Zuppa alla Bolognese

I started to make soups for lunch as part of a long term plan to lose weight, but really missed some of my old favourites like a big plate of spaghetti bolognese. I decided to invent soups that tried to recreate classic dishes I used to enjoy (my Cottage Pie soup’s not bad either), but with far fewer calories - and this is my favourite!

My partner is Italian, and I’ve honed my own bolognese style sauce - or ragu - over many years, mostly by watching her mother make it back home in the Italian mountains. This soup captures all the flavour of that sauce, but takes out most of the calories as there’s very little pasta. It’s also healthy and low fat as well. I tend to make it from leftover roast beef from a Sunday joint, so it’s thrifty too. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I've added four videos which show this recipe as well now, available on my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6aNdpB0GYFlEtDpfTmNdRa1uyje6gjpv

Method

1. First chop your celery, carrot and onions (the classic Italian soffritto) into 1cm cubes, and fry gently in a tablespoon or so of olive oil for about 10 minutes until they’ve just taken on a little colour.
2. Next add the same amount of leftover roast beef cubes as you have vegetables, again cut into 1cm cubes.
3. Add beef (or other meat) stock to cover the vegetables and meat and give a good chunky texture.
4. Add a tablespoon or so of tomato puree (depending how much veg and meat you’ve used), to give colour and flavour.
5. Chop up some fresh herbs and stir in. I usually use rosemary, oregano and thyme - I like it quite herby!
6. Add a couple of inches of leftover parmesan crust.
7. Simmer for at least 30 minutes, until the veg is tender and the parmesan has infused.
8. For the last 5 minutes or so of cooking, sprinkle in a good handful or two (again depending how much of the other ingredients you’ve used) of small pasta shapes, e.g. farfalline (little bows). Check the cooking instructions for whichever you’ve used for the right timing.
9. Top with a little extra grated parmesan if you wish - and enjoy!

The shameless supermarket rip off ... and the numbers to prove it

I've long been a big supporter of local food and smaller businesses, preferring to buy my food from farm shops, farmers markets, butchers, fishmongers, etc. - basically any specialist who knows what they're doing. I do use supermarkets, but most of the time it's for bulk purchasing of things that aren't so easy to find locally, the boring stuff like toilet rolls and pasta. But I'm not just some local eco-warrior, a middle class idiot with enough cash to be able to waste what I earn. After all I work in education, and that's not known as a particuarly well paid profession, and on top of that the west country isn't exactly the best paid place to work either!

I was raised a thrifty shopper either way, and I've long been convinced that buying locally not only helps to support local business and ease pressure on the environment, but that it also saves me money in the process. Up to now this has been more of an ad hoc belief, based on the odd price that I've compared here and there over the years, but this morning I decided to finally sit down and work it out pound for pound - and the results are pretty astonishing. Let's put it this way - I think I know where the supermarkets like Tesco are making those billion pound profits - the truth is if you're a supermarket shopper, then they're basically ripping you off.

Exe Valley Farm Shop versus Tesco, Sainsbury & Asda - the Numbers

I use the Exe Valley Farm Shop for most of my shopping, and this morning I popped down there for potatoes and some fruit for the week ahead. As usual I managed to buy much more than I planned- there's something that's no different from supermarket to farm shop! - but the whole lot only cost me £8.96. That's not so unusual to be honest, but we had so much I thought it was about time I did a comparison shop.

My food basket, not bad for a quick trip down the farm shop and back

Unfortunately I didn't take down every individual price in the farm shop, but I realised I had enough info to create a comparison none the less. All I needed to do was weigh everything I had, and then spend some time going through each of the supermarkets websites to see what they would charge for the same thing. And here are the results - personally I found them pretty shocking.

The upside is that my £8.96 basket of food from the farm shop would cost £14.82 at Tesco, £15.48 at Sainsbury and £12.52 at Asda. Whichcever way you look at it, the supermarkets suddenly don't look quite so 'super' any more.

