Thai Green Curry With Chicken
This is an old favourite and one that we eat often, or so I thought. It turns out we last ate it in September which is really quite a while ago.
Like last time, we speeded things up again (by adding the vegetables earlier and cooking the curry for a shorter time) and it seemed not to make a lot of difference. It was hard to tell what impact it had last time since we were using old curry paste so it was good to check again. The full recipe is here.
The Enterprise
A couple of weeks ago, Stephen and I met some friends for dinner in Sloane Square which, in my experience, is rather lacking in decent places to eat. Luckily, I had done my research in advance and was armed with a recommendation for The Enterprise which describes itself as “charming and homely” with a menu serving modern, British food.
We arrived just before 7 and the small bar area was already full, the restaurant wasn’t far off it either. I was slightly concerned that the dining area was rather too formal for a catch-up with friends but they all assured me they were happy to stay and we were shown to a table by the kitchen. Providing there is decent ventilation so my clothes don’t become too smelly, this is my favourite place to sit. I’m naturally quite nosey but more than anythingh, I love to to watch the chefs preparing food and responding to the incoming tickets.
There were five of us in total and we took pictures of all the food, sadly I’ve left it far too long between visiting and posting (as usual) and can’t remember what everyone ate or what they thought of it. Luckily, I can remember what Stephen and I ate so can tell you about that.
I started with whitebait, it’s one of my subconscious rules: if whitebait is on the menu then I always have it. I have loved whitebait for as long as I can remember and am delighted that it appears on menus more frequently these days. This was a particularly good example, the fish were just the right size: plump and juicy and coated with exactly the right amount of batter; there was a decent cayenne hit too.
Stephen ordered smoked salmon which came with capers and pickled cucumbers, a perfect combination. The fish was meaty and not too smoked, well balanced by the vinegary capers and cucumber. A slice of soft brown bread (while perhaps too retro for The Enterprise) would have been a welcome addition.
To follow, Stephen ordered the game pie. I suspect he has a similar rule about pie as I do about whitebait, it’s certainly one of his favourites. He remarked that the pie was gamier in flavour than he expected but enjoyable nonetheless.
I opted for the special of pork belly and chorizo, I didn’t really bother to check the menu once I’d seen it if I’m honest. With two of my favourite things on one plate, there was never going to be another option for me. The pork belly didn’t disappoinit; full of flavour and accompanied by a rich, deep jus, I couldn’t work out all the flavours in this though. Slightly disappointing was the lack of crackling, there was a little but it was heartbreaking to leave behind so much of the lovely skin that could so easily have been crunched up.
And that’s where my memory deserts me; I know there was fish and chips (with those stupid, Jenga style chips that are becoming increasingly popular) and seabass with Meditteranean vegetables, I even have pictures of them, I just can’t remember what was said about them. Next time, I’ll make notes.
I would definitely recommend the Enterprise if you are in the area. Slightly smarter than your average gastropub (which is reflected in the price) but the food was consistenly good and well thought-out.
Pork Hock and Butterbean Stew
We spotted pork hocks in Waitrose on Saturday so grabbed one without knowing what we were going to do with it. A quick look in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “Meat” book suggested it wasn’t much use for anything apart from flavouring stock. This didn’t seem quite right as I’m sure I’d seen other recipes where people has used the hock for both flavouring and eating.
A Google search confirmed my suspicion and threw up a few different ideas, we settled on a Spanish style stew. It turned out well; there was plenty of meat on the bone that was delicious and moist and the paprika gave a lovely sweet and smoky flavour. It wasn’t at all greasy or gelatinous as Hugh suggested.
Serves Three (two generous meals and one portion of lunch leftovers)
1 pork hock
1 large onion, sliced
Salt
1 red pepper, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
Parsley stalks, chopped
Tablespoon paprika
Salt and pepper
125ml sherry
750ml chicken stock
150g butterbeans, soaked overnight
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Tomato puree
Bay leaf
Parsley, chopped, to serve
Start by covering the pork in cold water, bring to the boil and then drain. This removes any impurities.
