Source it, cook it, eat it
Because if you do it three times a day, you might as well get it right!Archive for Caserole
Chicken, Pancetta and Butter Bean Caserole
One pot cooking is great for several reasons, including the small amount of washing up it allows. Often you need to do something to ‘go with’ your caserole or one-pot dish, but its possible to get a nice easy dish that you can just dollop on the plate. This ‘Robin Creation’ was a bung-it together job midweek and took about 20 mins to cook and I left it to stew in the oven for about 30-40 mins.
Ingredients:
- 5-7 chicken things
- 75-100g of pancetta, chopped
- 1 onion, roughly chopped
- 2 sticks celery, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
- 1 red pepper, in strips
- salt n pepper
- 500ml veg or chicken stock
- Olive oil
To cook it:
- Heat about 2 tbsp olive oil (enough to generously coat the base of the pan) to nearly smoking and brown the chicken thighs, starting with the fatty bits. Set them aside on the upturned caserole lid
- Add the onions and celery along with some more oil if it’s getting dry and allow them to brown for about 3-4 mins, still with the heat on high. Add the pancetta and get this browning for another 3-4 mins
- Add the pepper and stock (stirring in) and chicken and season, then bring to simmering point
- Bung in the oven on about gas mark 4 with the lid on for about 25 odd minutes. Then give it 15 mins with the lid off
- Check the seasoning and chomp away…
Recipe: Beef goulash
Here’s a nice beef caserole dish I used this evening which ended up in a very decent sauce and very tender meat. It’s exceedingly easy and leaves very little room for mucking up. Great for begginners.
Ingredients (for 2 with leftovers):
- 40g butter
- 400g beef – braising steak diced
- 2 onions, one finely diced, one finely chopped
- 2 large carrots, sliced into thin discs
- 2 tablespoons good paprika
- 1 tablespoon plain flour
- 1 pint + beef stock
- 1 decent glug of red wine
- generous seasoning of salt and pepper
To cook it:
- Brown the meat in the butter – if you can’t get it hot enough to brown beyond lightly searing the meat, it’s not a problem
- Spoon out the meat with a slotted spoon, which should hopefully leave a fair bit of meat juice and butter, if not, or to be on the safe side, add some more butter
- Fry the onions and carrots in the butter for 5-7 mins, then add the paprika and flour
- Now add some of the stock and stir in thoroughly – keep adding stock until you have a thick-ish sauce, then add the gluggage of wine
- Season and bung in the oven for a few hours on a low heat of 150 degrees or gas mk 2. Serve with rice
Chicken and Chorizo Stew Recipe
Here’s a recipe I put together a while ago which is a nice warming dinner. Very easy to put together and very tasty. It was a bit of a chuck-it-together at the time but worked very well. I think its getting to about the right time to use it again, so will be using it this week…
Ingredients:
- 2-3 shallots
- 4 chicken thighs (or whatever) – 650g-ish
- 150-200g chorizo
- 100-150g smoked pancetta
- Large clove garlic
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- 250ml stock
- Large glass (200ml?) white wine
- Seasoning
- Olive oil
- 350g potatoes
- Handful of fresh basil or tsp of dried
Cook it:
- Seal chicken in nearly-smoking oil – about 2 mins, including turns, but make sure any fat is browned nicely
- Remove chicken onto a plate
- Lower the heat and brown the pancetta for 3-4 mins
- Add the finely-chopped shallots and soften – about 2-3 mins
- Add the roughly-chopped chorizo and the garlic (smashed and chopped) – 2 mins
- Chorizo will bleed its nice red colour into the pan
- Add wine and deglaze the pan, allow to boil for alcohol to steam off for a min
- Add cayenne, stir, then stock and basil
- Lay partly cooked and sliced potatoes on top and put in oven for 30 mins with lid on and then 40 mins with lid off, or until the potatoes are brown
- Serve with green veg
Lancashire Hotpot Recipe & What Meat To Use?
I cooked a Lancashire hotpot over the weekend – recipe courtesy of Delia – using the recommended best end and middle neck of lamb; I thoroughly recommend it, the meat comes up beautifully sweet and tender.
It made me think when I saw Jay Rayner from The Observer’s comments today about supermarkets not stocking more traditional cuts of meat that are largely forgotten today. It’s funny to think that a high-end supermarket like Waitrose expects to see demand for offal and cheaper cuts of meat, which were once more the cuts of the lower/working classes.
The best end and middle neck of lamb is another cut of meat that is infrequently stocked in supermarkets (used in traditional lancashire hotpot). I picked one up from S C Crosby in Smithfield (near work) for just £6.80 and it was plenty for feeding four people. I hadn’t tried using such a cut before, but the meat was absolutely delicious. In the butchers, it was hanging next to various cuts like shoulder (c£12) and leg (c£18), which were far more expensive. It made me think about how inflated some of the prices are.
It’s all down to demand. Just look at how oysters are seen as today’s delicacy, where they used to be a filler for beef pies! Maybe the trend will go away quickly and Waitrose will drop the cheeks and trotters, but who knows, maybe we’ll all be dashing out to get hold of some exclusive ‘not-just-offal, but M&S luxury-hand-selected-from-the-finest-offcuts offal’. Maybe it’ll drive down the cost of traditional cuts? Chance would be a fine thing.
Chicken Casserole Recipe
I never used to particularly like casseroles when I was younger, but now I can’t do without them. There’s a balance to be reached with combining flavours when cooking in one pot and making a rich sauce that complements the meat or other main ingredients you use. I don’t exactly think I’m an expert yet, but this was a good recipe. Serve it with some mash, so you have something to mop up the sauce with.
Ingredients (serves three):
- 6-7 chicken thighs and drumsticks
- 1 leek – about two handfuls once chopped (don’t overdo it)
- 1 carrot (chop into smallish batons)
- 1 normal sized onion or half a large one (roughly diced)
- Heaped teaspoon of mustard [update: Dijon mustard]
- Glass of wine (very subjective
– measure to taste of course) - 400-500ml of chicken stock
- Salt and pepper
- Plain flour
- Small handful of bacon lardons (I normally used pancetta for this type of thing, but its flavour can be very strong and overpowering sometimes, a more gently bacon flavour is better with this)
Cook it:
- Roll all the chicken bits in well-seasoned flour. Keep the excess flour
- In a caserole dish, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil ’till nearly smoking and brown the chicken pieces; don’t crowd the pieces, do them in batches if need be. Make sure you don’t let too much excess flour fall in the pan – it’ll burn. If it does, clean the pan before continuing. Set the chicken aside
- Once all the pieces are browned, add the onions to the pan and fry so they brown very slighly to add some brown flavour to the mix. Add the bacon lardons and given them a chance to leak out some fat
- Add the carrots and leeks and continue to cook for a few minutes
- Keep the temperature up; once the caroots and leeks start to steam well, the pan should be a little dry, now add half the glass of wine, so that the wine steams the vegetables. It’s fine and good if the majority of the wine steams off, but this should take a few minutes
- Now add the rest of the wine and the mustard and mix it in
- Add the chicken and combine into the mixture
- Add enough stock to nearly cover the chicken and a teaspoon or two of the leftover seasoned flour… and a bit more seasoning
- Bring to the boil, lid on and shove it in the oven for an hour or two on about gas mark 3 or 170/180ish.
