MPM: 13th August 2018

I’m so tired this morning. This, despite the fact I had a nap yesterday afternoon and then went to bed at nine o clock, I feel like I could sleep for a week. Thankfully, God invented caffeine and I’m sure that the second cup of strong coffee will be the charm.

Anyway, meal planning. A quiet week ahead with some nice food to look forward to.

Monday: Pan fried salmon with Bois Bourdan sauce and crushed potatoes. A Heston Blumenthal recipe from his “At Home” book.

Tuesday: Creamy butternut squash and red pepper soup, homemade flatbreads brushed with smoked butter

Wednesday: Kale and blue cheese gnocchi

Thursday: D is out, so filled pasta for me.

Friday: Skate wings with black butter and capers. This is one of my all-time favourite things to eat but, dear Teapot, butter is high in points. The recipe I’ve used before suggests 75g butter between two people. That’s 14 points worth of butter a portion! I mean…I’m going to eat it, but I will be licking any excess butter off the plate when I’m done and will probably be whingeing about it a LOT.

Saturday: A homemade fakeaway - Nando’s chicken pitta. Now, we went to Nando’s the other week on a pre cinema jolly and I was SO disappointed. I think they might have changed their recipe, or else we just got a really duff cook because it was not nice at all. Too much chill heat without any rounded flavour, woolly, over cooked chicken and the chargrilled vegetables were not so much chargrilled vegetables as crappy, overcooked mulch. So I’m going to make my own Piri-Piri style chicken at home and it will likely cost a hell of a lot less than the £30 we paid for two of us to eat remarkably mediocre food.

Sunday: roast dinner. Probably chicken. Depending on the weather, I’ll either do roast potatoes and standard trimmings, or we’ll have it with a couple of salads, maybe some bread. It’s distinctly cooler and greyer this morning here in Leeds, perfect roast potato weather, but we’ll see how the week pans out.

Slow cooker recipe corner: (Very) chilli con carne

 

 

 

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D has worked long and hard to convince me of the merits of the chilli.  Me, I've never been sold.  If I'm going to eat a plate of tomatoey mince meat then spag bol will win every single time.  And, yes, I am quite aware that a proper ragu from the Bologna region of Italy is a million miles away from tomatoey mince meat, but I have never claimed to cook anything authentically.

 

Anyway, chilli.  I think he may finally have shown me the point.  The dish he produced the other night, an amalgam between Heston's recipe, Felicity Cloake's and "some other recipe that I saw on a blog", was rich and complex and quite a thing of beauty.  It eschews the usual tomatoes for a whole host of other unusual sounding ingredients which adds up to something that is significantly more than the sum of its parts.

 

You will, of course, notice that it uses a LOT of chilli.  And not just that but a lot of different types of chilli. This necessitated a rather expensive trip to Waitrose.  The payback was the incredible depth and complexity of flavour - each brought a different note with it.  But it was not the cheapest meal that we have ever cooked.  And of course I should say something about the heat level.  I have quite a timid palate when it comes to heat and found this to be on the edge of what I can comfortably manage.  A dollop of crème fraiche (you could also use yoghurt or sour cream) tempered the heat beautifully - D, who is far hardier of taste bud, judged it to be spot on just as it was. You could de-seed the dried chillies to reduce the heat.

Slow cooking is perfect for this sort of dish - it allows the spices time to develop and makes the meat meltingly tender.  But, of course, it could be cooked on the hob if you preferred.

 

Ingredients

 

200g beef braising steak, cubed

400g beef mince

 

2 onions, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, crushed

250ml freshly brewed coffee

2 x Knorr beef stock pots (or other beef stock concentrate)

25ml bourbon

125ml red wine

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp muscovado sugar

20g dark chocolate (we used a dark chocolate with chilli that we happened to have in)

2 large carrots, grated

Handful of mushrooms, finely chopped

 

2 dried chipotle chillies, finely chopped

2 dried habanero chillies, finely chopped

2 dried ancho chillies, finely chopped

2 dried cascabel chillies, finely chopped

2 fresh green jalapeno chillies, de-seeded and finely chopped

2 fresh red chillies, de-seeded and finely chopped

1 jar of honeydew piquante peppers, drained and chopped

 

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp dried oregano

1 tbsp hot chilli powder

2 star anise

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

 

200g kidney beans

200g black eyed beans

 

Serves 6, 9 pro points per portion

 

Dry fry the mince until well browned and transfer to the slow cooker.  Brown the steak in the mince juices and likewise add to the slow cooker.  De-glaze the pan with the red wine and pour over the meat.

 

Add all the other ingredients, stir, and season well.

 

Cook on low for 6 hours.  Serve with rice, or nachos, or tortillas and a large glass of water :-)

 

Out to Dinner

So, last Saturday D and I, along with my brother (D2) and his wife (V) kept a longstanding date with one Mr Heston Blumenthal. Or rather, Heston Blumenthal’s former right-hand man at The Fat Duck and now head chef at Dinner. Not that we saw either of them. But to be fair, if Heston had happened to pop in for lunch that day he would have probably have popped right out again when presented with a squealing fan girl (I have a tendency to get as excited around famous chefs as pre-pubescent girls get around JLS).

