Braised Neck of Lamb Casserole with Butter Beans

Braised Neck of Lamb Casserole with Butter Beans

A traditional Provencal farm house dish. Still often a favourite on rural cafe set menus in the South of France. Tastes amazing, doddle to cook and uses cheap ingredients. For best results use fresh herbs rather than dried ones. Feeds 4.

Ingredients:

500 - 600g of lamb neck fillets

5 salad tomatoes, chopped roughly into chuncks

500mls boiled water

2 tins of butter beans

200g of smoked bacon lardons

1 large handful of curly leaf parsley (6 or 7 sprigs)

The same quantity of thyme (6 or 7 springs)

2 bay leafs

1 sprig of rosemary

25g unsalted butter

2 table spoons of olive oil

6 whole garlic cloves peeled

The cooking:

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees and prep your ingredients. In a frying pan, on a low to medium flame, heat your olive oil and butter until it starts to froth. Fry your lamb fillets in the butter and oil for 8 to 10 minutes, turning frequently and seasoning with freshly ground sea salt and black pepper as you go. You want them to end up browned all over.

Remove from the heat and transfer the neck fillets into a casserole dish. Spoon the excess fat out of your frying pan and then pour in 100ml of your boiled water, return to the heat and stir, to deglaze your pan. In effect what you are doing here is absorbing all the crispy brown bits and all the meat juices from the pan. You should achieve this in less than 2 minutes. Once done, pour this liquid over your lamb neck fillets in your casserole dish.

Now add to the casserole all your other ingredients except the lardons and the butter beans. Specifically, that is your 6 peeled but not chopped garlic cloves, your tomatoes, the parsley, thyme, rosemary and bay leafs and as much water as is required to cover your ingredients in the casserole. Cover with a lid and place into your preheated oven and cook for between 1 hour 30 and 2 hours.

An hour before the dish is ready, place your bacon lardons on a baking tin and place them onto a shelf in your oven to crisp up. Once they have browned and reached the desired degree of crispness use a slotted spoon to separate them from the fat that has been rendered from them cooking and place them and your butter beans into your casserole for the last 45 minutes of cooking.

Serve up in a bowl with some rice and a chunk of rustic bread.

Chicken in cream and tarragon

CHICKEN IN CREAM AND TARRAGON

When we used to visit my family in France, this was a great signature dish that my Auntie Sophie used to do. And the great thing is, it is really easy to double up ingredients if you have more mouths to feed.

Ingredients (to feed 4)

4 chicken legs

1 pint of chicken stock

A decent hand full of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

10 baby button mushrooms

50-80g of peas (up to you really)

1 teaspoon of mustard

4 tablespoons of creme fraiche

2 table spoons of finely chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon of corn flour

25g of unsalted butter

Half a glass of white wine

Freshly ground sea salt and black pepper

The Cooking:

Start by melting the butter over a medium heat in a large, deep frying pan. Once it is foaming, lay your chicken legs in and fry in butter on all sides until the skin is brown and starting to crisp. Approximately 6-7 minutes on each side. Increase the heat and before the butter gets a chance to burn, add your white wine and let the liquid reduce down to about half its original content. Then transfer everything to an oven proof dish. Add in the flour, thyme and bay leaf, pour over the liquid from your frying pan and your chicken stock (just enough to cover the chicken), then cover with a lid and place into an oven, preheated to 180 degrees C. Cook for approximately 2 hours, so that the chicken is virtually falling off the bone. Check it every 20 minutes or so, to make sure that the stock is not drying out (if it is add more wine or stock). Give it all a good stir every time. 30 minutes before the end of your cooking time, take your casserole dish out of the oven. Lift out the chicken legs and place them on a baking tray or roasting tin and return them into the oven.

Gently fry your button mushrooms in butter. Be generous with plenty of ground pepper. While they are browning, add the creme fraiche and the tarragon to the liquid in the casserole dish and with a  wooden spoon, give it all a good stir until all the liquids are combined into one smooth sauce. If you are using a heavy dish like mine (rather than a glass one) best results are achieved if you do this bit over a hob on  a low heat, as it thickens the sauce nicely. Add the mushrooms and the peas into the sauce. Retrieve the chicken legs and put them back in the dish with everything else, season with salt and pepper, pop the lid back on and return to the oven for the final 30 minutes of cooking. Giving you the perfect amount of time to do any accompaniment you may fancy.

Serve up on a bed of rice and may be some vegetables Julienne.

Tuna Steak Salad with Chili Jam

Tuna Steak Salad with Chili Jam

A super lunch or light supper. Really tasty, very healthy and no carbs.

