Toast

Well, at least it seems like Posterous is Toast, now that it has been bought by twitter who seem to be ramping it down, based on some of the FAQ's about the acquisition. Bit of a shame really as I have enjoyed using Posterous. 

Black Pudding Stuffed Leg Of Lamb

I remember watching Gary Rhodes do a rack on black roast where he wrapped a rack of lamb around a black pudding, way back when I was at University and had always wanted to try something similar.In this case, I ended up going with a leg, because they are easier to find fresh around here for whatever reason, so I started from a boneless leg roast, unrolled it and applied a generous slick of rosemary, garlic and paprika paste similar to some of the summer barbecue experiments from last year. The pudding went into the middle of the leg and I finished it off with a mustard and breadcrumb crust.
The nice warm spices from the black pudding really complement the almost game-like flavour of the lamb, and also comes through in the juices from the roast as they are incorporated into the gravy.
I served it with some springtime feeling vegetables, rather than the usual roast potatoes and trimmings and it made for a very enjoyable sunday lunch.

Lamb:

3 - 4lb boneless leg of lamb, split open so that it can be rolled
1 black pudding or blood sausage

2 Carrots
2 Celeriac
2 Onions
4 cloves of garlic
Sprig of Rosemary
Bay leaf
1 L Stock

Stuffing:

3-4 tablespoons finely diced red onion
1 clove garlic
1 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tsp coarse sea salt
1/2 Tsp Smoked Paprika
1 heaped teaspon Dijon mustard
1 Tsp ground black pepper

Using a wide bladed, heavy chefs knife, pulp the onion, garlic and rosemary down to a paste, and then mix in the spices and mustard. Spread this evenly over the inside surface of the leg of lamb.Place the pudding on the lamb and roll up around the pudding, then tie the roast up with butchers twine and leave to rest in the fridge for an hour.
Crust:

2-3 Tbsp Dijon mustard.1 cup of breadcrumbs
2 Tsp fresh chopped rosemary
1/2 Tsp smoked paprika
Salt & pepper

Mix the breadcrumbs, rosemary and seasonings.
Preheat the oven to 325ºF.
Coarsely chop the mirepoix, leaving it in big enough pieces to form a base to rest the meat on.Sear the tied roast on all sides in some hot fat until crisp, when seared, place a the mirepoix in a layer on the bottom of the pan and put the meat on top. Add Stock to come up just shy of the meat, then cover with foil and pop into the oven for around 25-30 minutes per pound.
With 30 minutes remaining on cooking time, brush the roast with mustard. Press on the seasoned breadcrumbs for the crust, and finish cooking uncovered to crisp up the crust.Rest the roast for around 15 minutes wrapped in foil, strain the mirepoix out of the gravy, deglaze the pan with more stock, reduce and thicken with butter to make a nice gravy.
Accompaniments
Roasted Tomatoes

6 - 8 tomatoes, halved
1 clove garlic, finely minced
salt & pepper
olive oil
Arrange the halved tomatoes in a roasting pan cut side up (so you dont lose all the juices) sprinkle over the garlic, salt & pepper and drizzle with oil, and chuck in the oven for 20 minutes or so.
Green beans & Scallions

Rather than the usual steamed or blanched green beans, I went for a bit of a stir fry approach, shredding the beans and scallions on the bias, and then sautéing them in some butter with a splash or two of chicken stock to help cook them until tender.
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 lb green beans, shredded
1 bunch Spring Onions, shredded
2-3 Tbsp stock
2 Tbsp sliced almonds.Salt & Pepper

Finely shred the beans and onions on the bias.Saute the onions and beans in the butter, until they start to get tender and then add a splash of stock and let it reduce off, repeat this until the beans are cooked to your liking.Check the seasoning and stir in the almonds.

Gnocchi with Bolognese

Plum Bakewell Tart

A slight deviation from the bread making routine, driven by an idea in Paul Hollywood's 100 Great Breads book that includes a Normandy Tart, essentially a French version of the classic Bakewell with fruit and frangipane.I had some plums lying around to use up, so this was essentially an effort to use them up, although I ended up only needing two of them to cover the top of the tart.This really is the best of two worlds: It is a pie that is filled with cake. As such, you need two pastries, a sweet paté sucrée for the base and a more cake like filling made with almond flour.
The sweet pastry recipe came from the BBC website and is pretty straightforward, and has become my go-to pie pastry of late. The Frangipane is from the book named above. I filled the bottom of the case with Apricot jam and topped it off with sliced plums.

Paté Sucrée
90g Softened Butter
65g Sugar
3 egg yolks
200g flour

Using a pastry cutter, cream the sugar and butter together, then add the egg yolks. Add the flour and mix until it starts to stick together and form a dough, then wrap it in cling film and chill it for 30 minutes.Roll it out to fit a pie pan with a one inch deep edge, I used a 9" springform pan that I buttered and floured.
Frangipane

200 g softened butter
200 g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
200 g almond flour
60 g flour

Cream the butter and sugar together and gradually add the eggs, then mix in the flours until you have a nice smooth cake batter.

