Italian Shepherd's Pie

When my husband goes out and I have the flat to myself there are certain things I do - play music really loud and sing along (Saw Doctors or Opera mainly), make popcorn, watch cookery programmes, and cook. Tonight, as we have pork mince, I'm going to experiment with making an Italian flavoured Shepherds pie - with a bolognaise/ratatouille mix on the bottom and polenta on the top.

Here's what I'm going to do.... or am doing while also writing this...

Grab a pan and pop oil in and a pinch of salt (I use a mix of olive and sunflower). Add one chopped onion (I used red) and a couple of cloves of garlic. When these are in, add some herbs, fresh or dried - alas I have no garden so I use a dried mix (herbs de provence). Let them cook togther over a slow heat until they are soft. I also added a sprinkle of paprika - more if you want it hot, leave out if not. When soft, add the mince.

And here for a bugbear of mine - mix up the mince, mix and mix and squash it with the spoon so that it cooks in tiny minced up pieces, not worms - worms are soooooo unpleasant to eat, for everyone.

With that, while the mince is cooking dice and smallish courgette and a pepper. When the mince is cooked through, and the juices are starting to come out add the veg. Bear in mind that if you bung it all in in one go it's going to make the pan temp very cold, stir in a handful at a time to keep the pan hot.

Let the veg and the mince cook, until the veg is starting to look soft. Then add a tin of tomatoes and a good few squirts of puree. Mix it up and let it bubble quietly away, while you get on wth the polenta.

Polenta is easy and the recipe is on the back of the packet. Basically, get 850ml water boiling in a pan, measure out 175g of polenta. When the water is bubbling get a whisk and shake in the polenta while whisking - if you're not very coordinated get someone else to shake in the polenta while you whisk. Keep whisking unitl the mixture goes thick and startd to plop. Turn the heat down and stir now and again so it doesn't get lumpy.

Stir some olive oil, black pepper and parmesan (or parmesan-type cheese) into the polenta. Give it a relly good whisk.

Then, pour the mince mix into a baking dish, waggle the dish to spread it out. Then, a spoonful at a time, place the polenta on top. You should be able to put it on in small mounds all over the top, don't worry about spreading it out perfectly. sprinkle some more parmesan on top and pop into a hot oven (200 deg C) for about 20 minutes.

With any luck, the results will be fantastic!

Ant-O-Meter score for this recipe...3 leaves! (Someone's not a fan of polenta!)


Tip's tip: season the indvidual things as you put them in, this way as they cook the seasoning will work on them, and the dish should be nicely seasoned at the end - ie add salt and pepper to the mince when you add it, add sugar and salt to the tinned toms etc.

Chinese style roast belly pork!

Am never quite sure what to do with belly pork as I love the taste and it's nice and cheap, but chewing through the fat does put me off. This recipe seems to have made the fat disappear quite nicely so I think it's a good-un.

First I whacked the oven up nice and hot - to about 200 degrees C. Then I chopped carrots into sticks and layered them on the bottom of a roasting dish, with just a very little bit of oil and some S&P.

Then I made a marinade - oil, chinese 5 spice, crushed garlic, runny (or melted) honey. You will need quite a thick marinade so that the pork is well coated. Then I chopped the pork strips into about 2 or 3 inch pieces and covered them liberally with the marinade. Them I laid each piece of pork fat side up on top of the carrots.This went into the top of the oven for 40 minutes in which time the fat went crispy and caramelised - and the meat stayed juicy, and all the tastiness ran into the carrots!

This was an invention and a bit of a gamble that paid off nicely - we had it with homemade potato wedges.

Ant-O-Meter score: 4 leaves!

It's all about pork! Sticky plum and ginger meatballs! MMM MMMM

Due to a shopping oversight last week my fridge ended up with both pork mince and strips of belly pork in it this week.

The mince had to be eaten first and it just so happened that I needed something quick on Monday night. So sticky plum and ginger meatballs it was! First I put some plain basmati rice on to cook.* I then put the mince in a bowl with a good amount of pepper, salt and ground ginger, and a crushed clove of garlic. Using hands I mashed and squidged this all together. Then put a frying pan on the heat, with some oil, I rolled small pieces of mince into balls and popped them into the pan - you need to do this quite quickly so they don't all cook at differnt times. When these were all in they start cooking quite quickly so keep them moving and let them brown and caramalise a little on each side.

While the meatballs were cooking I started on the sauce. I chopped a clove of garlic and some spring onions, and grated about two inches of fresh ginger. When the meatballs were done on each side I put them in a separate pan using a slotted spoon so that any fat or juice stayed in the pan. Then add all the sauce ingredients to the pan, with a star anise, and let them cook until soft adding extra oil if needed. Once they are soft add some soy sauce - and here I have a cheat - my cousin made some delicious plum sauce (I think stewed and strained plums). I'm not sure what else would work - maybe fresh plums, stoned and chopped? So with the plum sauce I let it all cook together until thick - it got a bit too sticky too quickly so I added a little stock (or use water) to thin it again.

