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.
The great Saturday clear out
The kitchen was a disaster zone, what with re-painting and stuff going on all around. Food planning as you have seen, had fallen off the radar, with meals out, and too often taken on the run. So a look in the ‘fridge revealed any amount of ‘left-overs’ that needed attention and a couple of hours of serious food bashing.
First the chicken left overs: very substantial and a valuable carcass. So, meat stripped and back in the ‘fridge the carcass goes in the stew pot with the ends of leeks, some garlic, a diced chunk of the lurking celeriac, carrots, a nub end of fennel that has been making chunky salads, and a handful of fresh and dried herbs. Now, I’m thinking, if I can just get enough stock for a big vegetable soup and a risott
o … Oh, and the French beans, I stick half in a sieve to steam over the stock, ready for a salad: forward planning or what.
There are two approaches I think to veg soup – the refined ‘cream of’ variety, and I had plenty of carrots say to do carrot and coriander, or the chunky, stand up your spoon version, like a minestrone, with or without pasta. I had so many bits and bobs of veg that I decided on the latter.
So I started chopping for sweating leeks, carrots, onion, mushrooms, bits of sundry peppers; then dicing potato, celeriac; shredding some red baggage, and top/tailing the rest of the French beans. Everything in little boxes ready for the stock. Then veg to sweat, added stock and cook a bit more, then add the ‘boiling’ veg such as the potatoes which we don’t want to overcook, and finally the cabbage and beans. I beefed up the stock just a bit with a sprinkle of Marigold meaning I could leave out salt altogether, added lots of pepper and took off the heat the instant the vegetables were nearly cooked. Furthermore, I also plunged the pan into a sinkful of cold water, stirring every now and then to get the heat down as quickly as possible: this is soup for reheating, and we don’t want overcooked mush.
Now, whilst doing all that chopping I also prepped the risotto – the leeks, peppers and a bit of carrot just remained to be sweated off, some chorizo sliced and the rice added and the stirring commenced. I honestly believe that a good risotto simply means hard labour with almost constant stirring (though I use a wooden spatula to lift the rice from the pan, rather than a spoon which bashes it about too much). The home made hot stock works a treat and near the end I add the frozen peas, although baby frozen broad beans are great too, and a quite excessive amount of the left over chicken which has been diced into mouth bite bits. Finally butter, cheese and a five minute rest.
Of course I had sorted out all the other lurking things in the ‘fridge, so a chunky salad went on the table with the chicken dish, the forth in a row this week!
The Basque take on the chicken challenge
What’s with the menu planning this week, if it ain’t an ocean of fish, we get a farmyard of birds, and chickens anywhere we look to eat. This time though we’d left the meal to our host, naturally, of a delightful dinner that, as usual in her hands, managed to be serious scoff and wine without any of the social drawbacks of pompous, patronising guests or attempts at country house posh service. So, just great company and perfect food.
Starter – which vanished in a trice I noticed – was a decorous plate of salami, Parmesan and slow roasted tomatoes of unctuous sweetness and moorishness. It really was a little platter of such simplicity – although the tomatoes no doubt took hours of slow cooking – that got the taste buds slavering in anticipation and the food notes – all Mediterranean – should have given us a clue to the next course.
The one dish meal, in the ubiquitous Le Crueset (passim) – turned out to be Basque chicken. I don’t know the recipe, but it seemed like a chicken paella ie the rice was slow cooked in the pan in the oven, with brown long grain rice still with a bite and yet wonderfully moist from the sauce. The chicken had been carefully portioned – no bones I think judging from the other plates – and the whole cooked with chorizo, peppers, olives, tomatoes and whole segments of orange, complete with peel. I suspect the blessed Delia at work here.
Seconds for the greedy, then attempts to eat the Gorgonzola that went wonderfully with the wine, brought back from its chateau just a few weeks ago by other guests.
Real pudding – well a cake of such denseness and taste that a slice needed the fresh orange and grapefruit slices to meliorate its richness, and the blob of creme fraiche went down well too.
Perfect then on every count? You bet.
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!
Did my chicken die happy?
Another cross country travel, with the usual Great Western delays meaning a grabbed hot sandwich of unmentionable grossness. I was running an afternoon into evening meeting that included two muslims making their Ramadan fast, so 6.37 pm assumed some importance and everyone indulging in a sugar rush of M&S goodies. That still left me with the usual late night problem: what to eat this late in Luton?
Everyone said chicken at Nandos, and I have been pleasantly surprised there before. It does grilled chicken, sloshed in their own peri peri sauce that ranges from tasty to very hot. That’s pretty much it in various combos.
I chose a simple half chicken, medium sauce and two sides: that’s coleslaw and chips in everyday parlance. It took about 15 minutes and arrived piping hot and didn’t take long to eat. A bottle of Stormhoek Pinotage 2006 held its own against the flavour. And the whole bill around 20 quid. What’s not to like?
Well, my chicken’s life causes me a bit of concern. The website says all the birds are fresh, never frozen. That would suggest they haven’t come too far, so low food miles – though the whole of Europe is within range of a ‘fridge lorry. But what of their lifestyle? There’s absolutely no option to buy-up and choose a free range or even organic bird. And since Nandos make no claims, we must assume the worst: intensively farmed, very short lived birds. Not very happy ones.
So do I boycott Nandos for ever? Do we need to inspire a MacDonald’s like customer revolt? Maybe, but I’ve other battles on my plate. Wouldn’t it be better for Nandos to come clean and say: it’ll cost you £XX more to know your chicken had a happy life. Who wouldn’t want to pay?
