The 2007 cookery log

[mrph]

This year I have a plan...

...which is actually very simple. I cook at least 52 proper 'interesting' meals. One per week. Policy on repeat creations is that they don't count unless they somehow vary/improve the end result.

So far, we have:

1. Tail and tongue with rich red wine sauce - from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book. As cooked for jambon_gris, mrbear and paulw, 14/01/07. Moderately successful. It's a stew which uses a pig's trotter to add body - that bit worked. Generally, though, it was a victim of poor preparation and a vague confusion on my part. While it went nicely enough with bread, it needed something more to accompany it. And I can't help feeling that the sauce should have been boiled down to something a bit stickier. I'll be trying this one again - possibly without the tongue, as that's fiddly to cook and I'm not entirely sure I like it in stew.
   
2. Braised steak in Madeira with five kinds of mushrooms - from Delia Smith's Winter Collection. Very nice indeed. Cooked with elise (for me, elise and deborah_c) while I was in Cambridge 20/01/07, and elise did most of the work. I don't think we had quite the same mushrooms Delia specified, but it really didn't seem to matter. A very pleasantly edible sauce - I think everyone went for seconds - which worked well with a tender slab of beef. I might try this one again to see how it turns out...
   
3. The traditional Sunday lunch - roast chicken, roast potatoes, mashed swede, steamed cabbage and leeks. As cooked for jambon_gris, mister_jack and Elaine (winolj) 28/01/07. This one might count as cheating. Generally pretty successful, but that's not too surprising as it was a nice simple roast. Followed the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall method for the greens (and followed his advice on scratching and salting potatoes). There's room for improvement on the leeks, greens and gravy (not enough colour/body, although it tasted nice enough), but the chicken itself worked just fine, as did the potatoes.
   
