Meat Pie

 

 

Well, not the best photos. Anyway, this was my shot at making a steak and stilton pie. Somehow I forgot to get a shot after it came out of the oven, with the lattice crust on top. Oh well.

more odds and ends

Fishstock: it's not a festival for hippie merpeople.

Some old building

St. George's Park

St. George's Park

St. George's Park

St. George's Park

Jed, slicing up butter at The Horseshoe

Moroccan dinner

We had one of Jen's coworkers over for dinner; the last time people from her office came over, I made a one-pot dish of pasta, which I was pretty excited about until right about when I carried it out to the table and realised that it was functionally indistinguishable from a casserole. Uhoh. Red sauce, with garlic and onion, green peas and a little anchovy paste over pasta... at least it tasted good.

Not that there's anything wrong with the much-maligned casserole, but it does lack a bit of oomph in the presentation. So, determined to come up with something a little more impressive this time, I decided to go for a moroccan-inspired dinner.


A little "horse devour", as the french say, of roasted and spiced nuts; wild game and chicken b'stillas, and a merguez-based tagine over couscous, with a side of quick preserved lemons, and lemon ice cream for dessert.

I've never made any of these before, besides roasting seeds and nuts, so this should be interesting, to say the least.

Nuts:

• 500g roasted, unsalted peanuts
• 50g butter
• 50g honey
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• dash of celery salt
• 1/8th tsp black pepper
• 1/8th tsp smoked paprika
• dash ancho chili powder

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the honey.
3. Add peanuts, stir till they're well-coated
4. Transfer to baking sheet - for ease of cleanup, line the sheet with parchment paper
5. Sprinkle spices on top.
6. Bake for 5 mins, then stir. After that, stir them once a minute, until the butter-honey sauce thickens and the peanuts start to darken a bit. It's tricky to determine when they're done; just use your best judgement and remember that you can always put them back in.
7. Pour the nuts out onto a plate. They will be really hot, and that honey-butter mix will be incredibly efficient at transferring heat to your hand or tongue, so wait several minutes for them to cool a bit before tasting one.
8. Add more spices if needed - best to do this while the peanuts are still a bit warm and sticky.
9. Let cool fully; if they're stuck together, transfer to a bowl and stir to break them up

I had to do this in a couple batches because I only have one cookie sheet. I really recommend using parchment paper on the cookie sheet; it makes cleanup a lot easier.

Verdict: these came out really great. Really easy to put together; taste great and will keep for a while, assuming you don't eat them all.

Next, for the bistilla, or b'stilla, or bastila. It's basically a pigeon pie. Here's what I put in it:

• 2 chicken breasts
• assorted bits wild fowl
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 chunk of fresh ginger, approx same size as two D6 (standard dice)
• 2 Tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 Tbspl chopped parsley
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 eggs
• 25g butter, clarified
• 100g blanched almond, chopped to the consistency of breadcrumbs
• 50 grams icing sugar
• vegetable stock 
• 1 package filo dough, thawed (10 sheets)
• olive oil
• salt and pepper  

1. Put the chicken in a saucepan with the onion, ginger, cilantro, parsley, dash of cinnamon, and season with salt and pepper.
2. I poured in enough vegetable stock to barely cover the chicken. Then simmer gently, for 30-45 minutes or until the chicken is tender.
3. While that cooks, toast the almonds in a frying pan, until lightly browned. Stir frequently.
4. Chop the almonds up. I found out that if you don't have a food processor, this part is going to take a while. When they're the consistency of bread crumbs, stir in the icing sugar and the cinnamon. Set aside.
5. Transfer the chicken to a plate, let cool, and then chop into chunks.
6. Reduce the cooking juices.
7. Whip the eggs and butter with half the reduced cooking juices and cook, stirring constantly, until the eggs are scrambled. Set aside.
 

Now, bistilla is traditionally made in a round dish, cut into slices, and then eaten with the hands. I figured I could go with individual triangles of pie - kinda shaped like a samosa - and it would function as the appetizer rather than the main meal.

This only sounds complicated; believe me, after you figure out how the flag roll works, you'll be thinking of other filled-pastry concoctions you can whip up. With the premade filo dough, the only work is in creating the filling. And, if time is of the essence, you could make up the fillings the night before, then just fold these up while the oven preheats and be ready to go. 

