Quicky Photo Recipe: Chicken Escalope

I did this is a picture form one : here it is

And this is just a nice picture: isn't it just?

Guest Recipe 2 : Toad in the hole but better than it.

Hi. No one I know wanted to submit anything for the site, so I let Andrew submit another one. Up yours to everyone else, thankyou to Andrew…

Pigs in blankets in holes (toad in hole but better than it)

Hi I am Daniels friend Andy, me and Daniel have only seen one another
twice since my last recipe but I think are still quite good friends,
but not as close as say Ross and Chandler from friends, more like as
close as Gunther and Chandler from friends or Arjen and Emma from the
junior apprentice. As this is my second recipe I will just say a few
things about myself so you can get to know me a little better : my sort
code is 266 102 and my account number is 9237 4389 2476 and my bank is
NatWest in Worthing on Chapel Road. I’ve got another recipe that I
invented but it might already exist, but I didn’t know that when I
thought of it. I Hope you like it, it’s ideal for eating with others
because of its large proportions or just sharing with a life partner.
This time there is slightly more to it and with that in mind I would
say it’s about as difficult as carrying a ladder.

The reason I invented this dish is because I use the right side of my
brain a lot (which is the creative side, the left side is the more
academic practical side and I didn’t use that half when I made this
recipe up.) I would advise that this dish is reserved only for special
occasions for example after you have just won or passed because it’s
probably a total brick shithouse of fat and in turn v unhealthy, which
as you know is bad for the ongoing struggle to become a healthier
Britain. With this in mind I have tried to include some aerobic
movements and fitness manoeuvres throughout the recipe to combat the
problem.

To cook I want you to have:

3 big eggs
300ml of cows milk
130g’s of plain flour
6 slices of Parma ham (or you can use streaky bacon if you aren’t
feeling that majestic, if i’m honest streaky bacon is probably better
actually now i think about it)
12 chipolata sausages but if i’m honest you can use whichever sausages
you like really, and it doesn’t even have to be 12 either it could
quite easily be 8 or 7
Some Colman’s mustard]
Some salt and pep
A kitchen

!1. PUT in 3 big eggs the milk and the flour and whisk hard to make
batter, this whisking is as good as doing forty rounds on a peck deck
and it is rumoured that this whisking is good to improve the size of
your lats, quads, obliques and tries and that this is the main secret
of how Ricky Hatton got into shape when he fought against Floyd.

2. Add the salt and pep, add a teaspoon of mustard, whisk hard, girls
this whisking is good for your cellulite and fat deposits, and is no
different from going to bums and tums, it is rumoured that this is
another one of the main secrets of how Ricky Hatton got rid of his
cellulite and fat deposits for his big fight against Floyd.

3. Put the batter to one side.

4. Cook your sausages, browning them a bit. When they look two thirds
done just pop them on the work top and leave to cool, do ten squats and
then keep all the sausage fat because you can smear it all over your
cooking dish a bit later so the batter doesn’t stick.

5. wrap your sausages in the Parma ham, tearing each one in half so
that we can make ends meet with the quantities, pop these LOVELY
specimens in the oven for only about ten to five minutes at 220 so that
the ham can get a little crisp and become less of a membrane and more
of a crust, if you are doing it with bacon then maybe a bit longer you
know?

6. Once that has happened grease up your dish and pour in the batter
and then try to arrange the sausages willy-nilly and higgledy-piggeldy
so it looks like you have struggled a bit with cooking so that when
your mum sees the dish she will think you are sweet. When she says this
tell her her hair looks nice and hug. She will give you some money

(this technique can also work with girlfriend or with a girl whom you
are wooing, although this might be a lie because I have never tried
this variation, but I think it may work, but I don’t really understand
women, but I’m pretty sure they like gestures and eating, so I would
offer a 92% guarantee of success)

7. FAB 25 MINUTES HAVE PASSED SINCE YOU PUT IN THE DISH AT 220 IN THE
OVEN AND YOU HAVE JUST DONE SEVEN CHIN UPS, SO TAKE IT OUT AND LOOK AT
IT. IS IT PUFFY? DOES IT LOOK NICE? WHAT COLOUR IS IT? IS IT BURNT?
WHY? BUT IS IT STILL EDIBLE? DOES IT LOOK LIKE NORMAL TOAD IN THE HOLE
BUT SLIGHTLY BETTER BECAUSE OF THE ADDITION OF THE HAM OR BACON? Ask
yourself these questions and make your own conclusions.

