TARTA DE NARANJA

Regular readers will know I cooked up a Spanish storm a couple of weeks ago. This is what we had for pudding, courtesy of Claudia Roden. It is a flourless cake made with eggs and ground almonds, then bathed in an orange syrup. You can make it the day before but as long as it has 4-6 hours to rest it's fine. Serve with cream or some lovely full fat Greek yoghurt. It is a lovely light zingy way to end a meal - and it is also a  very forgiving recipe....

Cake

4 eggs, separated
125g caster sugar
Grated zest of 1 orange
50g ground almonds
50g blanched almonds, finely chopped

Syrup

Juice of 3 oranges (about 300 ml)
75g sugar
Cinammon stick

Pre-heat the oven to 180, gas mark 4

Grease and flour a 20cm cake tin, preferably with removable sides - I use baking parchment too as the cake is quite sticky when it comes out of the oven.

Beat together the egg yolks with the sugar, orange zest and all the almonds until creamy. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them in. Pour mixture into the tin and bake for 45 minutes. Allow to cool then transfer to serving plate.

To make the syrup simmer together the orange juice with the sugar and cinammon stick until the sugar has dissolved. Prick the cake with a skewer all over then gradually pour over the syrup. I do it a little at a time to allow it to absorb - it takes a little while. Put the cinammon stick on top for decoration.

Leave to soak for as long as you can, then serve with cream or yoghurt.
 

LAMB WITH PEPPERS

I have been woefully neglectful of my blog for some time. You know how it is – work gets frantic, personal life take an unexpected turn, suddenly life is taking up far more time than it should do. But I think we’re over the worst now (fingers crossed) and I was delighted to have my mate Tony (aka The Skint Foodie) over for a Spanish-stylee dinner a couple of Saturdays ago.  

I turned to Rick Stein’s Spain and Claudia Roden’s new tome for inspiration. I didn’t want to do jamon, tortilla, albondigas and croquetas but something slightly different with maybe a couple of favourites thrown in.  The first dish I would like to share with you is inspired by Rick Stein’s Slow Braised Lamb with fresh and dried peppers  – we had this as a main course with a soupy vegetable dish of artichokes, peas and broad beans in a thickened chicken stock. There wasn’t much left, so it must have been alright. It is supposed to be quite a chilli hot dish so don’t spare the hot smoked paprika.

Slow Cooked Lamb with Peppers 

Serves 4 

1 kg neck fillet

1 tblsp hot smoked paprika

2 tblsp olive oil

2 medium onions sliced finely

4 garlic cloves finely sliced

1 tblsp hot smoked paprika

75g Serrano ham, finely chopped

Can of tinned tomatoes, chopped

1 tblsp fresh thyme leaves

4 bay leaves

2 large roasted skinned peppers from a jar (or DIY), chopped

1 tblsp. chopped flat  

Cut the lamb into bit sized chunks then toss in the sweet paprika and leave for an hour or so out of the fridge. Heat the oil then fry off the lamb in batches so that it gets a nice brown, slightly crispy, coat. Take out of the pan and put to one side. 

Add the onions and garlic to the oil and sauté slowly until soft and golden brown. Add the paprika and Serrano ham and cook gently for a further five minutes. Add the tomatoes, thyme, bay leaves and pepper. Bring to a simmer, add the lamb, and braise for 45 minutes.  

Add more hot smoked paprika if not hot enough for you, sprinkle with the parsley and serve. I served it with vegetables cooked in a chicken broth, which suited the dish very well.....

CHICKEN STUFFED WITH SPINACH AND ROLLED IN PARMA HAM

I cook a lot of 'ethnic' food, as anyone who has looked at my blog will realise. But deep in my heart I love traditional European cooking and when I feel like making something special I will look towards Europe. This recipe is Italian in its roots and in its execution. I am not keen on pasta, or risotto, but I have been fortunate to experience other aspects of Italian cooking, both in the UK and in Italy.

This dish is simply delicious. I serve it with potatoes that are smaller than roast but larger than diced, and have been roasted with olive oil, rosemary and garlic slivers, and a pile of spinach that has been wilted with lots of grated lemon. I think it is a lovely dish - I hope you do too....

