Goan Fish Curry.

One of the advantages of working as a lodge cook in Scotland is you do get some fantastic kitchen sink views. This is a photo of one that I think is hard to beat. The disadvantages include your kitchens looking like this! Having said that this particular kitchen might be basic but at least the oven is consistently hot which is a rare treat.

I am afraid I must again apologise for another not great photo, this dish doesn't hold very well and there weren't any left overs for me to stage a more artistic photo with. This is more of an aromatic curry that a hot one. I always make it with cod loins but you could use monk fish or some prawns as well if you have them. I tend to serve this as a main course but you could probably serve it in smaller porions as a starter.

1 onion finely chopped
1 tsp mustard seeds
A lump of fresh ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
4 garlic cloves crushed
2 red chilies
2 tsp tamarind paste
2 tomatoes roughly chopped
400ml coconut milk
500g white fish cut in large chunks
Handful of fresh coriander

Soft the onion with the mustard seeds over a medium heat. Add in the rest of the spices and cook for a couple of minutes to release the maximum flavour from the spices. Add in the coconut milk, tomatoes and 100ml of water bring to the boil, allow to simmer for 10 minutes or so until it has thickened slightly. The length of time needed will depend on your coconut milk if you are using low fat milk this will take longer as it is thiner than the full fat version. At this stage the curry can be left to sit until just before you wish to serve it. Add in the fish and bring to back up to a simmer it will only take about 3 minutes for the fish to cook, it should be translucent. Don't over cook the fish or it will simply fall apart and you will end up with a curried fish soup! Serve with a smattering of chopped fresh coriander

Coronation Chicken.

I'm not a huge fan of coronation chicken I must admit. Whilst a good coronation chicken is delicious the majority of them are indifferent bordering on revolting, this recipe makes in my opinion a really good light coronation chicken.

150ml Cream
1/2 pint Mayonaise
1 tbsp Curry powder
Enough cooked chicken for six people most cuts work.
10oz Wild rice
1 Lemon
olive oil
1 Fresh Mango
Flaked almonds

Tear up the chicken. Whip the cream, fold in the mayonaise and curry powder. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Stir in the chicken and chopped up fresh mango. If you can't get ripe mango you could substitute it for a couple of tbsp of mango chutney but it is not as good. Cook the wild rice in simmering water, drain and stir in 1/2 lemon's juice and 2 tbsp of olive oil. Serve the chicken on top of the rice and garnish with toasted flaked almonds.

Roasted aubergines with pesto and goats cheese.

2 aubergines
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
30g fresh basil
6 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp grated parmesan
2 cloves garlic
2 small goats cheese

Cut aubergines in half length ways. Criss-cross the flesh side, cutting into the flesh but not going through to the skin. Lay the aubergines in a roasting tin, drizzle with oil and season.

Put into hot oven 220C or top oven of the aga for 20-30 minutes until soft and lightly brown on top.

Put garlic, nuts, and basil in blender and blitz to a paste. Slowly add olive oil and stir in parmesan. Season to taste with salt, pepper and lemon juice. This will keep in the fridge for three weeks with a film of oil.

Spread the pesto over the aubergines. Chop the cheese into chunks and put on top of the pesto. Place back into the oven at 200C for 10-15 minutes until the cheese has melted.

I have linked this up with Ren Behan's Simple and in season which is being hosted this month by Laura over at How to cook good food.

Butterflied leg of lamb.

If you have read this blog before you will probably have noticed that I like to bake once I have finished my academic work. So you can imagine that the list of things which I have been planning to bake post my last ever final was pretty long. However, low and behold, sods law and all, the day of my last exam and our oven breaks. This totally curtailed all my baking plans.

The only saving grace is that the weather has been beautiful, so we have been gardening. Ever since we moved in our garden has resembled something like jungle. Fed up of not being able to cook  'I do have such an expressive eyebrow don't I' and I went out and bought a BBQ. Predictably as we walked out of the shop as proud new owners of a BBQ it clouded over.

