Sunday 28 August - Beef Rendang

George requested this, and after a hunt through a few books, I settled on the Rick Stein version from his Far Eastern book.

The basis of the curry paste, is grated coconut, so I was rather pleased to find this frozen in our local Thai supermarket.

The coconut was fried in a dry pan, until golden.

 

 

This was then added to the food processor with garlic, onion, galangal, chopped red chillies and a spice mix of cumin, coriander and dried red chillies ground together until fine.

 

 

 

 

The spicy pasted was added to fried beef cubes, along with coconut milk. At the same time lemon grass stalks, whole kaffir lime leaves and cinnamon sticks were thrown in to the pan, along with some tamarind water made from the pulp, soaked for about 20 minutes

 

 

 

 

 

This was all simmered for a few hours, until reduced and the meat was tender.

 

 



 

 

We ate this with a cucumber salad, dressed with lime and fish sauce, steamed jasmine rice and a few spring rolls - it wasn't very spicy, but very fragrant and absolutely delicious

 

 









Monday 13 August - Prawns and Scallops with Tomato and Feta

An eventful few weeks during which I became 50, got married, and lost the two most important women in my life, mean that cooking, eating and blogging have not been on my mind too much. A new project is going to start when I go through all my Mothers recipes that she saved over the years, and cook and write them up for the rest of the family.

While all this has been going on, the garden and allotment have still been hard at work, and we have found ourselves with huge quantities of courgettes and potatoes, and the start of the tomatoes

 

A recipe I have cooked several times over the last few months is this simple dish of fresh tomatoes and fish - the recipe is from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi, but I have adapted it slightly, leaving out the clams as they are difficult to find, and also rather expensive - I make do with frozen scallops and raw prawns.

Peeling tomatoes is probably a job no one likes, but I think it's pretty essential for this dish, and I find this better than using tinned - when I've made this before I have also deseeded the tomatoes, but I have come to the conclusion that this is not necessary and is also pretty wasteful!

 

 White wine was added to sliced garlic which was fried gently in olive oil

Then in with the chopped tomatoes, some lemon peel, and chopped fresh oregano. This was all reduced down and seasoned with sugar, salt and pepper.

 Once the sauce was thickened and reduced, in with raw scallops (these were huge so I sliced them into four pieces) and some deveined raw prawns

The dish was finished with feta cheese, and some chopped sping onions and popped into the oven until the fish was cooked and it was all bubbly.

 

We ate this as a main course with some crusty bread to dunk in it, although I've previously served it  with orzo

Friday 27 May - Salade Nicoise

The weather is gorgeous at the moment, so summer food is called for (although we haven't actually eaten outside yet)

I was surprised to find fresh tuna steaks in Aldi, to make things easier their cheap vegetables this week included green beans and Jersey Royals - so Nicoise seemed the obvious thing to make.

I don't follow a recipe for this, as they seem to differ so much. One thing I don't do is add garlic to the dressing, as if I eat raw garlic it keeps me up all night!

The dressing was a mustardy vinaigrette, but I used olive oil and added some chopped chives at the end

I took great pleasure in popping out to the bottom of the garden to find some lettuce to add.

The tuna was fried until pink in the centre, and then broken up, and dressed while still warm.

The potatoes were also dressed while they were still warm.

I then built up layers of lettuce, tomatoes, the potatoes and beans, some marinated artichokes, olives and the tuna. Although anchovies are traditional I added some salted capers.

The layers were then tossed together.

Finally, when it was served it was finished of with boiled eggs

I'm looking forwards to making this again in a couple of months when we have potatoes, beans and tomatoes from our allotment!

Wednesday 18 May - Spaghetti with Tomato, Capers and Mint

This is from a Rick Stein book, and on first reading I thought it sounded very strange - tomato and mint aren't always the first things I think of putting together with pasta. Had to be worth a try though, and this is actually the second time I've made it in a week!

Fresh tomatoes are the thing to use  here, and the first stage is rather tedious, skinning and deseeding - the recipe called for cherry tomatoes, but I use big vine ones, chopped up.

