Valentine’s Day, Mushroom ‘Pastotto’, a romantic night in with the boys

For the majority of time I was at boarding school e-mail didn’t feature highly.  Every day at morning break we’d all rush to the year group common room to check if we had any letters or parcels.  Never more so than on Valentine’s Day.  Blackberries and I-Phones were a thing of the future and even mobile phones with ‘Everyday 50’ on Orange or ‘pay as you go’ on Vodafone were a very exciting novelty.  On Valentine’s Day we wouldn’t text, email or facebook; we’d write.

Arriving at the post table on Valentine’s Day, for me, was often a disappointment.  Red envelopes lined up, piles of them for the popular girls, even the odd wilting red rose wrapped in cellophane and tied with a bit of squiggly ribbon.  Apart from the loyal card from Dad each year, I rarely had the flutter of excitement of a card arriving full of carefully chosen love hearts.

Yesterday, I saw many a man rushing around with bunches of flowers, scribbling cards on park benches and buying cake.  We sold a lot of cake at Finns yesterday.

I spent the evening with HB and Best Man Andrew.  Following a rather full on staff ‘Christmas Party’ where we ended up in Raffles until at least 2am on Wednesday night, I was craving comfort food.  What I really wanted was risotto but it’s absence made me reach for the fregola.

 

It seems rather strange to me that I would have fregola in the house and no risotto rice.  If you don’t have it, you could use orzo pasta but recently I have seen jumbo cous cous in the supermarket which is very similar.  Just make sure you don’t use regular cous cous as you’d end up with a mush.  The fregola is like a small almost round pasta shape, it gives a similar texture to risotto without the starchiness.  A good alternative.

 

MUSHROOM PASTOTTO 

YOU WILL NEED:
100g shitake mushrooms
100g chestnut mushrooms
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Leaves of 1 stem of rosemary, finely chopped
250g fregola / jumbo cous cous / orzo pasta
500ml chicken stock
20g butter
Handful of parmesan
Desert spoon of cream cheese
Salt and pepper
A little olive oil

WHAT TO DO

1.  Sweat the onion in the olive oil until really soft
2. Add the chopped mushrooms with the rosemary and a pinch of salt and fry for a couple of minutes on a higher heat before adding the garlic and cooking for a further minute
3. Add a splash of white wine and let it bubble for about a minute.  Then add the fregola
4. Stir in the fregola and add the stock, simmer with the lid off, stirring occasionally for about 12 minutes (or according to pack cooking time).  You may need to add a little extra boiling water here if all the stock has been absorbed but the fregola isn’t cooked
5. Once the fregola is tender, stir in the butter and the parmesan, season with salt and pepper and serve

I fried some chopped pancetta with courgettes and added some spinach a the end to go with the ‘pastotto’

Dubai and Pancetta, Leek and Mushroom Risotto

In this post (my first since before Christmas) I was planning on unashamedly boasting about my healthy start to the year and abstinence from the evil booze.  As I sit here, sipping a glass of delicious viognier with risotto in the offing, my idea has needed to change.

I had a wonderful Christmas in Cumbria and then headed to Dubai to see the New Year in with the M&Ms.  We ate some fantastic food with dinner at Zuma, At.Mosphere (on 123rd floor of the Burj Khalifa) and lunch on New Year’s day at Nasimi beach; lemongrass and rhubarb martinis (Zuma), the best tuna tartare I’ve ever eaten (Zuma), spicy lamb chops (At.Mosphere) and an abundantly delicious and faultlessly cooked seafood platter (Nasimi beach).  What a Cosmopolitan and cool city.

Now back to the grindstone, it’s getting cold at last.  This evening, I needed something hearty and comforting and this risotto fitted the bill.  HB stirred whilst I drank viognier – as I said, so much for the resolutions but I’m certainly happier for it!

