The next one is so dead easy it is just silly.
Pack of new potatoes
Fresh Rosemary (1 good sprig)
1 whole bulb of garlic.
Olive Oil
Sea Salt and Black Pepper
Turn the oven on to 190C. Boil the potatoes in salted water for 15 minutes. Drain and leave to dry uncovered for a few mins. While the potatoes drain, add olive oil, broken bulb of garlic and rosemary to a roasting pan and sling in the oven.
After 3 mins, add the potatoes to the roasting pan, toss in the oil with sea salt and pepper too. When nicely coated, roast for 45 mins.
This is silk and with a steak and red wine and mustard sauce.
Nice.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Potatoes in cream a la Nigel
This is a lovely recipe and goes perfectly with steak.
I thank Nigel Slater for this and it is dead easy. I am quoting it verbatim as I have never played with this. It is perfect the way it is. The only tip I can suggest is for some depth and colour is a sprinkling or parmesan over the top before going in the oven.
"(Appetite, by Nigel Slater)
potatoes — waxy-fleshed if possible, about 2 pounds
garlic — 2 large, juicy cloves
butter — just enough to butter the baking dish thickly
heavy cream — enough to cover the potatoes (about 2 1/2 cups)
You will need a moderate to low oven, so set the heat at 180C or 325F. Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly. This, by the way, is one of those dishes where you really must peel: strings of brown, “healthy” skin are totally at odds with the gratin’s hedonistic overtones. The slices should be no thicker than 1/8 inch. If the garlic is really juicy, cut the cloves in half and rub them around an earthenware or enameled cast-iron dish, pressing down hard to release the juices. Otherwise it might be better to slice it thinly and tuck the slices between the potatoes.
Smear the dish generously with butter. Please don’t be stingy — you are only cheating yourself. Lay the potato slices in the dish, orderly or positively hugger-mugger, it matters not, seasoning with salt and black pepper as you go along. Pour the cream over the potatoes — it should just come to the top of the slices. Bake for an hour to an hour and a half, until the potatoes are virtually melting into the
cream."
Have this with some rocket salad to mop up the lemony, bloody, or mustard/red wine juices and cream. Knock your socks off.
I thank Nigel Slater for this and it is dead easy. I am quoting it verbatim as I have never played with this. It is perfect the way it is. The only tip I can suggest is for some depth and colour is a sprinkling or parmesan over the top before going in the oven.
"(Appetite, by Nigel Slater)
potatoes — waxy-fleshed if possible, about 2 pounds
garlic — 2 large, juicy cloves
butter — just enough to butter the baking dish thickly
heavy cream — enough to cover the potatoes (about 2 1/2 cups)
You will need a moderate to low oven, so set the heat at 180C or 325F. Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly. This, by the way, is one of those dishes where you really must peel: strings of brown, “healthy” skin are totally at odds with the gratin’s hedonistic overtones. The slices should be no thicker than 1/8 inch. If the garlic is really juicy, cut the cloves in half and rub them around an earthenware or enameled cast-iron dish, pressing down hard to release the juices. Otherwise it might be better to slice it thinly and tuck the slices between the potatoes.
Smear the dish generously with butter. Please don’t be stingy — you are only cheating yourself. Lay the potato slices in the dish, orderly or positively hugger-mugger, it matters not, seasoning with salt and black pepper as you go along. Pour the cream over the potatoes — it should just come to the top of the slices. Bake for an hour to an hour and a half, until the potatoes are virtually melting into the
cream."
Have this with some rocket salad to mop up the lemony, bloody, or mustard/red wine juices and cream. Knock your socks off.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Beef - the way "don't" makes the kid in you want to lick your fingers and put them in the socket.
I have a lot of red meat in my colon. What I mean by that is when mad cow disease struck in 1994, my best friend and I took a cab to Sainsbury's in Norwich and bought as much half price or less beef as we could. We came to the inspired decision that it tasted good, we liked it more than anything else and if it were going to kill us - well we were students at Art College, which could only mean three things.
1. We were poor.
2. We were poor and stupid.
3. We were poor, stupid and around a lot of drink and drugs.
Like a cow was going to kill us. As if.
