Posh Fish & Chips

Now, there’s yer Friday Night fish & chips takeaway (nothing wrong with that) and there’s this.

Lightly fried Red Bream with potato wedges and a fresh fennel, grape & walnut salad.

First, grow yer own fennel. This was #4 of 6 I planted a couple of months ago in the raised beds out back. It’s massive!

Cored and thinly sliced, rinsed in a sieve and left to drain while the other salad ingredients are prepped.

Grapes (halved), sliced red-onion and chopped walnuts.

Two beautiful filets’o’fish there, lightly seasoned and drizzled in olive oil, with just a sprinkle of flour.

A simple dressing of oil, lime-juice and mustard, with chopped parsley.

Wedges in the oven. Simply – raw spuds, cut into wedges, oiled and seasoned, microwaved (covered) for 5 mins on full, while the oven was heating up. then spread out on a baking-sheet. About 15 mins to brown.

Love this salad! Often made with lumps of orange, but the last couple of times I’ve made it with grapes – simply because I had grapes in the fridge and not oranges. Just as nice.

The fish is fried gently on the skin side until the translucent flesh turns white – a line of cooked/uncooked rises from the ‘frying side’ upwards. When it’s about 2/3 of the way up, flip the fillets and cook the other side very briefly. Less is more! Take it out when you think it still needs just a little longer. When it’s out it will continue cooking in the residual heat, so being just perfect on the plate. The dusting of flour helps crisp-up the outside.

Eet smakelijk!

Guinduck (a two-bird roast)

Being as how there’s only the two of us for Christmas dinner this year, only the two-bird roast, not five. 

A duck and a Guinea Fowl this year. 

Two kinds of stuffing, one fruity, one herby. Pre-prepared and cooled down. Bacon and some good sausages. Salt & Pepper. 

First, de-bone your birds. Easier said than done, I know, but YouTube is the place to learn. 

Season both birds with S&P. 

Spread a layer of the fruity stuffing, this was just a (good) packet stuffing, pimped with some butter and lemon zest. It already had bits of orange and cranberries in it. Aldi. Good stuff. 

Then the layer of de-boned Guinea Fowl and the herby, mushroom stuffing spread on there. I pimped the packet stuffing with butter and finely chopped shallots. Two nice, quality sausages form the core. 

Roll the sides in, tuck the ends under, form a duck-shaped loaf and tie it down before it all escapes again. Good luck with that. 

Prep the roasting pan, with a trivet of whatever. It’s just to keep the meat off the bottom, and give off a little flavour. Onions would be good, sprigs of woody herbs, lemon-halves, M&Ms. 

Ok, not M&Ms. 

All wrapped up and nowhere to go. The bacon is to protect the surface from burning, and add a little oil & flavour. I’ll probably remove it halfway through the oven-time. A double layer of aluminium foil over the top, in the fridge ready for tomorrow’s dinner. 

The bones don’t get wasted. Roasted in a very hot oven with the lid off for half an hour. Celery, carrots, garlic, some random spices, a lemon that was kicking around. (dry) roast again, with the lid on for another half hour. Two litres of boiling water, lid on, temperature down a bit (180) and simmer on in the oven for another hour. Fish out all the bones & veg, then pour the liquid through a sieve to catch the bits. Cooled down, portioned and frozen. Any time I need a chicken stock-cube, one of these out of the freezer and we’re done!

Eet smakelijk, and Merry Christmas!

Winter-Warmer meaty bean-feast

(In a Jeremy Clarkson voice) Some say winter is no fun. That the cold weather outside stifles play. They may even say that it’s “not cooking weather”. We say: Cassoulet!

Ingredients:

• Thick-cut cooked pork slices (cut into cubes)
• Boneless chicken thigh-meat (trimmed of skin & fat)
• Any kind of  (good quality) sausages 
• +\- 1kg canned beans, four tins, all different types – drained, rinsed 
• 2 cans of tinned tomatoes
• 3 large carrots
• 4 sticks of celery 
• A few cloves of garlic 
• 2 decent-sized onions
• A glass of red wine
• S&P, sugar, thyme, chilli-flakes (to taste – they can be evil buggers)

Fry up all the meat, in a dash of sunflower oil until browned all over. 

Add the (halved & sliced) onions and cook through for a few minutes more. 

Meanwhile, chop the carrots and celery nicely. 

Add the carrots & celery to the pot, along with the crushed garlic. Stir through and cook-on. 

Add the wine and the tomatoes. 

