Tortilla
Stephen made this at the weekend and has been eating it for lunches during the week. There are lots of different recipes for tortilla and many variations on the fillings but the method remains fairly constant:
Finely slice potatoes and onions, fry slowly in olive oil
Mix together five eggs, season, add to potato and onion mixture
Fry for 15 minutes on low heat, then flip and fry for a further 5 minutes
This time we added peas but tomatoes have made an appearance in the past too.
Pasta Amatriciana
Today was a fairly typical Tuesday, it got to 4.30 and we didn’t have anything planned for dinner. Stephen still isn’t feeling very well and I have tooth ache so neither of us were particularly in the mood for cooking. This usually means we eat pasta so, rather than rely on one of our old favourites, I started browsing for a quick and easy recipe when I came across amatriciana. My favourite pasta dishes are tomato based and feature garlic and chilli so this ticked all the boxes.
I picked up the ingredients on the way home and then started to worry that the super-quick-idiot-proof recipe I’d found wasn’t authentic so I did some more browsing and discovered that most of the recipes were the same, they featured the same main ingredients at least and it was mostly just the method that varied.
So, I softened a chopped onion in some olive oil and then added some pancetta and cooked it for a couple of minutes. Then I added a clove of chopped garlic and a whole, chopped red chilli. Cooked for another couple of minutes before adding some tomatoes and some pepper. I left it to simmer for about 20 minutes before adding some torn basil and some grated parmesan.
It’s got potential but my version was a little too sweet, I tried to temper this by adding some lemon juice but I obviously didn’t add enough. It needed more chilli too. It was a very quick dish and had a lot of flavour so if I can sort the sweetness out then I think it could be a regular fixture.
Roast Chicken
Stephen hasn’t been feeling very well this weekend and suggested roast chicken for lunch today. It turned out to be a lovely, warm day which would have been perfect for barbecuing but we already had our chicken so decided to stick to our original plan.
It’s not the most exciting meal, we eat it a lot and we generally always cook it the same way, but it’s always tasty and never disappoints. Which is just what you need when you’re not feeling very well.
Mexican Barbecue
We rather enjoy having themed barbecues rather than just buying a load of assorted dead animals and throwing them onto the fire. In collaboration with some friends, we decided that a Mexican themed barbecue would definitely be worth doing. So we invited them round, did some hunting for appropriate recipes and got started.
For snacks, we had tortilla chips of course, with lovely fresh salsa mexicana and some excellent guacamole (which isn’t in the picture because our guests brought it along later). We also made some spicy nuts, but these weren’t that good and lacked salt.
Kerri had seen a “barbecue wok” in the shop and was keen to try it out. So we bought it and thought that we could try using it to make fajitas on the barbecue. It is a strange looking device, looking rather like a thin wok with holes in it. It took a little longer than making normal fajitas, but the result was rather good, with the barbecue taste coming through.
The “main course” was Mexican style pork ribs based on this recipe. We were planning to cook about half that much, but ended up with huge amounts of ribs and needed to do the whole amount. The ribs were coated in a dry rub that included chilli powder, paprika, ground cumin and salt:
We left this for four hours for the flavours to penetrate the meat, then baked them in the oven for about an hour and a half before finishing them for ten minutes a side on the barbecue while brushing with the honey, lime and spice glaze. They burnt a little, but that just added crunchiness:
We rested them for a while, then sliced them into individual ribs, which turned out to be lovely and succulent on the inside while sticky and smoky on the outside. Yum.
With these we had black beans:
And Mexican rice:
It all turned out rather well (other than the nuts). Lots of preparation, but well worth the result, both in the eating and in the good time we had with our friends.
Sausage and Mash Pie
A couple of weeks ago, Stephen had a Higgidy pie for dinner which was really good. While wandering around the supermarket last night wondering what to eat, we remembered that they also made a sausage and mash pie which we were both intrigued by. We picked one up and by the time we’d put the shopping away, the pie was cooked.
Unfortunately, we were both really disappointed. We both had different ideas about what would be inside the pie, I imagined small pieces of sausage mixed with mashed potatoes and Stephen anticipated whole individual sausages…the reality was a large piece of sausagemeat, topped with mashed potatoes. The sausagemeat was under-seasoned and there were too many textures and flavours going on. Crunchy pastry with poppy seeds running through it, bouncy sausagemeat, cabbage and onions in the mustard mashed potatoes which were both dry and wet at the same time and also crunchy on top.
We both still think it’s a good idea and are keen to try and create our own version so watch this space 🙂
Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Broad Beans and Mint
Kerri and I had been talking about other things to do with pasta and broad beans. We have loads of mint growing in our garden too and thought that would work well with it. Kerri was out this evening though, so I threw something together quickly.
