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.

Bakers Oven Shoulder of Lamb

Now this should really be done with Mutton, but that's hard to come by so I always use shoulder of Lamb instead, and always on the bone. So much better to cook meat on the bone, plus of course you can make wonderful stock with them after.

The trick with this one is the long slow cooking. It's basically a Hugh F-W recipe which I've tweaked for me - he has wine in his and tends to cover it with foil when roasting, but I prefer adding rosemary and leaving it uncovered (provided it's in a normal, i.e. not fan, oven). It's also a one pot dish so the sort of thing you can prepare in the morning and then leave for four hours or so why you go off and do something more interesting instead.

The Lamb before going in the oven. It's surrounded by potato and onion layers, some garlic cloves and lying on abed of rosemary, lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and a little olive oil.

It can be a little fatty when it comes out again, but you don't of course have to eat the fat, just spoon out the potatoes and onions and leave the rest behind. I tend to leave whatever I don't want to cool and then throw the hardened fat away then as it's easier to separate when cold.

The potatoes come out both soft and crunchy at the same time, and wonderfully flavoured.

The Lamb itself is taken off earlier and left to rest for at least 20 minutes in foil, as normal.

Altogether an incredibly satisfying dish especially on a cold winter's Sunday. I served this one with leeks in white sauce, and as the gravy and leeks run in together you get some lovely combinations. Lamb and leeks were just made for each other!

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.