Southern Sausage Stew

Back to Jamie Oliver again this time, for a recipe from his ‘Jamies America‘, which I haven’t done that many recipes from. Lisa really like sausage stew, but I thought this gave a nice twist to it so I thought I’d give it a go.

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The usual assembly of the ingredients. The recipe called for all red peppers, but I used a mixture of red and green because that’s all I had.

Attack everything with a knife. Note the plastic bowl for all the trimmings. That was one of the key things I picked up on my Italian cookery course. Although it seems like such a simple thing, it stops you having to run back and forth to the bin all the time. If you had a compost heap you would stick it on there I guess.

First stage is to brown the sausages, which doesn’t take long. I guess you would do these in the oven, but catching all the juice that comes out of them gives you something to cook the vegetables in.

Done. Simple as that.

I took this picture because this is a sight that always made me panic when I started cooking. All the brown and crusty bits on the bottom of the pan look like something has gone wrong. But as any cook will tell you – that’s the good stuff, it’s where all the flavour is. Cooking the vegetables in the juice and fat from the sausages will capture all that flavour.

So, stick the vegetables straight in the same pan, and allow them to cook slowly to soften and absorb all the meatyness.

Then add the spices.

Once that’s all cooked in, add the tomatoes, stock and sausages to make it into a recognisable stew. Let it bubble away and thicken up into a nice thick sauce.

Serve with some rice (or potatoes I guess) and chopped spring onions on top. Easy.

This was very easy to put together, and it was very nice, although didn’t have a lot of depth for my taste – I’m not quite sure what I could do to improve that. I’ll definitely try it again, perhaps with a few more spices to give some depth.

Fillet Steak Poached in Red Wine

A bit of a change of direction for this one. I was really just reading through my recipe books trying to get inspired, when I came across this recipe in Jamie Oliver’s ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’.

We don’t normally eat fillet steak, as we prefer ribeye – more taste basically, and poaching steak just sounds wrong somehow. A point Jamie addresses in the book 🙂 Still, I decided to give it a go as it sounded quite nice. I did change one aspect and did normal potato mash rather than celeriac as Lisa isn’t keen.

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The usual routine of gathering all the ingredients. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary here, just some nice steak, red wine, stock and some potatoes.

Virtually no preparation required really – just peeling the garlic, and stick it in the pan with the red wine, stock, thyme and pepper.

In an amazing turn of events, the poaching liquid is heated up – not quite sure I thought this required a photo – but there you go. The steaks are in there, but it’s not easy to see I think.

Making a cartouche. I don’t do this very often, but it’s not exactly hard – and it looks quite impressive for some reason.

Put the cartouche on top, and simmer. While all this was going on I peeled and chopped the tatties and set them to boil – that really doesn’t need a picture does it? Thought not.

The steaks are finished, so keep them warm and sort out the sauce.

Some of the poaching liquid in a pan – boil.

Add butter and ‘swirl’.

Elelgently presented I’m sure you’ll agree 🙂

This was very nice. Not quite what I expected maybe. The steak didn’t take on as much of the liquid taste as I might have expected, but it certainly had more taste then fillet usually does (in my experience) and too much would probably have ruined it. I did cook this for a bit longer than I might have done normally, but Lisa really doesn’t like steak anything other than ‘well done’ so I had to make sure. This is actually one of the easiest recipes I’ve followed, and while it’s not going to replace ribeye in my favourites list, it’s a different take that I will definitely use in the future.

Chicken with prosciutto

I’m trying to take part in Jamie Oliver’s ‘Pass It On’ movement, as seen on his new TV series – the Ministry of Food. I’m hoping to pass on the recipes to people at work, so I thought I’d better check that I could cook them myself 😉

So, first of all, I decided to try one of the main recipes that featured on the TV programme.

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Gather all the ingredients. Nothing massively exciting here, just some nice chicken, prosciutto and some good parmigiano.

The first, really exciting step, is to peel and chop the potatoes, then put them on to boil while the rest of the work goes on.

Then open up the chicken and lightly score it, to allow the flavours to penetrate the meat.

Sprinkle some thyme on the chicken. I actually think I used a little too much here.

Grate a bit of lemon zest on top

Grate a bit of the cheese and …

…sprinkle it over the chicken.

Cover the whole of the chicken with the ham, to protect it, and to give a good seal.