So we began to eat red meat as if it grew on trees. In fact we were probably stupid enough to believe it did come from a tree or bush. It was a great time to be eating red meat. France had banned it, the government had heavily subsidized the UK farmer in order to keep them afloat. Supermarkets couldn't shift the stuff well and had specials on it every day. Before the days of understanding the effects on the ecology, grain consumption and general methane issues, red meat was to me a material to experiment with like paint.
So I ate a lot.
Anyway, now I have it down to once a week, (maybe twice) and I have fined tuned a few different approaches and recipes to share. But before I do, I have to tip my hat to all the chefs who have really bored the country with the importance of knowing your meat and what it should look like. Supermarket beef is just not as good as a good butcher, farmer's market or the like. No way. You might be able to pick up something ok or even good, but never excellent. Not in my extensive travails. Why not?
Mainly the supermarkets pander to our pockets rather than our palates. It makes sense as we consume salt and artificial flavourings to guide us to comfort and familiarity. Texture and looks tend to deceive and the average punter wants to buy red coloured red meat.
If you are buying mince, fair enough, but for a steak, a roasting joint, even a stew, you want something on the odd side of brown. I have seen roasting joints sit out the back of a butcher with a little mold on it and that shit is the BEST. Scratch the mold off, but you want the dark, rich, old, well hung meat. The maturing is not related to the level of conversation you can have with your cow, nor how it is going to treat you if you sleep with it. It determines the flavour. The more mature the beef, the better the flavour. End of.
On that note, here's some recipes and tips.
First, steak:
If you want flavour, size and lower cost, buy a rump steak. It has the deepest taste and texture, the most melting chews per bite and a good cut will have little or no chewiness, toughness or anything else. It will be tender as anything if cooked right, and the juices that flow from it when cooked right, will make the most fabulous sauces. From that, the order in price is then Rib Eye, Sirloin and then Fillet. All are lovely in their own way, but fillet, though the most tender, has the least flavour. It is the most special looking steak but actually, the hardest to do well because of the shape. I will come back to this.
How to cook a steak depends on the thickness and prep. Check out the difficulty in the preparation. 1. Take it out of the fridge. 2. Pat it down with paper towel. 3 drizzle a little olive oil, black pepper and sea salt over it. Leave for 30 minutes covered on the table, side, wherever. That is it. Not hard but this will make 30% of the difference.
30% of the difference will come from how hot the pan is and how much attention you pay to it. I have read Anthony Bourdain about the pains of managing the grill station of the restaurant and I can only imagine, knowing how many times I have burnt myself trying different approaches. This one works.
Heat the pan up hot and try and have a pan that reflects the size and amount of steak you are doing. EG 2 steaks should almost fill the pan you use but with a bit of air in between them. Don't pour oil in the pan, it is already on the steak. Add a little butter to the pan and instantly drain the oil from the steak plate and meat on to the rapidly sizzling butter. It stops it burning - but the butter will burn if you don't do this within 5 seconds of adding it to the pan. That is all the time you have.
Then when nicely melted, add the steaks and have your silly little iPhone on timer, or sensibly use a clock or proper timer and set to 1 minute. If your rump, rib eye or sirloin is around a centimeter in thickness, this will cook super fast to medium rare - I mean a minute each side!. If they are an inch, they will take a little more.
So as a rule (for steaks over 1cm and around or less than 1"), I would do 2 mins for rare (a minute on each side), 3-4 mins for medium rare (a minute on each side and then 30 seconds on each side), for well done, 6-8 minutes but you will fuck it up and it will be tough and pointless. I lack sympathy for those who like it well done because no cook really knows what a well done steak should taste or feel like. It has lost all of its properties by then and is really quite odd - like a beef toffee waffle.
The turning every minute is fail safe. It will stop burning while cooking on a pretty high heat, it will regulate equal cooking intensity through the dense structure of the meat, and it is a good way of knowing where you stand without having to touch it in the pan to check it is ok. I would advise to have a metal spoon at hand to scoop and pour the oil/butter over the exposed side while the pan side is cooking. It is nice and promotes equality of skin tone.
40% of the difference will be your ability to understand that you have to leave it to stand on a warm plate. Your steak will continue to (kind of) cook for another half minute just on the plate because it is hot. So you don't need well done. Also this is the tenderising stage. By doing nothing and leaving it for 3-5 minutes, you are literally making it good. Literally.
