food, reviews and of course coffee
Today the Guardian published a very nice cake recipe as part of a week long baking frenzy,
All this week, as part of Guardian food month, we will be running exclusive baking recipes from some of Britain’s favourite food names. To begin, a treat – top cake-makers Konditor & Cook’s bestselling Curly Whirly chocolate sponge with vanilla-bean frosting
Today it’s Konditor & Cook’s Curly Whirly cake.
A different way of cooking potatoes.
Take a spoon, place the potato on it, and then with a sharp knife make some slices ensuring you don’t cut all the way through the potato.
Place the potatoes in the roasting tray and baste the potatoes with a blend of olive oil and melted butter.
Roast for an hour and then grate some parmesan on top (if you so wish) and roast for a further ten minutes.
Really tasty.
Take some skinless boneless organic chicken thighs, some supermarkets sell them like this, others you will need to skin and bone them. I prefer the thigh meat as it has a lot more flavour than the breast meat (and is cheaper).
Slice into strips.
Coat in flour.
Coat in beaten egg (free range and organic).
I did two different kinds of strips, one with seasoned flour and one with breadcrumbs.
To season my flour and breadcrumbs I usually use a mix of cajun spices.
Shallow fry for a minute or so, until brown.
Drain and put onto kitchen towel on a plate to drain any excess oil. Keep warm.
I served mine with spicy rice.
Quick and easy.
BBC Food has published what looks like a very tasty recipe from Saturday Kitchen, pan-fried calf’s liver with port and sage.
Probably like most people I am not a great fan of liver, probably down to the liver and bacon dish that I was served at school.
However I would quite like to try this, so I might.
Continuing their daily series of Hugh’s fish recipes, the Guardian today publish a very nice griddled squid recipe.
I do like squid and I have cooked squid in this manner myself and it is delicious. If you have only ever had pre-battered calamari rings then you are doing squid a diservice and you really must try freshly cooked squid.
Another excellent recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in today’s Guardian, beer battered fish.
Generally I like to use beer in my batter, but I found it interesting that Hugh said to use proper beer and avoid lager. I am sure I recall from another chef that lager was best for batter.
Ah well, the next time I make batter I will use a decent proper beer and see how that works.
The Guardian has published another of Hugh’s recipes, sea bass baked in a salt crust.
This is one recipe I won’t follow due to the amount of salt involved though I know a salt crust is more a cooking process then a seasoning process, having done this in the past (with a chicken), the end result is still quite salty.
Nice crab recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in today’s guardian.
In a frying pan cook off some pancetta bacon, remove from the pan. Cook the chicken, I usually use chicken thigh (bonless and skinless) cut into a size which is about the same as the pasta I am using. Cook the chicken over a relatively high heat. Remove the chicken and then add the onions, cook until softened. Now cook the mushrooms.
Whilst this chicken and mushrooms are cooking cook the pasta. I used fusilli (pasta twirls) and cooked until al dente.
Once the mushrooms are cooked, add back the pancetta and chicken, add some creme frache.
Mix the chicken mixture with the cooked pasta and a good handful of freshly grated parmesan and some freshly ground black pepper.
Serve.
In a previous post I mentioned a dish I had cooked, beef in red wine, however I did not post the recipe. This post was quite popular by people searching for a beef in red wine, so as promised here is the recipe.
Take some stewing steak, and in a hot pan, add a little oil (no need for olive oil as the flavour will be cooked out). The aggresively brown the beef. Only brown a little at a time, browning in batches and ensure that the pan is hot so that the beef does brown and doesn’t stew – as you don’t want it to stew at this time.
Once you have browned all the beef, remove the final batch of beef and add some chopped vegetables to the pan. I used carrot and onions. You could also add celery (yuck) or swede or parsnips or other root vegetables.
Once the vegetables have browned add some plain flour (just a spoonful) and stir.
Once it starts to stick add the red wine and some beef stock, this should deglaze the pan.
Place everything into a casserole dish, lid on and cook in the oven (not too hot) for a couple of hours, adding more stock if the dish starts to dry out.
In a frying pan cook some chopped bacon (I used pancetta) and cook off, then remove the bacon and add some button mushrooms and some freshly chopped parsley. Cook for a minute or two, in the main to soak up the bacon flavour.
Add the bacon and mushrooms about thirty minutes before you serve.
Serve with crusty bread, mash or roasted potatoes with some fresh steamed green vegetables.