Beef Casserole (or using-up-stuff-stew)

I hate wasting food. It goes against everything I believe in and I just don’t think there’s any need for it. With a bit of planning ahead and a lot of freezer space everything can get used.

We’re normally pretty good at sensible shopping, but this morning I found myself with: A third of a bottle of red – about a week past its best; half a butternut squash (after last week’s butternut squash risotto); and about five peppers (due to a shopping list malfunction).

I decided to make a big, slow cooked, autumnal casserole to feed us for about a week. (I’m on a bad run of shifts). So I took myself down to the butcher and bought some beef shin.  If you haven’t used it before, I’d highly recommend it. It’s not very pretty – sinewy and fatty – but when you cook it for ages that just means amazing flavour. It’s also really cheap. I’ve yet to find a similar stewing cut that becomes so soft and delicious. But of course you can use whatever slow cooking cut you can lay your hands on. 

Bulking out the meat with lots of vegetables makes it a bit healthier and makes the most of the meat – which is the most expensive part of the dish. It also means it’s not too heavy and you don’t need to lie down immediately after it.  Of course you don’t have to use the veg listed here. Use whatever needs saving from the bin.

This is very easy, once you’ve browned the meat and chopped the veg you’re more or less done. Make this after lunch, shove it in the oven for the afternoon while you do other things, then serve with a carb of your choice. We had rice, because after fish and chips last night I’ve ODed on potatoes. It’s also nice with some steamed greens.

Ingredients:

2lb beef shin, chopped to casserole sized pieces

2 tablespoons plain flour

Half a squash, deseeded and chopped into chunks (I couldn’t be bothered to peel it)

2 onions, sliced

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

2 peppers, sliced

A handful of chestnut mushrooms, sliced

A stick of celery, chopped

Two bay leaves and a couple of sprigs of rosemary

A tablespoon of tomato puree

A third of a bottle of red wine

A pint and a half of beef stock (I just used one cube and extra water)

Salt and pepper

Put the oven on to preheat at 160 degrees.

Toss the beef in the flour and salt and pepper, and heat up some oil in a big ovenproof casserole dish on the hob.

Brown the meat in batches over a medium/high heat. Don’t overcrowd the pan, or it’ll steam. You want to get some good crispy colour on the edges of it, and try and do all sides. Put aside in a bowl. There will be lots of brown sticky bits on the bottom of the pan, but it's supposed to look like that.

It's supposed to look like that.

I sliced the veg whilst doing that, but you might prefer to have everything ready before you start. 

Once the meat is all browned, add the onions, celery, garlic and squash to the pan with a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat, give it a stir, then stick the lid on. After five minutes it should have started to sweat down, add the peppers and mushrooms. You’ll find all the meaty crispy bits on the bottom of the pan are now easy to scrape up.

Scrunch up the herbs in your hand and throw them in whole.  They’ll add lots of flavour, just don’t dish them up or try and eat a leaf or twig.

After a few minutes, add the tomato puree, stir it in and cook for a few minutes. Then put the meat back in the pan, add the wine and turn up the heat to cook off some of the alcohol. Add the stock, give it all a stir and put the lid on. 

Shove it in the oven, and go off to do something else for a while. Check it every hour or so, if it’s starting to dry out add some more water. I left it in for about three and a half hours.

Then when it comes out it has reduced, the beef has melted, and most of the veg has all but disappeared into the sauce. Lovely.

Not that pretty, but pretty delicious.

I got a slow cooker for Christmas.

A few weeks before Christmas I decided that having a slow cooker would probably change my life. It was a bit of a whim, but I work shifts, and the thought of being able to shove a load of stuff in the slow cooker then go to bed really appealed to me. And I thought it might help break the endless stir fry/pasta/ risotto cycle that makes up weeknight meals.

So far, so good. Since I got the slow cooker on Christmas morning I have used it three times, and it’s brilliant. I made chicken stock, which is the tastiest stock I’ve ever made. Here are two other recipes that I made up, but that seemed to work reasonably well.

