Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Chilli brussel sprouts
I think people don't like brussel sprouts because they had bad sprout experiences when they were little.
My mum is a fantastic cook and never made us eat anything we didn't want to and I was still freaked out my sprouts when I was small. They were always just boiled, very plain, perhaps with butter on and were quite big for little mouths. If they were a bit hot, you'd ram one in your mouth and it would explode, boiling and bitter. Not really that nice.
But, like most people, I have a huge amount of residual affection for sprouts, nevertheless. The trick is clearly to find a way to make them a bit more interesting.
Chucking all sorts of stuff over it - bacon, chestnuts, herbs - is the answer and my favourite topping is garlic and chilli. Singapore Garden, every north londoner's top singaporean rezzy http://www.singaporegarden.co.uk/ does Chiew Yim brussel sprouts, where the sprouts are dipped in, I think, batter, then deep fried with chilli and garlic. And they are outstanding, one of the best things on SG's menu.
I don't deep fry my sprouts, because I want to see my 30th birthday, but sauteeing them with the chilli and garlic works just as well to give the general cabbagey atmosphere a bit of a kick. And the marvellous thing about sauteeing a sprout is that you can cook them the night before if you're doing a big lunch/dinner.
It's essential, to make the sprouts a more manageable mouthful for adults and children alike, that you cut the little buggers in half before you fry them.
Chilli brussel sprouts
Boil your sprouts in salted water for 3 mins. When cool, chop in half.
Heat some butter, dripping or veg oil (or whatever you like most to fry with) in a pan and add the sprouts.
Then add your chopped garlic and chilli and swoosh round the pan for about 5-8 minutes. Keep the pan on a medium heat so that neither the garlic nor the sprouts burn and taste even more bitter than God intended.
My mum is a fantastic cook and never made us eat anything we didn't want to and I was still freaked out my sprouts when I was small. They were always just boiled, very plain, perhaps with butter on and were quite big for little mouths. If they were a bit hot, you'd ram one in your mouth and it would explode, boiling and bitter. Not really that nice.
But, like most people, I have a huge amount of residual affection for sprouts, nevertheless. The trick is clearly to find a way to make them a bit more interesting.
Chucking all sorts of stuff over it - bacon, chestnuts, herbs - is the answer and my favourite topping is garlic and chilli. Singapore Garden, every north londoner's top singaporean rezzy http://www.singaporegarden.co.uk/ does Chiew Yim brussel sprouts, where the sprouts are dipped in, I think, batter, then deep fried with chilli and garlic. And they are outstanding, one of the best things on SG's menu.
I don't deep fry my sprouts, because I want to see my 30th birthday, but sauteeing them with the chilli and garlic works just as well to give the general cabbagey atmosphere a bit of a kick. And the marvellous thing about sauteeing a sprout is that you can cook them the night before if you're doing a big lunch/dinner.
It's essential, to make the sprouts a more manageable mouthful for adults and children alike, that you cut the little buggers in half before you fry them.
Chilli brussel sprouts
Boil your sprouts in salted water for 3 mins. When cool, chop in half.
Heat some butter, dripping or veg oil (or whatever you like most to fry with) in a pan and add the sprouts.
Then add your chopped garlic and chilli and swoosh round the pan for about 5-8 minutes. Keep the pan on a medium heat so that neither the garlic nor the sprouts burn and taste even more bitter than God intended.
Monday, November 23, 2009
A pork pie for Giles
A pork pie is a wonderful thing. But it is also complicated and can go wrong in a number of ways, because there are three elements to this: a pastry, a filling and jelly, which each come with their complications.
If you'd like to make one, I say go for it, but make sure you have an entire day - or even a day and a half clear to attempt it - especially if it's your first go.
This recipe makes a medium-sized pork pie, using a 7in loose-bottomed cake tin from John Lewis. A similar version of this recipe can be found in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat book, on p.444.
You will need for the pastry:
If you'd like to make one, I say go for it, but make sure you have an entire day - or even a day and a half clear to attempt it - especially if it's your first go.
This recipe makes a medium-sized pork pie, using a 7in loose-bottomed cake tin from John Lewis. A similar version of this recipe can be found in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat book, on p.444.
