Archive | Dining In RSS feed for this section

That Sausage and Bean Stuff

4 Feb

Hey! I’m back. Now that THAT’S dealt with, on to the food.

This recipe doesn’t have a name. I call it “That Sausage and Bean Stuff”.  It has overtones of eastern European stews, Indian curries, and Creole jambalayas without really being any of those things. It’s sweet, spicy, sour, smoky, and intense. It’s a regular weeknight supper around here, and it’s delicious.

I used to make this with Mattesons smoked sausage. Yes, I know, it’s kind of gross. So are hot dogs and we still eat those. However, I recently discovered Polish country sausage, or Wiejska Kielbasa. So good in dishes like this, also good just sliced and served with bread and mustard. If you can’t make it to a market or to one of the many Polish groceries that have popped up in the last few years for your Kielbasa, they sell a pretty decent version at the deli counter in Morrison’s. It has a tough-yet-papery casing that you might want to peel or cut off as it can be hard or impossible to chew. I don’t mind working through it or just picking it out (it tends to come loose from the sausage in tight spirals during cooking) but you may feel differently.

This dish is still delicious – and completely vegan – without any sausage at all, or with a tin of chickpeas in place of the sausage. (more…)

I’m back and I’ve brought dessert!

6 Jul

Sorry for the extended silence, everyone. My involvement in a pre-recorded televised food-related spectacle (which will air at some point in August or September) has kind of taken up all the food-related space in my head. Once it’s all over and I can talk about it without giving anything away, I’ll write about it here (maybe – not quite sure if the contract I signed precludes that, but we’ll see). Anyway, for now, back to our regularly scheduled gastronomic chit-chat!

You know what I love? A good dessert, preferably involving fruit and/or chocolate. You know what I really don’t care for? Baking. I get in the mood for it sometimes, usually around Christmas, but it’s pretty rare. I usually buy biscuits or cakes at the grocery, which is just kind of sad, considering what a food-obsessed person I am. So this afternoon I noticed some apples sitting around and came up with this incredibly simple delicious sweet thing that took about five minutes.

  • 2 apples (preferably on the tart side) peeled and chopped or sliced roughly
  • Squeeze of lemon juice
  • Tablespoon of butter
  • Sugar, 2-3 tablespoons, depending on tartness of apples
  • 1/2-3/4 cup of water
  • Small handful roughly chopped walnuts (optional)
  • teaspoon each cinnamon and fresh grated nutmeg

Toss chopped apples with a squeeze of lemon juice. Saute in butter in a wide frying pan, stirring regularly, just until the apples start to colour around the edges. Add walnuts if using, stir around for another minute, and add cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and water. Cook until a syrup forms. Taste and add more sugar if you like.

Serve warm over vanilla ice cream, or let it cool a bit and do what I did -make a rough tart-type thing by pouring it in the centre of a rectangle of pre-made puff pastry (yes, yes, I know). Fold the sides towards the centre to almost-but-not-quite cover the filling and paint the whole thing with a beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar before baking according to the directions on the puff pastry package. I made some Bird’s custard to go with for my fella. He is in the living room snarfing a big slice as we speak! I’ll have mine later, probably with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt on top, or maybe a thin slice of cheddar cheese.

It’s a Pickle-splosion

25 May

Sunday night I decided to dig up some confit pork (a recipe for another day ) from its lardy home in the back of the fridge to serve with polenta chips (one batch of your favourite savoury polenta, spread in a pan, cooled in the fridge, cut into chips, drizzled with olive oil, and pan fried on each side ‘til browned and crispy). What with all this richness and creaminess, some bite was needed. Enter the pickled cabbage, which Americans would refer to as vinegar slaw (and as far as I am concerned, a much superior product for most applications than its more popular cousin, mayonnaise coleslaw).

(more…)

The Easiest, Most Perfect Bread

16 May

This no-knead bread thing was all over the internet about four years ago, but I didn’t take much notice because I like kneading bread dough. I love how the dough changes as the glutens develop and how it feels like a living thing in your hands. But you know what I love more? I love a perfect, crisp, shattering crust and a firm-yet-airy crumb with big swiss cheese holes, and I simply wasn’t getting that from standard home baking techniques. No-knead bread promised the results I was after, and I figured that if it’s as easy as they say, I might as well give it a try. (more…)