PANCETTA, LEEK AND MUSHROOM RISOTTO WITH ROASTED TOMATOES
For 2 very greedy people – would work really well for 4 as a starter

WHAT YOU NEED
2 washed and chopped small leeks
70g cubed pancetta
6 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
8-12 Cherry or small tomatoes, halved (dependent on size)
200g risotto rice
800ml chicken stock
125ml white wine
A knob of butter
Parmesan
Salt and pepper

WHAT TO DO

1. Preheat the oven to 180C
2. Put the tomatoes onto a roasting tray, season with salt and pepper and a little olive oil. Roast in the oven for 20-30mins
3. In a heavy based pan sweat the leeks with a little salt until soft and sweet, then add the pancetta and mushrooms, turn the heat up  and cook, stirring for 3-4 minutes
4. Now add the risotto rice and stir until you begin to hear it popping a bit on the bottom of the pan
5. Add the wine, let the alcohol sizzle off and start to incorporate the stock.  Remember to stir it lots so it doesn’t stick.  You may need a little more stock, depending on which risotto rice you’ve used
6. Once the risotto looks lovely and creamy but still has a little bit of bite, stir in the butter and then about 20g of grated parmesan to taste.
7. Season and serve with the roasted tomatoes on top

After making this, I thought that a little handful of rocket would work really well scrunched on top of the risotto underneath the tomatoes.  I’ll try that next time!

 

Beef Bourguignon, Rachel Khoo and Smiths of Smithfield

Last week I went to a wine and meat masterclass at Smiths.  My very clever little sister, Bella had organised the evening.  We arrived to a rather deliciously seasonal pear bellini and so began the evening.

On the demonstration table (in front of the tables where we were sitting) were the burgundy forequarters of a well hung piece of a rare breed beef.  HB was a salivating, the crowd was on tenterhooks, the butcher, Steve Turton was calm and good humored; he took us through the various cuts of meat and expertly dissected the beast in front of us with descriptions of all of the different cuts.  The well prepared chef then brought out  his interpretations on how one should cook these underused and truly delicious pieces of meat.  We  started with slow cooked short ribs where the rich meat fell off the bone; the chef served them with a salty, sour, crunchy Asian salad that cut through the rich meat; the salad made the dish – dish of the day for me.  We then moved on to a meltingly tender tomato braised shin with polenta, and finally rolled shoulder fat with capers and anchovies – a good bit of salt and acidity again to balance the fat.  At the end of the ‘Masterclass’ I thought: “Beat it fillet; the shin’s the S**t”

The other side of the evening was some wine tasting.  Bella ran through a few really good Australian wines, 2 white, 3 red.  We began with 2 delicious rieslings, the first, a Mount Horrocks Watervale riesling Clare Valley, 2009 and the second, Dean Hewitson ‘Gun Metal’ riesling, Eden Valley 2010.  I loved the Horrock perhaps because it matched my favorite dish.  Acidic enough to cut through the richness but floral too in order to work with the Asian salad, it made me think of orchids, smooth and fragrant.  The ‘Gun Metal’ riesling was also delicious but after the Horrocks it wasn’t going to match up.

We then tasted 3 different years of Clonakilla Shiraz / Viognier Canberra District, 2004, 2005, 2006.  Being a complete wine luddite, I’m not really one to give an informed view but it was very interesting to recognise the bearing of temperature on the 3 different vintages. 2004 was AMAZING, well rounded, bursting with berries and fruit (a sunny and not too hot year with a bit of rain – perfect for wine).  2005 tasted like cigarettes and coffee, smokey and dried out; burnt (the hottest year on record).  2006 was tasty and  similar to 2004 but not nearly as outstanding, less balanced (a moderate climactic year).  I’ve never tasted 3 vintages of the same wine and the temperature bearing was staggering.

The main thing I learnt from the evening was to look at pictures like this one of the cuts of beef.  I will challenge my butcher from now on.  EAT CHEAPER CUTS!!

I had a bit of a girl crush on http://www.rachelkhoo.com/   earlier this year (in fact I still do) and I made her wonderful Beef Bourguignon this weekend to feed many hungry and subsequently happy mouths.  She loves the shin!  This recipe is copied from her “The Little Paris Kitchen” cook book.  Go and buy it, it’s wonderful.

