Monthly Archives: October 2011

arctic roll

food, ice cream, jam, sponge

jamie oliver's arctic roll

This one is straight from the pages of Jamie’s Great Britain. I don’t have particularly as strong memories of arctic roll as other people seem to – but what’s not to love here? Ice cream, jam, sponge…

And it is good – but it’s extremely similar to his pudding bombe masterpiece (which I’m making for about the sixth time this week, do try it now pannetone is in the shops). Given the choice I’d have the bombe every time.

Arctic Roll (serves about, ooh 6 – 12?):

For the sponge:

3 eggs

100g caster sugar

75g plain flour

1 heaped teaspoon cocoa powder

For the filling:

500ml vanilla ice cream

500ml chocolate ice cream

300g raspberry jam

1 Crunchie

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Leave the ice cream on the side while you do everything else so it softens.
  2. Whisk the eggs with the sugar until pale and fluffy. Fold in the flour.
  3. Grease a baking tray and line with greaseproof paper. Spoon half the mixture on to the tray, fold the cocoa into the remaining mixture, then swirl that through the stuff on the tray. Place in the oven for 15 minutes, or until cooked through (it’s only thin so watch out!).
  4. Get another piece of greaseproof paper and scatter with sugar. Get the sponge out of the oven and flip it on to the sugar, and peel off the ‘cooked’ bit of paper. Carefully roll up the sponge in the paper and leave to cool curled up.
  5. Once cooled spread unroll the sponge and spread over the jam. Blob it with ice cream, alternating to make sure there’s a good mix of flavours. Bash the daylights out of the Crunchie and scatter over the ice cream, then roll it back up again. Leave in the freezer until you want to serve it.
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pork chops with bubble & squeak and creamy apple gravy

apples, cider, food, pork, potatoes, red onion

pork chops with bubble & squeak and creamy apple gravy

If there’s ever leftovers from a Sunday roast, just try and stop me making bubble and squeak. This is proper Autumn grub, with apples, cider, pork… just the kind of thing I could eat all season long. The pork here comes from Farmer’s Choice, a lovely butcher’s providing excellent meat delivered to your door.

Pork chops with bubble & squeak and creamy apple gravy (serves 2):

250g leftover mash

250g leftover cooked veg (maybe carrots, sprouts, spinach, parsnip – anything really)

1 red onion, sliced

2 pork chops

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

250ml cider

250ml creme fraiche

2 firm apples, peeled and sliced

  1. Get two frying pans on a medium heat. Season the pork chops and scatter over the marjoram.
  2. Mix the potato and veg together in a bowl and season well. Form into little patties and add a little oil to each pan.
  3. Put the pork chops in one pan and cook for 5 or so minutes until coloured on one side, then flip over. Add the onions and apples to the pan.
  4. Meanwhile fry the bubble ‘n’ squeak patties on both sides until golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper before serving.
  5. When the pork chops are done, transfer to a board to rest and cover with foil. Turn up the heat and deglaze the pan with cider.
  6. When the cider has bubbled away to almost nothing, add the creme fraiche and reduce the heat right down. Stir well to combine with everything in the pan, check for seasoning and serve over the chops with the bubble on the side.

competition – win gordon ramsay cookbooks [closed]

competition, cookbooks, food

This giveaway is now closed. Feel free to keep leaving comments though!

I have too many cookbooks. This is probably true of quite a few of you if you’re mildly food-obsessed like me. So I had to be quite tough with a cookbook reorganisation lately. Quite a few went to the lucky charity shops. Some others I thought to sell on. There’s Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food, which features one of my favourite things to cook in the whole wide world. There’s Gordon Ramsay’s Pub Food, packed with lovely British recipes. And Rose Prince’s The New English Kitchen which gives you kitchen classics for nearly everything. They’re all in fine condition but I have exhausted their usefulness and can’t see me needing them again. But you look at the second-hand market for big-name cookbooks but it’s a complete waste of time – I’m competing with 1p copies. One penny. What is the point?!

