Sausages and Mashed Potatoes
There wasn’t much discussion over what to eat for dinner tonight: for us, bonfire night = sausages and mashed potatoes. We did consider cooking the Cumberland sausage we brought back from our recent trip but that really needs to be cooked in the oven and ours is currently broken. So, ordinary pork sausages cooked under the grill with some mustard mashed potatoes and onion gravy. Peas are mandatory, cabbage optional but good for soaking up gravy.
Mushroom Risotto
On our visit to Borough Market last week, we picked up four chicken carcasses for £1 at the Ginger Pig to make into stock. We haven’t had a roast chicken recently (or bought a whole chicken for any other reason) so spotting these was good timing. Four chicken carcasses makes quite a lot of stock though and since we only have a small freezer, we needed to use some up quickly. Risotto was the obvious answer.
We kept this fairly plain and just added some interesting mushrooms at the end which were cooked with some thyme. Stephen went on to add some lemon juice and parsley to his and I added some truffle oil, both of which worked well with the mushrooms and thyme.
Basic Risotto Recipe
Serves 2
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1-2 tbsps olive oil for frying
1 small glass white wine or white vermouth
250g risotto rice
1l chicken stock
Good handful grated parmesan
Salt and pepper
Heat up the oil and when it is hot, add the celery, onion and garlic (we put a lid on at this point). When this mixture has softened, add the rice and turn up the heat. The rice should fry and start to turn translucent, but if it starts to colour then turn the heat down. As it starts to colour, add the wine or vermouth and stir while the alcohol burns off.
Turn the heat back down and when the wine has been absorbed, start adding stock a ladle at a time, stirring until it has been absorbed and then adding some more. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, then just start adding water. When the rice is cooked but still has just a little bite left to it, it is done. Stir in the grated parmesan, check for seasoning and serve.
This can of course be varied to include other ingredients, we often use bacon which we cook in the same pan and then remove, returning to the pan with the last ladle of stock (as we did this time with the mushrooms). Other vegetables could be added at this point too.
Teriyaki Salmon
After a weekend of eating mostly red meat, we thought fish would be a good option today. Having been a while since we tried anything Japanese, teriyaki salmon sounded good since we enjoyed it last time we cooked it. This time we followed a recipe in a Japanese cookbook though rather than one off the web, was closer to the traditional style and involved marinating the fish in the sauce before cooking it and then also glazing with it later, rather than simply putting it on after cooking.
It turned out really well, with the lovely sweet, salty and savoury teriyaki glaze complementing the salmon. We served it with some noodles, bean sprouts and pak choi – of those, only the bean sprouts were in the recipe, but it all went well together.
Teriyaki Salmon
Serves Two
2 salmon fillets
1.5tbsp shoyu
1.5tbsp sake
1.5tbsp mirin
1.2 tbsp plus 1 tsp sugar
Mix all the liquid ingredients together except for the 1tsp sugar in a pan. Heat to dissolve the sugar and leave to cool for one hour.
Place the salmon fillets in a shallow bowl and cover with the cold marinade. Leave for 30 minutes.
Remove the salmon from the marinade and dry with kitchen paper. Reserve the sauce. Grill the salmon for six minutes, turning once.
Reheat the reserved sauce and add the remaining sugar. Pour the sauce over the salmon and grill until it bubbles, turn the salmon over and repeat on the other side.
We served this with some noodles, spring onions, pak choi and bean shoots which we stir-fried in the wok with some soy sauce and then drizzled with sesame oil just before serving.
Liver and Bacon
We were just trying to remember when and how we decided to cook liver and bacon tonight, but we just couldn’t remember. It must have been before yesterday though, because yesterday we bought some liver at the butcher and planned to use up the bacon that was in the fridge. So, this afternoon saw us starting to fry our onions for the gravy quite early, jumping up during advert breaks during The Spy Who Loved Me to stir them. Luckily the advert breaks were at predictably regular intervals and the onions didn’t burn.
