Aubergine & Eggplant

The joys of frozen lemongrass

 

I love making a good thai curry, but I find having the necessary ingredients around for a truly good one a bit of pain. I can never just rustle one up without a trip to fairly large local shop. I mean, why bother if you're not going to dump in some lime leaves and lemongrass right?

I've inherited my mother's healthy fear/irritation/unwillingness to pay for pre-packaged and cut up ingredients. However, I am now officially in love with these frozen chopped up lime leaves and lemongrass. There's also chopped up garlic and shallots in the same line, and I've got them all in my freezer. For £1.20 or so it's really worth it, considering I never get through fresh lemongrass before it goes soggy in my fridge and I've paid at least that.

Taking it slow

I've always wanted a casserole dish. Hang on, when I say casserole, I mean what some call a dutch oven, a camp oven or a cocotte. 

As much as I wanted a lovely flame red Le Creuset, I just can't afford it, so Ikea came to the rescue with a nice blue one half the price. It's first day in our house it's busy braising some lamb shanks. I'm not as familiar with this slow cooking recipes as I've never had the equipment, so I started simply with this recipe from Anthony Worrall Thompson to get the quantities right. I know everyone goes on about how these cuts are cheaper, but I have to admit I was really surprised to get two nice sized shanks from Waitrose for £5. And boy have I fallen in love....

The basic recipe is here. I think next I'll try this one for Braised Lamb Shanks with Ginger and Five Spice. Any other slow cooked casserole recipes I should try?

Dennis' Cornbread

  When I was a kid, weekend mornings meant CBC Radio and my dad in the kitchen making either waffles or cornbread. My dad was a refiner of recipes, rather than a restless cook like me. He would work on his versions of cornbread, jerk marinade and coconut rice until he had it perfect.

Now cornbread is a contentious issue I know, everyone having opinions about yeast-raised or not, with chili pepper bits or not. I don't feel particularly concerned with these arguments as my cornbread was passed down through my dad's Jamaican family and I grew up in Canada, not exactly a hotbed of cornbread activity - so it's not like there were arguments about what is or is not cornbread in my frozen neck of the woods.

So to me, this is cornbread... made into muffins or in a square glass dish. Serve it warm with a bit of butter and honey drizzled on top. Recipe after the bump.

The Perfect Yorkshire Pudding

It was with a great amount of giggling that I read Tim Hayward's blog post about the science of Yorkshire pudding creation, as I too have spent time in a PR agency and know the kind of 'research' quoted in press releases... generally a quick shout around the office for favourite holiday destinations, restaurants in London or whatever.

So I decided to test out this proper scientific answer to the best Yorkshire pudding and I have to say it was minimum fuss, close to nothing ingredient-wise and excellent results. I would use even less fat than I did this time, which was about a tablespoon per muffin cup, and be patient. Really really wait 10-15 minutes. I couldn't handle the pressure and caved after barely 10 minutes and didn't get quite the requisite height.

Here you are, reposted in the name of science:

The Royal Society of Chemistry Yorkshire Pudding 

Ingredients

Tablespoon and a half of plain flour

1 egg

Half milk, half water to make a thin batter

Half a teaspoon of salt.

Method

Put flour in a bowl, make a well in the middle, add the egg, stir until the two are combined then start gradually adding the milk and water combining as you go.

Add the liquid until the batter is a smooth and thin consistency.

Stir in half teaspoon of salt and leave to stand for 10 minutes

Put beef dripping into Yorkshire pudding tins or into one large tin but don't use too much fat.

Put into hot oven until the fat starts to smoke.

Give the batter a final stir and pour into the tin or tins.

Place in hot oven until well risen - should take 10 to 15 minutes.

Three ingredients, two pots

One pot, if you can manage to cook rice in a frying pan. Personally, I wouldn’t go there. You’d have to take the rice out to cook the beef anyway, so that would be one pot and a bowl. Forget it, two pots.

We called this Hamburger and Rice when I was growing up. No cutsey euphemisms and actually none needed. It’s straight on comfort food.  It’s simple, nutritious, and any kid will eat this – promise.

It's ground beef [mince], tomato sauce, and rice, that's it. Put the rice on, and while it’s cooking, brown the beef. Add Italian seasoning and the tomato sauce to the beef and simmer a bit, and then add the cooked rice when it’s ready. Proportions are to your own taste, I like it a bit on the runny side. No ‘eeeuuuw’; wait till you taste it.

These days I use extra lean ground beef and yesterday, fearing that I had found a way to screw up the simplest recipe on earth, I used brown rice. Sigh. H& R for dinner and the world tilted back into place- I’ll bet you were wondering why that had happened. 

When I was growing up it was one of the few things we would eat on Hallowe’en night. And you had to eat before you could put your costume on and go begging for candy from the neighbours. It was a Mom Rule. No running up and down people’s walks dressed like a pumpkin until you’d had your dinner.

The other good thing about H&R is that I got to pass on “ the method” to Erin.
The right way to eat it. When you’re little it always seems to arrive on your plate way too hot to eat. And because you’re little, you are really, really hungry. Dilemma.

The trick is to flatten it out on your plate till it’s almost level and then make “roads” in it with your carrot sticks. Straight across one way and then back across at an angle, and then you can make a bunch of shorter ones if you’re really getting into municipal planning.

By the time you’ve done this with enough care to keep the rice bits from falling off the plate, it’s cool enough to start eating around the edges of your roads. Erin watched in complete fascination the first time I showed her this. Big brown eyes looking at me in amazement; license to play with food.

