Recently in recipe Category

Simple food is often the best, especially in the summer, but if it is rainy or overcast then something warming is what you want. Traditionally roast chicken in the UK comes with a load of vegetables and complexity. Here is a quick recipe for roast chicken that takes about 20 minutes preperation.
Take the following, one roast chicken, preferably free range, as they do taste better, about 1.4kg for two people. Other ingredients are some herbs to tuck under the skin, plus salt, pepper and some olive oil. Leaves and bread are the perfect thing to eat with chicken in the summer, watercress is a good choice, though mache (lambs lettuce) or rocket are also good. Then some bread, preferably french baguette or maybe ciabatta.
Take the chicken, poke some holes in the skin and tuck in some fresh herbs, rub some olive oil into the skin and put some salt and pepper over the skin too. Put in a preheated oven for 20 minutes per 500g, plus twenty minutes, so about 1hour and 15 minutes for the 1.4kg bird. Put the chicken into the oven breast side down initially, and roast for 20 or so minutes at about 200 degrees C, this keeps the breast meat more moist.
You now have basically an hour or so to get on with some other things, other than turning over the bird breast side up after twenty minutes. When then chicken is nearing done, check on it using a sharp knife, poke a neat incision deep into the bird over one of the legs, let the juices well up and flow over the blade of the knife, they should be clear and not pink. If you think they are pink, then put the bird back for another 5-10 minutes. If it is going brown on top and still pink, then put a bit of kitchen foil over the bird and put it in for another 10. When you check again do so on the other side.
Once you have a cooked chicken, put it on a plate or carving board to rest for 10 minutes, but as you do so tip the juices from inside into the roasting tin. There will be a few spoonfuls of juice. Put the tin on the hob and add a decent splash of wine and a pinch of flour, then turn the heat up and keep moving the liquid around. The aim is to loosen all the sticky bits on the bottom of the pan and gently cook the flour, if it looks a bit thick, add a splash more wine or some water. The important thing is to not burn it and ensure it is well mixed through with the flour cooked.
The gravy will have all the fat from the bird mixed in with it, you can tip the roasting tin over to one corner if there is a lot of it, but you do not need to be too fastidious with spooning off the fat, as it is quite tasty too.
Carve the chicken and serve on moderately warmed plates on which you have placed your salad leaves. Pour over some gravy and pass around the bread and wine. Enjoy.

A decent roasting tin really helps to stop things sticking and it helps with the washing up. I like the mermaid ones, they are tough and well made. If you liked this recipe, then you might like one of my favourite cookery writers, Simon Hopkinson, who has the aptly named Roast Chicken and other stories books. These are delightful stories and recipes focused around particular ingredients. These are all available from Amazon, see below.

I made some lovely garlic potatoes at the weekend and I thought I'd share the recipe with you. They are loosely based on a recipe from Nigella Lawson.
Take some small new potatoes and cut them up into small pieces, smaller than the top of your little finger. Then mix them with some olive oil and plenty of finely chopped garlic. I used 3 plump cloves for two people and about 15 or so small potatoes. Add plenty of salt, ideally big crystalline sea salt, like grey poupon and a good grind of pepper. Put them in a pre-heated oven at about 180-200 for about 35-40 minutes. You can vary the resulting texture of the potatoes by the amount of oil that you put in with them. If they sit in a bit of oil then they will be more moist and less crisp. If they are just coated in oil then they will be crispier, but you'll need to check on them more frequently, as they might burn.
You can vary this recipe by leaving the potatoes for a couple of hours with some chopped rosemary or oregano or maybe some sage.
We ate them with some grilled sea bass and steamed purple sprouting brocolli, which made a perfect combination.

In Sainsbury's today and utterly bored by eating chicken or similar over christmas and sought something more tasty. Thanks to Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson (amazon.co.uk links to prefered books).
We found and created something rather tasty and cheap too.

