Wedding Food
Stephen’s cousin got married on Saturday and at the reception we ate a goats cheese tart with caramelised onions and a red onion chutney followed by roast lamb with wild mushrooms and fondant potato. Dessert began with a creme brulee with strawberries and a sugary tuille and was followed by home-made tablet.
All of the food was very good but the tablet was particularly brilliant. Although we’ve made it before, we’ve never actually eaten it so neither of us were entirely sure what it was supposed to taste like. This one was much better than ours, creamy and crumbly and not at all dry, unlike ours.
Prawns in Dark Sauce
I know it’s been quiet around here lately. We have been eating but it’s mostly been food from the freezer and we haven’t had much time for posting. We actually ate this last Monday but it was good enough that I still remember it.
I worked late and Stephen cooked this ready for my return home from the Madhur Jaffrey book. The sag aloo was improvised and was actually with cabbage instead of spinach, it worked well though. The naan bread was bought from our local Co-Op…things are definitely changing around here.
Prawns in Dark Sauce
Serves Four
75g onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
5 cloves garlic, peeled
1 inch cube ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons plus 300ml water
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
2.5cm cinammon stick
6 cardomom pods
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
175g tomatoes, peeled and finely chopped
5 tablespoons natural yoghurt
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 teaspoon salt
350g peeled prawns
1/4 teaspoon garam masala2 tablespoons finely chopped coriander
Blend the onions, ginger and garlic into a paste with 3 tablespoons of water.
Put the oil into a pan and set over a medium-high heat. When hot, put in the cinnamon, cardamom pods and bay leaves and stir for 3-4 seconds. Add the paste and cook cook for 5 minutes. Add the cumin and ground coriander. Stir and fry for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and cook until the paste has taken on a reddish-brown colour.
Next, add 1 tablespoon of the yoghurt and cook for about 15 seconds, until incorporated into the sauce. Add all of the yoghurt this way.
Now add the turmeric and cayenne pepper and cook for 1 minute.
Add the rest of the water, the salt and the prawns. Mix and bring to the boil. Cook for five minutes until you have a thick sauce.
Sprinkle with garam masala and garnish with fresh coriander.
Chicken, Chickpeas and Chorizo
I can’t remember how we decided on chickpeas, but I do remember that after we decided we then thought that we didn’t have any. So I checked in the cupboard and we did have them, so that was lucky and we soaked some of them yesterday ready for today. We made this up as we went along and the ch-ch-ch in the title was quite accidental. It has a Spanish influence to it but doesn’t follow any particular recipe. Turned out very well though, so we’re putting the recipe down here in case we want to cook it again:
10cm cooking chorizo, peeled and sliced
1 small white onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic
half red pepper, finely chopped
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp dried thyme
1 stick celery, finely chopped
1 small to medium carrot, finely chopped
1 litre chicken stock
250g chickpeas, soaked overnight
250ml white wine
1 tin of tomatoes (440g)
4 chicken thighs, skinned and trimmed of fat
half a small head of cabbage, finely sliced
Heat a large saucepan and add the sliced chorizo, along with just a dash of olive oil. Stir and fry for a few minutes until the lovely orange oil has cooked out. Add the onion, garlic and red pepper and stir fry for about 5 minutes. Add the celery, carrot, paprika and thyme and fry for another few minutes. Then add the soaked chickpeas and stir well, coating them in the oil and fried vegetables. Add the wine and let the alcohol boil off for a few minutes, then add the tomatoes and stock (it needs to cover the chickpeas, so add some more if this is not enough), bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes with the lid on.
After the 45 minutes, add the chicken thighs, stir them in and cook for another 45 minutes. Then remove the chicken thighs, take the meat off the bones and slice / shred if needed and return the meat to the pot, discarding the bones. Add the sliced cabbage and put the lid back on and cook until the cabbage is just done. Season with black pepper and salt if needed. Serve. Some crusty bread would have been good to mop up the juices, but we didn’t have any so we used a spoon the eat the sauce. Delicious. And there are leftovers to eat during the week too.
Mexican Steak and Green Poblano Rice
For a while now we have been cooking Mexican food on and off. We started with the usual fajitas, tacos, chill con carne, guacamole, etc, using recipes that friends had recommended or that we had found somewhere on the world wide internets. While some of these turned out really well, we eventually felt that we should explore more real Mexican cooking rather than sticking with these few “stereotypes” of Mexican food.
So we bought Rick Bayless’s “Mexican Kitchen” (which I am sure we have mentioned before) and cooked a number of dishes out of it. One of the biggest discoveries has been dried chillis of various varieties, particularly guajillo, pasilla and ancho. These need to be soaked before using (sometimes toasted before being soaked too) and when they are soaking give off a lovely fruity, tangy, sometimes smoky aroma that makes its way into the finished dish too.
