Slow roast shoulder of lamb with chicory and winter vegetables

December 27, 2013Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged carrot, chicory, cinnamon, lamb, ottolenghi, parsnip, pomegranate molasses, roast, shoulder of lamb, slow roasted, swede, warm salad9 Comments

I am very partial to slow roasting large joints of meat. I cook with an Aga and so, of course, slow cooking goes with the territory. Lamb, in particular, lends itself to slow cooking; the fat melts down deliciously, flavouring the tender, juicy meat so wonderfully.

This warm salad was inspired by a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi, which brings together shredded shoulder of lamb with roast chicory, raddiccio and figs. I have played with the ingredients a little to adapt the recipe to the contents of a winter vegetable box – sadly no fresh figs in there at this time of year. So instead, my version features roast parsnip, carrot and swede along with the chicory; all perfect partners for roast lamb with their caramelised sweetness.

With plenty of fresh herbs in there and an incredible, slightly sweet and sour dressing with lemon, honey, cinnamon and pomegranate molasses, I think this warm lamb salad would be a wonderful dish to serve your family and friends this New Year.

Slow roast shoulder of lamb with chicory and winter vegetables

Serves 4-5 (including plenty of leftover lamb for naughty late night sandwiches!)

1.5kg shoulder of lamb, on the bone
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp dried mint
1½ tbsp fresh thyme, picked
1 head of garlic, cut in half widthways
2 parsnips, peeled, halved and quartered lengthways
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
half a swede, peeled and cut into large chunks
3 chicories, halved lengthways
2 tbsp honey
4 large sprigs of rosemary
4 stems of sage
20g rocket
salt and pepper

For the dressing:

70ml olive oil
90ml lemon juice
1½ tbsp honey
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses

If you are using a conventional oven, preheat to 150ºC / gas mark 2.

Place the lamb in a roasting tray and rub all over with a tablespoonful of the olive oil, lemon juice, mint, thyme, and a generous grind of salt and pepper.

Pop the garlic halves next to the lamb, cut side down, and cover the tray with foil.

If you’re cooking in an Aga, roast in the middle of the top oven for 20 minutes, before transferring to the simmering oven for 5 hours, regularly basting the meat with the cooking juices.

Otherwise, roast in a conventional oven at 150ºC for 5 hours, again regularly basting the meat.

When it is completely tender and the meat falls away from the bone easily, remove the lamb from the oven and allow to cool slightly. Shred into bite size pieces, discarding any fatty bits. Cover and keep warm.

While the lamb is resting, prepare the vegetables. If necessary, increase your oven to 220ºC / gas mark 7.

Place the parsnips, carrots and swede in a large bowl with 2 tablespoonfuls of olive oil, honey and a pinch of salt and mix well with your hands. Toss into a roasting tray together with the fresh rosemary and sage, and cook in the oven (top of the roasting oven in the Aga) for 20 minutes.

Place the chicory halves in the bowl and add another spoonful of olive oil, a little more honey and a touch more salt, and mix together. When the root vegetables have had 20 minutes, add the chicory to the roasting tray and cook for another 10 minutes, until the root veg is caramelised and the chicory is tender.

To make the dressing, simply whisk all the ingredients together and set aside.

To serve, place the rocket in a large, warmed serving dish. Scatter the roast vegetables over the top and finally cover with shredded lamb – you’ll only need about half of it. Save the rest for tomorrow.

Drizzle the dressing over the top and serve immediately.

As the dressing for this warm winter salad features a strong hint of cinnamon, I will enter it into this month’s Spice Trail challenge, which I just happen to host.

Your Christmas Day cooking guide – with a little help from Waitrose and Tim Burton

December 23, 2013Posted in General, MeatTagged Christmas, cooking guide, tim burton, turkey, waitrose2 Comments

We’re almost there. Only two more sleeps until the big Ho Ho. I don’t know what it’s like in your house, but the excitement here is reaching fever pitch. My daughters are crazy about Christmas and are permanently busy with some preparation or another, be it a festive treasure hunt or their attempt to break the world record for the longest paper chain. By twelfth night, I swear every square inch of floor space in our house will be covered in paper chain…

It can be a bit of a juggling act on Christmas Day to keep the children entertained and occupied while you take care of lunch. The kind people at Waitrose have come up with this ingenious infographic to help you keep on top of your timings, which all very cleverly tie in with key points in the Tim Burton film, The Nightmare Before Christmas. We just happen to be huge fans of Tim Burton here at Chez Bangers, so this couldn’t be more perfect.

