A restaurant described Moussaka as a lamb and aubergine pie … well, I suppose it is sort of, but of the many variations I’ve never had it topped with pastry. The whole fandangle takes some effort, so here’s the quickie version – well, at least to prep, it still takes 40 mins in the oven.
You need a really rich lamb mixture: fry off the minced, lean lamb and put aside giving a chance to reduce the fat further. Clean out the pan and soften onions, peppers, maybe a slice or two of fennel, celery and when soft add the meat back. Add tomatoes, fresh skinned or tinned (passim) and a smidge of tomato paste. I usually add ginger, garlic, thyme, rosemary and parsley as the base flavours, pimento and chilli flakes can spice it up a bit. Leave to bubble away merrily.
Slice your aubergine, circle, cross lengths, long lengths, whatever will fit your deep dish. You can salt them and dry them but I’ve never noticed the difference. Fry them off and as you do so layer them in the dish: aubergine at the bottom, then the mince, more aubergine, more lamb, finally aubergine. Then my cheats’ topping.
For a four person dish you need half a large pot of plain yoghourt (low fat’s fine) into which beat three nice eggs (a couple if you use duck’s), plus salt and pepper. Now pour the mix onto the last layer of aubergine – it should be quite thick. Slip a knife down the side of the dish at intervals to give the topping a chance to slither down the side – it looks very attractive if you are using a clear soufflé dish for example. Then – most important – lots and lots of grated nutmeg, and nothing but the real thing, ready ground is just sawdust.
Forty minutes at about 160 and the topping will brown, rising like a soufflé itself. You should be able to take out a slab in a whole piece, spooning out any reluctant lamb. Serve with steamed veg.
Quick and easy
Retro fishpate with twists
Who – at least of my age – hasn’t made tons on smoked mackerel pate? And weren’t we so taken aback when they started doing fillets encrusted with pepper so that this good old sixties stand by could take on yet another life! All those cheffy variations too – adding fresh horseradish seemed positively cuisine minceur .. or not.
Fact is it’s good stuff, but it needs a bit of variation after fourty years. So I tried this one: the technique, as you all know, is simply to stuff the ingredients into the Magimix in order needing to be chopped. So start with some spring onions (half a red one would do nicely too) and a good handful of parsley (get of rid of the worst of the stems but don’t pick off every leaf – this is meant to be easy!); zapp. Pile in a box of philly like cream cheese (‘lite for us porkies) and a pack of smoked salmon pieces and two large or three smaller skinned smoked mackerel fillets (with peppers if you like). More zapp.
It should be spreadable, but with noticeable contents, not just a mush, so I use the zapp button rather than leave it to blend.
Put into brown dishes – yes, they have to be to be properly retro. If you are being posh and not dieting then there’s no doubt that a layer of clarified butter doesn’t do anything but good. Freezes great. But please, please don’t eat straight from the fridge …..
Virtuous Sunday
Chaos still abounds so the soup came in handy for lunch: lots of cheese grated on top and chunky bread beside. Easy and a great comfort after yesterday’s efforts. Masses left over too.
Supper, another one in the bag as it were: a particularly special dried pasta from our friends Napolina (passim) called torchietti, mixed plain and spinach, and a freezer box of home made meat sauce. Positively the last of the salad ingredients laying about: red cabbage, cucumber, grated carrot and celeriac all with a nice olive oil and a splash of balsamic.
Two very nice and very easy meals reaping the benefit of earlier hard graft: virtue rewarded indeed.
Tasty roast on the run then toast on the lap
Straight off the train and only time for a rushed late lunch. Him indoors had roasted a handsome fowl the night before that had full happiness – and potential flavour – credentials – organic, free range. Generous chunks went on some handy leaves and a shared box of M&S pasta salad grabbed at the station. Very nice too, but what was the hint of flavour on the bird I asked? Lime pickle apparently – a not too hot one, generously slathered over the bird with the usual oiling and seasoning.
So, unwittingly we had a revisit to the Nandos of the night before, but much better.
It was such a late lunch that supper was a slice and a half each of Welsh rarebit, not even any more salad: sometimes enough is enough. Apparently “The spelling “Welsh rarebit” is a humourless euphemism” seems odd to me!
Mexican ad lib?
