Roast Bone Marrow with Parsley Salad, St John Style
While wandering randomly around a specialist food shop this afternoon and browsing the meat counter, I saw beef marrow bones. It can be hard to find these in today’s modern, fillet-steak-eating-and-offal-hating world and they immediately made me reminisce about the bone marrow salad that I once had at St John several years ago and keep getting flashbacks of. So I had to buy some. And parsley, because I remembered that parsley had featured in the dish.
So I got home, got out our copy of Nose to Tail Eating and thankfully the recipe was in there. It is simple in the extreme. Heat up the oven to quite high (we did ours to 200 which is as high as the stupid thing will go) and roast the marrow bones for 20 minutes. While this is going on, chop up your parsley. But not too much. The book says to chop it just enough to “discipline” it, which sounds a little risque. Then add a sliced shallot, a few capers and dress with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. Also make some toast.
When the marrow bones are cooked, serve them with the parsley salad, toast and some coarse sea salt. Spread some of the marrow on the toast, sprinkle with salt and top with the salad. The marrow is gooey and rich and the toast is crunchy, with the parsley adding freshness and the capers, shallot and lemon juice cutting through the richness. Delicious.
Lentils, Chorizo and Cabbage
After having a run of disasters in the kitchen over the past week, I thought I’d stick with something I knew well today in order to restore my confidence and prevent us from leaving the table feeling hungry or disappointed. We had about three quarters of a really good chorizo in the fridge which, combined with some lentils and crusty bread, made for a really hearty and satisfying dinner. This is a lot like the lentil ragu we eat a lot and which usually includes bacon, it’s also quite similar to a soup that Stephen made recently with beans instead of lentils. Basically, this combination of ingredients is incredibly versatile and can be used in many different ways; I wanted to use cavolo nero today but couldn’t find any locally so settled for savoy cabbage which worked well.
Lentil, Chorizo and Cabbage
Serves Four
Chorizo, cubed (about six inches, I didn’t weight it)
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 teaspoons paprika
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 glass white wine
400g puy lentils
500ml chicken stock
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs thyme
Cook chorizo over medium to low heat until fat has been released and the chorizo is cooked through. Remove from the pan and reserve until later.
Cook onions on a low heat with a good pinch of salt until softened, about 10 minutes.
Add garlic and cook for a further two minutes.
Add paprika and stir thoroughly so that powder is incorporated. Add the tomato puree and cook for about a miute.
Deglaze with the wine and allow it to cook out for two to three minutes.
Stir in the lentils and ensure they are well coated with the rest of the ingredients. Add the chorizo back to the pan.
Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes. Top up with water if necessary.
Just before you’re ready to serve, add the chopped cabbage to the pan and cook for about eight minutes.
Serve with crusty bread or stir through some pasta.
Cumin-Scented Chicken Curry
This evening we couldn’t really decide what to cook, so Kerri went through a few bookmarked recipes in her web browser and found this one. We mostly followed it, although we put in all the specified spices even though we only had a third of the chicken (and half of the onion and half the yoghurt). It turned out rather well and had just the right amount of spice (i.e. thrice what the recipe said), although it smelled very strongly of paprika (we used smoked paprika as we didn’t have sweet, although the recipe didn’t specify either) but luckily still tasted of cumin.
We were just thinking that we have been cooking a lot of Thai food lately and have a few really good Thai recipe books, so tasty as it was, it still seems wrong to cook an Indian dish from a recipe from the internets. Not to say that we haven’t found some really good recipes on the interweb in the past, it just feels like we should have some sort of proper “reference material”. So if anyone has a recommendation for a good Indian cookbook that we could cook a number of dishes from, please let us know. We do have our eye on one of Madhur Jaffrey’s books and might get that soon as a starting point.
I must admit that we do have Anjum Anand’s “Indian Cooking Made Easy” and have cooked a couple of recipes out of it. Having seen her on television since though, she is just far too irritating and we can’t face picking up the book again. Her recipes seem rather toned-down too; lots of putting in whole chillis and then taking them out later on instead of actually eating them. It gives the impression that she is trying to make it “palatable” (and of course marketable) to as wide an audience as possible and therefore pretty much pointless from a culinary interest perspective.