We made some mashed potatoes with plenty of butter and seasoning and stirred in some chopped spring onions and chopped parsley to use up what we had in the fridge. We finished off the gravy by stirring flour into the onions, then adding some red wine and some beef stock and simmering before checking for seasoning and adding a dash of red wine vinegar. The liver we dusted with seasoned flour and pan fried. We also cooked some peas and cavolo nero, which don’t feature in the picture but were good accompaniments.
All in all, a tasty and comforting dish on a rather rainy and winter-is-almost-here sort of day.
Lamb Shanks Adobo
Stephen had dinner at Green and Red last week. Even though he invited me to go along and I declined in favour of staying home to watch TV and eat cheese on toast, I was still envious when he told me he’d eaten a really good lamb shank. We found this recipe online which seemed fairly similar and decided to cook it this evening.
It took a little while to put together as it wasn’t the most straightforward of recipes but being that today was pretty grey and damp, it felt like a good day to spend in the kitchen.
All the chopping and simmering and blending was definitely worthwhile though because we ended up with a deep, complex dish that had many layers of flavours. There was a gentle heat in the background and a fruity, almost sweet flavour in the front of the mouth to carry the richness of the lamb. Served with some brilliant Mexican beans and guacamole this was perfect for a rainy Saturday night. Not exactly the same as the Green and Red dish apparently but close enough.
Mexican Beans
Serves Two
175g dried pinto beans, soaked for four hours
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 bay leaf
1 red chilli
1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tomato, peeled and chopped
Salt
Put the beans into a pan, add cold water to cover by 2cms.
Add half the chopped onion, half the garlic, the bay leaf and the chilli. Bring to the boil and boil hard for 10 minutes. Turn the heat down, cover and cook for 30 minutes ensuring that it doesn’t boil dry. Add more water if necessary.
Add vegetable oil and continue to cook for another 30 minutes, topping up with water if necessary so that it doesn’t dry out.
Add salt and cook for another 30 minutes continuing to keep an eye on the water level. Don’t add so much water that the beans are completely covered but don’t let them dry out. You want the water to have almost completely evaporated by the time you’ve finished this stage.
At the same time, heat some oil in a frying pan and soften the remaining onion and garlic. Add the chopped tomato and let that soften, squashing as it cooks. Add a quarter of the cooked beans into the frying pan and mash. Take this mixture out of the frying pan and mix into the beans.
Scallops and Samphire and Pheasant, Chestnut and Chanterelle Soup
Yesterday was Stephen’s birthday and, as is only right and proper, he got to choose how we spent the day. Luckily for me, it involved a trip to Charing Cross Road to look at cookery books, followed by a visit to Borough Market, a quick stop off at the Tate Modern before returning home to drink some good wine and cook dinner. Anyone would think it was my birthday.
We hadn’t planned anything for dinner but had a few ideas based on browsing some new cookery books (kindly provided by Quadrille Publishing) the night before. Mark Hix’s British Seasonal Food is the follow-up to British Regional Food which we received as a Christmas present a couple of years ago. It’s an interesting read but not a book we use to cook from very often, more of a bedside read than a kitchen companion.
Having only just received the latest offering, I’ve only had time for a quick browse but already a number of recipes have caught my eye. I particularly like the fact that the book is organised by month as I tend to use recipe books when I’m looking for inspiration and have no idea what to cook, this makes it easy to see exactly what’s available and means I don’t waste time paging through the salad section in the middle of winter.
One of the recipes that caught my eye was this Pheasant, Chestnut and Chanterelle Soup. We didn’t have the book with us when we went to the market but luckily enough we managed to remember what we needed and were able to find them everything easily. I popped into Borough Market a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday and was surprised at just how many stalls they were, it’s also a bit quieter on a Thursday which makes browsing easier and more enjoyable. I know it’s largely dismissed as touristy and over-priced by many but I still enjoy wandering around looking at the produce, particularly at this time of the year when he seasons are changing and everything looks new and exciting.