Ingredients (for 2)

2 Fresh Tuna Steaks

1 Teaspoon of Paprika

1 Little Gem Lettuce, shredded

2 Spring Onions, peeled and chopped

6 Whole Cherry Tomatoes

A Handful of Black Pitted Olives

4 Artichoke Hearts (You can buy jars of them on the Antipasti shelf of most supermarkets)

Roughly 3 inches of cucumber, peeled and diced (rather than sliced)

1 Red Pepper Chopped

A few chunks of feta cheese

1 Table Spoon of Dried Oregano

Olive Oil,

A Small Jar of Chili Jam

The cooking

Start with the salad as that takes the most time. Wash everything you are going to use in cold water, and peel and chop to your heart's desire. Then in a bowl mix your lettuce, red pepper, spring onion, artichoke hearts, cucumber, olives and feta cheese. Sprinkle over it the oregano, season with salt and pepper then drizzle generously with sweet, extra virgin olive oil. Make sure its all been mixed thoroughly so all the leaves have a coating of herbs and oil.

Warm a skillet (or small frying pan) over a medium to high heat. Lay out your raw tuna steaks, rub olive oil into both sides, season with salt, pepper and paprika on both sides and then pop into your frying pan. When the steaks have been frying for 1 minute, turn them over. After both sides have had their minute, remove from the heat and place on a chopping board.

Dish up your mixed salad onto 2 plates, slice your tuna steaks (hopefully revealing a pink interior) and lay on top of the salad. To give it some sweet heat, serve with a dollop of chili jam on each. Enjoy with a crisp white wine (eg pinot grigio)

Salsa Verde - The Perfect Accompaniment For White Fish

Salsa Verde - The Perfect Accompaniment For Any White Fish

I first came across this on a holiday in the Canary Islands. This was 1991 so way before the one we were on had been developed. The place we ate in was in a village at the end of an unmade up road. Just a few fisherman's cottages and a restaurant. You ate what ever had been caught that day. This is one of their sauces and with fish that fresh, it tastes absolutely incredible. Hopefully, like everything on this blog, this is a great example of how to create the most amazing taste with very little time or effort.

Ingredients (enough to accompany 2 fillets of fish) :

The yolk of 1 fresh egg

1 teaspoon of lemon juice

1 teaspoon of powdered mustard

100ml of olive oil

1 crushed clove of garlic

A hand full of the following fresh herbs in equal proportion; Chives, Dill and Parsley (Chervil if you can get it)

2 fillets of fresh fish cooked your way. 

The work:

Start by separating the yolk from the whites in an egg. Put the yolk into a mixing bowl. Add your lemon juice and mustard and whisk gently together until combined. Step up the pace with your whisking, and while doing it, pour a thin, steady stream of the olive oil. Make sure it is all being thoroughly combined as you go. If need be, pause your pouring to allow you to catch up. You do not want globules of oil in the middle of this. You will find the consistency will begin to thicken. Congratulations! You have just made mayonnaise!

To finish its transformation into Salsa Verde, rinse your fresh herbs in some cold water and finely chop them up. Stir the herbs and the finely chopped garlic into the mayonnaise and it's done. You can refrigerate it and it will keep for up to a day if you want to prepare it in advance of using it. If you do this and find when you come back to it the oil has started to separate from the egg, that's nothing a brisk stir with a fork can't put right.

Dish up a big dollop of it on some pan fried or baked cod loins or salmon steaks. Or a nice fillet of mullet, sea bass or monk fish. Just a salad and some new potatoes on the side. That is all you need.

Chili Con Carne

Chili Con Carne

Ingredients (feeds 6)

800g of steak mince

1 stalk of celery finely sliced

1 Onion finely chopped

3-4 Garlic cloves crushed and finely chopped

1 Green pepper with core and seeds removed cut into slices

A handful of mushrooms sliced

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

A fresh salad tomato cut into chunks

1 tin of kidney beans in water

100g of bacon lardons

1 or 2 chilis chopped (depending on personal preference for heat)

Half a glass of red wine

Quarter of a pint of beef stock

2 teaspoons of chili powder (hot or mild - again according to personal taste)

1 table spoon of paprika

2 teaspoons of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of marjoram

Accompany with: boiled rice or baked potatoes, refried beans, sour cream, guacamole and grated mild cheese.

The cooking:

Before you start, season your raw steak mince with plenty of salt and pepper and set aside for about 5 minutes. Fry ingredients off in a pan then transfer to an over proof dish for baking as you go along. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C and prepare your ingredients. 

Start by browning your mince. This is a recipe where you do not necessarily need premium quality mince to get the best out of it. In fact fatty mince gives it a better flavour. Once it is browned, it is inevitable that a certain amount of watery liquid will have been rendered off. Decant it away (as it tastes terrible) and put your mince into an oven proof casserole dish big enough to take all these ingredients. Rinse and wipe the pan (no need to be fastidious about it) then add a few drops of olive oil and over a medium heat,  fry up your celery, peppers, onion, mushrooms and garlic together. While they are in the pan, put your lardons onto a tray and into the oven and crisp them up. Once the vegetables are softened and golden add them to the casserole dish as well. Now using the same pan, turn up the heat and reduce down your wine till the liquid roughly halves in volume. Add that to the dish and by now your lardons should be crispy so add them too.

