Lovely Leftovers

I'm a big fan of using up leftover food and a Sunday roast is usually a good source of leftover goodies.

For me, yesterday was no exception and my roast beef yielded not only a batch of broccoli stalks which are great for broccoli soup (diced and frozen until needed) but a nice chunk of beef just crying out to be turned into a cheeky curry.

This recipe works just as well with lamb and if I'm going to take the time (4 hours or so) to cook lamb shanks, I always do one more than I need, just for a Monday night curry.

Anyway, back to the recipe.

Soften one thinly sliced onion in a little vegetable oil along with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, four cardamoms and cloves, salt, pepper and a teaspoon each of cumin, ground coriander, turmeric and crushed chilli flakes.

While that's all softening, cut the beef into bite-sized chunks.

Add the beef to the pan and give it a good stir to coat the meat with the spice mixture. Leave that to cook for a few minutes while you get a pint of hot chicken stock ready (if I don't have any fresh or frozen stock I use Knorr Touch of Taste concentrate).

Add the stock to the pan along with a carton of passata and stir well.

Bring it to the boil then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for at least 2 hours.

Serve it up with some pilau rice. I thought I'd previously covered pilau rice on another post but a quick trawl through the Bloke archives confirms otherwise.

Ok, bring a large pan of water to the boil and add a good pinch of salt, pepper, saffron, turmeric and onion seeds (these are the little black seeds you see in naan bread and they're available from supermarkets).

When it's boiling, add a mug of rice (I always use basmati but that's just my preference), stir well and boil for around 10 minutes.

I tend to regard cooking times on rice packets with a degree of scepticism. I've seen some instructions say 15 minutes or more. If you want wallpaper paste then go right ahead. But I digress. Try a bit of rice after about 9 minutes and make your own mind up.

When the rice is cooked, drain into a colander, put the colander back over the pan (not over heat) and cover it with foil. Leave it for around 10 minutes. This will leave the rice nice and fluffy.

Serve the curry and rice with a few bottles of ice-cold beer or, as I did last night, a big, meaty Cabernet Sauvignon.

Enjoy!

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Foodie Weekend!

Well, it's been a food filled weekend; buying, cooking, eating, even growing!

With friends Les & Jac round for tapas yesterday - a thank you for looking after Pooky whilst the Missus and I went off to Seville to celebrate my 40th birthday, shopping was a little more interesting than the usual trip to Tesco (other supermarkets are available).

For a touch of the authentic, I popped into Liverpool One to visit the excellent Lunya Deli. I left with two types of olives, one stuffed with orange and chilli, the other marinated in olive oil, paprika, chilli and oregano - both wonderful. I also bought some fantastic manchego cheese, jamón Iberico, morcilla with rice (which I pan-fried and served with a little rocket and topped with caramelised red onion) and some of those marvellous little breadstick like nibbles which were served with every beer in Seville.

I also served up some chicken wings seasoned with a little paprika, patas bravas with a great spicy tomato salsa, roasted asparagus wrapped in Serrano ham, roasted almonds and another wonder discovered in Seville - pringá.

Pringá, or certainly the version we had, is slow-cooked pork (I used shoulder steaks) cooked for hours with chicken stock, garlic and onions until the meat is falling apart and served with crusty bread. From what I've read, I think it's traditionally a way to use up leftover pork and is sometimes also made with morcilla or chorizo.

Needless to say, that was all washed down with a considerable amount of Spanish beer and a couple of nice bottles of white Rioja.

Which brings me to today and the growing part.

Today I finally got my seedlings in the ground. For a couple of months now I've been growing a batch of plants in propagators, waiting for them to get big enough to fend for themselves.

So, after getting rid of the weeds and giving one of the beds a good dig over, I've planted my broad beans, radishes, peas and Brussels sprouts. Hopefully the frosts have passed now and they'll be ok out there.

I still have some onions, grown from seed, and butternut squash indoors. They're not yet big enough to go out but I'm sure they will be in a few weeks.

Now I've got empty propagators now though and that'll never do. Courgettes, leeks and tomatoes are next to go in and I'll be sowing them later on today.

Anyway, today's roast (topside of beef with all the trimmings) won't cook itself so I'm off to sort that out.

I'll leave you with a photo (although I'm updating this via email so I don't know if it will work). I'll keep you updated on the progress of my crops and hopefully I'll soon have a bountiful haul of fresh produce to cook, eat and write about.

TTFN

The Bloke

Test post

Will this really work?!

Quick Prawn Paella

Ok, firstly, apologies. It's been far too long since I wrote anything new here. I've been Tweeting (@blokeinkitchen) but that doesn't excuse the tardiness.

Secondly, I know this isn't very appropriate for the season (Christmas dinner recipe will be appearing shortly, honest) but I'm cooking this now and wanted to share it with you.

Paella, for me, is a bit of a pain. Getting those grains of arborio rice to just the right consistency ain't easy. If you want it done properly, go to Ayo's on Nerja beach in Spain. In the meantime, here goes...