We haven’t had steak for ages, and really fancied the idea of it this Friday. We thought we would check quicky to see if by some chance there was a Mexican steak recipe in the Mexican Kitchen and lo and behold there was. It had to be done. This required a bit of advance preparation – there was sauce to be made ahead of time so that some of it could be used as a marinade. We did this on Thursday night in order to have it ready for Friday. We managed to cook the steaks just right and the marinade and sauce were brilliant, really worth the effort. The recipe is really for barbecued steaks so we definitely need to remember this recipe for when summer comes around.
We served it with “green rice” which again turned out really well – a nuttiness from frying the rice, a bit of depth from onion and chilli and a lot of herby flavour from coriander.
Grilled Steak with Spicy Guajillo Sauce (the original recipe was for 6, have tried to take it down to 2 portions here):
2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
5 dried guajillo chillies, stemmed and seeded
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, preferable Mexican (we didn’t have either, so used Marjoram)
pinch freshly ground black pepper
pinch ground cumin
1 1/2 cups beef stock
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 steaks (we had sirloin, which the recipe suggested)
few sprigs coriander for garnish
Roast the unpeeled garlic on a skillet over medium heat, turning occasionally, until it is soft and blacked in bits (about 15 minutes). Let them cool and peel them. While this is happening, open up the chillis and toast them in the same (or another) skillet, pressing them down firmly with a spatula until they crackle, even send up a wisp of smoke, then flip them over and do the same on the other side. When done, put the chillis into a bowl and cover them with hot water, letting them soak for 30 minutes, stirring now and then to ensure even soaking. Drain them and discard the water.
Put the oregano, pepper, cumin, garlic and chillies into a food processor or blender with about 1/4 cup of the stock. Blend to a puree, adding a little more stock if needed. Press through a medium-mesh strainer into a bowl (we didn’t do that bit actually, missed it). Heat 1/2 tablespoon oil in a heavy saucepan over medium high. When the oil is hot enough to make a drop of the puree sizzle sharply, add the puree and stir constantly until it reduces to a thick paste, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the rest of the stock, partially cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 45 minutes. If necessary, stir in a little more stock to bring the sauce to a medium, saucy consistency. Tate and season with salt if needed (probably not needed due to the stock) and sugar.
Mix 1/8 cup of the sauce with the cider vinegar and pour into a dish large enough to accomodate both steaks. Coat the steaks well in the marinade and leave in the fridge for up to 4 hours. At this point the recipe tells you to get your fire going to barbecue the steaks, which we didn’t do because we were just griddling them. We did make our green rice though. Then barbecue / griddle your steaks and serve with heated sauce poured over them. The recipe also says to barbecue some red onion slices and serve them with the steaks, but we didn’t do that. Garnish with coriander (didn’t do that either…)
Green Poblano Rice (original recipe serves 4, we halved it here)
1 cup chicken stock
1 fresh poblano chilli, stemmed and seeded and roughly chopped (we just used a generic supermarket chilli here actually)
12 sprigs coriander (this is the whole amount of coriander rather than half, felt like it needed a lot)
1/4 teaspoon salt if using salted stock, or 1/2 teaspoon if unsalted stock
1/2 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil
1/2 cup rice preferably medium grain (we actually used basmati here)
1/2 small white onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan, then add the chopped chilli and let it simmer gently for about 10 minutes until the chilli is very soft. Pour this into a food processor, add the coriander (stems and all) and process to a smooth puree. Press through a medium-mesh strainer into a bowl and add the salt (we didn’t do this strainer-pressing again…)
Clean the saucepan, add the oil and heat over medium heat. Add the rice and onion and cook, stirring regularly, until the rice is chalky looking and the onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook a minute longer. Stir in the warm chilli liquid, cover, and cook over medium-low heat for 15 minutes until the rice is done. If the rice is almost done, leave the cover on the saucepan and turn off the heat and leave for 5 to 10 minutes longer to complete the cooking.
Fried Garlic and Coriander Squid, and Pork Rib and Bamboo Shoot Red Curry
A Thai dinner on Saturday, with two recipes from Thai Food. Kerri was at work so I spent a bit of time preparing this but when it was time to cook there was still a load more to be done.
The first was squid, which I bought from the fish stall at a local market – first time buying something there. It did mean that I needed to clean the squid when I got home though; luckily I had step by step instructions in a good cookbook. That done, the recipe was fairly simple… cut up the squid (I did it into strips) and marinate it in fish sauce (or light soy) for half an hour. While it is marinating, bash up a bulb and a half of garlic (yes it’s a lot…!) with some white pepper and coriander. Then coat the squid in it. Then deep fry. The squid was delicious, as were the deep fried peppery-garlicky-coriandery bits that ended up going really crispy.