You will need for the pastry:
275g plain flour
100ml water
30g diced butter
70g diced lard
1 beaten egg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 Heat the fat and water in a saucepan until it is melted and warm - hot, even - it but don't boil it. While the fat is melting, put the flour and the salt into a mixing bowl and make a dip in the centre. Pour the egg into the dip and half mix it in with a knife. Once the fat and water have melted together, add it to the flour and mix until it is a dough. Here the dough will probably be a bit too sticky, so sprinkle on flour until it takes on that glossy sheen of pastry. Form it into a ball, cover in cling film and chill for an hour.
2 For your filling you will need:
400g pork shoulder/leg
200g streaky bacon
200g pork belly
Or similarly ratio'd quantities. Mince this finely the best way you can see how.
Do NOT - are you listening? - do NOT, NOT, NOT use only pork shoulder, or only bacon, or only belly because the result will be grim. To your pork mixture add 1/4 tsp mace (if you want), a pinch of salt, 5 twists of black pepper and a dried chilli (if you want).
2 Grease your pie dish with butter or vegetable oil. Roll out the pastry to about a 0.5cm thickness and lay as best you can in the dish. This isn't especially easy, as you're fitting a flat thing into a rounded, 3D thing. The most important thing is that the pastry doesn't tear - nothing else really matters. This is so important that I often cut my nails very short before doing it.
I always recall Delia Smith's advice about pastry when I'm making a pork pie, which is to handle the pastry "with confidence". Like horses and naughty children, pastry can smell fear.
3 Fill your pastry casing with your filling. Really ram it in, as this will shrink on cooking. Sometimes I add a whole boiled egg, hidden in the middle, if I want to freak people out.
4 Trim off any excess pastry hanging over the side of your dish and re-roll to form a lid. You must brush the edges of the pie and the lid with beaten egg to seal it. You absolutely cannot use water or milk because it won't stick properly.
5 Seal the edges of the pie and then make a blow hole in the surface of the pie, about 1cm in diameter, for the pork juices to bubble out of during cooking. Then brush the whole of the top of the pie with beaten egg.
6 Shove it in the oven for 30mins at 180 degrees and then for 1 and 1/4 hours at 160 degrees.
7 Once the pie has cooked you must allow it to cool. And I mean really cool down - ideally leave it overnight, although I know it's torture to have to wait. During cooking, the pork will have shrunk away from the sides of the pastry to form a natural cavity to be filled by the jelly.
The point of the jelly - so unbeloved by those understandably squeamish about savoury food the wobbles - would originally have been to make an airtight casing for the precious porkstuff, which would help it to keep for a couple of weeks without refrigeration.
7 Once the pie has cooked you must allow it to cool. And I mean really cool down - ideally leave it overnight, although I know it's torture to have to wait. During cooking, the pork will have shrunk away from the sides of the pastry to form a natural cavity to be filled by the jelly.
The point of the jelly - so unbeloved by those understandably squeamish about savoury food the wobbles - would originally have been to make an airtight casing for the precious porkstuff, which would help it to keep for a couple of weeks without refrigeration.
You can make the jelly in two ways: either make up a pint of warm stock - any will do, out of a packet or whatever - and set it with powdered gelatine. I find Dr Oetker's powdered beef gelatine to be the most user-friendly. 1 x 30g sachet sets one pint of liquid - easy peasy. You will need in total about half a pint of gelatine to be on the safe side.
If you're feeling very serious, ask your butcher for some veal bones or a pig's trotter. Boil it all up for a couple of hours with some carrots and celery and the stock will turn to jelly when it sets, without needing the help of manufactured gelatine.
Pour the jelly through the hole in the top of the pie while the jelly is still warm and it will set around the pork as it cools.
This is the trickiest part of the process, so you must keep your nerve - never attempt this in a hurry. You can use a turkey baster if you've got one, or a jug and funnel. It's a pretty messy business, so don't lose heart if the stock bubbles out of your pie's blowhole and goes everywhere.
This kind of pastry is very resilient and can withstand having quite a lot of stock splashed all over it without becoming soggy. You may have to repeat the pouring-in of the jelly as after you've poured in the first lot, as it will slowly disappear into nooks and crannies of the pie and suddenly there will be a 1cm gap between the lid of the pie and the top of the pork.
Then once you think there's as much gelatine in there as you're going to get, leave this to cool again - or chill in the fridge, ideally for three or four hours.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Recipe Exchange
I got an email the other day, with the title Recipe Exchange - a sort of chain letter for recipes. I'm supposed to get 360 recipes out of it, which sounds a bit many. But still, it's a nice idea and I can try out some new things, that aren't all out of Nigel Slater.
