Cooking The Books

Steak Fajitas

Fajitas were my first experience of Mexican food.  I remember back as a teenager they appeared on a few menus in Milton Keynes as Tex-Mex became popular.  What teenager could be failed to be seduced by the sizzling cast iron dish bought smoking to the table?  The little pots of cheese, sour cream, guacamole and salsa and the soft tortillas? The construction work required before you got down to eating?  Definitely not me.

I’ve been making these fajitas for years and use the marinade for both chicken and beef.  The idea originally came from a book by Lourdes Nichols but over the years it has morphed into my own.  You can add salsa and guacamole if you like but over the years I've moved towards less slop in my tortilla.  It may not be the only herb they use (oregano is also popular) but coriander works perfectly here, the stalks flavouring the marinade and the leaves providing a salad element.  With so many flavours in the marinade you don't want to put it to waste and so a few spoonfuls get added to the vegetables for flavour. 

Salami, Artichoke and Gorgonzola Pizza

I tend to eat pizza quite frequently.  Maybe once every two weeks I get the pizza stone in the oven, have a little knead and get topping and tonight was that night.  I've put base recipes on the blog twice (here and here ) so this one is just a topping.  I find fennel has an affinity with tomatoes, putting the seeds frequently into tomato sauces, so a fennel flavoured salami works well.  The artichokes and olives provide a sharpness that cuts through the richness of the cheese and sausage.  It's not a combination I've tried before, just an idea I had on the way home from the office, but it worked really well and I'll be eating it again.

 

Quick Mushroom Soup

I’ve been making a lot of soups recently.  Over prior winters I’ve tended to eat chunky soups but since making and falling in love with the velvety smooth broccoli soup I recently blogged I’ve been experimenting with short ingredient lists and the stick blender.  The smooth texture makes for great comfort food and lots of the main ingredient combined with minimal stock makes for loads of flavour.

Last night’s ingredient of choice was the humble field mushroom and whilst I always try and photograph dishes for the blog maybe I should have left this one to the imagination.  The gill-heavy field mushrooms made it full of earthy mushroom flavour but didn’t make for the most attractive dish.  Some cream mixed it would have toned it down a bit (and, I’m sure, tasted great) and a little swirl on top would have definitely made it more photogenic.  It was really good though and I’d happily tuck into the dairy-free monotonic brown again.

Obviously leave out the Worcestershire sauce if you want to keep it vegetarian (or vegan even looking at it).

Chicken Fried Bacon

I promise I’ll put the deep fryer away soon but before I stop here is just one more dish I couldn’t resist.  As with the Chicken Fried Steak this dish popped up on a Google search and once the notion was in my head it was never getting out until I ate some.  With the only restaurants serving it a few thousand miles away over the Atlantic the only choice was to get a saucepan of oil heated and crack on myself.

The coating recipe for this is exactly the same as the steak here.  I made it at the same time in fact but thought I’d spread the deep fried blog posts out a bit.  Deep-fried flour tastes great and when have you ever had anything that bacon didn’t improve?  You can probably guess I loved it – crispy, spicy coating giving way to rich, smoked streaky (important I reckon) bacon.  For this recipe I’d definitely double coat (buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour) as with a single coating I don’t think it will have enough body to keep its shape.

Give it ago.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.  Just be kind to your heart and don’t give it a go too often.

The Shoarma

Whilst we do pretty well for kebab based fast food in this country for some reason the shoarma isn't very popular.  I know of places in Queensway and on Edgeware Road that do them (and I'm sure there's others but in this country the doner and shish rule supreme.  Not so in Holland though where the shoarma wears the crown.  I don't really think of Holland as much of a culinary mecca but when I'm visiting my sister there I do like to grab one of these, chopped tender lamb delicately spiced with (and this is the main deviation from UK kebab flavourings) the warmth of cinnamon popping up in their along with the more usual chili, garlic, cumin etc.

I've found a recipe and will attempt to recreate this at home but until then here's a snap of what they should look like and a recommendation to try one if ever you get the chance.  Plus when I do get around to making one I can see how far away I am from the thing I'm trying to replicate.