8. Whilst its cooling you might like to know that the origin of the
name “Toad-in-the-Hole” is often disputed. Many suggestions are that
the dish’s resemblance to a toad sticking its little head out of a hole
provide the dish with its somewhat unusual name. I prefer to imagine it
the other way around though where someone has actually wedged a toad
into a hole, any hole will do, my favourite holes to imagine a toad a
wedged into are, key holes, man holes and arse holes.

9. Do ten sprints in the hall, or five up and down the stairs
remembering to be careful on the way down.

10. Serve your food up, I would do it with some potatoes and some green
beans, but you could use mashed potatoes and peas, or sweet corn but
definitely do have gravy please.I have noticed on cookery programs
these days that the presentation of a contemporary dish is very
important and often quite daring. With this in mind I usually serve my
toad in the hole on The Bourne Supremacy to give it that extra boost
(it also works just as well on The Born Identity or The Born Ultimatum)
thanks byee

Thai Pork Patties.

I’m trying to do something new with the pictures until i find a better camera. Won’t it be nice and handy to have a saved jpeg to follow rather than a thick stack of writing? Possibly.

Here is another thai recipe using the same sauce as the last, which is a bit like cheating, except for it accompanies these moist, juicy little pork burgers that I would like you to try.

I don’t actually know if you’ll be able to read the info on the picture though, so I repeat the instructions here…

For the sauce:

2 spring onions sliced

1 or 2 birdseye chillis

half a lime, juiced

crushed and chopped garlic clove

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp palm sugar

3/4 cup of chicken stock

coriander stalks

for the pork patties:

200g minced pork

1 birdseye chilli

coriander leaves

1tbsp red curry paste

1 tbsp fish sauce

To make the sauce, throw all the sauce ingredients into a pan and bring up to heat. Make sure the sugar has melted and then take it off the heat. Sauce done. Unless you want to add some coriander leaves.

To make the patties, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix, then form into tiny burger shapes. Pan fry. You could also stir fry some mushrooms and more spring onions with a little garlic and some of the sauce to flavour.

Serve over rice, as pictured, or roll up in some fresh little gem lettuce leaves, dipping in the sauce. Mostly i do both of these, because i’m a growing lad.

The pork mix also makes insanely good meatballs for noodle soups, which i suppose i’ll do a recipe for soon.

love daniel coleman x

Chicken with oyster sauce

I’m getting tired of people ragging on my phone camera, so i’m trying out a different tact. Please tell me if this suits or not. Personally, it doesn’t suit me, as i spent almost two hours and developed accute RSI on the above picture, and using my trackpad for anything remotely intricate is a little like herding a blue whale with an eyelash.

Here is a sturdy recipe from my chinese back catalogue. It’s relatively simple, incredibly edible and will show off some interesting technique you don’t really find in oher cuisines. J'adore real chinese food, as opposed to the shit that often gets passed for chinese food in our takeaways and all-you-can-eats, and defy anyone who tells me the pork scratching with strawberry jam dishes can even be mentioned in the same breath as this.

Some of the ingredients here might make you feel like you don’t want to make it. Perhaps you feel like buying a bottle of oyster sauce just for one recipe is madness, or ten pounds for shaosing wine is an outrageous price to pay. But these ingredients are the building blocks to a cuisine. with them, you can make endless other dishes. Essentially what i’m saying is that they’re an investment, like gold bullion, except you can eat them, and you can’t eat gold. Unless you’e this man.

You’ll need…

marinade:

tablespoon of oyster sauce

tablespoon of sesame oil

tablespoon of light soy sauce

tablespoon of shaosing wine/dry sherry/omit because you’re cheap/recovering alchaholic

cornflour

the rest:

chicken thigh, boned and sliced thin

spring onions

half a thumb sized piece of ginger

garlic clove

a pepper

1 bok choi/pak choi

sauce:

half a cup of chicken stock with a teaspoon of cornflour stirred in

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

We need to start with the marinade, but a marinade with a difference, in that it’s really velveting the chicken. This just means it’s marinating with cornflour, which gives the cooked meat a soft, velvety texture and helps the seasoning stick to the meat. To velvet, add the chicken and marinade ingredients to the bowl with enough cornflour to thicken the liquid ingredients into a paste. Set aside in the fridge while you continue prep. It should be in there for half an hour or so.

