Chicken tagine

I have issues with sweet things in hot savoury food. I don't like apple sauce with my pork and I definitely don't like pineapple on a pizza, it's just wrong. I think tagines are the exception to the rule, I've had some amazing lamb tagines with prunes and lovely ones with chicken and dried apricots. However, if I'm making my own I am still more likely to make one stuffed full of olives instead.

So this is a distinctly savoury chicken tagine, full of spices and lemon and the only bit of sweetness comes from a dollop of honey. Pretty much tailored exactly to my tastes.

This was made to serve four, or as we're having a friend over, three, and a couple of night shift break times next week. I'm sure it's totally normal to eat tagine at 2.30 am.

Ingredients (it looks a lot, but it's really easy):

Four chicken legs separated into thighs and drumsticks
a tablespoon of flour (seasoned with half a teaspoon of paprika and some salt and pepper)
Spices: a teaspoon of ground cumin, ½ teaspoon of turmeric, 4 cardamom pods (cracked with the back of a knife) a cinnamon stick
four cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
about three centimetres of fresh ginger,  peeled and grated
two onions, sliced
ten green pitted olives
a tin of chickpeas
a squidge of honey
a lemon
an aubergine chopped, quartered and sliced

First, put your seasoned flour in a freezer bag with your chicken pieces and give them a good shake. Heat up some oil in a pan, then brown it thoroughly all over in a very big pan, before putting it to one side.

Fry your onions for five minutes on a medium heat until they start to colour a little, then add your spices, garlic and ginger and fry for another few minutes before adding your aubergine, chickpeas and olives.

 Add the juice of the lemon and the zest...

A note on the lemon: all the recipes I read called for preserved lemons. I think that's a bit of a niche ingredient. I have a small kitchen, and don't have the space to keep lots of things like that. Instead, I used a potato peeler to take the zest off a normal unwaxed lemon in a couple of really big chunks then halved it and juiced it. It might not be authentic, but it worked for me.

Put your chicken back in the pan and add water... probably about three quarters of a pint. Cover it, turn the heat right down and leave to simmer for a good hour. It's very forgiving, you can leave it until you've had a gin and tonic and a bit of a catch up with a friend and it'll be grand. 

I served it with cous cous. Cook it according to the packet instructions. I then stirred through some toasted pine nuts and a big a slosh of extra virgin olive oil. More authentic would be toasted almonds. But I didn't have any.

We followed up with strawberries and cream, with a bit of dark chocolate grated over the top. Scottish strawberries. Awesome.

(A few things about the blog: I finally have a fancy new smartphone so have taken the pictures for this one using Instagram. What do you think? Everyone uses instagram these days, so I'm not sure if it's actually become a bit boring... still the food looks nice. Also, I've decided to write this one in a more conventional recipe type format than my usual ramblings. Feedback welcome.)

Monday roast.

The thing about shift work is that your weekend is not necessarily at the weekend. This week, my weekend falls on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And, after a few days of sandwiches, leftovers etc. at work I want proper food.

So today I have slept in, mooched about, and made a roast. Well, it gave me something to do while the football's on.

Still, it would be over the top to do full on roast potatoes, roast veg and Yorkshire pudding. It's supposed to be June after all. So here it is; belly pork, cooked simply, with steamed greens and new potatoes.

I have done a belly pork blog before, but I really don't think you can go wrong with it as a cut of meat, and that was a much heavier wintry dish.

First: Get your butcher to score the skin of the meat, because it's a right faff to do it yourself. Pour some boiling water over the skin of the meat then dry it with some kitchen roll and leave it out to dry out for about twenty minutes, while you put your oven on to preheat to it's very very highest heat. 

Then season the underside, and rub lots of salt, pepper and thyme leaves into the skin, particularly in the scores. Now shove in the oven for half an hour, before turning the heat down to about 180 degrees. Leave it in there for an hour.

Boil your new potatoes in well salted water, and steam some asparagus, broccoli and spinach to go with it. Toss the veg in a little extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of salt and pepper.

To make a light gravy (jus? Or maybe a reduction?) Take the pork out of the oven and put it on one side to rest. Pour away all of the fat, then stick the pan over a high heat and add a small glass of white wine. Start scraping up the tasty bits from the bottom and let it simmer away the alcohol for a few minutes. Then add half a pint of vegetable stock. Turn the heat down and reduce for about five – ten minutes while the meat rests then serve. 

