Grilling everyday?

Looking to bounce back after the burnt-old-broccoli-salad (which would have been an excellent accompaniment to the chicken with crushed cashews), we turned to the next edition of 'Everyday Food', which had the encouraging subtitle 'The Grilling Issue'.

The only problem: it was the middle of December (the 15th, in fact).  And grilling doesn't really work when it's freezing outside.  What do you do when you are faced with such a problem?  Do you sensibly put the book back on the shelf, so that you can come back to it when the weather is nicer?  Of course you don't.  Instead you bite the bullet, and you make not one recipe from it, but four!  So this is a 'bonus edition' entry on the blog.  The recipes are: 'Chili-rubbed skirt steak',

 with a 'spicy green salsa',

accompanied by 'green beans and almonds', and a potato salad:

First up, the chili-rubbed steak.  We didn't get skirt steak, but hanging tender.  I'm not totally sure of the difference, mind you.  They both seem to come from the diaphragm.  But we had had hanging tender the first time we made the thai-beef dish, and found it meltingly tender, whereas the second time we had that dish, we had skirt and found it too tough.  So anyway, this recipe calls for rubbing the steak with chili powder.  Not chile powder (powdered chiles), but chili powder (powder for making chilis).  (It's taken me a while to master the difference, not helped by the fact that British English more often uses the spelling 'chili' for the pepper itself.)    Here's the rubbed steak, infusing nicely:

Menawhile, I diced and cooked the potatoes, and toasted the almonds for the beans:

After the potatoes had cooled a little, I added mayonnaise and sour cream to make a gloopy mixture, to which the recipe calls for scallions to be added:

This was basically like a loaded baked potato, but in salad form.  Now, the recipe actually asked for crispy bacon pieces to be added, but we decided not to add them.  Yes, you read that right.  WHAT WERE WE THINKING???????  Well, bacon, mayonnaise, sour cream, AND steak seemed a bit much.

At this point, everything was going well.

What a cook who is pleased with himself looks like.

So I threw the steak on the hot griddle pan:

Here's another shot:

The problem is that the griddle just wasn't as hot as a grill would be.  (Perhaps I didn't heat the pan up enough?)  I think you can even tell from the pictures, because there's no smoke.  When I took the steak off (after 5 minutes a side), and rested it on a cutting board, it didn't bleed in the way I expected it to:

That was a sure sign it was actually too rare.  So I threw it on the griddle again.  Then I cut it up.  Still it was too rare (it was bleu and not seignant).  So I tossed the slices on the griddle pan one last time.  The resulting pieces of meat were disappointingly tough, and small wonder after all that griddling-resting-griddling-resting.  But it all looked good on the plate:

Note the failed attempt to stack the beans neatly.  This was not an easy dish to present nicely. 

Actually, apart from the texture of the meat, the dish was a success.  The crispy almonds went well with the beans; the salsa added tanginess to the already spicy meat; the potato salad helped offset the zing of the steak.

While I had been making dinner, Katherine had been preparing a gourmet treat for our little one: stewed apples and blueberries.

Once blended, they were decanted into little pots for freezing:

I even found time to help Katherine:

Next up: Everyday Food, Fall edition.  Well, at least it's more seasonally appropriate than the Grilling Edition.  So far, recipes for Sloppy Joe's and Chicken Pot Pie are looking good...

Who made up these stupid rules anyway?

Yeh, so it all sounded so good at the start. You must (or else what?!), you simply must, choose ONE recipe from every single cook book. Fine then. Next up is this doozy. It's one that my mother gave me many many years ago. If you are reading this Mama, no hard feelings, I've never cooked one recipe from this book. Having said that I did keep it all this time just in case. And here, indeed, was "the case"! She gave me several of these which are in are small magazine format (think Reader's Digest size), each containing many recipes but some articles and also advertisements (so watch this space... there's more on the way from these little magazines). Anyway - this is the 'special LIGHT issue' as it clearly states on the front cover. Right away I knew this was going to be challenging when Benjamin stuck his nose right up at the word "light". The terms "cooking" and "light" simply do not go together in his world. Anyway - at first glance there were a few dishes that sounded pretty good to me. One was a skirt steak that had many similar sounding tastes as a recipe that we'd made back in August, so we decided against that one. I then came across this one which I thought sounded pretty good.