4. The other traditional Sunday lunch - roast topside of beef, roast potatoes, steamed greens, boiled carrots and broccoli. As cooked for mhw, stgpcm and blooddoll3 04/02/07. Roasted the beef on a carpet of parsnips and carrots, served it up with horseradish sauce from a jar. Followed by a very pleasant fruit salad, provided by mhw.
5. Roast lamb with celeriac and chilli gratin, roast potatoes, steamed greens and so on. As served to mrbear, misstemperance and Elaine (WINOLJ). Reasonably successful, although the chilli had a little more bite than expected and I should really have used homemade mint sauce. The lamb was flavoured with garlic, rosemary and anchovies, which seemed to work well.
6. Roast belly of pork. Salted, rubbed with thyme and roasted, then served with runner beans and veg. 06/03/07. All very simple. Nothing too fancy. But really, very, very nice. I was eating pork sandwiches for several days thereafter, though.
7. Chicken soup - a complete failure. *sigh* This was an attempt to use leftover chicken from a Sunday roast, plus assorted veg, to make an interesting chicken soup. Celery was a worthy addition, celeriac wasn't so useful (especially not in combination) and the whole thing lacked body. I think it needed some potatoes and carrots before it had a hope of being anything special. It was... edible... but I wasn't rushing back for another bowl
8. Jerusalem artichoke and carrot soup - to feed mister_jack and mrbear 19/03/07. Took a little longer than the 35 minutes the recipe book claimed, but very nice. Blended to a smooth consistency, with grated carrot added just before serving. Especially good with a swirl of cream and a little bit of crisp bacon as a garnish.
9. Roast duck, with honey and orange glazed turnips (and all the other Sunday roast trimmings). Just about a success - the turnips worked well, although if I did them again I'd go for a stickier glaze, with a little less liquid. The flavours definitely combined nicely, though, with citrus adding something special to them. As for the ducks themselves, they were two small wild ones - much less fatty than farmed ones and a little bit tricky to carve. It's not that there's no meat on them, it's just that it's all quite well hidden. We fed three people with two ducks, with enough shreds on the carcass to supply a meal of leftovers the following night. The one aspect that didn't entirely work was the roasted jerusalem artichokes - not sure if they were getting elderly, overdone or just roasted with too much oil
10. Salmon and dill soup - this one goes into the "oh my..." list. Cream, white wine, salmon, dill, potatoes and a little bit of onion. Rich, filling, possibly addictive. The potato was tender but not disintegrating, whereas the salmon just seemed to melt. I'd love to claim all the credit, but it's a New Covent Garden recipe... and I suspect I had a certain amount of beginner's luck on my side with this one.
11. Grilled lamb's liver with sage - not an unqualified success. There's an art to cooking liver and I still haven't quite mastered it. Frying I can just about manage... grilling is trickier. By the time it's cooked, it's also dried a little too much - and the outside is too tough. Would have been better pan-fried with onions and sage, I think, wih a bit more liquid to keep it tender.
12. Conger eel steak and samphire - that worked. The eel was cooked in the oven, at very high temperature, with carrot/celery/garlic/onion/chorizo. The samphire was briefly dropped into unsalted boiling water. I like samphire. Generally successful (based on a Rick Stein recipe for conger eel, which uses bacon and a single large piece of skinned fish) - went nicely with a glass of fino sherry.
13. Braised shin of beef - workmanlike, but not a bad start. Cooked with carrot, onion, celery and a little parsnip. Plus a splash of red wine. Chilled, then reheated the following day. Needed more herbs - and it would have been worth reducing the cooking liquid a little more, to something stickier. Still, I didn't poison dmh.
14. Lamb's kidneys, cooked in their suet - a recipe from Fergus Henderson's St.John restaurant. Nice and simple... season, fry to brown, then put 'em in a very hot oven for a few minutes. Served sliced, with a watercress salad. This leaves a lot of lamb fat behind... I'm now trying to think of a good way to use it!
15. Baby broad beans with chorizo - so simple it barely qualifies as a recipe, but interesting all the same. From The River Cottage Year. One comment... it really is very quick indeed. When it says "a minute", it means it. Two minutes instead of one and the beans will start to suffer
16. Lamb's kidney baked inside potato - from Anissa Helou's The Fifth Quarter, this is just what it sounds like. Hollow out your baking potato, add a lamb's kidney, bake for a couple of hours. Very simple, very pleasant.
17. Brined and boiled ox tongue - another recipe from Fergus Henderson, this is a seven day brine (with juniper, peppercorns and cloves - it smells worryingly nice!) followed by three and a half hours boiling with stock vegetables. The end result is extremely edible. Henderson recommends ox tongue sandwiches with tomato and English mustard. I'd have to agree.
18. Oxtail with pancetta - workmanlike, but not wonderful. This was from The Silver Spoon and I suspect the fault's with me, not the cookbook. Pancetta to flavour the oxtail while it's first browning, then the whole thing is braised with veg. Not enough browning, not enough seasoning, too much water. Worth trying again - and next time I'll do it a little differently, probably in a smaller pot and with a little more care at the start of the process. I like stews when done well, but this one just didn't have enough flavour. Pity, as I really do like oxtail when other people cook it properly.
19. Veal escalopes with mushrooms (with English 'pink' veal), from The Silver Spoon - another one that wasn't that successful. Cooked too slowly and gently when it needed a little taste of fire, and the cook was a little too disorganised. It also proved Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's claim that even good UK butchers seem unsure when cutting veal - the escalope needs to be a single piece of meat, so that it stays a single piece once you try to pan fry it. Another one to revisit, methinks.
20. Greengrocer's Lights, from The Silver Spoon - I'm not doing too well with recipes from the 'Spoon, am I? To be fair, this one - lamb's lights gently fried with parsley, carrot, garlic and onion - had a lovely flavour to the veg, partly from the lemon juice that's stirred in at the last minute. In The Fifth Quarter, Anissa Helou mentions that she finds lights themselves a bit bland - based on this, I'm tempted to agree. I should probably have added a little more salt and pepper - and the cooking time listed in the book is really a little bit low. Nxt time, smaller pieces, more pepper, longer cooking. Might work a lot better. One final point to remember - as they've got so little substance to them, they cool down very fast!
21. Roast goose, with roast potatoes, swede and steamed greens. And also with gravy. The goose was nice (the swede needed more mashing alas), but the bit I'm really happy with was the gravy. Because I'm hopeless at gravy, whereas I've done roast goose before. It was roasted without the legs, which are about to become confit - which left enough for four people, plus seconds and copious leftovers. This is now officially goose-and-salad week. :)
22. Confit of goose legs. Complete failure - not even eaten. My own fault, I think. I had much fun with pestle and mortar, crushing salt with garlic and spices. The resulting paste then got used to smother the goose. Unfortunately, when I then started to brown it before cooking/storing it a couple of days later, I wasn't confident it was still safely edible... so farewell to the confit. I'll try again someday, but probably not this year. Bah.
23. Rolled shoulder of lamb with capers and anchovies. Another Sunday roast, served with new potatoes and steamed vegetables. Not bad, but I'd like to try it again with mutton - or a larger piece of meat. This time I was just cooking for two, and I don't think that really gave enough time for the strongly flavoured stuffing to really cook into the meat. It was still rather nice, though. Another one from the River Cottage cookbook.
24. Pigs trotters Ste Menehould. A variation on a River Cottage breast of lamb recipe - simmer the trotters with vegetables, bone them and press them overnight, then coat strips of sliced meat with mustard and breadcrumbs before finishing 'em off in the oven. Served very hot, with a creamy sauce, they work pretty well...
25. Oxtail with pancetta. Second attempt. There'll be a third attempt, too. This time I used a much smaller pot and used a touch more fire when browning the meat, which seemed to work. Last time the pancetta was washed out by the end of it, this time it was positively cremated, though. Hmm. I will master this particular recipe if it's the end of me. I've always found stews and braises trickier than roasts - it's a questing of keeping the flavour in the meat, really. Possibly I just need more practice. Still, even if this one wasn't entirely successful, it was a step in the right direction. Next! :)
26. Rolled shoulder of lamb with capers and anchovies. Second attempt, just worthy of inclusion because of a couple of minor changes. Better seasoning this time, and much better gravy - anchovy fillets instead of paste, too. Seemed a little too dry, though. Lamb's probably the roast meat I find trickiest to cook, perhaps because it's not my favourite so I'm much more critical. Served with steamed cauliflower, boiled cavolo nero (with olive oil and lemon juice), roast potatoes (done in some of the goose fat from the previous roast...) and carrot & parsnip mash. As a whole, pretty successful. But I still need to work on the lamb - next time, I may try this one with mutton, if I can find some...
27. Devilled kidneys. 22/10/07. Everyone has a different recipe for this, it seems - I was using the River Cottage version, with sherry, redcurrant jelly, double cream and cider vinegar. Plus lots of very spicy stuff. Serve very hot on fried bread. It makes a lovely supper - I now understand why Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recommends it as a dish to convert doubters. I may have to try the (completely different) Fergus Henderson version too, though (chicken stock, flour, lots of spicy stuff), just for comparison.
28. Rabbit, roasted with garlic and rosemary. Wrapped in bacon, lots of bacon. This was a rather nice wild rabbit that happened to be in stock when I visited the local butcher. Served for Sunday dinner with oven roasted swede, mashed potato (potato ricers - the way forward!), steamed carrots and cavolo nero. The gravy wasn't bad either, flavoured with some leftover bits of rabbit and a splash of port. Rabbit really is a bit awkward (or at least different) to carve, though...

