Cassoulet

Just a quick mini post today as I'm only grabbing a bite to eat before heading into Leeds for a couple of drinks with a mate.  But cassoulet takes ages to cook, I hear you yell.  I know this but I also know that La Belle Chaurienne make and tin some of the finest cassoulet this side of the Pyrenees.  This is the last tin of our last stash so we'll have to stock up again.

You'll probably agree that it wasn't the most appetising looking meal, even with the addition of some chopped parsley.  The flavour more than made up for that though and I am now set for a pint or two.  At some point in the future, when I have more time on my hands I'll attempt an authentic cassoulet, until then I'm more than satisfied with tonight's meal.

Beef and Chorizo Stew with Roast Potatoes

Tucked into a corner of our kitchen is the door into the cellar.  Down there lives a number of spiders of varying size, my fluctuating wine collection, our sofa*, R's future stocks of Lego and our over-flow freezer.  There are days when retrieving food from the freezer can be like a trip into the Temple of Doom, fighting past toppling towers of timber and vaulting discarded furniture while trying not to be skewered on some tools that have not been put away properly.  Today, I gingerly made the trip into the cellar to retrieve a portion of leftover Beef and Chorizo Stew, for our evening meal.

I knew that the stew was down there because on the door in the kitchen, we have a blackboard which lists the freezers contents.  We are in the process of adding yet another blackboard to the kitchen but I'll get back to that later.  It transpires that I had originally cooked the stew to form the base of a Spanish inspired cottage pie.  I had forgotten this nugget of information otherwise I may have tried the same trick with the leftovers.

In the end I made a huge pile of roasties to serve with the stew.  The drawing in of the nights and the chill in the air made my mind up for me on that front.  The stew was delicious with the sweet, smoky Spanish spice flavours that I adore.  The roasted anya potatoes were that magical thing, both crispy and fluffy.  However, having now eaten the stew twice my quest for a Spanish cottage pie remains unfulfilled.

This is where the second backboard is going to come in.  We are going to have a blackboard of dreams.  The dishes I want to create, the challenges ahead, the ingredients untried.  All of these things will feature and hopefully, they will not stay on the wall for too long.

*we are decorating the living room and the furniture needed to go somewhere!

Rocket Pesto

Last year, in an attempt to battle our inability to get to the allotment, we transformed our meagre front garden into a little veg patch.  We grew a hand full of onions, had three courgette plants and trailed runner beans up the fence.  The majority of the space was reserved for lettuces.  We eat lot of salad so growing our own is a really good way to save cash.

Along with a couple of red lettuces* we grew a small amount of rocket.  We didn't buy a single bag of rocket last summer, it kept growing just as fast as we could eat it.  It grew so well that it was only in the depths of winter that it finally died down.  As the snow fell we forgot that it had ever been there.  A year on and we are now getting to the end of salad season again, only this year we didn't sew any.  The rocket returned from it's wintry grave and, where we had had six varieties of salad leaf, it has taken over.

With so much rocket we are widening our horizons away from salads and will be having a pop at rocket soup over the weekend.  Before that though, I have made the slightest dent in the rocket patch to make some fresh pesto.

Rocket, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and cheese are combined to make a delicious peppery sauce that we had over pasta.  Parmesan is the traditional cheese for pesto but, for tonight's version, I added a good hand full of the Ribblesdale unpasteurised goats cheese that I bought for Thursday's Yorkshire Cheese night.  There will be more rocket inspired dishes soon, all ideas are welcome.

*it is a scientifically unproven fact that slugs and aphids do not attack red lettuce.  We have never had so much of a nibble on any or our reds, whereas standard green varieties get munched all the time.

Mousakka

Whilst we were waiting for yesterday's Kohlrabi Gratin to bake we cracked on with the first part of tonight's meal.  The final vegetable treat that Z brought back from Headingley Farmers Market was a rather large patty pan squash.  Like the kohlrabi we have tried to grow these but we have never had any success.  Our courgettes always grew no problem but these yellow saucer shaped versions of the same fruit always eluded us.

