Hallowe'en chorizo and potato bake

We were destined for a charity night at The Chaser Inn this evening but The Woo's not well so we cancelled and decided to do a 'whatever's in the fridge and cupboards' night!

This one is dedicated to you, Lydia - budget student food that works out at about 75p per head.

In a pan I softened a sliced small onion in a bit of butter and some olive oil.  You want a fair bit of both/either or else the finished dish would be a bit dry.  To this I added a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, a couple of chopped up chillies and a squeeze of tomato puree.  In went a shake of dried oregano and about 6" of sliced chorizo.  This was gently cooked together until the chorizo had softened and the paprika had infused into the oil.

In a separate pan I had cooked a £1 bag of cheap new potatoes; weighing in at a kilo.  I tipped the drained spuds into an ovenproof dish and gently crushed them with a potato masher.  I poured the oniony, chorizoey mixture over the potatoes and gently mixed them together.  I poured over a bit more olive oil just to keep it all loose and unctuous.  A good lug of mature cheddar was grated over the top and then it was baked in a 180* oven for about 20 minutes until the cheese was golden brown and bubbling.

This would easily serve four hungry students as it is and, with the addition of a few chicken thighs or a pork chop (cheap!), would be a very, very filling meal indeed; a couple of thighs or a chop each and a good spoonful of the potatoes would stretch to six or even eight at a push.


To feed loads just up the amount of spuds and oil...the rest will stretch as it is!

As it stands we did it from the fridge but it works out at approx 75p per person for four.  With the chicken thighs or a good sized chop each; it's probably still less than £1.50 each....bargain!

On your marks!

Get set and GO!!

Just had a phone call confirming my first paid cooking job at the weekend.  It's not massive; just a one course meal for 20 people but it's definitely a start!  Hopefully, they'll enjoy it enough to take a few business cards and spread the word.

Oh, by the way, I'm doing them home-made lasagne, roasted green beans with cherry tomatoes and some garlic bread.

I'm chuffed to bits!

Garlic News

My garlic arrived today from The Garlic Farm so later on this week I'll start planting it out.  Four bulbs each of Solent Wight, Early Purple Wight and Lautrec Wight.  The Early Purple and Lautrec will go in this week and the Solent in December.  If all goes to plan that should result in a harvest about 150 bulbs come the spring - as long as I can thwart the birds, bugs and garlic thieves!

Another day at the office

Spent a few hours down on the allotment again today as the Luncheon Club I usually cook for on a Tuesday were having an away day in the country.  I managed to clear and dig over another two beds; Numbers 4 and 5.  No 5 was particularly claggy and full of clay so I've left it roughly turned over and will wait to see what a few good frosty mornings do to break it down.  No 4 wasn't quite as bad and it looks like a previous tenant has tried to dig some good stuff in to help improve it.  There were the remnants of a half-decent potato crop still in the ground so the soil can't be too bad!

The already infamous No 5

The view south across Marcel

It was an absolutely glorious day out there today, though.  I spent all the time on the plot in T-shirt mode and when I sat down for a coffee break it actually felt like I was sunbathing!

There's also good news on the Kylie's Kitchen front as I may have my first paid gig at the weekend!  I priced it up today and am waiting for a confirmation phone call after work tomorrow.

Supper with a friend

Ross, of Ross and the Wrongens fame, came over for supper this evening.  He is the song writer, lead singer and guitarist for one of the bands for which Sam is the drummer (Ross and the Wrongens if you hadn't guessed already!).  He'd never had mussels so it was time for The Woo to take over the cooking duties and rustle up her usual shellfish storm.

With her moules we had pommes frites, courtesy of moi, and some good crusty bread.  All went down rather well.

Incidentally, Ross and the Wrongens are a great local band.  Have a look for them on YouTube - or even better - fork out some cash and download some of their stuff from iTunes - or even better still - see them live - I guarantee you'll have a great evening!

Update from the plot!

Spent a few hours today down at the allotment.  Dug over No 1 and No 2 beds for the second time and all I have to do now is rake it over ready for the autumn garlic planting.  I've ordered three different sorts of seed from The Garlic Farm on The Isle of Wight and they should be here any day now.

