Mushroom Risotto
Kerri was going to be out today, so we hadn’t planned anything particularly elaborate. As it was though, she wasn’t feeling well and stayed at home. Which meant that we needed dinner and hadn’t planned any. Kerri suggested mushroom risotto with thyme and lemon, which sounded like a good idea so we made chicken stock from yesterday’s chicken carcass, bought some mushrooms and got to work.
We followed a fairly standard risotto recipe, with a few additions. We used half chestnut mushrooms and half mixed wild mushrooms. We fried the mushrooms in batches in a mixture of butter and olive oil with some thyme, then when they were done, put onto a plate and sprinkled with some lemon juice (found that in a Jamie Oliver risotto recipe). We also soaked some dried porcini mushrooms in hot water and then chopped them, mixing them with half the chestnut mushrooms which we also chopped finely.
After adding the first ladle of stock, we added the finely chopped porcini and chestnut mushrooms and then carried on as normal. We mixed the the porcini soaking water into the stock to give a more mushroomy flavour, and also added a few dashes of mushroom ketchup. With the last ladle of stock, we added the rest of the mushrooms and also the zest of half a lemon.
Quite late in the process we realised that we didn’t have any parmesan, which was a bit of an oversight. We decided that we would just live without it and have a slightly more healthy risotto. It did turn out rather well and was very mushroomy, with the rice cooked until just soft enough but still with some bite. It was good without the parmesan, but I did end up grating some manchego onto it though (needed to make do with what we had), which added a bit extra.
Roman Chicken
This is a recipe that I cut out from Delicious ages ago which we thought would fit in with our healthy eating plan. The recipe said it took 50 minutes but we did it in about half an hour and it was really good. We’ve done a number of chickeny/tomatoey/winey dishes before but this is the best we’ve tried so far.
Serves Two
2 chicken legs
2 chicken thighs
1tbsp flour
Pinch of oregano
Olive oil
Half sliced onion
50ml white wine
200g tomatoes
1/2 tbsp tomato puree
1 garlic clove, crushed
1tbsp capers
40g olives
Dust the chicken with flour and oregano and brown.
Remove chicken from pan and fry onions until golden.
Add all other ingredients (including chicken), season and simmer for 20 minutes.
We served this with brown rice and steamed green cabbage.
Steamed Sea Bream
This was based on a Jamie Oliver recipe that was reproduced in the Observer Food Monthly some time last year. The original recipe called for the bream to be fried but in the intersts of being healthy we decided to steam it.
Despite the huge amount of garlic, chilli, ginger, lime, lime leaves, lemongrass and soy that it marinated in the flavour just didn’t permeate the fish and the end result was pretty dull and tasteless.
I’m curious as to how much extra flavour would have been produced if we’d fried the fish, not curious enough to try though I don’t think!
Beef in Mirin and Soy
Yesterday heralded the start of our new year healthy eating plan. In honour of the occasion I spent some time on Sunday going through our recipe files looking for low-fat dishes that looked exciting. I find it helps to be organised about what you’re eating so those mid-afternoon lows aren’t too difficult to get over, variety also helps so we’re not eating the same things every day.
Stephen then went through my chosen recipes and selected the ones he fancied and having bought the ingredients we settled on this dish first.
It seemed to come together very quickly and the smell of the food cooking was really good, the end dish was tasty but a little too sweet for our taste despite reducing the amount of sugar. It’s definitely something we’ll try again though because it checked all the boxes: quick, tasty, healthy.
Serves Two:
75ml white wine
50ml dark soy sauce
50ml mirin
1cm piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon caster sugar (next time we’ll half this)
1/2 onion, sliced (increase this next time)
250g rump steak, thinly sliced
50ml water
Put the wine, soy sauce, mirin, ginger, sugar and water in a saucepan over a medium heat. Cook so that the sugar dissolves then bring to the boil and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
Add the onion and simmer for a further 8-10 minutes. Add the beef and simmer until just cooked.
We served this with pak choi and rice but noodles would also have worked well.
Pot Roast Pork Loin with Cider
Stephen was given Mark Hix’s book British Regional Food for Christmas last year and while we’ve both enjoyed reading it, we’ve never cooked anything from it. So today, when we decided to roast something for lunch we thought we’d make this dish which hails from the South West.
We bought a piece of pork loin from our butcher yesterday and left it uncovered in the fridge, one of his tips for good crackling, we’ve done this before and it works well.