So fellow parents, you can now snuggle down to watch a great film with your kids and by keeping an eye on this handy infographic you’ll know exactly when to pop back into the kitchen to baste the turkey and put on the sprouts. And if you’re after useful tips on cooking your Christmas turkey, you’ll find plenty more on the Waitrose website.

Happy Christmas everyone – eat, drink and be merry!

Disclosure: Waitrose provided me with a complimentary copy of The Nightmare Before Christmas and a selection of festive snacks and treats as thanks for featuring this infographic.

Jacki’s Moroccan lamb tagine

December 13, 2013December 13, 2013Posted in Meat, Recipes, Stews and casserolesTagged lamb, moroccan, tagine, the spice trail3 Comments

This recipe comes from Jacki, one of my foodie friends on Twitter. Jacki is a fellow Aga owner and BBC 6 Music listener, and we share a passion for hearty, slow cooking. She was keen to enter her lamb tagine into the Spice Trail challenge, as it features this month’s spice, cinnamon, but as she isn’t a blogger herself I offered to share her recipe here.

In Jacki’s words, it’s “very simple but lush”. I can’t wait to try it out on my family – it looks like a delicious winter warmer.

Jacki’s Moroccan lamb tagine

500g lamb steak, diced
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 can chopped tomatoes
small carton passata
150g dried apricots, chopped
handful of flaked almonds
1 tsp honey
250ml vegetable stock
seasoning to taste

Combine the lamb with the oil and spices and marinade overnight, although shorter is OK.

Fry the meat to seal and colour, and place in your tagine.

Fry the onions and garlic until soft, then add all remaining ingredients to the pan. Bring to a simmer and pour over the meat in the tagine.

Cook in the Aga simmering oven for 2 hours or so – or in a conventional oven at 180°C for 1½ hours. Remove the lid for the last 10-15 minutes.

Serve with couscous.

Inspired by a ‘Select Lincolnshire’ recipe in The Good Taste magazine Lincolnshire.

If you have a favourite cinnamon recipe you’d like to share in December’s Spice Trail challenge, you’ll find more information here. And you might just win yourself a Tasting Experience for two courtesy of the good people at Buyagift.

Baked ham with Finnish mustard

December 6, 2013December 6, 2013Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged baked, falling cloudberries, finland, finnish mustard, ham, mustard, tessa kiros4 Comments

This post originally featured in the Wells Journal on Thursday 5 December 2013.

I’ve succeeded in not thinking too much about Christmas until the last week or so. I’m one of those who dislike getting Christmassy too early. I’m the one tutting when I hear a festive song on the radio before December’s even started.

But there’s no denying we are now galloping apace towards the big day and it’s time to get organised. Thankfully, on the present-front I’ve not too much to do, having made big batches of pickles and chutneys back in the autumn, which will make lovely homemade gifts this year for friends and relatives. And we don’t have to think too hard about our children; they drew up their wish list months ago.

On the food-side, it helps we all have such firmly rooted family traditions that the Christmas grocery shopping list practically writes itself. There are those things you simply must have or Christmas just wouldn’t be the same in your house.

One of our essentials is the ham. I enjoy baking a large ham just ahead of Christmas to last us through the festive period. A simple meal of sliced of home-cured ham alongside the remnants of whatever bird we opted for that year, with delicious cheeses, pork pies, pickles and chutneys, is one of my favourite things about Christmas.

How I prepare the ham is the part that varies each year. I have used Nigella Lawson’s ham in cola recipe in the past. It sounds revolting but I assure you it is delicious, and you really can’t judge it until you’ve tried it.

Another recipe I’ve tried and loved is this one from Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros, who was born in London to a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father and spent her childhood in South Africa. Her cookbook is full of delightful recipes that bring together these various culinary influences.

