Main Course

Boeuf Bourguignonne (Beef Burgundy)

BEEF BOURGUIGNONNE

Beef Burgundy is one of the French classic casseroles; it is the beef equivalent of Coq au Vin. You will notice that neither dish contains the tomatoes that are so characteristic of the dishes of the Mediterranean coast. Use rump steak for this for best results.

1.5kg rump steak or oyster blade
Light olive oil for cooking
250g kaiserfleisch, or fatty bacon
2 tablespoons brandy
1 – 2 tablespoons plain flour
450ml red wine
300ml beef stock
4 French shallots, or a further 4 pickling onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 teaspoons tomato paste
1 bouquet garni
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
12 – 14 tiny pickling onions
30g butter
150g button champignons or button mushrooms (buy the tiniest ones possible)

Cut the beef into 3cm cubes and the kaiserfleisch or bacon into bite size pieces. Heat oil in a heavy based frypan and heat a little of the olive oil until very hot. Sauté the kaiserfleisch or bacon until crisp, remove it to a plate and set aside. The bacon is not added to the casserole until near the end of cooking.

Add the meat in small batches to the oil and bacon fat in the frying pan and seal the meat on all sides until well browned. The colour achieved now will affect the final outcome of the casserole. When all the meat has been sealed, return it all to the pan and add the flour, mixing well with the meat to incorporate.

Gently heat the brandy in a small saucepan and making sure the exhaust fan is turned off, set the brandy alight. Pour the brandy over the meat and toss it through until the flame subsides. Place the meat in a heavy casserole.

Pour the stock into the pan with the red wine and de-glaze the frying pan, scraping any bits from the sides and bottom and stirring them well into the liquid. Add to casserole.
Heat a little more oil and gently sauté the garlic and shallots until tender. Some recipes add them to the casserole raw, but I prefer to cook them. Add to casserole, then add the tomato paste, the bouquet garni and season to taste. Make sure there is enough liquid in the casserole to cover the meat. If not, add more water or stock. Cover the casserole and place it in a preheated oven at 220C for 10 minutes, or as long as it takes for the mixture to come to the boil, then reduce temperature to 150 – 180C and allow to cook for about 1½ hours. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Refrigerate overnight. Next day, remove all fat from the surface of the casserole.

Gently re-heat casserole on top of stove and add the bacon.

While casserole is re-heating, sauté the peeled whole pickling onions in the half the butter until they are beginning to colour and all are well glazed. Add to casserole. Trim the mushrooms and cut any that are too big in half, otherwise leave whole. Add the remainder of the butter to the pan and sauté the mushrooms for just a minute. Add the mushrooms only 10 minutes before serving time. Check the seasonings and serve garnished with chopped parsley.

You will note that I cook half this dish in the oven and finish it on top of the stove. I still believe that the French slow-simmered dishes are better cooked with heat surrounding them than sitting directly on the heat where the bottom is likely to catch and spoil the flavour.

Slow-roasted garlic & lemon chicken

IMG_0425

This recipe really has me hooked. It is so easy and delicious and also very adaptable. When you have had a little practice, you can throw your vegetables into the roasting pan with the chicken and other ingredients. We have done it very successfully with baby potatoes and artichoke hearts cut in half and chokes removed. An all time favourite is with baby fennel bulbs cut in half or quarters that end up deliciously caramelised with all the juices.

Slow-roasted garlic and lemon chicken was originally one of Nigella Lawson’s recipes, but I’m afraid her cooking times are far too long, her temperatures too high and the result totally inedible.

1 chicken (2 – 2.25 kg), cut into 10 pieces  or 4 chicken marylands or 8 chicken drumsticks
1 head of garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into 8 wedges
A handful of fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
250ml white wine
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven 120C.

Put the chicken pieces into a roasting pan and add the garlic cloves and lemon wedges. Pull the leaves from most of the thyme stalks and sprinkle the leaves over the chicken. Retain the remaining thyme stalks to strew over the chicken later. Add the oil, then, using your hands, mix everything together, then spread the mixture out, making sure the chicken pieces are all skin-side up.

