The Sunday Roaster

Focaccia

2011-08-08T18:05:00.001Z

Thought I'd write a quick post about the joys of Focaccia, which is an Italian flat bread for those of you not familiar with it. I first tasted Focaccia when I was an exchange student at the Italian University of Padova, and have loved it ever since. It has a light yet doughy texture, with a subtle chew, and is very often cooked with crusty salt and herbs - my favourite way of preparing it.

Two shallow Focaccia ready to go in the oven

The best thing about Focaccia as far as I'm concerned is that it can be prepared so easily - that is if you have a bread machine at least. Not that I bake bread in a bread machine, that really wouldn't be possible with Focaccia. It's the kneading and rising side of things that I use it for. Some people love to knead I know, they see it as a source of relaxation, but to me it's simply a pain in the hands!

My bread machine is an old Panasonic model, well over ten years of service but never misses a beat. It has a good selection of different settings, but only one is much used in my household, 'Pizza'. This is only a 45 minute cycle, but provided you give your dough a good hour or two once the bread machine cycle has run then, it works well for a whole range of different Italian style flat breads, not least of which is Focaccia.

Here's the recipe I use. This amount will do for a large lasagne style deep dish, or for two regular flan dishes as shown in the pictures.

1 tsp dried yeast
450g Bread Flour
1½ tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
275ml water
2 tbsp olive oil (plus extra for coating the pan and for drizzling)

The method is quite simple:

Empty the yeast into the bottom of the bread machine bucket, add the flour on top, then sprinkle with the salt and the sugar, pour on the water, and finally add the olive oil.
Let the machine run the Pizza cycle or similar, then leave the dough undisturbed for an hour or so.
After the hour is up, pour a generous amount of olive oil into a deep baking dish and empty the dough out into it. Turn the dough in the olive oil to coat it, knocking it back and pushing firmly into all the corners so that it fits the rectangle. Leave for another hour or so somewhere warm, covered in a tea towel.
After the second hour is up your dough should be quite risen. Now push your finger deep down into the dough, but not quite to the bottom, to make the characteristic holes. Scatter generously with rosemary leaves and sea salt, and drizzle with more olive oil.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200ºC for 15-20 minutes until as brown as you prefer.
Leave to cool briefly, for as long as you can resist that gorgeous, soft, herby and salty delight ...

Topping and other flavours can be added according to season and taste, this year my wild garlic with caramelised lemon zest worked particularly well.

Wild garlic and caramelised lemon zest at the front, plain wild garlic at the back.

If you'd like to see more pictures of my Focaccia's being prepared, head over to my Focaccia pictures in Picasa Web Albums.

"Red Devil" Cheese Scone Noses: A Comic Relief Special

2011-03-17T22:43:00.004Z

Way back in 1988 a new institution was born in this country - Comic Relief. I was back in School back then, but I remember it quite distinctly, as a friend and I (Ben Clover I seem to remember) had been given special dispensation to stay up late and watch the live broadcast on the TV, in the sixth form common room. Powered only by a variety of hot drinks, plenty of toast, and an army of assorted spreads, we made it through right to the end of transmission. I can't for the life of me remember much about the broadcast, except for the strong sense that things were amiss in large chunks of Africa, and that Lenny Henry wasn't entirely sure what was going on for most of the programme, but at least I can say I was there.

Fast forward to 2011 and Comic Relief it still with us, and as fab as ever. Tomorrow is comic relief day, and for once I decided to cook in honour of it, and something a bit unusual to boot. A spicy - and very red - variation on my Mum's cheese scones.

Red Devil Cheese Scone Noses

Now my Mum's cheese scones are - of course - the best cheese scones on the planet. Aren't all Mum's cheese scones? I make them myself quite often, they're a particularly brilliant way of using up milk and cheese which has started to lose its lustre, shall we say. I've even done variations, my Brie & Lemon Balm Scones the most successful so far. But tonight I thought I'd push the boat out, and try something a bit ... well ... odd.

The most long running theme of Comic Relief has to be the red nose, and in fact the whole enterprise is often referred to as Red Nose Day - or RND as it's now cropping up on Twitter. So what, I figured about Red Nose Scones? But not just plain old red noses, but spicy, hot, cheesy red noses. To the kitchen! Actually, I had no way of making any any red food at all at this point, bar adding vast quantities of tomato puree, but luckily my neighbour Angela was happy to share some food colouring that she had spare, so I was in business.

But back to the recipe. Really simple, First here's the cheese scone recipe, sans Comic Reliefness ...

"Red Devil" Cheese Scone Noses

by Rich Osborne, March 17th, 2011

A spicey twist on a classic cheese scone recipe, perfect for comedy events. Should take about 20 minutes or so to prepare, 15 minutes to cook, so 35 minutes in total.

Ingredients

450g plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon mustard powder
200g strong cheddar cheese, grated
100g butter, thickly diced
milk to mix, up to ½ pint

Now that will make you fab cheese scones, which need to be shaped and baked in the usual way. I have a trick (actually, my Mum has a trick) with the preparation of the dough too, but that'll have to wait till another time. The processor took a nasty slice off my finger, so my typing's a bit slow tonight ...

To make my RND Red Devils you just need to make the following additions:

4 teaspoons of red food colouring (Less than four might well work, but I had four, so I used four. They do need to be REALLY red, after all)
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 dash hot sauce, e.g. tabasco or similar
1 tablespoon of tomato puree

Method

Mix all the dry ingredients in a food processor, then add the butter and process briefly. Add the cheese, process briefly again and then add the food coluring, the hot sauce and the tomato puree. Then start to add the milk with the machine running until the mixture forms a firm ball inside the machine.

Shape into walnut shaped balls and bake in a fan oven at 180° for 15 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack.

What you should end up with is something like this:

Front lot ready for the oven, back lot are baked already and now cooling

With the quantities from the recipe above you should end up with at least 30 red devil noses, hopefully more. Personally I got 35 out of it (it may have been 36 actually - I've lost track of how many I've eaten already).

I think they would be fab split in half whilst still warm, and served with cold butter, especially a chive or garlic butter, but they need to go to work tomorrow to join the other baked goods being sold to raise money for charity. Of course everyone else will be producing sweet cakes and the like, so chances are my little red devils might be coming home again with me - but then again you never know. They are damn tasty, and on comic relief day anything might happen ....

Brasato di Cervo (Braised Venison)

2011-01-08T08:42:00.002Z

Well that's Christmas over for another year, and for the first time in many years we've not been able to get to Italy to see the other side of the family and celebrate with them. There's a very good reason we've not been keen to travel far, the arrival of our Son, Max, but that doesn't mean we're not disappointed and feeling a bit low about it. The Italian trip has become something of an institution and it feels like something is missing somehow.

Luckily Nonna did manage to visit before Christmas and meet her grandson briefly in December, and she also brought practically an entire suitcase full of food for us, mostly local from the region. I swear she thinks I starve her daughter back here in England, and the food here is desperately in need of some hearty Italian additions! I have to admit I struggle to disagree given what she brought, the small crunchy breads called Bibanesi for example which I love and can't find in this country. There's also the wonderful Cotechino, a form of pork sausage that's probably quite bad for you but tastes delicious, especially when served with puy lentils cooked with vegetables and butter. There's also the truly local food, venison shot in the Italian alps by the Italians father or one of his friends - it's never entirely clear who shot what it seems. This time around we had mince and something labelled "Rosbeaf Cervo", which I think was some sort of topside joint. Either way I decided to do it in Nonna's style, something I've had many times when visiting the in-laws, a braised dish with root vegetables and wine.

Brasato di Cervo

The trouble with wild food is that you're never entirely sure what you're getting. Farmed food has the reliability of mass production at least, if not the flavour of wild, but it does mean that when a cut ends up on your kitchen sideboard you can't be 100% sure how best to cook it. Braising is something of a fallback in this respect, as there are very few cuts that won't be delicious after slow cooking in a moist flavour rich environment. This dish is something I've seen made a lot in Italy by the Italians mother as well, so I did have something of a head start on it, plus a handy recipe check just a phone call away.

The meat as it arrived - just what is this?!

Nonna is actually a fabulous cook, but in that home style way that is so often overlooked. She cooks simple food incredibly well, something which perhaps could be said is a hallmark of all great Italian cuisine, but something that can be tricky to replicate back home. I find the tendency is to overdo the frippary and miss the more basic - but critical - aspects of the cooking, which is why proper Italian food is so hard to find outside of Italy. By that I mean the underlying aspects such as how long to cook each part of the recipe, and the correct quantities of each of the ingredients.

This brasato recipe is a case in point, deceptively simple, easy to make, but hard to master. You start with a quick sofritto, then spend some time browning the meat exceptionally well, next deglaze with white wine and then very slow cook until tender.

Step 1: Sofritto

Sofritto is the Italian word for what the French call a mirepoix, a combination of onion, carrot and celery chopped into small dice that is slowly fried in oil or butter to form the base of other dishes. Here is is used as the base flavour for the braise, and also as the sauce used to dress some pasta for the primo.

Often when I cook onions I prefer to do them long and slow, creating an underlying sweetness and mellow onion flavour, but seeing as this is a slow braise anyway there's not so much need. One thing that is important though is to add the ingredients one by one, not all together. This means you can more accurately judge different lengths of cooking for different vegetables, and also that you won't overload the pan cooling it down. The golden rule is:

Onion first, 5 minutes or do
Carrots next, another 5 minutes or maybe a few more
Celerey, for just 3 minutes or even less

Now I should be using celery here, but a trick I've used a few times in the past is to swap this for celeriac leaves instead. I first started to do this as I had some celeriac leaves left over and didn't want to throw them away, but have found that they flavour just as well as celery and in some ways add more interesting notes and texture to a dish. I love the way the leaves end up as speckled flecks of green through the sauce.

Onions in first

Then the carrots after 5 minutes

Next some rosemary and bay

Now for the roughly chopped celeriac leaves

The finished sofritto

I also used a little garlic in this recipe, sliced thickly and added after the celeriac leaves. No need to cook it out, it will soften and flavour the sauce in the long slow braising. There's also some rosemary and bay, but you can add whatever herbs you like really or have available. I wouldn't bother adding dried though, there won't be much flavour left from them by the end.

