Recent Eats - the lockdown 2.0 edition

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while. I started on it a couple of weeks ago, but kept losing heart. I would start a sentence and then drift off, only to find myself staring blankly at the screen.

It's been so long that the title now only just applies. We are, apparently, approaching the end of Lockdown 2.0 in England, although given that my area (along with many others) lurches straight into Tier 3, we probably won't really notice. 

Gah, I don't want to moan. I really don't want to moan when I am safe, my family are safe, I am gainfully employed, able to work from home and, delighted that someone (either the supermarket supply chain managers or the Great British Public, who knows?) seem to have learned the lessons of Lockdown 1. We have been able to get supermarket delivery slots throughout and last week, the shopping contained flour! Two types! So, you know, what's to complain about?

Still, (because it is my blog and if I can't be self indulgent here...) my mood has really plummeted this week. One of the first signs is when I struggle to read and I haven't (until last night) managed to pick up a book in days. I've watched quite a lot of Christmas films - and even a Christmas sitcom - on Netflix, which has been nice. But I've still found myself sitting in floods of tears for no reason whatsoever. It feels terribly selfish and not a little pathetic when so many people are experiencing real problems and real heartache but I think all of us have taken a bit of an emotional bashing recently. I'm missing my family and my friends terribly - I've seen my Mum and Dad once since March and my father in law once and, other than that, it's been D and the cat. 

Sorry - this all turned into a bit of a pity party. It was my original intention to write about what we've been cooking lately, not snivel into the ether. When I flicked back through my most recent photos, all I managed to find were pita breads and stew and dumplings, which makes for rather beige pictures (not that anyone is here for the food photography!)

Pita or pitta?

The pita breads are by Dan Lepard, and the recipe can be found online here as well as in his book "Short and Sweet". I am finding, more and more, that I turn to Lepard for baking queries and this book is an absolute godsend. His brief-knead-and-leave method of bread making is unconventional but works very well - I would certainly urge you to forever eschew the store bought pita and go for these instead. They are a leetle labour intensive, but well worth it (and, I can confirm, they freeze beautifully).

Stew and, more importantly, dumplings

The stew in question is my late mother in law's panacalty. Or, rather, our take on it. Corned beef, and chunks of root veg in oxtail soup (!) with suet dumplings on top. I make it slightly faffier than just bunging everything in a single pan - roasting off the veg for a bit of extra flavour, caramelising onions for sweetness, finishing with a little mustard. We also use D's homemade corned beef rather than the tinned stuff...altogether, it's a lovely, lovely thing. And very much of the North East. 

I'm sure that there are more things to share but I have bored on quite enough for one Friday afternoon. Sending huge love and virtual hugs out into Tinternet to everyone out there who is struggling, be it a little bit or a whole lot. I wish you all a weekend of good food, cat cuddles and Strictly (or whatever it is that makes your world feel a little less crap). 

MPM: 24th September 2018

Greetings chickadees and I think it is safe to say that summer is well and truly over after a weekend which saw us a) light our fire every night b) turn the heating on and c) get pounded by hailstones.  Suits me just fine - I am not a big fan of the hot weather although I have no intention of giving up the salads that have characterised my lunches for the past couple of months.  I love salad and don't see that it should be confined to when the weather is sunny.

I've been back on track for nearly a whole week now (four and a half days counts as nearly seven, doesn't it?) and although it has had its tricky moments, altogether it is going pretty well.  It helps, I think, that we were SO over indulgent last weekend, my body was definitely ready to embrace a simpler, leaner diet.  But, as I said in my last post and said to my WW coach at the weigh in, I will never be the type of person to count, or even attempt to count, on holiday.  Food and drink are two of life's very great pleasures.

Talking of great pleasures, and another sign that winter is on its way - the new series of Strictly Come Dancing started on Saturday night which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Saturday nights from now will definitely have to feature a special sort of supper to honour the occasion.  Actually, this Saturday's supper was very special indeed - inspired by a photo on Bundobust's Instagram feed, I contrived a saag paneer pizza.  If two of your favourite foods are saag paneer and pizza, this is a dish not to be missed.  I may well post the recipe at some point.