Put the chicken between two layers of clingfilm (I actually used two layers on top and two layers on the bottom)

Then, using the base of a pan, give the chicken a good bashing until it’s all evenly thin. This doesn’t take a great deal of time, although it is a bit of a faff, but it does make a difference. The whole point is to make the chicken the same thickness all the way over so it cooks at the same rate.

Heat a good non-stick pan with a bit of oil. (clearly it’s vital that I show a picture of this)

Slap the chicken in – ham side down.

Once the chicken is cooked about halfway through, and the ham is starting to go crisp…

…turn it over, nice and quick and smooth

At the end, once it was cooked right through, I turned it over again and just gave the ham a bit longer to make it really crispy.

Turn it out onto a board and slice across the middle.

Serve – in this case dressed with some lemon juice and with some mash and soya beans.

This was very nice. The thyme was a bit strong which makes me think I used a bit much. Lisa also did’t like the lemon juice squeezed on at the end, so I’ll skip that next time. This was very easy to make though, and I can see why Jamie used it as an example.

Roasted chicken breast

This is from ‘Cook with Jamie’. I’ve come across the recipe a few times but never quite got round to using it. Then Lisa asked if I could do something with butternut squash because she really likes it, and this gave me the opportunity to try it out…

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Including the oh-so-phallic squash.

Attack everything with a knife, and spend ages getting nice thin slices of squash – only to remember way too late that you have a mandolin especially for this sort of job. Idiot.

Basically, you put the chicken in the tray with the chilli, herbs and oil, and arrange the squash around it, adding some cream over the squash. It looks very pretty 🙂

Get the onion and celery started for the risotto.

Add the rice and start the long stirring process. Interestingly, most common advice is to stir constantly. When I did my Italian cookery course, the instructor told us not to stir any more than necessary. I tend to come in the middle somewhere. I just can’t be bothered with constant stirring 🙂

Adding stock and getting rather large.

Add in asparagus and tomato. This is just to make the risotto a bit more interesting, and is a combination of a couple of Jamie’s risotto recipes. This is one of the reasons I like risotto, you get the basic recipe right, and you can add pretty much anything to it.

See – there is a spoon – it’s right there! My ever-present tasting spoon – a requirement whatever you’re cooking really, but a real must when making risotto to check when it’s done.

The finished risotto which is now clearly way too much for two people, and the rest went into a tupperware in the fridge for lunch the next day.

Serve. A nice clean-looking plate. I could have made more of an effort with the squash probably.

Fish Pie

I’ve done this recipe a few times now, and it’s always nice. It can be a bit of a hassle pulling all the ingredients together, but I think it’s worth it 🙂

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The by now traditional gathering of the ingredients. The fish I used were salmon, haddock, and for a change, smoked whiting.

The recipe – this time from Jamie Oliver’s ‘Return of the Naked Chef’

Do all the usual preparation – slice, dice, chop and so on.

Boil the potatoes along with the eggs.

Start off the onion and carrots for the sauce.

Wilt the spinach over the boiling potatoes.

Drain the cooked potatoes and let them steam dry – which gives a nicer texture when mashed.

Add the cream to start the sauce.

Add cheese, parsley and mustard to complete the sauce.

Cool down the hard boiled eggs, and remove the shells.

The sauce is now thickened and silky

Assemble the fish, eggs and spinach in the dish.

Pour over the sauce and cover with the mashed potato and stick in the oven.

When it comes out of the oven it’s all nice and brown and bubbly.

Serve (in a very slapdash fashion) with some soya beans.

Goes very nicely with an I.P.A.

Spaghetti with Seafood and Rocket

More food, another Jamie Oliver Recipe (from Jamie’s Italy) , again, slightly adapted. The original recipe calls only for prawns, but I decided to use a seafood selection – prawns, mussels, squid – that sort of thing. Very quick and easy.

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Get the book ready.

Gather all the ingredients.

Do all the usual prep.

Get the spaghetti started.

Start off with garlic and chilli.

Add the seafood…looks nice already 🙂

Stick in white wine and sundried tomato puree.

Add in the cooked spaghetti.

Serve with a nice cold glass of white wine, and a small side salad, in this case radishes, baby plum tomatoes and spring onions. Yum.

