I get so sick of cream of mushroom soup.
I mean really, really, sick of it. You add cream to anything and it tastes good.
It is, however, boring. This soup uses a base stock that I make in bulk and freeze. On defrosting you can throw in game (pigeon breast is good), vegetables (like described below) or a slab of strongly flavoured fish (monkfish and tuna work), and serve.
The broth isn't actually clear, it gets murky quite quickly, so you could make a deep bowl and hide hideous things at the bottom. I normally put the tentacles of a quid down their to imply the unseen horrors that lurk in the depths of our oceans, and same the bodies for my attempts at Spanish cooking.
Ingredients
1 litre of perfect but frozen beef broth straight from the supply you keep in the freezer
I small red onion, freshly plucked from your vegetable garden, finely sliced
10 large mushroom, without stalks, sliced, retrieved from your cellar, sliced.
I large entrecote (enough for two)
1. Heat up the broth untill boiling merrily as if having a party in the pot with itself.
2. Heat the griddle to a hight temperature, and grill the entrecote for 2 minutes each side.
3. Throw in the the mushroom in to the broth
4. Immediately slice the beef on the diagonal and pile in the soup dishes in a kind of wigwam.
5. Around the edges place the thin onion slices.
6. Ladle the broth and the mushrooms over the meat and onions. The heat from the broth will warm the meat, and cook the onions.
7. Serve at once.
The stock is the key:
1 litre of beef stock (home made...or go on then, use stock cubes)
1 tsp of sesme oil
1 splashes of tabasco sauce (or more)
1 packets of miso soup concentrate
1 tbsp of dry sherry
1 small onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Remember to strain the stock before freezing, or using, it.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
New Digital Camera
Got a new camera. I shall start adding pictures of food as I prepare it, and putting them here.
A quick review of it follows, for those interested.
It's small, losable, takes excellent night shots I find, has a very easy to use menu where you just turn the knob left or right and it tells you what that setting is ideal for (night shots, panoramas, portraits, close-ups, landscapes, motion/action shots). on the large LCD display on the back. They have separate buttons for review and delete, which is good, because in just 3 days I have realised that many of my friends are not photogenic, so being able to delete without going through ,enus is great.
It has that irritating delay that all digital cameras have, in that enough time elapses between to clicking the 'take the picture' button and it taking the picture, for someone to walk in front. The delay is long enough to make you move the camera thinking that it has done it's job. Really, this should be fixed. Surely these manufacturers know that you want to take the picture when you press the button, not 2 seconds later?
The software that comes with it, Kodak Easy Share, is intensely wrong. It doesn't put the pictures in the right place, they've mucked around with the standard windows interface so it feels uncomfortable to use and is ugly to look at, they have done silly things with their icons that make them unpleasant to click on. Oh, and the default orange theme is revolting.
It does take movies as well (hooray), but what I really want is automatic time-lapse photography, so I can film bread rising, peas growing, etc. it's not included, which is silly, because it is a glaring omission from the otherwise excellent options...and it already does movies.
It's entry level, maybe I expect too much. it would be nice if the casing was titanium or aluminium, but it still looks good. It also slips easily in to your pocket and weights next to nothing.
A quick review of it follows, for those interested.
It's small, losable, takes excellent night shots I find, has a very easy to use menu where you just turn the knob left or right and it tells you what that setting is ideal for (night shots, panoramas, portraits, close-ups, landscapes, motion/action shots). on the large LCD display on the back. They have separate buttons for review and delete, which is good, because in just 3 days I have realised that many of my friends are not photogenic, so being able to delete without going through ,enus is great.
It has that irritating delay that all digital cameras have, in that enough time elapses between to clicking the 'take the picture' button and it taking the picture, for someone to walk in front. The delay is long enough to make you move the camera thinking that it has done it's job. Really, this should be fixed. Surely these manufacturers know that you want to take the picture when you press the button, not 2 seconds later?
The software that comes with it, Kodak Easy Share, is intensely wrong. It doesn't put the pictures in the right place, they've mucked around with the standard windows interface so it feels uncomfortable to use and is ugly to look at, they have done silly things with their icons that make them unpleasant to click on. Oh, and the default orange theme is revolting.
