Tuesday 4 July - Jerk Sweet Potato Cakes

Bob is currently building a website for Black Ass Jerk Co, and came home from a meeting clutching a jar of Jerk Paste

Jerk paste is normally something that we make from scratch, but we thought we would try this out for a midweek meal. As we are eating very little meat at the moment, I decided that we would have a play with some Caribbean flabours, and make some sweet potato cakes with jerk flavouring. To serve with it some rice and peas, and some Green Plantains that were an impulse buy when we passed a market stall at the weekend.

The sweet potatoes were cubed, and tossed with a couple of tablespoons of jerk paste and a dash of olive oil, then roasted in a hot oven for about 20 minutes until soft.

They were then mashed, along with some flavourings - chopped coriander, fresh red Scotch Bonnet, spring onions and roasted garlic.

The mixture was chilled, then formed into small cakes, which we dipped in egg and polenta, before frying. It was quite a soft texture, so the smaller cakes are easier to manage, and less likely to fall apart when cooked.

For the rice, coconut milk was boiled along with garlic, thyme, allspice berries, spring onion and a scotch bonnet chilli - for about 20 minutes, to infuse the mik with flavour.

We then added this to the rice cooker, along with some drained black beans, and some soaked basmati rice and left to cook.

 

I had to search the internet to find out what to do with green plantain, but found out that a 'double cooking' was the way to go.

The plantains were peeled and sliced into one inch pieces.

These slices were then fried for a couple of minutes on each side. We then bashed them flat with a mallet

The flattened pieces were then fried again until crisp

No one missed meat at all, the jerk paste was absolutely delicious - had obvious pieces of the ingredients that you could see. I would certainly buy this rather than making my own in future.

Saturday 27 May - Vincisgrassi

I bought a new book last week, called The DIY Cook by Tim Hayward. It caught my eye, and as it was cheap I picked it up to have a read. It turned out to be just the sort of cooking I love - making all the components of a recipe from scratch. I spotted this recipe for Vincisgrassi, which is essentially a lasagne, but a bit more special. The pasta element is so easy now that we have an attachment on our kitchen aid, that this didn't seem too daunting to start with. The main components were a slow cooked ragu, and a mushroom bechamel, plus the homemade lasagne noodles. A main ingredient in the recipe was truffles, which unsurprisingly are not available in Gosport at any time of year - however, I was given a jar of Black Truffle paste for Christmas, so it was an excuse to open that.

The ragu started with a sofrito of carrot, celery, onions and pancetta, fried slowly in butter and olive oil.

The meat was a mix of beef and veal mince, fried quickly in a hot dry pan - red wine,garlic, cinnamon and cloves were added and the wine was boiled down.

The meat and soffrito were combined, along with a small amount of tomato paste, and some fresh chicken stock, and it was left to simmer gently for three hours before finishing with some double cream.

For the bechamel sauce, some dried ceps were added to warm milk until they were soft, they were then drained, chopped and fried off with some fresh chopped button mushrooms to drive off all the water.

The mushroomy milk was made into a bechamel sauce, and the chopped mushrooms added back into this with some seasoning.

Then for the assembly.

First a layer of pasta, topped with a thin layer of ragu

Then more pasta, parma ham, some of the bechamel, parmesan and fresh mozzarella, and some of the truffle paste.

Finishing with sauce and cheese as the top layer, this was then baked until golden and hot.

I made a garlic and rosemary bread to serve with this

The only other thing we needed was a fresh green salad. We had enough left over to freeze for another day. This was a recipe I really enjoyed cooking, and was certainly worth all the effort.

Saturday 6 May - Gumbo

Every so often I realise how few recipes I am adding to this blog, but we tend to be creatures of habit, and often eat the same, or similar dishes so it's not often that we cook something completely new. I was browsing facebook yesterday, and an article popped up by Yotam Ottolenghi, about Gumbo. His recipe didn't greatly appeal to me, as there was no okra in in, but it gave me the idea to have a read up, and to try and make some. As an added bonus, it was a beautiful day, so we took the ferry over to Portsmouth where I knew I'd be able to buy some Okra. While we were there I also bought some plantains and Scotch Bonnet chillies so we can make Jerk chicken for tonight.

As we needed to make a chicken stock, I bought a couple of whole chickens - we jointed them, saving the breasts for tomorrow, the legs and thighs for the Gumbo, and everything else went into the stock pot.

I read up on lots of recipes, and the main things that make a gumbo are the roux, and also the basic 'Holy Trinity' of Cajun cooking, celery, green pepper and onions. I decided that in this instance I needed to overcome my fear of cooked celery as it is vital in this dish.

For seafood I bought raw prawns, and also added some tiny dried prawns, chopped up very small. Polish sausage is the easiest to find here so thats what we used for the smoked sausage.

As I was about to start cooking, I realised that many of the recipes mentioned Ancho Chilli powder, which I didn't have - a bit of googling thought made me realise I could make my own by grinding up Ancho chillies in a coffee grinder (although I would recommend NOT putting your contact lenses shortly after doing this..)