Assembly:

Put around 2 Tbsp apricot jam onto the pie crust base and spread it around evenly. Fill the crust with the frangipane, making sure to fill it out to the corners and level it off.Arrange half moon slices of plums on top of the frangipane, and sprinkle with light brown sugar.
Place the tart in a preheated 400ºF oven for 20 minutes and then decrease the temp to 300 and cook until a knife inserted into the middle of the pie comes out clean.
Next time you cant chose between cake and pie, make this. It is a cake in a pie and totally awesome.

Spring Fish Pie

Perhaps it was the 100 year anniversary of the Titanic that got me thinking of Fish Pie (because the Pieminister book has a recipe for a fish pie called the Pietanic) or perhaps it was driven more by the pile of frozen fish we had accumulated in the freezer (Trader Joe's is a dangerous place) but whatever the reasoning, it was happening for dinner.
With it also being springtime, and the garden is really starting to put forth herbs and hardy leaves like sorrel, I wanted to get something nice and fresh into the mix, so I decided to go with a vibrant green sauce for the fish.I based the sauce around coconut milk, with a hit of lime to complement the citrus flavour of the sorrel, and then some spinach, scallions, peas and parsley to give it a real vibrant green pop.
The fish was a mixture of haddock and tilapia, with some clams thrown in more for the clam juice in the sauce than any desire to add more seafood. The top of the pie was a pretty traditional mash potato with some nice sharp white cheddar thrown in.

Green Sauce:

1 Bunch Spinach
1 Bunch Sorrel
1 Bunch of Spring Onions
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup peas
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley
1 Can of Coconut Milk
1/2 cup clam juice
Juice of 1 lime
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Butter
2 Tbsp Flour
Salt & Pepper

Heat up a skillet, and wilt the spinach and sorrel in batches, then set it aside in a colander to drain out some of the liquid.Add the oil and butter to the skillet and then saute the onion and garlic until translucent, then sprinkle in the flour an cook to make a roux. Deglaze with the clam juice, then add the lime, peas and coconut milk and simmer until it starts to thicken. Season well.
Transfer the sauce to a blender, add the spinach, sorrel and parsley and pulse until you have a smooth sauce, checking the seasoning is OK.

Fish Pie:

2 Haddock Fillets
3 Tilapia Fillets
Clams (from the jar of clam juice used above if you have them)

8 white potatoes
1/2 cup milk
2 Tsp Dijon Mustard
3-4 oz shredded white sharp cheddar
Salt & Pepper

Boil the potatoes, and then mash with the milk, cheddar, mustard and seasoning until nice and smooth.Dice up the fish, and mix with the green sauce in an oven proof dish.Top with the mash potato and pop into a 350ºF Oven for around 45 minutes.
Serve with crusty bread.

Grilled Asparagus & Blue Cheese Salad

Early spring means asparagus season and it's completely different to the weird, woody, year round stuff you can get in grocery stores.  Grilled asparagus, getting crisp and almost burned and well seasoned with sea salt and pepper is probably my favourite way to eat it, and this salad combines that method with a rich, pungent, creamy blue cheese. The dressing for this is about as close as I have come to replicating the standard French mustard vinaigrette that you find on any respectable salad verte.

Dressing:

1/2 cippolini onion or shallot, finely minced.
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
4 Tbsp White wine vinegar
1/2 cup Olive oil
juice of half a lemon
Pinch of sugar
salt and pepper.

Put everything in a jar and shake the living daylights out of it. Taste and adjust the sugar, oil, seasoning and perhaps vinegar as needed, just keep tweaking it until you get something you like. 
Make it at least an hour ahead to give the onion time to steep. 

1 bunch of asparagus
1 generous bunch of maiché
1 wedge of suitably pungent creamy blue cheese, such as St Agur, Roquefort or Stilton
few Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
juice of half a lemon

Snap the asparagus spears to remove the woody bottom pieces. Toss in olive oil and season well, and throw them on a hot griddle, flipping them around occasionally to crisp them up. Splash the lemon juice over the asparagus while still on the grill so that it steams off. 

Dress the maiché at the last moment, squish the cheese into small pieces over the top and then layer on the warm asparagus and serve with some warm crusty bread (Ciabatta in this case) and a nice crisp white wine. 

Chicken Fricassé

A bit of a nostalgic throwback for me, is this one. My first ever school dinner was Chicken Fricassé, back in 1982 on my first full day of school. Apparently mum had told me it was my first full day, but I didn't listen and was quite surprised when we didn't get to go home at lunch time but were instead marched to the hall and dished out plates of this weird and wonderful exotic stuff I had never heard of, not unlike the mystery surrounding your first pot noodle I suppose.I don't remember it being particularly good or bad, but it obviously made an impression for it to have stuck out in my mind. It had mushrooms in it though and I liked mushrooms, things with mushrooms were interesting, exotic and captivating. (remember this was in Leicester in the early 80s, when exotic was a trip to the chippy…)
I have no idea if it was made fresh, I suspect there was some sort of packet involved in it, and Jamie Oliver would no doubt probably not approve, but it made quite the impression on me.
I am somewhat amazed it has taken me this long to give it a crack myself. I did a little bit of research and came up with a recipe that included braised pearl onions and used bone in chicken thighs. Some recipes wanted the mushrooms cooked ahead, some wanted the carrots cooked into the mixture, but it seemed a bit finicky and I didn't remember it having carrots in it. Thickening the sauce with egg yolks whipped into heavy cream sounded like a lovely way to finish off the sauce so I adopted that.