Take the following
Jamie Oliver's 21 day old minute steaks 250g or so for two people
4 big mushrooms per person
one baguette
a couple of fat cloves of garlic
some butter
some olive oil
some rosemary from the garden
salt
pepper

Put the oven on, about 200 or gas mark 6, then chop up both cloves of garlic. Take your mushrooms and break out the stalks and spread about half the garlic, plus some salt and pepper and a bit of butter in each one. Put them in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Now take the rosemary and chop it finely and put it on a plate with a splash of olive oil and some salt (sea salt crystals if you have them) and some pepper. You will put the steak in this marinade, in the packet there are four steaks, put one on the oil and then take it out and turn it over and place another bit on the oily side, turn over again so that you are alternating steak against fresh oil from the marinade and the other side against already oiled steak. This process makes the marinade go further and means that there will be less oil to burn. Put a griddle pan on a high heat now, then do the last bit of prep now, take the rest of the garlic and mix it with a small lump of butter in a small bowl, use a knife to fold the garlic into the butter.
You now should have the mushrooms with about 8 minutes to go or so, and a hot griddle pan, start to cook the steak, but first put a plate in the oven to warm up. The steak will take 40-60 seconds per side, so you'll need to work quickly, the steak is ready when the blood and juices start to rise off the surface of the meat. If you do not get nice parallel lines on the cooked side then your pan is not hot enough, likewise if you are getting lots of smoke, then it is probably a bit hot.
It should take 6-7 minutes to cook all the steak, putting each bit on the warmed plate to rest after cooking. Butter the split baguette with the garlic butter and get the mushrooms out of the oven, put the mushrooms and the steak into the sandwich, you can cut it into strips which makes it easier to eat.
Enjoy with a glass of wine... or two.

I'm never sure why people say they do not like lamb. It is truely one of the best tasting meats. The depth of flavour certainly can match good beef and is easily better than chicken or pork.
Maybe it is because of mint sauce, that insipid green goo, a far cry from the fresh plant. Lamb is best in a french style, with rosemary, garlic and anchovy.
Take a leg of lamb, about 250g to 400 per person depending on how hungry you are. Using a sharp knife make several incisions in the skin side of the meat, the white fatty bit. Around a dozen in a piece for two people and then take your finger and push it right into each hole, get at least your finger tip inside, ideally to the second knuckle. The reason for this slightly cold and a bit icky task is to allow you to pack more of the rosemary, garlic and anchovy to flavour the meat.
Cut the garlic into pieces an inch or so long and a couple of matchsticks thick, chop the anchovy into bits about half an inch long and for the rosemary snap it into lengths of around 1-2 inches. Having assembled your flavouring ingredients put the anchovy into each hole first, then some garlic and finally some rosemary, some of which will poke out, but this doesn't matter. I have not said how much of these too use, as it depends on the bit of meat you have, but a small handful of rosemary, say 3-4 branches, two big cloves or garlic and a couple of anchovy fillets will be fine for two people. Stuff it until some pops out from another hole, you really can use a lot more than you think.
Do take care though when making the incisions not too allow them to intersect, the meat will hold together better if you keep the holes roughly parallel to one another. If there is fat on the bottom of the meat, trim it off and use a bit of rosemary to pin it to the top of the joint, as this will help keep it moist, see picture.
The instructions on lamb are often for medium, so around 25 minutes per pound/500g plus 10-15 minutes should give you medium rare at 190°C. Do leave it to rest for 10 minutes, the meat relaxes and releases some juices, which makes carving easier.



The other thing I don't get is bisto and fake gravy. Once you have roasted the above, you'll have a mixture of meat juices and some fat in the bottom of the tin. Add the rest of the juices from the rested meat, plus half a glass of the wine you are drinking and about the same amount of water. Add a bit of plain flour and stir and reduce, the gravy will darken a bit and become glossy. Warm a jug and decant into it, you can carefully pour off the fat first, as it floats if you are feeling healthy.

Burke and Wells wrote a while back about their best scrambled eggs, the way they describe it sounds amazing. On Monday after climbing I made pretty great scrambled eggs. Taking my inspiration from Burke and Wells, but bearing in mind that Lucy and I were starving from a few hours climbing.
Take decent free range eggs, supermarket or farmer's market or even duck eggs (yum). Allow about 2 per person, melt some unsalted butter with a little olive oil so that it doesn't burn. Whisk your eggs with coarse ground pepper and some salt, then turn the pan down as low as it will go, then gently scramble your eggs, stir and scrape as you go, it'll take 5-10 minutes. They end up delightfully creamy and taste a million miles away from eggs done in a hot pan. Best on toast, with long espresso and some fresh juice....
Burke and Wells, along with Stewart Brand are completely right, life is taken at too fast a pace, onions know this and respond to gentle treatment.

