Monthly Archives: April 2007

Parsnip Risotto with Parsnip crisps


Parsnip-risotto.JPG
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

I quite like making stock; when I’ve paid £13 for a chicken, it makes me feel considerably more virtuous to know that not a drop of chickeny-goodness has gone to waste. However, although I diligently make, strain, reduce and store my stock, I’m often at a loss for the best way to show it off. It seems a waste of all that effort to just bung it into a curry or sauce. Which is why I find myself turning to risotto again and again when I have chicken stock in the house.

I’ve seen copies of Jamie’s Italy in various people’s houses over the past few months and have resisted buying, even though it looks very good, as I already own Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking and Giorgio Locatelli’s Made in Italy: Food and Stories. Browsing through other people’s copies, however, (and I am certainly not above this – if I’m in your house, no cookbook is safe) a couple of unusual recipes struck me, namely recipes for a parsnip risotto and an artichoke one. The parsnip one particularly intrigued me; the idea of the savoury stock and the sweet, earthy parsnips seemed particularly appealing. Although I didn’t have the echt Jamie version to work from, I used my usual risotto tactics, following along with Giorgio to make sure I got the technique right. The parsnip crisps occurred to me at the last minute; I’ve been buying rather a lot of them in Pret recently.

Parsnip Risotto with Parsnip Crisps

1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 small parsnips
1 tbsp butter plus 1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 glass white wine
500 ml chicken stock
1/2 cup risotto rice (arborio, carnaroli or vialone nano)
1/2 tsp thyme
2-3 tbsp grated parmesan

Finely slice half of one of the parsnips, and finely dice the rest. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan or saute pan and soften the onions. Once the onions have started to go translucent, add the diced parsnips and cook together with the onions until their almost browning. Stir in the rice, and fry for 2-3 minutes to toast the rice. Add the white wine and stir until it’s all absorbed, then start to add the chicken stock a little at a time. Stir between additions, and start to taste the rice after about 10-15 minutes. When the grains only have a little hardness left, add the chopped thyme, then keep adding stock and stirring until the grains yield all the way through. In between the stirring, heat a small frying pan and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (not the good stuff). Add the sliced parsnip and fry until they are brown and crisp. Remove to a plate lined with kitchen towel to absorb the excess oil, and sprinkle with a little salt.
Once the risotto is done, take the pan off the heat and let stand while you slice off another piece of cold butter and grate the parmesan. Stir these in then serve, with a little extra grated parmesan, the parsnip crisps and a little more thyme on top.

Cook’s notes: I used the gravy from making Muriel’s chicken as well as the stock for this. As this was already flavoured with thyme, lemon and garlic, it was a little too much for the dish, and just the plain chicken stock would have been better. The dish could also have stood a little more wine to add a bit of acidity to the earthiness and sweetness of the parsnips.

A tale of two beef dishes

I was in an English Food mood this weekend, partly due to Sam’s ‘English Food is not a joke’ challenge (and see previous post for more on that). I had bought a couple of packets of braising beef last week, with a vague plan to make some stew over the weekend that would act as an easy ready meal this week when I knew there would be a couple of late nights. In the end, I split the packets up and used them two different ways, both very satisfying and highly English. First on the agenda was pasties – good lunch food for those painting and decorating all weekend. The second packet went into a version of Jamie Oliver’s dark sticky stew, a basic beef stew enriched with Guinness and marmite – highly flavoured comfort food for a Sunday night.

I also made a batch of scones with the heat from the same oven as the pasties. It’s easy to forget how easy scones really are, with their connotations of an elaborate Victorian tea. But it took only 30 minutes from deciding to make them to taking them out of the oven. The finishing touch to a very English weekend (even if we did eat them with Creme Fraiche and jam).


Cornish Pasties
I adapted this from Gary Rhodes’ recipe in ‘New British Classics’, my only significant aberration being to substitute carrots for the traditional swede (which I didn’t have any of). I also substituted some strong white bread flour in the pastry, to help make it a little tougher and more robust. This only partly worked – my pastry was still a bit fragile. I have also specified a smaller sized pasty – Gary suggests only 4 from this mixture, but I found these too large, and therefore tricky to eat in one go.

For the pastry:
200g strong white bread flour
200g plain flour
100g butter
100g lard

450g braising beef (chuck, flank and rump could all be used), cut into 1cm cubes
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
2 carrots, peeled, halved and sliced
1 medium onion, finely chopped

Make the pastry. This is made as normal shortcrust pastry – make sure you season the flour well. My preferred method is to put the fat and flour into the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes, then use the food processor to cut in the fat, and add cold water to bring the pastry together in the processor. Turn the dough out and knead it lightly to make a stronger pastry, then wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut up the meat and season well with salt and pepper. Prepare all the vegetables, and divide each type into 4 piles.

Once 30 minutes has passed, remove the pastry from the fridge. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, and, taking one piece at a time, roll each one out into a circle about the thickness of a pound coin (around 3mm). Arrange 1/8th of the meat and vegetables in layers down the centre of the circle, first the potatoes and carrots, then the meat and finally the onions. Season well with salt and white pepper (if you have it). Brush the edge of the circle with water all the way around, and bring the edges together. Press the edges together and then crimp the top to seal it well. Place on lined baking sheet and repeat with the remaining pieces of pastry dough.

Chill for 20 minutes, then bake at 180C for 1 hour. Allow to cool a little before eating.

A Dark Sticky Stew
Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Dark Sticky Stew in ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’.