Thinly slice the spring onions, the garlic and ginger and cut the peppers how you like. Wash the pak/bok choi and seperate the leaves.

To cook, we need to get the pan really hot. All your previous attempts at chinese food were failures because (1) you don’t cook at a high enough heat and (2) you don’t follow my recipes. So get a solid frying pan or wok and let it heat until the metal starts to smoke. Open your kitchen window. Add sunflour oil and when it starts to shimmer, just on the brink of smoking, add your meat to the pan. Shimmy it around a bit and allow it to form a nice little crust, then take out the chicken and set aside on a plate. Into the same pan, add the spring onion, ginger and garlic and swizzle it around until the garlic starts to colour a little, then add the peppers. Push that around, add the stock and turn the heat down to medium. Add the chicken back in, the oyster sauce and finally the pak/bok choi, and allow to bubble for a short time or until the sauce reaches the thickness you desire.

Serve it over rice, or better, cooked noodles you’ve allowed to cool and then deep fried; a bit like this. Or just phone a takeaway and don’t bother you lazy prick.

little thai salad.

I quite like thai food. Here is a thai salad. It should have a papaya in it, but i didn’t have no papayas. If i didn’t write that it needed papayas though, you would have never known. Unfortunately, my delete key isn’t working, so there’s no way i can keep it a secret from you now. I wouldn’t anyway...i like you too much to lie. Hopefully as much as you’ll like the following recipe…

smoked mackerel fillets (one or two. your choice fatty), chopped.

shredded carrot, half per person

shredded cucumber, quarter per person

tomato per person

coriander

couple of tablespoons of unsalted peanuts

and for the sauce…

quarter cup of chicken stock

heaped teaspoon of palm sugar

birdseye chilli

spring onions

half a lime

2 tablespoons of fish sauce

clove of garlic

coriander stalks

First we’ll make the sauce. Put all the ingredients in a pan, bring to the boil and then tun the heat off. Give it a little stir to make sure it’s amalgamated. If you need to, adjust the ingredients as you see fit. As long as it tastes delicious then it’s done. My palatte will be different from yours, mainly because i smoke a lot and drink a lot and sometimes kiss questionable women with my mouth, so it might need a little tweak if you are young, innocent and have a soft, pretty little mouth.

Next, toast the peanuts in a dry pan, and put some oil in another pan on a high heat. Hard fry the mackerel, and when it gets crisp and brown, take it out and lay it on some kitchen paper to drain and cool. Chop up the peanuts.

To serve, just dump it in a big pile and toss it with some of the sauce.

Guest Recipe : Andrew’s chorizo stew.

I’m going to be including a guest spot here in the blog, and here is the first submission. If anyone else is interested in submitting then please get in touch. But without further ado, i give you Andrew’s chorizo stew.

Andy’s Chorizo stew with lentils

Ciao, I’m Daniels friend, we have been friends for a long time maybe something like seven years or eight, that’s not as long as he has been friends with other people like Mark or his brother Matt but I still think it’s long enough to be classed as old friends, although we weren’t that close whilst we were doing our degrees because we lived so far apart and I just couldn’t be fucked to visit him on the train, because he would always say the same old shit over and over and I preferred hanging out with my girlfriend. But we are mates again now so relax. Here is one of the top ten Chorizo stew recipes I have made up this year, its v easy, about as easy going up the stairs or looking at a notice board. Also it’s great for sharing with friends, like on the Doritos adverts or just having all to yourself like on the magnum adverts or for having in an awkward date scenario with just man and woman like on the tampons adverts.

To cook it you will need these things:
Four shallots or five (if you can’t get any do a red onion and a half, or a white onion and a half)
1 Red pepper
1 Green chilli (YOU COULD ALWAYS SWAP THE COLOURS OF THE PEPPER AND CHILI AROUND FOR A LUAGH IF YOU LIKE, IF YOU ARE GETTING BORED WITH YOUR LIFE OR IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD THE SPECIFIC COLOURS IN THE RECIPE)
HALF A good CHORIZO OR WHATEVER A WHOLE ONE IF YOU LIKE
250g of red split lentils but maybe slightly less (don’t worry about soaking them, they’ll soak while they stew)
A whole pan of chicken stock
A variety of 5 or 7 tomatoes (if you can get the sorts that are all deformed and green as well as some red it would be good, like on Jamie Oliver, if you just have normal tomatoes I’d say it’s a shame but don’t be so pretentious, you could even just do a tin of tomatoes if you want guys, so just chill out)
Three cloves of garlic
A heap of parsley about as big as a fist or cats head
Half a lemon
Some baby oil

IF YOU ARE A GIRL PLEASE START AT SECTION 1.
IF YOU ARE A GUY PLEASE GO STRAIGHT TO PART 3.

