Meat – Page 4 – Bangers & Mash

Bangin’ books: Chop Sizzle Wow, plus my girls cook penne with meatballs

October 30, 2014October 30, 2014Posted in Meat, Recipes, ReviewsTagged cooking with children, meatballs, pasta, penne, silver spoon3 Comments

This tasty and very satisfying pasta dish is brought to you courtesy of Chop Sizzle Wow; a new cookbook bringing together 50 quick and easy classic Italian recipes from the bible of Italian home cooking, The Silver Spoon, in a fun and engaging cartoon format.

I was sent a review copy, and as the press release said it is perfect for cooks young and old, I decided to put the children to work testing out one of the recipes.

Our chosen recipe

Chopping action

More chopping action – watch those fingers Mia!

Poseur? Moi?

Chop!

Squeeze!

Roll!

Sing!

Let’s get cooking

Sizzle!

Our chosen recipe was rigatoni with meatballs. Except we didn’t have any rigatoni, nor did the corner shop, so we went with penne instead. Jess and Mia loved the cartoon concept of the book and found the recipe fairly easy to follow, but they definitely needed some adult assistance from time to time; such as when they couldn’t get the meatballs to fry and brown without them disintegrating. At this point I stepped in and cooked up the meatballs in a separate frying pan.

But all in all the dish was a resounding success and the end result was very good. I think it’s one the kids will want to cook again. Oh, and they also have their eye on several recipes in the desserts section, such as the Chocolate Delight and the Stuffed Peaches.

The recipes in Chop Sizzle Wow are brilliantly simple and very easy to follow, although you probably do need a little kitchen nouse to fill in some of the gaps.

The book is divided into five sections: appetizers, pasta, main courses, deserts and baking, and extra stuff. There’s also a witty introduction giving an overview on how Italians cook and eat.

The illustrations by Brazilian illustrator and artist Adriano Rampazzo (a recent graduate of London’s Central St Martin’s art college) are fantastic and I’m sure this book will appeal to comic book fans, as well as those looking for an easy introduction to Italian cookery. I think it would make a great Christmas present for students returning to their uni digs after the holidays.

If you’d like to try those tasty meatballs yourself, here’s the recipe…

Pasta with meatballs

300g minced meat (our pack was 400g and we used all of it)
Half a clove of garlic (we used a full one – who saves half a clove?)
1 onion
1 carrot
1 celery stick
1 sprig parsley (we decided this wasn’t enough, and used a small bunch)
1 sprig rosemary
1 egg
350g rigatoni (we used penne)
plain flour for dusting
3 tbsp olive oil
400ml passata
25g grated Parmesan

Serves 4

Thinly slice the onion.

Chop the garlic.

Chop the carrots and celery.

Chop the parsley.

Chop the rosemary.

Lightly beat the egg.

Mix the meat, parsley and garlic. Then season and mix in the egg. Shape into small balls. Dust with flour.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan on a low heat.

Cook the onion, carrot, celery and rosemary for five minutes on a low heat.

Increase the heat to medium and add the meatballs. Cook until lightly browned all over. (This is where I had to jump in and rescue the meatballs because they were falling apart. I fried them in a separate pan and then added them back to the vegetables.)

Season and add the passata. Simmer for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta for 10 minutes, or according to packet instructions.

Drain the pasta, then add to the meatballs. Gently stir together and serve, topped with pasta.

Delizioso!

Chop Sizzle Wow is available from the Phaidon online store and costs £12.95.

As this dish is a perfect one for older children to make themselves, I am entering it into the Family Foodies challenge, which I host with Eat Your Veg, where the theme for October is Cooking With Kids.

Disclosure: I was sent a complimentary copy of Chop Sizzle Wow from Phaidon Press for review purposes. No money exchanged hands and all opinions expressed are my own.

Madhur Jaffrey’s chicken tikka kebabs with spiced vegetables

September 25, 2014October 1, 2014Posted in Meat, Recipes, VegetarianTagged chicken, chicken tikka, courgette, green beans, indian, kebab, madhur jaffrey, sabzi, the spice trail, tikka, zucchini2 Comments

There are times when you try out a new recipe and you know the very instant it touches your tongue you’ve got yourself a keeper; that this dish is set to become a firm family favourite, an easy regular for the weekly meal plans.

