12 posts tagged “cooking”

This Halloween I'll be drinking McNuggetinis

Also, the result of an unexpectedly free Sunday

Chilli Tomato Jam

I mentioned that I made a stuffed chicken dish last night and someone asked for the recipe. And I haven't Voxed about cooking for a while - mostly because I don't really seem to have done any.

This is a moderately time consuming dish - the actual steps aren't that long or complicated but there's cooking and resting times to consider so I think it took about an hour and a half in total (although I wasn't really hustling, more watching old episodes of the West Wing).

First off, I blitzed about a handful of shelled pistachios in the blender until they were coarsely chopped. I have wondered what they'd be like whole or halved - I think the texture contrast would  be really interesting. But this worked just fine and the texture was good so I'm not complaining. Then I mixed them in with about half a pound of sausage meat (mild italian for the Americans following along at home) and some finely chopped flat leaf parsley and let it all rest (since mixing up the sausage meat slightly cooks the fat and tissue in the sausage meat).

Meanwhile I got 4 sheets of baking foil and drizzled some olive oil on and then seasoned them fairly generously. Then I laid down 4 slices of prosciutto (parma ham or streaky bacon would work just as well) on each so that they were overlapping (tip: try and make the pieces lie the same way with the uneven edge of the next slice overlapping the solid edge of the previous slice) and set the sheets aside.

Then I took 4 large chicken breasts and cut them almost all the way through horizontally but length ways like a baguette and then took a cigar of the sausage and pistachio mix and laid it down the middle before folding the whole thing back up and laying it down - cut side facing the prosciutto. Then I rolled the foil up into a tube, making sure the ham was overlapping, and twisted the ends in opposite directions until it was a nice, tight wrap.

I poached the 4 parcels for about 20-25 minutes (it's quite forgiving) then removed them from the water and chilled them in the fridge (beware: putting hot things in the fridge raises the ambient temperature in there) for another 20-30 minutes.

Then I took each one, carefully unwrapped it and seared it off in a hot pan - rotating frequently until the ham was crispy and there was some nice colour on everything.

After that, I let them rest for 5 minutes and then sliced them thickly at an angle and they came out looking like this

Chicken stuffed with Sausage and Pistachio

 
The picture doesn't quite do it justice  - the stuffing had a really nice vibrant green to it.

I deglazed the pan with some port (marsala or sherry would probably also work), reduce it, added some of the poaching water and reduced again (chicken stock would probably have worked better).

This is the first time I've ever done it and it came out really well - the chicken was moist (although I think it could have benefited from maybe 5 minutes less poaching time - I missed the buzzer going by accident) and the stuffing and ham complemented the flavours perfectly. I'd like to play around with some variations - maybe throw in some finely diced dried apricots or try a version with walnut and celery stuffing and wrapped in turkey bacon for my Kosher friends. Feta and toasted pine nuts would probably work as well.

A single breast easily fed one hungry person - in fact with a more substantial side dish such as buttered noodles or mashed potato or polenta (I served them on a bed of sauteed mushrooms with spring green and avocado salad) one breast could do 2 people.

We washed it down with some excellent Piper Heidsiecke which I am delighted to report goes excellently. With anything, really.

I actually cooked this risotto at the same time as the crab linguine but didn't actually eat it until last night. However, if anything, it suffered more from a lack of attention to ingredients, or, in fact, anything that wasn't Gossip Girl.

This was actually supposed to be my favourite risotto from Casa Del Gregorio in Penge - Spicy prawns with Chestnut mushrooms which is usually fool proof to cook and unbelievably moreish. There's a recipe here but I failed in several respects.

First off, not only did I not have any garlic but neither did I have any of the following

• White Wine
• Onions
• Mushroom
• Cream
  

Which is somewhat of a drawback when making a risotto. In my defence I could have sworn I had all of these (in fact, I did have the mushrooms but despite checking on them in the night before they had turned horrible and slimy in between).

Undeterred I plunged on.

First off, I toasted the rice

Arborio rice toasting

and started ladling in the stock a bit at a time. Instead of white wine I used a glass of red reasoning that paprika and red wine are a classic combination in spanish cooking and so why the hell not.

