Catching up with the rest of 2014

Spareribs - glaze including orange marmelade, devon fire chutney and other random store-cupboard ingredients. Excellent.

Pheasant with glazed onions. Good flavour but the pheasant was rather tough.

Venison loin. Tender, flavoursome and delicious. Not quite as underdone as the photo suggests.

Shepherds pie. Very nostalgic, but perhaps a bit too cheesy.

Pork fillet flambé with apricots. Delicious and with some spectacular flambéing.

Meatballs and pasta. Lovely, fluffy but flavourful meatballs. Chilling before cooking helped to retain the right shape.

Herb crusted rack of veal. Looks good, but disappointingly sinewy veal, that needed at least 10 minutes more cooking.

Slow cooked pork with orange. Slow cooking resulted in lovely tender pork. The skin went into the oven separately at the end to crisp up and got a little bit too burned.

Venison with blueberries. Very nice flavour with the fruit, but not as tender as I had hoped.

Grilled mackerel. Simple and good but more attractive with the head and tail still on!

April 2014 Food Roundup

I left it far too long to do these posts individually, so here's a summary.

31 March - 13 April 2014

Grilled swordfish with croquettes made from left-over mash. Very good, but the croquettes are a bugger to kepp in any kind of shape during cooking.
Salmon Teriyaki style. Always tricky to get a teriyaki sauce sticky enough without being too sweet.
Chicken "curry". Not really a curry but more of a oniony stew with a few spices. Quite good with the fresh coriander.
Pork cutlets and risotto with morels. Sadly not very good. Pork overcooked although tasty, crackling inedible, risotto strangely flavourless.

25 April - 27 April 2014

Rabbit in red wine and mushrooms with Pappardelle. Two rabbit legs cooked slowly with mushrooms, bacon, leeks and fennel. Tasted way better than it looks. The meat was deliciously tender and the flavour of the sauce just right.
Fish and black bread. Smoked salmon and matjes with a little horseradish. Great!
Pot roast pork with tomato and leeks and fries. Very tasty meat and sauce, but failed crackling again. My chips have not be very crispy lately but these still tasted OK.
Swordfish steaks on the teppanyaki. The only thing I had big enough to cook these huge steaks. A little overdone, to be honest. We had them with just bread and salad.

Iberico pork loin and rösti

Thursday, 25th August

Got this nice piece of Iberico Lomo pork and simply fried it on all sides and finished it in the oven for a few minutes. Meanwhile cooked the rösti by just grating potato, squeezing out excess juice and frying gently in a little duck fat. Turning it over the first time didn't go so well, but I was able to recover. The sauce is caramelised onion and blackberry.

Pork cutlets with pasta

Thursday, 19th May

Pan fried the pork cutlets for a couple of minutes and finished them in the oven. While the meat rested I quickly cooked onion and mushrooms in the pan juices, added a splash of white wine, two small tomatoes quartered and then some cream. I let that reduce a little while draining the pasta and mixing in some lemon juice, olive oil and black pepper, which worked very well. All in all very good for a quick mid-week meal, although probably a bit more wine and a bit less cream in the sauce would have been better.

Buta no Kakuni

Sunday, 1st May

Japanese Braised Pork, Traditional Japanese Recipe Book p94.
Another recipe I have made several attempts at but have yet to get right. The pork should cook slowly for a long time and come out juicy and very tender.  Mine cooks slowly for a long time and comes out tough and dry. The sauce tasted good although, again, it was much too dark.
As a side vegetable I sliced yellow courgette and stir fried it in sunflower oil with a dash of sesame oil and finished with a little ponzu shoyu (a citrus and soy sauce) and toasted sesame seeds (too many).

Pork filet

Friday, 28th January

Quick ad-libbed Pork Filet with Honey and Brandy.  Flattened rounds of pork filet, seasoned well and then dipped them in a mixture of a little honey and a lot of brandy before quickly frying them.  Added left over brandy to the pan.  Served with oven chips and a spicy tomato relish.  The sweetness of the honey was not too overpowering and went nicely with the spicy tomato.  The pork was tender and juicy.  I would have liked a bit more caramelization on the meat, so probably less oil would be better.

Pork fillet with Juniper / Blackberry Fool

Saturday, January 1st

Pork fillet with Juniper - The Cook Book 1980 p243.  With linguine.  Used spanferkel fillets, so smaller than normal.  Beating flat was OK after the first couple of goes.  Sauce with Juniper berries, garlic and red wine was a little bitter. Also, could have been a bit more of it, to go with the pasta.  Meat was good though.

Blackberry Fool - based on recipe in The Cook Book.  Didn't let the fruit macerate long enough because I didn't want to wait.  May have overdone the sugar and used too much cream.