The few that we did manage to grow tended to end up in pasta sauces, bulked out by standard courgettes.  Tonight they are replacing pasta.  In fact they are replacing aubergines which replace pasta.  In my mind mousakka is the Greek lasagne, which in turn is the Italian cottage pie.  A mince sauce is the starting block to all three and I always try to make my mince a day in advance.  The flavours intensify and the consistency is much better.

The spicy mince sauce was layered with thinly sliced patty pan squash which I had fried before hand.  The finished dish was then covered in a cheese sauce and baked until the top was golden brown.  Unlike the a bechamel sauce for lasagne, the sauce for the top of mousakka has an egg beaten through it so that it sets during baking.

Unlike aubergine, the squash retains some of its crunch during cooking giving the finished mousakka a much nicer texture.  When we get back to growing our own vegetables again I think we'll give these another go.  They are so pleasing to look at and have a little more versatility than ordinary courgettes.  We did make a little bit too much mousakka but I can't see it hanging around too long before it is eaten.

Kohlrabi Gratin

One of our favourite vegetables is sadly one that we don't eat that often.  We first discovered kohlrabi in gardening seed catalogues, we knew nothing about them other than the fact that they looked like small sputniks.  That image alone was enough for us to try and grow them.  Our first attempts were feeble, only two or three of the row of seeds we planted germinated and when one finally got big enough to eat it was old and woody.

Not put off by our initial attempts we tried again the following year with a much higher success rate.  I had a German colleague at the time who was mad for kohlrabi.  She informed me that she loved to eat them raw like an apple but that that wasn't necessarily normal.  We played about with them, finding new recipes to try with every harvest.

Now that we have all but given up the allotment* we don't get to eat kohlrabi that often.  It seldom appears in the "super" markets and when we do find it at farmers markets or on Leeds market it is often too expensive.  We were lucky to find a really nice large purple kohlrabi at Headingley Farmers Market at a price that we were willing to pay and quickly decided on how we were going to cook it.

Kholrabi gratin is every bit as good as it sounds.  Thinly sliced kohlrabi is layered in a buttered oven proof dish, seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper and then covered in cream and strong cheese.  It is then baked for half an hour covered and quarter of an hour uncovered to crisp up the top.  We've had this with salad, bread and on occasion, on it's own.  Tonight we happened to have some good sausages so we had those.  The gratin was definitely the star of the show though.

*a hard decision but probably the right one

Spaghetti al Funghi

Today we had a fantastic family outing to Sheffield.  The reason; The Sheffield Food Festival.  Twitter had alerted me of the existence of this South Yorkshire three day food-athon and so I was duty bound to visit.  Along with the treats on offer, the trip to Sheffield also meant that I could meet up with a couple of the other Olympic Food Challenge participants.

I'm always a bit wary when I go to food festivals.  So often I'm left disapointed.  Huddersfield is by far the best one I have visited but the people at Sheffield put on a good show.  There was a good variety of produce on offer* and there was plenty of space to sit and enjoy any food and drink that you bought.  I bought a chicken mole burrito, from The Street Food Chef, for lunch which sadly wasn't as great as I expected.  Don't get me wrong the burrito was good but the mole sauce was just too sweet for me.

The afternoon was spent lounging around the Peace Gardens soaking up the sun and the beers from the "craft" beer tent*.  My one plan was to seek out inspiration for tonight's meal and that came from Autumn Harvest, who can be found at lots of food fairs and markets in Yorkshire.  Sadly it is too early for Wood Blewit season but they did have some Chanterelle mushrooms which I hoovered up.

I'm not going to pretend that chanterelles are cheap, far from it, but they are really nice.  The flavour is subtle, less mushroomy and sweeter, more fruity than your average mushroom.  To make sure I didn't mask the 'shrooms I made a simple sauce for pasta by frying them in butter and olive oil with a little salt and pepper.  The sauce was finished with a splash of white wine, a handful of parsley and a little grated parmesan.  I'd normally add cream to a mushroom sauce, sometimes bacon makes an appearance too, but chanterelles are too special.  For an end of a foodie day treat, they were worth it.

*still a bit heavy on the cupcakes for my liking.
*I'm no beer geek but I'm sure that the beer on offer was closer to real ale than craft beer.

