The best stew for winter

It's really cold. The coldest winter in a couple of years, at least. Certainly the coldest I've felt for a while, and I'm loving it...Most of the time I'm loving it. The times when I'm walking from the station to work and my feet have turned numb and my nose is aching are not the times I love it so much. But generally I've always been a cold-weather person, and I think it's partly because of the food; I love anything slow-cooked, casseroled, stewed or Germanic and over the past weeks I've been cooking up a huge pot of something meaty and wet (uhhh...) to have in the fridge for when we come home and it's dark and cold, and we're tired, hungry and perhaps prone to grabbing the first edible thing that springs to hand, which may or may not be a packet of Twisties...
This week I made coq au vin, in honour of Bastille Day, but I've also been dabbling in a spicy, paprika-laden beef & chickpea stew dolloped with yoghurt (gutsy) and an Irish stew made with pearl barley and topped with sliced potatoes that my mum thought was nice, but wasn't what she considered Irish stew (and fair enough -it did seem more of a Lancashire hot pot). But the best stew I've ever made and which gets my juices going just when I look at the photo was one I made for a few friends last winter; the Greek lamb stew from Nigella's How To Eat. Truly, I dreamt about it for weeks afterwards, and I'm going to have to give it another run this winter, especially as my brother is currently living the party life in the Greek Islands and the Greek theme is running strong.

It calls for 2.5kg of lamb shoulder cooked in a bottle of white wine (yes, white), the standard stew veggies, tinned tomatoes, oregano and small pasta shapes. I love stews with pasta cooked in them; they go soft and slurpy and absorb all the tasty liquid. But for me, the crowning glory of this dish is the mix of crumbled feta and dried oregano you scatter over your plate before serving. I love feta cheese anyway, but this was outstanding. Don't skip it. In fact, I'd double the amount - it makes the dish a bit richer, but the sharp saltiness works so well. It's also fabulous with a dribble of chilli oil over the top.
This one gets a really strong recommendation from me, but note, if you have trouble finding lamb shoulder - as we did, even at the Preston market, or are charged a what-the-f*%#?! price - as we were - an alternative one butcher suggested might be to use lamb shoulder chops, which are cheaper and much easier to find.

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Lemon Chicken...Italian style

How many times have you looked at that bottle of limoncello in the freezer and thought "My god, that must have been there for at least two years. What are we going to do with it?!" I know we're not the only people to be lured in by the romance of this Italian lemon liqueur: remembering warm summer evenings on a loggia, with a warm breeze tickling the leaves of trees in the olive grove and flowing through your hair, and sweet lemon flavour slipping down your throat. Admittedly, I've only experienced that scenario in my winter-in-Melbourne dreams, and in my life limoncello tends to burn all the way down and makes me cough. Somehow the dream just isn't quite recreated that way you intend, is it?
So, we've had this bottle of liqueur in the freezer for a long time, and I can't remember where or when I found this recipe, but it's just the thing if you find yourself in a similar perplexed state when cleaning out the freezer. I know it was from a food blog, so do let me know if it is yours.
Chicken baked in limoncello...what an idea! It sounds a bit outrageous, and I wasn't sure how it would work out, but the best way to describe it is Lemon Chicken, Italian Style. It really does work well; the sweetness of the limoncello is balanced by fresh lemon juice and summery herbs. I didn't have quite enough limoncello, so made up the difference with vodka....hey, it's all alcohol, and I know people who'd be pretty excited at the idea of chicken baked in vodka.
The ingredients listed are not set in stone; I didn't have lemon thyme, so used fresh rosemary and sage instead. I also added a touch of Spanish paprika to the sauce, which gave a hint of smokiness. Also, my chicken breasts didn't have skin, and in fact 2 of them were actually thighs, as I discovered as I started eating them! I have to admit I preferred the texture of the thighs to the breasts, but I'm a thigh girl after all.... It's a perfect meal for a warm summer's evening, even if it doesn't take place on a Tuscan hillside.
Read on for the recipe:

Chicken baked in limoncello

4 x 180g chicken breasts with skin on
8 garlic cloves
Pared rind & juice of 2 large lemons
6 sprigs lemon thyme
1 cup (250ml) limoncello
50g unsalted butter
2 tbs olive oil

-Place chicken in a non-metallic dish with garlic, rind & juice, thyme & limoncello. Cover & chill for one hour.
-Preheat oven to 180c. Heat butter & oil in a large heavy based frypan over high heat.
-Remove chicken from marinade (reserve marinade) & brown for 2-3 minutes each side.
-Place skin side up in a baking tray & roast for 10 minuts or until cooked through.
-Return frypan to medium heat, ad reserved marinade (including garlic & herbs) & stir for 5 minutes to reduce.
-Remove chicken from oven & rest for 5 minutes. Place on a serving plate, pour over sauce.
-Serve with rice or mashed potatoes and green veg.