BBQ's and snow seem to bring out a cave man instinct in all men, 'I do have such an expressive eyebrow don't I' therefore insisted on assembling said BBQ. An hour and half later I was rather wishing I had done it myself.

Once said BBQ was assembled he insisted on being in charge of lighting it. This proved to be a bad idea as it swiftly went out, at which point I took over.

This is a recipe which my Father always cooks. It is not a very exact science.

A butterflied leg of lamb
zest of a lemon
1 tbsp dijon mustard
4 tbsp olive oil
sprig rosemary
4 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

Marinade the leg of lamb in all of the ingredients. It needs at least an hour but over night is best. Cook it on a BBQ for 14 minutes on the first side and 12 on the second. Only put it onto the BBQ once the coals have stopped flaming and are grey. These timings will give you slightly pink lamb.

I have linked this up to Simple and in season over at How to cook good food.

Crozet.

I made this whilst staying with a friend in her apartment in Meribel. We decided not to eat out but instead to splash out on nice ingredients and say to hell with calorie counting. Crozet is a very traditional alpine dish, somewhat akin to macaroni. This way of cooking it creates a lighter version of a tartiflette.


This serves 2


100g crozet or smallest size whole wheat macaroni
100g reblochon cheese or a strongly flavoured soft cheese
3 pieces of bacon chopped up
handful chopped mushrooms optional


Cook the pasta until only just done. Layer the pasta, cooked bacon, mushrooms and cheese into an oven proof dish. Season. If you would like a looser sauce you can add a couple of tbsp of cream at this point. Place a layer of the cheese onto the top and put under a grill until the top is brown and the mixture is bubbling

Chinese Spare Ribs.

I was in the butchers getting my knives sharpened when I saw these ribs. They are apparently called thick ribs and were delicious; they have a much greater meat to bone ratio than spare ribs. This recipe would work equally well though with normal spare ribs. The mixture smells like the aniseed flavour from the star anise is going to over power everything else but once they have cooked the balance  is about right.

12 pork spare ribs
100ml hoisin sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp runny honey
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp chinese five-spice

Put the ribs into  pan of cold water and bring to the boil, simmer for 15 mins. Meanwhile, mix all the remaining ingredients together in a bowl.

Drain the ribs very well, then brush with the glaze - if barbecuing, chill, cover and keep in the fridge for later. Otherwise put them under a hot grill for 15-20 minutes, turning every so often adding any left over glaze when you do.

Hungarian Pork Goulash.

'Oh I do have such an expressive eye brow don't I' had bought a rolled shoulder of pork from the reduced section in the supermarket. There wasn't room for it in the freezer and neither of us could quite face roasting it. So I found this recipe in my ginger pig book but it required belly of pork as well. A fact I was exceptionally happy about as it gave me a great excuse to go to our local buter Crombie's. Crombie's is a truly exceptional old fashioned butchers, where they are kind enough to sharpen my knives while I wait.  This recipe makes a really delicious stew which is full of flavour but much lighter than a beef of lamb stew. It was definitely better reheated the second time around as the spices had time to really come through, so I would advise making it a day ahead f you have the time or self restraint.

Serves 6

1.25kg shoulder of pork, skinned, and cut into 1inch pieces
300g pork belly, skinned and cut into 1inch
1 onion, diced
2 clove garlic
2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp caraway seeds
800g tinned tomatoes
300g jar of peeled, roast peppers or 3 peppers, chargrilled and peeled
2 tbsp sour cream
chives to garnish

Pre heat oven 180C. Brown off the meat on all sides, then add the onions and garlic and saute for 3 minutes. Add the spices and season, cook for a few minutes. Pour in the tomatoes and top up with enough water to cover the meat. Bring to boil, then put in the oven with the lid on for 2 hours. Cut the peppers into strips and stir in to stew. Return it to the oven for another 30 minutes. At this point I thickened the sauce with a beurre noisette as a thicker sauce was our preference but it was not entirely necessary.

