Focaccia

Thought I'd write a quick post about the joys of Focaccia, which is an Italian flat bread for those of you not familiar with it. I first tasted Focaccia when I was an exchange student at the Italian University of Padova, and have loved it ever since. It has a light yet doughy texture, with a subtle chew, and is very often cooked with crusty salt and herbs - my favourite way of preparing it.

Two shallow Focaccia ready to go in the oven

The best thing about Focaccia as far as I'm concerned is that it can be prepared so easily - that is if you have a bread machine at least. Not that I bake bread in a bread machine, that really wouldn't be possible with Focaccia. It's the kneading and rising side of things that I use it for. Some people love to knead I know, they see it as a source of relaxation, but to me it's simply a pain in the hands!

My bread machine is an old Panasonic model, well over ten years of service but never misses a beat. It has a good selection of different settings, but only one is much used in my household, 'Pizza'. This is only a 45 minute cycle, but provided you give your dough a good hour or two once the bread machine cycle has run then, it works well for a whole range of different Italian style flat breads, not least of which is Focaccia.

Here's the recipe I use. This amount will do for a large lasagne style deep dish, or for two regular flan dishes as shown in the pictures.

• 1 tsp dried yeast
• 450g Bread Flour
• 1½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 275ml water
• 2 tbsp olive oil (plus extra for coating the pan and for drizzling)

The method is quite simple:

1. Empty the yeast into the bottom of the bread machine bucket, add the flour on top, then sprinkle with the salt and the sugar, pour on the water, and finally add the olive oil.
2. Let the machine run the Pizza cycle or similar, then leave the dough undisturbed for an hour or so.
3. After the hour is up, pour a generous amount of olive oil into a deep baking dish and empty the dough out into it. Turn the dough in the olive oil to coat it, knocking it back and pushing firmly into all the corners so that it fits the rectangle. Leave for another hour or so somewhere warm, covered in a tea towel.
4. After the second hour is up your dough should be quite risen. Now push your finger deep down into the dough, but not quite to the bottom, to make the characteristic holes. Scatter generously with rosemary leaves and sea salt, and drizzle with more olive oil.
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200ºC for 15-20 minutes until as brown as you prefer.
6. Leave to cool briefly, for as long as you can resist that gorgeous, soft, herby and salty delight ...

Topping and other flavours can be added according to season and taste, this year my wild garlic with caramelised lemon zest worked particularly well.

Wild garlic and caramelised lemon zest at the front, plain wild garlic at the back.

If you'd like to see more pictures of my Focaccia's being prepared, head over to my Focaccia pictures in Picasa Web Albums.

Cauliflower Arancini and Ratatouille with a Rocket, Basil & Wild Garlic Pistou

Spring is back, at least according to the Met Office it is, and with Spring comes the welcome return of Wild Garlic. It's quite abundant down in Devon already, though you'll have to know where to look. Our usual spot is only lightly covered at the moment, just enough for the wild garlic pistou from the title, but we have found huge amounts growing in another spot nearer Exeter - but that's for another story, and hopefully lunch tomorrow.

Two odd things about this dish, not only the wild garlic pistou but also the arancini, both of which were something of leftover specials, as befits the end of a busy week.

Arancini

If you've not come across arancini before they're an Italian speciality, made with leftover risotto. Quite simple to make, and sublime to eat - one of those things that somehow tastes much better than it deserves too, if that makes any sense! You simply take some cold leftover risotto, and pack it around a small cube of cheese (often mozzarella) or possibly some meat sauce (bit more tricky) to create something the same shape and size as a scotch egg. Next do the usual flour, then egg, then breadcrumb thing to coat (we usually do ours twice, for extra crispyness) and shallow fry for 10-15 minutes until well browned. By now the smell will be driving you too insane to cook any longer, so you'll have to stop cooking them anyway so you can get stuck in.

Ratatouille with a Rocket, Basil & Wild Garlic Pistou

This was a bit of an odd one really. A fridge with one lonely courgette, a half eaten pack of basil, some rocket which had seen better days, two peppers (one with a bit cut off which was ... well, you're getting the picture by now). Basically an ideal start to make something kind of like ratatouille and kind of like pistou.

First the ratatouille ...

1. First off cut a red onion into half inch sized pieces, and get these frying in a shallow pan with a little olive oil and butter. You're looking to get these quite caramelised to bring out the sweetness of the onion.
2. Once the onions are about 2/3rds done, add in the peppers cut into strips about 1cm wide (mixing my measurements a bit here!). I had a green one and a yellow one, but any will do. Green's a good idea though to add a little bitterness into the dish. These need to be cooked for about another 10 minutes, tossing now and then, aim to soften them and add a bit of colour.
3. When the onions and peppers are done, put them on into another deeper dish (this is going to be the one for cooking the finished ratatouille).
4. Now back in the same pan that fried the onions & peppers add the courgette sliced up into average thickness discs. Fry these till golden on one side, flip over and fry till golden on the other side, then into the same pan as the onions and peppers.
5. Now deglaze the pan you used for frying with a half glass or so of white wine, and put this into the other pan. 
6. Add a tin of tomatoes to the onions, peppers and courgettes and cook this mixture for about half an hour till the tomatoes are tender. Break up any large chunks as you do so, and check the seasoning is good.

