As you will see below, after surfing all afternoon, the young men produced petit paquets de lotte en prosciutto and fresh nectarine and blackcurrant and it was delicious... and as well as getting them to cook supper I got them to write the blog.
What with the young men and the housekeeper, shortly like Bilbo, I shall disappear completely...
The Blogger
Showing posts with label ym. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ym. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Monkfish, friend style!
This is a guest post by the young men
Hello Internet! This is the young mans friend and I've had a bit of a relaxed time when it comes to the kitchen, I've had to eat a cooked breakfast almost everyday day and I've had lunch literally put on a plate for me but when the sun dips behind the trees and the blogger starts to even think about dinner I immediately rush to my book hoping he might leave me to read and just use one man for the lesser culinary jobs.This doesn't work and I get put by the table top and asked to pulp some garlic or wrap some monkfish or skewer some beef.I guess this isn't that bad but the garlic sticks to everything and the monkfish smells and the lemon stings as it seeps into the scratches on my hands and the lambs kidneys freak me out and you get the picture,I like food more than cooking! However, at times it can be peaceful, that is , if you get the easy jobs like chopping(but not peeling!).
Today the blogger tells me "we're having monkfish", at first I thought that it would be fine, then he said that it needed to be wrapped in parma ham and that the potatoes needed to be peeled.When something 'needs' to be done it means that we(the young men) have to do something.This is: Monkfish with Parma Ham.
The blogger filleted the monkfish and cut them into approximately 135g pieces(quarters of a whole tail). I,the guest, then prepared them rubbed a little
oil,salt,pepper and a squeeze of lemon into the fillets .I then wrapped the monkfish in the parma ham beautifully to make four neat parcels ready for roasting (a tip: put the fillet diagonal to the parma ham,on a chopping board,and at a diagonal to the ham and at one of the top corners,then roll the monkfish down,again on a diagonal, to make sure that the monkfish is completely covered) then roast in a fan oven at 210 for 7 minutes in an oil-less shallow roasting dish.
'His Majesty' The Young Man - As if this conglomeration (spelt correctly?) of flavours was not enough, I tortured table-sitters with my blend of Nectarines, Blackcurrants and L'Occitane hand-cream. Nectarines were cut into questionable quarters with uneven amounts of Blackberries spread over the three bowls. If you have managed to complete this task, Congratulations! You qualify for the same medication as me. If not, you have suceeded in serving fruit ...in a bowl.
Hello Internet! This is the young mans friend and I've had a bit of a relaxed time when it comes to the kitchen, I've had to eat a cooked breakfast almost everyday day and I've had lunch literally put on a plate for me but when the sun dips behind the trees and the blogger starts to even think about dinner I immediately rush to my book hoping he might leave me to read and just use one man for the lesser culinary jobs.This doesn't work and I get put by the table top and asked to pulp some garlic or wrap some monkfish or skewer some beef.I guess this isn't that bad but the garlic sticks to everything and the monkfish smells and the lemon stings as it seeps into the scratches on my hands and the lambs kidneys freak me out and you get the picture,I like food more than cooking! However, at times it can be peaceful, that is , if you get the easy jobs like chopping(but not peeling!).
Today the blogger tells me "we're having monkfish", at first I thought that it would be fine, then he said that it needed to be wrapped in parma ham and that the potatoes needed to be peeled.When something 'needs' to be done it means that we(the young men) have to do something.This is: Monkfish with Parma Ham.
The blogger filleted the monkfish and cut them into approximately 135g pieces(quarters of a whole tail). I,the guest, then prepared them rubbed a little
oil,salt,pepper and a squeeze of lemon into the fillets .I then wrapped the monkfish in the parma ham beautifully to make four neat parcels ready for roasting (a tip: put the fillet diagonal to the parma ham,on a chopping board,and at a diagonal to the ham and at one of the top corners,then roll the monkfish down,again on a diagonal, to make sure that the monkfish is completely covered) then roast in a fan oven at 210 for 7 minutes in an oil-less shallow roasting dish.