Rolled and Stuffed Lamb Breast.

The 'One with a thing for Men in Uniform' and 'The Musician' gave me the Ginger Pig Meat Book for my birthday back in February. I have been solemnly avoiding it as I needed to keep my head to the grindstone and I am already far too easily distracted. It is a wonderful book full of fascinating information as well as delicious recipes.


Instead of going out and painting the town red to celebrate the end of my dissertation, I thought I would splash out ingredients in order to cook something nice and christen my new cookbook, thereby killing two birds with one stone so to speak.


The first thing I would say about lamb breast, a cut I had certainly never heard of before, is that it is only really economically if you a serving a multiple of five. Butchers want you to buy the whole flank which comfortably feeds five or a greedy four. At approx £10 per kilo I don't think that it is too steep but understandably a bit of a pain if you are feeding a hungry six and have to buy two flanks, as I did. Cost issues aside I didn't mind cooking too much as it was just as good cold.


1 Lamb breast
100g Cheddar
150g Mushrooms
150g Spinach
1 Small onion
2 Cloves garlic
2 tbsp Flour
250ml Red wine
250ml Stock


Sweat off the chopped onion and garlic then add the mushrooms and fry them. Next add the spinach and wilt down. Set this mixture aside to cool. Once it has cooled stuff the lamb with it. The recipe says to roll it up in tinfoil until it looks like a sausage and that you don't need to tie it with string. However I have made this twice and you do get a neater, tighter finish which is easier to carve if you tie it up with string.

Roast in the oven at 170C for 2hrs. Once it has cooked take it out of the oven and set aside still in the tin foil to rest for 20-30mins. Use the roasting pan to make gravy whilst the meat is resting. Spoon off almost all of the fat leaving about 2tbsp. Stir 2tbsp of flour into the juices and cook over a low heat until the flour has swelled and become a light golden brown. Add the wine and stock in equal measures and bring to the boil. Allow it to thicken up slightly and season before serving.

I have linked this up to Ren's Simple and in Season.

Chicken and Chorizo

Photo to follow I took it on a friends phone and haven't managed to upload it yet. The grumpy welshman's better half cooked this for us the other night and I was looking for some advice with it. It is perfect as it is for great home cooking but I want to use it when I go lodge cooking, so it needs tinkering with slightly in order to finish it off. Once cooked you are left with a delicious chorizo sauce in the bottom of the pans but it is very slightly greasy. I want to make more of a sauce to go with it. I don't want to use cream as I think it will take away from its clean taste. My thoughts so far were some sun dried tomato paste and white wine but I think it needs something more than this and I'm not sure what.

12 chicken thighs.
750g chorizo cut into 4cm chunks.
1kg new potatoes, halved.

2 red peppers roughly chopped.
2 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped.
2 teaspoons dried oregano.
grated zest 1 orange.

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Drizzle some oil in the bottom of 2 shallow roasting tins. Rub the skin of the chicken in the oil, then turn skin-side up.
Divide the chorizo and the new potatoes between the 2 tins. Sprinkle the onion, peppers and the oregano over, then grate the orange zest over the contents of the 2 tins.
Cook for 1 hour, but after 30 minutes, swap the top tray with the bottom tray in the oven and baste the contents with the orange-coloured juices.

Ox Tail Pie.

In the spirit of total honesty and full disclosure I should probably admit that I am currently procrastinating. I am only 3,000 words in the 18,000 that I need to write before the 3rd April. Having had a productive day yesterday I have now lost the element of fear and consequently so far today have only got as far as opening a word document. Why is it that the subject of oxtail pie seems so much more intrinsically important to my life the a study of Pitt the Younger in political satire?