Anyway, on to this week.  I am supposed to be going out on Friday, so it is blank for now, but may try and wriggle out of it for various reasons, not least that it would be nice to have two straight weeks of tracking under my belt as we go into October AKA D's 50th Birthday Month.  Elsewhere:

Monday: Tuna and onion (tonno e cipolla) pizza - we have pizza dough leftover from Saturday night and, well, it would be rude not to.

Tuesday:  Mussel paella

Wednesday:  Vietnamese braised pork with vegetable egg fried rice

Thursday: Chicken breast stuffed with goats' cheese

Saturday:  Lobster truffled macaroni cheese - a dish inspired by our recent trip to the Star Inn the Harbour.

Sunday:  A freezer dive - beef and fennel stew with mashed potatoes.

Have a fabulous week all!

MPM: 26th February 2018

I cannot tell a lie, when I weighed in this morning and the scales yielded me a mere 0.4 lbs loss, I was disappointed.  I try to be very, very realistic about what I can expect on 5:2 but less than half a pound still stings.  I'm hoping that now my digestive system seems to be settling down a bit, if I keep on with the old keeping on I will see a better result next week. 

Talking of better results, yesterday saw me dip the very tip of my littlest toe back into the exercise pool.  Long time readers might remember that we have a treadmill in our garage, purchased back in the days when D was a keen(ish) marathon runner.  I've long been using every possible excuse to avoid venturing out there and climbing aboard, but given that it is clear that my 2018 Weight Loss Campaign needs a boost, I've done it.  And by "it", I mean I completed the Couch to 5k week 1, day 1 workout, which is really more walking than anything else.  Let's see if I can manage day 2 and 3 this week and maybe even reach the giddy heights of week 2.

Meal planning - we are out on Wednesday (a quick bite before a trip to the theatre) and on Sunday (lunch with the parentals).  Today and Wednesday are fast days.  There's not an awful lot else to plan.

Tuesday: Beef and fennel stew (from the freezer), mashed potato

Friday: Nigel Slater's fettucine with fennel and prawns - how adorably simple and delicious does this dish look?  Perfect for an end-of-the-week-collapse-on-the-sofa supper.

Saturday:  D is cooking two dishes from The Palomar Cookbook (a recent addition to our collection).  He plans chopped liver followed by a deconstructed kebab.  I shall be contributing homemade pitta breads to the proceedings.

MPM: 4th September 2017

During my drive to blog every day in September, Mondays should be the easiest because I can just stick in a quick meal planning post and be done.  Hurrah. 

That being said, the plan for this week is a little bit vague and back-of-a-fag-packety.  Partly because it is my first week back at work after a month of post operative rest and recuperation and I am expecting my evening energy levels to be extremely low and up to little more than making tea and toast - hence the midweek freezer dive.  I am, hopefully, back to two full fast days this week so that means soup (on Tuesday and Thursday).  And we are going out for supper on Friday to, er, celebrate the fact that it is Friday.

Monday: We were originally intending to be out tonight and now we are not.  So tea will likely consist of leftovers from yesterday's roast.  We have cold roast chicken, we have some carrot and ginger mash, we have four roast potatoes - I am feeling some sort of bubble and squeak-esque patties coming on.

Tuesday: Fast day - soup

Wednesday:  Braised beef cheeks from the freezer, jazzed up with some blue cheese that's been lurking round the fridge for a while and needs using up.  Possibly mash on the side, possibly some crusty bread.

Thursday:  Fast day - soup

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  We are going Stateside and having Buffalo style chicken wings.  I am in charge of the side dish and am currently researching wedge salads - have you heard of these?  They sound odd to me but am prepared to try anything once.

Sunday:  Nduja lamb with a couscous salad - how this will work exactly remains to be seen.

Happy cooking (and eating) folks and have a wonderful week.

How to make the perfect Reuben sandwich

Since last December, it has been rare to find our freezer without several portions of D's home made corned beef.  And one of our absolute favourite ways to eat corned beef is in a classic American deli sandwich, a Reuben.

