Tag: red onion

Caramelised onions and a wedding anniversary.

I’m very fond of November as a month… I love the dark nights because it means when I get in that I put the lights on and the place seems to glow making it seem like a warm cocoon; I make lovely, comforting food that soothes us both, no matter how stressful a day we have had at work; it’s getting close to Christmas so the excitement is building… but it’s not close enough to terrify me because I haven’t done the shopping. But the best thing of all is that in November we have our wedding anniversary.

We got married on Guy Fawkes night and the week leading up to and the week afterwards the night skies are filled with fireworks. It’s like a city wide celebration, just for us. In 1605 a law was passed, The Observance of 5th November Act, that called for a public, annual thanksgiving that the treasonous plot failed.

I have to wonder that anyone would think we would need a law to make us celebrate anything, as the Great British public will have a party at the drop of a hat, but there you go. Not wishing to be law breakers, we all join in and enjoy ourselves. It seemed to us to be a great day to get married, too.

We got married, in the late afternoon,  at Lumley Castle , near Durham, in the far north of England,one of  the most beautiful and romantic places in the world to have your wedding. There were fireworks going off outside as the speeches were taking place and the whole place had a magical and special air. The castle staff did everything to make our day perfect… and it was. We laughed as we exchanged our wedding vows – so much that the cermony stopped for a while as the giggles took hold of us all – and we carried on laughing for the rest of the evening.

Most of our wedding photographs show people, giggling helplessly. That set the tone for our marriage, I think.

Anyway, here we are, a few years on, still laughing and still celebrating. Last year I made us roast vegetables for our anniversary supper and we sat and watched the fireworks going off below us. This year we decided to take a day’s holiday from work and really celebrate.

The night before our anniversary we went to  Restaurant Sat Bains. This was our fourth visit to Nottingham’s only Michelin restaurant and, as it always has been, it was spectacular. Sat is one of the UK’s finest chefs and one of the most approachable and welcoming. One time we went we took the Bear’s sister, who had come from Australia  for her birthday and Sat invited her (and, therefore us, because we weren’t going to be left behind) into the kitchens.

 Sat really achieved  national fame in “The Great British Menu” that was screened on TV. Fourteen of the UK’s top chefs competed to win a place cooking a course in what would be the best menu Britain could produce. Sat’s starter of slow cooked duck egg, peas and ham scored a perfect 10 from each of the judges. It really is special and we have had it a couple of times before but this night we thought we would have the  ten course tasting menu. It’s not as daunting as it sounds.. the ten courses are delicious bite sized, or mini portions that make you glad you are there.  Explore the link if you want to see the kind of menus on offer… our menu started with scallops, then salmon that was so delicious I could have eaten plates of it, then duck, mutton, a barley and snail dish, then leeks before moving to the transition course and desserts. You need someone better than me to tell you how lovely it was. It’s not enough that I just make whimpering, moaning noises of delight and say it was lovely.

Life can’t be all Michelin restaurants, though, so for our anniversary proper, we decided to stay in and cook for ourselves. The Bear decided he wanted to have sausages in buns for supper because… well, because that’s what you have on Bonfire Night!

I made the buns from so No Knead Bread dough that was ready to be baked

and instead of baking the dough in a cast iron pot as I normally do, I heated a baking stone in the oven and just shaped the dough and then baked them on there. Without the cast iron pot which sears the outside, you get a softer bun, which was what I wanted.

That was going to be delicious… but, it was our anniversary, so I decided I needed something to make the sausages in buns special. Caramelised onions would be just the thing, I thought. Rich and tasty, soft and savoury onions, stuffed into the buns with hot sausages… what could be better or more appropriate for Bonfire Night?

All you need to make this is time (maybe an hour), onions, balsamic vinegar (a spoonful or so), some sugar and some salt and pepper.

I had five red onions. That was going to make a lot of caramelised onion, I know, but whatever I didn’t use was going to be put in a jar and kept in the fridge for later. It won’t keep forever but it will certainly keep for a couple of weeks at least, so you may as well make extra.

I love the look of red onions.

They are so vibrantly pink and beautiful.

Slice your onions finely and add them to a large frying pan with a good amount of olive oil, warmed on a gentle heat.

You are not wanting to fry them to a crisp, just to soften them as they cook slowly.

red onion cooking slowly

Adding a spoonful of salt keeps them soft and enhances the flavour.

As the onions start to soften, the colour gentles and blends slightly. What you need to do now is add some extra flavour and add to the caramelisation process. Balsamnic vinegar works brilliantly here, or, as I used, a balsamic vinegar glaze or crema. What they have done is reduce the vinegar down to a thick, sweet and sticky glaze that can be used in dressing, on roasts, in salads or in general cooking. It is, I suppose, what you would end up with if you slowly cooked straight balsamic vinegar, so don’t worry if that’s all you have.

The aim is to add another layer of flavour.

A tablespoonful or so needs to be stirred through while the onions carry on cooking slowly.

