Category: lamb

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lamb

barnsley chop with redcurrant sauce

barnsley chop with redcurrant sauce

I spent some time over Easter up in the Peak District. Mostly it was spent gadding about Alton Towers and tearing around Cbeebies Land (which is great fun by the way).

We also took in some of the local towns like the unfathomable Alpine-influenced Ilam, which looks like something from the Sound of Music hewn from the mountainside and dropped in the middle of England. There’s also the charmingly old-fashioned Tissington constructed around elaborate Well Dressing ceremonies with the tiniest network of shops such as a butcher’s, candle shop and sweet shop. We also enjoyed Cheadle and it’s mightily impressive Pugin’s church which was fastidiously detailed.

After a long day visiting the beautiful Chatsworth House and taking in their enviable farm shop (which the butcher mentioned to me takes £3.5 million a year over the meat counter alone), we and the friends we went with stopped off in Monyash. We plumped for dinner in The Bull’s Head, a pub dating back from 1619. Isn’t it crazy in this country we can have pubs that are 400 years old?

After a nice drop of cider we enjoyed an old fashioned pub dinner. I saw something on the menu I hadn’t seen in years and given it was April, was perfect. A Barnsley Chop. Taken from the lower back of the animal, this perfect double chop gives you that great mix of crispy fat, chewy outer meat and tender up to the bone.

With steak-cut chips on the side it’s just the thing after  hard day’s sightseeing. It was glorious. So much so, that I wanted to have it again at home. Before heading back, I popped into the butcher’s in the aforementioned Tissington and grabbed some chops for another dinner. (The butcher also looked like he was going to kill me but that’s another story for another time).

A Barnsley Chop needs to be cooked carefully to get it right. It’s so thick that you need to cook it right through to the bone (to your liking) and yet want a high heat to render that fat and caramelise the surface. I start mine on a high heat to get that fat melting then turn it down as I flip it on the side.

To complement it, a tangy sweet gravy made from pan juices flavoured with redcurrant that helps punch against the fat. If you’re ever in Monyash, stop by The Bull’s Head for a chop.

Want more information about the Peak District? Try 10Adventures. All the routes on it, including the GPS coordinates, are free to use and download for anyone.

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barnsley chop with redcurrant sauce

Course Main Course
Cuisine English
Servings 2 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 2 Barnsley chops about 300g each
  • 100 ml red wine or other wine. Water would be fine too
  • 400 ml chicken stock
  • 1 tablespoon redcurrant jelly

Instructions

  • Place the lamb fat side down for a couple of minutes until crisp. Turn the heat down to medium, flip on to one side and cook for 3 minutes. Flip on the other side and cook for another 5 - 7 minutes. This will vary greatly from chop to chop. Cook until the internal temperature when tested with a probe reaches 55C for rare, 60C for medium. Rest on a warm plate or board while you make the sauce.
  • Turn the heat back up and add the red wine. Use this to pick up the crusty bits on the bottom of the pan. Bubble away until reduced to almost nothing. Add the stock and bubble furiously until syrupy, add redcurrant jelly, check for seasoning and pour over the lamb. Serve with chips and broccoli
Categories
food lamb pork reviews

review: marley spoon meal delivery service

Do you want the pleasure of home cooked food, but find yourself lacking inspiration or short on shopping time? Then Marley Spoon might have the service for you.

Marley Spoon invited me to try out their meal delivery service to see how it worked.

The proposition is this: pick the meals you like the sound of from Marley Spoon’s website, then on either Wednesday or Friday they will deliver the ingredients to you. With the small assumption that you have basics like oil, salt, sugar and pepper you’ll then have everything you need in perfect portions to cook the dish. You’ll also have a large recipe card to help you along.

The meals are well chosen, with a decent variety every week, including fish, vegetarian and vegan options. If you’re omnivorous the dinner inspirations are from all corners of the globe and feel well balanced. There’s plenty of gorgeous photography to help you choose the dish that you fancy for dinner that week.