The outing didn’t get off to the very best of starts; D2 and V got stuck on the Underground which meant they were late meeting us which meant that we were late getting to our table. Both D and I, but especially D, are pathologically punctual. Well, actually, I’d say that I am punctual, D is early. He started getting agitated at about quarter to twelve (admittedly, we had made tentative plans to meet them in the hotel bar at half past eleven, but equally, they had to convey a six month old baby and all the luggage that said small child generates to his grandparents’ house before setting off, and so I was unsurprised that they were running slightly behind schedule). By five to twelve I was also getting a little twitchy, although getting stuck into an appletini of mammoth proportions was taking the edge off. D had stopped hoovering up the Kettle Chips at this point – when D stops eating snacks then you know that the balance of his mind is seriously disturbed.

But they arrived and disaster was averted and the very charming staff, with nary a reference to the fact that we were nearly quarter of an hour late sitting down, offered us a seat on the terrace, with pashminas for the ladies if the slightly brisk July (!) weather became uncomfortable. And D calmed down and we all had a glass of champagne, at which point he probably regretted not smuggling the bar snacks in with him.

The menu at Dinner is rather exciting. The dishes are all “inspired by historic British gastronomy” and so often peculiarly named with unexpected ingredients, with the sources of origin listed on the back of the menu (which we snaffled). Personally, I felt a little adrift. Usually when I go to a fancy restaurant, I order a tasting menu. Not only because I am extraordinarily bad at decision making but because I want to get a feel for the restaurant and the cooking. Actually, the second half of that sentence makes me sound terribly poncey…let’s face it, it’s probably because I had a deep seated need to be told what to do rather than have to decide for myself. Here, not only did I have to decide for myself, but the language of the food was not what I was used to. There was a starter on there called “Rice and Flesh” for goodness sake (of which more in a second).

We kicked off with a pre starter, the “Meat fruit” which was a chicken liver parfait presented like an orange. Look at the picture – you’ll see what I mean. We got two of these for the table so as not to ruin our appetites. I wish we had ordered one each. This was amazing. Seriously, the best chicken liver parfait I have ever eaten and probably ever will eat. Silky, rich, that deeply savoury tang of iron that you get from liver, but overlaid with a delicate sweetness and the fragrance of citrus. We were back in plate licking territory here.

Best.  Chicken liver.  Ever.

I must credit my photographer at this point.  I had (for once) remembered to bring along my nifty little pink Nikon but unfortunately had not remembered to check that the battery was charged.  So these pictures come to you courtesy of D's mobile phone and with his apologies if they are not as clear as they could be (he informs me that the camera on his current phone is not as good as the one on his previous handset).  Considering I manage to make everything I photograph look awful, I don't think he has anything to worry about.

Both the boys, being boys, had ordered Rice and Flesh for their starters. The name put me off – I’ll hold my hands up to that. But lordy. This was probably the best risotto I’d ever eaten (on the basis of the spoonful D allowed me to try). D and D2 suggested that larger lumps of meat would have improved the dish. I think serving it up in a bucket big enough to stick your head in is the only way it could have been bettered. I mean, wow. My salamagundy was fine, don’t get me wrong, but I think I mainly ordered it because I like the word and it didn’t cause rampaging flavour fireworks to go off in my mouth – if anything I would have liked more of a horseradish kick. And I think V was a wee bit underwhelmed by her scallops.

Best.  Risotto.  Ever.

Onto the mains – and again one stand out dish. The pork chop, served with pointy cabbage (I ate it and I’m still not sure what the difference between pointy and normal cabbage really is) was the best. Pork. Chop. Ever. That’s three best evers in one meal! I don’t know what the hell this pig had been doing throughout its life (perhaps strumming a celestial harp on a cloud?) or how the kitchen had coaxed such extraordinary flavour out of the meat (fairy dust???) but it was amazing. Amazing. I will never eat a piece of pork again without thinking, a little sadly, it’s not the angel-fairy pig that I had at Dinner. On the other side of the table, the powdered duck (no, we couldn’t work out what the powdered bit referred to) was not provoking similar raptures. I mean it was fine, it tasted good and gamey. The accompanying pomme puree had more butter in it than pommes, which is always a good thing, but it was not…special enough.

Best.  Pork.  Ever.

We moved onto puddings and the two Ds went for the dish which is apparently becoming a bit of a Dinner signature – the roasted pineapple with tipsy cake. It was good – cake and cream and brandy cannot fail but to be good. The two girls, on the other hand, went for a dessert called a Chocolate Bar (I think I’ve mentioned my feelings on desserts before; if it isn’t chocolatey then I am generally a little disappointed, no matter how lovely it is). Which was scrummy – accompanied by a tangy layer of passion fruit (chocolate and passion fruit – a revelatory combination for me and one I must experiment with at home) and a scoop of ginger ice cream which worked very well, bringing a spicy note to the dish. No best evers in this course though. Nice puddings, great puddings in fact, but they didn’t reach the lofty bar set by some of their savoury compatriots. I was rather impressed by a complimentary little post dessert though – a white chocolate and Earl Grey ganache with a caraway biscuit. Again, a very interesting new chocolate/flavour combination which made me wonder about experimenting with some sort of white chocolate studded tea loaf.

So, great food including three best evers, friendly staff, good location – what’s the final verdict?  I actually think I liked it more than the others.  My brother said (while leaning back sipping his dessert wine – if he had a moustache he probably would have been twiddling it) that he didn’t feel that he had been taken on a “journey”.  I told him he was a pompous git, but I kind of get what he means.  Because the menu takes dishes from a variety of eras it overall lacks a little cohesion and, to be brutally honest, some of the dishes are a little humdrum (sometimes there is a reason as to why a dish has gone out of fashion).  Others are superlative.  But when you’re paying that sort of money for a meal you expect consistency.  Overall, it’s a solid seven.