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Too Damn Hot chicken salad

This weekend it's damn hot...too hot! 3 days at the upper end of the 30s is not great incentive for doing much. Flicking half-heartedly through Nigella's Forever Summer a few weeks ago, when it was also too damn hot, revealed this chicken salad that looked pretty good for the weather. Her show of the same name happened to be on that night, and she was making this dish, so with that double whammy I figured it was telling me something!

I've never had Coronation Chicken, the dish she rejigged to make this, but it seemed to contain cooked chicken, mayonnaise, mango chutney, curry powder and apricot puree, which to me sounds like a combination thrown together by a deranged person home from the gym who JUST NEEDS TO EAT RIGHT NOW and doesn't care what they find in the fridge. I don't want to say "eugh" because I know many people of my grandmother's age who seemed to enjoy this....effort, but.....hmmm. Nigella's version also contains cooked chicken, but is much more sensible!
I mixed up a cooked chicken breast with a cubed mango, spring onion, chopped fresh chillies and lime juice and tossed it about with a torn up cos lettuce, a big handful of fresh coriander and a few drops of sesame oil. It's very evidently Asian-inspired, and was perfect for a hot sticky night. The lime juice and chilli kick was perfect, and although I'm really NOT a fan of fruit with meat, the mango and chicken was great together. For a hot night after a damn hot day, it's about all we could cope with - and afterwards I realised it had virtually negligible fat content - bonus!

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Lamb Fest

Going through the freezers before Christmas, trying to clear some space, we found a previously unknown hidden cache of lamb. Specifically legs of lamb in varying sizes, and no memory of having bought them. So, in trying to use them up in a more interesting way than just making standard roast lamb, I recalled a photo I'd seen in one of my cookbooks of a piece of lamb coated in yoghurt roasting on an oven tray. It took me a while to find the photo, in my sole Jamie Oliver book - Jamie's Dinners, and it looked pretty good, but I didn't have all the ingredients (fresh mint, tinned chickpeas - my supermarket is always out!), so I combined it with another yoghurty, minty marinade I found in Nigella's How To Eat. It was a bit of an experiment, but one that paid off.

I pulled out my mortar and pestle for about the first time in a year and ground up a 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds with 2 tablespoons black peppercorns. Then added 2 tablespoons dried mint, 2 garlic cloves, salt and some oil to make a paste. Then measured 250g yoghurt and juice of 1/2 lemon and mixed it all up.
Jamie's recipe was for a lamb leg, but one that had been boned and butterflied. My leg was a half size, and looked pretty manageable, so I decided to have a go boning it myself. It was....ok. Didn't help that I had to defrost it first and the inside was still hard: frozen meat, sharp knife and greasy hands don't make for a good combination! Eventually I got the bone out, randomly cut it down the middle and kinda managed to butterfly it into something almost even. Not the most sophisticated butchery skills, but full points for perservering!
The marinade goes into a freezer bag with the meat, and I left it for the afternoon at room temperature. We don't have many veggies in the house at the moment, so I found some old pumpkin, a few potatoes and red onions and sprinkled them with ground cumin, sumac (which I love) and olive oil.
Butterflied meat cooks much quicker than meat on the bone, so it only took 45 minutes at 200C to cook the lamb. It was more well-done than I'd choose, but it suited this recipe. The smells coming out of the oven were amazing; my brother, who was going out for dinner, was practically delirious and hung about the oven sniffing and watching the meat cook. It was a nicely novel way to cook it as you placed it directly on the oven tray, so it browned all over, and dripped its yoghurty, meaty juices into the vegetables below. Consequently the veggies were astoundingly good! It kind of reminded us of Indian tandoori cooking, but without Indian spices.
Because there were some pretty strong flavours happening in the marinade and spicing up the veggies, I made a pot of plain boiled peas to go along with it; their simple sweetness was a good foil to all that partying in our mouth.
And the leftover lamb makes a wicked sandwich!