Having bought the pheasant and everything else we needed, we decided that we ought to get some scallops to go with the samphire we’d seen and serve them as a starter. A quick stop for lunch at the Ginger Pig (who make the best sausage rolls ever) followed by a glass of wine and off we went to the Tate Modern. We checked our bags in when got there and had an amusing conversation with the employee who told us we wouldn’t be able to leave our bags if we’d bought cheese as they’d had ‘an incident’ recently – something particularly ripe and smelly had found it’s way on to someone’s jacket which led to all manner of complaining.
I felt quite embarrassed that we didn’t have any cheese actually, (what sort of person walks past Neal’s Yard Dairy and doesn’t buy cheese?) but at least it meant we weren’t denied access to the gallery. Although, after about five minutes I was back to wishing we did have the offending cheese: Tate Modern + Half Term = many, many Bugaboo and iCandy pushchairs which = incredibly bruised ankles.
So, we didn’t stay long which was probably for the best as our over-priced ingredients had been hanging around in their designer jute shopping bags for long enough and it was time to get on with the really important business of the day.
Conscious of the disaster that occurred last time we attempted to cook scallops and game birds, we gave ourselves plenty of time for preparation and drank our wine slowly. This forward thinking served us well to begin with as the scallops turned out as we intended: just cooked with a good crust and a great match for the salty samphire.
This was of course followed by the Pheasant and Chanterlle Soup which we managed to get almost completely right until we lost focus (or, had drunk too much wine) at the very last moment and forgot to add the cream. I’m not sure just how much this contributed to my disappointment in the dish but I’m guessing it was a fairly vital ingredient. While the pheasant had a really good depth of flavour and wasn’t at all dry like it often is, the flavours in the dish didn’t really come together for me which is really my own fault for not reading the recipe properly. Luckily, Stephen didn’t have the same complaint so his birthday dinner wasn’t entirely ruined. Would have been nice to finish with some cheese though.
Mexican Bean Stew
We’ve been talking a lot about Mexican food lately and while we’re waiting for some new books on the subject to arrive, we’ve been searching online to find recipes that appeal. We’ve both struggled with authenticity though and given there is no information available on the origins of this dish, it’s probably safest to assume that it’s not all that authentic. Hopefully our books will arrive soon and provide the answer.
There isn’t any chilli in the recipe (aside from the garnish on top) but the generous helping of cumin added a background warmth which was complimented by the lime juice. The further garnish of spring onion and coriander added a lightness and a real burst of flavour that brought all the flavours together.
We didn’t deviate from the recipe much but I didn’t find it that easy to follow so I’m reproducing it here for next time. We didn’t use as much water as the recipe suggested which resulted in a thicker dish that’s more of a stew than a soup. I’d like to try this with a selection of beans next time and perhaps leave out the bacon for a meat-free version.
Mexican Bean Stew
Serves Two
250g pinto beans
1 packet lardons
1 onion, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
Olive oil, for frying
Bouquet garni of parsley sprigs, thyme sprigs, bay leaf and rosemary
1 tin chopped tomatoes
2 tsps cumin seeds
1 tbsp dried oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lime, juiced
1 avocado, diced
Coriander
2 spring onions, sliced
1 red chilli, sliced
Start by soaking the beans for four hours (or overnight) in a bowl of cold water, then drain.
Fry the lardons until the fat has rendered, remove from the pan and blot any excess oil.
Add the onions, carrots, celery, garlic and bouquet garni to the pan and cook with the lid on for 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
Return the lardons to the pan, add the beans and cover with water.
Bring to the boil and boil hard for 10 minutes, reduce the heat and simmer gently, covered, until the beans are very tender (about an hour).
Add the tomatoes, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper and lime juice.
Simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon and crushing some of the beans against the side of the pan.