What you'll need:

300g raw prawns (with shells)
2 good glugs of olive oil
1 onion
1 carrot
1 teaspoon of tomato puree
500ml chicken stock
6oz basmati rice
2 cloves of garlic
3 cloves
3 cardamoms
1 piece of cinamon
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
2 large tomatoes
1/2 a red pepper
1 handful of defrosted frozen peas
1 chunk of chorizo
A handful of fresh parsley

Here's how you do it:

First, you need to make a stock. Take the shells off the prawns and set them aside, you need 'em. De-vein the prawns by running a very sharp knife down the length of the back of the prawn where you'll see a black vein. Pluck this out and discard.

Finely chop the onion and the carrot. Gently heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the carrot and half the onion and fry gently until you get a bit of colour in the onion and the carrot is softened a little.

Chuck in the prawn shells and continue frying until they change colour. Add the tomato puree and cook out for a couple of minutes, giving everything a good old stir then add the chicken stock.

Now, this is an important bit, so pay attention.

You'll have noticed that I've been specific with the amounts of stock and rice. Normally I wouldn't be so bothered. Amounts of 'some' are usually my method, but this is different. This actually matters because this is how you get the rice 'just-so'.

Bring the stock to the boil then turn the heat down and simmer for 15 minutes. This should reduce the stock to around 300ml. Drain the stock through a seive into a measuring jug to check. If it is less than 300ml, top it up with a bit of boiling water. If there's a little more, put it back in the pan and reduce it a little more, then strain into the measuring jug again. Discard the stuff from the seive.

Add another glug of olive oil into the empty frying pan. Add the rest of the onion, the chorizo (skin removed and roughly chopped - the chorizo, not the skin) the finely chopped garlic, the cardamoms, cloves, cinamon and turmeric and fry gently until the onion has softened.

Add the rice. Give it a good old stir around to get it coated in the seasoned oil.

Important bit No. 2.

Add the stock, add a bit of salt and pepper, bring it to the boil, turn the heat down as low as it will go, put a lid on the pan and leave it for 10 minutes. Don't take the lid of and most definitely don't stir it. As long as you've stuck to the volumes of stock and rice above, it will be perfect.

While the rice is cooking, peel, de-seed and chop the tomatoes, and do the same to the red pepper. Do I need to tell you how to do this? Hmm, possibly, but I haven't got time right now. I do intend to add a section full of useful tips like this once I get the blokeinthekitchen website back up and running but with currently work commitments this is a bit tricky, but I digress. If anyone wants to know how to do this, Tweet me and I'll either reply on Twitter or stick a separate post here, whichever I get time for.

When the 10 minutes is up, take the lid off the rice, add the prawns, the peas and the chopped tomato, pepper and parsley. Give it a gentle stir then put the lid back on. Leave it for 5 minutes or so, until the prawns have turned pink all over and are cooked through.

Actually, it's at this point you could add anything you want - squid, mussels, cooked chicken - whatever takes your fancy. Just make sure that everything is cooked through and warm before you serve it up with some ice cold, crisp, dry white wine.

I'll hopefully be able to add photo's to this very soon. In the meantime, enjoy!



The Bloke

Salmon Teryaki With Stir-fried Vegetables and Noodles

OK, it's been a while. Six months actually. Sorry.

Anyway, here's a new recipe that I put together recently. It went down well with The Missus so here goes.

For the teryaki marinade, put 4 tablespoons of soy sauce into a bowl with 1 tablespoon of chinkiang rice vinegar, a crushed clove of garlic and a finely chopped red chilli.

Place two salmon fillets into the marinade and leave them for about an hour, turning them over every now and then.

When you're ready to cook, grill the salmon fillets for about 8 minutes, turning occasionally until cooked through. Keep the marinade.

Now prepare your vegetables. Take a handful each of tender stem broccoli, baby corn, sugar snap peas and spring onions and slice them in half lengthways.

When the salmon is about halfway cooked, heat a little vegetable oil in a hot wok and stir fry the veg for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to the boil and chuck in a couple of sheets of noodles. I use Sharwood's Medium Egg Noodles. They take 4 minutes to cook and I tease them apart in the pan with a pair of tongs to make sure they separate.

When they've got 2 minutes to go, tip the marinade into the wok and bring to the boil then simmer until the noodles are cooked. Drain the noodles, add them to the wok and toss them all around.

Divide the noodles and vegetables into 2 bowls, place a salmon fillet on top and pour over any sauce that's left.

Enjoy!

Tiramisu

Ok, here's The Missus' favourite dessert - tiramisu. I could bore you by telling you that tiramisu is apparently Italian for 'pick-me-up', but I won't. I'll just get on with the recipe.

Usually I don't bother with ingredients but with desserts I think it's important, so here goes.

2 free range organic egg yolks
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
a few drops of vanilla essence
250g/8oz of marcarpone cheese
175ml/6floz of strong black coffee
2 tablespoons of Marsala wine
1 tablespoon of brandy
15g/5oz of sponge fingers
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder

Mix the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl until they are creamy. Mix in the drops of vanilla essence then gently fold in the marscarpone until you have a smooth creamy mixture.

Mix the coffee and Marsala together in a large bowl. Quickly dunk the sponge fingers into the liquid. Don't soak them or they will become soggy and fall apart.

Place a layer of sponge fingers in the bottom of a large glass bowl and cover them with a layer of the marscarpone mixture.

Continue layering in this way, finishing with a layer of marscarpone. Sieve over a dusting of cocoa powder.

Put the whole thing into the fridge and chill for at least 3 hours.



The Bloke