Spreadsheet comparing price of goods at the Exe Valley Farm Shop versus Tesco, Sainsbury & Asda

The supermarkets have long been trying to convince us that they save us money, but the plain fact of the matter is that they don't save us money, they make supermarkets money. That's their sole purpose in life, to make money, and they have absolutely no qualms about doing it. They are machines set-up to extract as much money as possible from our pockets, whilst at the same time they have marketing machines spending millions convincing us that it's all in our best interest to keep shopping there.

I've not even mentioned the health or environmental aspects to this, it's all been about the money. But my basket contains (pretty much) only local food, sourced within a few miles of where I live, and has all been grown pretty naturally. I know the onions, for example, are from my own village, and the apples are from an orchard just a couple of hills away in Cadbury. How does that compare with Dutch onions shipped in across the north sea, and apples flown all the way from New Zealand? Now my local farm shop isn't some sort of charity, sure they sell some food from a long way away, but they're pragmatists and know they need to meet customer demand. That said the majority of their food is local and fresh, and they support a wide range of local producers across the full spectrum of foodstuffs.

So that's the Veg - but what about the Meat?

One more thing before I wrap up - the main reasons for going to the farm shop this morning was for potatoes to go with my Sunday roast. Seeing as I was comparing prices anyway, I wondered just how my lovely 3-rib forerib of beef on the bone from my local butcher here in the village would compare with the supermarket prices. No prizes for guessing - turns out they would rip me off just as badly for the meat as they would do for the veg. I bought a fantastic piece of meat for £35 from my butcher, which I know will be enough for at least 35 meals, if not more (and if you doubt that, just flick through some older postings for ideas about leftovers). A quick check on the supermarkets sites show that for the same quality meat I'd be paying at least £20 more. In fact the only way I could get meat cheaper would be if I paid for the very lowest quality that they offered, and even then it would only be a small saving - and somehow I don't think such cheap meat would stretch as far as I have planned for what I've bought. No bones to boil up for stocks and soup, that's for sure - and once that sort of meat has been minced up for chilli and bolognese I think you'd be hard pressed to find the flavour.

Anyhow, I hope this Sunday rant has perhaps convinced the odd sceptic out there to try more local shopping. But one more caveat perhaps  - there are farm shops, and there are farm shops. There are still local monstrosities that need avoiding - Darts Farm, for example (in my experience at least) is even more of a rip off than the supermarkets. I would put their prices up to show you, but it's not something they like to share on-line it seems. Knowing some of their mark-up I don't blame them! I guess at the end of the day you need to shop with eyes wide open, but just don't let those supermarket bullies convince you they're doing you a favour by selling you all that nice cheap food. It 'aint half has cheap as they make out ...

Rib of Beef for Sunday lunch - meat from the village butcher, veg from the farm shop (not to mention runner beans from the garden), wine from the local vintner. And a hell of a lot cheaper than you'd pay from your supermarket.

A Beefy Leftover Special: From Roast Topside to Vitello Tonnato

I'm a sucker for Farmer's markets, rarely get my food from anywhere else, and last Saturday it was Killerton House's turn (third Saturday in the month, in case you're local). This market has only been running for a year or so, and has attracted a couple of new meat producers recently. A while back I tried some lamb from Peradon Organic farm (http://www.peradonorganicfarm.co.uk/), which I made into Spit Roast Lamb and Wild Garlic Mash - unfortunately never got a chance to blog about that one. However last week I decided to plump for Beef instead from West Kidland farm (http://www.westkidland.co.uk/)- what what a piece of beef it was!

Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I also have a weakness for Rib of Beef on the bone, so it's not really like me to choose Topside, but it looked like a lovely piece of meat and a bargain at £15 for 2kg. It was very well hung too. I won't go into the way I cooked it this time, suffice to say that it was a pretty standard roast, that I served with a rather large yorkshire pudding, carrots, peas (in their pods) and new potatoes. Lovely stuff, which you can see on my Picasa food site if you're interested.

But what I really want to talk about is not the roast beef, it's what I did with the leftovers - Vitello Tonnato.