It does take movies as well (hooray), but what I really want is automatic time-lapse photography, so I can film bread rising, peas growing, etc. it's not included, which is silly, because it is a glaring omission from the otherwise excellent options...and it already does movies.
It's entry level, maybe I expect too much. it would be nice if the casing was titanium or aluminium, but it still looks good. It also slips easily in to your pocket and weights next to nothing.
Cleriac Puree
One Friday, after shopping, I grabbed the BF and demanded that we not rush home, that I don't cook, that we have a completely relaxed evening out drinking hidiously expensive wines, eating expertly prepared food, and ignoring the cost.
A long discussion followed, but we settled on DE KAAI as it had never failed to please... and it gives me a chance to practice my Flemish, as the BF is as blind as a bat so I have to read it out loud.
I've linked to the place above, but don't be dispointed by the web site, the food is much, much, much better than the website suggests, and the restaurant has a very good atmosphere, despite the pictures giving the impression it is somewhat cold.
So, it was great food, but the revelation was celeriac, something I had seen when shopping, and read in recipes, but never actually tried. Shame on me!
Anyway, I went to the kitchen and the chef agreed to give me the recipe if I could best him at wrestling; best of three falls. Normally I play to lose, but I really wanted the recipe.
So this is what he told me, this is what I made, and this is what I keep in the freezer on standby.
Ingredients
1 Celeriac
2 medium sized potatos
3 pints of milk
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon of unslated butter
a small white truffle
1. Peel the celeriac, and cut in to 1/2"x1/2 cubes, do the same with the potatos
2. place both in the milk and bring to the boil, reduce heat and let simmer until soft
3. Drain and discard the milk. Puree the celeriac and potato. Now some like their purees to be smooth, so the chopping blades of a food processor can be used. I prefer a chunkier feel to my mash, so I put the lot through my Kenwood Chef mincer, or I mash by hand.
4. Be warned, a lot of excess liquid is produced, so you may want to wrap the lot in a cheesecloth and squeeze the excess out (I actually go in to the garden and swing it around my head, using Centrifugal force to get rid of the water....but then, i don't care what the neighbours think).
5. When the puree is nice and dry, season to taste, then put in the freezer for later use.
6. When you want to use it, defrost as normal, and just before serving fork the butter in to the mash. Then grate white truffle over the top, and serve.
By the way, white truffle should never be cooked. Truffle oils, as many people recommend are good enough, but white truffle is always best frashly grated.
And I make the unsalted butter myself. i get creamc from a local dairy and use the whipping attachment on the Kenwood. Yes, it does make a difference. I wont bore you with the details.
A long discussion followed, but we settled on DE KAAI as it had never failed to please... and it gives me a chance to practice my Flemish, as the BF is as blind as a bat so I have to read it out loud.
I've linked to the place above, but don't be dispointed by the web site, the food is much, much, much better than the website suggests, and the restaurant has a very good atmosphere, despite the pictures giving the impression it is somewhat cold.
So, it was great food, but the revelation was celeriac, something I had seen when shopping, and read in recipes, but never actually tried. Shame on me!
Anyway, I went to the kitchen and the chef agreed to give me the recipe if I could best him at wrestling; best of three falls. Normally I play to lose, but I really wanted the recipe.
So this is what he told me, this is what I made, and this is what I keep in the freezer on standby.
Ingredients
1 Celeriac
2 medium sized potatos
3 pints of milk
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon of unslated butter
a small white truffle
1. Peel the celeriac, and cut in to 1/2"x1/2 cubes, do the same with the potatos
2. place both in the milk and bring to the boil, reduce heat and let simmer until soft
3. Drain and discard the milk. Puree the celeriac and potato. Now some like their purees to be smooth, so the chopping blades of a food processor can be used. I prefer a chunkier feel to my mash, so I put the lot through my Kenwood Chef mincer, or I mash by hand.
4. Be warned, a lot of excess liquid is produced, so you may want to wrap the lot in a cheesecloth and squeeze the excess out (I actually go in to the garden and swing it around my head, using Centrifugal force to get rid of the water....but then, i don't care what the neighbours think).
