Hearty, Zesty, Rich Beef Ragù

July 14, 2014 — Leave a comment

So here it is by popular demand… well I say popular – two people asked for it, in fact probably just one person really, and I’m totally imagining the other. But anyway – here it is… my recipe for a frickin tasty, meat-tastic beef ragù. Be warned – it has to be slow cooked for at least a couple of hours minimum – so if your idea of effort in the kitchen is reaching for the HP sauce from the highest shelf in cupboard this may not be the recipe for you. Having said that its not a complicated recipe, and anyone with enough common sense to be around hot/pointy kitchen implements and utensils, without supervision, should have no problem getting brilliant results. Once its in the oven, it just needs checking every so often – leaving you free to find something suitably random to stick on Netflix for 3 hours – ‘Gangsters vs Zombies’ looks interesting. Anyway… back on track – a ragù is just a meat based sauce for pasta – thats it… nothing complicated, just a italian sounding meat stew really. This one, like many has a tomato and meat stock base, enhanced with a rich good quality red wine. Recipes do not come much easier than this and the BIG, deep, sumptuous, opulent flavours that come from the rich sauce and meltingly tender, slow cooked meat are just awesome – as with many recipes like this the effort to results ratio is pretty generous. The flavours come in amazing waves of complexity too – sweet, savoury, tangy, meaty… they just keep on coming. My girlfriend and I have been enjoying many bowls of this sitting on the sun on our little balcony recently – as this is the kind of dish thats perfect for cooking up a big batch and sticking in the fridge to heat up throughout the week. And just like all dishes of this kind – beef bourguignon, english stew or a meat paella – a couple of days in the fridge soaking up flavour just improves it. Its also perfect for cooking up in big batches if you have a load of mouths to feed as its so easy to do, and basically is classic one big pot cooking – I recently had to do this myself, cooking up two big patches for my girlfriend to take on a girls weekend away she was doing with some friends in a beach cabin – though I have to admit it probably didn’t taste as good as concentrating on cooking up one, amazing, fantastically layered and slow cooked batch of ragù on a lazy Saturday or Sunday and enjoying it in the evening sun with a good glass of wine.

Music I Cooked to:

For the ragú

Light olive oil, for frying
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
4 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
3 sticks celery, finely diced
6 Tomatos de-seeded and chopped
1 chopped red chilli
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
salt and freshly ground black pepper
750g beef cut suitable for slow cooking, chopped into 3cm/1in cubes e.g shoulder steaks
200g pancetta
Jar of anchovies
Zest of an orange – grated
Zest and juice of 1 lemon – grated
500ml Italian red wine
600ml beef stock
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 tbsp brown sugar
4 sprigs Lemon Thyme, leaves picked and roughly chopped
4 sprigs Tarragon, leaves picked and roughly chopped

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 160C/300F/Gas 2.
Prep your veg – rough chop the carrots and celery, dice the onions and de-seed/chop the tomatoes.
Add some oil to an ovenproof, heavy-based pan set over a high heat and add the beef pieces. Fry until the meat is golden-brown on all over – this may have to be done in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.
Remove the meat from the pan and set a side. Reduce to a medium heat and add the onion, carrot, celery.
When the vegetables have softened, add the pancetta, chilli and garlic to the pan. Cook for about five minutes until much of the pancetta fat has melted and the vegetables have browned a little around the edges.
Add the browned beef to the vegetables. Pour the red wine into the frying pan. Cook over a medium heat, scraping the bottom of the pan to deglaze it.
Add the tomato purée and chopped tomatoes to the ragú and stir through. Cook for a couple of minutes stirring regularly to avoid burning
Add the beef stock and bring to a simmer
Add the grated citrus zest and stir through. If you like your ragù with a bit of a zesty kick like I do you can use the zest of 2 oranges instead of one
Squeeze the juice from the lemon into the ragù
Take 4-5 anchovies and finely chop. Add, then stir well.
Add the chopped lemon thyme and stir through. Sprinkle in a tbsp of brown sugar
Put the lid on the pan and place in the preheated oven for 2½ – 3 hours, or until the meat is meltingly tender and the liquid reduced to a lovely thick sauce like consistency. Check JUST once or twice in this time and stir to prevent the meat on the surface drying out. Top up with a very little extra beef stock and wine if you think its needed.
To serve, place some fresh tagliatelle or pappardelle in a bowl and spoon over the ragù. Sprinkle over some chopped fresh tarragon.

