If in doubt add more wine

Another mixed day.

We made a kinda spiced Indian themed baked beans using tinned cannellini beans and many spices.

It was..meh.

So we don’t think we’ll try that again.  We’ll stick with North American style baked beans in future.

On the other hand we had a total bloomin’ success with cheat based ragu.

Our usual ragu (courtesy of the blessed Delia) is a precise and elaborate affair.

This time we stared deep into the freezer and shrugged.

Well, we had a metric some of chicken liver, a dubious dunno of minced pork and a large bag of cooked roast beef.

Sure we can turn that into ragu!  Or rather Dan can turn that into ragu.  He rather kindly made most of it whilst I was still in bed.

He did say the ragu was looking a little dry before he put it in the oven.  I would have added some beef stock, but no, Dan decided to up the 400ml of red wine required to 750ml.

That’s a whole bottle of wine!

He did reassure me that we’d had it before and it wasn’t brilliant.

So that’s okay…

The texture was slightly chewier than normal, but otherwise this was a total success.

This is what a freezer staple should look like.

Round Objects: Ricotta Edition

Continuing on the home-made cheese front, after we polished off the mozzarella, we moved onto dealing with the large quantity of ricotta sitting in the fridge.

First we made ricotta ice cream.

This sounds weird, but we have previously made toasted rice ice cream (amazing) and clotted cream ice cream (the best thing to serve with hot dessert ever).

Plus ricotta is a frequent base for desserts, so we thought “yeah, this is worth a punt.”

Sometime later we had what we can only describe as a Mini Milk flavour ice cream.

The plain white Mini Milk.

Which I adore.

Second we made Savoury Filo Strudel with Port Wine Sauce.

Well, almost.

We made the filling then realised that:

1. It was 6.00pm and we had to cool the filling for a couple of hours.
2. The kitchen was a state and we had no room to lay out the filo.
3. We’d already done three batches of washing up that day.
4. We had run completely out of steam.

So we put the filling in the fridge and ordered a curry.

The next day we had way more energy and finished the recipe.

We last made this in 2014 and my notes on the recipe read, “Really very nice.  Occasional due to time and cost.”

Cost is less of an issue nowadays, but the rest remains completely true.

Round Objects: Mozzarella Edition

So we’ve been busy on the cheese front.

We made some ricotta

And then we made some Mozzarella

Chocolate Orange for Scale

We continued the non-descript white sphere trend by making sour-dough pizza bases.

Here’s a picture of us using a local eco-friendly power source to aid the rise of the dough

Eco-friendly definition may vary depending on your love of small local wildlife

We also used some of the mozzarella to make the Tomato and Mozzarella Risotto, although mostly to bulk up our freezer reserves.

But mostly we used it to make delicious pizza.

Sour dough pizza with homemade mozzarella seems a perfect representation of the “never simple” attitude to cooking in this house.

Hit & Miss

A mixed selection of recipes.  One raving success and one utter failure.

The failure was a bit of embarrassment on my part, mostly because it was a result of inaccurate record keeping.

The recipe in question was a Winter Root Vegetable Tagine by Jull Dupleix.  According to my notes it was “tasty” and “huge”.

Excellent, I thought, just the thing for using up squash and parsnips.

Mid way through cooking Dan stared at the bubbling pot and asked, “Isn’t this the tagine that sat in the freezer for ages because neither of us wanted to eat it?”

“No, no,” I said, “It was another one.  We make lots of tagines.”

He was totally right.

It manages to be both spicy and bland, and it generally unpleasant.

So that went in the bin and it’s freezer meals for us for the rest of the week.

Lunches, however, were excellent.

We made a Chickpea, Tomato and Chorizo Soup.  And chorizo makes everything better.

We heated a good splosh of olive oil in a large pan and fried two finely chopped onions until they were soft. Then we added four crushed garlic cloves, a finely chopped green chilli, a tbsp. of ground cumin and a tsp of smoked paprika.  We stirred until pungent.

Then we added a good mixture of chopped frozen tomatoes and passata (probably three tins of chopped tomatoes), four tins of chickpeas (yes four!) and about one and a quarter litres of veg stock.  Then we brought it to the boil, partially covered and allowed it to simmer for 25 minutes.

Whilst that was bubbling away we fried about 200g of chopped chorizo until crispy.

Then, because the soup still wasn’t done, we ate some of the chorizo.

Finally done, we blended about half the soup so it was thickened but still contained some whole chickpeas.