And these books are too good to get rid of for a penny. So I thought I’d take that idea and shove it through a logic hole until it falls out the other end and get rid of them for nothing. I’m going to exchange them for a comment you make. Because a comment from another real person is worth more than a penny to me. The acknowledgement that these words aren’t just tumbling into anonymous Internet noise, but that some people’s RSS feeds and Google searches find these witterings and leave their own ideas, photos and suggestions is worth a lot more.

Here’s the deal. I’m on 959 comments all-time for this blog. Let’s pick a round number, say, I don’t know, 1,000 comments. When I hit that number I’ll give one of these books to someone who commented in between 959 – 1,000 at random. Don’t comment on this – this is a pretty pointless post, history will reveal. But have a trawl through the archives. Tell me about one of these recipes you’ve cooked. Or about what I’m doing terribly wrong. Or that I need to try making XYZ. Whatever. Just leave me something interesting to read. You never know, you might get a free book out of it.

Tedious obligatory bit: these are freebies after all, so I’m only going to send these on to a UK address.

sunday roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts

bacon, brussels sprouts, carrots, chestnuts, chicken, food, garlic, maple syrup, marjoram, parsley, polenta, potatoes

sunday roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts

Sunday lunch is when you want to just go for it. I grew up in one of those lucky houses where my Mum cooked a Sunday roast every week without fail, and recently it’s been nagging at me to do this much more regularly for my own family. But my Mum didn’t have Twitter to distract her. Or Facebook. Or Dave Gorman’s Absolute radio show. But I’m trying.

This is a fairly typical roast for me, and when you do more involved roasts with a few side-dishes, I think you should forgive yourself a few shortcuts. Why not use packet stuffing, or frozen yorkies? We all know you can make them, but the extra timing, oven space and graft is more worthwhile concentrating on getting the big stuff right. So I took a few liberties.

And I know what some of you are thinking. “Yorkies? With chicken?” Yes. They were made to float on gravy of any description. Try and stop me.

roast chicken fresh from the ovenThe chicken here was excellent, from those fine chaps at Farmers Choice. It gave brittle, savoury skin with plump and flavour-packed meat. A real treat.

If the thought of making a Sunday roast scares you, and just seeing that list of things is too daunting, don’t panic. I bet you could cook all those things on the list individually. So it comes down purely to timing. If it helps, write a list. Start with the thing that takes longest to cook, and count things in from then – see below for a guide. Don’t forget to allow the roast time to rest. But be bold, and always remember that the gravy will heat everything back up again :-)

Sunday roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts (serves 4 – 6, + leftovers):

1.6kg chicken

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

1 onion, quartered

20g butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon parsley, finely chopped

