Best of British

We seem to have a lot of cooking books of regional cooking & I thought a nice way to start making more use of them was to pick a country for a Saturday night meal.  Last weekend we had two British meals which provided two midweek meals as well.  I also thought it would be a nice idea to have a seasonal arrangement of those charming mini pumpkins on the sideboard.  I just buy a couple each week & we eat our way through them.
The first British meal was venison loin with barley risotto & roasted roots.  Start with the barley because it takes a while.  Saute a thinly sliced leek with a little butter & oil & a sprig of thyme until softened.  Stir in 250g pearl barley with 1/2  the hot  chicken stock (500ml of 1 litre).  Put the lid on & simmer 20 minutes or so until all the stock is absorbed. Just keep adding stock over the next 40-60 mins until the barley has the consistency you like to eat.
While that is cooking, heat the oven to 200 & dice 1/2 a swede, 1 red onion, 1/2 large carrot & 2  turnips into 1-2cm cubes.  Toss in a roasting dish with 2 rashers chopped streaky bacon & a couple of sprigs of rosemary.  Season well & drizzle over some olive oil.  Cook 30-40 mins until the vegetables are done.
Put the leaves of two rosemary sprigs in a pestle & mortar with 5-6 juniper berries & salt & pepper.  Bash them then mix in a splash red wine vinegar & a swig of olive oil.  Rub all over your venison loin.  We had 400g for two & that stretched to 2 meals.  When you think you are 20 mins away from dishing up, heat a little olive oil in a pan to a high heat.  Cook the loin around 18 mins turning every 2 mins.  Do not overcook.  You want it rare to medium rare. Place on a warmed plate & rub it with a little butter while it rests.  Get up the roasties & stir through some marmalade which will give it a lovely gloss.  Serve it all with a few handfuls of watercress & other green leaves dressed with a little oil & balsamic.
Later in the week make a rustic huntsman's pie with the leftovers.  This is just shepherd's pie with venison.  I made a sofrito with onion, carrot & celery then added the finely chopped venison & left over barley & veg.  I topped with a mash of swede, pumpkin & potato because that is what I had in my cupboard.  You might have a different combination.  I had too much mash so I froze the surplus for another day.  My freezer is full of surplus mash which is great for a potato topped dish & sometimes I forget to label it so I am not sure which vegetable I have until it is done.
On Sunday we did Jamie Oliver's empire roast chicken. I served this with peas - it felt like the right thing to do. You could expand this if you had a crowd maybe with a variation on dhal & some spicy beans.
Leftovers became a pilaf the next day & Peter took the remainder for his lunch the day after.  For that I adapted an old favourite.  I left out the pine nuts & the preserved lemon and added a little garam masala with the turmeric.  I just added the shredded cooked chicken & peas with the rice.  I used 1 cup rice & 2 cups stock.  We served it with the cranberry sauce that needs to be used. Meals like this make weekday eating so easy.