4 chicken breasts

16 slices of parma ham 

Filling

250g washed and drained spinach

50g butter

50g plain flour

250 ml milk

25g parmesan

Grated nutmeg

Black pepper

 Wild Mushroom Sauce 

30g dried wild mushrooms

Knob of butter

2 shallots finely

1 clove garlic crushed

150ml white wine

150ml dry vermouth

250ml chicken stock

100ml double cream

Seasoning

 First step is to make the spinach béchamel filling for the chicken breasts. Basically it’s a thick cheese sauce with chopped spinach. I favour the all in one in the microwave method so I select a large wide bottomed jug, melt the butter in it, stir in the flour them stir in the milk. Pop it back in the microwave for a couple of minutes, give it a good whisk, then back in for another couple of minutes, By this time the sauce should have relaxed but, if not so, add a tablespoon of water and put back in the microwave for another minute. Then add the grated parmesan, a good grating of nutmeg and some black pepper. Cook for another couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, put the washed spinach in a wide frying pan, put on a moderate heat and let the spinach wilt. There is no need to add water, oil, butter or salt. Once the spinach has wilted strain and chop finely.  Stir into the béchamel sauce and check for seasoning – you want this to have a pronounced nutmeg cheese flavour do don’t be shy! Leave the mixture to get cold.

Take four slices of Parma ham and arrange on your board one below the other, giving a squareish rectangle. Place the chicken breast diagonally onto the Parma ‘good’ side down.  Ignoring the fillet, make a slit along the side of the thickest part of the breast and then open it out. Put a quarter of the filling onto the flattened out breast then fold over the chicken, then wrap the whole breast up in the Parma ham. Take a square of cling film and roll the chicken breast up in it. Take hold of both ends and ‘spin’ so that you end up with a tightly bound sausage within cling film. Repeat with the other chicken breasts and place in the fridge.

For the sauce, sauté the shallots and garlic in the butter on a low heat until soft and golden. Add the white wine and simmer until almost completely reduced. Add the vermouth and simmer until almost reduced. Meanwhile, re-hydrate the wild mushrooms with boiling water. Add 250ml of the soaking liquid to the sauce along with the mushrooms and reduce by half. Add the chicken stock, bring to the boil then add the cream. Reduce until you have a medium thick sauce.

45 minutes before serving fill a deep sauté pan with water and bring to the boil. Add the cling film wrapped chicken breasts and poach for 10 minutes per side. Meanwhile prepare a frying pan with olive oil. Once the breasts are poached peel off the cling film, heat the olive oil in the frying pan and gently fry off the breast, making sure the Parma ham is properly fried.

I serve this with cubes of potatoes roasted in olive oil with garlic cloves and rosemary, and spinach seasoned with lemon zest.

A BURGER AT HAWKSMOOR

My dear friend Sashimi Girl and I have been pursuing burgers,  not in the single minded way of some but we have sampled a few. We've done Meatwagon at The Rye, the Rivington Grill, Byron and a few others, and we felt it was time to visit Hawksmoor. We pitched up for our reservation at 1.30, intending to make an afternoon of it. The cocktail list at Hawksmoor is exemplary, imaginative yet respecting the principle that a cocktail should be strong and not filled up with fruit juice and umbrellas.  My particular favourite was the Silver Bullet - Gin, Kummel and Lemon Juice.  As the menu says 'This isn't for everyone - it depends whether you like Kummel, a spiced liqueur flavoured with caraway, cumin and fennel - but it's perfect for clearing fog at any time of day and has the odd distinction of being Prince Phuilip's favourite cocktail' - well I never thought I would have anything in common with the Duke but this was delicious, a great appetite stimulant - I had two....

So, onto the food. I started with Devon crab with toast which was all I could want it be, and Sashimi Girl had potted beef which disappeared pretty quickly. Then the main event....

We had tried to order our burgers on the rare side of medium but were told this wasn't possible because of health regulations. I had heard about this, and accepted it, but we were very happy to receive two beautifully pink burgers. I had mine without cheese and Sashimi Girl had stilton...we had also ordered a side of bone marrow which arrived beautifully prepared.

One bite and I was lost - the most flavoursome, juicy, beefy tasting burger I have ever had. I was truly astounded by the succulence, the tenderness, the way it melted in my mouth.  This is my benchmark burger to date...I look forward to finding a better one but I think the beef mix that Hawksmoor have, with those little nuggets of bone marrow, mkaes for a burger with a multi-dimensional flavour.  We devoured our burgers, ate as many of the excellent triple cooked chips that came with them as we could, then ordered another round of cocktails...the best way to spend a chilly afternoon.

We continue our quest.....AdCod next....

MY NEW TAGINE AND KEFTA

Mr Redding bought me some fantastic Christmas presents – most of them from Sally at Persepolis!  I am now the proud owner of an ‘I Love Peckham’ hoodie, cactus soap (which is fabulous) and, most beautiful of all, a tagine. I have hankered after a tagine for years, ever since visiting Marrakech in 2000. And this one is the real deal, handcrafted, hand decorated, a veritable thing of beauty.