'His Majesty' The Young Man - As if this conglomeration (spelt correctly?) of flavours was not enough, I tortured table-sitters with my blend of Nectarines, Blackcurrants and L'Occitane hand-cream. Nectarines were cut into questionable quarters with uneven amounts of Blackberries spread over the three bowls. If you have managed to complete this task, Congratulations! You qualify for the same medication as me. If not, you have suceeded in serving fruit ...in a bowl.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
El huevo frito soñado (A dream of fried egg)
Saturday and Sunday breakfast is rarely complete, for at the young man and I at least, without fried egg. Now that eggs are healthy again I don't need to have guilt about this.
We like our eggs the Spanish way - taught by our Catalan friend Joan. He produced this late one afternoon as a tapas with Pa amb Tomaquet, (recipe in a later post), but it is just as good for breakfast or indeed lunch. Wikipedia Spain explains:
'El huevo frito ideal es aquel que mantiene líquida la yema y los extremos de la clara cuajada empiezan a estar quemados (o 'crujientes' según los expertos) en este caso se denomina su punto como "puntillas".'Roughly translated this says that the yolk is still runny but the edges of the white are burned ('according to experts'). The egg is then 'on tiptoes' or en puntillas. To make it this way you need hot oil and plenty of it.
It was Ferran Adrià, chef/patron of El Bulli restaurant, who dreamed of fried egg. In "70 recetas muy personales", (not available in the UK), he recounts how he uses two whites for every yolk in order to maximise the puntillas. We do not go this far!
Huevo FritoStart with a great egg. For two or three years now Burford Brown eggs from Clarence Court have been the eggs to beat for us. These sumptuous eggs are very dark brown, have a resilient white and exceptional yolk colour and taste delicious. They are often better than some of the farm eggs we can buy in Devon. Choose a 20cm frying pan and pour in light olive oil to a depth of 4-5mm. Heat this on your stove until you can just see little wisps of smoke coming off the oil.
Don't try to break the egg into the pan. Break it into a shallow dish
. (Burford doubles are rare...but this is one egg and not two). Slide the eggs into the pan so that the white fills out before the yolk goes in. Immediately begin to spoon hot oil over the middle of the egg so that it is cooked in the centre. The puntillas will form within 15 or 20 seconds and by 25 seconds you should be lifting out the egg on a spatula. Drain the oil off for a few seconds over the pan.Eat immediately
! (The young man likes his with Hovis. I usually prefer a more rustic bread or focaccia)
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Ragù - la grassa, la dotta
Where, how and when does a young man learn to cook today?
Research conducted by the BBC in the nineties before they started to produce the Delia Smith 'How to Cook' series indicated that 36% of people between the ages of 20 and 30 claimed that the last meal that they had 'cooked' was a bowl of cereal. Over 20% UK homes do not have a dining table. 'If it fits in a toaster, I can cook it' might be the motto of many of the young man's contemporaries.
He likes to eat. He does it regularly - and often with gusto. Cheese, olives, anchovies, chorizo, jamon, foccaccia, hovis, oat cakes, apples, oranges, nectarines and kiwi all disappear from the kitchen with alarming speed when he's at home.
We've always made a ritual of sitting down to eat together and entertaining friends at the table. Childish cake baking - stirring the mixture (and licking the spoon), pizza dough, being the magimix whizzer, pancake mix, making lemonade and frozen yoghurt have all featured. But when should he start to cook real food? Hot oil, boiling water, sharp carbon steel knives and gas or charcoal ranges do not mix easily with under 11s. But once he was 11 we've cooked together from time to time taking small steps to increasing complexity.
Delia says "If you want to learn how to cook start with eggs" and we did. We've boiled, scrambled and fried eggs. We've made omelettes with cheese, jamon and chorizo. Extended this to Tortilla for a family tapas.
When it comes to the cook books Delia doesn't do it for him nor does the original Nigel Slater - Real Fast Food - though a 30 minute time limit is definitely the right agenda for 11-13 year old cooks. Of all the books Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Family Cookbook is the one he likes best. The wife was able to arrange for HF-W to sign a copy for him - so now he has his own. We've already roasted a chicken. Now we're ready for a bit of complexity - a Ragù. I can't put it better than HF-W (p287)
I've been cooking Ragù so long I can't remember whose recipe I first used but I guess it will have been Elizabeth David's from Italian Food - first published in 1954. I remember having an increasingly dog-eared penguin paperback edition which eventually disintegrated completely. (see my librarything for the current). Certainly I still feel inclined to include chicken liver and do not use milk/cream. This method is also in the Alan Davidson Oxford Companion. Marcella Hazan and Anna Del Conte use milk and Claudia Roden double cream. None of these latter three include livers. Perhaps I am behind the times? Heston Blumenthal of course goes to Bologna, interviews everyone and returns to his kitchen where he sets up experiments. I believe he may have used a blow torch...