Spaghetti with Chorizo and Butternut Squash
This should have been good and, if I’d stuck to the recipe, then it would have been. Only, the recipe included tomatoes and I forgot them which meant the whole dish lacked something soft and almost liquid to bring it all together. I wasn’t going to post it but I like to keep the diary aspect of Dinner Diary accurate so here it is. I won’t bother with the recipe though because without the tomatoes it’s not worth doing.Â
When we do it again (and we will do it again because it has potential) then I’ll put it up.
Hawksmoor
It’s taken me a while to post this, mostly because it’s taken me a while to process the experience and deal with it. The Hawksmoor has long been regarded as one of the best steak restaurants in London and certainly my previous experiences of dining there have backed this up. A while ago, they introduced the burger to their lunch menu after a long period of researching the perfect recipe, supplier and method of cooking. Stephen and I both love burgers and have been patiently waiting for an opportunity to visit, knowing that if their burgers were anything like their steaks, then they’d be very good.
We went on Monday and were really disappointed. Possibly because we’d built it up so much in our heads but also because what we were served was undercooked and under-seasoned. We’re both big fans of the medium-rare burger but, unfortunately, this was verging on under-cooked. It was only when I got home and compared the picture with Helen and Niamh’s that I realised just how undercooked it was. Not only was the charring on the outside lacking but it was impossible to pick up and eat with our hands as the whole thing just crumbled.
In retrospect, we should have sent it back because I’m sure they would have been more than happy to rectify the mistake but we just didn’t realise until it was too late. Such a shame and hopefully just an off-day.
Spaghetti Carbonara
Having spent most of the day in the kitchen yesterday, today we wanted something quick and easy that didn’t create lots of washing up. Stephen suggested carbonara so, after a quick dash to the shops for some eggs, we put this together in about 20 minutes. You do need good bacon though as there are so few other ingredients, we used lardons from Waitrose that are usually pretty good but weren’t brilliant this time. Next time we’ll put up with the extra washing up and chop up our own.
Pasta
1 packet lardons
2 eggs
1 small carton single cream
Parmesan
Salt and pepper
Put the pasta on to boil and fry the bacon until the fat has rendered. Combine the eggs and the cream with the parmesan and season with salt and pepper.
Drain the pasta, add the bacon and the cream and egg mixture. Combine and eat.
Thai Green Papaya Salad, Mackerel Braised with Green Papaya, and Pork and Green Bean Red Curry
The title is a bit of a mouthful, but it needs to be to cover everything that we ate. We have been on a bit of a Thai theme for a few weeks now and it culminated in dinner with friends last night. One of the big points about Thai menus is that they should contain a number of dishes that complement each other and can be served together, so we deliberated over this for quite a while and eventually came up with these three dishes. Curiously enough, we have never cooked with green papaya or with dried prawns before, and each dish contained at least one of these ingredients.
We started with some prawn crackers of course, while we finished off the cooking…
The green papaya salad had as its base a lot of green papaya obviously. Tasting it plain, it doesn’t taste like very much. There is a just-detectable taste of papaya, but it seems closer to a firm but bland cucumber in character. When mixed with other flavours though, it does combine very well and absorb a lot of flavour, transforming it. We shredded ours using the julienne sized setting on our mandolin and it did look rather like noodles when all mixed together.
To make the dressing, we made a paste from dried shrimp (which we boiled quickly first as the instructions on the packet said to cook them), garlic, peanuts and chillis. To this paste we added lime juice, palm sugar, fish sauce and tamarind water, mixed it all up well and then dressed the shredded green papaya with it. We added some chopped cherry tomatoes and blanched green beans to it to add some colour and then served it on lettuce leaves. The flavours all worked together to give a well balanced salad with a slightly crunch to it and the exotic edge of involving two ingredients that we haven’t used before.
The braised mackerel was a very interesting dish, and different to most other Thai food we have cooked. The recipe is from Thai Food which we use often and the author points out that Thai people would boil this until the flavours were correct, but that tends to make the fish tough, so he prefers to braise it gentle over a couple of hours. So we braised it.