Vitello Tonnato aka Veal in Tuna Sauce

OK, first things first, obviously I wasn't using veal. But you don't really need to, to be honest. We've done this before with not only beef, but also lamb and even chicken. What is it? Basically it's cold meat dressed with a tuna sauce. It's simplicity itself to make, but like all simple food if the right ingredients are combined in the correct way then a few simple things can be transformed into something much greater than the sum of their parts. It should also be done with mayonnaise to be truly original, but as we're expecting our first child at the moment raw eggs are off the menu, so we are tending to use creme fraiche instead and that works out pretty well.

Ingredients (for four hungry people)

Sauce:
Tuna, 170g (in olive oil), chopped finely
Capers, 2 tablespoons, chopped finely
Mayonnaise (or creme fraiche), 150g
Anchovies, if you like them - not something we're keen on

Beef (or other meat):
10-12 thin slices of beef

(doesn't really need seasoning)

Preparation

• Mix all the sauce ingredients together - easiest done in a blender if you have one.
• Layout beef on a serving platter, slightly overlapping.
• Dress with a thickish layer of the sauce, then leave to come to room temperature.
• Serve the platter in the centre of the table, and allow people to help themselves.

Accompaniments

Boiled potatoes work well, or saute (my preference) - again left over from the roast.
A fresh green salad with cucumbers and tomatoes works well.

It's a fab dish for a hot summers day, and a very tasty way of using up leftover beef. I must admit I was a bit suspicious when the Italian first suggested this dish many years ago, but have enjoyed it many times since. I do urge you to give it a try, hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Rib of Beef with Horseradish Dauphinois - and my Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

Not exactly a new combination this - I think I blogged about it sometime before - but this time around I did make an effort to film the important bits. And even made it into one proper movie as well. Thank heaven for tools like Picasa that make movie making so easy these days, and tools like YouTube which make distributing them just as simple. I may be a techy in many ways, but when it comes to video I still feel like a novice.

As you can probably see - I'm a lousy carver :-)

My Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

Here's how I make my yorkshire puddings - a recipe I've perfected over the years which suits how I like them. This is enough for 6 small yorkshire puddings. If you need more just double everything, works just as well. Timing is for small yorkshire puddings - larger ones will take longer to cook.

• 40 g flour
• 40 ml milk
• 40 ml water
• 1 egg
• pinch of salt

Put the flour in a bowl, add a pinch of salt (what on earth is a pinch anyway? Give it a good sprinkle, depends how much you like salt!). Make a well in the centre of the flour, crack the egg into it, start blending it into the flour with a fork (a wide toothed old fashioned one is best, preferably strong metal. Or just use a whisk.).

Next you're going to have to decide how fast to add the other liquid depending how watery/dry the egg/flour is. At some point you'll need to start adding the milk and water (makes no odds which is first, you can just blend them together and then add them bit by bit, that's what I do). Just aim for a thickish consistency all the time, beating out the lumps as they form - if you add too much liquid at any one point before the lumps are gone you'll never get rid of them. Soon you'll get to the point where you have a smooth paste, then the rest of the liquid can go in at once and be mixed in.

Now into the fridge for at least half an hour. I usually do mine first thing in the morning on a Sunday, and only take it out again when I'm ready to use it. The logic behind this is that all the molecules start to bind together I think, but whatever - it works for me.

When the beef comes out of the oven, whack the oven temperature back up high (at least 200ºC, preferably more, but depends on your oven - see my top roasting tips for more info on that sort of thing) and put in your yorkshires tray with the fat (either beef dripping from the roast, or some other high temperature fat) already in it. Give that at least 5 minutes to get really hot.

Now pour the yorkshire batter into the trays and back into the hot oven quick. And leave it - don't open the oven again for at least 15 minutes, you don't want to let in the cold air or they won't rise as well. They may be ready after 15 minutes or take 20 or so to get done, if you like them really crispy leave them longer.

P.S. My Mum tells of when she used to eat cold yorkshires with jam, and I still love them cold the next day myself, so have no trouble making too many. One tip though - if you're going to do this take the cooling yorkshires out of the tray once you've finished your lunch, don't leave them in the tray to get totally cold or they'll suck up too much fat and can become a bit greasy and nasty. Just pop them on a plate and put them to one side, and then in the fridge once totally cold. I just eat them plain like this, but you could take a leaf out of my Mum's book and spread some jam on yours first - wonderful stuff. Sweet batter puddings are a bit of an old classic, so this isn't as bonkers as it might sound!

