Pigeon with fig, honey and soy dressing

Wow so its been a long old while since my last post, Summer has been and gone and we're now in the depths of Autumn which means an abundance of game, warming stews and lots of tasty ingredients to cook with.  

This is a fairly simple dish, slice the figs and put on the plate and then pan roast the pigeon breasts in a hot pan with some rapeseed oil for 90 seconds each side and then remove the pan from the heat adding in a a squeeze of honey and two tablespoons of soy sauce.  Leave the pigeon to rest in the pan and give everything a stir around to coat the meat.  Once rested remove the pigeon, slice and plate up.

Pan roast rib of beef with Chimichurri sauce for the British F1 GP

The final board

Well above is the result of a Sunday well spent, beef from the best butcher in Cambridge Barker Bros of Great Shelford, spiky Chimichurri sauce and a new potato and broad bean salad on watercress with a horseradish dressing.  My thoughts behind this was a summers Sunday roast, something much lighter than the usual affair.  To begin cook the potatoes and cool in ice cold water and half and also blanch the broad beans in boiling water before also plunging in ice cold water to retain their colour.  

Once cool pop the broad beans out of their skins and leave in the fridge.  For the dressing mix 100ml of creme fraiche, 100ml of natural yoghurt, freshly grated horseradish, juice from half a lemon and salt to taste and store in the fridge.  For the chimichurri sauce I've followed this recipe

Prior to cooking

So there it is, prior to cooking.  Get a pan nice and hot and then add some flavourless oil, drop to a medium heat and add in some buttter followed by the beef, seasoning the exposed side with salt and pepper.  Turn after five minutes to the other side and cook for another five minutes before turning again.  Add in some rosemary half way through and continue to turn every five minutes for another 20 to get a rare finish.  Keep adding an extra 5 minutes to cook the meat through more.  Once cooked to your liking remove to rest, I've used a small plate on top of a large plate to collect the juices below.

Resting

 Once rested slice the meat and serve on a platter, dress with the chimichurri sauce and dress the broad beans and potatoes with the dressing adding some chopped spring onions to the mix.  Place the potato salad on top of a bed of watercress and serve.

An afternoon to enjoy

Chicken wings, scallops, asparagus, celeriac puree, hazelnut gravy

Bit of a preview before I write a full post on Friday so enjoy the picture for now...a very tasty platter to share indeed!

Griddled Squid with Broad Bean Relish, Lamb with Cucumber and Mint

Well to begin with I'll apologise, it's been a while since my last post but the weeks have been very busy at work and the weekends have been spent on trips away and more recently my birthday.  Luckily birthday equals more cooking books so expect to see me attempt some recipes by the likes of Tom Kitchin, Bryn Williams and others in the coming weeks.

To go with the summer weather yesterday was the perfect opportunity for a light and Summery  starter and main combo from Mark Hix - Oyster and Chop House.  The starter is a griddled squid and broad bean relish followed by saltmarsh lamb chops with cucumber and mint.  Both dishes pack a punch on the flavour front, take very little time to make and prepare and yet are light to eat.


Griddled Squid and Broad Bean Relish - for 4 people

•  500-600g cleaned squid with tentacles
• Groundnut oil 

 For the relish

• 3tbsp cold pressed rapeseed oil
• 1 small onion finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 medium red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
• 6 firm tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and finely chopped
• salt and pepper
• 80-100g of podded broad beans
• 1tbsp coriander leaves

To begin put a pan of salted water on to boil and when ready drop the broad beans in, cook for 2-3 minutes and then remove and drop into a bowl of iced water.  Once chilled slip the broad beans out of their skins and keep in a bowl.

Warm the rapeseed oil in a pan and sweat the onion, garlic, chilli and cumin seeds for a few minutes until they soften without colouring and then add in the tomatoes.  Taste, season with salt and pepper and then cooked out for 10 minutes or so.  In this time put a griddle pan on and get it nice and hot ready for the squid.  Once the ten minutes is up put the broad beans in and add a little water if the relish has thickened too much and cook for 5 minutes or so then remove from the heat.

