Got veal leftovers? I do. This is a great potato pancake recipe that works with any cold meat, or even without!
I’ve tried making rosti before and never achieved decent results: soggy, or tasteless, or not quite cooked enough but this recipe from Alex Mackay is the business. I’ve cooked it twice now and it’s pleasingly consistent. It’s another recipe from Everybody Everyday. His version is with roast chicken but the excellent veal (from Farmer’s Choice) tastes just fine.
Veal potato pancake (serves 2):
700g floury potatoes
150g cooked veal, diced
8 sundried tomatoes, sliced
50g mozzarella, diced
20g cheddar, grated
2 spring onions, sliced
14 black olives, diced
40g butter
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Peel the potatoes and grate them into a tea towel. Gather up the tea towel and squeeze as much liquid as you can out of them. Season the potato really well.
Get a frying pan super-hot and add a little oil. Add half the potato into the pan and pack down with a fish slice. Combine the veal tomatoes, cheeses, onions and olives in a bowl and season. Layer this mixture on top of the potato, then add the remaining potato on top. Press it down and dot half the butter around the edge of the pancake. Fry for a couple of minutes until golden.
Using a plate flip the pancake over and slide the raw side back into the pan. Add the remaining butter around the edges and transfer to the over. Bake for 15 minutes or until the potato is cooked through. Serve with a fried egg and gravy.
Raymond Blanc has recently trotted around France cooking for locals. In A Very Hungry Frenchman Raymond acted as part guide, part tourist in a manner similar to Two Greedy Italians. I couldn’t quite figure out whether Raymond was well known in his home country or not – sure he has a spot in Paul Bocuse’s Les Halles de Lyon but little clues other than that. The program was very entertaining if a little long, with Raymond giggling his way through the food and showing his affable passion. Each programme showcased a different region.
In his Alsace episode this recipe for an onion tart stopped me dead. I thought it looked the business so I had to give it a go. Not content to leave it alone, I added cheese to the pastry to add another layer to the flavours. I was recently sent some Old Amsterdam cheese, not a brand I’d previously heard of. Trying it raw out of the packet I was knocked out by it’s punchy flavour, like a soft, tangy parmesan with a cheddar-like texture. I’ll definitely be picking some more of this up.
The tart itself is quiche-like, set with eggs and packed with sweet onion flavour. I didn’t have the deluxe variety Raymond was celebrating so used a mixture of regular brown and red onions. It’s a dense and tasty tart, and I was very pleased to have the cheesy pastry as an accompaniment; cheese and onion is a classic combination for good reason and the saltiness crumbled beautifully next to the onions.
It’s a lovely recipe for a Sunday lunch or cold as a part of a picnic. I served mine with salad and a lemony avocado dressing (the dressing from this one).
70g Old Amsterdam cheddar, grated (a strong cheddar would also work)
30g unsalted butter, diced
1 egg
For the filling:
100g bacon lardons
450g mix of red and brown onions, peeled and finely sliced
50g butter
Nutmeg
1 tablespoon flour
100ml milk
100ml creme fraiche
3 eggs, beaten
First prepare the pastry. Pulse the flour, cheese and butter with a pinch of salt in a food processor until you get breadcrumbs. Add the egg and maybe a splash of milk to bring it all together. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for at least half an hour before using.
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Melt the butter in a large saucepan and gently fry the onions for 15 minutes until soft and golden.
Roll out the pastry (Raymond recommends rolling it between two sheets of cling film, great tip!) and lay into a baking dish. Prick all over with a fork and blind-bake for 15 minutes until golden. Brush with a little of the beaten egg to glaze and bake for a further 2 minutes.
Add the lardons to the onions and fry for a couple more minutes. Tip in the flour and stir well for 2 more minutes. Add the milk and stir vigorously to make a thick oniony paste. Add the creme fraiche and stir a little longer, then remove from the heat. Add the eggs to incorporate, season well then pour into the pastry case. Bake for 30 minutes until golden, then allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving in thick wedges.
Yes eagle-eyes, you’re right: that’s not macaroni in the picture. But this recipe is full of substitutions. What it tells me is this recipe has a great base from which to build on.
This is Heston’s recipe for macaroni cheese from How To Cook Like Heston, and is predictably very, very tasty. Like most people I usually kick cheese sauces off with a roux, but this approach melts cheese into reduced wine and stock. I’m amazed it works. I think I let the cheese cook a tiny bit too long and it started to split on me, but just about caught it in time. I also veered off from the recipe as I didn’t have a posh cheddar, nor cream cheese in the house but instead let it down with pasta water. That’s another bonkers bit – in the original recipe the pasta is cooked in a very shallow amount of water but I didn’t quite have the attention to monitor that one today. I boiled it in the usual way and it worked just fine.
I’ll definitely be making cheese sauces from this base in future – no more floury rouxs for me.
Get the pasta on to boil in a large saucepan of salted water and cook according to the packet instructions.
In a separate pan reduce the wine down to “30ml” (I have no idea how you can easily tell what level you’re down to without a lot of faff so eyeball it and trust your gut). Add the stock to this wine reduction.
Preheat the grill. Toss the cheese with the cornflour and add to the winey stock. Turn the heat right down low, add some black pepper and stir until thoroughly combined. As soon as it’s smooth turn the heat off.
Drain the pasta and reserve some of the water. Trickle over a tiny amount of truffle oil, toss and add to the sauce, then transfer to a baking dish. Top with the parmesan and pop under the grill until bubbling.
I’d heard excited whispers on Twitter about a new BBC programme from Simon Hopkinson called The Good Cook. His name was only distantly familiar to me; I wasn’t directly aware of him.
So I sat down to watch it with little expectation. I became an instant convert. Simple, honest food that is achievable, excellent and done with love.
Just about everything featured is worth cooking, in a programme refreshingly devoid of format, gimmick or travelogue. Only the tiniest scraps of production remain: incessant overuse of funky chart hits, just because the BBC can; and occasional 30 second jaunts to far-flung places showing stock footage of people making cheese.
These are minor quibbles against the brilliance of Simon’s own natural easy going charm and obvious skill. His effortless style makes everything look easy and worth trying. So I’ve started with this, a luscious and rich pasta bake with a few small changes down to what I had lurking around waiting to be used up. It’s absolutely tremendous and really easy. It even encourages the all-in-one roux method which works like a dream to produce a silky and slurpable sauce. Please run to your storecupboards and try it now. You must have some of those dried mushrooms in there somewhere, right?
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Pop the mushrooms and milk in a pan and bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat and leave to infuse for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile make the sauce. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Keep it moving about for a minute to cook out the floury taste. Sieve off the milk then add it to the roux in one go whisking all the time. When smooth keep on a gentle heat for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally and allowing to thicken. Check for seasoning towards the end of the cooking time.
Get the pasta on to cook according to the packet instructions. When done, throw the pasta, mushrooms, bacon and a third of the parmesan into the sauce and toss really well to get everything coated. Turn out into a baking dish, add another third of parmesan and bake for 30 mins until bubbling. Top with the remaining parmesan to serve.
