Hangovers, beef and chicken action

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Terrible start to the day. I don’t think anyone would call Penzance a cultural centre, but last night we shook our stuff with the best of them and sampled many local delights. Needless to say we weren’t feeling too clever in the morning.
The day doesn’t really happen for me – the only thing that keeps me going is that I promised to cook dinner for the boys – I go to the supermarket in a state of semi consciousness and somehow manage to push the trolley from aisle to aisle picking up the things I need to bring the team back to life and ready for another night…
The boys for head off a long walk to Porthleven while I begin to prepare a couple of things to eat…

Beef Carpaccio
Take the best quality beef fillet you are prepared to afford – I usually go for the tail end of the fillet as it’s easier to cut into slices. You need about an inch of fillet for each person as a starter. Now take a mixture of herbs and spices and pound them together with a pestle and mortar until they have the texture of ground black pepper (not too fine). I usually use coriander seed, cumin (a must), oregano, salt, pepper, thyme and fennel. Now roll the fillet in the mix until it’s completely coated and set aside until about 10 minutes before you want to eat.
At this time, sear the fillet in a hot frying pan (with olive oil) for about one minute on each side – so about 4-5 mins in total. The beef should be a lovely caramelised colour. Now leave it to rest for about 5 mins.
To serve – take your plates and pour (not drizzle please) a little olive oil on the bottom of each plate. Then cut the fillet into slices as thinly as you can (but don’t get anal about it) with a very sharp knife. Lay the slices on the plates, hopefully covering the bottom of each plate and then take a bag of wild rocket and cover the beef with it. Finally use a potato peeler to shave parmesan over the rocket and finish with a good splash of lemon juice and more olive oil. Serve with really good stonebaked crusty bread…
Followed by Chicken Casserole with Sweet Potato Mustard Mash
As always, you can pretty much wing this as long as you get a few basics straight –
For four people, start with a whole chicken (you can use pieces if you like but it seems odd when you can get all you need from a whole chicken with a tiny bit of effort and you get a carcass as a bonus to make decent stock with). Remove the breasts, and legs, then separate the thigh from the rest of the leg and chop off the horrible knobbly ankle bit at the end of the drumstick. Then cut the breasts in half – so now you should have eight portions of chicken. These now need frying (off?) in a frying pan until brown all over. When you’re done you can put them aside.
Now take some veg – I used half a celery, a large onion, a handful of sweet baby carrots, and a red pepper – chop them roughly and fry gently in your casserole dish with butter and olive oil. Next fry a pan full of mushrooms in butter with salt and pepper and add to the casserole.
Pour in the majority of a bottle of white wine or Marsala, two tablespoons of grainy mustard, a tablespoon of dried (or a handful of fresh) tarragon. Mix it up, season with salt and pepper and place the chicken pieces on top. The liquid should just about reach halfway up the chicken pieces.
Put the lid on and place in an oven at 200c for about 40 mins.
While the casserole is cooking peel some potatoes and a sweet potato, cut them up and boil in salted water. When they are done mash them with a tablespoon of grainy mustard lots of butter, salt, pepper, and cream!
Ten minutes before serving, take the chicken pieces out of the casserole and place on a roasting tin in a very hot oven to make the skin lovely and crispy. While you’re doing this add a little flour to the casserole to thicken it, and then place the chicken back ready for serving.
Serve the chicken and mash together with more crusty bread and a wine that goes with the wine you used in the casserole – in this case I used the Australian Riesling – again!
Needless to say the boys were very happy…

Corny

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So it’s less dad at the weekend, more lad at the weekend this time with a bunch of old friends on the Cornish coast.
This place is just fantastic – it’s cold but the swell is small and perfectly formed – half a day in the water is exactly what we needed to build up a decent appetite.
Straight out of the sea and Dev cooks up a fantastically simple Asian broth with chicken –
Heat a litre of chicken stock (preferably home made) and pan fry a couple of chicken breasts (or salmon fillets if your prefer). In the meantime, chop up some lovely vegetables – my favourites are pak choi, spring onions, mushrooms (doesn’t matter which, but chanterelle are really good), red chillies (without the seeds unless you like it really spicy) – really whatever you like as long as it’s delicate and cooks easily in boiling water. Now add a handful of udon noodles to the stock, along with some rice wine vinegar.
When the chicken is ready (nicely browned on both sides) let it rest and then slice it thinly. Add the veggies to the stock and let them cook for a couple of minutes, then add the chicken and a good glug of soy sauce.
That’s it!

Canadian duck

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Finally – something different for breakfast! The Canadians are here so I have to do a real English breakfast with bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, black pudding, baked beans and toast – brilliant!

Then off to Cambridge and Immie’s skating party. It’s unnatural for english people to ice-skate. We simply have no grace and it’s all too obvious when we strap blades to our feet and try to look like we know what we’re doing. And that lack of grace is compounded by the fact that we can’t maintain ice rinks either – it feels more like skating along a rocky mountain pass than a placid lake. Why can’t we do these things properly?

