stir-fried belly pork

using up: cooked belly pork

Last Sunday, i.e. a week ago, we had roast belly pork with fennel seeds, and very nice it was too.  I wrapped the remains in some aluminium foil and put it in the fridge for later in the week, and then promptly forgot all about it, to my shame.

I remembered it on Saturday, part way through the fish pie frenzy, checked to make sure it was still ok, and resolve to do something with it on Sunday. I wanted something quick, as we were working yesterday, and were due out at the local pub quiz in the evening.

It was alright, thankfully.  In the morning, I chopped it up and set it to marinade in some cornflour, water, sesame oil and a little dry sherry (we are out of rice wine).  Then, when we were ready to eat, we minced ginger and garlic, chopped a red pepper, some spring onions and the last four mushrooms.

I deep fried the pork in batches until it was crispy, and drained on kitchen paper.  I kept the marinade. Then stir-fried the remaining ingredients with some five spice powder,  while we cooked some noodles.  Tipped in the marinade, added the cooked noodles and some chopped coriander.

Apart from the marinading aspect, 15 minutes start to finish.  And it worked very very well.

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a plum and apple pudding

using up: four plums and a wrinkly cooking apple

Peel and core the apple, and cut into chunks.  Set in an ovenproof dish.

Cut the plums in half, and remove the stones.  Set cut side down in a shallow pan, and add about 1/2″ of water, two star anise, and half a cinnamon stick, and some honey (how big a spoon is up to you - we don’t like things sweet, so it was probably a teaspoon or so for us). Poach for about 5 minutes.

Remove the plums and pile them on top of the apple.  Turn up the heat under the cooking liquor and boil ferociously until it reduces to a syrup, then remove the star anise and cinnamon and decant the liquid onto the fruit.

Bung 4oz each of ground almonds, butter and caster sugar, together with two eggs, into the food processor and blitz until combined. Spoon on to the fruit mix, and bake for 50 minutes to an hour at gas 4.  We didn’t have any cream, so we had to slum it with vanilla ice cream.  It still worked :)

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a fish pie

using up: a piece of fish, a bulb of fennel, the last third of the bag of spinach.

We’re having a fairly traumatic week, and the reason for this was the cause of the existence of one not very big fillet of anonymous white fish.  One of our cats, our beloved Bada, has been and remains exceedingly ill, and a pair of fish fillets was bought to tempt her (it didn’t work).

When I’m unhappy, I cook, and I don’t like to waste food as you know, so here’s what I did.

I poached the fish in milk and water and a little black pepper for a few minutes, then set it aside on a plate to cool. I put the chopped up fennel in the fish water, and simmered it for, oh I don’t know, maybe 12 minutes with no lid, so it cooked and the milk reduced down.

Then I made some white sauce, chunked the fish, and added fish, fennel, and a pack of prawns from the freezer.  Put that in an ovenproof dish^H^H tin (the lasagne dish is broken, remember).  Piled a layer of spinach on top. Boiled some potatoes, and mashed them with Red Leicester cheese, and added that.

Baked at gas 5 for 25 minutes.  Scoffed - gorgeous comfort food.

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cracked …

Nothing much to blog at the moment.  I was out at meetings (school governors, local politics) Monday and Tuesday night, and we have a sick cat so we’re a bit distracted.  We’ve been eating out of the freezer.  We’ve signed up with a new veg box scheme, VegBox2U - their first delivery arrived yesterday, and we’re pretty pleased with it, so normal service will be resumed real soon now!

Last night was lentil lasagne - I suppose, in fact, I was using up half of a huge bag of spinach.  I had the lentils, I had the bechamel sauce made, I had the spinach, the grated cheese, the lasagne … I got the dish out of the cupboard, and WOE!  Big crack, as you can see in the photo; the crack goes right through the dish, and up the side.  No way were we putting dinner in *that* - it would have been dangerous.

But what to use?  We didn’t have another suitable earthenware dish, so I put it in my beloved old white enamelled tin dish with the blue edge.  But it wasn’t really right, because the sides aren’t straight.

And so, I am going to have to buy a new lasagne dish, especially as this is the second one we’ve lost in recent years (Pete left the first one on the gas, which wasn’t all that clever).

Wah …

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do people buy this stuff?

I went to Asda - I hate it, but I needed some fizzy water and some shampoo, and some wafer thin meat for the cats.  I shouldn’t go round the aisles, really; it just makes me cross, and astonished.

I can understand people buying a cake - hell, I’ve done it myself.  I can understand people buying frozen Yorkshire puddings. I guess, although how hard is it to add an egg and some milk to flour and whisk it up?

But I don’t understand why people buy a mix and cook it - either buy the stuff ready to eat, or make it from scratch. I bet you could buy an Asda sponge cake for £1.98.  Perhaps it’s just me …

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making good use …

… of the oven. I’m trying to cook in a different style - more on the hob, and less lighting of the big oven unless I can use it for more than one thing. I have a decent oven in the microwave, so I use that more now as well.

We were supposed to be going out last night, but one of the cats is unwell, and we didn’t want to leave her. Of course, we had nothing planned for supper, so we pulled the last tub of chilli from the freezer (must make some more!), and as it was frozen solid, I set it in a small cast iron casserole in a low oven to thaw.