Pasta, grains & greens

When I first introduced soup Monday I made a wonderful barley soup inspired by Alison Holst & I returned there this week.  This had two pleasing consequences.  I discovered I had more pearl barley in the cupboard than I needed & remembered a barley salad I had been meaning to make.  You could serve this with anything really but we had lamb meatballs which worked well.  Just make your favourite meatball recipe.  We included onion, garlic & cinnamon.  For the salad cook 1/2 cup of pearl barley for about half an hour until tender.  It may take a little longer.  Drain, toss through 2 tbsp olive oil & set aside to cool slightly.  In the meantime mix a cup chopped parsley, 1/4 finely diced preserved lemon, a few black olives, juice of 1/2 a lemon, crumbled feta & some finely sliced mint leaves.  Mix in the cooled barley & top with meatballs.  Good as lunch leftovers later in the week.  Look forward to lots of barley on these pages in the coming weeks.Are you wondering what the second consequence was - did you think I had forgotten?  The soup requires a can of creamed sweetcorn & I only needed 1/2  a tin for two.  We added the remaining corn to the Friday night omelette.  Try this - it was delicious.  I have a real soft spot for creamed corn.
I often think of the green vegetable first & then come up with a way to fit a meal around it.  For a simple weekday meal you can't go past Hugh F-W's macaroni peas.  Cook pasta - we used macaroni but penne or whatever shapes you have to hand would do as well.  Cook some frozen peas.  While the peas are cooking gently soften a clove of garlic in a little butter.  Blend half the peas with the butter, garlic, 25g Parmesan & enough of the pea cooking water to make a puree.  Think pesto.  Combine with the rest of the peas & pasta, add more Parmesan & mix through basil or parsley.
Roasted roots crumble seemed like a good accompaniment to leeks & greens this week.  Roast a selection of pale root vegetables - potato, parsnip, swede, celeriac - cut into smallish chunks & some sliced onion, with a mustardy dressing.  Mix equal quantities of wholegrain mustard, honey & olive oil with a good quantity of chopped rosemary and toss the veg around in it.  Cover the veg & roast at 180 for 45 minutes then uncover & cook a further 20 minutes at 200.  You want the vegetables well cooked & golden but not browned.  Pour a few tbsp cream over the vegetables - this is just to meld them together a little so you could omit if you don't have cream in the cupboard.  Top with a crumble made of a handful of rolled oats, 2-3 slices of crumbed bread, toasted hazlenut roughly chopped , grated cheese & a little melted butter.  Return to the oven for 10-15 minutes to crisp up the crumble.
We made way more than we could eat & there was a little cranbapple sauce in the fridge so the next day we had lamb rack with the left over crumble mixed with the left over leeks & greens.
If we are planning to eat mixed greens it seems impossible to buy only what we need for a single meal so another pasta & greens meal was called for.  Again this can be whatever pasta & greens you have to hand.  In our case penne & cabbage with beetroot leaves.   Soften an onion in a little oil then add finely chopped garlic & chilli & cook a little longer.  Cook the pasta in the usual way & a few minutes before the end of cooking add the shredded greens.  Drain the pasta & greens & toss with the onion mix & some grated Parmesan & a drizzle of olive oil.
There was still some spinach & beetroot leaves to use so out came that meal of the moment  - spicy potatoes with greens.  Top it with a poached egg and you have a splendid meal.
This week a work colleague gave me 5 kilos of windfall apples.  Look out for apple recipes next week.  If you have any ideas post them here.
You may remember that when I go to the market every Sunday & have a cup of chowder from Yellow Brick Road for Breakfast.  I occasionally try something different but always return to chowder.  Nothing else quite measures up - until now.  I may have found a new favourite - Vicky Ha and The Dumpling House.  Try those dumplings.  She now sells them frozen by the dozen and I am planning to buy a dozen tofu & spinach dumplings to treat a vegan.  I think my favourite is the pork & cabbage but the Nepalese lamb & veg is a close second.

Easter Eats

This year's Easter menu is almost the same as last year & the year before.   Good Friday means hot cross buns, hot from the oven around 11.30.  Dinner is smoked fish pie.  I like the predictability of traditional festive eating.  It reminds me that we do have food traditions although they are mostly ignored these days & some people are unsure where they came from.  Most relate to the old agricultural year so although they are seasonal are not always relevant to modern city dwelling.  I do like to bring them out on high days & holidays.  I'd like to do more of them.
Saturday was an unbelievably hot Wellington day.  Possibly the warmest of the summer & there was no wind in our garden so we dined outdoors, mezze style, for lunch.  We had sourdough with carrot hummus, flatbread with leafy greens & goats' cheese, a tomato salad & spicy potatoes with spinach.  This has become one of my favourites.  It is really quick & would do as part of a spread, a meal on its own or as I did with the leftovers, topped with a poached egg.
Boil some small waxy potatoes & set aside to cool enough that you can handle them.  Heat a little oil in a pan & soften a thinly sliced onion.  Add a clove of crushed garlic, 1 finely chopped chilli, a knob of grated ginger, 2 tsp garam masala & cook for a couple of minutes.  Thickly slice the cooled potatoes into the pan & heat through.  Thinly slice a handful of spinach & add it to the pan.  Stir through until wilted then season with salt & pepper.  If you are not feeding a vegan think about adding a little cream to bind or you could use coconut cream.  I like it both with & without cream.
Easter lamb is one of my favourite meals of the year.  This year we did a very simple slow cooked shoulder of lamb served with roasted vegetables and leeks & greens.  We included beetroot leaves with the greens.  Keeping with the rosemary theme of the lamb, I roasted carrot, parsnip & swede coated in mustard, rosemary & honey.  Cut an appropriate number of vegetables for your table into bite size chunks & toss in a mixture of wholegrain mustard, honey & olive oil.  Use 2 tbsp each per 1 kg veg.  Season & add rosemary sprigs, then tip everything into a roasting dish & cover with foil.  Bake for 30 mins at 180 then uncover & turn up to 200 for another 30-40 mins.  You want them tender & beginning to caremelise.
To complete the meal I made a sauce with the 15 crab apples off our trees.  This was a variation of something I found on the internet called Sassy Crabapple and Cranberry Chutney.  I found there are heaps of recipes called Sassy crabapple and/or cranberry  - who can say why?  I named mine simply Cranbapple.  Use a ratio of 2:1 crab apples to cranberries.  We didn't have enough crab apples so I included a couple of windfall apples as well.  Peel and core the apples and add the cranberries.  For 750g fruit, add grated ginger, a clove of crushed garlic, a cinnamon stick, zest & juice of a lemon, a sprig rosemary, 1/4 cup muscovado sugar, 1 tbsp apple syrup (you could use maple if you have it - use real syrup not maple style syrup).  Put it all on the stove and cook until the fruit is soft - 20 mins or so.  Remove the cinnamon stick and rosemary before serving.