There are two things I have learned so far… 

1. Brown the meat first – it seems like an annoying step but will really add to the flavour and colour of the meal.
2. It doesn’t reduce or thicken the sauce in the same way as doing something on the hob/in the oven, so you will have to thicken it in some way. But you can’t abandon things on the hob for 7 hours while you go to sleep unless you want to wake up in a house fire, so it’s a small price to pay.

Beef Casserole

After working overnight on Hogmanay, I came home and browned off the beef, added lots of other stuff then went to bed. I finally celebrated the new year with a bottle of prosecco and this casserole that night. It was brilliant. 

Ingredients

-          1.5 lbs of beef shin, in reasonably big chunks

-          A dessertspoon of flour

-          An onion, chopped

-          A stick of celery, chopped

-          A couple of carrots, peeled and roughly chopped into big chunks

-          Two cloves of garlic, chopped

-          A load of mushrooms, halved

-          A third of a bottle of red wine

-          Some water

-          A bay leaf

-          Salt and pepper

-          A heaped teaspoon of cornflour to thicken

Put the flour and some salt and pepper in a bowl, then add the beef and give it all a good mix round until it’s thoroughly coated. In a big frying pan, heat up some oil or fat and add the beef a bit at a time. Do it in batches so you don’t overcrowd the pan. Leave it sitting and frying until it goes nicely brown, then turn it over to do the same on the other side. When it’s brown, shove it in the slow cooker. 

Once all the beef is done, add the red wine to the pan and whack up the heat to boil off some of the alcohol, scraping up any meaty bits off the pan with a wooden spoon.

Add all the veg, bay leaf etc. to the slow cooker, then the wine. Top up with some water until all the meat and veg is nearly covered. 

Put on low for about 8 hours. Go to bed and get some sleep. Go for a walk, whatever.

When it’s nearly ready, it’ll look quite different. 

Take a ladleful of the sauce and mix it with the cornflour, before adding it back to the casserole. Make some mash and some token green veg. 

If you were to do this in the oven, you could put it on at 150 degrees for about two and a half hours. You could probably skip the cornflour step, as it would reduce itself!

Chicken and Chorizo stew.

Ingredients

-          6 pieces of chicken – thighs and drumsticks

-          Two normal sausage sized cooking chorizo/half a chorizo ring (as much as you 

like really)cut into chunks

-          An onion, peeled and sliced

-          A pepper, sliced

-          Two cloves of garlic, chopped

-          A courgette, sliced

-          Some leftover white wine

-          A tin of tomatoes

-          Salt and pepper

Season, then brown the chicken in a big frying pan in a little bit of oil. Put it in the slow cooker. Put the chorizo in the pan so it releases some of its lovely oil and starts to go a bit crispy. Chuck that in the slow cooker (oil and all) along with all the veg and tinned tomatoes. 

Put the wine in the pan and let it bubble for a few minutes, before adding it to the slow cooker. 

Add a little drop of water if you think it needs some more liquid. Put it on high for 4 hours (a long afternoon nap) then serve with rice. I think I added some spinach towards the end of cooking. (We also added a dollop of sour cream, because our chorizo was quite spicy)

I didn’t thicken this one, Joe had a big bowl of the sauce as a chorizo-y soup. It made him very happy.

Are you sensing the theme? Brown things, chuck them in, go to bed, sorted. Today before my night shift I’m making a sausage and bean casserole. 

Any other suggestions for recipes I can do? Particularly veggie ones – they’ve all been a bit meaty so far.

The sauce that goes with everything.

I love the sunshine. I love summer. Even if I have to plaster on the factor 20 just to leave the house. Even if it does make it really difficult to sleep during the day before night shifts, so that I end up lying in bed writing up a blog when I should be getting another hour or two of kip.

It also makes for some interesting cooking. This year we don't have a garden, so barbecues are out of the question. In truth, it just means we spend a lot of time in our local beer garden just to ensure that we get out in the sun. It also means I'm often cooking after a G and T. 

See? A sunny spot by the canal. Not too shabby.

 So things to avoid when cooking in the summer: Gravy. Standing by the hob for hours. Stodge. Anything too complex that can't be done after a gin.