Thickly sliced garlic

Step 2: Frying the Meat

Once the vegetables have been cooked till just softening it's the meat's turn. Simply turn the sofritto out into a dish on the side, and a little more oil into your pan and then get the meat frying.

Sofritto left on the side. Doesn't matter if it cools down a little, it'll soon be hot again.

Meat is often browned before cooking, and this was once thought to 'seal the meat', keeping it juicy by creating a crust on the outside that keeps moisture in. It's now pretty well known though that this simply isn't true, moisture can escape just as easily from browned meat, what keeps it moist is the cooking technique. What browning does do though is create the Maillard reaction, that wonderful rich dark brown colour imparts all sorts of delicious flavours to the dish.

As usual in many recipes the meat is first tossed in seasoned flour, which will act as a thickener for the sauce. Unusually though the meat is browned for a very long time, 15 minutes or longer. This is something that I've learned from Nonna, and is an absolutely critical part of this dish. It imparts such a deep an rich flavour to the finished brasato it has to be tasted to be be believed!

The meat tossed in seasoned flour

The very well browned meat

The wine has just been added, but the pan not yet deglazed.

Sofritto and meat together, ready for braising.

Once the meat has had it's 15-20 minute browning, delgaze with a generous glass of white wine, and then add the sofritto back in and it's ready for the long slow braise.

Interesting point here - the addition of white wine rather than red wine is another hall mark of Italian cooking that I've discovered. More often than not I'd have used red wine before I met the Italian, but have since learned that it is much more usual to use white wine even in red meat dishes, and I think it does produce a finer result.

Step 3: The long slow braise

Finally, time to do nothing! All you need do now is get the meat on a very slow heat, cover it and leave it alone. When I say very slow, you should be able to see the odd bubble coming up from the bottom of the dish but nothing more than that. The very worst thing you can do to a braise is cook it fast, nothing will toughen meat up quicker. As for timing, you should be aiming for at least 2 hours for a piece this size I would say, longer for larger. If it starts to dry out at all just add a tablespoon or two of water.

The finished dish, a couple of hours later.

Serving: Primo and Secondo

Back home in Italy this would probably be served in the traditional way, primo first then secondo, with the same dish providing the sauce for both. Pasta and rice are usually only served as a 'primo' course, not as a main, with meat and vegetables or salad as a 'secondo' course. A braise like this is perfect as you have a sauce for both.

First take out the meat and leave it to rest as usual - this will help the meat to become even more tender as it relaxes. For this dish I then blitzed some of the sauce in a food processor to make a smoother sauce for some fresh pasta, keeping about half the sauce in the pan with the resting meat.

Sauce on the left for meat, water boiling for pasta, and blitzed pasta sauce warming.

Fresh egg tagliatelle. Hand cut rather than machine cut this time, so a bit rough!

Fresh pasta like this really only needs a minute or so cooking, depending how thinly you've rolled it. I served the braise with some dauphinois potatoes left over from New Year's Eve's dish, so pretty easy food all in.

The primo, fresh egg tagliatelle with the sauce slightly blitzed.

Secondo, slices of braised meat and dauphinois, dressed with the braising sauce.

Hopefully this dish doesn't look too complex, and I hope you'll find time to try it. The flavours really are wonderful, and of course you get leftovers so you only have to cook it once and you can get several meals out of it.

P.S. There's a full library of images from this dish on my Picasa Web Album, Brasato di Cervo. This also includes pictures of making beef, red wine and wild mushroom ravioli - more left overs from New Year. When making pasta it's always a good idea to make a fair bit as you can either freeze it or dry it for another time. Making ravioli like this is a great way of using up leftovers too.

Shoulder of Pork with Quince & Chilli

2010-11-26T17:59:00.000Z

Quick note to regular readers: I've not written for a while since my son Max was born a few weeks ago. Whilst I've still been cooking, I've not had quite as much time to write about it as I'd like to!

Quinces on the tree

I guess I've always been a seasonal cook, and whilst that means you get the pros of having the very best produce to cook with, it also means that you have to cope with various gluts of products now and then through the year. Right now if there's one thing I tend to have a lot of it's quince, a wonderfully fragrant hard fruit that needs to be cooked before eating. I bought my particular tree, a Quince Vranja, many years ago now, and although it's never grown particularly large it does crop very well, with prolific large, heavy golden pear shaped fruits. They have the most wonderful perfume to them, though they can go brown and decay quite quickly if you don't use them quick once they've fallen from the tree. For that reason I never tend to pick them, just take them as they fall.

Cooking wise quince is most often paired up with apple, added to fruit pies and sauces, and adds interesting notes of flavour and texture. I've also made jams and jellies with it, various interesting desserts, as well as the famous quince cheese - an odd concoction, but certainly tasty. Kind of like home made jelly sweets, though more often paired with cheese. This time around though I wanted to try something roast'ish, but had already bought a good looking shoulder of pork for Sunday. Luckily I came across an interesting looking recipe from Sophie Grigson on the BBC's website, Slow-roast shoulder of pork with quinces served with savoy cabbage and roasted potato wedges.

I was a bit suspect of the recipe to start with, thinking that it might turn out too sweet with tough pork and soft crackling, but knowing what an experienced cook Sophie is it hardly seemed my place to question her, so I pretty much went along with it. My main differences were:

Shoulder on the bone, not rolled
Normal onions, not red
Dark muscavado sugar, not light

I also didn't bother greasing the dish before hand, and decided to cut my quince and onions into chunks rather than slices. Here's a picture of my ingredients before preparation:

All the ingredients before preparation

And two pictures before going in the oven, one without the dressing and one with:

Ingredients ready for the next stage

Ingredients with 'dressing'

You'll notice I'm using a Dutch Oven here, or what I call my French Roaster. Oddly enough it's something I picked up that was discarded by someone else, and it's been a gem in my collection ever since. It's ridged bottom together with the dimples in the lid mean it can cook wonderful pot roasts and self-baste at the same time.

As Sophie suggested I did this with potato wedges and cabbage. I have a neat (lazy!) trick with potato wedges, that means I can cook them from cold. Once the dried potato wedges have been tossed in cold seasoned olive oil I arrange them on the roasting pan making sure that they're all skin side down. I then put them in a hot oven (200° or so) and make sure I don't touch then for at least half an hour - this stops them from sticking to the pan, avoiding that horrible moment when you go to toss your potato and the skin sticks to the pan whilst the rest of the potato just breaks away!

Potato wedges - all skin side down!

And the result? Well the flavour was outstanding. The quince was in no way too sweet, and the chilli was a revelation. Great combination. Knowing how well quince and apple go together I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that quince would also be a good match! The crackling was too soft, but I have another trick to deal with that. If this happens to me I simply take the crackling off the meat, put the meat to rest somewhere warm as usual, and then pop the crackling back into a hot oven on a new roasting tray for 20 minutes or so as the meat rests. That usually does the trick. The meat was pretty tender considering it had been roasted rather quickly - shoulder would usually be done cooler for longer. But it was in no way too tough. Perhaps that's also a mark of the quality of the meat - a saddleback from Oakcroft Farm, bought at Cullompton farmers market. As I've said before in my Top Roasting Tips, the quality of your meat is more important than pretty much anything else in my opinion.

The roast out of the oven. Looks a little 'caramelised' on the edges perhaps (i.e. burnt :-) but there was no bitterness at all

Sliced meat ready for serving. Lovely and tender.

Finished dish

All in all I can definitely say this is a dish I think I'll be doing again, though perhaps with one or two more tweaks.

P.S. It also went on to make a great sweet & sour pork dish later in the week with almost no more effort, so two dishes in one here!

Wild Mushroom Foraging: How to tell Real Chanterelle from Fake Chanterelle

2010-09-12T07:13:00.003Z

Well mushroom season is back again, finally, and we had our first outing yesterday. I'd heard from others that it was a good season already, and sure enough we weren't disappointed - sometimes we go looking and come back empty handed, but this time around I'm happy to say that we got a pretty good haul.

Boletes & Chanterelles

I've been foraging for wild mushrooms for years now, and have slowly built my skills so that I can identify mushrooms correctly. I still find it tricky to tell the difference sometimes though, I have to say, and usually find myself poring through my mushroom books once home just to make sure. Roger Phillips's "Mushrooms" (he has a website too at http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/) is my key tome, as it is for many others, but I also have several others from people like Carluccio. I actually keep the Phillips book in the back of the car with my mushroom knife - you never know when you might find something tasty!

How to Start Identifying Mushrooms

Learning how to identify mushrooms takes time above everything else, partly of course because mushrooms are seasonal, so you only have a few months in which to practice. I think there are two great pieces of advice I would pass on to any budding mushroom hunter:

First, get to know the major poisonous mushrooms before you know any others. There are actually quite a small group of common dangerous mushrooms, e.g. Death Cap, Panther Cap, Destroying Angel. Once you get your eye in and know what to look for it's relatively simple to spot them, and you can then be comfortable that you're protected from at least those deadly mushrooms that really will kill you.
Second, pick a small group (i.e. genera) of mushrooms and focus on that, so you can comfortably identity mushrooms within just that group. Once you start learning more about mushrooms you soon realise that there are many, many different structures within them that set them apart from each other, so mushrooms that previously seemed exactly alike will suddenly be quite obviously different. You learn that even things like size can be quite specific, sometimes it's possible to rule out a certain species based on size alone.

Identifying Real Chanterelle versus Fake Chanterelle

When it comes to identifying mushrooms, one thing that has taken me years to feel truly confident about is telling the fake chanterelle (Hygrophoropsis Aurantiaca) from the real chanterelle (Cantharellus Cibarius). Many books and websites will tell you that it's quite easy to tell the difference between these two, but that's not been the case in my experience, so I thought I'd share here what I know just in case others have been equally as frustrated.

Chanterelle (or Girolle as they're also sometimes known) are of course one of the very best edible mushrooms - the Italian would probably say they are the best I reckon - and we're lucky enough to know a few local patches where they grow. Mushrooms of course grow in the same spot year in year out, provided you don't damage the underground root structures (i.e. mycelium) when harvesting, so once you've found a good spot it's worth keeping it under your hat! Trouble is fake chanterelles very often grow in the same locality, so chances are you'll probably encounter both.

