Angels on Horseback and Plaice with Nut-Brown Butter
Tonight we decided to cook ourselves a special dinner. Seeing as we are on holiday this week, we had some time to shop for ingredients today and start preparing early.
We were trying to think of dishes that would fit in well with British Food Fortnight, and after browsing various cook books, we ended up choosing two from the same book – Gary Rhodes’s New British Classics. Not that it’s that new any more, but it does contain some interesting recipes.
The first was Angels on Horseback, which are oysters wrapped in bacon. We bought six oysters and it took rather a while to shuck them – I have great admiration for people who have the skill of doing it quickly. The oysters were very briefly simmered, then wrapped in bacon and grilled for a couple of minutes on either side and served on a long slice of toast. It is the first time either of us remember eating these, and both the texture and flavour of the oyster (slightly squishy and salty and ozoney) and the bacon (um… just bacony really – it was unsmoked) go well together, complemented by the crunchiness of the toast.
For main course we chose Dover Sole with Nut-Brown butter, but as luck would have it, we weren’t able to get hold of any dover sole when we needed it. So we went with plaice, which is fairly similar. Gary’s instructions said to skin the dark skin side and implied that it would be very easy. It wasn’t. The instructions also implied that it would be easy to pull out the fish’s insides once the head was off. It wasn’t. Anyway, we eventually got there and put it under the grill skin-side up.
Then we made the nut-brown butter sauce and forgot about the fish and it caught a bit under the grill, leaving some black marks which don’t look that great in the picture. Still very tasty though; Kerri commented that it tasted like restaurant fish rather than home-cooked fish. Probably all the butter 🙂
To drink we had Nyetimber vintage 2000 sparkling wine to start with, to keep with the British theme. This was very good, with loads of toasty aroma coming from the glass even if you were nowhere near it. With the plaice we had a rather nice white Pernand Vergelesses (part of Burgundy) which went well with the fish and the butter sauce.
Janssen’s Temptation
This is one of those recipes that seems to have been following me around for a while which we finally got round to making this evening. Its a Swedish recipe and is usually part of a smorgasbord, served with cold meats and fish. Also traditionally served at Christmas and/or Easter.
Unfortunately, I tried to improvise so that I could use up some marinated anchovies that had been languishing in the fridge for a while. They didn’t end up melting down in the same way as the jarred anchovies do and I think this led to a lack of flavour; of course I can’t be sure as I’ve never had the real dish. As I understand it, Swedish anchovies are very different to the type we get here so the UK version is very different to the traditional anyway.
We followed Lizzie’s recipe, apart from her very good advice about which anchovies to use 🙂
It was still tasty and we both enjoyed it, it’s similar to one of our very favourite potato dishes: dauphinoise. We served it with some garlicky greens.
Guacamole
We’re on holiday this week, but I had to pop into work today. While I was out, Kerri had made some delicious guacamole. It was rather hot due to the birds eye chillies that were in it, but delicious and excellent served with toasted pita bread slices. Yum.
Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake
Stephen and I have this week off and don’t have much planned apart from a little cooking and a lot of relaxing. We’re both quite fond of cake but don’t tend to eat them very often or make them ourselves as we always seem to have one eye on the waistline. Being on holiday is a good excuse though so I did a little research and this is the recipe that stood out.
Another reason for the lack of baking is, as I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I’m not much of a baker. I’m a bit of a throw it all in the pot and see what happens kind of cook; baking and all its associated measuring and weighing doesn’t fit well with that kind of mentality and, if I’m really honest, I find it all a bit scary.
This recipe however was very easy to follow and took very little time to put together. I was slightly worried when, 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time, it was very brown on top and wet in the middle but I put some foil on the top and took a few deep breaths. We ended up cooking it for slightly over the one hour but it turned out well. Full of lemony flavour, moist in the middle and crunchy on the outside. Delicious and perfect with a cup of tea.
Recipe courtesy of Nigella via the lovely Penny of Penelope’s Pantry.
Butternut and Parsnip Risotto
For a while now, Kerri has been going on about risotto. In a good way though. She initially mentioned butternut squash risotto, which I thought would be excellent with some added sage. At some point she changed her mind to parsnip risotto, but I managed eventually to persuade her that making risotto with both parsnip and butternut in it would be a good autumnal dish. As it turned out, we ended up adding thyme as we have some in the garden.