There were leftovers of the roasted roots.  Later in the week I heated them in the microwave, pureed in the processor then mixed with a freshly mashed potato.  We cooked up a fresh batch of leeks & greens.  A savoy cabbage is a pretty big thing and will stretch to quite a few servings.  We served with sausages & cranbapple sauce.  There is still a little sauce left - maybe a lamb rack over the weekend? 

Sticking with the fruity theme we had apple & blackberry pie & vanilla ice cream for pudding.  I had hoped to get fresh blackberries but we had to settle for frozen.  If you have a favourite pastry recipe use that or buy good short pastry.  We used this recipe and recommend making pastry with lard.  My mother-in-law does this & she is the queen of pastry.  Phoebe hopes to follow in her footsteps.  Mix slices of apple & blackberries (about 1 kg fruit) with 1 tbsp sugar and 1/2 tsp each nutmeg & cinnamon then turn into a pie dish.  Cover with pastry & bake for 40 mins at 200 until golden.

Yak, cheek and squeak

You thought I had given up on Tagine Saturday but not so. And I am not shying away from the odd looking recipes which is a good thing because last Saturday's effort did look a bit odd on the page & turned out to be a winner on the plate. I will admit to passing over the tagine with chestnuts & I won't be going back but all the rest will eventually make their way to these pages.
A Tfaia tagine is apparently from Andalusia and is especially popular today in Tangiers. They are traditionally made with a clarified butter called smen which gives of a pungent aroma. (For those of you familiar with Mog in the Fog, it brought to mind yak butter.) You could use ghee. I used regular butter with olive oil.
Melt the butter & mix in 2 cloves crushed garlic, 1 tsp each ground ginger & coriander and a pinch of saffron threads with a little salt. Put the mixture into your tagine and roll lamb cutlets in the mixture, 2-3 per person depending on size & greed. Sprinkle over 1-2 finely chopped onions. Pour over just enough boiling water to cover the cutlets, cover & put in the oven at 160 for 1 1/2 hours. Take the tagine out of the oven & add kalamata olives to taste & a preserved lemon, quartered. Return to the oven for another 20 minutes. I did this stage uncovered to reduce the liquid. Meanwhile boil an egg per person for about 4 minutes, so that the yolk is just firm, & carefully peel. Dissolve a little saffron in 2 tbsp warm water & roll the eggs in the liquid to colour. Lightly toast whole almonds in a little butter or oil. To serve season the tagine, sprinkle with parsley, add the halved eggs & sprinkle over the almonds.
A few weeks ago we spent the weekend in the Taranaki & went to a fabulous French restaurant in New Plymouth. I had the Beef Provencale which was delicious. I enquired about the cut of beef & the waiter replied "sheiks" while patting his face. I have been meaning to try these at home so Sunday was the day. Using one cheek per person, brown the cheeks in the casserole dish & remove. For 2 people, add 1-2 thinly sliced onions and the same of thinly sliced garlic cloves to the pan & cook until they begin to caramelise. Return the cheeks to the casserole with bay leaves & thyme, 175ml red wine & 75ml beef stock. Season, bring to the boil then transfer to a low oven (150) for 1 1/2 hours. Serve with your favourite mash. Amazing. The cheeks have a distinctive aroma ( not unpleasant but noticeable) but this will disappear during the cooking process. On the plate they just smell like delicious dinner. Many recipes suggest marinating them in the wine for up to 24 hours and this may eliminate the aroma at the outset. I will try that next time.
During the week we had a delicious Greek style chicken with pilaf. Take a chicken breast (skin on) per person - the recipe suggested supremes but that was too much chicken for us. For 2 people combine 40g butter ( a little less) with 1/4 tsp each allspice & cinnamon, 1 clove crushed garlic, zest of 1/2 lemon & a little finely chopped rosemary. Rub this mixture all over the chicken breasts & roast at 200 for 1/2 hour, basting a couple of times. Remove & rest before serving. Make a rice pilaf. Saute 1/2 onion,thinly sliced, 1 clove crushed garlic & 1/4 tsp allspice until soft. Add 1/2 cup rice & stir to coat. Add 1 cup chicken stock & simmer until done. Toast some pine nuts & pistachios & stir some through the rice. Save the rest to sprinkle over the top. Blend 50g creamy feta with 1 1/2 tbsp Greek yoghurt, 1 clove crushed garlic, 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard, zest of 1/2 lemon plus 1 tbsp juice. Dollop this over the chicken to serve.
Mid week we roasted a selection of root vegetables we found in the fridge - celeriac, parsnip, potatoes, yams, baby beetroot, kumara. We served these with a mustard cream - 150g creme fraiche, 1 tbsp hot English mustard, 1 1/2 tsp each Dijon mustard, grated horseradish, mustard powder. Try leeks with greens. Soften 1-2 leeks in butter or oil. Steam cabbage, spring greens, curly kale, cavalo nero - whatever you have to hand - until just tender. I love cavalo nero & curly kale. Add to the pan of leeks & stir through for a minute or so. Do extras of everything and the next day make bubble & squeak with the left over veg & the mash from earlier in the week plus the greens. Top with a poached egg & the left over mustard cream. I always freeze left over mashed potato & if your roasted veg aren't quite the right consistency for bubble you could add some of these.