This dish required the rind to be be removed so we did that this morning, poured a kettle of boiling water on it, dried it thoroughly and then sprinkled it with salt. We cooked that separately to make (brilliant and very crunchy!) crackling.
The rest of the pork was roasted in the oven for half an hour on it’s highest setting before the vegetables (onion, carrot and celery) were added with some thyme and some cider. The heat was reduced to 160 and the meat continued to cook for a further hour and fifteen minutes during which time we basted the pork every fifteen minutes with the cider.
We rested the pork for 15 minutes or so while Stephen made gravy. The pork was served with some mashed potatoes, the crackling and some January King cabbage.
It was very good, the meat was cooked perfectly and was moist and tender with a subtle, background flavour of cider. The cider also made a really tasty gravy and the mashed potatoes (baked in their skins in the oven) were fluffy.
Chocolate Fondant
Did I say we were starting our new year diet on Monday? In the spirit of going crazy we decided to make something chocolatey for dessert and opted for these chocolate fondants from the James Tanner book that I received when I did the Cook The Books show for Channel Five.
Serves Two:
65g chocolate
65g butter
2 eggs
37g sugar
25g flour
1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
Melt chocolate and butter and leave to cool.
Whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and doubled in volume.
Fold eggs into chocolate then add the flour and cocoa.
Spoon into buttered moulds and cook for seven minutes until risen.
Eat!
Tartiflette!
I’ve been really excited about this all day, it’s been on our “Things To Cook Soon” list since last year but the amount of cheese and cream has always given us an excuse not to cook it. However, our new year diet starts on Monday so we decided to go crazy this evening and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Our version was based on this Waitrose recipe which we followed almost exactly; we didn’t sprinkle thyme on the top and we cooked the dish for an extra 15 minutes but otherwise it was the same.
And wow. It was amazing. But then, it was always going to be amazing….potatoes, cream, garlic, cheese and bacon. It’s a classic combination and it certainly didn’t let us down.
While researching recipes we came across this link from Wikipedia which explained that the dish was created in the eighties by the Reblochon trading union as a way to increase sales.
Stuffed Mushrooms
Stephen bought some enormo-mushrooms yesterday for the stew but they looked too good to slice up so instead we stuffed them and had them for lunch today.
I part cooked them in the oven before stuffing them with a mixture of cheese, garlic, breadcrumbs and pancetta. We served them with some lighly toasted brown bread. They were tasty (if a little too garlicky) and made a good lunch.
Beef and Stout Casserole
Neither Stephen nor I were at work yesterday so we took the opportunity to cook something slow. We chose a beef dish from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Meat book which used stewing beef and Guinness. Recipe below serves 8-10 which we obviously scaled back.
1.5kg stewing beef
250g bacon
50g butter
500g onions
50g seasoned flour
1 litre stout
2 bay leaves
Thyme
Parsley stalks
250g button mushrooms
250g flat mushrooms
Salt and pepper
Brown the bacon and onions and remove from the pan.
Brown the beef and add the bacon and onions back to the pan.
Add the stout to deglaze.
Add the herbs and salt and pepper, bring to the boil.
Cook for 2.5 hours adding the cooked mushrooms an hour before the end.
Serve with mashed potatoes.
We both enjoyed the dish and appreciated the amount of flavour that came from such few ingredients and such a simple cooking process.
Scallops and Pancetta with Jerusalem Artichoke and Potato Rosti
Does that win the prize for longest-ever-blog-post-title?
We had some Jerusalem artichokes languishing in the fridge, Stephen had picked them up to go with the lamb on Sunday but we forgot them. We weren’t sure what to do with them but a quick search threw up lots of options for pairing them with scallops, never a bad thing because we both love scallops.
We both think of them as being similar to parsnips and potatoes in texture so it seemed sensible to make rosti out of them; scallops and pancetta is a classic combination so that’s what we did.
I overcooked the artichokes in the beginning so grating them proved quite tricky, I got there in the end though (and managed to keep my nails intact) and produced two reasonably sized rosti cakes. Stephen fried them off when he got home, along with the scallops and pancetta and we served them with some buttery Savoy cabbage.
The flavours all worked well together and we both enjoyed it, I think my comment about it making a good starter was telling though as there wasn’t nearly enough food and I’ve just caught Stephen at the pinenuts again.
