Beef and Stilton Burgers
Knowing I would be away for most of the weekend, I planned ahead and organised tonight’s dinner well in advance. I made the mistake of checking (and believing) the weather forecast in advance though and when I saw sun, I planned for a barbecue. By the time I got home this evening, it wasn’t particularly sunny but Stephen was happy to light the fire anyway so we went ahead.
The dreary weather had dampened my spirits slightly so I half-heartedly threw this together based on a Gordon Ramsay recipe (which I can’t find online), and made a quick salad to go with it. Shamefully, I didn’t even bother to cook onions or slice lettuce to go with the burgers so what you see here is exactly what we ate: burgers in buns. You can see for yourself that I didn’t pay much attention to the photography either.
We weren’t convinced of the quality of the beef mince we were using so opted to cook these all the way through which meant they’d dried out a little. The flavour combination worked well though (beef, red onion, chives, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, English mustard, Stilton) and next time I’ll go a bit heavier on the seasoning and use better beef. An extra wodge of cheese in the middle wouldn’t hurt either.
Sag Aloo and Moong Dal
Last week I was feeling rather ill for most of the week and ended up eating quite a lot of fairly plain food. This included mostly cooked vegetables and not much meat. Although I am over that now, some of those menu choices still recur. With Kerri out this evening and an abundance of potatoes and spinach in the house, I had to make sag aloo.
With it I made some dal – we had made a dry version of moong dal recently, which we had frozen half of. As the sag aloo was dryish too, I added some extra water to the dal when reheating it to make it a bit wetter and a good accompaniment to the sag aloo. Just before serving it, I fried a chopped dried chilli and some cumin seeds and poured them over the dal, which gave it a lovely aromatic note.
It all went quite well together and only as I was eating the last mouthful did I wonder “where is the rice?”. I had forgotten to make any rice, but it didn’t matter much as I enjoyed it all anyway. There is some left for lunch tomorrow too, which is good.
Chicken with Thyme
After Wednesday night’s fail, Stephen offered to cook chicken with tarragon sauce on Friday night. Except he couldn’t find tarragon so yet another attempt to try the aniseedy herb was thwarted. He did still cook dinner and used the same Delia recipe he was intending to use but substituted the tarragon for thyme. It worked well and the sauce had a really deep, rich flavour.
We both agreed that although we enjoyed the flavour of the sauce, it was perhaps slightly over-reduced. Next time we’ll watch the reduction a little more closely. And perhaps we’ll even use tarragon.
Grilled Chicken with Muscat Wine and Thyme – FAIL
I took a couple of recipe books to bed with me last night, in the hope of finding something for tonight’s dinner. I had a vague plan to cook chicken with a tarragon sauce, partly because a friend cooked it recently and commented on how good it was and partly because I’m trying to like all things aniseed. The fennel we ate in Jamie’s tagine recently wasn’t as challenging as I’d previously found it so I thought I’d see how I fared with tarragon.
As I was paging through Nigel Slater’s “Real Fast Food”, I came across this recipe.* There wasn’t any tarragon in it but it was healthier than the creamy sauce of my first choice so I changed my mind and decided to cook that instead.
Having read the recipe, I knew I didn’t need to marinate anything so, planning to eat at 7, I started preparing everything at about 6.15. And then I read the recipe more closely. This is a mistake I often make and I really need to stop doing it. The recipe didn’t make any sense. Marinate the chicken in the wine, garlic, thyme and chopped vegetables while you get on with the rest of the dish (Nigel suggested a salad of watercress and orange which I wasn’t planning to do but would have taken about five minutes to make). Then, put the chicken under the grill, spoon on some of the marinating liquid, cook and then add the juices to the plated chicken. I didn’t understand how any of the flavour was going to penetrate the chicken, given both the short marinating time and the fact that all the liquid would slip away as soon as it went under the grill.
