Lamb Mezze – or the Lamb That Kept on Giving

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Saturday’s slow roast Leg of Lamb kept on giving today with its third offering. This time as part of a mezze from Ottlenghi’s Plenty cookbook.

Yesterday we had Lamb Ragu with pasta. It really wasn’t worth the picture or talking about as I just boiled up some pasta and added a good amount of lamb and the red wine sauce left over from Saturday’s epic dinner.

Two types of lamb featured today; the Leg meat (simply reheated in the oven) and the spicy minced lamb (left over from the Minced Stuffed Aubergine dish we made last week). I have the say the lamb leg was just as tender and juicy as it was when it was first cooked.

Accompanying the leftovers were Fried tomatoes and Garlic from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem cookbook. Very little to this really; I just pricked some fancy Natoora tomatoes and all the available parsley stalks and fried them for a minute or so with olive oil and sea salt. After taking them off the heat I added some more parsley, a couple of red chillis and some grated garlic. And that was that. 10 minutes to make this max!

The salad (in the centre of the picture) we’ve had before. Also from Jerusalem it’s called Baby Spinach with dates and almonds. I love it. It conforms for Ottolenghi’s preferred ‘all salads need nuts and fruit’ rule. It’s another really easy dish which you can adapt to whatever you’ve got. I’ve made it with apricots before, added sultanas, and even dried cherries. Any nuts will do too; I’ve made it with hazelnuts and walnuts before. Chopped apple also works well.

Here some dates and some red onion are pickled for a short while in white wine vinegar and a little salt. You really don’t need those expensive Medjool dates; just get the cheap and cheerful ones and quarter them lengthways. Once they’ve been pickling they’ll soften up nicely.

While that’s pickling melt some butter and oil in a pan and tear in a couple of pitta bread (or even some regular bread that isn’t as fresh as it could be) and some chopped skin on almonds. Keep it moving in a hot pan until it gets golden and crunchy then take it off the heat and add some sumac, chilli flakes and salt. I added some more of my friend Becca’s Preserved lemon salt as it gives everything extra punch!

After letting it cool a bit – you don’t want to wilt the spinach – throw this bread mixture on top of the spinach and then the red onion and dates. Finish it off with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil.

I think this is one of the best salads I’ve ever made – and it goes with just about anything.

Finally I made a quick tzatsiki by grating half a cucumber into some yoghurt and stirring in some chopped mint and a bit of sea salt.

We loved this dinner. Freya said it was the best meal to come from the Leg of Lamb; and as you can see there was way too much for 2 people to eat. Six pitta breads went into this dinner! 2 in the salad and two that we stuffed with the mezze.

We will inevitably be having it all again tomorrow for lunch, meaning we’ll have gotten 8 meals out of one leg of lamb. Now that’s resourcefulness for you!

Very Slow Cooked Lamb

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In a change to the regularly scheduled Sunday Zoom call cook-along with Freya’s parents we decided to shift to Saturday for a change. Nothing like a bit of variety during these challenging lockdown times.

Mine was slow cooked in the over for 7+ hours; Freya’s mum did hers in her outside log powered pizza oven.

I’ve made this recipe up, and although you can’t see it yet (picture to follow shortly), the lamb was cooked in a traditional red wine sauce – which I’ll get to in a minute.

Main inspiration for this dish (rather than the Ottolenghi lamb dish we did a few weeks ago) was the rapidly fading vegetables we had knocking about, and my inability to throw any food away that isn’t already walking to the compost bin by itself. We also had a 3/4 full open bottle of red wine, and some stock that I made from the carcass of Ottolenghi’s Soffrito chicken. Together these ingredients were bound to make a good sauce.

Prep for mine started the day before. I stabbed the lamb (and it was a very big lump of lamb) with a sharp knife and filled every stab hole with a chuck of garlic and some rosemary. I then rubbed some of the salt from my friend Becca’s homemade Preserved Lemons over the lamb and left it for a good 12-18 hours.

The next morning I started dinner (it was around 9:30am and we were going to eat around 6pm)

In a large saucepan I added some olive oil and browned off the leg of lamb on a high heat, to get some colour on it – and to release some of the meat juices into the pan. I then put the meat to one side.

In the same pan I fried off some diced carrot, onions, celery and garlic then added all the leftover wine, all the leftover stock, two tins of chopped tomatoes and some tomato puree. I had some left over thyme in the fridge which was borderline so this went in too. I brought this too the boil, let it blip for a while and they poured it all over and around the lamb and popped it in the oven at 160 degrees (uncovered) – and that was basically it!

