Cooking The Books

Thoughts on Christmas Dinner

It's always seemed strange to me to have a big get together and then celebrate it eating a cheap, pretty bland (delicate if you must) bit of poultry that's not native to this land, let alone traditional. Due to this when I have the choice Christmas dinner is always an expensive, flavour-filled huge lump of traditional British beef - fore rib or sirloin on the bone served dripping red. Obviously you'd have some Yorkshire pudding with this. It's nice to have a baked ham as well, even if just for the cold cuts for the evening and the leftovers for the following few days.

I'm not a fan of an obscene number of different vegetables with a roast either, two is fine by me really - quality not quantity. I'd always get something dark, leafy and green, a sort of kale probably, either curly or cavalo nero. If kale is not available I think spinach has a natural affinity with beef.  Some carrots are nice too, either batons or baby, finished with a little butter and sugar to glaze. Potatoes ideally will just be roast but I could do some boiled to keep other folk happy.

Even if turkey wouldn't grace my table I'm happy to wrap some sausages in bacon and, although not a traditional combination with beef, stuffing is good too.  A sausage meat one probably just to add to the porcine content of the meal.

After years of trying I've finally nailed making gravy from the meat juices (now a glass of wine in the tray stops the juices burning and ruining during the initial half hour of full heat) so no need for any Bisto. Just a roux made with some beef fat and juices in the roasting pan, cooked for a minute or two before adding a nice beef stock, more red wine and a good splash of Worcestershire sauce then simmering for ten minutes.

Copious amounts of red, a Syrah/Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon probably, complete the spread.

L'Atelier Des Chefs - Macarons

When I got into blogging I had no idea I’d get free stuff from it, it was merely a way to vent out my food thoughts and somewhere to put the photos of food I was amassing.  A week ago though I went to the second freebie it’s got me (courtesy of Trusted Places ), a day at the very cool L’atelier des Chefs to learn how to make macarons.

 L’atelier des Chefs started in France and has now made the move over here.  They provide cooking classes from simple to complex, a quick half hour to three dishes over 2 hours and various cuisines all with the help of their chefs in the very nicely equipped Central London location.  They’ve also got a rather nice cookery equipment shop where you can purchase a lot of the stuff you used during the lesson.

As much as I adore macarons I’ve never made them and frankly thought something that nice looking and tasting must be fairly complex to make so I was keen to learn from a professional.  We were told we were going to make four flavours – salted caramel, raspberry, lime and ginger and foie gras (certainly different) – and when we arrived I ended up on the table making lime and ginger.  It wouldn’t have been my first choice but as good a flavour to learn on as any and we were going to get to eat them all at the end anyway.

For those that don’t know a macaron is just a pair of almond enriched meringues sandwiched together with some form of normally rich filling.  We were told that although labour intensive if you remember a couple of things you should turn out decent examples OK.

Being meringues the first stage involved beating egg whites, sugar and colouring (food dye or squid ink for our various flavours) into some fairly lurid coloured stiff peaks.  To this was added ground almonds and icing sugar that had been forced through a fine sieve.   This was the first of our tips; fine ground almonds and icing sugar lead to shiny macarons.  Unlike the addition of most stuff to beaten egg white here we didn’t fold but beat the dry ingredients in.  We didn’t want to keep the air particularly as air bubbles expand and pop when cooked and that could spoil the smooth exterior of the macarons.

Courgette Soup

This is a first for me, a post with no photo.  I'd just knocked this soup up to see if it would work though and by the time I realised it was really tasty I was already sat down eating and I didn't want to stop to take a snap.  It's bright green and velvety smooth anyway, so would've been a pretty boring photo.  I've been making Ramsay's broccoli soup quite a bit recently, which just involves boiling broccoli in stock then blitzing the lot, so thought I'd extend the technique to courgettes.  I did stray from the path slightly though as I thought some fried alliums (onion and garlic as they're more commonly known) would go well and their presence was tasted and appreciated, as was the black pepper.

Courgette Soup, for 4 people

500gr courgettes
1 medium onion
2 cloves of garlic
Vegetable stock (I use organic Marigold powder), maybe 750ml but you may not need it all
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

Slice the onion and soften in the oil over a medium heat, you're going to process the soup so you don't have to be too careful with your onion cutting.  I just went in half root to tip then cut it into slices.

After a few minutes slice the courgette into centimetre thick slices and add it to the pan along with the roughly chopped garlic.  Don't cut the garlic too fine as you don't want it to burn.  At this point you can also add a good few grinds of black pepper, I'd hold back on salt till the end though.

Cook for a few minutes more, until the courgette looks a bit cooked and then add enough vegetable stock to cover.  Bring to the boil then turn down the heat, put on a lid and simmer for 7-8 minutes, until everything is pretty soft.

Remove from the heat and blitz with a stick blender (or pour into a blender) until velvety smooth.  Depending on how much stock you put in you may need to add more to get the texture you want. 

At this point I like to put it back on the heat for a minute or too as I think it helps the bubbles from the blending to disappear. 

Check the seasoning then serve.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Keeping up a Southern theme here is one of those foods I imagine everyone has heard of (thanks Hollywood) but few in Britain have eaten, myself included.  The summer must have been poor for tomatoes because over the last few weeks a couple of stalls on the Farmer's Market have been selling green tomatoes and the sight of them made this dish pop into my mind.  They're normally eaten for breakfast, as a a side dish, and while I ate them for breakfast they weren't really a side.  Well I ate a pork pie too but I wouldn't consider them part of the same meal.

I didn't know what to expect from these but I definitely didn't have high expectations, this was to be an educational exercise as much as anything.  How pleasantly surprised I was, they were tart, as I thought they would be, but they were also really tomato tasting.  This may seem obvious, what with them being tomatoes, but I just didn't expect it - I guess I equate tomato taste with the colour red.  Add a crisp, fried cornmeal coating and it was real pleasurable experience, if I'd have had some bacon grease to fry them in then they'd have been even better.

If you've got a load of green tomatoes then I'd really recommend adding these to a cooked breakfast one morning.

Southern Fried Chicken

I've spoke before that I can be a bit partial to a Kentucky Fried Chicken, not that I eat a lot of it.  Over the years I've tried to replicate the Colonel's secret herbs and spices in an attempt to make something similar tasting at home.  I've used mustard powder, sage, thyme, onion and garlic powder, paprika, chili, salt and pepper and whilst the chicken tasted good, it was never quite the taste I was after.  Reading up a bit about traditional southern fried chicken led me to realise that less maybe better when it comes to additions to the flour - well maybe not better but definitely more traditional.

This recipe came from a lady who has edited a Southern USA cook book and she described it as old school.  She said people do put other spices in, and they make tasty chicken, but if you're after the real old school taste you should miss them out.  The spices may have differed from other times I've tried but the biggest difference was in the cooking method.  Out went deep frying and in came a whole half hour of low temp shallow frying.  Supposedly this makes the coating stick to the skin throughout the eating experience not fall off in big lumps.  It works too, the last mouthful still had coating attached and on top of that the 30 minutes at a low temp left moist, tender chicken from the surface to the bone.  I loved the coating too, not the bombardment of different spices some recipes provide but tasty nonetheless.  I think I'll experiment in the future, some of these new fangled spices like chili and paprika I think to try and perfect it for my tastes.