Bring to the boil and add about 300ml of water, and the sugar/salt/pepper/thyme/chilli seasonings. Stir-through and bring that to the boil. Cook for 1/2 an hour with the lid on. 

Then transfer to a heavy oven-pot and cook in a 180c oven for another half hour with the lid off. 

Serve with toasted rustic bread after you’ve just come in from a long walk in sub-zero temperatures with the dog. 

If you don’t have a dog, borrow one, tell them it’s part of the recipe. 

Eet smakelijk. 

Simple Caesar Salad

So, basically, a chicken and bacon salad with a salty, creamy dressing. 

Or is it?

Ingredients:

• Chicken breasts 
• Paprika
• Salt & pepper
• Breadcrumbs 
• Bacon/Pancetta 
• Ciabatta bread
• Garlic cloves
• Baby Gem lettuce
• Cherry tomatoes
• Greek yoghurt
• Red-wine vinager
• Fresh basil leaves
• Worcestershire sauce
• Parmesan 
• Anchovy (paste)

Method:

Fry a couple of slices of bacon/pancetta/schwartzwalderschinken/whateveryou’vegot in a dry pan until crispy. Remove onto kitchen paper. 

Put some paprika, seasoning and about a tablespoon of breadcrumbs (for crunch)  onto a sheet of baking partchment. Lay the chicken breasts on top and fold the paper in half, side A to side B with corner X1X2 touching edge C/D with a sharp crease along line E/F. Got it? Good. Now bash the chicken to within a quarter of an inch of its life. This will “encourage” the paprika etc to adhere to the chicken. 

Fry the flattened chicken breasts in the bacon-fat residue, both sides, until it’s crispy on the outside and cooked-through but still moist inside – about 12-15 mins total. Set aside. 

Heat a cast-iron griddle-pan to almost glowing. Slice a few thick cuts off the ciabatta loaf and grill them in the hot pan. They’ll look like they’re doing nothing for the first couple of minutes and then, just before you think you might flip them, the smoke-alarm goes off and you can start again. So watch them. When they’re done both sides rub them with a sliced clove of garlic – you wouldn’t think so but it makes a huge difference. Slice once lengthways and then twice across – big, bold croutons.  

Dressing: a couple of tablespoons of thick Greek youghurt, made by thick Greek dairy farmers, as much as you need depending on how many you’re cooking for, into a kitchen hacker-chop machine-thing. Season with crushed garlic, Worcestersheershire sauce, about 1/3 volume red-wine vinegar, a thumb of Parmesan cheese, a couple of anchovy fillets (or a decent squeeze from a tube) and a good amount of fresh basil, really decimate the plant. Whizz it all up Into a homogeneous light-green dressing. 

Chop one of the baby-gem lettuces into four, long ways and share them over two plates (that’s two bits each, keep up). Chop the other one crossways into ’rounds’ and share that lot over the two plates. Be creative; throw stuff. Chop all the cherry-tomatoes in half and fling them about the place too. Slice the (rested) chicken breasts into finger-thick chunks and divide deftly over the salad. Toss the croutons-XL into the air and catch them on the plate. Chop the crispy bacon into random bits and sprinkle them throughout. Spoon the dressing over, from a height, like a proper TV-chef. Add a few torn basil leaves for effect, a quick grind of black pepper from above your head while standing on a chair, and you’re done!

Eet smakelijk! 

Savoury brioche crown

This spectacular table centrepiece is also spectacularly naughty – half a pound of butter goes into the brioche dough – although one person doesn’t have to eat the whole thing on their own, good luck trying that, we got through less than half of it between the two of us.

 So there it is, a slice on the plate accompanied by a green salad with feta & black olives.

Filling ingredients are:

• Enough slices of cured ham to cover the dough (I used Schwartzwalder)
• Three mozzarella balls
• Fresh basil leaves

To make the brioche dough you’ll need:

• 500g plain flour, salt & yeast
• 4 whole eggs
• 250g butter, softened
• Splash of milk

Add the dry ingredients, the eggs and milk to an electric mixer with a dough-hook attached (good luck trying to do this by hand). Mix thoroughly together until it’s a smooth paste and the gradually add all that naughty butter, one knob at a time waiting for each piece to become incorporated before lobbing the next one in. It’ll end up as a silky-smooth, slightly sticky bread dough. If it looks more like batter than butter-dough gradually add more flour while it’s turning.