Most people would be eating it now but no! Leave it. Instead, turn the heat off as soon as the steaks are out and chuck half a glass of nice red wine in your pan to a mad sizzle and spit. A little salt and pepper and a half teaspoon of Dijon mustard and turn heat back on high-ish. Whisk or stir with something whisk like to break up the mustard and simmer over a medium to low heat. The alcohol will cook out of the wine in the rest time leaving the deep sweet marrying of the wine and beef flavours. Every minute, add the juices that are flowing from your steaks into the warm plate. This adds so much depth to the sauce that you couldn't buy. (BTW if you leave your gas on when adding the wine, there is fair chance of a big flambe, which in most domestic kitchens will burn your eyebrows, set off your smoke alarm and make you scream).
After a few minutes of saucing, it is time to eat a delicious, tender and flavoursome steak with red wine sauce.
Also, you don't have to do the sauce. Italians squeeze a lemon over the steak and it is ridiculously good with the steak juices. No lemon and just mustard is also great. But that rest time is critical and if you don't do it, you will never know real quality.
So buy the finest, taste the difference and generally the best steak you can. Or go to a better place than a supermarket and splash out. God it's good.
Returning to fillet steak, it is much thicker and much harder to manage the times. I would just say for something that is 1.5" thick to 2", 5-6 mins is rare (1 minute each side turned 6 times. 8 minutes is medium (same thing applies), more is well done. But you will have to turn it on all sides and you won't trust your timings. Doing this well requires practise and also a feel for it. Come back to this once you've tried the others a few times.
If like me, you love steak, then print this out and put it on your fridge or washing machine with a magnet. Get it stained up and battered. Smudge the lettering and brown it with so many sauces that you could actually start sucking it after a year or two, while you wait for the steak to rest. Seriously, get it right and you have it RIGHT.
Moo.
1. We were poor.
2. We were poor and stupid.
3. We were poor, stupid and around a lot of drink and drugs.
Like a cow was going to kill us. As if.
So we began to eat red meat as if it grew on trees. In fact we were probably stupid enough to believe it did come from a tree or bush. It was a great time to be eating red meat. France had banned it, the government had heavily subsidized the UK farmer in order to keep them afloat. Supermarkets couldn't shift the stuff well and had specials on it every day. Before the days of understanding the effects on the ecology, grain consumption and general methane issues, red meat was to me a material to experiment with like paint.
So I ate a lot.
Anyway, now I have it down to once a week, (maybe twice) and I have fined tuned a few different approaches and recipes to share. But before I do, I have to tip my hat to all the chefs who have really bored the country with the importance of knowing your meat and what it should look like. Supermarket beef is just not as good as a good butcher, farmer's market or the like. No way. You might be able to pick up something ok or even good, but never excellent. Not in my extensive travails. Why not?
Mainly the supermarkets pander to our pockets rather than our palates. It makes sense as we consume salt and artificial flavourings to guide us to comfort and familiarity. Texture and looks tend to deceive and the average punter wants to buy red coloured red meat.
If you are buying mince, fair enough, but for a steak, a roasting joint, even a stew, you want something on the odd side of brown. I have seen roasting joints sit out the back of a butcher with a little mold on it and that shit is the BEST. Scratch the mold off, but you want the dark, rich, old, well hung meat. The maturing is not related to the level of conversation you can have with your cow, nor how it is going to treat you if you sleep with it. It determines the flavour. The more mature the beef, the better the flavour. End of.
On that note, here's some recipes and tips.
First, steak:
If you want flavour, size and lower cost, buy a rump steak. It has the deepest taste and texture, the most melting chews per bite and a good cut will have little or no chewiness, toughness or anything else. It will be tender as anything if cooked right, and the juices that flow from it when cooked right, will make the most fabulous sauces. From that, the order in price is then Rib Eye, Sirloin and then Fillet. All are lovely in their own way, but fillet, though the most tender, has the least flavour. It is the most special looking steak but actually, the hardest to do well because of the shape. I will come back to this.