And so it was with these chicken tikka kebabs from Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible. I thought it was about time I cooked a dish to enter into my own Indian-themed Spice Trail challenge, and this felt like a good excuse to try another recipe from Jaffrey’s classic curry tome. Continue reading “Madhur Jaffrey’s chicken tikka kebabs with spiced vegetables” →

Bobotie spiced beef burgers

July 27, 2014July 28, 2014Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged apricot, beef, beef burger, bobotie, burger, curry, south africa, spice14 Comments

Generally when I make burgers I tend to keep things very simple; just some good quality minced beef, seasoning and perhaps a little chopped onion. But occasionally I fancy a burger that packs a bit more of a flavour punch. This was the mood I found myself in the other day when I was about to make burgers for the barbecue.

Flicking through a few cookbooks for some flavour ideas, I came across a recipe for bobotie, a South Africa favourite, which could be described as a curried meatloaf. I rather liked the sound of beef flavoured with curry spices and fruit chutney. This was the inspiration I needed, and my bobotie spiced burger was born. Fruity and spicy, it was a winner with the whole family, especially the kids who are big fans of dried apricots.

I served my bobotie spiced burgers in sesame seed buns with some chargrilled courgettes and red peppers.

Bobotie spiced beef burgers

Makes 6

500g minced beef
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp chilli powder
pinch of nutmeg
8 dried apricots, roughly chopped
salt and pepper

Simply place the minced beef and all the other ingredients in a large bowl and combine well.

Using your hands, form the mixture into six balls and then flatten each one into a thick patty.

Cook the burgers on the barbecue for four to five minutes on each side, until just cooked through and ideally a little pink inside – although you’ll probably want to cook them a little longer for young children or pregnant women. Alternatively cook in a griddle pan or under a grill.

Serve in toasted burger buns with salad and perhaps some chargrilled vegetables.

I’m entering my bobotie spiced burger into my very own Spice Trail challenge, where the theme this month is Summer Spice.

I’m also entering my burgers in the Four Seasons Food challenge hosted by Eat Your Veg and Delicieux where the theme for July is Al Fresco.

Chicken satay with peanut sauce and coconut rice

June 27, 2014February 4, 2017Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged chicken, coconut, peanut, rice, satay, sauce, the spice trail10 Comments

It’s typical, isn’t it? I finally get around to posting a summer barbecue recipe and all of a sudden the gorgeous weather disappears, the grey clouds gather and a deluge of rain descends from the heavens. Blinking typical.

What else can you expect when it’s Glastonbury Festival? Even if it weren’t all over Twitter, radio and TV, we’d know it was Glasto time just by the sheer number of helicopters flying over our house taking the VIPs to the festival down the road in Pilton. We always give them a wave as we wonder who might be on board…

But I am ever the optimist and I’m sure the days of balmy sunshine will return to us soon. And this chicken satay is a dish we’ll making again on the barbie.

This was one of my favourite dishes when I went to Malaysia and Singapore as a child to stay with my Mum’s family. I thought the hawker stalls were just so exciting and loved the way the sticky rice came wrapped up in banana leaves. I can’t clam my version is at all authentic I’m afraid, and it isn’t easy to come by banana leaves in the middle of Somerset. It is ruddy tasty though, and I could easily polish off a whole bowlful of that peanut sauce on its own.

The chicken satay is packed full of spice and while it’s fine to mince the marinade ingredients in a food processor, I rather like doing it with a pestle and mortar to work out some of those pent-up tensions. It’s best to marinate the chicken overnight or at least for three to four hours.

Chicken satay with peanut sauce and coconut rice

Serves 4

For the satay chicken

500g chicken breasts, skinned
1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 lemongrass stalk, trimmed and white part finely chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tbsp ground coriander
salt
pepper
demerara sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
½ chilli, deseeded and chopped
a little sunflower oil for brushing

For the peanut sauce

2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ onion, peeled and finely diced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp crushed garlic
½ tsp ground ginger
5 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
1 tsp tamarind paste
1 tsp dark soy sauce
250ml coconut cream
50ml water

For the chicken satay

Slice the chicken into thin strips and place in a bowl.