The chores had piled up and late home from the office means one thing, instant grub. There were two portions of vegetable chilli in the freezer and a pack of ‘seeded’ wraps. Maybe something with a Mexican twist, you know those tortilla things that go crunchy, what they called??
Oiled baking dish took four well stuffed, rolled up wraps quite snuggly. Lots of cheese on top and a hot oven for 30 minutes ish. I wanted them piping hot and a bit crunchy too.
Himself wanted boiled yellow potatoes – some sudden fancy, who’s to say no?
And another crunchy salad of all sorts (what we going to do when the newly discovered pointy red cabbages finish?).
Big plates (it was really too much) and lots of not-too-hot lime pickle. Sour cream would have been good but that would have entailed planning, and the whole point was, it wasn’t.
Infinite variations on fishy pies
Knocking up a fish pie should be in everyone’s repertoire of great standbys, whether it has a Fish Pie top (potatoes) or a Fisherman’s (pastry). What goes underneath can adopt the same approach and, if crafty, entail just washing up one pot – apart from the topping that is. With variations of fish and the vegetables you need never cook two the same.
I use a large sauté dish or fry pan – a wok would do just as well – to make the filling from start to finish. It seems daft to make enough just for two/three, (who wants to chop half an onion?) so we usually end up making enough for two pies with the second going straight
in the freezer as soon as the finished (but uncooked) pie is chilled down.
So, into some oil in your chosen pan put a chopped onion, followed in cooking order by a pepper, some carrots – diced, and any combination of courgette, fennel (not too much), celery (ditto). Sweat until they’ve lost their bite. Then add a generous heaped tablespoon of cornflower and wiz about a bit, it doesn’t need cooking, but ordinary flour would if you use that. Add two teaspoons of the ubiquitous Marigold vegetable stock powder, or a crumbled cube of something.
Now you’re ready to turn the mess into a rich sauce: start adding milk, first in glugs, then as it thickens and cooks, more at a time until you have a rich, coating texture. Now add frozen peas or beans or even sweetcorn – if you like bright colour! – and let it all come back to the boil. Add some fresh herbs: parsley finely chopped, some fennel if you have it, or whatever. Check the seasoning and overdo the pepper if anything. If you want it to be extra creamy add grated cheese, or do the Jamie Oliver thing and slosh in double cream!
Now the fish. Today I used a couple of slabs of salmon and a big handful of prawns. In truth I prefer solid white fish, cod if we can afford it, but see what’s on offer. And of course, smoked haddock – especially with a cheesy sauce – is quite a distinctive version.
Turn everything over carefully in the sauce and take off the heat.
You should have enough stuff to fill two 2/3 person dishes ready for topping. If using mash, make sure it’s extra creamy: I smooth it flat with a spatula then do plough lines with a fork, going both ways, just like mum taught me. More cheese on top maybe? Dot with butter.
Then 200°C for about 35 – 40 minutes.
It’s got to be peas or steamed beans to go with it.
Afterthoughts: so you don’t fancy freezing one – then use the remaining filling for delicious puff pastry pasties – but watch when eating they tend to be very hot! Or just serve on a baked potato with extra cheese. Or pile into those individual shop bought Yorkshire Puddings ….
The Art of Festering – and nearly instant food
Mentioned this notion before: that some things are best left to their own devices to develop taste and unctuousness by natural processes. This is probably akin to the biological and physical actions called ‘rotting’ in other situations, but let’s not dwell on that.
Supper tonight was a perfect example of many things: the virtue of making a curry from the finest ingredients (in this instance the remains of a leg of lamb that had first been baked on a bed of vegetables to which a can of beer had been added; plenty of herbs and three hours on a very low oven – thank you for the inspiration Rick Stein), not eating it all at once (another virtue indeed), and the festering effect of freezing.
I hope no-one out there’s in the camp that decries microwaves and freezers as devices of the culinary devil. For us they are essential to eating well, cheaply and sometimes fast.
So take the curry: one click top box full of lamb with aubergine and defrost, along with a couple of portions of frozen mixed rice (wild, brown and organic white) cooked to store a week ago. Now, there were last night’s left over potatoes (red salad ones as it happens) and they got diced and thrown into the lamb to reheat.
