Trout, Watercress and Potato Salad
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the first crop of watercress since the weather warmed up. As much as I love cabbage and parsnips and Brussels sprouts, I’m getting a little tired of them now after so many months of relying on them for comforting, hearty dishes. Watercress may seem like a funny thing to be excited about as it doesn’t have a particularly strong flavour but it represents the real start of Spring which is what I’m really happy about. That, and the Jersey Royals, broad beans and asparagus that should also be appearing soon.
This was very easy to put together and was lovely and fresh, a welcome sensation after the heaviness of the lamb and salt beef we’ve been eating over the weekend.
I poached the trout in some water with a bay leaf, some celery tops and some black peppercorns until it was just cooked. The potatoes were steamed separately and left to cool with the fish. Once it had come down to room temperature, I combined the two with the watercress, some sliced spring onions and a dressing Stephen had made of yoghurt, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and black pepper. The spring onions added an extra zingy note to the yoghurt and acid of the mustard.
We ate this with a mixed salad on the side (yes, we’re desperately trying to up our vegetable intake after the excess of Easter) but it would have been good with some roasted tomatoes stirred through and something else for crunch.
Salt Beef
While this dish requires very little skill, it does require a certain amount of love and care. You start off by salting the beef for 12 hours, rinising and then rubbing in a spice mix (including saltpetre which you need to order online) and refrigerating for 10 days. Each day, the beef has to be turned so that it’s well coated before cooking gently for 3.5 hours on the final day.
We were both really excited about the result, as we are with most new dishes but particularly so this time as we had both been waiting patiently for the 10th day to arrive. Sadly, we were a little disappointed. The beef wasn’t as tender as we were hoping for and it was a little too salty for our tastes. I’m not sure what we did wrong, perhaps we didn’t cook the beef for long enough or perhaps it was the fault of our stupid, unreliable hob that doesn’t seem to know the difference between simmering gently and boiling rapidly.
Recipe here.
Slow Roast Lamb Shoulder with Butter Beans
Slow roast lamb is one of our absolute favourite dishes, guaranteed to make us both go “mmmmm” every time it’s mentioned. It requires very little effort, is incredibly reliable, always excpetionally tasty, cheap and versatile. We spent the weekend with my mum and we know she’s a big fan too so quickly agreed that it would be the perfect offering for Easter lunch.
Not wanting to play it too safe, we took a bit of a gamble and used a different recipe. A Nigella recipe. I know she’s very popular but I don’t like her. I don’t like her recipes either so quite why I thought this was a good idea I’m not sure. In fairness to the finger-licking one, this actually turned out pretty well but a few small tweaks and it could have been brilliant. The general consensus was that, while it was rich and earthy and very savoury, it definitely needed something light and zingy at the end to freshen the whole thing: mint, capers and redcurrant jelly were all mentioned.
I can’t find the recipe online but I wouldn’t recommend it anyway. Use Jamie’s recipe instead and just add some beans and water at the same time you add the lamb.
Lemon Sole with Crushed New Potatoes
I like lemon sole, it’s a delicate fish and I’m generally happy to eat it without too much in the way of an accompaniment and let the subtle flavour shine through. Saturday night dinner calls for something a little more special though which is why we decided to have another go at creating a white wine sauce. Our previous attempt wasn’t completely successful and, in hindsight, we probably should have tweaked this recipe rather than trying something completely new.
I’m not going to post the recipe because we weren’t completely happy with it. Much like last time, it was a texture thing rather than a flavour thing so at least we know we’re on the right track. Third time lucky?
Steak with Horseradish Crushed Potatoes
Last week’s success with the marinated lamb chops got us thinking about what else we could approach in a similar way. We don’t often eat steak and when we do, we usually just season it with a little salt and pepper beforeheand. It seemed obvious therefore that we should try marinating some steaks so that’s what we did.
Similar to last week, we used some oil, salt and pepper, garlic, rosemary and a dash of red wine vinegar as the marinade. The steaks sat in this mixture for about an hour before Stephen fried them for two minutes each side, resulting in perfectly medium-rare steaks. The pan was hot and that, coupled with the marinade resulted in crunchy outsides and meltingly-tender middles: just the way a good steak should be.
The marinade itself worked well, rosemary isn’t a herb we would normally use with steak but it leant an earthy, fragrant note to the meat. The vinegar wasn’t immediately discernible but added a layer of of sourness and obviously helped in the tenderisation. Served with crushed new potatoes which had been mixed with spring onions, horseradish and wholegrain mustard.
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.