Must remember to take more than one picture of the finished dish for blog purposes.

Whilst making this I mostly listened to: Match commentary. 

Now if you don't mind, t'other half has taken a few days off to enjoy my non-weekend weekend with me, so we're off to the pub.

The Perfect Hamburger

Well I was going to do a vegetarian tapas thing this week. Honestly, I promise I was. But I have to work part of the Bank Holiday weekend so we have decided to treat ourselves to tapas out on Sunday night to make up for it. And although I seem to be craving a holiday in Spain (I've never been) tapas two nights running seemed excessive. So another day I will do a veggie extravaganza and make my own tortilla and buy manchego and make a couple of lovely salads etc.

I decided to go to the other extreme and make burgers. This wasn't supposed to be a fancy dinner, just a Friday night tea, so you might find it all a bit less hard work than usual. 

NB. There seems to be an unintentional American theme in these last two posts, I'm not sure why.

Burgers:

I have an enduring memory of reading “The Perfect Hamburger” by Alexander McCall Smith with my mum when I was wee. I loved it, and I asked my mum if we could make the perfect hamburger. My mum's a primary school teacher, and it turns out when she read this book to her class, they'd all made burgers afterwards. She had the mince ready, that night we made our own burgers for tea. Anyway, enough reminiscing, in all seriousness my burger recipe today will not differ wildly from the one I made with my mum when I was about seven. Two things I have decided to add are: some very finely chopped streaky bacon to give it an extra layer of fat and salt (healthy) and some finely chopped fried onion to add a bit of sweetness.

First, shove on your oven to preheat for your wedges. They'll take half an hour, so they want to be in the oven before you put your burgers on.

Finely chop and fry on a low heat in a little butter to soften. Let it cool a bit. Take a load of mince (I had about 400g for three big meaty burgers... too much really) add the onion, some very finely chopped unsmoked streaky bacon (I had three rashers) and an egg. Mix it up with plenty pepper. If it's a bit wet add some breadcrumbs. (Take the end bit of your normal loaf that never gets eaten, blitz in food processor, you've got nice fresh breadcrumbs) I've read recipes that say absolutely no to the egg, but it helps it stick together. And my mum always added egg. It doesn't taste of egg, so I have no problem with it. Anyway, mix it all together with your hands, or if you don't like touching raw meat a spoon, but it makes life much more difficult.

Heat up your griddle pan to a medium-high heat. Shape them into really fat burger shapes, as you want them to be quite thick so they don't dry out. Rub some oil on the outside of them, and salt the outside. And griddle. Put them on then turn down immediately to a medium heat, and don't touch them for at least five minutes. Turn them as little as possible, and cook for about 7-10 minutes on each side, depending on the size of your burger. You want a nice crust on the outside (that's where the flavour is). If you want to put cheese on, put it on when you've just flipped them. You might need to stick it under the grill to melt it properly for the last thirty seconds. 

Put it aside to rest for a few minutes while you shove your rolls on the griddle to soak up any remaining juices and get a bit crispy.

Potato Wedges:

You see this is almost a healthy meal, as we're not having chips. It feels a bit ridiculous putting a recipe up for potato wedges. (Cut potatoes into wedges, add stuff you like, shove in oven) Here goes anyway.

Cut potatoes into wedges. Toss in sunflower/vegetable oil (don't bother with nice fancy olive oil, there's not much point. Season really generously, and shake over some paprika and chilli flakes. Shove in oven at 180 degrees for about half an hour, or until cooked. It depends how fat your wedges are.

If you want to speed this process up, you can parboil the wedges, then add the oil and seasoning and whatnot, then shove in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes, or as long as it takes to cook a frozen pizza. (ahem.) 

Serve the whole thing with salad, and top with anything you like, I like mustard and ketchup. Joe hates mustard. Add gherkins if you're a fan of things that are pickled, etc. The home made coleslaw from last week's post would, of course, have been brilliant with this. (see here: http://tinyurl.com/ck2mahj) but I'd done that. Plus we struggled to eat an entire cabbage worth of the stuff this week, so I've gone and bought coleslaw from the shop.

