Month: November 2021

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Tandoori Chicken / Pheasant / Partridge

This is my take on tandoori, like I say in my ‘about’ page – this is about the ingredients I have to hand, so not trying to be authentic – just after something that tastes good to me.

I love this, prepare the marinade after breakfast, leave the bird in it all day and cook in the evening.

Prep: 5 min Marinade: 2+ hours Prep: 5 min Cooking: 24 min

Ingredients

  • 2 Chicken or two Pheasant breasts cut into 6 pieces each. Or 4 partridge breasts cut in 3 pieces each (skinless)
  • 1 green pepper cut into large squares
  • 1 onion cut into large squares
  • 2 tomatoes halved

For the marinade

  • 1/2 tub sour cream (about 125ml)
  • 1 tsp coriander
  • 1 cayenne chilli finely chopped or 1 tsp chilli powder
  • 1.5 tsp cumin
  • 1 dstspn garam masala
  • 2 garlic cloves crushed or chopped
  • 1.5 tsp paprika
  • 1 piece stem ginger chopped or crushed
  • juice of 1/2 a lime
  • salt and pepper

Method

  1. Mix all the marinade ingredients in a bowl then add the pieces of meat and stir to give them a good coating. Cover and put in the fridge for as long as you like (6 hours is good). When your ready start on step 2.
  2. Preheat the oven to 225oc (fan).
  3. Make up skewers of onion, pepper and the marinaded meat. place these over a baking tray and pour on any remaining marinade. Drizzle with a little vegetable oil.
  4. Add 50ml water and the tomato halves directly to the baking tray – this is to steam the meat as it cooks and with the marinade drips makes the sauce.
  5. Place in the oven to cook for 24min, baste every 6 minutes and turn at least once during the cooking time.
  6. Take out of the oven and empty the skewers onto the plate, put the baking tray on the hob on a high heat (8/10 on my induction) and stir briefly to mix the remaining water, sauce and roasted tomato halves. Remove the skins and drizzle on top of the tandoori.

Things to think about…

I use Vietnamese coriander paste because I grow it, and I use stem ginger, lime and sour cream rather than root, lemon and yogurt because I keep these in my fridge all the time. But use what you’ve got.

I normally serve it with a little rice (often flavoured with a cardamon pod in the water), a potato or pumpkin curry and poppadum’s or naan, along with dips – basically I love to have a taps style curry rather than a one dish meal.

Oh and skewers – get ones that are wide and flat so you can turn them and they stay – the bog-standard ones are two narrow and annoy me.

This recipe also works on the BBQ and with smoked paprika if you fancy mixing it up, although that’s best reserved for pheasant as it goes better with the taste of the bird.

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Roses

To my mind there are three types of rose in cooking: for the colour; the aroma and of course; the taste.

Depending on which of these I’m majoring on in a recipe I’ll use a different rose, or rose substitute.

So lets start with taste.

The best way to do this is to taste you own rose petals. Take a few from each rose you have (wild or cultivated), wash them and do a side by side taste test. Whats important is the taste and flavour of the petal – because a lot of the scent is from the centre of the flower, and when the petals are separate and stored the flavour is different to when you can smell the bloom.

Tasty!

A rule of thumb I read, and agree with after tasting, is that pink roses tend to taste the best. Darker roses from my garden tend to be a little more bitter, and the whites less flavoursome. Maybe its the pigments – but I don’t really know…

So pink roses – I harvest them at their peak or perhaps one day after and take the perfect petals as I dead-head. For these petals I blitz with a tiny bit of veg oil (one with no taste of its own like sunflower oil) then freeze as cubes. I’ll use the petals direct into couscous and as part of my rose harissa. Basically anything with spices and not desserts.

Next for aroma

This is where I cheat. For aroma I use Pelargonium ‘attar of roses’. It’s a geranium, tender, but thrives and survives in my unheated greenhouse. Takes cuttings well and also acts as a good companion plant (attracts pollinators and deters pests).

For Pelargoniums use the leaves – not the flowers. The flavour and aroma of rose is intense – it’s the taste of Turkish delight. And bluntly not the taste of Roses but the taste of the smell of Roses.

I use this in tea – makes a beautiful rose tea or addition to an infusion. In cakes and desserts this is king. You can crystallise the leaves to keep the best flavour for months, and I use a mix of pink Rose and Pelargoniums to make rose water.