A dessertspoonful of golden granulated sugar needs to be stirred through to help the caramelisation

And then, after maybe another quarter of an hour you have a rich, sticky, soft and tasty tangled pile of onion……

All I had to do was slice open the buns

Add a fat and juicy sausage

… and then start adding the onion…..

It was delicious.

The night before, Michelin starred restaurant… that night, champagne, sausages and fireworks.

Pretty simple. Pretty delicious.

At the end of the night, we had had a lovely time and I still had enough caramelised onion to put into a jar and keep in the fridge. It’s perfect to serve with sausages, or pate, or cheese. Make some yourself and see how easy it is. It’s enough to make a simple supper special. We thought so, anyway.

Bacon and apple risotto with black pudding

This afternoon the Bear and I went out to help clear the road into our estate

 

The gritters don’t come up the hill to us because they are too busy trying to keep the main roads clear.  There’s no grit or salt left that we can scatter ourselves and what was ordered has been taken by Birmingham City Council as their need is greater than ours. Apparently.

Oh, and we don’t live in Birmingham.

Nothing for it then, than to rally to the cause and help.

If we don’t do it, we won’t get in or out…. not bad if it is before we set off to work, but not so great if we happen to be at work when more snow comes down.

We went out and helped clear the road and some paths so cars could get up the hill without sliding backwards which is always a good thing if you are driving up hill.

After a couple of hours we got back in and felt we deserved something really good for supper and I had my eyes on some black pudding.

When I met the Bear he said did not like black pudding…. when what he really meant was that he had not had black pudding cooked in a way that he liked.  Now? After three years of marriage? He really is becoming omnivorous.

I have plans for most of the black pudding for tomorrow, but there will be enough left for something I have been thinking about… we love risotto and I have a fancy for black pudding  risotto. I kept thinking about what would work well with it and realised that bacon and apple would be just the ticket.  One thing to remember is that cooking apples wouldn’t be any good in this as I didn’t want the apple to dissolve into a mush, so I chose a bright, sweetly sharp Pink Lady. It was beginning to look like a pink theme was developing so I got some red onions out as well.

Let’s get everything ready –

 – to feed four people well, you will need maybe 250g of risotto rice. I am using Fior di Riso, a vialone nano risotto rice which tends to be used more in the north of Italy. Other rices to look out for are carnoroli or arborio – just as long as you do get risotto rice.

2 red onions, 2 big slices of black pudding and 25o g of bacon bits , or lardons , some stock, some butter, a Pink Lady apple and some Parmesan cheese to shave over at the end.

To start with… get two pans out – in one you are going to have stock bubbling away ( you can make your own or use cubes or granules – just make sure they are good quality. I often use Knorr stock granules)

and in the other, melt a knob of butter…. while that is melting, quickly peel and chop the red onion and then add that to the pan with a pinch of salt

After softening the onion, add the rice and stir it round in the buttery juices. This forces flavour into the rice grains – or so I was told…. and then add half a glass of vermouth. You will hear a fantastic sizzle and a really aromatic smell will whoosh out of the pan.

All the alcohol evaporates and you are just left with an enigmatic hint … it’s quite safe, even for children to eat. If you haven’t got vermouth then a dry white wine or maybe some sherry would be good. Just stir it round until the liquid is absorbed by those greedy rice grains.

Once the vermouth, or wine, or whatever has been absorbed, add a ladleful of hot stock and stir it gently round so that can also be absorbed.

Oh and this IS important – I was taught to make risotto by a real Italian cook and it was stressed that when you stir the risotto, you stir in ONE direction only. This isn’t some mad superstition, there is a valid reason for doing it – if you just keep going in the same direction, the rice grains swirl around in the beautifully flavoured stock, absorbing as they whirl. If you go bashing them back and forth with a wooden spoon, they start to break and starch comes out into the stock, making it gloopy. The aim is just to get each rice grain swelling separately.

I love making risotto because I particularly love just standing there, quietly, ladelling in stock, stirring gently and relaxing. It doesn’t take long, you know – maybe twelve minutes or so, just until the rice has absorbed enough of the stock to be plump and delicious with just a hint of a bite to it. 

Trust me – doing it this way makes the risotto really good.

While this is all going on,

put the lardons of bacon into a frying pan and cook gently – you need to get the pieces tender before you add them to the risotto. Once they are ready, add them and any of the juices to the rice, stirring gently as you go.

Start to cook the black pudding now – keep the heat gentle and cook both sides so it changes into  rich and shiny, slightly crusted slices of spicy black pudding.

Roughly peel and cube the Pink Lady apple and then add that in – you aren’t wanting to cook it through, but it does want to be in there for a few minutes, so all the flavours can blend

The final thing to do is to add a knob of butter to the risotto… this enriches the stock, giving it a lovely rounded flavour…. stir it round gently…

Then, put your risotto into your bowls and  break up the black pudding over the top….

A few shavings of Parmesan over the top finish it off

The result? Really good.

Each spoonful  has the perfect combination of  bacon bits giving a lovely savouriness and a gorgeous chewiness amongst the savoury rice… the little nuggets of Pink Lady apple gives a sweet and juicy almost-crunch, while the black pudding provides a deep and earthy richness, bringing it all together.

