This is another great winter dinner, although it does take a bit of effort to make. It can be expensive or cheap, depending on which cut of beef you use.
Skirt steak (bavette) was awesome when I tried it on Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's advice (in the River Cottage Meat book), so if you can get it maybe try that, otherwise any stewing cut will do - long slow braising before the main bake is the key.
You also need some kidneys, lamb or calves is fine, but be very aware of the source as some calves liver will come from inhumanely treated veal calves, imported to the UK. There's a little bit more info about this in my earlier liver, onion & colcannon post.
I was feeding four fairly greedy people (including myself!) and used two 360g packs of beef skirt and six lamb's kidneys. This was enough to allow for two people coming back for seconds! Use scissors to snip them into bitesized chunks before rolling them in well seasoned flour and pan-frying in batches.
When all the meat has been browned, tip everything into a large pan, then fry up a large, thickly sliced onion in the juices, deglaze with red wine (a good, large glassful) and put this mixture into the casserole pan as well. Finally, add a couple of bay leaves, a dollop of English mustard, a dash of worcester sauce, a tablespoon of ketchup and a pint of really good beef stock.
You can now partially cover the pan and leave to simmer slowly for a good hour and a half. Add in a punnet of halved or whole mushrooms (chestnut are my favourite) for the last 15 minutes.Take the mixture off the heat and season it to taste.
Line your pie dish with puff pastry and pile the filling in. Cover with more puff pastry and any design you like on top, then brush all over with beaten egg. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and bake the pie for another hour.
Serve with mashed potatoes and green veg, such as kale.
If you can get hold of fresh wild mushrooms from somewhere, like Borough Market, during autumn and early winter then definitely make the most of it. Otherwise, a lot of shops sell them dried in little tubs or packets, which can be reconstituted in water prior to cooking.
All risottos start with the same basic essentials, or at least mine do: a diced onion and a couple of diced celery stalks, sauteed in butter and oil until soft.
Add 300g of risotto rice and stir it through, letting it get hot. From experience, it is worth forking out for the pricey arborio stuff, it cooks in half the time of the other, cheaper, short grain varieties I tried using. Slosh in a glass (or teacup) full of white wine and stir through the rice mixture until it's all been absorbed.
Keep 750ml of hot vegetable stock in a saucepan on the heat and pour the first ladleful into the rice. Keep the rice on a medium heat, at least enough to keep it at a low sizzle. Stir, stir, stir and stir again. Keep stirring. Even if your arm is about to drop off, keep gently stirring the rice.
Eventually the stock will be absorbed and you'll need to add another ladle of stock and do it all over again. I mean, don't beat it up or anything, but do keep stirring and adding stock and stirring.
After adding all the stock, the rice should be near cooked. At this stage I turn the heat down very low (or even off), put a lid on the pan and get on with the exciting part.
Pick over and clean your mushrooms, in this case we had a good few handfuls each of chanterelles, trompettes, girolles and ceps. Heat up a frying pan with a little oil and butter, with some crushed garlic. Saute the large mushrooms first, adding in the smaller ones after the chunky ones have had a bit of a start.
When the mushrooms are ready mix them into the hot rice mixture with tons of grated parmesan and chopped parsley.
If you can get hold of one (and I'm soooo lucky, my husband bought me one as a present!), grate in a lovely load of black truffle - also known as winter truffle.
Finish with some butter and freshly cracked pepper and some truffle shavings.
I ripped this recipe out of some food magazine ages ago; it was on an advert for Cauldron (the tofu brand) and had been stuffed between the pages of my Malaysian cookery book. I omitted their dessicated coconut but was otherwise reasonably true to the recipe: it was really tasty.
First of all assemble the "paste" ingredients: a couple of sliced lemongrass stalks, 2 chopped red chillies, a generous tablespoon of chopped ginger, a heaped teaspoon of turmeric, one of palm sugar and a pinch of salt. Also once sliced purple onion and a few cloves of garlic.
Heat up a pan with some oil and cook the garlic and onion until translucent, then add all of the other ingredients which you've already prepared. Cook for a minute or two before adding a can of coconut milk, 125ml water, 1 tsp tamarind paste (or more if, like me, you love the stuff), 4 star anise and a cinnamon stick. I also added a load of halved chestnut mushrooms and trimmed green beans.
