365 days: Steady as she goes: pasta with broccoli

Spent the whole day writing, so decided would do pasta.  This was good - I was able to recylcle the stew from last night - with a bit of extra fresh tomato and shredding the beef, and mashing the carrot and shallot it came out rather like a good bolognese sauce.   In deference to my veggie diet, I ate a pile of broccoli, mixed with mashed anchovy and chili mixed in with the pasta.

This is a version of the more elegant orecchie con broccoli - a favourite Sicilian dish, which is now fairly well known.   It involves frying chopped garlic in olive oil, adding chili flakes, several anchovies, chopped. When the anchovies are melted, mix this with nicely cooked broccoli, pour on to the freshly cooked orecchie (conchiglie are a good substitute).   You do not normally put cheese on this dish, unless you are doing this recipe from supermarket magazine, in which case you probably also have to include capers, basil and pink peppercorns...but don't!

365 Days: Tuesday Risotto

I adore risotto - and I felt rather excited when I saw my new diet allows as much rice as you want.  Only one plateful I expect, I don't think they realise how much I love rice.   I don't think I've written about rice before, largely because for much of my life I'm theoretically on a sort of low-carb regime - not very regimented usually.  So I don't eat it often.

Having eaten a vast bowl of fruit salad for breakfast, I had a couple of greengages at one o'clock, so it was not surprising we were hungry during our trip to see the glass in Canterbury cathedral.  We then had a late lunch, and by this time there was no possibility of cooking the ox cheeks I bought yesterday.  So the answer to supper had to be pasta or risotto.

This looks a bit like my risotto - I just can't get into
the habit of photographing my food.

What I would love is dishes like pumpkin, spinach or mushroom, or gorgonzola risotto, or even risotto with raddicchio which I've had in Italy.  However, I am catering for Fussypants Central here - so I am restricted in what I can cook.  I made a version risi e bisi which is usually a rather soupy venetian risotto - mine is nothing like it really.

Chop a small onion or a couple of shallots and soften them in 30g butter, stir in about 300g arborio rice, chop up some ham into strips or squares and add that.  Make up a litre of hot stock (on this occasion I used a Knorr stock pot, because my own stock was frozen) and when the rice is suitably coated with butter add a little at a time, stirring it on a low heat until the liquid is absorbed, add a little more stock.  This is a nice slow process and cannot be ignored - if you fancy just standing and staring for 20 minutes, make a risotto.   With the second addition of stock pour in "a cup" of frozen peas, or more.   Continue stirring and adding stock, when the grains are at the consistency that you want to eat them, turn off the heat, add another lump of butter, and 15g or so of grated parmesan.  Cover the saucepan and leave it to stand for 5 minutes, then eat.   With more parmesan if necessary.   I also added some chopped parsley to this..      

365 days: Ox cheek

They keep going on and on about it, but it's never for sale anywhere, and when one tries to find a recipe for it they are all pretty much the same.  I found some reduced in Waitrose yesterday and today I cooked this - my version of the stew, feeds 4 terribly well.  As pictures of the cheeks might offend vegetarian sensibilities, I draw your attention to cut No. 18 on the handy chart below.  I'd also like to mention No.16 - what we call shoulder, and I think the French call collier - another excellent, shin like cut. Most of the other cuts are a mystery to me.

Use a casserole for this.  Chop up two ox cheeks into large cubes, fry in one tablespoonful of olive oil until browned, add a bayleaf and 3 crushed garlic cloves during cooking.   Remove meat, put 2 small chopped onions, 6-8 whole small carrots, 6 large shallots and a thinly sliced stick of celery in the pan, add 3 twigs of thyme.  Stir about in the residual oil, add more if you are not dieting and you feel the need.  Salt the vegetables and turn them until they begin to change a little.  Return the meat to the pan,  if you wish you could sprinkle it all with a tbsp of flour, I didn't.  Add half a small tin (a generous tbsp or two) of tomato puree, a tin of chopped tomatoes, a small (125cl) glass of wine, and enough stock to cover the meat and veg and add pepper.  Bring to boil and cover.  Put into low over, Gas 2 for 5 hours.  The meat will seem impossibly tough at this stage.  By suppertime the house will be fragrant, and the meat will be extremely tender.   Eat with, for example, pommes etuvees and broccoli or other green veg.

I can't tell you how good this was, although being on a diet may be bringing on hallucinations. I drank a very nice glass of Grignan les Adhemar with it.  Delicious.   See my Quotidiana blog for further details of this curious history of the re-branding.