It didn’t take long at all and it certainly doesn’t involve costly ingredients but it added up to a truly delicious and warming supper – perfect for a freezing night, after an afternoon’s labour shovelling snow.

Puy lentils and peas

One of the most delicious vegetable  dishes the Bear and I have is made from what might seem to be an unlikely combination of lentils, peas and onion…. it’s quick and easy as well as low calorie. What more could you want?

Puy lentils are a beautiful browny-green colour and they have a lovely nutty flavour

They just need a quick rinse and then put them in a pan with twice the amount of water and bring gently to the boil.

I sometimes add stock granules to the water and that adds another dimension of flavour to the lentils.

While they are gently boiling, finely slice a red onion

and put the slices in a bowl with some olive oil… maybe three or four tablespoons

This starts to soften and mellow the onion.

Then squeeze half a lemon

Pour the lemon juice in and stir round

Add a few handfuls of frozen peas and no, you don’t need to defrost them.  They start to defrost gently and not boiling them keeps them full of flavour. That lemon juice and olive oil dressing seems to emphasise the sweetness of the peas.

By now the lentils will be cooked – they keep their firmness to some degree but they shouldn’t be hard.

Drain them quickly… and then…while they are still hot add them to the bowl

Stir them through the mixed peas and onion, making sure they are all covered with the lemony dressing.

The heat of the lentils softens the onion to perfection and takes the last chill off the peas.

This really is an excellent side dish to serve with roast meat… one of our favourites is roast lamb. The lentils and peas are all you need to serve with a few slices of meat – we don’t even bother with potatoes – which means it makes one of the simplest suppers ever

Pork and Pepper Goulash

The Bear has returned from a trip to Australia and I have returned from work. We meet upstairs in the kitchen.

I need to cook something and I need to make sure it is not only quick to cook and serve   (before he falls asleep from jet lag) but also to get us back on our diet. It will have to be something from the 400 and Under section of my recipe files.

On my way back through town, in the rush hour traffic, I pulled in to the supermarket to see what there was and saw some pork.

I knew there was a recipe that I had cooked before that turned out to be surprisingly  tasty. I say surprisingly, because it wouldn’t have been my choice when I spotted it. I said, didn’t I, that I looked through magazines and cook books for recipes that gave us under 400 calories per serving?  Well, I always index tab them and show them to the Bear to see if there’s anything he fancies. He picked this one  from delicious.magazine (sept 2008). And this one had two things going against it in my eyes… it involved pork (not my favourite meat) and caraway seeds – very definitely not my favourite flavour.

Still, it was his choice and I am, despite appearances to the contrary, quite pleasant at times….

And as it happened, it turned out to be incredibly delicious. And also very quick to cook. Time to do it again, I thought.

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So I got 4 boneless pork steaks – not too much fat on them – and not too expensive. I knew I had all the other ingredients that I would need, which is another good reason to read this recipe and keep it in mind.

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I needed a tin of tomatoes, a red onion, some smoked sweet paprika, some caraway seeds, a jar of roasted red peppers in oil and some yoghurt.

First of all, while waiting for the kettle to boil so I could make the poor, exhausted Bear a cup of tea, I sliced the red onion and put the frying pan on to heat through.

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Not much oil in the pan and get them softening, before adding 1 tablespoon of smoked sweet paprika

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and a teaspoon of caraway seeds

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Stir it all round and while the flavours are blending, cut the pork into bite sized pieces. Take the rind and any excess fat off (we are on a diet, you know!) and add that

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get that meat in and stir it round, letting it brown

I swear, all that took just a few minutes. All I had to do then, once the meat was browned, was to add a tin of chopped plum tomatoes and let it simmer for fifteen minutes.

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Now, as I was in late from work and as the Bear was starving, I didn’t want to delay supper. I had some Anya potatoes (those knobbly ones) and I put them on to steam (yes, it really should have been mash but I knew this would work) All I would have to do with them would be to crush them so the gorgeous juices soaked in….

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… and some of the juices would be coming from the roasted red peppers. Most of the supermarkets have them and they are a great storecupboard standby. They have a real depth of flavour and a long shelf life so they are perfect to get and keep for moments like this.

Cut them into pieces and then add them to the tomatoey pork after it has had fifteen minutes or so, cooking

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… then add a couple of large spoonfuls of yoghurt.

And that’s it. Done and dusted in less than 40 minutes. Squash the potatoes with a fork so they are broken up and then spoon over the delicious (and I say this as a person who doesn’t LIKE caraway) meat and sauce.

The tomato and caraway make a beautiful rich and savoury sauce for the meat, which is still tender…..

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A sprinkling of parsley sets it off… all that for less than 400 calories (396 according the the recipe) … maybe 550 if you add the potatoes?

Well… it WOULD have been 550 calories but it was so utterly delicious I did have an extra spoonful. I do my best, you know. It was quick and easy, low calorie…… but I am greedy.

It is supposed to feed 4 so if you are strict and divide it by 4………. or maybe invite two friends round? That should solve things. What can you do, eh? Totally delicious…….