Fricando (Rich Braised Beef)

At the moment I'm still playing around with Anglo-Italian hybrids - seems only fair to the Italian to bring more of her type of food into the Sunday roasting. Was after beef this week, and as ever I hadn't decided on anything until I knew what meat I had to play with. For me the core of any Sunday roast has to be the meat itself, so there's no point planning anything until you know what quality of that you've got. The butchers had a nice selection of brisket this week, and being a big brisket fan I decided to plump for that.

Brisket - bit large for what I was doing, so cut a bit off for another time

Back at home it was time to dig in to my cookbooks for inspiration. I have a bit of an obsession with cookbooks, and although I rarely follow a recipe I love to be able to browse through ideas and techniques to inspire me. I recently did buy one by Anna del Conte though, The Classic Food of Northern Italy, and was bowled over somewhat by her style and clarity of writing, so decided to follow something of hers completely - 'Fricando'.

Anna does recommend following things quite closely, in order to reveal the true Italian style of the dish, so that's what I did. At least that's what I thought I did, until after the meal - but more of that later! Fricando is basically a braised beef dish, of either French (fricandeau) or Italian (fricando) origin, depending who's side your on :-) From what I understand it should really be veal, but the core of it seems to be a larded piece of beef that's then braised. Cloves also seem important, as well as a very long slow cook at low temperature.

Pancetta & Clove Studded Onion

The trick is to make incisions into the meat and push in quite a lot of minced/chopped proscuitto into it. You then brown the meat very well with olive oil and butter, and then leave to braise with one clove studded onion cut in half, half (or less) of a chopped up carrot, a good handful or two of celery (leaves only if you can), a (very) little stock and plenty of fresh parsley. After a few hours (I did mine for about four in the end, but it was ready earlier really - christmas beers down the pub delayed me somewhat) it should be done. All you need do next is take the meat out to rest, and then blitz the sauce smooth, either in a blender, sieve, mouli or whatever you prefer.

Minced pancetta, ready for pushing into the meat

The joint ready to go into the oven for it's long slow cook

The flavour has to be tasted to be believed. Absolutely wonderful. Always odd how such simple combinations can create such a sublime combination, but a real pleasure to eat. One of the best braised beef dishes I've ever made I think, if not the best. Served it very simply with some fresh greens and mashed potatoes (with a lovely celeriac risotto as primo, courtesy of the Italian).

Celeriac risotto

The leaves from the celeriac in the garden - used these in place of the celery it should be, and very tasty they were too!

The finished sauce

And the finished dish

P.S. I hinted earlier I cocked up a bit with this one - well the truth is I used pancetta rather than proscuitto. Looked at too many recipes, and since I had some pancetta to finish up in the fridge I guess I couldn't get it out of my head! Either way though it was delicious, but now of course I need to try it with the prosciutto just to check!

Christmas Turkeys and all that

Just busy preparing a boned & rolled pork shoulder to go on the spit for lunch, and thought I'd better update things up here. What with all the Christmas travelling and other busyness that this time of year always brings I've been a bit remiss with posting!

Lots of things have come and gone Sunday Roasting wise, including lots of lamb and a fab bit of Sirloin on the bone, which Arthur up at the butchers did a special old fashioned preparation for creating a plinth to roast it on out of it's own bones. Worked a treat. Unfortunately you can't see it that well in the picture:



As you can see I roasted it up with new potatoes just chucked in with their skin and everything. This way they roast up slowly and get covered in lots of stickiness from the beef - you don't get the crunch of proper roasties, but sometimes I prefer them this way.

Sad news on the butcher front, as Dave Haggett has decided to give up and sold the business. Seems he's had enough of people not appreciating good meat, always wanting cheaper and cheaper cuts (with all that entails for animal welfare and traditional butchering). A much bigger business now owns the butchers and associated Spar, and whilst not much has changed yet only time will tell whether or not it will survive.