How to do the flag roll: place a rectangle of pastry in front of you. I would do two sheets at a time, stacked. This makes the exterior a little thicker and resistant to bursting. Imagine the pastry divided horizontally into three segments, like the German flag.

Begin in the center. Sprinkle a line of the cinnamon/sugar/almond mix from the left side, almost all the way to the right hand side, down the middle of the sheet of dough. You should have a sheet of dough divided in two by your almond mixture. It should be wider than it is deep; I did about a 3" area of almond cinnamon sugar, spread as thinly as possible.

Fold the top 1/3rd of the dough, covering the center section with the upper section. If we're using the German flag as the model, cover the red stripe with the black stripe. Drizzle a little olive oil down the pastry, and gently rub it in with your hand or a pastry brush.

Place a spoonful of the egg mixture about 1 inch in from the left hand side, on top of the pastry that is covering the almonds.

Now, fold the bottom third up to cover the middle - from the flag model, gold comes up to cover the other two. Oil the pastry as before. Place a spoonful of the chicken mixture on the left-hand side. Now, take the upper left corner of the pastry, and fold it down to the bottom, forming a rough triangle. Then fold back across, following the rectangle. Your triangle should rotate with each fold; gently pull against the dough to keep the folds tight and the filling inside. It's like making a paper (american) football.

Lay the triangles with the flap downward on a cookie sheet, brush with oil

Bake at 175C for 25-30 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and crisp.
Serve dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon.

Quick-preserved lemons - this is from a recipe by Mark Bittman. I zested and juiced two lemons, setting aside the zest and juice for the ice cream. The remaining bits of lemon, plus one other whole lemon, were chopped into small dice. Add two tablespoons sugar and one tablespoon salt, stir well and pack into a jar. Let sit for three or four hours at room temperature. Add to dishes for a bit of extra zest, or serve on the side like a pickle.

Now for the ice cream:

• 600 ml double cream
• 160 g icing sugar
• 2 oz orange liqueur (this was some homemade stuff from orange peel macerated in vodka, not Gran Marnier - if using something else, maybe do half vodka and half Gran Marnier
• zest and juice from two lemons

Weigh out the icing sugar into a bowl, add the orange liqueur and lemon juice, then slowly pour in the cream, whisking vigorously. Beat the cream for a bit until nicely frothy, then pop in the freezer. The alcohol raises the freezing point of the cream, keeping it from freezing totally solid.

At this point my notes kind of break down; the tagine consisted of an onion, diced and fried in butter, to which I added merguez sausage. Once the sausage browned, I broke it up, added veggie stock and white wine, carrots, and a leek. this simmered on the stove for about 45 minutes, then I added salt, black pepper, ancho chili powder, ras al hanout, a dash of cumin and two tablespoons of honey, a fistful of chopped apricots + raisins. proportions and quantities all by eyeball, sorry. Kind of hard to go wrong here though; just keep in mind that you want to balance the sweet and the spicy flavors. I cooked it without a lid, as I wanted the sauce to cook down and be nice and thick.

Anyway, while this was cooking I put on 2 3/4 cups of water to boil. When that had come to a rolling boil, I turned the heat off and poured in 1 1/2 cups of couscous. Added a splash of orange-infused olive oil, a dash of sea salt, and covered the pot. This was fluffed with a fork right before serving.

When the tagine had reduced to my liking, I judged it done. This is totally not a traditional method; like the casserole, the tagine-as-food takes its name from the receptacle it's cooked in. Stoneware shaped like a shallow bowl with a funnel-shaped lid, in which the ingredients cook for a long time over low heat. Due to various planning issues, I didn't have that much time, nor did I have an actual tagine. But that's okay. The long cooking time is good for cuts of meat that require extensive braising to break down, but if you're just using sausage, like I did, shorter amounts of time are okay.

I guess that's about it. Dinner was pretty good, if I do say so myself. The tagine came out a bit sweet; not as noticeable at dinner, but when having leftovers I realized it could have done with a bit more pepper to heat things up. I'm reluctant to spice too aggressively for guests, without knowing how much spice they like - I know if I'm cooking for Rich, there's pretty much no limit (El Jefe wings, anyone?) whereas Stewart doesn't even like the chilis to get too close to the pan.

