Month: November 2009

Spiced red cabbage

… glossily red and purpled, subtly spiced and aromatic red cabbage……I love it.noodle prawns, red cabbage, lamb, celeriac 021

It is perfect with fattier meats like pork or lamb as the sharpness of the red wine vinegar that is in there cuts through the richness. Apple sweetens it and the onion gives it savour.

Adding aromatic spices gives it a depth of flavour

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You’ll need nutmeg, cloves and garlic.

First of all, you need to start cutting the cabbage. Cut out the hard core with a sharp knife – it is hard and white and solid… which is not what you want in amongst your lovely bits of shredded red cabbage

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Then slice the rest into thin strips. You’ll also need to slice the onion.

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Rub a bit of butter round an oven proof dish and put half of the cabbage in and add the onion

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Next, peel and chop the apple

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and scatter that on top of the cabbage and onion

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… and then grate a light covering of nutmeg over the top

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Now shake cinnamon over it. I love the smell of cinnamon – it’s perfect at this time of year.

Cloves go wonderfully well with all of this. You can buy ground cloves but it is much better just to grind them yourself and anyway, why would you want to buy an extra bottle of something that will take up space in your cupboard? Put a few cloves into a pestle and grind it. A word of warning though, my brother adores this red cabbage and once rang me up so I could tell him what to do. Well, put on the spot as I was, I rattled off a list of ingredients and, as normal, wasn’t much good at remembering exact quantities. That’s why I show you by taking a picture….anyway, my brother was merrily sprinkling the cloves… sprinkling and sprinkling…….. made it all taste like a dentist’s mouthwash, he said. So, be careful. It will maybe amount to less than a teaspoonsful.

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A light dusting is all you need.. you are building up  layers of  aromatic spices.  Sprinkle some sugar over the top and then.. the secret ingredient. Martini Rosso. Obviously not so secret now………

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I first did it, not with Martini Rosso, but with Dubonnet… I thought the herby red spirit would blend well with the vegetables and the spices. I also had a bottle that I hadn’t drunk and I thought I could start to use it up. Once the Dubonnet had gone I moved on to Martini… and that, I think is even better. Pour some over

 

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then pour some red wine vinegar in as well. This sharpens everything up and keeps the colour a deep purply red.

Put some little knobs of butter over the top and sprinkle more sugar

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Then put the rest of the red cabbage over the top

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Cover it with foil and put it in the middle of the oven at about 160 degrees C. This is going to take maybe two hours or so, so if you are going to cook something else, that’s fine. If the oven needs to be on higher, just move it down to the bottom of the oven and make sure the foil top is on so it doesn’t burn or all the moisture evaporate

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After about an hour or so, look at it… give it a stir. It looks pretty awful till you stir it and see the gorgeous deep colour underneathRack of lamb, finished celeriac and red cabbage 005

What I should have done, of course, was to take it out of the oven dish and make it look attractive. But I didn’t.

 

Tasted great though… you’ll just have to trust me that it looks better than that!

Lamb stew and minty dumplings

While I was preparing to get back to work I went shopping to get supplies in. I saw that the butcher had some stewing lamb and I thought that there would be nothing nicer to come home to, after a day at work than some slow cooked lamb that I could pop some dumplings into, to cook while I got changed and then we could settle down to a hot meal.

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The lovely thing about slow cookers is that you can get everything prepared (and when I say prepared, I am not talking about a huge investment of time… maybe 5 minutes or so?) anyway, you can do that the night before and then start the slow cooker in the morning before you leave for work.

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Fry off the meat (you can see why it is a good thing to do this at night… I certainly wouldn’t want to be frying meat at 6am) until it is browned on the edges. This helps the gravy develop a good colour and a decent flavour.

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While that is sizzling, chop an onion and some garlic and think about the way you want to go with the lamb stew. I thought about using some spices… sort of a tagine feel but in a toned down way. I looked about to see what we had and found a bag of dried peaches. I had thought there might be some apricots but there wasn’t, so peaches it was going to be.

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They are pretty sharp in flavour which is a good thing with lamb as that is sweet in itself . I hadn’t actually used dried peaches before so this really was going to be an experiment.

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Because I was using fruit in there I looked for spices to go with it… and found a tin of tagine spices…

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By now the lamb was browned off and I put it into the slow cooker with the chopped onions.