5. When the puree is nice and dry, season to taste, then put in the freezer for later use.
6. When you want to use it, defrost as normal, and just before serving fork the butter in to the mash. Then grate white truffle over the top, and serve.
By the way, white truffle should never be cooked. Truffle oils, as many people recommend are good enough, but white truffle is always best frashly grated.
And I make the unsalted butter myself. i get creamc from a local dairy and use the whipping attachment on the Kenwood. Yes, it does make a difference. I wont bore you with the details.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Roast Leg of Lamb
The day after the freezer arrived I went off and spent 700euros at Makro to fill it. It didn't work, it was only half full. The issue was that I didn't have a big enough car. So I went back the next day and filled the other half.
I bought a 2.4kg leg of lamb. Lamb is a juicy, fatty meat that is good for roasting, currying, BBQing (when sliced in to steaks), and of course, is a key ingredient of Shepherds Pie if you can't get fresh sheperd.
I dreamed of making a beautiful roast lamb lunch that would convince these Belgium gastro-people that British cooking can be good.
Well, I never go around to that. The Saturday Night Party normally meant we were serving breakfast at 16:00 hours, and we were all too hung over to cook something that required extended concentration.
18 months after I bought the leg of lamb, I decided to roast the bloody thing.
You may think looking at this that the amount of garlic is over powering. It isn't roasting lightens the flavour of garlic a great deal, producing a softer sweeter result. Never the less, if you think 12 cloves is too much, reduce the number to 9 or 6. You will taste the difference, and there is a fair chance your guests will notice the varying intensity. Well, I say 'notice', it depends on how closely you follow the rest of the recipe.
Here's what I did.
Roast Leg of Lamb, with Celeriac puree and thumped baked potatos.
1 2.4kg leg of lamb *
12 fresh twigs or Rosemary
12 peeled cloves of garlic
400g of Celeriac Puree *
100g of home made, unsalted garlic and parsely butter.
at least 2 bottles of wine, one of which needs to be red.
4 large potatos
'Hair' the video.
1. Defrost the lamb, slowly, over night. Don't microwave defrost this, you risk cooking parts and it can be a great cause of food poisoning.
2. Open the bottle of red wine and check it's quality. A thin tasteless wine will give a thin tasteless sauce. Check the quality by drinking it, two glasses should be enough to be able to tell. If you have friends over, get their opinions, but make sure you have two glasses left in the bottle.
3. Heat the oven to 180 degrees centrigrade, bring out the butter and let it get to room tempurature. YOU can microwave defrost this.
4. Carefully choose your potatos. They should be of even size (the size of a balled fist) and shape, kind of oval and should have a properly formed, fairly thick skin. If they are flat and white, they are butter beans, not potatoes. Small and green, they are peas. If they make your eyes water when you sniff them, you either have onions or a bad allergy, see a doctor just to be sure.
5. Wash your potatos removing any crumbly brown stuff that might be sticking to them, Then rub them with sea salt, and skewer with metal skewers.
6. Stab the defrosted leg of lamb evenly all around the shape, making 24 deep holes. Evenly distribute the cloves of garlic all over them. Grease up the sticks of rosemary with the soft butter and put them in the other holes.
7. rub rosemary leaves all over the outside, then rub with more garlic, then rub with the butter. Chase any guests you have around the kitchen with your greasy smelly fingers until they pour you another glass of wine.
8. Put the leg of lamb in a baking tray, surround with the potatos. Set the timer to two hours. Put it in the oven. This is the moment to put on the 'Hair' video and start on the other bottles of wine your guests brought over.
9. When the buzzer goes of you will discover you are significantly affected by alcohol. Do the following! Microwave your celeriac puree until piping hot (3 minutes at 500w, stir, 3 minutes at 750w, stir, 1 minute at 750w, serve).
10. Take out the lamb. Turn the oven off,. Put in all the plates and serving dishes you will be using. Leave theoven door slightly ajar. We want the plates hot, but not too hot.
11. Take to potatos and cross on top. Bash them on opposite side so the fluffy stuff comes out of the top. Salt and pepperise them. Put them in the potato dish in the oven.