By now the griddle should be hot enough so season the oiled squid with salt and pepper and cook on the griddle for 2 minutes or so, don't be tempted to move them too early on or you won't get the charred marks and flavour on the squid.  Once ready remove from the heat, squeeze half a lime over the top and mix the coriander through the relish and serve up something like below.

Lamb with Cucumber and Mint - serves 4

• 2 cucumbers
• 8 saltmarsh lamb loin chops
• Salt and Pepper
• Groundnut oil
• 2tbsp cold pressed rapeseed oil
• 2 shallots, peeled and halved, thinly sliced
• Handful of mint leaves
• 1tsp white wine vinegar/cider vinegar

Again get the griddle pan on a medium to high heat to kick things.  Take the cucumbers, cut in half lengthways, remove the seeds and then cut 10mm slices on the angle.  Season the lamb and rub with the groundnut oil and cook each side for 5 minutes to achieve a medium cook piece of lamb, removing to rest a few minutes before plating.

Sweat the shallots down in the rapeseed oil and then increase the heat and add in the cucumber and cook for a few minutes until it starts to soften slightly.  At this point take it off the heat, add in the vinegar (this will cut through the oil in with the cucumber as well as the fat of the lamb) and the shredded mint and stir through and then plate up.

Duck Ham Part Deux

Seems like this recipe has drummed up some interest and today was the best part - the tasting.  Picking up where I left off once the duck has been in the salt for two days remove and rinse well under cold water then pat dry with kitchen paper and hang individually in muslin bags in the fridge for 14 days, turning halfway through and making sure that air can circulate around the meat at all times.  After these 14 days the meat will have darkened and firmed up a lot and you have a beautiful homemade usable product.

I've gone for a simple salad of cured duck ham, endive and fig with a honey mustard dressing.  To make you'll need;

• Thinly sliced home cured duck ham
• Endive
• 1 fig per person - quartered. 

And for the dressing;

• 1.5 tbsp extra virgin rapeseed oil
• 0.75 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 0.5 tsp english mustard (dijon if you want to take some heat out)
• 1 tsp runny honey
• Salt and pepper to taste

Mix the dressing ingredients together and dress the endive and fig, place on the plate. I sliced the duck and layered it and then trimmed the edges to tidy it up (and kept the trimmings for a snack whilst watching the football tomorrow!) and below you end up with a smart salad perfect for this timely summer weather.

Noticed that some guy called Raymond Blanc also decided to make duck ham on TV this week...copycat.  Here's the link to his version that I may try next;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/duck_ham_31997

Give it a go, its easy to do and gives you a really impressive result.

Toad in the Hole, Japanese broth and Soda Bread

Apologies for being away for a few days, I spent last weekend with friends in Nottingham and have been rather hectic with work in the meantime however this does mean you're getting a bumper pack of cooking action in one post.

Toad in the Hole

A classic, not healthy but my god its damn good.  I'll let the recipe talk for itself on this one....plus this post is taking me an age to put together and my dinner is nearly ready!

2 Eggs

150g Plain Flour

300ml Milk

2.5 tsp smooth Dijon Mustard

6 sausages (hickory smoked from my butcher)

Rosemary leaves

Groundnut oil

Gravy

2 Red Onions

Butter

500ml Rich beef stock

Cook the onions and butter with some salt for 30 mins or so until they take on a dark brown colour then add the beef stock and leave on a medium heat for 20 minutes.  This is then ready and can be reheated as and when its needed.

Put the sausages in the oven in the dish you plan to serve in with some oil at around 200C and cook until brown (20-30mins).  Whilst they cook make the batter by whisking the flour, eggs and a little milk.  Once smooth slowly add the rest of the milk and mustard and to finish add in the rosemary leaves and some salt and pepper.

