Barbecued Sardines & Salad

As soon as the clocks go forward my diet seems to switch to a Mediterranean-style one - I usually eat late anyway - with a very heavy emphasis on "burnt" meats and salads, accompanied by potatoes or rice, and frequently both. I love fish also, but this is not a dish I would attempt in company because boning sardines after they're cooked is such a messy, inelegant business. I picked up the sardines - or were they pilchards masquerading as sardines - from the reduced bin in Tesco: 71p for 6, which is incredibly cheap for 2 meals. I suppose some people are squeamish about gutting fish - I was, once upon a time - but, now, like boning meat, it is almost second nature. I did find my cat in the kitchen sink, apparently licking it after I'd rinsed the fish, but heigh-ho!

For the marinade:

Mix together about 50ml of olive oil, 2 tsp crushed garlic, 1 tsp lemon juice and 1 tsp rock salt - I'm not normally precious about different varieties of salt but I do think this made a big contribution to the final taste. Be sure to open up the fish and rub the marinade inside for best results. Leave for a couple of hours, turning once.

Cooking:

To get the desired texture I griddled AND grilled the fish - started off on a smoking hot ridged griddle pan, turned once after a few minutes, then putting the pan under a pre-heated grill for a few more minutes on each side. If I was a bit more dextrous I would be able to able to take off the head and backbone with a knife and fork - I used my fingers!

Accompaniments:

The salad was the usual suspects: lettuce and baby spinach, peppers, cherry tomatoes, red onions, stuffed green olives, a few cooked chickpeas and sliced courgette which I use in winter salads in place of cucumber.

Potato purists will probably be shrieking in the streets at the way I cook mine - scrubbed and thinly sliced, then microwaved in a closed casserole dish for about 3 minutes. To me, it's the equivalent of steaming, so the surface of the potatoes don't get mushy. Rinse, dip in the marinade and then fry in a hot wok. I also had plain boiled basmati rice.

Postscript:
After I got back from the pub I finished the marinade off by dipping crusty bread in it - delicious!

Chicken & Aubergine Hash

I was reading yesterday about a famous New York restaurant called the Minetta Tavern which was revamped in 2008. One of the items on their menu, as a side order of all things, is a dish called Duck Hash. The mouth-watering photograph showed something quite different to a British version of hash - this was more like potatoes Lyonnaise with chunks of duck meat in the skillet. Having just bought some (reduced price) chicken thighs I thought I could wing it, so to speak!

Parboil a big handful of peeled potatoes in salted water. In a hot wok fry 2 small boned chicken thighs, skin side down. When the skin is nicely coloured  take out and chop into chunks about 3cm square. In the meanwhile soften a good handful of chopped onions - I used red and white - in the pan. You may need to add more fat - poultry fat or dripping preferably, though vegetable oil will suffice. Add the drained potatoes, with a big handful of diced aubergines, a small handful of peppers and 2 tsp crushed garlic. Put the chicken back in with 1 scant tsp salt and a pinch of pepper. Keep shaking the pan to prevent sticking. Cooking will take about 5 minutes.; just before everything is ready  add 1 scant tsp of cumin and 1 tsp of Soy sauce.

Mix gently, cook for about a minute and serve. I had mine with baby corn and baton carrots.

My Latin Liver

 I first did this dish back in 1998 at Grandma Becky's Kitchen in Hoylake. During a camping holiday in Cornwall a few years earlier I'd been amused by the way the locals greeted everyone "Hello, my lover".......

This variation omits the oregano I used then and substitutes a basic bechamel white sauce for cream.

Cut a handful of lamb's liver into strips, shake in flour and fry in a little oil until golden brown. Set aside. In a little oil and butter soften a small handful of onions and peppers; add 2 tsp of crushed garlic, 1 sliced mushroom and about the same quantity of sliced courgette. Add the liver, 1 tsp basil and 1 tsp flour. Stir well and gradually whisk in 200ml milk.

Simmer and add 1 heaped tsp of chicken bouillon powder and S+P to taste. Add more milk or water if necessary.

Breakfast Egg en Cocotte & Baked Pinto Beans

.....Still no dried haricot beans in the shops.
Beans
Precook the pinto beans in water for about an hour-and-a-half.
Into a lidded casserole dish:150ml tomato juice, 1 scant tsp sugar, half a tsp salt, a pinch of pepper, 2 shakes of Worcester sauce and 1 tsp milk with 2 big handfuls (150g?) of cooked pinto beans. Bake in a very hot oven for 15 mins and lower the heat to med-low for a further 15 mins - less if you want the beans quite runny.

Eggs
Lay 1 small mushroom, thinly sliced, in the bottom of a greased ramekin. Add 1 tsp of clotted or double cream, season with S+P, and carefully break an egg on top. Garnish with half a cherry tomato, reserving the other half to add later in cooking.

Bake in a very hot oven for 8 mins, lower the heat to med-low for a further 15 mins - less if you want the dish runny. With multigrain toast.