Pan Fried Sea Bass and Prawn, Tarragon and Red Pepper Sauce

June 23, 2014 — Leave a comment

With summer finally underway to some extent in London this is a great, light supper for those stuffy, stifling city evenings thats quick and easy to bang together. There’s nothing quite like a great piece of fresh fish simply cooked with a robust, zingy sauce to go with it – a really winning combination. The tarragon obviously adds a nice refreshing aniseed spice to the dish that cuts through those great, deep seafood flavours really nicely, finished off nicely with the tang and smoky flavours of a tasty, earthy, chargrilled fresh baby leek.

INGREDIENTS

For the Prawn and Red Pepper Sauce:

150ml/5fl oz extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
16 tomatoes on the vine, de-seeded and chopped
24 fresh raw king prawns – peeled
1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon

For the Sea Bass:

4 Sea bass fillets
salt and freshly ground black pepper
75g/2½oz unsalted butter
4 baby leaks

Music I Cooked To:

Preparation method:

Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan180°C/gas 6.
For the sauce, over a low heat fry the onion in a dash of oil for 20 minutes. Add the pepper and garlic and cook a further five minutes.
Add the tomatoes and roast in the oven for 10 minutes.
Boil some water and blanch the leaks for 2-3 minutes until just tender. Remove from the pan and quickly refresh in a colander under cold water.
Drizzle with the balsamic vinegar, season and return to the oven for a further 10-12minutes
For the sea bass, rub the fish with oil and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Heat a heavy-based frying pan and fry the fillets for four minutes on each side. Towards the end of cooking add the butter to the pan and baste the fish.
To finish the sauce, add the prawns and tarragon to the pan and cook on the stove over a medium heat for another five minutes.
Heat a griddle pan on a medium high heat and fry the leaks for 2 minutes each side, until nicely browned.
Carefully remove the sea bass skins.
Spoon the sauce onto a plate and place the Sea Bass carefully on top.

‘WHO NEEDS NANDOS’ ULTIMATE PIRI PIRI CHICKEN AND SPICY RICE

March 17, 2014 — 3 Comments

So there is a brief bit of history behind this recipe’s origination. Basically about 2 years ago a certain well known Piri Piri chicken chain changed their loyalty cards and refused to accept the two I had diligently been collecting stamps for – despite the fact they were completed and I was eagerly anticipating two, whole, juicy, spicy and most importantly FREE chickens. Thanks to this crappy customer service, in a fit of (pathetic) rage I decided to boycott said restaurant chain and invent my own Piri Piri chicken recipe to get me over my frequent cravings.

Thus began many hours of sad, sad research into Piri Piri preparation. And not just Piri recipes – I looked at all sorts of spicy chicken recipes from american bbq to indian curried, in my quest to invent what I believe to be the ultimate in Piri Piri chicken. This isn’t a purists Piri chicken – I’ve added a few elements and steps that you wouldn’t find a your average, bog standard Piri recipe – But it is better! This is, what I hope, a Piri Piri recipe would look like if it evolved towards self awareness.

I’ll admit that this recipe does require a smidgeon more effort than popping down to your local high street food chain… BUT it is so worth it. The extra effort is minimal – all thats required is a small amount of pre-planning and effort in order to prepare the dry rub salt cure for the chicken and cook some rice about a day before hand. This dry rub may seem like a lot of needless prep, but the extra juicy, moistness and booming flavour it adds to the meat is astounding. Dry rubs essentially work by using the salt/sugar to draw out the water in the meat, allowing it to mingle with the flavours in the cure, before, through a process of osmosis, all the surrounding moisture is drawn back into the meat. And just like that – BOOM – your meat becomes juicy flavour central. Then with an extra short marinade for good measure this recipe packs a hot, spicy, sweet, sticky wallop of Piri Piri awesomeness.

