Category: 2 Recipes

Posted on

Broccoli Cheese

Veg in in a cheese sauce is a classic. I don’t grow cauliflower but I do grow Kale and Broccoli. Both work brilliantly, and prior to Broccoli flowering you can use the leaves.

Cheesy heaven

So you may think it looks anaemic and if you do there’s lots you can do that I don’t. Adding some breadcrumbs to the top before baking, a few minutes under the grill at the end – stuff like that. Improves the look, but not the taste. If you want added crunch I’ve even had them with a sprinkling of croutons! So each to their own.

Prep: 10min Cook: 18min

Ingredients

250g broccoli/kale etc as florets and large bite size

250ml milk

20g parmesan grated

30g cheddar grated

2 slices Leerdammer chopped

1dstspn plain flour

25g butter

salt, pepper

1tsp english mustard (optional)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 225c (fan)
  2. Par-boil the veg then quench in cold water and drain well (broccoli 6-8min, kale 0min)
  3. Make a roux with the butter and flour and slowly add the milk to make a creamy white sauce.
  4. Add half the cheese, mustard, salt (if you must) and pepper.
  5. Place the veg in an ovenproof dish, best to pat dry with kitchen towel. Cover with the sauce and then sprinkle on the remaining cheese.
  6. Cook for 18min in the oven.

Sometimes a large luxurious veg-cheese with crusty bread and butter is the best meal in the world, for this I’d double everything but triple the milk so there is dipping sauce.

Posted on

Venison Wellington

A twist on a classic, and frankly one with oodles of online recipes telling you how. This one is mine.

That’s dinner sorted…

This is a recipe where you need to use fillet – venison fillet is much smaller than beef, so I use 12cm sections for individual wellingtons. This recipe is for 2 individual wellingtons.

Prep: 10-15min Cook: 18min

Ingredients

2 sections of venison fillet

175g puff pastry

4 slices Parma ham

175g mushrooms finely chopped

English mustard

Ground pepper

Egg whisked for an egg wash

Method

  1. Dry fry the mushrooms to remove as much liquid as possible, do not let them brown, you want concentrated flavour, not fried flavour. Add a grind of pepper.
  2. Pre-heat the oven to 225c (fan)
  3. Seal the venison by searing each side for 15sec in a hot pan (with a tiny bit of smoking olive oil). Just enough to seal and colour. Make sure the pan is really hot.
  4. Lay out some cling film, then 2 pieces of Parma ham as a sheet, spread half the mushrooms. Smear the venison with 1/2tsp mustard, places on the bed of mushrooms and wrap in the ham (using the cling film helps).
  5. Roll out half the puff pastry and wrap the venison parcel (minus the cling film…) seal with egg wash, wash the parcel and gently score with a knife.
  6. Cook for 18 min.

If you do this right the venison is rare but not at all bloody and cuts with a fork. No salt is needed – it all comes from the ham, and the other flavours add an earthy note, keeping the venison as the star.

The pastry is thin – on purpose, its to seal and support, you don’t want to cut in and just get pastry – well if you do use more.

Serve with luxury, Dauphinoise potatoes perhaps, maybe mushrooms in a brandy cream sauce – you get the picture.

Posted on

Venison and Pumpkin pie

Venison and pumpkin is a great combination. I use a hard squash (crown prince) so butternut is a good substitute.

waiting for the veg…

Prep: 10min Cook: 40min overall, 20 on the stove, 20 in the oven

Ingredients

200g venison (leg) as cubes

200g pumpkin cubed

1/2 onion chopped

175g puff pastry

50ml red wine

1 dstspn bisto gravy granules

1tsp Worcestershire sauce

salt and pepper

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 225c (fan)
  2. put the onions, pumpkin and venison in a hot pan and soften the onions, seal the venison and slightly colour the pumpkin.
  3. mix the bisto with about 150ml water, add the wine and Worcestershire sauce, stir well and add to the pan.
  4. cook for 15 min on a medium heat, either reducing the gravy or adding a little water to ensure a good thick consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.
  5. Top with rolled puff pastry and is you like you can wash this with a little milk or egg white. Make sure you pierce it a few times.
  6. Place in the oven for 18-20min until the pastry is risen and crispy.

You can see there is not masses of gravy when it’s cooked – that’s to stop the pastry going soggy. It also means the flavours are concentrated.

Pre-frying the pumpkin also intensifies the flavour, but if you use a softer squash it can make them break down more in the mix. I cook the filling on the stove in a cast iron pan so I can just lay the pastry on top and cook it without transfer – less washing up, but up to you.