Although frankly, they all WILL be.
Although frankly, they all WILL be.
Lamb shank stew for a blustery November night
I've always been a bit scared of stews, I don't know why. But the other day I found some lamb shanks in the freezer and some haricot beans in the larder and decided to put them together, with the help of my NBF Nigel Slater.
He recommended using leeks with the beans, but I didn't have any of them, so I used some celery and carrots instead.
The exact recipe can be found in Volume 1 of NS's 'Tender' cookbook, but it goes something like this:
(For 2)
- Soak 150g haricot beans overnight, or for approx 6-hours, then change water and bring to boil, skim off the gross froth bit and then simmer for 40 mins. When they're done, leave them in the water they boiled in.
- Season lamb shanks all over and then brown in some oil in whatever casserole pot you're going to cook the whole lot in. Takes about 10 mins to brown lightly all over (but it's going to cook for 2 hours, so you don't have to be really neurotic about it. And anyway, I always tell myself, lamb won't kill you if it's a bit rare). Then put aside, on a plate.
- Chop up your carrots and celery - maybe two of each? - and a clove of garlic and add, with a thick slice of butter to the casserole. Then cook gently for 20 mins. Here, NS recommends putting a sheet of greaseproof paper underneath the casserole lid, but if you haven't got any (and I frequently haven't) it's probably ok just to put the lid on.
- Take the casserole off the heat and sprinkle a tablespoon of plain flour over the veg and stir it round. Then drain the beans and add them, then pour in about 150 ml stock (just made with a cube or whatever), give it a stir and then place in the lamb shanks.
- Cook at 160 for 2 hours.
NS says it's best re-heated and he's right, athough it's also great first time round. It goes really well with Haimisha cucumbers on the side, just to cut through a bit of the fattiness of the lamb and the delicious gackiness of the beans.
He recommended using leeks with the beans, but I didn't have any of them, so I used some celery and carrots instead.
The exact recipe can be found in Volume 1 of NS's 'Tender' cookbook, but it goes something like this:
(For 2)
- Soak 150g haricot beans overnight, or for approx 6-hours, then change water and bring to boil, skim off the gross froth bit and then simmer for 40 mins. When they're done, leave them in the water they boiled in.
- Season lamb shanks all over and then brown in some oil in whatever casserole pot you're going to cook the whole lot in. Takes about 10 mins to brown lightly all over (but it's going to cook for 2 hours, so you don't have to be really neurotic about it. And anyway, I always tell myself, lamb won't kill you if it's a bit rare). Then put aside, on a plate.
- Chop up your carrots and celery - maybe two of each? - and a clove of garlic and add, with a thick slice of butter to the casserole. Then cook gently for 20 mins. Here, NS recommends putting a sheet of greaseproof paper underneath the casserole lid, but if you haven't got any (and I frequently haven't) it's probably ok just to put the lid on.
- Take the casserole off the heat and sprinkle a tablespoon of plain flour over the veg and stir it round. Then drain the beans and add them, then pour in about 150 ml stock (just made with a cube or whatever), give it a stir and then place in the lamb shanks.
- Cook at 160 for 2 hours.
NS says it's best re-heated and he's right, athough it's also great first time round. It goes really well with Haimisha cucumbers on the side, just to cut through a bit of the fattiness of the lamb and the delicious gackiness of the beans.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Coriander roast chicken
I've had a lot of coriander hanging around recently and applied it, the other day, to a roast chicken.
I'm one of those people who does that thing where I push butter, salt and garlic under the skin of the breast of the chicken before roasting. Not everyone likes doing that, but I think it's a great way of keeping everything moist as well as making it taste a bit different to the 98,000 other chickens I've roasted.
Anyway, I took some scraggy old coriander (why does it go scraggy so quickly?), a good lump of butter, salt and garlic and rather than mixing it all up by hand, I ran it through the food processor (I do love my food processor) and spooned it under the skin.
Then I roasted the chicken as normal, turning a couple of times during cooking.
I'm one of those people who does that thing where I push butter, salt and garlic under the skin of the breast of the chicken before roasting. Not everyone likes doing that, but I think it's a great way of keeping everything moist as well as making it taste a bit different to the 98,000 other chickens I've roasted.