Spanish omelette to the rescue
The plan said roast chicken, the realities took over as time and energy ran out. With a fridge full of vegetables and a box of eggs – oh and some left over potatoes, what about a Spanish omelette?
For me the spuds are a distinguishing feature of this dish: ideally start with raw ones, cube them small, fry in shallow oil until browned all over and cooked. Set aside on kitchen paper putting into the omelette pan when adding the eggs.
We however had some left over ‘yellow’ potatoes, so these were just cubed and got ready with the other veg. For four people you need a small non stick pan that is going to be full of veg before you add the eggs, but frying the veg is easier if you use another, bigger pan. So, start with some strips of bacon , lardons or bits of chorizo, then the onion, peppers, some finely sliced fennel, chopped aubergine and courgette (very small) and celery if you have it Sweat for a bit then add some mushrooms. When you think that everything is cooked add the potatoes and a good handful of frozen peas – for me these are as essential as the spuds.
Put the veg into the clean, smaller pan and bring up the heat. Beat your eggs – six will do for this sized pan – with some cream/milk, lots of seasoning, chopped fresh herbs, pour into the hot vegetables. You should now have a pan dangerously full! Stir the egg into the centre as it sets for a minute or two keeping the heat high. As soon as it looks as though it is setting, turn the heat down, smooth off the top and leave to cook for a few more minutes, the bottom should be nicely browned.
Did I say the grill should be on? Mmm…. You might want to grate cheese on the top of the omelette before you put it under the grill for final cooking. Unlike a quick omelette we are looking to get this cooked right through, so a few minutes under the grill may be needed. When done remove from pan onto a board or plate. Do not eat!
Why? Because like a lot of food it really tastes best neither hot – straight out of the pan, nor cold – straight out of the fridge. So leave well alone for fifteen minutes whilest you prep a big bowl of salad, it’ll taste better for the anticipation.
PS: Of course leftovers go in the fridge to keep: if you haven’t got time to let it warm up naturally, 20 or 30 seconds max in the microwave should do the trick but don’t overheat ‘cos it will be rubbery and horrid and such a waste of all that effort.
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.
Mustard seed mayhem
It was the bean spouts what did it. I only know two things to do with them – salad or a stir fry. So working backwards from a vegetable stir fry it seemed like Chinese tonight.
There were store cupboard (well, freezer) king prawns and a bit of a bag of small ones, and lurking in the store cupboard proper a jar of Thai red curry paste.
So chop, chop later and we had the ingredients for:
The prawn curry – fried off mushroom slices, added three big teaspoons of the paste and fried that off too. Then one of those tiny boxes of coconut cream and two finely chopped red chillis: the paste said it wasn’t hot. Left to stew, the prawns, now defrosted of course, added just a few minutes before it was piled into the serving dish.
The stir fry had lots going in it. First some leek, then sliced fennel strips, two colours of pepper, small chunks of aubergine and some garlic. I’d started the fat in the wok with some mustard seeds and the first veg hit the pan as they started to fly all over the kitchen. The trick is a very hot pan, lots of stirring, and not letting the veg steam but really fry. Finally the bean spouts and some pak choi. A splash of fish sauce and some dry sherry and into a hot dish to wait for the …
Fried rice. Precooked long grain, chilled down so every grain is separated. Into the wok some more light oil, chopped leek, mushrooms, courgette – whatever as long as its cubed and small. Then work quickly – the rice will stick if you give it half a chance. Wizz about till well heated then push all to one side. Break an egg into the space you’ve made in the pan and with the heat still on full, bash it about to scramble/omelette it. When it’s cooked smash it up and distribute through the rice. You should be able to see flecks of yellow egg. I like a splash of rich soy sauce at this point, but you can leave that to the eaters.
At the moment of serving the dishes, stir in chopped coriander leaves into the curry, sprinkle masses of whole plucked leaves onto the veg – the aroma is delicious.
Hot bowls. Chop sticks for authenticity. Forks for greedy.
The only, only drawback of such is a meal is the endless washing up, a wrecked stove – all that heat – and bloody mustard seeds underfoot…..
(PS it means shrimp, prawn etc)
Half a lamb shoulder
Not a piece of meat I’d seen before and not from Mopsa, so assumed it needed a bit of help to be tasty. It looked at though it would take a good stuffing so the end bone removed, and a bit of judicious trimming and bashing (rolling pin does fine) and there’s something resembling a flat, oblong piece of lamb.
Over to the Magimix with its small bowl. First some fresh crumbs from a very tasty rye sourdough: put aside. A smallish onion and two garlic cloves wizzed small and tossed into a pan with some oil. Followed a few minutes later with a handful of finely chopped mushrooms.
When very softened, the vegetables and the crumbs are combined with some dried rosemary (crumbled in) and the juice of half a lemon. Lots of seasoning.
The lamb was stuffed and tied into a roll – looked like it would do a generous three when sliced.
It weighed about 1kg, so an hour at 180, plus a rest. A tray of chopped veg (fennel, courgette, peppers, aubergine, red onion, garlic – coated first in a bowl with olive oil) sat on top in the small oven.
The gravy (juices, red wine and v old home made chutney) finished it all off.
Bad, bad boys’ breakfast
Two croissants fresh from the baker, sliced carefully in half. Cover with generous slice of Parma ham. Slice a melty cheese and cover the ham. Turbo oven at 230 for five minutes ’till the cheese melts and exposed bits of ham start to crinkle. Flip together. Eat whilst too hot with coffee.
Calories and fat content: OTT, probably as bad as a fry up, but somehow more ‘sophisticated’!
Who’s kidding who?