Pasta Salad with Roasted Broccoli

Looks can be deceiving

Not sure if you can see well enough in the picture above, but this kind of salad is right up my alley. So Benjamin agreed (not that it sounded good but that I should make it). With the caveat that I could have it for lunches. Yes - *I* as in *he probably wouldn't be having any*. But that's ok. Really the pickings were pretty slim for anything for him from this book and I was quite looking forward to having a cold pasta salad. So merrily we buy all the ingredients for the dish (oh - it states to buy roasted red pepper from a jar but I decided that I'd roast my own red peppers). And then one day passes. And then another, And then another. Well I am not sure how or why (because I am writing this nearly three weeks after making the dish) but all the ingredients sat in the fridge for too long gathering dust (or rather, mold, most likely). So that didn't start things off on the right foot really. The broccoli didn't really work. The roasting burnt many of the tops of the broccoli (and smelled the whole house up for days). Burnt (old!) broccoli really is quite disgusting. When you get a bit of charcoal affect on other roasted veg (like carrots, potatoes or pepper) it can be quite tasty. But I don't really think roasting broccoli works very well in general. And it especially isn't nice on broccoli that's too old to start with! Anyway - so by now Ben is helping me with this dish even though he probably won't be having any (he can't help but help, really, because that's just how lovely a person he is).

Brocoli and peppers going in the oven

Ben removing the skins of the peppers

Roasted peppers and brocoli

By the time we stick the roasted broccoli and peppers together before we add all the other ingredients (which I promise didn't include Pedia Care as so carefully pictured here!) the house is already starting to stink of burnt broccoli. I am still hopeful though I can pull it all together. I almost forgot to mention that the recipe calls for cloves of garlic to be roasted with the brocoli. You are then supposed to crush the garlic into some olive oil and lemon to make the dressing. Sounds good right? I guess because it was a 'light' recipe there just wasn't enough olive oil and the lemon was too overbearing. So I added much more olive oil. Surely lots of olive oil could save the day?! So we finish by adding the crushed pecans (the recipe called for walnuts but we had pecans so used them instead), the olives and the cooked penne pasta. The end result looked pretty good. The taste wasn't as bad as the smell either. Mostly because the other ingredients were compensating for the bad broccoli. So I had a little bite, but put the salad in the fridge to eat the next day. Sadly - it really was completely inedible. The whole thing had to go into the kitchen bin :-(.

Finished product!

Still... we've had some hits and misses so far. This one was a miss. And I really don't think that even having fresher brocoli would have saved the day. We won't be trying this recipe again and in fact the magazine is going to be relegated either to the trash or to downstairs. We are having to make more room for newer cooknbooks and books that we feel we aren't likely to use again are going in the basement. For example this one I could NEVER give away for sentimental reasons. And who knows. Maybe one day I would want to create a cold salad that looks like congealed sick. Never say never. Meanwhile have very much been getting into the Christmas spirit around here.....

Evelyn's first attempt at pulling down the tree...

Next entry... something from the same Every Day Food series: The grilling issue. Which actually we've already had and Ben has very patiently been waiting for me to finish this entry before starting on that one!

Risotto Castles

Katherine here. For the first time in a while. Well, it's about time that I did some writing. Not to mention I chose the recipe and it's from a book that I owned. So the recipe comes from this book.

Yes, you read that right. Best SUMMER food and barbecues. And yes, it IS mid-November, but it was next in the list and rules is rules! However I feared not, as I knew this book well and I knew that there were several dishes in here that weren't dependent on us standing out in the cold freezing our (insert body parts of your choice) off. I am not sure if there is a tradition here in the US, but in the UK there are book sellers that come round to offices and places of work and leave sample books with an order form. These books are usually sold for an unbelievably cheap price. I bought this book for probably a couple of Quid when I worked at Wolsey Hall (so we're talking probably 1994 or 1995). This is the second book I bought using this method. The first being another Good Housekeeping cook book which Ben I think wanted to throw in the bin (along with the results of the recipe from that book). Anyway - I've used and liked this book over the years so was looking forward to trying a recipe that I had never made before. I really liked the look of this dish and best of all, it could be done INDOORS. It could either make a good side dish or starter. We went for side dish.