I only seasoned with pepper as I thought I’d used enough salt already on the lamb and didn’t want to ruin it.

After about 4 hours it started looking a bit dark so I turned the lamb over in the sauce and covered it in a sheet of tinfoil.

After 7 hours it looked pretty epic (as you can see in the picture). I separated the sauce from the meat and blitzed the sauce in the Thermomix to made a rather thick and very very tasty Ragu like wine sauce. Traditionally you’d remove the veg by straining off the liquid to leave a glossy sauce. I don’t really do refined and I prefer a thicker sauce with this sort of meal.

We had about 20% of this melt in the mouth, falling apart lamb with the Ragu sauce, mashed potatoes and garlicky Cavolo Nero.

Our Scotty dog Bruce was very pleased with the lamb bone too – it kept him busy for hours.

A very successful meal indeed. We used up all the borderline veg, leftover wine and stock and probably have enough Ragu sauce and lamb to have it with some pasta today – and perhaps the next couple of days too!

Freya is now making Tattie scones with the leftover mash potatoes. We don’t throw anything away in this house!

Ten Minute Tiramisu

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Weekends during lockdown are now a regular excuse to do a cook-along with Freya’s parents. We’ve done a few now and this week we both cooked leg of lamb (more on that in another post).

The In-Laws advocate that all meals have a starter and a dessert. We don’t tend to bother so we patiently waited for them to eat their beetroot, goats cheese, and salmon blinis before tucking into the main event.

After some lengthy shouting into computers we were ready to down tools until Mummy Two Two whipped out a Tiramisu and made Freya wish she could have some.

As luck would have it we had a packet of sponge fingers left over from Christmas. We were going to make Jamie’s Christmas dinner (in it’s entirety) but we didn’t get round to making his dessert.

So this was a bit freestyle but seemed to work. I whisked 4 heaped teaspoons of instant coffee, caster sugar and some very hot water with an electric food mixer until the sugar dissolved (this is the beginnings of a Dalgona coffee – but that’s for another time). To the coffee mix add some brandy then pour it over the sponge fingers.

While the fingers are absorbing all the coffee and brandy goodness, whip together a tub of marscapone cream, some double cream, vanilla bean paste and caster sugar until it comes too (careful not to split it).

Next grate some chocolate (traditionalists say to sift cocoa powder but I didn’t do this). We used Tony’s Chocolonely Dark Milk.

Finally layer the fingers, the cream and the chocolate.

It obviously isn’t a Tiramisu that the Italians will approve of – but for 10 minutes it wasn’t bad.

I imagine the 80% of it that is left will mature nicely in the fridge. I intend to add a coffee foam to my next portion. Simply whisk the same quantities of coffee, sugar and very hot water AGAIN but this time keep going for 3 or 4 minutes until soft peaks form. Spooning this over the tiramisu is bound to make it taste better. Alternatively just spoon it over iced milk.

Nigella’s Cheesecake

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I’ve made this cheesecake from Nigella Lawson’s Feast cookbook more than any dessert I’ve ever made. Many reasons; I am not really into desserts or sweet things. I’m definitely a savoury person; much to my wife’s dismay.

Baked cheesecakes are the best. The whipped up cream ones just don’t do it for me – or the shop bought ones where breaking into the plastic packaging is a mission in itself. No thanks!

I think I made this for the first time ten years ago, and have probably made it five or six times since. There’s a Nigella’s Nutella one posted on this blog somewhere that I made in next to no time – but this one takes a bit longer and requires a lot more effort.

Before you consider spontaneously making it one day make sure you have a deep sprung cake tin (I still use the same one from 10 years ago despite it being on its last legs) and clingfilm – AND tin foil. If you don’t have these it probably won’t come out right.

I usually make this the same and mix up the sauce a little each time. Nigella’s recommended sauce is Apple Schapps but this isn’t the easiest to come by – especially in small bottles – so a cheesecake can end up costing you £30 to make. It’s worth is – but.. probably too much!

I’ve since made it without booze, with Besos (vegan monkey nut Baileys), and most recently Chambord (raspberry and blackberry liqueur); my friends Vicky and Dan made theirs with Bourbon and raved about it.

The making is quite simple; you can actually prep everything in the same food mixer, and not even bother cleaning it between the base prep and the cheese part. The base is just Hobnobs and butter blitzed and press into the sprung tin. I went rogue and used chocolate chip Hobnobs for the most recent cheesecake – and I won’t do it again – the base went soggy, so stick to plain Hobnobs.