500g white potatoes, peeled and diced into golf ball-sized chunks

1 tablespoon fine polenta

25g butter

2 bay leaves

Dash of red wine vinegar

3 carrots, peeled and sliced

250g brussels sprouts

100g cooked chestnuts

4 rashers back bacon, rind removed and reserved and sliced

1 tablespoon maple syrup

  1. A few hours before, sprinkle the marjoram over the bird. Spread it all over generously with salt and black pepper, then place on a rack over a roasting dish and pop in the the fridge for about 3 hours. This step draws flavours down into the chicken, while at the same time drying out the skin to make it super-crispy.
  2. Pre-heat the oven to 220°C. This temperature will really blast the skin and make it golden.
  3. Get the chicken out of the fridge and add a few more flavourings: put 2 quarters of the onion inside the carcass and the other two on the base of the roasting dish you’re going to use. Mix the butter, parsley and garlic together. Work your fingers under the skin of the chicken to release it from the meat, then slowly push the butter into this little pocket you’ve created. Put into the oven and leave there for 15 minutes, before turning the heat down to 180°C.
  4. Meanwhile, get the potatoes on. Get a large pan of boiling water on and salt generously. Par-boil for 10 or so minutes, until a knife can slide in and out easily (I usually jab a knife into a wedge then suspend it above the water – when it can fall off within a few seconds they’re ready). Drain well and leave to sit in the warm pan without a lid for a few minutes to steam dry. Put the butter with a splash of rapeseed oil into another baking dish and place in the oven to heat up. Toss the potatoes in the polenta and then tip out into the now hot fat. These are going to need about 45 minutes, which will cross over with removing the meat from the oven. When you remove the meat, turn the heat back up to 200°C for the potatoes’ sake.
  5. When the chicken is cooked (look for juices running clear when probed), remove to a wooden board and cover loosely with foil. Pop the roasting dish on a high hob and add a tablespoon of flour, stirring well. After a minute add about 300ml boiling water to cover the bottom of the tray and get scraping to get all that good stuff. Sieve into a jug for serving, and give it a short blast in the microwave to keep the heat up right at the end.
  6. If you’re using packet stuffing like me, you’ll probably need to do the boiling-water-and-stick-in-the-oven thing here. Let the instructions on the box guide you.
  7. When the potatoes have had about 20 minutes, add sea salt, a little white pepper, the bay leaves, red wine vinegar and the bacon rind. Return to the oven.
  8. Get the carrots and sprouts on to cook. When you are cooking multiple veg I recommend a multiple-tier electric steamer. It gets everything going at once and frees up a space on the hob. The carrots will need around 15 minutes.
  9. While the sprouts cook, get a frying pan on medium hot and add a little oil. Throw in the bacon and wait til it colours on one side before adding the part-cooked sprouts and chestnuts. Stir fry well for five minutes.
  10. The potatoes might need a final blast of seasoning, otherwise they’re good to serve. Take the chicken to the table, pouring any spare juice into the gravy jug, and get someone else to carve. You’ve done enough.
  11. If you’re using frozen yorkshire puddings, they’ll need their 2 minutes in the oven now.
  12. When the sprouts are tender, take them off the heat and add the maple syrup. Toss well to coat and serve, and don’t forget the carrots!

heston blumenthal’s pea and ham soup

food, gammon, ham, peas, stock

heston blumenthal's pea and ham soup

“You don’t like small food, do you?”

That’s something someone said about my eating habits a few years back. It’s not completely accurate but did draw together a few of my food hates: sweetcorn, baked beans and peas. Baked beans remain the work of the devil, I’m still not really sold on sweetcorn (why does it always end up in tuna?) but over the years I have grown to accept peas. And if any recipe is going to fully convince me of the power of the pea, it’s a Heston one. I was sent this recipe by someone who knows of my Hesotn obsession, and comes from his new book Heston Blumenthal at Home.

peas defrostingIt’s refreshingly free of bonkers twists, as long as you discount defrosting frozen peas. Oh yes, frozen peas – I think most chefs now accept frozen is the way to have peas if they’re not straight from your garden. And the peas are barely cooked so they retain their vibrant colour and fresh taste.

The finishing touch, as is so common with Heston recipes (I’m looking at you, vanilla salt), the thing that just makes it. A few drops of mint oil is a crystal clear note among the comforting, meaty flavours.

It’s absolutely delicious. Creamy and fresh, with a round, savoury flavour that is amplified in all directions. Do try it, it’s brilliant.

Heston Blumenthal’s pea and ham soup (serves 4):

