52 Cookbooks 43: A simple stew of onions, beer & beef

Now the weather's chillier I was looking for a one-pot slow-cooked dinner and I thought Nigel Slater might have just the thing. And he did. There wasn't frost on the ground on the day I cooked this, but we were heading off for fireworks so it was great to have this cooking away in the oven for our return. 

The book I've used this week is Nigel Slater's Tender Volume 1 - it's another book I don't use enough and it's chapters are split by vegetable. As well as an intro for each subject title - this one was in onions - there's advice on how to grow onions and which varieties to grow and how an onion behaves and mixes in the kitchen too, as well as the recipes. 

52 Cookbooks, where I cook a recipe each week from one of my (ahem) many cookbooks

This recipe has few ingredients and like many of the things I'm cooking in this series I already had most of them. The recipe called for stewing beef, well I had skirt so as that was a slow cooking cut of meat I used that. There's also butter, onions, thyme, plain flour, bay leaves, red currant jelly and the only ingredient I needed to buy - beer (shocking I know!) The recipe said Trappist beer, but this was the closest I could find (and it may not be that close):

I started by melting the butter and browned the seasoned meat. I did this in batches removing it from the pan and replacing it with the thinly sliced onions and thyme leaves and cooked these until they were soft and pale, before adding in some flour and cooking a little more.  

Then it was time to add the beer and bay leaves. The recipe said to wait until the sizzling had subsided - and boy did it sizzle - before returning the beef and it's juices to the pan. Then bring the pan to the boil, pop on the lid and transfer to the oven. The recipe says for at least one and a half hours - mine needed longer.  I'm not sure if that was solely due to the cut of meat I was using or because I used a lower oven temperature for the Le Cruesuet casserole dish.  

Then just before serving stir in a tablespoon of redcurrant jelly and check the seasoning. Nigel suggests serving this with an apple sauce - yes with beef - however I decided against that, as we were out most of the time it was cooking. I did serve mashed potato and kale.

I did forget to photograph the casserole dish before we ate dinner, but there was plenty left for dinner another day (it's in the freezer ready and waiting). 

The verdict

- this was an easy but tasty one-pot; because I used blond bier I also added a beef oxo cube to help deepen the colour which worked well

- the sauce was relatively sweet, most likely down to the amount of onions - but still good

- I'd cook this again because it's so simple and as with any slow-cook cut of meat the longer you cook it the better

- I'm considering adding mushrooms and carrots to the leftovers along with a puff pastry top to form a nice warming pie...

52 Cookbooks #42: Chicken liver pâté

This week I've chosen a Gordon Ramsay recipe for chicken liver pâté and it sounds more complicated than it really is. The recipe is from Gordon Ramsay's Great British Pub Food. It's clearly fairly old as Mark Sargeant's name is also on the cover, so I presume they were still talking at the time!  It does contain a lot of pub classics and I've used this book for a couple of recipes including a pie, but it doesn't get that many outings. 

Gordon says they call this "poor man's pâté" but while the ingredients are inexpensive it creates an elegant starter and covered with clarified butter will keep in the fridge for up to a week. He suggests serving it with a red onion marmalade, oh well perhaps I'll make some of that another week!

The ingredients for this recipe are chicken livers (obviously), milk, shallots and butter plus a splash of brandy. It isn't a speedy recipe as the chicken livers need to soak in the milk for 6-8 hours - I presume this tenderises them.  Mine were actually soaking for longer than this as I ran out of time to make them and made them the next day instead. 

It's not a recipe for the squeamish either as the next step is to drain the chicken livers then rinse and dry them with kitchen paper. Once you can take no more of this, melt some of the butter in a frying pan and sauté the finely diced shallots until they're soft, but not coloured. Next it's in with the chicken livers and fry these until they are evenly browned but still pink inside - some guesswork's involved there! Then it's the fun bit - adding the brandy and flambé-ing! As I've an induction hob for me I flambéd with the help of a match and the extractor fan on full!

Once the flames had died down I added some more butter and let it  melt before putting everything into a blender and pressed go until I thought it would be smooth enough, and then blended it some more, just to be sure. Gordon says if you want it really smooth then you can pass it through a fine sieve. While I did this with my blackberry jam to get rid of the pips - see 52 Cookbooks #38: Spiced blackberry jam - I didn't think it necessary for this pâté and quickly filed that part of the recipe as "a faff too far!"

I spooned my blitzed pâté into four ramekins/lunch box servings and set about clarifying some butter. I'd not done this before but knew it was about removing the milky whey bits. The recipe says to slowly melt the butter in a saucepan, well I thought I'd try the microwave. I hadn't worked out how to separate the butter though and ended up spooning the golden liquid onto the top of the pâté. It didn't turn out too bad though. 

After an hour or so in the fridge they looked like proper chicken liver pâtés!

The verdict 

- this was a relatively easy, but long-winded recipe at the start. 

- it tasted fab and looked very impressive (to me) 

- I probably needed a bit more clarified butter to completely cover and seal the dishes.  

- as for keeping up to a week - no chance! 

Lunch is served!

52 Cookbooks #41: Sopa de Castañas

The recipe I've chosen this week is a Chestnut and Chorizo soup and it's a Moro recipe by Sam Clark and Sam Clark. The book is a charity compilation of soups put together by Thomasina Myers (of MasterChef fame) and Annabel Buckingham called Soup Kitchen. The recipe that tempted me to buy this book was the EAT Hungarian Goulash, which I often ate for lunch from the EAT eateries - well as often as I spotted it on their menus anyway. And yes, I've made that soup and it was good. 

This is an unusual soup for me to choose, mainly because the soups I normally make don't tend to include meat... but I was happy to make an exception for some smoky chorizo! And as luck would have it I already had some chestnuts - two packets just lurking in the cupboard waiting for some Brussels sprouts to wander along. 

So it starts with a chopped Spanish onion, a diced carrot, celery and chorizo frying in olive oil until they're lovely and brown and caramelised. Then add a couple of cloves of sliced garlic, some ground cumin and some thyme along with two crushed dried chillies for some heat. 

Next in went two tomatoes - I used tinned plum tomatoes - and after a couple of minutes in went the two packs of vac-packed chestnuts. The recipe said 500g, but I only had 400g so I went with that, before adding a litre of water.

Then I let the soup simmer until everything was soft before mashing it with a potato masher.   I was curious about this as the recipe said to mash "until almost smooth but still with a little bit of texture" - how on earth would the chorizo mash?!  The answer is it didn't really, but the chestnuts and the vegetables did (mostly). The result was a substantial and textured soup for lunch, with extras for lunch during the week for both MOH and I. 

The verdict:

- this was a tasty, chunky and filling soup with a hint of spice, which was easy to make taking about 45 minutes from start to finish

- I would never have thought to use chestnuts in a soup, but they worked well

- MOH could taste the cumin (which I was quite impressed by) and has said he'll take it to work for lunch, which is high praise :) 

- for an extra flourish I served it with some yogurt on the top, and I'm already looking forward to my next bowl of this.