I chose a couple of things to try: nasi goreng (a household favourite) and lamb steaks with red cabbage and neeps.

Aside: check out some more of my lamb dishes!

The checkout process is smooth and painless, and delivery was spot on – an hour beforehand the driver rung me to advise he was running 15 minutes late so I was kept informed. Everything was packaged well and insulated sensibly. It was also smartly labelled so I could put things away ready for the next dinner, along with a cute little hand-signed card by the picker inside. Nice touch.

 

Come cooking time I followed the simple instructions, and as promised both meals were ready in 40 minutes. The nasi goreng was really enjoyable, tasting fresh and exciting. The pork loin was of a very good quality, from Devon Rose farms. It was nestled in wild rice and plenty of veg.

The lamb dish was a comforting meat-and-two-veg style dish and delivered excellent flavour. The gravy in particular was plate-lickingly good thanks to an really good redcurrant jelly. Again the lamb was great quality.

So far so good. But there are some elements that prevent it being a solid recommendation.

Some of the vegetables I received were not of great quality. The chinese leaf had a soft, dog-eared feel to it, and the carrots were poor. Browned and able to be bent at more than 45 degrees, I don’t think these were fresh from the farm that day. Take a look at the carrots in this pic:

Sad specimens. I could forgive small things like this could if the price reflected that. But there’s the biggest but.

A portion of a meal costs £9. And you have to order 4 portions of something to qualify for a delivery. So that’s £38 to receive these ingredients. And that’s before you’ve started cleaning, chopping, cooking and washing up after. And I really struggle with that price point.

If we take that as £18 for two people, I can find a bunch of high end ready meals for that money (such as Bigham’s), which will involve a lot less peeling and chopping my end. Or get a decent takeaway for that money. Which begs the question, when does this become good value? You’re paying for your time-saving in choosing the recipe, shopping for the ingredients and bringing them to you. If you’re a busy professional couple who still want to cook for themselves than rely on ‘ready made’ options, there are much cheaper ways to do it and I suspect you will have a battery of decent go-to recipes. And they still took me 40 minutes as directed, and I’d like to think I’m an experienced, multitasking home cook.

It’s a frustrating prospect. I want to support Marley Spoon a lot as they advocate home cooking and being a little adventurous. But I can’t see how that price represents good value. If they could at least do some prep: the cleaning and dicing of veg, providing marinades pre-mixed.

The website is great for dinner inspiration, and I’ll definitely be checking in for meal ideas. If they can get that price down I’d definitely use it again as the recipes are perfect.

Check out Marley Spoon for yourself here.

Marley Spoon provided the meals for free.

Categories
food lamb pork rosemary stock thyme tomato

slow cooked pork and lamb ragu

I had a great big clear out of the freezer and unearthed heaps of lamb and pork. Great big lamb shanks and chunks of pork all solid as rock and crying to be used up. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a slow cooked pork and lamb ragu. Kinda traditional style, but I used a few Knorr flavour pots to kick things along. If you don’t have stock pots, add about 6 cloves of crushed garlic and a tablespoon of dried Italian herbs such as oregano, basil, or parsley. I didn’t even have an onion in the house so I didn’t bother.

After a brief sear I pretty much chucked everything in a pot and left it to cook on a low oven for 14 hours. I would’ve used my slow cooker but it wasn’t big enough! Step forward my largest Le Creuset casserole dish to house the meat mound.

The rich meaty smell filled the house, the kind of smell that drives everyone mad with hunger, the kind of smell that brings people in off the street to investigate.

Happily there was some cheese and broccoli bake in the freezer too to make a mean topping. A bit like a shapeless lasagne al forno.

I could eat this sort of stew all day. Thankfully it made buckets of the stuff so much of it returned to the freezer for another day! You don’t have to make the absurd quantities I have. Scale it down to sensible proportions as required and you’ll have all the pork and lamb ragu you need. Make sure that pasta’s al dente and you add back to the sauce to combine for the last minute or so.