Simmer on a low heat while you cook the rice. Then, while the rice is on the side having its final steam, pop the tofu in to cook through. I used plain tofu and I think it would have been even better if I'd drained it and fried it first, but it was still lovely au naturel. Serve over the rice and top with fresh coriander.
This is a great use of leftover roast pork but you could easily use a fresh cut if you wanted, just pre-cook it in a frying pan. The inspiration for this came from Rick Stein's Eastern Odyssey.
First get together, in a large saucepan, heaped tablespoons of dried shrimp, palm sugar, chopped ginger, a load of garlic and one star anise.
Add a pint of hot vegetable or chicken stock and bring up to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently while you pre-cook the noodles and prepare the vegetables.
Boil the kettle and get your chosen noodles on to cook; I used standard flat noodles that you can pick up at Asian supermarkets and some mainstream ones. When they are cooked, drain them and run cold water over them to stop them overcooking. Portion them out into the bottom of a deep bowl or bowls.
Slice up your vegetables, use whatever you have to hand. I had the following knocking about which were perfect for this: a red pepper, a chinese cabbage, a carrot and some chestnut mushrooms. You can also chop your leftover pork into strips at this point.
Season the soup mixture with light and dark soy sauce and nam pla (fish sauce), then drop the vegetables in to cook, along with the pork to heat through. When they are cooked to your liking, add a finely diced red chilli, sliced spring onion and some chopped coriander. Ladle into the bowls, on top of the noodles, and enjoy.
I make my own pasta fairly regularly these days, the general method I use can be found here.
A quick refresher though: 100g flour and 1 egg per portion, mixed together with a pinch of salt, kneaded for 10 minutes and rested in the fridge for about half an hour. Roll it out really flat and cut into the shape you want, using a pasta machine if you have one. I started using semolina flour to coat the pasta to stop it sticking together and it works much better than ordinary flour does.
So, assuming you've made (or bought) your spaghetti you can turn your attention to the sauce, which is really simple but very tasty. If you don't fancy this sauce, you can find other recipes by doing a search for "pasta sauce" (which shows a list of links) or clicking here to display posts in chronological order.
First of all fry up a sliced purple onion and some garlic, then add in some thick cut bacon or lardons. When the bacon is pretty much cooked add in the mushrooms and cook through. Right at the end, stir in a little cream, the juice of half a lemon, lots grated parmesan and finely chopped parsley. Season with lots of pepper and a pinch of salt. Easy peasy!
Sometimes it's necessary to eat similar meals quite close together, in this case I still had half a pot of red curry paste left over from our Father's Day dinner, which needed to be used up.
My husband and best friend both laugh at me whenever I say "Oh, I've got nothing in the fridge!", they're probably right though as I always seem to find more than I thought I had.
I had a few things that were thinking about going off, so I tried to use up anything that looked a bit wilty, including the enoki and buna shimeji mushrooms, a courgette, fresh peas, coriander and spring onions.
The soup is shockingly easy, I got the idea from the blurb on the back of the enoki mushroom packet and combined it with a recipe in Keith Floyd's "Thai Food". First of all I put a pint of veg stock in a pan with a spoonful of lime leaves, brought it to a simmer, then added in a chopped up long red chilli.
I left that to simmer for a while, so I could get on with the red curry. When I was almost ready to serve the soup, I added spring onion, enoki mushrooms, the juice of two limes, a little brown sugar and a dash of fish sauce (nam pla). Lovely.
I actually preferred the taste and texture of my completely made up red curry here, than I did the partly recipe based one I made at the weekend. First of all I fried off the curry paste in a big frying pan and added sliced shallots and diced garlic and ginger, frying until almost cooked. I then added a little water, a tin of coconut milk, a dollop of tamarind paste and a spoon of lime leaves.
When that was simmering nicely, I added a pack of frozen raw prawns and let them bubble away until not quite cooked. Then I piled batons of courgettes, the buna shimeji mushrooms, fresh peas, spring onion and fresh chilli in, gave it a quick stir and let them cook for a few minutes with a couple of squirts of fish sauce.
Both the soup and the curry get a generous handful of fresh coriander to finish them off. I served it with some plain, shortgrain rice (the method can be found at the bottom of my father's day thai dinner post). I'm starting to suspect you can make red curry our of almost anything, so long as you have the paste and a tin of coconut milk.
Links
Useful frozen lime leaves @ waitrose
