Lamb Chops Provencale with Ratatouille
After a brief Messenger conversation this afternoon we decided on lamb chops provencale, mainly because we had lamb chops in the fridge and we have enjoyed cooking crumbed cuts of meat in the past. Ratatouille sounded like a very good accompaniment to lamb chops provencale, as did sautéed potatoes, so we cooked both.
For the lamb chops, we used this recipe. It worked quite well, except we should have trimmed the chops a bit better before coating them as it’s difficult to avoid the fatty bits when they’re all covered in crumbs and you can’t see them. For the ratatouille, we followed Delia’s recipe. Kerri was cooking this when I arrived home and the aroma was very welcoming when I walked in the door. We did our usual style of sautéed potatoes.
Pancakes!
Last year, a friend of Stephen’s brought us back a tin of Dulce de Leche from Argentina and it’s been sitting in our cupboard ever since, very much like those bottles of wine that are given to you as gifts and are too good for every day drinking. Tonight felt like the perfect time to crack open the tin and
As good as we knew it would be, we realised we weren’t going to be able to eat the whole tin so decided on some other flavours:
– Lemon and vanilla sugar (this was more by luck than anything, I went all Jamie Oliver at some point and stuck some old vanilla pods in a jar of sugar)
– Rosewater and orange syrup (the orange syrup has been in the fridge since we made candied orange peel from the leftover marmalade peels)
– Orange syrup and ice-cream (this is taking up valuable space in the freezer and isn’t all that good)
All the combinations worked well, the Dulce de Leche was just as good as we knew it would be, but I think the traditional lemon and sugar was the winner.
Leek, Pancetta and Yellow Pea Soup
Neither of us really put much thought into tonight’s dinner because it was really just a prelude to the real point of the evening: pancakes. As I wandered around Waitrose earlier though I realised that I should make some kind of effort to feed us with something other than sugar and decided on leek soup.
Leek soup would of course be vegetarian though and that really wouldn’t do, luckily the fridge was well stocked with bacon products so in went some pancetta too. As with most soup recipes, I mostly made it up as I went along but it went something like this:
One small packet pancetta
2 leeks, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
200g split peas (or any kind of lentils)
300ml vegetable stock (chicken would probably be better)
Salt and pepper
Parsley, finely chopped
Single cream
Brown pancetta and remove from the pan.
Sautee sliced leeks until soft, add garlic and cook for another couple of minutes.
Add the pancetta back to the pan, throw in the lentils and make sure they are well coated.
Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to the boil and then simmer for 45 minutes.
Add parsley (I forgot) and cream (I forgot) and serve.
Stephen really enjoyed it, I thought it needed some work. The parsley, chicken stock and cream would be a start.
Spicy Lentils with Chorizo
I spotted some Brindisa cooking chorizo in my local deli last week and picked it up without having a definite plan for it. It’s been calling to me every time I open the fridge and today, with nothing else planned for dinner, it was a welcome addition to the fridge. I started wondering how it would work with lentils but a quick search online didn’t throw up anything interesting. A friend came to the rescue with a recipe not unlike the lentil ragu we’ve cooked before so I took some elements from both.
6 mini cooking chorizo, sliced (next time I’ll crumble these instead)
1 onion, chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped (not necessary)
Tablespoon paprika (increase to two tablespoons if not using chilli)
200g lentils (increase to 250g)
200ml beef stock
Splash dry sherry
Small tin tomatoes
Squirt tomato puree
Gently fry off the chorizo until browned and remove from the pan.
In the same pan, sweat the onions with some salt until soft, add the garlic and chilli and cook for a further minute.
Next, stir in the paprika and the lentils and make sure everything is well coated.
Deglaze with the sherry.
Add the rest of the ingredients (including the reserved chorizo), bring to the boil, reduce heat and cook for 45 minutes.
We ate this with toast which worked well but wasn’t entirely necessary. We both enjoyed it but I think the amendments I’ve noted above would definitely improve the dish.
Toad In the Hole
We spent the weekend at my mum’s and she had planned sausages and mashed potatoes for dinner last night, it turned out to be a busy day though so we opted for fish and chips instead. That left us with a surplus of sausages which Stephen and I brought home with us and turned into toad in the hole.
It was really good, we browned the sausages before adding them to the hot batter and then cooked the whole thing for about 40 minutes. Served with onion and madeira gravy. Mashed potatoes would have been brilliant but we settled for some cauliflower and brocolli instead.
