Scallops, Pork Belly and Paella
We had some friends over for dinner last night to celebrate the start of the long weekend. I’ve been waiting for the right time to cook scallops and pork belly since eating it in a restaurant last year and this was the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, I didn’t take in to account just how much the pork would shrink in cooking so the portion sizes where slightly on the mean side. The combination worked very well though and the scallops were particularly fresh and tasty.
The pork was rubbed with garlic, rosemarly, salt, crushed bay leaf and olive oil before being slow roasted for four hours. This is my favourite way of eating pork belly and the flavours complimented the sweet scallops very well.
We followed this with paella which we haven’t cooked for ages. Our paella pan isn’t big enough to feed four so we had to use the wok which proved to be a fairly good susbstitute despite being the complete opposite of a flat-bottomed paella pan. As our last paella wasn’t brilliant, I spent a fair amount of time looking for a traditional recipe but, as with a lot of Spanish food, the variation was vast and often varied depending on the region. In the end I settled for a Gordon Ramsay recipe as it contained most of the elements I wanted to incorporate, it was a good starting point but not exactly as I hoped for.
Gordon’s recipe doesn’t require stock but we both felt it was needed. More garlic and thyme would have helped to increase the depth of flavour too.
Bombay Bicycle Club
We’ve been having some re-decoration done on our flat this week which has meant we’ve been living with lots of dust and disruption since Monday. Despite this, we’ve still managed to eat fairly well but last night we gave in and decided to order a takeaway. I was ridiculously over-excited about this prospect as, apart from the very occasional pizza, we never eat takeaway food. We’re lucky enough to live near a number of reasonable restaurants but most of them don’t deliver, faced with going out to collect the food and bring it home again we usually opt to just eat out. Last night we were tired from having put the flat back together again though so it seemed like the perfect opportunity.
One of the only restaurants that does deliver is Bombay Bicycle Club, so that’s what we went for. I ordered a lamb bhuna with garlic naan and Stephen chose a chicken biryani. Mine was really good, very fresh but definitely a dish that had been cooked for a long time on a low heat. Full of flavour but not so spicy that you couldn’t taste the gentle spicing.
Stephen wasn’t so impressed with his dish and I definitely found the taste I had to be slightly bland. It was perfectly edible (and there was loads of it!) but just not that exciting. Aside from that, it made a really nice change to eat good food at home without having to spend hours preparing it, or washing up afterwards.
Chicken Fajitas
Although we do most of our cooking together, this is definitely one of Stephen’s dishes, today however I thought I would give it a go. We haven’t had fajitas for some time though and I couldn’t remember exactly what we (well, Stephen) normally does. Looking back through the archives normally helps with this but the details were sketchy so I just had to get on with it.
I started by marinating the chicken breast pieces in a mixture of lime juice, chopped fresh chilli, hot chilli powder, coriander seed, cumin seed, smoky paprika and some chopped coriander. I left this in the fridge for an hour or so while I got on with making the guacamole.
When it came to cooking the fajita filling, I started by frying some garlic and chilli in a little oil before adding some sliced peppers and onions with a sprinkling of salt and a little cinnamon. Once these had started to soften, I added some water and continued to move the vegetables around until they were cooked through.
The vegetables were removed from the pan before the chicken went in with a little more salt. Much the same as above, I moved these around until they were almost cooked (adding a dash of water) and then returned the vegetables to the pan. Mix together and serve with some warm tortillas and guacamole. Sour cream and cheese optional 🙂
There was a fair amount of chilli in there but it didn’t really come through in the finished dish, next time I’ll need to remember not to be so shy with my seasoning. Or leave it to Stephen.
Pork Ragù
As I mentioned yesterday, one of the reasons we had pork for dinner last night is because I’ve been wanting to make a pork ragù for some time. Normally, we would decide what to do with leftovers after we had eaten the main meal so this is a bit backwards but it’s a good way to make sure everything is used up.