You can play with the recipe. If you want to bulk it up and make it a one dish dinner you can add cubed potato. I wouldn’t recommend adding neep (swede), but mushrooms also work as an addition.

Posted on

Roast Ham with Medlar, Marmalade and Maple Syrup

What’s left…

I love a roast ham, always unsmoked for me and weirdly now is a great time to buy them – just before Christmas and just after they tend to be really good value.

You can buy them pre-cooked, and on or off the bone. I tend to keep it simple, off the bone and to cook myself. It means that each one can be different. Yesterday I tried a new recipe and boy did it work!

Prep: 24hours Cook: 90min on the stove then 25min in the oven

Ingredients

1 good sized ham joint ~ 1.5kg

12 bletted medlar

1 lrg dspspn marmalade

1 dstspn maple syrup

olive oil

Prep

ham is salted to preserve it, so the first job it to get rid of some…

I swill the joint in cold water and soak for 24 to 36 hours before cooking, changing the water several times. I do this at room temperature. If you put it in the fridge it takes longer.

Method

  1. With the joint in a large pan and submerged in fresh water, break the ripe medlars into two or three pieces and add them to the pot. Bring to the simmer and cook for 90min to 2 hours. A minimum of 20min per 500g plus 30min.
  2. Pre-heat the oven to 200c (Fan)
  3. Remove the joint (keep the water). Cut away most of the fat and score what is left in a pattern – be creative, or not – up to you.
  4. Rescue the medlars from the water and press through a sieve – leave the skins and seeds behind. Take the pulp and mix it with the syrup, marmarlade and a ladle of the stock water.
  5. Add a good glug (about 40ml) of olive oil to the mix and give it a really good shake/blitz. Thw hot stock should melt the marmalade and the shake should create an emulsion (much like a salad dressing).
  6. With the joint in a roasting tin (fat side down) pour over the sauce. Cook in the oven for 25min basting every 5 min

Basting is really important. It thickens the coating with each basting and stops the outside of the joint from drying out. If you cook it hotter for less time you get the colour but not the thick sticky coating that adds a lot of flavour.

Oh and the water you have left from the cooking – use it for you’re veggies. It’s often too salty for soup or stock, but ideal for cooking potatoes so they take a little of the flavours.

The medlars aren’t essential. But I like the taste and cooking them with the ham gets the flavour through the meat. If you like you can replace these with an apple or just add apple sauce to the sauce – I like the contrasts between the marmalade, fruit and syrup.

More traditional recipes use things like cloves – I do that too sometimes, but I find the taste infusion can be quite uneven. Cooking a few cloves in the water works to even it out, but then I’d not use it for potatoes afterwards.

Posted on

Venison and pumpkin curry

A simple and quick curry, I use a courgette base for the sauce, but you can use tomatoes or lentils, both work really well. You can cook the whole thing while the rice is cooking…

Prep: 5min Cook: 12min

Ingredients

200g venison, cubed

200g pumpkin, cubed

1/2 onion chopped

250ml courgette puree (base)

2 chillies (chopped)

2 garlic cloves (crushed)

6 cumin seeds (husks discarded)

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp corriander

1 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 dstspn sour cream

salt & pepper

Method

  1. in a hot frying pan with a little olive oil seal the venison, colouring the outside and reserve in a bowl.
  2. Add the onions and pumpkin to the pan, fry until they just start to colour.
  3. Add all the spices and fry for 20 sec until you can smell they have cooked.
  4. Add the courgette and a pinch of salt, cook for 8min on a medium heat until the pumpkin is cooked.
  5. Turn down low. Add the venison, cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.
  6. Serve on a bed of rice or with naan bread.
Simple and tasty
Posted on

Rosehip Syrup

When the hips start to colour on the bushes, and when there are enough, I make syrup. I’ll make several litres over the course of a few months because every last drop will be used.

Rosehip syrup is an amazing taste, add it to fizz for an instant cocktail, or cakes or cake-fillings. Use it on pancakes and drop scones, add it to herbal tea, use it as a cough syrup, or as a topping on ice-cream or poached fruit. As part of a salad dressing, to soak dried fruit before cooking in a couscous. I use it a lot.

Word of warning – I don’t use enough sugar for this to be a proper syrup – it won’t keep more than a few weeks in the fridge. I freeze it in batches then pour into sterile 250ml Kilner jars. Each jar is used inside a week.