When I’ve eaten too much rich food or just eaten out too often and crave something simple, this is at the top of my list. Well right under sushi. And steak.

Warm Lemon Curd Pudding

Today has been a thoroughly ugly day outside in London. It's felt like 7pm, even at noon, and the rain has been dumping down all day. I came home and spent an age practising the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante.

So it's time for a warm sunny lemon pudding.

My mum used to make this for me when I was little, and she had another name for it, but the Brit version I came across is called Lemon Self-Saucing Pudding. Which sounds a bit disgusting to me... more like a DIY caulking gun than the light and fluffy thing with tart curd nestling at the bottom. Recipe after the bump.

Fresh

Historically speaking, I have always hated peas. In company I will swallow whatever ends up on my fork, but in private I have no trouble dedicating whatever time it takes to pry little green pellets out of a frozen dinner before I put it in the microwave.

So snow peas [mange-tout] were an abject lesson in "never say never"  for me, and the first sugar snap pea was an even more embarrassing crow-eating event.They are both divine. Who knew?

When snow peas were suddenly available only in little plastic envelopes shipped all the way from China, I stopped buying them. Sad. And incomprehensible. Snow peas are so easy to grow, why don't we have local ones?

In protest I planted my own this summer, both snow peas and sugar snaps. And on the why-stop-there principle, I also planted spinach (yum, green teeth), scarlet runner beans, carrots, tomatoes and zucchini. My luck ran out after the beans, but never mind.

With very little effort of my own, I had vegetables. Sweet, tender, spinach – enough to share with friends. Beans big enough to hold up a tent. And oh my gawd the peas. On my knees, religious experience, this is what we're supposed to be eating, peas. Humbling, move me to say thank you to the pea vines, peas.There is only one word I can think of to describe how they actually tasted– fresh.

I'd take a picture, but I've eaten them all.

Autumn fish stew

Sometimes in the dark days of early November, when I'm still getting used to the early nights and digging for scarves and toques at the back of the hall closet, I find myself eating loads of red meat. I crave the substansial nature of a bit of seared cow.

I have to take myself by the hand and go to the fish section, though nothing ever looks hefty enough for those cold winter evenings.

Enter the humble fish stew.

I had two halibut steaks sitting in my freezer, ordered in a moment of halibut-ambivalence amnesia from those nice Ocado people. Hence why they've been lurking there ever since.

A half-hearted recipe search later, and I came up with this Sophie Grigson recipe. I wasn't initially convinced, as the tomatoes looked like they'd give me heartburn and it sounded slightly boring and labour intensive to boot. But after some improvised tweakage (you want me to dry orange peel for HOW many days??), it was incredible. Recipe after the bump.

Good morning

Porridge with maple syrup and pecans

Crunchy thyme and pancetta pork fillet with roast carrots

Some self-flagellating urge took hold of me this evening, to think I could invent a new dish, with a cut of meat I've not cooked with before, slightly less than an hour to go before my hairdresser arrives.

Yes, well, why do things slowly when you can freak out and do it quickly with an absurdly short time limit.

So. I quick google revealed most people either cut their pork fillets into medallions or roast the whole thing. Delia says a pork fillet comes from the lower back of the pig, and the Pork Marketing Board has a slightly crazy looking diagram about where all the cuts come from, in case you're curious.

I decided to go for the roasting approach, and then went a little crazy with wrapping it up. I had some nice pancetta crying out for a purpose, fresh thyme and crunchy pre-made breadcrumbs. And a shedload of carrots.

Crunchy thyme and pancetta pork fillet with roast carrots
30g dry breadcrumbs
70g pancetta
380g pork fillet
handful fresh thyme
Carrots, sliced into batons
Olive oil
Maldon salt, or kosher salt

1. Dump the carrot batons into a casserole dish or similar, just try and get them into a single-ish layer. Toss with some olive oil and the Maldon salt. Bung into a preheated oven at 220ºC for about 30-40 minutes. You'll want to pull them out halfway through and push them around so they're evenly cooked. Keep an eye on them, depending on the size of your batons it may take more or less time. They will start to look all caramelised and begin to blister when they're finished.

2. While the carrots get going, mix your breadcrumbs with the fresh thyme on plate large enough to accommodate your pork fillet (I didn't, and ended up with a quarter of my breadcrumbs on the floor, but a helpful little terrier-shaped vacuum cleaner hoovered them up for me). Then, wrap your pork fillet with the pancetta, covering the whole thing. Press the fillet in the breadcrumb mixture firmly, flip it over (gently!) and press again. If you're not getting good coverage, try using your hands to dump the breadcrumbs on top and push down with your fingers. It should be fully covered now.

3. Put the carrot dish on the top shelf and push it to the back, putting the pork on a cookie sheet in the middle shelf. You probably don't have to take it out and rotate it halfway through, as I have a crazy oven, but there you are.Leave it in there for about 35 minutes, depending on how done you'd like your meat, and how big the fillet is.

4. Let it rest for 10 minutes. No really, don't touch it. After you've waited 10 minutes (really, I mean it) slice it into medallions and serve with the roasted carrots.

Post-cooking note: it tasted wonderful, but the outer crust wasn't as crispy as I would like. Maybe try browning the fillet wrapped in pancetta briefly in a pan first, getting rid of some of the fat, then rolling in breadcrumbs, then baking, for a shorter period of time.