Of all the recipes I looked up HF-W's is the best described in terms that a teenager might undersand and his ideas for extension of the technique to Picadillo (for Tacos), Cottage Pie and Chile con Carne are an important next step for this audience. Anyway this recipe is mine rather then HF-W's. It took 55 minutes to cook 2Kg of (butcher) ground skirt plus trimmings and a big big soffrito. It should be possible to deal with 500g mince meat in 35 minutes and that is the quantity this recipe is based on. This should feed 4 adults or 3 teenagers.
For the soffrito
1 Celery stalk washed clean and grated
1 good Carrot peeled and grated
1 large sweet onion peeled and chopped fine
2 garlic cloves peeled and chopped fine
2 tblspn Olive oil
Meat
500g premium ground beef
75g Chicken livers coarsely chopped (optional)
3 slices pancetta (or un-smoked streaky bacon)
Sauce ingredients
75ml red wine
75ml veal stock (or a knorr veg stock cube dissolved in 75 ml warm water if you must)
2 tblspn tomato paste (ketchup will do at a pinch)
500ml tomato passatta drained
2 good pinches oregano
Salt to taste
Heat the oil over a medium heat in a sauté pan. Add the onion and stir. Meanwhile lightly cook the pancetta in a frying pan on medium heat so that it releases some oil. Don't crisp it. Keep stirring the onions and after a few minutes add the garlic, celery and carrot. Keep stirring - they mustn't burn.
Lift out the pancetta and cut each slice into 6 or 7 pieces. Put it in a bowl. Add the chicken livers to the hot pancetta fat and cook for a minute, stir then cook for another minute. Keep stirring the onions etc. Take out the liver and put it with the pancetta. Stir the onions and turn them down to low.
Turn up the heat in the frying pan and, when hot, add the beef. Spread it out but don't turn it over for 2 or 3 minutes. It doesn't matter if it burns a bit. Turn it over and press it down in the pan. Cook for another 3 minutes untill the beef isn't pink any more. Tip it into the bowl with the livers etc. Add the tomatoe paste to the meat and mix it in with your fingers.
Keep stirring the onions. After about 25 minutes they should be translucent and soft. Take them off the heat and add them to the meat. Mix it all up with a wooden spoon. Then add the passata to everything and mix it in.
Put the whole mix into a casserole and add the oregano. Set it on a low heat over a diffusing ring (if possible). Stew for at least 2 hours. Halfway through taste the Ragù. Does it need salt? You can add a good pinch if you feel it needs it but remember that you will probably be serving this with a salty parmigiana so don't add too much...When you feel it's cooked take it off the heat and let it cool. It must cool and be reheated before it's served.
Serve with a good pasta (De Cecco is a good bet). Don't choose spaghetti - serve it with tagliatelle if you must have long pasta or with farfalle or conchiglie and with parmesan and a salad of rocket.
And remember, even though I plan to write this blog for just 8 or 9 weeks, when all the transient readers have long since stopped checking if there's a new entry, these recipes will still be here (along with all those dodgy photos on Facebook) so that it can be consulted on a stolen wireless connection from a 2nd year student bedsit.
Research conducted by the BBC in the nineties before they started to produce the Delia Smith 'How to Cook' series indicated that 36% of people between the ages of 20 and 30 claimed that the last meal that they had 'cooked' was a bowl of cereal. Over 20% UK homes do not have a dining table. 'If it fits in a toaster, I can cook it' might be the motto of many of the young man's contemporaries.
He likes to eat. He does it regularly - and often with gusto. Cheese, olives, anchovies, chorizo, jamon, foccaccia, hovis, oat cakes, apples, oranges, nectarines and kiwi all disappear from the kitchen with alarming speed when he's at home.