Baked ham with Finnish mustard would be eaten by her Scandinavian family on Christmas Eve, and it is ever so good.

Finnish mustard

45g English mustard powder
115g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
250ml single cream
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp cider vinegar
juice of half a lemon

Mix together the mustard powder, sugar and salt together in a small saucepan until smooth.

Put the pan over a low heat and add the cream, oil, vinegar and lemon juice. Bring to the boil, stirring continuously. Cook for about eight minutes and remove from the heat when the mustard has thickened and darkened.

Leave to cool in the pan, stirring every now and then. Pour into sterilised jars and keep in fridge.

As well as delicious as a glaze for ham, you can serve Finnish mustard with smoked salmon or sausages.

Baked ham

1 x 6kg cured gammon joint
80g fresh breadcrumbs
95g brown sugar
Finnish mustard
15 whole cloves

Cover the gammon with cold water and soak overnight or according to your butcher’s instructions.

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

Rinse the gammon and pat dry. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and wrap in foil. Place in a roasting tin and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, then turn down the oven to 180°C / gas mark 4 and bake for another three and a half hours, turning the joint occasionally. Remove the foil and leave to cool a little before glazing.

Place the ham on a rack in a roasting dish. Mix together the breadcrumbs and brown sugar. Spread the Finnish mustard all over the ham, using a knife or your fingers.

Sprinkle the breadcrumb and sugar mixture all over the ham, pushing it down to make it stick. Spike cloves in the top to form a rough diamond pattern.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until the top is golden and crusty, increasing the heat towards the end if necessary. Leave to cool before slicing. Serve with Finnish mustard and lingonberry jam (if you’re in Finland) or cranberry sauce.

Chilli beef pie with spicy potato wedges

November 27, 2013November 28, 2013Posted in Meat, Recipes, Stews and casserolesTagged beef, cheese, chilli, Higgidy, pie, potato, the spice trail9 Comments

This chilli beef ticks all the right boxes for me. It’s a proper winter warmer, pretty much all cooked in one pot. The beef is slow cooked so it practically falls apart in your mouth and is flavoured with delicious cumin, chilli, cinnamon and oregano. It’s topped off with crispy, spicy potato wedges. Oh and it’s got melted cheese on top too. Really, what’s not to like?

It’s the first dish I’ve tried from the Higgidy Cookbook and I’m now looking forward to working my way through the rest of the book. The lamb shank pie is another I’ve got my eye on.

Chilli beef pie with spicy potato wedges

Serves 6

2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp dried oregano
750g braising beef, cut into chunks
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 small bunch fresh coriander, leaves and stalks separated and chopped
2 green chillies, chopped
2 tbsp tomato puree
400ml beef stock
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp black treacle
1 red pepper, deseeded and diced
1 x 400g tin black beans, drained and rinsed
salt and pepper

For the wedges

4 large baking potatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
good pinch of smoked paprika
large handful of grated Cheddar cheese

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

Crush the cumin seeds and chilli flakes in a pestle and mortar and then pour into a large bowl. Stir in the cinnamon, oregano and 1 teaspoonful of salt. Add the chunks of beef and toss well to completely coat the meat.

Place your casserole dish over a medium heat and add a tablespoonful of the oil. Brown the beef all over in batches. Don’t let the spices burn or they will turn bitter. Put the browned meat in a bowl.

Pour a little water into the pan, scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon to loosen all those lovely tasty bits, and then pour this over the beef.

In the same pan, heat the rest of the oil and then gently fry the onion, garlic, coriander stalks (reserve the leaves) and chillies until soft. Add the puree, stock, tomatoes and hot stock, and give it all a good stir. Cook for a minute or two.

Add the beef and bring to the boil. When the stew comes to the boil, remove from the heat and cover tightly with the lid. Cook in the oven for two hours.

Add the pepper and black beans, stir well, season with salt and pepper to taste, and then return to the oven with the lid back on for another 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and stir in the coriander leaves. Keep to one side with the lid on to keep warm.

Increase the oven to 200°C / gas mark 6.

Cut the potatoes into chunky wedges and boil in salted water for around 8 minutes until just tender. Drain well and put into a roasting tin. Drizzle with the oil and sprinkle with paprika and salt and bake for half an hour until crisp and golden.

