I had a craving for biscuits and a stew seemed like a good accompaniment.
For the biscuits I used the usual recipe from Bittman.
For the stew I used pork shoulder, smoked bacon, some turkey (remainders from the pot pie makings), leek, yellow carrots, parsnips, fennel, white wine, tomato paste, fennel seed, yellow mustard seed, and some beef bouillon.
To go with the rest of the goodness I did a chopped salad with spitzkohl and granny smith apples.
A recipe from Alles Klar that needed to be made: beef filet in red curry with lemon-basmati rice. I pretty much followed the recipe aside from the cooking in jars part... I cooked everything normally. :-)
To accompany I made a salad of chopped napa cabbage, fresh mint, lime juice, fish sauce, and sesame oil.
Really nice food; moving the sour elements from the curry to the rice is an interesting shift.
A simple pot pie:
Brown some diced turkey breast in neutral oil, set aside. Saute sliced leek, chopped onion, diced carrot, celery, potato, and parsnip, and minced garlic in the same pan. After a few minutes add white wine, some chicken bouillon, pepper, rosemary, sage, a bit of oregano, mustard, carrot juice (leftover from last week), and some water. Bring to a simmer and then add corn starch to thicken. Add back the turkey and adjust seasonings. Transfer to serving-size oven-safe containers (I used our french onion soup bowls), top with puff pastry, and bake at 175C until the puff pastry is ready, about 30 minutes.
Together with a big green salad, this made for a really nice winter meal.
There were a bunch of small potatoes from the biokiste that needed to be used...
Cut some new potatoes in half lengthwise and put them in a single layer in a hot pan with some olive oil. Cook ~5 minutes. Add a good quantity of sherry, salt, cumin, chopped garlic, chopped red onion, cover, and let simmer until the potatoes are done. Serve topped with parsley and chives.
For the pork: season pork loin chops well and pan-fry them. Drizzle with sherry vinegar and olive oil and top with parsley and chives before serving.
Serve with a big green salad.
I'm not really sure where this idea to use up the beef that didn't end up in the hotpot came from, but I'm definitely glad it came.
Make a vinaigrette from sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt, ras al hanout, black pepper, a bit of mashed garlic, and a pinch of of brown sugar.
For the beef: cut some steak into 2-4mm slices, sear the slices in a very hot pan, toss them with some vinaigrette and set aside.
For the beets: peel and slice them (1cm thick) and steam until tender.
Layer the sliced beets with, strips of beef, sliced goat cheese (we used a soft cheese with a rind for this), and vinaigrette.
As an accompaniment I made some basmati rice and served it topped with ras al hanout and chopped pistachios. That was a magical combination.
Great food.
When I was growing up we always used to do black-eyed peas on New Years day. I don't always succeed, but I do try to keep doing this.
This year's version was really simple: into the pressure cooker went black-eyed peas, diced onion, diced bacon, chicken bouillon, bay leaf, clove, thyme. After 15 minutes at pressure I served the soup with thinly sliced red onions that I killed with red-wine vinegar, salt, and a bit of brown sugar.
This seemed like a good one for New Years Eve. As with last time, I stuck reasonably close to the stock recipe in Land of Plenty. This time I strained the stock before putting it on the table - definitely a nice refinement.
Things we had on the table to toss in the hot pot: thinly sliced beef, smoked bacon, strips of chicken breast, spring onions, sliced mushroom, broccoli, carrots.
For dipping sauce(s): soy sauce, sesame oil, black vinegar, garlic.
I also did a salad of very thinly sliced red cabbage, lime juice, sesame oil, fish sauce, salt, and a bit of sugar.
Really good eating.
The veal breast that I used to make stock on Wednesday couldn't just be tossed out, so I used it to make a quick hash.