Friday Night Take-away: Chana Saag

With the Olympic Food Challenge taking up all of our time over summer we have neglected some of our own food traditions.  The Friday Night Take-away started before I had even thought of writing Tonight's Menu so it's about time we started cooking our own take-away inspired food at home again.

To ease our journey back into our Friday night ritual I'm using leftovers from the Olympic Food Challenge. Qorma e Sabzi from Afghanistan to be precise.  Fried onions and a tin of chick peas were added to the mild spinach curry, along with some garam maslala and chilli powder to lift the dish.

Having transformed Qorma e Sabzi into chana saag it was only right that we had even more leftovers to mop up the curry.  I had made too many puris for Pakistan so I defrosted a couple of them, warmed them up and tucked in.  We can get spinach dishes from the local take-away but they are nowhere near as good as this.

Yorkshire Cheese

The second Thursday of the month is traditionally* the night for Homage 2 Fromage, Leeds' own cheese club, a gathering of fans of fromage, tasting and celebrating different varieties of cheese.  Sadly this month saw the night moved due to a pre-existing booking at the venue.  Cheese club happened last week and I was not able to attend.  The theme of the night was white rind cheese (brie, camembert etc.) which I love but you can't always get what you want.

Today, to make up for last week's omission, I visited George & Joseph at The Source on Leeds Market and stocked up on superb cheese for tonight's meal.  We already had a decent brie in the house but we topped up with a piece of Shepherds Purse Harrogate Blue, some Lacey's mature cheddar and some of Ribblesdale's mature unpasteurised goats cheese.

I'll skip the brie as it was a supermarket staple.  The three cheeses that I bought from George and Joseph were superb.  The mature cheddar was nutty and crumbly without trying to strip the enamel from my teeth, a trait of too many overly strong cheeses.  The Harrogate blue was nice and creamy.  I'm a big fan of blue cheeses and this is one not to be missed.  The star of the night for me was the unpasteurised goat cheese from Ribblesdale.

Unlike most goat cheeses this one was hard, not quite at parmesan levels but getting there.  The flavour was not too goaty and it had a good salty tang to its mature sharpness.  I can see myself going back to this one and just cutting off slices to eat by the light of the fridge.  I'll have to wait another month before I can go to cheese club but it's good to know that I can still get great cheese to satisfy any cravings I have.

*for the last year at least.

Venison Steaks with Caraway Cauliflower and Anya Potatoes

Last weekend Z took the boy on a trip to Headingley so that I could crack on with some of the urgent DIY that a Victorian house demands.  We are slowly reinstalling a cast iron fireplace, replacing an ugly 80's gas fire in the process.  My task for the day was to chisel out the existing mortar from beneath the hearth tiles so that they can be relayed.

Z's trip was actually to a craft fair in Heart, but she also managed a trip to Headingley Farmers Market and picked up a few goodies.  One of Z's finds was a purple cauliflower.  I have seen them in seed catalogues but never seen one in the flesh, let alone eaten one.  As with all oddly coloured vegetables, I assumed* that the purple cauli would taste the same as the standard creamy white version.

With that in mind we decided to serve the cauliflower as a side veg, steamed to keep its colour.  We raided the freezer and found a couple of venison haunch steaks that were begging to be eaten.  The venison was simply fried for a couple of minutes on each side and allowed to rest.  The steamed cauliflower was tossed in butter and cracked caraway seeds.  A pile of anya** potatoes finished off a plate of food I could sit down to night after night.

*correctly.
**one of the nicest potatoes out there.

Turkey and Pak Choi in Hoi Sin Sauce

Yesterday I told a tale of my dislike of following recipes.  I know that this means I will never make a good baker or pastry chef, but I can live with that*.  Being free of the Olympic Food Challenge means that I can cook by feel and taste again without having to continually scroll up and down websites with a dripping wooden spoon in my hand.

The end of the OFC also means that I can shop for food the way I love to shop for food.  I am always armed with a list when I go shopping but it is often vague giving me carte blanche to pick and choose what looks best or is on offer.  The catalyst for tonight's meal comes from the "reduced to clear" category of impulse buys.

 I really like pak choi, we have grown it in the past but we tend not to buy it as it is usually airfreighted into Blighty and we try to watch our food miles.  Having saved a pack of choi from the supermarket vegetable graveyard I raided the freezer and found some turkey steaks that were quickly thawed and sliced and a stir-fry was born.