Preheat the grill to medium-high.

Scatter the wedges over the top of the stew, top with grated cheese and pop it under the grill until the cheese has melted.

Serve with soured cream. Enjoy!

As this stew-slash-pie features my favourite chilli, I’m entering it into The Spice Trail challenge, which has chilli as this month’s theme.

And as this pie-slash-stew is cooked almost entirely in one pot, I’m entering it into the Four Season’s Food challenge, hosted by Eat Your Veg and Delicieux, where the theme this month is Soups, Stews & One Pot Wonders. If you’re looking for more winter-warmers, head over there for some great inspiration.

Tagliatelle with lamb’s liver and a sage, chilli and garlic butter

November 25, 2013January 3, 2014Posted in Competitions and challenges, Meat, RecipesTagged butter, buyagift, chilli, food poverty, garlic, lamb, liver, offal, pasta, sage, tagliatelle, trussell trust12 Comments

Could you come up with a meal for at least two people for under £3? That’s the challenge set by the leading food charity The Trussell Trust in partnership with Buyagift with the aim of raising awareness of just how difficult it can be to eat well on a limited budget.

I managed to come up with a dish but it wasn’t easy, and I really wouldn’t want to have to work with this budget every mealtime. But for so many people in this country, it is the reality they face each and every day. While the UK might be the seventh richest country in the world, many people here struggle to put food on the table.

You can help raise awareness of the work of The Trussell Trust and the urgent need for us as a nation to tackle food poverty by taking part in the challenge and coming up with your own recipe. You can also visit the charity’s website for more ways to support their work, from donating to your local foodbank to raising money for them as you do your online shopping.

For my dish I decided to use liver as it is relatively inexpensive. Obviously a vegetarian pasta dish would have been cheaper still, but I wanted to see if I could manage a meat dish on this tight budget. I managed to buy 370g of lamb’s liver from my local butcher for just £1.48 and I only used half of it. A little liver goes a long way.

OK, so not everyone likes liver but I’m sure that’s because it’s generally been overcooked when they have tried it. In this dish it is sliced very thinly and fried for only a few minutes, so it is beautifully moist and tender. My husband doesn’t normally eat liver but he enjoyed this. Plus it was cooked in a very generous amount of butter, with lots of chilli, garlic and sage, so absolutely packed full of flavour. It actually tastes quite luxurious despite the cheap ingredients.

Tagliatelle with lamb’s liver and a sage, chilli and garlic butter

Total spend: £2.21½

250g dried tagliatelle (47½p)
1 egg (24p)
170g lamb’s liver, thinly sliced (74p)
2tbsp olive oil (13p)
75g butter (36p)
1 red chilli, finely sliced (22p)
2 cloves garlic, crushed (5p)
6 sage leaves, finely chopped (free from the garden)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the tagliatelle in salted, boiling water according to the packet instructions.

Beat the egg in a shallow dish, add the liver and coat well, and leave for a few minutes.

Heat the oil and butter in a frying pan over a low heat. When the butter has melted, add the chilli, garlic and sage and fry for a couple of minutes.

Drain the liver and add to the frying pan. Increase the heat to medium and fry for three to four minutes, turning frequently, until cooked through. Season to taste and remove from the heat.

Drain the pasta and add to the frying pan. Toss well to coat the pasta in the butter and distribute the pieces of liver. Serve immediately.

As well as entering this dish into The £3 Challenge, I’m also sharing it with The Spice Trail (where the theme this month is chilli), Credit Crunch Munch (hosted by Dinner with Crayons, Fab Food for All and Fuss Free Flavours), Cooking with Herbs (hosted by Lavender & Lovage) as it features fresh sage, and Pasta Please (hosted by The Spicy Pear and Tinned Tomatoes) as it contains garlic.

Mini lunchbox pasties and tarts

November 24, 2013Posted in Competitions and challenges, Meat, RecipesTagged beef, cherry tomato, lunchbox, pasties, pastry, pasty, savoury, tart4 Comments

When my oldest daughter first started primary school, I rather enjoyed packing her lunch boxes each week, seeing what new and tasty things I could think up to put in there. And yes, you guessed it, the novelty wore off after about half a term.