Crush together the onion, garlic, lemongrass and ground spices using a pestle and mortar (or in a food processor) to create a rough paste. Add a little salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Stir in the fish sauce and chilli. Pour the paste onto to the chicken and mix well with your hands to thoroughly coat.

Cover with cling film and leave to marinate in the fridge overnight, or at least three to four hours.

Soak 16 bamboo skewers in water for around 30 minutes to stop them from burning on the barbecue later.

Carefully thread the marinated chicken onto the skewers.

When you are ready to cook, brush a little sunflower oil onto each satay skewer and then gently lay them onto the barbecue grill. (Or of course you can do this under the grill or in a griddle pan.)

Grill the chicken for about five minutes, turning frequently, until it has cooked through.

For the peanut sauce

Heat the oil in a saucepan and gently fry the onion, chilli and garlic for a few minutes until the onions are soft.

Add the ground ginger and peanut butter giving it all a good stir until the peanut butter starts to melt down. It should start to melt. Then add the tamarind paste and soy sauce and stir again. Next goes in the coconut cream and water. Cook and keep stirring for a few more minutes until everything is well incorporated.

Pour the peanut sauce into a bowl and serve warm alongside the chicken and rice.

For the coconut rice

400ml coconut milk
½ tsp ground ginger
salt to taste
1 bay leaf
1 lemongrass stalk
200g long grain rice

Place the coconut milk, ground ginger, salt, bay leaf, lemongrass stalk, and rice in a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Stir together and cover with a lid. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat. Continue to simmer very gently for around 20 minutes, until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the coconut milk. If it dries out before the rice is done, add a little water. When it’s cooked, fish out the bay leaf and lemongrass stalk – you don’t want anyone chowing down on either of those.

Serve the rice by packing it into a small, very lightly oiled bowl and turning it out onto a plate alongside the barbecued chicken satay and individual bowls of peanut sauce. I like to add a simple dressed salad to the plate too. Now that is properly finger-licking good.

As the spice mix for the chicken satay features cumin, I am entering it into this month’s Spice Trail challenge, where of course the theme this month is cumin.

I’m also entering it into June’s Family Foodies, hosted this month by Louisa at Eat Your Veg. The theme is Barbecues, Picnics and Outdoor Eating and I think these chicken satay fit the bill perfectly.

Beef and Guinness pie with vanilla and thyme

May 28, 2014Posted in Meat, Recipes, Stews and casserolesTagged beef, guinness, pie, thyme, vanilla10 Comments

When Solange at Pebble Soup suggested vanilla as the theme for this month’s Spice Trail, which she is very kindly guest hosting for me, my mind went into overdrive. I simply had to come up with a way to use this gorgeous spice in a savoury dish. And this deeply dark and delicious beef and Guinness pie is what I came up with.

My husband was the inspiration. He thought vanilla might work well in our favourite braised pig cheek recipe. I’m sure that would be heavenly but, as I’ve only recently featured the dish here on the blog, I couldn’t really go with that again. So the idea of pairing vanilla with slow cooked with meat in a rich, warming sauce evolved instead into this sumptuous beef pie.

Vanilla and Guinness are a genius combination. Soft and rich and ever so slightly sweet, but without being cloying. The vanilla flavour is subtle; just enough sweetness to be warm and comforting. Teamed with tender beef and vegetables – I opted for butternut squash and celery to continue the sweet them and some chestnut mushrooms for texture and a touch of earthiness – and topped with buttery puff pastry, this dish is definitely my idea of foodie bliss.

Beef and Guinness pie with vanilla and thyme

1 tbsp vegetable oil
400g braising beef, cut into bite-size pieces
2 tbsp corn flour
1 red onion, peeled and chopped
250g chestnut mushrooms, quartered
2 celery sticks, sliced
1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped into bite-size pieces
440ml can Guinness
260ml hot beef stock
large handful fresh thyme, picked
1 vanilla pod
salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten
375g ready rolled puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 180°C / gas mark 4.