Stephen came home and agreed that if we followed this method, we were going to end up with tasteless, grilled chicken. Since I’d already chopped the vegetables and put them in a dish with the chicken and the wine, we were in a bit of a quandary. We decided to roast the chicken in a little of the wine and vegetable mixture and cook the rest of the wine down on the hob to make a sauce. The chicken seemed to be cooking through but it was pale and the skin hadn’t crisped up so we grilled it for the last few minutes of the cooking time. At which point, some of the skin burnt, some didn’t brown at all and the bottom of the pan became a dark, sticky mess.
The sauce was disgusting. Stephen had added some white wine to dilute the sweetness of the muscat but it didn’t work. He then tried to blend the liquid and the vegetables together but that didn’t work either and it went down the sink.
The vegetables tasted fine though so we plated those up with the chicken and hoped for the best. Despite our best efforts to rescue things, the chicken was completely tasteless and I gave up after two bites. Stephen finished his vegetables but the rest ended up in the bin.
The lesson here? Apart from reading the recipe properly first, always stick with your first choice. If I’d gone with the recommended chicken and tarragon as I planned then I wouldn’t be typing this while eating a bowl of Cornflakes.
* The recipe isn’t online and, after all that, I’m not going to type it out.
An English Tortilla
I’ve been wanting to do something with asparagus, bacon and English cheese for a while. I like the popular Italian combination of asparagus with grated parmesan wrapped in Parma ham but with something so typically English like asparagus, it seems a shame to rely on Italian accompaniments and not celebrate other good, English ingredients.
Of course, I could have just grated the cheese over the asparagus and then wrapped it in bacon before grilling but I wanted something more substantial. The addition of potatoes was obvious and thus the English tortilla was born. Perhaps I should have given more thought to an English sounding name for the dish but I got stuck on “pie” which this isn’t really.
This wasn’t a risky dish, everyone knows that bacon + cheese + potato = good but I’m still pleased that it turned out so well. The first slices were severely lacking in bacon though, the bacon pieces had made their way to the other side of the frying pan and stayed there meaning one side was salty and full of bacony goodness while the other was a little under-seasoned and verging on vegetarian. We compensated for this by eating from the other side too which wasn’t exactly a hardship but I’ll be careful to mix the ingredients more thoroughly next time.
To balance out the sweetness I knew would come from the caramelised onions and Lincolnshire Poacher, I added a salad of chicory and radicchio with a few walnuts, some more cheese and a dressing of oil and lemon juice. It did indeed provide a good contrast but I think the cheese would have been better grated on top of the fritatta before it went under the grill.
Asparagus, Bacon and Lincolnshire Poacher Tortilla
Serves Two (generously)
1 bunch asparagus
1 packet lardons
Olive oil
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
3 medium potatoes, finely sliced (I use a mandoline for this)
4 eggs
100g cheese, grated
Handful parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
Cook the asparagus until it is just tender, drain and rinse under cold water to prevent it cooking any further.
In a large frying pan, fry the bacon until the fat has rendered, remove from the pan and blot on some kitchen paper. Drain and discard the excess oil
In the same pan, add a little olive oil and caramelise the onion; I do this by frying them for a few minutes on a high heat so they start to brown and then turning the heat down and cooking slowly until they are golden all over – this takes about 15 minutes.
Remove the onions from the frying pan and add to the bacon. In the same pan, add some more oil and cook the potato slices slowly over a low heat – about 20 minutes. Remove (scraping up any stuck-on, browned pieces) and add to the bacon and onions.
In a large bowl, gently mix together the eggs, cheese, parsley and salt and pepper until the egg yolk is just broken down. Add the potatoes, onion and bacon and combine gently.
Pour the whole lot back into the frying pan (after adding a little more oil) and then add the blanched asparagus. Cook for about 20 minutes and then put the frying pan under the grill to brown the top.
Barbecued Lamb Kebabs, Fattoush and Failed Muhammara
I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday and consequently didn’t plan anything for dinner today. As soon as I saw the weather forecast, I knew we had to barbecue but I was stumped as to what I could cook that wouldn’t need marinating (I did consider taking everything I needed to work with me and whipping up a marinade in my lunch break but chickened out).