Luckily there's a sauce that goes with everything, and makes everything taste a bit summery. It's my version of salsa verde, and I've no idea if it's authentic (it probably isn't) but it's light, and herby, and really useful with meat, fish, halloumi and all sorts. Use whatever green leafy herbs you like. I also use it as an opportunity to use up any green things in the fridge, like spring onions or spinach.

Salsa verde:

Ingredients:

a big bunch of parsley

a good handful of basil

a clove of garlic, peeled

a spring onion, roughly chopped into chunks

a teaspoonful of capers

the juice and zest of half a lemon

a load of extra virgin olive oil, but if it seems like you're using too much you can thin it 

down with a bit of water 

Plenty of salt and pepper

1. Put everything in a blender with about three glugs of olive oil.
2. Blitz it. Add more oil if it seems too thick.
3. Blitz it some more. Add more oil/some water if it seems too thick.
   
   
   
   
   

We had it with some grilled pork chops. We also had buttery new potatoes, and because I had a leek to use up, leeks grilled with a bit of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

It will keep for a while in the fridge, but I decided to use it up fairly quickly by tossing it through a load of veg and roasting it. Add a bit of crumbled feta, and I'd made a few meals to take to work too. 

Everyone can make a bolognese.

So I've been a bit ill. I don't get ill really. Not properly, visit-the-doctors, spend-days-in-bed ill. I regularly get a bit of a cold or whatever and feel a bit sorry for myself (and moan a lot, and make a lot of soup) but I still do everything I would normally do. I tried that this time, and ended up leaving work half way through a shift and calling in sick for the first time in three years. Ah well. The point of this preamble is not for sympathy, but to discuss food choices. I found myself becoming a child again. I was sitting on a sofa, under the same duvet I had when I was ill as a kid, eating tinned tomato soup. Boiled eggs mashed up in a cup. All it needed was white bread spread with margarine to go with it. Brilliant (yet terrible at the same time).

Now I'm feeling loads better. I've started getting bored at home, want go running, go to the pub. (I probably shouldn't do either of those things quite yet...) But I'm not ready to stop regressing. I've always loved spaghetti bolognese. We had mince most Tuesdays when I was growing up, and whenever I saw it defrosting I would always campaign for spaghetti bolognese. More often than not we'd have mince and tatties, as we had pasta on Mondays.  My mum was against having the same carbs two days in a row. Eventually she gave in to my campaigning with a weary “If you really want spaghetti bolognese, you make it.” As such, this is a recipe I've been honing since I was about twelve.

I'm aware there are lots of much easier ways to make a bolognese – often involving a well known brand of pasta sauce – but I've worked out this recipe throughout the last, erm, fifteen years?  For many of those years I was very skint, so this recipe can also make 1lb of mince feed at least four people.

A note on pasta... I will always call this spaghetti bolognese even though we often don't have spaghetti in the house. I use whatever shape of pasta we've bought in industrial sized bags. This week, penne. Most importantly, if you want your pasta to taste of something make sure you stir it into the bolognese while it's on the heat. You don't want a pile of pasta, then a pile of bolognese. The pasta will be horrible. Bolognese is a sauce and it's supposed to coat the pasta properly.

This is almost certainly not authentic.

My version of Bolognese

Ingredients:

1lb decent steak mince (I think that's probably about 450grammes?)

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon diced up/or a small pack of lardons

2 onions, finely chopped

a carrot, peeled and finely chopped

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

6 or so chestnut or button mushrooms, chopped

a red or orange pepper, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

a big glass of red wine

a tin of tomatoes

2 tablespoons of tomato puree

a splash of milk (optional, but I think it adds a bit of richness and helps bring it

all together)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried thyme/some fresh thyme

2 dried bay leaves

plenty of salt and pepper

-  First, in a big pan, fry off your bacon/lardons until it's going a bit crispy and tasty. Resist the urge to eat a bit of it out of the pan. (actually eat a bit of it, there's nothing better than fried smoked bacon)

-  Add the onions, carrots, celery and pepper, a big pinch of salt and give it a stir. Now shove a lid on and leave it for five – ten minutes. It should be on a lowish heat, so everything starts to sweat but not colour.