But every now and again I do try to put in a little extra effort. Most of the time my daughters are grateful for that effort, although we do have the occasional disaster when I wish I hadn’t bothered and had simply given them a cheese roll instead. These mini pasties and tarts get the thumbs up from my two though. So if you do find you have a little extra time on your hands at the weekend and you’re in a baking mood, make up a big batch of these to see you through the week. They also freeze well too.

Mini lunchbox pasties filled with beef, carrot and boiled egg

Makes around 20

For the pastry

250g plain flour
pinch of salt
65g butter, cubed
60g lard or hard vegetable fat, cubed
4 tbsp iced water

For the filling

1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and finely diced
250g minced beef
1 tbsp black treacle
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper
1 hard-boiled egg, chopped

1 beaten egg, for brushing onto the pastry

For the pastry

Put the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter and lard/vegetable fat using your finger tips until the mixture resembles large breadcrumbs. Gradually mix in the cold water using a knife until it comes together to form a dough. Bring it all together with your hands into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.

For the filling

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and saute the onion and carrot until soft and golden. Add the minced beef and fry until browned.

Next add the black treacle, Worcestershire sauce, dried oregano and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook for a couple more minutes and then stir in the chopped egg. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

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

Flour your work surface and roll out the pastry until about 2mm thick. Using a cup or small bowl about 9-10cm in diameter as a template, cut out circles of pastry.

Into the middle of each pastry circle, spoon some of your beef filling. Fold the edges of the pastry up and pinch together to seal it into that classic pastry shape. Place each pasty onto a large baking sheet and when they’re all complete, brush the pastry with a little beaten egg.

Bake the pasties in the oven for 10-15 minutes until they are a beautiful golden brown colour. Enjoy hot or cold.

Next come the mini tarts. They are very versatile and you can add your children’s favourite ingredients. As well as cherry tomatoes, used here, we also include ham, sweetcorn, peas, chopped sausage, spinach, courgette, peppers – the options are pretty much endless.

Mini lunchbox tarts filled with cheese and cherry tomatoes

Makes 12

For the pastry

110g plain flour
pinch of salt
50g butter, diced
cold water to mix

For the filling

2 large eggs, beaten
100g Cheddar cheese, grated
salt and pepper
12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half

For the pastry

In a large bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Rub in the butter to form breadcrumbs. Combine with water to form a dough. Wrap in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200°C / gas mark 6.

Grease each of the cups of a 12-bun muffin tin with a little butter and dust with flour.

Flour the work surface and roll out the pastry to around 2mm thick. Cut out circles using a fluted pastry cutter, slightly larger than the diameter of the cups in the muffin tin. Press the pastry circles into the muffin tin.

Mix together the eggs and half the grated cheese, and season with salt and pepper. Pour into the pastry moulds. Pop two halves of cherry tomato into each tart and sprinkle with the remainder of the cheese.

Bake in the oven for around 15 minutes until the pastry is golden and the filling is set. Enjoy hot or cold.

These tarts and pasties are my entry into this month’s Family Foodies challenge, which I am co-hosting with Lou at Eat Your Veg. The theme this month is Lunchbox Ideas. We’ve already received some great entries – why not pop over and take a look? Or how about sharing your own favourite lunchbox filler?

Cooking with apples

November 5, 2013Posted in Cakes and biscuits, Meat, Puddings and desserts, RecipesTagged apple, cake, eve's pudding, feeding boys, pudding, sausage, toad in the hole, utterly scrummy, waitrose4 Comments

Katie’s Sausage & Apple Toad in the Hole, Michelle’s Apple Cake and my Nana’s Eve’s Pudding

Our apple season here has been and gone, but for a good couple of months there was quite a frenzy of apple cooking and apple eating in the Bangers & Mash household.

We have a lovely Discovery apple tree in our garden, which gives us a good crop of pretty red apples fairly early in the season. We can normally start picking them from around mid August. Well, most years. Last year we only had six apples from the tree but it was a terrible year for apple growers all over the UK. This year we had a splendid harvest.