We had Reubens at Katz's deli when we were in New York earlier this year, but I think mine is better because, as delicious as Katz's beef was, the quantity served in the sandwich was so large as to overwhelm the other component parts - it just wasn't properly balanced.  For me, the joy of this sandwich is the way in which all the ingredients work together.  I like a variety of textures as well, hence leaving the bread under the cheese layer untoasted.

I think traditionally this would be on rye bread, but I find the really dark German style rye bread a bit too intense, so prefer to opt for a crusty loaf, a sourdough if possible.  If you are so clever as to make your own sourdough (one day I will get around to experimenting with that...) then use that.

Serve this with a big dill pickle on the side.

Ingredients

4 slices of bread (see above)
100g corned beef, thinly sliced
50g Gruyere cheese, grated
4 tbsp sauerkraut

For the Russian mayonaise:
2 tbsp full fat mayonnaise
Tsp Dijon mustard
Tsp tomato puree
Tsp chopped fresh (or freeze dried) dill
Pinch of dried chilli flakes

Makes 2 sandwiches, 16 pro points each

Preheat your grill for bread toasting purposes.

Combine the ingredients for the mayonnaise and set aside.  You could, of course, use a reduced fat mayo if you were looking to shave some points off.

Toast the bread on one side until lightly golden.  In our beast of a grill, this takes about ten seconds.

Flip the bread slices, and on two of them, divide up the grated cheese.  Replace under the grill and cook until the naked bread is lightly toasted and the cheese is molten and bubbling.

Spread the mayonnaise on the naked bread slice, and then layer on the sliced meat and the sauerkraut.  Top with the melted cheese slice (cheese side down).

Serve with a napkin (this is a juicy devil) and a large dill pickle on the side.

Slow cooker recipe corner: (Very) chilli con carne

 

 

 

.

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 :-)

 

Recipe corner: Corned beef hash

 

Goodness.  We used some of our home made corned beef for a hash this evening and it was ever so, ever so good.  It was the kind of good that makes me very sad for the people who will never get to eat it.  So my Christmas present to you, dearest reader, is the recipe.

The thing is, I say my recipe, it is very much akin to St Delia's recipe.  One of the big differences is that the meat in ours was the home made sort rather than the tinned sort which makes a distinct textural difference - and you'll notice from the method below that it allows, nay encourages, you to have two different textures of beef through the hash which is delicious.  We also went for poached eggs over Ms Smith's suggested fried which I think vastly preferable - the yolk runs into the hash and adds fabulous rich gooeyness.

D thinks that this portion is on the small side.  I agree, that one probably could eat more.  For the Weight Watcher who does not wish to scale up, I would say the addition of some green veg (steamed spinach, knob of butter?) would add volume with few additional points.  Sizewise though, it would be excellent for a multi course dinner party main, we think, with an elegantly positioned dollop of home made brown sauce and some finely chopped pickles. It is excellent, full stop.

Ingredients

150g corned beef - shred 50g and cut the rest into cubes
Tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp Worcester sauce
Tsp dried thyme
Pinch dried chilli flakes
Salt, pepper

250g potatoes, cubed

25ml sunflower oil
Large onion, thinly sliced

2 medium eggs
Tbsp white wine vinegar

Serves 2, 13 pro points per portion

Combine the meat with the mustard, Worcester, herbs and spices.  You can do this in advance and leave it to sit for a while.  You may think that it appears too saucy at this stage, but don't worry.

Put the potatoes in a large pan and cover with water.  Salt well.  Bring to the boil and bubble away for three minutes.  Drain.  Combine with the saucy (oooo-er) beef.  Season - minimal salt, lots and lots of black pepper.

Heat the oil in a large pan - you want a decent surface area so don't skimp.  When the oil is hot, add the onion and cook until golden and beginning to brown. Add the meat and potato mixture and spread out as far as possible.  Leave to cook for a while - you want to get a decent crust.

While this is cooking, bring a pan of water to a brisk boil.  Do NOT add salt but DO add a capful of white wine vinegar.  Break the eggs into ramekins. 