Cover the mixing bowl with cling-film and leave it to rise – 1hr at room temp or put it in the fridge overnight as I did. It should just about double in size. When you’re ready to go on turn it out onto a floured surface and stretch it out into a large rectangle, a bit like you’re going to make a pizza square.

  Cover the sheet of brioche with the slices of ham, torn lumps of mozzarella and scattered basil leaves. Season with peppier, but not salt as the ham already has a quite salty taste. 

  Now tightly roll up the sheet of dough along the long edge.

 Until you end up with a closed sausage of a thing. Squeeze the ends shut.

  Now it starts getting a bit weird. Cut the “sausage” in half along its length. 

  Until you’ve two long halves – check out those luverly layers! At this point I decided to nip the edges together, Paul “The Handsome Git” Hollywood didn’t and his filling was escaping all over the oven during baking – the last thing we want is a soggy-bottom.

  Lay the two long halves together, cut sides touching (nipped closed or left open, whatever, just don’t blame me when the missus goes mad at the state you’ve left her oven in).
  Now the fun bit. Take hold of each end of the two lengths in your left and right hands. Twist your right hand towards you while twisting your left hand away from you and giving it a little flip in the air at the same time. Got that? So it’s: take end A. with hand A1. & end B. with hand B2. Twist end A. in direction C. and end B. in direction D. The middle travels upwards in direction E.
Grip, twist, flip, repeat.

 Then it’s just a matter of bringing the ends together and squeezing them to join into a ring. Place it onto a (lightly floured) baking tray lined with parchment. Cover with cling film and let it rise again Hallelujah! for about an hour at room temp, or in the fridge for as long as it takes for you to go do whatever it is you like to do all day. When ready to eat brush it liberally and all over with a beaten egg wash and sprinkle a few sesame seeds over it.

  Into the oven at 200 degrees C for about half an hour. Check after that if it’s cooked all the way through (no soggy bottom missus) and slide it onto a serving board. 

Note to Hollywood: check out how it’s not all gone walkabout through the kitchen! ‘Ave some of that you Master Baker!
 A nice fresh green salad with black olives and feta, simple oil & lemon dressing with a little chilli piled in the middle to make you feel better about all that butter (you can shove that to one side and ignore it if you want) and away you go!
Eet smakelijk!

Maroccan Tagine

 
A Tagine is a type of pan, often a cast-iron base with a conical lid that traps any evaporated moisture inside and let’s it run back down the inside into the stew (which is basically what you’re cooking here – a fragrantly spiced meat & veg stew).

    

This is one bought from IKEA, very good quality, decent capacity.

I didn’t document the cooking process photographically this time, too busy doing other stuff for the time being, but here’s a description of what went on.

Ingredients:

750gr rough cuts of meat – anything really, lamb, goat, beef. I actually used pork rib pieces (not very Muslim-friendly I know, but hey, I’m not Muslim) i chose this because they were on the bone scraps and very cheap.

Olive oil, 400ml of any kind of stock, S&P

A couple of onions – roughly chopped. A couple of cloves of garlic, squashed. A bunch of Corriander.

Tin of chickpeas, tin of chopped tomatoes and a little tin of Tom-purée. Cup full of semi-dried apricots.

A small squash, or (yellow) courgette if not in season, chopped into 1cm chunks. A decent handful of (toasted) almond flakes, or (toasted) pine-nuts and/or sesame seeds.

Spices for a dry-rub marinade: 2tblsp Ras El Hanout (a North African spice mix), 1 tblsp cumin powder, 1tblsp powdered ginger, 1tblsp cinnamon, 1tbksp paprika

Method:

Chuck all,the dry spices into a zip-lock bag, add the meat chunks, zip it closed and do the hippie-hippie shake through the house with it. Then bung it in the fridge for a couple of hours, or even overnight if you’re horribly well-organised (I’m not).

When ready to cook, heat the cast iron pan and add a good glugg of olive oil. Add the dry-marinated meat and brown it on all sides. Separate the Corriander stalks from the leaves and chop them, then add the stalks and the chopped onion and garlic to the meat and fry for a little longer, couple of minutes.

Add the (drained) chickpeas and the tomatoes, stir through. Then add the stock, put the lid on and simmer gently for 1,5 hours. The meat will become soft and tender during this slow-cooking process, falling off the bone later.

After the first hour and a half add the chopped (butternut) squash or, in my case, (yellow) courgette and the soft-dried aprocots (you know the ones, them you can’t resist nicking a few before they get anywhere near the pot). Just scatter them over the top of the stew and sprinkle about half of the chopped Corriander leaves on that. Lid back on and go do something nice for another 1,5 hours.