I have spent the last four years at university bemoaning my degree. Wondering whether it has been a glorious waste of money and a huge self indulgence, putting of facing the real world. In the only state that your parents will ever be proud of you for being unemployed and simultaneously running up huge debts. But now as I am about to set out into the abyss otherwise none as adult life and rip off the plaster of denial, I am beginning to assess with a less embittered sense of academic boredom the value of my university education. I say university education as I believe I have grown as much as an individual as a result of the time spent at university as I have through academia. It has given me the space in a very unstructured environment to determine what it is that I want from life and what kind of person I want to be.  I want to be an achiever not necessarily for financial gain, I don't want to look back at my life and wish what if. I would rather fail with aplomb than never to have stepped into the unknown.


My university education may not have equipped me with industrial skills with which I could instantly fall into the work place as a seasoned professional. As I very well may have been by now if four years ago I had forgone university to head straight for the work place. Four years ago despite feeling like and adult, I thought like a child and wrote like a child. I enter the work place now as an optimistic realist rather than a naive enthusiast.


I had some oxtail stew in the freezer which I thought to ring the changes I would trow together into a pie rather than leaving as stew. Having recently watched Heston make a suet pastry I was inspired to attempt to emulate him. Unfortunately as usual I was laking in equipment to was forced to make it in a cake tin rather than a pudding bowl. The structure was not a sturdy enough shape it seems to somewhat collapsed on its release from confinement. If I had had more time on my hands I would have removed the meat from the juices and reduced them down of thickened with flour. As you can see in the not very good photo the sauce was way to thin. I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the poor quality of photos on this blog but we live in a basement where daylight in scarce and I rarely have more than few moments to capture my creations before the boys way into attack.


Ingredients:


couple of sticks celery 
1 leek
3 carrots
200g mushrooms
1 large onion
2.5kg oxtail, jointed
250ml red wine
100ml brandy
200g tinned tomatoes
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs thyme
750ml chicken stock
750ml beef stock


Method:


Sweat the chopped celery, leeks, onion and carrots. Once soft, remove from the pan and set aside. Return the pan to the heat and add a bit more oil, cook the mushrooms and set aside.


Add a splash of water to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add the liquid to the cooked vegetables.


Brown the oxtail over a high heat in batches, deglazed the pan in between. Put all the ingredients back in the pan and simmer for 3hrs or until the meet comes away from the bone easily.


At this point it can either be eaten as stew or thickened with flour to fill a pie. If you are making a pie this amount filled a 9inch cake tin and fed 6. I baked it at 200C for 45minutes.


Suet pastry:


300g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
250g suet vegetable or meat
200ml water


Mix all the ingredients together and kneed until you have a smooth dough. Leave to cool in fridge before working.

Very Easy Roast Vegetable Tart.

This is so easy you almost can't call it a recipe but it is great for girly lunches or sunday night fridge scrapes. You can use raw vegetables or cold left overs, either works just as well. In our flat we love spicy food and add chilli to most things. Partly because we genuinely like hot food and partly because we are mean and it means that our flat mate who is from wales has to eat everything with milk while his nose runs and tears poor down his face. Mean I know but somehow still funny. If you like spicy food you can add harrisa paste to the tomato and pesto or you can sprinkle chilli flakes onto the top. In our case it was both.

I have linked this to fuss free flavours frugal friday.

1 packet ready rolled puff pastry
Tomato paste
Pesto
vegetables of your choice
Cheese of some kind I would advise goats or mozzarella.If you like spicy food you can add harrisa paste to the tomato and pesto or you can sprinkle chilli flakes onto the top.


Simply spread pesto and tomato paste over the pastry. Then pile on you choice of fillings. Drizzle with olive oil and season. Bake for 30mins at 200c if you are cooking in an aga for the last ten minutes put it on the floor of the oven which will crisp up the base nicely.

Moule Mariniere.

While I was out this morning Simon the Fish arrived. Simon is a white van man who drives up from the coast and every other Thursdays visits us selling whatever looked good from the catch that morning. My Father bought enough mussels for the two of us for lunch. He is blissfully happy at the moment putting up plaster board in my parents new bathroom, why pay some one else to do it when you can do it yourself? Fortunately for us he is quite the Mr fix it, so for the most part it is not a bodge job although he does believe that there is not much that cannot be fixed with either gaffer tape or cable ties. Having so said he came home last weekend with his thumb nail held together with a piece of gaffer tape. He had split the nail with a hammer whilst re-tiling the barn roof. This has now elegantly been replace with nail glue and an off cut of silk. 


