Slow cooked oxtail stew in rich gravy with roasted vegetables.
Slow cooked oxtail stew in rich gravy with roasted vegetables.
We have a weekly delivery of box of organic vegetables. It’s a self imposed challenge to use up whatever they send. I’ve got 3 choices for ‘do not send’ – these are currently occupied by beetroot (beets you Americans), Brussell sprouts and avocado. It’s not just organic – they work hard on reducing the travel miles on the vegetables. Hence, the humble swede appears frequently in the box.
Why is it called rutabaga in America? And what is a turnip if its not a baby swede? Who knows, the weird and wonderful names of vegetables are beyond my expertise.
When a boring root vegetable appears – soup is the answer. Oven roasting does wonders for root vegetables going into soup, really adds a layer of taste. It’s worth the extra prep time and clean up. I like to really scorch the swede just to the edge of burnt. I did it by accident – oh the dangers of multi tasking a well known recipe – and now it’s required by the Davinator.
Handy tools for this recipe: parchment paper for roasting, a mandolin for slicing in the vegetables, a stick blender to puree the soup at the end. Or a good sized blender. Can also be done in a food processor but both of those alternatives add messy clean up steps.
I add croutons and sautéed chorizo to make the soup a meal. If you’re feeling a need for more vegetables, a green salad on the side would be lovely.
Make this recipe vegan by omitting the butter and avoiding cream or chorizo.
Let’s get cooking.
The recipe proportions are for 450 grams of swede. Adjust if your swede is larger or smaller. Usually larger, in my experience.
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Five ingredient omelette.
I have a friend who loves food and hates to cook. By special request, I’m going to establish a special category of recipes on the website – known as the Love Food Hate Cooking recipes. Scrambled eggs on toast was the traditional default dinner of a busy single woman. My omelette recipe takes only a bit more time and effort but is extremely versatile.
The trick to the easy perfect omelette is to start it on the stove top, finish it under the grill and never ever flip it. All you need is butter, eggs, filling(s) and an oven proof skillet. The omelette above is made using crab, parmesan cheese and chives. It is infinitely flexible on ingredients and combination – any kind of cheese, protein that’s precooked (ham, smoked, salmon, thinly sliced sausage, cooked chicken, etc), vegetables that have been properly prepared. Both the recipe and method are straightforward.
I use a le Creuset skillet – they are expensive but stand the test of time. My youngest son is 25 years old and I have le Creuset cookware that predates him. There are other brands of enamelled cast iron cookware that will work well – the heavy bottom pan makes a difference.
Let’s get cooking.
Butter, plenty of it
4 eggs
Tablespoon of dairy – milk, yogurt, cream – any unsweetened dairy (optional)
150 grams of crab meat
40 grams of finely grated parmesan cheese
Handful of chives
The omelette just before it goes under the grill.
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This recipe makes beautiful slow cooked stew to serve over noodles or potatoes or even better filling for beef pies. I’ve taken my classic slow cooked beef stew recipe and added a Julia Child twist to it. One thing that makes Julia’s recipes taste fantastic is the separate cooking of key elements that are then combined at the end for maximum flavour. The recipe has 3 key processes: cook the beef, cook the onions and cook the mushrooms. These 3 elements are combined to make either fab stew or even better pie filling. I used my slow cooker for the beef but you could easily put it in the oven on a low heat. I do it in this in order: beef, onions, mushrooms.
Let’s get straight to the cooking.
Brown braised onions
18-24 miniature onions
30 – 50 grams of butter, a shot of olive oil
125 mls of beef stock and red wine
A bouquet garni
250 grams of quality small mushrooms (double this recipe if you have mushrooms lovers in your house)
30-40 grams of butter
Splash of olive oil
2 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots (optional)
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This recipe is adapted from Julia Child’s classic recipe in ‘Master the Art of French Cooking’. You might want to read this blog also: The 10 Commandments of Coq au Vin but not until after you’ve made the recipe(s) below. There are three: the main coq au vin, the onions and the mushrooms. There is no ‘one pot’ short cuts here. Settle in and cook.
4. ounces unsmoked bacon lardons
Butter
3 pounds of jointed chicken – legs & thighs with the bone in are best
Salt & pepper
½ cup of cognac
2 cups of decent red wine
2 cups of chicken stock (approximate)
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 clove of mashed garlic
1 bay leaf, 1 sprig of thyme
1 ounce of flour
1 ounce of very soft butter
18-24 miniature onions
2-4 tablespoons of butter, a shot of olive oil
½ cup of chicken stock or red wine (or a combination of the two
A bouquet garni
½ pound of quality small mushrooms (double this recipe if you have mushrooms lovers in your house)
2 tablespoons of butter
Splash of olive oil
2 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots (optional)
Autumn has well and truly arrived; 3C here this morning. Time to get out the slow cooker and make some hearty food. I have a great butcher, Hatto & Son, specialising in meat from British farms. Some times I go with a list and some times I go in and see what looks interesting. One day there was goat meat, prepped for stewing. Of course I bought it. Oh happy accident that has resulted in one of our favourite recipes; slow cooked goat curry Jamaican style. If you can’t get goat or mutton, then stewing lamb is a good substitute.
The Davinator accompanied me on a business trip to Jamaica and we stayed in a quirky little place. The evening menu was soup, plus a choice of three main dishes. If there was goat curry, the Davinator chose it every time. There was a great cook in that kitchen – cooking her authentic heart out every night. This is my homage to her great cooking.