Lemons for preserving and ice cream

Pigeon, duck, pheasant and chicken

Ice cream ingredients

Butter, glorious butter

Roasting the almonds

The tagine takes shape

Left to right: almond-cinnamon-sugar; eggs; fowl

The tagine over couscous, with preserved lemon on the side

quick shots from the kitchen

I'm still compiling my notes from the Moroccan dinner the other night; I need to download the photos, so that should be done in a day or so NOW.

Meanwhile, here's a couple quick ones:

Salt marsh lamb and mint crisps.

Trying a Camden Town Brewery Bitter at The Horseshoe

Sweet potato crepe with parmesan

Carrot-Bacon-Mozzarella Risotto with Brussels Sprouts

sick

sick sick sick.


I had this rotten fever + ache combo Sunday evening through Monday... not particularly high, as fevers go, but I felt terrible. As in, I was lying there thinking "Well, this could be swine flu. These might be my last few days on earth... I'VE WASTED MY LIFE!"

Lots of feverish apologies to Jen and Jed for being hard to deal with, etc.

In the words of John Cleese "I got better".

Well, actually, I felt so much better after the fever was gone that I sort of ignored the stopped up sinuses and drainage. After two days of coughing, and with Jed running a mild fever, we decided that we should go to the doctor.

If you move to the UK, I'd suggest setting up a GP before you get sick, as it's not fun to think about once you're actually unwell. We took a look at the NHS website, found the closest doctor's office - which they call a "surgery" - and gave them a call at 9AM. They were taking new patients, and said they could see us that morning at 10:15. If we got there at 10 we could fill out the paperwork.

The paperwork consisted of.... writing down my name, Jed's name, and our address. The doctor saw us right away - and since Jed and I had the same thing, we both went in together. A discussion of the symptoms, we both got an examination, and then a prescription for antibiotics.

I'd heard a lot of horror stories about the NHS - and undoubtedly it does have its drawbacks - but my experience was really pleasant. The staff seemed competent, they were nice to deal with, and, unlike Brooklyn, I didn't have to take a train to get there. We'll see how future interactions go, but this was a pretty good intro.

Ham Sandwiches and veggie stock

Making veggie stock:

I've started throwing all my carrot and onion peels, plus whatever other veggie scraps are leftover from preparing dinners, and tossing them in a tupperware on the counter. By the end of the week I usually have enough sitting there to make stock. So, into the cast-iron casserole they go, along with some herbs, garlic, onion, and maybe a little carrot and celery. Add water and pop in the oven at 150 C for a couple hours. It warms up the kitchen nicely, smells great, and gets one more use out of stuff I would previously just toss into the garbage.

Jed helps prepare some carrots. That's a butter knife.

We got some lovely ham at the farmers' market on Wed. I wasn't originally going to get any meat, but Jed tried some of their samples, and then said "Ham? Ham? Ham? Ham?" while I picked out the vegetables. I though it'd be a nice treat for him, so we headed back over to their table and bought a couple thick slices. The farm's called "Animal Farm", according to their sign, which, though a correct description of their work, made me think of "Two Legs Good, Four Legs Bad" and other slogans.

I was trying to think up other adaptations of Orwellian phrases for the farmers' market:

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a beet stamping on a human face - forever."


"Big Butter is watching you"

"We have always been at war with Yeastasia"

Orwell also said "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket " which sums up my attempts there pretty well.


So, here's the ham, along with homemade sourdough, Colman's Mustard, and a jar of Stilton. I sliced the ham super-thin, since that slice is probably 1.5 cm thick, and got two lunches worth of sandwiches for the kid and I out of the two slices.

boozy tarts and other edibles

So, Jen's off to India for 10 days. While she's off sampling the delights of the Curry Mothership, I'll be consoling myself with boozy tart.


This is one I didn't make myself - our upstairs neighbor brought some down for the boy and I to check out. And let me tell you, it is pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.