I knew straight away that the first dish I cooked in it would be lamb meatballs, or kefta. Traditionally eggs are added at the end but that didn’t appeal, so I just served them as they came with couscous. I cooked the couscous with chicken stock, then seasoned well and added lots of chopped coriander and some lemon juice. I found cooking in the tagine very interesting. Sally recommended I used a diffuser, and the ‘we sell everything’ shop in the Aylesham Centre provided me with one (I actually had a choice of three!). The tagine took a long time to get up to temperature but once it was there the residual heat just kept on going…the saying about turning round oil tankers came to mind. But I came to realise that the tagine is a fabulous vessel for cooking, and the top of the cone stays cool…it is all so well designed, which is why it is still in use after centuries I suppose!  I can see me using it for more western style dishes too...

Serves 2

Kefta 

500g lamb mince

Small onion or shallot, chopped very finely

2 tsp ras-el-hanout

2 tsp smoked paprika

2 tsp baking powder

Handful finely chopped coriander

Ground black pepper and salt 

Sauce

Medium onion, finely sliced

Clove of garlic, crushed

Can of chopped tomatoes, drained

Ground black pepper and salt 

Put all the kefta ingredients together in a roomy bowl and knead together well with your hands until the fat starts to melt and the mixture becomes slightly sticky – this will take at least five minutes.  Put in the fridge for ten minutes.

With wetted hands, shape the mixture into walnut sized balls. Heat up the tagine, or a wide sauté pan, and add two tablespoons of olive oil.  Fry the kefta until they are nice and brown all over. Remove and leave to drain ion some kitchen paper. 

To the remaining oil and sticky bits in the tagine add the onion and garlic. Cook slowly for at least ten minutes until thoroughly softened and slightly browned. Add the chopped tomatoes and a good grind of black pepper and a sprinkle of salt.  

Return the meatballs to the tagine, lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes Check for consistency and if the sauce is a little thin allow to reduce uncovered. Sprinkle with some chopped coriander and serve with couscous or flat bread.

ONION RINGS.....

We all love a good onion ring by the side of a great burger or a magnificent steak. I love onions and I always find the battered single onion ring a little unsatisfying – too much batter, not enough onion, and so often you get that really annoying sensation when you bite into the onion ring and the whole ring comes out leaving you with a batter shell….. 

The best battered fried onions I have ever had were at a chinese restaurant in Kuala Trengganu in Malaysia. They were ethereal, little clumps of finely sliced onion coated in the lightest, airiest batter imaginable, and I have tried time and time again to recreate them. I’m not quite there yet but this is what I am currently serving when I cook Mr Redding a lovely steak from the East London Steak Company… 

It’s all a bit ‘cooking by feel’ so there is no list of ingredients. For one portion I slice one onion into fine rings and separate them out. Put the onion rings into a roomy bowl and add a couple of tablespoons of plain flour, a good shake of salt and black pepper, and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder. Add enough water to create a batter that is holding the rings together but is loose enough for them to move about. Fry at around 160 degrees for five minutes, until golden brown.   Eat IMMEDIATELY!!!

CROCODILE PIE

There is no crocodile in this pie. When I was growing up we didn't have turkey for Christmas - instead we had a couple of chickens and a shoulder of pork, with a large ham cooked to add to the leftovers for Boxing Day. We also had the usual accompaniments of stuffing balls, chipolatas and bacon rolls.  Even though there could be 10-12 people around the table there was always a lot left over after Boxing Day and crocodile pie was my Mum's way of using them all up. I was a very trusting child and when Mum told me that the pie was made from the crocodiles at the end of our garden I believed her (crocodiles being very common in Essex) but when I began helping her with the cooking I was initiated into its mysteries.

It is very difficult to give quantities for this as it all depends on the amount of leftiover meat you have - you can also use up those cold chipolatas, bacon rolls and stuffing balls. As a rough guide try and have equal amounts of white chicken meat, dark chicken meat/pork/game and ham. Mince or lightly food process half the meat with an onion and chop the rest into small dice. Combine the meats in a large bowl with a good sprinkling of dried thyme and sage and a grind of black pepper.

Traditionally the next stage is to make up some packet chicken and leek soup but alternatively you can make up a sauce by cooking together a tablespoon of flour and butter and stirring in a pint of chicken stock and milk. Add enough of the sauce/soup to the meat to bind it together and make a moist filling.

Line a shallow pie tin with shortcrust pastry, add the filling, and cover with more pastry. Decorate appropriately and glaze with egg. Cook at 190 for 45 minutes until golden brown and bubbling. Crocodile pie is traditionally served with mashed potatoes, carrot and sprouts. Crocodile never tasted so good....