Take the sausages out of the oven, give them a quick turn and then pour the batter into the gaps between the sausages and put back into the oven for 30-40 minutes then remove and it should look something like below.

Japanese Broth

After the excesses of the weekend in Notts there's only one thing I want to eat and that it Ramen.  Rich, spicy Asian flavours warming you up and restoring you ready for the week ahead.  I'll run through how I did this one but I can't recommend Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan as a far better port of call than my good self for this style of cuisine, it's definitely the first book that I turn to.

So anyway here it is, rough quantities to your taste;

Finely chop the holy trinity that is ginger (a thumbs worth), two green chillies and three gloves of garlic and put into a bowl.  Take a dried red chilli and pierce it with a knife a few times, you just want the contrast of flavour between the dry and fresh chilli here, and chuck this in the bowl along with some szechuan pepper corns and some coriander seeds that have been bashed up in a pestle and mortar. At this point I also rehydrated some dried chinese mushrooms.

Pop all this in a warm pan with some groundnut oil and sweat down then add some halved chestnut mushrooms and the now rehydrated chinese mushrooms, chopped before adding.  Once the mushrooms have started to cook down add the meat of your choice, I used boneless chicken thighs cut into chunks.  When the meat is sealed pour in some mirin (2 dessertspoons)  and cook off a bit then add in about 1.5 litres of chicken stock and 3 tablespoons of soy sauce.

Once this comes to the boil, reduce the temperature and skim any scum from the surface from the chicken cooking.  Leave it to slowly cook for 45 mins or so on this low heat and when you are ready to eat add in some quartered Pak Choi and edamame beans and peas and noodles of your choice.  When serving dress with a little sesame oil then slurp down and start feeling ready for the week...

Soda Bread

My first ventures into baking bread have been through the guidance of Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly and soda bread is perfect if you're a novice, impatient or think that making your own bread will take too long.

As its the science of baking the ingredients are as follows;

140g Wholemeal Self Raising Flour

140g Strong White Flour

5g Sea salt

10g Caster Sugar

5g Baking Powder

125ml Water

125ml Buttermilk

Get the oven to 200C then put the above list into a bowl and mix together by hand until combined then leave to rest for 5 minutes.  Flour a baking tray and shape the dough into a ball and place on the tray, don't worry if it seems quite wet this is right.  Shake a bit more flour over it and cut a cross in the top and leave to rest another 10 minutes then put it in the oven for 40 minutes.  

Take it out and if you can resist leave it to cool on a wire rack and it should look like the pic below. I varied the recipe myself this time and used some natural yoghurt instead of buttermilk and also have used stout instead of water so go try it and experiment yourself.

Hope there's something for you to try there - next week the duck ham is ready and my next batch of beer is being started so see you then.

Sunday Chicken Stew

So Sunday arrives, the day of rest for most however I found myself in the kitchen at 5:30am making an omelette and a pot of coffee in preparation for turning into work at 6:45am to move some end of line terminals with colleagues.  This went with some success and setup the rest of the day nicely to make a simple chicken stew to enjoy whilst watching the football this afternoon.

I'll unashamedly admit the recipe has been taken from Olive Magazine.  Ingredients are as follows;

• Chicken Thighs - bone and skin removed and cut into quarters
• Chopped fresh rosemary
• Crushed garlic cloves
• 2 sliced onions
• Chicken stock
• Balsamic vinegar
• Peeled and quartered waxy potatoes - new's, charlottes etc
• Pearl barley

Brown the chicken, remove then sweat down the onions, add the rosemary and garlic and cook for a few minutes, pour in the balsamic and coat the onions then add everything in and bring to a simmer then transfer to the oven at 170 degrees celsius for 1 hour.  I made a quick cartouche to cover the stew before putting it in the oven.  Serve with fresh parsley and some good bread.  More to come, enjoy your Sunday!

Chicken Stew