I eventually settled on lamb kebabs made with minced lamb, figuring I could get plenty of flavour into the meat without the need for a long marinating time. I was foiled when I got to the supermarket at lunchtime though since they didn’t have any lamb mince. I didn’t have a plan b and, since I’d already planned the accompaniments, I picked up some reduced lamb leg pieces instead.
As it turned out, I got home a little earlier than I was expecting so that, coupled with a later-than-usual dinner, meant the lamb got at least an hour to marinate before the coals were ready.
I did some random internet searching for these recipes and now can’t find the link for the fattoush so I’ll reproduce it here. The cut and paste job I did on the muhammara tells me it’s originally from “Cooking the Middle Eastern Way” by Christine Osborne. This turned out to be a complete failure sadly, I’m not sure what I did wrong but the texture was that of uncooked stuffing. The flavour was brilliant though and worked very well with the heat of the sumac that was present in everything else – I need to research this a little more and perhaps try another recipe.
The lamb worked out well, even with the relatively short marinating time. Stephen cooked it expertly meaning there was a decent char on the outside but the insides were still tender and pink. There was just enough spice coming through from the sumac but it did still have that slight gritty texture that we’ve complained about before – perhaps I need to pound it in the mortar and pestle before using (although now I look back I see that I said exactly that last time).
The fattoush was more successful than last time too, the flavours were more subtle and had a better balance between hot and sour. It complimented the lamb well, since a lot of the flavours were present in both dishes but the thing that brought it all together was the flavour of the muhammara, even though the texture was off-putting.
Lamb Kebabs
Serves Two
1 packet of diced lamb leg (I can’t remember what it weighed)
Tablespoon sumac
1 garlic clove, crushed
Juice of half a lemon
Tablespoon olive oil
Pepper
Salt
Start by soaking the skewers in cold water.
Combine all ingredients together (apart from the salt) and coat the lamb with the mixture. Leave in the fridge for as long as you can and then, just before cooking, add the salt, mix and thread the meat onto the skewers.
Barbecue over direct heat for 15 minutes, or until cooked to slightly pink.
Fattoush
Serves Two
1 pita bread
Lettuce
1 spring onion, finely sliced
3 tomatoes, chopped
Handful chopped parsley
Handful chopped mint
1 garlic clove, peeled*
1 tablespoon sumac
1/8 cup olive oil
1/8 cup lemon juice
Salt
Pepper
Chop the salad ingredients and combine.
Toast the pita bread, cool and then tear into pieces. Add to the salad.
Take all other ingredients, shake up in a jar and pour over the salad.
* The original recipe calls for a clove of crushed garlic. I love garlic but I don’t like a lot of raw garlic, particularly not when I have to go to work the next day. I crushed the clove, added it to the jar and then removed it before serving.
Greek Salad, Pseudo-Rustic Style
When I’m a bit hung over, I sometimes crave salad. I know this is rather unusual since most people crave hamburgers or sausages or something along those lines, but I have a theory as to why it happens – tomatoes and cucumber contain a lot of water, which is what the body needs when you are hung over. And if the salad contains something salty such as Feta and/or olives, then all the better.
As it turned out, I was not actually hung over this morning, but I did spend a lot of time running around in the sun yesterday, chasing a little red ball all over a rather large field without much success, so was a bit dehydrated today. And I woke up thinking about Feta, which I haven’t really thought about for a while and can only have been caused by one thing – watching the final episode of Jamie Oliver’s “Jamie Does…” series last week, which was in Greece.
There seems to have been something of a pattern to these programmes – in each country that he visits, he will make a “main” dish, a fish dish or starter, a soup and a salad. At least that is the way that it has seemed in those that I have watched. In Greece of course, the salad had to be Greek salad.
We didn’t have all of the ingredients, so the salad that I made wasn’t quite the same as his, but it was close. My ingredients were:
Three different types of tomatoes, sliced “rusticly”. I remember on the programme he said something like “you really want it to look home made”. Of course it will look home made; I’m making it at home. Grr. Anyway.
