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!

Lemon & Lime Roast Chicken

I know some of my friends think it a little odd that I like to cook so much, but I generally find the whole process quite relaxing so don't mind spending what might to them seems like hours preparing food, just for 10 minutes eating it. I don't really think it's that simple (you are after all what you eat, and I kind of like to know what it is I'm eating!) but there is another really good reason to cook a Sunday roast at least - you get great food and save money at the same time.

You save money in two important ways. First off you usually get more meat for your money in the first place, as buying a whole piece (like a chicken) means you're not paying for someone to prepare different cuts, or for that matter extra packaging. Secondly, you've always got lots of leftovers which can make what seems like an expensive initial purchase go an awful long way. I reckon I spend on average about £1 on meat per portion of food that I produce, and I'm using pretty good ingredients.

Anyhow, why on earth and I going on about thrift and not about chicken? Well the other thing about leftovers and Sunday roasts is that they can work the other way around - often I'm inspired by what's lying around in the fridge needing eating, rather than having something special in mind. I'll usually buy a good piece of meat according to what I can find (and what I haven't had in a while), but what I'll do with it is usually a mystery until the day before - or even the morning before! And that's how I ended up with this recipe - Lemon & Lime Roast Chicken.

The Ingredients

The ingredients

So this is pretty much what I had left over that Sunday - cabbage, lime, lemon, red onion. Citrus flavours and chicken aren't exactly rocket science, but it can be tricky to get it right. Lime has a nasty habit of turning sour and lemons can be far too sharp and acidic in any quantity. Seeing as I had two limes, a bit of a lemon and some red onion I reckoned I needed something to sweeten the whole deal, and luckily there was also half a small pot of double cream left over.

I'd planned on making a creamy sauce with the leftover cream, the juices from the bird and the stuffing, so prepared all the ingredients ahead of time with that in mind. The limes were quartered lengthways, so as to maximise their surface area, the lemon chopped up roughly in to centimeter pieces, and the onions quartered and then sliced.

Chopping up the 'stuffing'

I love to stuff things inside chickens to get more flavour into the dish, but experience has shown you need to be careful with juices flowing out and burning. To make sure that the inside of the bird would steam in lemon and lime juice and the outside would crisp up I would need to close the bird up tight. Once everything was stuffed inside the seasoned cavity (well not everything, I couldn't get all the limes in!) I used largish skewers to close off the end.

Securing the end of the bird with skewers

That then went into a hot oven (180ºC) for 15 minutes per pound, this time on a trivet to hold the meat off the bottom, as I was expecting some dripping and didn't want the bottom of the bird to poach. I always leave the neck in the roasting tray - helps to intensify the flavour of the gravy.

The bird just out of oven, ready to rest for 20 minutes or so.

Once the bird had come out it was gravy time. First off I tipped all the juices and all the stuffing out of the bird back into the roasting pan, making sure I got everything out. Then into that went some white wine and some stock (pheasant this time, all I had left in the freezer) and let it cook down for a while.

The gravy being made with the stuffing from inside the bird.

Finally I picked out all the lemon and lime from the sauce (decided they would be far too acid to serve) but left in the onion and then added the half a small pot of leftover cream. And voila, one delicious sauce, and a perfect compliment to the slightly lemony/limey chicken.

The finished dish

Served this with the cabbage, which was lightly steamed, and three different types of rice cooked together - wild, red and brown. This was a revelation in itself - slightly pricey stuff, but totally delicious, and a great foil for the richness of the other flavours. All in all a great experiment, very tasty - and of course with lots of left overs! In fact we've been eating chicken practically all week, just finished off the last of the meat last night, this time reborn as a Chicken Korma with basmati and homemade naan bread - but that's another blog post ...

Traditional Roast Lamb with Roast Potatoes & Leeks in White Sauce

Lamb is not exactly a stranger to my table, but more often than not it'll be a shoulder that ends up gracing it rather than other cuts. There's something about a shoulder's combination of flavour, price and overall ease of cooking that hits the spot for me. But the other day at the butchers the legs of lamb looked too good to overlook, so I had to give one of them a try.

I usually like my lamb well done, and that's great for shoulder, but it's not really a great way to cook leg in my opinion. Leg doesn't have the fat content of the shoulder, so it's all too easy to create something dry and not so palatable when roasting a leg for a long time - generally speaking you're better off aiming for something pinker. That was my plan this Sunday, so after consulting the usual battery of cookbooks I decided on half an hour hot (220ºC) and then 15 mins per pound cool (160ºC)  for my 5 lb leg of (very well hung) Lamb. Nothing too special about this one - just coated in a very light layer of olive oil, well seasoned with salt & pepper and resting on 3 good sprigs of rosemary and a few cloves of garlic.

The meat out of the wrapping

The meat ready for the oven

As I was aiming for something very traditional this time around I decided to serve this with really crunchy roast potatoes and leeks in white sauce, and old favourite that I've grown up with. This time around I even got to use some of my Dad's leeks from Essex, as I managed to bring some back from there after Christmas. I braise the leeks just in butter for a good hour or so on a very low heat to get them really tender. Then I sprinkle in some flour and let that cook a little, before adding milk, salt & black pepper, and cooking until it thickens up - probably another 15 mins or so. This time around a little left over double cream went in as well, just to give that extra special something.

For the potatoes I reckon the secret it to get them really dry before they go in the hot oil/fat. I always parboil when I'm doing 'proper' roast potatoes, and do this well ahead of when they need to go in so that they can steam and dry out. A good shake in the colander is enough to give you a rough texture to pick up the fat - I normally use beef dripping, but didn't have any today, so used some of the fat from the lamb pan which was lightly flavoured with the rosemary and garlic from there. Ten minutes in the hot oven first gets the oil good and hot, then in go the potatoes (carefully!), a few turns to cover and then in for about an hour, depending how well browned you like them.

Parboiling potatoes

Finally there's the gravy to make. I rested this leg for half an hour in the end, to ensure it would be nice and juicy, and whilst it was sitting resting deglazed the pan with some wine and stock and cooked down the juices with a little flour to thicken.

Making gravy

Preparing the plates

All in all pretty happy with how this turned out. The potatoes & lamb were probably a little over done for my tastes, but lovely all the same. That's the price you have to pay, though, for nipping down the pub for a swift pint whilst your Sunday roast cooks :-)

Finished dish

P.S. These videos were all shot with my new Nexus One phone from Google - not bad I think, better quality than my previous phone that's for sure.