Tempest63

The big day is here. I’ve been up since six a.m., walking dogs and prepping food. Stuffed mushrooms in the fridge and made up some other hot tapas ready for cooking later. From left, cheese croquettes, morcilla scotch eggs and smoked cod and potatoe eggs. We have a friend who doesn’t eat meat but does eat fish, so the quail eggs with the cod and potato case in golden breadcrumbs accomodate her preferences. Also, no ham in the croquettes for the same reason.

Long day in the kitchen today prepping for our friends coming round tomorrow. I fired up the Weber traveller, a small gas bbq, to cook a couple of sirloins, but just as I was about to put them on the temperature had dropped right away. Looks like the gas canister was empty. I resorted to the cast iron skillet to cook the steaks and served them with steamed green beans and broccoli and “extreme” garlic potatoes. The potatoes I found as a tapas dish and thought I would try it as a side dish before subjecting others to it. It worked and I would do it again. https://spainonafork.com/extreme-garlic-garlic-potatoes-recipe/

But of a theme going on here. I initially posted this recipe using meatballs made from sausages with the skins removed. I tried it again tonight with fresh lamb meatballs from Waitrose, a UK supermarket. I baked the meatballs on Sunday and reheated them in the sauce tonight with macaroni and beans. Mrs T63 preferred the sausage meatballs as she said they had more flavour, but agreed that if I had made the meatballs they would likely be much tastier. But overall it is a good recipe to use as a base for experimenting with different ingredients.

Spanish cheese (two types) and ham. Very good.

Last dry run before our tapas and paella evening. As one of our guests doesn’t eat meat we are going to serve up half of our quail eggs in morcilla, the other half are going in Richard Corrigans Smoked Cod Scotch Eggs, with smoked cod mixed in with mashed potatoes. RC says to cook the eggs in 170C oil for 2 minutes. I cooked them on for a little longer as they were very pale (top three eggs).The oil went up to 190C and the 2 minutes was just about enough (bottom 3 eggs) My observations, the mash was very soft and was difficult to cut in half, even with a freshly sharpened knife. The 190C eggs were firmer on the outside but softer on the inside. Next time I will not make the mash so soft, and may consider mixing in an egg to bind them a little better. Both batches tasted good and were cooked through. 190C egg on the bottom of the photo below. We had our first wedding anniversary at Richard Corrigans Lindsay House Restaurant, Soho, London, back in 2008. The restaurant was in a two storey Regency Terrace Town House, sadly now closed. The meal was extraordinarily good, one of our best fine dining experiences without a shadow of a doubt. Edit: https://www.dine-online.co.uk/lindsay.htm

A trip to Dishoom is seriously overdue. The Shoreditch restaurant is close to work and very handy for Liverpool Street Station and home.

I can’t really remember my first cookbook but thinking back my first wife and I had a few Marks & Spencer cookbooks. M&S is a national store with most towns having one. Back in the day they produced a series of basic cookbooks that were great for the relative beginner. Here in the U.K. we also had the Australian Woman’s Weekly recipe books, soft back, large format, glossy books with plenty of pictures and step by step instructions. I still have a few of those kicking about. Every year I buy cookbooks as Christmas presents as each of my children have a love of cooking and all four of them are competent in the kitchen in varying degrees.

Busy day today. Working from home as I had an online course to attend. I got some meat out of the freezer to knock up a few dishes and thought I would turn some short ribs into a Ragu. These two little fellas weighed a touch under two kilos. I had it in the oven on a low heat (160C) for three and a half hours. After which the meat was falling apart. I removed all the fat, gristle and bone and shredded the meat and was left with this. We split it into two large pots for future use in a couple of Lasagne’s, and a smaller pot for serving with pasta. I also got out a 1K bag of goat meat from our local butcher. Very disappointing as it was primarily bone and gristle with very little meat. I have been cooking Indian and Caribbean goat recipes for many years and have never encountered such disproportionate amounts of bone in a bag. Ordinarily I buy a boned out leg , with the bones sawed through. I make a rich stock out of the bones and use the best meat in the dish. The dish looked good and tasted good, but after two and a half hours the meat was still very tough. Finally, in preparation for this coming Saturday’s Tapas and Paella day, I did a dry run with a seafood paella for our evening meal. Quite a fruit-full day in the kitchen considering I had to balance work and training with it.