365 days: The diet

It's one of those diets where you can eat almost anything you like except junk food - so quite like my normal diet - with minute quantities of oil, butter and cheese... so it will be disappointing.  But I will make an effort.

I did not start today - simply turned up and got weighed.  I had not planned nice diety meal and I was starving - so we had fish and chips - for the last time in a while I expect!

Diet recipes to follow no doubt!

365 days: Irish Apple Bread etc.

I have posted the recipe for this before.  It's a sort of cake, can be very moist and almost rubbery if you over do the apples, and quite cakey and fragrant if the apples are sparser.  It is dead easy and I thoroughly recommend it, especially if, like me, you have a rather over-productive apple tree in the garden.

Our apple tree is weird - the apples are early with tough, tanniny skin, crisp flesh which becomes very fragrant and almost perfumed when ripe.   However, many of the apples fall before they are ripe, others are subject to the depredations of the local parakeets, and most of them have worms.  They are therefore only edible when peeled, and may be cooked in all sorts of ways.  I usually make a vast pile of stewed apple and freeze it for instantish crumbles around the year.

The apples do make good apple bread - a pound or so will yield less, but the distinctive perfume comes through.  The original version from my grandmother doesn't have luxurious ingredients like almonds in.  Here's the recipe again.

8oz/200g  self raising flour
4oz/100g  granulated sugar
4oz/100g  butter (chopped into small pieces) or margarine
1lb/400g  cooking apples, peeled and sliced
1 egg
pinch of salt, 1 tsp baking powder,
milk to mix
blanched almond, optional,
brown sugar and flakes of butter for toping

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, add chopped butter, then mix in the apple slices with the egg and enough milk to make a smoother mixture.   Put into suitable tin, lined with baking parchment, sprinkle brown sugar on top, with flakes of butter and flakes of almond if liked (this is not in the original - this is a luxury version!).  Put in oven gas 5/190 degrees for about 30-40 minutes until brown and firm.  Allow to cool slightly, peel off parchment and cool on a rack to stop it being too damp.
.  

365 days: 24 hours later

Well, after 24 hours of only eating 2 oatcakes with cheese, I decided I felt a lot better, so I cooked.  I'd found this doable recipe - and that means one that (a) isn't predominantly carbohydrate based and (b) does not involve non-obtainable ingredients  and most importantly (c) will appeal to the household.  Actually Finn doesn't like chicken on the bone...or chicken skin - but never mind.

"Greek chicken" a la Sainsbury's (with my modifications)

Slice 3-4 red peppers and cut 2 red onions into 1/8ths.  Put a thin layer of olive oil in a baking tin which will be big enough for 8 chicken thighs.  (You could use 4 chicken legs instead, cooking might be a bit longer).  Turn oven onto Gas 6.  Crush 2 cloves of garlic and mix into the oil, add a tbsp chopped basil (Greek for authenticity - but not essential).  Get the veg in and mix around to make sure they've all got some of the oil mixture on them.  Then put the chicken thighs on top with salt and plenty of pepper.  Drizzle with about a tsp of honey...put into oven for 50 mins.   Then add a packet or less of halved cherry tomatoes, a lemon sliced in 8, and a handful or two of kalamata (or other) olives.  Cook for a further 10 minutes.

At some point in the process make the following sauce: 170ml greek yoghurt mixed with a few stalks of mint leaves and another tbsp of chopped basil, add juice of half a lemon, and 1 tsp honey, then add 1 tbsp good olive oil.  Serve the chicken with about 75g crumbled fetta on top of pitta bread with the yoghurt sauce over it.  I did rice and a green salad alongside it and forgot about the pittas.   I thought this was utterly delicious, but perhaps the fact that I hadn't eaten for 24 hours was a factor.  Anyway - this recipe's a keeper - and I at the leftover bits cold for lunch and it was still good.

365 Days: A pause

I think the exaltation of dripping in the last post must have done it.  For the last few days I have felt progressively weaker, I've been very unfit, and now I am aching in the places I used to play (as Leonard Cohen would say - although that may be a topographical rather than an anatomical reference).   When one's health goes into such a flat spin, one has to take drastic action.  I feel totally weird, and have no appetite for food - which doesn't of course stop me eating, just makes me feel less enthusiastic about cooking.

My plan is to fast for about 2 weeks - I will drink water, I will consume about 500 cals.  

Since you probably don't want to know what I am eating (roast veg, veg soups, fruit, water, coffee) I won't be writing a daily recipe.   However, I expect to be back on Sunday 30th August, when I shall be cooking pork cooked in milk for the Vale Square party.  So, that's something to look forward to!