To warm and cheer...

Yesterday, as I mentioned below was a grey damp November day.  I was cold when I came in and wanted something cheering.  Try this.  Oolong tea, a level teaspoon of sugar and a wallop of Gosling's Black Seal Rum.
It was so good that I had it twice.  The tea has a richness, almost chocolate-ey, that works really well with the rum!

Caraway Cabbage

I see that I have not given a recipe for the cabbage that we had last night.  Here goes.  Dry vermouth is a great kitchen standby for anything that needs white wine.  I actually used a 2003 good reisling spatlese which we were having before supper, which was very good.  If the wine is sharp, you may like to add 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar.  If you have butter roasted a chicken recently and kept the fat, use that, it is wonderful! 

For two:
A small cabbage, I prefer Savoy but anything will do
Butter
Salt, pepper, nutmeg and caraway seeds
White wine or dry vermouth

Put 1/2 oz of butter in a large pan with 1/2 a glass of wine, seasoning (careful of the salt, this is all going  to reduce to a coating) and 1/2 a teaspoon of caraway seeds.  Cumin seeds work too, but I think the result is a little coarser.  Boil fast for a minute or so to let the fat and liquid emulsify.

Shred the cabbage.  5 minutes before you want to eat (this will put up with hanging around once cooked for a very few minutes but not for long), get the fat/liquid mix back to a fast boil, drop in the cabbage and keep turning it over to that it all gets coated.  By the time that the liquid has evaporated, it should have become a brighter green and be ready.  Taste to see if it need more seasoning or more butter - we like lots!

This came I think, from a recipe in Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book.  If you don't have a copy, get Santa on the case!  The cabbage was quickly boiled, all the water squeezed out, finished with cream and served with a bowl of cinnamon sugar on the side for each person to sprinkle on to taste. 

 

I think that the recipe above could be finished with cream, but I'd want a very little flour in there to stabilise it.  A few pages on, there is a recipe for cabbage leaves stuffed with a curd cheese flavoured with caraway and paprika.  That's one for the "to try" list!

Yesterday was one of those damp November days, all blows and squalls.  We wanted a casserole, but I had to make a cake first and it was 7pm before I got to it, however.....I had bought an end piece of fillet steak, and we had some mushrooms, so I thought it should be possible to fake something.  This is quick and simple.  I use a small non-stick stir fry pan.

For two:
A piece of beef fillet say 6 - 8 ozs
1 long shallot
6 -8 Chestnut mushrooms
Butter and olive oil
Plain flour
Madeira
Soy sauce
Balsamic vinegar
Stock
Salt, pepper, nutmeg, dried thyme or tarragon. Sweet smoked paprika

Peel and slice the shallot, and cook it in a scant 1/2 oz butter with a twist of the salt grinder.  Slice the mushrooms thinly.  When the shallot is just on the edge of browning, add the mushrooms to the pan and give them several good shakes to mix well.  Add plenty of pepper, some nutmeg and a good pinch of dried thyme or tarragon.  I like to add a little paprika here too but be careful not to let it overpower.
Whilst the mushrooms are cooking, trim the fillet if it needs it, and cut into approx 1" cubes.  Put a teaspoon of plain flour into a medium sized mixing bowl and add some pepper. 
The mushrooms should be ready by now.  Add a small wineglass of Madeira, a very little soy and ditto balsamic vinegar to cut the sweetness of the Madeira, and boil to reduce by 2/3rds.  Add 3 or 4 ladles of good stock and reduce by 1/2 over a strong heat.  All this should take 10 minutes or less.
Put the shallot, mushroom and sauce mixture into a bowl.  Wipe the pan and add no more than a dessertspoon of good olive oil (or walnut if you have some, better still).  The pan should be no more than thickly coated; you don't want the meat to swim about in the oil but almost dry fry.  Let the pan get hot. 
Toss the cubes of meat in the flour and pepper so that they are all well coated.  Do not throw away the surplus flour.  Quickly sear them in the pan and keep tossing them for a couple of minutes so that the flour coating is cooked.   Remove them to a plate.  Add 1/2 oz butter or so to the pan, swirl it around to deglaze and add the rest of the flour - there won't be much.  Cook for a minute or two and add back the sauce mixture.  Taste and check for consistency.  It may need a little more reduction, but remember that the cooked flour on the cubes of meat will thicken it a little.  Add the meat, reheat and serve.

