Haggis Sausage Rolls
Last year, we made Scottage Pie, using haggis as the filling. It was a partial success but the inside (which was purely haggis) was a little too dry and dense.
This year, we thought about doing the same again but combining the haggis with some kind of mince. Somewhere along the way, this idea transformed itself into sausage rolls using haggis and pork mince. These worked brilliantly. The pork did a brilliant job of lightening the whole thing up and the onion and sage added a traditional sausage roll flavour. The chorizo worked fairly well when you actually ended up with a piece in your mouth but the flavours didn’t permeate the whole filling and I don’t think we’d bother with that again.
We didn’t make our own pastry which may well have made these even better but it was late and we really need to tackle that when we have plenty of time, maybe next time.
Haggis Sausage Rolls
250g haggis
250g pork mince
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 bunch sage, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
Packet puff pastry (or your own, if you’re not as lazy as us)
Combine the filling and roll into a sausage shape. Lay onto puff pastry that has been rolled out to about 1/2 cm and roll. Cut into the size of your choice and bake at 180 for about half an hour.
Cheese and Marmite Crumpets
Helen’s recent post about homemade crumpets coincided with the rekindling of our love for them. We eat them now and again but not regularly, once we’ve got through one packet though it usually isn’t too long until we reach for another until we tire of them and then repeat the process a little while later.
I cooked dinner last night (pesto pasta with hot smoked salmon, green beans and tomatoes) and was planning on photographing Stephen’s dinner when he got home but he decided just to eat leftovers, hence the lack of post. He got hungry later on in the evening though and ate a crumpet with Marmite and cheese, which instantly sealed my lunch choice for today.
I wouldn’t normally post about lunch but since there’s been a lack of posts lately and there isn’t likely to be any for a few days, I thought I’d mention this. They were really good too, otherwise you’d have been staring at the butternut soup for a while longer.
I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to try making my own but I’m curious as to how different they are to shop-bought crumpets.
Butternut Squash Soup
We had a butternut squash at work last week that looked a bit ugly on the outside and was rejected by our customers so I bought it, knowing that the inside would be fine. I must be a glutton for punishment since I decided to turn it in to soup but, in order to minimise the chances of disaster, relied on a recipe found by Stephen.
Of course, I didn’t follow the recipe as closely as I should have done and ignored the advice to add potato since I didn’t have any. I also thought it would be a good idea to add a lot more chilli than the recipe stated which meant I had to rescue the finished dish with some milk. It turned out quite well though and the roasted seeds added a good crunch. Smoky chorizo is a classic partner for sweet squash and this was as good as always. I reserved some of the cooking oil to drizzle on top of the soup which looked pretty and intensified the flavour a little too.
Oh, and that’s a toasted bagel on the side.
Beef Stew and Dumplings
Every now and then I crave dumplings briefly, but never have them and then forget about them again until next time the craving arises. As a child I used to love them and it’s that memory that resurfaces from time to time. During some recent and long overdue kitchen-tidying, Kerri and I discovered a long lost box of shredded suet that we had used to make Christmas pudding last year. There was a recipe for dumplings on the side of the box. What better thing to do with it in the middle of winter than make a lovely stew with dumplings? So that’s what we did.
Kerri was working until 4:30, so I set about making the stew by throwing things into a pot in a semi-organised way. This was a mostly made up recipe but it turned out very well indeed, so am putting it down here for future reference. There is actually quite a low meat-to-vegetables ratio in this and after I’d put everything into the pot I wished I had some more stewing beef to add to it, but it worked out well as it was.
Beef Stew and Dumplings
Serves Four
500g stewing beef, diced
Half a celeriac, diced
Half a swede, diced
About 20 small new potatoes, or fewer larger ones, halved or quartered
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
a dozen small shallots, peeled
Half a bottle red wine
1 litre beef stock
3 or 4 sprigs of thyme
Large sprig of rosemary
Two bay leaves
Flour for dusting
Salt and pepper
Put a large saucepan onto medium heat and add some olive oil or vegetable oil. When it is hot, add the onion. Stir occassionally, letting it soften and go slightly golden but not brown. Add the garlic and bay leaves halfway through this process. While this is going on, season a few tablespoons of flour with salt and pepper and coat the diced beef with it.
When the onion is golden and soft, remove it to a plate. Add some more oil to the saucepan if you need to, turn up the heat and brown the floured beef in two batches, letting it take on some deepish brown colour but not burn. When both batches have been browned, add all the beef and the onions back to the saucepan and turn the heat down. Pour in the wine and allow it to bubble away for a few minutes until the alcohol has evaporated.
Then add the stock, potatoes, celeriac, swede, rosemary and thyme and a generous grind of pepper. Bring to the point of simmering, cover, and leave for about 45 minutes. Then add the shallots, give it a good stir and leave it for another half an hour. Then add the dumplings and cook for a final 20 to 30 minutes before checking that the dumplings are done and serving.
The dumplings were simple to make: mix suet, flour, salt and water. Form into balls. Put into stew to cook. We added herbs to ours and should have added a bit onion too but were in a rush at this stage as we (mostly I) had actually forgotten about the dumplings briefly. We made the balls a little large though and they didn’t turn out as light as they could have, but they were certainly tasty went very well with the rest of the stew. It’s a great pity that they are mostly just fat and carbs or we’d eat them more often.