Then scattered a handful of dried peaches on top

And then sprinkled the spice mix.

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Some stock granules over the top of that and pour in some water.

 

That took just over 9 minutes and that is because I was having to wash my hands in between each step to take a picture. If you aren’t doing that  😉 you can expect it to take a lot less time

 And that’s it for the night. Lid on and leave it unto the morning when you can turn it on before you go to work.

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Set it to Auto and then set off to work.

 

The good thing about a slow cooker is that the Auto function starts it off as high to get things going then goes right down to low to tick over until you get home….

 

What to do with it? When I started out I was thinking of minty dumplings but then I hadn’t thought of the tagine hint….and by the time I got home we had a friend to feed as well. That was good news and there was certainly no problem about that but what it did mean was that dumplings for three people wouldn’t fit in the small slow cooker…

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Anyway, I got in and tasted it.. it wasn’t too spicey… there was a hint of spice, sure enough, but it wasn’t totally tagine. It was a mix of sharpness from the fruit, warmth from the spices and and meaty juiciness. Dumplings would go, after all. Maybe not dumplings poached in the gravy… but they could be baked and then placed on top…

I needed to thicken the gravy slightly – at the moment it was just the slow cooked lamb juices and the water… a delicious stock but it needed to be thicker. mashed celeriac, lamb and dumplings 028 If you take a  couple of spoonfuls out of the pot and mix it with some cornflour, it mixes easily in the bowl you can add it straight back in to the main pot without making it lumpy. Now that is is thickening nicely… on to the dumplings!

First of all, put the oven on, if it isn’t on already. 200 degrees C should do it.

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So, in a bowl put 80g of self raising flour ( add a couple of teaspooons of baking powder if you use plain) and 40 g of suet..

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Chop up some mint

Add that and a sprinkling of stock granules to the flour and suet and then add a couple of teaspoons of water and mix together

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Form into dumpling shapes and put on a baking tray

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Fifteen minutes later… look!

Serve up the lamb and balance the  dumplings on top….

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Oh they were delicious! Light and fluffy with a soft middle and a gorgeously crispy outside…. what a good thing it was that we needed more than could be cooked in the slow cooker.

Sometimes you discover things by accident and are really glad you did.

Celeriac gratin

Celeriac always reminds me of weirdly tentacled aliens from Dr Who. I’m sure there was an alien looking much like this on there once

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Anyway, it is a tasty old vegetable and makes a good change from potato all the time. It does smell of celery but the taste is more subtle. I mash it sometimes but tonight I am making a quick gratin.

First of all peel it. I’m usually very strict about using a peeler to take off the bare minimum of skin because that is where so many of the nutrients lie but in the case of gnarly skinned celeriac, well, I am prepared to make an exception.

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I take a knife and just slice at it. One thing to know about celeriac is that it needs to be cooked, if you are boiling it,  in acidulated water (that is, water that has lemon juice in or, as I tend to do, the squeezed out half of a lemon… moneysaving, eh?) otherwise it starts to blacken. If you are making it into a gratin then just work quickly and expect to see it browning if you aren’t moving fast enough. Get it peeled and slice it….

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Anyway, lightly butter a baking dish and place the slices of celeriac in – half of them at first

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I like to add a thinly sliced onion. It adds to the flavour, I think

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Scatter some salt and a knob of butter, cut into cubes over the slices then add another layer of slices on top

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More onion and then pour some milk over it all – not much, you don’t want to cover the celeriac, just enough to cook it

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I would have used cream but I didn’t have any and that was skimmed milk so I added some Greek yoghurt to give it some richness

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(I make it with EasiYo which is, as the name suggests, an easy way to make yoghurt. I always make the Greek yoghurt with acidopholous in and use it in smoothies and as toppings)

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A quick shake of white pepper and it is ready for the oven. Cover it with tin foil to keep the moisture in on the first half of the cooking process – that will concentrate the flavour

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After half an hour take a look – you will see the celeriac has started to soften. Give it a jab with a knife and you will feel the difference

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and after another hour or so? Looking good. It would have been a lot smoother with cream but as we all know, needs must when the devil drives and the important factor is what does it taste like?