Couscous is made in seconds, I’ll not go into that – read the instructions on the pack, you can go in any direction you feel with couscous, add spices, or don’t, add chopped fruit, or not, chopped onion or red/green peppers. Or just keep it plain as a base to your stew, which is pretty spicy as it is.

When you’re ready to go take the lid off, check seasoning, add S&P if needed and if it’s too “wet” let it boil off a little. Don’t stir it, let it lie as it has cooked, in layers with the courgette(squash) and apricots lying on top. 

Sprinkle the remaining Corriander leaves over the top and some of the toasted nuts. I threw a handful of the pine-nuts over the couscous too, with a couple of lime wedges.

Eet smakelijk!

Gorgonzola Cheesecake

I love baked Cheesecake. A simple NYC vanilla/lemon is my favourite.
But this is different. A savoury Cheesecake – no sugar.I didn’t need a huge great pie of a thing, these are for a starter, to be served with figs poached in red wine, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar.
So (only) 100g unsweetened oatmeal biscuits.
50g butter.
25g grated Parmesan cheese.
One egg.
125g Gorgonzola cheese.
250g Cream cheese(s).Whizz-up the Oatmeal biscuits, add the Parmesan Cheese and mix through – for the base. Grease the baking dishes well and spread the crumble mix over the bases. Pat it down well and bake in a 170 C oven for 15mins.While that’s baking (and cooling back down afterwards) rinse the Whizzer-Machine out and blend the two (or more) kinds of Cream Cheese together. I used 200g Cottage Cheese and 50g Spreadable Cream Cheese. You could use Marscapone, etc, in any combination.Then add the Gorgonzola and the whole egg, blend it all together.When the Cheesecake bases have cooled to around room temperature spread the cheese-mix over it.
Cook it all back in the oven (still at 170 C) for 25mins
Let them cool down a bit in the (switched off) oven with the door ajar before removing them and running a knife around the edge – while they’re still a little forgiving.
Let them cool further to room temperature and then they go into the fridge – preferably overnight.

Eet Smakelijk!

Just a Cheese & Tomato toastie really.

It’s the best cheese/tomato toasty evah!
(but basically “just” a cheese & tom tostie)
it’s all about the ingredients – fresh, authentic, real.
Ingredients:
Tasty, ripe, Italian tomatoes (not those anaemic, cheap, Dutch glasshouse things)
(home-bake) Ciabatta bread.
A good Pesto Genovaise (Basil, Pine-nuts, Garlic, Olive oil)
Buffalo Mozzarella cheese, real, local, from Buffalos!
S&P
That’s it!

Cut the half-baked Ciabatta in half – to fit your grill – and again, through the middle to make our “sandwich”.

Spread the Pesto over one of the halves, like butter.

Layer of sliced tomatoes on top of that.

Rip/tear the (Buffalo) Mozzarella into pieces, don’t slice it into those Pizza-rounds.

Divide over the tomatoes, season with S&P, and drizzle with Olive Oil.

Bung it under the contact-grill – this will cook the Ciabatta as if it had been through the oven, and at the same time soften the tomatoes and melt the cheese.
Like you ordered a Cheese’n’ tomato toastie in Southern Italy!!

Eet smakelijk!

Hachee! (bless you)

 

 

 

 

This is a little strange, very Dutch, and very tasty. Give it a try if you dare!

Ingredients;

500/600gr (stewing) beef
500ml good stock (I used game fond)
110gr flour & 110gr Butter
A couple of large Onions, I threw in two red ones too, about the same per volume as the meat.
A cup of vinegar, I had Cider Vinegar in the cupboard.
Soy sauce (I said it was a bit strange)
Dutch “ontbijtkoek”, a kind of ginger/spice cake.
Two Bay leaves, half a dozen cloves and the same of peppercorns.

Chop up all the onions into a medium dice, not too fine today.

Melt the butter in the pressure cooker you got from your missus for Christmas.

Fry the onions, gently, in the butter for five minutes or so – until they’re soft, not browning.

Then add the flour and stir through.

Cook the flour thoroughly, but gently through the onions, careful not to burn it, keep stirring!

Warm the stock through, in the microwave, with the whole spices floating in there. I topped up the jar of concentrated fond with water to make up the 1/2 liter.

Stir the hot stock into the onion/butter/flour mash, one third at a time while constantly moving it all around, making a thick sauce, without lumps, that – quite frankly – looks disgusting.
(but we’re not there yet)
Cook the sauce through so that the flour is properly cooked, about another five minutes.

