Spaetzle and Beef Stroganoff

Beef stroganoff is a definite guilty pleasure, it’s a highly unlikely the following recipe is at all authentic, but it’s an easy throw together meal. The rich mushroom-beef creamy stew was ladled over a bed of slightly crisp buttered noodles called spaetzle.

Spaetzle get made now and then when, I feel the urge and am willing for the clean up that follows, using a spaetzle press (or ricer) is no clean feat. The other method is scraping off noodles from a board one at a time into boiling water, a skill I have very little desire to practice and no one to show me anyway, plus it looks far messier than the noodle press. To compound issues, I also managed to misplace my recipe (or list of quantities) and as I haven’t blogged previously about it, I had to start from scratch.

I guess I may of put you off, all this talk of mess, well don’t worry I have solved that problem. All you need is a zip-lock bag, no need for spaetzle presses, colanders dripping over pots or ninja knife board scraping skills. Just a simple bag that you can nip the corner off and a large pot of boiling water. You don’t end up with one long noodle, as the dough hits the water they break into perfect lengths of noodle. The noodles can be made ahead of time and chilled in an ice bath before being stored in a container in the fridge, just remember to toss them in a little oil so they don't stick to each other.



Spaetzle
250g Flour
195ml Milk
8g Salt
2 Eggs (130g)

• Combine the dry ingredients together and form a well in the centre.
• Whisk together the eggs and milk, pour into the well and beat well, you really want to work the gluten.
• Allow the mixture to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.
• Get a deep pot with salted water on the boil.
• Transfer to a piping bag with a thin nozzle, or as I do, a zip-lock bag with the corner lopped off.
• From a height steadily pipe the bag into the simmering water, it will break up into noodles an inch or two in length, this will need to be done in batches (2-3 depending on pot size).
• Cook for a minute or two, or until floating on the surface.
• Scoop out and transfer to a colander set inside an ice bath (or to a waiting pan to sauté in butter).
• Once cooled, toss in a little oil and transfer to a container. Refrigerate until you're ready to cook.
• For the above, I sautéed the spaetzle in butter, crisping it around the edges then added arugula until wilted.

Beef Stroganoff

• 400g of beef schnitzel sliced into half centimeter strips tossed in flour seasoned with garlic powder, mustard powder, hot paprika and salt.
• Sauté in a hot heavy based pan with a good dash of butter and oil until crisp and golden, remove and set aside.
• Generously dollop in another knob of butter, when foaming add in half a finely diced onion and generous amount of sliced button mushrooms. When cooked down, and colored, Stir through a couple of minced garlic cloves, paprika, Dijon mustard and tomato paste.
• Pour in some beef stock, about 400 ml in total, when all has been incorporated and begun to thicken add the beef back to the pan.
• Adjust seasoning.
• Splash in a couple of tablespoons of sour cream, lower the heat, and stir, reduce slightly.
• Before serving fold through some chopped parsley. Serve up with some spaetzle sautéed with rocket.

Creamy rice with pork sausage and thyme

Well I should start with a slight disclaimer, the idea of this dish is completely and utterly ripped off, or humble homage to the original, from Loretta on Cuba St. It makes a hearty dinner or a filling warming lunch it can be tweaked and tinkered with to your hearts content. It's a little less labour intensive than risotto, and a little more forgiving, as we're not aiming for al dente but well cooked rice, not falling apart though.

1 Cup arborio rice
1 Litre chicken stock
2 Good pork sausages, removed from casings
1 Medium fennel bulb, finely diced
1 Medium onion, finely diced
3 Cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tsp black pepper
1 Tsp chilli flakes
1/2 Tsp bay leaf powder
6 Sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped off
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Anchovy fillets

If you feel like being a little more indulgent, add 3 tbsp of cream or butter and a third of a cup of grated parmesan to the ingredient list.

Place a pan over a medium heat and add a slug of good olive oil. Soften the onion, garlic and fennel, add the pepper, chilli, thyme, bay leaf powder and cook through.

Add the sausage and anchovy fillets, sauté, breaking the sausage apart, try not to colour too much.

When the sausage has given up its fat, but not browned too much, tip the rice in and stir through. Give it a chance to get coated in the fat and cook a little.