Now the Rocket, Basil & Wild Garlic Pistou ...

Pistou is kind of like a French Pesto but without the pine nuts, so I'm taking liberties a bit with the name. Very simple to make, and easy to balance flavours to suit your own tastes - or (more likely) to suit what you have in the fridge!

Here's how I did mine this time:

• Half an ordinary bag of rocket
• Half an ordanary pack of fresh basil
• A good handful of fresh wild garlic
• About 25g of freshly grated parmesan
• Salt & pepper
• Olive oil

First mix all the herbs into a food processor together with a good glug of oil to get things started (this is the lazy method - though chopping or a pestle and mortar would be just as good). Give them a few good pulses until they're starting to form a very basic paste. Add in the parmesan and seasoning, a little more olive oil and start to blend until you've got a smooth sauce. The amount of oil you'll need will depend on how much of everything you've got, what you're looking for is a creamy consistency - it shouldn't take much work or much oil. On that note, it doesn't matter if the herbs are a little wet beforehand, it'll just get emulsified in the process.

Only one more thing to do - once the ratatouille is ready, just spoon a good couple of tablespoons of the pistou mixture into it and give it a good stir, and you're done. Lovely cripsy arancini with a herby and aromatic vegetable side dish. Healthy, tasty, cheap - who could ask for more.

P.S. Any pistou left over makes a great sauce for pasta, adding to pizzas, or just added on the side of a meat course. It should keep in the fridge for a week or so, but it depends on the wild garlic a bit.

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

Roast Chicken with Goats Cheese & Wild Garlic

Well it's been an interesting few weeks roasting and boiling things. Top of the list has to be the famed Italian Bollito Misto which I've been itching to try for ages, and finally got round to the other week when my bro came down with his family. To be honest it wasn't all I had hoped for though, although I wasn't in the best of health and it's never a good idea to try and cook when you're not feeling great. I think I might have to revisit it another time though - ever since I actually had it in Italy I've been captured by how wonderful something so simple can be.

But back to last weekend and the title of this blog post. Ever since I did the turkey at Christmas, pushing butter and the skin to keep the bird moist, I've been eager to repeat the process and to try some more experiments. Thinking of what to cook this Sunday I decided to have a try with some goats cheese that needed eating, a free range chicken, and the now almost obligatory wild garlic.


The ingredients lined up ready to go


Getting your fingers between the breasts of the bird and it's skin is a doddle really, although maybe once you've done a turkey a chicken isn't a challenge! I decided the goats cheese wasn't enough by itself though (I used a crumbly Vulscombe with herbs) so mixed it ahead of time with some soft cheese and salt & pepper just to increase the fat content. It was going to get pretty hot after all. This went under the skin and then a good handful of wild garlic and about a quarter of a lemon inside the cavity.


The bird with the cheese mixture under the skin, seasoned and stuffed.

Then into a fan oven at 180°C for 15 mins per pound plus 15 mins (timing that I've worked out is good my oven, but as ever for this sort of thing your oven might be different).


Roasting away - about half-way through now.



And finally out of the oven, ready to rest for 20 minutes or so.

I served this with oven baked rosemary & garlic potato wedges and purple sprouting broccoli with a hot red wine vinaigrette. The broccoli was a little overcooked, but the vinaigrette came out really well, which I'd lightly spiced with cayenne pepper. Saw something vaguely similar on Saturday kitchen the morning before so thought I'd give it a whirl myself.


All plated up and ready for munching.


So how did it work out? Pretty good really. I thought the residue from the chicken pan was going to be too burnt at first to use for gravy, but it was actually really delicious, and the everything worked very well together. Opened a bottle of Beaujolais to drink and then was great too, in fact everything was kind of just right for the season, a real taste of spring. This whole "let's shove something under the skin of the bird and see what happens" lark could become a minor obsession with me I think!

Slow Roast Lamb with Wild Garlic & Red Onion

Finlly, it's back - the wild garlic is here again!

We love a bit of wild garlic, and there's something quite special about the fact that it's abundant once more, something to do with Spring being around the corner, promises of being back in the garden again, salads, warm walks in the sunshine, and even swimming in the river. Much as I love the Winter, whether cosy around the wood burner or playing in the snow, I always get restless towards the end of any season, eager for the next one to start and with it a whole new set of experiences ready and waiting.