We had crushed roast new potatoes and caraway cabbage.  Just the thing for a November evening!  Mashed potato would be good too.

Professional Masterchef this evening.  Call me picky if you will, but here's my draft letter to Ms Galetti and Mr Wallace....unfair?  the only reference on the web that I can find about the boiled juice is...surprise ...on a Roux website.  I wouldn't mind, but they are so precise about there being only one "classic" way to do everything!

Mr Greg Wallace and Ms. Monika Galetti
Professional Masterchef
BBC

I watched the Professional Masterchef programme this evening with great pleasure but was surprised to see the suggestion that the orange juice for a Sauce Maltaise should be boiled to concentrate the flavour, partly as I had never heard of this and partly as I would have thought that boiling would alter the actual blood orange flavour.

In our kitchen is a bookshelf with only around 100 books: the selection of books is very varied and does concentrate towards a number of writers, but it spans quite a wide range.  When a new book is acquired, another has to go – harsh but fair!

I thought that it would be amusing to trawl throught he likely candidates to find a reference to boiling the orange juice when making a sauce Maltaise.  Here is the list of books that I consulted.

 The recipes that suggested fresh juice and zest (sometimes blanched and shredded, sometimes grated raw) to be added to a basic Hollandaise were in La Repertoire de la Cuisine 1979, Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking Penguin edition, Michel Gueraud’s Cuisine Gourmande, Art de Culinaire Moderne by Henri-Paul Pelleprat 1937, Andre Simon’s Encyclopedia de Gastronomie 1939 and my old Penguin Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

 There was no mention of Maltaise at all in the Escoffier, Ma Cuisine (1965 English edition), any of my three Boulestins, Connie Spry, Prue Leith or Paul Bocuse’s New Cuisine (in English). I looked in several others too.

I would be really grateful to know what classic books must be missing from my little kitchen library, or is it a little unfair, given the above, to expect chefs (who are given a sparse 15 minutes to make three sauces) to know that they should boil the blood orange juice? 

Stuffed Chicken Breasts
This came from a friend who cooks brilliantly and I have lost the original recipe.  Here is the version from 17th November 2012.

for two:

2 smallish, skinned chicken breasts
1 tablespoon of breadcrumbs
1 egg yolk
4 or 5 firm brown mushrooms
1 shallot (not round - one of the long ones)
4 thinnest slices Parma ham or similar
Olive oil
Butter
Salt, pepper, nutmeg and a pinch of dried thyme or (better) tarragon

Trim the breasts and, if you can, remove the central sinew without damaging the meat.  If unsure, don't.  Take a piece of clingfilm about 12" square and lay it onto the worktop.  Brush with a good teaspoon of oil.  Take another piece of cling, lay it on top and press all over so that both pieces have an even layer of oil.  Take the top one off, put a chicken breast in the centre, and replace it.  This is much the easiest way of bashing a piece of meat flat!  Do you have a meat mallet?  Some say a rolling pin will do the trick, or a good heavy pestle. Best to get a mallet - you are going to want to do this recipe again! Beat the breast so that it is maybe 1/2 a cm thick or a touch less. Leave it in it's film and repeat the process for breast no 2.