The stew itself turned out very well as I mentioned earlier. If I had remembered to then I would probably have added some tinned tomatoes, but I am glad that I forgot because their omission allowed a very beefy flavour to come through which was balanced by a slight edge from the swede and celeriac.
Fishfingers and Chips
I really wish I’d taken a picture of this but I just wasn’t with it enough at the time to do so (just imagine a very orange looking ‘plate of food’). I had root canal treatment on Friday and when I finally felt well enough to eat something, the only thing that appealed was fishfingers and oven-chips, lovingly cooked for me by Stephen. Comfort food of the finest order.
The fishfingers were brilliant but I have to admit to being a bit disappointed by the chips, they actually taste like potato now which is not how I remember them.
Byron
There isn’t much I can say about Blogger’s favourite Byron that hasn’t already been said but I’m adding this as much for the record as anything else. I don’t much like writing about food I’ve not cooked myself and I’ve never eaten a proper American hamburger so am certainly no expert on the subject but I do know what I like and I like Byron.
I had a day off from work on Thursday and Stephen suggested we meet at Westfield for lunch. He conveniently works around the corner and I had my first week’s wages to spend (on incredibly glamorous stuff like hiking socks and technical baselayers to keep me warm in the shop). Stephen hadn’t been to Byron before, the last time we tried to go they had unfortunately sold out of hamburgers and only had chicken left so there was a lot riding on this visit.
The service was quick and efficient and the burger was well cooked, slightly over the advertised medium but still juicy inside with a good flavour (although Stephen thought his was a little dry). I think the bun has changed recently but I can’t be sure, this was a soft roll and I think they previously used ciabatta. The fries were particularly good, thin and crispy which is just how I like them and with a decent potato flavour. Pretty good for under a tenner although the burger isn’t huge and my feeling of fullness probably had a lot to do with the huge milkshake I had.
Chorizo and Cannelini Beans
Not to self: don’t leave it five days before writing up a post otherwise you won’t remember what you did. Which is a shame since this was really good. It was based on Dan’s recipe but I couldn’t find tinned chickpeas so used tinned cannelini beans instead. I usually use dried beans since I thought I preferred the texture but couldn’t really notice much of a difference. This is useful as tinned beans cook much quicker and don’t require any pre-cooking, making this perfect for a quick, mid-week meal.
Celeriac and Potato Soup
This was the ‘soup of the day’ at work yesterday and was perfect at warming me up on my lunch break. I asked the chef how he made it and it sounded so simple that I thought I would try to recreate it at home today. Given my past history with soup, I should have guessed that my version wouldn’t turn out as I expected it to; luckily Stephen was on hand to fix things. A pinch of cumin and some cayenne pepper turned this into something edible, if entirely different to what I was attempting.
I’ll post a recipe when I’ve got it right. Unless I add “admit you’re useless at making soup” to my list of resolutions for this year and stick to buying it instead of making it myself.
Really Good Roast Pork Leftovers
We bought a larger joint of pork than we needed yesterday so that we would have leftovers for this evening. Stephen suggested we turn them into something vaguely Mexican so, when I got home from work, I started on some guacamole.
We had some leftover gravy too which Stephen used as the starting point for the sauce. Into the Magimix went a rehydrated ancho chilli, some garlic, cumin seed, coriander leaf and a little tomato puree. This was added to a saucepan with the leftover gravy and brought up to simmering point. Next we added the leftover shredded pork which was heated through until hot.
We served the pork with yet more leftovers: the garlic Spring greens from yesterday’s lunch. All wrapped up in corn tortillas with the guacamole and some grated cheese.
This turned what could have been some rather dull, dry leftover pork into a really interesting and tasty dinner. The ancho chilli adds a warm, deep flavour which is reminiscent of long, slow-cooked meat and works really well with the bright and zingy guacamole.
Really Good Roast Pork
It was Kerri’s birthday today, which was very exciting. We went out to Chez Bruce last night and had a wonderful dinner there, so decided to stay at home today and cook something ourselves. Roast pork it was, which we bought from a local butcher, Parsons Nose, which we were hoping would be open on Sunday and luckily was! We had to wait a while, because just as we arrived the butcher was boning and tying a pork loin for another customer. That customer ended up buying just over half of it, then we took just over half of what was left and the butcher looked at the remaining piece and said “I think I’ll have that for my dinner this evening”. So a whole loin prepared, portioned up and put to good use in a short space of time. Excellent.
The pork was lovely free range pork from Dorset and was delicious, but that wasn’t the end of it. We also managed to cook really good roast potatoes for the first time in a while (it seems that buying potatoes from Waitrose rather than Sainsbury’s was the key here as they were the same variety – Desiree – and cooked in much the same way) and the crackling was brilliant, so much so that it deserves its own picture:
One of the birthday presents that I had bought Kerri was a spotty jug from Emma Bridgewater, which is what we used to serve our gravy:
So two good roast dinners two weekends in a row now, which will make it all the more difficult to start on the being-sensible-and-not-eating-too-much regime which starts tomorrow.
