Lamb Cutlets with Walnut Spiced Cous Cous

   The inspiration for this dish came from a meal that my Chef step-brother cooked for me a few months ago. He slow cooked lamb in a water bath to keep it moist, and served it with Moroccan spiced cous cous and dried apricots.

   My variation of this dish uses an apricot jus rather than whole dried apricots, and I also used toasted walnuts in my cous cous to give it a strong savoury flavour, which would contrast with the sweetness of the apricot.

   The first thing I did was what I always do, I had an idea for a dish, and straight away realised that I had absolutely NONE of the ingredients that I needed. So I went to Morrisons down the road and grabbed a load of stuff.

   I went with lamb cutlets, rather than neck fillet or a shank, because I find them a much more tender cut, and the fat is much more controlled, all in one place, which I just find much neater to work with.


   The first proper stage of making this dish was to make the dry mix to add to the cous cous. The ingredients for this were;

1/2 cup of walnuts, coarsely chopped and toasted until golden brown in a dry pan
3 tsp Lebanese 7 spice
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp fresh coriander, coarsely chopped

      To this mixture, I added approximately 100g of dried cous cous and mixed it well.

      Next it was time to prepare to apricot jus. The ingredients for this were;

20 dried apricot pieces
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold water

   First, put all of the ingredients apart from the water into a small blender or food processor, and blend until nearly smooth. Then transfer to a small saucepan and add the cold water, and heat slowly for around 15 minutes.

   Next, pass the sauce through a fine meshed sieve, making sure to press all of the juices through with the back of a wooden spoon. This should leave you with a smooth shiny sauce.

   Now it's time to cook the lamb. Drizzle some olive oil into a non-stick frying pan, and put it on a medium-high heat until it's smoking. This technique is called searing, it should literally sear the meat closed, keeping it nearly raw on the inside but making sure that it's still juicy when it's cooked in the oven. You're looking for a really dark brown colouration, due to a process called Maillard reactions, which create the colours and tastes of browned meats.

   Note that I also trimmed off all of the meat around the tips of the bones, I find that while this creates a more sophisticated looking end result, it also allows you to place the extra pieces on top of the lamb while it's in the oven, and tends to keep it moist during the cooking process.
   Once the pieces of meat have been seared, place them on a baking tray with the extra pieces of spare meat on top of them, and put them into a preheated oven at 170C for 10 minutes.


   Next, prepare the cous cous by adding around 200ml boiling water to the mixture, and a small knob of butter, stir, and cover for 10 minutes.

   Once the cous cous is finished, fork it through to give it a light airy texture, and place some in a small bowl or ramekin, upturning it onto the final serving plate, creating a very neat finish.

   Now, balance the three lamb cutlets around the cous cous pile, and place the three off cuts or meat in the spaces around them, finally drizzling with the reduced jus and garnishing with some fresh coriander, and enjoy!

   Once again, if you like anything in particular that you see here, don't forget to comment and leave me some feedback, or follow me on blogloving!

Thanks, Anthony

Our visit to Piazza Firenze

   Last weekend, my girlfriend and I went on a day trip to Godalming in Surrey, the focal point of which consisted of a high street through the town centre, sporting three kinds of shops; hairdressing salons, estate agents and restaurants. This being said, we did stumble across a small deli selling all kinds of fine wines and cheeses (which I went crazy for, I could live off of cheese).
   The spirit of the place was very old school, with plenty of olde Englishe touches.

   While foraging through the undergrowth of salons and estate agents, we stumbled upon a gem of a place called Piazza Firenze.

   While the restaurant was laid out in a fairly modern and classy way, you could tell from a mile off that there was a major Italian influence there, simply from reading the menu.
   While in Rome, I have noticed many times that the key to good Italian cooking is 1. Good quality ingredients, and 2. Simplicity. A good Italian chef can create a masterpiece from three or maybe four ingredients, letting the food speak for itself, the chef only allows the good qualities of the food to show through, with minimal input, making the chef more of a facilitator of taste, not a creator.
    This was clear once my girlfriend had her starter served, a Portobello mushroom stuffed with wilted spinach and goat's cheese, topped with pesto. Four ingredients.

   The key to this dish was by a long way, the goat's cheese. It was very fresh tasting, but still managed to retain it's spicy but nutty taste, that comes from aging a fine quality cheese.
   My starter was a deep fried ball, similar to an Arancino, but instead of being filled with risotto, it was filled with a mixture of spinach and ricotta cheese.