Red onion, sliced very thinly.
Cucumber, scraped decoratively with a fork and then sliced.
Olives, preferably decent ones – mine were quite boring and plasticky as I couldn’t find decent ones this morning.
Fresh mint, oregano and parsley. Jamie used mint and dill, but we didn’t have dill.
Dried oregano
Dressing – lemon juice, good olive oil, salt and pepper.
A slice of Feta, kept whole
(Jamie also added sliced green pepper, which we didn’t have)
Mix all of the vegetables and fresh herbs together, dress with the dressing and toss, with your fingers of course. Then put the piece of Feta on top, sprinkle with the dried oregano and drizzle with some more olive oil.
This was delicious, just what I was after and perfect for eating in the garden on a beautifully sunny day like today. I had actually forgotten that we had dried oregano and hadn’t added it, but Kerri reminded me and I was glad that she did because it added a lovely fragrance to the salad. I thought it would be a bit unwieldy to have the Feta in one large piece, but you can of course break bits off with your fork as you go if it’s a one-person salad. If it is for more people then it probably would be unwieldy.
I shall certainly try variations on this theme in the future – I particularly like the idea of using more than one variety of tomato in a salad. I love tomatoes and usually buy different varieties from one week to the next, but I don’t remember every purposefully making a salad with more than one variety before. Hopefully the summer will last, to give me reasons to make it!
Pan Bagnat
After the success of the recent shooter’s sandwich, Stephen and I began to think of other ways to pimp the humble sandwich. This has been on my list of things to “cook” for a long time and seemed the obvious choice. What wasn’t so obvious was just how I was going to get through the whole thing on my own since Stephen is still experimenting with a wheat-free diet. The first cricket game of the season was the perfect opportunity since I knew there would be plenty of volunteers to help me out.
I bought the bread and fillings on Friday and intended to make it that afternoon and leave it in the fridge overnight but, worrying about the sog-factor, I assembled it quickly on Saturday morning instead. This meant the bread wasn’t quite as fresh as it could have been and I should have removed more of the dough from the inside but otherwise it was a huge success.
The original pan bagnat uses a salad nicoise filling but I opted for something more Mediterranean, stuffing as much as I could into the hollowed out sourdough loaf. It’s difficult to give exact quantities because that will depend so much on the size of your loaf and how much of the inside you remove. To give you a rough idea, there were almost two balls of mozarella in here and a packet and a half of salami.
So, start by slicing off the top of your loaf and removing the insides. Drizzle the loaf with olive oil, rub a garlic clove all over the exposed dough and season with salt and pepper. Then start adding your fillings. I started with a layer of salami and finished with some lettuce so the bread didn’t get too soggy but how you do it is really up to you. Aside from the salami and lettuce, I also added the mozarella, some leftover barbecued asparagus and spring onions, some Peppadew peppers, some marinated artichokes and a few olives. Season the layers as you go, put the lid back on, wrap in foil and squash the whole thing together.
Since we had to leave early, I wedged this at the bottom of our coolbag and put everything else on top. We ate it about four hours later which seemed about the right amount of time for the flavours to mingle and combine. Sunshine, a brilliant sandwich and a glass of Pimm’s in Greenwich park was a pretty good way to toast the start of the summer.
Mexican Barbecued Ribs
I bought these pork ribs earlier in the week with a vague idea of what I was going to do with them but, having seen the weather report, Stephen suggested keeping them until tonight and barbecuing them. We don’t eat ribs often so I wasn’t really sure what to do with them, a quick flick through Rick Bayless’ “Mexican Kitchen” was all that was required and I found an easy marinade.
Part of the reason I liked this marinade so much was that half was used to marinate the ribs overnight and the other half reserved (with some honey added) for the cooking. A lot of recipes (including the one we used previously) seem to require both a dry rub and a wet marinade and while I’m sure this is worthwhile, the faff value is off-putting if you don’t have plenty of time to spare.