I took advantage of the time needed to do this to make brown rice to accompany it - brown takes a lot longer than basmati, and we are rarely organised enough, or unhungry enough, to wait for it! I cooked it with shallot and cumin seeds, and it was very nice, although a little crunchier than I’d have liked.

As the oven was on, I took the black bananas and turned them into a couple of banana cakes - this time with chocolate buttons, rather than sultanas. Then Pete rolled out the last of the pastry from our impulse mince pie frenzy earlier this week (I didn’t tell you about that - I took the organic mincemeat from the jar and mixed it up with some bourbon :) … and we made jam tarts! I don’t think I’ve ever made jam tarts before. We used lingonberry jam, and gooseberry - sadly, and shamefully, the morello cherry, and greengage and almond, had gone furry. I shan’t let that happen again, particularly as the jam tarts were so yummy. Not, I’ll grant, the most elegant of presentations, but still delicious.

So that was a good haul for the oven. It’s going on again today to roast and glaze a lump of cooked gammon that came out of the freezer - that’ll do for lunch this week - and a slow roast belly pork with sweet potato mash and poached fennel for tonight’s dinner.

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fusion risotto

using up: cold roast duck, 1/4 tin coconut milk

Now, this really was quite barking, and I wasn’t at all sure it would work, but nothing ventured, etc.

As I said, there was more duck left on the carcass than we thought, so risotto seemed appropriate.  Basic rule of risotto in this house is 5 oz risotto rice to 1 pint liquid; the liquid can be anything you like, or a permutation there of - stock, wine, lemon juice, water.  So, I thought, in a mad, end-of-the-week sort of way, why not use up the bit of coconut milk left from the spring greens the other night.

So: one leek, fairly finely chopped, sautéd in olive oil and butter; I like butter in a risotto.  Put the coconut milk in a jug and topped it up to a pint with water, added a pinch of Marigold vegetable powder.  If you don’t have this in your larder, I strongly recommend you get some - it’s a great invention.

Put the rice in with the leek and stir it around to coat it, then start adding the liquid.  I will confess here that I used to be bone idle, and put all the liquid in at this point and bung the dish in the oven, but what with the price of gas these days, I’m trying to use the hob more, so I’m actually doing it risotto in a more tradiitonal way.  I don’t keep the stock bubbling on the hob though, I’m afraid; purists, feel free to tut.

Add the liquid bit by bit, stirring all the while so that it is absorbed by the rice, then add a bit more.  When I’d used almost all the liquid, I put in the shredded duck, some sel gris, and black pepper.  And then I threw all caution to the wind, fully embraced the Thai / Italian fusion thing, and added some lime juice.

It really had no business working, but it was gorgeous. Only very slightly coconuty, but a beautiful texture and the flavours went together really really well.  I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to recreate it, but I might try - prawns would work instead of duck.

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duck soup

photo by Eberman @ Flickr

I boiled up the duck carcass - Pete was a hero and stripped it down afterwards; it’s a job I hate. A surprising amount of meat came off it.  And there was, of course, a lot of duck stock.

I had deliberately cooked extra veg with the duck on Monday (carrot and leek in vegetable bouillon, since you ask) and had saved that in a box in the fridge.  I put that, the rest of the fresh carrots (they needed using up) and a leek in the Magimix and whizzed them up.  I sautéd this veg mix gently in my big soup pot for about 15 minutes, then poured the stock on top and left it overnight.  I added a little of the remaining duck meat, shredded very fine.

Put some butter beans to soak in water overnight, and then put them in the stock pot this morning, set it over a very low light, and it was ready for lunch.

We had it with some rye bread, which was utterly gorgeous. Just as well, as the stuff took three days to make … (not full time, obviously, but toing and froing with starters and stuff).

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spring greens in coconut milk

using up: spring greens

This is a really simple and easy dish, and vegan to boot, which is always useful to have in your arsenal of recipes.

Put on some rice to cook - we had basmati, with a lemon quartered into it to give it a nice flavour.

Finely chop some garlic and a dried chilli, and fry them in some groundnut oil for a minute or so; I use a wok for this. Take a tin of coconut milk - I used about 2/3 of it for two of us - add it to the wok, and boil it vigorously for about ten minutes, to reduce it to a fairly gloopy texture.

While that’s going on, take a bunch of spring greens and shred them fairly finely - up to you whether you remove the stalks or not.  Blanch them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then drain and press the water out. The greens want to go into the coconut gloop about five minutes before the end.

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duck surprise*

using up: very weary flat mushrooms, cold roast duck

It seems daft to tell you how to make a stir fry - you all know how to make a stir fry, surely?!  But they are great ways of Using Things Up, so I do try to write them up.

We bought an organic duck on Sunday at the farm shop at Puxton Park - it could not be described as cheap, and I know that there’s not much eating on a duck, but this one cost thirteen quid, and did us one roast meal, and some scrapeens (Irish word). I’ve boiled up the carcass to make soup, and the cats finished off the very bitty bits, but even so …

Anyway - three large mushrooms sliced, 2/3 courgette, one red pepper, two spring onions, some garlic and ginger, minced up.  All into the wok and stirred about in ground nut oil with some sesame seeds.

Duck added, five spice powder, splash of tamari, some noodles boiled and hurled in, job done - 15 minutes absolute tops, start to finish.  Why don’t people cook?

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