Batter
170g plain flour
1 tsp salt
300ml cold milk
150ml cold water
3 eggs, beaten
Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl (do it a couple of times). In another large bowl, mix together all the other ingredients and then slowly add to the flour while whisking.
Brown the sausages in a frying pan. Put a few tablespoons of oil into a large roasting dish and put it into a pre-heated oven to as high a temperature as your oven will allow. When the oil is hot, add the sausages and the batter and cook until the batter has risen and is brown and crispy. Our oven only goes up to 200 so we cooked ours for about 45 minutes.
Onion and Madeira Gravy:
1 medium onion, finely sliced
150ml rich madeira (or cream sherry)
150ml dry red wine
250ml beef stock
1tbsp vegetable oil
1tbsp flour
red wine vinegar (or white wine vinegar or cider vinegar or any other vinegar that you have to hand)
Add the vegetable oil to a saucepan on medium heat. When it has heated up, add the onions. Stir occasionally until they have softened and are starting to brown around the edges – usually about 5 minutes. Then turn down the heat and let them fry slowly to soften further and caramelise – about abother 15 minutes. Then stir in the flour, cooking it for a couple of minutes before adding the madeira and wine. Stir thoroughly so that the flour is incorporated and leave to simmer for another few minutes. Then add the stock, stir and leave for 15 minutes to simmer. When it is almost ready, add about 1/4 teaspoon vinegar and check to see if it needs salt and pepper or more vinegar and add anything it needs to balance it out. Stir well, leave it to simmer for a minute or so, then serve.
Baby Pears and Ice Cream
Some friends gave us baby pears preserved in sweet wine as a Christmas present. I thought that they would go well with some vanilla ice cream, so that’s what we did. When I opened the jar I realised that the baby pears were a lot more baby than I thought they’d be; they were very tiny indeed.
The pears had quite a strong flavour from being preserved in sweet wine, so the ice cream wasn’t quite strong enough to hold up to them. A drizzle of Pedro Ximinez (a sweet, raisiny Sherry) over the ice cream gave it a bit of a kick and brought it together with the pears a lot better.
Marmalade
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We vaguely talked about making marmalade earlier in the year but couldn’t find any Seville oranges. I was secretly quite pleased about that as it seemed like an awful lot of work for something only eaten at the weekends (we tend to eat cereal during the week). This however all changed when we spotted some oranges while shopping on Saturday and felt like we had to go through with it.
There’s an awful lot of commentary on the subject of marmalade and deciding which recipe to go with was a daunting task, neither of us wanting to be stuck with vats of unedible preserve. We used this James Martin recipe in the end and it was both straightforward and easy to follow.
Stephen (conveniently?) had a cut on his hand so I ended up doing most of the slicing and squeezing and cutting and chopping and it wasn’t as labour intensive as I thought it would be; the end result was definitely worth it. The marmalade is very well balanced, not too sweet and not too sour and I somehow doubt we’ll only be eating this at the weekend.
Hamburgers and Chips
Having decided on hamburgers for dinner, we started thinking about what kind of meat to use. A quick Google search suggested chuck steak was the best option and luckily enough the butcher had some and was happy to mince it for me. I asked him if he would recommend any other cuts but he said this was perfect for hamburgers as there was a decent amount of fat to keep everything moist.
As we hadn’t used chuck steak before and wanted to really taste the meat, I kept the seasonings fairly simple, just a little parsley, some salt and pepper and a splash of mushroom ketchup. On reflection, I think the hamburgers could have benefitted from something else, mustard perhaps.
These were quite fat so we fried them for five minutes on either side which left them about medium, it occured to us that we probably could have got away with a leaner cut afterall since we didn’t cook the hamburgers all the way through. They were good though, moist but not oily and fully flavoured; ever so slightly challenging for me to eat with my wonky mouth mind you!
Carbonara
Both Stephen and I were home late last night and we didn’t have anything planned for dinner. It’s been a bit of a challenge to find interesting things to eat since I had my wisdom tooth out, I’ve been craving lamb chops but don’t think I’ll be able to chew them.
I ended up in Waitrose on my way home hoping that inspiration would strike but nothing really called out to me. After browsing the ready-made pasta dishes I settled on carbonara knowing that all I needed was cream. Stephen loves eggs so we always have those and the little packets of pancetta that Waitrose sell are useful for so many things that we try to keep those in the fridge too.