Stock photo (oh god that's a bad pun)

Meanwhile I seared the large prawns

Prawns

Then chucked in the smaller bay shrimp and some smoked paprika.

More prawns

Now this is where semi-fatal mistake #1 was made. Usually you'd cook the mushrooms first at which point, diverging from the menu, I add the paprika. In doing so it's allowed to cook which gets rid of the bitter, raw taste. Then I add the prawns and wait for them to cook before adding a touch of cream and upending the whole lot into the risotto.

This time however the prawns were left cooking a little long whilst the paprika cooked and soaked in. This would have been ok for the large prawns but not so much for the small bay shrimp which went a little mushy with over cooking.

It was also at this point that I discovered that i didn't have any cream - or more precisely that the cream I had looked and smelled decidely dodgy.

I then perpetrated semi fatal mistake #2. Instead of just not using cream I tried to use some milk - reasoning that it was fairly fatty. However it's no where near the consistency of cream and, not only that, I slipped and poured too much in. I tried to reduce the mixture but Iwas torn between that or over cooking the prawns (even more).

Eventually I mixed them all together

Prawn and paprika risotto

If last night's cooking was one of the PSA's at the end of GI Joe episodes then the lesson would have been "KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE". Or, less abstractly, "Pay attention when you're  buying your ingredients". Then later "Pay attention when you're cooking, taste everything and stop getting distracted by Entourage".

So, the first two mistakes of the evening were realising that I didn't have any fresh garlic or olive oil. Using avocado oil may be healthier but it has a lighter flavour and, let's be clear about this, dried garlic flakes just aren't up to the job at hand. Never the less, I resolved to man up and knuckle down to the task at hand. After getting a beer from the fridge.

Anyway - finely diced chilli, grated lemon zest, and garlic flakes simmering over a low heat in some oil for about 20 minutes

Lemon, garlic and chilli

I slightly overdid the lemon and a stronger garlic taste would have really helped but it made the kitchen smell fantastic.

Then, in with some crab. This was the next mistake - I'd accidentally picked up crab claw meat rather than white meat. Normally I love claw meat - it's a much meatier, "crabbier" flavour which is great for stuff like ravioli or crab mayonnaise but here I needed a more delicate touch.

In with the claw. THE CLAW!

I warmed it through and then added some chopped flat leaf parsley (the parsley only got added then so that it wouldn't discolour in the heat).

Crab tastic

Finally, I dumped the linguine in with a couple of tablespoons of the pasta water and checked the seasoning.
 
I'm trying to be more careful with stuff like this - my taste veers towards the salty, especially over here where quite a lot of things are much sweeter - but it definitely needed salt. I really miss easy access to Maldon Sea Salt - I know that Jeffrey Steingarten has debunked a lot of the myths about fancy salts but I love the flaky texture of Maldon which would have given the dish a nice crunch.
 

Final result

Next time I definitely want to do it with white crab meat. Also, cutting down on the lemon at the start would allow me to squeeze some fresh lemon on  at the end which would really lift the dish and make it more bright and fresh.

Also, I'm pondering if some garlicky breadcrumbs sprinkled through it would give it a little bit of texture variation.

Either way, a dead easy dish and, if you use fresh garlic (which wouldn't require simmering for quite so long) probably cookable in the time it takes for the (dried) pasta to cook.
 

p.s The Claw!

On a whim I picked up some Pork Tenderloin on the way home yesterday because, let's face it, isn't life essentially meaningless without chunks of raw swine. The phrase "existential void" is lurking, sullenly on my frontal lobes. Full ahead I thought, cheerfully, and DAMN the trichinosis.

Not that I had any idea what to do with it of course, but I determinedly poured myself a glass of vino and perused my oddly lopsided spice rack (15 different types of salt, no chilli powder. You get the picture).

The pork came in two loins and so I whipped up a marinade of garlic, cayenne, orange juice, coffee and cocoa powder and let both slabs luxuriate in them for 15 minutes whilst I set the oven and made sure that bottle knew who's boss. It's not for nothing that I studied at the Keith Floyd School of cooking.