Next, soften the onion, pepper and garlic with some salt for about 10 minutes. Add the parsley stalks and cook for a further five minutes before stirring in the paprika. Deglaze the pan with the sherry and allow to bubble for a minute or two.
Now add the rest of the ingredients, including the pork hock, bring to the boil and then simmer for two and a hlaf hours. Remove the pork hock, shred the meat and add this and the bone back to the pot. Cook for a further half an hour. You could cook it for longer but this is all the time we had. Just before serving, check for seasoning and add the chopped parsley.
Serve with plenty of crusty bread.
Breaded Tilapia and Chips with Homemade Tartare Sauce
Over the past 24 hours we’ve been through many different potential menus for the weekend. The main driver for this was that we couldn’t find the ingredients for our first choices, but I think we still over-thought it quite a bit. In the end we settled on breaded fish for this evening and shuffled and re-organised everything else around it.
We bought two tilapia fillets and some oven chips (I know – cheating – but we don’t have a deep fat fryer yet) and tried our hand at making our own tartare sauce. The tilapia turned out rather well, but the tartare sauce didn’t emulsify properly and was too runny but still tasted good (if a little like capery salad dressing). We ate some steamed brocolli with this, which also went well with the pseudo-tartare sauce.
As we made up the fish recipe as we went along, this is an approximation:
Ingredients:
2 tilapia fillets
4 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp paprika
salt and pepper
1 cup fresh bread crumbs (these are easy to make by putting bits of white bread into a food processor)
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp vegetable oil
10g butter
Method:
Mix the paprika into the flour, then season with salt and pepper. Put onto a plate (this needs a lot of plates…). Pour the beaten egg onto a second plate. Spread the breadcrumbs out on a third plate. Then dust the fish fillets quite generously with the flour. When that is done, dip them into the beaten egg and finally coat them in the breadcrumbs.
When they are both breaded, heat up a frying pan to medium heat. When the frying pan is hot, add the oil and the butter and when the butter has melted, add the fish. Cook for 4 minutes on each side, then serve.
Saffron Scented Roast Lamb and Rosewater Meringues with Pistachios and Pomegranate
We had friends over for dinner last night so, not knowing what to cook, I picked up Nigella’s “Feast”. I wanted something that was going to sit happily in the oven for a couple of hours and not require too much attention. The book fell open on the saffron scented lamb recipe which seemed like a sign.
It was certainly an easy dish to cook and full of flavour, even though I forgot to marinate the lamb overnight. The flavour of the marinade was well complimented by the saffron sauce too.
To follow, we used our normal meringue recipe with some added rosewater and some toasted pistachios. Served with some whipped cream and some pomegranate seeds. This was good but the flavour of the rosewater didn’t come through as strongly as I hoped, next time I’ll use two teaspoons instead of one.
Rabbit and Leek Pie
Apparently, this week is British Pie Week. I don’t usually pay much attention to this kind of thing but, stuck for something to eat tonight, it was a welcome suggestion. I had it all worked out and had researched my recipe idea thoroughly but, when I got to the shop, they didn’t have the ingredients I needed. I find my mind tends to go blank in these situations and I end up wandering around aimlessly, I managed to avoid this today though when I spotted some some rabbit.
We’ve cooked with rabbit a couple of times and had mixed resutls, the rabbit pappardelle was one of my favourites of my last year though and it definitely benefitted from a long, slow cooking. Perfect for pie filling then!
I cooked the rabbit in a pretty similar way to chicken casserole, with just a few tweaks, and then let the filling reduce right down before adding it to the pie dish and topping it with puff pastry. It turned out brilliantly: the meat was tender and moist and the tangy mustard leant itself well to the sweetness of the rabbit and sherry. Served with more mustard in the shape of mustardy mashed potatoes and some crunchy, green cabbage.