Remove the bouquet garni, check for seasoning and serve with avocado, coriander, spring onion and chilli. Placemats in the colours of the Mexican flag optional.
Chicken Casserole
With the clocks going back yesterday, it seemed the right time to start thinking about proper winter food. And that means casserole. And pie. But casserole if you’ve eaten a lot of rich food over the weekend.
We had some chicken stock that needed to be used up so, chicken casserole was the obvious answer. This is quite a straightforward recipe that doesn’t take too long to prepare (unless your kitchen light bulbs start exploding while you’re trying to skin the chicken pieces) and can then be left to simmer without needing any other attention. Despite the short ingredient list, it’s fully flavoured but not so rich that you can’t afford a decent serving of buttery mashed potato alongside!
Chicken Casserole
Serves Two
Chicken pieces with bones (we used two thighs and two legs)
3 tablespoons flour (2 tablespoons to be mixed with the salt and pepper to make the seasoned flour, 1 tablespoon to be stirred in before the chicken is returned to the pan)
Salt and pepper
Oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 carrot, diced
250ml chicken stock
75ml white wine
2 sprigs thyme, chopped
4 sage leaves, chopped (optional)
Bay leaf
Coat the chicken in the seasoned flour. Heat the oil and brown chicken on all sides – about 10 minutes.
Remove the chicken and add more oil if necessary.
Add the onions, celery, carrot and garlic and cook slowly until soft – about 10 minutes.
Stir in the excess flour and cook out for a couple of minutes. Return the chicken to the pan, deglaze with the wine, add the stock and herbs.
Season and cook for one hour on a low heat.
Check for seasoning and serve.
It’s not easy to make this look attractive. We normally serve it on the bone but had a little time today while waiting for the mashed potatoes to finish cooking so stripped the meat and added it back to the liquid. It was easier to eat but still didn’t make it look very pretty unfortunately. It tasted good though which is the main thing.
Five Courses for Eight People
Last Saturday, Kerri and I cooked dinner for some friends; there were eight of us in total. We eventually came up with a five-course menu. Which could be called seven courses if you counted nuts and a little shot of watercress soup that we served between the starter and main course.
At some point we had decided that this sort of dinner was a good idea, and then the conversation had turned to wine. As these things often do, the result was a competition: old world vs new world. We would have two wines with each course – one old world and one new – and would vote which matched the food the best. So Kerri and I did some organising and preparation and then arrived at our hosts’ lovely house at 2pm to start preparations and cooking.
Due to a lot of rushing around and cooking and serving, etc, the pictures aren’t great, but do give an idea of what the food was like.
First up was smoked mackerel pate, served on a little piece of melba toast and a slice of prosciutto. These were inspired by something similar that we had eaten at the Bull and Last, except with the toast instead of soda bread; we tried both and our pate went better with the toast. These toasts didn’t turn out quite as melba-ish as we’d planned, but time was too short to start again. We had tried to find air dried Cumbrian ham to use instead of the prosciutto, but it was hard to find in London and ordering from a web site would have meant paying twice as much in postage as for the ham itself. These worked out very well and tasted great; they were served as pre-dinner snacks rather than as a formal course.
The Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc which was the new world wine choice went very well with these. The Donnhoff Nahe riesling which was the old world choice was really good, but wasn’t the best match for the food. 1-0 to new world.
Next up was the main starter. Slow roasted pork belly, which had been roasted at 140C for four hours. Afterwards we removed the skin and put it back into the oven to crisp up, which worked very well. That and the salting it the day before and pouring boiling water over it before cooking… we tend to take the crackling quite seriously! With this, pan-fried scallops and some lightly cumin-scented cauliflower puree.
The new world wine choice for this was Fromm Clayvin pinot noir – another New Zealand offering and a nice wine and went well with the pork belly. The old world wine was a white Chateauneuf du Pape from Domaine Chante Cigale which was a better match for the dish as a whole. 1-1 draw.