Ingredients
1 small to medium mackerel whole or filletted (we actually used two medium to large whole mackerel without increasing any other quantities in the recipe and it worked out well)
lime juice
salt
3-5 long red or green chillis (we didn’t have long ones, so just used two birds eye chillis)
10 slices galangal
2 stalks lemongrass
5 thick slices ginger
2 coriander roots, scraped
5 red shallots, peeled
5 garlic cloves, peeled
5 pods fresh tamarind or 4 tablespoons tamarind pulp
1 very small green papaya
2-3 cups stock or water (usually chicken stock in Thai cooking, but I imagine that fish stock would go well in this dish)
4 tablespoons palm sugar
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoons coarsely ground white peppercorns
Garnish:
3 red shallots, finely sliced
1 tablespoon coriander leaves
pinch of ground white pepper
First gut and/or fillet the mackerel if it has not already been done. Wash the fish very well and rub it with the lime juice and salt, then rinse again and pat dry. This removes any loose bits which would cloud the stock.
Bruise the chillies, galangal, lemongrass, ginger, coriander roots, shallots and garlic in a mortar and pestle and set aside. Peel the green papaya and cut into 1-inch square pieces. Bring the stock to the boil in a flameproof casserole, then add tamarind, palm sugar, soy sauce, fish sauce and white pepper. When this is dissolved, add all the bruised aromatics and the papaya and simmer for several minutes. Add the mackerel and some water to cover it, then bring it back to the boil, cover it and put it into the oven for two hours at just 80 degrees Centigrade. This will ensure that it does not quite boil and will gently braise the fish. If you don’t have a flameproof casserole, prepare the stock in a saucepan and then pour it into a casserole with the fish when you are ready to put it into the oven.
When it is ready, serve in a bowl or deep platter sprinkled with the shallot and coriander garnish and with some of the cooking liquid poured around it. The white pepper gives it a pungency and the aromatics penetrate the fish very well over the long cooking time, giving it a lot of flavour. The green papaya also soaks up loads of flavour and is a treat just on its own. The broth itself is very well flavoured too and can be eaten as a soup. In fact I am planning to add some noodles to the left over broth and have it for lunch soon. All in all a winning dish. Apologies for the rubbish photograph though…
The pork and green bean dish is one that we have cooked before and we loved it then and loved it this time too. The paste contained 15 dried red chillis, which gave it a fair amount of heat. We didn’t use the dried prawns in the paste last time though and from that post it didn’t look like we substituted with anything either. The prawns were a real pain to crush into a paste; I should have chopped them first instead of just throwing them into the mortar and pestle whole.
The three dishes were all quite different in style and complemented each other well, especially seeing as they had some ingredients in common. We served them with some jasmine rice and some steamed pak choi.
Lamb Cutlets
Lamb chops, steamed broccoli and some roasted butternut squash. The lamb was good, crunchy on the outside and perfectly pink in the middle. The butternut was roasted for quite a while but stayed quite soft and the spices we roasted it in (left over from last week’s oxtail) didn’t work very well. The broccoli was steamed and past it’s best but needed using up. Not very interesting, not very cohesive and not enough of it. This is what happens when you’re hungry, tired and haven’t planned your dinner properly.
Rabbit Ragu with Pappardelle
As Stephen mentioned yesterday, we planned this dish when we knew we would be in receipt of a rabbit which meant we could start the preparation while cooking yesterday’s dinner. After removing the meat we needed for the curry, we were left with the bones and the legs; the bones went into the stock pot and we decided to add the legs too so that the meat would be cooked and ready for tonight. Once the leg meat was tender, we removed them from the stock, shredded the meat and threw the bones back into the pot to continue cooking.
We made a simple ragu by frying onion, celery, garlic and carrot which we deglazed with a glass of white wine before adding the rabbit stock, some tomatoes, tomato paste, herbs, salt and pepper and some milk. In went the rabbit and there it sat for about three hours until the whole lot had reduced and thickened.
After about an hour, I tasted it and it was too sweet. I’d forgotten that we had sundried tomato puree which is a lot sweeter than ordinary and I’m not sure the carrot helped either. I added some Worcestershire sauce and a little more salt which helped to balance it but it wasn’t perfect.
