Soda bread

Posted on Monday 22nd November, 2010 by headchef

Soda bread
I really enjoyed watching the bread making episode of River Cottage Everyday. We have a bread-making machine that’s been languishing unused for years in the corner of our kitchen. But the soda bread that Hugh & Co. made seemed so simple, and looked so much more appetising than machine-made bread, that I thought I’d give it a go, although I had some strange idea that soda bread was heavy and sour.

The recipe I followed is here: http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/classic-soda-bread/ – I didn’t have quite enough buttermilk so I topped it up with cheap supermarket live yoghurt. I also used Sainsbury’s Basics plain flour, so the overall cost was very low.

It really does take under an hour to make a delicious loaf of bread. There’s hardly any kneading – a mere minute! No proving, no resting, no rising. And I can honestly say it gave me the most delicious bread and jam I have ever tasted. The kids loved it too.

It was so nice, sweet and light, I don’t think I’ll ever be buying another loaf of ‘artisanal’ bread again.

Next I think I’m going to have to try the Guinness, Apple and Cheese variety.

The best bread & jam I have ever tasted

Posted in bread | 2 Comments

Everyday recipes

Posted on Friday 29th October, 2010 by headchef

What a fantastic idea for a web site, Hugh!

http://www.rivercottage.net/users/Every%20Day/

Missed the first half of the TV show but the noodles were a fantastic idea.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Lamb Lagoto

Posted on Thursday 28th October, 2010 by headchef

This incredibly simple recipe is insanely tasty – it passes the Frank Bath Alchemy test with flying colours. Serves 6.

  • Whole bulb of garlic, unpeeled
  • 2kg lamb, trimmed & cut into 5cm pieces. The recipe calls for leg but I wonder if cheaper cuts would work.
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 400g tin of tomatoes (or 6 plum tomatoes)
  • 1 tablespoon tomato puree
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 teaspoon dried mint
  • juice of 1 and a half lemons
  • chips!

Simmer the garlic bulb whole in water for 15-20 minutes. When soft, drain and dry; squeeze each clove into a pestle & mortar and squish.

Heat the oil in a large pan, fry the lamb until browned on all sides. Add tomatoes, tomato puree, herbs and garlic. Season with salt & pepper. Add enough water to cover stew and simmer for about 90 mins or 2 hours until lamb tender and sauce thick. Add the lemon juice in the last 15 minutes of cooking – the lemon juice really cuts through the greasiness of the lamb.

Serve with chips / French fries.

From Issue 2 of the excellent Jamie Magazine.

-o-

Lamb Lagoto Redux

Diced lamb is devilishly expensive, so tonight I tried to make this with lamb shanks instead. It was a huge success.

Lamb Lagoto
before going in the oven

Follow the method above, but use 2 lamb shanks and 2 tins of chopped tomatoes. Brown the shanks in a casserole dish, add all the ingredients and put in an oven at about 170 degrees C for a couple of hours. The meat just fell away from the bones and melted in the mouth.

I also cracked chips tonight – I can honestly say my chips were better than chip shop chips. I cut big, thick chips – cooked them for about 10 mins until soft on the lowest heat of my deep fat fryer (approx 160 C), put them in the freezer for half an hour then cooked them until golden in the fryer on its hottest setting (190 C). Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside – and not at all greasy. Perfect!

My deep fat fryer has been banished to the shed, so a stew like this is a very welcome thing on a cold night working down the smallest, coldest chippy in SE London.

Lamb lagoto redux
after being in a low oven for a few hours

Posted in lamb, meat, tomatoes | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Green Tomato Chutney

Posted on Sunday 10th October, 2010 by headchef

This is based on a recipe from an old Good Housekeeping book of my mum’s. We made it over 10 years ago and it was such a big hit with our rat-catcher Mick, he kept coming back to dispatch more rodents – and take more jars of pickle.

Making green tomato chutney

  • 4 small pieces of root ginger tied up in a muslin bag
  • 1lb (250g) cooking apples – peeled, cored & minced
  • 4 medium onions, minced
  • 3lb (750g) green tomatoes, thinly sliced
  • 8oz (225g) sultanas
  • 8oz (225g) demerara sugar
  • 2 level tsp salt
  • 3/4 pint (400ml) malt vinegar (Sainsbury’s basics malt vinegar is 13p a pint)
  • half tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp mustard powder

I blitzed the apple, onion & ginger in the food processor. I know it says put them in a muslin bag, but I wanted to give this some poke. I may have also been over-generous with the cayenne pepper.

Chuck everything in a huge pan. Boil, then simmer & reduce, stirring occasionally, for about 2 hours. Bottle in steralized jars when still piping hot.

I’ll let you know how this batch turns out in a month or so – pan-scrapings suggested this is fearsomely spicy but delicious.

Making green tomato chutney

Posted in tomatoes | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

M-m-m-my Granola

Posted on Monday 13th September, 2010 by headchef

First time I made this, I cocked it up utterly. I didn’t have any nuts and I mixed the fruit in with the oats before baking them… which would have resulted in burnt fruit. But I did then have some delicious cinnamony muesli, which I’ll make again (follow this recipe but forget the syrup – and the nuts if you like – and don’t roast!).

m-m-m-my gran-ola!

For the granola, though… put the oven on at 230C. Well, the recipe said 230C but I think 200C might be better, depending on your oven. My first batch was a bit over-toasted (possibly because I used porridge oats rather than jumbo oats).

