Dinners Blog

Spicy Lamb & Aubergine Stew

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:18:35 +0100

I’ve heard it said that cravings are the body’s way of telling you that you need a particular nutrient. It kind of makes sense to me from an anecdotal point of view, as pretty much every time I’ve been away for a weekend in Germany, mostly for stag do’s, I’ve always had a craving for raw vegetables & salad, probably to counter the vast quantities of meat & booze consumed. I therefore couldn’t really work out why I had a craving for Aubergine. Maybe my body was telling me I should start smoking again, considering my newly found knowledge that aubergine contains Nicotine. Then again, maybe not.

Anyway, I fancied a stew due to the recent drop in temperature and found this one, that took my fancy, at least for a starting point, anyway.

Spicy Lamb & Aubergine Stew (serves 3-4):

350g Lamb (I used shoulder)
1 large aubergine
2 cloves garlic
1 red onion
Glug vegetable or groundnut oil
Splash of balsamic vinegar (I used Pedro Ximenez Balsamic)
Tin of tomatoes
2 Tbsp ground cumin (use less if you prefer less heat)
1 pint of lamb stock.

Small pot natural yoghurt
10 mint leaves

Cut the lamb into about inch size chunks and fry in the oil until browned. Remove and set aside. Finely chop the onion & garlic and fry in the same pan for a few minutes, before adding the aubergine, which you need to chop into similar size chunks to the lamb. Cook the aubergine for about 5 minutes, then add the cumin, cook for a further couple of minutes to take the rawness from the spice, then add the vinegar, tomatoes, lamb & lamb stock. Cover with a lid and put on a low heat for about an hour or when the lamb is meltingly tender.

Mix the yoghurt with the mint. Serve the stew in bowls with crusty bread and add a dollop of the yoghurt mint mixture.

Having used quite a large amount of cumin gave the stew quite a deep and slow burning heat, spice wise, which I really liked. The vinegar gave a nice little tang and the aubergine a nice smokiness that gave a fantastically more-ish flavour. The yoghurt & mint I thought wasn’t that great a condiment, until I let the heat of the stew wilt the mint, which really made it work and added another level to the stew. I loved it!

Tower of Onion Bhajis

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:39:49 +0100

I love onion bhajis and, apart from beer, it’s the only guaranteed dish I’ll order at an Indian or when ordering a curry take away. So it’s probably a wonder why I’ve not tried cooking this at home before.

Reading a few recipes online, there seemed to be couple of different methods, one using eggs and one using a touch of water to give some moisture to the pre-cooked onion mix. I thought I’d go the egg version, for no particular reason. I went with mainly the following recipe, here. I won’t write down the changes I made, because I wasn’t really that impressed with the result.

Using eggs definitely made a wet batter with the gram (chickpea) flour, which gave the cooked bhajis a bit of a spongey texture in places. Not a good thing. Reading other recipes, a drier texture seems to be more common, and also perhaps cooking the onions before mixing in with the flour & spices. Definitely more work required on this one, although it didn’t stop the little one having a good old munch!

British Style Vongole

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:38:48 +0100

I always get a bit put off by cooking and eating shellfish and the reason is really quite a petty one. Once on the plate, the slight delay it takes to remove the shellfish from the shell and get it to my mouth is enough to elicit a pass by. But not this time. Being in the vicinity of a local-ish fishmonger I’d heard good things about and fancying a pasta dish for dinner, I decided to make a bit more effort and get some clams.

The reason for labelling this dish British Vongole may be a bit of a stretch, but bear with me. Knowing Ms R eschews molluscs, I bought some Morecambe Brown Shrimp to add to the dish. The shrimp, plus a surfeit of leeks at home meant I could adapt the classic Venetian recipe with a (slightly) British twist.