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slow cooked pork and lamb ragu

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 4 lamb shanks
  • 8 pork osso buco
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • 1 sprig thyme
  • 4 tins tomatoes
  • 1 litre beef stock
  • 1 Knorr garlic flavour pot
  • 1 Knorr mixed herbs flavour pot
  • 2 tablespoons good quality balsamic vinegar

Instructions

  • Set the oven to 100C. Get a (very) large casserole dish over a high heat. Season the meat on all sides and brown in batches, removing to one side. When all the meat has been seared, return the meat to the pan with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil and then transfer to the oven. Cook for 14 hours, or until the meats can be pushed apart with a spoon. Shred the meat and serve with pasta.

Want more slow-cooked lamb? Check out Nazima’s pulled lamb. Mouthwatering!

Or maybe Jeanne’s oxtail ragu. Immense!

Perhaps Helen’s more traditional beef ragu is up your street? Delicious!

Leftover ragu? Try Kavey’s recipe for stuffed courgettes. Brilliant!

Categories
food lamb leftovers polenta tomato

crunchy polenta shepherd’s pie

All the years I’ve been blogging, and I’ve never entered Belleau Kitchen’s random recipes challenge. It’s been running for a long old time, and I met Dom over three years ago during a Sainsbury’s campaign, for which I blogged a cottage pie. I decide to enter his challenge this month, and what do you know, I turn out a similar recipe for this as I did for that campaign – a crunchy polenta shepherd’s pie! The power of random, eh?

This recipe came out of The Best, a fairly under-the-radar show that I really loved. It starred Ben O’Donoghue, Paul Merrett and Silvana Franco. I’ve always loved Silvana’s recipes, and found her to be so inventive and accessible. Paul was approaching things in a fairly cheffy way, and Ben brought the Southern Hemisphere influences that set his dishes apart from the others. Dom’s Random Recipes theme for this month is books that need rehoming – I’ve had this book a long time, and while it’s full of great things, the useful recipe quota is used up. After 12 years I think I’ve extracted all the goodness from it. So here’s one last hurrah.

It’s Ben twists that are evident here with his crunchy polenta shepherd’s pie. Instead of a mash topping, the wonderful polenta is used in it’s twice cooked formed: first hob-cooked, then allowed to set so it can be cut into shapes ready for grilling.

The polenta recipe itself was slightly out – I would’ve added a dash of milk and a bunch more seasoning to liven it up, but the recipe challenge is all about doing “as is”! But the addition of tomatoes interweaved with the polenta slices gave lovely bursts of freshness that was very welcome. Under that it’s classic shepherd’s pie really, leftover lamb braised with mixed root veg. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

This recipe is entered into Belleau Kitchen’s Random Recipes #39 challenge.

 

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crunchy polenta shepherd’s pie

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 2 carrots diced
  • 3 celery sticks diced
  • 1 onion diced
  • 1 leek diced
  • 1 turnip diced
  • 1 potato peeled and diced
  • 3 garlic cloves finely chopped
  • 500 g leftover cooked lamb shredded
  • 1 tablespoon yeast extract
  • 1 vegetable stock cube crumbled
  • For the polenta:
  • 225 g instant polenta
  • 100 ml olive oil
  • 100 g parmesan
  • 4 ripe tomatoes sliced

Instructions

  • Heat some oil in a large casserole pan and saute the vegetables until golden brown. Add the lamb, yeast extract, stock cube and just enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes until thickened. Season to taste.
  • Meanwhile bring 1 litre water to the boil and add the polenta in a steady stream, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat and beat in the oil and parmesan. Pour into a baking tray until it is about 1.5cm thick, then allow to cool and set.
  • Preheat the oven to 200C. Spoon the lamb and veg into an ovenproof dish. Using a glass or pastry cutter, carve out circles of polenta and alternate slices of polenta and tomato on top. Grate over a little more parmesan and bake for 40 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbling.
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