Fettucine Carbonara and a plug for a neat website

3 May

So there’s this website called Forkd I’ve been enjoying lately. It’s kind of like a social recipe networking kind of site. You can save or ‘fork’ other people’s recipes to try later, add your own changes and substitutions, comment on other recipes, and search for new recipes using tags. It’s also easy to use and really, really nicely designed with lots of clever touches. There is an option to automatically blog your recipes, which works quite well, as you can see below. I’ve done some minor editing (moved the photo to the right, changed some text from italic to plain) but for the most part, the auto-blog feature gets the layout just right. So, with no future ado, I bring you Fettucine Carbonara!
(more…)

Tacos for Tea

22 Apr

For most people here in England, taco means Old El Paso. Or maybe Discovery. Crispy tortilla shell with a spoonful of mince that’s been browned and seasoned with a salty, sweetened packet of powder. Chopped lettuce, shredded cheddar cheese, a dollop of soured cream. Gloopy salsa from a pouch or a jar. But let me tell you, my friends, there is another kind of taco – a real taco, a fresh, amazing taco. I am here to show you the way!


First of all, no mince, please. That doesn’t mean you have to buy fancy cuts. I made these tacos with a pack of pre-cut organic stewing beef from the reduced-to-sell bin. It was less than £2 and was more than enough for me and the Mister. In fact, the cheaper the cut, the more authentic your taco will be. Just remember, the cheaper it is, the longer it will take to cook, so plan ahead! I used the slow cooker this time. The night before, I mixed the stewing beef with the juice of an orange, a big pinch of cumin, a big pinch of chipotle chili powder (plain chili powder would work fine), salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. The next morning before work, I just took it out of the fridge and plopped it into the slow cooker with a couple of cloves of garlic that I smashed as best as I could with my fingers since I don’t trust myself with a knife that early (by the way, if you put on your makeup after you smash garlic with your fingers, even if you wash your hands, your face will smell of garlic all day. Consider yourself warned). After eight hours on low, the beef was tender enough to fall apart when poked with a fork. It was not, however, crispy on the edges. This is important to me, so I tipped the whole shebang into a pan and cooked it over high heat until all the liquid evaporated and the shreddy chunks of beef were nice and brown. See?

So this is your filling. Before you finished it up, you should have made your toppings. Sorry! I forgot to mention that. You can use jarred salsa if you like. I wouldn’t, unless it was really awesome jarred salsa. It does exist, just not generally in this country. Definitely not at Morrison’s, or Tesco, or Sainsbury’s. Not to worry, though, home made salsas are much better and very, very easy. This time, I made an avocado and tomato salsa  with cubed ripe avocado, 3 small, ripe chopped tomatoes (seeds and goop squeezed out), a little onion, a chopped fresh chili, juice of one fresh lime, a teaspoon of cider vinegar, salt, a little cumin, and fresh coriander. By the way, sniff your tomatoes before you buy them! If they don’t smell like anything, they are worthless, no matter how red they are. If you don’t know how a tomato is supposed to smell, wait a few months until you find a ripe one in a garden, and have a good sniff. If you can’t find tomato-smelling tomatoes in the store then just do without. So back to our regularly scheduled taco programming. I also made a vinegary apple slaw. This sounds strange, but it’s kind of similar to jicama in vinegar, which is very traditional in Mexico. Jicama isn’t as sweet as apple but the texture is very similar. This slaw is easy to make, just an apple and about 1/4 of an onion chopped into thin matchsticks marinated for about 20 minutes in white or cider vinegar and water to cover (1 part of each) along with about a tablespoon of sugar. Other ideas for toppings – thinly sliced radish, crumbly white cheese (feta is good, as is Caerphilly, but not cheddar!) or thinly sliced iceberg lettuce sprinkled with salt and vinegar.

So, here’s the finished product with the salsa and the slaw and a drizzle of creme fraiche thinned with a little milk. You can use soured cream, too, but make sure to thin it out so it’s drizzle-able. That’s a corn tortilla you see there, toasted in a dry skillet until it’s hot and pliable and a little puffy with brown toasty spots. OMG so good. However, I know that corn tortillas are hard to find in the UK, so flour is acceptable. Flour tortillas in this country are almost always huge, though, so if the ones you use are larger than 4-5 inches across, you should cut them in half. If they’re REALLY huge, cut them in fourths. You’re not making burritos here – a taco should be three good bites, four at the most. As you can see in the photo, a proper taco is barely bigger than my teeny little mouse hand. 