The base recipe I cooked this from was in Delicious magazine https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/panissa-piedmontese-rice-and-beans/ I only had 150g of a soft salami so fried off 100g of pancetta and once the pieces were taking on a little colour I took them out of the pan, adding them back at the same time as the chopped salami. this is another recipe you need to be mindful of the amount of salt, especially using the pancetta. I didn't need to add any salt late in the recipe at tasting stage. There are various recipes about for this dish, some with pancetta and some without. Some use tomatoes, as opposed to purée only in this recipe. The traditional salami is a soft “della deju” preserved in a layer of lard and the wine is a barbera d’asti, neither of which I could find locally. You can compare the recipe I used with one from Jamie Oliver https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/jamie-olivers-panissa-rice/#:~:text=Method,or until soft%2C stirring regularly. Great British chefs also have a version by the Costardi Brothers which requires soaking and cooking of the beans. I prefer quick and easy sometimes. https://www.greatitalianchefs.com/recipes/panissa-recipe

Tonight I cooked us Panissa, a risotto with borlotti beans, finely chopped salami and red wine There are many variations on the recipe, and the traditional ingredients from Piedmont can be elusive, especially the salami and the red wine. The one I prepared tonight had tinned beans and a robust cooking wine. The salami was blitzed in a food processor and I started off with pancetta which gave up its fat to cook the onions in. Very rich and tasty with enough leftovers for two midweek lunches.

Tonight I fired up the bbq for what is likely to be the last time this year. The weather here has been cold but after a couple of days of respite the rain is due to start over the weekend. A couple of small sirloins on the bbq with a Mediterranean rub on them, 3 minutes a side. Oven chips, last of the cauliflower that I knocked up last night and more petit pois. A little mustard mayonnaise on the side. Very enjoyable with a glass of red wine.

Home from work to an empty house. The wife had a long day driving to and from Cambridgeshire to pick up a poorly Rollo, one of our Springer Spaniels. I started prepping as soon as I got in and on her return I gave her a bottle of beer and served her Crispy Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breast https://www.recipetineats.com/parmesan-crusted-chicken-breast/ For veg I saw a lonely head of cauli and used it up in a Creamy Mashed Cauliflower https://www.recipetineats.com/creamy-mashed-cauliflower/ and some petit poi’s. She isn’t overly mad on breaded chicken so with no breading this ticked another box for her. As an aside, our train service home from London last night was completely shut down for a number of hours so I ended up in a pub with friends and colleagues who were also stranded. I imbibed far too much and cooked this tonight feeling rather fragile. I never used to get hangovers but with age they strike with a vengeance.

This pasta, chicken and broccoli turned out a little disappointing. Broccoli was undercooked. The illustrated instructions did not match the recipe card. The result was edible but could have been better. I won’t post the recipe or the website it originated from.

Another quick and easy dinner for a Saturday evening from fridge to plate in under an hour. Bean & pasta stew with meatballs from the BBC website. A bog standard soffrito made from onions, carrots and celery. A tin of tomatoes, a tin of beans, and meatballs made from skinned sausages rolled up into little balls. Easy peasy! Enough for four so a Saturday night meal with two mid week lunches. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/bean-pasta-stew-meatballs

I’m using panko and I double coat them. Spoke with the chef tonight (another £120 of research) who has suggested I need to cook them at 190C for three minutes. Even then he confessed they have the odd one that splits. As we left the tapas restaurant my wife said I’m to cook them on the night but, on pain of death, no more trials. I think she may be cheesed off with quail eggs in blood pudding. I am allowed to test the quails eggs in smoked cod however. Some of tonight’s research as we got close to finishing the meal. Albondingas, garlic mushrooms, salt cod with pea purée, ham and cheese croquettes. Missing from the pic is scallops and padron peppers.

I had another crack at morcilla quails eggs this morning. I cooked the eggs yesterday and encased them in the morcilla and refrigerated them overnight. This morning I dipped them in egg with a teaspoon of plain flour well mixed in, a tip I got for use with cheese croquettes to stop them exploding, coated in breadcrumbs (did this twice) and dropped them in an electric deep fat fryer at 180C. The first three went in for 5 minutes resulting in well cooked eggs with a runny centre, but despite the overnight chilling they still split slightly. I did the next three for a little over four minutes with the same result, 2 splitting morcilla and one perfect. Hot through with a runny centre. I was obviously disappointed but the wife told me not to get too hung up as we can cut them along the split and no one will know. I smiled and told her we are going out for Tapas tonight. I need to consult with the chef

We just love a thick pork chop. Our local butcher gets his pork from one local supplier and it is very very good. His thick pork chops are a weekday favourite when fried off in sage butter. Belly pork is a Sunday lunch for me and the wife. Bone-in pork loin is one of our special roast dinners for visitors.