Texican Braised Steak & Beans

This is about authentic as Laurence Harvey's accent in the classic movie of The Alamo; as with most of my dishes I hope that by grasping what the essential ingredients are I can reproduce, simply, the essence of the whole cuisine and the particular dish. Purists will further hate the fact that the meat wasn't even cooked in the sauce - when I buy any braising or stewing beef I get it in bulk, cook it all off in a little beef bouillon, before portioning and freezing. The reason being that one can be far more flexible in choice of meal without wasting huge amounts of freezer space.

So, I started with about 200g of beef cooked the previous day, as were my pinto beans. Soften a handful each of onions and peppers in a little oil with 2 tsp of crushed garlic. Add a level tsp of salt, a heaped tsp of ground cumin and a scant tsp (or less) of chilli powder. Stir in and fry for a couple of minutes. Add 1 medium tomato, cored and chopped in 1 cm cubes, 150ml of tomato juice, 1 dstsp of lime cordial and 1 scant tsp of sugar. Turn the heat up and add a handful of pre-cooked pinto beans. Check seasoning and carefully lower the meat in, together with a dstsp of the cooking liquor.

Cover with sauce and gently heat through.

Pork in Oriental Bar-B-Q Sauce, Singapore Noodles

Barbecue Sauce

The original recipe for this came from my friend Pete Skalley, a wonderful chef and a hilariously funny man, who died last year. He, in turn, had acquired it from his Chinese father-in-law who ran a takeaway. This is my tweak of it: 

14 floz beef gravy simmered with 1 dstsp crushed garlic, 1 tsp of ginger puree, 1 tsp Chinese 5-Spice, 1 dstsp Soy sauce, 1 scant tsp chicken bouillon powder, 6 tsp sugar and half a cap of red food colouring (optional). Add 1 tsp of sesame oil towards the end of cooking.

Pork
I marinated my spare-rib chop overnight in garlic and soy and a pinch of chilli because this batch of meat tasted a bit, well, "porky"! Seal it  in a hot wok, add the sauce and transfer to casserole dish. Bake on medium for about 30 minutes depending on the thickness of the chop.

Singapore Chow Mein
Apparently, just as the Indian sub-continent knew nothing about Chicken Tikka Massala, this is an invention for the UK taste - spicy noodles, in other words!

 Pre-cook a couple of handfuls of noodles. I blanched some carrots and green beans, softened a good handful each of onions and peppers in a little vegetable oil and then added broccoli, baby corn, the pre-cooked veg and a little crushed garlic. When everything was well coated I added a little soy sauce and a pinch of chilli. In went the noodles with a drizzle of sesame oil, and to finish, a dstsp of Hoi Sin sauce and a little water to thin it down.

Toss well and serve with the meat on top.

Turkey Ratatouille

In a little oil fry a handful of diced turkey with a handful of diced aubergine, a handful of chopped onion and a handful of diced courgettes. When the meat begins to colour add 2 tsp of crushed garlic and stir well. Next, add half a tin of tomatoes, 100ml of tomato juice and 1 tsp of tomato puree, 1 tsp Herbes de Provence (mixed herbs), and season with  a scant tsp of salt, a pinch of pepper and a pinch of sugar.

 Transfer to a casserole dish and cook on med-high for 30 minutes. I had mine with parsnips roasted in sesame oil and ginger, charlotte potatoes and broccoli.

Rambles in Chiantishire

Do you ever get that feeling where you've made a mistake but in doing so you become convinced you've made a significant discovery - only to find thousands have been there before you: I imagine Edmund Hillary would have hit a trough pretty quickly if he'd reached the peak of Everest, to be confronted by a row of sun-loungers draped with German towels. You get the picture?

This excursion started because of baked beans - they've rocketed in price (well, the ones I buy have!) so I got it into my head a while ago to make my own. Unfortunately neither my local Co-op nor Asda stock dried haricot beans, so I went to Tesco for a change. They don't stock them either, but did give me the head office phone number to find out why not. I bought a pack of cannellini beans instead, thinking I could have jumbo baked beans. Not being as dangerous as raw kidney beans I filled my pressure cooker with water, bunged in the beans and brought it to the boil. First discovery: cannellini beans don't take nearly as long to cook as other pulses like chickpeas or kidney beans. What I ended up with wasn't a mush but the beans were certainly too soft to bake in the home-made tomato sauce I had in mind. 

Inspiration time: adapt my definitive hummus recipe, substituting these for chickpeas. Now, in case you don't know, cannellinni beans are big (popular) in Tuscany so it seemed appropriate to add some Italian seasonings to my "no-name bean dip". I had my usual delusions of grandeur - come up with a snappy monicker and all the supermarkets would be scurrying to bang on my door, clamouring for the recipe. Alas, when I googled "Cannellinni beans" I was gutted to find that plenty of other cooks have had the same idea as me - no-one, however, has yet come up with a name as readily-identifiable as "hummus" (with all its different spellings) is throughout the whole Mediterranean/North African region.

