Author: jamesclay

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Roast Leg of Lamb

Sometimes you don’t want a whole leg of lamb otherwise you will be eating lamb for the whole week…

Many supermarkets are now offering a partly boned leg of lamb, sometimes called a carvery leg of lamb. It is often cheaper and smaller than a traditional leg.

It takes less time to cook than a whole leg (obviously) and when I have cooked them found most to be tender and delicious and certainly better than a boned shoulder of lamb.

What I do find though is that as it is partly boned, though a little easier to carve, the meat does shrink a lot more whilst cooking and some of the meat can be a little tougher as a result.

I usually use rosemary and garlic, classic flavours, to enhance the roast. In the photograph you can see I roasted the joint on a bed of carrots and rosemary. The carrots raise the meat from the bed of the roasting pan and work like a rack. The carrots then make a great base for gravy.

I am interested in using other herbs and spices for the future. Morrocan spices are an obvious choice, but wonder if anyone out there has some winning and tasty ideas.

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Scallops with Noodles

Scallops with Noodles

One thing I like about cooking oriental (inspired) food is the speed. This dish took about ten minutes from getting into the kitchen to putting food on the table.

Now I did cheat a little by using a pack of prepared stir fry vegetables, you can (as I usually do) prepare the veg yourself.

Once in the kitchen I put some water onto boil for the noodles, that take two minutes to cook.

I got the scallops and cut them in half through the middle to “double” the number of scallops. This is a trick I picked up from Gordon Ramsay on making scallops go further.

I heated a large frying pan and added a splash of sunflower oil. I let the oil heat through I then added a dash of Chinese Five Spice before adding the prepared stir fry veg.

In another pan I cooked the scallops. They don’t take long and you don’t want to overcook them.

Once the vegetables are nearly cooked, in other words still crunchy I added the noodles and some oyster sauce.

I then placed the noodles and vegetables on a plate and topped with the pan fried scallops.

For a variation I would have added some cashew nuts for crunch and some squid and prawns to complement the scallops.

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Marmalade Roly Poly

I have cooked many things in my life, but this was a first for me, a traditional steamed pudding. Yes I have heated up shop puddings, using steam or the microwave. But this was the first time I actually started with basic ingredients, made the pudding, steamed it and ate it!

So why marmalade?

Well we didn’t have enough lemons for a lemon pudding. No strawberry jam so “dead man’s leg” was out of the question. No dried fruit, so no spotted dick. But I did have marmalade… well it tastes of orange!

150 self-raising flour , plus extra for dusting
70 dried suet
45g caster sugar
finely grated zest of a lemon (well my lemon was a little soft so didn’t get too much zest)
100ml milk
some spoonfuls of marmalade

For the dough, mix together the flour, suet, caster sugar and lemon zest with a spoon. Stir in some milk until the mixture reaches the consistency of a soft pastry. Gather together into a ball, but don’t overwork or it will toughen.

This I then flattened out onto a flour dusted work surface.

I then spread the marmalade over the dough. Now to be honest if you try and spread like you do with toast then it isn’t going to work. Think of what you would do with hard butter on fresh soft white bread.

I then rolled the dough up. You can use a bit of milk to seal the edges.

I placed the rolled dough onto some greaseproof paper which I then placed on some foil.

I made a parcel of the greaseproof paper and used the foil to ensure it would retain it’s shape and sealed the edges. Leave rool for the pudding to rise.

Place the parcel in a steamer and steam for an hour and a bit, until firm to the touch. Allow to rest for a minute or two, unwrap, slice and serve. Custard is the obvious accompaniment.

Now as you can see it didn’t come out exactly to the shape I thought it would.

However once sliced it looked okay.

It was delicious served with custard.

It did need more marmalade, however I couldn’t use all of the jar as I wouldn’t have any for my toast in the morning…

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Cooking Apples

Whenever I cook pork (and if I have time) I like to cook some apple to serve alongside. This is not apple sauce, this is cooking apples.

Cooking Apples

If I have more time I do peel the apples, but this isn’t strictly necessary.

In a large frying pan, like the one you cooked the pork in, add some butter and place the apples in the pan. I then sprinkle a teaspoon of icing sugar. This helps to caramelise the apple and add a little sweetness. It is best to serve straight away once they have finished cooked and are browned.

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Frying the perfect steak

Useful advice and tips from Jamie Oliver.

Key for me is a decent griddle pan and I wouldn’t use salt. The other thing is buying decent steak too, cheap and cheerful cuts generally will disappoint.

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Pan Fried Chorizo

A recent comment on Twitter made me chuckle.

http://twitter.com/mweller/status/31049453251067904

I would tend to agree.

If you have eaten chorizo in the past, either the thinly sliced stuff you get in packs next to the ham, or the whole chorizo sausage that you are finding more and more in most supermarkets, then you probably will find that cooking chorizo really should be on your shopping list.

Now this is cooking chorizo and really does need to be cooked.

My method is to cut the chorizo into slices about quarter of an inch thick. Fry in a large frying pan until sealed on both sides and just starting to go a little crispy.

Serve as part of a tapas or with salad. Or as Martin says with any other dish…

Another way I use chorizo is to add it to a tray of roasting vegetables to add texture, flavour and spice.

In many ways cooking chorizo is a versatile ingredient that is in many ways much easier to use than tradition air dried chorizo. I would air caution though, make sure it is proper cooking chorizo and not chorizo style sausages otherwise you will be disappointed. Chorizo style sausages are simply English style sausages with some paprika and chilli. Definitely not chorizo.

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Roasting Quail

If you are looking for a huge roast dinner then forget about quail. These are very small and certainly won’t fill you up.

I have had grilled quail in a Vietnamese restaurant as a starter so that’s certainly an option.

I cooked these quail very simply and quite quickly.

I covered them with some pancetta bacon before roasting them in a hot oven for about 15-20 minutes.

After resting for about 5 minutes I cut the breasts off and served. You can fiddle with the legs, but there isn’t much meat on them and it is fiddly…

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Cakes

These cupcakes (or fairy cakes) are based on a recipe for a traybake cake.

Ingredients

250g softened butter , plus extra for greasing
280g self-raising flour
250g golden caster sugar
½ tsp baking powder
4 eggs
150ml creme frache – the recipe calls for yoghurt, but I didn’t have any.
1 tsp vanilla extract
handful of choc chips

To make the sponge batter, beat the butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, creme frache and the vanilla in a large bowl with an electric whisk until lump-free. Stir in the choc chips. Spoon into the tin, then bake for 15-20 mins until golden and risen and a skewer poked in comes out clean.

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Salad for Lunch

Lunch

I know that a lot of people have salad for lunch as they perceive it to be a healthy option. I generally have salad for lunch as I enjoy eating a nice salad. It’s nice at work that we have salad bars that I can get one from. Sometimes I get one from the local supermarket. Some of the best salads I have had are from small deli type places who make them fresh to order. They’re generally my first choice.

I do like variety in my salad, however I generally draw the line at dried fruit or celery.

From a health perspective a salad such as the one pictured above has a fair bit of fat and salt in it. You can of course avoid all the mayonnaise, dressings and salty stuff and have a much healthier salad, but where’s the fun in that then?

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Is this the supermarket of the future?

From BBC News.

Though I have the Tesco App on my iPhone I don’t really use it, even though I do the online shopping. I think this is more down to a behaviour thing over not wanting to use the technology.