12. Take the lamb out of the baking tray and put to one side. Throw the red wine in to the baking tray and heat directly over the hottest ring on your cooker. Add a small knob of butter and some cornstarch (a teaspoon)...or don't, it is not vital. Stir and allow to bubble. When reduced pour in to a gravyboat using a seive to get rid of anything gross.
13. Slice the lamb and reassemble on the serving dish, put the baked potatos
14. Put it all on the table, distribute wine, eat.
I'll tell you about the celeriac puree next time.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
minced beef and tatties, screw the tomatos
Right, go look at recipes that use minced beef...read the ingredients...
Yes, get some minced beef (AKA 'ground beef' for our American buddies), add onions, add tomatos... and it's all the bloody same. At one site (http://www.cookitsimply.com/category-0020-0i50.html) you get the joy of reading 17, yes 17 recipes before you get to one WITHOUT onions and tomato...but you can understand the reason for this drop in creative powers. Beef, onions and tomato taste good, and are in virtually everyones larder. So why think of alternatives?
Well, mostly because the food always tastes the same. Anyway, this recipe avoids tomatoes, so is a "Good Thing"(tm)
So this is phase one of emptying the freezer. I have 20 kilos of minced beef, and it all got to go. The recipe below contains freezer elements marked with a "*".
Minced beef and tatties
500g of minced beef *
2 medium onions
3 cloves of garlic
a ton of Oregano *
2 litres of stock *
3 large potatoes per person, cut in to very thick slices
2 cups of petite pois *
a splash of oil
1. Take your home made frozen stock out of the freezer and blast with microwaves until boiling hot. Add two handfuls of your oregano (you know, the fresh stuff you bought, cut up, and froze for later). Keep it hot.
2. Cut the onions in to cubes and crush the garlic, fry in the oil at a high heat, stirring frantically to avoid them burning
3. Remove from the heat and throw in the mince, keep the mince in fairly large chunks. maybe 1"x1". This makes the mince and tatties more like a chunky beef stew, and if you re-heat, will stop all the beef disintergrating in to a slurry.
4. put back on the heat, and fry, stirring to stop burning and sticking. Do this until you see no more bits or red raw beef on the outside.
5. Add the boiling hot stock (if you don't have home made stock, shame on you! Shame on you!!, but add 2 litres of boiling water instead). The 'boiling' is important. Mince will go rubbery if you add cold water an let it heat up. Only add cold water if you hate the people who will be eating the food.
6. Bring it to the boil again. Keep stirring. Throw in the peeled potatos.
7. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, until the potatos are mostly cooked through (that is, a knife meets some resistance at about the centre of the potato slice). Feel free to stir it.
8. Throw in the peas, cook for 5 minutes more.
9. Look at the resulting stew. Is there too much liquid? If so, boil until the ingredients are just covered.
Serve with Branston Pickle, or with tomato ketchup.
For better results, re-heat the next day and serve with Branston Pickle, or with tomato ketchup.
Freeze any that is not eaten, noting that your attempt to empty the freezer was only partially successful!
Yes, get some minced beef (AKA 'ground beef' for our American buddies), add onions, add tomatos... and it's all the bloody same. At one site (http://www.cookitsimply.com/category-0020-0i50.html) you get the joy of reading 17, yes 17 recipes before you get to one WITHOUT onions and tomato...but you can understand the reason for this drop in creative powers. Beef, onions and tomato taste good, and are in virtually everyones larder. So why think of alternatives?
Well, mostly because the food always tastes the same. Anyway, this recipe avoids tomatoes, so is a "Good Thing"(tm)
So this is phase one of emptying the freezer. I have 20 kilos of minced beef, and it all got to go. The recipe below contains freezer elements marked with a "*".
Minced beef and tatties
500g of minced beef *
2 medium onions
3 cloves of garlic
a ton of Oregano *
2 litres of stock *
3 large potatoes per person, cut in to very thick slices
2 cups of petite pois *
a splash of oil
1. Take your home made frozen stock out of the freezer and blast with microwaves until boiling hot. Add two handfuls of your oregano (you know, the fresh stuff you bought, cut up, and froze for later). Keep it hot.