1. Strip off all of your sexy clothes, gym slips, slinky knickers, plimsolls, skirts that are too short, wonder bras, knicker bockers, nylons, lippy, stilt shoes, tight leather leggins, golden hotpants, etc…..in a slow and erotic way, maybe put on some music, some sexy music, like pan pipes.
2. Rub the baby oil all over your nude body, getting it everywhere, all over the boobs, behind the knees, private parts, shin, middle of spine etc…but not the eyes please, you’ll need these to be clean for checking the stew with, and weighing out the lentils.
3. Cut the chorizo into coins, fry in a small amount of olive oil in a big deep pan or stew pot, once the chorizo has produced all of its oily juices then…
4. Chuck in the shallots, cut up roughly, sweat them until they are transparent.
5. Cut up and add the chili and pepper and garlic, fry a little and then add the tomatoes, cut them up first and make sure you keep all the juices as well in there, it should smell delicious at the moment and your family or friends should be making comments about how brilliant you are and you should feel like Monica from Friends in the episode where she does cookery classes even though she is already a pro just so she can belittle amateurs and be praised by the cookery tutor.
6. Once this looks like a nice sludge of oil and colors and textures you might want to think about filling the pot up with the stock, but grind some pepper in there for seasoning, no salt though please.
7. Fill the pot up with stock/
8. Put all the lentils in it and bring to the boil
9. After that it will need to be stewed, this means you can just stir it every ten minutes for the next two or three hours on a low heat, if it gets to thick and dry just add more water.
10. Girls you might want to think about re applying baby oil now to your naked body.
11. OH WOW IT’S DONE NOW IT’S BEEN TWO AND A HALF HOURS AND THE TEXTURE IS LIKE A STEWY PORRIDGE TEXTURE BRILLIANT!
12. Squeeze in half a lemon and put in all of the parsley chopped.
13. I like to just have it in a bowl (if it’s a rustic looking bowl it works best, but any type of bowl will do) with a lovely loaf of bread and butter but you can do what you like, for example maybe put it in a potato on a plate bye
14. Oh here is a picture underneath, I have served it in a traditional rustic bowl used by Spanish shepherds in the old days
15. Also Daniel if you have anything to add please add it here:

i have nothing to add.

Eating Fish : Mackerel Recipe

I’m recently unemployed as of about two weeks ago, so as well as being an absolute catch (ladies!), I’m also having to tighten the purse strings (ladies!). This is a dish in which simplicity is everything, the sweet sauce contrasting beautifully with the strong oily mackerel, like my pretty blue eyes and strong manly jaw (ladies!). It also takes almost no skill at all to pull off, which pleases me greatly, owing to my terminal laziness (ladies!). Also mackerel is a delicious fish (ladies!). Ladies, you will need…

two mackerels!

three tomatoes!

one red onion!

one garlic clove!

suzy salt and percival pepper!

You need to skin the tomatoes. There are two ways to do this…

First way: cut a little holy cross on the bottom of the tomato, then drop in a pan and cover with boiling water. After a while, pull them out and peel the skins off.

Second way: cut them in half and then grate them. the skin stays behind.

Now we can start the sauce. Slowly saute a finely chopped onion in a frying pan with some good olive oil. We want the onion to break down slowly, get tender and sweet, not burnt. Add chopped garlic and continue to saute, then add your tomatoes. A lid to your pan comes in incredibly useful here, as the moisture that evaporates out of the tomatoes and onion will be retained, giving you a lovely sauce. Without the lid, you may need to add a little water to keep the sauce from drying out, which will dilute the flavour. While the sauce is bubbling away slowly, turn your grill up as high as it goes. Next we prep the mackerel.

Make sure your mackerel is gutted. season it inside and out with s&p. put it under grill.

Cook the mackerel until it’s ready, which will vary depending on the size of the mackerel, but 4 minutes each side is a solid guideline.

I serve the sauce over the top of the fish and like a chunk of good wholemeal to go with it.

Braised Recipe 3 : Mexicanish Pork.