-  Add the mince and garlic, and stir it a bit then let it brown. Stir it occasionally for five minutes until there aren't any pink bits left in the meat.

-  Add the mushrooms and tomato puree, stir, then cook for another five minutes.

-  Add the red wine and turn up a bit to bubble off the alcohol.

-  Add everything else (tomatoes, herbs etc.), give it a good stir, turn it right down and pop the lid on. Now cook it for about an hour, stirring occasionally. 

-  Keep an eye on it – it should reduce and get quite thick. If you think it looks a bit wet, take the lid off for a while. Keep tasting it and checking for seasoning. (if you don't have an hour and a half to make your bolognese you can cook it on a higher heat for less time, it just won't be quite as rich. I'd still give it half an hour of simmering if you can)

-  If you've got four people round for dinner, cook your pasta and drain it, before adding to the pan with the bolognese. If you're freezing some of it, take some of the bolognese out and put it in some tupperware, then stir your pasta into the rest of it. Cook the pasta in the bolognese for thirty seconds – a minute.

There we go! Serve with grated parmesan, salad etc. It probably doesn't need garlic bread, but sometimes it's nice to have a carb overload. 

I promise to do more adventurous food soon. Probably when I've finished the antibiotics and stopped regressing.

Home comforts and cheap eats.

This is a rare post about soup. I make it almost every week but rarely put the recipe up, as it took me years to convince people that it wasn't the only thing I ate. But now, with autumn well and truly here, it is the perfect time for soup. It's healthy, cheap and very very easy. Make it now. Freeze some of it. Have it on night shifts when you're cold and sleepy. 

Split pea and ham soup

My mum used to use ham hock in soups all the time, but I don't remember them being enormous. I don't know if hock is just the Scottish phrase for it but never mind. My conversation with the butcher went like this:

Me: “Have you got any ham hocks?”

Him: “Do you mean ham shank?”

Me: “Is it the same thing? It's for soup”

Him: “Yeah it's good for soup.”

(produces a ham shank the size of my head)

Me: “Jesus it's enormous!”

Him: “Yeah you're going to have a lot of soup.”

And yet, it was only £2.80. And I go to a good butcher, where the meat is free range and brilliant. £2.80. Amazing. So I'm now concocting other recipes for this rather ugly but totally delicious cut of meat. Honestly, I don't buy cheap meat, but cheap CUTS of meat are the way forward.

So with some split peas from the back of the cupboard and the cheap meat this probably works out at about 35p a portion.

Ingredients:

a ham hock

half a pack of green split peas, rinsed

a carrot, scraped and roughly chopped

a couple of onions, peeled and roughly chopped

a clove of garlic, peeled and sliced in two

a couple of bay leaves

lots of water

pepper

normally I would have a couple of roughly chopped sticks of celery

too, but the celery in our fridge had gone bendy

1. I boiled the ham for a short blast on it's own before cooking as it's an insanely salty piece of meat. Some ham hock recipes I've seen say you should soak it overnight for this reason. That would require planning though. Put it in a soup pot, surround with water and bring to the boil for ten minutes. This helps to take away some of the saltiness, and any scum from the ham (no one wants scum).
2. Pour away that water and put the ham to one side. Wipe any scum from the pan.
3. Fry the onions garlic and carrots on a low heat in a little vegetable oil, then add the ham, bay leaves and split peas to the pan
   
   

   

   Ugly, isn't it?

4. Top up with a full kettle full of cold water. Probably a couple of litres. Bring it up to the boil, then lower the heat stick a lid on and leave it to simmer for ages, depending on the size of the ham. At least two hours but probably more.
   Go with your instinct on this. I did it for two and a bit hours but then we were due to go out for dinner, and I didn't feel like the ham was quite falling apart enough. We do have a rubbish electric hob though, which takes an AGE to cool down, so I just switched the hob off and left it while we went out. I would guess it probably bubbled away for about two and a half in the end.
5. Remove the ham and bay leaves and blend the rest of the soup. When the meat has cooled remove the skin and bones, tear up the meat and add as much of it back to the soup as you like. Use the rest for sandwiches or something. I've frozen some so next time we have chicken I can make a chicken and ham pie.
   