How to cook a steak depends on the thickness and prep. Check out the difficulty in the preparation. 1. Take it out of the fridge. 2. Pat it down with paper towel. 3 drizzle a little olive oil, black pepper and sea salt over it. Leave for 30 minutes covered on the table, side, wherever. That is it. Not hard but this will make 30% of the difference.
30% of the difference will come from how hot the pan is and how much attention you pay to it. I have read Anthony Bourdain about the pains of managing the grill station of the restaurant and I can only imagine, knowing how many times I have burnt myself trying different approaches. This one works.
Heat the pan up hot and try and have a pan that reflects the size and amount of steak you are doing. EG 2 steaks should almost fill the pan you use but with a bit of air in between them. Don't pour oil in the pan, it is already on the steak. Add a little butter to the pan and instantly drain the oil from the steak plate and meat on to the rapidly sizzling butter. It stops it burning - but the butter will burn if you don't do this within 5 seconds of adding it to the pan. That is all the time you have.
Then when nicely melted, add the steaks and have your silly little iPhone on timer, or sensibly use a clock or proper timer and set to 1 minute. If your rump, rib eye or sirloin is around a centimeter in thickness, this will cook super fast to medium rare - I mean a minute each side!. If they are an inch, they will take a little more.
So as a rule (for steaks over 1cm and around or less than 1"), I would do 2 mins for rare (a minute on each side), 3-4 mins for medium rare (a minute on each side and then 30 seconds on each side), for well done, 6-8 minutes but you will fuck it up and it will be tough and pointless. I lack sympathy for those who like it well done because no cook really knows what a well done steak should taste or feel like. It has lost all of its properties by then and is really quite odd - like a beef toffee waffle.
The turning every minute is fail safe. It will stop burning while cooking on a pretty high heat, it will regulate equal cooking intensity through the dense structure of the meat, and it is a good way of knowing where you stand without having to touch it in the pan to check it is ok. I would advise to have a metal spoon at hand to scoop and pour the oil/butter over the exposed side while the pan side is cooking. It is nice and promotes equality of skin tone.
40% of the difference will be your ability to understand that you have to leave it to stand on a warm plate. Your steak will continue to (kind of) cook for another half minute just on the plate because it is hot. So you don't need well done. Also this is the tenderising stage. By doing nothing and leaving it for 3-5 minutes, you are literally making it good. Literally.
Most people would be eating it now but no! Leave it. Instead, turn the heat off as soon as the steaks are out and chuck half a glass of nice red wine in your pan to a mad sizzle and spit. A little salt and pepper and a half teaspoon of Dijon mustard and turn heat back on high-ish. Whisk or stir with something whisk like to break up the mustard and simmer over a medium to low heat. The alcohol will cook out of the wine in the rest time leaving the deep sweet marrying of the wine and beef flavours. Every minute, add the juices that are flowing from your steaks into the warm plate. This adds so much depth to the sauce that you couldn't buy. (BTW if you leave your gas on when adding the wine, there is fair chance of a big flambe, which in most domestic kitchens will burn your eyebrows, set off your smoke alarm and make you scream).
After a few minutes of saucing, it is time to eat a delicious, tender and flavoursome steak with red wine sauce.
Also, you don't have to do the sauce. Italians squeeze a lemon over the steak and it is ridiculously good with the steak juices. No lemon and just mustard is also great. But that rest time is critical and if you don't do it, you will never know real quality.
So buy the finest, taste the difference and generally the best steak you can. Or go to a better place than a supermarket and splash out. God it's good.
Returning to fillet steak, it is much thicker and much harder to manage the times. I would just say for something that is 1.5" thick to 2", 5-6 mins is rare (1 minute each side turned 6 times. 8 minutes is medium (same thing applies), more is well done. But you will have to turn it on all sides and you won't trust your timings. Doing this well requires practise and also a feel for it. Come back to this once you've tried the others a few times.
If like me, you love steak, then print this out and put it on your fridge or washing machine with a magnet. Get it stained up and battered. Smudge the lettering and brown it with so many sauces that you could actually start sucking it after a year or two, while you wait for the steak to rest. Seriously, get it right and you have it RIGHT.
Moo.
Thursday, 20 January 2011
I have noticed...
The similarity in many of my meals and a repeat of ingredients. This is predictable if you are me, but if you aren't then you might not like the recipes.
In which case I apologise and will be changing it up a lot in due course.