I like mexican food, or at least the idea i have in my head of mexican food. No doubt this isn’t really mexican food, but i imagine if i gave it to a mexican they wouldn’t hate it. Why would they? It’s delicious.

boneless rolled shoulder of pork
chicken stock
carrot
onion
celery
chilli
tomato puree

Take the pork shoulder and pre-boil it like you might have the ribs if you bothered to look at that recipe. This will boil out the impurities and blood and muck you’d only have to spoon off the top during the cooking process. Give it about ten minutes or so. Clean out the pot and then throw everything else in and the pork, with stock to cover, put a lid on, and simmer slowly for three or four hours, or enough time so the meat just falls apart when you touch it. Take out the pork and allow to cool.

In the forever you’ve got to wait for the meat, you might as well make some accompaniments. I like to have some refried beans, and a little salsa with my pork. I present both here. For the refried beans you will need…

tinned kidney/pinto beans
garlic
onion
stock from the cooking pork

Drain off the beans; you can use dried, but i don’t see the point. Add to the pan with finely sliced onion and a clove or two of garlic and cook it down lightly in the pork stock in a covered pan. If it boils dry, add more stock. Wait for the beans to turn tender and then mash dem up. When mashed, the pulpy insides will suck up most of the stock, but just add more to adjust the consitency to something resembling a thick humous.

You’ll have plenty of time to make some delicious salsa as well, for which you’ll need…

tomatoes

roasted peppers

spring onions

garlic

chillis

coriander

lime

olive oil

salt

Chop up the tomatoes, springers, then crush your garlic and finely dice. I use one birds eye chilli or a couple of average chillis chopped. Next, add the coriander, squeeze half a lime over what you’ve got chopped, a couple of glugs of olive oil and season. Alternatively just throw everything in a processor.

Back to the meat: when cool, break apart the meat into about thumb size chunks and apply a dry rub of…

cumin seeds
coriander seeds
cinnamon
salt
pepper
a little all purpose caribbean seasoning

Dry pan, toast the cumin and coriander, then grind. Add the rest. Apply to meat. The built-in fat in the shoulder means no oil. Put it into a hot oven. We’re looking to crisp the edges and get a decent crust on the meat and no more, otherwise it will get dry…incredibly dry. As soon as it starts to turn, grab it out, throw it on a chopping board and cut into little chunks. Meat done.

Cooking completed, place everything you’ve made into a warmed tortilla with a little sour cream and eat it with some friends you like.

Bbq Recipe 2 : hamburger.

Round two of bbq series is here, with a recipe for one of my favourite things in the whole world - the hamburger. There isn’t much i can write that hasn’t already been written about hamburgers, except perhaps that i would lose an eye and an ear as opposed to never eat another hamburger in my life. unless someone else has written that, then perhaps i’ll write that i’d take my own life and that of my best friend rather than never gobble down another morsel of greasy patty…which is 100% not true, but i feel i’d have to write something to trump the last one, and offering a body part would almost be plagarism. they’re just words anyway…

Yeah. You’ll need -

minced beef

salt

pepper

processes cheese slice

bun

Now i don’t believe a hamburger should be embellished in any other way. You are more than welcome to fill your hamburgers with spices, herbs, garlic, breadcrumbs or eggs, but i like a burger to taste like well seasoned meat. Others worry it won’t stay together, but it will if you keep it at the right temperature. The only thing i do do differently is place the cheese inside the burger, as if it was an infamous and elusive treasure waiting to be discovered by a gallant and handsome explorer named daniel, but it is mostly because i am single and people don’t phone me enough. I’ve heard this is called a ‘juicy lucy’ in some quarters, but i just call it ‘hamburger with some cheese inside’. You can feel free to change up the cheese depending on your preferences, and so many cheeses work so well in this, but for some reason, the gooey yellow fat of the processed cheese works best on my palate/love handles.

To compile the hamburger, take a good handful of meat seasoned with salt and pepper and split this in two. Form into half inch burgers about the size of your palm. Take your cheese and place in the middle of these two burgers, then crimp the edges down. The key to keeping your burgers from falling apart is keeping them in the fridge before you cook them. It’s quite simple really.

Throw the little fellows on the bbq when you’re ready, or like i have here, cook in a hot frying pan, until you’ve got a pretty brown crust on the outside and some medium pink meat on the inside. The added bonus of the pan is that you can fry a split bun in the meat juices, which is the cooking equivalent of buying your burger a gift or beating your waistline to death with a blunt weapon made of fat.