Braised Pearl Onions:

1 package of fresh pearl onions (about two dozen onions total)
2 Tsp butter
2 Tsp olive oil
Approx 1 cup chicken stock
Sprig of fresh thyme
salt & pepper

Top & tail the onions and peel the outer skin off. Melt the butter into the olive oil and fry the onions until they start to get golden, then add the thyme, seasoning and enough chicken stock to cover them and simmer gently for around 10 minutes, allowing the chicken stock to reduce off. Set aside until ready to add to the main pan.

Chicken Fricassé

8 -10 Bone in chicken thighs, skin removed and excess fat trimmed.

3-4 Tbsp corn oil 

1 yellow onion, finely diced
1 carrot, finely diced
2 sticks celery, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and diced

1/2 stick butter
4 Tbsp flour
1 generous glass of dry white wine
1 L Chicken stock, simmering
bouquet garni containing parsley, tarragon, thyme and bay leaves.
1 packet crimini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 egg yolks
Braised onions, from recipe above.
Juice of half a lemon
Grate of nutmeg.1/2 cup chopped parsley
Salt & Pepper

This recipe sort of happens in stages, I prepped everything ahead of time and it really paid off, as the actual cooking reduced to a nice wine-in-hand type of operation. The ingredients list above is grouped in the order you will need to add them to the pan.
Start by heating a large heavy bottomed pan like a deep skillet or le creuset type of thing and add enough oil to cover the bottom. Season the chicken thighs and sear them in batches until they get a nice crisp on them. Set the thighs aside.
Add the mirepoix to the pan, and start to cook them in the chicken juices. When they start to colour a little, turn the heat down and cook them gently for five minutes so they start to get tender. Add the butter and flour and cook the roux for a couple of minutes. Don't forget to season with salt & pepper as you go! Things will start to get quite sticky, quite quickly, so have the wine ready to deglaze the pan. Add around 3-4 cups of chicken stock and stir well to combine everything, then drop in the mushrooms and bouquet garni. Return the chicken to pan, add a little more stock to cover them if needed.Cover the pan and simmer for around 30-40 minutes to cook the chicken through.

Around 5 minutes before you are ready to serve, whisk together the egg yolks and cream, and slowly temper in some of the sauce to warm the eggs up without scrambling them. When the mixture is warm, add it to the pan and stir in. Add the braised onions, lemon juice and nutmeg. Check the seasoning.
At the last minute, stir in the parsley and you are ready to serve.

I served this with roast fingerling potatoes and carrots, and followed it up with another school dinner classic: a treacle tart with ice cream, the weather being a little on the warm side for custard.This was actually my wife's first time eating Chicken Fricassé and she liked it enough to go for seconds. Who knows, perhaps the memory will stay with her for 30 odd years, but since we drank three bottles of wine after an excellent sunday lunch, it may be a little bit hazy.

Posole

 

 

 

Pepperonata with Polenta & Arugula

Not only has spring shown up early in Chicagoland, but it seems to have dragged some of summer along for the ride. We have had a couple of lovely sunny weeks with above average temperatures following on from a very mild winter.
The upshot of this has been that a lot of my garden didn’t even fully die off over winter. I have a hedge of recovering sage, parsley and sorrel and some of the Apollo Arugula seeds I had a bit of an Oops with last year has sprouted and grown enough to provide a big enough bunch for an early season salad.
Having recently roasted several batches of bell peppers, I took a crack at a Pepperonata, or something like I understand it to be. I make no claims that this is authentic, but it tasted rather nice. 

Pepperonata:

4 red bell peppers (quartered and roasted in olive oil, balsamic, salt & pepper)
4 yellow bell peppers (quartered and roasted in olive oil, balsamic, salt & pepper)
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 red onion
tablespoon of capers
12 kalamata olives, chopped
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
Chopped fresh basil
Chopped fresh parsley

Roasting the peppers is nice and easy, toss them with oil & vinegar, season and roast at 450ºF for 30 - 45 minutes, turning occasionally. You can do this fresh, or roast them whenever they go on sale and freeze them for when they are needed. 

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and sauté the onions and garlic. Add the tomatoes and let the juice sear out for a couple of minutes, then add the peppers and capers. Cook for around 5 minutes, and then add the rest of the ingredients and combine, then kill the heat. 

Serve over a batch of polenta made with some parmesan and a bunch of arugula tossed in a little more olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

 

Slow Roasted Adobo Pork Shoulder Sandwich