I've read books that say you can identify which is which by colour, but they often seem very very similar. Others say you can by smell, but whilst true chanterelles smell of apricots, I've often found fake chanterelles can smell a bit fruity too. In blind tests I've always been able to spot one from the other if I have both, but given a single species I'm not so sure I could tell by smell alone. Another point of difference seems to be that the fake has a hollow stem, but the trouble is you could possibly find a true chanterelle with enough maggot damage (the mushroom hunters nemesis!) to confuse I reckon.

For me there is one absolutely unmistakeable difference between the true chanterelle and the fake chanterelle - the gills. A true chanterelle has primitive gills, a fake chanterelle has true gills.

Now the trouble with that statement of course, at least the trouble if you're not familiar with mushroom structure, is that the chanterelle is not a fish. Gills, from a mushrooms point of view, are what runs from the stem to the rim under the cap of the mushroom. On your normal supermarket mushroom they're usually white.

I'm not going to go on at length about them here, as this is actually a really complex subject, but it's hopefully enough to say that the diversity and structure of the gills is an absolutely key part of identifying mushrooms. Some mushrooms don't even have gills, but have other structures in their place. The wonderful hedgehog mushroom (which is delicious by the way) has spines for example, not gills at all, making it almost impossible to misidentify, as mushrooms which have spines are a very small group.

Chanterelles are unusual in that they have primitive gills, and that's exactly what it sounds like. Normal mushroom gills are thin and papery, well formed and uniform. Primitive gills are more like ridges on the surface of the mushroom underbody, they tend to be more haphazard and are an extension of the underbody itself, rather than a thin sheet of material protruding from it.

But enough words from me, I'm going to let my pictures finish this post. Below are a number of shots I took of two mushrooms, the first on the left is a true chanterelle that's destined for risotto. The second mushroom on the right is a fake chanterelle that's destined for the recycling bin. Hopefully the difference between their two gill structures is clear!

Food, Fashion & Fish: How being a bit different can save you a packet

2010-09-05T11:40:00.002Z

I'm an avid collector of cook books, but not just any cook books. I tend to look for books which offer specific insights into a region or type of cooking, or older books which might have information which has been forgotten. You'll often find me in charity shops or second hand book shops rummaging amongst the shelves looking for hidden gems.

One of the last I picked up on one of these haunts was titled "Fishing for Food" by Trevor Housby. It was published in 1979 and sold then for the grand price of 99p. It cost me 50p, which I suppose isn't bad depreciation for something that's over 30 years old, though of course 99p would have bought you a fair bit more back in '79.

It's a fascinating book (well, more an extended pamphlet really) on all different types of fishing, whether from shore or boat, and also on lots of different types of fish and how good they are to eat. The usual suspects are there, bass for example is highly recommended, but I noticed as I skimmed through there was a section at the back for 'Odd Fish' and what should I find tucked in there but monkfish - and what it had to say there was quite surprising. It very clearly stated that "monkfish has very little value as food".

Monkfish? Not good eating?

Now I've enjoyed the odd bit of monkfish in the past, and have done the usual recipes that most cooks will have done, e.g. the roasted loin wrapped in ham, But to be honest I've never been able to justify the experience of eating monkfish with the price. It's an exorbitantly priced fish at the best of times, and when there is so much other great fish to choose to cook I can't stomach the (no pun intended!) extra cost - I just don't find I get the extra flavour that I expect with that extra cost.

On closer examination it seemed my new book was actually talking about a slightly different monkfish to the ones we usually consume - monkfish and angler fish are often called the same thing, and it's the angler fish which has the tasty tail, some other monkfish truly are not good as food. But it did spark me into thinking a bit more about food and fashion nonetheless, and specifically fish.

Last night was a case in point. I was at a local fishmonger looking for something for supper, and being the end of the day there wasn't much left. It was dabs, plaice, monkfish, dover sole or whiting. Now dover sole is marvellous stuff, no question, but very expensive too. I'm very fond of a bit of plaice though, and these were still stiff as a board they were so fresh - a great sign in fish. But it was the price that was most surprising. I could have bought some monkfish at £31 per kilo, but the plaice were selling at only £9 per kilo! No doubt in my mind what to buy, so I spent £5 on a couple of lovely fresh plaice which I then cooked up meuniere style with new potatoes and runner beans from the garden.

Plaice Meuniere

I guess many people are aware that fashion changes the price of food - it wasn't so long ago that oysters were food for the poor for example, and now they're served with champagne at specialist oyster bars. If you can move beyond the trendy food though you can save yourself a packet and still enjoy really great fish and other seafood.

Try something new, save yourself a packet

Plaice it seems is there right now, but if you're not keen on that there will always be things like dabs - fish too small and too plain to attract the interest of chefs. Another great fish that is often still cheap is Gurnard, an odd looking thing but with a wonderful flavour and a great texture too - much better than your monkfish I reckon, and at at least half the cost! My favourite way is cooking is whole and skinned with sage butter, wonderful stuff.

Gurnard pan fried whole with sage butter and lemon mash

Whatever fish you choose, just remember that something a little different might be more rewarding than you think, and be cheaper to boot. Diversity is the spice of life, so save some pennies and buy something different!

P.S. As an interesting aside, whilst researching for this post I came across this article talking about the rise of monkfish back in 1997.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3190/is_n30_v31/ai_19648691/

P.P.S. Another interesting aside perhaps, and a lesson to those who always trust the first website they read. Here are two articles on Gurnard. Apparently it's either got a stunning flavour and a good texture or is bland, depending who you believe :-) Personally I think I'll stick to believing my tastebuds, and they give it the thumbs up!

P.P.P.S. One final note then I'm done, honest. If you're looking for a good book on fish in general, and not only how to get your plaice into fillets but also to prepare a meuniere sauce, then look no further than Rick Stein's Seafood. Techniques and recipes for just about all the classic fish dishes you could want.

Farfalle with Broad Beans, Bacon, Red Onion & Thyme

2010-09-02T17:08:00.001Z

Not strictly a Sunday roast this, but it's one of my own inventions that's good enough for sharing I think. I tend to be an inventive cook ... but as with all inventions, not everything is worth sharing, believe me! I wanted to go for a bit of a photo recipe this time around, as I'm aware I can be a bit lax with measurements - hopefully the photos make up for it.

I first knocked this together a few years back when we started to grow our own broad beans. It was one of those classic "what can I cook with these leftovers" dishes, when all I had was a ton of fresh broad beans, a few bits and pieces in the fridge, and plenty of summer sunshine. It's simplicity itself to make - the secret of all good Italian food, but relies on excellent quality ingredients in the correct proportions - that's the other secret to Italian cooking, and the one that most people tend to overlook.

Fresh broad beans, ready for cooking

Now in truth I'm not brilliant at measuring ingredients - unless I'm baking I tend to play it very much by eye/nose/whatever. I can't give exact proportions here, but hopefully the pictures will give you a clear idea of just how much of everything you'll need if you wanted to try and replicate this dish.

Ingredients

Farfalle pasta (the little bows)
Broad beans (cooked and shelled unless very fresh)
Streaky bacon (I prefer mine unsmoked, but that's a matter of personal preference)
Red onion, thiny sliced
Fresh thyme
Lemon zest
A little white wine (optional really)
Creme fraiche

Some of the ingredients

Preparation

First off prepare the thyme and lemon. I love thyme - well, I love all herbs to be honest! - so am very generous, but add as much as you think you'd like to eat. The lemon zest should be done lengthways to give a little texture as well as flavour, and the thyme simply needs to be pulled off the woody stems.

Lemon Zest and Thyme

Now the broad beans. Cook the de-podded beans by boiling in salted water for about 8-10 minutes or so, depending how large they are, and then leaving them to cool slightly. You're trying to get a very slight al dente type bean, doesn't matter if some are firm as they will be reheated again. Slip off the outer skin once cool, which should come off nice and easily, and put the lustrous green bean halves to one side.

Cooking broad beans - two different varieties here, hence the different colours

The cooked beans. These have been added to the Thyme/Lemon mix as this will all be added back in to the pan at the same time

Next get some onion cooking. You're looking for quite a sweet finish, so the onions are going to need to cook in a mixture of olive oil and butter for at least 15 minutes in order to sweeten. Whilst they're cooking put a large pan of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

Onions cooking, these are about half way there

Now the bacon. Once the onions are cooked take them out of the pan, and add in the bacon chopped into strips. No need for extra oil or butter as the fat from the bacon itself will soon cook down and do the job for you. Crispier the better in my book, but cook to taste. When the bacon is about half way there, you'll need to get the pasta in the water. Different farfalle's will take different lengths of time, but for an average farfalle cooking time of 10 minutes now is the right time.

Farfalle pasta

Once the bacon is crispy, it's time for the rest of the ingredients to go back in. Add back in the onions and the broad bean, thyme and lemon mixture.

Bacon, onion, broad beans, thyme and lemon back in the pan

Once this comes back to temperature deglaze with a splash of white wine if you like, cook off some of the liquid, and then add in a good dollop or two of creme fraiche.

Adding in creme fraiche

You should end up with quite a loose sauce, ready to dress the pasta with.

All the sauce ingredients mixed together

Season well with salt & pepper, and add the pasta to the sauce (or should you add the sauce to the pasta? I'm never convinced by either camp if I'm honest) and you're done.

Pasta just added to the sauce, ready to mix

Top tip for pasta here - when you're draining it, always try and keep a little of the water from the pasta back in the pan. You can then use this liquid to loosen the sauce if you're accidentally let either the sauce or the cooked pasta get a little too dry.

Once you're ready either serve the past straight, or you can add a little more thyme and some parmesan for that finishing touch. I also like a couple of Bibanesi on the side, but that's not something you can easily get in the UK

The finished dish

A scrumptious light summer lunch, full of seasonal freshness and healthy to boot. What more could you want?