Once your meat and potato is looking crusty and delicious, tip the eggs into the water and set a time for one and a half minutes.  While they cook, spoon out the hash (we used chef's rings because we are....middle class).  Top the hash with the eggs and season to taste before serving.

How to make corned beef (and you really, really should)

Best corned beef sandwich EVER...

Corned beef and pickle sandwiches were an absolute staple in my household when I was growing up.  OK you risked bleeding to death every time you tried to open a can (or at least I did) and it looked kind of weird (a friend of mine once described it as "nipple meat" which put me off for a little while) but still, delicious.  I don't know why I stopped eating it but I certainly can't remember the last time I bought it.

D, for reasons best known to himself, had long cherished the notion of making some corned beef at home.  It's odd - it is not something that it would EVER  have occurred to me to cook, primarily because it is one of those things, liked baked beans, that only exists as a canned foodstuff in my head.  The idea of taking a piece of beef and....well, corning it seemed odd. 

And what does corning refer to, I hear you ask?  Well, thanks to my friend and yours, Wikipedia, I can tell you that it is a reference to the coarse, granular salt used to cure the beef.  There doesn't appear to be a particular difference between "salt beef" and "corned beef" although pastrami, another cured beef product, is apparently smoked rather than boiled to give it a particular flavour.  So there you go. 

Anyway, it turns out that corned beef is absolutely delicious.  It tastes like the canned stuff but somehow amplified...meatier, spicier...and far more tender.  It's so good that we just ate corned beef sandwiches for tea on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with nothing more than slices of meat, mustard and dill pickles, and I am rather sad that I won't be having them again tonight.  Later this week we intend to make corned beef hash - I'll report back if it is good. 

Incidentally, in terms of points, I've been reckoning on 7 pro points per 100g cooked weight based on nutritional information I've found online.  50g is more than enough for a decent sandwich filling which works out at 3pps. 

Ingredients

Pickling spices:
1 tbsp allspice berries
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp dried chilli flakes
1 tbsp whole cloves
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
9 cardamom pods
6 dried bay leaves, crumbled
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 stick cinnamon
1 1/2 star anise

Brine:
4.5 litres of water
2 handfuls of sea salt (we always buy Maldon)
5 tsp pink curing salt
3 tbsp pickling spices
110g brown sugar

Brisket:
3kg piece of brisket
1 tbsp pickling spices

Some notes first of all.

Yes, 3kg of brisket is a lot.  Ours cooked down to about 1.7kg. This is still a lot.  The beef will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge or can be portioned up and frozen.  It is delicious, and brisket is not a terribly expensive cut so I recommend making a load but, of course, I would assume this recipe would work perfectly well scaled down.

The pink curing salt is available online.  We bought it here.  The original recipe does state that you can make the beef without - the main difference will be to the colour which will be less vividly pink.

You need a BIG container for such a big piece of meat.  We used a large cake carrier Lock and Lock which looked huge - but could only get about half of the specified amount of liquid in even so.  The beef still worked beautifully but D did turn it every day to ensure that it all sides were getting well brined.

So here's what you do:

Toast the allspice, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, chilli flakes, cloves, peppercorns and cardamom pods in a dry pan over a high heat until the mustard seeds start to pop and the spices are fragrant.  Transfer to a pestle and mortar and lightly crush.  Stir in the ginger and the bay.

Now add 3 tbsp of the spice mix plus the cinnamon and star anise to the water in a large pan along with the sugar and salt.  Bring to the boil then remove from the heat.  Allow the liquid to come to room temperature and then put it in the fridge to chill.

Place your beefy behemoth in your chosen container and pour over the brine.  Cover and keep somewhere cool - the fridge or, in this weather, the garage.  Brine for at least 5 days - ours was in their for 10.  Turn the meat regularly.

When you're ready to cook, remove the meat from the brine and rinse with cold water.  We cooked ours in a slow cooker which was perfect for this type of joint.  We added a small quantity of water to the pot with a tablespoon of the pickling spice and then sat in the meat and gave it 1 hour on high followed by 9 hours on low heat at which point it was falling apart and the house smelled like a deli. Wrap in foil and rest for at least an hour before serving.