450g braising beef steak
2 tablespoons flour
2 sprigs thyme, finely chopped
2 small onions, chopped
3 large carrots, cut into batons
8 – 10 mushrooms, quartered
1 rib celery, finely chopped
125ml Guinness
500ml chicken stock
1 teaspoon Marmite

Preheat the oven to 170C. Combine the thyme and flour and toss with the beef until it’s coated. Heat some olive oil in a casserole dish, and brown the beef really well in two batches. Remove the beef and put to one side. Soften and brown the vegetables in the same pan. Then add the Guinness, reduce and add the chicken stock, Marmite and add the beef back in. Cover with a lid and put into the oven for 1 hour, or until the beef is tender. Serve with boiled potatoes (or even better, mash) and some cabbage or broccoli.

Celebrating English Food

This is my entry for Sam’s ‘Fish & Quips – why English food is not a joke’ round-up. I started by brainstorming all the things I think of when I think of English Food, because it seems to me that it’s a pretty diverse subject:

Fresh produce / regionality Home Baking
Rhubarb, apples, cobnuts, fish, peas, round lettuce, plums, greengages, gooseberries

Preserving
Smoked fish, kippers, cheeses: Cheddar, Lancashire, Wensleydale

 Split tin loaves baked once a week for the family, cottage loaf, Eccles cakes, Sally Lunns, Scones with Clotted Cream
Food for workers Victorian Cooking
Pasties, Bedfordshire clangers, Steak & Kidney pudding, Sausage & Mash, Fish & Chips, Yorkshire pudding with beef Formal dinner parties, establishing dinner as the main meal, nursery food, Game, Roast beef & Horseradish, syllabub, jellies, Steamed syrup pudding, Jam Rolypoly

So, I decided to come at this from the angle of Working Food. My choice of dish to represent Working Food is Sausage & Mash. Also known as ‘Bangers and Mash’, this is a dish that spans the whole of English society – from cheap sausages, bulked out with lots of bread and fat and instant mash to elevated chefs like Gary Rhodes, and all the dinner tables and gastro-pubs in between, this dish is at home anywhere. I’ve also served it at a dinner party (albeit a pretty informal one) with a rich onion gravy, as per Nigella’s suggestion in How to Eat. At heart, this has much in common with Working Food the world over – cheap, spiced preserved meat combined with lots of filling, comforting carbohydrate.

Another major reason for choosing sausage and mash is that it has inspired some of the greatest English food writing – I refer, of course, to the majestic prose in Nigel Slater’s ‘Real Food’. And so it seemed only fitting to follow the great man’s words to create the dish:

Sausage & Mash – adapted from Nigel Slater’s Real Food

Choose really good quality pork sausages. I went for Lincolnshire sausages from Tesco on this occasion, but my favourite is Duchy Originals Pork and Herb. British sausages have a particular spice blend which is not always present in other countries, and can’t really be replicated by an Italian sausage, for instance. Gary Rhodes says the key flavourings are mace, sage, thyme,onion and Worcestershire sauce. I also think that white pepper is important.

Heat a heavy frying pan (I used my Lodge cast-iron pan) and add the sausages.

Cook over a medium-low heat for 40-45 minutes, cooking the meat through very gently, keeping it moist and developing lots of sticky goo on the outside of the sausage. Turn occasionally, but be careful not to pierce the skin – and definitely don’t prick the skin before you start! A juicy sausage depends on keeping as many of the juices in as possible, and if it’s a good quality, meaty sausage, it won’t split.

Meanwhile, peel some Maris Piper potatoes, cut them into even chunks and cover with cold water.

Bring to the boil, and simmer for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the chunks), until they are tender to the point of a knife. Drain and push through a potato ricer (or you can mash by hand – I have my ricer for just this purpose). Add a good deal of butter and mix into the hot riced potatoes, then pour in some hot milk and beat with a wooden spoon to make it light and fluffy. [Nigel’s proportions are 900g potatoes, 100g butter and 100ml milk, but I go more or less by eye.]

Dollop on the plate and serve with the sausages and proper Heinz tomato ketchup (although Heinz is an American company, there is something completely British in my mind about Heinz tomato ketchup).

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Bad-tempered Cookies

It’s quarter to midnight and I’ve just finished mopping tomato ketchup off the floor. Cookies are a nightmare. No really. I’ve had it up to here.

I was a fool. I read Adam’s enthusiastic, nay, evangelical posts about Martha Stewart’s cookie recipe and I had to give it a go. More fool me. Firstly, the recipe needed to be translated from the dreaded American cups. American cups as a baking measurement are just infuriating – for some reason the good old US of A refuses to use scales while baking, just as they cling to pounds and inches. Cups are never the same weight twice, especially when you’re talking about something like flour. Then there’s the ingredients. American All-Purpose Flour is actually somewhere between Plain Flour and Strong White Flour, and American granulated sugar is not as coarse as British granulated but not as fine as caster sugar.

So I took Adam’s recipe, and measured it carefully, substituting approximate British equivalents and … just look what happened:

Isn’t that the ugliest batch of cookies you’ve ever seen? The first set were gigantic and undercooked in the middle, the second and third batches better, but still ugly, the third set I burnt (those ones in the lower right-hand corner aren’t actually double chocolate – they just got baked for half an hour!).

Maybe it wasn’t the cookies after all – maybe they were just a karmic sign, because just after I pulled out the last baking tray, this happened:

You see, all week I’ve been avoiding a couple of kitchen chores: to scrub the kitchen floor and to wash down the skirting boards and door frames in preparation for painting them this weekend. The Ketchup Disaster ensured that I had to wipe down the skirting boards, and walls, and mop the floor. So maybe the cookies were just a sign after all: don’t waste your time on frivolous baking projects, get on the floor and clean, damn you!

So it’s Jeffrey Steingarten’s cookie recipe next – let’s hope I find a better time to try it, karmically-speaking.

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