improve my cooking skills

Made this a couple of years ago based on a Jamie Oliver recipe a friend gave me (I find him far too irritating to have any of his books, though I suspect his recipes are quite good). This time I also used another recipe here and took the bits I liked from both.

Ingredients

• leg of lamb (think mine was, er, 3kg! lots of leftovers!)
• 3 red onions cut up roughly
• 6 carrots, chopped into largish chunks
• 4 parsnips, ditto
• a bulb of garlic, split into cloves
• fresh rosemary
• 1 bottle white wine

Method

Heat oven to 200C. Chop up veg and lay in roasting tin with rosemary. Lay lamb on top. Roast for 30 min.

Take it out, turn oven down to 180, pour in wine, cover with foil. Roast for another 3.5 hours.

Take it out, take foil off, roast for another hour, same temperature.

The results were magnificent, even if I do say so myself! The lamb was great and the vegetables had caramelised very nicely. The wine had reduced to form a pretty good sauce. Very easy and very good for entertaining. Realistically serves 6 but we guzzled most of it between 4 of us and I have some leftover lamb which we are going to turn into a curry this evening!

The Jamie Oliver recipe includes potatoes and celeriac but not parsnips. The other recipe uses butternut squash and cherry tomatoes. Both use carrots, the parsnips were my own touch as I am something of a parsnip addict. So I guess you can pretty much use whatever veg you like! Highly recommended.

I made this yesterday, so here’s the report.

First I caramelised about 10 small organic red onions – I sliced them finely then slow-cooked them with some butter for about half an hour, then added a dash of the magic ingredient, Belazu balsamic vinegar (this stuff is expensive but worth every penny). Then decided the onions had mushed down so much that I’d better cook some more! Next time I would probably aim to use about 6 big onions. I did this well ahead of time and allowed them to cool.

For the pastry, I used M Roux’s pate brisee recipe, which worked well although it went very hard while in the fridge and was quite hard work to roll out, and I am dreadful at rolling pastry so I ended up with a shape that reminded me of France, as opposed to the perfect circle that M Roux always seems to achieve in his illustrations.

I then baked it blind – a new adventure! – which involved putting the pastry in the flan dish, then covering it with baking parchment and weighing it down with beans (I used dried soya beans) and baking at 190C for 20 min. Then I turned down the oven to 170C and took the beans out and put the flan back in the oven with no filling at this stage, for 10 min. Finally I added the onions and sprinkled some thyme on the top, and cooked at 170C for a further 30 min. We let it rest about 15 min before eating, as apparently tarts are supposed to be served warm not hot.

We ate it with a green salad and although it looked a lot, we finished it comfortably between four of us. I would have added some goats cheese to it had we not also been having a cheese course and also one of my friends doesn’t like goats cheese. I also saw a recipe for caramelised onion tart with feta which sounded quite good so that would be a possibility next time.

In terms of effort v. reward: I have to be honest and say it was quite a lot of effort to make the pastry. The whole thing took about 2 hours from start to finish with a few quiet minutes in between. It was very satisfying though, and it did taste extremely good. I would make it again, but probably only at a weekend when I have plenty of time and people coming round. I’d also say it felt like more of a lunchtime dish somehow. For wow factor, the meringues were much quicker and easier!

My friend LA is coming round for dinner on Sat and she let slip a couple of years ago that she loves meringues, so I thought it would be rather nice to have Eton Mess as a pudding (strictly speaking this involves strawberries, but I shall use frozen raspberries).

I discussed meringue-making with Mum while I was at home – she wasn’t convinced it was worth making my own as the bought ones are quite good these days. A fair point, but the aim is to extend my culinary skills.

I used a recipe from St Delia’s website here. I used 3 organic egg whites and 6 oz (170g) sugar i.e. 1.5 times the amount in the recipe. This made 11 decent sized meringues.

Was very glad I have an electric whisk thingy! Anyway, it all went to plan and took less than 5 minutes! There was a slight hitch when it came to putting them in the oven, as I had 2 trays which meant one had to go higher up.

I totally failed on the “leave them 4 hours to cool” bit. I managed to wait 1.5 hours before I ate the first one, and 3 hours till I ate the second. Wow. I mean, like, wow. These are seriously seriously good. Not only really easy to make but also miles better than bought ones – crisp on the outside, then there’s a chewy bit, then a softer bit. The only question now is how do I not eat the whole lot before Saturday? ;)

The only thing I would change next time is I might try to use less sugar, as it seemed like a lot and they are very sweet.

I’m cooking a lot these days and I’ve become much more confident and creative in the kitchen than I was a year ago. I can now improvise a little and make small changes to recipes and it’s good fun. Recently I’ve felt a bit bored, however, so it’s time to find new recipes and ideas to try. Last night I spent an hour flicking through few cookbooks and made a list of nice sounding recipes that I want to try.
This is going to be a loooong list, so apologies…

Brunches

Mushroom & tomato frittata (or leek) (fd58/87)
Omelette with beans (fd140)
Gramflour pancakes and salsa (gi106)
Sweet pepper and cashew nut flan (d79)

Lunches (or light meals)
Mash toppers (fd66)
Avocado and quinoa salad (fd93)
Tomato & red pepper soup with avocado (gi34)
Egg fu yong (gi60)
Mixed wholegrain salad with miso dressing (d118)
Sweetcorn chowder (d105)
Lentil and carrot soup (d38)
Beetroot, rocket, apple and cashew salad (d31)
Beans with creamed avocado dressing (d25)