I sweated some onions and garlic, then added some cherry tomatoes. When the tomatoes had softened, I popped them with a wooden spoon and stirred it all up. Added some white wine, some broad beans and let it bubble away for a short while. Then threw in loads of chopped mint, some grated parmesan and seasoned.
It was okay but not brilliant; could do with some work on the seasoning maybe. Or adding bacon.
Lamb Rump and Champ
We had lots of potatoes and cabbage to use up this week and when we found some spring onions lurking in the fridge, the sensible option seemed to be to make champ. It’s a rather wintery dish for this time of year but it worked brilliantly with the lamb. The spring onions really complimented the sweetness of the new season lamb and the cabbage gave it an extra bite.
It also meant we got to use the griddle pan again which gave us some nice stripes and helped to char the outside of the lamb.
Barbecued Chicken
We picked up some Kentish strawberries on Saturday, the first ones we’ve had this season. They were ok but not that sweet and by Sunday they seemed past their best. While thinking about what to do with them we remembered Rossinis – Prosecco and pulped strawberries – that we’d had at the Anchor and Hope a couple of summers ago. Stephen went off to pick up some Prosecco and we crushed the strawberries with our stick blender. They were really good, the fruitiness of the Prosecco worked well with the strawberries and all in all, it was a great way to use them up.
We obviously needed something to eat as well and luckily had decided on chicken. Last year, we attempted to smoke a chicken but it didn’t work out too well so this time we decided just to cook it on the Weber with the lid on which worked much better. The chicken had picked up lots of smoky flavour from the charcoal and fell off the bone but wasn’t at all dried out. We served it with a simple salad and some potatoes we’d cooked in the coals.
Cassoulet
Cassoulet is one of those dishes that has attained a somewhat mythical aura over the years and people are sometimes surprised or disappointed that there is no “authentic” single recipe for such an iconic dish, but rather that various people or regions have different versions of it. It is of course a dish of peasant origins and people would have used what ingredients they had to hand at the time, rather than following a specific recipe. The beans were there to make the meat go further, and at least some of the meat would have been preserved. Which leaves us with typical ingredients being beans (white haricot beans), bacon, confit duck, sausages, pork and/or lamb or mutton.
Based on my own experiences of eating cassoulet in restaurants, I had formulated my own opinions on what should and should not be in cassoulet: It should always contain bacon, confit duck, Toulouse sausages and should not contain any lamb or mutton. So when I found this recipe that contained lamb and no confit duck, I initially disregarded it, but upon re-reading it, decided that it didn’t sound all that bad and of course my opinions on its “authenticity” were unimportant.
Cassoulet is a good wintery dish, but we found ourselves wondering what to do with some cannellini beans during the week and decided that it would be a good excuse to make cassoulet, which we have never cooked before. Cannellini beans are a little larger than the smaller haricot beans that are “traditional” but the recipe mentioned above specified them, which was a reason for using it even in the face of its almost unforgiveable confit duck omission.
The recipe is available via the link above, but here is a quick overview: Cook the beans for an hour with an onion and herbs, bacon and the rind from the pork belly. While the beans are cooking, brown diced lamb and pork belly and then roast them with the sausages. Then combine everything in a large casserole dish and cook in the oven for two hours.
This turned out nicely but didn’t have as much flavour as I remember some restaurant versions having. It is of course one of those dishes that is really hot when you first taste it and you can’t taste much, but then as it cools down the flavours develop. Which is a reason not to be greedy and impatient, but we had enjoyed the smell of it cooking so much that we didn’t have a lot of patience left by the time it was done. And there is some left over too, I’m sure it’ll be even better when reheated.
If anyone is interested, the Wikipedia cassoulet page describes the differences between some regional variations.
Halloumi
Several months ago, we had a griddle pan but it wasn’t a particularly good one. It was a non-stick one which still managed to stick, and it had quite shallow, wide ridges, which didn’t seem to work that well for griddling. At some point it mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again.
Every now and then we felt the need to griddle something but of course couldn’t without a griddle pan, so we recently picked up a new one. A cast iron one with deeper ridges. A real one in other words.
So, with our new griddle pan hanging in the kitchen, we wondered what to cook in it. Steak came to mind, but we’d just barbecued some steak recently to decided against that. I can’t remember exactly how we decided on halloumi, but once we had then we were convinced it was the best idea.
We served it with a pepper and caper salad, which was slightly sweet and sour (a bit too sour actually as I was a bit heavy handed with the vinegar) and went well with the saltiness of the halloumi. And a slice of spelt and sunflower seed bread, which had a dense, closed texture which also went very well with the rubberiness of the halloumi.