   

   

   A dinner plate full of ham!

   
   

   
   
6. DON'T ADD SALT. It won't need it. Even for a salt fiend like me.

The enormous piece of ham was a revelation. I'm already plotting recipes which involve ham hock and pearl barley.

A friend and fellow food blogger has just mentioned lamb breast as an equally delicious cheap cut of meat. Any others that I don't know about and should be cooking? It might just be the theme for this winter...

Herby roast chicken with aubergine parmigiana.

How many times can you put roast chicken on a blog? It's my ultimate comfort food. After a hectic couple of weeks and a traumatic trip to the Trafford Centre I needed it. (Honestly, I hate shopping malls, but I needed clothes and it's just up the road.)

In the last couple of weeks I have had the most horrendous diet... shift work + travelling + wedding buffet + takeaway chips for tea on the way to the pub. As usual, for me, that means craving vegetables.

All of this means that on my first normal day at home I made roast chicken with aubergine parmigiana. The aubergine parmigiana is an amazing veggie meal if you're that way inclined.

First the chicken:

Herby Roast Chicken ingredients

-  A decent chicken. I've mentioned this before, but try and get one that hasn't had a hideous life. I'm prepared to pay a little extra and get a free range one from the butcher. Buy as big as you can afford, chicken leftovers can ALWAYS be used.
-  About 50grammes of butter, at room temperature makes it easier to use
-  Some herbs – I used rosemary and thyme as that's what I have
-  a couple of cloves of garlic
-  a lemon
-  salt and pepper

For all chicken timings (and roast times in general) you can't beat Delia. http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/meat/roasting-times.html Ignore the other instructions about bacon etc. but follow her temperatures and timings.

1. Finely chop your garlic and herbs together (taking the leaves of the rosemary and thyme and discarding the stalks) then mash it into the butter with some salt and pepper using a fork.
2. Using your hands separate the skin from the breast meat. It sounds gross, but get your finger underneath the skin at the gap above the breast and move it around to make a little pocket of space. Put half of the herby butter in that pocket.
3. Smear the rest of the butter over the rest of the chicken, and make sure there's a good blob in the joins between the legs and the body.
4. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the top, and put the squeezed out lemon inside the bird.
5. A bit more salt and pepper over the top, then cook according to Delia's timings, basting regularly. Don't forget to leave it to rest for a bit after.

Aubergine Parmigiana

This might all seem a bit faffy, but it's really nice. It works as a vegetarian dish if you serve it with crusty bread and salad. (and use veggie friendly cheese)

You can do all this while the chicken is in the oven.

Ingredients:

-  an aubergine
-  a couple of cloves of garlic
-  an onion, finely chopped (I'd run out and made it without, so it's not completely necessary)
-  a tin of tomatoes
-  a teaspoon of red wine vinegar (or balsamic)
-  a small handful of fresh oregano (or a teaspoon of dried)
-  a small handful of basil leaves
-  fresh parmesan (or alternative Italian hard cheese, parmesan will taste best) Finely grated.

First you have to make a sauce. This would work equally well as a pasta sauce/pizza topping if you wanted.

1. If using onion, fry gently for a couple of minutes until it softens. Finely chop together your garlic and oregano then fry (with the onion) on a low heat for a few minutes to help it release all the lovely flavours.
2. Add the tin of tomatoes, red wine vinegar and some salt and pepper. Leave it to bubble away and break down the tomatoes for a while. Fifteen minutes ought to do it.

 The aubergine:

1. Slice into centimetre thick slices.
2. Fry on a dry pan for a few minutes on each side to soften it and brown it a little. You'll probably need to do it in batches.
3. Erm, that's it.

Then build it up in layers: sauce, parmesan, aubergine, sauce, parmesan, aubergine etc. Finish it with sauce and plenty of parmesan. You could add mozarella if you wanted too, particularly if you were doing it as a veggie main course.

Shove in the oven for half an hour.

We had this with some roasted spuds and some steamed broccoli. And it was good. 

The rest of the chicken will be a curry/stir fry/sandwiches.