BEEF BOURGUIGNON A LA RACHEL KHOO
FOR 6 – very generously

900g beef shin (ask your butcher to keep it in large chunks, not to dice it)
A sprinkling of seasoned plain flour
150g smoked bacon (chopped into chunks) or lardons
10 peeled pickling onions or shallots
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and squashed a bit to let out the juices
1 bay leaf
A bunch of parsley stalks
1 sprig of thyme
1 sprig of rosemary
3 cloves
10 peppercorns, crushed
500ml red wine
300ml water
1tbsp tomato puree
a pinch of sugar
10 chestnut mushrooms
Chopped parsley to garnish
Vegetable oil
Salt and Pepper

WHAT TO DO

1. Preheat the oven to 150C
2. Season the flour and dust the beef pieces with it
3. Heat some vegetable oil in a non stick frying pan and brown the beef in batches, removing to  a large casserole dish with a lid as you go
4. After the beef has been browned, add the bacon and shallots to the frying pan with the herbs (apart from chopped parsley) and keep on the heat until slightly caramelised.  Then add the garlic for 30 seconds or so and make sure it doesn’t burn
5. Transfer everything to the casserole (make sure you scrape all the gluggy bits from the frying pan) add the remaining ingredients (except the mushrooms and parsley) and put into the oven, covered for around 3 hours until the meat is really tender
6. Remove from the oven 30 minutes before the end of cooking and stir in the chopped mushrooms; return to the oven
7. Check the seasoning and serve garnished with parsley, French beans and mashed potato

Rachel suggests that you make this the day before eating and I agree.  The flavours seem to intensify overnight – a brilliant dinner party stalwart

Warm Pear, Gorgonzola and Pancetta Salad and The Oxford Classicists

When I was  19 a friend and I were asked to cook for a group of Oxford students in France. These weren’t any old students, these were Classicists and hardcore ones at that. With their tutor, the Classicists were to spend the week reading and familiarising themselves with various Latin and Greek texts. They’d sit under a tree in the gardens of the beautiful Dordogne Chateau clad in chinos, boaters and crisp linen shirts, commenting on Ovid and Aristotle; you could have painted the scene. The vision of us was far less romantic; more concerned with (and better at) sunbathing than cooking, we spent our days soaking up as much sun as we could like meat on a spit. The job we were supposed to be doing came second to our preferred pastime.

As to make the most of the sunshine hours, we got quite good at cutting corners in the kitchen and to our surprise actually managed to cook some quite nice things. There was the odd disaster; for instance when we tried to make a birthday cake with no weighing scales; but the majority of what we made went down pretty well.  We took advantage of the wonderful French food shops and bought lots of lovely pate, charcuterie and cheese which worked brilliantly for starters and lunches alike.  Figs were in season  so a favorite starter was a salad of figs, cured ham, honey, rocket and chevre. The boys obviously enjoyed it as we were asked back the following year much to our surprise.

Last week I made a variation on the cured meat, cheese and fruit theme and it worked really well as an easy and light dinner. There were some big juicy Williams Pears in the shops so I made the following. It would make an excellent starter:

PEAR, PANCETTA AND GORGONZOLA SALAD
(For 6 as a starter)

9 Rashers of pancetta
3 Pears, peeled, cored and cut into 6
6 handfuls of rocket, watercress and baby spinach mix (the Waitrose ready mixed bag is good)
250g Gorgonzola
1tbsp Runny honey
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

WHAT TO DO:

1. Fry the pancetta until crispy and set aside on kitchen paper
2. Put the pear into the same pan and saute in the pancetta fat until warm and slightly softened.
3. Add the honey and a splash of balsamic vinegar to the pears and toss in the pan until coated
4. Dress the salad leaves in a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper, arrange on 6 plates
5. Break the pancetta up and divide between each plate with the pears on top of the salad leaves
6. Crumble the gorgonzola over each plate and finish with a final drizzle of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pepper