INGREDIENTS

For the chicken dry cure rub

salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 chopped and crushed garlic cloves
2 tbsp. fresh rosemary leaves
2 tbsp. fresh oregano leaves
2 tbsp smoked paprika
4 tsp. rock salt
1 Tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
10 sprigs lemon thyme
2 tsp. light brown sugar

For the chicken

2kg/4½lb whole free range/organic chicken
salt and freshly ground black pepper
150ml/5fl chicken stock
250 ml/5fl red wine
250ml/5fl Cider
3 red onions

For the peri peri sauce

4 garlic cloves
5 red chillies
2 Birds Eye Chilli
2 tbsp of tomato puree
2cm/1in piece of ginger, grated
50ml/2fl oz vegetable oil
25ml/1 fl oz white or red wine vinegar
250ml/5fl Cider
3 tbsp soy sauce
1-2 tbsp hot Tabasco
2 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp chilli powder
3 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp chopped lemon thyme
1 tsp caster sugar
1 lime, zest and juice

For the spicy rice

300g of cooked rice
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1 brown onion
3 sticks celery
½ bunch spring onions
a large handful of sugar snap peas
3 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 garlic glove

Preparation method:

Rub chicken with garlic, oregano, rosemary, salt, sugar, lemon zest, and pepper. Place in a resealable plastic bag. Add thyme, seal bag, and chill at least 12 hours and up to a full day.
To make the piri-piri sauce, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Place the chillies on a roasting tray and roast them for 10 minutes.
Cool and finely chop the chillies. Heat some oil in a large pan. Place the rest of the ingredients for the sauce in the saucepan, and simmer for 5 minutes.
Allow the mixture to COOL. Very important – unless you’re a fan of E.coli and salmonella bacteria
You can use a large mortar and pestle or a blender to turn the mixture into a more paste like consistency, though its not vital. I didn’t.
Spatchcock the chicken – remove the chicken’s backbone, then break the breast, whilst flattening out the chicken. Spatchcocking the chicken allows it to roast quicker in the oven, at a high temp, and crisp up the skin better. If you’re unsure how to spatchcock a chicken, just use one of the many tutorials available on the web. Add half the piri-piri sauce, spreading it evenly over the chicken. Seal with cling film and marinate in the refrigerator for 2-4 hours.
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/Gas 6, AND preheat a large griddle or sauce pan on the hob.
Season the marinated chicken, and cook it on the pan for 2-3 minutes on each side, until the skin is golden brown.
Transfer the browned chicken to a roasting tray with a rack. Pour the cider and red wine into the bottom of the roasting tray. Peel and quarter the red onions, then scatter in the roasting tray. Cover in foil and roast in the oven for 20 minutes.
After twenty minutes remove foil, scatter a tbsp of caster sugar over the top of the chicken and increase temp to 250 for around 10 minutes to crisp up the skin, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of thigh registers 165°F / 72C° and the juices run clear.
For the rice – heat a little oil in a large frying pan. Fry the onions until browned. Cook the peppers, celery and white parts of the spring onions for 5 mins. Finely slice and chop the garlic and ginger then add to the pan.
Tip in the purée and paprika, stir, then add the cooked rice, breaking up with a wooden spoon so all the grains are coated well. Use a high heat and scrape any that sticks off the bottom so you get some soft and some crispy parts. Heat until piping hot. At the last moment add the sugar snap peas and cook everything, stirring regularly, for around 3 minutes.
Scatter the green parts of the spring onion on top and set aside briefly.
Back to the chicken – Once cooked, carefully lift the chicken from the roasting tin onto a plate and cover it loosely with foil so it can rest and become juicier.
Now to make some more Piri Piri sauce to serve with the chicken. Carefully pour the oil out from the roasting tin, leaving the juice and sticky bits behind. Put it on a medium heat and add the onions, the rest of the prepared sauce mixture, some chopped tomatoes and the cider, stock and red wine. Allow to simmer and reduce for a some minutes, scraping up all the sticky bits from the bottom.
Returning to the chicken, pour any juices on the plate into the sauce before carving the meat. Arrange on serving plates with the roasted Piri Piri sauce and a helping of the spicy rice.