Once chopped, I always lightly salt them, and leave to drain to remove excess liquid

The sauce starts with infusing olive oil with whole garlic - I did a bit extra to use the oil to brush over the bread I made to go with the dish.

Then in go some dried chilli flakes and the tomatoes, followed by salted capers and chopped mint.

Add to Spaghetti, and toss

Quick, and very delicious - can't wait for our tomatoes to be ready now!

Saturday30 April - John Torode Cookathon

Our Facebook food group had a cookathon this weekend - you could chose to cook recipes from either John Torode or Rachel Khoo. The final results are going to be tweeted to the chefs.

I chose John Torode, and although these recipes were simpler than the ones I would normally chose to cook on a Saturday night, I actually found it quite stressful as I followed the recipes without adding things as I would normally do. I even weighed and measured most of the ingredients which I never do.

First course was a simple prawn cocktail - I used up the leftover whole prawns from our Tapas last week, and added some raw shelled tiger prawns to bulk it out. These were cooked for a few minutes in boiling water with lemon juice and malt vinegar added, then quickly shelled.

The sauce was mixture of mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and various flavourings - all mixed together and then onto the prawns and shredded little jem lettuce.

To serve with this a found a recipe for Soda Bread, which was made with wholemeal and white flour, and buttermilk.

For main course I chose to make a leek and mushroom pithiviers, this was made with frozen puff pastry.

The filling was a mixture of cooked leeks, and musrooms with creme  fraice added.

This filling was layers onto the pastry, with cubes of gruyere

Then the top was added, and glazed and it was baked

To serve with it, we bought some of the first Asparagus of the season, to make asparagus with capers and black butter - the lightly cooked spears were reheated in smoking hot butter, with tiny capers and a squeeze of lemon

Finally, a really simple pannacotta for dessert, along with some rhubarb from our allotment.
Milk and cream were heated with vanilla and sugar, and then the soaked gelatine added, and into the fridge to set

The rhubarb was gently oven baked with some sugar and a vanilla pod

Once it was tender we left it to cool, before turning out the pannacotta and serving this on the side

We enjoyed all three courses - and for once managed to eat all of them too!

Monday 11 April - Moroccan Baked Rice with Chicken and Chickpeas

This is an old favourite out the Delia Smith Winter Collection, but we've not had it for ages. I made a couple of changes to the recipe but nothing drastic. It involves quite a selection of ingredients, but once prepared it all goes into the over in one pot, so is fairly straightforward. I used a couple of chicken crowns cut in half instead of a jointed chicken, and also replace the fresh lemons in the recipe with preserved lemons. The other change I made was to use a tin of chickpeas rather than soaking and boiling them

Saffron was soaked in the juice of a lemon, and some coriander and cumin seeds were roasted and crushed

All the veg were prepared, peppers and onions sliced up, and the other flavourings chopped - then the actual cooking commenced.

Chicken breasts were browned in the casserole.

Then in went the onions and peppers, and these were fried over a high heat.

Then in went the rice (brown basmati) and all the other spices and flavourings along with the chick peas and some chopped preserved lemon skins.

Stock and wine were added.

The chicken went back in, along with some black and green olives, and it all went into the oven to bake.

It's nice to remember some old favourites sometimes, and I'm not sure why we ever forgot about this one - delicious and clean plates all round!!

Saturday 23 January - Rum, Cherry and Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding

We fancied making a dessert as there wasn't much to do while our belly pork was roasting, and had a sudden urge for Bread and Butter pudding.

I decided to make individual ones, as we always end up making far too much.

I started by soaking some dried cherries in some of the Wild Cherry Rum that was in the hamper I had for Christmas from my brother - another Bytham Kitchen ingredient.

Buttered brioche was layered in the ramekins, and the rum soaked cherries and some chopped dark chocolate were sprinkled between the layers.

I then soaked these in a custard made from cream, egg yolks, vanilla bean paste, and a spoonful of caster sugar, before cooking in a water bath.

Once cooked, we finished them by sprinkling with sugar, and using a blow torch for a crispy topping, and served at room temperature - absolutely delicious!