As well as this being a new dish, I tried a couple of different cooking methods today too. I tend to start most dishes with a base of onion, celery, carrot and garlic all chopped very finely and sweated for a long time over a gentle heat. I don’t like finding discernible lumps of onion in a dish which is why I always take so much care over this stage. I recently came across a recipe which suggested whizzing all these ingredients together in a blender to make a paste before frying so that’s what I did today. The resulting purée looked a little odd to begin with but it certainly overcame the lump issue. It made it much easier to deal with too, I just left it in the pan for about seven minutes and stirred occasionally but it needed very little attention.
As well as the puréeing of the initial ingredients, I added the tomato purée shortly after these had softened and left it to caramelise before stirring it in to the vegetables. It was difficult to tell what this added to the overall flavour so I’m not sure if I’ll do it again. I just thought I’d try something else that was new.
I feel the same way about large lumps of tomato as I do onion so today I used a jar of skinless tomatoes that I found at the deli. They broke down really well but, now I’ve thought about it some more, I should have just used ordinary tinned tomatoes and blended them before adding.
As a result of all the new methods, I didn’t really pay attention to the quantities so here’s a very loose recipe.
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick celery
2 cloves garlic (I actually used the leftover roasted garlic from yesterday)
Bay leaf
Salt
Tablespoon tomato purée
Shredded leftover pork (I’m not sure how much of this there was, probably enough for two sandwiches)
Rosemary
Thyme
Oregano
Nutmeg
Salt and pepper
Glass red wine
Stock (I used the leftover gravy from yesterday, with some additional boiling water)
Tomatoes
Milk
Purée onion, carrot, celery and garlic with a little oil. Heat additional oil in a pan, add purée and sauté for about seven minutes with a little salt and the bay leaf.
Next, push the ingredients to the side of the pan, stir in the tomato purée and allow to caramelise slightly before incorporating with the purée. Add the herbs, nutmeg, salt and pepper and then the wine. Allow to bubble until the alcohol has evaporated and then add the stock and the tomatoes. I added a large splash of milk at this point too.
Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and then leave to simmer until the sauce has taken on your preferred consistency. As I used milk, I left this on a very low heat for two hours.
Initially, I was slightly disappointed with the outcome as it seemed as if we had ended up with just a very good tomato sauce. The flavour of the pork didn’t really come through until we had reduced the sauce right down. In the end it was very good, much like I imagine a sausage ragù might be. It needed a scrape more nutmeg though and possibly some basil at the end to heighten the flavours.
The blending of the initial ingredients is one I’ll definitely try again though, it created a real smoothness that would work with both a basic tomato sauce or a ground meat sauce.
For the very first time, I’m sharing this with Marye of Baking Delights who is hosting this week’s Presto Pasta Nights.
Corned Beef – The Story Begins
As you might imagine, I read a lot of food blogs but mostly UK based ones. There are an awful lot of American sites but their seasons are different and so is their produce and it all seems so far away from what’s happening here. I can never remember what arugula is and I don’t really care about baking for the ball game but sometimes I find myself landing on an American site and being pleasantly surprised. This is what happened when I started searching for traditional St Patrick’s Day recipes and I found myself inundated with Americans talking about corned beef and cabbage.
I love corned beef but I just can’t bring myself to eat it anymore. As soon as I started to care more about where food came from and study ingredients lists, I had to give it up. But I really miss toasted corned beef and mustard sandwiches.
The American version is not the same as the corned beef we know in the UK, in fact, it should probably be more accurately called salt beef. I love that too though, especially on a toasted bagel which is why we decided to give it a go ourselves. It’s going to take 10 days though so, for now, here’s a picture of the salt and spice mix.
Tayyab’s
On a Thursday night a few weeks ago now, Kerri and I had a wonderful dinner at Tayyab’s with a lot of other London food bloggers. Tayyab’s, which is situated on a random side street in Whitechapel in London’s East End, has become legendary for its excellent yet ridiculously cheap Pakistani food. I have been lucky enough to eat there a number of times either with a few friends or with various interesting groups of people over the past several years. It has been re-invented a few times along the way: Initially, there was Tayyab’s, which was only open during the day, then New Tayyab opened next door as an evening restaurant. Now these two have been joined together to create a bigger restaurant, which is good news for everyone as more people can squeeze in to enjoy the delights of Tayyab’s, although there is still usually a sizeable queue!