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Handmade foodie presents

Being time-rich and money-poor this Christmas, I decided to make foodie gifts for friends and fam, hoping that old maxim about homemade gifts meaning so much more blah blah etc. held true. The decision was helped out by reading the latest issue of Donna Hay while lazing about by the pool; there was a feature on caramelised onion relishes, which was pretty appealing. But the clincher for me me was the time saving tip about sterilising: it says there's no need to worry about sterilising jars before adding preserves, because the hot preserves will do all the work. Once you've cleaned the jars with hot, soapy water and rinsed and dried them, you just fill them, screw the lid on tight and turn the jars upside down and allow them to cool. The hot relish sterlises the insides of the jars and lids. BONUS!!! Whenever I've made jams and assorted conserves (yes, Little Britain reference) I've spent ages zapping hot water in the microwave until boiling point, making a hell of a mess and nearly killing myself with the safety combo of glass, steam and boiling water.
So, thus convinced, and really hoping I wasn't going to give my loved ones botulism, I was most tempted by the red onion, thyme and lemon relish. If you haven't made jams or relishes before, this is a good start. It's not hard at all to chuck stuff into a big pot and let it cook. You don't have to worry about setting times and pectin levels and all that faffing about that goes with jam making.

I'm actually not a relish or chutney girl at all; I like my savoury food savoury. Chutneys etc. are usually far too sweet for me, but I'm actually kind of won over by this one. Yes, it has that characteristic sweet & sour taste of relishs, from the vinegar and brown sugar, but it also has something I quite like. I intended it to be an accompaniment to the Christmas ham, and it does that job well, but it really shines when paired with a really bitey cheddar cheese. The type that burns the roof of your mouth...mmmm. Before Christmas my favourite lunch was toasted bread with butter (real butter, not that nasty fake stuff!), bitey cheese, onion relish and a carpet of flat leaf parsley. Weird combination, created out of stuff we had in the fridge, but it worked so damn well. (Now I'm just trying to eat up the leftover leg of ham- now 2 weeks old...) I've only had one report from my present recipients, and she said she loves it, which I'm happy to know!
I won't lie and say I eat it every day, but just maybe this girl is starting to turn toward the world of chutney...?

Read on for the recipe:

Red Onion, Lemon and Thyme Relish
Dec/Jan 07 Donna Hay magazine

1/2 cup (21/2 oz.) olive oil
2kg (4 1/2 lb) red onions, peeled and cut into wedges
3/4 cup thyme leaves (stripped from the branch)
1/2 cup lemon zest
1 cup (200g/7oz) brown sugar
1 cup (8 fl oz) white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste*

Heat a large deep saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the oil and onions. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally for 40 minutes or until the onion is holden and caramelised. Add the thyme, lemon zest, sugar, vinegar, salt and peppr and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Cook for a further 10-20 minutes or until thick and syrupy. Makes 5 cups (2 pints)


*I found I needed quite a lot of salt to create a good balance between sweet and savoury: almost a 1/4 cup.
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Salmon & noodles with mirin dressing....dinner in 15 minutes

I've finally got around to reading the December issue of Donna Hay magazine. It only arrived about 3 weeks ago, and it's not like I have many other pressing concerns stopping me from reading it! But while lazing about in the swimming pool a few days ago, Donna Hay in my wet hands, I noticed a '10 meals in 10 minutes' section about noodles. I don't eat a lot of noodles or pasta, but I do make an exception for soba noodles, which are made primarily of buckwheat (well, should be all buckwheat, but we're talking the ones you buy in supermarkets here!).
I also like salmon and am trying to eat more of it, in place of the red meat I love. It's so easy to throw a steak on the grill, with a few veggies or salad and have dinner ready in 10 minutes. Much quicker than pasta! This meal promised to be ready in 10 minutes, and featured Japanese flavours and salmon; all good things, especially in this sunny Melbourne summer.
It was a quick meal; probably more 15 minutes than 10, and I was very impressed. I made a few changes, in typical style:
-Didn't have soba noodles, but had something similar called 'multigrain noodles'. They also cook very quickly and have similar texture. They had them in the local Asian grocery and I was curious. They're good, but soba are better.
-I doubled the amount of sesame seeds, and toasted them for a minute or so. I wouldn't usually bother doing that, but now realise the difference it makes. Yum!
-Didn't bother taking off the salmon skin, cos I love it. Yes, it makes it fattier, but it's the fish equivalent of pork cracking! Mmmm.....pork crackling...
-Going to the cupboards for mirin, I discovered the bottle I had was no longer there. Hmmmm. Did a bit of Googling, and discovered a substitute for mirin is sake mixed with sugar. I thought that worked really well; for the 4 tablespoons of mirin in the recipe, I used 4 tablespoons of sake and 1.5 tablespoons caster sugar. I'd reduce that to 1 tablespoon in the future, but I don't like things too sweet.

