. It would have been nice to have a little more liquid though.
Sloe Gin and Sloe Chutney
A couple of weeks ago, we went sloe picking with a friend. He has a spot that he visits every year which generally provides him with a plentiful haul and we’ve been meaning to go with him for a while. This year, since it was such a nice day, he thought he would take us somewhere new which he suspected might provide good pickings.
We started off slowly, picking individual berries from small bushes along the path until, out of the corner of his eye and across a field, our friend spied a bigger bush. When we reached said bush we realised it was surrounded by many other, even bigger bushes, heaving with sloes. We started to pick and soon realised that we need not have worried earlier about being greedy and stripping the bushes since there were huge amounts of berries available. We stopped after filling a couple of bags each and came home to find we had seven kilos between us.
It was late so the berries were squeezed into our tiny fridge and left until the next day when we began the long process of washing and de-stalking the berries. Back into the fridge again until the next evening when we had enough time to start turning them into something interesting.
We started off with a traditional sloe-gin and a traditional vodka. Since we had so many berries we also decided to experiment and make two smaller bottles of gin flavoured with almonds, lemon peel, cloves and cinnamon.
And then, since there were still so many berries left, we made a chutney.
Of course, we don’t know what anything tastes like yet since the gin needs to be left for at least six months and the chutney . I suppose that’s all part of the fun though.
Sloe Gin (or vodka)
600g sloe berries
250g sugar
1 litre gin or vodka
Wash and de-stalk the berries. Add to a sterilised jar with the sugar and shake vigorously. Traditional methods state that you should prick each individual berry (with a hawthorn if you’re being really traditional) to bruise the fruit and let out some juice. We figured the muddling method would work just as well though and life really is too short to prick seven kilos of sloes.
Top up with gin, mix and seal the jar.
Turn daily for a week and then weekly for a month. Store in a dark place for three months, or ideally, until next year.
Spicy Sloe Gin
600g sloe berries
250g sugar
1 litre gin or vodka
2 inch piece cinnamon
Small handful slivered almonds
2 cloves
2 strips lemon zest
Prepare as per above, adding the aromatics alongside the alcohol.
Sloe Chutney
1 kilo sloe berried
2 tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 medium sized onions, sliced
1lb raisins
1 teaspoon of hot chilli powder
2 inch piece of fresh root ginger, grated
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
12 cloves
Juice and grated rind of 2 oranges
1lb of soft brown sugar
1 pint white wine vinegar
Put the ingredients in a large cooking pot and stir, using a wooden spoon. Bring to the boil and stir occasionally. Reduce the heat so the mixture simmers and stir occasionally, for 3 hours or until it is thick. Ladle into clean, warm jars. Cover, label and leave in a cool place for a couple of months.
Recipe from the River Cottage forum.
Eggs with Bubble and Squeak
Stephen’s at they gym at the moment. It’s not unusual for him to be at the gym, he goes regularly but not usually on a Sunday morning. Sunday mornings are usually reserved for leisurely breakfasts and lunch preperation. The reason for this unusual burst of activity? That’s what he had for breakfast this morning.
Stephen loves eggs and often eats them for breakfast at the weekend, usually fried or scrambled on toast but if there’s anything lurking in the fridge that can be fried up and served alongside then it will be. Today however we were in the unusual position of having more than just potatoes and vegetables left over, there was also some pork fillet, a little jamon and some chorizo so that all went into the frying pan alongside some cavolo nero and some mashed potato to make a porky bubble and squeak. A pretty good way to start the day, even if it does guilt you into an additional gym visit.
Home Made Tapas
Saturday night! As we weren’t going out, that meant that it was time to cook something “interesting”. Where the exact meaning of “interesting” does of course vary depending on what mood we are in, but generally cooking on a Saturday means that there is more time available to prepare, so the range of what can be achieved without consequently eating at midnight is therefore greater.
As it turned out, most of what we ended up cooking this time round was relatively quick to prepare, but there was a range of it so that meant that it was still “interesting”: a range of small tapas-like dishes, mostly from the Moro cookbook. It did turn out to be something of a game of two halves though; more on that later. So, armed with a glass of Manzanilla, we set about preparing. First up was Chorizo in sherry. Very simple: Fry some chorizo and then splash some Fino (we used Manzanilla as that is what we had) over it. Tasty and chorizoey as it should be, with a light tang from the sherry but that mostly gets lost in the paprika-flavoured chorizo oil.