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It tasted delicious. And with a lovely bit of rack of lamb? Well, all I can say is that there was nothing left over.

Chicken soup with rose harissa buns

… nothing better when you are feeling low and ill. And there’s nothing better for your bank balance that making a meal from scraps and leftovers.

It’s flu season and people are dropping like flies. What we need is soup.. chicken soup. Apparently it really does work!

First thing, get your chicken. Now you can do this with a whole, raw chicken, of course, but I use up the carcass of a roasted chicken.

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See, there’s still some chicken on there… there’s the bones and the skin. They are just waiting to be turned into delicious soup to soothe you and make you better.

You’ll need some vegetables for the stock… a leek, say and a carrot or two

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Put them in a large pot and strip your chicken from the bones…. tear off the spare chicken and leave the carcass

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See? There’s a good bowl full of chicken shreds there

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Put the chicken carcass and whatever bits of skin and so on that are left in the pot with the vegetables. add some peppercorns and a some salt and set it away to simmer. After an hour and a half or so, the stock is more or less ready….

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You need to drain it… get a colander or sieve and putting it over another pan (this is SO important…. don’t laugh because in a rush I once forgot and managed to lose a quarter of my stock… goodness knows what i was thinking of! I had a colander with the boiled vegetables and skin and bones and my stock, my delicous stock, was disappearing down the sink!) anyway… make sure you drain it into another pan… If you were doing this for guests and wanted the clearestr stock imaginable them drain it through muslin. I was just doing this for us so I reckoned the colander was fine.

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See those vegetables? Well they have more or less donated their all to the soup.. the leek definitely has, though the carrots may still have a bit of life in them… anyway, with the rest of your leek, slice it very finely and get some pretty baby carrots.. or chop your cooked carots a bit smaller

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And add them to the pot of stock.

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Taste it. Does it need a pinch more salt? Some pepper?

Then add your chicken that you had pulled off the bones earlier

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Let it cook for a while.. not long… those baby carrots, if you added them will need a few minutes.. and then…..

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Chicken soup to soothe your cold… can you see how that could cure you?

Far better than cough and cold medicine. And you were using scraps and leftovers!

Add a couple of little breadbuns and you have a brilliant meal. I used the same recipe for the little loaves but left out the usndried tomatoes and chillies  and added rose harissa to the dough… a chilli, spice and rose scented paste. Not as odd as it sounds and oh, how it livens up the dough!

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You can do it… just give it a go!

Planning ahead

After several weeks away from work because I had an operation on my arm, I will be back at work from Tuesday. That’s good because I need to get back to earning money, but bad because I will be leaving at 7.30 am and getting back after 6 pm.

If  we are to be eating at any kind of reasonable time I need to be organised. I need to plan shopping and ingredients…. I need to plan meals that kind be either cooked while I am out or cooked quickly when I get in.

So from now on there are going to be meals featuring slow cookers or ultra fast put-it-all-together meals.

There’s a couple of things I must do  – first, I really have to sort out shopping lists so I can get things in advance or, at least, know what I am going to grab as I race through a supermarket on the way home after a long day so I will be searching through recipe books and magazines…. oh the work I put into this…

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I might as well relax while I read because, after this, I will be at a desk all day

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Oh, and the other thing?

Without putting too fine a point on things, The Bear and I are no longer the sylph like creatures of our youth…. a diet is called for. Well, not so much a diet as a restriction on the amount of calories we have been consuming. I know the government has said I actually need more than the 2,000 calories they said a normal woman needed but  I really don’t think my waistline was paying attention. For some reason I seem to have…. well, expanded!

Over time I have been collecting and developing recipes that are 400 calories and under as a serving – we shall be going through that file as well. 400 calories for a tasty portion? That should help. Of course you would have to add in extra calories for the side dishes but it HAS to make a difference…….. doesn’t it? Well, it has to.

Salt and pepper prawns

I can always be tempted by salt and pepper dishes from our local Chinese restaurant and when the Bear returned home clutching  raw king prawns and a bottle of rose it seemed that this would be the night to make salt and pepper prawns. I didn’t want to do a deep fried dish (lovely though that is) so I decided on a more or less dry fried way of cooking so I could at least say I was giving a nod towards healthy eating.

The rose went into the fridge to chill – that lovely pink fruitiness goes so well with spicy seafood – and I started on the spice coating.