Anyway, I took some scraggy old coriander (why does it go scraggy so quickly?), a good lump of butter, salt and garlic and rather than mixing it all up by hand, I ran it through the food processor (I do love my food processor) and spooned it under the skin.
Then I roasted the chicken as normal, turning a couple of times during cooking.
Curry without the bleurgh
I love curry, but I'm always freaked out by the recipes for it - about 16 ingredients, all things that I haven't got and that if I bought I'd invariably use once and then have to throw away ten years later when I moved house.
I was also always so fazed by coconut milk - you could only ever buy huge cans of it and although I like curry, I'd never eat enough of it to use a WHOLE can and would have to throw away most of it and then feel guilty.
So I never really make curries. But staring at a massive bunch of coriander the other day, I was reminded of a recipe I made a few years ago that I found in a newspaper, that called itself a 'Keralan curry'. I also discovered that coconut milk now comes in little 160ml cans, which are perfect for making a curry for one or two peopl.
I'd lost the recipe, but vaguely remembered that there was also chilli, garlic and ginger in it. That sounded pretty nice, so I whizzed up the vaguely scraggy coriander, some garlic, an ancient piece of ginger and the last bits of a chilli, much the worse for hanging around in the kitchen for about 3 weeks, and it turned itself into the most delicious, fresh curry paste-thing. It works with anything - chicken, lamb, fish - and its freshness yet spicyness is brilliant for when you get that feeling that you MUST HAVE a curry, but don't want to be tasting it for days afterwards.
Keralan curry
Large bunch of coriander
1 clove garlic (or 2 if you like garlic)
2 de-seeded red chilli (or leave some seeds in it if you want it hotter)
About 2cm cubed of ginger
Lime juice out of a bottle (if you've got it)
About half a cup of stock - just made with a cube or whatever
Half a teaspoon of cumin powder - if you've got
Two onions
A few glugs of cream or one of those 160ml mini cans of coconut milk
Chop the onions and cook for 15 mins over a low heat. Whizz up the coriander, garlic, chilli, ginger and lime juice (optional) in a food processor.
In a separate pan cook the meat until it's browned.
Once the onions are done, sprinkle over the cumin and shake around in the pan for a bit. Then add the coriander mixture, then the meat, including any juices or bits at the bottom of the pan.
Add the cream or coconut milk and stir. Turn the heat right down and pour in enough stock for the curry to be well-hydrated but not actually soup-like, a couple of tablespoons.
Put a lid on the curry and simmer for about 15 mins.
I was also always so fazed by coconut milk - you could only ever buy huge cans of it and although I like curry, I'd never eat enough of it to use a WHOLE can and would have to throw away most of it and then feel guilty.
So I never really make curries. But staring at a massive bunch of coriander the other day, I was reminded of a recipe I made a few years ago that I found in a newspaper, that called itself a 'Keralan curry'. I also discovered that coconut milk now comes in little 160ml cans, which are perfect for making a curry for one or two peopl.
I'd lost the recipe, but vaguely remembered that there was also chilli, garlic and ginger in it. That sounded pretty nice, so I whizzed up the vaguely scraggy coriander, some garlic, an ancient piece of ginger and the last bits of a chilli, much the worse for hanging around in the kitchen for about 3 weeks, and it turned itself into the most delicious, fresh curry paste-thing. It works with anything - chicken, lamb, fish - and its freshness yet spicyness is brilliant for when you get that feeling that you MUST HAVE a curry, but don't want to be tasting it for days afterwards.
Keralan curry
Large bunch of coriander
1 clove garlic (or 2 if you like garlic)
2 de-seeded red chilli (or leave some seeds in it if you want it hotter)
About 2cm cubed of ginger
Lime juice out of a bottle (if you've got it)
About half a cup of stock - just made with a cube or whatever
Half a teaspoon of cumin powder - if you've got
Two onions
A few glugs of cream or one of those 160ml mini cans of coconut milk
Chop the onions and cook for 15 mins over a low heat. Whizz up the coriander, garlic, chilli, ginger and lime juice (optional) in a food processor.
In a separate pan cook the meat until it's browned.
Once the onions are done, sprinkle over the cumin and shake around in the pan for a bit. Then add the coriander mixture, then the meat, including any juices or bits at the bottom of the pan.
Add the cream or coconut milk and stir. Turn the heat right down and pour in enough stock for the curry to be well-hydrated but not actually soup-like, a couple of tablespoons.
Put a lid on the curry and simmer for about 15 mins.
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