Next was clams in Manzanilla (we stuck to the recipe properly here, which was the reason we had Manzanilla at hand). Again, very quick but not quite as dead simple as the chorizo: Fry some thinly sliced garlic in olive oil. When it starts to brown, add the clams, manzanilla and some chopped parsley. After a few minutes, when the clams have opened, add some more chopped parsley and some black pepper and serve with a lemon wedge to squeeze over the clams if the fancy takes you. We ate them with some bread made from left-over pizza dough from last night, which was great to soak up the clam-and-Manzanilla-and-parsley sauce. The clams themselves were very good too; this was our favourite dish of the evening, which was good because at the last minute we had realised that we didn’t have any clams and had made a special trip to buy some.
We had had a bag of Padron peppers in the fridge for a while and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to use them up. Tossed in oil and salt, then fried until starting to blister, they came out looking good. But didn’t taste good as they were too old and some were going brown inside; clearly been in the fridge for too long. So we didn’t eat them, which was a shame as we had been planning to serve pork skewers on top of them. Remember I said this was a meal of two halves? This was the beginning of the not-so-good half.
Griddled chicory served with jamon and a sherry vinegar and thyme dressing sounded like a good combination and it mostly worked well: the bitter crunch of the chicory complemented the soft, salty jamon and the sweet and sour dressing. Kerri wasn’t a fan of the dressing though, finding it too sweet and cloying.
Finally onto the Moorish skewers, which were initially due to be served on top of the Padron peppers in the way that we had had lamb chops served on Padron peppers in a tapas restaurant. Seeing the recipe in the book, they looked familiar but we couldn’t remember if we had actualy cooked them before or not. Turned out that we had, and the reason that we couldn’t remember very well was that it was three years ago! This was the only part of the meal that required advance preparation – grinding up spices and marinating the meat in them for two hours before cooking – recipe for this at the end of the post.
Our original intention had been to barbecue these because the weather forecast had looked really good, but when the actual weather arrived it clearly hadn’t read the forecast because it wasn’t as good as we had hoped for. So we did these under the grill in our oven. The grill in our oven is really rubbish, It heats up and then turns itself off for a while and then heats up again. When I grill something I want constant, blasting heat, as if it was on a barbecue. Not some sort of thermostat-controlled namby pamby grill that means that by the time you have any sort of char on the outside of your meat you have completely overcooked it and dried it out. In fact we had to put the skewers in a frying pan eventually to try to get some char on them.
The spicy marinade gave the pork a lovely flavour, but they were dried out as you probably gathered from my rant. We made a comment on that previous post about using less saffron next time. We hadn’t read it, but ended up using less saffron purely because we didn’t have much left. Which worked out well.
Ingredients:
1 pork fillet of 500g, trimmed of fat and sinew
sea salt and black pepper
1/2 heaped teaspoon each of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and fennel seeds, all roughly ground
1 teaspoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika
2 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste with salt
a good pinch saffron (about 60 strands) infuxed in 2 tablespoons of boiling water (we used less than half of this this time round)
1/2 small bunch fresh oregano roughly chopped or 1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf, prefereably fresh, crumbled or chopped very finely
1 dessertspoon red wine vinegar
1 dessertspoon olive oil
Cut the pork fillet in half lengthways and then into 3cm cubes. Flatten these cubes slightly. (We didn’t cut it in half and just sliced it into thinnish round slices, didn’t need to flatten them) Place the pork in a large mixing bowl and add the marinade dry spices, garlic, saffron-infused water, oregano, bay and vinegar and mix thoroughly. Then add the olive oil, toss again and leave in the fridge for 2 hours so the flavours or the marinade get into the meat.
Thread onto skewers (remember to soak them beforehand if you are using wooden ones) and cook over high heat, on a barbecue or griddle pan or under a decent grill (not like ours). Enjoy!
Cavolo Nero Pizza
I’ve been thinking about this for a while but wasn’t entirely sure it was going to work. I considered swapping the cavolo nero for spinach and making a more traditional fiorentina pizza but was intrigued enough by the idea to continue and risk ruining our favourite Friday night dinner.
We both love the rich, irony flavour of the cavolo nero but knew it would take some balancing to work as a pizza topping. Our usual tomato sauce is light and fresh but this time, we made a deeper, more heavily reduced sauce with plenty of garlic and oregano to stand up to the greens.
Stephen cleverly suggested tossing the previously-steamed cavolo nero in some grated lemon zest to add an acidic note and, as well as the cooked mozarella and salami, we kept some aside and added it to the pizza when it came out of the oven. The fresh salami added some sweetness and the “raw” mozarella provided a lightness.