It was called Risotto Castles and basically you take risotto, add some egg, form in ramekins and then add some stinky cheese with more risotto on top. Bake in the oven and tip out the "parcel" (as seen above). Doesn't it look pretty?

So to get started first you need one cook:

Check.

Next butter your ramekins and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

Then you add the risotto, leaving room in the middle for the cheese.

N.B. Bottles with left over formula to left, you will be pleased to hear, have nothing to do with recipe. Add your cheese (here we used Pont l'Eveque) and then top with more risotto...

Ok. This is when things started to go downhill a bit. The recipe says cover with foil. What the whole thing or each ramekin? I covered all of them. That was just vague on the part of the recipe. The next mistake was mine. The directions said to bake for 20 to 25 minutes, but after 20 minutes I checked and it looked as if it had just come out of the fridge. It certainly wasn't looking anything like the beautiful picture (above). So we left it in (without the foil) for another 5 or 10 minutes so it could get that nice golden brown on top, and then Ben remembered that of course that browning up was happening on the bottom of the risotto, not on top because once finished you are supposed to flip them out. Which would put them upside down. Doh! So because of having them in longer and waiting for them to brown on top they were overcooked. Oh and I didn't put enough cheese in so there was no melting goo when opened up. And we couldn't get the 'castles' out so we had to eat them out of the ramekin.

While those were cooking we griddled some steaks and then also some asparagus. That was the best bit of the meal. Also there is a quick red sauce that is supposed to go with the risotto cakes. As I am writing this a couple of weeks after we made them I can't remember what was in the red sauce exactly, but I do remember we forgot to buy fresh basil, but it (the sauce) was still tasty. So here is the end result. It doesn't look THAT bad in the end but really they (the risotto castles) didn't taste very good at all. Ben wasn't keen on the cheese in the end either. I would NOT repeat the recipe even knowing the mistakes that were made. I just don't think even with doing it correctly it would be tasty. 

But even though this particular recipe was a bit of a disaster, in general I really rate this cook book. Perhaps one should just stick to the grilling and barbecue recipes. 

A Return to Form

In 1987, when I was 17, I went to live in Paris for a year to study music at the Ecole Normale de Musique.  I was no stranger to living away from home, having been in boarding school since the age of 9.  However, life at boarding school is very cushy: all the cooking and laundry is done for you.  In Paris, I was to be on my own, living in a studio apartment on the Rue Collette.  The apartment had no washing machine, but it did have a small kitchen area.  My mother had a quiet word with the concierge, who agreed to do my washing and ironing once a week for a small fee.  (No doubt she also asked her to keep an eye on me.)  But as for the cooking, I was on my own.  And so at the beginning of my adventure, my mother presented me with an early 18th birthday present: Delia Smith's recently published One is Fun:

The occasion must have struck Mum as important, since she inscribed the book very formally:

The premiss of the book is that those who live on their own, but who like to cook, are often frustrated by the fact that recipes in cookbooks are typically designed to feed four or six people, and it is not always a straightforward matter to cut the recipe down.  What do you do if the recipe for (e.g.) spaghetti carbonara for four people called for one egg?  So Delia Smith set out to write a cookbook catering specifically to single people.

Thus, it was somewhat ironic that in preparing dinner for Katherine and me I found myself doubling Delia's recipes.  I say 'recipes' in the plural, because we ended up doing two.  The main one was the recipe for Cider-braised pork chops with cream and mushrooms:

The subsidiary one was for stir-fried red cabbage:

We also did baked potatoes.  In fact, they went in first:

While they were doing, I started the chops.  They were browned, and then onion and mushrooms sautéed in the same pan.  Then cider is poured all over.  Now, when I say 'cider', I mean what in America is called 'hard cider', i.e. the alcoholic drink ('apple beer', as the nice man in Claridge's Liquors  helpfully suggested).  In the pan, it all looked like this:

Notice how the onion and mushroom mixture is piled on top of the chops as they braise in the cider.  The sauce was reduced and finished with cream before serving.  Meanwhile, my beautiful assistant was chopping ingredients for the cabbage:

Apples and onion first:

Into the pot they went:

Then the red cabbage:

And then spices (cinnamon, ground cloves, and nutmeg):

That was cooked in the Dutch Oven for ten minutes or so, and vinegar was added at the end.