British Style Vongole (serves 3-4):

1kg Clams
150g brown shrimp
Small bunch of flat leaf parsley
3 Cloves garlic
1 Leek
Glug extra virgin olive oil
Glass of white wine
Tin of tomatoes
Pinch chilli flakes
Salt & Pepper
Linguine or Spaghetti

Put a pan of salted water for the pasta on to boil. Stick the clams in a big colander and then inspect and check the clams to see if they’re all still alive. Tightly closed or closing when you tap them = good. Broken shells or ones that don’t close when you tap them = bad. It can be useful and highly entertaining if you have, or can borrow, a small child that can help with this (see above).

Finely slice the leek & garlic and sauté in the oil, in a separate pan. Separate the parsley stalks from the leaves, chop both and leave in separate piles. Add the chopped stalks to the leek & garlic. When soft, add the tomatoes and chilli flakes. Bring to the boil, but whilst this is happening, put the pasta in the pan with the boiling water. When the tomato, leek mixture is bubbling, add the wine and then the clams. Put the lid on the pan.

The Clams should be done (shells opened) after about 4-5 minutes. Add the brown shrimp, then drain the pasta and mix all together in whichever is the biggest pan of the two. Chuck any clams that haven’t opened. Stir through the chopped parsley leaves.

The taste of this dish turned out so much better than I was expecting. There was an issue in that there was quite a bit of juice, some of which I drained off before serving, but apart from that, it tasted divine. Perhaps the best part of the evening was watching the reaction of Mstr A, who was transfixed and highly entertained by watching the clams open, before tapping them and seeing them shut on their own, so that’s at least two reasons to cook this one again!

Shoulder of Lamb

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:58:48 +0100

Despite learning from the Master of Sunday Roasts (my Dad), who had me & Sisters so well versed that we were offering advice to others ( ‘the oil probably wasn’t hot enough’ my 5 year old Sister told a neighbour when they said their Yorkshire puds weren’t rising properly), it’s actually pretty rare I buy & cook a joint of meat. The main reason I don’t is because, at the moment, I’m really the only person in the house that will eat it and despite even my huge appetite, there’s only so much meat I can down in one sitting and only so many days before I get bored of having the same filling in my sandwich.

Seeing a fairly small shoulder of lamb, just over a kilo and not much more than a fiver, at the local farmer’s market on Hilly Fields, I decided to give the joint another crack.

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted out of the lamb and therefore how to cook it, but in the end went with the traditional ‘Rosemary, Garlic & Salt’. I thought that I could always spice up my leftover lamb sandwiches with the harissa I had in the fridge and therefore have the best of both worlds.

Quite surprisingly, there were only a couple of recipes in my reasonably sized recipe book collection, so in my usual contrary fashion, I decided to combine both Mr Oliver’s version with Ms McEvedy’s version (in Economy Gastronomy). The resulting dish was made as follows:

Shoulder of Lamb (serves 3-4 or makes about 8 loaded sandwiches/pittas):

1kg shoulder of Lamb
Few sprigs rosemary
2 Cloves garlic, cut into slivers
Glug olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Stick the oven on it’s highest heat. The, give the lamb multiple stab wounds with a sharp knife before rubbing with the oil and then stuffing the garlic and rosemary into the holes made by the knife. Put the lamb in a big roasting tray in the middle of the oven and turn down the heat to 180C (350F or Gas mk 4), straight away. Leave to cook for 3 to 4 hours, occasionally basting with the juices from the pan. Get out and leave to rest for 10 minutes before getting stuck in. If you drain the fat from the roasting tin, you can use the juices to make a great sauce or gravy.

The lamb didn’t turn out too badly, but wasn’t quite as cut-with-a-spoon tender as I’d have liked, but that was probably because I got a little impatient and removed the lamb bang on 3 hours, rather than waiting until the meat could be pulled apart with a fork. The taste was pretty good, though.

I stuffed a couple of pittas with the warm lamb and some sweet rosemary jelly I found in the back of the cupboard, which I did enjoy. I wasn’t as keen as the cold cuts in my sandwiches for the next few days, but re-heating the meat on the grill did vastly improve the experience. I don’t think it changed my mind, so will probably save cooking joints of meat when there are more people around to enjoy it when it’s just cooked!