1kg gammon joint

1 onion, peeled and sliced

1 carrot, peeled and sliced

1 leek, white part only, rinsed and sliced

8 mint leaves

30ml extra virgin olive oil

900g frozen peas

65g butter, diced

75g shallots, finely diced

1 clove of garlic, minced

160g unsmoked bacon, cut into lardons

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 85°C. Pop the gammon, onion, leek and carrot into a casserole and barely cover with water. Bring to a simmer on the hob, pop a lid on it and transfer to the oven for 5 hours.
  2. While the gammon cooks, put the mint in the oil and leave in a warm place to infuse. Line a baking tray with kitchen roll and layer the frozen peas on this to defrost and absorb excess moisture.
  3. When the gammon is done, let the meat cool in the liquor. Sieve off the solids (Heston then says to discard the veg, but I squeezed out the excess juice and mixed with mash the following day for fab bubble ‘n’ squeak). Then shred 180g of the meat for the soup – the remainder you can keep for another day.
  4. Get a large frying pan over a low heat and add 25g of the butter. Ad the bacon, shallots and garlic and sizzle for five minutes so they soften but do not colour.
  5. Add 750ml of the gammon stock and bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Add all but 75g of the peas and the rest of the butter and remove from the heat. Liquidize then strain through a sieve, squishing thoroughly to get as much good stuff in the pan as possible. Season to taste and reheat gently.
  6. Use a hand blender to aerate and thicken the soup, then add the reserved gammon and remaining peas. Allow these to warm up and then serve, drizzling with mint oil.

steak

beef

farmer's choice sirloin steak resting

Few things in food get me more excited than a lovely piece of steak. And this sirloin steak from Farmer’s Choice is an excellent specimen. Based in Fareham Farmer’s Choice have been providing free range meat for over 20 years. They kindly sent me a selection of products to try all individually frozen so it’s really convenient to get as much or as little out as you need for dinner.

farmer's choice sirloinYou can see how good it is raw; marbled and ruddy brown, with a loose flaking texture. When cooking I added the bare minimum of flavourings so the natural taste of the beef could come through. And it was a really tasty piece of meat, strong and savoury with crispy yellow fat.  Usually I buy rump for economy so to have sirloin was a bit of a treat.

If you struggle with steak, you can read 1,000 words I wrote about it previously, or distill it to a few simple rules: really high heat, let it rest, and buy really great meat.

Steak (serves 2):

2 x 400g sirloin steaks

¼ beef stock cube

  1. An hour before you want to cook, get the steak out of the fridge. You’re not going to cook the steak for very long even if you like it charred, so allow it to come up to room temperature first.
  2. Fifteen minutes before you want to cook, get your frying pan on super-hot, as high as it will go. You may wish to temporarily remove the battery from your smoke alarm (but don’t forget to put it back in, I’d feel terribly guilty if you didn’t). Also put your oven on 150°C and pop an ovenproof plate in there to warm up.
  3. Crumble up the stock cube and rub liberally all over the meat. Shake over some olive oil and wait for your pan to start shimmering. Lower them in and just leave them be for a few minutes.
  4. Flip them over and cook for a further couple of minutes. Doneness is up to you and the best way to figure it out is to press the meat in the pan with your finger and feel how bouncy it still is. After cooking a few steaks this will become your best guide for how done they are.
  5. When done, turn your oven off and carefully remove the plate and plonk the steaks on that. Leave for about five minutes.
  6. While the steaks rest, add about 100ml of water to your pan and use a wooden spoon to scrape at the crusty bits. After a few minutes’ bubbling this will reduce to a syrupy consistency, at which point serve up your steaks and pour this beefy nirvana over your meat.

beef in oyster sauce

beef, oyster sauce, red onion

beef in oyster sauce with vegetables in a soy curry vinaigrette

When Ken Hom is on Saturday Kitchen, he usually pulls a blinder out of the bag, such as crispy chicken noodles. And this recipe was no exception. Tender beef, sticky savoury sauce and to quote the Homster “disgustingly healthy”. I’m not sure how healthy it is, but it tastes pretty darn good to me.