Tastewise, this has a great combination of sweet, tangy and salty. I prefer salt to sweet, so would skew things in that direction a bit more next time. I'd also take my salmon off the grill earlier. I tend to undercook or overcook salmon; one day I'll get it right!!
Don't be tempted to skip the pickled ginger; it really makes the dish. My packet cost about $2 from a random Asian grocery store in Preston. It's easy stuff to find.
Read on for the recipe:

Salmon & soba noodles with mirin dressing
Enough for 2 (or 1 dinner, one lunch for work)

300g (10 oz) dried soba noodles
vegetable oil for brushing
2 x 150g salmon fillets, skin removed (I used 1 large fillet, skin on)
1/4 cup coriander (cilantro) leaves
salt & cracked pepper
Mirin dressing:
2-3 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
2 teaspoons chopped pickled ginger
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons mirin
salt & cracked pepper

Mirin dressing: Place sesame seeds, ginger, soy, lemon, mirin, salt & pepper in a bowl and stir to combine. Set aside;

Place noodles in a medium saucepan of boiling water and cook until ready. Soba noodles are quick, and should take about 3-5 minutes. Drain and set aside;
Brush the salmon with oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Heat a medium saucepan and cook salmon to your liking;
Place the noodles and half the mirin dressing in a bowl and toss to coat. Divide the noodles between bowls and top with the salmon, coriander and remainder of the dressing to serve.
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Ortiz anchovies....the dream finally realised

I finally get it (not that I'm paraphrasing Epicure, or anything). I really do. I finally understand what all the fuss is about.
I have been wanting to try the Spanish Ortiz anchovies for so damn long now. Every foodie thing I read raves about their meatiness, their sweetness, their general not-awful-like-a-pizza-ishness. So, a few months back, I hooked up with Plum and went on an expedition to Simon Johnston to spend a voucher I got for my birthday. Hmm - $150 at Simon Johnston doesn't get you very far! A 60g small bar of Valrhona was $10.
But I found me my Ortizs, just the regular size like you'd buy in a supermarket, and had a chat with the staff woman who said the best way to try them was just over some simple spaghetti with olive oil. So, at home today and at a loose end for lunch, I gave it a go.

Not one to just dump some mega-expensive anchovies on pasta, I pulled out some fine spaghettini. A simple dressing like this would be ruined by big, chunky pasta. Then I started by really slowly cooking a LOT of garlic in olive oil and butter. A small pinch of chilli. I didn't want the garlic to brown, so kept it as low as possible. While the pasta cooked, with hand shaking over the tin I opened the anchovies, carefully not spilling a drop of the platinum oil. Of course I had to have a taste - and yes, they are wonderful. Yes, they're soft and meaty and not crunchy and hard like the usuals. They're pinker and generally more appealing to look at. And they do have a sweetness to go along with the general anchovy saltiness. Now, when people said they were sweet, I was almost expecting them to NOT taste like anchovies, but the salty taste was still there. Yay! I love salt! I love anchovies! I love these expensive anchovies!
I melted just one into my garlicky, buttery oil. Threw the pasta into the pan and tossed it about, then added a few more achovies on top. Some of the anchovy oil and a squeeze of lemon juice to cut through it. Some cracked pepper. Then went outside into the beautiful sun, with a glass of chardonnay and enjoyed a rather excellent lunch.
The cost for my 50 gram tin of Ortiz anchovies?.....$15.
Have I left some for another occasion? You betcha.

*NB I saw them, as well as Ortiz tuna at the Spanish stall at the Borough market in London recently. About 7 pounds for the same tiny tin - expensive over there too!

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