All you need is salt, black peppercorns and Chinese five spice powder. Well, actually you should use Sichuan pepper as well, but I didn’t have any.

Actually, I didn’t have ordinary salt, either, which meant I had to crush some….

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So, about 2 tablespoons of salt are put into a dry frying pan and toasted…. you will see the salt change colour slightly

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In the meantime, crush a  teaspoon or so of black pepper corns

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And then pour in a teaspoon of Chinese 5 Spice powder and stir it well. If you had the pink Sichuan peppercorns then add a teaspoon of them and grind them

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Once everything is smooth and fine, add the spice mix to the salt and toast. Again you will see a colour change

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You can see it smoking in the pan… a word of warning – aromatic though that is, it doesn’t half make you cough if you breathe it in

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Leave it to cool and then remove it from the pan and get your prawns out. A spring onion, finely chopped and a squeeze of lemon juice will set them off beautifully.

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You can see they are grey and raw…

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put the minimum of oil in and get it hot and then throw them in

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Thirty or so seconds later they are pink and opaque.

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Scatter over some of the salt and spice mix

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………………….then serve with a scattering of spring onions and a squirt of lemon juice

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And the chilled rose is just perfect along side it.

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The Bear, who has always been hesitant about prawns and only bought them to please me… ate his portion with gusto and decided he liked prawns after all. I’m not sure that is such a great result.. on the one hand, it is lovely that we both like prawns but on the other… well, I have had to share!

Nikki

.. another T.O.B cook!  My aim is to get as many people baking as possible and Nikki decided that she would try the No Knead Bread

So she bought her ingredients and then … well, then she just waited for an opportune moment. Eventually….

Nikki RJ Loaf 1      Loaf number 1

And she tried again                  Nikki R-J Bread loaf 2

Much better.. and much appreciated by her daughter…Nikki RJ bread

Anyway.. this is what Nikki says about the whole experience…

“First thing you should know about me is that I am THE worlds greatest procrastinator. I can put things off for months – even if I have fantastic intentions, I can avoid it until there is no way out of it. It’s not even that I don’t like cooking, I do, but I like instant gratification. I’m blaming it on my generation!!

I bought all of the ingredients needed for the No Knead Bread, even took a picture of the ingredients to prove I’d done something towards making the thing! If I’m honest I was put off with the amount of time I’d have to wait before I could try it.

So there I was, all ingredients bought (ok, this may be a couple of weeks after actually purchasing them), a spare couple of days or so without anything particularly pressing happening and no more excuses forthcoming… I had family leaving for the weekend and a child who was amusing herself, so I found myself in my night clothes in the kitchen getting the ingredients out to make the No Knead bread.

I made the mixture… but decided it looked a little too ‘runny’ before the yeast even started to work, so added more flour until it was at a consistency that I was comfortable with, wrapped up the bowl lovingly up in cling film and set it to once side for hours!!!

Next morning there I was again, in the same position, night clothes on in the kitchen having just made my daughter breakfast, I decided to tackle the bubbly, sloppy mixture. Having floured my board I started to almost pour out the mixture on to the board – it’s very sticky!! The gloop landed on the floured board and after a little shaping it looked vaguely like the pictures on the Omnivorous Bear’s website. My impatience got the better of me and I couldn’t bear to wait for the full 2 hours before I threw it in the oven. I think I managed an hour and a half.

I threw the mixture with quite a bit of force in to my casserole dish and heard the sizzle and watched the dough bubble a little as it hit the dish – that was rather satisfying! In to the oven it went for half an hour or so, I then checked on it, decided it was cooked enough and needed to brown up. Another 10 – 15 minutes later it was ready to come out. I liked the fact that it didn’t make my house smell of that over powering yeasty smell like other loaves do when they are cooking.

It was done, I dumped it (yes, I know my terminology is affectionate) on to the cooling rack and tried to wait until it was cool and the ‘crust’ had hardened up. I think we managed to wait for just over an hour and then we cut in to it. It was still warm and slightly soft but edible. My daughter munched her way through 2 slices with thick butter and I ate quite a bit myself. So all in all although the wait was endless the end product was a success – I even made it again so it can’t be bad!!