It's not fancy, but it is lovely. In all the meals I've cooked and blogged, Joe seemed the most delighted with this one. Seriously.

A picture so good I put it in twice (didn't take many pictures)

In other news: I have just read an article which says that British asparagus season is delayed. I'm gutted. The shops are still full of Peruvian stuff. I'm hoping this will change soon as I love asparagus. Click on the link to the right for some of last year's asparagus season cooking. Maybe when I'm doing my veggie tapas feast I'll do something with asparagus too...

Sort of ribs, slaw, stuffed skins and corn.

Hello. It’s been a long time since I last updated it, and I’ve genuinely missed my blog. I’m sorry for my absence (in case any of you missed it!) But it has been an absolutely insane few months. 

To summarise I have:

• Got a new job
• Left the old job
• Gone on holiday to Berlin, eaten lots of pork and drank a lot of beer
• Lived in someone else’s house in London for three weeks (thanks Lisette!)
• Started a new job
• Moved back to Leeds
• Found a house, packed up a house and moved to Manchester all in the space of a week

You know, amongst other things. So my culinary inspiration has been low. I have managed to make normal food and real meals more often than not, but it hasn’t been new or interesting or novel, it’s been something that I’ve made before and is probably on this blog already. (or it has been a stir fry. I've had a lot of them)

So I had to ask for help for this one. When asked what kind of meat I should buy for this weekend, my other half said “It’s a while since we’ve had a chicken” and that wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted to cook something different and that I don’t cook all the time. I asked a friend for inspiration for what to do with beef, as I hardly ever cook beef and she suggested Beef Short Ribs. (suggested reading, her blog http://megabekatron.com/) Finally I was getting inspired. I started to think about home-made coleslaw with chilli and coriander. And corn on the cob, with butter. And salads. And potato wedges? Or stuffed skins? Oh, the list is endless. Brilliant. 

You've got to have time for this, although there isn't that much to do and it's not difficult it just takes absolutely ages. Lazy rainy Saturday afternoon ought to do it. 

Beef Ribs, with stuffed potato skins, corn and coleslaw.

Cue lots of confused conversations with my butcher (have found a new butcher now I've moved). Lots. Short ribs is an American name for the cut, and we talked at cross purposes for much of the week, and I'm still pretty sure I don't have short ribs, but you know what? There's meat, there's bone and sod it I might as well just give it a good go. 

Some recipes advocate boiling them first to help keep them tender. I thought this seemed like a good idea as surely the by-product is basically stock? I could always use stock, and lovely beef stock would make an amazing soup. 

So I put the big hunks of rib into a pot with two chopped onions, some celery and a few cloves of peeled garlic as well as some bay leaves, peppercorns and salt. I then just covered with water and simmered for about an hour, occasionally skimming scum off the top. 

I didn't take any photos of this, because it has scum. That's not very photogenic. 

In the mean time shove some potatoes in the oven to bake. And you can probably make your coleslaw at this point too... the recipes are below.

For the marinade: 

Rub the cooled ribs with some cumin, coriander, paprika, salt and pepper. Cover and put in the oven for an hour at about 160 degrees. 

Big hunks of meat rubbed with spices

I mixed two tablespoons of tomato puree, one tablespoon of soy sauce (ours is really good dark stuff from the Chinese supermarket, use more if it's not), two tablespoons honey, and three tablespoons of bourbon. Mix thoroughly with a good pinch of salt, some chilli flakes and salt and pepper. And a splodge of ketchup. Thoroughly coat the ribs in that, then put them back in the oven covered for another hour. 

Uncover them for the last half hour, then whack up the heat to 200 for the last 15 minutes. Add a bit of water to the pan if they look like they're getting dry.

Potato skins

Once your potatoes are baked take them out of the oven and let them cool for a bit. Then cut them in half, scoop out the insides and mix with spring onion and cheese, and salt and pepper.

Put the mix back in the potato skins and put in the oven for half an hour. You could pile more cheese on top, and this is hardly a healthy meal, but I decided enough was enough. Serve with a big dollop of sour cream.

 NB. if you weren't having such a ridiculously meaty meal you could fry/grill some bacon and add to these.