Mix 300g of oats with 100g each of almonds, desiccated coconut, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and chopped pecans or walnuts – plus a generous teaspoon of cinnamon.

Mix 125ml warm water with 3 tablespoons of honey & golden syrup, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil or clarified butter.

making granola

Mix the oats with the syrupy gloop and spread out on baking sheet in the oven. Toast for 5 minutes, stir, put it back in for 5 more minutes and keep checking, stirring until it’s all dry and toasted.

m-m-m-my gran-ola!

Then put it all in a large, dry bowl and add 100g each of chopped dried apricots, sweetened dried cranberries, sultanas etc.

Allow to cool and store in an airtight container. Serve with milk or youghut and honey.

adapted from the book B&B by Hugo Woolley

Posted in breakfast | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Roast tomato sauce

Posted on Friday 10th September, 2010 by headchef

Tomatoes about to roast Tomatoes, post-roast Roast Tomato Sauce

This is a great way of using up any allotment tomato glut. The sweet sauce can be frozen and used as a base for pasta sauce (just add basil, chilli, anchovies or whatever you fancy) or as a base for soup.
Heat the oven to 180 C. Get a load of ripe, or over-ripe, tomatoes. Wash, dry and halve the tomatoes. Sprinkle with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and finely chopped garlic.
Roast for about 45 minutes, then in small batches, press the roasted tomatoes while still warm through a sieve with a wooden spoon, to remove the seeds and skins. Really delicious even on its own. (A top tip from the original River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.)

Posted in pasta, soup, tomatoes, vegetarian | Tagged | Leave a comment

Mexican rice

Posted on Tuesday 10th August, 2010 by headchef

Again, not a precise receipe, just a jotting. This is good with chilli or burritos.

Fry some basmati rice in some vegetable oil. Add some garlic, a bit of onion if you like, and a teaspoon of cumin and cook for a minute or two. Then add water or chicken stock – at least twice the volume of liquid compared to the rice, some chopped red pepper or chillis and tomatoes if you like – I squeeze is a slug of tomato ketchup at this point. Cover and simmer gently until cooked.

Posted in rice, tomatoes, vegetarian | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Pot-luck roast dinner

Posted on Monday 9th August, 2010 by headchef

This isn’t really a recipe, just a notion. We do like a roast dinner (though John Pienaar might be putting paid to 50% of my roast dinners… another story…) but everyone likes something different. My wife and daughter like salmon, the boys like steak and I fancied duck for a change. Tired of chicken.

So this week I roasted some potatoes and carrots in a little vegetable oil and stuck a couple of duck legs in the oven too. I did them in a Nigel Slater duck salad style: rubbed the skin with Chinese five spice and seasoned with salt & pepper and roasted at 200C for an hour. I crisped the skin up a bit by injecting the fat back in with a metal baster. I then added the rendered fat into the potatoes for extra yumminess.

Steamed some green veg. Cooked a couple of slabs of salmon in the same oven, with olive oil, salt, pepper & dill. Quickly pan fried the steak with a bit of garlic and some bloody ‘artisanal’ bread left over from the farmers’ market. Sliced the steak and the duck and everyone helped themselves. Didn’t bother with gravy – there was a dollop of mayonnaise for anyone who fancied it.

Net result: much less bother than a normal roast chicken with gravy, and the boys are now hooked on roast duck. It was delicious, and so easy. Nice one, Nigel.

Posted in duck, fish, meat, salmon | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

White chocolate cookies

Posted on Wednesday 4th August, 2010 by headchef

finished cookies

These were easy to make and a big hit.

  • 100g softened unsalted butter
  • 100g golden caster sugar
  • 100g light muscavado sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 175g plain flour
  • half a teaspoon of baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • 140g white chocolate

Preheat the oven to 190 C.

Beat the sugars and butter together until creamy. Add the egg and vanilla essence and mix. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt and mix again. Smash the chocolate into small chunks and mix in.

Making white chocolate cookies

Dollop lumps of mixture onto non-stick greaseproof paper and bake for about 11 minutes. We did 2 batches. Put the cookies on a wire rack to cool and eat while crispy on the outside and gloopy inside. Yum.

Adapted from Annabel Karmel’s cranberry & white chocolate cookie recipe in BBC Good Food magazine, Christmas 2001.

Posted in pudding | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Tilly’s (or Clover’s) Carnation Milk Jelly

Posted on Wednesday 21st April, 2010 by headchef

Clover's Carnation Milk Jelly

A (female) friend of mine points out that only men like Sophie Dahl, whom she describes as over-doing the ‘simpering blonde’ thing. Like that’s a bad thing.

Anyhoo, this pudding is as camp as a summer’s day, if not Christmas. Tilly decorated the top with whipped cream, sprinkles and marshmallows.

  • Packet of jelly – Sainsbury’s Basics jelly is 9p a packet I think
  • Smallest available tin of evaporated milk
  • Stuff to go on top – whipped cream, sprinkles, marshmallows, fruit etc.

Make the jelly up – dissolve the cubes in half a pint of boiling water, then make up to a pint using evaporated milk rather than water. Set in fridge and when ready, go mad on top. Eat in a tree house on a quiet, plane-free sunny day.

Posted in pudding | Tagged , , | Leave a comment