Category: thyme

Categories
chicken food lemon salt thyme wine

heston blumenthal’s roast chicken

heston blumenthal's ultimate roast chicken

Heston’s latest series, How to Cook Like Heston, is probably the one that could finally convert the non-believers. It’s vintage Heston treading familiar recipes, but taking them just far enough, and just explaining enough to make them accessible for those that want to try. The best example of this is roast chicken: I’ve previously cooked his perfect roast chicken (from In Search of Perfection) and it’s a brilliant recipe. But despite its relative simplicity there are a couple of stages in it that could be intimidating: plunging into water a few times, trying to cook a whole chicken in a frying pan, and chicken wing butter. So I was intrigued to see him show an even further simplified version on the show.

The brining is still there; an absolute necessity in my book. A low solution of 6% keeps the meat moist without making it too strong and cure-like. The slow roasting is also there, “low and slow” as Heston puts it, and after a simple resting back into your hottest oven to finish off. For the roasting itself, you simply have to use a meat thermometer to be sure that it’s done. I recommend Salter’s Heston-branded one but any one will do. It is recommended that you take the meat to 75°C; Heston admits that but says 60°C gives you the perfect succulence. If you have bird of spotless provenance that would probably be fine but I took my mid-range supermarket bird to 70°C.

And it’s tremendous of course. In fact I’d possibly argue that the extra stages introduced by the Perfection version are unnecessary. You get a fabulously juicy, tasty chicken, plump with flavour and intense chickenness. It’s well worth giving a go once – it takes no more effort than a regular roast chicken, just the brining the night before and a bit longer time blocked out for the oven. If you love your Sunday roast chicken, you owe it to your dinner table to try this one out.

The link to the Channel 4 recipe is here. An even more developed and detailed version of the recipe is in the book Heston Blumenthal at Home.

Heston Blumenthal’s roast chicken (serves 4–6):

6% brine (I used 240g salt dissolved in 4 litres of water)

1.4kg chicken

1 lemon

1 bunch of thyme

125g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for rubbing into the skin

30ml dry white wine

  1. Remove the trussing from the chicken to allow it to cook more evenly then place it in a container. Pour over the brine ensuring that the chicken is submerged then place in the fridge overnight.
  2. Preheat the oven to 90ºC. Remove the chicken from the liquid, rinse with fresh water and pat dry with kitchen paper. Place on a wire rack over a baking tray.
  3. Roll and pierce the lemon then place it in the cavity of the bird with half the thyme. Rub some softened butter on top of the skin. Roast the chicken until the internal temperature in the thickest part of the breast is 60ºC (for mine to hit 70ºC took 2 hours 20 minutes but there’s so many factors involved you should check every half hour from about 2 hours onwards).
  4. Remove the chicken from the oven and allow to rest for 45 minutes. Turn the oven temperature as high as it will go. This is a good time to use the oven if you’re doing roast potatoes.
  5. In the meantime, melt the butter in a pan and add the wine and a few sprigs of thyme. Bring to the boil then remove the pan from the heat and use the melted butter to baste the chicken before browning. Grind over some black pepper.
  6. Once the resting time has elapsed, put the chicken back in the roasting tray and return it to the oven for approximately 10 minutes or until golden brown, taking care that it doesn’t burn.
  7. Once coloured, remove the chicken from the oven and carve. Serve with Heston’s perfect carrots and my perfect roast potatoes, a combination of methods including Heston’s.
Categories
mushroom onion porcini rice steak thyme

porcini steak with mushroom camargue rice

It’s an idea that’s bubbled around my head for ages so when I saw this recipe for porcini mushroom rump on Michelle’s site that was the kick I needed to follow it through. And it was everything I imagined. The concentration of dried porcini in beef provides an umami kick that’s hard to beat. Combined with nutty, stock-infused rice this is a real treat.