Coleslaw

Mix two big teaspoonfuls of good quality mayo with some lemon juice. You could make your own mayonnaise, but I had enough to be getting on with. I have done it in the past though, look! 

Slice some white cabbage, a carrot and a red onion as finely as you can. (I ended up grating the carrot) A mandolin would be good for this, but I don't own one. It's on the list of things I covet for my kitchen, but the other half thinks I'm being ridiculous. 

Mix it all together with the mayo, a handful of finely chopped coriander, and some finely chopped chilli. Season. 

Boil your corn in plenty of salted water, then toss it in some butter. And you're there.

This is not a healthy meal. And it's not really the meal I was intending to make, and it was the wrong cut of beef, but my word it was tasty and tender. As usual I made far too much, but I'm going to shred the rest of the meat and have it in sandwiches with leftover coleslaw with some leaves.

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: Giles Peterson on 6music. Good stuff.

This week's soup: will be something involving beef stock. Suggestions welcome.

Soup recipes

One of my work colleagues is very pregnant (actually a couple of them are), and wants to start filling her freezer with soup for when the baby comes along. I said I'd cobble together some recipes for her and here's the result! I thought I might as well put them up as a bonus post - enjoy! Sorry for the lack of pictures.

All of these can be changed depending on how you like them! Just keep tasting them and season with salt and pepper. All should freezable. All use chicken or veg stock – and the amount stated is just a rough guide. Add a bit more or less if you think it needs to be thicker/thinner. If you don't have a hand blender I'd suggest getting a cheap one from the supermarket, they're a godsend! And if you get one with a little bowl attachment you'll never have to chop ginger and chilli again.

Leek and potato

• peel and slice about five decent sized potatoes
• chop and rinse about 3 or 4 leeks (depends on the size of them)
• fry leeks on a low heat with a chopped onion in some butter and a touch of normal cooking oil
• put in the potatoes and stir around for a couple of minutes
• add a pint and a half of stock (chicken or veg)
• add a splash of milk
• season with salt and pepper
• when the potatoes are soft, add a splash of cream and blitz with a hand blender until smooth

Curried carrot and lentil

• chop an onion and two cloves of garlic and three or four good sized carrots
• fry over a low heat in a little oil
• add half a teaspoon of curry powder and a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cumin. (if you don't have any cumin use a little bit more curry powder instead)
• rinse two handfuls of red lentils and add to the pan with one and a half pints of stock.
• Season it, then when the carrots are cooked and the lentils soft use the hand blender to blitz it

Spicy butternut squash

• you'll need a big sharp knife for this. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees, quarter the squash and scoop out the seeds. Drizzle a little oil over and season them. Shove in the oven for about half an hour or until it's soft.
• Meanwhile fry on a low heat an onion, two cloves of garlic and a chilli (all roughly chopped). You could also use a bit of peeled, grated ginger if you can be bothered. Add a pint of stock.
• Let the butternut squash cool a bit once it's cooked, then take all the flesh out and add to the onion and stock etc. (if there's still a few bits of skin it doesn't really matter, you'll blitz it anyway and it won't do you any harm.
• Add a tin of coconut milk. Blitz. You could add a squeeze of lime juice and some chopped coriander at the end if you wanted to.
• FOR A NON SPICY VERSION: don't use chilli and ginger, don't add coconut milk but use more stock and a touch of cream.

Mushroom

• chop an onion and a clove of garlic and fry over a low heat in a little butter.
• Slice a packet and a half of mushrooms. The normal size from the supermarket. Add to the pan and fry for a few minutes
• add a pint of stock and a touch of milk
• after it's bubbled away for about half an hour the mushrooms should be done
• add a touch of cream and blitz

Turkish lentil

Had this in Istanbul and loved it, so came home and worked out the recipe. It sounds weird but it's really nice.

• fry a finely chopped onion over a low heat in some butter. Add a pinch of chilli flakes and three quarters of a teaspoon of paprika. (chilli flakes optional)
• rinse four or five handfuls of red lentils and add them to the pan along with two handfuls of bulgur wheat and a good squidge of tomato puree
• stir around for a minute or two, then add a pint and a half of stock. Season
• give it a good stir to make sure its not stuck to them bottom then cover and simmer on a low heat until the lentils are cooked.
• Add the juice of half a lemon and a good teaspoonful of dried mint.