Chiantishire Hummus
Put 500g cooked cannellini beans into a food processor (I found my blender/liquidiser couldn't cope with the mass)  and pour in 300ml olive oil. With the motor running add 1 tsp of lemon juice, 3 heaped tsp of minced garlic, 1 heaped tsp of dried oregano and 1 heaped tsp of dried basil. Season with 1 tsp salt and half a tsp of fine pepper. Chill and leave to infuse overnight. As hummus freezes quite adequately, I've portioned mine into plastic bags but as it's so delicious I'm spreading it on everything at the moment!

Tuscan-take Cannellini Meatballs with Tomato & Basil Sauce
After making two loads of my "White-bean dip" I still had a load of soft beans. I had been about to batch-produce some Chilli Con Carne but, in the end, adapted my Spicy Mexican Meatball recipe to what I thought would work in Chiantishire. I can't find a recipe for these anywhere else!

In a big mixing bowl combine 200g blitzed onions, 200g cooked cannellini beans pulsed but not puréed and 500g mince, together with 100g breadcrumbs, 100g plain flour, 4 dstsp of crushed garlic, 1 heaped tsp salt, 1 level tsp pepper, 1 heaped dstsp of oregano and 1 heaped dstsp of basil, 2 dstsp of Tomato ketchup and 2 dstsp Tomato purée. Mix well, add 1 beaten egg and mix again. I made my meatballs about the size of a small egg - I dip my hands in luke-warm water continually to prevent the meat sticking to me - and produced 25. Place on a lightly greased baking tray cook at Gas Mk5 for just under 15 minutes. Turn and cook for a further 10 minutes. If you're freezing the surplus, put on a tray overnight to prevent sticking to each other before bagging up.

Tomato Coulis/Thin Sauce (per person)
In a saucepan, bring to the boil 180ml tomato juice, 1 scant dstsp basil, 1 scant dstsp tomato purée, 1 scant tsp salt, half a tsp of sugar and a pinch of black pepper - about 4 grindings. Turn down the heat and simmer on low to infuse and thicken.

I had four meatballs on a bed of tagliatelle, with the sauce drizzled over the top. Jamie, eat your heart out!

Beef Olives stuffed with...... olives

I was perpexed as child why so-called "beef olives" weren't stuffed with olives. Yes, I had sophisticated tastes way ahead of my years, probably because of my yiddisher Grandma, at whose home pickled cucumbers would be on the table at every meal, together with that uniquely Jewish condiment, Chrain - a relish of beetroot and horseradish.

I haven't made beef olives for years, but in the freezer I had some very thin slices of "frying steak" - probably top rump, I guess - which I thought would be ideal for rolling up. But this time I was going to stuff them with proper olives (and traditional sage & onion)!

Make up some sage & onion stuffing according to directions on the packet if you're lazy like me - I used half a pack, and that was way too much. Take a  steak about 5 oz in weight and hammer out as thin as possible without tearing the meat, turn in the rough edges and bash again - I ended up with a rectangle approximately six inches long by four-and-a half inches wide. Take a small egg-sized scoop of stuffing and mix with 4 chopped, pitted green olives - I used anchovy stuffed ones, though garlic or pimento ones may have been rather tasty - and roll into a sausage about  two-and-a half inches long. Lay this crosswise on the steak about a half-inch from the bottom edge. Turn the sides in to form a parcel and then roll up along its length, securing with cocktail sticks.

Brush with oil and roast on high for 8-10 mins. Add about a third of a pint of gravy, cover, lower heat to Mk5 and cook for a further 8-10 minutes.

I use gravy granules when I haven't got real meat stock to hand, but add a little beef bouillon and a pinch of pepper and salt to get a more authentic beefy taste.

Proper roast potatoes, parsnip roasted with a little salt and sesame oil, and carrots and swede completed my feast.

Tikka-ish Turkey & Spicy Peanut Relish

This is almost kosher as neither the marinade nor the dip uses any dairy - yoghurt.

Peanut Relish
3 tsp peanut butter (I used crunchy, but it's immaterial), 2 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp lime cordial, 1 tsp sweet chilli sauce, a good pinch of cayenne pepper, a pinch of sugar and 1-and-a-bit tsps of Soy. I added a pinch of salt to mine too. Mix well.

The Marinade
This is one I do quite frequently for turkey or chicken - and I thought, consequently, that I'd recorded and published it before. I hadn't! This is, therefore, from memory...... 1 dstsp Madras Curry Powder (hot), 1 tsp each of ground coriannder and cumin, 1 dstsp crushed garlic, 1 tsp lime cordial, S+P and about 50ml of oil - veg or olive. Cut the meat into chunks - I had some diced turkey in the freezer - and marinate for at least an hour. Thread onto skewers and bake in a very hot oven for 15-20 minutes - I balanced mine over a small casserole dish and turned them once.

Some basmati rice and a simple salad of shredded lettuce, cabbage, peppers, red onions and tomatoes in a classic French dressing to complete.....