Despite a recent trip to Borough market to stock up on Mexican ingredients, we didn’t actually have any of the chillies required for this recipe (ancho and guajillo). I improvised and used what we did have: habanero and chile de arbol. These worked well and added both heat and depth, I’m not sure how the dish would have turned out had we had the chillies specified but we were both happy with what we had. Ordinary chillies would result in a different taste but still worthwhile if you don’t have access to the dried ones.
I can’t remember what type of ribs we used but there wasn’t a huge amount of meat on them, one of the reasons I can’t really be bothered with them. What meat was there was tasty but if we cook them on the barbecue again then I’ll do my research first and try to find some meatier ribs. The marinade was really good though and versatile too, I can imagine it working with any kind of barbecued meat. It keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks too so worth making a large batch in advance if you’re planning a lot of barbecues this summer.
We also had some corn salsa, using this recipe from a couple of weeks ago. I boiled the corn this time with a fair amount of salt and it really seemed to enhance the sweetness of the kernels. I added chilli this time too which we would normally do, I didn’t last time because there was so much chilli in everything else.
Mexican Rib Marinade
Serves Two (enough for six ribs with a little left over)
2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
4 dried chillies
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Pinch of cloves
Pinch of cumin
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/4 cup beef stock
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3/4 tablespoon honey
Toast the garlic in a pan until it starts to blacken, remove and set aside to cool. Peel.
Toast the dried chillies for a few seconds each side. Remove from the frying pan and soak in hot water for 30 minutes. Drain and discard the water.
Blend all the ingredients together except from the honey.
Taking half of the marinade, coat the ribs and chill in the fridge overnight. Add the honey to the other half of the marinade and store in the fridge.
As I mentioned above, we don’t really cook ribs often and since all the recipes I found stated they should be cooked in the oven first, that’s what we did. In hindsight, I don’t think this was necessary and in future, I would put the whole lot on the barbecue and brush on the honey-marinade. As it was, we cooked our ribs first, for 20 minutes, at 180 degrees and then finished them on the barbecue for 15 minutes.
Anchovy and Asparagus Pasta
This was mostly the same as the spaghetti and anchovies I ate on Tuesday, just with the addition of asparagus. I’ve got a big bag full of asparagus stalks in the fridge that I’ve been wondering what to do with, a couple of years ago I made asparagus pesto which I remember as being really good but tonight, I needed to use up the leftover anchovies.
I decided to make a kind of stock with the asparagus ends, to use as an emulsifier for the anchovy, chilli and garlic. All I did was boil the ends in some water for about 15 minutes and then added this to the aforementioned ingredients. It worked well and there was definitely a huge amount of flavour in the water. It occurred to me that I could actually blend the stalks into the water to release more flavour but I was worried about the soupiness of the texture, I haven’t disregarded this idea completely though and may do that next time.
I really liked this, it was more interesting than the previous attempt and the textures of the pasta and asparagus worked well together. I quite like the idea of adding crab or prawns too but think the chilli and anchovy would probably over-power the delicate flavours. Perhaps reducing the anchovy or omitting it would work though.
I have another couple of things I want to do with asparagus so need to work quickly before the season is over. I’ve found half-price asparagus in both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose recently which has been another good excuse for eating so much of it, the Sainsbury’s bunches were Peruvian though sadly.
Anchovy and Asparagus Pasta
Serves Two
Pasta
Asparagus stalks
Asparagus tips
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
Large handful of parsley, chopped
Lemon juice
Black pepper
Start by cooking the pasta.
At the same time, boil the asparagus ends for about 15 minutes or until you’re left with about three tablespoons of water and then set aside. Steam the asparagus tips separately and set those aside too.
To make the sauce, fry the garlic, chilli and anchovy for about three minutes. Add the reserved water and cook until the liquid has reduced by half.
Combine the pasta and the sauce, add the parsley and the asparagus tips and toss together gently. Add a squeeze of lemon and some black pepper and serve.