Lucy wanted muffins for breakfast, but not nasty shop bought ones. She wanted savoury muffins with bacon. Several dozen recipe books later, the elusive recipe for the right kind of muffin was no where to be found, I turned to google and found ... muffins. The article describes a bit of the history of muffins, the differences between US and UK and gives several recipes.
I've amended the recipe a bit, adding bacon and sundried tomato, but it is largely based on the spicy muffin recipe linked from the above article.

Savoury muffins
makes about 10 - 12 muffins
100g polenta, use the coarse stuff for a bit of crunch
75g plain flour
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
75g butter, melted
150g soured cream, crème fraîche or Greek yoghurt
4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
50g of cheddar, a good strong one like vintage canadian
5-10 halves of sundried tomato

Turn the oven to 190C/gas mark 5/375F. Take a 12 hole muffin or tart tin and butter it, so as things don't stick. In bowl large enough for the eggs, butter and cream, melt the butter and leave to cool. Now grill the bacon and leave to cool. Then sieve the first five ingredients into a large separate bowl, this needs to be big enough to hold everything. Now crack the two eggs into the cooled butter and add the cream (or yoghurt). Stir this until the eggs are mixed through. Snip the bacon and sundried tomato into small strips and grate the cheese. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ones and add the bacon, tomato and half the cheese. Now stir until just mixed, you are aiming for no dry patches of flour, but not over mixed. Spoon into the tray and bake for around 15 to 20 minutes. About halfway sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top of the muffins. They are done when a knife blade comes out clean, they'll start to go golden too.

You can vary this quite a lot, add toasted pine nuts or pumpkin seeds, maybe even small bits of rehydrated porcini, or olives etc.

I've realised that I've not been posting recipes, like I thought I would be and I feel a bit bad about this. So some recipes will be forthcoming this week.
However to cook you need to be able to chop and to chop you need a sharp knife. I've spent a few years working out how to use a steel and I think I've got it now. The trick is that all the guides tell you how to keep an edge, but if you neglect your knives badly enough then you need to know how to get an edge in the first place.
To keep an edge hold the steel in one hand and then draw the blade of the knife from the point to the hilt quickly back along the steel. You need to do this on alternate sides, left then right then left, otherwise you build a false edge.
If you've neglected your blades, then you need to ensure that the steel is firmly held and essentially do the same thing. I usually put the tip of the steel on the top of a block, but you could use a countertop, it need to not skate about, then you slowly draw the blade back left and right in a similar manner, but you need to press harder. Placing the tip of the steel on the countertop gives you the ability to press hard enough.
UPDATE: Photos for this howto on flickr, finally.
Buy a new Kitchen knife, I like Sabatier and Wusthof, of course you'll need a sharpening steel, all from Amazon UK.

Very simple tasty recipe, sadly made more difficult due to the lack of easy availability of copious goats cheese in Uk shops, the inch and a half thick 6-8 inch long logs.

Simple salad of leaves and maybe thin slices of carrot, toast some goats cheese on bread, sizzle some lardon in the pan, dress the salad, put the grilled cheese on top, and scatter the lardon, eat.

On a different note I had some very nice chinese food in chinatown, I was introduced to the Fung Shing on Lisle Street by my friend Chris. Very nice food, so good that we considered ordering second mains.

Crozet is interesting stuff that you can get to eat if you head down to the Haute-Savoie in the south east of France. It is sort of a bit like large bits of rice made of white flour and buckwheat flour. Kind of difficult to find outside of there, but if you go skiing or mountaineering you'll definitely have had it. Perfect warming food for recovery after climbing. Only found a few mentions online via google, here is a recipe in french

Chop a small onion and then fry it preferably in butter ( with one or two garlic cloves, add the garlic later if you want a more pungent taste. Then take some mushrooms and chop them roughly, you will want over a pound of them for two people. Cook them to drive out their water and then let them fry a little. Add water and stock, about a pint, bring to boil then simmer for 10 minutes or so. Remove about half the soup and liquidize, then return to the pan. Add some nutmeg, a splash of lemon juice and a bit of cream. This freezes well and makes a great soup for lunch. Thanks to Lindsay Bareham for the basis of this recipe.