Chicken & Wild Boar with Perry

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 20:12:58 +0100

It’s been a while. Not that I haven’t been cooking and eating out, although that’s happened a little less in the style and frequency I would have wanted, but c’est la vie. I’m back. I wasn’t even planning on writing another entry, but when I suggested what I wanted to cook tonight to Ms R, who is not necessarily know for her adventurous palate, I had the response ‘only if you blog about it’. So there you go.

A stunning, sunny morning made me think twice whether an autumnal, casserole type dish was appropriate for dinner, but good old blighty obliged with grey skies and constant rain all afternoon and evening.

The recipe is mostly based on one in the ‘Borough Market Cookbook - Meat & Fish’, although I didn’t exactly stick to it. My version is as below.

Chicken with Wild Boar & Perry (serves 3-4):

4 slices of wild boar bacon (or normal streaky bacon or pancetta)
6-8 pieces chicken (I used boneless, skinless thighs)
Glug of extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Few shakes of dried oregano
3 large shallots
Pint perry or cider
2 rosemary sprigs
Salt
Pepper
A small celeriac
1 large carrot
2 medium potatoes

Stick the oven on around 200C (Gas mk 6 or 400F). Then, using a reasonably deep casserole pan, heat the olive oil, chop the slices of wild boar into and fry until browned. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. Season the chicken with plenty of salt, pepper and the oregano before putting in the pan and again, frying until browned on both sides (about 4-5 mins per side). You may have to do this in batches if all the chicken pieces don’t fit in the pan at the same time. Remove and put to the side once browned.

Slice the shallots and fry in the pan until browned, then add the perry, bring to the boil and reduce by about half. Whilst the perry is reduced, peel and cut the celeriac in half, then slice about 1cm thick. Slice the potatoes to the same size. Cut the carrot in half, then thickly slice, lengthways.

Once the perry has reduced, place the chicken pieces in the sauce, then sprinkle the wild boar over the top. Layer the veg on top of the wild boar in the order of potato, carrot & celeriac. Put the lid on the casserole pan and stick in the oven for 40 mins.

When the veg is cooked, remove and place on the plates, before adding the chicken on top and finally, adding a spoonful or two of the sauce. You can reduce the sauce further if you like, but at this point of a meal, asking me to wait another 5 or minutes is like asking the tide to stop turning.

The final dish was very good and a bit nicer than I was expecting. I’m not a huge fan of root veg, but effectively steaming it in perry retained the bite and gave a lovely flavour. The rest of the dish was also excellent, although I think using wild boar is not really necessary and probably one of those ingredients you use when you want to impress or are on ‘Come Dine with Me’. Normal bacon would work equally well, as would cider instead of the perry, I expect.

Venison, Port & Mushroom Suet Pudding

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:54:03 +0000

I like Venison, but find it usually disappoints me in terms of flavour. I consider it an exotic meat, certainly not a staple one, so maybe that’s why I expect more than gets delivered? Anyway, I found a recipe which involved marinading the meat in port for 2-3 days, which I quite fancied the idea of. In addition, the recipe had pickled walnuts in it, which I’m not sure I’ve ever used before, but again, liked the idea of using a very different ingredient.

The original recipe is here, although I tampered around with it in terms of only using Venison meat, instead of half Venison and half Beef. I also made my own venison stock, from the bones of the haunch I bought, rather than using beef stock. Last but not least, I obviously turned the recipe into a suet pudding from puff pastry used in the recipe. The suet pastry recipe and method of cooking is the same as the one used for the Steak, Oyster & Stout pudding.

The end result was enjoyable, but I’m not sure how much the pickled walnut added. I also thought the meat would have had more taste after marinading for 3 days, but the mushroom wedges worked really well in terms of adding some real juiciness to the naturally less moist venison meat. Whilst I did enjoy it, I’m leaning towards the fact I’m just not a huge venison fan.