   Now, usually I steer clear of any dish that boasts to made made using spinach and ricotta, mostly because I find it far too supermarket for me. Call me a ponce, but I prefer to experience new things, rather than something I could buy for a couple of pounds at the shops. Although this time, I had a good feeling about this restaurant, so I thought I would give it a go. Rightly so. The inside (I'm sorry I haven't got a picture of this, I was far too focused on eating it as quickly as possible!), was clearly made form scratch, and was mostly green, but with a delicate hint of ricotta, rather than the piped ricotta with green flecks in it that I have come to hate of recent years.
   Next, I decided to go with the pizza option, and chose the Quattro Staggioni, mostly due to my fond memories of eating pizza for breakfast at the roadside on Rome's Via Veneto. The bases were thin and crispy, and the mozzarella so fresh tasting that you could excuse eating a huge pizza at 10 o'clock in the morning!

   The flavours of this pizza were incredible, especially the tomato sauce, of which I am always very fond. I love how soft the artichokes were, and the pepperoni was picante and very delicious. The only issue I had with this pizza was that the base - lovely and fresh as it was - was slightly too thick, I have said before about how I'm a purist when it comes to food, and I believe that a good pizza should always have a wafer thin crust.
   Mr girlfriend ordered a chicken and bacon Caesar salad, an Italian classic, and very easy to do badly.

   This time though, the chef had done extremely well. He had avoided the classic pitfall of covering the entire dish in salad dressing. The croutons were large and freshly baked rather than tiny and impossibly hard, as is done so often, and there was a scattering of anchovies which are excellent for subtly seasoning a dish like this. They had used a good quality Parmesan, and hadn't opted for the finely grated option, which always creates a sludge when it mixes with the dressing.


   As well as the food, we both found the service to be of a good standard, the serving staff were very attentive and friendly, and on top of all of this, the price was very reasonably indeed. We only paid £38 for this entire meal, as well as a large beer and a small glass of wine.


   All in all, I would highly recommend a visit to Piazza Firenze if you are ever in the area of Godalming.




   If you enjoy any of my posts in particular as the weeks go on, please leave me a comment or two to tell me what you think, I am always open to suggestions and ideas!


Thanks, Anthony.

Stewed Aubergine and Tomato Crostinis

   The tomato sauce recipe that I stewed the aubergine in is my own recipe, that I have developed over the last few years. I believe that anyone who takes cooking seriously should be able to knock up a good, solid tomato sauce, as it is a basic ingredient in so many dishes, from a good homemade spaghetti bolognese to a pizza base sauce.
   I am a complete purist when it comes to making a tomato sauce, I don't add chilli, or pancetta as some people do, and most of the time I don't even add herbs or garlic (although I did this time, as they lent themselves to the type of dish I was making), and prefer to focus more on the taste of good quality tomatoes.


   Right, the absolute starting point or any tomato sauce is to find some good quality tomatoes. The better the quality, the better the final taste will be. Here are some tips when buying tomatoes for your sauce.

- In my opinion, the best tomatoes in the world are San Marzano tomatoes from Italy, you can find them in most supermarkets, and the ones in Waitrose are usually the best.

- Always use tomatoes that come packaged on the vine, this ensures that they remain full of flavour for as long as possible.

- Smell them. Most if not all packaged tomatoes have small holes in the packaging that you can use to smell them before buying, and to keep them from sweating in the plastic. They should smell fruity and deep, with a rich homegrown aroma, like your grandmother's greenhouse. I find that San Marzanos have an almost balsamic richness to them.

- Colour. They should be a deep, blood red. It's not a must, but I find that the colour tends to reflect the flavour, the deeper the colour, the deeper the flavour!


   The first stage of making your sauce, that is if you don't want your sauce to be full of tomato skins, is to blanch them in boiling salted water for one minute, and the straight away run them under cold water to make them easier to handle.

   Now peel off the skins, this should be a piece of cake as blanching the tomatoes makes the skin pretty much fall off.

   The next stage is not to chop the tomatoes, but to squeeze them with your bare hands into the saucepan, this will ensure that you extract lots of good flavour from them, rather than just slicing through them and keeping most of the juice still inside. You may want to be careful though, as the juices do tend to go absolutely everywhere!
   In this recipe, I added the squeezed tomatoes to a saucepan with some olive oil, garlic and roughly chopped sage leaves, but unless you are doing this recipe, I would just cook them on their own.