There is a very tired looking and overgrown strawberry bed already established and, according to a plot neighbour, it is the source of some amazing strawberries.  I tidied up the bed and cut back the plants for over wintering.  It looks a bit shabby at the moment but fingers crossed for the summer.  I'm sure once I level it up a bit and bung down some straw to protect the potential harvest it will look ok...the main thing is the crop, anyway...not how it looks!

I have partially dug over the edge of this bed as well and saved a few healthy runners so hopefully I can plant them over the next couple of days and look forward to a bumper crop.  I'm not the world's biggest strawberry fan but it would be a shame to waste what is effectively free food!

Poulet de Karpates

Looking through an old French cookery book this morning for some inspiration and decided to do my own take on 'Poulet de Karpates' this evening.  This is a chicken dish from the Carpathian Mountains region; a range of mountains which runs in a curve from the Czech Republic and Poland in the north, through Romania at it's most widespread point and ending in the northernmost part of Serbia in the south.

 
Geography lesson over and so on to some cooking!

The original dish is a sort of herby, mushroomy, lemony dish which I have used as a base recipe and then added a couple of twists with a creamy white wine gravy packed with whole mushrooms and shallots which have been slow-roasted along with the chicken.  I will, of course, be in close cahoots with The Woo at gravy time as she is acknowledged as the family's Queen of the Gravy!

So into a roasting dish I roughly chopped a couple of onions to act as a trivet for the chicken and to give a good base flavour for the gravy.  Onto this was placed the chicken; weighing in at just under two kilos for the three of us (The Woo and Sam), with a bit left over for late night munchies and maybe an addition to tomorrow's lunch (and of course the picked over carcass for stock or a decent home made soup).  I find that roast chicken is a bit like roast potatoes - it doesn't matter how many you do there's only just about enough to go round when you get down to the eating bit!

The chicken was seasoned inside and out and then coated in softened butter.  Into the dish went some peeled shallots; the larger ones halved, half a dozen large portabellini mushrooms.  A handful each of thyme sprigs and roughly chopped chives were scattered around the bird and then half a lemon was squeezed over the mushrooms and the other half inserted into the chicken cavity.  Last but not least a good lug of white wine around the dish to start the gravy off.

The whole thing was then covered in tin foil and placed into a 180* oven for an hour and then 50 minutes with the foil removed to let the skin crisp up; 45 minutes per kilo plus 20.

And so to the end result.  Once the chicken was cooked I removed it from the oven dish, wrapped it in foil and left it to rest.  I removed the mushrooms and shallots and set those aside also.  The Woo did magic with white wine and cream to make the gravy and then the mushrooms and shallots were warmed through in it prior to serving.

We had ours with roast potatoes, honey roasted Chantenay carrots and baby leaf greens.  A perfect Sunday roast!

'Broyled' pork chops

I have a love of food and cooking as you may have already gathered.  I also love old cookery books and started a small collection a couple of years ago.  One of my first charity shop acquisitions was a book called 'Pepys at Table' which is a sort of catalogue of 17th Century recipes mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diaries.  So far I have only cooked one thing from the book as it was such an instant hit that it has become a firm family favourite.

Pepys mentioned a dish of pork in his diary entry for 4th September 1667 when he dined at Bartholomew Fayre; which is more or less where Smithfield Market is now.  The book records a recipe from the late 1600's which apparently comes close to catching the flavour of the dish as it would have been served to Sammy Boy.  Here it is...

To broyl a leg of pork

Hannah Wooley - The Accomplisht Lady's Delight - 1675

'Cut your pork into slices very thin, having first taken off the skinny part of the Fillet, then hack it with the back of your knife, then mince some Thyme and Sage, exceeding small, and mingle it with pepper and salt, and therewith season your collops and lay them on the Gridiron; when they are enough, make sauce for them with butter, vinegar, Mustard and Sugar and so serve them.'

Got that?

Well this is what I did...

I marinated a couple of lovely thick pork chops from Haywards in a tablespoon each of chopped sage and thyme, two teaspoons of sea salt and one of freshly ground black pepper in a good lug of olive oil.  After an hour or so the chops were browned in a hot pan and then bunged in the oven for 40 minutes or so in a 180* oven.

The sauce sounds odd to the modern palate but bear with me and try it as it has a piquancy that really cuts through the fattiness of the pork in the finished dish.  If you find it too acerbic it's easy enough to adjust by adding less of the vinegar or upping the sugar/butter content.