Once the sauce was done I added the meatballs back into it, gave them a good stirr around so that they were all covered and piping hot all the way through. Then served with the rice, and a bit of Mango chutney just for fun!

And the Ant-O-Meter gives this dish......4 leaves! (That's out of five by the way.)


*Having had disasters with rice in the past I am pleased to say I have now perfected this bit of cookery! I tend to use 2/3 of a large ramakin of rice per person and a full ramakin of water per person. Bring to the boil quickly in the pan and turn to a low heat, and keep an eye on it. Another method I'm a big fan of is taking a pyrex dish with a lid and cooking the rice in that in the oven. The oven should be on about 180 degrees C, and I use the same quantities of rice as above - replacing the water with chicken or veg stock. This usually takes about 20 mins and is so handy if the oven is on anyway.

New Year New Recipies!

With one thing and another I have been completely distracted from this - but now with a new year and new foody books, and a little less work - I can return to Culinary Deliciousness!

For Christmas I was given a Food Thesaurus. It's written by Niki Sergent and is brilliant! All flavours covered, and well written too. Recipes galore and all sorts of combinations to try out. And that's what I've been doing today.

I love cardamom, so I looked it up and saw that it might be combined with coffee - so I've made some muffins.

Coffee and Cardamom Muffins.

For a basic muffin mix make 9oz plain flour, 2tsp of baking powder, and 30z sugar. Then in another bowl whisk an egg and add 9 floz of milk. Add 3floz or 3oz melted butter to the liquid. Mix these together and pop into muffin cases. 200 deg C for about 25 minutes.

I added cardamon and coffee to this mix by making a little very strong coffee (I used a percolator but I'm sure istand or an expresso could be used). I took 6-7 cardamon pods and crushd in a pestle and mortar to get the seeds out. I crushed the seeds to a very fine powder and added them to the dry ingredients mix. Then I put the empty pods in the coffee to stew. When it was cool I added the coffee to the milk mix then went on as usual.

They came out of the oven after 25 minutes risen up and golden brown on top!


I also made triple ginger biccies today! Inspired by a recipe from Jamie Oliver but tweaked by me these come out like crunchy toppped gingerbread biscuits. I took the basic reicpe, flour, sugar, butter, ginger etc - but added treacle, golden syrup, stem ginger (preserved in syrup). Took 15 minutes in the oven and come out gooey and cool to a soft biscuit. Recipe needs some tweaking so watch this space for a recipe!

Boiled bacon etc

Am just back from sunny Spain and have been catching up with M. Roux and the Masterchef Proffs and Nigella (who by the way I find completly maddening and ridiculous!) - and am just finding time to blog while some brioche dough is rising. Have found myself on my own this evening having spent the day sat in front of a computer and feeling rather disheartened I thought I would try something active and new - having given up on a new yoga dvd I got out the french cookery book.

I bought this ages ago and have hardly used it. It's old. So old that I had to look up what a gill was earlier - it's 4 tablespoons by the way. It was published in 1965, us by Jean Conil and is called The French Cookery book. I love it, it smells like old books and has a pencilled in 25p in the front - bargain! Also, some handy person has scrawled in oven temp conversions and underlined some handy hints about chicken.

Anyway, being only halfway through the brioche recipe I'll hang on to write about it in case it's a disaster - which it won't be!

For now, I'll tell you about the delicious ham we had on Sunday, one of my favourite meals - boiled bacon and parsley sauce, with red cabbage, potatoes and carrots. Mmmmm. Mum's recipe of course, but they are always the best.

So, a bacon or gammon joint, smoked or unsmoked (- just never Danish). Into a tall pot with a star anise, bay leaf, peppercorns, and cloves. Water, nearly covering the meat. Bring to the boil, and then turn down to a simmer. If the piece is really big, double up the spices. Mine was just under a kg so an hour was plently - again, bigger pieces of meat take longer.

You can prep veggies here and turn on to cook when the meat comes out of the water.

After an hour, take the meat out of the water. Two choices here, cover with foil to keep warm and rest while you do the veggies. Or, glaze it.

I glazed. So, heat the oven to 200ish, and take the fat off the meat. You should be able to do this quite easily by just slipping a knife though it just above the meat. Then, mix a table spoon of honey with a couple of teaspoons of wholegrain mustard and spread over the meat. Pop this into the oven.

In the mean time, make the sauce. A simple white sauce is best starting with a roux, but adding the meat stock instead of milk. Taste the stock first, if it's very salty only use a little bit and use milk or veg water for the rest. When the consistency is thick and luscious, add lots and lots of chopped parsley and season.

The meat should come out of the oven. Rest, and then be served in thin slices.

In my opinion, this is the best meal. End of.