   A good piece of advice for this stage, is to put the vine stalks from the tomatoes into the pan, and cook them into the sauce until right at the last moment before serving, as this imparts a really meaty powerful tomato flavour to the sauce.
   You should also add a ladleful of water, 50ml of balsamic vinegar and one roughly chopped aubergine to the pan, and cook with the lid on for about 20-25 minutes.

   Once the sauce has thickened up nicely, spoon it generously onto slices of either toasted ciabatta or toasted rye bread like I did, and drizzle on some reduced balsamic vinegar. Smashed it.

Porcini Mushroom and Gorgonzola Stuffed Ravioli

   This was only the second time I had made pasta from scratch, and it turned out infinitely better than the first time. It turns out that the key is kneading, for a LONG time, and ensuring that when you rest the pasta dough in the fridge, it is completely covered in cling film, because you're never getting those crusty lumps of dried dough out!

  The first step is to measure out 300g or good quality type "00" pasta flour. This is a very fine grade flour that is suitable for making pasta a pizza bases as it can be rolled extra thin and can be worked very easily. Next, put the flour on the counter top and make a well in the centre, cracking in three large free range eggs.

   Now - using your fingertips - work the flour into the eggs until the dough starts to form, if it's too dry, add another egg, if it's too wet, add some more flour. Simple.

   Now the annoying bit, knead, knead and knead some more. The reason you do this is to develop the gluten in the flour, which is what gives the finished pasta it's elasticity. When you're done, in around 20 minutes, it should look like this...

   Now cover it WELL with cling film, and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

   In the meantime, roughly chop half a punnet of fresh Porcini mushrooms, and grate on approximately the same volume of Gorgonzola cheese. Mix well.

   Once your pasta dough has rested, roll it out to approximately 1mm thick, and arrange teaspoon sized balls of filling onto the dough, with enough spacing to allow for the edges of the ravioli.

   Now, using a wash of beaten egg (I always use free range, mostly because the taste of eggs from battery hens is almost non-existent, and also because it's unnecessarily cruel for the sake of an extra 50p), coat all of the gaps between the balls of stuffing.

   Now using some of the left over dough (of which I had lots), roll out another sheet to around the same thickness, and lay it on top, pressing down slowly between the stuffing balls to get rid of most of the air, and creating a good airtight seal with the egg wash.

Now using either a sharp knife or a pizza cutter, cut around the balls of filling to create your ravioli pieces.

Finally, boil them for 3-4 minutes, and serve with some balsamic vinegar reduction and a salad of dressed rocket and spinach leaves.

N'Duja Sausage and Fresh Mozzarella Pizza

   I made this pizza with a pizza dough recipe from Jamie Oliver's website that can be found here. I also used a type of sausage called N'Duja, which is a kind of soft spicy sausage, that you can eat straight away. It seems really strange at first, but once you've cooked it, the oils come out and really flavour the tomato sauce nicely.

As much as this recipe involves a lot of mucking around, please bear with me, as it is by far the most amazing pizza I've had outside Rome, and is really worth the trouble.

For the tomato sauce;

Blanch about 20 San Marzano tomatoes in boiling water for no longer than one minute, then run under cold water in a colander to cool them down. This should make the skins really easy to peel off. Then roughly chop the tomatoes and put them in a saucepan with a generous splash of good quality olive oil and a good pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. This sauce needs a fair amount of salt to really bring out the flavour of the tomatoes, especially as we're only going to use a small amount of it on the dough itself.

Now cook the tomatoes with approximately two teaspoons of tomato puree and a tablespoon of water. The sauce should simmer for around half an hour so keep adding water to stop it drying out too much.

Once the sauce has cooked, roll out a small ball of the pizza dough until it is only about 1-2mm thick, and about 20 cm in diameter, and spread about two or three tablespoons of the sauce onto the dough, leaving a border of around 2 cm all the way around the edge.

Now cut the sausage into chunks of around 1-2 square cm, and arrange on the pizza. Cook in a preheated oven at 180C for 15 minutes.

Once the pizza has cooked, take it out of the over and tear a ball of buffalo mozzarella into large chunks and arrange while the pizza is still hot. Then throw on some peppery rocket leaves and some grated Parmesan and drizzle with olive oil.

Baked Brie with Garlic, Rosemary and Hazelnuts

   This is the best starter that I have ever eaten, and it's from a chain of restaurants called Wildwood, and it was from one of their restaurants in a small town in Leicestershire called Market Harborough.

The most important things in this recipe are a good quality brie, and a good quality honey. Don't be tight if you're going to make this, otherwise it's quite pointless.