The shameless supermarket rip off ... and the numbers to prove it

2010-08-08T16:26:00.002Z

I've long been a big supporter of local food and smaller businesses, preferring to buy my food from farm shops, farmers markets, butchers, fishmongers, etc. - basically any specialist who knows what they're doing. I do use supermarkets, but most of the time it's for bulk purchasing of things that aren't so easy to find locally, the boring stuff like toilet rolls and pasta. But I'm not just some local eco-warrior, a middle class idiot with enough cash to be able to waste what I earn. After all I work in education, and that's not known as a particuarly well paid profession, and on top of that the west country isn't exactly the best paid place to work either!

I was raised a thrifty shopper either way, and I've long been convinced that buying locally not only helps to support local business and ease pressure on the environment, but that it also saves me money in the process. Up to now this has been more of an ad hoc belief, based on the odd price that I've compared here and there over the years, but this morning I decided to finally sit down and work it out pound for pound - and the results are pretty astonishing. Let's put it this way - I think I know where the supermarkets like Tesco are making those billion pound profits - the truth is if you're a supermarket shopper, then they're basically ripping you off.

Exe Valley Farm Shop versus Tesco, Sainsbury & Asda - the Numbers

I use the Exe Valley Farm Shop for most of my shopping, and this morning I popped down there for potatoes and some fruit for the week ahead. As usual I managed to buy much more than I planned- there's something that's no different from supermarket to farm shop! - but the whole lot only cost me £8.96. That's not so unusual to be honest, but we had so much I thought it was about time I did a comparison shop.

My food basket, not bad for a quick trip down the farm shop and back

Unfortunately I didn't take down every individual price in the farm shop, but I realised I had enough info to create a comparison none the less. All I needed to do was weigh everything I had, and then spend some time going through each of the supermarkets websites to see what they would charge for the same thing. And here are the results - personally I found them pretty shocking.

The upside is that my £8.96 basket of food from the farm shop would cost £14.82 at Tesco, £15.48 at Sainsbury and £12.52 at Asda. Whichcever way you look at it, the supermarkets suddenly don't look quite so 'super' any more.

Spreadsheet comparing price of goods at the Exe Valley Farm Shop versus Tesco, Sainsbury & Asda

The supermarkets have long been trying to convince us that they save us money, but the plain fact of the matter is that they don't save us money, they make supermarkets money. That's their sole purpose in life, to make money, and they have absolutely no qualms about doing it. They are machines set-up to extract as much money as possible from our pockets, whilst at the same time they have marketing machines spending millions convincing us that it's all in our best interest to keep shopping there.

I've not even mentioned the health or environmental aspects to this, it's all been about the money. But my basket contains (pretty much) only local food, sourced within a few miles of where I live, and has all been grown pretty naturally. I know the onions, for example, are from my own village, and the apples are from an orchard just a couple of hills away in Cadbury. How does that compare with Dutch onions shipped in across the north sea, and apples flown all the way from New Zealand? Now my local farm shop isn't some sort of charity, sure they sell some food from a long way away, but they're pragmatists and know they need to meet customer demand. That said the majority of their food is local and fresh, and they support a wide range of local producers across the full spectrum of foodstuffs.

So that's the Veg - but what about the Meat?

One more thing before I wrap up - the main reasons for going to the farm shop this morning was for potatoes to go with my Sunday roast. Seeing as I was comparing prices anyway, I wondered just how my lovely 3-rib forerib of beef on the bone from my local butcher here in the village would compare with the supermarket prices. No prizes for guessing - turns out they would rip me off just as badly for the meat as they would do for the veg. I bought a fantastic piece of meat for £35 from my butcher, which I know will be enough for at least 35 meals, if not more (and if you doubt that, just flick through some older postings for ideas about leftovers). A quick check on the supermarkets sites show that for the same quality meat I'd be paying at least £20 more. In fact the only way I could get meat cheaper would be if I paid for the very lowest quality that they offered, and even then it would only be a small saving - and somehow I don't think such cheap meat would stretch as far as I have planned for what I've bought. No bones to boil up for stocks and soup, that's for sure - and once that sort of meat has been minced up for chilli and bolognese I think you'd be hard pressed to find the flavour.

Anyhow, I hope this Sunday rant has perhaps convinced the odd sceptic out there to try more local shopping. But one more caveat perhaps - there are farm shops, and there are farm shops. There are still local monstrosities that need avoiding - Darts Farm, for example (in my experience at least) is even more of a rip off than the supermarkets. I would put their prices up to show you, but it's not something they like to share on-line it seems. Knowing some of their mark-up I don't blame them! I guess at the end of the day you need to shop with eyes wide open, but just don't let those supermarket bullies convince you they're doing you a favour by selling you all that nice cheap food. It 'aint half has cheap as they make out ...

Rib of Beef for Sunday lunch - meat from the village butcher, veg from the farm shop (not to mention runner beans from the garden), wine from the local vintner. And a hell of a lot cheaper than you'd pay from your supermarket.

RSPCA Freedom Food Update

2010-07-01T16:33:00.001Z

Last year I wrote about the RSPCAs "Give Animals a Voice Campaign", which was encouraging us all to think about animal welfare when choosing our BBQ meat. Well it seems it did some good, that and the other campaigns by folks like Jamie Oliver. The RSPCA wrote to let me know that sales of RSPCA Freedom Food chicken in particular have increased significantly.

Glad to be doing my little bit to help the cause of animal welfare. I'm not a vegetarian by a long shot, as anyone who reads this blog will be well aware of, but I do believe that animals deserve to be treated fairly before the inevitable chop.

I should confess that I do have an ulterior motive for posting this - the RSPCA know how to wrap a food blogger around their little fingers, they sent me a small plastic chicken as a thank you. Now who could receive something like that and not write a blog post in support?

A Beefy Leftover Special: From Roast Topside to Vitello Tonnato

2010-06-27T09:35:00.001Z

I'm a sucker for Farmer's markets, rarely get my food from anywhere else, and last Saturday it was Killerton House's turn (third Saturday in the month, in case you're local). This market has only been running for a year or so, and has attracted a couple of new meat producers recently. A while back I tried some lamb from Peradon Organic farm (http://www.peradonorganicfarm.co.uk/), which I made into Spit Roast Lamb and Wild Garlic Mash - unfortunately never got a chance to blog about that one. However last week I decided to plump for Beef instead from West Kidland farm (http://www.westkidland.co.uk/)- what what a piece of beef it was!

Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I also have a weakness for Rib of Beef on the bone, so it's not really like me to choose Topside, but it looked like a lovely piece of meat and a bargain at £15 for 2kg. It was very well hung too. I won't go into the way I cooked it this time, suffice to say that it was a pretty standard roast, that I served with a rather large yorkshire pudding, carrots, peas (in their pods) and new potatoes. Lovely stuff, which you can see on my Picasa food site if you're interested.

But what I really want to talk about is not the roast beef, it's what I did with the leftovers - Vitello Tonnato.

Vitello Tonnato aka Veal in Tuna Sauce

OK, first things first, obviously I wasn't using veal. But you don't really need to, to be honest. We've done this before with not only beef, but also lamb and even chicken. What is it? Basically it's cold meat dressed with a tuna sauce. It's simplicity itself to make, but like all simple food if the right ingredients are combined in the correct way then a few simple things can be transformed into something much greater than the sum of their parts. It should also be done with mayonnaise to be truly original, but as we're expecting our first child at the moment raw eggs are off the menu, so we are tending to use creme fraiche instead and that works out pretty well.

Ingredients (for four hungry people)

Sauce:
Tuna, 170g (in olive oil), chopped finely
Capers, 2 tablespoons, chopped finely
Mayonnaise (or creme fraiche), 150g
Anchovies, if you like them - not something we're keen on

Beef (or other meat):
10-12 thin slices of beef

(doesn't really need seasoning)

Preparation

Mix all the sauce ingredients together - easiest done in a blender if you have one.
Layout beef on a serving platter, slightly overlapping.
Dress with a thickish layer of the sauce, then leave to come to room temperature.
Serve the platter in the centre of the table, and allow people to help themselves.

Accompaniments

Boiled potatoes work well, or saute (my preference) - again left over from the roast.
A fresh green salad with cucumbers and tomatoes works well.

It's a fab dish for a hot summers day, and a very tasty way of using up leftover beef. I must admit I was a bit suspicious when the Italian first suggested this dish many years ago, but have enjoyed it many times since. I do urge you to give it a try, hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Kudos to Kenwood, Customer Service to be Celebrated

2010-06-26T17:54:00.000Z

I must admit I have something of a reputation for writing extensive reviews for disappointing service. I love the way the web allows someone as insignificant as me to have a voice that can spread so much further and wider than was previously possible, and there's something deeply satisfying about doing your little bit to stand up to bullies. But that said I recognise that I don't perhaps write quite as often as I should about the good things in life. Thought I'd go some way to mending that by writing about my recent experience with Kenwood.

I needed a new food processor last year as my old Moulinex Ovatio gave up the ghost, so bought a Kenwood FP950 Multi Pro Libra Food Processor. Been very happy with it overall (love the fact that it can weigh food as you add it), but not so long ago part of the mechanism that locks the bowl in place snapped off. It still worked OK most of the time, but it was a bit weird to have such an expensive piece of kit break. I have various Kenwood tools (including one of their very first generation Chefs, still a stalwart in the kitchen) but the rest are generally well built.

Broken safety switch - now that shouldn't happen

Anyhow, to cut a short story even shorter I contacted Kenwood about this, and after a few emails back and forth they were satisfied purely on the basis of the photos that I supplied that it was a problem with the machine, and a brand new bowl arrived this morning, no charge.

Brand new bowl, no charge - now that should happen!

The machine was out of warranty by the time I contacted them, and although I know there are further European laws I could have tried I think in stands in Kenwood's credit - and for that matter Zoe Hall from Kenwood who dealt with it - that what could have become a long winded and difficult situation was dealt with efficiently and appropriately. One happy customer, many thanks Kenwood, and Zoe.

Roast Duck with Lavender & Herbs ... and Three Tricks for Leftovers

2010-05-22T09:29:00.003Z

Sunday Roasts are in my blood. A traditional middle class English background means that I've spent so many Sunday's enjoying a roast joint with the family that that's an inescapable fact, so I guess I'd be bound to continue this tradition. But as much as I enjoy the pleasure of cooking and eating a Sunday roast, it's perhaps the leftovers that I enjoy more than anything. This duck was no exception, and it did such a great job feeding us through the week, I thought I'd make a bit of a special post about leftovers. But first, the main event.