I didn’t really follow a recipe but I used one small packet of pancetta (two would have been better!), two eggs, a small carton of cream, some salt and pepper and lots of parmesan cheese. While the pasta is cooking, frythe pancetta off first and drain away the oil. Combine the eggs, cheese and salt and pepper together in a jug. When the pasta is cooked, stir everything in and serve.
Salmon with Horseradish Mash
Kerri was feeling unwell today as a result of having one of her wisdom teeth out last week, so it was just dinner for me. And coincidentally it was fish, greens and potatoes, much like last time I was just cooking for myself. Salmon seasoned with paprika and salt this time though, and horseradish mash.
Paprika Salmon
Salmon
Paprika
Salt
Butter
Olive oil or vegetable oil
Mix an equal amount of paprika (sweet works better than smoked here) and salt. Sprinkle this onto the fish and pat it in. Heat a knob of butter in a frying pan and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil to it (the butter gives a good flavour and the oil lowers the “smoke point” so that it won’t burn as easily). Heat the pan to medium heat and when the butter has melted and mixed with the oil and is hot, add the fish skin-side down and then turn the heat down a bit. Depending on the thickness of the fish, cook it for between five and ten minutes. This piece was quite fat, so it cooked for almost ten minutes. While it is cooking, spoon the oil and butter mixture over it regularly, once a minute or so. If when it is cooked, it is still looking a little pale on top then turn it over for thirty seconds or so to give it some colour. Serve!
The simple recipe that we use for the greens works very well, and we have had it a few times lately. It does bother me that shops are selling “spring greens” at the moment; surely global warming isn’t quite that bad?! They are tasty though.
“Spring” Greens
1 large head spring greens, or 2 small ones
butter
salt
pepper, preferably freshly ground or crushed white pepper if you have it
Remove the leaves of the greens from the head. Discard any discoloured outer leaves. Strip the leaves from their stalks, tearing each leave into three or four pieces. Rinse them in a colander and shake a bit of the water off, but leave the leaves damp. Heat a small knob of butter in a lidded saucepan. When it has melted, add the leaves and stir a few times and season with salt and pepper. Turn the heat down and put the lid on the saucepan.
Remove the lid and stir a few times while they cook; this distributes the heat and coats them in the butter-water emulsion and seasoning. After a few minutes, they should wilt down and start to soften while turning bright green. If the leaves are tough then they might need a little longer. They will definitely need longer than something like spinach, but don’t overcook them as it’s good to have some texture when they are on the plate.
I first used white pepper on these by accident but loved the result. I thought we had run out of black pepper (in reality though we had plenty but the grinder was just blocked) so I ground some white pepper in the mortar and pestle and sprinkled that on. White pepper has such wonderful aromatics and quite a different flavour to black pepper; I find it strange to think that white pepper is made from black pepper.
The horseradish mash was quite simple; no need for a recipe. Simply steam potatoes, then mash and add a spoonful or two or horseradish and stir/mash it in well. I added butter to it, which I love with mashed potato that is simply seasoned with salt and pepper, or even with mustard, but I find cream goes much better with horseradish; sadly we didn’t have any cream though.
As for wine, we have loads of bottles of fortified wines lying around our flat at the moment as I’m “studying” for my fortified wine module of the WSET diploma. I had a tasting sample of both manzanilla and manzanilla pasada at the time and found that the manzanilla pasada went quite well with the salmon. For those who haven’t tried manzanilla pasada, it takes a bit of explaining:
It is a type of Sherry which, like all true Sherry, is produced in the Jerez region in southern Spain. Not the sort of nasty, industrially-produced, too-sweet sherry that hangs around in dusty decanters though. Let’s start the story with fino which is a light, elegant, crisp sherry that is wonderful as an aperitif. Fino gets a lot of its character from a film of “flor” yeast that grows over it in the barrel while it is maturing and protects it from oxidation while imparting a uniquely yeasty, crisp flavour.Â
Manzanilla is similar to fino, but is yet lighter and more elegant because it is matured near the coast where the layer of flor is thicker and the sea air and humidity impart a salty tang to it. Finally, manzanilla pasada is a manzanilla that has been aged until the flor starts to die off and the manzanilla starts to oxidise. Leave it much longer and it’ll turn into an amontillado, which is a darker, nuttier, slightly spicy, oxidised style of sherry. Get it at the right time though and it’s a manzanilla pasada, which has a touch of both styles in it; just right to accompany a piece of fish with a salty, slightly spicy coating.