Christmas was a fun time, as I got a niece from my brother and sister in law. That did mean I did all the cooking for Christmas lunch though, not something I really mind but Christmas lunch is almost always the most stressfull cooking of the year, what with all the different things that have to be prepared. We did go for turkey too, which can be a bugger to cook, especially on my Mum's oven which has seen better days. Let's juts say what you pick on the dial as atemperature often seems to have little to do with what actually happens in the oven.


Mille Rose Osborne

I went for a variation on Jamie Oliver's way of doing Turkey for mine, separating the skin from the bird and pushing butter up underneath to baste the bird as it cooks. I was supposed to add sage leaves that my brother has sent from his garden as well (Mum's being a bit bare) but my brain took on a sieve like nature and I promptly forgot. Some herbs and manadarin also went inside, and I stuffed the neck as usual, then wrapped the legs in foil to stop them cooking too quickly.


Separating the skin so that I can push the butter underneath

Took a few hours to cook, but came out pretty well I think, although maybe a tiny bit overcooked. Wonderfully moist and favloursome thouhg, which is the main thing. The bottom line with Turkeys has to be that you have to check when they're cooked, there is just no other way of measuring them. Ovens and turkeys vary so much that no matter what recipe your follow you're going to have to use a bit of experience and testing if you want your bird cooked properly.


The finished bird


Making the gravy - bit blurry this one, but at least you can see the neck and vegetables I was using to make a trivet to place the bird on. Gravy was amazing just like that - I actually made the mistake of adding some stock to it to make it go further, but to be honest I don't think the stock was as good as the gravy so blending the two made things worse not better. Should of just used water!

I did the usual suspects with this, roast potatoes and parsnips, brussel sprouts, carrots, bread sauce, braised red cabbage, bacon wrapped sausages, and two types of stuffing.


Stuffing balls and bacon sausages. The stuffing balls I tried to keep very simple, just adding a little sage and lemon for a bit of freshness. I used chipolatas for the bacon wrapped sausages, and just snipped them in two once they were roasted

Seems made now - why on earth do we do this to ourselves! Once a year is enough - I guess we forget by the time the next year comes along just how much we have to get through ...


The finished meal - with a glug or two of red wine of course!

Then it was on to the christmas pud (thankfully my Mum's - wonderful stuff, although the Italian has never taken to it) and a little cheese. All in all a great meal, made even more special by my tiny niece sitting (well, laying - let's face it she's only a few days old) beside me.

Anyhow - must get back to my pork shoulder - it's not going to roast itself!

P.S. Excuse the photos - have a new camera on the phone and seeing if it's good enough for this sort of thing. Still trying to get the settings right!

Pot Roast Brisket with Basil Dumplings

I love a piece of brisket now and then, but it can be a tricky thing to cook and I've overdone it once or twice, which is never a good thing. Lately I've taken to curing it first to create a kind of corned beef, and I'd really recommend it if it's not something you've had a go at. My favourite recipe so far is from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating (now that's a well named book) which is simple, but has lots of strong flavours which tuck themselves nicely into the main flavour of the meat.

Once the meat had cured this time around it kind of fell apart into four large pieces, which I left whole and bunged in with plenty of onions, carrots, swede, potato and beef stock, plus bay leaf & thyme. It then went on our new wood burning stove - we've been experimenting with cooking on it, but it's early days!



The picture shows it with the basil dumplings added. I wouldn't use basil normally, but we had some left that needed finishing up (well, it probably needed throwing away really, but I hate doing that) so in it went. I should add that the Le Creuset pot that the pot roast is in (OK, well perhaps 'stew' might be more accurate!) I found at the local dump for £1. Weird how great stuff like that is thrown out sometimes, but good for those of us who don't mind reusing what others don't want ...

The stove did a great job in the end of cooking it through, and I think will be a fab addition to the house - and that's apart from being a brilliant way of heating the house without relying on fossil fuel. The cat certainly likes it at any rate.