Anyway – we get back and it’s time to cook the thing I have been waiting to do ever since I started this blog –

Confit of duck leg, pan fried duck breast with mustard mash and garlic fine beans

The thing to know about this meal is that you should prepare the confit at least a day before you eat it (although you don’t have to).

For four people you need a whole duck and an extra pair of legs. Take the duck and remove the legs and the breasts. Remove any fatty skin from the bird cut into small chunks and put in a saucepan. Trim the excess fat off legs and breasts (not too closely) and put the fat into the pan, then put the pan on a low heat. When the fat has fully melted you can take the pan off the heat and set aside. In the meantime, take the legs and cover them in salt (and pounded juniper berries if you have any) and leave for a few hours (or overnight if you’re patient – although to be honest – you can probably skip this step if you are in a rush)

When that’s done – take the legs and scrape off the excess salt and juniper berries and put them in an oven proof dish (that is just big enough for all four legs) and pour over the duck fat – they should be virtually covered in the fat. Cover with foil and put in a low oven (about 150c) for two hours then just turn off the heat and leave them. You can turn them over half way through cooking if you like. The trick is to make sure they cook in the fat and that they don’t cook too quickly. Once they are cool, that’s it – they can stay in the fat for a very long time (old French preserving technique).

Right – now you’re ready to cook the meal –

I think I’ve done mashed potato before so just look down this blog – the key here is to make sure there is a enough cream, mustard, salt and pepper in there.

Take the legs – scrape off the excess fat, place on a baking tray, brush with a little honey and place in the oven at 180c. They will take about 20 mins – but check them to make sure they don’t overcook. Take the duck breasts, season well and place into a frying pan at a moderate heat (about 3/4 strength) fat side down. Now the timing completely depends on the thickness of the breasts but I would go for about 5 mins on the fat side, turn over for 4 mins, and then do a last couple of mins on the fat side again. The breast needs to give when you prod it – otherwise it’s overcooked – and that is a disaster. When done, take them out of the pan and onto some foil to rest. While the duck is frying, steam the fine beans for about 5 mins until almost cooked. Then take the beans out of the pan, finely chop a large clove of garlic and put it in the pan with a good shot of olive oil for one minute, then put the beans back into the pan with lots of salt and pepper – they will be the best beans you have ever tasted – trust me.

Finally, put equal amounts of honey and balsamic vinegar into the pan and let it reduce a little to make a glaze. Now you just need to serve –

Cut the duck breasts into 1 cm slices and place on the plate, covering with the glaze. then add the leg, mash and beans. Works every time.

Lovely with Rioja.

Fishcakes, but not fried off

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It starts with Saturday kitchen and I finally realise what it is that I hate about TV cooks – they always have to add a spurious word at the end of everything they say – so “fry it” becomes “fry it off”, “trim it” becomes “trim it up” – the list goes on – “brown it off, “whisk it up”, “boil it down”. And they all seem to do it. Infuriating.

The days starts with – need I say it – croissants and pain au chocolat – I have to find something different next week. Then simple spaghetti with ragu sauce for lunch. But supper is a little more interesting –

Trout and Smoked Salmon Fishcakes

Peel a handful of potatoes and place them in salted boiling water. Take a couple of trout fillets and very gently fry them in a pan with butter – not cooking them fully through.

When the potatoes are cooked, mash them with butter, double cream salt and pepper, then take the skin off the trout and flake it into the potato mixture. Finally, pull the smoked salmon into little pieces and add.

Finely chop a handful of dill and mix it all together, checking that the mixture is well seasoned. If it is a little too wet, add a handful or two of breadcrunbs.

Now form the mixture into individual cakes, no more than about 1 cm thick and 3-4 cms in diameter. Fry them in butter and serve with a green salad.

Brilliant with a bottle of Australian Riesling (Tim Adams is a good one)

Oscar’s Birthday

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Oscar’s Birthday!

Three hours trying to amuse 17 eight years olds in a sports hall with a football, a basketball and a bouncy castle – it is a fact that they get more frightening as every year passes. And not one of the little buggers ate my sandwiches

I’m on my own tonight and I decided to try something different –

Beef fillet with pureed cauliflower and parsnip chips (for two)

Take half a cauliflower and cut it into small florets then heat in a saucepan heated with a good knob of butter (and with the lid on). After 5 minutes add a good glug of white wine and leave it to cook in the wine for a further 5 minutes. In the meantime peel a few parsnips, cut in half lengthways and cut into thin chips, then put them in a deep pan of sunflower oil for 5 minutes (hot but not too hot). Take them out and turn up the heat to get the oil really hot (but not smoking). In the meantime add some cream and dijon mustard to the cauliflower and use a hand blender to puree the mixture. finally add tarragon and season with salt and pepper.

Now put the beef fillets into a very hot frying pan (after seasoning and rubbing with olive oil). After a few minutes turn over and put the parsnip chips back into the (now) hot oil.

As soon as the parsnips start to turn brown, bring them out of the pan and onto some kitchen roll, then season. Take the fillets out of the frying pan when ready (for perfectly rare you just need a few mins on each side) and leave to rest.