Prep: 20min Cook: 10min Prep: 15min

Ingredients

Rosehips

Sugar

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Water

Time for a refill

This method is what you could call contingent – it depends on the amount of rosehips you’ve got.

  1. Start by washing the rosehips, weigh them, then blitz them in enough water to make a thick soup.
  2. Put them in a big pot and warm them to 60c, add 1/2tsp cinnamon and a pinch of fresh nutmeg per kg rosehips steeping them for 8min.
  3. Drain and reserve the juice, add about 1/2 as much water again and steep the rosehips for another 8min at 60c.
  4. Drain all the juice through muslin, and weight the juice. Divide this number by 7 then multiply by 3 – add that much sugar. I use golden sugar for a little bit of taste.
  5. Gently warm the liquid until the sugar dissolves, then bottle or freeze.

Rosehips are a great source of vitamin C. But heating denatures it (it oxidises and becomes inactive), so lower temperatures help keep some of the vitamin C alive. If you steep at lower temperatures you keep even more, and you can even steep overnight at room temperature (make sure the bowl was sterilised beforehand. But the lower temperature and the lower sugar content means this is not pasteurised and will not act as a preserve (like jam). So be careful to use it quickly.

If you want a proper preserve then up the sugar content – at least 50:50 so equal weight of sugar to liquid. Adding a little citric acid will also help. But that’s way too sweet for me. I’d rather freeze it and use it quickly.

Posted on

Fruit Leathers

In the late Autumn I have a lot of fruit. It comes in waves, through the summer it’s the soft fruits, then the plums, then rosehips, damsons apples, pears, quince. A good orchard I have learned is one that has a long picking season for eating and a short one for brewing.

What I mean by that is that variety is key to a good orchard, or indeed to picking just 2 fruit trees for your garden. But whatever you do you will have a glut some years, and most years when the trees are mature. So what to do?

One of my favourite snacks is fruit leathers – they are small, tasty nibbles that give you energy. They are easy to take out on walks or for a quick burst of energy when you’re working. And they are easy… My two mainstays are plum and apple, but any fruit or mix will do.

Prep: 10min Cook: 12min Dry: 8hours

Ingredients

6 large apples peeled and chopped

1 tblspn sugar

50ml water (depends on the fruit)

Method

  1. Put the fruit and sugar in a pan and stew the fruit, adding a little water if you need to.
  2. Cook the mix down until it starts to stick to the pan – as thick as you dare.
  3. spread the mix onto baking parchment about 5-8mm thick or silicon non stick and dry in a dehydrator or oven at 60c until it is a solid dry sheet. Drier stores longer, moister is nicer straight away.
  4. roll the sheet and cut into sections, store in an airtight container.
Apple leathers in a jar

A few things to think about.

Firstly the sugar, you can use brown or golden, and or heat it in the pan to caramelise it first before adding the fruit. I add a little because I use cooking apples, but if I make this with dessert or eating apples I leave the sugar out entirely.

Second is the fruit. If I’m doing this with plums I leave the skins on but blitz them before cooking (so the bits of skin are tiny). If I don’t have enough of one fruit it will be a mix, apple and pear, apple and plum etc. They work well. If you’re no sure take a small piece of each fruit and eat them at the same time – if you like it then cook it. A taste test will also tell you if you need to add any sugar.

How dry? Well I tend to make my leathers so dry they crack when rolling, that’s so I can store them for months, taking me through (along with dried fruit) until the soft fruit starts.

Oh and our dig likes them too, so on a walk it can give them a boost if I’ve forgotten the snacks. And because they are low sugar they are pretty healthy. Remember fruit has plenty of sugar in it already. The good thing about leathers is you’re keeping the fibre and intensifying the taste.

Posted on

Fresh Pasta

My basic do everything pasta recipe. I use medium eggs – if you use large reduce the water content. If the dough is too sticky add extra strong flour.

There are alternatives on the internet, and you can get Tipo 00 flour easily enough in most places. I can’t without buying in bulk off the internet – hence this recipe was born.

Prep: 5min Rest: 20min Roll: 5min

Ingredients

60g strong bread flour

60g semolina flour

60g plain flour

1 egg

80ml water

Method

1. Put all the flour in a bowl and add the egg, mix gently.

2. Add most of the water and stir until it almost comes together, add the last bit of water if you need it, but always err on the side of crumbly.

3. Tip it onto a board and work (knead) for a few minutes until you have a smooth dough. Add extra strong flour or water if you need to.

4. wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for 20min – this is important because the dough rests and the consistency changes a lot – it becomes much more elastic.

