Steak and Sauteed Potatoes
A perfect Friday evening meal cooked by Stephen, steak, lots of lovely sauteed potatoes, mushrooms and some yellow-sprouting-brocolli.
Pork Chops, Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Parsnips
Bit of a mish-mash (geddit?!) tonight as we were trying to use up vegetables from the weekend. We had lots of leftover potatoes, leeks and kale so Stephen suggested pork chops with mashed potatoes and the vegetables. I thought it would be more interesting to mix the vegetables up so I did that while he fried off the chops.
It turned out well, the kale was a little past it’s best but hidden amongst the mashed potatoes and sauteed leeks it wasn’t too bad. A good way to use up the leftovers and quick too.
Puttanesca
After the elaborateness of last night’s Thai dish, Stephen made us a simple puttanesca for dinner this evening. It was delicious and even better because he washed up afterwards too!
Thai Odyssey Part 1 – Sour Orange Curry of Trout and Vegetables
While on holiday last week, I ended up reading a lot of what I call the Big Pink Thai Book by David Thompson. We’ve had the book for a while but I hadn’t read that much of it in the past, which is why I took it on holiday with the intention of reading it.
The book covers the culture and the various regions of Thailand as an introduction to the food itself. It also gives a history of the development of Thai food and how it changes depending on the ingredients that were available in the different regions. I found all of this very interesting indeed and planned to set out on a mission to cook various Thai dishes that we hadn’t cooked before, cooking a new dish every week. Monday is a good day because if there are pastes to make then we can make them on the weekend.
So for the first edition tonight, we tried Sour Orange Curry of Trout and Vegetables. This is a fairly simple boiled curry from the Central Plains region. It was quite a change from the Thai food that we usually cook in that it didn’t contain coconut milk, lemongrass or lime. Coconut is actually quite common in the Central Plains along with the South, but less so in the North and North East.
The finished dish looked like this:
Not great presentation, but we were hungry!
To make the paste, we started off with:
5 long dried red chillis, deseeded, soaked in salted water and drained; 1 tablespoon chopped galangal, 3 tablespoons chopped red shallot, 2 tablespoons shrimp paste and a large pinch of salt. These were pounded into a paste, starting with the chillis and galangal and salt, then when they were smooth, adding the shallots and finally the shrimp paste. Which gave a paste looking like this:
The recipe said to use 100g of trout (or other freshwater fish) but we used about double that. We poached a quarter of the fish in three cups of fish stock (apparently Thai people rarely use fish stock and would probably have used chicken stock, but we used fish stock) and then broke it up and mixed it into the curry paste. This will act as a thickening agent when the paste is added to the curry.
To the stock, we added three tablespoons of tamarind water (tamarind pulp soaked and dissolved in water), a pinch of sugar and two tablespoons of fish sauce. Then we added the curry paste and simmered for a few minutes before adding a few yard-long beans, cut into sensible lengths. When these were almost cooked, we added some kale and then a minute or so later, the rest of the trout, cut into pieces. A couple of minutes later and it was done.
It tasted, as the book said it should, salty (from the fish sauce), sour (from the tamarind) and hot (from the chillis) in that order. I had expected it to taste a bit hotter than it did and thought that maybe our dried chillis were a bit old, but afterwards my lips were definitely tingling so the heat was certainly there, just in the background amongst the other flavours. Overall, it was rather good, which I was pleased about because I’d been a bit apprehensive about the fact that it contained no coconut milk and no lemongrass, which are the Thai ingredients that we both like most. Also, being a “boiled curry” rather than a “fried curry”, there is no frying of the curry paste in the beginning, which is the most exciting part.
The book gave a list of recommended accompaniments, but we were boring and just had it with rice. In a formal Thai meal, there should be various different styles of dishes served together and something like this would have been accompanied with a relish, a soup, some vegetables and probably some grilled or fried meat or fish in addition to the rice.
When making green curry as we have done on many occasions, the recipe that we use calls for some shrimp paste which we usually leave out. But having used it successfully here, I think we’ll put it in next time to give a bit more body; I usually find myself adding a bit more fish sauce than the recipe states anyway.
I’m not sure what we’ll be trying next Monday yet, we’ll have to wait and see.
Roast Chicken
It has become something of a tradition for us to have roast chicken when we get back from holiday. So, having been away in Scotland last week, we had roast chicken today. Kerri realised recently that we haven’t cooked the same thing twice so far this year and we were worried that having roast chicken would break our run of different dinners, but as it turned out we have been strangely lacking in roast chicken so far this year, so the run is intact.
Yesterday I worked on a roasting time calculator, which you might or might not have noticed in both the sidebar and also on its own separate page. It doesn’t look very pretty yet, but I’ll fix that soon. Of course, roasting a chicken today meant that I got to use it properly rather than just testing it. Which was very exciting of course.
The chicken turned out to be nice but not brilliant, not sure why as they usually turn out really well. The potatoes were really good though, as were the parsnips. Stuffing was good and the carrots were nice and carrotty and not too sweet. Lemony baby leeks were good but a little too lemony in places. Kale was okay. Gravy was really good when I tasted it in the pan but seemed to have lost some flavour on the plate for some reason.
Smoked Salmon Salad
Not all that exciting but very necessary after our week of potatoes and creamy sauces! This was dinner on Friday night and lunch on Saturday; usual salad with some hot smoked salmon. The salmon is very strongly flavoured but works well with the salad.
Scotland
We’ve just got back from a week in Scotland where we visited both Aberfeldy and Edinburgh. The main purpose of our trip was to relax and eat some good food, both of which we achieved.
