Slow cooker recipe corner: Vivek Singh’s Suriani home-style chicken curry

A slow cooker curry recipe is perfect for this time of year and this one, adapted from the BBC Food site, is lovely. Please, please do not be put off by the amount of vinegar. When you first combine the ingredients it will taste and smell slightly overwhelming. By the end of cooking it will have mellowed to the most delicious subtle sourness.

From the BBC website

From me. A career in food photography clearly beckons...

The original recipe can be found here and comes with a sweet and sour coconut rice accompaniment but if you are looking to keep points down, you could just serve with plain rice. Or cauliflower rice. Or whatever you like really...I can imagine it with a chilli and coriander spiked mash.

This is a wet curry / stew, even if you reduce it as per the below suggestion. It’s got no thickening agent so it’s never going to be a thick sauce but I don’t think that is the idea. Just thought I’d mention it in case thinner curries aren’t your bag. You could quite easily bung a handful of lentils in it if you like - this wouldn’t affect the points. Oh, incidentally, you could also use reduced fat coconut milk which would take the points down to 5 per portion.

Ingredients

Tbsp rapeseed oil
2-3 large chicken breasts, cut into chunks

Half a punnet of chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 red onions sliced

Can of coconut milk
Cinnamon stick
6 cloves
4 green cardamom pods
4 garlic cloves, sliced
5cm piece of ginger, grated
8 green chillies, slit lengthways
15 curry leaves
2 tsp salt
Tbsp black peppercorns, crushed
5 tbsp sherry vinegar

Tsp garam masala

Serves 4, 10 Smart Points (WW Flex) per portion

As ever, these slow cooker recipes are more of an assembly job.

Heat the oil and add the chicken pieces, in batches if necessary, to brown on all sides.

Meanwhile, put the coconut milk, the spices and the vinegar into the slow cooker. Stir well, then add the sliced veg and the browned chicken.

Lid on, cook on low for 8 - 10 hours.

We then used a slotted spoon to remove the meat and veg, poured the sauce into a pan and reduced over a low heat for 15 mins, but this is not essential if you’re looking for ease and speed.

Stir through the garam masala just before serving.

Slow cooker recipe corner: Merguez sausage and squash stew

I am unclear as to when a stew ceases to be a stew and becomes a tagine. I'm calling this a stew, despite the obviously Moroccan influences, because I don't feel qualified to call it otherwise. You can call it a tagine though, if it pleases you.

In any case, this is a mash up of a couple of online recipes adapted for the slow cooker so it lost touch with any claim to authenticity a while ago. That aside, it is utterly delicious. Merguez sausages are officially one of my new Favourite Things. Homemade Merguez sausages are amazing. I've probably posted this picture before but I'm so impressed by D's hitherto undiscovered sausage making skills (plus I don't have a picture of the stew. Stew is like curry - it always looks rubbish in pictures):

This recipe was a fitting way to use up these beauties, and I can give it no greater compliment than that.

Ingredients

6-8 Merguez sausages

Large red onion, thinly sliced
250ml chicken stock
Small tin (200g) tomatoes
Tbsp honey

Heaped tsp each of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, dried chilli flakes, smoked paprika, ground together in a pestle and mortar

Butternut squash, peeled and cubed
Tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
100g dried apricots, roughly chopped
Half a preserved lemon, chopped

To serve: fresh coriander, finely shredded

Serves 4, generously

First: heat a little oil and brown the sausages on all sides. Remove from the pan and set aside to cool slightly before cutting into chunks and transferring to the slow cooker.

Add a little more oil and then place the onion into the pan cooking for around five minutes until beginning to soften. Splash in a little stock to deglaze the pan then add the spice mix and stir well. When nearly all the stock has bubbled away, pour in the tomatoes and the honey, then turn down the heat and allow to reduce slightly while you get on with prepping the other ingredients.

Throw the squash, chickpeas, apricots and lemon into the slow cooker alongside the sausage.

Taste the sauce and season well. Pour over the other ingredients in the slow cooker and stir thoroughly. If the mixture looks a little dry, add a bit more of the stock. Set the slow cooker to low and allow to burble away for 6-8 hours. Before serving (with steamed rice or couscous) stir through the coriander.

Slow cooker recipe corner: "Pulled” pig cheeks with sherry, saffron and olives

There are certain dishes that are never going to be particularly photogenic.  And, as readers of this blog know, I have a way of making even the photogenic ones look like piles of pallid mush.  So rather than attempt to photograph pulled pork, here is a photograph of a pig ornament.  And my cat. 

So a few weeks ago, a lovely man called Chris emailed me and asked me if I’d like some meat and some alcohol.  I attempted to be cool but my reaction was probably more along the lines of SQUEEEEEEEEEEE.  Chris, bless him, didn’t seem fazed by the over enthusiasm and duly sent along some pig cheeks and a bottle of Fino sherry.  Chris, you see, works for a company called Grey’s Fine Foods.