Dice some potatoes and cook them over medium-high heat in some peanut oil until they start to get a bit crispy. Add sliced leek, diced red onion, garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, and both sweet and hot paprika, reduce the heat, cover, and cook until the onion is soft. Meanwhile lightly brown some diced cooked veal breast in peanut oil, then add some madeira and let reduce by half. Add some veal stock, cover, and simmer 5-10 minutes. Pour the veal + liquid over the potatoes, mix well, and serve topped with chopped parsley.
[well, comparatively big at least...]
I started the day by making a big pot of veal stock for later use and then, for dinner, moved on to two recipes from Alles Klar, neither served in glass, but that's just eye candy. :-)
The orange-fennel-avocado salad:
Slice a small red onion very thinly. Filet a couple of oranges. "Kill" the onions in the juice collected from orange prep along with a bit of white balsamico if needed (this is a deviation from the recipe; I prefer onions that have been tamed a bit in my salads). Very thinly slice some fennel. Dice a ripe avocado. Rip some Thai basil leaves into pieces. Juice and zest another orange (I used lemon zest since we didn't find an untreated orange). Make a vinaigrette from orange juice, some white balsamico, walnut oil (recipe calls for pistachio oil), and the zest. Layer together individual salads from the fennel, oranges, thai basil, avocado, and onion, seasoning and dressing the salad as you build it. Top with a bit more dressing and some chopped pistachios and serve.
For the braised veal with cous cous:
Slice a 500g piece of veal shoulder into 1-1.5cm thick slices (recipe calls for veal cheeks, but I didn't even bother looking for those without having ordered them in advance). Brown well on both sides and set aside. In the same pan cook a mixture of leek, carrot, and celery root (all cut into thick matchsticks) with some minced garlic for 5-10 minutes. Add a Tbs of tomato paste, a bay leaf, a cinnamon stick (broken in half), and a good Tbs of ras al hanout and cook another couple of minutes. Add 100ml of madiera and 125ml of white wine and let bubble a minute or so. Add 200-300ml of veal stock and let bubble another couple of minutes. Put the veal in a coverable casserole, pour over the vegetables and sauce, cover, and bake at 160C for about 1.5 hours. 10 minutes before serving prepare the cous cous: bring 180ml of carrot juice to a boil, remove from the heat, add 100g cous cous, mix well, cover, and let stand 10 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil and mix well. Serve the veal+vegetables+sauce over the cous cous.
Both of these dishes were really, really good.
Some notes:
One smiley face; we'd consider going back for drinks and apps, but not a meal.
A good one for a cold day!
For the meatballs:
Coarsely grind 350g pork shoulder with 80g smoked bacon, add 2tsp salt (note, this is too much, see below) and a couple good grinds of pepper, mix well, and let everything sit in the fridge for a couple hours before forming small meatballs.
These were originally intended to be done as a sausage and in bigger pieces, but they are way too salty for that, so I did small meatballs and cooked them a bit longer in the unsalted soup to calm things down a bit.
For the soup:
Cook a mixture of green and yellow lentils in water together with a couple bay leaves and a clove or two. After about an hour add some biotta (mixed vegetable juices) and some more green lentils. Saute some small diced carrot (yellow and orange), with finely diced onion and minced garlic in olive oil and add to the soup together with the meatballs. Cook for another hour or so.
Serve the soup topped with fresh horseradish grated on the microplane and mixed with sour cream. Have good bread available and the obligatory green salad.
Grate a yellow carrot, an orange carrot, a small bulb of fennel, and a medium-sized onion on the box grater. Cook 1.5 cups of risotto rice in 2 cups salted water for a few minutes. Stir in the grated vegetables along with a good amount of sweet paprika. Cover and bake at 175C for 30 minutes. Remove the cover, top with grated cheese (I used a mixture of mountain cheeses), and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the cheese is brown and bubbly.
For the beets: Peel and dice (1-1.5 cm) a couple good-sized beets. Steam them until they're tender. While still warm toss with freshly-squeezed orange juice, rapeseed oil, salt, a bit of garlic (mashed to a paste), and freshly ground fennel seed. Let stand 5-10 minutes before serving.