Finally for colour

This is where you can play. My favourite for adding colour is ‘Hot Chocolate’ a beautiful rose, dark red – like claret mixed with dark, dark chocolate. I use the petals roughly chopped to mix though basmati rise (often alongside calendula petals and nasturtium), or in bread dough (Moroccan and focaccia). Sometimes a sprinkle though a muffin or finely chopped through a sponge (especially if I’ve flavoured it with Pelargonium).

So there you have it – Roses – I use them for cooking more than I cut them for the table, but mostly I just admire them in the garden.

A rose in November

So when you pick Roses for the garden think about all of their uses. Repeat flowing is awesome, I prefer singles or semi doubles, because I want bee-friendly, size colour, habit, and massively important is disease resistance.

Luckily there are many, many types to choose from, and one for every space, soil and situation. Underplanted with geranium or viola they are a source of delight for me all year round and, even with some frosts, I often have blooms right up until mid December.

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Scrambled Eggs

simple and tasty

Scrambled eggs are a simple hearty breakfast – the recipes isn’t difficult but it’s worth writing down…

Cooking: 3 min

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp butter
  • 1 tsp Philadelphia soft cheese (optional)
  • 3 chives chopped

Method

The key to great scrambled eggs is to cook them slowly. So

  1. Beat the eggs, add a pinch of salt and a grind of fresh black pepper
  2. heat a good non-stick frying pan with the butter in it, slowly melting the butter (5/10 on my induction hob)
  3. When the butter is melted add the soft cheese and let it soften, swirl it though the butter then add the eggs.
  4. Leave it alone for a minute then stir, then leave it alone for 30 sec and stir. You’re waiting until the egg starts to cook. Keep gently stirring every 15 seconds or so until the egg is cooking quickly, then break it up with the spatula and just before it’s cooked enough – turn it off.
  5. You can then use the residual heat to get the perfect consistency, serve and sprinkle with fresh chives.

Be gentle – that’s the key, don’t over stir, and let the butter keep a glossy edge to the eggs – they should taste like velvet, but not like mush.

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Making Stock Blocks

A block of chilli and one of tomatillo paste straight from the freezer

I’ve got a small chest freezer for storage. I use it because growing your own leads to gluts, particularly in the summer, and in the when you buy a whole deer in the Autumn to butcher you need to make sure you’ve somewhere to put it!

So, for lots of things I make up 500ml blocks. It’s so I have a know portion size and (more importantly), they stack well in the freezer. I could buy lots of Tupperware, but I’d rather reuse, or upcycle stuff I already have in abundance.

I use margarine tubs and I use them for lots of stuff. It’s November and right now I have

  • Venison chilli
  • Tomato (passata)
  • Tomatillo paste
  • Courgette soup
  • Rosehip syrup
  • Home made Haggis

Some things I freeze as smaller portions, like the tomatillos for dips, and some things I freeze in ice cube trays (basil paste, Vietnamese coriander, rose petals, french tarragon). And I cycle through whats there as the seasons change. Oh and don’t use your regular ice cube trays – buy some specially if you want to use them for herbs and get ones that are flexible because they don’t pop out quite as easily as ice cubes…

Rule of thumb – clear out the veg (and herbs) from last year before you add this years.

So how to do it:

  1. Save up some large margarine tubs and keep the lids. Open out a plastic freezer bag and place it in the tub (remember to label it first),
  2. Pour in the stock/sauce/whatever until it’s almost full, fold over the bag to cover the top then pop the lid on. Leave until it’s cool before stacking in the freezer.
  3. Leave it for at least a day to freeze then pop it out of the tub, still in the bag and tie the bag – hey presto a 500ml cube…

Remember not to tie the bag before you freeze it as the liquid will expand – and for the same reason always leave a little room in the tub for expansion – if you over fill the tub will crack.

And to defrost – top tip – pop the block (in its bag) back into a tub and leave it overnight in the fridge. Keeps it nice and clean and contained.

Basic tip, but for getting the most out of a freezer and stopping stuff freezing together in a big icy food icicle it’s the business.

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Venison and Mushroom pie

A simple, tasty, comfort food for a cold evening.