Comments

[stickman12.livejournal.com]

Good job morph, sounds like an excellent plan! I.m no Hugh / Gordon / Nigella (thank god for the last, the world would be a poorer place if Nigella looked like me ;) ) but if your stews are a little thin you can get pretty good results adding a handful of rice / pasta / lentils / beans to the mix. They absorb the water and thicken up nicely. You can also absorb the water with four / arrowroot but the taste is a bit .. bleh .. if you haven't spiced enough the stock takes on a flavour not unsimilar to pva glue :P Lastly, if you add in some softer root veggies (like sweet potato or finely shopped potatoes) and cook for a little longer, they tend to disintergrate well and add a thinker texture to the stew liquid. Hand in hand with your comment on wanting something extra with the stew, I'd be tempted to try the handful of .. method.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestions! I've tried the lentil and chopped potato options before- they do indeed work well.

At the moment, my favourite stew veg is still celeriac, though - lovely taste, doesn't totally disintegrate but does go wonderfully with a lamb stew...

[juudes.livejournal.com]

Hi! could I have your salmon soup recipe please? I bought a blender recently and went soup mad (although I guess the salmon one wouldn't be blended). I copied the ingredients list off the CGS site: they have a celeriac one which has horseradish added to it: sounds fab!

One thing I'm intending to try is Heston Blumenthal's method for roasting beef at a very low temp for a long time - it needs a meat thermometer and a spare Sunday I think! But the sauce to go with it which is "really not much bother" uses 750g each of chicken wings and beef shin and enough veg for a couple of meals, so I think I'll leave that bit out.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Eeek! Somehow missed this at the time - either the comment never arrived in mail, or I somehow lost it (which seems more likely). Sorry!

Shall dig out that recipe for you today...

Brain like a sieve, me...

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Salmon & Dill soup (for 4 people)

300g fresh salmon fillet, skinned and in 3.5cm chunks
450g potatoes, peeled and cubed into 1cm chunks
1 medium onion, finely diced
250ml double cream
2 tablespoons olive oil
570ml veg stock
200ml dry white wine
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh chopped dill
salt & pepper

Bring the cream to room temp before starting. Gently cook the onion in the oil, in a covered pan, for 5 minutes - soften it, don't brown/colour it.

Add stock, wine, potato, salt & pepper. Boil, then simmer 15min without a lid, until potato is tender but not falling apart.

Add salmon, bring back to boil, add dill, then remove from heat. Leave to stand for a couple of minute - the hot soup will keep cooking the salmon chunks.

Add cream, heat gently - do not boil - then serve. Left to cool, it makes a great breakfast. Like potato salad with fish! :)