 

Chop the shallot as finely as you can and cook it slowly in 1/2 oz or more of butter with salt pepper and nutmeg.  Cut the mushrooms into paper thin slices, or chop (less elegant) and add to the shallot with the dried herb.  Cook gently to start then fast to concentrate any mushroom moisture back intot he mixture.  Beat the egg yolk and the crumbs, add the shallot mushroom mixture and stir well so that it is completely amalgamated.  (If you don't have any crumbs, add a teaspoon of plain flour to the mushroom mix at the end but make sure that it is well cooked, then put the mixture into a bowl with the yolk and mix well). 

 

Lay two pieces of Parma ham alongside each other on a board.  Remove the top film from a bashed breast and gently lay it (breast down/bottom film up) onto the middle of the ham.  Ideally it should be squareish and sit in the centre with 1cm or so of a ham border but it doesnt matter too much.  Take half the stuffing mix and lay it down the middle of the chicken, then roll it up, tucking in the ends.  You will have a neat, fat ham-wrapped cylinder, I hope.

 

Cook very slowly for about 30 minutes in a frying pan in as little butter as possible, turning every 5 minutes or so to get the chicken completely cooked. 

 

These are very good.  Sometimes I add a teaspoon of white truffle paste (from a jar) to the stuffing, or into a mushroom sauce for them. 

Stoved Jerusalem Artichokes

18th September 2012 - Sunday.  We really like the routine of a Sunday.  Tea and coffee, then porridge, maybe an egg.  Lunch, pretty much always a roasted joint or chicken, then a movie on the sofa.
We had roast beef - a piece of topside - not a joint that I'd usually want to roast, from City Meat on the King's Road.  It was nearly black - maybe hung 6 weeks?  The butcher was most insistent that it would be great and that I mustn't cook it for too long.  I guess it weighed 24oz, and was wrapped in a piece of pork fat. 

Preheat the oven to 250C fan.  Into the roasting tray goes an onion, a peeled carrot and a couple of sticks of celerey, all in chunks and tossed with olive oil.  Beef on top.    Put the beef into the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 150C.  35 minutes, then out, covered with foil and several teatowels to keep it hot to rest for 40 minutes.  It was red pink throughout and carved very thinly; it was a bit chewy, perhaps, but great flavour.  I took the carrots out and put them in with the roasting potatos to finish them off.
Brocolli, roast potatoes (Yukon gold - not convinced) and..... the reason for this post......  

Stoved Jerusalem Artichokes.  Mostly Jane Grigson from her Vegetable book, but no garlic or parsley, which I think would fight with the beautiful flavour of the artichokes.  Choose the least knobbly ones and make sure that they are stone hard - if there is a tiny bit of give - cook something else.

Jerusalem artichokes
dash olive oil
1/2 oz + of butter per pound of artichokes, but 1/2 oz is the minimum if only doing a few.
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
1/2  a lemon

Squeeze the lemon into a bowl of cold water.  Peel the artichokes as far as possible to a uniform, roundish size, dropping each one into the acidulated water as they are done.  In a saucepan in which they will loosely fit (you are going to need to shake/turn them) put a splash of oil, the butter - if in doubt use more - a couple of turns of the salt mill, several of pepper and about 6 scrapes of a nutmeg down the grater.  Put over a low heat, add the artichokes and cover the pot.  Cook as slowly as you can (I use a gas hob - a small burner at the lowest heat - just sizzling) for about 40 minutes, giving them a firm shake everyso often, and gently turning them every so often if the shaking isn't doing so.
Mine didn't go the crusty brown she suggests, but were utterly delicious.

Word of warning - artichokes are fickle things and similar looking ones will cook at entirely different speeds.  I cooked 10, a bit smaller than a golf ball.  Only one collapsed to mush (still yummy).  Maybe I was lucky. 

The star of the show was a bottle of Vieux Telegraphe, Chateauneuf du Pape, 1995.  I opened it at 10pm the night before and put the cork loosely back in the bottle.  By 1pm on Sunday it still had a touch of tartness and iron filings, the fruit was struggling to get to the top.  At 5pm when we had lunch, stunning.