Pork or fish

Now we are back at work and it is summer of sorts we are looking for quick light meals. Phoebe has been preparing many of the meals and we have been eating fish when she's working.
One of her favourite meals, & one she is successfully mastering, is pork with cider. Take one pork chop per person & trim off the fat if there is any. Wrap in cling film & bash the chop out a little - not too thin.
Cook the chops in a pan with garlic infused olive oil, on a high heat, about 5 minutes per side. You could add garlic to regular oil but it is likely to catch & pre-infused is quicker. Take out the chops & stand - cover to keep warm. Pour about 125ml (for 2 chops) cider into the pan & deglaze, then add 1 tbsp grainy mustard & 75ml cream. Let the sauce cook a few minutes then pour over the chops. Apparently the cook gets to drink what's left of the bottle of cider. Phoebe served with gnocchi which she turned in the remaining pan juices before serving, and steamed beans. The gnocchi was a find. The Scopa guy is selling hand made pasta at the market & his gnocchi is amazing. As you can see his pedigree is impeccable. You can drop it in boiling water & when it rises to the top it is done. Lorenzo (or maybe Leonardo), recommended tossing in a little butter in a pan until lightly golden. It only needs a minute or so. He did say add a minute for every day it has been made. It was delicious. I find gnocchi a challenge to make & most bought stuff is inedible so I was delighted to discover this.
This pork meal is not heavy but if you are looking for a lighter option try a fillet of fish. Terakihi is beautiful dusted with a little seasoned flour & lightly pan fried. You can serve with a medley of roasted spring vegetables. Toss some fresh young carrots with strips of capsicum, boiled baby potatoes & a few shallots, in olive oil & season. Roast at 180 about 30-40 minutes. I usually put them into a heated tray at 200 & immediately turn down. After 20 minutes add thick slices of courgette, cut on the diagonal.
For a thicker cut of fish such as lemon fish, try briefly searing the fish in a pan then transfer to the dish with the vegetables to finish off in the oven. You can do this with any vegetables & I have done it with root vegetables in a tagine. This week we used cherry tomatoes & capsicum. I bought a selection of different coloured & shaped tomatoes & they all behaved a little differently. Some retained shape & firmness & others dissolved into little balls of sweet deliciousness. Using the method above, roast the capsicum & tomatoes in a hot dish in a hot oven, 10 minutes. Lightly brown the fish in a pan. Sprinkle a handful of capers & halved black olives with a dash of red wine vinegar over the vegetables & lay the fish fillets on top. Return to the oven 5-8 minutes depending on the thickness of the fish. Sprinkle with parsley & serve with a dish of freshly dug potatoes tossed in parsley & butter. Add a simple salad dressed with lemon & olive oil.
We have a variety of delicious leaves growing in the garden at the moment. In addition to Cos, Little Gem & Red Sails we are growing Sorrel & Radicchio. Apparently Sorrel is something you will find in every French housewife's kitchen garden. You can't buy it in the shops - you have to grow it & I recommend you do. I found a ratty little seedling at the garden centre & it is flourishing. You just pick off the leaves as required. I am planning to experiment with sauces & soup. One of you sent me some recipes I am about to try. Radicchio is a red relative of chicory & is a pretty leaf that goes well in salads. Remember a recent foray to the green grocer where he insisted that I probably wanted radishes & didn't know how to spell. I have been struggling to buy it recently so we are producing our own. It is also a success.
On the topic of success it has not been a great year for jam fruit, at least in our neck of the woods. I did manages to pick up some reasonably priced blueberries & small strawberries. We have a bit of a surplus of rhubarb as well, so we now have a small quantity of strawberry, blueberry & rhubarb & ginger jam. That should tide us over.