All in all a great meal for very little cost, and perfect for this time of year, although you might want to go easy on the dumplings!

Cheap Eats: Why big roasts give you big flavour and big value

I know I've gone on before about the value of a good roast over buying bits and pieces of meat, or heaven forbid some instant meal, but I thought I'd expand a little on my point. 

The reason I started this blog was because I tend to roast a large piece of meat on a Sunday, in true English style, and then use whatever is leftover for food for the rest of the week. Nothing exactly unusual about that - hell, my grans (were they still about) would be surprised if I didn't - but it doesn't seem as common as it used to be.

I reckon I can sum it up in a few points as to why big roasts are a great choice, especially given the current financial climate:

• By buying a big roast you're getting lots of different bits of meat in one package, so you get variation in flavours and textures just from one piece. 
• Buying a larger piece is just about always better value than buying separate smaller pieces, as you're not paying for someone to do the work involved in cutting bits up.
• Making things with the leftovers saves you loads of time - the meat is already cooked, so you can usually turn around dinners during the week in about half an hour or so using leftovers.
  
• The value is amazing - I reckon I only spend at most £1 on meat per meal per person, and that's not some sort of supermarket value meat (like some poor bastard chicken from a huge hen house) but good quality meat from local farms

So to do we do with leftovers to make it stretch so far? Here are some examples:

Chicken

Breast meat is lovely in sandwiches of course, but also great in salads.

The thigh & leg makes wonderful curries.

Just about everything from a chicken can go into a risotto!

Stuffed pancakes or stronganoff - just add some slow cooked onions and mushrooms, a little creme fraiche and you've got a really tasty sauce for just about anything.

Rib of Beef
The rare middle is used for sandwiches or turned it into little steaks.
Tender bits between the ribs themselves can be used for things like salads.
Tougher bits like the meat on top are cut into centimetre cubes and frozen ready for curries or stews.
Anything else left over is minced up and turned into cottage pie or bolognese.


Making curry from leftover rib of beef

Spare Rib

Makes great Schintzel's, tend to have more flavour than the real thing I reckon.

Cubed meat is great for curries again, or pork casseroles.

Shoulder of Lamb

Probably my favourite. I like cubes of it cooked in with rice. You fry up a little onion and garlic in big pieces, add the rice and the lamb and toss around a bit, then in goes twice the amout of water as rice, a little salt, and seal for about twenty minutes until rice is tender. Comfort food!

Also good for curries (reading this you'd think I live off curry!).

Anyhow - enough for now. Just one more thing though - bones! I always try to get meat on the bone, as they make such great stock once you've got the meat off. That stock can be used for soup straight away, but also adds loads more flavour when used for all the dishes above (well, except for sandwiches perhaps).

'Ziti' Al Forno

Bit of a cock-up last weekend, as what with one thing and another I never managed to get to the butchers in time to get some meat to roast, at least not a joint. As ever with these things though that forced me to be more creative and I turned to a recipe that I had been wanting to do for some time - Ziti al Forno from Antonio Carluccio's "Passion for Pasta".

"Passion for Pasta" is a fab book and well worth getting a copy. There are so many pasta books out there, which generally speaking I find a bit of waste of time, but let's face it, Antonio is the master when it comes to this sort of thing (well, one of the masters at least! I can't really write something like that without at least mentioning Gennaro Contaldo). What Passion for Pasta has though above most books is that insight which understands that pasta is not something just to pour sauce over, but is an intrinsic part of the meal in itself. Carluccio brings across to the reader the critical message that not only is the choice of flavour of pasta, i.e. combinations of ingredients such as egg or durum wheat for example, a big part of the dish, but also that the shape of the past itself has a very important part to play, and whatever pasta you choose will have a big impact on the finished dish.

So what, you may be wondering, is 'Ziti' Al Forno? Well first off it is not a roast, but a baked dish, hence the "Al Forno". It was Sunday lunch though! You'd probably be surprised how often a baked pasta dish like this ends up as the special dish of the week. Lasagna, for example, often ends up on the Sunday lunch table in Italy so my partner tells me. She should know - she is Italian after all. And the 'Ziti'? Well they are in fact effectively long tubes of macaroni, and difficult to get hold of here in Devon, which is why they're in quotes. I actually ended up using a style of penne as it was the closest I could get - which brings me onto the dish itself.