Porcini steak with mushroom camargue rice (serves 2):

Handful of dried porcini mushrooms

Couple of sprigs of thyme leaves

½ an anchovy

2 x 300g rib-eye steaks

200g Camargue red rice

500ml beef stock

10 chestnut mushrooms, sliced

1 onion, sliced

1 clove of garlic, crushed

½ a lemon

  1. Put the porcini and thyme in a food processor and chop it until it’s as fine as you can get it. Add the anchovy and some black pepper and blitz a little more. Rub all over the steaks with a splash of olive oil and leave to marinate for a couple of hours or as long as you’ve got.
  2. Get the beef stock on to boil and add the rice. Simmer for 30 minutes until the rice is tender.
  3. 15 minutes before the rice is ready, sweat the sliced mushrooms and onion in a frying pan with a little oil. Toss occasionally until these are tender, then add the garlic.
  4. To cook the steak, brush off any loose rub ingredients while you get a griddle pan reallllly hot. When it’s smokin’, lay the steak on and cook for a couple of minutes on each side. Make sure you rest the steaks well for beautiful texture.
  5. While the steak rests drain the rice and toss together with the mushrooms and onions. Add a blast of lemon juice to lift it up.
  6. Add a sprinkle of smoked sea salt and a dash of extra virgin olive oil to the steak and serve with the rice.
Categories
food garlic lamb thyme

rolled lamb breast

I’ve tried this before. I lovingly poached the lamb breast for a few hours, bubbling away in my treasured Le Creuset. I took the lid off, and FOOM. I was hit by a blast of pure mould. It was so utterly disgusting I left it in the conservatory overnight and scrubbed it a dozen times to get the smell out.

I consigned the recipe to the dustbin until I read this post by FoodUrchin. It spurred me on to try again. It was a Tristan Welch recipe after all, so how could it not be a winner?

And a winner it is. Lovely succulent lamb meat packed with bold flavours and a crisp outside. Also costs next to nothing, so try it now!

Rolled lamb breast:

500g lamb breast

1 large sprig of rosemary, leaves picked

1 large sprig of thyme, leaves picked

1 bulb of garlic, bashed up

1 litre chicken stock

  1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
  2. Bash the daylights out of the herbs and garlic and add salt and pepper. Add enough oil to make a spreadable slush.
  3. Lay out the lamb breast and spread the mush all over it. Roll up the lamb breast like a swiss roll and tie firmly with string.
  4. Bring the chicken stock to the boil and drop in the lamb. Leave to poach for around 3 hours, until a knife goes in easily. Allow the lamb to cool down in the stock.
  5. Bring the lamb out of the stock and wrap tightly in cling film. Refrigerate overnight to firm up.
  6. When you’re ready to serve, heat a little butter in a pan. Carve the lamb into thick slices and fry on either side for a couple of minutes until golden. Serve with minted new potatoes and wilted spinach.
Categories
food mushroom polenta rosemary thyme

mushroom and herb polenta

My poor snap is a billion times worse than the one in Ottolenghi’s new book, Plenty. I didn’t trust my polenta to keep still on a wooden board though. This is mighty good, powerful in flavour and the mushrooms give it a real meaty presence. The original calls for a whole bunch o’ mixed mushrooms, but to save foraging and potential fungal-induced death I used good old chestnut mushrooms supplemented with a jar of Sacla antipasto mushrooms. This takes a lot of graft out of it (not that it was difficult in the first place) however the pickled flavours can unbalance the seasoning, so taste well. Otherwise feel free to use any mushrooms you can find for an interesting mouthful.

Adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi

Mushroom and herb polenta (serves 2):

500ml vegetable stock

80g polenta

2 tablespoons rosemary, chopped

2 tablespoons thyme, chopped

50g butter, melted

50g parmesan, grated

200g chestnut mushrooms

200g jar antipasto mushrooms

1 clove garlic, grated

1 tablespoon truffle oil

100g comté, grated

  1. Get some oil heated in a pan and begin frying the chestnut mushrooms. Don’t move them too much, let them colour. Let them cook down for about ten minutes, until they have some give when prodded.
  2. Get the grill on hot while you make the polenta. Bring the stock to the boil and whisk in the polenta in a steady stream. Keep whisking until the polenta starts to come away from the edge of the pan. If you’re using old-school polenta this will take a ruddy lifetime. Use the quick-cook stuff and it will take about 3 minutes.
  3. Take the polenta off the heat and beat in the parmesan, butter and half the herbs. Spread into a baking dish into an even layer and pop under the grill for a minute. Let’s return to the mushrooms.
  4. Add the garlic, fry for a minute and then add the remaining herbs and mushrooms. Give it a good stir to warm everything through and taste for seasoning. Add the truffle oil. Get the polenta out, pour the mushrooms on top and grate a thin layer of comté over. Return to the grill and cook for another minute or two until the cheese bubbles.
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