Ingredients:
Flour
Salt and pepper
1 rabbit, boned and diced
125g lardons
2 leeks, chopped
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
125ml sherry
Heaped tablespoon Dijon mustard
250ml chicken stock
20 thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
Pastry (I cheated and used ready-rolled)
black onion seeds (optional)
Start by tossing the rabbit pieces in the seasoned flour and then browning in batches. Remove browned rabbit to a plate and set aside.
In the same pan, fry off the lardons until the fat has rendered and add to the browned rabbit.
Next, soften the leek, carrot and celery for about 10 minutes. Then add the garlic and cook for a further two minutes.
Add the rabbit and lardons back to the pan, deglaze with the sherry and then add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 2 hours (longer if you have time).
Once the rabbit has cooked through, the sauce should have reduced to a thick, syrupy liquid. If it hasn’t then turn up the heat and allow the liquid to bubble until it has thickened.
Add the contents of the saucepan to your pie dish, top with the pastry, brush with an egg (and sprinkle with the onion seeds if using) and then cook until the pastry has browned (about 25 minutes).
Serve!
Fish and Prawn Soup with Haricot Beans and Paprika
I’m finding it really difficult to get excited about fish at the moment, I don’t know if it’s because it’s been cold lately but when I’m trying to think of something for dinner, fish just doesn’t seem to appeal. I’m hoping that will change as the weather warms up and, with a slight nod in that direction, today we came up with this. It was very easy, the only difficult thing being remembering to soak the beans which, as usual, I forgot until this morning. They managed about seven hours of soaking before I boiled them rapidly for half an hour and then transferred them into the main dish and simmered for a further hour and a half. Not a bad workaround.
For something relatively simple and easy to put together, it was a pretty good dish. We used cod but both felt that something firmer like monkfish would have been better. The prawns were a good addition though, the sweet flesh working well with the heat of the paprika…quite a lot of paprika as it turns out, since my hand slipped!
1 onion, sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Tablespoon paprika
100ml dry sherry
100g haricot beans
250ml chicken stock
Salt and pepper
Tablespoon sundried tomato paste
250g white fish
2 large prawns
Tablespoon chopped parsley
Gently soften the onion in some olive oil and some salt for about five minutes before adding the pepper. Contine to sautee for another five minutes and then add the garlic. Cook for another five minutes. Stir in the paprika.
Deglaze the pan with the sherry and let it bubble for a couple of minutes until it’s almost evaporated. Stir in the beans, add the stock and the tomato puree and then season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, reduce and simmer until the beans are tender (this took 1.5 hours for us but we used fresh beans, timings would vary if you used tinned).
Once the beans are cooked through, add the fish and cook for about four minutes (dependant on size, of course). Stir in the chopped parsley and serve.
We ate it on it’s own but it was crying out for some crusty bread. Chorizo would have been a brilliant addition too.
Khmer Chicken Samla with Coconut Milk
This is one of the first Thai dishes I ever ate, cooked by Stephen’s sister. I really enjoyed it and they subsequently bought us the book they found the recipe in: Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by Jeremy Alford and Naomi Dugold. We’ve cooked it ourselves but neither of us remembered that until we started cooking.
Friday’s chicken kiev left us with two thighs and two legs; this coincided with the opening of a new, local Thai supermarket which we were both keen to visit. We bought the rest of the ingredients yesterday morning and Stephen spent a lot of time with the mortar and pestle when we got home!
I still like it as much as I did when I first had it, it’s described as being somewhere between a curry and a soup and I’d say that was a fairly accurate description. Making the paste is time consuming but the end result definitely benefits from it, I haven’t seen this kind of paste ready-made anyway.
Curry Paste
6-10 stalks lemongrass
2 small wedges wild lime, mostly peel
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh turmeric
Several pinches salt
3 tablespoons minced galangal
10-12 tiny mauve Asian shallots
10 medium to large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
4 Thai dried red chillies, soaked in warm water until softened
2 tablespoons shrimp paste
2 whole chicken legs, chopped into 3 pieces each
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups coconut milk, divided into 1 1/2 cups thinner milk and 1 1/2 cups thicker milk
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Remove tough outer skin from lemongrass and discard, slice lemongrass finely.