Prep: 10 min Cooking: 30 min

Ingredients

200g venison, either blade steak or leg, cubed

1 onion, chopped

175g mushrooms, ideally chestnut, cubed

175g puff pastry

2 dessert spoons plain flour

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

For the gravy

250ml venison stock

50ml red wine

1 dstspn gravy browning

1 dstspn Worcester sauce

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 225 degrees (fan)
  2. Place the onions and mushroom in a frying pan, add a little olive oil and start gently frying – soften and cooking, but not browning.
  3. Mix the flour and cayenne together and season with salt and pepper. Use this to coat the Venison.
  4. When the onions are translucent and the mushrooms just cooked through and squidgy add the Venison, spreading it evenly across the pan – do not stir.
  5. Wait one minute then turn the venison (stir in other words) and leave for another minute. This seals and browns the venison, also cooks the flour to help thicken the gravy.
  6. Mix all the gravy ingredients in a jug and add to the pan. stir to form a smooth gravy and lift any flour from the base of the pan. If you want to be ‘chefy’ about it add the wine to the pan first to lift the flour, then everything else… Cook this on a low heat until the gravy is thick and unctuous.
  7. Put the mix in a pie dish (I use a 25cm square dish) and gently move the dish back and forth to even out the mixture.
  8. Roll out the puff pastry and lay it on top making sure it is just slightly larger than the dish, cut a few sprue holes in the top and put it in the oven for 18min. If you like you can glaze the pastry with egg yolk but I generally don’t bother. Similarly, you can crimp the pie edges but I don’t tend to do that either. If the gravy is the right texture then the pastry rests on the mix and cooks just fine.

I normally serve this with mash, but if you want a one dish dinner you can bulk up the pie with pumpkin or carrot – just cut this into fine cubes and add it when you add the mushrooms – just up the gravy mix by adding extra (about 75ml stock per 150g veg).

On the ingredients side – you can substitute beef for the venison, a beef stock cube for the venison stock (but add less salt tot season) and you can make or buy the pastry.

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Tomatillo

Tomatillos

Tomatillos or ‘Mexican husk tomato’ originate, unsurprisingly, from Mexico. They are a member of the Physalis family. It grows very easily in my greenhouse as a bush up to about 1.5m high and needs supporting to stop it becoming too unruly.

The fruit appear as ‘lanterns’ wrapped in a papery leaf and swell until they fill and ultimately split the pod. When de-husked they look like green or greeny-yellow cherry tomatoes and are slightly tacky to touch. They keep for a couple of weeks off the plant on the sideboard, and just need a wash before using.

When you look online to find out what to do with them salsa verde is probably every one of your top ten recipe hits! but this little fruit is amazingly versatile. It has a slight lime tang and is brilliant raw or cooked. I use it in salsa (of course), but also in things like Thai green curry and spicy lime dips. It cooks like tomatoes and adds a great glossy/stickiness to sauces, raw it has a similar texture to tomato and can be (as tomatoes can) sweet or firm or squishy or tart… I love it.

When I first grew it I wasn’t convinced, but now I’m a convert. Never seen it in the shops so I grow 4-6 plants a year, use the fruit fresh while I can (July to November) and freeze the rest as pre-cooked blocks in 150 ml and 500 ml cubes (smaller for dips and larger for bigger curries etc. ) .

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Lime and Tomatillo Dip

My substitute for Lime pickle – great with poppadoms…

I love spicy food, and while I can buy lime pickle around here it lacks the depth of flavour and the hot tang I crave – so I made this up one day and have never looked back!

Prep: 3 min Cooking: 10min Resting/marinading: 20+ minutes

Ingredients

150 g tomatillos, washed and cut into small pieces

1 cayenne chilli chopped

Juice of 1/2 a lime

zest of 1/4 lime cut into tiny batons

pinch of salt and pepper

Tomatillos, lime and chilli

Method

Place all the ingredients (except the pepper) in a pan, add about 100ml of water and cook until you get a sticky paste. Grind the pepper on top and voila:

Tomatillo lime dip

I keep my chilli chunky, and I still want a bit of texture in the tomatillos – not too much, but similar to a mango chutney.

You can add extra chilli if you like or extra zest for a punchier flavour – but for me it’s just right.

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Venison Stock

Basic stock for everyday cooking.

Cooking: 1.5 to 2 hours

Ingredients

750g Venison bones

1 litre water

1/2 teaspoon boullion

If the bones are shin or thigh make sure they are cut so the flavour from the marrow can get into the stock. Make sure the bones are small enough to go into a small pan so they are submerged with the water.

Method

Place the ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil, put the lid on and reduce the heat to a very low setting where the water is just bubbling and the lid stays unruffled by the steam. On my induction hob that’s 2/10.

Cook the stock for at least 90min, ideally 2 hours then put to one side to cool or use it straight away. Remember to pick at the bones to get any meat off, and to strain the stock to remove any bone fragments.

If you store the stock in the fridge use within 2-3 days.