2. Cut the onions in to cubes and crush the garlic, fry in the oil at a high heat, stirring frantically to avoid them burning
3. Remove from the heat and throw in the mince, keep the mince in fairly large chunks. maybe 1"x1". This makes the mince and tatties more like a chunky beef stew, and if you re-heat, will stop all the beef disintergrating in to a slurry.
4. put back on the heat, and fry, stirring to stop burning and sticking. Do this until you see no more bits or red raw beef on the outside.
5. Add the boiling hot stock (if you don't have home made stock, shame on you! Shame on you!!, but add 2 litres of boiling water instead). The 'boiling' is important. Mince will go rubbery if you add cold water an let it heat up. Only add cold water if you hate the people who will be eating the food.
6. Bring it to the boil again. Keep stirring. Throw in the peeled potatos.
7. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, until the potatos are mostly cooked through (that is, a knife meets some resistance at about the centre of the potato slice). Feel free to stir it.
8. Throw in the peas, cook for 5 minutes more.
9. Look at the resulting stew. Is there too much liquid? If so, boil until the ingredients are just covered.
Serve with Branston Pickle, or with tomato ketchup.
For better results, re-heat the next day and serve with Branston Pickle, or with tomato ketchup.
Freeze any that is not eaten, noting that your attempt to empty the freezer was only partially successful!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Empty that bloody freezer!
So, it's that fat time of year again, and after spending 1000 euros (same as 1500 quid in the UK, thanks to rip-off prices over there, and $17.22 in the US, thanks to voodoo economics over there) on non-freezable items (why buy one bottle of champagne? Why buy one tin of sweet chestnut puree? etc, etc, etc), I and my non-partner/non-bf have decided it's time to....
EMPTY THE FREEZER!!!!
What will this fun activity mean?
Obviously, putting on enough weight to seriously de-stabalise the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. That's a given.
Not buying ANY MORE FOOD, except fresh veggies and bread. Obviously herbs (with a bloody 'H', dear USA/French readers), spices, milk and sugar are excepted, apart from chopped parsely, we dont keep that stuff in the freezer.
And most importantly... getting some new, more food to freeze.
Why bother to blog it?
Well, no reason really...we have everything from frozen lobster to those little cheesey party snacks in that freezer, legs of lamb, wild ducks, deer, sausages, leeks, cheap mince, bloody expensive mince, 45 chickens, chinese spring rolls and filo pastry... and not enough time to catalogue, let alone cook and eat the stuff. So we are gonna make a game out of it.
IF we have to have posh dinners.... so be it.
IF we are gonna have to throw a party, so be it.
IF we need a romantic dinner for 2 (or 4, or 60,) so be it.
That freezer WILL be emptied and we will NOT be throwing it's contents in the bin.
So, maybe this is just a recipe blog, or maybe I am here because I experimented on emptying the freezer by first emptying the drinks cabinet *hic*
Later
EMPTY THE FREEZER!!!!
What will this fun activity mean?
Obviously, putting on enough weight to seriously de-stabalise the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. That's a given.
Not buying ANY MORE FOOD, except fresh veggies and bread. Obviously herbs (with a bloody 'H', dear USA/French readers), spices, milk and sugar are excepted, apart from chopped parsely, we dont keep that stuff in the freezer.
And most importantly... getting some new, more food to freeze.
Why bother to blog it?
Well, no reason really...we have everything from frozen lobster to those little cheesey party snacks in that freezer, legs of lamb, wild ducks, deer, sausages, leeks, cheap mince, bloody expensive mince, 45 chickens, chinese spring rolls and filo pastry... and not enough time to catalogue, let alone cook and eat the stuff. So we are gonna make a game out of it.
IF we have to have posh dinners.... so be it.
IF we are gonna have to throw a party, so be it.
IF we need a romantic dinner for 2 (or 4, or 60,) so be it.
That freezer WILL be emptied and we will NOT be throwing it's contents in the bin.
So, maybe this is just a recipe blog, or maybe I am here because I experimented on emptying the freezer by first emptying the drinks cabinet *hic*
Later
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