Roast Duck with Lavender & Herbs

Duck is a bit of novelty for me, and once again was I was inspired to cook it by "a woman at Cullompton Farmer's market". I forgot her name last time I bought something from her (Roast Guinea Fowl with Lavender, Mint & Thyme) and now I've gone and done it again! Next time I really must make more effort. She doesn't half deserve the credit as well - not only does she sell great meat, but she makes some of the best pies to be had in Devon I reckon.

Just like that Guinea Fowl, I decided to follow a recipe (well, mostly follow a recipe, I was kind of following several) for the Duck, and from the same "Flavours of the World" book. I've becoming quite fond of Lavender and meat, and this was done with fresh thyme from the garden as well, made into a kind of salty rub that's pressed all over the lightly scored meat before cooking. Wonderful stuff.

The Lavender and Thyme salty mix

Scored and dusted duck ready for the oven

Close up on the dry mix on the bird

The duck itself has been lightly scored to let the fat run, and I'm using a support in my roasting tray as well so that it won't sit in the fat as it's running. This was cooked fast then slow, pretty normal cooking style for me, but longer than I usually do for poultry as I prefer duck either pink or well done, kind of how I like my lamb. It's quite a complex recipe, involving making stocks, reducing them, etc., so I won't go into it all now, but fun to do and not at all challenging, just time consuming.

Duck out of the oven, ready to rest. Lovely crispy skin

Came out pretty tasty, with a wonderful sticky sauce. Lavender's not something to use often in the kitchen perhaps, but now and again it does add a welcome and interesting variation to dishes.

The Roast Duck finished dish, minus vegetables

But then what to do with lots of leftover duck? Duck's often not a huge bird, true, and we had a female this time around which is much smaller than a drake, but you still get a fair bit of meat off it. First things first, it was time for stock.

Duck Stock

The first thing we tend to do with any roast is get the meat off the bones and make a stock. That's one of the great things about always going for meat on the bone, you've not only get a better roast but also bones for stock. I'm not really someone who bothers much with trying to create elaborate stocks, honestly it's usually just bones and water for me cooked for an hour or two, but this time I added the usual suspects of carrot, celery, onion and bay leaf.

Stock being made

To be fair it does add extra depth to a stock to do this, but I had an ulterior motive as well - I'd worked out what to do for my first proper left over dish - duck & noodle soup.

Duck & Noodle Soup

As ever with these things, my leftover cooking is largely driven by what's in the fridge. The meat may be the core of any dish, but it needs other things to make it into a complete meal. This time around it was cabbage & spring onions that needed eating, so I decided to plump for an oriental style soup.

Ingredients for soup ready to go

By taking the remaining breast off the bird and slicing it into delicate thin discs I intended to make a simple spiced soup, with noodles cooked in stock at the bottom, and cabbage, spring onion and slices of duck on the top. Simple as anything to make. I strained some of the stock off and added some Chinese five spice and soy sauce to taste, and then added each ingredient according to how long it would take to cook.

The stock strained and enriched with soy sauce

Cabbage was first for about 10 minutes till it was getting really tender, then in went the spring onions and noodles for 3 minutes, some very finely sliced fresh ginger (done in inch long extra thin match sticks, to add texture and interest) and some very finely chopped red chili, and finely the duck back in for just a minute at the end to warm it through. Lovely stuff.

Duck & Noodle Soup in the office

This is one of my first trick to leftover cooking - you have to ignore the 'rules' of cooking fresh meat if you want to make the most of leftover meat. If I'd put the duck in earlier it would have got tough and dry, but by reversing things and just adding it at the end you get the opposite effect. By using the stock as well you still get full flavours, without needing any long cooking.

We got four large portions out of this, soup always goes a long way I find. Well, unless the Italian gets hold of it, she's a fiend for soup! Still had lots of duck left though, so next up ...

Roast Duck Ragu

The English are pretty keen on Italian food generally, and in a mixed Italian/English house like hours that's even more pronounced. Ragu or sugo is therefore a bit of a staple way of using up leftovers. Just to clarify, the term sugo generally means a slightly more smooth sauce than ragu, which usually has larger pieces of meat and a rougher texture.

And here the second of my tricks with leftovers. When it comes to well cooked meat you can't really mince it up and re-fry it, that just dries it out or makes a mush - not pleasant. The technique I use these days is to flake the meat, creating texture while preserving the moisture within it.

The flaked duck meat

You still need to cook a ragu long and slow, as tinned tomatoes need time for their flavour to develop, but by flaking in this way and cooking slowly in a liquid environment the meat will enrich the dish and not get tough or dry.

I always do my ragu's the same way, the usual sofrito of onion, carrot and celery is cooked till golden and tender, then in with the meat, deglaze with wine if you like, and in with the tomatoes and herbs.

That leads me to my third trick with using leftovers, adding something from the original dish so that you always get a different result, that way your food never gets too samey. For this one, for example, I chopped up the leftover skin really finely and added that to the sauce with all it's flavours of lavender and thyme. Once that's blended with the rest you don't really pick up the individual notes of flavour anymore, but it does add a subtle distinctness which makes all my ragus or sugos different, no matter what they're based on. Whether it's a lamb cooked with lemon balm, or chicken cooked with basil, I think your main roast always ends up adding something special to a leftover dish, which you'd otherwise be hard pressed to create. Sometimes it may be that the meat itself is simply infused with interesting and different flavours, other times there may be something leftover you can add, but either way it keeps you from getting bored with your food.

Ready for deglazing, white wine this time (usually what Italians use)

Now with the tomatoes added, ready for long slow cooking

One note on ragus and sugos - don't skimp on the tomatoes, or the herbs for that matter. I used six tins of tomatoes I think, plus a large bundle of marjoram, thyme, bay and rosemary. Your sauce will be very wet to start with, but the long, slow cooking will slowly reduce it down, concentrating the flavours. I think I must have done this one for about two hours at least, maybe three. Served it with a good thick pasta, and that made supper for the two of us and then lunch the next day as well. Then it was off to the freezer with the rest of the ragus for other days.

Ragus ready for the freezer

These old cheese pots are fabulous for this - they just about contain two portions per pot, and not skimpy ones either. Let me put it this way, I'm not exactly losing weight eating portions of this size! "DS" stands for Duck Sugo here. Our freezer is usually full of BS, RS, VS, LS - you get the drift I'm sure :-) The labels are for ever getting rubbed off, and we end up playing the mystery sugo game - still, it's all good.

So that's my leftover odyssey. I hope it might inspire others to make more of their Sunday roasts. Duck is an expensive meat compared to others, this one cost about £15, for example, but if you consider that I managed to make twenty four meal portions from it, suddenly it doesn't seem so expensive at all. All the other main ingredients, i.e. pasta, noodles, carrot, onions, etc, are very cheap - and the lavender and herbs free - so it's relatively simple to turn out pretty good quality food like this for less than £1 per meal. Personally I'm amazed people think they're getting a good deal from places like McDonalds, I find it a bit galling to see people chucking tens of pounds at those places, and then claiming they don't have any cash. Still, different folks, different strokes I guess.

All comments welcome, as ever!

Guest Post Recipe: "Pit Cooked Pig"

2010-05-22T07:21:00.002Z

I don't usually bother with advertising on this site, after all it's more of a hobby than anything else, but I had an email the other day from a new hog roasting company in the south west, Astridges, who were looking to spread the word about what they do. Since they were a local family firm - with a great look for their website! - and they were offering an interesting recipe for pit cooked pig I thought I'd give them a mention.

I've not tried their service yet as I've not seen them at any events, so can't vouch for them personally. I do know the butcher who supplies their meat though, Hartnell's, and have bought a fair bit from them myself over the years so can certainly vouch for the quality of their produce.

I would like to try one of their Lamb Roasts that's for sure. A whole lamb roasted at once? My idea of heaven :-)

Anyhow, here's the recipe - enjoy!

Pit Cooked Pig

Called Mumu cooking in Papa New Guinea, a Kula in Hawaii and a Porceddu in Sardinia, this rustic method of cooking a pig has provided a celebratory feast for many ancient cultures, dating back hundreds of years. A suckling pig was, and still is, a popular choice, particularly in Mediterranean countries where outdoor cooking and festive occasions are something we can only follow. The flavor and texture really is quite wonderful and delicious!

There are a number of variations but, in outline, a large pit is dug in the ground and layered with stones. A hardwood fire is then built up over a number of hours until the heat of the rocks reaches maximum temperature. The embers and the top layer of stones are then removed and the prepared whole pig, wrapped in wet aromatic leaves, is lowered on to the remaining stones and covered with the embers and spare stones. After this the pit is then back-filled with earth and the pig left to cook. Depending on the size of the pig this could take up to 12 hours... or more. To ensure the heat is maintained, a fire can be built over the top layer of stones and used as an alternative to backfilling the the pit with soil. Some of the hot stones can also be placed inside the pig cavity to generate a more even distribution of heat.

As an accompaniment, apples, corn on the cob and sweet potatoes wrapped in foil can also be cooked in the pit by burying them in the top layer of the soil about an hour before the pig is ready.

I have have been to a wedding where they had a pit roasted pig – it was fantastic, BUT a lesson learned was to ensure that the pig is well wrapped and protected in a suitable layer. As delicious as it was I spent most of my time spitting out gritty soil and ash! For more detailed information there are a number of sites offering advice and instructions.

If you'ld like to hire a Hog Roast caterer, why not get in touch with Astridges Hog Roasts and they'll be happy to help you.

Italian Slow Roasted Lamb Shoulder with Potatoes & Olives

2010-05-02T15:24:00.000Z

I'm a big fan of the slow roast, though perhaps I do have something of an ulterior motive. It gives me time to get on with other things (which this Sunday unfortunately meant studying), yet means I can create a delicious tender and well flavoured Sunday roast without having to spend as much time and effort creating it as you might think. This Sunday it was lamb again, but given an Italian twist through the combination of a few recipes.