Since cooking the bread I’ve since passed the recipe on to friends, one of whom has an intolerance to the yeast or something (I didn’t really listen) in shop bought bread, she tried the No Knead Bread and has become a convert and she makes two loaves a week for her and her partner. She’s much more committed than I am!!

Thanks the Omnivorous Bear – I baked, my family liked it, I may even try other recipes – but only after a long period of umm’ing and ahhhhrrr’ing!”

16 Nov… Nikki saw the Salt and Pepper post and used the spice rub on steak
Nikki RJ salt and pepper
As she described it as “b*****y yummy” and that she was no longer reliant on the Chinese for that salt and pepper fix, I think you will gather from that that it was a successful recipe. In a BlackBerry mesage to me later she said she tought she was turning into a cook. Which is a good thing, Nikki. A very good thing.
 My only aim is to get as many people cooking for themselves. Looks like it is happening

Ohhhhh… aubergine

Sometimes it is really rather lovely to have a lighter, vegetarian meal…. something quick and tasty. I always used to think aubergines were awful until I made this roasted and stuffed-with-delicious-little-bits aubergine. This is excellent when you want a midweek supper when you are late in from work, or maybe  a hot lunch at weekends. 40 minutes or so… does that sound good? And 30 minutes of that is in the oven.. you can be pouring yourself a drink and trying to put the tortures of a working day out of your mind while the smell of supper filters out and makes your mouth water…

Imagine a roasted aubergine, stuffed with delicious bits of anti pasti – olives, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, olives and goats cheese? And before you think that might not be for you, the Bear ate it and said it was delicious.

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You’ll need aubergine (half for each person)

I called in at Sainsbury’s and filled a little pot with their mixed antipasti – it has olives, marinated mushrooms, roasted peppers, tomatoes.

I bought a jar of chargrilled artichokes because I love them and I knew there were some sun dried tomatoes in the cupboard.  You don’t have to, you can just use the mixed antipasti if you want to. All I needed to finish it off was a small log of goats cheese.

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Halve your aubergines and slash them across (try not to slash their skin – you want to keep all the juices in) and then slash again length ways. This will give you the gaps you need to stuff in everything.

Put the oven on at 160 degrees C, or thereabouts

If you have bought artichokes you will need to slice them – they are too big to be shoved in the slashes

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and half the olives and any of the big bits

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Start to jam things in the gaps… this is quick and easy. You are not looking for awards for neatness here

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There will be some oil left from the pot, don’t waste it, dribble it over the vegetables and aubergine

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Then open the goats cheese and slice it. This is a sticky job, more sticky than shoving in the oily vegetables, but don’t worry you can wash your hands in a minute and settle down while it cooks.

Share out the goats cheese on top of the aubergine and vegetables

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See? Looking rather attractive, don’t you think?

Lay them on a silicone sheet or some tin foil, lay some more foil lightly over the top to keep the moisture in for the moment and pop them in the oven.

At this point I would start to boil some baby salad potatoes to go with it and then take a break…. pour that drink and tell everyone within earshot about how dreadful your day was.

After quarter of an hour, check the aubergines… and take off the foil top to brown everything in the last ten minutes. The aubergine will be soft and bathed in the delicious vegetably, oily juices.

Drain the potatoes… and serve….

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There you have it. Forty minutes or so and you have a delicious supper with ingredients you can pick up in the supermarket on your way home, very quickly

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A nice bit of crumpet…..

A couple of weeks ago I was reading “Bread” A River Cottage Cookbook

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and today it was chilly and foggy…

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and I remembered that I said I would make crumpets.  What could be better on a cold, grey afternoon than hot buttered crumpets, dripping with honey?

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To make crumpets you will need a heavy based frying pan or griddle and some metal rings to cook them in. If you don’t have rings then just pour the mix on and make pikelets, instead.

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So, into a bowl with 450g of plain white flour,

350ml of warm milk and 350 ml of warm water

5 g of powdered yeast

10 g of salt

1 tsp baking powder

Some sunflower or vegetable oil

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And whisk it all together. It makes a thin batter, like single cream. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it to rest and do its yeasty business for at least an hour until it is lovely and bubbly. I left it for three hours as we were going off into town.

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When I looked it had expanded beautifully and looked smooth and frothy

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Now you need to warm your griddle, or heavy pan on a medium to high heat and while that is warming, whisk in the baking powder an salt.