Based on Ken Hom’s original recipe and messed around with according to what I had knocking about

Beef in oyster sauce (serves 4):

For the beef

450g fillet of beef, cut into thin strips

1 teaspoon dark soy sauce

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 tablespoon dry sherry

2 teaspoons cornflour

3 tablespoons rapeseed oil

3 tablespoons oyster sauce

4 spring onions, chopped

For the salad

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon Madras curry powder

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 broccoli, cut into small florets

100g green beans, trimmed

½ cauliflower, cut into small florets

Small tin of water chestnuts, drained

½ red onion, finely diced

  1. Mix the soy, sesame oil, sherry and cornflour together and add the beef. Combine well and leave to marinate while you chop up everything else.
  2. Get your wok on screaming hot, then add a few splashes of oil. While the oil heats up stick a sieve or colander over a bowl. When the oil is smoking add the beef. Keep it in the wok until it’s browned lightly on all sides, then chuck the lot into the sieve, letting the excess oil drain off. Wipe the pan out with kitchen paper.
  3. Put the vegetables into a pan of simmering water. These will take 4 -5 minutes to get tender. While this is happening, mix the mustard, curry powder, soy sauce and oil in a bowl, mix well and add the onion and chestnuts.
  4. Back to the wok: get the oyster sauce to simmering point and add the spring onion and drained beef. Toss well to coat.
  5. While the beef finishes, drain the veg and add to the salad dressing. Mix thoroughly with the dressing and serve up with the beef.

red hot lamb burgers

burger, chilli, lamb, mayonnaise, mint

red hot lamb burgers with mint mayonnaise

There’s no shortage of burger recipes on this blog, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for one more.

I was sent a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot sauce in the post. It’s not a condiment I usually use but after a little taste I found it really interesting – very hot of course, but with a very pleasant fruity taste. I thought it would work really well at cutting through the richness of lamb in these burgers, and if it all proved too much then the mint mayonnaise rushes in at the end to put out the fire. A great combo, and I’m definitely converted to hot sauce!

PS. I’ve been pointed to this bonkers competition of Frank’s, where you can win a “massive” TV. 

Red hot lamb burgers (makes 4):

400g lamb mince

1 tablespoon Frank’s Red Hot Sauce

1 tablespoon mint, finely chopped

200g mayonnaise

1 beef tomato, sliced

4 soft rolls

  1. Combine the mince with the sauce and a good pinch of salt. Form the lamb into 4 patties but try not to compress them too much – you want to keep a nice loose texture.
  2. Preheat a frying pan to pretty darn hot. Add a splash of oil and fry the burgers for 3-4 minutes each side.
  3. While the burgers are cooking mix the mint and mayonnaise together. Lightly toast the rolls.
  4. When the burgers are browned on both sides, slam into a bun, layer on a tomato slice, slather with minty mayo and gobble up.

tomato and chorizo salad

chorizo, tomato

chorizo and tomato salad

When I watch cookery programmes, I try to keep a notepad nearby. If something pops up I love the look of, I can scribble it down immediately. Even if the recipe is published online afterwards I find there are little bits and pieces that are not always included in the full rundown. Extra seasoning, tips to look out for… like making notes when studying, I find it really useful to have my own version of events. They tend to come out as flow charts or odd diagrams as they make more visual sense to my brain.

So I was thumbing through an old notebook and found this recipe that I’d completely forgotten about. From Jamie Oliver’s Jamie Does… series, he cooked this summery salad in Andalucia. I had some home-grown tomatoes begging to be used, a lump of chorizo in the fridge (as there so often is) so it was a straightforward decision!

Given the absurdly inseasonal weather this weekend this fitted the bill perfectly. A little poke, sharp from vinegar with fresh tomato flavours, it goes great alongside any BBQ dish.

Tomato and chorizo salad (serves 2):

100g chorizo, cut into chunks

6 tomatoes, roughly chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

Sherry vinegar

Handful of roughly chopped parsley

  1. Heat a little oil in a pan and throw in the sausage. Fry for a few minutes until browned on all sides.
  2. While the chorizo cooks, chop up the tomato and parsley and pop into a serving dish. Sprinkle with sea salt, pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
  3. Once the chorizo is cooked, add a good shake of sherry vinegar and the garlic, and cook for 30 secs. Scoop out the chorizo with a slotted spoon and toss into the tomatoes (reserve the oil for frying something else really tasty, like a roast chicken or potatoes).