The baking is not so simple, and can cause issues if you don’t do it right.

Now in the same food mixer beat together double cream, cream cheese, vanilla, cornflour, caster sugar and eggs. I wouldn’t bother getting a branded cream cheese like Philly – but don’t go for the half fat own brand stuff, as it won’t come out as well. Full fat for this.

When you’ve beaten it for a while put some booze in it. Don’t go nuts with it or you’ll probably mess up the chance of the cake setting. In any case your sauce will be all over the cake so go easy!

You now need to wrap the outside of the tin with lots of cling film. The cake tin is going to sit in a water bath and if you don’t seal the tin the water will seep in to the base and ruin it. Once it’s wrapped up – I usually do three layers, pour the cheesecake mixture into the tin.

The cheesecake should now bake in the over in a bath of hot water. It is suggested that you make a nest with tin foil. When you make this for the first time you are quite diligent and have this done well in advance. When you’ve made it a few times you don’t and it can get you in a pickle. So either do this well in advance – or fill the bottom tray of your oven full of water – mine takes 2 kettles worth!

Bake it until it starts to colour and a wobble offers some resistance. I usually wait for the surface to crack. Again it doesn’t matter as you’re gonna pour sauce all over it anyway. Make sure it cools right down before unspringing it – it’ll keep cooking after you take it out anyway.

The sauce is a standard caramel sauce of butter, 2 sugars, cream, and then the booze of your choice. The most recent Chambord one I added a load of frozen dark fruits (that I usually have in my breakfast smoothie) and it was an epic sauce!

Whatever you do with it – the sauce makes it. The rest is amazing – but the sauce! Whenever we make it we are sick of it by the time is it gone – there are only two of us and it is 16 people big. Really big slices too.

Make this. You’ll definitely keep making it – despite the effort.

Pizza Bianca with potato, anchovy and sage

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I think I’ve cooked every recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple cookbook. It is in my top 5 go to books for quick stuff. Itsu’s 15 minute meals is another.

During these tricky times – where we are getting our food once every 2-3 weeks – we are planning meals from one cookbook at a time. Ottolenghi’s Simple was last week’s book of choice so we made this incredibly easy pizza.

I appreciate flour is hard to come by at the moment, but this one doesn’t need much. The base is just yeast, flour and water mixed together, lightly kneaded then left under a damp towel for an hour to double in size.

The base is smeared with a paste of marscapone, anchovy, sage, lemon zest and spring onions, the thinly sliced new potatoes popped on top, and finally the grated pecorino. Go crazy with the black pepper – it really makes a difference. And cook it properly! I made 2 – the second one was so much better for leaving it in the oven for longer.

Perhaps my oven wasn’t hot enough for the 9 minutes that it was supposed to need. But it was better for having 12+ minutes – and I have one of those fancy Bake-Off ovens!

I can’t recommend this pizza enough as long as you have the ingredients. For some reason we always have left over anchovies in our fridge, sometimes 2 or 3 jars at a time, as we are notorious for always buying all the ingredients without checking what we already have!

The Pork Belly cook-along

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My birthday promised to be a very uninteresting affair with just my wife, myself and our dog (yes we now have a dog!) at home; no friends, no family – all thanks to lockdown in the UK.

Our very good friends Vicky and Dan suggested we do a cook-along Zoom call. Zoom is the new norm for 2020, web calls to friends instead of meeting them in a pub for a cheeky pint or many…

We settled on both cooking the same pork belly dish, so in the end it was more of a ‘leave it in the oven for many hours’ and just chat and catch up. 4-5 hours in fact.

This pork belly dish is from Tapas Revolution; the recipe is publicly available on their website:

https://www.tapasrevolution.com/recipesomar/2017/10/19/torreznos-con-mojo-dulce-slow-cooked-pork-belly

It is a very simple dish to make. In fact the hardest part was finding someone that sold pork belly. We had to settle for strips from Ocado (they are doing sterling work during the lockdown), and this did not spoil the dish at all.

Simply rub the pork belly with salt, pour a bottle of beer over your pork belly and leave in the oven while you go about your business. No checking required – just leave it to do its thing.

When 5 hours have passed – or somewhere in between make the Mojo Dulce sauce. This is somewhat more complicated but well worth doing properly. Throw in some new potatoes and serve when they are cooked through.

As with all cook-alongs (we’ve done a couple with my in-laws) timing is everything. Both being ready to eat at the same time is an art form. Vicky and Dan’s sauce was beautifully blended – mine was somewhat more rustic! The sauce was finished off properly on my side the next day and had with the leftovers.