We've always made a ritual of sitting down to eat together and entertaining friends at the table. Childish cake baking - stirring the mixture (and licking the spoon), pizza dough, being the magimix whizzer, pancake mix, making lemonade and frozen yoghurt have all featured. But when should he start to cook real food? Hot oil, boiling water, sharp carbon steel knives and gas or charcoal ranges do not mix easily with under 11s. But once he was 11 we've cooked together from time to time taking small steps to increasing complexity.
Delia says "If you want to learn how to cook start with eggs" and we did. We've boiled, scrambled and fried eggs. We've made omelettes with cheese, jamon and chorizo. Extended this to Tortilla for a family tapas.
When it comes to the cook books Delia doesn't do it for him nor does the original Nigel Slater - Real Fast Food - though a 30 minute time limit is definitely the right agenda for 11-13 year old cooks. Of all the books Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Family Cookbook is the one he likes best. The wife was able to arrange for HF-W to sign a copy for him - so now he has his own. We've already roasted a chicken. Now we're ready for a bit of complexity - a Ragù. I can't put it better than HF-W (p287)"Once you've learned how to make spag bol, you've begun to master a range of skills that will introduce you to a whole family of different recipies. The ingredients may vary quite a lot from recipe to recipe but the techniques remain the same: the proper browning of the meat, the slow sweating of chopped vegetables in oil or butter, the gentle stewing of the meat in a highly flavoured sauce."So this morning we cooked Ragù. Actually, we cooked up a vatful as Ragù freezes well.
I've been cooking Ragù so long I can't remember whose recipe I first used but I guess it will have been Elizabeth David's from Italian Food - first published in 1954. I remember having an increasingly dog-eared penguin paperback edition which eventually disintegrated completely. (see my librarything for the current). Certainly I still feel inclined to include chicken liver and do not use milk/cream. This method is also in the Alan Davidson Oxford Companion. Marcella Hazan and Anna Del Conte use milk and Claudia Roden double cream. None of these latter three include livers. Perhaps I am behind the times? Heston Blumenthal of course goes to Bologna, interviews everyone and returns to his kitchen where he sets up experiments. I believe he may have used a blow torch...
Of all the recipes I looked up HF-W's is the best described in terms that a teenager might undersand and his ideas for extension of the technique to Picadillo (for Tacos), Cottage Pie and Chile con Carne are an important next step for this audience. Anyway this recipe is mine rather then HF-W's. It took 55 minutes to cook 2Kg of (butcher) ground skirt plus trimmings and a big big soffrito. It should be possible to deal with 500g mince meat in 35 minutes and that is the quantity this recipe is based on. This should feed 4 adults or 3 teenagers.
For the soffrito
1 Celery stalk washed clean and grated
1 good Carrot peeled and grated
1 large sweet onion peeled and chopped fine
2 garlic cloves peeled and chopped fine
2 tblspn Olive oil
Meat
500g premium ground beef
75g Chicken livers coarsely chopped (optional)
3 slices pancetta (or un-smoked streaky bacon)
Sauce ingredients
75ml red wine
75ml veal stock (or a knorr veg stock cube dissolved in 75 ml warm water if you must)
2 tblspn tomato paste (ketchup will do at a pinch)
500ml tomato passatta drained
2 good pinches oregano
Salt to taste
Heat the oil over a medium heat in a sauté pan. Add the onion and stir. Meanwhile lightly cook the pancetta in a frying pan on medium heat so that it releases some oil. Don't crisp it. Keep stirring the onions and after a few minutes add the garlic, celery and carrot. Keep stirring - they mustn't burn.
Lift out the pancetta and cut each slice into 6 or 7 pieces. Put it in a bowl. Add the chicken livers to the hot pancetta fat and cook for a minute, stir then cook for another minute. Keep stirring the onions etc. Take out the liver and put it with the pancetta. Stir the onions and turn them down to low.
Turn up the heat in the frying pan and, when hot, add the beef. Spread it out but don't turn it over for 2 or 3 minutes. It doesn't matter if it burns a bit. Turn it over and press it down in the pan. Cook for another 3 minutes untill the beef isn't pink any more. Tip it into the bowl with the livers etc. Add the tomatoe paste to the meat and mix it in with your fingers.