*not having a sweet tooth has some advantages.

Broad Bean Risotto

The Olympic Food Challenge has come to an end.  The summer of discovering new recipes and ingredients is over but I am still learning.  My latest revelation is the fact that I do not like following recipes.  That I have come to this conclusion at the end of following so many recipes shouldn't be so surprising.  But if I'm honest, I have never been a fan of slavishly following quantities and timings, preferring to add my own slant on a "borrowed" idea.

My dislike of recipes has been magnified recently with most of the OFC recipes being web-based.  I am not going to bite the hand that feeds me* but there are many food sites and blogs around and, sadly, they do not all pass muster.  The number of times that I found recipes with missing steps, or mystery ingredients that were not used during cooking, drove me potty.

Now that I am free of the shakkles of poorly written recipes I am once more the master of my own destiny.  I can also cook what I want, without hoping that it comes from a country that I have never heard of.  To get the ball rolling I decided to cook risotto.  Possibly my favourite meal and definitely one that I have missed while discovering new dishes.

Tonight's star ingredient in the risotto was broad beans.  We missed the early broad beans this year so tonight's were of the large, starchy variety.  That said, once they had been blanched and podded they were still delicious in the creamy risotto.  I'm looking forward to embracing my recipe freedom now that I have it back.  I'll still read the odd cookery book for inspiration and new ideas, but you won't find me tied to a book any time soon.

*not that I'm getting paid for any of this blogging nonsense.

Olympic Food Challenge: Pakistan - Tamarind Puy Dhal and Poppy Seed Puris

My final stop in the Olympic Food Challenge is Pakistan.  I had a feeling that I would have to research this one to death to make sure that I was being authentic.  My first stop was twitter.  I asked the known universe if anybody had any truly authentic Pakistani recipes that they would share and the response I got was superb.

I was immediately introduced to Sumayya whose blog is packed with authentic Pakistani food, and some great stories to boot.  I had decided before I had even set eyes on her site that I wanted to cook Dhal and make my own bread as my tribute to Pakistan.  I chose Tamarind Puy Dhal and Poppy Seed Puris and set about cooking.

Both the dhal and the puri were simple and delicious.  We have only just started making dhal at home and we're still learning the way of the lentil.  Puy lentils hold their texture when cooked so there was no sloppy sauce to contend with.  The tempur mixture, including fresh coconut, really lifted the dish, as did the addition of some of the lemon pickle I had made for the Indian Olympic food Challenge meal. Of course I made too much bread but I thought we would need nibbles for the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

Olympic Food Challenge: Kyrgyzstan - Beshbarmak

Where do you start with Kyrgyzstan?  Before doing the research for the Olympic Food Challenge I would like to think that I'd have been able to find it on a map, but beyond that I knew nothing of the country, their culture or their cuisine.

I'm still not altogether genned up on the country's history, but I do know that Beshbarmak is one of those meals that are reserved for high-days, holidays and celebrations.  We are celebrating the food of Kyrgyzstan and that is enough for me.

The Kyrgyz were a nomadic people until around 100 years ago and their food is still entrenched in those traditions.  Simple food with few ingredients is the way forward and Beshbarmak is no exception.  The recipe I found called for lamb or beef and as Z is not a lover of lamb we opted for beef.  We got a wonderful piece of shin from B & J Callards and began the slow cooking process.

There are definitely two stages to Beshbarmak.  Firstly you cook your meat with some onion for a couple of hours and then you make a basic dough that you simmer in the meat stock.  I'll admit to being a little underwhelmed at the thought of this dish.  In fact, if it wasn't for the Olympic Food Challenge, I wouldn't have bothered cooking it at all.

But then I would have missed out on a fantastically wonderful dish.  We added half a green pepper to the finished dish, but other than that we were true to the recipe.  The noodles were a cross between pasta and udon noodles.  The shin beef was perfectly cooked and the broth, oh the broth.  I won't go as far as suggesting that you drink it out of tea cups*, but it is delicious.  I suggest you try this for yourself.  If you are interested you can find the recipe I used here.