Heat the oil in a large casserole and fry the beef until browned on all sides. Stir in the corn flour to coat the meat.

Add the onion, mushrooms, celery, butternut squash, Guinness, beef stock and thyme. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Add the seeds to the pan, along with the pod. Season to taste and give it all a good stir.

Bring it to a gentle simmer. Pop the lid on and place in the oven for at least three hours until the meat is beautifully tender.

Remove the stew from the oven and leave to cool.

Turn up the oven to 200°C / gas mark 6.

Transfer the stew to a ovenproof pie dish (around 2 litre). Brush the edges of the pie dish with a little beaten egg and carefully lay the ready rolled puff pastry over the top of the stew. Knock the edges with the back of a knife so they stick to the dish and trim off the excess pastry.

With a sharp knife, cut a little hole in the middle of the pastry to allow the steam to escape and brush the top with beaten egg.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown.

Serve with vegetables and creamy mashed potato to soak up all that meaty vanilla-flavoured gravy.

I am entering this pie into The Spice Trail, which is of course being hosted this month by Solange over at Pebble Soup, and where the spice theme this month is vanilla.

And as this pie also contains lots of lovely fresh thyme, I shall also enter it into Cooking with Herbs, hosted by the brilliant Karen at Lavender & Lovage.

Spicy chana dal cottage pie

May 23, 2014May 25, 2014Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged beef, chana dal, cottage pie, mashed potato, minced meat, spice9 Comments

There are certain dishes I don’t play around with too much. When they’re easy winners with the family, what’s the point of trying to fix something that ain’t broke? Like spaghetti carbonara or bangers and mash. Sometimes simple is best.

Cottage pie had always been one of those kinds of meals for me. Cooked minced beef with onions, maybe a vegetable or two, in gravy and topped with creamy mashed potato. Why would you want to mess with that?

But the problem is I just do have this tendency to play with my food. I was thinking about ways to make cottage pie go further, you see. Since taking part in the Living Below the Line initiative, where we only had £1 a day for food and drink for five days, the cost of food has been on my mind and I keep looking for ways to make things stretch a bit. I always bulk cottage pie out with a few vegetables, so the idea of adding lentils (or in this case chana dal, split and polished chickpeas) seemed the natural next step. Of course, I could have gone completely vegetarian and left out the beef mince but we do rather like meat in our house, and I think it’s useful to have ways to get more meals out of good meat than have to omit it all together.

Once I’d decided to add chana dal, it was a natural leap to add some spice, since chana dal is such a popular ingredient in Indian cookery. I added some cumin and mustard seeds to the mince and dal, and then a little turmeric to melted butter before mashing it into the potato. It could so easily have been one of those disastrous experiments but it worked an absolute treat and the whole family seemed to approve. Well, they asked for seconds. Always a good sign.

This is another of those incredibly adaptable dishes. Instead of chana dal, you can use pretty much any kind of lentils or pulses, and throw in whatever vegetables you happen to have in.

Spicy chana dal cottage pie

This recipe makes two large cottage pies, each yielding 4 to 6 portions. One for supper tonight and another for the freezer – perfect!

200g chana dal
1 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp black mustard seeds
500g minced beef
4 large carrots, peeled and sliced
2 courgettes, halved lengthways and sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
200ml beef stock
salt and pepper
1kg potatoes, peeled and halved or quartered depending on size
50g butter
½ tsp turmeric
200ml milk

Soak the chana dal in cold water for at least an hour, and then drain.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onion until soft and golden. Add the cumin and mustard seeds and fry until the release their aroma.

Add the minced beef to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes until browned, stirring frequently. Next add in the carrots, courgettes and garlic and give it all a good mix before stirring in the chana dal, tinned tomatoes and stock.

Leave to simmer gently for 20 minutes or so until the liquid has thickened a little and the vegetables are tender. Taste and season.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the potatoes until just tender, drain, and return to the pan.