I didn't ask them for the recipe yet, but I know it's got cider brandy and golden syrup in it. Can't go wrong there!  Not sure if this is exactly it, but it seems pretty close:

• 250g plain flour plus extra for dusting
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 180g caster sugar
• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• filling
• 100g cooked, peeled chestnuts, roughly chopped
• 150g hazelnuts, roughly chopped
• 150g walnuts, roughly chopped
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1tsp vanillla essence
• 100g unsalted butter, melted
• 120ml cider brandy, such as Somerset Pomona
• 220g golden syrup
• 200g soft brown sugar
• 3 medium eggs, beaten

 

1. First, make the pastry. In a food processor or by hand, cream the butter and caster sugar together until fluffy. Slowly add the beaten egg until well mixed, then fold in the flour. Mould the dough into a ball and wrap in clingfilm; chill for 30 minutes.
2. To make the filling, blitz all the ingredients, except the nuts, in a food processor until smooth. Fold in the nuts and mix well.
3. Roll the sweet pastry on a floured table to 5mm thick. It is delicate, so go carefully. Grease a large 25cm tart tin, line the tin with the pastry, trim the edges and refrigerate for about 1 hour.
4. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 5. Fill the tart with the nut mix; bake for 20–25 minutes until golden. Leave to cool before cutting.

Serve with vanilla ice cream, crème fraîche or cream.

So, how was it? Here's Jed's reaction:

 Golden Syrup is interesting stuff: it's a byproduct of sugar refining, is about the consistency of Karo, but has a more complex flavor. We have a can in the cabinet; it's potent stuff!

I used it to make this school treacle sponge:

• 6 overloaded, oozing tbsp of golden syrup
• 100g butter, plus extra for the dish
• 100g sugar
• 2 eggs
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 100g self-raising flour
• custard, to serve 

1. Butter a 1-litre baking dish, and dollop the syrup in the bottom. Put the butter and sugar in a food processor and blitz until pale. Beat in the eggs one by one, then the vanilla. Add the flour and pulse until just mixed. Scrape into the dish, on top of the syrup.
2. Bake in the oven at 180C/fan 160C/gas 4 oven for 30 minutes until risen and golden. Serve with lashings of custard.

Not sure why "lashings" means "lots" - there's probably some interesting etymology behind why "quantity" would share a homonym with "savage beating" but that's English for you.


Chowhound has some suggestions as to where you can find Lyle's Golden Syrup in the states, or possible substitutions.

One of the comments in that Chowhound thread states that Golden Syrup is an ingredient in John Thorne's pecan pie recipe. John Thorne is one of my favorite cooking writers; if you have not read his stuff, do yourself a big favor and check it out.

• 200g/7oz full-flavoured brown sugar (eg muscovado)
• 3 eggs
• 14 teaspoon salt
• 200ml/7fl oz Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup
• 230g/8oz broken pecan nuts
• 2 tablespoons premium dark rum
• a 23cm/9in unbaked shortcrust pie shell
• 55g/2oz butter
• whipped cream for topping

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4. In a large saucepan, heat the sugar, golden syrup, rum and butter to boiling point. Stirring constantly and scraping back any foam that clings to the side of the pan, let this mixture boil for about a minute. Remove from the heat and let cool while you beat the eggs until creamy in a separate bowl.

When the boiled syrup has cooled, beat in the eggs, salt and the broken pecan nuts. Pour into the unbaked pie shell. Bake for about 50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the pie comes out clean. Cool on a rack, and serve at room temperature with plenty of unsweetened whipped cream.

 Bread baking, continued:

I've been working on this sourdough ferment, and it's coming along pretty well. I add a splash or two to most breads that I make now, as well as some of the whey from this massive cheesemaking last week. I'm making a smaller loaf on a daily or every-other-day basis.

It goes a little something like this:

300g flour - I vary this up, depending on how i'm feeling.  A mix of organic plain white, strong white breadflour, whole meal, and rye flours. 

1/2 tsp yeast

1/2 tsp salt

Stir these together. Add

210 g fluid - water, whey, sourdough starter, or a combo of all three.

Stir well. it should be pretty sticky. I usually use a bench scraper to get this whole mass together, then I put a shower cap over the bowl and let sit for a couple hours. Then I use the bench scraper again to stir it up, add a dash or two of flour to get things a bit more solid, and turn it out on the counter. Knead and add flour until it's more dough-like - the final consistency should be as sticky as a post-it note. Grease the bowl with a splash of olive oil, pop the dough back in, turning it a couple times to cover the surface with a film of oil, put the shower cap back on, and wait. when it's doubled in size, you're ready to go.

At this point I would normally make loaves, but I decided to try making naan. So i put the cast iron pan on the stove, heated it up, and when that was good and toasty, i stretched out some dough and tossed it in the pan.

 It worked amazingly well. It is by no means an authentic recipe or the same as it would be if baked in a tandoori, but it's better than the premade frozen stuff and cheaper than takeout.