Discovery is a wonderfully sweet and crisp apple. The skin is so red it leeches into the white flesh turning it pink. And when you juice them, the apple juice is the most gorgeous shade of pinky-red.

The only problem is Discovery apples don’t store well, so I do find that late summer and early autumn become our apple-obsessed months, with practically every meal or snack featuring apple in some form or another. We’ve been baking, chutneying, pureeing, drying, juicing, freezing and crumbling! But as soon as they’re gone, I miss them terribly.

So when an invitation came from Waitrose to try some of their English apples, it couldn’t have come at a our better time.

Waitrose runs a Grow & Sell campaign with schools, encouraging seven to eleven year olds across the UK to grow their own produce and sell it to Waitrose customers. They are now taking this a step further and encouraging families to grow their own apples at home. So along with my apples I was also delighted to receive a Scrumptious apple tree to plant out in the garden alongside our Discovery tree, which will extend our apple season next year considerably.

Scrumptious is perfect for smaller gardens as you don’t actually need another tree nearby as a pollinating partner to produce a bumper crop of apples. The sweet eating apples are ready to pick in September and the tree is also happy in a large pot so long as it is kept well fed and watered.

With my bumper bag of Coxes apples from Waitrose I decided to try out some recipes from their website, where I found some rather tempting dishes from top food bloggers.

This Sausage and Apple Toad in the Hole from Katie at Feeding Boys caught my eye straightaway. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that toad in the hole is a bit of a favourite in our house. I’ve never thought to include apple before and it was a big hit with all my family. We made ours with Waitrose pork and herb chipolatas and it’s certainly a dish I’ll be making again.

I also baked this yummy Apple Cake from Michelle at Utterly Scrummy. It’s a delicious cake to serve slightly warm with yoghurt or ice cream, or I think it would work equally well as a pudding with lashings of homemade custard. My daughters also appreciated it cold as an after-school snack.

Eve’s Pudding is always very popular with my clan and so I used the rest of the apples to rustle one up. It’s a recipe my Nana Barbara gave me and it’s a proper, old-fashioned, comforting sort of a pud – what I call a ‘hug in a bowl’ – with sweet, juicy pieces of cooked apple enveloped in a soft, fluffy sponge. Just the kind of pudding I crave when the weather turns nippy. What’s even better is it’s so easy to make.

My Nana’s Eve’s Pudding

450g eating apples, peeled and cored
60g demerara sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
1 tbsp water
85g butter
85g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
115g self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 170°C / gas mark 4.

Slice the apples thinly into a greased ovenproof dish. Sprinkle over the demerara sugar, grated lemon rind and water.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg a little at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fold in the flour with a metal spoon and carefully spread the mixture over the apples.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until the apples are tender and the sponge mixture cooked. If you’re using an Aga, bake in the bottom of the roasting oven with the cold plate in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes, and then move to the bottom oven for 25-30 minutes.

Serve warm with cream or ice cream.

What are your favourite recipes to cook with apples?

Disclosure: Waitrose provided me with a complimentary apple tree and £10 shopping voucher for this post. All opinions are totally my own.

Wells Food Festival and a new food discovery: the gastro steak

September 27, 2013Posted in General, Meat, ReviewsTagged beef, butcher, gastro, griffiths, pave, pie, steak, wells, wells food festival6 Comments

It’s less than a month until the first ever Wells Food Festival and I’m rather excited at the prospect of a big foodie event practically on my doorstep.

The festival promises to be a marvellous celebration of the finest food and drink Somerset has to offer. Taking place on Sunday 20 October, the same weekend as National Apple Day, the organisers have timed the event for when Somerset’s produce is at its most abundant and glorious.

Centred around Wells’ historic market square, the festival will feature a whole host of fabulous foodie events and activities. There will be an artisan producers’ market, a ‘Question Time’ style Milk Matters debate in the Bishop’s Barn, a cake competition, cookbook talks and signings, a foodie pub quiz; a vintage tea party; cider, beer and wine bar and a tempting choice of great Sunday lunches showcasing local ingredients served up at restaurants and cafes across the city. Take a look at the full line up on the Wells Food Festival website.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be featuring interviews with some of those involved in the festival here on the blog to find out what makes Somerset food so special and to get their advice on cooking with local ingredients.