Gently melt the butter in a small pan and stir in the turmeric. Pour the yellow butter onto the cooked potatoes, pour in the milk, season with salt and pepper and mash well.

Spoon the meat and chana dal filling into two ovenproof dishes, and then cover with the mashed potato. Cook one in the oven for around 25 minutes until the top is golden. Cool the other one before covering with foil and placing in the freezer for a quick easy dinner another night.

As this is a great way to make a cottage pie go further, I’m entering it into this month’s Family Foodies challenge where the theme is Cheap & Cheerful.

I’m also entering it into the Credit Crunch Munch challenge, the brain child of Fab Food 4 All and Fuss Free Flavours, and this month hosted by Gingey Bites.

Braised oxtail with smoked bacon

May 14, 2014Posted in Meat, Recipes, Stews and casserolesTagged Aga, bacon, beef, offal, oxtail, silver spoon, slow-cooked, soffrito13 Comments

Other than tinned oxtail soup as a child (which I don’t think really counts), I hadn’t eaten oxtail until just the other week when I got hold of some at my local butcher and decided it was time to try it out on my family.

I’ve been meaning to cooking with it for quite some time but for one reason and another hadn’t got round to it. It’s a wonderfully cheap cut and I’d heard how full flavour and “unctuous” it can be when cooked long and slow – perfect for us as we cook in an Aga.

And I certainly wasn’t disappointed. I turned to that classic Italian cookbook, The Silver Spoon, which I always tend to consult when faced with a new cut of meat, and found a recipe for a slow-cooked oxtail, cooked very simply with soffritto (onion, carrot, celery and garlic), white wine and pancetta, or in my case beef stock and smoked bacon.

The result was truly unctuous. So it might not be the prettiest of plates but it tastes divine. A properly rustic kind of dish which demands eating with fingers to make the most of all that gorgeously sweet meat clinging to the bones, with plenty of cartilage to be gnawed and marrow to be sucked. The vegetables seem to soak up the gooey, marrow-rich sauce making them beautifully soft, and a large helping of creamy mashed potato is just wonderful served on the side.

What did disappoint was how squeamish the children were about getting stuck in. This isn’t normally a problem in our house, where we’re used to sticky fingers and dribbly chins. Perhaps I left a little too much fat on the oxtail or maybe it was simply the idea of eating a beast’s rear appendage, but I was surprised at how much encouragement my kids needed to finish their plates.

Don’t worry, I never give up on the first attempt. This is definitely a dish I’ll be trying on the clan again soon. I loved it so much, it’s now my mission to make my family love it too.

Braised oxtail with smoked bacon

850g oxtail, cut into pieces
2 tbsp olive oil
25g butter
3 rashers smoked bacon, chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
3 carrots, finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
500ml hot beef stock
salt and pepper

Remove any excess fat from the oxtail and then soak in cold water for three hours, changing the water a couple of times. Drain and pat dry with kitchen towel.

Preheat the oven to 140°C/gas 1.

Heat the butter and oil in a large ovenproof dish, add the bacon and fry for 5 minutes until coloured.

Add the oxtail pieces and brown all over.

Stir in the onion, carrot, celery and garlic and fry together for a few minutes before pouring in the hot beef stock. Add enough hot water to just cover the ingredients and season to taste.

Bring to a gentle simmer, then cover with a lid and transfer to the oven to cook for three to four hours, until the meat comes easily away from the bone and the juices have thickened.

Serve with plenty of creamy mashed potato to soak up all that delicious sauce. And make sure you have napkins to hand.

Oxtail is a very inexpensive cut of beef and so I am entering this dish into May’s Family Foodies challenge (hosted by myself and Eat Your Veg), where the theme is ‘Cheap and Cheerful’.

I’m also entering into Credit Crunch Munch, co-hosted by Camilla at Fab Food 4 All and Helen at Fuss Free Flavours, and this month guest hosted by Gingey Bites.

Queso Fundido

April 27, 2014Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged cheese, chorizo, cool chile co, fondue, Mexican, queso fundido5 Comments

Queso Fundido is essentially a Mexican version of a cheese fondue, bringing together wonderfully oozy, gooey cheese with a fabulously spicy and very, very moreish cooked chorizo.