Sprinkle over the white wine and add the black pepper. Cover the chicken tightly with foil, and place in the oven for 1 hour.

Remove the foil from the roasting pan and increase the oven heat to 160C. Cook the uncovered chicken for another 30 – 45 minutes, by which time the skin of the chicken will have turned golden and the lemons will have begun to caramelise.

The vegetables can be added during the cooking time depending on how long you estimate they will take to cook.

Serves 4.

Red duck curry made from barbeque duck

We usually make red curry of duck with the meat of a barbecued duck purchased from Chinatown after the duck has been relieved of its skin for duck pancakes. There is no reason why you should not use a duck you have cooked yourself, and there is no reason why the skin shouldn’t go into the curry! That said, the spices added to a Chinatown duck do give it an extra dimension – and of course it is so much easier!

This is a Thai curry and Thai curries don’t normally have vegetables in them. However somehow onion wedges seem to have crept into ours and they do give the curry a nice crunch.

For the sweet element, we use either lychees in syrup or John West mandarin segments in syrup. Both work well.

1 onion, peeled and cut into thin wedges
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 x 400ml can coconut cream
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
1½ tablespoons Thai red curry paste
Meat (and skin, optional) from 1 Chinese roast duck, cut into bite size pieces
1 tablespoon fish sauce (or to taste)
1 can lychees in syrup, or 1 can mandarins in syrup
A few kaffir lime leaves
1 tablespoon coriander, roots, stems and leaves finely chopped

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok and cook the onion wedges until transparent but still crunchy. Remove from wok and set aside. Tip excess oil from the wok.

Tip the coconut cream into the wok and cook until it cracks. (Cook until the oil separates from the cream.) Add the red curry paste and cook for about 1 minute, then gradually add the coconut milk. Bring slowly to the boil.

Drain the lychees or mandarins but don’t discard the liquid.

Add the reserved onion wedges, the duck meat, the lychees or mandarins (but not the syrup), the fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves and coriander.

Test for balance of flavours. If not salty enough, add more fish sauce. If not sweet enough, add a little of the syrup from the fruit.

Serve with jasmine rice.

 

Moussaka

If, like me, you thought moussaka was a Greek dish, you were wrong. It originated in Rumania, but is widely cooked in Greece and Turkey. So there is your piece of trivia for today!

Just a word about cooking aubergine, or eggplant. I had been brainwashed by cookery books to do one of two things to aubergine before cooking: either slice it and soak it in milk for an hour to remove any bitterness, or sprinkle it with salt, leave for an hour, then wash. I do not like the salt method, as no matter how much you wash the aubergine, it still tastes salty. Turkey, (where almost everything contains aubergine), was an eye opener. They do absolutely nothing to their aubergine, except wait until the very last minute to peel and slice them. Since I went to Turkey, I have not soaked an aubergine in milk, nor have I salted one, and the results have shown such precautions to be absolutely unnecessary. Don’t peel and slice the aubergine until you are ready to use it. To cater to tradition, I have included the usual instructions in the recipe. If you trust me, forget them.

Moussaka is a combination dish of layers of cooked lamb mince and aubergine topped with a white sauce flavoured with Parmesan cheese. Do not be tempted to use beef mince. The combination of lamb and aubergine was made in heaven, and beef does not come even close.

Meat Sauce:

1 kg lamb mince
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Oil for cooking
1 cup chopped, peeled tomatoes, or equivalent amount of Italian tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
½ cup white wine
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 teaspoon brown sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 large aubergine or several small ones
Oil for grilling

Sauté the onion and garlic in oil if a heavy based frying pan until transparent. Remove from pan and set aside. Increase the heat and brown the lamb mince, stirring well. Return the onions to the pan and add the tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, brown sugar and cinnamon. Season to taste. Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes. If you feel the meat needs thickening, make a roux of flour and butter, add some of the liquid to the roux, stir well, ensuring that there are no lumps, then add to the sauce. Stir in the chopped parsley last.