Top it with whatever you like or some gherkins and caramelized onion.

picture coutesy of http://findmatthewcoleman.tumblr.com/

Bbq Season : Lamb Kebabs.

It’s bbq season, or at least it was last weekend when i made this. Over the next few weeks i’ll try and cover as much as i can before the tiny window of opportunity closes once more. I like bbq a lot because i like to get drunk and cook, and it never seems quite as appropriate when i’m alone in a kitchen at three o’clock on a wednesday afternoon.

This is a pretty good recipe to pull out if you’re getting tired of the 3 for 2 deals, the 20 burgers for a high five deals, or the quails legs dipped in food colouring offers in your local supermarket. It requires a modicum of effort and is guaranteed to make people rethink bringing a bag of dog cocks from Iceland to your table. Here’s what you need…

a good helping of minced lamb, lets say 500g.

1 tbsp each of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds and ras-al-hanout.

salt and pepper

olive oil

coriander stalks

Just like the previous lamb recipe, you need to toast your seeds for the spice mix, so get to it. Once cooled, add them to a mortar with the ras-al-hanout and salt and pepper and give it a pounding. Add this spice mix to the meat and mix well, add your chopped coriander stalks and form into sausage shapes. To finish your prep, coat them with a little olive oil once they’re formed so they don’t stick together between the time you make them and the time they go on the grill.

I serve these in turkish flatbread or pitta with tzatziki. the recipe for which is as follows…

a cucumber

few tablespoons worth of yoghurt

a twist of lemon juice

tablespoon of good e.v olive oil

chopped coriander and mint

salt and pepper

Split the cucumber in half horizontally and then take one piece, take a peeler to the skin and split it vertically. Spoon out the seeds and mince with a knife or grate it. Put it in a sieve over a bowl and throw some salt over it to extract the water. Let it sit for 20 minutes or so, then wash the salt off and squeeze out as much of the juice as possible.

Combine this processed cucumber with the rest of the ingredients and season to taste.

Now go and get drunk.

picture coutesy of http://findmatthewcoleman.tumblr.com/

Leftovers : Lamb.

I had a lot of leftover lamb from the last recipe so i decided, rather than rinse and repeat, i’d make a shepherds pie. I only use roast lamb leftovers for this dish because minced lamb just doesn’t make a rich enough gravy, and for me, the shepherds pie isn’t anything without a decent gravy.

leftover roast lamb and roasting juices/leftover gravy
white onion
carrot
celery
stock
leftover
butter
potatoes
cheddar
parmesan
salt & peps

Strip all remaining lamb off the bone and hand chop into tiny pieces. Foam a little butter in a frying pan and brown the lamb off in it. Take it out with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl somewhere while you deal with the vegetables. They should all be peeled, chopped and julienned (chopped fine). Fry them in the same pan the lamb was in until softened, then reintroduce the lamb, add enough stock to cover this and a bit and simmer it lightly while you prep the potato.

Peel and cook your potato. the best way to do this is by steaming them before you peel them, but boiling water is fine i suppose. By the time the potato is done, the lamb and gravy should have reduced a little and thickened ever so, so take it off the heat. Push the cooked potato through a sieve to make sure there’s no lumps and introduce a little hot milk and butter. Season it all nice, but remember that parmesan is a little salty, so please be careful.

Now just compile. lamb and gravy on’t bottom, tato on’t top, then grate cheddar and a bit of parmesan over that, and into an oven about 200 for 30 or 40 minutes.

Yeah it’s alright.

Also featured in the terrible quality picture is a little sugar snap garlic and caper combo which i just sauted lightly in a touch of good olive oil.

Yeah they were alright.

Braising Recipe Number 2 : Lamb Shoulder.

This is a nice little recipe that reminds my stomach that i am its closest confidant, dearest friend and most despicable lover. It’s quite a nice way to prepare lamb, and it’s easy as shit to pull off. I’ve paired it here with a little yoghurt carrot salad that a friend of mine wants the recipe for. When he isn’t getting blazed and hitting bongs, he’s constantly pestering me for it. I’ll come to that later. First the lamb; for which you’ll need…

half a lamb shoulder
harissa paste, a couple of tbsp
coriander seed
cumin seed
fennel seed
ras al hanout
salt
pepper
oilive oil

First you need to roast the spices, so take a spoon of the fennel, coriander and cumin seeds and put them in a dry pan. Dry fry until they start to toast slightly, smell a lot and pop a little. Take them out and throw them in a pestle and mortar or a grinder or something heavy and grind that all up. Add the ras al hanout, salt and pepper and give it a mix.