To kick things off, I popped into one of my favourite and most regularly frequented shops in Wells, the family butchers F Griffiths & Sons, who have been selling meat and poultry to locals since 1953. It’s a wonderfully welcoming shop where customers can ask questions and learn about food without feeling overwhelmed.

Pretty much everyone who knows Wells will know Gerry Morris. He is the ever-friendly, smiley face behind the counter at Griffiths, always able to provide you with knowledgable advice and top tips on what cuts of meat to buy and how to cook them. I asked him how Griffiths will be getting involved in the food festival.

“Wells Food Festival will give us a chance to cook and sell our new range of award-winning pies to a wide range of local people who will be there because they love food,” Gerry tells me. “The pies are made from scratch, including our own secret recipe pastry, in our Street branch. As well as selling the pies through our own shops we are supplying pubs, shops and hotels from Taunton to Bristol.”

I’m a sucker for a good pie and so are the rest of my family, so we had to put The Humble Pie Co. range to the test. Well, it would be rude not to. And I am pleased to report that they are very, very good. They taste just like a proper homemade pie, with a lovely crisp pastry and delicious fillings, using only shredded meat rather than chunks to ensure you get a meaty mouthful every time. If you happen to be in the West Country and come across them, you must give them a try.

But back to Gerry. What does he think this new festival means for Wells and the food and drink of Somerset?

“Food and specifically the provenance of our food has become much more important in recent years,” says Gerry. “The festival will give local producers and suppliers the chance to show people from all over the county the vast range of high quality food that is available on their doorstep. It is also a chance for traders to get together and exchange ideas and have a chat to see how they can improve products and service to their customers.

“Somerset produces a surprisingly varied array of food and drink. Obviously there is the locally produced meat and poultry (most of our meat comes from within a 20 mile radius of Wells), as well as wonderful cheeses, cider, artisan bread but there’s also a huge list of produce you wouldn’t necessarily associate with the West Country but is made right here in Somerset. This is what we’ll be able to collectively showcase at the festival.”

So which are Gerry’s favourite local retailers and restaurants in Wells?

“Shops like Sante Wine and Queen Street Deli are a real asset to the city and bring people from all over to come and shop here. We are spoiled for choice as far as restaurants are concerned and, particularly as we supply many of them, I couldn’t possibly nominate a single favourite!”

Finally I ask Gerry to suggest a cut of meat for me to cook at home; one I probably haven’t tried before. Without hesitation he suggests the ‘gastro steak’.

“The gastro beef steak is carefully cut from a very specific and small part of the calf of the animal,” Gerry explains. “It can be cooked as a traditional braising beef but I think it’s amazing when you cook it very quickly on a high heat and serve it rare. It eats like a very tasty fillet steak, but costs just one-third of the price. It only needs a pepper or hollandaise sauce, some green vegetables and new potatoes to make a stunning meal.”

If you’re interested in seeing how this cut is butchered, Gerry recommends taking a look at this video. “Although we didn’t invent the actual cut, we did come up with the name ‘gastro’ steak. It seemed appropriate as the specific muscle it comes from is the gastrocnemius.”

And so I did exactly as Gerry suggested and took home a couple of gastro steaks for my husband and me to put to the test. I seasoned them with ground black pepper and fried them very quickly, just for a few minutes on each side, on a very high heat. As you might have gathered, I’m a bit of a mashed potato fiend, so I served them with mash and steamed green beans and a simple peppercorn sauce.

And the verdict? Simply divine. Believe me, I’m not just saying that because I don’t want to hurt Gerry’s feelings. These gastro steaks really are packed full of flavour, as tasty as a sirloin but with the cuts-like-butter texture of a fillet. And since they’re a fraction of the price of a fillet, I think I’ll be buying a few more of these delicious meaty morsels very soon. I’d recommend you do too, but I’m slightly concerned that if more people start buying them Gerry might be tempted to put the price up. So on second thoughts, steer clear!

Thanks so much to the lovely Gerry for his time and advice last week and I look forward to sampling more of his gorgeous pies at the festival.