*which is the Kyrgyz way

Olympic Food Challenge: Cayman Islands - Almond Tree Snapper with Lemon Herbed Butter

We are fast approaching the end of the Olympic Food Challenge.  After tonight I only have two meals to cook and then I'll have researched, cooked and written about the cuisine of twenty nine countries since the start of the Olympic Games.  Tonight's second to last nation is the Cayman Islands.

Before I get onto the meal, I need to tell you about one of the recipes that I found.  Even if I could have sourced the ingredients there is no way that I am willing to cook Turtle Cordon Bleu.  I know that I profess to be willing to eat anything, but when a meal consists of the young of an endangered species, wrapped in ham and cheese and deep fried, I'm out.

From the same site that brought you Turtle Cordon Bleu I also found Almond Tree Snapper.  We had snapper for the first time earlier this week and it was so good we were really looking forward to having it again.  Sadly, for the first time since the start of the Olympic Food Challenge, we were let down by the fishmongers of Leeds Kirkgate Market.  Snapper was off the menu.  Luckily the stall holders are not just sellers of fish, they also really know their product.

After a good chat with our fishmonger of choice, Z returned home with some hake fillets.  Not necessarily a Caribbean fish, but far and away the highest selling fish to R Bethell's Caribbean customers.

The only difference between this recipe and one for bread crumbed cod*, is the addition of salted almonds in the breadcrumbs.  I found salted almonds in Sainsbury's, but I'm sure they are widely available.  We served the fish with roasted peppers, courgettes and sweet potatoes**.  It's a shame that we couldn't get snapper but that can wait for another day.  Adding almonds to bread crumbs is a good idea and one we'll definitely be using again.

*apart from the fish.
**fish and chips on a Friday?

Olympic Food Challenge: Iraq - Chicken in Fig Sauce

After our non-country specific burger and chips last night, tonight we are back on track with the Olympic Food Challenge.  Tonight's member of the National Olympic Committee is Iraq, a country sadly best known to us as a battle ground, rather than the cradle of creation*.  It is possibly thanks to the country's recent history that its culture and food is not very well documented but one author, Nawal Nasralla, decided that we ought to know about her country.  It was on her website that I found the recipe for tonight's meal.

Afkhadh al-Dijaj bil-Teen, or Chicken in Fig Sauce, struck me as a simple and yet authentic recipe so we set about finding the ingredients.  To be honest there wasn't much to source but finding dried figs in Leeds could have been simpler.  In the end I turned to twitter and asked the good people at Millies who, it turns out, sell dried almost everything, including figs.

The recipe states that dates could have been substituted for the figs but I'm glad we persisted.  The sweetness of the figs along with coriander in the sauce created an almost festive flavour and the chicken was fall off the bone tender.  I served the chicken with bulgar wheat**, which I cooked in vegetable stock, and garnished the entire plate with fresh parsley and pomegranate seeds. 

This really was a great dish, one of the standout meals for the Olympic Food Challenge.  I have already planned it into our Christmas meal planner as it is so simple and yet so full of flavour.

*I know which I'd rather be remembered as.
**a grain we really should eat more of, it's as easy to cook as rice and has a better texture than couscous.

Burger and Chips

Our original nineteen countries in the Olympic Food Challenge were a heavy mixture of beef, lamb and pork dishes.  We struggled to find many chicken or fish dishes and there were certainly no vegetarian meals to be had.  This time around we have drawn ten countries that seem to be chicken and fish obsessed.  This week's meal planning went a bit awry, as we were in danger of having chicken two days in a row, so with a break in the Olympic Food Challenge we decided to devour some red meat.

I know that the phrase "Why go out for burgers when I can have steak at home" is actually a referance to fidelity but if you look on it as a statement it's a little flawed.  Don't get me wrong, I love steak, but I also love a good burger once in a while.  These particular burgers were from Swillington Farm, so chocked full of rare breed goodness.

The beauty of a burger at home is that you are in control of the toppings*.  I kept things simple with French's American mustard and cheese while Z added tomato relish to hers.  Corn on the cob, pickles and skinny fries made for a wonderful mid week meal.  In amongst the frantic cooking of the last month the burger was like an oasis of calm.  A big, juicy, comforting oasis of calm.

