Author: jamesclay

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Steak and Black Pudding

The other week I was lucky enough to have dinner at the Mustard Seed Restaurant in Inverness. For my starter I had had the crayfish and salmon salad. For my main course I had the pan fried rump steak served with roasted fine diced black pudding and potatoes with parsley and garlic crème fraîche.

This was really really nice.

The steak was a rump steak, and I have found at many restaurants that rump steak can be quite tough, this one though was cooked to perfection and was very tender. I did ask for it to be cooked medium rare and I think that helped. The black pudding and potatoes were done well and really enhanced the steak. It was all complemented with the parsley and garlic crème fraîche, which had a subtle garlic flavour and the freshness worked well in opposition to the strong spiced flavour of the black pudding. Across those flavours you could still certainly taste the flavour of the beef.

Overall a really nice combination of ingredients, that was cooked well and was as a result delicious.

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Crayfish & Salmon Salad

The other week I was lucky enough to have dinner at the Mustard Seed Restaurant in Inverness.

For my starter I had what the menu described as the Crayfish tail, smoked salmon and vegetable egg noodle salad with an oriental dressing and roasted sesame seeds.

Now though I think the sesame seeds were missing, it was an interesting combination of oriental and Scottish, the noodles with smoked salmon. The salmon was great, the crayfish tails were okay though the noodle salad was somewhat bland, even with the oriental dressing.

Overall it was nice starter, refreshing and some nice ingredients, but I think it could have been better, though I don’t think that the missing sesame seeds would have been the solution.

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Devon Cream Scones

Recently at a conference I was able to enjoy these delicious cream and jam scones.

Devon Cream Scones

I am no expert on cream scones or the cream tea, but I certainly do enjoy eating them, something very nice about clotted cream. Though for me the freshness of the scone is paramount too, all too often I have had a cream tea and the scones are nowhere near fresh.

It would appear in Devon that they prefer their scones without dried fruit too, I do prefer my scones with dried fruit.

And finally when eating scones with clotted cream, it has to be for me a nice cup of tea… yes tea!

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Sainsbury’s Cooking Chorizo

Chorizo

Having used cooking chorizo from Tesco, Marks and Spencers and Sainsbury, I much prefer using the chorizo from Tesco or Marks and Spencers.

The main issue I have with the Sainsbury’s chorizo is that it comes in little sausages. From the other two stores, you get four large chorizo sausages, whereas from Sainsbury you get twelve small sausages, though from a weight perspective you get roughly the same amount of sausage.

So for the majority of dishes I use chorizo in, the small sausages are a bit annoying to slice. They also seem to be a little more salty than the other two.

However I suspect if you cooked them whole with red wine, then it would a really nice chorizo frito al vino.

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Grilled Chicken

I do like grilled chicken, however I don’t like my grill! I would love to have a proper commercial salamander grill, I am reminded on a regular basis that this is a standard domestic kitchen, and not a restaurant kitchen…

Well one can dream…

So the grill we do have is built into the oven and is not separate. So if I want to grill I need to leave the oven door open and that I don’t like from a safety perspective, especially with young children running around.

So the other day I decided I would use my grill and as I had the time I would be able to ensure that everyone else in the house wouldn’t be grilled.

I took some chicken thighs and legs and in a bowl added some Schwartz’s Spicy Italian spice mix, some olive oil, lemon zest and the juice form the lemon too.

This I coated the chicken before placing it under the grill.

I turned the chicken a couple of times and each time I would brush the chicken with the remaining spice mix from the bowl.

The result?

Grilled Chicken

Well the chicken had a wonderful flavour and was beautifully moist and tender. I really do like the taste of grilled chicken (especially with lemon) and this was just right.

I intend to use the same ingredients in the summer, but use the barbecue.

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Ich bin ein Berliner

Ich bin ein Berliner

The infamous quote from John F Kennedy was as any German will tell you translates as “I am a doughnut”.

So it was with this reminiscence in mind that I bought a Berliner doughnut from Waitrose that had been reduced.

It was the first Berliner I had ever had. Never had the chance to get to Germany for many years, and though through JFK I was aware of the Berliner it’s not something I had seen.

So what did I think?

Es ist ein schaler Berliner.

Yes it was stale.

So it was reduced and it was reduced because it had been out all day (maybe a couple of days) and as a result it was stale. Well I hope it was stale in some ways, as if that was how it was suppose to taste then I am disappointed.

So I didn’t finish it.

I will need to get to Germany sometime for a doughnut…

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Pink Peppercorn Crusted Beef Steaks

Sometimes time is against you with cooking, especially after a long day in the office, so ranges like Waitrose’s Easy To Cook can be a quick and useful way of making something nice to eat.

I picked Waitrose’s Pink Peppercorn Crusted Beef Steaks from their branch at Gordano Services and they did look quite nice, not just in the packet, but also on the side of the packet.

However cooking them, according to the instructions did not go to plan…

The steak itself cooked fine, but the crust stuck to the pan and separated from the steak. Think it was a combination of the preparation of the steak and my pan.

Anyhow scraping the crust from the pan onto the steaks worked okay, but they didn’t look anything like what it looked like on the packet.

I served it with potato rosti, steamed vegetables and a homemade sauce using the pan I cooked the steak in, some white wine, creme frache and a little parmesan.

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The difference saffron makes…

Tonight I made paella, something I seem to do on a regular basis. Tonight though was different and the reason was I had no saffron.

Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of the saffron crocus and it imparts not just a rich golden hue to the paella, but also importantly adds flavour too.

So don’t get me wrong, the paella was very nice, what with onions, pepper and peas, but the lack of saffron was very telling and I think next time I want a rice dish, and I don’t have saffron in the house, I will be making risotto instead.

How my paella should have looked, a rich yellow colour….

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Roast Pork

Though relatively cheap, a joint of pork loin still makes for a nice Sunday roast.

Cooking lunch

I did manage to get very crispy crackling and a tender moist joint.

One thing I do about 30 minutes before the pork has finished cooking is to add some sliced apple to the roasting dish. I also add other stuff like onions, mushrooms, courgette and bread, however the apple is there as a kind of apple sauce. I do though have been known to cook the apples separately but sometimes for speed and to save on washing up I will roast the apple with the pork.

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Spicy Linguine

Though I am calling this spicy, it isn’t that spicy, you could of course make it more spicy, if you like your food really spicy.

What I do like about this recipe is that it is very quick and easy.

In a large pan of boiling water cook some linguine. I use De Cecco Linguine as it cooks well, tastes great and works with a range of sauces.

Whilst the linguine is cooking (takes 10-11 minutes) in a large frying pan I cook off some onions and pancetta, to which I then add slices of cooking chorizo.

I ensure that the chorizo is cooked before removing from the heat. There will be a fair bit of fat cooked off from the chorizo and the pancetta, so you might want to drain off this before adding the contents of the pan to the cooked linguine.

Once the lingine is cooked, drain and add half a jar of red pesto and the cooked onion, chorizo and pancetta.

Serve.

You could add red pepper to add some more spice and chilli if you want heat too.