One of our favourite places was the Courtyard, a bar/restaurant near to where we were staying in Aberfeldy. The menu was small and varied, relying heavily on local produce. We had lunch there last Sunday and shared a starter of smoked trout salad, this was serve with confit potaoes and dill creme fraiche (there was also the dreaded balsamic vinegar but it worked well with this dish so I’ll save he ranting for another time):
I then had pollack for the first time, we saw this appear often on menus while we were away. I really enjoyed it, the texture is similar to that of cod: firm and meaty. It was served with basil mash and a mussel brothe (a cream sauce with mussels). It was really tasty, possibly the best thing I ate.
Stephen chose oven baked ballotine of local pheasant stuffed with wild mushroom mousse, with barley risotto and game jus – we both enjoyed this, the addition of the barley gave the risotto an interesting texture.
We didn’t drink any whisky here but we would have been spoilt for choice if we’d wanted to:
While in Aberfeldy we stayed in a cottage and took the opportunity to cook “at home”, we’d both been looking forward to doing this but in reality it’s quite difficult because we didn’t have access to our store-cupboard of oils and spices. We resolved this by eating a steak pie which we bought from the local butcher, it was tasty but we didn’t have any gravy sadly (or mashed potatoes as we were trying not to totally over-indulge).
While in Edinburgh we read a review of Creelers, at this point we hadn’t eaten a lot of seafood so it seemed appropriate to eat there. We went at lunchtime and were the only visitors which seemed odd as the town was busy and the food brilliant. I had scallops which were served with a leeky, cream sauce similar to the sauce that the pollack came with but with smoked haddock instead of mussels.
Stephen chose halibut which was beautifully cooked and served with almond mash – the second time we’d been served this.
We weren’t brave enough to take photographs of all the food we ate but some other highlights included enormous langoustines and lots of great smoked salmon, real tablet (better than our attempt but we weren’t far off), oven-bottom rolls and deep fried haggis!
Macaroons
While shopping earlier I happened across these beautiful looking macaroons, I bought one of each colour for us to eat this evening (plus one to eat on the way home!) and after this evenings earlier disappointment I’m glad I did. The pink one was raspberry, the white vanilla and the brown coffee; we both liked the coffee best. It’s hard to describe the texture if you haven’t had them before, they’re essentially meringuey with a sticky, gooey inside and a fondant centre.
I’ve had these before from Paul but the ones I really want to try are from Laduree, I could try making them myself but these are so good (and only 40p each from my local deli) that I think I’ll leave it to the experts this time.
We’re off to Scotland tomorrow so our posts probably won’t be so regular for the next week, we’re both really excited about the food that’s on offer though so hope to post something exciting when we get back.
Lemon Chicken
I found a recipe for this in this month’s Olive magazine, clipped it and added it to the pile of “Things To Cook Soon”. I’ve been at home today and asked Stephen earlier what he felt like eating for dinner; I listed this among various lamb related dishes and also sausage casserole. This was his favourite though so I went out earlier and bought what I needed. The recipe called for preserved lemons which I found but they were £7 and as we only needed one I thought it was a bit excessive, the recipe mentioned you could also use ordinary lemons so that’s what I did.
When it came to cooking the dish it seemed too simple so, feeling brave after a glass of wine, I decided to tinker. I browned the chicken and removed it from the pan, sauteed the onions and garlic, added the chicken back in, deglazed with a glass of wine, added some parley, capers and the aforementioned lemon and put the dish in the oven for 35 minutes. I then added the olives and cooked for a further 10 minutes. Then I removed the chicken, bubbled the sauce for a minute or so to thicken, added some extra parsley and served with cous-cous.
The actual recipe said just to put all the ingredients (minus the capers) into the dish and put it into the oven for 35 minutes. Then the olives went in for 10 minutes, the chicken came out and the sauce bubbled. I’m not sure if my way of doing things added anything extra but I’m pretty certain that my addition of capers was wine-fulled madness. Why add something tart and briney to a dish that already has olives and lemons in it?
Stephen ate it and said he enjoyed it, I’m not sure if he was just being polite though. The chicken was moist and tender (probably because I browned it first 🙂 ) but the rest of the dish was too sharp for me. Note to self: if you thought a recipe sounded good then the chances are it is good, feel free to tinker once you’ve tasted the dish but not before.
Geng Gari Gai
I ate this recently in Busaba Eathai and it was lovely so we thought we’d try making it ourselves. Stephen made the paste on Wednesday night and we cooked it together last night.
This is the recipe from David Thompson’s “Thai Food”:
200g chicken thighs
4 medium potaotes (we used some new potatoes that were lurking in the bottom of the fridge)
4 cups coconut milk (we didn’t use quite that much)
2 cups coconut cream (we didn’t use it because we didn’t have any)
1 tablespoon palm sugar (we used about a teaspoon of golden caster sugar)
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 cup deep fried shallots (we didn’t use them)
Marinade
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
pinch of salt
1/2 cup coconut cream (we used coconut milk)
Paste
6-10 dried chillis, soaked and drained (we used seven)
Large pinch of salt
1 tablespoon chopped turmeric
4 tablespoons chopped red shallot
3 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 coriander root (we didn’t have any)
1 teaspoon white peppercorns
1 tablespoon coriander seeds, roasted (we increased this to make up for the lack of coriander root)
A little grated nutmeg
The cooking method was really complicated and there seemed to be gaps in the process and unnecessary steps so we did our own thing.
We started off by simmering the potatoes in some coconut milk before adding the marinated chicken (which had been resting in coconut milk overnight, as per the recipe) and vegetables. We fried off the paste in a separate pan for about five minutes before adding the sugar and fish sauce and cooking for a further minute or so. We then combined the whole lot and cooked it on a high heat for a further five minutes.
It was a great success and it doesn’t really need any refinement which is unusual for the first attempt at a dish. The addition of coconut cream would have made it thicker but it didn’t really need it. I enjoyed it more than the restaurant version actually.