Keep stirring the onions. After about 25 minutes they should be translucent and soft. Take them off the heat and add them to the meat. Mix it all up with a wooden spoon. Then add the passata to everything and mix it in.
Put the whole mix into a casserole and add the oregano. Set it on a low heat over a diffusing ring (if possible). Stew for at least 2 hours. Halfway through taste the Ragù. Does it need salt? You can add a good pinch if you feel it needs it but remember that you will probably be serving this with a salty parmigiana so don't add too much...When you feel it's cooked take it off the heat and let it cool. It must cool and be reheated before it's served.
Serve with a good pasta (De Cecco is a good bet). Don't choose spaghetti - serve it with tagliatelle if you must have long pasta or with farfalle or conchiglie and with parmesan and a salad of rocket.
And remember, even though I plan to write this blog for just 8 or 9 weeks, when all the transient readers have long since stopped checking if there's a new entry, these recipes will still be here (along with all those dodgy photos on Facebook) so that it can be consulted on a stolen wireless connection from a 2nd year student bedsit.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Rosewater Kulfi
The heatwave continues. Time to make cold food and what could be colder than ice cream? Kulfi is usually made from milk that has been boiled for a couple of hours. Not this Kulfi though. It can be made in 5 minutes and forgotten about for 6 hours. It's made with condensed milk. (Delia doesn't have the monopoly on cheating). I know condensed milk is stuffed with sugar, but then, so is kulfi. And the rose water cuts the sweetness. Anyway it gets a good response from the young man - he likes it best with a passion fruit garnish.
Start early - before it gets too hot.
450g Condensed Milk (this is the 'squeezy' size)
250ml Creme Fraiche
2 tblspn Rosewater
Squeeze the condensed milk into a bowl and beat in the rosewater. Fold in the creme fraiche. Pour into silicon muffin moulds. Freeze for 6 hours.
This is the basic recipe. You can add pistachio or other nuts to the mix if you like. As the mix is so thick, it doesn't need stiring whilst being frozen. We serve it with a garnish of fruit (red currants this evening). Or with a summer berry purée and a garnish of nuts and a sprig of mint.
Try to use a good Lebanese Rosewater. We get ours from Oil & More and it's delicious.
(oopps! - I used the deeper mould and have ended up with 5 Kulfi. You should get 6 slightly shallower Kulfi from this recipe).
=========
UPDATE!
-------------
For an authentic Kulfi MasterClass in old Delhi go to Eat & Dust
Start early - before it gets too hot.
450g Condensed Milk (this is the 'squeezy' size)
250ml Creme Fraiche
2 tblspn Rosewater
Squeeze the condensed milk into a bowl and beat in the rosewater. Fold in the creme fraiche. Pour into silicon muffin moulds. Freeze for 6 hours.
This is the basic recipe. You can add pistachio or other nuts to the mix if you like. As the mix is so thick, it doesn't need stiring whilst being frozen. We serve it with a garnish of fruit (red currants this evening). Or with a summer berry purée and a garnish of nuts and a sprig of mint.
Try to use a good Lebanese Rosewater. We get ours from Oil & More and it's delicious.
(oopps! - I used the deeper mould and have ended up with 5 Kulfi. You should get 6 slightly shallower Kulfi from this recipe).
=========
UPDATE!
-------------
For an authentic Kulfi MasterClass in old Delhi go to Eat & Dust
Sunday, June 28, 2009
'Rosbif'
Both the young man and the wife claim that Rosbif is their favourite. Of course, they also claim that numerous other things are their favourite when I cook these, but a rolled sirloin or (as tonight) a rib is always popular and a bit of a celebration.
I think I learned to roast beef from Jane Grigson's English Food
" - one of the first recipe books that I ever bought. Just 23 minutes at 220 degrees on turbo fan setting are need to produce a pink and succulent 1 Kg roast rib...enough for the three of us and more.
I also use a recipe in English Food for the Yorkshires. Jane's recipe and the whole story of Prize-Winning Chinese Yorkshire pudding is recounted here. According to the Guardian, which covered the competition, 'his ingredients [were] oddly arranged, but his pudding swelled to the height of a coronation crown'
And they do!
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