Category: orange

Categories
duck food orange rosemary salt star anise

potted duck

It’s been something of a duck week. I nearly picked up two duck breasts at the weekend, but when they cost £7 and a whole duck cost £8, it seemed a false economy (as buying meat portions almost always is). So after enjoying some lovely roasted duck breasts with red wine sauce and sauté potatoes, what to do with the rest of the duck?

Heston had a bloomin’ good suggestion in Heston at Home: potted duck. Being a Heston recipe, it has quite a few stages of curing and confiting, and I got bored waiting for it so tossed aside the smoking stage at the end. I can’t say I miss it; there’s mountains of flavours rolling along in waves as you munch down through rich, soft meat.

If you have some duck legs knocking about – and let’s face it, who hasn’t… – you could do much worse than piling this into a nearby kilner jar. So here’s what I did based on Heston’s recipe, smoking stage removed and all.

Potted duck (can serve about 8, depending on how generous you are – it’s pretty rich):

9 star anise

1 cinnamon stick

5 black peppercorns

2 bay leaves

Zest of 1 orange

60g salt

2 duck legs

500g duck fat

2 sprigs of rosemary

2 cloves of garlic

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the star anise, cinnamon, peppercorns and bay leaves on a baking tray and roast for 5 minutes. Tip the lot into a pestle and mortar with the salt and orange and pound to dust. Rub all over the duck legs, store in a sealed container and refrigerate overnight.
  2. The next day, put your slow cooker on low. Add the duck fat, rosemary and garlic and allow to melt. Thoroughly rinse the duck legs and pat dry. Add to the slow cooker and top up with oil if required to cover the legs. Slow cook for 18 hours.
  3. Remove the duck legs from the fat and shred with two forks. Pack into a ramekin or kilner jar, and pour over a little of the cooking fat (save the rest for roast potatoes or pork belly). Refrigerate for a couple of hours then serve with your best toast, pickles and chutney (I used a fig chutney like this).
Categories
food orange salt turkey

dry-brined turkey with orange

The bird only fit for one month of the year is back! December is of course month of the turkey (I’ve tried to buy a turkey at other points in the year and it costs a fortune).

I’d been very pleased with brining a whole turkey last year and was all set to do the same again. Just as I filled my enormous container ready to bath, I started flicking through a few online articles just for any interesting ideas. I came across this article comparing brining techniques by the impressive J. Kenji López-Alt. Most surprisingly of all, he advocated so-called “dry-brining” based on some detailed research. Crucially, you get an easy recipe that promotes succulence and flavour without diluting the turkey taste. And this is certainly what you get. The turkey comes out crisp, tasty and moist and is easily the best way to eat it. Brilliant.

I combined it here with some orange flavourings to bring out the best of the meat and add a festive zing. It could easily be adapted with another citrus fruit or left out altogether. I’ve also paired it with Jamie Oliver’s sensational get-ahead gravy with some turbo-charging flavours, which is definitely becoming an annual tradition in my house.

Many thanks to Jen at GolinHarris for the turkey and seasonal ingredients. The turkey was an excellent Seldom Seen bird and was truly delicious.

Dry-brined turkey with orange (serves millions, as turkey always does):

For the gravy:

1kg chicken wings / drumsticks etc

1 bay leaf

1 sprig rosemary

1 onion, quartered

1 celery stick, chopped

1 glass white wine

1 tablespoon flour

1 Knorr chicken stock pot

For the turkey:

5kg turkey

Table salt

1 large orange

  1. The gravy can be made well in advance and frozen until required. To make this, preheat the oven to 180°C. Add the chicken pieces, herbs and vegetables and roast for an hour. Bring on to the hob over a medium heat and add the wine. Scrape away at all the crusty goodness on the bottom of the roasting tray for a minute and then shake over the flour. Stir well for a further couple of minutes, and then add the stock pot and enough boiling water to cover. Bring to the boil and then simmer for another 30 minutes, before straining into a freezer bag. Freeze until needed.
  2. For the turkey, untie the turkey and remove all the gubbins you get with it. Dust the turkey generously with salt so there is a fine layer over all of it. Grate the zest of the orange liberally all over too (retain the orange halves). Cover loosely with a tea-towel and put in the fridge overnight to let the salt do its magic.
  3. The next day preheat the oven to 180°C. Remove the turkey from the fridge and remove the excess salt – do not rinse it under the tap as you will be losing flavour here. Instead use a damp kitchen towel to wipe off the excess. Cut the orange as necessary and stuff inside the cavity. Grind over plenty of pepper and put in the oven.
  4. Meanwhile, in a pan add turkey trimmings, giblets etc and cover with water. Simmer for 45 minutes to make a light turkey stock.
  5. After an hour and a half, check the turkey temperature at various points of the bird, looking for it to go over 70°C. Check every half hour until ready, and cover well to rest before carving.
  6. While the turkey rests, warm up the gravy. Add resting juices from the turkey, any interesting bits from the resting, and add the turkey stock. Taste and adjust seasoning as required. Carve the turkey and serve with lashings of gravy, and of course plenty of roast potatoes.
Categories
chilli dates food olives orange pine nuts

olives with dates, orange and chilli

When someone says “can you do something with these olives?” I don’ t need asking twice. Their bittersweet bite and salty character give me lots to work with, and I’ll happily eat them every day of the week. Olives from Spain have asked me to come up with a marinade or two, and this is my favourite creation.

The filling is inspired by ma’amoul, a date-filled cookie from the middle east. It is heavy with dates and nuts, although I went for pine nuts here as opposed to the standard walnuts. Just to make sure we knew we’re on savoury territory, red wine vinegar and chilli keep it on track. It’s sweet, spicy, savoury, and surprising.

The quantities below will make a portion of the marinade base. You can then blend a part of it with olive oil to make a loose drizzle. The rest can make further olive mix, or be spread over white meats before grilling or roasting.

Olives with dates, orange and chilli:

4 Medjool dates, stoned

A large pinch of chilli flakes

1 teaspoon pine nuts

Zest of half an orange

Maldon sea salt

Red wine vinegar

Spanish extra virgin olive oil

Spanish green olives

  1. Put the dates, chilli, pine nuts, orange and a pinch of sea salt in a food processor and whizz to a paste. Add a squirt of orange juice, a big splash of olive oil and a dash of red wine vinegar. Mix a little more and then taste. You will have to find a good balance of spicy, sharp and sweet with the chilli, vinegar and orange.
  2. To make the marinade, put a tablespoon of the mixture into a small bowl and blend with a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the olives and macerate uncovered for an hour before eating. Garnish with fresh pine nuts.
Categories
cake food lemon orange polenta

revani

I spotted this little gem on the pages of an Ottolenghi article in Waitrose magazine and made it immediately: it’s a squidgy and sweet Turkish cake. Surfing around it seems to be a very popular and traditional dish and when you taste it it’s not hard to see why. It’s kind of like a drizzle cake in that you bake a sponge, then slice it up and pour over a syrup while it cools. And definitely follow Yotam’s advice: it improves immeasurably overnight as the cake soaks up more and more of the lush, sweet juice. Perfect with a cup of tea.

You are supposed to use marmalade in the batter but I used some leftover orange jelly.

You know the other clever bit? Cutting the cake into diamonds. No messing about with even slices, just merry little diamonds which are easy to eat and cute for the virtue of being different.

Revani (makes about a 20 piece cake if cut into diamonds):

5 eggs, separated

100g caster sugar

50g plain flour

100g semolina

Zest of 1 orange

50g butter, melted

50g marmalade / jelly

For the syrup:

250g caster sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 orange, halved (the one you zested above)

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 21cm springform tin and line with greaseproof paper. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until pale and then incorporate the flour, semolina, pinch of salt, zest, butter and marmalade. Continue beating until smooth.
  2. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and then gradually fold into the batter. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
  3. While the cake is in the oven make the syrup. Put all the ingredients in a saucepan with 300ml water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.
  4. While the cake is still warm and in the tin, slice it into diamond shapes about 3cm wide. Pour the syrup over the cake – it will look like too much but it will take it all! – and leave to cool and let the cake soak up the juice. You can eat it straight away but it’s so much better if left overnight.
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