Add the meat (that you’ve cubed) to the bubbling onion-goo.

Add the Soy sauce, this will add some colour and a little salt, so don’t season with (extra) salt until you’ve tasted the result at the end at least.

It’s starting to look a little less anaemic with that Soy sauce cooked though there.

Now for the (even more) weird bit;
The chopped-up cake and the (Cider) Vinegar goes in there!

Cooked though, it is already going a little darker. By the time it’s been through the pressure cooker (that your missus got you for Christmas) that cake will have dissolved and helped to thicken the sauce.


So, lid on, clamped down, high heat, build up the steam and then let it sit on a smaller heat for 45 mins.
The meat needs to be really well-done, falling apart.
If you’re not using a pressure cooker, if it’s too far from Christmas still, put it on a low heat in a heavy-bottomed pan with a tight-fitting lid for about 2 1/2 hours. Or in a slow-cooker, that’d work.

Served with mashed potatoes and red cabbage with bits of apple cooked through it. It really needs a 10 degree frost outside to do it justice, but we’re not having any kind of winter at all this year so we’ll have to make-do.

“Eet Smakelijk”!

Paradiso dal luce di cruscotto! (Italian Meatloaf)

Now THIS, is a goodie!
Meatloaf on (Italian) steroids.

L’ingrediente:
400gr (beef) mince. A couple of cloves of fresh Garlic. One onion.
A pack of Mozzerella (I had some of these baby ones in the fridge, the bigger ones would probably be less of a fiddle)
Proscuttio (yeah,right, I always use Schwartzwalder schinken, less than half the price and tastes no different, if you’re cooking with it)
One Courgette. Three slices of bread – crusts off. 100ml milk. Handful of Parsley. Jar of roasted red-Peppers.

Soak the bread in the milk. White bread is good, but we never have white bread in the house, so only brown. Not a problem.

Chop the Parsley fairly finely.

Chop the garlic, fairly finely and then add a pinch of salt. This is pink Himalayan rock-salt. Well it would be, wouldn’t it.

Squish the salt/garlic with the flat of a large knife until you get a kind of paste. A Himalayan Rock-Salt-Garlic paste.

Finely chopping onions can be a bit of a chore. This is the way I do it.
Use a SHARP knife! Tears are caused by blunt knives crushing the cell-walls and releasing the juices that make a bee-line for your eyes. A sharp knife will cut cleanly and produce much less “spatter”.
Chop the onion through, from top to bottom. You can see inside the root part – bottom-left. This binds all the layers together while you’re chopping.

Lay each half down flat and make cuts into the onion, not quite all the way to the back end –  where the root is still nicely holding it all together.

Turn it side-on (see where the cuts stop just short of the root-end?) and chop crossways.

Add the garlic-paste and the chopped onion to the mince.

Squeeze most of the milk out of the bread and add that to the mince.

Squish it all together using your totally sterilised hand.
(note – no egg to bind! not necessary, we don’t want it to be a rubber-lump)

Some of you may be aware of my attitude towards Courgettes. The Devils-own food. Tastes of nothing, turns into a watery mush when you cook it, like fried cucumber. This is (mostly) the fault of the seeds in the middle. Scoop those out and fling them as far as you can over the neighbour’s fence.
Then chop the Courgette into (half) rings. I’m banking on all the other lovely ingredients in this dish imparting some of their flavour(s).

Line a bread-tin with the Ham/Schinken. No need to grease the tin, enough fat/oil will come out of the contents.

Divide the mince mixture into three portions (there are going to be three layers)

Spread one third of the mince over the base of the lined tin and cover with a layer of (half of) the roasted red-peppers. A layer of (half of) the Courgettes on top of that.

Half of the Mozzerella slices on top of the Courgette layer and half the chopped Parsley over that.

Another layer of (1/3 of) the mince mixture, again – spread out over the width of the tin. Repeat the veg/cheese layer.

A final layer of the mince and tuck over the ham edges to finish. This will be the bottom when you turn it out after cooking.

Cover with foil, bung it in the fridge until ready to go. Then the oven at 200C and half an hour in the middle. Take the foil off for the last ten minutes.
Leave it to rest for five minutes after cooking, drain off the oil from one corner and flip it out onto a chopping board.
Slice into nice, thick, generous portions. served with flavoured mashed potatoes and a fresh green salad. A real winner.

Buon appetito!