I can thoroughly recommend making this if you’re prepared to sacrifice a beer to the oven gods.

I’m back – AGAIN!

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runninglow-1024x536Where have I been for 4 years. Oh my! I can’t believe I’ve not posted to sifty for this long.

Well I kind of stopped cooking new things. Freya and I bought a house in Birmingham, moved off the boat and have been busy doing a major house renovation. No time for exciting blogging about food.

Well of course there was time, I just got really distracted. I ended my 17 year long tenure at Ocado Technology and went to work for myself doing IT Consultancy.

And how the world has changed. Now we are all stuck inside, and my appetite for cooking is back – as is the time available to photograph it – and blog about it – and tell you all the fun things I’ve been up to!

So this is just a test post to make sure everything still works, that I remember how to use WordPress, and that I get all my notifications as expected.

Watch this space for more yummy food – and thank you for coming back!

Chickpea and Sweet Potato Beta Bake

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This dish comes courtesy of Dale Pinnock – The Medicinal Chef. Having worked pretty hard digging out and creating a new path in my mums garden I was pretty whacked. Even a lovely chicken roast dinner wasn’t enough. I needed more food.

When we got home I threw this together. It’s pretty straightforward – not dissimilar to a Shepherd’s Pie.

Under the mashed Sweet Potato (picture above) is your base of chickpeas, red onions, garlic, wilted spinach and some sun dried tomato paste. On top of the mash is some blue cheese.

In hindsight more cheese would have been awesome – but it was pretty late so I probably did the right thing.

 

Sweet Potato and Spinach Curry

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I need to make a resolution to keep this food blog up to date. It’s been too long. Again ! What’s wrong with me. It’s not like I haven’t been cooking. If you saw the size of my belly lately you’d know this for sure!

April resolution – sort the blog out! So I apologise in advance if I over-blog during the next few days – clearing the backlog of food things I have made in the last 2 months!

This curry is from The Medicinal Chef. It’s incredibly easy and for once I under spiced it. Freya isn’t a hug fan of things with fresh ginger so I toned it down a bit and, although nice, I think it needed a bit more kick. 

I have a number of dishes planned from this book – mainly vegetarian – and am hoping that a combination of these very healthy meals and my return to the gym will help me lose a bit of weight so that I don’t look like the porker I did at Resistanz 2016 last week!

Green Mimosa Salad

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Brrrr…. it was chilly last night – and again this morning.

Living on a boat comes with its own share of fears. Sinking – obviously is the big one. But at this time of year flooding is another. You only have to watch the London Boaters forums to spot boats capsizing; boats becoming untied from their moorings and boat owners suffering thousands of pounds of damage due to the weather.

On Tuesday we had to have all our ropes loosened for fear of the boat being pulled over by the extraordinary rising tides. Yesterday, in response to the very high tides on the Thames, the Thames barrier was raised and the risk of flooding to areas of London was removed. For us. No damage and no issues. Phew!

Pleased that I’d come home to a safe boat I got the stove going, and set to making this very simple yet unusual dish for our dinner last night.

A traditional mimosa salad is a layered salad with a grated egg yolk base. This isn’t that. This really is quite different – much like the Quinoa risotto isn’t really a risotto!

Taken from Anna Jones – A Modern Way to Cook – this recipe uses the dressing that is usually made with the mimosa salad and dresses tenderstem broccoli and asparagus instead. The eggs are kept separate and don’t see the dressing until you eat it!

The dressing is simply a Chardonnay White Wine Vinegar, olive oil, dijon mustard and a finely chopped shallot, seasoned well. To this you add your lightly steamed broccoli and asparagus – and then some thickly sliced avocado.

Meanwhile, some hard boiled eggs are grated, seasoned, and mixed with creme fraiche and lemon zest. You can then either stir in some chopped dill – or keep it separate like I did.

There’s nothing else to this dish. It is very simple and very tasty. It’s visually very pleasing too.

Make sure it is seasoned well or it is in danger of being a bit bland. If you don’t have tasty enough avocados (they can be a bit tasteless this time of year) squeeze half a lemon over them to pep them up a bit.

I loved it – but didn’t feel as full up as I have from other meals. Maybe I was just cold. It was very cold last night!

This week has been a week of very simple dishes. This was done in less than 30 minutes. Tomorrow I have more time so I plan on spending a bit more time in the kitchen. I’ll be making the last three dishes I’ve chosen from Anna Jones’s book and then I’ll move onto something different.