Now put the cauliflower puree on the plates with the fillets on top (probably best sliced into three or four pieces and hopefully beautifully red inside) and the chips on the side – lovely. Personally I think the more mustard you use the better….


And then back to the X factor – finally Daniel goes – fingers crossed for Rachel to go next week… How is it that either of these people managed to stay on the show for so long – they are hopeless, simple as that…

 

Sunday lunch

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More crossants and pain au chocolat – I really have to get them to try something different for breakfast. I’m not worried though because it’s merely a prelude to the main event – Sunday Lunch…

Roast chicken with mashed garlic swede, cabbage, roast spuds and parsnips

Firstly prepare the chicken by stuffing with half an onion a handful of rosemary and thyme and a stick of celery, then slash the thighs and cover the whole thing with lots of salt, pepper, tarragon and olive oil. put it in a 220c oven – it needs to stay in there for about an hour and twenty minutes then pull it out out and rest it in foil while you make the gravy with the juices from the bottom of the pan, some flour, a glug of wine and the water that you used to cook the veg.

A few things to mention about the veg (although I’m not going to take you through it step by step – this isn’t a cookery book).  To get perfect results you must par-boild the spuds (10 mins) and parsnips (5 mins) before you put them in the oven (this time I used extra virgin rapeseed oil – bright yellow and beautiful) for about 40 mins. 

The cabbage should also be cooked in boiling water for a just a few minutes before dropping into cold water and leaving until ready to reheat in a pan with butter and lots of seasoning. The swede just needs to be cut into chunks and boiled in the water you used from the spuds. When the swede is cooked, take it out of the pan, and drop in a good chunk of butter with a couple of cloves of garlic finely chopped. Then put it back into the pan and mash – perfect…

Of course – all of this is for nothing without a big bowl of bread sauce – milk heated to simmering point with an onion and a few cloves, left to cool a little then strained into another saucepan. Add a few handfuls of breadcrumbs, lots of butter, a few glugs of cream and season…

Very simple but loads of work and loads of washing up. It’s well worth it though – especially for the chicken sandwiches later that evening. And DON’T forget to keep the carcass – put it in a saucepan with an onion, a few peppercorns and a carrot, then add boiling water and simmer for about forty minutes – perfect chicken stock and none of those rubbish stock cubes in sight.

Lunch is over and the weekend is drawing to a close – just enough time for a quick outing on the bikes and more wii (although no more wii sports which was an unfortunate casualty of the weekend – left on the floor and scratched to death by a careless short…)


Bruschetta and the shorts

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Friday 6.30 until Sunday 6.30. Two days of the shorts – I love it.
Friday night supper is quick and easy – I never show off on a Friday – best to start simple and build up over the weekend to a climax at Sunday lunchtime. So this time it’s sausages and mustard-mashed potato.

Saturday morning and it’s off to the shops to get food for the weekend, then back for a really easy breakfast of pain au chocolat and croissants for the kids – smoked mackerel and buttered toast for me (although William steals half of it). Then off to Play Space – a rubber-clad indoor playground full of single parents desperately trying to snatch a few peaceful moments over a luke warm cup of machine-made crappucino. Still – the kids love it…

Saturday lunch and it’s the shorts favourite –
Chicken goujons in pitta with salad and a sweet chilli dressing.
Cut the chicken into strips and drop into a bowl with one beaten egg. In the meantime make some breadcrumbs from any left-over white bread or baguette and add tarragon, flour, salt and pepper. Pull the chicken out of the egg and roll around in the breadcrumbs then place in a hot frying pan with a couple of mm of olive oil. Fry for five mins on each side and then serve in toasted pitta with the salad and sweet chilli sauce. They love it…
After lunch and I’m watching them create weird miis all afternoon on the wii – mainly obese ones called fat kid, fat lady, fat girl etc – what is it about kids and fat people??
Saturday Supper – the X-factor excitement builds as we approach Saturday evening, only to be briefly dampened by a dismal firework display courtesy of a Tesco firework family pack – never again – next time I’ll go back to the local guy who makes his own rockets and bombs. Fairly hit and miss on the safety front but considerably more exciting – and it’s only once a year isn’t it?
Garlic bread with tomato and basil
Half fill a small mixing bowl with plain flour, add a sachet of yeast to half a mug of warm water and mix them together with a little salt, sugar and a good glug of olive all. Mix it all together and knead with floury hands for about five minutes than leave it in
a warm place while the oven warms up to 250c (with a large baking tray warming up inside). In the meantime chop three cloves of garlic finely and mix with a really good chunk of butter, salt and pepper. Chop a handful of plum tomatoes and put into and bowl with a handful of chopped fresh basil, another good glug of olive oil, a tiny splash of red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.
Get the dough, split into two and roll one piece out and place on the hot tray pricking it and rubbing olive oil all over. Put it in the oven for about five minutes, take it out and cover with the garlic butter then put back into the oven for another five minutes.

Take it out, cut it into pieces and cover with the tomato and basil. Shorts destroyed in seconds… twice…
Next stop Simon Cowell…