So you’re going to make some real tacos soon, right? If you don’t feel like cooking your filling low-and-slow all day long, not to worry. Rump steak and chicken breasts make great filling, too. Just marinate in the orange juice mixture I told you about up there while you’re at work and then when you get home, cook the steak or chicken breast in a skillet or grill pan before slicing as thin as you can against the grain. I’d leave the rump steak rare, but not the chicken obviously! I’d also pound the chicken out thin before marinating it but that’s just me.  You could also get crazy and try some international tacos! Marinate the meat in Indian curry spices and lime juice, serve with mango chutney, lime pickle, and cucumber raita and wrap in chappatis. Or marinate in greek spices and yogurt and serve with hummous and olives and feta in a pita. If you’re a veggie (you weirdo), you can even use the taco marinade with chunks of onion, courgette, and mushrooms before cooking in a little oil over high heat until delicious and tender with browned, crispy edges.


Tacos! Yay!

What to buy at the Asian grocery

20 Apr

I love Asian grocery stores, but for the longest time I just wandered around confused, not knowing what to buy. The staff are always competent and professional, but between the language barrier and my general shyness (no, really), I’d come home with a bit of this and a bit of that, some of which was awesome and was gobbled right up, some of which was terrible and ended up in the cupboard for six months before hitting the bin. Here are some tips and some ideas of things you might like to try, if you’re an Asian grocery newbie.


Today’s grocery is Taste the Orient, located here in Leeds on Vicar Lane. I tried to get some photos inside, but I was told NO PICTURES. If you haven’t been, it’s not the tiny, crowded, confusing place you might expect. It’s very modern and bright with a red-and-black colour scheme. If you want tiny and crowded, you can head right across the street next to the Edward Street carpark where you will find the Wing Lee Hong Co. It is owned by the same people and carries many of the same products, maybe with more of an emphasis on catering sizes of Asian culinary staples, herbal and medicinal products, and Asian holiday decorations. They also have some gorgeous posters of old Chinese (I think – please someone correct me if I am wrong! ) cigarette ads with beautiful, traditionally-dressed ladies, which would probably look excellent over the mantel. I usually hit both stores when I am Asian marketing, but I stuck with Taste the Orient this time.
So here’s some Japanese crispy seaweed (though it is actually made in Korea, according to the back of the package). See how it has been opened? That’s because I ate more than half of it before I got home. This stuff is ADDICTIVE. It is as delicious as pork crackling, no lie. The nutrition information claims that the whole big package only contains 140 calories, but I don’t actually believe it. One, it’s too delicious, and two, it’s fried in palm oil and leaves a greasy mark when you lay it on a piece of paper. Still, this stuff is  amazing. The packaging suggests adding it to salads and sandwiches, which I might try if I could keep from eating it all in one sitting.

Here we have ponzu – a vinegar and citrus based sauce that can be mixed with soy sauce and used for dipping sashimi or dumplings aka gyoza. It’s great in salad dressings , too.
To your right are three varieties of instant soup, two miso and one ‘clear japanese broth’. Each envelope contains three soup sachets, so that’s nine here total. I have them at work instead of tea or coffee, sometimes. If you are the dieting type, all of these soups are really savoury and satisfying and only have about 10 calories per cup (but, like most everything on this page, they are very high in sodium). I especially like the miso soup with seaweed – it’s amazing how the tiny black pellets unfurl into tender, bright green leaves in the boiling water.

Remember my recent breakfast of udon noodles with kim-chi and a fried egg? These are the noodles responsible for that. You find them in single-serving packs in the refrigerated section. If you are using them in soup, give them three minutes to simmer before serving. If you are stir-frying them (Yaki Udon, anyone?), they can go straight in the pan, again, soon enough that they can cook for 3-4 minutes before they hit your plate.
This is a container of miso paste. It makes a great salad dressing mixed with lemon, ginger and oil. It’s nice spread thinly on salmon or chicken before baking or grilling. I wouldn’t buy this brand again, though – too sweet. I admit to being swayed by the super-cute packaging. My favourite brand is Korean, and comes in a tan-coloured plastic rectangular tub about twice as big as this one, but I couldn’t find it this time. I hope they haven’t decided not to sell it any more.

Next up? Brown rice tea. Sounds disgusting, tastes really nice and toasty and comforting, but completely unlike Horlick’s if that’s what toasty and comforting brings to mind for you. It’s kind of hard to describe – it kind of smells like popcorn. I drink this all the time at work.

This is furikake. It’s a seasoning made mainly of seaweed flakes, sugar, and sesame seeds. There are tons of different varieties which include things like dry salmon flakes, shiso, miso, etc. This stuff makes plain leftover rice into a new and exciting meal. Kids love it, apparently, because there are tons of versions in little envelopes with cartoon characters. There is even a Hello Kitty variety. I assume it doesn’t contain dried kitties. I use this stuff to season the rice when I make onigiri and sometimes I just sprinkle it on any old thing that’s tasting a bit boring. Tomato soup? Tuna Mayo? Ham sandwich? All good candidates for the furikake treatment.