The baked rice was good, but the beets were the real star.
This is one I've done before. The only difference this time is that I used piment d'espelette instead of raclette spices.
We had some merguez leftover from the weekend and combining it with potatoes seemed like a natural:
Peel some potatoes and slice them about 1/2cm thick. Toss them in a pan with some oil and a pinch of salt and cook them, covered, over medium high heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring only a few times. The potatoes should have some color and be heading towards cooked. Add some thickly sliced onion and cook another 5-10 minutes, again stirring only a few times. Finally add sliced merguez and some sweet paprika and let the sausage heat through.
For the beans: Cook soaked blackeyed peas together with diced bacon, onion, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, and black pepper until they start to get tender. Add chicken bouillon and finish the cooking.
For the rice (method from Bittman): cook rice (we were out of basmati, so I used japanese short-grain instead) in a lot of boiling salted water for 5 minutes; pour into a strainer. Melt some butter in a pan and add a layer of rice. Top with diced merguez and thinly sliced onion, then with the rest of the rice. Add a splash of water and then cover with a towel-covered lid. Let cook over medium-high heat for ~5 minutes, then reduce the heat to low and let cook for another 40 minutes. This would have been better with basmati (of course), but it was still mighty good.
As a side: cook a diced onion in olive oil for a couple minutes, add chopped savoy cabbage, diced dried tomatoes, and a good pinch of salt. Cover and let cook until it's ready to eat.
This seemed like a nice way to use up some of the savoy cabbage we had in the fridge.
Cook diced onion and yellow carrot in some rapeseed oil for a few minutes. Add diced bacon and chopped cabbage and cook for another 4-5 minutes. Set aside in a covered dish. Brown some sliced sausage (I used a smoked sausage) in the same pan and add to the dish with the vegetables. Add a bit more oil to the pan and cook some spätzli over medium-high heat until they take on some color and get a bit crispy. Add the vegetables and sausage back along with a splash of cream, mix well and cook for another couple minutes then serve.
As a side I did basic steamed beets: diced, steamed, tossed with salt, white pepper, olive oil, cider vinegar.
A quick one:
Cook a diced onion and some chopped garlic in olive oil for a few minutes. Add roasted peppers (these were ones from the biokiste that I processed and froze a couple months ago) that have been cut into strips, fresh thyme and rosemary, salt, and a good grind of black pepper. Let cook another few minutes. Add pasta (we used whole-wheat cellentani), a bit of cream, and some grated cheese (mixture of swiss hard cheeses) and mix well. Serve sprinkled with some raclette spices and black pepper.
Something of an improv:
Bone a couple chicken leg quarters and dice the meat (1cm dice). Brown well in olive oil. Add chopped garlic and diced onion and cook until the onion starts to soften. Add cumin seeds and diced butternut squash and cook until the cumin is aromatic. Deglaze with sherry and let that mostly evaporate. Add some tomato paste, a bit of ketchup, chicken bouillon, and some black pepper, bring to a simmer, and let cook until the chicken and squash are ready to eat, about 20 minutes. Serve topped with toasted almond slivers.
We ate this very nice dish with rice (parboiled + wild) and a big green salad.
We did an early Christmas dinner with some friends last night and it somehow seemed appropriate to bring eggnog with us. Since this is a traditional thing, I used a recipe from my grandmother's copy of the Joy of Cooking:
This week's biokiste included Grünkohl (pretty much collard greens). We generally don't get much of this, so a traditional prep is a good place to start:
Heat smashed garlic cloves in rapeseed oil until they take on some color. Add finely chopped Grünkohl, diced potato, and a good pinch of salt and cook for 5-10 minutes, until the color of the greens deepens. Add a bit of chicken bouillon, top with a smoked sausage (saucisson neuchateloise), cover and let simmer 20-30 minutes, until the greens are ready to eat.
Serve with mustard, maggi, and a big green salad.