Throw the lamb in a roasting dish apply plenty of olive oil and rub in the spices and the harrisa. Drop some unpeeled garlic around it, a few shallots if you want them and then cover with foil and put in the oven you should have preheated to 140C before you started the prep.

Leave this in the oven for a few hours. Let’s say three or a little more. Four tops. You can do five if you want, but i probably wouldn’t. Turn up the oven for the last 20 minutes or so if you want it to crisp a little, but please keep an eye on it.

In the meantime you might want to make the carrot yoghurt salad. You should. It’s nice. You’ll need...

grated carrot

yoghurt

lemon juice

olive oil

salt, pepper

Fry the carrot in good olive oil until softened and a little lighter in colour. I added a little of the roasted garlic from the lamb at this point. It’s optional. Allow to cool. Put in a bowl with some yoghurt, more olive oil and a touch of lemon if you need it, then season.

After such trials you’ll have a big chunk of sweet, moist meat and a pan full of fat. Set the meat aside and drain as much fat away as you can. There should be a rich pool of meat juices you can salvage underneath. Either make it into a gravy or spoon a little as is over the meat. I served as is, the meat, the salad and some pitta, but i wouldn’t be adverse to a good pilaf or some well made couscous to accompany. You could have it with chips…i don’t really care.

Braised Recipe Number 1 : Ribs.

Here’s a recipe for pork ribs braised in lu shui, aka master sauce. This is by far the best way i know to cook ribs, the best way to bring out the potential of what i see as a much misused cut of meat. I tire of these stiff, tasteless sticks of bbq meat that bypass the melting, fatty qualities of a good rib, and the slow braise in soy - what the Chinese call red cooking - means you get highly seasoned meat from surface to bone.

pork ribs, rack or split

1/2 cup of dark soy

3/4 cup of light soy

couple of glugs of chinese rice wine

4 tbsp palm sugar

tbsp schezuan peppercorns

bunch spring onions, cleaned, trimmed and halved

thumb sized chunk of ginger

one star anise

water/light stock to cover

If you get a rack of ribs, remember to take off the membrane that runs along the underside of the cut, because it’s a bit shitty and will only work against you in your mission of deliciousness.

Take a pot large enough to contain your ribs, and heat up a kettle of water. We need to pre-simmer the ribs to extract some of the blood and impurities that you’d have to skim off the braising liquid later otherwise. So boiling water and ribs into the pot, give it about ten minutes at a rolling boil and then drain them off.

Replace the ribs in the pot and the pot on the hob, then add your master sauce ingredients and enough water to cover the meat. Bring these up to a slow simmer, a really tender simmer and put the lid on. then walk away.

Three or four hours later, get some white rice if you want it, perhaps braise a little choi sum or pak choi in the pot and lay a few ribs on the plate. Most of the time i just eat it with a tsing tao and a boner.

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Please, please, please consider keeping this leftover sauce. after cooking these ribs, you’ll have added a deep rich pork flavour. Next time you use it it will flavour you’re new meat further, resulting in more delicious meat. Obviously there are some concerns that this isn’t exactly the most healthy thing you can do, but i assure you that if the sauce is brought back up to temperature again, and you’re heating it for hours at a time then it won’t give you rickets or make you poo and sick so hard you scream my name and curse me, beating your fist into a steaming pool of your insides, weeping diseased master sauce tears. If it makes you feel any better, the Chinese also call it ‘thousand year sauce’, ‘the sauce that goes on and on’ and ‘fine to reheat sauce’.

To store the master sauce, wait for it to cool completely. You’ll have a thick layer of fat on the top which you need to remove, and then pass the sauce through a sieve. Store it in a bottle, a pot, or a watertight boot in the fridge or freezer. Next time you want to cook with it, top up with a little more soy, wine, stock, et al.

Think about braising whole chickens, chinese sausages, eggs in shells..............

I've made it to blogger...

yeah! food blog. i've already started one on tumblr a bit ago, and i'll be transferring it over to this blog; so expect an ongoing braising series and bbq series, bad food photography and step dad jokes.