Peel the aubergines and slice into 5mm slices. Sit them in a shallow dish containing milk for about half an hour. Drain off milk, wash aubergine well and dry with paper towels.
Spray a baking dish with oil, add a layer of aubergine and spray with oil. Place the aubergine under a hot grill, and lightly brown. Turn and repeat on the other side. Repeat with the remaining aubergine. Alternatively, the aubergine may be shallow fried in oil, but they will absorb a lot of unnecessary oil this way.

Grease an oven dish (approx. 33cm by 23cm by 5cm) and place a layer of aubergine slices in the base. Top with half the meat mixture. Add another layer of aubergine, then the remainder of the meat. Finish with a layer of aubergine.

Cream Sauce:

3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
Freshly grated nutmeg
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese (more if you like a very cheesy sauce)
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Make a thick white sauce using the butter, flour and milk. Add the grated nutmeg and half the grated Parmesan. Stir the beaten egg into the sauce.

Spread the sauce over the top layer of aubergine. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan cheese.

Preheat oven to 180C and bake mousska for 1 hour. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting it into squares and serving.

Lamb and aubergine casserole (aka graveyard stew)

This may be the recipe that started it all, but it has got me into some trouble since. When I first wrote it out, I used the quantities that I would have used once, although perhaps not now. My theory is that if you are going to mess up the kitchen, you might as well make the mess worthwhile. So I would cook for a multitude and freeze for a multitude.

Then Joe and Pearl Saragossi asked me if I had a good lamb casserole recipe. I told them about this one and promised to print out a copy. When I asked if they had enjoyed it, Joe said, “That recipe is for twenty people. Pearl and I eat very little these days.” (You can’t please all of the people all of the time!) Well, I’m not at all sure that four kilograms of lamb, including bones, would have fed twenty people, even with pigeon-sized appetites, but I do take his point. (I have, since, made it to feed twenty people, and the original quantities would not have done!)

I think it was Georgie Lewis who gave it it’s other name, Graveyard Stew. I objected to the ‘stew’ label for a while, then finally gave in to public pressure. If people like it enough to re-name it, why complain? The empty plates certainly resemble a graveyard.

So, here it is, re-hashed.

By now I am sure you are well aware of my views regarding the treatment of aubergines before cooking. Unless the aubergines are old with dark, prominent seeds, they do not need to be soaked in milk or dredged in salt. Buy young aubergine, with smooth, shiny skins and cut them as you are about to use them.

The proportion of leg chops to forequarter and neck chops is not really critical. The leg chops have plenty of meat, the neck chops are full of flavour and the forequarter chops are somewhere between the two.

Oil for cooking

2 – 3 large onions, finely chopped

2 kg lamb leg chops

1 kg lamb forequarter chops

1 kg lamb neck chops

2 tablespoons plain flour

2 medium sized aubergine, young with shiny, unwrinkled skins

½ bottle of Italian pureed tomatoes

Chicken or beef stock, or a combination of the two

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon brown sugar

A dash of red wine vinegar

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Peel and slice one of the aubergines about 1 cm thick. Drizzle a little oil into a baking dish and place aubergine slices into the oil. Spray or drizzle with more oil and bake until slices are tender. Remove from baking dish and drain on absorbent paper.

Repeat with remaining aubergine. When all aubergines are cooked and drained, dice coarsely.

Meanwhile, cut excess fat from chops. Heat oil in a heavy-based frying pan and sauté onion until transparent. Transfer to a heavy-based casserole. Add a little more oil, if necessary, to the frying pan, and brown chops, in batches. Transfer chops to the casserole as they are browned. Add flour, working it down amongst the chops so that the fat on the chops absorbs it and the remainder thickens into the sauce without lumping.

Add coarsely diced aubergine to the casserole with the onion and the chops. Add a little more flour and make sure it is absorbed by the fat in the aubergine, onion and chops.

Add tomato puree, tomato paste, brown sugar, red wine vinegar and enough stock to cover. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Make sure oven is still preheated to 180C and add casserole, covered. Cook for approximately 2 hours or until the lamb is tender. (The neck chops will take the longest to cook.)

Remove from oven, cool and refrigerate overnight. Skim all fat from surface of casserole.

To serve, heat gently until casserole reaches a simmer and meat is heated through.