Pour in the vinegar and cook it off.

Tip in a third of the stock and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, cook until almost absorbed, about 5-7 minutes, add another third and cook for a further 5-7 minutes.

Repeat with the last third, you don't want it too thick, the rice should of given up a lot of starch so the liquid should be lush and glossy, while the rice is still loose stir vigorously to release more starch from rice and make the liquid more creamy and homogeneous. Taste and season.

To really gild the lily, beat in the cream and parmesan cheese.

Serve a generous ladleful in a bowl and drizzle over a little peppery olive oil.

Monkfish Stew

A forced diet tends to put roadblocks front and foremost in the mind, what you can’t have rather than viewing the opportunities of experimentation forced by limitation. As such a negative view of a once loved activity slowly creeps and has the power to become all encompassing if not held at bay and the positives of the situation reflected upon. It certainly didn’t help that along with the prescribed low fat diet, I was told strictly no alcohol and that meals should be smaller and more frequent, breakfast, pshaw. Needs must though and once recuperated, mentally and physically, I tried to push the negative creeping thoughts of “what the hell can I eat, no butter, no fat, no dairy, no good stuff” and the sarcastic “thanks a lot pancreas”.

Breakfast has probably been the hardest adjustment to make, I usually skipped it, having a strong black coffee in its place, but now I have become quite the porridge making expert, thankfully I’ve never been a huge fan of the added milk/cream to my oats so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I find the trick is soaking the night before, one part oats, three parts water, a good pinch of salt, dried sour cherries and figs, all placed in a bowl, covered and refrigerated overnight, ready to be cooked over a low heat until thick and lush.

Lunch wasn’t so much a problem, I miss the cheese I must admit, a crusty baguette just isn’t the same without a schmeer of butter, but I can still have tasty treats like pressed ox tongue on rye with super hot english mustard and a good sour pickle to finish it off with.

Dinner, well, I’m getting there, it’s hard not to add a dash of butter or a glug of olive oil, avoid dressings, no white wine to deglaze with. I started out quite somber, completely no fat added meals, and as you can imagine they weren't the most successful, you need a bit of fat to carry flavour, you can’t soften, caramelise, or sauté a humble onion without a slight dash of oil to keep it from sticking or fry with. Finally I got past the limitation of diet as a roadblock and an absolute, low fat isn’t no fat, and now am slowly starting to introduce a more normal diet, but it’s difficult because what I have tonight could make me sick tomorrow, but as I’ve heard and read, it’s about the only way to know if my body can handle certain things now, try it and if it doesn’t make you feel like shit then it’s probably OK.

1 Medium Fennel bulb, diced
1 Large Red onion, diced
200 g Chickpeas, cooked
1 Carrot, diced
A good handful of Parsley, finely chopped
Juice of a Lemon
1–2 tbsp of Harissa
200 g of Tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or purée/passata)
Monkfish fillet, cut into large chunks
Capers
Olive oil
200ml Stock (fish or chicken)

Place a pan over a medium heat and add the olive oil, add the onion and fennel, sauté until soft and translucent. Stir in the Harissa and cook until fragrant. Deglaze with the stock, add the carrot, tomatoes and half the parsley. Simmer for about 10–15 minutes, the carrots should be cooked and the liquid reduced a little. Add the chickpeas and capers, cook for a minute or two, taste and adjust the seasoning, add the lemon juice. Bring to a simmer and then place the monkfish pieces in the stew and cover. The fish will only take a couple of minutes to cook. When cooked, remove from the heat and adjust the seasoning, stir through the remaining parsley.

Serve in a bowl with some crusty bread.

Puff Pastry

Plans dreamed up during the day in the odd moment I have spare, rarely end up as that night's meal, either lack of ingredients or time. I had great plans of making a dashi-chicken broth, whipping up some of McGee’s alkaline noodles, and serving with a hamine egg and shredded chicken, but it just seemed a bit too much for a Monday night after work. So instead I whipping up a couple of oxtail pot pies, a thick rich stew topped with a pastry shell.