When all the elements were ready, it looked pretty good on the plate:

That was my plate (two chops and a delicate amount of butter on the potato).  Here was Katherine's:

Notice the large dollop of sour cream on the potato. We drank a nice bottle of our trusty Rhône red with it:

It was pretty much the perfect home-cooked dinner.  Tasty, seasonal flavours, and a straightforward recipe which was hard to ruin.  Our experiment with the cookbooks was back on track!

"The cook's classic companion"

OK, so this is a difficult post to write.  The dish we ate last Sunday (it's Wednesday now) was disgusting.  Well, actually, there were two things wrong with it.  First, it was disgusting.  Second, it was DISGUSTING.

The culprit was this cookbook:

It's The Good Housekeeping Cookery Book: 'The cook's classic companion'.  I could only find a link to it on the UK Amazon store, because I believe it's been banned in the USA.  The book was very similar in spirit to the infamous Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Cooking: published recently (this time, in the 90s) but aggressively retro in its recipes.  My theory was that they simply reused recipes from some previous version of the cookbook published in the 70s.

The first challenge was finding a recipe.  I chose unwisely.  I picked 'Spiced Chicken with Cashew Nuts'.

It had some interesting ingredients.  For instance, it involved marinating the chicken in a yogurt mixture containing ginger, coriander seeds, cloves, and peppercorns.  The instruction was to blend those ingredients together to make a paste for marinating.  But picture what happens when you try to blend those ingredients: the peppercorns are not going to grind up, nor are the cloves.  (I should have realized this, and ground them up with a pestle and mortar first.)  Anyway, the resulting mixture was decidedly lumpy.  I pressed on.  Here are the chicken pieces, in the marinade, about to go into the fridge on Saturday evening for 24 hours.

So, out they came on Sunday evening:

I dutifully sautéed them in clarified butter.  Here, I made a mistake: I didn't leave enough time to clarify the butter properly, so there was still a lot of moisture in the butter when I tried to sauté the chicken:

The result was that the pieces didn't brown up, but only 'whitened' up.  But then came the killer.  You add to the sautéed chicken the following mixture: onion, cashew nuts, cayenne pepper, turmeric, water, all mixed together in the blender.  Then you cover and cook for 20 minutes, and the dish is done.  Just take a minute to reflect on that.  The mixture you add is a suspension.  (Check that link out.  I love the first of the common examples listed).  It contains raw chopped onion and chopped cashews.  It is like slurry (another 'common example' of a suspension).  But close your eyes and try to imagine what the dish will actually taste like, and how it will feel in the mouth!  At the end of the 20 minutes, you have essentially chicken with boiled onions and gritty cashews.  It looks decidedly better than it tastes:

But it tastes disgusting.  No two ways about it.

Now, a few things need to be admitted.  First, I didn't sauté the chicken properly (because I didn't clarify the butter properly).  My fault.  Second, I didn't add turmeric, because when I found the turmeric in our cupboard, I discovered it had been bought here.  My fault for not checking beforehand.  But I refuse to believe that these things were responsible for the finished product being disgusting.  The whole concept behind this recipe was flawed.  Here are the problems with it.  (1) The chicken pieces ended up with large pieces of peppercorn and clove embedded in them (because of the mistake of thinking that blending them with yogurt would result in them being ground up). (2) Cashews, when ground up, do not dissolve in liquid.  They are suspended in it.  So the final product that you put on the plate sits in a mud-like sauce.  (3) Onions.  Boiled onions are not good.  You need to sauté onions in order for them to impart the proper flavour to a dish.  Boiled chopped onions dominate all other flavours - and not in a good way.

Here is the final dish, in all its glory.  (With peas and chinese noodles.)  I am so embarrassed to have served it.

One final thing.  If I HAD to choose another word to describe this dish, it would be 'institutional'.  I suspect that it brought back deeply-embedded memories for me of nasty school lunches at the school I attended from 1974-79, King's House School.  Boiled onions.  I'm sure of it.

Next up, a book with altogether more nostalgic memories.  Delia Smith's classic One is Fun.  Somewhat ironically, we're going to have to double the recipes.  I'll explain more in the next post...