I took one of the loins and pan roasted it then stuck the pan in the oven with some chunks of onions for about 20 minutes. And it came out looking like this

Sliced Pork Tenderloin

After resting for 15 minutes (during which time I gave the bottle another stern talking to) I plated it up with a avocado and spring green salad and some rice

Plated Pork Tenderloin

If you can make it out in this incredible dark photo then the black morass at the top left is the caramelised onions which turned out even better than I'd expected - they'd really picked up the spices and the smokiness from the coffee and chocolate.

And damn tasty it was too - moist but with a crispy crust. The marinade turned out really well too considering it was largely a random collection of whatever I had in my cupboard ("Hmm, mincemeat, maybe that will work").

And what happened to the other tenderloin you might be asking? Or might not to be honest. You might also be sitting in front of your computer asking the world at large loudly who this bloke is and why he keeps taking bad photos of food. Or more philisophical questions like "If omnipotence is defined as the ability to do anything then surely that must include the ability to create something that can't be done?" or "Is that nagging in my soul a reaction to the vapid consumerism of everyday life or just that I've got the munchies?". Either way, I recommend having more wine. Not my wine of course, get your own you stingy bastard, and, oh, I seemed to have finished mine anyway. Can I have some of yours?

Anyway, the other loin. I chopped it up into knuckle sized chunks which, having marinaded in the same sauce, I placed lovingly but firmly in a roasting pan with more roughly chopped onion and then covered with foil. When the first loin (do keep up) came out of the oven I turned the temperature right down and then stuck the second loin in for, oooh, a couple of hours. The nice thing about dishes like this is that you could even do it for longer - things just keep getting more tender. or burn eventually but the margin of error is quite large.

It ended up looking like this

Slow roasted Pork Tenderloin

It was so tender that even transferring it to the bowl caused it to fall apart. It's currently sitting in my fridge until I figure out what to do with it - possibly tacos or over more rice tonight.

Or I could make a meatshake out of it. Mmm.

More bad food photography - I don't know if it's the stabiliser in my camera failing or the DTs are finally catching up with me but these came out quite blurry.

That said - this ratatouille (old-style, no aubergine eggplant) came out spectacularly well. One doesn't get the opportunity to throw around word bombs like "unctuous" much but hot damn - the spirit of Elizabeth David was moving through me on Sunday night. I feel compelled to stand up in the street and WITNESS, brothers and sisters, because surely the only way to salvation is through this ratatouille. If possible it was even better the next day. I wept. Openly and without shame. Seriously.

Ratatouille

I should therefore be critical about the lamb which was more hit and miss. I cleaned up the rib bones a little to make them more 'french' but then was too lazy to wrap them in tin-foil to keep them pristine and pure, which is the way that god and Gordon intended.

Lamb1

I did them for about 20 minutes at 200°C (400°F) then glazed them with a mixture of dissolved brown sugar and dijon mustard and put them back in for about 10 minutes (or until the tip of the knife I stuck in came out warm to the touch on my tongue)  and they were pretty perfectly cooked - pink in the middle chops and crusty on the outside as per the teachings of Friar Gary of Rhodes.

Lamb2

The glaze however - wasn't in love. It was a bit of a compromise since I didn't have any honey and so made a syrup with demerara sugar (light brown) when I would have preferred muscavado (dark brown). I also didn't have any English Mustard or even any proper Djion and had to make do with the squeezy bottle of djion in the fridge. Which turned out to contain high-fructose corn syrup (WHY?!) which gave the glaze a slightly sickly undertone. The Housemate loved it though so either a) I'm being way too self critical or b) He's become immune to the evils of HFCS. Or, I suppose d) He's been brainwashed by the Bilderburg group and the shapeshifting lizards of the British Royal Family/Bush Family NWO secret government. They orchestrated 9/11 don't you know? It's true! I saw this documentary on the internet and everything.

As always, the final plating money-shot is as graceless as it is badly exposed.

Lamb_plated1

Lamb_plated2

Drunk with a very, very good '06 Owen Roe Sharecropper's Pinot Noir which I'll be ordering a case of sometime soon.

More cooking. And a slightly better camera setting ...

Cod and Pesto wrapped in Prosciutto