Dinners (or protein dishes)
Chestnut and vegetable burgers (cv77)
Ginger, aduki bean and celeriac cakes (d38)
Thai beancakes with sweet pepper sauce (gi94) .
Tempeh burgers (gi151)
Butter bean and coriander potato cakes (d73) .
Quorn korma (i38) .
Coconut quorn (fd84)
Spicy millet and roasted hazelnuts (+quorn pieces) (cv80)
Leeks in red pesto and tofu sauce (fd106)
Butternut and squash risotto (cv67)
Garlic & chilli split pigeon pea curry (i115)
Bengali style aubergine cooked in yoghurt (i104)
Moroccan chickpea casserole (gi119)
Keralan potato curry (gi59)
Millet pilaff with baked aubergine (d128)
Tofu and pineapple stirfry (p124)
Corn enchiladas with tofu, spinach and salsa (d119)
Grilled lemon sole (d69) .
Asian fishcakes (fd118) .
Coconut and coriander fish (fd122) .
Bengali style baked fish (i77)
Coconut and chilli panfried halibut (i74)
Simple north Indian fish curry (i70)
Coconut mackerel curry (i69)
Tandoori monkfish (i64)
Haddock fishcakes (pf122)

Sides or snacks .
Leek compote (fd95) .
Split yellow peas with spring onions (fd132)
Coconut rice (i123)
Toasted spiced chickpeas (i109)
Fried spiced okra (i101)
Spinach with tomatoes (i94)
Five seed potatoes (i92)
Potato rosti (pf62)
Tofu &hijiki balls (gi160)
Veggie sushi (gi122)
Cabbage thoran (gi61)
Spinach curry (gi60)
Cumin roasted sweet potatoes (gi46) .
Crispy sweet corn fritters (d72)
Twice baked sweet potatoes (d70) .
Gujerati carrot salad (d62)

Dips, dressings etc
Green salsa (fd94)
Red salsa (fd95)
Yoghurt sauce with green herbs (fd95)
Salad dressings (fd114)
Marinades (fd126)
Sweet corn and avocado salsa (cv60)
Mango and avocado salsa (cv57)
Soya mayonnaise (d112)
Roas pepper and basil dip (d29)

Baking
Gingered carrot cake (pf50)
Date flapjacks (p42)
Date and walnut cake (pf42)
Banana muffins (pf34)
Sticky date bread (gi183)
Banana and cashew slice (d135)
Spiced baked bananas (d82)

I’m not going to set any deadlines for this, because I want it to be enjoyable and more about the cooking than beating a deadline, but I’d like to try at least 2 new things every week. It’ll still take a while (and I still have about 10 more cookbooks to go through and lots of recipes bookmarked online – i think i’ll try to finish this list first.)

I’m making corn chowder right now and later tonight I’ll be making twice baked sweet potatoes and some fish, maybe try one of the fish recipes above. Might even make spiced bananas for dessert….

perfect the art of pellkartoffeln mit quark.

it may sound boring, but i’ve just realised it’s by far my favourite german dish: potatoes with quark and linseed oil. as served in the spreewald, delicious with a bit of raw onion and lots of fresh herbs. when i’ve mastered that, i can move on to frankfurt green sauce. they sell the appropriate herbs at our local purveyor of fine foods.

Excellent website with video tutorials for people who want to improve their cooking skills:

http://rouxbe.com

Yesterday I made my first recipe from M Roux’s book on pastry, as recommended by M. Lupin… cheese straws using rough puff pastry. I’ve never made puff pastry before but it wasn’t particularly difficult – you just have to allow lots of time as it needs to be refrigerated between turns.

They didn’t rise very much to be honest and although they tasted good, bloody H E double hockey sticks I could hardly believe the amount of butter that went into the stuff! It was nice to make the pastry myself as although you can buy stuff in the shops, when you make it yourself you have complete control over the ingredients – essentially finest French flour, finest French butter and Parmesan.

Main points for future reference:

• M Roux says they take 5-6 min to cook. God knows what oven he’s using, as mine took about 20 min! We were waiting impatiently for a long time ;)
• he makes them into twirly shapes. I’m not very dextrous so my twirly shapes were a disaster. Next time I’d leave them flat – that way the cheese goes a nice colour too.
• use more cheese! This was the first outing for the Microplane grater which my mother gave me for Xmas, and it was noticeable what a large volume of cheese it created so there must have been a lot of air in it – I should have grated more.

Gougeres are probably easier to make, but it was good to extend the repertoire, and with cheese straws you can make the pastry in advance, useful if people are coming round and you don’t want the kitchen to look like a bomb site.

i’ve pretty much stopped cooking again. all i’m making these days is poached eggs on toast. hardly inspiring! need to get back to making good, healthy meals. first meal will have to be sunday. lets see how it goes…

my mom has taught me how to make chicken and dumplings, potato soup, tortilla soup(which actually has no tortillas in it. haha) and chicken breasts. i know how to make hamburgers but thats not much to brag about. haha. i’d like to learn how to make more meals. any recipes??

I’ve been trying to be a bit more creative with lunches this week and am really enjoying trying new things. For a long time, I’ve wanted to learn to make a simple avocado dip/spread (or guacamole) and finally gave it a try today. It was very quick to make and much tastier than I expected – definitely will be making this regularly. I had it with some tofu on crispbread. Nom nom. And I took a picture. Not a very good picture as my kitchen lights have still not been fixed, but a picture anyway…