I rarely if ever follow one recipe, but I guess I'm experienced enough in the kitchen to combine them, picking up their various strengths whilst adapting them to suit what I have in the house and what it is I'm trying to cook. I do have an extensive library of cookbooks, well over 100 now, ranging from small pamphlets produced by local groups like the WI (that's the Women's Institute for international readers) to huge tomes like McGee's On food and cooking and the Italian classic The Silver Spoon. I absolutely love cook books, but much prefer scouring old book shops and charity stores for them, as opposed to buying new ones. I've found some wonderful gems that way, for example the fabulous Time Life Good Cook series.

But back to the slow roast. The tradition of slow roasting like this on a Sunday apparently goes back to the days when villages like mine used to have a communal bakery. Bread of course is traditionally baked very early in the morning, and needs a very hot oven. As these village ovens cooled people often used to bring their meat to the bakery and use the residual heat to cook their Sunday lunch, whilst they went off to Sunday church. Of course the longer you cook a slow roast the more tender and moister it gets (up to a point that is), leading to the idea that the longer the sermon in church the better your lunch would be! Not being a religious person myself, I tend to head to the pub (my favourite local The Lamb in Silverton) rather than the church, but at least I'm supporting some sort of local institution that way. I'd recommend the Dob's Best Bitter in particular, though that may be a bit biased again, seeing as the Exe Valley brewery who make it are based in my village.

I'd chosen a shoulder of lamb from Crediton Farmers market courtesy of Higher Hacknell farm this week, and picked up some waxy potatoes there from Linscombe as well. I knew I had some black olives knocking about at home, so decided to re-do an old recipe from Antonio Carluccio's Italian Cooking, but with a nod to Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat Book and a touch or two of myself thrown in for good measure. Basically what you need is this - black olives, waxy potatoes, shoulder of lamb, onion, rosemary:

The ingredients ready to combine

Put all this together in a deep roaster, add plenty of seasoning, and toss together to make sure it's all well coated:

Everything ready to go in the oven

Roast in a hot oven (220ºC) for about 20 minutes, then turn down to about 150ºC for another 3 hours or so. Timings not too critical, you've got a fair bit of leeway either way with this sort of cooking - enough for a pint at least. I did baste it once during this time, but it's not imperative. One small note - I don't use my fan oven for this, I use a conventional oven. I find the fan is too hot and tends to dry things out too much with it's constant convection.

Eventually you should end up with this:

Everything cooked and ready to serve

You'll probably need to pour off some of the fat, depends on the meat. I used spring lamb this time around wish isn't very fatty, so only poured off a very small amount, but later in the season they'll be a lot more. Then straight out onto the plate and enjoy!

Flavour wise it's pretty strong, and if you don't like olives then you won't like this. It will depend to a certain extent on the olives themselves though as they tend to dominate - these were particularly strong, even a bit strong for me if I'm honest, but still delicious none the less.

We had a primo with this, something B cooked up with Ricotta, left over home made paste and chives from the garden - it was wonderful, really light and tasty. If you're looking for a light supper in the heat this would be the business I reckon - but that's probably another blog post :-)

Primo - home made tagliolini with a ricotta and chive sauce

Spit Roast Chicken 'French Style' with Buttered Parsley Arborio

2010-04-22T17:36:00.003Z

I've been meaning to blog about the recipe for some time, what is for me probably my absolute most favourite way of cooking a chicken. To be honest, I have blogged about it before, but I never included enough detail last time to let anyone else recreate it in this style - here's hoping I can do better this time.

If I'm totally honest it's not 100% my recipe - though that said I've never actually seen any other recipe for it, or even like it really. It was inspired by a meal I had in a French bistro in Albert back in the Summer of 2007, and I was so struck by it that when I returned to the UK I had to try and recreate it - so this is my version of what I had then.

The core of the recipe is cooking the chicken relatively hot and fast on a spit over a roasting pan, and then using what drips into that pan during the cooking time to make a jus (has to be a jus, it is a French recipe after all) to serve with the meat. To me it's also critical that it's served with arborio rice which has been cooked till light and fluffy, lightly buttered and mixed with plenty of chopped parsley.

The Recipe

First off, the chicken. Doesn't really matter how large, but what is important is that you trim off any extraneous fat, and make sure that plenty of air can get blown into the birds cavity by trimming around that as well. I do this on the spit attachment in my oven, which doesn't turn, but as it's a fan oven air is blown all through and over the bird giving something like a spit effect. Once it's trimmed and on the spit it needs a tablespoon or so of olive oil rubbed all over it, and a generous seasoning with salt & pepper inside and out.

Preparing the bird for the oven

Now get it into an oven, and make sure there's that tray underneath to catch the juices. If you don't have a spit you can try and cook it on a grill with a tray underneath, but the key is still to try and make sure that air can flow freely all around the bird.

In the oven, ready to roast

I roast it in a 180ºC fan oven for about 15 mins per pound - might take a little longer/shorter in yours, if in doubt go a little over as ever with chicken, provided you let it rest properly it should be fine. One other little note - try and get the bird to hang downwards for the longest part of the cooking process. Basically you want the breasts to be facing down so that juices flow back into them, especially during the rest.

One cooked chicken, ready to get the tray out for gravy, ermm, jus

Once the cooking time is up you can remove the tray from the oven, which should now be full of crispy stuff and fat. The bird can stay in the oven as it cool,s provided you leavethe door ajar. You can tip most of the fat away from the tray, what we're after is the crispy stuff. The trick now is to get that tray onto the stove, add some stock, and transform it into a wonderful chickeny sauce.

Making the jus

Now for the rice - which you'll need to get started before the jus thing above. Using arborio is also a bit odd I know, but bear with me, it's very tasty. You need to cook it like long grain rice, so for me that means washing it thoroughly first in cold water, then boiling it in plenty of well salted water for about 15 minutes till tender, and then washing it again when it's ready with fresh boiling water from the kettle. Now leave to stand for a minute or so with the lid on to drain, back into the pan (once you've thrown away the any remaining water) and add a few dollops of butter and plenty of chopped fresh parsley and leave that to melt in.

Serving the bird - legs only!

I've always preferred legs, so this recipe is perfect for me as you only serve the legs, which leaves the breasts for sandwiches another day or loads of other tempting leftover treats. This time around I also did this with vichy carrots (well, a sort of vichy carrots anyhow) which worked really well I'm happy to say. When I had it in Albert it just served as chicken, rice and jus, but the carrots worked so well they'll probably become part of the dish for me I think.

The finished dish

'Spring' Pasta with Fresh Garden Herbs

2010-03-28T16:40:00.005Z

Just finished cooking my classic 'French Style' Roast Chicken - which I'll write about another time - and as I was sorting out some pictures I came across a lunch I made the other day which I thought I'd share. It's so wonderfully simply and tasty, it seems selfish to keep it to myself!

It's actually based on a recipe from Antonio Carluccio, but what's nice about it is that it's not really a recipe at all, more a guide. It's the kind of thing you can usually throw together at the last minute from pretty much what you have in the garden, so can be invaluable for these sort of quick lunches or light suppers. The core of it is the making of a sort of lightweight pesto to dress pasta. Here's the recipe for two people.

First get some water on the boil for pasta as normal. Remember water for pasta should be generously salted - most of the salt stays in the water, so it's not all going into you.
Gather a good handful or two of whatever fresh herbs are growing well, and for that matter whatever you fancy. For this one I had a few leaves of sage, a few of mint, about 10 leaves or so of basil, some parsley and a few sprigs of thyme. In the past I've also used majoram, rosemary, lemon balm, black peppermint, oregano, wild garlic, literally anything will work. Personally I think mint works especially well.
Next add a few nuts, between 10-20 - usually these would be pinenuts, but for this one I used toasted hazelnuts that I'd kept in a jar left over from winter. Doesn't really matter what, you can pretty much choose whatever you like again.
Put all these together and roughly chop them, leaving some large pieces of nut and herb here and there (but making sure you're not going to choke anyone!).
Now get the pasta in the water and cook as normal, usually I'll go for something long like linguine or spaghetti.
In a separate pan, large enough to add the pasta in later, melt a large knob of butter and a good glug of olive oil. Finally chop a garlic clove (or crush it for a more intense flavour) and add it to the oil on a low heat to infuse.
Grate a generous handful or two of paremsan, and add it to the herbs, ready to go in with the garlic. Keep a little aside to finish.
Once the pasta has about a minute or so to go, stir the chopped herbs, nuts and parmesan into the oil, butter and garlic and leave it on the heat to warm through.
Finally drain the pasta, and toss it into the herby buttery mix - make sure you leave a fair bit of liquid in the pasta, as it will emulsify with the mixture and create a light sauce.

Enjoy - with a nice glass of red, some toasted bread, and good company in the sunshine :-)

Cauliflower Arancini and Ratatouille with a Rocket, Basil & Wild Garlic Pistou

2010-03-06T18:01:00.001Z

Spring is back, at least according to the Met Office it is, and with Spring comes the welcome return of Wild Garlic. It's quite abundant down in Devon already, though you'll have to know where to look. Our usual spot is only lightly covered at the moment, just enough for the wild garlic pistou from the title, but we have found huge amounts growing in another spot nearer Exeter - but that's for another story, and hopefully lunch tomorrow.

Two odd things about this dish, not only the wild garlic pistou but also the arancini, both of which were something of leftover specials, as befits the end of a busy week.

Arancini

If you've not come across arancini before they're an Italian speciality, made with leftover risotto. Quite simple to make, and sublime to eat - one of those things that somehow tastes much better than it deserves too, if that makes any sense! You simply take some cold leftover risotto, and pack it around a small cube of cheese (often mozzarella) or possibly some meat sauce (bit more tricky) to create something the same shape and size as a scotch egg. Next do the usual flour, then egg, then breadcrumb thing to coat (we usually do ours twice, for extra crispyness) and shallow fry for 10-15 minutes until well browned. By now the smell will be driving you too insane to cook any longer, so you'll have to stop cooking them anyway so you can get stuck in.

Ratatouille with a Rocket, Basil & Wild Garlic Pistou

This was a bit of an odd one really. A fridge with one lonely courgette, a half eaten pack of basil, some rocket which had seen better days, two peppers (one with a bit cut off which was ... well, you're getting the picture by now). Basically an ideal start to make something kind of like ratatouille and kind of like pistou.