In a small pan I melted 50g of butter and then added 25g of dark brown sugar.  This was cooked together on a low heat for a few minutes and then I added a couple of tablespoons of cider vinegar and the same of wholegrain mustard.  A couple more minutes of gentle cooking and the sauce was ready to serve.  To make life easier I usually make the sauce while the pork is marinating and then re-heat it when ready to serve.

We  had ours with a sort of colcannon using up some cabbage and leeks that were lying around in the fridge and needed using up.  Usually I do this with roast potatoes and braised red cabbage but it works well either way.

Food heroes

I have just started reading Elizabeth David's 'French Provincial Cooking'.  What an absolute inspiration that woman was!  Born with a silver spoon in her mouth she renounced it all, became an actress and then ran off to Europe with a married man - writing some revolutionary and inspiring cookery books along the way.  More than anyone else she was responsible for educating us into the delights of day to day French and Mediterranean food - kudos I say!!

Even in the introduction she makes sense.  Quoting Escoffier she writes...'two of the most valuable words he ever wrote were these: faites simple.  What a Frenchman intends these words to mean may not be quite the same as what an English cook would understand by them.  They mean, I think, the avoidance of all unnecessary complication and elaboration:  they do not mean skimping the work or the basic ingredients, throwing together a dish anyhow and hoping for the best.  That is the crude rather than the simple approach.'

Buy great ingredients, cook inspirationally and love your food and your life.  Live the dream!

Chilli and potato bake

We're trying to use up some of the older stuff out of the freezer at the moment and yesterday evening I took out some steak mince for supper this evening.  The Woo and I decided on a nice hot chilli.  We also have some new potatoes to use up so I've decided to do a sort of chilli and potato bake.

First I'll talk about the rest of the day.  I did a bit of running around this morning after dropping The Woo off at work then took the hounds or a good long walk over the fields.  The mushrooms are starting to appear all over the place and I have big plans for some of the parasols whose locations I've made a mental note of already.  I keep revisiting the site where I found a lovely puffball a couple of years ago but so far no joy.  Fingers crossed if this weather keeps up as it is!

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours on the allotment.  I have now dug up, root by root, all of the three foot high docks.  The rest I will strim and either compost or dig in ready for next year.  I have a couple of virgin beds that I might try and put a few bits in over the autumn/winter but I'll see what the weather does first. Apparently we're due a fairly harsh frost next week so that should help beak up the soil if I can get it all dug over before then!

The frost is good news on the foraging front, though, as it means I can collect some rose hips and haws for some rose hip syrup and haw-sin sauce.

Now back to the food!

I have made the chilli from all the odds and sods in the fridge.  That's the beauty of food like this; you don't have to rigorously stick to the same old recipe all the time. Tonight it's onion, carrot, celery and garlic softened in a little oil.  Added to this were a few chopped mushrooms, some tomato puree, oregano, half a dozen chopped birdseye chillies and some salt and pepper.  All cooked for a bit then in went a good lug of Dr Pepper (well it's worth a try and there was no wine about!), a carton of chopped tomatoes and the same amount again of water.  In went the browned mince, stirred in the get it all mixed up and then brought to the boil and left to simmer covered for a while.

I often add a lug of balsamic vinegar to mine and then balance the flavour with a cube or two of dark chocolate.  I did this today as there was chocolate in the fridge (Sam's not home!).  It gives the chilli a bit of depth I think.

After it had cooked out for a while I added a chopped yellow pepper as there was one knocking about that needed using and a small tin of cannellini beans.  Any beans will do.  I'm not a great fan of kidney beans as I think they tend to go a bit soft and pappy but this is all about using what's in the cupboard.

Once the potatoes were cooked I crushed then gently into a shallow dish, added a few spots of butter and a small carton of single cream, sprinkled a liberal amount of grated cheese over the top and then covered this with the chilli.  More cheese grated on top and then into a 180* oven until hot through with lovely golden brown melted cheese on top!

This worked really well.  The Dr Pepper gave it a bit of a barbecue back flavour and the potato and bean combination was a good carb hit.  This would be a great dish for bonfire night maybe?  It's good, old-fashioned warming autumnal comfort food.  I think next time I will use pumpkin or sweet potato as a base to make it even more seasonal.

Easy carbonara

Cathy's round for supper this evening.  She's fresh back from a holiday in Italy so we're treating her to an easy but authentic spaghetti carbonara.  Picked up some scallops at work as well so we had them to start with.