And what better to go with wild garlic than lamb. Moretonhampstead had a big foodie festival on Friday (the 7th), and amongst all the things we picked up was a very well hung shoulder of lamb. I do prefer shoulder over leg, but then I like my lamb well done on the whole and think shoulder works much better like this because of the added fat that keeps it moist. I do like rare lamb now and again, but if I'm going to do that then I almost always go for a rack instead of a leg.

We didn't know whether we'd get any wild garlic, as last time we checked two weeks ago there was none, but we popped down to one of our favourite spots and sure enough there was loads of the stuff coming up all over the place. It really is the most profilic free veg you can think of, and it's not as if you need much of it so it'll stretch for many a meal. If you're not sure where to find it then you need to be looking out around stream banks and other wet places.


A close up of wild garlic next to the waters edge. It's the big broad leaves, and has an unmistakeable aroma of garlic, very strong.



A wider shot just up from the water. This is very early in the season but you can already see just how prolific it is. Later on there will be flowers as well, nice to sprinkle into salads.


I love a lamb shoulder roasted very slowly, and for this one (5lb joint) I did it very simply, sliced up two red onions quite thickly and placed into a large roaster, seasoned and then two big handfuls of wild garlic leaves - no need to cut them at all (but the Italian will insist that I wash them :-) and then the lamb shoulder (on the bone as ever) on top of that, with a bit more seasoning. The idea is that the onion and garlic is mostly covered by the lamb to stop them burning, and in return they'll flavour the meat from the underside and cook down and become a sort of sauce for the meat. Then in a normal oven at 150°C for about four hours. At least that's the idea ...


Ingredients all ready to go.



Wild Garlic & Red Onion ready for the meat to go on top


... I did add a glass of white wine after an hour or two to keep it moist but then had to go and teach online for a while, and by the time I got back the onion and garlic had cooked a bit more than I had hoped so we only managed to salvage about a third of it for the meal, but it was exceptionally tasty. And the lamb? Lovely flavour, incredibly tasty, and the skin was so light and crispy, kind of like fresh lamb crisps. I think the best comparison is with crispy fried duck, as you get the same sort of tender meat and crispy skin. Next time I really must pack it into a smaller roaster so that there's less chance of over cooking the onion/garlic, and maybe add a bit more liquid too neat the end of cooking.

Needless to say we've now got bags of leftover meat to play with plus loads of lamb stock from the bones. I think I might take that whole crispy duck idea a bit further - I feel some pancakes coming on ...

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!

Spit Roast Lamb

Been meaning to try and spit roast an entire leg of lamb, and the other day the butcher had a special on all lamb so seemed a good chance to try it out. By spit roast I mean just held on a skewer in the oven, not actually turning on an open fire. My oven has a special attachment for holding meat like this.



To be honest it wasn't the best lamb I've done, as I found it just a little drier than I would have liked. I think the trouble is I like lamb well done, but if you spit roast or do any kind of roasting that doesn't involve some moisture with the meat then cooking it well done will dry it out a little. You can make the best gravy this way though - the trick is to put a tray underneath the meat as it roasts and this tends to get some very caramelised juices in it at the end of cooking that you can deglaze with whatever other flavours you want into a wonderful rich and tasty sauce.

Served this with a wild garlic cream as well, so it certainly didn't taste dry with that! I know a patch of wild garlic nearby and we went there just to see if any was up yet and found loads of the stuff. So of course we picked loads, and not only made this wild garlic cream sauce but also some wild garlic pesto which is fab stuff - just use wild garlic instead of basil and it works fine. We've been having it on pasta and gnocchi, but I think the best is on bruschetta with just a few chopped up tomatoes (if you can find some this time of year that is, that haven't been flown half way around the world).



Also served it with roasted crushed potatoes - another leftover dish that has become a favourite. I had a few boiled potatoes left this time, and what I tend to do is break them up a bit with the back of my hand then fry them with an roughly chopped onion (red in this case) till they're starting to get crusty. Then they get pushed into rings on a backing sheet and in the hot oven for 15 mins or so just to make sure they're piping hot and that they cook together into a bit of a cake. It's important when you put them in the ring to push them down so that when you come to serve they stay in shape. They tend to have a lovely combination of soft and crunchy this way once they're ready.



Loads of lamb leftovers from this, which went on into loads of other meals as ever, including what I think was one of the best lamb sugos I've made in a long time. Funny how sometimes they just seem to turn out better than others, although I did make a conscious decision this time to limit the amount of tomato and added more herbs than usual, although only rosemary and bay. There was of course the left over gravy from the lamb as well, which gave it a great dark colour and rich and silky depth - and you only really get that with the spit roast I reckon. But then again this is part of what I love about cooking - it's always different. In a world full of deadlines, assessments and labels it's nice to play around with things that can't really be tucked into such neat little boxes!