Now this sort of meal can easily be lacking the fresh veg we need – so I made large bowl of raita: peel and chop half a cucumber; finely chop about a third of a red onion; sprinkle with salt; then fold into thick plain yoghourt. Now you don’t want anything too posh for the yoghourt: it mustn’t have any sense of sweetness for my taste, so the extraordinary River Cottage yoghourt that tastes as though it’s made from double cream is no good. Sprinkle on a quarter teaspoon of garam masala and a pile of chopped coriander and you’re done.
Make sure curry and rice are piping hot. Serve in deep bowls and feast. Chapatis, nan breads et al will bulk out the fibre if you need too …. but they really need to be home made so no time tonight ….
Bread in a box? Seriously?
Well, yes. It’s seems that Ikea can even flat pack food. We all know, don’t we, that its food shop has great crisp bread, scrummy herrings of all sorts and wonderful red berry compote (far too slurpy to be called jam by the British and great on home made muesli (passim)) and of course meat balls? Now it has added Swedish rye bread in a box.
It has been blogged about before, but I hadn’t noticed and this one didn’t have much success.
The first thing is that although not cheap (about £2) the contents of the box seems to have a fine provenance: the home of Nordic rye bread and a family firm of millers who are big time in that part of the world. They are called Finax and as well as bread, produce muesli and a whole range, no less, of shake in the box products, especially muffins. See a fun video here.
So, what do you get? Well a box obviously, and of the Tetrapak kind since it was invented thereabouts. The instructions are clear: add water (for this you do need a thermometer, which as a sometimes souredough maker we had), and shake for 45 secs. I’d recommend a bit longer since there was a lump of hesitant ingredients lurking in a corner when I tipped it out straight into a greased bread tin: wait for 45 mins. It didn’t rise much but you wouldn’t expect a bread of this sort to. Into hot oven and wait another hour (again this might seem a long time, but par for the course for this sort of bread).
What’s it like? No telling, yet. I’ll turn it out and let it fester: most rye bread is best left for a day so I suspect it’ll be started at breakfast tomorrow. I’ll let you know.
For now it’s off to finish the roasted veg, steamed broccoli and grilled organic burgers from the happy pig man (Caermynydd Piggery Free Range Pork 01974 821 361 01545 571 607) at the Riverside food market.
Real Sardines on Toast
For this you need some left over (or specially done, worth it) grilled sardines, not a tin (delicious though they are in their own right).
Carefully fillet the by now cold fish – you can be picky about only using really nice bits, free of bones, they are so very cheap.
Toast a slice of good bread per person – we used tonight a seven seeds, wholegrain; sourdough would be good, Ciabata if it’s your thing. Butter. Cover with chopped crisp lettuce stuff (or posh leaves if you want, but I like crunchy for this).
Now lay the fish on top, be generous. Sprinkle on a good quantity of chopped red onion and finish with a dollop of salsa – shop will be fine. Stick a gherkin or two alongside.
Eat and be surprised.
It was an occasion when the starter was infinitely better than what followed – an indifferent stir fry of fresh vegetables, hair noodles and spicy sausage. The spicy wasn’t, I’d held back on the black bean sauce, the vegetables didn’t shine and the hair noodles were just – well, hairy. Win some, lose some.
Starting with left overs
There are some kitchen jobs that define the notion of boredom and make little or no difference to the outcome: halving and deseeding grapes, taking the pips out of tomatoes or cucumbers. Some mind numbing tasks however have a real impact or are essential: double shelling big broad beans springs to mind. And shucking the left over mussels …
They had to be done before bed last night and the box had a lot more in than I had anticipated meaning that they deserved something more than left over status. So although ‘starters’ aren’t usually on the menu in the week, that’s what they became. A heafty slosh of lime juice in some Hellman’s made a good mayo and all there was to do was make a pile of leaves, mussels and mayo.
The surprise was how good it was. I’d have never have thought of cooking fresh mussels for this sort of thing – even for a posh nosh night with guests. How wrong can you be? They were incomparably better than anything from the fishmonger, fresher, juicier and with a much more subtle taste than bought pre-cooked. So next time I do a starter like this, fresh it has to be, in spite of all that shelling……
To follow in this fishiest of weeks: a couple of large trout simply grilled, on a plate with fresh steamed spinach and some sauteed brown mushrooms. Too much already?
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