It was a fairly typical risotto recipe. We cut the butternut and parsnip into bite-sized chunks and roasted them in the oven with some olive oil, salt and pepper and a dusting of nutmeg. Then when the risotto was almost done, we added them and stirred them in, along with a big handful of grated parmesan.
The result was rather good (which is a good thing after all that stirring…) and the pieces of parsnip and butternut were tasty additions.
Pork Shoulder Braised in Cider
Last week Kerri had pork braised in cider for lunch in a rather good gastropub (Great Queen Street on – you guessed it – Great Queen Street in Covent Garden) and wanted to try to recreate it. We had a look around for recipes but eventually just did our own thing.
We bought a boned, rolled shoulder from our butcher. We were planning to remove the skin and cook it separately to make lovely crackling, but the skin was full of rather dark hairs which didn’t look at all appetising, so we removed the skin and threw it away. This meant untying the string to remove the skin and then tying it up again and of course it didn’t go back into as nice a shape as it had started in.
We scored the fat, then seasoned the joint all over with salt and pepper. One recipe that we found said to make slits in the pork and insert garlic slices, which we do with lamb, but we didn’t do that. Another recipe said to rub it with a mixture of crushed fennel and coriander, which we didn’t do either.
We placed some onions and carrots into the bottom of a casserole dish, put in the pork and then added about 300ml of cider. We had planned to buy some decent English cider but forgot, and at the last minute all we could find was some sparkling French cider, which was interesting but didn’t taste particularly appley.
We braised the pork for two and a half hours, spooning some of the cider over then pork now and then. When it was done, we added some chicken stock and a dash of cider vinegar to the braising liquid to make a sauce. We also added some finely diced carrots, celery and onion to the sauce.
The result was tasty and very porky; probably due to the fact that our pig was apparently a very happy pig. Kerri said it didn’t taste much like the version that she’d eaten recently though; maybe we needed more appley-tasting cider and needed to baste it more often. Served with some yummy mustard mash and some steamed greens.
Pizza
Our dough turned out a bit too thick again but it was a definite improvement on last time. Garlic bread followed by salami, olive, pepper and rocket for me; tuna, anchovy, olive and pepper for Stephen.
Creamy Mushroom Pasta
Mushroom pasta is one of those things I’ve attempted a couple of times with no success and I’d pretty much given up on it. This recipe posted by Rachel of What Rachel Ate Today sounded promising though and I bookmarked it to try later on. I didn’t have to wait too long; we bought mushrooms for Saturday’s pie and didn’t end up using them so, keen to make sure they didn’t go to waste, I picked up some cream on the way home and started cooking.
We followed the recipe almost exactly: we used red onion instead of white as we seem to have loads of them, didn’t add lemon and completely forgot about the walnuts until we were half way through eating.
It was a resounding success, the mushrooms were bursting with flavour and the earthiness perfectly complimented the sweet, red onion. It was a perfect autumnal dish and I’m really glad to have at last found a good mushroom pasta recipe – thanks Rachel 🙂
Peppers Cashew nuts with Chicken
This is another recipe from the mysterious Thai Traditional Cooking: The Mother’s Recipes by Maria Kanigman Saunders that we used last week to make the beef stir-fry.
Once again, the recipe was easy to follow and quick. I spent a few minutes chopping up the ingredients and Stephen cooked it when he got home. It was really tasty and we both commented that it tasted a lot more complex than it actually was. It would definitely benefit from more liquid though, maybe some chicken stock.
2 chicken breasts, cut into strips
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 onion, peeled and sliced
1/2tsp sesame oil
4tbsp soy sauce
1tbsp fresh ginger, sliced
4tbsp whole roasted cashew nuts
2 chillies, chopped
2 peppers, sliced
Heat the oil in a wok, add garlic and ginger and fry for five seconds before adding the chicken.
Fry for one minute before adding the rest of the ingredients (except the cashew nuts).
Fry for 3-5 minutes, add the cashew nuts.
Serve with jasmine rice.
Chicken with Butter Beans and Chorizo
We’d planned to have this for lunch yesterday but changed our plans as the weather was so good. The chicken needed to be used up though so we cooked it anyway and just re-heated it this evening. It was really tasty and very easy to cook, it could easily be done after work…as long as you remember to soak the beans in advance 🙂
If we make it again then I think I’d adapt the original recipe so that the chicken was chopped up into smaller pieces.
