food, reviews and of course coffee
This is one technique I use to roast chicken breasts that adds flavour and stops them drying out.
In the roasting pan I add (in this example) chunks of onion, parsnip and squash. Though you could add other root vegetables of course.
Towards the end of cooking I then add bread chunks, mushrooms and courgette chunks.
In this dish I have used free range corn fed chicken which has a lovely chicken flavour, much more so than the “plain” chicken you can buy in supermarkets these days.
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. I have been using it in a few recipes recently, in the main paella, but also chorizo frito al vino.
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. At this point I add the red wine (Spanish red wine is best, but I am sure you can use any good red wine).
Cook the chorizo for a few more minutes. Serve as part of a tapas or with salad. The red wine with the chorizo makes a wonderfully spicy sauce which you can dunk warm soft bread into.
Sainsbury’s cooking chorizo comes as smaller whole sausages and these can be cooked whole, but will take a little longer.
Another recipe was to add it to lentils. In a large frying pan, saute some diced onions, pepper and pancetta. I added some stock and tomato puree and simmered for about ten minutes before adding the sliced cooking chorizo. This I cooked for a further five minutes.
The next stage was to add the lentils, I usually use tinned green lentils. I finished the dish with some basil, though parsley would have been better.
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.
I do like roast potatoes and after trying many different varieties and techniques I believe I have now got a repeatable recipe and process for perfect roast potatoes.
Firstly you need to use the right kind of potatoes. It’s not as simple as buying any kind, the cheapest or whatever.
I have in the past used King Edward potatoes which have worked, but more recently I have found Maris Piper to be a better choice.
After peeling and cutting into chunks the potatoes are blanced in boiling water for about 7-10 minutes depending on the size of the chunks. Now the size if dependent on how you like your roast poatoes and how long you have to cook them. Obviously smaller chunks means a shorter cooking time, whilst larger chunks though take longer are preferred by some people.
While the potatoes are blanched, place the roasting tray into the oven, with a good splash of olive oil. Now you can use goose fat, and I have done in the past, but I am now using olive oil. You could use sunflower oil. I avoid butter generally because it burns and adds a bitter taste. The key here is to heat the pan and the oil.
After blanching the potatoes, drain and the key here is to let the heat dry the potatoes. If they go into the pan “wet” they won’t crisp up well.
The next stage is to slightly “bash” the potatoes by shaking the colander or sieve, this will aid the crisping process too. Then remove the roasting pan from the oven and add the potatoes, turning them and maybe a little more “bashing”. You could add some flavouring, fresh sprigs of rosemary works well. You should also ensure that the potatoes are not too crowded, in other words they need air to be crisp.
Cook for 30-45 minutes depending on the size of the chunks, if you have parmentier sized chunks cooking time could be as low as 20 minutes. It is a good idea to turn the potatoes half way through to ensure a more even crispness.
The end result should be tasty, crisp potatoes with a fluffy centre.
That’s my recipe for roast potatoes, what’s yours?
I seem to be cooking paella more and more recently.
The key for me is the right kind of rice and saffron. I really do like the way the saffron adds not just colour, but also flavour.
After that you can add many different things to make a really nice paella.
The dish above contains in addition to the rice and saffron, the following, chicken, chorizo, prawns, onions, pepper, pancetta and peas. This is different to the last time I cooked paella.
There is something about paella, the richness, flavours that I really enjoy.
Over the last few weeks I have had a lot of success with cooking (well roasting) different varieties of squash.
In the past I have tried cooking butternut squash with little success. Generally it lacks flavour or just doesn’t do have anything special about it.
I have been buying in my local supermarkets various types of squash, and roasting them in the oven and to be honest they have been really really nice.
They are quite tough to cut up, but once they are cut up, the seeds removed, the skin taken off, cut into chunks and roasted in a hot oven with a little olive oil, you can really appreciate the flavour.
Whenever I do a big roast I do like a nice garnish of stuffing and sausages. The stuffing is described in this recipe, and the sausages are either plain or wrapped in pancetta jackets.
I mentioned last week how I was disappointed with the fish and chips I had had at the Sainsbury’s Café. One of the reasons I do go there (as well as convenience) is that you can be surprised.
Earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised with a meal I had at the café.
It was chargrilled tuna on a bed of steamed vegetables with a tomato sauce. It was certainly one of the best meals I have ever had in the Sainsbury’s Café.
The vegetables were not over cooked and still had some crunch. The tomato sauce was certainly better than most I have had, even the tuna was very nice, if a little overcooked.
A pity it was a special and not a regular item on the menu.
This was a dish I made last week.
I took a crown of free range chicken. This was actually cheaper than buying two chicken breasts and of course cooking it on the bone means it won’t dry out as much as cooking chicken breasts on their own.
Before cooking I covered the chicken in pancetta, this was partly to protect the chicken, add flavour and also add some much needed fat to the pan for the vegetables roasting their.
The chicken was roasted in the oven on a bed of squash, carrots and onions. After cooking for 30 minutes more pieces were added to the pan, this included chorizo cooking sausage, slice of courgette, mushrooms, pepper and cubes of bread. This was then cooked for a further 20-30 minutes until everything was cooked.
The pancetta was crispy, the chicken moist and delicious. The roasted vegetables were full of flavour and perfectly cooked. The bread was flavoursome and crunchy.
Delicious.
Really clever trailer from the BBC, very Back to the Future.
I have enjoyed the first two episodes about historical high streets, shows how “lucky” we are today in some respects and how much we have lost too. True no food adulteration these days (well some probably), but we have lost a lot of the personal touch we had in the past.
Series still available on BBC iPlayer until December 14th 2010.
Well not quite….