Minestrone-ish

Minestrone can be anything with some veggies in it. I tend to make it to use up any old veg I have lying around. You can add anything you like to it. The only problem is because you don't blitz it takes a bit more time to chop it finely! Here's one version:

• Fry some bacon pieces, lardons or chopped bits of bacon
• Add a finely chopped onion, a clove of garlic or two and a couple of sticks of celery over a low heat.
• Add some finely chopped carrots and a tin of rinsed borlotti beans. (could also add some chopped mushrooms?)
• add a pint and a half of stock, season
• bubble away till all the vegetable are nearly cooked, then add some frozen peas and about three handfuls of fresh spinach. After a couple of minutes it should be done – you don't want the spinach and peas to be on for too long.

For a different version – add a tin of tomatoes too. You can add pasta bits but it won't freeze too well. Could add chopped parsley and basil at the end too.

Tomato and basil

• fry a chopped onion, chopped celery and garlic.
• Add two tins of tomatoes
• add a pint of stock, bubble away for twenty minutes
• add a touch of cream
• season, then blitz
• add some finely chopped basil

If you happen to have the rind bit of some parmesan kicking around put that in when you add the stock and let it bubble away for twenty minutes then fish it out. Sounds weird, but adds a nice savouriness to it.

Chicken and vegetable (add any other veg you want – spinach or peas are good to add at the end) – Make it with less stock and it'll be like a stew

• finely chop an onion, some celery, a couple of cloves of garlic and fry on a low heat
• add two decent sized potatoes and a carrot, peeled and diced. (when these cook and break down they'll thicken the soup a bit)
• add a pint and a half of stock. Season
• add a tin of sweetcorn (drained)
• put two whole raw chicken breasts in. Cover, turn the heat right down and let it simmer for about twenty minutes
• after this time the chicken should be cooked, so take it out and let it cool slightly before shredding/chopping and adding back to the soup.

Comfort food on a snowy Sunday

Winter has finally arrived. It's at least a month late. But no matter, I kind of love snow! It makes everything pretty. We went for a walk and were beaten about by the snow on Saturday for a few hours and it was great. We then went into town at night, ate Persian food for the first time (amazing), and sat in window seats in pubs sipping ale and looking out at it. Brilliant.

It's comfort food time. Today's tasty comfort food is: slow cooked duck legs with celeriac gratin and heaps of veg.

I've never cooked duck legs before, they were on offer a while ago and I bought them and shoved them in the freezer. As usual I looked up loads of recipes then ignored them.

In fact, I've never cooked celeriac gratin before, but I decided we've had a hell of a lot of mash recently and wanted something different.

We even had a vegetable I'd never cooked before, cavolo nero, which I just steamed like it was kale, then added some butter and pepper. (Actually too much pepper, as our pepper mill broke and it ended up covered in whole peppercorns. I managed to pick most of them off.)

Duck legs braised in red wine:

For the duck legs heat up a pan nice and hot, if possible use one that can go straight in the oven. Season the duck legs then shove them in the pan skin side down for a few minutes. You want a good colour on them. Brown them on the other side too, then remove from the pan.

Pour away a lot of the fat from the pan – duck is a fatty meat – then fry off a chopped onion and a couple of chopped cloves of garlic. Add some thyme, then pour in half a bottle of red wine. I then added a grating of nutmeg and a couple of bay leaves. I also chucked in a handful of mixed berries from the freezer. This might sound odd, but lots of recipes I read called for redcurrant jelly or similar and we don't have any of that in because the other half doesn't like it.

Shove the duck legs back in the pan, season then put a lid on and shove it in the oven at about 170 degrees. It'll be in there for about two hours, uncover it after the first hour.

Celeriac Gratin:

Peel and slice a celeriac as finely as you can. Do the same with a couple of potatoes and an onion, then layer it all up in a dish with salt and pepper. Take a small tub of cream, and top it up with some milk to make it up to about half a pint. Pour it over the vegetables and dot some butter on the top. 

Shove it in the oven for a good hour. I think I would normally do it on a higher heat for slightly less time, but the oven was already set at 170 for the duck! 

