Pork and Prunes with Butternut Squash

We had a couple of friends from work round for supper, an ideal opportunity to try out two new recipes. They are both quite rich dishes though so with hindsight you would only really want one of these with your meal.

Pork with Prunes

This is a dish my step mum does for us, there are quite a few recipes out there on the web, but the basic idea is the same. Pork is a very sweet meat, and goes well with a sweet sauce (often served with apple sauce). Thus basically doing a casserole where the the sauce is sweetened by the additions of prunes works very well. Here’s what we did (based on the BBC’s recipe) …

Ingredients:

• 4 fillets of pork
• 200g of pitted prunes (basically a packet)
• 3/4 Bottle white wine
• Dijon Mustard
• Redcurrent Jelly
• 200g Creme Fresh

Method: (Brown the meat, make the sauce, put together in oven for 30 minutes)

• Dust 2cm wide slices of pork (cut across the fillet) in flour and brown in butter. 3 minutes on each side over a medium heat should be fine. Once browned remove and place in a casserole dish. Season with pepper at this stage either directly on in the flour.
• In the same pan, add the prunes, wine, and a good dollop of mustard (1tbsp). Let this reduce by half, while this is happening a lot of sweetness will come out of the prunes. For this reason wait a while before adding the redcurrent jelly otherwise you will make it too sweet. 1tbsp should be enough.
• When the sauce has reduced, turn the heat down and add in the creme fresh.
• Once combined poor over the pork, cover and place in a medium oven.

Butternut Squash with cream and cheese

This is basically a Jamie oliver recipe, and is a slightly fancy roast butternut squash recipe.  You pretty much roast your squash as you would usually, then at the endpour over cream/wine/cheese and cook for a little longer…

Rub the slices of squash with olive oil and thyme, cover with greeseproof paper (scrunch up under a running tap) this will prevent the top from browning.  Roast on gas mark 6 for 30 minutes until the squash is just starting to soften.

Remove the paper and place back in the oven, meanwhile prepare the sauce…

To 200ml of single cream add:

• glass of white wine,
• a good heft of seasoning,
• 1/2 ground nutmeg
• and a couple of handfuls of freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Stir it all together and then pour over the squash.  Cook for a further 10 minutes.

Steak and Mushrooms, stretched.

Well there were four of us, so four juicy rib eye steaks were purchased from Mr Sainsbury along with some sweetpotatoes, a box of mushrooms, and a bottle of Cotes du Rhone.  It doesn’t take much of a clairvoyant to see where things were heading…

However life is fickle mistress, and fate took a turn for the better by increasing the number of our impromptu crowd by one.  Calculating that i can take exactly a 1/5 of each steak and redistribute the available meat evenly would certainly have solved the problem from a mathmatical perspective, however….

Creamy mushroom strips of peppered beef

• Caramalise some onions.
• Flash fry the beef in the onions (add ground black pepper here).
• lower heat and add in chopped mushrooms.
• Wine.
• Creme Fresh.
• Seasoning.

Meanwhile chop the sweet potato (no need to peel), and roast in hot oven for 15-20 mins.

Meanwhile drink the wine.

Saturday,

Breakfast : Yoghurt & Oats

Lunch : Shared two dishes at “Munchies” on Aldeburgh high street.

1) Cheeseburger in a Suffolk bap (£5.95).  Juicy.

2) Beef hot pot. (£4.95)

(Lashings) of ginger beer to wash it all down.

Over to the in-laws to pick up some furniture; Mother-in-law was cooking a simple tasty looking Sausage dish for supper.

Food:

• onion
• apple (any kind)
• sausage
• mustard

Method:

Slice onions & apples into rings (or whatever) and place in the sort of dish you would cook lasagna in.  Place sausages on top.  Spread a little mustard onto the sausages.

Cook in oven (med/high) for C. 1hr.

The onions and apples will caramelise and you will be left with a delicious “goo” along with your sausages.  Serve with mashed potatoes and savoy cabbage.  Or whatever….

Then it’s off to the badlands of Norfolk for a Christmas drinks party.  Details are a little hazy but I remember it being very wet.  Tasty snack food at the party (sausages, bread and cheese, sausage rolls, etc…) .  Late drive home.

Sweet Potato Laksa

Laksa – lak.sa (plural lak.sas) noun. Noodles in a coconut-based gravy. See also “yummy”.