It’s a great dish to serve to a hungry family or perhaps when you have a few friends over for drinks. Serve it in the middle of the table with plenty of tortilla chips and hunks of crusty bread and people will come running, elbowing each other way to load up their next scoopful and laughing as everyone ends up with cheese all down their chins.

You could use a good shop bought chorizo meat for this dish but I made my own, using minced pork from my favourite butcher and the Cool Chile Co’s new Mexican Chorizo Seasoning, which I can highly recommend.

Mexican oaxaca or queso quesadilla would be the traditional cheeses to use in this dish but as I couldn’t get hold of these I experimented with Mozzarella and good old Cheddar, which I thought worked a treat.

Queso Fundido

Serves 4 to 6

200g uncooked Mexican chorizo meat (shop bought or make your own – see below for the Cool Chile Co recipe)
150g Mozzarella cheese, grated
200g Cheddar cheese, grated
2 large tomatoes, chopped
bag of tortilla chips
crusty bread – baguette is perfect

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 / 200° Celsius.

In a large frying pan, cook the chorizo over a medium heat for about five minutes. Drain off the excess oil and set aside.

Mix the two cheeses together in a cast iron skillet or ceramic ovenproof dish and place in the oven until just melted. This takes around five minutes but keep an eye on it as you don’t want the cheese to burn.

Give the cheese a good mix before topping with the chorizo and chopped tomatoes.

Serve at once with tortilla chips and bread. It will be gone in seconds.

It’s incredibly easy to prepare your own chorizo meat using the seasoning kit from Cool Chile Co.

The contents of the kit include traditional chorizo spices (achieote powder, Mexican oregano, thyme, cinnamon, bay and clove) along with dried ancho, guajillo and chipotle chillies, , and the resulting chorizo is full of rich and beautifully smoky flavours, which I was surprised to find aren’t completely overpowered by all that chilli. It’s actually quite mild in terms of chilli heat, and both my daughters enjoyed it lots and weren’t at all phased by the spiciness.

Mexican Chorizo

This recipe created double the amount of chorizo I needed for my queso fundido so I froze the rest and plan to use with tacos very soon.

1 Cool Chile Co Mexican chorizo seasoning kit
4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
50ml cider vinegar
500g minced pork or beef (I used pork)
4 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil

Roast the chillies from the seasoning kit, and soak in hot water for 15 minutes. Blitz these in a food processor with the rest of the herbs and spices from the kit, as well as the garlic and cider vinegar, to create a dark red puree. Chill in the fridge.

Place the minced meat in a large bowl and add the chilled puree. Mix together thoroughly.

The chorizo meat is now ready to be used in your chosen dish, whether a queso fundido as here, or perhaps fry and crumble over fried or scrambled eggs, or mixed with diced onion and potato for a tortilla topping or taco filling.

I’m entering my queso fundido into this month’s Spice Trail challenge, where the theme for April is Destination Mexico.

Disclosure: The Cool Chile Co provided me with a complementary Mexican Chorizo Seasoning kit for review purposes. All views expressed are completely my own and are 100% honest.

Tray-baked pork chops with rosemary and pears

March 27, 2014March 27, 2014Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged carrot, garlic, pear, pork, pork chop, potato, rosemary15 Comments

I’ve been making this dish for years. It’s a perfect meal for Saturday lunch when you want to get on with the weekend and not spend the day in the kitchen.

I regularly make this on Saturdays once the girls’ ballet lessons are out of the way (why, oh why did I go for dance lessons on a Saturday morning?) and it’s simply a case of throwing everything in a roasting tray, tossing in olive oil and bunging in the oven. Easy as. It doesn’t really warrant a recipe, but I thought I’d write it down anyway. It is actually based loosely on an early Jamie Oliver recipe, from his Naked Chef days, but even easier – if that’s possible.

So, simple and tasty and the kind of food I have to stop my children picking up and eating with their fingers, until I give in and join them.