After this came a red curry of pork ribs and bamboo shoots. This was okay but not as great as the squid. The bamboo shoots (which look disturbingly like giant slices of garlic in the picture) made the dish very bitter, which we should have expected as the recipe did mention it. The ribs had taken on quite a lot of flavour and were good to gnaw on.
Lamb Ragu
When I originally thought this up, I had planned to use leftover lamb. I didn’t get round to it earlier in the week though so Stephen ended up taking Sunday’s leftovers to work as sandwiches. I had a day off from work today though so adjusted my plan slightly to use a lamb shank. Lamb mince would have worked too but there’s something about it I don’t really like. I also wanted the extra flavour that comes with using meat on the bone.
I briefly considered going heavy on the spices and using chilli too but decided I wanted something gentler that would allow the lamb flavour to come through. I haven’t ruled those options out completely though and may well experiment next time.
Lamb Ragu
Serves Two
Lamb shank
1 onion, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp cinnamon
Mixed herbs (I used mostly parsley but also a little rosemary and oregano)
Glass red wine
Tin tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
250ml milk
1 tbsp worcester sauce
Salt and pepper
Bay leaf (I’ve run out but I would have added one if I hadn’t)
Start by browning a lamb shank and then removing to a plate. In the same pan, fry onions and celery with some salt until soft. Add garlic and cook for a further minute or two.
Next, add the tomato paste and allow to colour for a minute or two. Add the cinnamon and herbs and cook for another minute.
Deglaze the pan with the red wine and return the lamb to the pan.
Now add the tomatoes, the stock, the milk and some worcester sauce. Season with a little more salt and rather more pepper. Bring to the boil, lower the heat to a simmer and cook for four hours with the lid on but slightly ajar. For the last hour, I encouraged the meat off the bone so that it was completely submerged in the cooking liquid. Just before serving, you can break the meat down further if it hasn’t completely broken up.
There is a lot of excess fat which would be easier to remove if this was cooked the day before and left in the fridge overnight. The flavours would develop further that way too. Even though we ate this the same day, there was still plenty of flavour; the lamb came through which is what I was aiming for and the whole dish was rich with a subtle sweetness without being overpowering. I’m glad I didn’t use leftover lamb now as I think that would have created a completely different dish.
Stir-Fried Chicken with Vegetables and Noodles
A quick and easy but still tasty dinner this evening, it was mostly comprised of ingredients that we had bought last week with a similar idea in mind but had ended up going out instead.
Quick overview: Stir fry some sliced garlic, finely chopped / minced ginger and sliced chilli for a minute in vegetable oil in a hot wok. Add a thinly sliced chicken breast, then after a minute or two add halved baby corn and green beans. After another minute or so, add sliced red pepper and sliced spring onions. Add a healthy drizzle / splash / glug each of Thai fish sauce and soy sauce, plus a dash of chicken stock. Turn down the heat and put a lid on the wok until the vegetables have just cooked through and are still quite crunchy. Add some noodles (which you have cooked / soaked already!) and combine well with everything else. Sprinkle over some crushed peanuts and it’s ready to serve.
Roast Lamb
I planned something using leftover lamb for tomorrow night’s dinner but a later shift means I won’t have enough time to do it now so it’s gone on the “to cook” list, (which should be renamed “where ideas go to die”). Since we don’t need enough for tomorrow but still fancied lamb, we opted for a half shoulder which we stuffed with garlic and anchovies and roasted.
We really should learn not to rely so heavily on the meat thermometer though as the lamb definitely wasn’t pink, it was still tasty though so it didn’t matter too much.
And, as it turned out, there were plenty of leftovers anyway so that other lamb dish may make an appearance later in the week.
Colston Bassett Stilton
Yes, we did eat rather a lot last night but it was unavoidable. We put some samples of Colston Bassett Stilton out for customers to try in the shop yesterday afternoon and the smell drove me so mad that I had to buy some to take home. It isn’t Scottish cheese so it didn’t really go with our haggis but it was so good that we were happy to overlook that.
I’ve had this cheese before and enjoyed it but this seemed better than I remember. Rich and powerful, as Stilton should be but creamy too with an almost delicate note to it. We ate it with Scottish oatcakes. And straight off the knife as the evening progressed.
Haggis
After half our haggis was put to good use in our sausage rolls, we used the rest for traditional haggis with neeps and tatties. While this was good (although it doesn’t look that interesting) we both wished we had just made more sausage rolls instead.
