Tempest63

I’ve cooked lots of Caribbean food over the years, most frequently curried goat, but also Brown Chicken Stew, Curry Chicken and pepper pot. But up until yesterday I had never cooked Caribbean oxtail. So after a trip to our local market where I bought 2kg of oxtails I tried it. After cooking I spent sometime taking the meat off the bones then left it in the fridge overnight for the fat to rise and harden. I removed this before reheating. Served it with leek and garlic mash, steamed veg and a cold pint of Guinness. One word of warning, the guys from the Caribbean who recommended this told me to pick the larger pieces of oxtail and get the butcher to put it through the bandsaw to chop it into smaller pieces. My butcher didn’t have a bandsaw so went at it “hammer & tongs” with a meat cleaver which resulted in quite a few little pieces of bone in the sauce. The flavour though was really quite outstanding. https://www.africanbites.com/jamaican-oxtail-stew-2/

Celebrating the wife’s birthday today, we did nothing special other than walk the dogs and clean and tidy ready for Christmas. We have twelve coming on the day plus us two means I’m cooking for fourteen. But for tonight we had roasted partridge, which we shot a week ago, steamed vegetables and a port and redcurrant sauce. Happy birthday Mrs T63.

Last night I put together a broad bean (fava beans) and leak purée sitting on a bed of spinach and topped with pan fried salmon. Served with steamed new potatoes. Lemon, caper dressing to finish.

It is really parsley sauce but given the Irish association with boiled bacon, where it is traditionally served, it is often, jokingly, referred to as Shamrock Sauce.

I’m currently on a gammon, ham, bacon trip and have either bought, or been gifted, a few gammon joints. I roasted one tonight, without first boiling, after buying it for a third off. My argument is I am practicing for the Christmas joint. So tonight was roasted gammon with steamed potatoes, steamed spinach and peas. Shamrock sauce to serve.

Chow Chow obviously has a different meaning where you are to here in the U.K. A very handsome looking Chow Chow.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/fish-finger-bhorta Last weekend I thought I would try something a little unusual for me after first hearing about the dish on a podcast, it was Nigella Lawson‘s fish finger bhorta. I cut down on the English mustard and the salt by half and I feel nothing was lacking as a result. I only had Scotch Bonnet chilies so added one instead of the required two. I put this in front of the wife who enjoyed, and appreciated a change from the normal dishes I put together. I thought I might try it again tonight, but this time with left over rotisserie chicken. Did this tonight and result was as good as it was with the fish fingers, if not better. There are many variants on the web for this dish which originated in Bangladesh, so room to explore and play with the recipe. It gives me another alternative to chicken risotto when looking to use up any leftover roast or rotisserie chicken.

That is quite a three pipe problem and will take some consideration. The first two books would be the Madhur Jaffrey one from her 1970’s BBC programme, the second would likely be Camellia Panjabi’s 50 curries. That is based on the fact that they are the ones I revisit most. The MJ recipes are simple, but a bit more experience is needed with Camellias books as a number of the recipes are incomplete and don’t use all the ingredients listed. In the 40 years or so that I have been cooking Indian food, books have come into favour then fallen out again. The Urban Rajah is one of my current favourites, the recipes are home style dishes, similar to a book I used a lot in the past titled Cooking with my Indian Mother In Law. Julie Sahni’s book on Indian food was first published in the 80’s I believe. and was heavily referenced back in the day and remains a classic. Nowadays anything by Vivek Singh or Anjum Anand whose recipes are easily accessible score high. As for familiarity, I have been cooking traditional, home style Indian food for over 40 years.I know my Achari from my Biriani, and whilst we host a lot of Indian dinner parties (to use an out of favour phrase), we never get an invite to our friends for similar food. People tell us they couldn’t match what is prepared at our house. I’ve picked up a few tips over the years, the most important being to “Cook with your nose”. Smell the garlic, smell the ginger and the masala as they cook, and don’t move on to the next phase until the raw smell has been cooked out. Always have a small jug of water to hand to cool down the pan and stop anything from burning, especially the spices. Take your time browning onions, 20 to 30 minutes. Halve the salt content given in a recipe book and adjust at the end. It’s easy to add salt but difficult to take it away. Saying that India has many many regions and many types of influences. Historically I have focused on North Indian food, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Parsi food, so I am pretty blinkered to the food of the whole sub-continent. I hope that goes someway to answering your question.

That was one of the articles that prompted me to buy the book. Pity I couldn’t get one with the original cover illustration.

As a big fan of Elizabeth David I was reading an article that mentioned Patience Gray and the similarities in some of their respective recipes. I really knew nothing of Patience Gray but found her cookbook “Plats Du Jour” on a secondhand booksellers web site and bought it for £10. Delved into the first few pages this evening and I’m sure it is a book I can make use of.

Work has been manic and stressful just recently and though I have photographed some of the meals I have made, most have been home cooked meals out of the freezer. I thought I had a sleeve of chorizo in the freezer so I got it out to make beef and chorizo meatballs, only when I looked at it this afternoon it was a sleeve of salami (Milano to be precise). Well, waste not want not; I followed the recipe taking out all the chefy faff and made the meatballs. I used the tomato sauce from nigellas meatballs with black pudding and it was good. Possibly a little less salt next time as the salami added more than I thought it would. No fresh parsley, so substituted with fresh coriander (Cilantro to those across the pond). The recipe produced 45 meatballs I didn’t bake them as per the recipe, just dropped them in the sauce for 25 minutes. I served them to my wife with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. I tasted one meatball and they were very good. My Crohn’s is making it a little difficult to eat at present so small and often, no big meals, nothing heavy.

I had a sleeve of Morcilla left over from Tapas night and found a Nigella beef and black pudding meatball recipe. I made it tonight and it was very good(as are most of Nigellas recipes). She suggests serving it with crusty bread or colcannon, for speed we settled for Penne. https://www.nigella.com/recipes/black-pudding-meatballs

If I am having guests round for a food fest, I invariably book a couple of days annual leave leading up to it. So much can be pre-prepared and ready to finish on the night.

I used this recipe as the base. I’m sure I would have added a few of my own twists to it, I usually do. https://www.venturists.net/braised-pork-cheeks-carrilladas/ I use cheeks for a pork Vindaloo as well if you like an Indian. https://meerasodha.com/recipes/pig-cheek-vindaloo/ Another Indian dish where I use cheeks instead of belly pork is Vivek Singhs Coorgi Pork Stir fry. Worth the couple of days marinating before cooking and and allowing it to mature in the fridge before finishing the dish. https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/coorg-pandhi-pork-stir-fry/

Wishing you a speedy recovery and hearty appetite.