This was very nice indeed, and one that I will definately make again. Maybe just with prawns so that Lisa can have some (she’s not keen on mussels or squid 🙂 )

Rack of lamb

We got this nice lamb from Costco, so as usual I went to Jamie Oliver for a recipe.

We actually had two smallish racks, so I cooked them both and we had plenty left over to make sandwiches the next day.

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Nothing complicated in the ingredients. Pretty straightforward stuff.

The obligatory recipe book

I decided to use a slightly different method for the Dauphinoise Potatoes this time, and used Jamie’s recipe rather than the Nick Nairn recipe that I usually use. The main difference is that the Nairn recipe cooks the potatoes in the milk and cream before they go in the over – Jamie’s recipe just puts everything in the dish and in the oven. Hardly a major variation, but of interest – maybe 🙂 Anyway, this is the milk, cream and garlic just steeping for a while

If you really want to do Dauphinoise properly, then a mandolin is almost a necessity. You can slice the potatoes thinly by hand, but it’s a right pain. The mandolin does it in seconds.

Ta daa.

To add some interest, I decided to add onions to the Dauphinoise. Thinly sliced by hand this time, because it’s pretty easy to do quickly.

Layer the potatoes and onions in the dish, with some thyme for flavour.

Once all the layers are done, and the liquid, then cover with foil and stick in the oven.

Browning off the lamb on the hob – this got a bit smokey.

Once the lamb is browned, season, and put in the oven.

The lamb comes out of the oven nicely brown and moist.

The potatoes come out nice and brown (the foil was removed for the last 10 minutes to let the top brown)

Serve all together, with some broccoli. Yum.

Overall, this was very nice, and not too much hassle. Lisa wasn’t keen on the thyme in the potatoes so I might miss them out next time.

Beef, Stout and Cheese Pie

Yet another Jamie Oliver recipe, that he did on his TV show the other day. It takes quite a while, but most of that is just oven time, so the prep is not that long really.

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Gather the ingredients. I made a couple of changes here. I used Wild Oat Stout rather then Guinness, simply because I found it hard to buy a single bottle of Guinness, rather than a four-pack. Normally this would be an excuse to drink the other three, but I was being good 🙂 I also marinated the beef in the stout in advance, rather than just adding it in the middle. For two reasons – it allowed the beef to absorb more of the flavour of the stout (and vice-versa), and it tenderised the meat a bit more, as I was using flank steak which can be a bit tough.

Get the recipe out to make sure you follow it right – and to show off your fancy book-weight thingy from Lakeland.

Prep the ingredients – dice, slice, chop, grate etc. – generally make everything smaller.

Using Lisa’s fancy Marco Pierre White casserole, soften the onions.

Add the other vegetables…

…then the beef and the herbs.

Finally add the stout, and stick in the oven.

Halfway through, take it out and stir

The filling is done.

Roll out the pastry

Mix the filling with the cheese, put in a dish, and put the pastry on top. Just folding the edges of the pastry in looks a bit rubbish when it’s like this, but after cooking it actually looks quite good.

Ta-daa.

Pie and mash – lovely jubbly.

Chicken in Puff Pastry

Another Jamie Oliver recipe here, from ‘Happy Days’. I’ve no idea why I haven’t tried this one before, because it looks nice (and tastes nice) and is pretty easy.

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This was very nice, and pretty quick and easy to prepare. The only comment I would make is that I either messed up the amounts, or did something wrong with the sauce, because it was waaay too strong. Next time I would do it with about a quarter the amount of mustard.

No Cinders, you shall not go to the ball

Played football at Tweedbank last night and won both matches.  We play one main match for about 90 minutes, then have a short ‘best of three’ at the end – we won both 🙂

However, Yetholm’s match today has been cancelled.  It’s a bit of a shame, because I was quite looking forward to it.  However, Coldstream are playing at home, so I may get to see them (which doesn’t happen very often).  This is assuming that their match isn’t cancelled as well, of course.  It also means that I get to watch the rugby – the Six Nations kicks off today, and England’s opening match is against Wales at Twickenham – should be a good one.

Saw Jamie Oliver making pasta the other night, and he did it really quickly.  I like making my own pasta, but it can be a bit of a faff doing all the kneading etc.  However Jamie just mixed everything up in the food processor  and then whacked it through the pasta machine – bonus!  Might try that soon.