The quick between-courses course of watercress soup didn’t have a wine match with it.
Next up was “lamb two ways” which was a roast shoulder with garlic and rosemary, along with a pan-fried cutlet. The lamb was from Dorset and really good. We should have taken a picture of a neater plate for this dish though. The lamb was perched on top of dauphinoise potatoes, and was served with baby carrots and some green beans with hazelnuts. There was a sauce made from some of the rosemary-and-garlic lamb juices with mint and capers added to it.
The new world wine choice was Kanonkop Paul Sauer, a South African Bordeaux blend. This had a lovely nose and went very well with the lamb, the tannins balancing out the richness of the lamb shoulder and the potatoes. The old world choice was Fattoria le Sorgenti Gaiaccia which is an Italian blend in the “super Tuscan” style, i.e. traditional sangiovese blended with international grape varieties, in this case merlot. This also went very well with the lamb and developed some lovely savoury flavours in the glass that complemented the sauce. When voting on this course, it turned out to be a draw, with four votes each. So still on a draw overall…
Dessert was lemon posset with blackberries and shortbread. We had planned to make tuile biscuits to go with this but had failed in our attempts, so made shortbread instead, which worked out well.
New world wine was Essensia Orange Muscat from the USA, which almost matched the lemon, but had quite an orangey note to it that didn’t quite go. The old world wine was Chateau La Tour Blanche Sauternes, which was voted as the better match; its flavours and sweetness matched the lemon posset and its full body matched the creamy texture. Could only afford a half bottle of it though, sadly. 2-1 to old world.
The final course was a selection of British cheeses, which we sadly neglected to photograph. The cheeses were Stichelton (similar to Stilton, but made in a slightly different way to produce a fuller but gentler taste), Keen’s cheddar, a goat cheese that might have been Ragstone but I can’t remember now, and of course Stinking Bishop.
The new world choice was a Concha y Toro Carmenere from Chile, which went well with the cheese. The old world was a 20 year old Tawny Port, which I enjoyed but most people felt it was too sweet after we’d just had dessert wine with dessert. So the new world won that one, bringing it to 2-2 overall!
There was brief discussion of some sort of tie-breaker, but nothing really materialised. We had a really interesting range of wines across the board, and certainly some that we wouldn’t have chosen had we not been trying to match them up to something in particular. So a good job all round on that front and the draw was probably a fair outcome.
With two wines per course and five courses, there were of course a lot of glasses on the table:
Thai Style Mussels
Lately we have been cooking a number of different Thai dishes and happened to have some curry paste left over that we had made for the rabbit curry. We didn’t want to waste it, so we tried to think of something interesting to do with it. Kerri thought of using it to cook a Thai mussel dish, which sounded interesting, so we gave it a go. It went something like this:
Ingredients
2 or 3 tablespoons Thai curry paste (it probably doesn’t matter what sort)
half a tin of coconut milk
a bag of mussels of the sort that supermarkets sell in mesh bags
1 or 2 tablespoons of fish sauce
oil for frying
small bunch of coriander leaves, roughly chopped
First prepare the mussels. Examine them all and discard any that are broken or do not close when tapped. If they have “beards” on them, remove these and give them a good scrub.
Add a little oil to a large saucepan and heat. When the oil is hot, add the curry paste and fry, stirring occasionally. Season with the fish sauce, stir a little more, then add the coconut milk. When this has come to the boil, add the mussels and put the lid on. Cook for a few minutes, shaking occasionally, until the mussels have opened. Stir in the coriander leaves and serve. Discard any mussels that have not opened of course.
We loved this. With very little cooking, the coconut milk had taken on huge amounts of flavour from the paste, and a lot of this had gone into the mussels too. We just ate the mussels and then ate the coconut milk “soup” with a spoon. It would be good to have some noodles in this too to make a proper meal out of it.