For the scallops I made a sort of mushy pea puree.  Enough peas for a good portion each were cooked for a couple of minutes in boiling salted water with a good handful of chopped mint thrown in as well.  Once cooked they were drained, roughly crushed with a potato masher, seasoned and liberally dosed with loads of good olive oil to loosen them up.  The scallops were pan fried in butter for just 30 seconds either side.

I served these with a sauce made from a white wine, shallot and lemon reduction with the scallop roes chopped and added at the last minute.  Seemed to work well.

I've had many a cabonara over the years and, in this country, we seem obsessed with adding cream or some other non-eggy dairy product to make the sauce.  Here's how to make a reasonably genuine version from a recipe shown to me by an actual Italian!

Whilst the spaghetti was on the go in a nice big pan I gently fried about 100g of diced pancetta with a couple of whole peeled garlic cloves in 50g of butter for about five minutes; until the pancetta was starting to crisp up.  I then removed the garlic as it had done its job by infusing the buttery pancetta with loads of flavour.  In then went the cooked pasta with a little of the cooking water.  I did this by transferring the spaghetti with a pair of tongs as I wanted to save the water in case needed to loosen the sauce.

In a bowl I had beaten three eggs and added 50g each of finely grated parmesan and pecorino cheese.  I seasoned with black pepper only as the cheese mix was salty enough already.  This cheesy mixture was added to the pasta/pancetta and the whole lot stirred through to coat all of the spaghetti with the sauce.  I added some of the water from the spaghetti pan a little at a time to make sure the carbonara retained its saucy consistency.

Served with a little more of the grated cheese mixture for sprinkling at the table.

Semplice!

Tabitha

We lost one of our lovely old cats, Mrs Small, last autumn and have had a fairly crap time of it since then as some of you may know.  Recently we've been discussing getting another one to add to our animal collection so yesterday I drove to the Isle of Sheppey to pick up our new kitten.  We've called her Tabitha and she settled right in on her first evening in her new home.  She's eleven weeks old and I'll be adding her to my bloglist.

Sunday roast

Claire and Joe stuck around for food so I decided to do us all some slow roasted lamb shoulder.  Popped to the shops and picked up a carvery joint which worked really well in the end.  It was almost completely boned out and literally fell apart when it came to carving.

With this I did some roast potatoes, yorkshire puddings (always a family ask!) and a version of my creamed leeks with mint and peas added.  This seemed to go well with the lamb in all its anchovy, garlic and rosemary goodness...but I still prefer the sweetcorn version that I do with chicken.

Try them both and let me know your opinion.  The recipe's the same as the sweetcorn version that I've blogged about before but obviously add frozen peas instead!

Cheese and wine

Yesterday Joe and Claire came up for the evening and to stay overnight so we had a bit of an impromptu cheese and wine gathering.  Joe and Lisa came over with their girls as well and there were a few of Sam's mates around.  Dress of the day for those who had them were Shite Shirts; sadly on the night this was restricted to The Woo's brother, Joe, my Joe, Sam and yours truly.  These shirts are amazing and well worth a look at the web site if you're struggling for an unusual gift.

We all posed for the camera so you can get a good view of the shirt backs!
Everyone brought some unusual cheese and the beer and wine were certainly flowing.  Once the drinking games started it all began to get a bit blurry, though, and those of you who know me on Facebook may well have seen the end result!!

Vacherin cheese

Was doing some deli training at work yesterday and tasted the most amazing cheese that had just come in.  It's a French mountain cheese called Vacherin du Haut-Doubs.  It's only available between September and March, apparently, but well worth trying if you get the chance.  It's like a really creamy brie with an almost citrus after taste which is probably down to the fact that it comes wrapped in spruce

 bark.  Be warned though...it's an unpasteurised cheese so should be avoided if preggers etc.  If in doubt maybe try the Swiss Mont d'Or variety.  It's made using the same process (in fact it's the subject of a dispute between the two nations as to who came up with it first!) but the Swiss use pasteurised milk.

Man of all hats today as I started out at 6.30am laying out the fish counter, then another spell on the deli and finishing by doing an hour or two of the baking.  Home and taking it easy now with The Woo and looking forward to some of her mussels later on.  We bought those after I finished work; Scottish rope grown ones which are small, sweet and juicy...can't wait!!