The stew was a pretty simple, chuck together of oxtail, red wine, swede, potato, carrot, onion, garlic, anchovy, brandy, caraway, bay leaf, thyme, mustard, salt and pepper. Just brown up the meat, then the onions, deglaze with the brandy and wine, then add the rest, put it in the cooker on high pressure and wait, or simmer away on a stove until the meat is tender and the cooking liquid reduced to a thick luscious gravy.

So while the meat was cooking, I got onto the pastry. I’ve never made my own puff pastry, I make shortcrust quite often, but I always thought puff must be hard, anyway I had the idea of pot pie, I wanted a pastry crust, and like heck I was going to buy it. After some research, I was pleasantly surprised just how easy it seemed, the main theme I read, was to make sure to keep the dough cool, so the layers of folded pastry don't meld into each other. Apart from that it seemed like any other pastry, just folded and rolled a bit more.

Ingredients
200 grams Flour
1 tsp Salt
200 grams Butter (unsalted)
120 ml Water (Cold)

Dough

1. Sieve the salt and flour into a bowl.
2. Work the butter into the flour with your fingers, you want a large bread crumb type texture but still have some large pieces of butter in there.
3. Pour in about half of the water and work it into the butter/flour mixture, adding more water if needed, you want a firm dough that's not too sticky.
4. Cover and put it in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Rolling
Roll the dough out in one direction, keeping the edges straight, and trying to make it as rectangular as possible.


Fold the bottom third up, and then the top third down, and roll out again to the original size. Repeat two or three times more, on the last repetition stop before re-rolling, cover and place in the fridge for another 20 minutes. If the dough gets too soft during the rolling process pop it back in the fridge for a couple of minutes.


Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out to a couple of millimeters thick. Cut out the desired shape with a sharp knife, you don't want to pinch the edge together with a dull knife as it won't puff properly.

The amounts in the above recipe was more than enough for the two pies, and a healthy number of Palmiers.

Shin & Stout

Another meal for one, tonight beef cooked in stout, rich and tasty. The ingredients used are thyme, mustard, stout, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, shallots, onions, beef shin, worcestershire sauce; and mashed potatoes made from sour cream, butter and potatoes(obviously).

Dice up the onion, garlic, and one of the carrots.


Brown the shin on both sides. Remove from the pot. Add the diced carrot and onion and cook until soft and beginning to colour.


Test that the beer is of a suitable quality.


Pour the quality tested beer in to the pot along with a spoon of mustard, the thyme and bay leaves. Reduce. Once it has reduced by half put the beef back in and cook on high pressure for about 20 minutes (or I guess a slow simmer for about 60? if conventional).

While it's cooking, chop the remaining carrot in to bite size pieces, and peel the shallots. Cook the potatoes.

After 20 minutes, and 10 minutes on natural pressure release (or about 5-10 min before the 60 is up) remove the beef and strain the liquid discarding the vegetables. Reduce the liquid (if needed). Add the carrots, shallots and beef back to the pot with the liquid and cook for 4 minutes under pressure.

While it's cooking, mash the potatoes with butter and sour cream, season well.


Serve.


My favorite bit of the shin is the marrow.

The pressure cooked shin

Pulled out the trusty pressure cooker for stewed beef shins.

Firstly, get you're vege ready, a fine dice of carrot, mushroom and onion, roughly chop some garlic. That's for the sauce.

Turn on the pressure cooker (mine's a plug in one), and set it to browning, brown your beef shins with a little olive oil until a nice golden crust forms. Then remove from pot.

Heap in your prepared vege and let them soften, then deglaze with a shot of brandy and once that has evaporated pour in about half a bottle of red wine, a couple of bay leaves, some thyme, pepper (salt at the end) and mustard. Reduce until you have about 1/3 of a cup of liquid left.

Once reduced put the beef back in, lock the lid and cook on high pressure for about 25 minutes.

While the meat is cooking cut up some mushrooms and carrots to bite size pieces, turn a few small potatoes and slice up some fresh herbs.


When 25 minutes is up, let the pot release its pressure naturally for 10 minutes then release it manually. Remove the beef and if needed reduce the liquid further.


Then add the new vege to the pot and cook on high pressure for 5 minutes and at the end release the pressure manually.