 The gravy:

When the duck is ready it will have gone all sticky and lovely. Take the duck legs out and put the sauce back on the heat, then add some chicken stock and let it reduce for a little while. Without this step it would be incredibly tasty but SO rich, and you wouldn't have as much gravy. Strain the sauce through a sieve, then put back on the heat and put the duck legs back in to warm through. 

This was seriously good. There are a few things I would maybe do differently; I think the celeriac gratin would have been nice with some garlic through it, and if you were having it with meat that's not so rich I'd put some parmesan on top. I wouldn't throw a load of whole peppercorns over my cavolo nero, as that was annoying. But in general this was really good in a “pick up bones and gnaw on them” kind of way. And I have a good wedge of celeriac gratin for my tea at work tonight, which is much better than a ready meal.

This week's soup: Spicy butternut squash. It's a good 'un. I'm currently compiling a big list of soup recipes for someone from work, so I'll put them up as a bonus blog post one of these days. 

 

I love haggis.

Let's be honest, Burns Night is the first excuse for excessive eating and drinking after Christmas. You've spent all of January skint, trying to lose weight and breaking resolutions, and by the time it gets to the 25^th you're sick of all that and it's time to just sack it off and gorge again. With this in mind, I decided to invite some friends round for a Burns Supper. Despite the fact I'm Scottish, I couldn't promise tartan, pipers or poems, but I made sure there was plenty of food and drink available. Rabbie would've been proud.

There were oats in every course, and whisky in two of them.

In a traditional-ish menu we had:

• Smoked mackerel pate with oatcakes (I decided cock-a-leekie soup was too boring)
• Haggis, neeps and tatties with a whisky cream sauce. (Except I added other root veg to the neeps)
• Sort of Cranachan

I prepared the starter and pud in the morning, then went out for the afternoon.

Smoked Mackerel Pate.

The pate is ridiculously easy. It would be even easier if I had a full sized blender, but as it is I had to do each mackerel fillet individually. I figured as I was serving them in individual ramekins, there's no harm done. For each fillet, add a teaspoonful of crème fraiche, a teaspoonful of cream cheese, the juice of a quarter of a lemon, and some pepper. Then blitz. Done. I served it with some token salad and some oatcakes. I didn't make those myself, life's too short.

Haggis, neeps and tatties.

Cook the haggis according to the instructions on the packet. We got MacSweens. It was ace. I'm debating going and eating the leftovers of it right now to see if it'll cure my hangover.

Peel your spuds and boil in plenty of salted water. Peel and cube a turnip. If you're English you will probably call it a swede. Once the turnip has boiled for five minutes, add carrots and parsnips. You don't have to, but I find neeps a bit boring on their own, but love mixed root veg mash.

Drain your spuds and let them steam off in the collander for five minutes before mashing/ricing with plenty of butter, milk and a touch of cream.

Mash your veg with plenty of butter. And serve. It's not the prettiest dish, but it is nice. 

Not a great picture - it's not pretty food!

For the sauce I made some lamb stock. You absolutely don't have to bother with this, just use some chicken or lamb stock cubes but I happened to have some lamb bones kicking around in the freezer. Add to this some whisky, some cream and salt and pepper and reduce down. When it's done, add some chopped chives. 

Cranachan.

 

Traditionally this is a blend of cream, oats, whisky, honey and raspberries. However, it's not raspberry season, so they're really expensive. I opted for buying one small pack of raspberries, and buying some frozen berries too to turn into a coulis. I did this first thing, by boiling up half a bag of frozen berries, a couple of tablespoons of whisky, and a few of honey. Add a drop of water, then pass it through a sieve to get rid of the seeds. 

Amazing colour!

Toast your oats in a frying pan over a lowish heat. Do this really slowly, because if they burn even a little bit they're ruined and they cranachan will taste rubbish. If they do burn just start again. Oats are cheap it's fine.

Now whip up some cream until it's in soft peaks, stir through three tablespoons of honey, three of whisky, your raspberries and toasted oats.

Then layer it up in some glasses. I don't have the right sized glasses for this, so it looks a little odd but still good. 

Now you've made all that, eat it with friends, drink loads of whisky and talk rubbish for hours.

Wake up with a terrible hangover, and a kitchen that still looks like this even after half an hours cleaning effort:

Whilst eating this we mostly listened to: our entire vinyl collection and discussed it drunkenly at great length.