Now this is a staple – panko bread crumbs. They are extremely light and delicately crispy and are perfect for any breading situation, Japanese or not. Have you ever had Chicken Katsu curry? It’s my go-to dish when I end up at Wagamama – it’s a breaded chicken fillet served with sticky rice and a Japanese style curry sauce. Panko is essential for breading the chicken if you want to make it at home. As for the sauce, you’ll need some curry roux, which you will find, along with the short-grain sticky Japanese rice, near the panko. I almost always grab a few packs of curry roux, but I think I want to try making it from scratch next time. The pre-made versions are perfectly nice, but they are full of sodium and hydrogenated oils, and with all the pig fat and salt I eat I need to cut corners where I can.
I tried something new today – mustard green kim-chi. I’ve only ever had the  cabbage variety, but this is pretty awesome. The mustard leaves are looooong and slimy and spicy and delicious. This came in a big packet, which I mistakenly thought was resealable. I need to get a couple of zipper storage bags to put this in because it is pretty (deliciously) smelly and it might take over the fridge before I’m done with it.
And, finally, my favourite asian vegetable – Pak Choi, Back Choy,  whatever you call it, it is awesome. Raw or cooked, in a salad, in a stir fry, and especially in cold rice noodle soup with soy, ponzu, red chili powder, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and spring onion. My reward for a hard day of Asian grocery shopping. Sorry for the mismatched chopsticks, I was in a hurry.
So that’s my guide to some things that are nice at the Asian grocery. What  do you pick up when you’re there?

Chicory with Walnuts and Stilton

13 Apr

The Mister is out this evening, so it’s a single lady’s supper for me. Toasted walnuts and crumbles of Stilton nestled in chicory leaf boats with a side of sliced ripe pear, all drizzled with a honey mustard vinaigrette (that’s 4 tablespoons of honey, 1 tablespoon of of grain mustard,  and a splash each of cider vinegar and olive oil all whisked together). Those are black grapes in the middle. They look like olives, don’t they?

So I was wondering… do you all have any tricks for taking great looking food pics? I have a decent digital camera (not a DSLR, unfortunately),  I avoid using a flash and I carry my plates all around the house looking for the best light, but it all still looks a bit beige and boring. It doesn’t look beige and boring in person, I promise! So help a girl out – what can I do to punch up my pictures?

Market Adventures, Episode 2 – Bunny Boiler

12 Apr

So I think I successfully cooked my first rabbit, AND I managed to recreate a a restaurant dish I enjoyed a couple of years ago that’s been knocking around in my head ever since – Rabbit Ragu with Pappardelle and Gremolata.

The ragu took most of the afternoon, but it wasn’t difficult. In a cast iron dutch oven I sauteed a carrot, celery rib, and onion, all chopped fine, along with 4 slices of diced, smoked streaky bacon in olive oil till it was all a bit brown around the edges. I added the chopped up rabbit and tried to brown it, but I didn’t get very far because the aromatics were starting to burn – If I do this again, I’ll brown the rabbit in a separate pan and deglaze it with a little wine to get the fond up before adding it back to the main pot. So, after everything was as browned as it was going to get, I added a glass of white wine, a dollop of tomato paste, 4 cups of chicken stock, a piece of parmesan rind and a couple of bay leaves. I put the lid on a little crooked so some of the steam could escape and let it simmer away for a couple of hours. I checked it every half hour or so to make sure it didn’t get too dry and ended up adding another cup or so of water before it was done. Here it is just starting out – it already smelled amazing.
I completely forgot I’d added the parmesan rind,  and about halfway through cooking when it floated to the top I could not figure out what this orangey, gummy, perfectly rectangular cartaligey-looking thing was or where it could have come from. So what did I do with this inedible-looking mystery object in my ragu? Why, I tasted it, of course. Even then it took a few more moments before the light bulb came on. Silly me.

So while the bunny simmered, I made some gremolata and got started on the pasta. 1 egg per 100 grams flour whizzed in the food whizzer and then kneaded on the counter(I always add a couple of eggshells of water since I only use medium eggs instead of large or extra large, though now that I think of it, I could just cut out a few grams of flour in the flour/egg ratio). I find the trick to good pasta is to knead it until I think I might die of exhaustion and then let it rest in the fridge for at least an hour before I roll it out. Here’s the hand-cut pasta (I never use the cutting attachment on the pasta machine – I like it rough and uneven), all rolled out and ready to cook. I just dusted it with flour and piled it up loosely while I finished everything else up – you need to make sure that everything stays nice and moist under a damp tea towel while you’re rolling it out, but once it’s done, it’s OK if it dries out a little bit before you cook it.