The restaurant does not sell alcoholic drinks but you can bring your own along, which makes these sorts of evenings particularly entertaining as well as particularly challenging for anyone determined to bring wine rather than beer to go with the food. The first time I ate at Tayyab’s a number of years ago was also the first time that I remember drinking Alsace wine. Someone had recommended it as a good accompaniment to spicy food (they were completely correct!) and so I had bought a bottle each of Riesling and Gewurztramminer without knowing a lot about either. Into the fridge at work they went to keep them cold, then of course there was an hour on the tube to get there and then an hour of standing outside the pub chatting before dinner. Suffice to say, by the time we got to the restaurant neither bottle was the least bit chilled. I still really enjoyed them both though and it’s a memory that has always stuck with me, which is surprising given that I suspect I drank most of both bottles myself.
Anyway, back to the present. We met up at The Good Samaritan pub, which is just a few minutes walk from the restaurant. This seems to be a ritual. On arriving at Tayyab’s, we were ushered into the VIP room, past the rather long queue of hungry-looking people. The VIP room used to be at the side of the New restaurant, but now that they have been joined together, it is situated in the middle of the larger, joined-together restaurant. There are several large tables in the VIP room and we had two of them for our group: one round table and one larger, long one. I was in the middle of one side of the long one, which made it convenient for shouting at people and asking them what they wanted to eat and then passing on the orders to the waiter.
We had brought along an Alsace riesling for old time’s sake, as well as an experiment – a Californian zinfandel in the hope that the spicy, not-too-tannic fruitiness would go well with the food, particularly the legendary lamb chops. The riesling did go well with chicken and fish dishes, and the zinfandel did go with lamb in various forms, but the bottle that I’d brought was more tannic that I’d planned. Dan, who was sitting next to me (and knows a lot about wine…) also had a bottle of Zinfandel, but his was less tannic which worked better.
The restaurant had been very kind and put on three delicious roast marinated lamb legs for a main course, so we set about ordering starters. Of course, we ordered a fair few of the legendary lamb chops, along with various other grilled starters – seekh kebabs, tandoori chicken, masala fish and probably one or two others that I’ve forgotten. I enjoyed the lamb chops, but they had a heavy dose of chilli that I felt drowned out the other flavours. Everything was really good; generously spiced with great depth of flavour and succulent too – nothing I ate was overcooked.
Then we tucked into the lamb legs, which had been marinated overnight and roasted for three hours (if my memory serves me correctly) and served on top of a bed of delicous rice, the texture of which reminded me of a baked “Hyderabadi” biryani that I’d cooked once and haven’t encountered much since.
We probably didn’t need to order any more based on the amount of food that we already had, but of course we had to in order to taste things. So we ordered some “dry meat” curry, which doesn’t sound that appetising from its name but it is really lovely – marined pieces of lamb cooked in a coriander-heavy spice mix. It isn’t actually dry in the exact sense of the word, but it is just drier than other curries.
We also ordered various other side dishes, amongst them bhindi (okra) and some sublime tinda masala (baby pumpkins).
A deliciously fun evening all round, which ended with us going back to the Good Samaritan and things got a little fuzzy from then on. So thanks to everyone who came along for making it such an excellent event and thanks to Helen for organising.
Typing this has made me hungry even though we had our dinner an hour or so ago!
Roast Pork Loin with Garlic, Rosemary, Anchovies and Lemon Zest
I’ve been thinking a lot about pork ragu lately and decided I would make it this week. The version I’ve put together uses leftover pork so, of course, we needed to cook pork today in order to generate those leftovers.
I picked up the new Jamie Oliver magazine last week and there were a number of interesting pork recipes, Stephen chose this one which was originally based on pork neck fillet which we were unable to find. I think we managed to adapt it reasonably well and the end result was very good, if a little too lemony for my tastes.