But I implore you to try to mess about with my recipes too. They aren't stuck in stone you know.
In which case I apologise and will be changing it up a lot in due course.
But I implore you to try to mess about with my recipes too. They aren't stuck in stone you know.
I was going to make...
This is the easiest dish on earth but I realised I forgot a couple of key ingredients in my shop yesterday.
BTW Sainsburys was doing a deal of 2 very nice bottles of Primitivo red wine at 8.99 each or 2 for 8 quid???! I took two.
This is a pasta dish that asks for nothing and returns everything. This is the most simple dinner ever and just perfect. For 2 you need:
Spaghetti - however much you like to eat
Cherry tomatoes 200g or more, washed and halved
Cubed pancetta 100g
Large bunch basil
Parmesan (lots grated)
Extra virgin olive oil.
2 cloves finely sliced garlic
That is it. It is traditional, boring and supreme. Unbelievably supreme.
Heat the water in a large pan and throw in spag when boiling. When pasta is in, heat a frying pan and in a little olive oil, fry the pancetta until golden and crispy on outside. When crispy and not too dark, throw in tomatoes and garlic and stir once. Then turn down heat and cook for the remaining 3-4 mins til pasta is ready.
Drain the pasta, chuck back in pan, add contents of frying pan with sea salt, ground pepper and basil and stir/toss well. Drizzle a fair bit of extra virgin over the top, serve in plates and then pile on the parmesan.
A meal in 11 minutes and totally wonderful flavours. Sweet, savoury, moreish and sexy.
BTW Sainsburys was doing a deal of 2 very nice bottles of Primitivo red wine at 8.99 each or 2 for 8 quid???! I took two.
This is a pasta dish that asks for nothing and returns everything. This is the most simple dinner ever and just perfect. For 2 you need:
Spaghetti - however much you like to eat
Cherry tomatoes 200g or more, washed and halved
Cubed pancetta 100g
Large bunch basil
Parmesan (lots grated)
Extra virgin olive oil.
2 cloves finely sliced garlic
That is it. It is traditional, boring and supreme. Unbelievably supreme.
Heat the water in a large pan and throw in spag when boiling. When pasta is in, heat a frying pan and in a little olive oil, fry the pancetta until golden and crispy on outside. When crispy and not too dark, throw in tomatoes and garlic and stir once. Then turn down heat and cook for the remaining 3-4 mins til pasta is ready.
Drain the pasta, chuck back in pan, add contents of frying pan with sea salt, ground pepper and basil and stir/toss well. Drizzle a fair bit of extra virgin over the top, serve in plates and then pile on the parmesan.
A meal in 11 minutes and totally wonderful flavours. Sweet, savoury, moreish and sexy.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
While I have the bug - A soup
This is another one where stuff left in the fridge happened to be a goldmine
This is truly a filling soup and will be an awesome lunch or midweek dinner with crusty bread.
Leek, Onion, Pancetta, Potato and Roquefort Soup
Serves 4
2 leeks (outer layers discarded, sliced sideways and sliced finely, then washed thoroughly)
1 medium onion peeled and chopped fine
75g chopped pancetta
2 large potatoes peeled and chopped small
50g roquefort cheese broken up into pieces
100ml milk
2 pints chicken stock
50g unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Big soup pan, sweat the onions and leeks in the butter for 15 mins, add the potatoes and sweat for another 5. Fry the pancetta in a small frying pan and add to the veg. Chuck in the stock and salt and pepper and simmer for 20 mins.
Remove from heat and add the milk and blue cheese (no live heat stops the dairy splitting). Stir for 5 mins and return to the heat for 1-2 mins if it seems like it might be cooling. In a blender or with a hand blender take the soup to the cleaners, leaving a thick and tiny lumped soup with such intense and lively flavours.
It really works and is proper rich so will go a long way. That is my word.
This is truly a filling soup and will be an awesome lunch or midweek dinner with crusty bread.