5. you’re ready to roll…

Rolling out the pasta is where the skill comes. A pasta machine is just so easy I totally recommend one. I have an ‘Atlas’ and any decent pasta machine will last you a lifetime. I only make pasta sheets, linguini and tagliatelle pasta with it, but I also use it for dim sum and gyoza wraps, and for making super fine pastry sheets (for samosas) because it just works so well.

The key is to roll the pasta through every stage – don’t skip a setting. And put it through a few times on ‘0’ fold and repeat to get a perfect dough – it feels silky and smooth, almost oiled. For linguini I stop at ‘5’ for tagliatelle and pasta sheets ‘6’ for some pastry wraps ‘7’. If the pasta crinkles as it comes out – then fold it in half and go back one step. If it keeps crinkling you’ve made it too thin.

Just try it, do it once to get the hang of it then it becomes easy. Rather than making chefy loop like they do on ‘masterchef’ etc I just cut the raw pasta into 4 and roll these as strips.

To cook – it takes about 3min in boiling water – keep testing after 90 seconds and drain immediately it’s ready. it will carry on cooking on the way to the sink and I always add a tiny bit of oil to the drained pasta before serving or mixing with a sauce.

Posted on

Winter Lasagne

I’ve got two lasagne recipes, one for winter and one for summer. They differ in the richness of the sauce and the use of seasonal veg. This is the winter one, and has a couple of variations. The cooking times are based on using fresh pasta sheets. If you use dry you’ll need to soak/pre-cook I guess.

Prep: 10min Cook: 10min Making the layers: 3min Cooking: 18min

Lasagne just out of the oven

Ingredients white sauce

25g butter

1 heaped dstspn plain flour

500ml milk

50g grated cheddar

1 chopped mozzarella

20g grated parmesan

2 sheets Leerdammer chopped

Ingredients for layers

200g venison mince (can use beef)

200g cubed squash (crown prince/butternut)

1 chopped onion

500ml passata

1 basil cube

2 crushed garlic cloves

50ml red wine

Method sauce

  1. melt the butter into a small pan, mix in the flour and cook gently.
  2. slowly add in the milk stirring the ensure a smooth white sauce. Add the cheddar, Leerdammer and 1/2 the parmesan.
  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Method filling

  1. Fry the onion, mince and squash in olive oil. When the mince is browned add the garlic and basil.
  2. After a few second to fry off the garlic add the passata and red wine and cook until you have a thick bolognaise type sauce. Season with salt and pepper.

Method – layering up and cooking

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 225c (fan)
  2. put a thin layer of the bolognaise in the bottom of a lasagne dish,
  3. cover with fresh sheet pasta.
  4. repeat this (so two layers of bolognaise) then do one layer with about 1/2 the white sauce.
  5. Follow this up with 1 more layer of the bolognaise before topping out with the rest of the white sauce.
  6. Sprinkle of the parmesan and mozzarella.
  7. Cook for 18 min until golden.
Just going in the oven

This is a winter dish – the cheeses and the red wine add lots of richness. I use about 300g fresh pasta rolled into sheets to give me the right amount for this dish (see the pasta recipe), and remember that weight includes the water…

I always like to add one layer of the white sauce into the middle – to me it adds something to the overall unctuousness. If you want to (and it’s great), for the layer of white sauce, mix this with 150ml of courgette base/soup. You heat the courgette, make sure it’s seasoned then mix with some white sauce. This bulks the dish up and makes it even richer.

To tone down the richness you can omit the red wine, and mozzarella.

Posted on

On the day crusty bread

400g as two ‘ciabatta’ style crusty loaves

When I cook a roast bird perhaps my favourite accompaniment is bread and butter. When it’s crusty and fresh from the oven I love it. Same goes for BBQ and warm salads.

The thing is my favourite bread for that is ciabatta – but because I have to prep a sour dough I have to know the day before I want the bread. When that’s not possible, and I’m not that organised here is what I do…

Prep: 2min Rise time: 4 hours Cook: 16min

Ingredients

70g semolina flour

330g strong white flour

tsp salt

15ml olive oil

tsp sugar

280ml water

1/2 a 7g pack of yeast

Method

  1. Place all the ingredients together and use programme 16 on the bread-maker. This programme makes a dough and completes 1 rise. You can do this manually, leaving the dough to rise for about 90min.
  2. turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled baking sheet, tear in half and pull out the two halves into sausages.
  3. Sprinkle with salt and leave to rise for about 40min in a proving drawer.
  4. Heat the oven to 225c (fan) and cook for 16min, serve immediately.