I put mine in the slow cooker but you can also use an oven proof stock pot and put it in a low oven. I make this recipe for 8 people and start it about 10 am for dinner at 6 pm. Let’s get cooking.
I serve with flatbread and rice; it’s tasty and rich. If you’ve gone a little overboard with the chilli, serve with a big scoop of Greek yoghurt to cool it down.
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I came across a version of this recipe in the Silver Palate ‘New Basics’ Cookbook. The Silver Palate was a gourmet take out food store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, opened in 1977 by two women, Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins. It was a novel concept for its time and they eventually wrote 3 cookbooks. They are all good cookbooks and mine have fallen apart over the years from usage. Their ethos; great ingredients cooked with care make good food. Good food shared with friends makes great meals.
I’ve adapted this recipe over time, eliminating garlic, adding more vegetables and a mustard coating for the lamb. This is a great meal, with reasonably quick prep and not much fuss. One big dish to wash up. Eight generous servings. It’s a family style food with gourmet level taste. I recently cooked this dish in a self catering holiday let – notoriously short on speciality cooking implements. The only thing I really missed was my handheld mandolin but I had a great sous chef in my friend Lisa. She’s an artist (see her work here) and her nimble fingers made short work of the repeated ‘slice thin’ instructions below. Sharp knives and a sous chef or a mandolin highly recommended. You’ll also need a little rack or some skewers to hold the lamb slightly above the level of the vegetable gratin.
Time to get cooking.
If you’re feeling the need, you can include a green vegetable or a salad with the lamb and gratin. (We didn’t). The Davinator suggests a Grignan-Les Adehemar as the perfect wine accompaniment. Or, another mid-Rhone syrah based red wine.
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Toasted cheese sandwiches are part of our traditional Christmas Eve supper. Kids love them and served warm, adults can’t say no either. Two secrets to these world famous (just kidding) sandwiches; butter both sides of the bread and use a flat crepe pan or griddle for cooking.
Ingredients for this recipe are fairly obvious – bread, butter and sliced cheese. I serve these with soup and one sandwich each seems to be enough.
It’s okay to use good quality store bought white bread for this recipe. Might seem like heresy from someone who makes all her own bread but home made bread is denser and it’s difficult to get even slices. You want good quality white bread because it needs to carry a fair amount of butter without tearing.
Put good quality salted butter out to soften well before you’re planning to make the sandwiches. It’s Christmas so I like to use butter from Normandy ‘Isigny Ste Mere’; but any good quality salted makes a difference. Do not use margarine or ‘spread’. It’s a crime against sandwiches and you’re reading the wrong blog if you’re afraid of butter.
The eternal question for toasted cheese sandwiches: what type of cheese? If you’re feeding a crowd, then I recommend aged medium cheddar but most cheeses will do. If you’re feeding a few close friends (grown ups) it might be worth investing in some Comté or Jarlsberg. You can use hard or crumbly cheese if you want; grate it in advance and apply to the bottom half of the sandwiches once they’re on the pan.
Ingredients: sliced white bread, sliced or grated cheese of your choice and room temperature butter.
Get busy toasting! Thank you for reading the blog, cooking the recipes, sharing and commenting. Tag me @mamadolson on Instagram and Twitter if you’re posting photos.
Merry Christmas.
This is one of our favourite winter soups; traditionally we have this on Christmas Eve with the world’s greatest toasted cheese sandwiches. This recipe is based on one from the original Silver Palate cookbook. I’ve adjusted the seasoning and changed how the cheese is incorporated. The soup keeps much better when the cheese is added as a topping when serving it. Also – cheese can curdle unpredictably. Nothing like making a big vat of soup and then ruining it at the list minute.
Making this soup is easy, especially if you have a quality stick blender. I have a commercial standard one that could double as an outboard motor – if I could only find someplace to plug it in.
Another useful gadget is a handheld mandolin slicer; I slice the onions and the carrots straight into the pot with mine. Be careful – until you get used to the mandolin, you may lose the skin on the ends of your fingers. Several times in my case.
Easy to make a vegan version of this soup – substitute a light vegetable or nut oil for the butter and be careful with your vegetable stock. Remember that many commercial stock cubes are not vegan or even vegetarian (even vegetable stock).
Let’s get straight to the recipe.
I’m trying to post all of my festive period menus and recipes. More coming soon.
The weather here in London is turning towards autumn after a summer that we hardly noticed. It’s time for some easy to cook comfort food. One of our family favourites is slow cooked lamb with prunes and pearl barley. It’s a classic one pot meal – well it’s two unless your slow cooker has a sauté function. Put it on in the morning and it’s perfect for dinner plus leftovers.
I have an amazing slow cooker that will brown and also make the sauce. If yours doesn’t have that function then make the sauce separately in a deep fry pan and add to the lamb in the slow cooker.
I use lamb shanks then strip the meat off them. It will also work well with a lamb shoulder or lamb neck. The recipe is for 6 lamb shanks, a generous two kilos with the weight of the bone or approximately 1 kilos if just using stewing lamb chunks. Ginger, saffron and the sweetness of the prunes gives this dish a Middle Eastern vibe. Adding the pearl barley a couple of hours before the end allows the barley to soak up all the juices. The recipe feeds 8 people with leftovers.
6 lamb shanks
300 grams prunes
4 large shallots or an onion, chopped very fine
2 carrots, chopped very fine
45 mls (3 tablespoons olive oil)
Pat of butter
250 mls dry white wine
30 grams minced ginger (I use the jarred stuff for ease)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon saffron threads
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 litre (4 cups) lamb stock or chicken stock
250 grams of pearl barley or long grain rice.
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