Leek, Onion, Pancetta, Potato and Roquefort Soup
Serves 4
2 leeks (outer layers discarded, sliced sideways and sliced finely, then washed thoroughly)
1 medium onion peeled and chopped fine
75g chopped pancetta
2 large potatoes peeled and chopped small
50g roquefort cheese broken up into pieces
100ml milk
2 pints chicken stock
50g unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Big soup pan, sweat the onions and leeks in the butter for 15 mins, add the potatoes and sweat for another 5. Fry the pancetta in a small frying pan and add to the veg. Chuck in the stock and salt and pepper and simmer for 20 mins.
Remove from heat and add the milk and blue cheese (no live heat stops the dairy splitting). Stir for 5 mins and return to the heat for 1-2 mins if it seems like it might be cooling. In a blender or with a hand blender take the soup to the cleaners, leaving a thick and tiny lumped soup with such intense and lively flavours.
It really works and is proper rich so will go a long way. That is my word.
All that is in the fridge
Tonight I cooked what we had left. It was flipping decent.
Decent enough to put on here anyway (whatever that suggests!)
We had half a roast chicken left over from yesterday. It is nice to do the roast on Monday when you feel the drag of the week upon you. It kicks you into Tuesday which is nearly Friday innit?
We had 1 orange and 1 yellow pepper, 1 onion (we had more but that is all that is needed), 3 cloves of garlic, 2 courgettes, some pancetta, tin of tomatoes, 1 pint of chicken stock or gravy, 2 sticks celery, new potatoes, sea salt, pepper, sugar, dijon mustard, mixed herbs. I am pretty sure a glass of red or white wine would be delicious in this but I drank it all.
I chopped all the veg small and stripped the chicken from the bones. Wash the potatoes and then boil for 20-25 mins. Drain and leave to stand.
In a big Le Creuset (yeah yeah I know), fry up the onion, celery, garlic and courgettes in some butter and olive oil (oil stops the butter burning). Add some salt to stop the onions burning in the oil. (I dunno why she swallowed a horse, she'll die of course. Sorry). In a separate small frying pan, fry the pancetta up and when golden and nice, chuck in with the sweating veg and stir. Add the chopped peppers to the mix and sweat/fry off.
In the frying pan while it is hot, chuck in the stripped roast chicken and heat through, crisp up, brown off for 4-5 mins. Chuck it in with the veg. Add to the big pan the tinned tomatoes, herbs, a spoon of sugar, tsp of dijon, stock and stir through.
Get it bubbling and meanwhile halve the new potatoes you boiled. When you have the bubbling stew, add the potatoes in and stir round.
Simmer for 15 mins and eat.
It was decent and properly what was left over. I am chuffed as it really made sense and the flavours, textures, consistency and body all we great. Very tasty indeed.
Decent enough to put on here anyway (whatever that suggests!)
We had half a roast chicken left over from yesterday. It is nice to do the roast on Monday when you feel the drag of the week upon you. It kicks you into Tuesday which is nearly Friday innit?
We had 1 orange and 1 yellow pepper, 1 onion (we had more but that is all that is needed), 3 cloves of garlic, 2 courgettes, some pancetta, tin of tomatoes, 1 pint of chicken stock or gravy, 2 sticks celery, new potatoes, sea salt, pepper, sugar, dijon mustard, mixed herbs. I am pretty sure a glass of red or white wine would be delicious in this but I drank it all.
I chopped all the veg small and stripped the chicken from the bones. Wash the potatoes and then boil for 20-25 mins. Drain and leave to stand.
In a big Le Creuset (yeah yeah I know), fry up the onion, celery, garlic and courgettes in some butter and olive oil (oil stops the butter burning). Add some salt to stop the onions burning in the oil. (I dunno why she swallowed a horse, she'll die of course. Sorry). In a separate small frying pan, fry the pancetta up and when golden and nice, chuck in with the sweating veg and stir. Add the chopped peppers to the mix and sweat/fry off.
In the frying pan while it is hot, chuck in the stripped roast chicken and heat through, crisp up, brown off for 4-5 mins. Chuck it in with the veg. Add to the big pan the tinned tomatoes, herbs, a spoon of sugar, tsp of dijon, stock and stir through.
Get it bubbling and meanwhile halve the new potatoes you boiled. When you have the bubbling stew, add the potatoes in and stir round.
Simmer for 15 mins and eat.
It was decent and properly what was left over. I am chuffed as it really made sense and the flavours, textures, consistency and body all we great. Very tasty indeed.
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