First the ratatouille ...

First off cut a red onion into half inch sized pieces, and get these frying in a shallow pan with a little olive oil and butter. You're looking to get these quite caramelised to bring out the sweetness of the onion.
Once the onions are about 2/3rds done, add in the peppers cut into strips about 1cm wide (mixing my measurements a bit here!). I had a green one and a yellow one, but any will do. Green's a good idea though to add a little bitterness into the dish. These need to be cooked for about another 10 minutes, tossing now and then, aim to soften them and add a bit of colour.
When the onions and peppers are done, put them on into another deeper dish (this is going to be the one for cooking the finished ratatouille).
Now back in the same pan that fried the onions & peppers add the courgette sliced up into average thickness discs. Fry these till golden on one side, flip over and fry till golden on the other side, then into the same pan as the onions and peppers.
Now deglaze the pan you used for frying with a half glass or so of white wine, and put this into the other pan.
Add a tin of tomatoes to the onions, peppers and courgettes and cook this mixture for about half an hour till the tomatoes are tender. Break up any large chunks as you do so, and check the seasoning is good.

Now the Rocket, Basil & Wild Garlic Pistou ...

Pistou is kind of like a French Pesto but without the pine nuts, so I'm taking liberties a bit with the name. Very simple to make, and easy to balance flavours to suit your own tastes - or (more likely) to suit what you have in the fridge!

Here's how I did mine this time:

Half an ordinary bag of rocket
Half an ordanary pack of fresh basil
A good handful of fresh wild garlic
About 25g of freshly grated parmesan
Salt & pepper
Olive oil

First mix all the herbs into a food processor together with a good glug of oil to get things started (this is the lazy method - though chopping or a pestle and mortar would be just as good). Give them a few good pulses until they're starting to form a very basic paste. Add in the parmesan and seasoning, a little more olive oil and start to blend until you've got a smooth sauce. The amount of oil you'll need will depend on how much of everything you've got, what you're looking for is a creamy consistency - it shouldn't take much work or much oil. On that note, it doesn't matter if the herbs are a little wet beforehand, it'll just get emulsified in the process.

Only one more thing to do - once the ratatouille is ready, just spoon a good couple of tablespoons of the pistou mixture into it and give it a good stir, and you're done. Lovely cripsy arancini with a herby and aromatic vegetable side dish. Healthy, tasty, cheap - who could ask for more.

P.S. Any pistou left over makes a great sauce for pasta, adding to pizzas, or just added on the side of a meat course. It should keep in the fridge for a week or so, but it depends on the wild garlic a bit.

Rib of Beef with Horseradish Dauphinois - and my Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

2010-02-13T16:37:00.001Z

Not exactly a new combination this - I think I blogged about it sometime before - but this time around I did make an effort to film the important bits. And even made it into one proper movie as well. Thank heaven for tools like Picasa that make movie making so easy these days, and tools like YouTube which make distributing them just as simple. I may be a techy in many ways, but when it comes to video I still feel like a novice.

As you can probably see - I'm a lousy carver :-)

My Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

Here's how I make my yorkshire puddings - a recipe I've perfected over the years which suits how I like them. This is enough for 6 small yorkshire puddings. If you need more just double everything, works just as well. Timing is for small yorkshire puddings - larger ones will take longer to cook.

40 g flour
40 ml milk
40 ml water
1 egg
pinch of salt

Put the flour in a bowl, add a pinch of salt (what on earth is a pinch anyway? Give it a good sprinkle, depends how much you like salt!). Make a well in the centre of the flour, crack the egg into it, start blending it into the flour with a fork (a wide toothed old fashioned one is best, preferably strong metal. Or just use a whisk.).

Next you're going to have to decide how fast to add the other liquid depending how watery/dry the egg/flour is. At some point you'll need to start adding the milk and water (makes no odds which is first, you can just blend them together and then add them bit by bit, that's what I do). Just aim for a thickish consistency all the time, beating out the lumps as they form - if you add too much liquid at any one point before the lumps are gone you'll never get rid of them. Soon you'll get to the point where you have a smooth paste, then the rest of the liquid can go in at once and be mixed in.

Now into the fridge for at least half an hour. I usually do mine first thing in the morning on a Sunday, and only take it out again when I'm ready to use it. The logic behind this is that all the molecules start to bind together I think, but whatever - it works for me.

When the beef comes out of the oven, whack the oven temperature back up high (at least 200ºC, preferably more, but depends on your oven - see my top roasting tips for more info on that sort of thing) and put in your yorkshires tray with the fat (either beef dripping from the roast, or some other high temperature fat) already in it. Give that at least 5 minutes to get really hot.

Now pour the yorkshire batter into the trays and back into the hot oven quick. And leave it - don't open the oven again for at least 15 minutes, you don't want to let in the cold air or they won't rise as well. They may be ready after 15 minutes or take 20 or so to get done, if you like them really crispy leave them longer.

P.S. My Mum tells of when she used to eat cold yorkshires with jam, and I still love them cold the next day myself, so have no trouble making too many. One tip though - if you're going to do this take the cooling yorkshires out of the tray once you've finished your lunch, don't leave them in the tray to get totally cold or they'll suck up too much fat and can become a bit greasy and nasty. Just pop them on a plate and put them to one side, and then in the fridge once totally cold. I just eat them plain like this, but you could take a leaf out of my Mum's book and spread some jam on yours first - wonderful stuff. Sweet batter puddings are a bit of an old classic, so this isn't as bonkers as it might sound!

Lemon & Lime Roast Chicken

2010-01-30T19:13:00.003Z

I know some of my friends think it a little odd that I like to cook so much, but I generally find the whole process quite relaxing so don't mind spending what might to them seems like hours preparing food, just for 10 minutes eating it. I don't really think it's that simple (you are after all what you eat, and I kind of like to know what it is I'm eating!) but there is another really good reason to cook a Sunday roast at least - you get great food and save money at the same time.

You save money in two important ways. First off you usually get more meat for your money in the first place, as buying a whole piece (like a chicken) means you're not paying for someone to prepare different cuts, or for that matter extra packaging. Secondly, you've always got lots of leftovers which can make what seems like an expensive initial purchase go an awful long way. I reckon I spend on average about £1 on meat per portion of food that I produce, and I'm using pretty good ingredients.

Anyhow, why on earth and I going on about thrift and not about chicken? Well the other thing about leftovers and Sunday roasts is that they can work the other way around - often I'm inspired by what's lying around in the fridge needing eating, rather than having something special in mind. I'll usually buy a good piece of meat according to what I can find (and what I haven't had in a while), but what I'll do with it is usually a mystery until the day before - or even the morning before! And that's how I ended up with this recipe - Lemon & Lime Roast Chicken.

The Ingredients

The ingredients

So this is pretty much what I had left over that Sunday - cabbage, lime, lemon, red onion. Citrus flavours and chicken aren't exactly rocket science, but it can be tricky to get it right. Lime has a nasty habit of turning sour and lemons can be far too sharp and acidic in any quantity. Seeing as I had two limes, a bit of a lemon and some red onion I reckoned I needed something to sweeten the whole deal, and luckily there was also half a small pot of double cream left over.

I'd planned on making a creamy sauce with the leftover cream, the juices from the bird and the stuffing, so prepared all the ingredients ahead of time with that in mind. The limes were quartered lengthways, so as to maximise their surface area, the lemon chopped up roughly in to centimeter pieces, and the onions quartered and then sliced.

Chopping up the 'stuffing'

I love to stuff things inside chickens to get more flavour into the dish, but experience has shown you need to be careful with juices flowing out and burning. To make sure that the inside of the bird would steam in lemon and lime juice and the outside would crisp up I would need to close the bird up tight. Once everything was stuffed inside the seasoned cavity (well not everything, I couldn't get all the limes in!) I used largish skewers to close off the end.

Securing the end of the bird with skewers

That then went into a hot oven (180ºC) for 15 minutes per pound, this time on a trivet to hold the meat off the bottom, as I was expecting some dripping and didn't want the bottom of the bird to poach. I always leave the neck in the roasting tray - helps to intensify the flavour of the gravy.

The bird just out of oven, ready to rest for 20 minutes or so.

Once the bird had come out it was gravy time. First off I tipped all the juices and all the stuffing out of the bird back into the roasting pan, making sure I got everything out. Then into that went some white wine and some stock (pheasant this time, all I had left in the freezer) and let it cook down for a while.

The gravy being made with the stuffing from inside the bird.

Finally I picked out all the lemon and lime from the sauce (decided they would be far too acid to serve) but left in the onion and then added the half a small pot of leftover cream. And voila, one delicious sauce, and a perfect compliment to the slightly lemony/limey chicken.

The finished dish

Served this with the cabbage, which was lightly steamed, and three different types of rice cooked together - wild, red and brown. This was a revelation in itself - slightly pricey stuff, but totally delicious, and a great foil for the richness of the other flavours. All in all a great experiment, very tasty - and of course with lots of left overs! In fact we've been eating chicken practically all week, just finished off the last of the meat last night, this time reborn as a Chicken Korma with basmati and homemade naan bread - but that's another blog post ...

Traditional Roast Lamb with Roast Potatoes & Leeks in White Sauce

2010-01-11T05:25:00.003Z

Lamb is not exactly a stranger to my table, but more often than not it'll be a shoulder that ends up gracing it rather than other cuts. There's something about a shoulder's combination of flavour, price and overall ease of cooking that hits the spot for me. But the other day at the butchers the legs of lamb looked too good to overlook, so I had to give one of them a try.

I usually like my lamb well done, and that's great for shoulder, but it's not really a great way to cook leg in my opinion. Leg doesn't have the fat content of the shoulder, so it's all too easy to create something dry and not so palatable when roasting a leg for a long time - generally speaking you're better off aiming for something pinker. That was my plan this Sunday, so after consulting the usual battery of cookbooks I decided on half an hour hot (220ºC) and then 15 mins per pound cool (160ºC) for my 5 lb leg of (very well hung) Lamb. Nothing too special about this one - just coated in a very light layer of olive oil, well seasoned with salt & pepper and resting on 3 good sprigs of rosemary and a few cloves of garlic.