Look out for further festival related posts in the coming weeks, including cake baking tips from Royal wedding cake maker Fiona Cairns (who is judging the cake competition), and Somerset cheese recommendations from Dan Holland at the Queen Street Deli.

Disclosure: Griffiths provided me with complimentary pies and gastro steaks for review purposes. No money exchanged hands and all opinions are totally my own.

Posh macaroni cheese

September 21, 2013Posted in Meat, Recipes, ReviewsTagged cheese, mac 'n' cheese, macaroni cheese, neil perry, pasta, qantas, rockpool5 Comments

I posted a recipe for my macaroni cheese a little while ago. It’s a firm family favourite in the Bangers & Mash household. But I also had to bring you this version. It’s not my recipe. It’s from the acclaimed Australian chef Neil Perry’s Rockpool Bar & Grill; a beautiful tome of a cookbook, as much a coffee table book as a practical guide for the kitchen. If I actually had a coffee table, this would certainly take pride of place on it.

I received the cookbook courtesy of Qantas, who as well as offering flights to Australia are passionate about spreading the word about Australian food. In addition to running restaurants in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth , Neil Perry is the chief consulting chef for Qantas.

The recipes in Rockpool Bar & Grill are more aspirational than every day; the kind of dishes I’d probably only attempt if I were cooking for a special dinner party. Not surprising though as the aim of the book is to show you how to create restaurant-style dishes at home. It’s impossible to stop your mouth from watering as you turn the pages, which also provide a behind-the-scenes account of life in the Rockpool restaurants, as well as stories about the producers and suppliers who inspire Neil Perry’s menus.

So while I was rather taken with dishes like scampi ceviche, Wagyu beef bolognese, octopus braised in red wine and strawberry tart with balsamic vinegar ice cream, it might be a little while before I work up to trying these at home, particularly as they’d probably blow my weekly food budget in one meal. Instead it was the Rockpool’s take on good old macaroni cheese I felt would go down well with my family. This is what Neil Perry says:

Pasta and cheese is the best combo. My daughter Josephine can polish one of these off for dinner any night of the week. I first started making this years ago. I loved going to America and having mac ‘n’ cheese, more often than not at steakhouses. I began with a recipe from a great friend and truly one of the world’s great chefs, Thomas Keller of The French Laundry and Per Se. If you start with that kind of pedigree, you’re going to end up with a great dish, and a great dish I did end up with. It’s a perfect marriage with a good steak but is equally at home with all of the other meats and poultry we serve at the restaurant. Use good cheese, really good quality hard Italian pasta and a smoky bacon. Your efforts will be well rewarded.

I was curious to see how different restaurant-style macaroni cheese would be from what we usually make. And I have to say it is very good. Very, very good actually. My husband and the girls wolfed it down greedily and it really does work well with a decent steak. We enjoyed ours with griddled sirloin and a simple salad instead of our usual Sunday roast, and it was a rather special meal indeed.

Oh, and there’s are some heavenly-looking lemon meringue cupcakes in there that I’m pretty sure I’ll be having a go at very soon too.

Neil Perry’s mac ‘n’ cheese

Serves 4 as a light meal or a side

400g dried macaroni
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 rashers smoked bacon, diced
500ml single cream
125g Cheddar cheese, grated
250g Gruyère cheese, grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp smoked sweet paprika
2 tsp Dijon mustard
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
100g Parmesan cheese, grated
80g fresh breadcrumbs

Cook the macaroni in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and refresh in iced water. Drain again and place in a large bowl.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until golden. Drain on paper towel, then add to the macaroni.

Return the pan to the heat, add the cream, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat and gradually add the Cheddar and Gruyère, stirring until melted.

Combine the garlic, paprika and mustard to form a paste, then stir into the cream mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add to the macaroni mixture and stir through.

Heat a grill to high. Divide the mixture between individual heatproof bowls or a 1.5 litre capacity baking dish. Sprinkle over the Parmesan, then the breadcrumbs. Grill until the top is golden.

Disclosure: Qantas provided me with a complimentary copy of Rockpool Bar & Grill for review purposes. No money exchanged hands and all opinions are totally my own.