Oh, and for the red cabbage, give it a lot of time. Finely slice onion and soften, add the red cabbage, finely sliced, and a chopped apple (raisins too if you like). Mix it up and let it all get hot and start cooking before adding a little bit of water. Keep the lid and the heat in. Cook gently but keep it going. When it's soft, add balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, and season. Let it have some more time to let the vinegar soften and the sugar dissolve.

Back to the brioche....

Stock and Left-over-chicken Cakes

It's so sad when the roast is over. But, luckily, I've managed to make mine last most of this week! Slightly on the thrifty side I know but while on a budget, it's great. Fried up leftovers and nice hot gravy was delish on Monday andI made stock on Monday too. Here's how:

Pick all the chicken off the bones - keep all bones you can find, even from the drumsticks etc. Lose the skin - If I had a cat or dog this would go to them, and although tasty, I leave it out of stock as it adds grease.

Keep all the meat to one side. Yes, of course I'll use this later.

Then break the bones up and put all into a big pan with an onion, couple of carrots, and a couple of sticks of celery - all chopped chunky - and two bay leaves, a good sprig of thyme, and a few peppercorns. Add water to just cover the bones and veg. Boil for hours - or three, till the water looks really murky and there's a good chickeny smell wafting about.

When you think it's had long enough, put to one side, and leave to cool. Later, seive into containters and fridge (if you're going to use it soon - ie this week), or freeze.

Yum!

And all those bits of good chicken - are good for anything! Make a chunky chowder style soup with sweetcorn and some of the stock?
Or, risotto?
Or, chicken cakes?

I chose chicken cakes - sounds odd? Think fish cakes with chicken instead of fish, and trust me, they're good.

Put a few potatoes on to boil in small cubes.
Finely chop and onion and couple of cloves of garlic, put in a pan with some oil and thyme and soften.
When they're cooked, mash the potaoes, mix in the onion mix and leave to cool down.
Take the leftover chicken, and any leftover stuffing etc and chop into a fine mulch - don't mash it or blitz it - just run a knife over it a few times to make small chunks. (I added some chopped spinach to the chicken too, but only because it was hanging about!)

Add the chicken to the mash mix, with salt and pepper, a good dolop of dijon mustard, an egg, and a good grating of cheese (I only had cheddar, so used that, but have a feeling parmesan would work well here). Mix it all up well. I don't have any quantities as it's hard to know how much chicken you'll have left, I think roughly 2/3 potato, and 1/3 chicken should be a good guide.

Form into burger size patties and fry in a hot pan until you have a good brown crust on each side. As you're reheating chicken give them a good long time in the pan and make sure they're thoroughly heated through. This will be quicker if you don't make them too thick.

We had these with branston pick and a corn on the cob - because that was what we had in the fridge! But it did work well. Tasty.

A Delicious Chicken Roast

Ok, I know everyone has their own roast method. I haven't braved it since I moved out of home, but have just sucessfully roasted up a small chicken in my new kitchen. Hooray. And here's how I did it.

My chicken was only small (3lb) and I don't have a proper roasting tray, so, I cut 3 small lemons in half and put them in the bottom of a deep roasting tray. In here too I put three cloves of garlic, towards the edge.

With the chicken, I rubbed butter under the skin, salt and peppered it, and stuffed it (with box stuffing - yes Paxo is the best!). I tied up the legs making sure the skin was tight over the stuffing to keep it safe inside the chicken. The chicken sat on the lemons and I arranged par-boiled potatoes and parsnips around it (and drizzled a little olive oil on them).

The chicken went into a hot (200 degree c) oven for 20-30 mins until the skin was golden brown. Then turn the oven down (to 170ish) and cook for another hour. If the skin is getting too brown cover the top of the chicken with foil. Halfway through coooking you can take the chicken out and look around the bottom of the legs and breasts to see pckets of fat - I poke a hole in these and let the juices run into the dish. You should be able to tell when the chicken is done - but just to be sure - poke deep into the breast then press the flat of the knife near the hole. If juices run out they should be clear - if they look even a little bit pink put it back in the oven.

When the chicken's just about done it's gravy-time! I took the chicken out of the oven and rested it on a plate (discard the lemons which should have gone soft and caramelised). I rolled the potatoes and parsnips in the fat and lifted them out onto a flat baking tray - and put them back into the top of the oven - just to get that bit more crispy. The juices from the chicken went into a small saucepan with lots of flour to soak up the fat. (You may find you have far too much of this mix - if so, put half aside and you can use it for more gravy to go with leftovers tomorrow!)

Cook the roux-gravy mix out until it turns a lighter colour, and then slowly add liquid - use the water you've been boiling veg in if you can (I did green beans so used the water from those). So, add the liquid slowly, stirring all the time until you have a thick gravy consistency. Season if you need to and it's ready to go!

And that's that. Get the roasties from the oven and carve the chuck! This was really tasty, the lemon seemed to get into everything - making a really tangy crust on some of the potatoes and parsnips and making the gravy lovely and fruity. Perfect for a Sunday.