So the ragu simmered for over two hours until the bunny was super-tender and falling off the bone. I took it out of the dutch oven, let it cool a bit, and pulled all the meat off the bones to add back in to the sauce. It was incredibly dark and rich and sticky, though I must say that it was a tiny bit too salty. I salted the aromatics at the beginning and then the mysterious parmesan rind took it over the top. I  decided to add a couple of tablespoons of cream to thin it out and dilute the saltiness a bit- clever, eh?

So here is the finished dish. It was really, really rich and the gremolata cut through it nicely. Gremolata is a condiment traditionally served with the incredibly rich and decadent Ossobuco Milanese, so cutting through richness and unctuousness is pretty much its job. It is good at its job.
 
I basically followed this this Tuscan Rabbit Ragu recipe from the NYT- it was the only one I could find that didn’t call for a tin of tomatoes. I wanted this to be a meat sauce, not a tomato sauce with a little meat in it – speaking of which, don’t get me started on what the English called ‘bolognese’. Tomato sauce with 500 grams of  beef mince cooked for twenty minutes can be tasty enough, especially if you’re hungry and/or nine years old, but it’s NOT Bolognese. Anyway. The NYT recipe called for a 3 pound rabbit, and mine was less than 2 pounds. I was a bit worried and considered cutting back on all the other ingredients, but it turned out fine. The gremolata consisted of a big handful of flat-leaf parsley, the zest of a lemon, and one large clove of garlic, all chopped fine (but not in the food processor – you don’t want a puree) and stirred up with a glug of olive oil and salt and pepper and a squeeze of the lemon juice.

Next time, I think I’ll put the ragu inside some ravioli and make some kind of light sauce based on the gremolata.

Market Adventures, Episode 1 – the Cooking of the Crab

9 Apr
So my adored husband is off to Newcastle this weekend for a stag do (god help him),  which means it’s time for me to go a little crazy and try some new stuff in the kitchen. I stopped by the Leeds Kirkgate Market this afternoon on the way home and picked up a few things to try. I thought about writing a bit about the market itself, but instead, I’ll just link to Katie at Leeds Grub, who has already done a fine post on the subject. First up for my weekend of cooking adventure? Live crab!

I’ve eaten crab plenty of times in the form of crab cakes or King Crab legs, but I’ve never cooked one. This big fella, an Edible Crab (the clue is in the name!) had the dubious honour of being my first victim. He’s quite a bruiser, actually – check out that claw!- and I grew quite attached to him by the time I got him home, out of his plastic bag, and into the (empty) vegetable drawer. I very nearly decided to take the train to Scarborough tomorrow to give him his freedom, but greed won out in the end. Sorry, vegans.


Cooking him was easy enough – ten minutes in the freezer to anesthetize him (probably a myth, but it eased my conscience) and then into a heavy-lidded pot with some sea salt, black pepper, and a kettle of boiling water for 20 minutes. There was no jumping or screaming, which was a relief. While he was boiling, I found some skewers, sliced a lemon and some bread and raided the tool box for a hammer and some locking pliers.
 No, seriously. 
As you can see, most of his legs fell off in the boiling water. I ate them (well, the meat inside them) anyway. Mostly, even with the locking pliers, eating this guy was quite a palaver. It was worth it for the tastiness and the experience but I think I might let the fishmonger do the work and buy a pre-dressed crab next time. The claws and legs were delicious, but it was hard to get enough meat from the body to make it worth the trouble. I was admittedly not prepared for the wide variety of gills and fronds and fingers and tubes that made up his body. Beautiful and interesting but not exactly appetising. Also, I think this guy must have been about ten minutes from molting, because right under his shell was another, identical, still-soft shell, which was kind of weird. Anyway,  I worked hard and got every last edible bit I could out of there. I wasn’t going to let a creature I killed with my own hands go to waste, even if it was basically a big insect.
So – Edible Crab is, indeed, edible. Next up from my market adventure? One whole rabbit. Please don’t hate me when I tell you that there is a pet stall at the market, and the sweet fluffy bunnies that were cavorting with the guinea pigs put the idea of cooking a rabbit into my head. Also coming up, a review of my birthday dinner at The Reliance and a post about my dearest friend, who happens to be a 60-year-old black iron skillet. 
← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.