This has become something of a recent favorite “round our way” almost competing with the spicy sausage pasta dish a couple of years ago for winter popularity. Very quick to prepare…

NB this is a Nigel Slater recipe from “Kitchen Diaries”

Peel and cut up into 2cm chunks 2-3 sweet potatoes or pumpkin or squash – or mix of the three. Steam until cooked. This will take about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile make the base of the sauce with: (all fresh ingredients)

• Lemon grass (2 stalks – or good 1 tsp of the jar stuff)
• Red chili (up to 5 birdseye ones – with or without all the seeds – for you to make the judgement)
• Ginger (1/2 a thumbsize chunk)
• Garlic (1-3 cloves – again, one is plenty but you can go all out if you want to)
• Coriander (couple of fist fulls) stalks as well as leaves (they are the most flavourful bit of the plant)

Blitz all the above – except for handful of the coriander leaves – into a paste using a blender otherwise get busy with the chopping board then pestle and mortar.

Gently fry the paste in some groundnut oil (or similar) for about 2 minutes. Then add 1/2 pint of vegetable stock and gently bring to simmer stirring gently for about 5-10 mins for the flavours to cook and blend. Then add in halved cherry tomatoes – about 20 – and gently simmer and stir for another 5 mins. Meanwhile cook some noodles as instructed on the packet. Then add in can of coconut milk to your main laksa and simmer for about 2 mins. Finally add in your cooked sweet potato or other vegetable. To serve, put some noodles in each bowl and ladle the laksa over the top. MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm.

Scrambled eggs for Breakfast, good way to start the week.

I’ve just thought about it for a few moments and, along with mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs are the only things that i’ve recieved unprompted praise for from other people. This surprises me as I really don’t do anything special. Can everybody else be so bad at cooking eggs?

So in the interest of open disclosure here’s my technique…

Ingredients:
Eggs x 2 (or more)
Butter x 15g (this is a large ish knob, salted or unsalted)

Water (optional)
Milk (optional)
Pepper (optional)

Tools:
Stove/Hob
Non stick pan (any shape is fine)
Spatula, wooden spoon, etc…
Fork
Bowl/Jug/Mug (Optional)

Technique…
Crack eggs into a bowl/jug/mug and beat lightly. (If bowl is not available then break eggs directly into pan when butter is melting.) A dash of milk or water can be added at this stage. You can add sald and pepper now or at any stage before serving. Or indeed after serving. Or not at all.

Place pan on low to medium heat and add knob of butter. When butter is melted pour in the all the egg. Cook and stir until done. Serve.

Two points I feel are important.

Point 1 – Stiring
Continuous stiring will form a pretty much uniform consistantly that I consider undesirable. I like to leave the egg to cook for a few moments and then give a gentle push with the spatula as if scraping ice of a car windscreen. It gives a pleasingly ruffled texture to the egg.

Point 2 – Stop cooking at the point where you think that the egg could do with “just a little bit longer”. The egg will continue cooking in the pan before you serve and also on the plate. Cook it for too long and your egg will be too firm.

Final point, stiring in a small knob of butter at the end gives a lovely buttery sheen to the whole thing.

Postscript on Eggs. You can make pretty good scrambled eggs with any old egg, even the “Value” or “Essential” range from your supermarket (You are using Butter and Salt, anything can be made to taste good), however the more you spend on your egg…

PPS – The picture behind door number 3 on my Advent Calendar is a Titian Detail from “The Aldobrandini Madonna” about 1532. Can be seen at the National Gallery.

Cauliflower cheese for supper

I’m so very anoyed that I forgot to take a phot of this, it looked delicious.  Hot cooked cauliflower florettes drowned in bubbling cheese sauce, that’s just starting to brown on top from the oven.

Dead easy to make…

What you need:

• 1 x Cauliflower
• 3/4 Pint of milk
• 40g Flour (3-4 tbls)
• 50g butter
• 40g grated mature cheddar cheese
• mustard powder
• nutmeg
• bay

Method:

Like most things there’s a fair bit of room for error.  This recipe has three parts…

Part 1 – Cooking the cauliflower.

Cut into florettes and steam until just cooked (<10 minutes).  Add a bay leaf and some nutmet to the cooking water if you can be bothered.

Part 2 – Making the cheese sauce.

Add the milk, flour and butter to a saucepan, cook on a gentle heat whisking continuosly.  When the sauce starts to thicken att in 2 tsp (or whatever) of mustard powder, the cheese, and season to taste (pinch of salt, good grind of pepper in my case).  continue heating for a few minutes.

Part 3 – Brining the two together.

In a buttered heat proof dish, place the cooked, drained, cauliflower.   Ideally leave this to dry for a moment in the saucpan for a moment. Cover with the cheese sauce & place in a hot oven for 15 minutes or until the sauce begins to brown.

Serve immediatly.