The quantities are a guide to the proportions I find useful – If you want just multiply it all up and freeze it in 500ml blocks (see below). But if you stick to smaller batches you can play with flavours – roasting the bones first in the oven (200 c in a fan oven with a smear of olive oil adds a deeper flavour – good for gravy but not for broth. Up to you…

Not much to look at!

Why make your own stock?

You can buy stock, and stock cubes, but if like me you buy venison by the ‘beast’ then you want to make the best out of every bit…

Typically I’ll freeze maybe 5 or 6 packs of bones and use half the stock fresh, and freeze the other half. I could make a huge batch but I like to take the time and faff, playing with flavours because it’s how I like to relax.

Making Stock Blocks

Save up some large margarine tubs and keep the lids. Open out a plastic freezer bag and place it in the tub (remember to label it first),

Pour in the stock until it’s almost full, fold over the bag to cover the top then pop the lid on. Leave until it’s cool before stacking in the freezer.

Leave it for at least a day to freeze then pop it out of the tub, still in the bag and tie the bag – hey presto a 500ml stock cube…

Remember not to tie the bag before you freeze it as the liquid will expand – and for the same reason always leave a little room in the tub for expansion – if you over fill the tub will crack.

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Pumpkins and Squash

Over the last few years We’ve consistently grown two types of pumpkin. We’ve tried several and will keep on trying the odd new variety but these two are staple favourites.

Red Kuri

A fertile climbing squash I grow in the poly-tunnel. A good plant will produce four or so round orange/red squash about 20cm diameter. I pick them when the stalks go woody and the season lasts from late July to early October. After a week on a window sill to firm up the skin they store for months on a dry cool shelf in the kitchen. Typically at least 4 months.

three Red Kuri sitting on a shelf

As you can see, and perhaps because they are from my own seeds, they vary in size, shape, colour and texture – but they all still taste great!

Crown Prince

Crown Prince

A sterile (so I buy seeds every year) outdoor pumpkin. Spreading vines about 4m long and each plant normally produces one large pumpkin 30-35cm diameter.  This might not seem like a big difference from Red Kuri – but each fruit has about six times as much usable flesh. They crop later – typically I pick them just before the first ground frost, and they store for a good six months.

Why two varieties?

A few reasons, firstly it extends the season, secondly crown price stores so well I can be eating it into the following spring, thirdly it gives me ‘pumpkin security’ – sometimes one variety doesn’t do so well so I rely more on the other.

There are culinary reasons too. The two squash are different in flavour and more importantly (to me) texture. Crown prince is harder, keeps it’s texture better when cooked, Red Kuri is softer and pulp and softens much more readily. So just like potatoes I have a preference for different squash in different dishes. Red Kuri is awesome with leaves in a curry, as a soup or sauce, as a mash. Crown Prince reins supreme as chips, roasties and as a veg in a stew or slow cooked pie.

Think of it as the difference between sweet potato and butternut squash and you get the picture. Both of these are substitutes for squash in my recipes as are carrots in a few. So that too will give you an idea of how/when to use them if you grow them.

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Rosehips

Hips are the fruiting bodies of roses. But because of selective breeding for blooms in many varieties are sterile, or unable to be pollinated because of the abundance of petals, and hence produce no hips.

Of those that do produce hips – well not all hips are created equal… I currently use two types for cooking: Rosa Rugosa (alba); and Rosa Canina. To give them the English translation the Wrinkled Rose (White) originating from China and Japan and the Dog Rose which are native to Europe and the West/North-West of Africa.

Rosa Rugosa

Rosa Rugosa produces larger hips (about 2.5cm diameter), as slightly flattened spheres. They ripen earlier than Dog Rose and the season lasts much longer (August to November here). So I can get multiple pickings. I always leave about 20-30% for the birds in the early season as there is still a lot of other food sources, but into November I cut back to50%.

The good thing about Rosa Rugosa is the hips tend to be on the outside of the plant and easy to pick and when they are ripe the thorns drop off the stem of the hip – almost inviting you to pick them.

Dog Rose
Rosa Canina

Dog rose, by contrast has skinnier hips maybe 2.5cm by 1 cm thick, on last years wood and therefore often protected from picking by this years growth. They are available later (October, November) and are trickier to pick without thick clothes and occasional swearing. Because of this and the time of year I rarely pick the full 50%. However, the hips keep better off the plant and you can have a few rounds at picking over a week without fear of losing the earlier harvest before you process the batch.

Both are prolific, and while I love the ease and bulk of the Rugosa rose hips the flavour is (to me) less intense and slightly thinner.