*if you make the burger from scratch you are in control of the whole process, but that is for a different blog post altogether.

Olympic Food Challenge: Armenia - Garlic and Lemon Baked Chicken

Having baked fish with some lemon and orange last night for the Olympic Food Challenge, tonight I'm upping the citrus steaks with Chicken Cooked with Garlic and Lemon in the Oven from Armenia.  I was tempted by a couple of the dishes on the Armenian Cuisine website, but having stuffed vine leaves for Lebanon and not knowing where to get soujouk, I decided on chicken.

I actually felt like a contestant on The Great British Bake Off.  I had a list of ingredients but it felt like half of the cooking instructions were missing.  I did what all of the best contestants do and made it up as I went along. 

The juice of three lemons, three large garlic cloves, allspice, salt and some harissa as a pepper paste substitute, were all blended together with olive oil and poured over the chicken.  This was then baked for half an hour covered and half an hour more uncovered, basting all the while.  The finished result was some of the juiciest chicken I have eaten in a long time.  We served it with crushed new potatoes with olives and green beans.

Armenia won a silver and two bronze medals in the Olympics but neither of their Paralympians have picked up a win. This baked chicken dish was well worth a gold medal though.  We will be cooking it again but possibly with a whole spatchcocked chicken.

Olympic Food Challenge: Vanuatu - Citrus baked fish in coconut cream

A couple of thousand kilometres off the Queensland coast of Australia lies the island group of Vanuatu.  The South Pacific islanders sent a team of five athletes to the Olympic games and one athelete to the Paralympic games but so far they have failed to pick up any medals.  I could really have done with bumping into one of them at some point as finding out about their food has proven to be tricky.

After what felt like an aeon I found a list of recipes on Travel Blog, a site I had never discovered before.  My eye was drawn to recipe twenty one of twenty nine, which is a Green PoPo Curry.  I then spent another lifetime trying to decipher what PoPo was* before deciding that a different recipe was perhaps the best way forward.  Citrus baked fish in coconut cream was the recipe that I settled on.

 
Apart from that fact that we have never cooked snapper before tonight, I really liked the idea of baking fish in coconut cream.  I failed to buy any banana leaves for authenticity, so I used tinfoil to wrap the snapper in.  I don't know if the leaves would have imparted any flavour but the fish was very tasty without it.  As the recipe asked for half a tin of coconut cream I used the other half to cook wild rice in as an accompaniment.  The rice was finished with lime zest, coriander and a couple of chillies.

If you can cope with a whole fish on your plate this is a dish well worth trying.  We'll be having snapper again in a couple of days, I hope it's as good as this.  Even if it's close I'll be happy.

*papaya, if you are interested.

Olympic Food Challenge: Qatar - Shakshooka

Finding a recipe that summed up Qatar for the Olympic Food Challenge proved to be tricky.  I thought I was onto a winner when I discovered that the Qatari Embassy website has a food section.  Sadly the Embassy's website is a poor indictment of Qatar's athletes who picked up two bronze medals* during the Olympic games.

Every link on the site led to a broken page and every google result took me back to the same home page via a different route.  I was ready to throw in the towel when I came across this You Tube recipe for Shakshooka.  Until that point I had never come across shakshooka but it turns out that it is not all that uncommon a dish.  It seems to stem out of North Africa and has moved from country to country with every nation taking on their own twist.

With that in mind I decided to stray away from the video and come up with my own variation based on the many recipes that I found and what I happened to have in the house.  I started as per the video instructions with sliced onion and immediately veered off course with half a chopped pepper.  I was back on track with some fresh chopped plum tomatoes**.  The vegetables bubbled away, softened and collapsed into a sauce over a low heat. 

According to the You Tube recipe the eggs are mixed into the cooked sauce to create a tomatoey scrambled egg mixture.  Again, I decided to ignore the recipe.  I added a handful of spinach to the sauce to wilt and then broke a couple of eggs into wells in the mixture to cook.  The only addition was some salt and pepper and a nice breakfast/lunch dish was born.

*Mutaz Essa Barshim in the men's high jump and Nasser Al-attiyah in the men's skeet.
**I have no problem with tinned tomatoes but while they are in season I love fresh tomatoes.