Into the casserole dish pour the stock, the chopped tomatoes (tinned and fresh), the cumin, the marjoram, chilli powder and paprika. If you have elected to use them also at this point add the chopped fresh chillis. Now here is as good a point as any to bring this topic up. Personally I like my chilli to have more of a "smokey" flavour than anything else. But I know there are people out there who are not satisfied until they break out in a sweat. It's up to you. Without the fresh chillis this will be a mild, smokey dish with a small hint of heat.With them added, make sure you have some water on hand when you eat it. Especially if you use the seeds as well as the flesh.

You should by now have used all your ingredients except the kidney beans. Give the whole lot a good stir so it is thoroughly mixed, then put a lid on the dish and bake in the oven for 2-3 hours, The longer the better. In fact if you have the time, drop the temperature to 170 and cook it all day. Check it every now and again and give all the ingredients a good stir. If it starts to dry out then add more wine. If it starts to resemble soup then pour off the surplus liquid. Good chilli needs to be the consistency of unset concrete in my view. Add the beans for the last 20 minutes of cooking.

Serve up with rice or on a baked potatoe with a side of refried beans. Give your guests a selection of toppings to add, preferably soured cream, grated mild cheese and guacamole. This is a good dish for a buffet at a party.

Chicken And Chorizo Casserole

Chicken And Chorizo Casserole

Ingredients (to serve 4):

4 Chicken legs separated into thighs and drumsticks (skin on)

A Whole Chorizo, peeled and cut into chunks

1 Sweet white onion, peeled and finely chopped

2 Garlic cloves peeled, crushed and finely chopped

A small handful of fresh thyme, chopped

2 Teaspoons of dried sage

3 Red peppers cut into 1 inch chunks

50g of Bacon lardons

6 Cherry tomatoes halved

100g of butter beans

3 cubes of dehydrated/powdered chicken stock

Olive oil, salt and pepper

Quarter of a glass of red wine

Quarter of a pint of chicken stock

A small hand full of black olives

An optional extra; a few slices of black pudding if you wish

The cooking:

Begin by crumbling the stock cubes into 4 tablespoons of warmed olive oil (warm your olive oil by popping it into an oven proof jug or bowl and heat at 150 degrees for about 2-3 minutes - do not use a microwave). Stir until thoroughly mixed into a paste then liberally baste over the chicken pieces and season with salt and pepper. Fry the chicken peices on a medium heat in a pan for about 5 minutes each side, until the chicken turns golden, then set aside in an oven proof casserole dish.

In a teaspoon of olive oil, and on a medium heat, fry the onion until softened, then add the chorizo to the same pan. After 2 to 3 minutes add the red wine and turn up the heat to reduce down so the liquid content roughly halves. Then add the peppers, sage, garlic, thyme and lardons (and black pudding too if you are using it). Once golden, add it all to the casserole dish, pour over the stock. Give it all a big stir and pop it into an oven pre-heated at 180 degrees and cook for about an hour and a half to two hours (or until the chicken is starting to come away from the bone). If it starts to dry out, add more wine. Half an hour before the end, add the tomatoes and the butter beans and mix thoroughly.

Great on its own. If you want it to go futher then serve with rice to pad it out. Deserves a full bodied red Rioja or Ribera del Duero.

Harissa Lamb, Merguez and Couscous

Harissa Lamb, Merguez and Couscous (Serves 4)

Ingredients:

4 Lamb Chump or Loin Chops

4 Table spoons of Harissa Paste

1 Teaspoon of Cumin

4 Merguez Sausages

Some Good Olive Oil

100g of Dried Couscous

300ml of Boiling Water

Half a Cucumber, Peeled and Cut Into Chunks

Handful of Chopped, Fresh Coriander

1 White or Red Chicory (also called "endives") Cut Into Chunks

Cherry Tomatoes Halved

A Handfull of Black Olives

30g of Pui Lentils

4 Sundried Tomatoes sliced

Juice from a quarter of a lemon

3 to 4 Tablespoons of Greek Yogurt

The Cooking:

A couple of hours before cooking, make a marinade using the Harissa, cumin and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Prod your lamb chops all over with a pointed knife and liberally coat with the combined paste, covering on both sides and put to one side in a covered dish.

Make your salad by combining the cucumber, coriander, chicory, cherry tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, lentils and olives in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, then cover with yogurt and stir well until all is covered.

Fry your marinated lamb chops in a tea spoon of olive oil for approximately 8 minutes each side on a medium heat to leave it nicely pink in the middle, or 10 minutes each side if you prefer it more cooked. You can cook the merguez along side the lamb, and frying for 5 minutes each side until browned and cooked through. Alternatively you can bake both in an oven at 190 degrees. The lamb for 30 minutes, the merguez for 20. Turning regularly so they cook on both sides.

Prepare your bed of couscous by boiling 300ml of water and pouring over 100g of couscous in a pot and cooking on a high heat until the moisture has all been absorbed (about 7-8 minutes). Then serve up. Nice and spicy without being hot. Serve with a dollop of yogurt and a dollop of sweet chili jam if you have it, This would also be great for a summer barbecue.