Tray-baked pork chops with rosemary and pears

Serves 2 adults and 2 children

3 or 4 pork chops – I used to share one between my two kids, but now they’re getting bigger they demand one each
several sprigs of fresh rosemary
6 large carrots, scrubbed and chopped into large chunks or quartered lengthways
3 pears, cored and quartered
4 large potatoes, scrubbed and quartered
6 garlic cloves
salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220°C / gas mark 7.

Arrange the pork chops, rosemary sprigs, carrots, pears, potatoes and garlic in a large roasting tray.

Season well with salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to make sure all the ingredients are lightly covered.

Roast in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour, until everything is nicely browned and turning the chops and vegetables once or twice during the cooking time. The pears will be squishy and the garlic oozy, while the pork chops will be sticky and the carrots will have that lovely caramelised thing going on. The kitchen will smell incredible.

Serve with a big dollop of mayonnaise, homemade preferably, or the best shop-bought you can afford.

As rosemary is used in abundance in this dish, I’m entering it into Cooking with Herbs hosted by Karen at Lavender & Lovage where the themed herb this month is rosemary.

Braised pig cheeks with carrot and parsnip mash

February 26, 2014Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged braised, caraway, carrot, cheek, parsnip, pig cheek, pork, red wine21 Comments

This was one of the first recipes I featured on the blog many moons ago. It’s a rich, deliciously intense dish, in which pig cheeks are slowly braised in red wine, vegetables and caraway until they are so exquisitely tender they fall apart at the touch of a fork, and, if you weren’t upfront with your dinner guests, they would never dream they were eating offal. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never actually tried tricking anyone into eating pig cheeks before, but it would be rather interesting to see how it worked out. Anyway, I know my lot love this dish and they are generally pretty squeamish about eating ‘funny bits of animal’.

I thought I should enter these pig cheeks into this month’s Spice Trail challenge, which is calling for people’s favourite caraway recipes, as this is undoubtedly one of mine. The plan had been to simply link up my previous recipe post (badly lit photos and all), but then I spotted some pig cheeks on the butcher’s counter – rather unusual as I normally have to put in a special request for them. So I took that as a sign I had to make the dish again, especially for The Spice Trail. Such a hardship, I ask you. The things I do for this blog.

I always serve these braised pig cheeks with some kind of vegetable mash. It just seems to work so well with the rich sauce, and creates the most blissfully comforting of dishes. When I featured it on the blog previously I went for celeriac mash; this time it is carrot and parsnip. It could simply be mashed potato. Your call.

Braised pig cheeks with carrot and parsnip mash

Serves 4-6

6 pig cheeks, trimmed of fat
salt and pepper
flour for dusting
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
1 leek, washed and cut into 1cm chunks
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1cm chunks
2 celery sticks, cut into 1cm chunks
2 garlic cloves, sliced
100g tomato puree
½ bottle dry red wine
300ml beef stock, hot
½ tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp caraway seeds
1 bay leaf

For the mash

4 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large parsnip, peeled and chopped
50g butter
splash of milk
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 140°C/gas 1.

Season the pig cheeks and dust with the flour. Heat 2 tbsp oil in a large ovenproof pan and fry the cheeks until golden brown. Remove from the pan and keep warm on a plate.

Add a little more oil to the pan and add the onions, leeks, celery, carrots and garlic and fry gently until just beginning to brown. Pour in a little of the red wine and the tomato puree. Cook gently to reduce the wine and caramelise the puree. Gradually add the rest of the wine, reducing down each time until you have a lovely rich dark sauce.

Return the cheeks to the pan and pour over enough stock to cover. Add the peppercorns, caraway seeds and bay leaf and bring to a gentle simmer.

Cover with a lid and cook in the oven for four hours. Stir occasionally and add more stock if it begins to dry out.

Towards the end of the cooking time, boil the carrots and parsnip in a pan of salted water for around 10 minutes. Add the butter, milk and a little seasoning, and mash well or puree with a hand blender.

When cooked, remove the cheeks from the pan and keep warm. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a clean pan. Bring the sauce to the boil and reduce until it is good and thick. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve the cheeks on the mash and generously spoon over the sauce. Enjoy!