Preparation time - sorting out the ingredients

Now I should say that I did deviate a fair bit from the straight recipe, which on top of the missing Ziti also calls for the addition of chicken livers and salami. I have to say after eating it though that I'm kind of glad I did leave them out (not that they were exactly to hand at the time!) as even without these it was a pretty rich dish. Basically the whole thing is layers of pasta, mozzarella, beef meatballs and tomato sauce which is finished with beaten egg, plenty of parmesan and baked in the oven - serious food.

Creating the Dish

We're big fans of meatballs and these little guys were fab - simply made from some beef mince that we did find up the road, a little onion, garlic, parmesan, bread and parsley from the garden. Think these will be a common feature in the kitchen in future just cooked by themselves and served with a bit of pasta and sauce. I'm not sure the raw garlic in them worked so well though - personally I love garlic but this could of done with just a little cooking first I reckon.

Frying up the meatballs

The tomato sauce was simplicity itself as well, just a few tins of good Italian tomatoes cooked down with some seasoning, herbs and wine. For pasta we did have to use penne but these were De Cecco organic penne, smaller than most with a good rough surface and the kind of quality that can be baked and still keep their al dente texture.

Before baking, covered in parmesan

Overall a fab dish, not as complex as it at first sounds, and delicious and impressive to serve. Recommended!

Finished!

Beef Sirloin, Pan Roasted Potatoes & Horseradish Crumpets

Was after the classic this weekend, rib of beef on the bone, but no luck at the butchers as he had none left. That'll teach me for not ordering ahead of time. Actually that said I'm often glad when this happens as it makes me more inventive in the kitchen, and is the main reason I tend to go up the road on a Saturday morning with only a vague idea of what I'm going to buy when I get there. What he did have instead was a large piece of rolled sirloin which looked pretty good, so I had half of that instead and went home to have a browse through the cooking library.

I thought I'd spotted something in a Gordon Ramsay book and sure enough he has one for roast sirloin with pan roasted potatoes and shallots. Pan roasting potatoes isn't something I'd tried before so we gave it a go, and it turned out pretty well in the end I have to say. Lots of garlic went in too as well as thyme for a full flavoured selection.



The best bit about the dish though I think was my horseradish crumpets, at least that's what I'm calling them! They weren't really crumpets, actually it was leftover pancake mixture from the night before (lamb and leef stuffed pancakes flavoured with wild garlic - a blend I'd had in the freezer for a while wondering what to do with) to which I'd added a good helping of creamed horseradish. I figured I could cook them on the stove in a couple of rings in place of yorkshire pudding. You can see them in the front of this photo which I took just after I'd poured the mixture in.



They had a lovely flavour and texture, especially for someone who likes the squishy bit of a yorkshire best! I think I might try and polish this particular recipe up a bit and do a proper crumpet with bicarb to see what turns out. Could be onto a winner here I reckon! All in all a pretty satisfying lunch, and although Gordon might not like me ignoring large chunks of his recipe (just how much port am I supposed to add?) I'm sure he would have liked to taste a bit of crumpet ;-)

Fillet Steak & Saute Potatoes

For the first time in months - no roast! I feel a bit ashamed, but what we had instead was a bit tasty ...



Well we both had a lot of marking to do, so needed something quick. Plus we had left over potatoes to eat, so ... bought a piece of fillet.

I know they always say fillet doesn't have the flavour of rump or sirloin, but there's also the point that it depends on the quality of the meat as well. This looked so dark and tempting at the butchers I couldn't resist and sure enough it had flavour to match, not as strong as some cuts but incredibly beefy nonetheless. The same piece went on to make four portions of beef stroganoff too (another all time favourite) so whilst unquestionably a treat not perhaps as indulgent as you might think cost wise.

