Friday 17 May - Beef Stifado

For once I was very organised on a Friday, and managed to get the beef into the marinade before starting work.

The marinade consisted of red wine, wine vinegar, oregano, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves garlic and allspice berries.

I left the chunks of braising steak quite big, and they were in the marinade all day.

 



 

The beef was then braised in this marinade, along with some peeled and chopped tomatoes and a spoonful of tomato puree for about 3 hours.

 

 



 

 

The rich stew was served with some orzo, and a Greek Style Salad with dill and mint stirred into it.

 







 

 

Saturday 11 May - Curry Goat

I'd seen goat meat advertised at a farm shop locally, so  decided to get my Levi Roots book out and find a recipe for Curry Goat - something I've never cooked or even eaten before.

I was surprised to find that the goat meat was fresh, and came cut into smallish chunks, but with quite a lot of bone left in it.

This meat was marinaded in lime juice, Jamaican mild curry powder, and what should have been all purpose seasoning which I forgot to buy, so we added grated onion, all spice, chilli powder, thyme and salt and pepper.

Then the cooking started - this took ages and was carried out in stages with much adding of stock at 45 minute intervals.

Finally the other ingredients, peppers, scotch bonnet, allspice, ginger, garlic and herbs were added and another 2 hours cooking.

 

 

 

For the rice and peas, a coconut was grated and soaked in hot water, before squeezing the milk out. (I think next time I'll use a tin of coconut milk!)

 

 

 

This milk was simmered with various flavourings before being used to cook the rice and black beans in

 





The final stage of the curry was to add some potatoes, and then cook until they were tender.

We served the curry with the rice and peas, and some sliced plantain which I fried in sunflower oil.

Wednesday 1 May - Pesto Bread

I've decided to blog this one, as it didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped it would, so will use it to see how I can make improvements. I didn't use a recipe for this, it was a bit of a made up as I went along experiment.

Firstly, I activated some fresh yeast as I had some that needed using up - the block of yeast was creamed with some sugar.

Then some warm water was added and it was left until bubbly (about 10 minutes)

I used this added to 1lb of flour, some olive oil and salt - adding warm water to make a pretty wet dough.

The dough was left to rise, and then using semolina to stop it sticking formed into a flattish rectangle  - I didn't kneed it again at this point.

Left to rest again for about 10 minutes, and then I brushed it with pesto, which I diluted down with some olive oil to make it more brushable

 

 

I then make dimples all over the dough with my fingers  which I had oiled, and popped some pieces of sun dried tomatoes into some of them

 

 

 

It was then baked in a very hot oven, with a pan of water underneath to create steam

 

 

This was the finished result, and you can see the problem from the photo was that the Pesto cooked a bit more than I would have liked it to - it tasted OK, but not quite as nice as I'd hoped it would be - next time I need to find a way to get the pesto actually into the loaf I think.