It is all the noms.

Chinese & Chicken

Continuing on with the China section of Round The World we made Corn Pancakes for lunch.  These were both tasty and used up a couple of corn cobs from the freezer.

They count as street food and they are very fast and easy to make.

It is essentially just corn and spring onion in a soy sauce seasoned batter.  They are shallowed fried, so Dan got all the fun of the corn popping whilst it was cooking!

We would have quite happily eaten more of these, and we strongly suspect they might rear their pancakey heads again when we need another fast lunch.

We then further raided the freezer (we’re on a freezer burn down in preparation for harvest in summer) for all the chicken thighs and drums we generated getting the chicken supremes for the Nopi dish.  We used these to make Chicken Cacciatore – which is an Italian dish which roughly translates as Hunter’s Chicken.

Obviously this means it’s a big hearty dish with pancetta, mushrooms, tomatoes and olives.  We had a bit of a play on the substitution front, using a mixture of frozen chopped tomatoes and passata instead of tinned chopped tomatoes.  It was actually pretty successful, and we still have 2.5 litres of passata left so… we’ll do that again.

It’s a recipe from 5 of the Best by Valli Little, but we can’t seem to find it anywhere online.

But the search has however brought my attention to the fact that the Guardian series “How to cook the perfect…” has covered Chicken Cacciatore, so we might have to do that one and compare.

Fakin’, but in a good way

First we cooked with sausages.

These were nice hearty bangers that we fried once, then sliced in half (along the length) and fried again.

We served it with some puy lentils dressed with garlic, olive oil and red wine vinegar, and a parsley salad.

The parsley salad was just a combination of sliced onion, flat leaf parsley, olive oil and lemon juice.

Raw onion is generally better when heartily dosed in salt, left for five minutes and then rinsed.

It won’t stop it tasting of onion, but it will take a lot of the bite and eye-stinging properties, out of it.

If you don’t want it to taste of onion we strongly suggest you try another vegetable that isn’t onion.

We also made Butternut Squash Soup with Smoked Gouda and Spicy Chickpeas from a cute little blog called Rhubarbarian.

This soup is amazing.

We used smoked cheddar rather than smoked gouda and it will be a definite reoccurrence on our “use of butternut squash” list.

The toasted  chickpeas serve a sort of spiced crouton role.

We need to tweak it slightly so the chickpeas catch less, but this soup genuinely tastes like it contains bacon.  But it’s vegetarian.

We don’t usually comment on the vegan/veggie/pescy standards of a dish, but we’ve never before tasted one that defied what we knew was in it.

I mean we generally sneer at dishes that pretend to contain meat when they don’t.  Vegetables and tofu are delicious in their own right.  Quorn is an abomination.

This.  This is something special.

It also wins the prize for best blog name.

Fowl Play

This a post of delicious decadence, reliable favourites, and unreliable recipes.

The decadence comes via Nopi (obviously).  We made Chicken Supremes with Roast Garlic and Tarragon Brioche Pudding.

That’s right, a savoury bread and butter pudding.  Made extra silly/decadent/rich by making it with a brioche loaf.  And then slicing it and frying it in olive oil.

All the healthy.

We must admit we bought the brioche.  We have not dabbled in enriched doughs yet.

Due to the total lack of chicken supreme availability we ended up buying three chickens and jointing them.  And the large chickens were on offer so we ended up with chuffing huge Supremes as well as a freezer full of drums and thighs.

See those peas?  Those peas that look healthy? Swimming in butter.

On a continuing chicken trend we raided Leon for lunch inspiration.

They have an amazing Sesame Chicken Wings recipe that combines vast amounts of garlic (10 cloves) and  ginger (150g) with fish sauce (2 tbsp), soy sauce (2.5 tbsp), sesame oil (1ish tbsp.) and sesame seeds (1.5 tbsp).  Blends it together and pours it over 1kg of chicken wings.  These get marinated overnight then roasted at 180°C for 45 minutes.

This is tasty enough that we end up picking at the chimbles of marinade that have fallen off the chicken and eating them whilst boxing up work lunches.

We served this with Brazilian Beans, also from Leon, which is a sort of herby-bacony-garlicy-oniony use for home grown borlotti beans.

Although Dan appear to have had much more success with drying the beans than he did last year.  The beans took almost 2 hours to cook!

Finally we come to the disappointing recipe of the week.

It’s essential pheasant on toast with a little exciting ricotta on the side.  We did it last year with some success, but the repeat this year was frankly not very nice.

