Brasato di Cervo (Braised Venison)

Well that's Christmas over for another year, and for the first time in many years we've not been able to get to Italy to see the other side of the family and celebrate with them. There's a very good reason we've not been keen to travel far, the arrival of our Son, Max, but that doesn't mean we're not disappointed and feeling a bit low about it. The Italian trip has become something of an institution and it feels like something is missing somehow.

Luckily Nonna did manage to visit before Christmas and meet her grandson briefly in December, and she also brought practically an entire suitcase full of food for us, mostly local from the region. I swear she thinks I starve her daughter back here in England, and the food here is desperately in need of some hearty Italian additions! I have to admit I struggle to disagree given what she brought, the small crunchy breads called Bibanesi for example which I love and can't find in this country. There's also the wonderful Cotechino, a form of pork sausage that's probably quite bad for you but tastes delicious, especially when served with puy lentils cooked with vegetables and butter. There's also the truly local food, venison shot in the Italian alps by the Italians father or one of his friends - it's never entirely clear who shot what it seems. This time around we had mince and something labelled "Rosbeaf Cervo", which I think was some sort of topside joint. Either way I decided to do it in Nonna's style, something I've had many times when visiting the in-laws, a braised dish with root vegetables and wine.

Brasato di Cervo

The trouble with wild food is that you're never entirely sure what you're getting. Farmed food has the reliability of mass production at least, if not the flavour of wild, but it does mean that when a cut ends up on your kitchen sideboard you can't be 100% sure how best to cook it. Braising is something of a fallback in this respect, as there are very few cuts that won't be delicious after slow cooking in a moist flavour rich environment. This dish is something I've seen made a lot in Italy by the Italians mother as well, so I did have something of a head start on it, plus a handy recipe check just a phone call away.

The meat as it arrived - just what is this?!

Nonna is actually a fabulous cook, but in that home style way that is so often overlooked. She cooks simple food incredibly well, something which perhaps could be said is a hallmark of all great Italian cuisine, but something that can be tricky to replicate back home. I find the tendency is to overdo the frippary and miss  the more basic - but critical - aspects of the cooking, which is why proper Italian food is so hard to find outside of Italy. By that I mean the underlying aspects such as how long to cook each part of the recipe, and the correct quantities of each of the ingredients.

This brasato recipe is a case in point, deceptively simple, easy to make, but hard to master. You start with a quick sofritto, then spend some time browning the meat exceptionally well, next deglaze with white wine and then very slow cook until tender.

Step 1: Sofritto

Sofritto is the Italian word for what the French call a mirepoix, a combination of onion, carrot and celery chopped into small dice that is slowly fried in oil or butter to form the base of other dishes. Here is is used as the base flavour for the braise, and also as the sauce used to dress some pasta for the primo.

Often when I cook onions I prefer to do them long and slow, creating an underlying sweetness and mellow onion flavour, but seeing as this is a slow braise anyway there's not so much need. One thing that is important though is to add the ingredients one by one, not all together. This means you can more accurately judge different lengths of cooking for different vegetables, and also that you won't overload the pan cooling it down. The golden rule is:

• Onion first, 5 minutes or do
• Carrots next, another 5 minutes or maybe a few more
• Celerey, for just 3 minutes or even less

Now I should be using celery here, but a trick I've used a few times in the past is to swap this for celeriac leaves instead. I first started to do this as I had some celeriac leaves left over and didn't want to throw them away, but have found that they flavour just as well as celery and in some ways add more interesting notes and texture to a dish. I love the way the leaves end up as speckled flecks of green through the sauce.

Onions in first

Then the carrots after 5 minutes

Next some rosemary and bay

Now for the roughly chopped celeriac leaves

The finished sofritto

I also used a little garlic in this recipe, sliced thickly and added after the celeriac leaves. No need to cook it out, it will soften and flavour the sauce in the long slow braising. There's also some rosemary and bay, but you can add whatever herbs you like really or have available. I wouldn't bother adding dried though, there won't be much flavour left from them by the end.

Thickly sliced garlic

Step 2: Frying the Meat

Once the vegetables have been cooked till just softening it's the meat's turn. Simply turn the sofritto out into a dish on the side, and a little more oil into your pan and then get the meat frying.

Sofritto left on the side. Doesn't matter if it cools down a little, it'll soon be hot again.

Meat is often browned before cooking, and this was once thought to 'seal the meat', keeping it juicy by creating a crust on the outside that keeps moisture in. It's now pretty well known though that this simply isn't true, moisture can escape just as easily from browned meat, what keeps it moist is the cooking technique. What browning does do though is create the Maillard reaction, that wonderful rich dark brown colour imparts all sorts of delicious flavours to the dish.