We both said it was the best pizza we’ve ever had. The flavour combinations all worked together brilliantly and, without being too immodest, were as perfectly balanced as we could have hoped for. I’m looking forward to trying a similar combination next week with pasta but I might just cook this again. And again.
Halloumi with Lentils and Avocado
We always keep halloumi in the fridge since it has a long shelf life and it’s so useful if you find yourself in a cheese-based emergency. It wasn’t exactly an emergency this evening but we had planned to go out and changed our minds at the last minute. There wasn’t much else around the kitchen would could be turned into a meal so out came the halloumi. I had planned to chop the avocado into the lentils but forgot so hastily threw it on the top just before Stephen took the picture. We ended up mashing it onto the toast and then piling the lentils and halloumi on top and it was brilliant. In fact, I think it’s one of the best things I’ve eaten for a while and considering it was made up of store-cupboard ingredients and took very little time to put together pleases me even more.
No need for a recipe, just cook the puy lentils and then dress with some salt and pepper, red onion, olive oil, lemon juice and herbs. Fry the halloumi and serve on avocado toast.
Minestrone Soup
We had half a cabbage left over from the weekend and I didn’t know what to do with it. I did a quick search through the archives and came across this minestrone soup recipe we cooked earlier in the summer which included the comment: “Most of the recipes I found used cabbage which I’m sure is lovely in winter but it made more sense to use some summer vegetables this time”. While it’s not quite winter yet, it was an ideal way to use up the cabbage so I started cooking it last night. The beans took forever to cook though so we had to finish it this evening but that worked out well since it gave the flavours time to develop overnight.
This version was much more liquid than last time and probably had too much pasta in it but it suited us both, I got to eat more pasta while Stephen ate more soup. The leftovers, minus the liquid, and with some added cheese made a good lunch the next day too.
Chicken Tagine
Time permitting, I like to have something cooked and in either the fridge or the freezer ready to reheat when we get home from work on a Monday night. It takes me a little while to get used to the fact that the day isn’t my own and, by the time I get home, I’m tired, hungry and severely lacking in creativity when it comes to all things kitchen-related. The best solution is to cook something on a Sunday that will generate leftovers but that isn’t always possible, which is how we came to find ourselves cooking chicken tagine at 8pm last night.
We’d been out for the day and planned to cook the chicken this evening, ready for tomorrow night. All we really wanted to do was enjoy the last of the weekend but we both knew that a small amount of effort would reward us in a big way when Monday evening came round and we didn’t need to cook anything. And it really is only a small amount of effort since this is so quick and easy to cook, especially with the modifications we made this time around.
Last time we cooked tagine, we followed all the rules of marinating the chicken in advance. We didn’t have time for that last night but neither of us thought it made a huge amount of difference to the finished dish. We didn’t have any fennel so substituted celery and fennel seeds which worked well, the aniseedy flavour was a little more dilute than last time but this gave the other flavours a chance to shine which I really appreciated since fresh fennel isn’t one of my favourite flavours. More olives and preserved lemons than last time too which upped the zing factor.
While it would have been nice to lounge around last night, watching bad TV or browsing the web, I’m really glad we made the effort to cook this. After the drama of the tube-strike today and the long journey home, it was bliss to heat something up quickly and sit down to something delicious.
Chicken Tagine
Serves Four
Spice Mix
1.5 tsps cumin seeds
1.5 tsps coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp turmeric
1.5 tsps ginger
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 chicken, jointed
2 large onions, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, sliced
2 sticks celery, quartered
Pinch saffron
3 preserved lemons, deseeded and finely chopped
Handful of olives, stoned and halved
750ml chicken stock
Start by making up the spice mix. Toss the chicken in the spices and marinate overnight (if you have time) or for as long as you have.
Brown the chicken pieces in some oil over a medium heat. There’s no need to remove the chicken so when it is brown all over, just add the onions and allow them to soften (about 3 minutes) before adding the garlic and celery. Cook for another 3 minutes or so and then add the saffron, preserved lemons, olives and chicken stock.
Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and cook for 1.5 hours. This should be about the right amount of stock but check occasionally to make sure it hasn’t cooked out entirely.
Just before serving, add a handful of roughly chopped coriander.
We ate this with barley cous-cous and some roasted vegetables sprinkled with toasted almonds. Add the almonds, they make a huge difference.