Saute potatoes - mmmm, again something you don't have every often, but worth it now and again. Plenty of salt & pepper are all both of these need really, although I do tend to use a pretty good butter in the pan I must admit. Served with our own rocket & salad and a fab bottled hollandaise we've just discovered that's made locally. I love the stuff, alhtough B isn't as keen.

The Best Bolognese Ever

Yes, I know, everyone's bolognese is the best ever, but I do have a trick up my sleeve (what great bolognese doesn't?) - the meat that I use to make it ... but more of that later.

In our house bolognese sauce is usually referred to as Sugo - that's the Italian word for any sauce like this. It's also referred to as meat ragu, but the bottom line is that most of the time the sauces have more in common than they do differences. Mine is quite simple really - I always use onion, carrot, celery, beef, tomatoes, wine and herbs. Sometimes other things get added, and I might use different herbs and wines (even white wine sometimes, which is surprisingly common in Italy), but it's the beef that really makes the sauce.

Sugo in progress, with roast cherry tomatoes (and a solitary half pepper in the middle!) that I was doing at the same time

Since I discovered how fab Rib of beef is (on the bone, naturally) I always buy it if I can get it. But it's not cheap - you can easily set yourself back £30 or so for a large joint. But I maintain that it's actually one of the best cuts for thrifty cooking too, because at the end of the day you can get so many meals out of it that it starts to work out at way less than £1 per meal. I even did some calcuations the other day to prove my point, and worked out that a piece of Brisket that I bought the other day actually worked out more expensive than Rib if you consider how many meals you can get out of it! Of course there are wonderful things like beef sandwiches made with the rare eye form the middle, curry made with slow cooked chunks from the top and the bits from between the ribs, broth made from the ribs themselves gently simmered with whatever other flavours you fancy, and maybe a few bits of pasta dropped in for good measure, but for me the very best way of using it up is to make lots and lots of really good sugo.

Now the recipe bit. The trick with the left over beef is to mince it coarsely, and then to fry it hard in a little of the left over beef fat until it's almost getting crispy. Make sure at this point you don't overfill the pan and do it in batches if necessary. What happens is you create a wonderful texture in the meat. You might think it dries it out, but the next stage (after lightly frying the onions, celery and carrots separately and adding them in) where you add lots and lots of tinnned tomatoes, wine and herbs and then simmer for at least one and half hours (prefereably longer depending on quantity) gives the meat back it's tenderness, and gives a wonderful texture as well as rich dark flavour to the sugo. I always pot it up once it's cooled, and the freezer becomes a life saver after a long day in the office when you can just defrost a pot of sugo for two and be eating incredibly good bolognese in half an hour. Now that's my idea of an instant meal!

Fresh bread rools that I made for the left over eye - they make fantastic beef rolls for lunch in the office. If you've got a bread machine you can turn these things out ridiculously easily.

Sheepish Return

No that title doesn't mean I did lamb last week, just that I haven't been posting here in a while so am feeling guilty! Hard to keep this blogging thing up.

Actually I have done lamb, and just about every other meat you can think of since the last time I posted. But ironically yesterday it was rib of beef again, just like my last post. If nothing else this blog is making me think how repetitive I can be! Must try and be more creative.

One of the lamb dishes I have done - a roast loin together with rosemary & garlic roast potato squares (at least they will be :-)

That said I did do yorkshire pudding in a small round dish this time, cut into wedges to serve. Decided that it was much better than the usual small round ones, so that might be the choice in future too. Much more like a pudding, with an evenly cooked eggy middle and only some limited 'crusty bits' on the edges. Yum. There were also Jersey Royals on the side, which were delicious, but to be honest I think we'll be back to Cornish new potatoes next - as nice as the Jersey's were, the Cornish are coming out even better.

In other news - the veggie plot is almost done. I've been planning to make a vegetable garden for years it seems, and have been keeping an old queen size bed that I broke up a long time ago (the first I owned - all of £10 it cost!) in the shed, with the plan to turn this old bed into ... you guessed it ... raised beds. One is now in place, filled with my own compost and 15 broad bean plants. The next will be up and running shortly. Now all I have to work out is what to put in it ...

Benedetta putting the finishing touches to the Broad Beans