I’ll fully admit, not a site that was on my radar at all which is extremely sad because I have been missing out on some real treats.  They specialise in all things Spanish – and the charcuterie selection, in particular, is a thing of beauty and absolute joy forever.  Plus it is a Yorkshire based company and I love to bang the drum for all things Yorkshire.  So do, please, go along and have a little look.  Several of my family members may well be getting Spanish foodie treats for Christmas.

We’ve cooked with pig cheeks before but these were a class apart – thick, a nice marbling of fat (obviously very jowly pigs) and full of deep, almost gamey flavour.  After an overnight sojourn in the slow cooker they fell apart as the prod of a fork.  Perfect for a slightly Spanish twist on pulled pork.

I served the below in a boccadillo – which is basically a Spanish sandwich, traditionally served in a sub-type roll.  I made a delicious loaf of rustic Spanish bread from this Hairy Bikers recipe and then smeared it with tomato and aioli and stacked up the warm pork and thin, crispy slices of chorizo.  It was all kinds of messy wonderful.  But this recipe would also be great with mashed potato, or patatas bravas, or a Spanish-ey mac and cheese or (and this has only just occurred to me) a veggie paella-type rice thing. 

One pack of cheeks, at £16.50 made six extremely generous portions.  But obviously this recipe could be scaled up or down to suit.

Ingredients

10-12 (about 1.5 kg) pig cheeks

Flour, for dusting

Tbsp. olive oil

200ml Fino sherry

Hefty pinch of saffron

Tsp. smoked paprika

½ tsp. cayenne pepper

Tbsp. tomato puree

2 onions, roughly quartered

2 carrots, roughly quartered

2 sticks of celery, roughly quartered

4-5 fat garlic cloves (no need to peel)

Several sprigs of fresh thyme

100ml chicken stock

Handful of black olives, chopped

Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Serves 6, 10 pro points per portion

Measure out your sherry and add the saffron to infuse.

In the bottom of your slow cooker (or in a casserole dish if making in the oven), make a trivet of the roughly chopped vegetables and the fresh thyme.

Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan.  Dust the cheeks with flour and a good whack of salt and pepper.  Then cook in the oil for a couple of minutes on each side until they have started to colour.  You may need to do this in batches, depending on the size of your pan.  As they are browned off, transfer them to the slow cooker (or casserole dish).

Turn the heat down and pour the saffron-coloured sherry into the pan to deglaze, using a wooden spoon to make sure you get up all the tasty, crusty bits.  Add the paprika, cayenne, and tomato puree and bubble together for about five minutes to reduce.  Now pour in the chicken stock, and again reduce slightly before transferring to the slow cooker.  Cook, on a low heat, for at least 8 hours – overnight is fine (probably about 120-150 if doing in the oven).

When the cheeks are cooked and cooled, remove from the dish with a slotted spoon and shred.  They should be tender as anything at this stage.  Strain the remaining juices through a sieve over the shredded pork, making sure to squish all the vegetables to get every drop of flavour.

Stir through the balsamic vinegar and the chopped olives, and adjust the seasoning as desired.

Slow cooker recipe corner: North Carolina style baked beans

Picture taken from theodysseyonline.com

Welcome back to the deep South of America!  Actually, is North Carolina in the South?  I'm not entirely sure.  Anyway, as promised, here is the fabulous baked bean recipe, again taken from Waitrose "Kitchen" magazine, which pairs so well with the pulled pork in my last post.

I must admit that those beans that didn't accompany the pork ended up on toast with a sprinkle of cheese and very delicious they were too.

Now we cheated a little here by using canned beans.  One can of plain and one can of...well, Heinz.  I'm not sorry though.  We're pimping those beans up with plenty of other ingredients, but I think the back drop of the (almost) too sweet tomato sauce is very much in the spirit of the dish.

You don't have to do this in the slow cooker, but it does help the flavours develop beautifully and you can do it during the four hours that the pork is in the oven.  If not, start it on the hob, use about double the amount of liquid and then transfer, covered, to the oven to bake for an hour or so.

Ingredients

1 large can haricot beans, drained
1 large can baked beans
150g smoked bacon, diced
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp ground allspice
Tsp English mustard powder
3 tbsp tomato puree
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
2 bay leaves
sprig of thyme
Tsp Worcestershire sauce

Serves 6, 5 pro points per portion

Add the bacon to a cold frying pan and raise the heat gradually so that it browns in its own fat.  Once the pan is up to heat, add the onion and soften for around 5 minutes, then add the garlic for a further two minutes.

Transfer the contents of the pan, along with all of the other ingredients to the slow cooker.  Add half a bean can of water, season and stir well.  Slow cook on low for 4-5 hours.

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 :-)