Venison and Chocolate Casserole

Britain, it would seem, is in the evil grasp of a new tradition this evening.  Ever since I was a lad* Hallowe'en has meant dressing up and, with a suitable adult in tow, wandering around your neighbourhood collecting sweeties from the locals that you knew.  I remember one such Trick or Treat outing, I was dressed up as Twiki, Buck Rogers' faithful tin friend.  If you have no idea of who Buck Rogers or Twiki are then you are younger, and possibly less cynical than I am.  Other than my costume I also remember bobbing for apples and helping my dad carve a lantern out of a turnip**.

All of that feels like a very long time ago.  You never hear of bobbing for apples any more.  The practice has probably been outlawed unless a full Health and Safety review has taken place to ensure that nobody drowns and that no teeth fall out as a result of biting close to frozen apples from ice water.  The humble turnip has also been replaced by the huge and vulgar American pumpkin. 

At least the carved turnip has a culinary use.  The carving pumpkin however, has no place in the kitchen.  A never ending barrage of soups, risottos and pies are being cooked this evening in an attempt to use up the pappy, mealy, bland scrapings from the legions of not really scary tea-light holders.  I'm sure that when R gets a little bit older, we'll be carving pumpkins too, but until then we're staying clear of the Americanised and commercialised version of All Hallow's Eve.

Rather than having a jack-o-lantern to ward off the evil spirits of the Underworld, we decided to celebrate and rejoice with the spirits of our loved ones with a Day of the Dead*** inspired Mexican meal.  Venison stews are often sweet affairs packed with root vegetables and finished with redcurrant jelly.  We decided that the bitter sweetness of Mexican chocolate would be a marriage made in heaven.

As with most casseroles, I started by coating the meat in seasoned flour and frying it off in batches.  I then fried two onions, three red romano peppers and some garlic until they had softened, scraping the meat residue off the bottom of the pan at the same time.  I added the meat back into the pan along with five large tomatoes and a teaspoon each of ginger powder, ground cinnamon, ground cumin and some fresh chilli.  Finally I added some chicken stock and let it bubble away for a couple of hours.  After about an hour and a half I added my not so secret ingredient, half a jar of The Chilli Jam Man's Hot Chocolate Orange Chilli Jam.

I cooked the meal before I set of to work for the evening.  Letting the casserole rest for the best part of eight hours let the flavour come together.  When I had turned it off there was still a rawness to the chilli and the chocolate wasn't as pronounced as I would have liked it to be but by the time I had got back home, it had really come together.  Z reheated the venison and cooked some rice, so that when I got in from work we could sit down together and have a meal for the first time this week.

We live on a quiet road where there aren't that many families with children old enough to go trick or treating.  Our neighbours have decorated the front garden with cobwebs and ghoulish nick-nacks, but as one of them is a set designer I can forgive them.  Perhaps it's our proximity to a cemetery that puts people off from knocking on our door looking for a tooth rotting hand out.  Whatever the reasons, I'm glad that we were left alone tonight to enjoy this wonderfully spicy and not too sweet meal.

*the 70's do feel like a very long time ago don't they.
**that would be a swede for my English readers. How you could possibly carve what the English call a turnip is beyond me!
***technically November 1st but we couldn't wait another day.

Chicken Fajitas

There has been a distinctly Chistmassy feel in the air this week.  It's not the lack of snow.  I've not had a huge pile of presents to open.  I've not started drinking at breakfast time.  I've not even eaten my own bodyweight in chocolate.  The Christmassy feel has been provided by the leftovers from Sunday's roast chicken.  As with the Christmas turkey, we have been eating the chicken for days.  Not only did it appear in a risotto, but it has also been in salads and sandwiches for our lunches.

Tonight's meal was a triumph of leftovers.  Not only did it contain the end of the roast chicken, but it also used the leftover sauce from last night's meatballs.  Z reheated the chicken in the tomato sauce before adding a third leftover, the end of a jar of The Chilli Jam Man's Chocolate Orange Chilli Jam.  Z also managed to find that rarest of things, a ripe avocado.  This was turned into a creamy guacamole which was perfect alongside a fresh tomato salsa.  The composite parts of the meal were then stuffed into corn tortillas and devoured.

Pumpkin Enchilladas with a Mole Sauce

When flicking through our folder of recipes, looking for the carbonara one, I fell across a recipe that I had printed out in 2004 and had never cooked, Pumpkin Enchilladas with Mole Sauce.  As we were pre-armed with chilli chocolate jam, now seamed like the perfect time to try it out.

An additional reason for choosing this particular meal for tonight's menu was our visitor for the evening.  Kato is a rising star of the Leeds Music scene and a vegetarian.  I have nothing against either of these traits, in fact I'm quite envious of at least one of them.  We don't eat meat for every meal but I wouldn't choose a life without bacon.  I would love to be more musical than I am.  I own two guitars and a ukulele but can only just manage to knock out a tune on them if Jupiter is in alignment with Uranus.

I am however, more than capable of following a recipe and altering it as I go along.  The stuffing for the enchilladas was so simple to make.  I mixed a tin of refried beans with three small roasted butternut squash and added some chilli and fresh coriander.  The mixture was then stuffed into tortillas and baked.  The mole sauce had a base of fried onion and a tin of tomatoes into which I added half jar of The Chilli Jam Man's chocolate jam.  This is then blended and reheated before pouring it over the enchilladas.  The full original recipe by Simon Rimmer can be found here.

As we had a guest, Z decided to make dessert.  Cooking carbonara earlier in the week had left us with a surfeit of egg whites so Z rolled up her sleeves and cracked on with her first attempt at a pavlova.  With rhubarb season in full flow Z managed my trick of buying far too much from Leeds Market. She roasted it with sugar and stem ginger syrup and served it piled on top of the meringue with yoghurt instead of cream.  It was great but we'll be eating rhubarb for a week.

Yorkshire Chicken Mole

I go to an awful lot of food events these days.  Fares, markets, festivals, you name it.  If it's within easy reach I'll try my hardest to be in attendance.  I may well be reaching my tolerance of cupcake stalls at these events however.  I know they are going to be good, but there are now so many "Professional" cupcakeists out there that I can no longer tell one from another.  It's particularly galling when you have multiples at the same festival.

Duplication happens all to often.  It is not the fault of the vendor, they apply for a stall and their money is duly taken.  The blame (if there is any to apportion) needs to lie at the feet of the organisers.  I'm not claiming to be able to do any better but variety is the spice of life.  If was attending a chutney fair I'd expect wall-to-wall chutney but a food and drink festival should have variety at its forefront.

Last weekend's Wakefield Food, Drink and Rhubarb festival was over-run with cupcake, fudge and pork pie stalls.  Much more variety was needed to make me want to go again next year.  If there had been one cake stall or one pie stall I might have felt inclined to buy some.  Unfortunately, and very out of character, I wasn't in the market for pork pies.  One of my other destinations in Wakefield was Hofmann and Sons butchers.  I had been tipped off that their pies were worth the train fare alone.

The pies were good, but they were secondary to the main reason for getting the train to Wakefield.  At a food event in Leeds last year I had tried a spicy chocolate orange jam and was bowled over by it.  I found out about the Wakefield festival from The Chilli Jam Man, the person behind this incredible jar of joy.  As soon as I knew he was in attendance we had to go so that I could share the flavour of the chocolate sauce with Z.

Tonight is the first time we have cooked with it and we kept it simple so the flavours would shine.  We coated chicken breasts with the chocolate orange chilli jam and roasted them.  We served them with a warm salsa of peppers, onions and tomatoes.  If you haven't tried a chocolate mole before this is the simplest way in.