Place the lime and turmeric into a mortar and pestle with a pinch of salt and pound to a paste.
Add a third of the lemongrass and contuinue pounding. Gradually add the rest of the lemongrass and continue to pound.
Add the shallots and garlic and continue to pound to a smooth paste.
Remove to a bowl.
Cut the chillies open, remove the seeds and pound in the mortar and pestle. Add to the lemongrass paste.
Spread the shrimp paste onto foil, fold into a parcel and place in a hot frying pan for 3-4 minutes. Add the toasted paste to the curry paste.
Heat up the wok, add oil and stir in the curry paste. Cook until fragrant and aromatic. Add the chicken pieces, coat in the paste and cook for 7-10 minutes. Add the thinner coconut milk, salt and sugar and bring to the boil. Boil gently for 10 minutes.
Add half of the thicker coconut milk, bring to the boil, simmer for 20 minutes half-covered. Add the remaining coconut milk and simmer for a further 10-15 minutes until the chicken is tender.
Serve with rice.
Dulce de Leche Brownies
After Tuesday night’s pancakes, we were left with rather a lot of leftover Dulce de Leche. As nice as it is to eat straight from the fridge with a spoon, we both felt it deserved a more fitting end so we decided to use it to make chocolate brownies. I first came across this recipe last summer when we had our Mexican barbecue and it’s been filed away in the dessert category of my head ever since.
It was a very easy recipe to follow and the results were good: crunchy outsides with a dense, sticky middle which was intensified by the sticky, caramel like texture of the Dulce de Leche. Just as brownies should be.
Chicken Kiev
Chicken Kiev has become something of a byword for outdated, retro-but-not-cool food along with prawn cocktail and similar dishes that were once considered the height of fashion but have since fallen from grace. It’s a shame really, as when they are done well, they can be very good. I used to like chicken kiev when I was younger, but I’m sure that most of the ones that I ate were frozen, reconstituted-chicken versions that I shudder at the thought of eating now.
However all is not lost, since with a decent recipe, some good ingredients and a measure of determination, it is of course perfectly possible to create a really good chicken kiev the way it should be. (After all that ranting, for those who don’t know what chicken kiev is, it is a breaded chicken breast stuffed with a herb-and-garlic butter.)
This is a somewhat adapted recipe… the one that we originally found specified tarragon but we didn’t have that so we used parsely instead.
Ingredients:
2 large chicken breasts (you need to cut a pocket into them, which is difficult if they are small)
1 egg, beaten
plain flour
bread crumbs
oil for frying
salt and pepper
For the butter:
2 small to medium garlic cloves, crushed
juice of half a lemon
a tablespoon of so of finely chopped parsely (if you are using tarragon which is stronger, use less)
125g butter
salt and pepper
Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C. Leave the butter to soften a bit if it has been in the fridge. I put ours in the oven for a bit and left it in for too long and it started to melt and then had to cool it down for it to harden up again. So don’t do that. Mix in the garlic, parsely, lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Stir it together well.
If your chicken breasts have skin on them, remove it. Carefully cut a slit into the side of the chicken breasts and create a little pocket inside them. Stuff these pockets with as much of the butter as you can. Fold the skin back over and if it’s not quite holding together, secure with a toothpick.
Season the flour with salt and pepper, then coat the stuffed chicken breasts in it. Then coat them in the beaten egg mixture and finally coat them with the breadcrumbs. Heat up a little oil in a frying pan and brown the breaded chicken breasts on both sides. If the frying pan is oven-proof them pop it straight into the oven. If not, then put them onto a baking tray (make sure it has highish sides though as butter may melt out and spill otherwise).
After 20 to 25 minutes, they should be golden on the outside, cooked through and lovely and buttery and garlicky on the inside. A lot of the butter cooked out of ours; we’re coming up with ways to prevent that happening in the future.  And of course beware of the toothpicks when eating!
We served ours with some mashed potato and broccoli and it didn’t matter whether or not they were cool or contemporary because they were delicious.