Anyhow back to the recipe we cook mussels a lot in Scotland where they somewhat give me the heebie-geebies as we collect them of the beach and they are full of pearls. Not the kind of pearls which you want to keep but the kind which you crack your teeth on. If I must eat mussels even pearl free ones, I do always think that they are better as plain as possible. This is for two.


1.5kg Mussels
1-2 Shallots depending on size
2 cloves of garlic crushed
A handful of parsley 
salt and pepper
100ml white wine or cider
150ml cream optional


First de-beared the mussels and scrape off any barnacles then wash them with cold water. Finely chop the shallots you can use onion but it is not as sweet. Sweat off the shallots and garlic then add the mussels and wine. Turn up the heat bring to boil with the lid on and allow the mussels to steam for 3-4minutes shaking the pan occasionally. Once all the shells are open they are cooked. At this point you can either serve it or remove the mussels and tinker with the sauce. Once you have taken out the mussels you can season, reduce it if you prefer it a little thicker of add some cream. Finally sprinkle liberally with chopped parsley. 

Beef shin stew.

My parents have gone to France for the day leaving me looking after the dog and the house, we are currently living on a building site. My Father has taken four months gardening leave and in that time taken out all the bath rooms in our house and knocked down the kitchen. The Aga is being put into storage on Wednesday leaving us with only a microwave and the barbecue to cook on until september at least. While they are out in between watching wimbledon I am meant to be making supper and using up some eggs that are about to go off. I thought that I would start by using a Jamie Oliver recipe for shin of beef stew as the base for this recipe.


Ingredients:

2 red onions
3 carrots
3 sticks of celery
4 cloves of garlic
a few sprigs of fresh rosemary
2 bay leaves
a small handful of dried porcini
1 cinnamon stick
1kg shin of beef, preferably free-range or organic, bone removed, trimmed and cut into 5cm/2 inch pieces
1 tablespoon flour
800g tinned good-quality plum tomatoes
750ml red wine.

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180ºC or in a two door aga on the grid shelf with the grid on the floor of the roasting oven and a cold shelf or if you have longer than three hours you could cook it in the simmering oven. If you are following option two make sure you have brought it to a boil on the top first. Gently fry the onions, carrots, celery, garlic, herbs, porcini and cinnamon for 5 minutes until softened slightly. Meanwhile, toss the pieces of beef in a little seasoned flour. Add the meat to the pan and brown, then add the tomatoes, wine and a pinch of salt and pepper. Gently bring to the boil, put the lid on and place in your preheated oven for 3 hours or until the beef is meltingly tender. Taste and check the seasoning, remove the cinnamon stick and rosemary sprigs and serve.


This was a very easy and delicious recipe made only better by the fact that shin is also an extremely cheap cut of meat at the moment, it is only around £4.50 per kilo. I hate the look you get that follows the pronouncement that you are a student and like to cook so many 'adults' slowly raise one eyebrow as if to say I don't call beans on toast cooking. This will then be followed up with whats you speciality spaghetti Bolognese. Ok so I'm a student so we eat on a budget but that doesn't  mean that we don't cook good food. We try to maintain a balanced diet fruit, vegetables and good meat. This does mean being canny with  the cuts you buy and I have recently discovered shin. A great alternative to supermarket stewing steak which has usually been pre cut into pieces far to small to cook for long enough to get tender without them disintegrating. 

I fear that my photo does not do my stew justice. This must partially be blamed on stew, as stew never does looking as appetising as it tastes the attraction must be in the smell. More importantly though the photo was taken on my iphone not on some super swish camera. I must confess I'm a point and press kind of girl the camera consequently on my phone is all I have.