The main difference we can spot is that we didn’t use sourdough bread this time, but that doesn’t seem enough change to move an entire dish from “yum” to “yuck”.

I mean Dan didn’t even finish his pheasant. And it was such a lovely looking bird.

Exciting Uses for Animal Remains

We have a freezer full of left over protein and it’s really getting rather silly.

There ham from the Greedy Guinea Pig Club, beef from the post spa meal and even more beef from that massive roast we did.

It seems a bit foolish to slaughter any fresh animals whilst we have this going on, so we made a series of left over roast meals.

The first was Baked Macaroni Cheese with Beef

It’s bloody simple this one, as it doesn’t require making a roux, but it is immensely satisfying and comforting in the miserable weather.

First stick the oven on hot.  By hot we mean about 200°C.

Then boil about 300g of macaroni until al dente. Drain and stick back in the pan.

Start heating up 200g of cooked beef (or similar) in a frying pan, add 200ml of single cream and mix.  Then add 250ml of milk and a good pinch of nutmeg.  Season and heat gently.

We mostly did this step because our beef was still frozen, but it helps to take the chill off things.

Pour the creamy beefy mixture over the macaroni along with 100g of grated cheddar.  Mix it up and stick it in a lightly buttered oven proof dish, top with some grated Parmesan and bake for about half an hour.

The second was a Cheesy Potato and Ham Gratin

This was essentially just layers of thinly sliced home grown potatoes, ham and cheese layered up (about 1kg of potatoes, 200g ham and 100g grated cheese) with a sprinkling of fresh rosemary to keep things fresh.  We tipped over about a pint of vegetable stock, dotted a bit of butter on top and baked for about an hour in a reasonably hot oven.

Sadly it didn’t quite meld in the way a gratin should.  This was despite the blood sacrifice Dan made via the mandolin.

For those of you concerned about us dying of scurvy this winter we’d like to point out that potatoes are an excellent source of Vitamin C.  In fact they are mostly the reason scurvy became such a sea based affliction.

Basically pirates needed to eat more chips.

Although we applauded their decision to have a mojito instead.

However, for those of you still concerned, we did finish the ham on a healthy bang.

Ticked all the clean eating/raw food diet bollocks.  Although probably not paleo.  There is no consistent logic to paleo that we can spot.  It is like a random word generator trapped in a testosterone poisoned diet plan.

Basically we made a slaw to go with the ham.  It used a stray home grown red cabbage and a bag of carrots, mixed with a random assortment of nuts and dressed with a nice sesame oil and rice vinegar combo.

That gets us “multi coloured” on the crazy diet bingo card and “vinegar” for the alkali diet section.

Yes, vinegar is an acid.  Yes, if we called it “acetic acid” it would be a toxic chemical.  No, it doesn’t make any sense.

Let Them Eat Cake – 29/01/2017

And lo there was much rejoicing in Chateau Catchpole, for the dvla had pulled their finger out and issued a driving licence.

And also was there posting on Facebook, and suggestions from El’s office that this merited cake.  And thus Sunday became a day of baking.

We made Jamaican Ginger Cake and Wholemeal Honey cake from River Cottage Everday.  The Honey cake is so good it’s actually banned in the house for home consumption.

Basically we made it and then we ate it.  All in a single day.

It destroyed our cake based self-control.

Cake control Kryptonite.

Caketonite.

Because all this cake was headed to El’s office (which Dan cannot enter MWAHAHAHA!), we made Dan some pity cake.

I mean delicious fruit cake.  Flavoured with tea and pity.

In seriousness the cake is rather tasty, good for using up left overs and very easy.  It’s from Leon Ingredients and is called Justin’s Barn Brac, but it’s pretty much just a variant on Bara-brith.

It uses 375g of dried fruit (any dried fruit, hence its outstanding status as a cupboard clearer) that gets soaked overnight in 250ml of cold tea.  Ideally the tea would be earl grey, but we used Lapsang Souchong this time with no ill effects.

The next day you mix the tea and fruit with one largish egg, 75g of brown sugar and 250g of self-raising flour, pour it into a loaf tin and bake at 170°C for about and hour (or until it smells done).

Dan then slices and freezes it for work based treats.

So we did some non cake based cooking, such as continuing our never-ending quest for new butternut soup recipes (actually pretty good), and making Spiced Pumpkin Ice cream (El didn’t like the texture), but all these baking free shenanigans can wait for another post.