Get a small ovenproof dish like I have above, and put 1-2mm of olive oil in the bottom, then add 3 cloves of garlic to it, not crushed, just cut in half, then add some whole hazelnuts, just 4 or 5 will be fine. Then roast in the over for about 15-20 minutes at 170C.

Once the garlic cloves have browned slightly and gone nice and soft, add the brie. I would recommend a Brie De Meaux, as the flavour is much stronger than most other types of Brie, and it tends to melt much more nicely.

Once you have added the Brie, cook again for about 10 minutes, or until the Brie has melted nicely and is hot, then drizzle on two teaspoons of honey and serve with Melba toast, or just normal cut up toast if you can't be bothered to mess around anymore.

Beef Tagliata

   This dish is really easy to put together, and looks like you've absolutely smashed it when you have people round.

Firstly you need a fairly decent cut of steak, probably a nice fillet, as you need it to be quite tender. Then leave the steak whole on a plate drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. You do this so that the steak can get to room temperature, as if you don't then the centre of the steak will remain cold and won't cook at the proper rate, and it will be much more rare than you want it.

Now, heat a thick bottomed pan until it is extremely hot, and place the steak in the pan. You want to keep turning it, every 15-30 seconds, so that it cooks evenly. Keep turning it until it has been cooking for about six minutes for a steak about three-quarters of an inch thick, then place the cooked steak on a plate covered with tin foil to rest for about 12 minutes.

Once the steak has rested, slice it up (against the grain, this will make the steak seem more tender and easier to cut and eat), and lay it onto a bed of rocket leaves, then dress with a decent extra virgin olive oil, some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, and some roughly shaved Parmesan.

Steamed River Cobbler with Ginger and Spring Onion

   This was really simple to make and is incredibly healthy too. River cobbler is a very delicate flavoured white fish, that is really cheap to buy.

First get hold of one of those little bamboo steaming baskets that the Chinese use. You can get them i n most Chinese supermarkets, and even in Tesco sometimes. and as a guideline, if you're paying more than 7 or 8 quid, you're being ripped off.

Then slice up about two cubic inches of fresh ginger into matchsticks and lay them out on a small piece of grease-proof paper in the bottom of your steaming basket. This will ensure that when the hot steam hits the ginger, it will carry the flavour up into the flesh of the fish.

Now place the fish on top of the ginger and scatter some roughly chopped spring onion, some white pepper, and some dark soy sauce.

Steam for about 10 minutes and serve with Thai jasmine rice, it's fairly fragrant and compliments the delicate flavour of the fish, without punching you in the mouth and ruining it.

Herb Crusted Lamb Cutlets

   For this I made a mixture to encrust the lamb by using my mini blender which is great for making sauces and other things like that, it's a little Kenwood thing that I got for 20 quid and I would really recommend.

  For the Crusting mixture;

Take one slice of bog standard bread, stick it in the toaster, toast it, and let it cool in the toaster. The reason you do this is because if you let it cool on anything else, condensation forms and it just goes soggy and horrible. Then tear it up and throw it into the blender with a generous sprig of rosemary, one of thyme, one large clove of garlic, and a good pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Blend.

Then add about a teaspoon of water, to form a kind of paste, and coat the outside fatty edge of the lamb cutlets with flour, and push the paste onto the now floury surface, it should stick fairly well.

Now, pan fry the cutlets in olive oil on a medium high heat for about a minute and a half on each side (this recipe serves the lamb slightly pink).

While you rest the lamb for about 3-5 minutes covered with tin foil, scrunch a ball of spinach leaves up, and use them to support the lamb in a poncey fashion, the heat from the lamb will slightly wilt the leaves - in a good way.


Lastly, scatter over some chopped red pepper and drizzle over the cooking juices from the lamb.

Teriyaki Tuna Steaks

   I used really fresh tuna steaks for this, and let them marinade in a mixture of dark and light soy sauce (dark for the colour and light for the saltiness), pepper (no salt as the soy sauce is salty enough), and a teaspoon of honey, for 24 hours.

  I then fried them on a really high heat for approximately two minutes on each side, and then thinly slice them and serve of a bed of rocket and spinach leaves, and dress with a glaze made form reducing dark soy sauce with honey, and scatter with prawns if it's not substantial enough, I just did that because I was hungry.

Alright. Starting now, this is a place for me to unload all of the food ideas that I have, the food that I eat and the food that I cook. I will also be including reviews of restaurants that I visit. Feel free to leave comments and ideas. Watch this space.

Cheers

Anthony