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food lamb pork rosemary stock thyme tomato

slow cooked pork and lamb ragu

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
bread chicken food tomato

incredible chicken sandwich

He takes a lot of flak, but I like Valentine Warner. I certainly like his recipes, which are usually easy to make, easy to eat and make you think “I think I’m going to give that a go…”

His latest book, What To Eat Next, is packed with these types of recipes. Duck legs with cucumber, spicy cracked crab claws, deep-fried hotate scallops… all eagerly plastered with post-it notes ready for the to-cook pile. Lots of these are interesting and comforting, with plenty of flavour. A few of the recipes are a little bit filler – do we need a listed recipe for quiche lorraine in 2014? – but the majority are really worth it. I particularly enjoyed his steak sauce, bursting with umami-rich ingredients like tomato ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. Polenta with kale and porcini was also a delight.

One big area of the book letting it down is the desserts, many of which are so simple as to be pointless. It’s a part of the book easily skipped though, as there’s only 15 pudding recipes.

Here’s my take on one of the recipes from his book, a chicken sandwich with slow roast tomatoes and coleslaw. It’s really moreish and absolutely delicious. Take it into work the next day and be the envy of your colleagues. The slow roast tomatoes can be made in advance, and in quantity. Can’t be bothered? Put them in a high oven for 30 minutes. Not as rich and sweet, but nearly as good.

Click here to buy Valentine Warner’s What To Eat Next on Amazon

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incredible chicken sandwich

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • For the slow-roasted tomatoes:
  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon red wine veingar
  • Small knob of butter for each tomato
  • Pinch dried thyme
  • For the coleslaw:
  • 1/2 white cabbage
  • 2 carrots peeled
  • 1 red onion peeled
  • 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard
  • Lemon juice to taste
  • For the sandwich:
  • 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs
  • 2 gherkins sliced
  • 2 ciabatta rolls

Instructions

  • For the tomatoes, preheat the oven to 100C. Halve the tomatoes and place cut side up on a baking tray. Dot with sugar, vinegar, thyme and butter and a little salt and pepper. Roast for 4 hours or until soft and sticky. Allow to cool in their juices.
  • Season the chicken all over and squash out flat. Fry in butter until crisp and browned on one side, then flip and repeat.
  • Meanwhile, shred the coleslaw veg in a food processor. Combine with mayo, mustards and lemon juice along with salt until it tastes yummy.
  • Toast your ciabatta on the cut side. Add the chicken, gherkins, tomatoes and a blob of coleslaw. Devour, and don't forget to wipe your chin.

 

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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.
Categories
cheese food polenta pork tomato

sous vide pork osso buco with crispy polenta

I’ve been mucking about almost constantly with my Sous Vide Supreme since unpacking it the other week. Pretty much every day the old silver box has been silently ticking away, gently cooking dinner. I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Following on from steak and gammon, I read just about every post by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt on sous vide and attacked a battery of different recipes. First up were some lamb shanks, courtesy of Donald Russell. I cooked them at 60°C for 48 hours, then briefly browned in a searing hot pan. I have to say I didn’t particularly enjoy them. The texture was a chalky, with a strong offal flavour.  However the sauce was dynamite, the cooking juices reduced down with a little port made for a spoon-licking jus.

On with pork chops. After a much briefer 1 hour bath followed by quick sear (you get used to this pattern) I tucked into them. They were perfect…  But not substantially better than pan fried. And on the downside you don’t get crispy, wobbly fat to bite into, just hard rind. I was losing faith a bit.

Lamb leg steaks marinated with rosemary for 90 minutes @ 57°C, well now we’re getting somewhere. Plump and tender with a deep lamby flavour. Helped along by a sauce of white wine reduction and mushrooms this really hit the spot.

I’m starting to find a groove with sous vide. For me what works is thick, traditionally quick-cook meats. You get a fuller, deeper meat flavour and it’s really satisfying. I‘m trying chicken breast later this week and I think It’s going to be a winner. I’m also seeing a lot of flavour imparted from dried herbs – the humidity seems to favour those often dried grassy bits and engorge them with taste. But working the slower casserole-style cuts? I’m not yet convinced. 

This recipe was my most successful long soak. Meaty pork osso buco, giving off plenty of luscious meat juices for gravy. Unlike it’s beefy cousin, the pork osso buco has a lighter, cleaner taste and a chicken-like texture. To offset this I added some crispy polenta spiked with chunks of cheese and tomato. Adding a veg-packed sauce to be mopped up meant clean plates all round.

I was given a Sous Vide Supreme to try, along with meat from Donald Russell. There’s a competition a-coming in a few days, more details here.

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pork osso buco with crispy polenta

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 4 pork osso buco steaks
  • Pinch dried oregano
  • 1 carrot peeled and finely diced
  • 1 onion peeled and finely diced
  • 1/2 leek diced
  • 1 garlic clove crushed
  • 1 bouquet garni
  • 400 ml chicken stock
  • 140 g dry polenta
  • 50 g cheddar diced
  • 5 sun dried tomatoes sliced

Instructions

  • Sprinkle the oregano over the steaks, along with a little seasoning. Vacuum seal and cook at 60C for 48 hours.
  • An hour before the osso buco is ready, get 125ml water in a saucepan and get boiling. Whisk in the polenta, pouring in a smooth stream. Add a pinch of salt and cook for another minute until thick. Stir in the cheese and tomato, then pour into an oiled baking dish. Put aside for a moment.
  • Over a gentle heat in a little butter fry the mirepoix. Add the stock and bouquet garni and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the herbs and blitz with a hand blender, and keep warm whilst everything else finishes.
  • Get the grill on high and a pan on a high heat. Grill the polenta for around 10 minutes until crisp on top. Remove the osso buco and pour the cooking juices into the sauce. Pan fry the osso buco quickly on all sides until browned. Serve with slices of crisp polenta and some green beans.
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