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.
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.