Tonight one of my “leftover” lamb shepherds pies went in the oven. Its twin brother is nestling in the freezer for one night next week. Pre oven Post oven, hot and bubbling Served up with baked, garlic butter asparagus. Yum yum. With the lamb, potato topping, the veg within the pie and the asparagus it was a complete meal.

Tonight was the reheated venison joint I found in the freezer.I tried to slice it but it was too soft and crumbled as it was sliced. Served with the BBC’s next level cauliflower cheese. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/next-level-cauliflower-cheese With horseradish mash, steamed tender stem and a reduced gravy. Our freezer has proved bountiful this weekend with several meals consumed or prepared for the week.

Half a teaspoon to one teaspoon to a pan of potatoes adds no flavour but gives it a good colour. My youngest daughter once commented she could never get roasted potatoes the same colour as mine so I told her how I cheated and she uses it all the time and has passed it on to her friends.

I also found the leftovers from a roasted leg of lamb. I trimmed off all the fat and finely chopped up the lamb, I added the chopped lamb to an onion, carrot, celery and garlic soffritto. Added 500ml of lamb stock and some fresh rosemary then simmered it for about 25 minutes until the fluid had reduced. It then went in the fridge overnight. Today I split the meat between two Pyrex dishes, about 500g in each dish. I added 80g of frozen peas to each and mixed in. I boiled up 1kg of floury potatoes in salted water with half a teaspoon of turmeric added to the water to give a yellow colour to the chopped potatoes. Mashed them up with goats milk, butter and Parmesan. Split it equally over the two dishes and now have a couple of after work shepherds pies. One for this week and one put away for next week. Tonights dinner will be a venison pot roast that also came out of the freezer after being cooked up about three weeks ago. It got cooked for a Sunday dinner but wasn’t eaten on the day. Turmeric added to the boiling water for your roasted potatoes gives a nice golden colour to the finished spuds.

I had no firm plans for an evening meal tonight so went rummaging through the freezer this morning and found a portion of Ragu I made a few weeks ago. Dropped into the local supermarket, picked up some fresh lasagne sheets, knocked up a quick béchamel and dinner tonight was Lasagne. Here it is prepped for the oven And here it is after 50 minutes in a fan oven at 180C. Quite light for a lasagna but I try to make it more in the Italian style, with less sauce and more pasta. This one had five layers of lasagna with a thin spread of Ragu and béchamel and a sprinkle of Parmesan between each layer of pasta.

I’ve been a little disappointed with the results of my attempts at cooking a paella in preparation of our tapas nights. Specifically I have been unable to get a decent socorrat using either a 12” cast iron Lodge skillet or a 32 cm Le Creuset paella pan. The results of the actual paella have been good. Well cooked and great tasting, comparable in taste and texture to that found at our local tapas bar. However I am hampered by having to use an induction hob for the preparation, which I believe may be why, in conjunction with the thicker bases of my pans, I cannot achieve the desired socorrat. As I will be cooking two different paellas on the night I thought I would invest in a second paella pan and have ordered a 38cm pan on offer here in the U.K. by Harts of Stur. https://www.hartsofstur.com/vaello-induction-paella-pan-38cm-pha113.html I’m not overly confident that this will provide a better final result but at least I can serve two paellas in two paella pans (of a sort). If this fails I may have to look at a gas fired paella stand with traditional pans, though with summer drawing to a soggy close here in the U.K. that may go on the bucket list until next year.

Got home from work in London too late to spend time on potatoes tonight, so it was a quick pan seared salmon, steamed tender stem broccoli and spinach cooked with garlic and butter. Start to finish about 15 minutes with a little assistance from Mrs T63. Who says you need time to cook and eat well and healthily?

Tonight was another try on the Paella I cooked recently. This time I used my large Lodge cast iron skillet in place of the Le Creuset Paella pan. This was an attempt to get a better soccorat, unfortunately it didn’t have the desired result. I also finished off the cooking in the oven, as per the Josẽ Pizarro recipe that I attempted last time; only then I cooked it on the stovetop. Whilst it fell short in a couple of desired areas Mrs T63 and myself found it very enjoyable. No doubt another attempt is on the cards.