The meat out of the wrapping

The meat ready for the oven

As I was aiming for something very traditional this time around I decided to serve this with really crunchy roast potatoes and leeks in white sauce, and old favourite that I've grown up with. This time around I even got to use some of my Dad's leeks from Essex, as I managed to bring some back from there after Christmas. I braise the leeks just in butter for a good hour or so on a very low heat to get them really tender. Then I sprinkle in some flour and let that cook a little, before adding milk, salt & black pepper, and cooking until it thickens up - probably another 15 mins or so. This time around a little left over double cream went in as well, just to give that extra special something.

For the potatoes I reckon the secret it to get them really dry before they go in the hot oil/fat. I always parboil when I'm doing 'proper' roast potatoes, and do this well ahead of when they need to go in so that they can steam and dry out. A good shake in the colander is enough to give you a rough texture to pick up the fat - I normally use beef dripping, but didn't have any today, so used some of the fat from the lamb pan which was lightly flavoured with the rosemary and garlic from there. Ten minutes in the hot oven first gets the oil good and hot, then in go the potatoes (carefully!), a few turns to cover and then in for about an hour, depending how well browned you like them.

Parboiling potatoes

Finally there's the gravy to make. I rested this leg for half an hour in the end, to ensure it would be nice and juicy, and whilst it was sitting resting deglazed the pan with some wine and stock and cooked down the juices with a little flour to thicken.

Making gravy

Preparing the plates

All in all pretty happy with how this turned out. The potatoes & lamb were probably a little over done for my tastes, but lovely all the same. That's the price you have to pay, though, for nipping down the pub for a swift pint whilst your Sunday roast cooks :-)

Finished dish

P.S. These videos were all shot with my new Nexus One phone from Google - not bad I think, better quality than my previous phone that's for sure.

'Pot Roast' Brisket with Dumplings

2010-01-06T18:30:00.003Z

Just looking back on a few old web albums, and thinking it's a real shame I haven't blogged about some of the dishes I've been creating as they're so interesting! Things like the Chicken with Celeriac, Parsnip, Blue Cheese & Hazlenut Bake and a Fennel Sauce for example, the Braised Lamb & Ravioli, and the wonderful (if fattening) Chinese Style 'Pot Stickers', Fried & Steamed - where I made two different types of dumplings from Sunday Roast leftovers just to try out a new cook book. But blogging takes time, and that seems to be in short supply. Anyhow, I will try and write a few words about 'pot roast' brisket, seeing as it's so classically British.

I love a pot roast, and the cheaper cuts like Brisket in particular, as long slow cooking gives them a wonderful tenderness together with a rich beefy flavour that you can't find in tenderer cuts. I'm also a big dumpling fan, and at this time of year they go down a treat. This particular piece of meat was actually an offcut from the piece I bought for the Fricando recipe, as I had too much, and it was lying about in the freezer. One cold evening after Christmas I decided it would be just the ticket.

How to Make the 'Pot Roast'

A pot roast is one of the absolute simplest things you can do with meat, though to honest this is a slight variation on the theme - hence the quotes. You wouldn't usually use quite as much liquid as I've done, where I've completely immersed the meat in it. A traditional pot roast would normally just have the liquid coming up the side a little. This is something a bit more akin to a boiled beef recipe really.

Anyhow, here's how to make this one. First place your meat in the center of a deep casserole. Then cut up some root veg into largish pieces - I've used carrot, onion and celeriac leaves (didn't have any celery, but this works just as well) and scatter around the meat together with herbs. Here I've gone for 2 bay leaves and a generous handful of thyme. Just throw them in as they are. You'll also notice I've left some of the onion skin on for colour. Add some salt & pepper - not too much though, you'll need to adjust later - and then finally pour on boiling water to cover.

Everything in the pot

And now with the water added

Finally add the lid and cook on a very low simmer for 2-3 hours, depending on the size of the meat, the heat, pot type, etc. - you don't need to be too precise here, just pierce with a sharp knife/skewer and feel the resistance if you're concerned - the knife should penetrate the meat nice and easily.

Dumplings

That's the beef, now for the dumplings. I use animal suet, half suet to one portion (self-raising) flour, a little salt, and enough water to make the mixture form into a ball. Add too much liquid and you will get soggy dumplings - but maybe you like them that way! For a lighter touch and some breadcrumbs as well. I cooked these for 20 minutes in the stew, though to be honest they could have probably done with a little longer. Do check your seasoning before these go in the pot, as once they're in you should really leave the pot closed so that they can steam properly.

The pot after dinner had been taken out

And the finished dish

Lovely stuff, cheap, tasty, warming and with plenty of leftovers. Who could want more.

Gnocchi: An Expert (Italian) Video Guide

2010-01-06T16:23:00.001Z

Gnocchi, like most forms of dumpling, are a common sight in my house - I love all forms of dumpling, in fact I have a whole book dedicated to the things (A World of Dumplings: Filled Dumplings, Pockets & Little Pies from Around the Globe)! Gnocchi can be tricky to perfect though, so I thought I'd shoot some video of the Italians mum creating a batch over in Italia this Christmas. Like most couples we have to alternate between parents at this time of year, and this time around it was our turn to be in Italy with B's mum and dad, Anna & Elio.

These weren't actually for Christmas day, just another lunchtime - but B's mum pretty much always sticks to the the traditional primo/secondo style of Italian dining. The primo is generally something like pasta with sauce or risotto - or indeed gnocchi - and then the secondo some form of meat with vegetables. And if you think my portion of gnocchi below looks large for a 'starter' then you should have seen it before I got her to take some off ...

Preparing the dough. The potatoes have been baked till tender, left to just cool a little, then passed through a potato ricer.

Making the dumplings.

Some of the finished article, ready for the pot.

Poaching some test dumplings - and a little bit of dog (!) Gnocchi are cooked when they rise to the surface of the boiling water.

The finished dish, together with a meat ragu (venison).

The secondo being prepared.

All in all very delicious - and somehow I managed to return from Christmas no heavier than I left. Wonders will never cease.

P.S. Just in case you speak Italian, and are wondering why you can't understand anything that's said, they are speaking a dialect that's local to the area and although has some similarity to Italian is different enough to make most of it pretty unintelligible.

Fricando (Rich Braised Beef)

2009-12-20T19:12:00.000Z

At the moment I'm still playing around with Anglo-Italian hybrids - seems only fair to the Italian to bring more of her type of food into the Sunday roasting. Was after beef this week, and as ever I hadn't decided on anything until I knew what meat I had to play with. For me the core of any Sunday roast has to be the meat itself, so there's no point planning anything until you know what quality of that you've got. The butchers had a nice selection of brisket this week, and being a big brisket fan I decided to plump for that.

Brisket - bit large for what I was doing, so cut a bit off for another time

Back at home it was time to dig in to my cookbooks for inspiration. I have a bit of an obsession with cookbooks, and although I rarely follow a recipe I love to be able to browse through ideas and techniques to inspire me. I recently did buy one by Anna del Conte though, The Classic Food of Northern Italy, and was bowled over somewhat by her style and clarity of writing, so decided to follow something of hers completely - 'Fricando'.

Anna does recommend following things quite closely, in order to reveal the true Italian style of the dish, so that's what I did. At least that's what I thought I did, until after the meal - but more of that later! Fricando is basically a braised beef dish, of either French (fricandeau) or Italian (fricando) origin, depending who's side your on :-) From what I understand it should really be veal, but the core of it seems to be a larded piece of beef that's then braised. Cloves also seem important, as well as a very long slow cook at low temperature.

Pancetta & Clove Studded Onion

The trick is to make incisions into the meat and push in quite a lot of minced/chopped proscuitto into it. You then brown the meat very well with olive oil and butter, and then leave to braise with one clove studded onion cut in half, half (or less) of a chopped up carrot, a good handful or two of celery (leaves only if you can), a (very) little stock and plenty of fresh parsley. After a few hours (I did mine for about four in the end, but it was ready earlier really - christmas beers down the pub delayed me somewhat) it should be done. All you need do next is take the meat out to rest, and then blitz the sauce smooth, either in a blender, sieve, mouli or whatever you prefer.

Minced pancetta, ready for pushing into the meat

The joint ready to go into the oven for it's long slow cook

The flavour has to be tasted to be believed. Absolutely wonderful. Always odd how such simple combinations can create such a sublime combination, but a real pleasure to eat. One of the best braised beef dishes I've ever made I think, if not the best. Served it very simply with some fresh greens and mashed potatoes (with a lovely celeriac risotto as primo, courtesy of the Italian).

Celeriac risotto

The leaves from the celeriac in the garden - used these in place of the celery it should be, and very tasty they were too!

The finished sauce

And the finished dish

P.S. I hinted earlier I cocked up a bit with this one - well the truth is I used pancetta rather than proscuitto. Looked at too many recipes, and since I had some pancetta to finish up in the fridge I guess I couldn't get it out of my head! Either way though it was delicious, but now of course I need to try it with the prosciutto just to check!

Wild Mushrooms & Milk - bitter flavour?

2009-12-20T18:57:00.000Z

Not my usual post I know, but an unusual cooking disaster has prompted me to write a quick post hoping for some illumination. I have a question - can poaching certain mushrooms in milk create an unpalatable bitterness than will ruin a dish?

I have a dish that's long been a favourite - Cod & Crab Gratin - that also includes a fair quantity of mushrooms which are poached in milk before mixing with the fish and other ingredients. Since I'd had a successful mushroom foraging trip and collected a good amount of wood & field blewitts I used these, but the milk turned horribly acrid ruining the sauce. Never had anything like it - so if someone else out there can illuminate I'd appreciate it!

Braised Lamb Italian Style

2009-11-25T17:49:00.002Z

Well I've not blogged here for a while, though I've been cooking as much as ever. Finding the time to squeeze everything in is a pain! I will try and post something up here a bit more interesting soon, but in the meantime here in some more experimentation with the Flip HD video camera, filming a Sunday lunch. Lots of short videos of the various stages.

Been trying to do some Anglo/Italian hybrids recently, so here's a good example of one.