Cooking The Books

British Food Fortnight Challenge (Or Photogenically Challenged)

Having a little look over at UK Food Bloggers Association last week I saw a post about a British Food Fortnight Challenge.  I'll admit that until this point I knew nothing of British Food Fortnight (or Antonia's Food Glorious Food blog) but I'm not one to turn down the opportunity to cook something I might not normally cook. I decided to go for something from where I grew up but as Milton Keynes hasn't got any history, let alone food history, I hopped over the country border to Bedfordshire.  Both sets of my grandparents lived there anyway so it's probably a better representation of my heritage.

Bedfordshire is the home of the Bedfordshire Clanger, a dish I'd always been intrigued by.  The Clanger is a combined sweet and savoury dish cooked up by wives for their husbands to take to the fields with them when working the farm.  From what I'd heard one end was a meat filling and then at the other fruit resided so you could have a main course and dessert all in one. 

It's a hard one to track down a definitive recipe for but by piecing a few things together it seems to have started life as suet roly poly with meat (bacon for the poor, beef for the rich) between the layers, in this first form the fruit was raisins which studded the suet pastry rather than being in one end.  In then seemingly went through a second stage, still a suet pastry rolled like a swiss roll but now with meat at one end and the fruit at the other.  More recent incarnations are like a Cornish pasty in form, a suet pastry still but now in a pasty shape, with meat at one end and fruit in the other - baked rather than giving a couple of hours simmering.  Out of the three the second was the one I fancied the most.

Oyster Mushrooms with Basil and Parmesan

 

Last night was a quiet one in front of the TV so I took the opportunity of today's early, fresh feeling morning to head to Islington Farmer's market.  It's a small affair, hidden away behind the Town Hall on Upper Street, but it still has some great stalls, including quite a few that you also see at Borough Market.  One of the stalls is a mushroom stall and it was there I grabbed these nicely coloured oyster mushrooms.

There was half a baguette at home leftover from yesterday's barbecue so I decided to knock up some mushrooms on toast when I got home.  A perfect breakfast when you have a vegetarian house guest as we currently do.  Normally I'd use flat leaf parsley in this recipe but I forgot to buy any and this dish was born.  Mushrooms and basil aren't something I'd normally put together but a search on the internet showed the pairing used a bit so I cracked on.  Parmesan popped up in this search too and so I added a few shavings to what's normally a cheese-free dish.  I imagine this would work great as a light lunch or starter too with a glass of white wine.

Fish Amok - The Recipe

A while ago I wrote of the fabulous fish amok I learnt to cook at Frizz's Restaurant cooking school in Phnom Penh.  Back when I wrote the post I'd lost the recipe book they gave me but a friend of mine popped in and grabbed me another which she's just delivered to me in the UK.  So, as promised back then, here's the recipe.  This is such a great dish, the depth of flavour you get with the coconut based curries from that part of the world delicately set with the addition on an egg and the steaming to cook.  Now the recipe's here I'm going to be recreating the dish and I recommend you do the same.

Fish Amok, for 2

Kroeung (curry paste)

2 dried chillies, soaked
3 cloves garlic
1 shallot
3 stalks of lemongrass, trimmed to the tender middle bit
1cm slice of galangal
1 lime leaf
1 ts salt

Amok

400gr of meaty white fish, chopped into bite size bits
1 TB of fish sauce
2 birds eye chilies, finely sliced
500ml coconut milk
1 ts shrimp paste
1 egg

Coconut cream and 4 shredded kaffir lime leaves to serve.

4 banana leaves to make cups, or a couple of bowls I guess

Method

Make the paste either in a pestle and mortar or a processor.

Beat the egg and the shrimp paste together then mix with the curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce and fish.

If using, soften the banana leaves by dipping briefly in boiling water or running through a gas flame then cut into circles by cutting around a 25cm-ish plate.  Place two together and then fold the sides up into a cup, securing each corner fold with a cocktail stick.  The first thread - here - shows what you're aiming for. Repeat for the second cup.

Split the curry between the two cups then steam for 20 minutes.  A couple of minutes before the end you can pour a little coconut cream on to each curry and sprinkle with some shredded lime leaves.  Serve with boiled rice and enjoy.

The last barbecue of the year?

Not sure what's going on with the weather this year, last week I managed to sunburn myself in late September and today it was so sunny we decided on a barbecue.  I love a bit of steak cooked over coals but when I cook it I like to cook a single, huge rib-eye to share between everyone.  Cut from the ribs the rib-eye is tender and, due to a nice amount of fat, flavoursome and juicy too.  If you get something 5cm plus thick then you can give it a long cooking on a hot heat, building up a thick, dark outside whilst keeping the middle nice and juicy.  It's a struggle to do this with even the biggest one person steaks unless it's a barrel shaped fillet but you have to forego a lot of flavour if you're using that cut. 

Today's piece came in at just over a kilo, 5cm thick and with a great marbling of fat - a fine piece of meat even if it was only from the supermarket.  For a steak it really was quite huge, 39oz in old money probably and totally covering that normal size plastic chopping board.  To prepare it couldn't be simpler, just let it come to room temperature and give it a heavy seasoning with salt and pepper - there's a lot of meat there and so you'll want a lot of salt on the outside to make up for the lack of seasoning in the middle. 

Then it's just a case of getting on the hot barbecue, I guessed this would need about 9 minutes a side then, as for any lump of meat cooked at a high temperature, a good rest - 15 to 20 minutes for something this size.  Be careful when you're cooking this as it can burn a bit if the barbecue's very hot, I just shift it around a bit hoping that the same bits of meat won't be sat over the hotspots all the time.  Once rested it's just a case of carving it so folk can take their portions,a rough centimetre or so thick seems about right.

With the 9 minutes each side of cooking you build up a great charred crust and also give the fat time to render out, softening up and lubricating the meat, an entirely different experience to an individual steak that's only had a couple of minutes a side.  If I'm honest when I set off I was a aiming for something nearer rare than the medium I achieved but after eating this I think I'd aim for this kind of pink again (well maybe a little more red).  I've always gone for very light cooking of steaks but I'm starting to think a rib eye wants a bit more - there's so much fat in there that likes a bit of heat to break it down.  Sometimes very rare rib-eyes, whilst very tasty, can require rather a lot of mastication. 

The steak went down a treat, the heavily salted and charred outside and tender middle being to everyone - bar the resident vegetarian's - taste.  Give it a go, with the month nearly being October this will work well in a grill or on a ridged griddle too.

Tonkatsu

I'm always buying ingredients with the best intentions of using them straight away but an evening stuck in the office or some impromptu drinks later they're stuck at the back of the cupboard for two months.  One such pair of items came from the Japan Centre in Picadilly, London (who conveniently have online shopping) - panko breadcrumbs and tonkatsu sauce.

Tonkatsu is a Japanese deep fried pork dish, thin loin chops egged then breadcrumbed (panko are light and crispy) which, when I've seen it, has been either served with a sticky, sweet sour tonkatsu sauce or a curry sauce.  You can also get chicken cooked the same way but a tonkatsu is pork - I think.