We had originally planned to serve this with some tomatoey butter beans but they just wouldn’t cook so instead, we made some gravy out of the stock the pork had roasted in and had that with some vegetables. And garlic. I think there was about a whole bulb in the original recipe which, having roasted for two hours, was sweet and sticky. We couldn’t resist squeezing it all over the pork.
It was difficult not to carry on eating until all the pork was gone but we managed to restrain ourselves so tomorrow, it’s pork ragu as planned.
Lamb Chops and Minted Pea Puree
We spent most of last Saturday cooking for a family lunch the following day and, as a result, neither of us have felt much like cooking recently which is why things have been a bit quiet around here.
After a day of catching up with friends and watching the Grand National, neither of us were particularly in the mood again but I’m really glad we managed to force ourselves into the kitchen as these lamb chops were incredible.
Before we went out, we marinated them in a mixture of oil, lemon juice, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper. A few minutes in the pan and they were done, served with a minted pea puree (a cheats version, just the peas with some water, mint and seasoning) and some sauteed potatoes. We also made some gravy by simply de-glazing the pan with some red wine to capture all the flavourings that were left behind.
We were lucky that we started with some really good meat which would have been tasty enough without the additional aromatics. The oil and salt did a great job of tenderising the meat and the extra flavours turned what would have been a good meal and turn into a great one.
Roast Chicken
Roast chicken is not usually a weekday meal for us, but due to my badly planned shopping trip yesterday, we ended up with a chicken that needed to be used. We debated whether or not to post about it as we’ve posted about roast chicken hundreds of times before, but the point of Dinner Diary is to be a proper diary and to post pretty much everything we cook, so here it is.
The chicken itself wasn’t that tasty, but the roast potatoes were particularly tasty and the gravy was very good too. Also served with leeks (very good), beans (good) and cabbage (okay).
Cabbage Stew
When I was younger, my mum used to cook this on occasion and I loved it, especially topped with a big pile of grated cheese. My mum had written it and several other recipes into a little notebook for me about ten years ago, so as Kerri was out this evening I dug it out and gave it a go. It doesn’t sound very interesting from the title, but I rather like it and it’s a sort of comfort food for me. I know it won’t be on most people’s comfort food list as it’s healthy and lacks some essentials such as sausages and mashed potatoes, but it does it for me. Of course, I generally undo some of the healthy aspects of it by topping it with the aforementioned big pile of grated cheese.
We had most of the ingredients apart from cabbage, so I got one on the way home and got to work. This is the slightly adapted recipe:
Ingredients – serves 2:
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely sliced
1 tin of tomatoes (410g)
2 large carrots, grated
half a savoy cabbage, stalky bits removed and shredded
6 baby corn, cut into quarters (my mum used frozen corn kernels so use that instead if you have it)
leaves from a few sprigs of thyme (or any other herb that you have, even just dried mixed herbs)
1 tablespoon tomato puree
big pile of grated cheese (optional)
cooked brown rice for serving
Method:
If you are serving with brown rice then the rice will probably take longer to cook than the rest of this, so put that on first. Heat up a little oil in a saucepan and cook the onion and garlic until the onion is soft but not starting to brown. Add carrots and stir fry for a few minutes. Add the tin of tomatoes and the tomato puree and bring to the boil. Let this simmer for a few minutes and then add the corn and herbs and season with salt and pepper.
Let these cook for a while until the corn is softening, then add the cabbage and stir it in well. If there isn’t enough liquid, add a dash of water. Cover and leave it to cook for a few minutes so that the cabbage is just cooked but still green and retains some texture. If there is a lot of liquid still at this point, add a dash of cornflour mixed in water to thicken it.
Serve on the rice and top with the big pile of grated cheese!
It’s ages since I had this and I’d forgotten and/or hadn’t realised how quick it was to make. It’s fairly simple and not to everyone’s taste, but it is both quick and healthy. Except of course for the cheese. I love the taste of the tomatoes mixing with the other vegetables and the texture of the rice. It’s a little like a proto-vegetable-soup that hasn’t evolved into a soup yet. And there is some left to take to work for lunch too because that recipe serves two and there was just me and I wasn’t that much of a pig this evening.