As usual in many recipes the meat is first tossed in seasoned flour, which will act as a thickener for the sauce. Unusually though the meat is browned for a very long time, 15 minutes or longer. This is something that I've learned from Nonna, and is an absolutely critical part of this dish. It imparts such a deep an rich flavour to the finished brasato it has to be tasted to be be believed!

The meat tossed in seasoned flour

The very well browned meat

The wine has just been added, but the pan not yet deglazed.

Sofritto and meat together, ready for braising.

Once the meat has had it's 15-20 minute browning, delgaze with a generous glass of white wine, and then add the sofritto back in and it's ready for the long slow braise.

Interesting point here - the addition of white wine rather than red wine is another hall mark of Italian cooking that I've discovered. More often than not I'd have used red wine before I met the Italian, but have since learned that it is much more usual to use white wine even in red meat dishes, and I think it does produce a finer result.

Step 3: The long slow braise

Finally, time to do nothing! All you need do now is get the meat on a very slow heat, cover it and leave it alone. When I say very slow, you should be able to see the odd bubble coming up from the bottom of the dish but nothing more than that. The very worst thing you can do to a braise is cook it fast, nothing will toughen meat up quicker. As for timing, you should be aiming for at least 2 hours for a piece this size I would say, longer for larger. If it starts to dry out at all just add a tablespoon or two of water.

The finished dish, a couple of hours later.

Serving: Primo and Secondo

Back home in Italy this would probably be served in the traditional way, primo first then secondo, with the same dish providing the sauce for both. Pasta and rice are usually only served as a 'primo' course, not as a main, with meat and vegetables or salad as a 'secondo' course. A braise like this is perfect as you have a sauce for both.

First take out the meat and leave it to rest as usual - this will help the meat to become even more tender as it relaxes. For this dish I then blitzed some of the sauce in a food processor to make a smoother sauce for some fresh pasta, keeping about half the sauce in the pan with the resting meat.

Sauce on the left for meat, water boiling for pasta, and blitzed pasta sauce warming.

Fresh egg tagliatelle. Hand cut rather than machine cut this time, so a bit rough!

Fresh pasta like this really only needs a minute or so cooking, depending how thinly you've rolled it. I served the braise with some dauphinois potatoes left over from New Year's Eve's dish, so pretty easy food all in.

The primo, fresh egg tagliatelle with the sauce slightly blitzed.

Secondo, slices of braised meat and dauphinois, dressed with the braising sauce.

Hopefully this dish doesn't look too complex, and I hope you'll find time to try it. The flavours really are wonderful, and of course you get leftovers so you only have to cook it once and you can get several meals out of it.

P.S. There's a full library of images from this dish on my Picasa Web Album, Brasato di Cervo. This also includes pictures of making beef, red wine and wild mushroom ravioli - more left overs from New Year. When making pasta it's always a good idea to make a fair bit as you can either freeze it or dry it for another time. Making ravioli like this is a great way of using up leftovers too.

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!

Roast Chicken with Basil & Lemon (with HD video!)

Bought a chicken on Saturday, but for the life of me couldn't decide what to do with the thing. I love to roast chicken, but it can get a bit repetitive. Was gazing out of the kitchen window, wondering, and my eyes came to rest on the trough of basil that we've been growing over the summer, and I suddenly remembered an old favourite that I'd not done for years.

It's as simple as they come - just take a lemon, halve it, give it a bit of crush in your hands and then stick it into the chicken cavity. Then try to cram in as much fresh basil as you can get into the space that remains! As the chicken roasts the perfume (an odd word to use, maybe, but appropriate I think) of the basil penetrates the meat, but not overpoweringly so, it just adds another dimension to the meat. The lemon meanwhile gives a slight citric tang, and melds with the juices that the chicken exudes as it roasts to create a wonderfully light and summery gravy.

I cooked this for about an hour, but it was a small chicken. Here's the video I made during the cooking (not the most glamorous camera angle I have to say, but then again I've not got the most glamorous body :-):



Served this with our runner beans and some dauphinois (looking for that cream/lemon contrast), along with some focaccia I'd made the day before.

And then there are the leftovers ... what's great about this dish is that you get all that basil flavour still in the meat. I just grabbed a bite from the fridge, and it was gorgeous, but then again I'm a big basil fan. If you like basil, give this a try, I guarantee you'll not be disappointed!


See more roast chicken at Foodista:

Roast Chicken wild Wild Garlic & Lemon

Just trying something new - video blogging! Probably needs some work, but fun none the less.