The sliced sausage was fried, and then removed from the pan, and then the flour was added to make a roux. This had to be cooked and stirred until quite brown.

Then in went the chopped vegetables, chilli powders, tabasco and then the okra, which was sliced up to release the sticky edges

Then the fresh chicken stock was stirred in, and the whole chicken pieces were added.
Once cooked, the meat was removed, and stirred back in, along with the smoked sausage and raw prawns.

 

This was served over boiled basmati rice. Absolutely delicious, and will certainly make it again but maybe try some different seafood next time.

Friday 10 March - Fennel and Sausage Ragu with Tagliatelle

This is a recipe from the Rick Stein Long Weekends book, which we've cooked a few times now. As Friday is our busy night, I bought some fresh tagliatelle rather than making it myself. I also make one change to the recipe in the book - instead of using celery, I use chopped up fennel bulb - cooked celery is one of the few things I really dislike.

I've made this before using Italian sausages from Asda, but wasn't able to get them, so I used some good quality sausage meat this time round.

This is quite an unusual way round of doing things, as the first stage is to start frying the sausage meat

Then in with chopped fennel (or celery), onion, garlic, chilli flakes and some fennel seeds

This was cooked for around 15 minutes, and then in with some white wine, which was left to reduce by half

Finally, some chicken stock and cream went in, and it was left to simmer, lid on for around 30 minutes

The first time I made this I had to text my brother who had made it the week before, because to me it looked far too wet, but I was assured that the pasta would suck up the sauce, and it did.

We served in large bowls with some grated parmesan  - absolutely delicious, and one that will be cooked many times in this house.

Saturday 26 February - Pork in Milk

Having had a bit of a break from blogging due to various events, I'm hopefully back on track with trying some new recipes.
We've been trying out a lot of Rick Stein recipes recently, and this meal was mainly from his Venice to Istanbul book - I've started to try out recipes that don't really appeal when I first look at them, and I've been pleasantly surprised by a lot of the results.

We started the meal with some Pide - Turkish bread, served with olives.

The dough was flattened out after proving, and then drizzled with olive oil infused with garlic and chopped rosemary, before baking in a really hot oven.

We ate this while the pork was cooking. The pork was sealed in butter and olive oil, then garlic, lemon rind, fennel seeds and sage were added to the pan.

Then for the milk - the whole milk was scalded, and added to the meat along with lemon juice, and it was left to simmer slowly for a few hours - it all looked most unappealing, but the smell was wonderful.

The pork was thickly sliced, and served over polenta, along with the curdled milk sauce.

I served a salad on the side, made from chicory, watercress, walnuts and sliced pears, with a balsamic dressing

To follow, a Tiramisu from the same book - this started with a fat free sponge, which I cut to size to fit into the serving glasses

The marscapone was mixed with egg yolks and sugar, and the the whites folded in to make the creamy layers.

The sponge was then dipped in strong coffee mixed with marsala and it was all layered up and then chilled before serving.

Sunday 13 December - Sri Lankan Cashew Nut Curry

We've never tried a Sri Lankan Curry before, and found this one in one of Rick Steins books after spotting him making it on TV. We were an ingredient short, and strangely were unable to source Pandan leaves in Gosport - so we just left them out, figuring we wouldn't know what it was supposed to taste like anyway.

The first stage was to make the roasted curry powder - I did half quantities as it seemed to make a huge amount. The first stage was to toast some rice

Then the spices were toasted - cumin, coriander, fennel, fenugreek, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, cardamom and mustard seeds

 



Finally the dried chillies went in the pan, then all the spices and rice were ground up

The main body of the curry was cashew nuts, and these were soaked in hot water, almost as if they were pulses, so soften up prior to cooking.

Then the curry sauce was made in the usual way, with onion, ginger, garlic, lemon grass, curry leaves and coconut milk - it was all left to simmer for around 30 minutes

Then in with the soaked nuts, and another 30  minutes to soften them up

 

 

The final addition was some green beans. We served this with plain boiled rice, and some homemade naans. Quite tasty, but could have done with a lot more heat for us.

 



Friday 11 November - Pearl Barley Risotto

I made pearl barley risotto once before, and George hated it, so I was surprised when he asked me to make some again - the reason he hated the last lot though was because I used mushrooms in it. A quick google came up with a recipe for Chorizo and Rosemary risotto which met with approval.

This was really easy to make, but did take a while for the barley to cook.

The recipe started of with slicing the chorizo and frying until crisp, with no added oil.

As with a normal risotto onions and garlic were softened, and then the grains were added, and stirred until coated in fat.

Then in with a tin of tomatoes, some chicken stock and some chopped black olives, and it was left to cook until the barley was tender - no need to add the stock a bit at a time as you have to with rice.

Just before serving the fried sausage was added along with some chopped fresh rosemary.

Will definitely be experimenting with different flavours in the future, absolutely delicious, and three completely clear plates.