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Whisk it…

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Put some sunflower oil on some kitchen paper and rub it round the inside of the metal rings

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Try making a test crumpet first, the book says. Good thing too… Ladle in some batter mix to just below the rim of the ring

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It was fine, at first…..

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The book said leave it for 5 minutes or so till the top is just set then flip it over….

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Ooops!

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Just goes to show that a test run is the way to go. That griddle was obviously far too hot. I turned it down and let it cool just slightly (that was cast iron, just turning down the heat wasn’t going to radically change things in seconds) and then tried again

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It was good.. it was working

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You can start doing them all now.

Soon be time for tea…..

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Spread those hot crumpets with butter….

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And…….. take a bite! They were good enough for a Bear, apparently.  You can see the size of the bite he took…….

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Time for tea, indeed

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A perfect afternoon tea in autumn.

Another cuppa, anyone?

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…………… ragu

While I was in the north and at the butcher’s, I spotted some rabbit

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£2.20! I bought that and started to think of things to make with it. Because the rabbits are wild they have very little fat on them but they are high in protein… a very delicious meat but they need to be cosseted in order to get the best from them. I thought a lovely rich ragu, slowly cooked until the rabbit was tender and served with pasta would be gorgeous.

What you will need is rabbit, of course, carrots, onion, some streaky bacon, a couple of bay leaves and some peppercorns. You’ll need either fresh tomatoes or a tin of the lovely Italian plum tomatoes, some wine, garlic and some butter.

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 I got the bay leaves from the tree on the balcony

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You will need pasta to serve it with – I make it when I have time but just buy some if you want to.

It was the weekend so I had the time to do this….. first of all, if the rabbit isn’t jointed, then do it now. Mine was, so that saved me a job. If it isn’t then you need to take a sharp knife and carefully cut through the joints. If you have poultry shears snip down the ribs. Get it into roughly evenly sized pieces.

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Heat your casserole and some oil and then start to brown your rabbit. What you are about to do is get the meat ready and make a delicious stock that you will add to the tomato sauce to pour over your pasta.

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While the rabbit is browning, get the rest of the stock ingredients together

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Chop the carrots and onion, get some black peppercorns and add that to the browned rabbit. Add some water – don’t entirely cover the rabbit – and see all the lovely browning caramelisation mix with the water already……

 

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Just leave that to simmer quietly for an hour and a half or so until the rabbit is tender and falling off the bone.

Now get cracking on the ragu…..Bear Bars and Rabbit ragu and tagliatelle 053

Usual routine… chop the onion, start to sweat it gently…

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Never put the garlic in with the onion as it burns too quickly.. so while the onion is gently softening, chop the garlic

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Then the bacon… chop that and add it

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Once that has started to cook down, add the tomato. Chopped plum tomatoes in a tin are fine… excellent, in fact. You should always have tins of them in the cupboard.

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The juice sticks to the side of the tin so pour some red wine in and swish it round… then pour it in

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Well, you might as well get the last of the tomato out and you don’t want to dilute the delicious ragu with water, do you?

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Now that, too, can simmer for a while…..

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See how rich it is looking?

Back to the rabbit…..

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See? It is tender and starting to come away

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Get it out and put on a plate.. don’t throw the stock out! Look at how the wooden fork can gently pull the flesh away ….

Meanwhile, strain the vegetables from the stock.. you don’t need them but you do need the stock

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Boil down the stock with a good old slug of vermouth for a few minutes so it reduces slightly then add it to the ragu…. I decided to blitz it as I wanted a smooth base to go with the soon-to-be shredded rabbit

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Start shredding the rabbit… well, you don’t need to shred, it just falls apart when you pull at it

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Do watch out for the bones though.. a rabbit always seems to me to have more bones than are necessary… look at them

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Still, you get a lot of meat for your £2.20

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Then, add the lovely, tender, delicate rabbit to the gorgeously smooth sauce

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Stir it round.. that rabbit need to be covered in the sauce

While that is gently simmering, get some pasta ready

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And then…? Well then you put the two together…

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That is something I will be doing again. There was enough rich and tasty ragu there to easily feed 6 of us. Pity there was only the two of us……. don’t you wish you had been passing and had called in to share?