We didn’t have any parsley so chopped up some rocket instead which worked quite well, not so much that it over-powered the flavour of the rabbit but just enough to lift the dish. Just before serving we added a drizzle of truffle oil which added another flavour level and further addressed the sweetness issue.
It was good and we both enjoyed it but not as much as the ragu we made last year which didn’t involve tomatoes (and was one of our favourites of 2008). There’s another rabbit waiting for us in my mum’s freezer though so we can hopefully re-visit that dish soon.
Thai Rabbit Curry
Last year when we visited Kerri’s mum one weekend, she had bought a rabbit for us really cheaply. When she recently asked if we wanted another one, we of course said that no, we wanted two. So we picked them up this past weekend. As we have a tiny freezer, we left one there and brought the other home to eat this week.
Based on past experience, we figured that we should be able to get two dishes out of one rabbit. We had a good idea about what we were going to cook for one of them, but were struggling to think of what to do for the other. While I was paging through Thai Food looking for something to cook over the weekend, I happened across a rabbit curry recipe which seemed like an excellent idea.
Coincidentally, last night we had watched a Masterchef The Professionals episode on iPlayer and the contestants had been set the task of jointing a rabbit. I don’t think any of them managed to do exactly what Monica the mouthy sous chef had asked, but then they didn’t actually show any footage of her explaining what she wanted, so it was a bit confusing. Bad editing. Or maybe they left that bit out on purpose so that they could fit in a bit more shouting. I think most of them managed a passable attempt at removing the legs, which I managed too, and then they removed the fillets from the body which I don’t think is what she wanted because she had said that she wanted five pieces rather than six. Anyway, I went with the fillet removal because it seemed like it would be easier to mince the meat afterwards, which is what our recipe required. We don’t have a mincer, so I chopped it very finely with a knife, which took quite a while and didn’t mince it as fine as a mincer would have, but it was good enough.
This is a curry in which the paste is dissolved simply in boiling stock rather than being fried first. It is a simpler and less refined method than the fried curries, but is versatile and still produces a satisfying dish. They are popular in the northern region of Thailand. This particular curry can be adapted to include almost any meat or fish and any green or leafy vegetable, preferably one that is slightly bitter. As the main recipe included rabbit and we had rabbit, that is what we did.
For the paste:
6-12 dried long red chillies, deseeded, soaked and drained
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons chopped lemongrass
1 tablespoon scraped and chopped coriander root
1 teaspoon chopped red turmeric
2 tablespoons chopped krachai
2 tablespoons chopped red shallots
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
Make the paste in the usual way by pounding all the ingredients together in a mortar and pestle (or use a blender…). Start with the hardest, driest ingredient and a little salt, pound it until it is broken down, then add the next hardest ingredient, etc, ending with the softest one. This can be a long process and you’ll see by the little red bits of chilli floating in our soup that I didn’t quite get ours as fine as I should have.
Then for the curry:
3 cups stock (the recipe says it should ideally be made from the rabbit bones, but we didn’t have time to do that and used some home made chicken stock instead)
pinch of white sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce (the recipe suggests using fermented fish sauce (nahm pla raa) if you can find it, which is more pungent than the regular fish sauce (nahm pla) but we couldn’t find any)
1 bunch Chinese broccoli, cut into 1cm lengths
1 cup minced rabbit meat
Bring the stock to the boil, then season with the sugar and most of the fish sauce. Dissolve 3 tablespoons of the paste into the stock. Add the broccoli and let it boil for several minutes until the colour begins to fade – the slight bitterness will improve the curry. (Obviously if using spinach or other leafy vegetable here instead then don’t cook as long) Add the meat, stirring to prevent it clumping and cook until it has just changed colour. Taste and season with the rest of the fish sauce if necessary, then leave it to stand for five minutes before serving.
It was really tasty, with the shrimp paste giving a lovely earthy flavour to it which mingled well with the heat from the chillis and the aromatics from the other ingredients in the paste. And all that flavour without any coconut milk, which means it probably had half the calories of yesterday’s dinner. I think we cooked our meat for longer than the recipe intended as it was slightly tough, but it was still easy to eat as it was in small pieces and gave an interesting texture to the dish.