Part 1: Preparation

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Part2: Gravy & Cabbage/Pancetta

Part 3: The finished dish

The Best of Both Worlds: Lamb Fast & Slow

Spring lamb is here and whilst I love older meat there is something enticing about it. This Easter I decided to try and emulate a dish I had at River Cottage with it - lamb cooked slow and lamb cooked fast.

I bought two pieces from my local butcher (Dave Haggett of Silverton - fab place, as recommended by Rick Stein on his Food Heroes programmes) both about a kilo - a half shoulder and half leg. The shoulder was set on red onion slices and rosemary and done in a low over for over 2 hours. The leg was with lemon and olive oil and roast hot and fast. Whilst both were resting I then took juices from both pans, deglazed, passed through a sieve to get all that onion & rosemary flavour out and on the plate.

The result was pretty special, and I think will become a regular on the table. The addition of lots of rosemary and onion to the shoulder really penetrated the meat after all that long slow cooking (I did use four quite large rosemary sprigs, but then I love the stuff). The lemon on the leg just started to burn a bit and gave that lovely charcoal effect here and there. On the plate these two ways of cooking lamb worked really well together, and whilst either would be nice by themselves the contrast was a real pleasure. Nobody could decide which they liked better in the end!

You might think it would be much more work to do this, but in actual fact because both roasts were so simple it didn't take much. I think I spent most time reading the paper, not cooking. I did serve this with wild garlic dauphinois, which went well but also meant that they could be prepared early too and just sit alongside the slow shoulder in the same oven - nice and easy. For vegetables it was spinach again with wild garlic - well there's just do much wild garlic around right now and it tastes so good why not use it I reckon.

On that note we have wild garlic pesto in the fridge again - if you haven't tried it you're missing a trick. It's fab stuff, just take a standard pesto recipe and swap the basil for the garlic and don't bother with any garlic cloves - you might need a bit more parmesan/pecorino than usual though to offset the sharpness, and perhaps even a little cream to add sweetness. It can be a bit metallic. It's lovely on fresh pasta for a quick lunch or perhaps on the side of some simply grilled fish.

No pictures today I'm afraid as no camera!

Pot Roast Chicken with Garlic

Picked up a recipe from another blog site last weekend, as I was looking for something to do with Chicken and garlic. Turned out really well - here's the recipe on their website:

http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/?p=205

Tweaked it a bit for my tastes, so left mine uncovered and didn't bother moving the bacon off. The fact that that meant I could nip down the pub whilst it was cooking was probably also a factor!

Here's how it looked before it went in the oven:



I served this with dauphinois potatoes, so that the creamy sauce from that would run into the garlicky juices from the chicken. Very tasty once it was done, plus lots of left overs for other things. A fair bit of it became a sort of chicken stronganoff with the addition of mushrooms, cream and parsley, and that went on for a fair few more meals in itself, especially good stuffed into pancakes, topped with a little grated cheddar and then under the grill for 5 minutes.

Chicken time again

Bit of a favourite, chicken, and this recipe too. I tend to go for Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's herb roast chicken recipe, although as ever I put it together in my own particular way.

This time around it was parsely, sage, rosemary and thyme (isn't that a song?) all chopped up finely and mashed together with a good lump of butter, some black pepper and a garlic clove. Smear that lot all over the chicken (local free range, of course - mine come from Ottery St Mary, just down the road) and then I stuck half a lemon, a bay leaf and some seasoning inside.

That goes into my preheated (fan) oven at 180°C, and this time around I put it in the rack within the roasting pan, which is the first time I've tried it. I tend to do my chicken's for 15 mins per pound plus 15 mins these days, although even that is a bit much I reckon - partly because my new oven (a Smeg) is a bit powerful.

And with it, well good old dauphinois potatoes again. Say what you like but I think they're fab, especially with this dish. And cabbage with bacon for a veg (fry bacon first till crispy, then in goes shredded cabbage and maybe a splash of water, and let it steam till juicy). Loads of gravy made from chicken stock and scrapings from the pan of course. Oh, and a nice Chilean Chardonnay.

So what was the verdict? Pretty tasty on the whole. Still think my dauphinois could have a just a tiny bit more salt, and the gravy (whilst delicious) was a bit of the thick side - not exactly classy! Probably won't use the roasting rack again, as I don't think it added anything, and made it very tricky to baste the bird during cooking. Plus I didn't get as many crusty bits on the bottom of the roasting pan to add flavour.

A picture of the leftovers, from the Monday after - still bloody good!