Confit Duck with Garlic & Rosemary Roasties

Oh Aye, I went there. 

I'm not sure what was going through my mind when at 9:30pm on a friday night I decided to make Duck Confit. Especially as I was making it for Sunday lunch! But as I slathered the legs in garlic, salt & covered it in oil to put them in the oven and slowly braise for 3 hours I knew there was no going back. 

Once the 3 hours was I let the confit cool a bit before putting the dish straight in the fridge. Theoretically Confit can last up to a month in the fridge, I'm not that brave and only left it about a day & a half.. I simply roasted the legs in a tin foil parcel slightly open at the top to allow the skin to crisp up. It fell from the bone, I have an awful habit of panicking and pulling meat from the oven too soon, I resisted this instinct and the legs were really great!

I then roasted some par-boiled potatoes in the duck fat with rosemary & garlic. I covered the potatoes in flour before frying in the oil, this creates a beautiful crunch on the potatoes. Seriously good.

I'm going to be honest I didnt really take note of exact times and temperatures on this one. It was very much fluid & improvised, although I know that I started the oven off just below 190 and raised it above 210 at the end to crisp off the duck skin and the potatoes. The duck was in for about an hour and the roasties for 40 of that. I very much stuck with the "until golden brown" rule when came to the potatoes.

The gravy was a base of onions, garlic & rosemary (to tie in with the potatoes) with a mix of vegetable stock & chicken gravy granules. sounds wierd but it tasted awesome and needs very little seasoning thanks to the stock. I would love to have served some vegtables with this but I didn't have any. some frozen peas & carrots would be great if you're going the traditional Sunday Dinner route.

This two day meal is actually very simple & not labour intensive at all! You are reading the ramblings of a very happy full person right now.

Molegnese

Now you really have to bare with me on this one. I started out wanting to make a a simple Bolognese or a chilli con carne. on browsing my cupboard I realised I didn't have the ingredients to create a full version of either of these but I could with a bit of creativity get a bit of fusion going and see what I came up with. The finished product turned out to be a sort of chilli/mole (pronounced mole-ay) ragu.
Very early on I realised that with neither tinned tomatoes or cannellini beans in the cupboard I'd have to make a substitution. Baked Beans seemed the logical alternative. yes ok they're two very different tomato tastes, but I usually end up adding a bit of sugar anyway when I use tinned tomatoes and I always buy low salt/sugar baked beans so that's my justification. and to replace some of the lost tomato tang I added quite a bit of tomato & garlic puree.
I was saved from my Baked Beany mince (the huge amount of paprika I had added just wasn’t providing a kick) by Ali who rang me from M&S asking was there anything I needed. A quick order for chilli’s & salad and I was suddenly inspired. I grabbed some Cocoa power from the cupboard and my ‘molegnese’ was on its way.
Ingredients:
500g Mince
1 large Onion
Stock Cube
1 tbsp tomato & garlic puree (you can add separate garlic if you want, i didn’t have any)
1tbsp dried Thyme
1 tbsp dried Rosemary
1 tin low salt Baked Beans
2 heaped tbsp Paprika
a good glug of Worcester Sauce (I used Tamari Soy as I don’t have any but Worcester would probably work better)
1 tbsp cocoa powder (unsweetened, as pure as you can get)
2 red chillis
Fry off the onions until soft (I’m trying to use as little extra fat as I can so have been adding a bit of boiling water to semi stew the onions until they’re soft). Add the mince and fry till completely brown. add the stock cube and continue to fry until there is no excess liquid. stir in the tomato puree, herbs & paprika. Add the beans and top up with water (about the same as the tin)
Alternatively at this point you could substitute some of the water with some red wine this would add extra depth to the sauce)
Simmer the whole thing gently until is become a deep ragu-like mixture. Add in the finely chopped chilli ( i de-seeded one of them but chopped the second whole. leave for a about 10 minutes whilst your rice or pasta cooks and then serve.
You could serve this with either rice or pasta due to the fusion nature of the sauce. we chose farfalle (pasta bows) as we were also having salad and parmesan shavings and rice just felt wrong with that. another serving possibility would be to embrace the Mexican heritage of the mole and serve with tacos or in fajitas. this would also make a great burrito filling (trust me i will be trying that one out for my home-made boojums)
I’m going to make a note of the Rosemary & Thyme. I don’t know how much they added to the dish. I’ll probably try both adding more to see what that does and going completely without. With dishes like this where I’ve just thrown it together its all about trial & error and the fun part is perfecting the process.
I relish the fact that you've mustard the strength to ketchup to me.

Daniel's Basil Burgers

This recipe is my brothers homage to a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis. I'm just going to write it as I saw them being made but this is all about the taste & preferences so its really up to you how much of each ingredient you put in. as long as there's plenty of Basil of course.

Inredients :
1Shallot
1 clove garlic
large bunch of basil
500 grams beef mince
big hunk of grated parmesan
tsp chilli puree
1 1/2 tsp tomato puree

blend the onion, garlic and basil in a food processor, add the mince and mix thoroughly,then add the parmesan, tomato puree & chilli. Season & then form into round burger patties. You can BBQ the like we did or fry them in a griddle pan . Serve with salad or fries.

Why did the banana go to the psychiatrist? Because it had a split personality.

Roasted Butternut Squash & Leek Risotto

I make risotto’s all the time. or at least i make my versions of risottos all the time (more about that at a later date) but i had a real urge here to make a proper dish from scratch but wasn’t sure about how to use the ingredients. I’ve never cooked with squash before and my only leek recipe so far is a lamb and leek hotpot (again you’ll hear about that at some point I'm sure) so when i spotted a little 100g ready prepared pack of squash in Tesco (prepared as in peeled cored and cut not seasoned and cooked) i jumped at the chance to use it. and also great as it cuts down prep time and wastage (you couldn’t use a whole squash for just one person!)

Ingredients:

100g butternut squash diced
1 medium onion sliced
1 leek sliced
1/2 cup Arborio rice
Chicken stock (approx 500mls)
Thyme or Sage (2tbsp)
Oil/butter (whatever your preference for frying is)

Optional:
frozen peas (fresh would be amazing but who keeps them as a store item?) or Frozen mixed vegetables as i used (i had a veg’ craving)
Garlic 2cloves finely chopped
1/2 Glass Of White Wine (dry)
1/2 Cup Cream

Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius roast the squash slices for 10 – 15 mins or until just starting to colour then dice them ready for the risotto. whilst the squash was roasting sauté the onions and leeks (and garlic if used) in the butter until soft and shimmering but not brown, you don’t want any colour in this risotto other than the green and orange of the veg’. Add the rice and continue to stir until it starts become opaque at the edges. start adding the warm stock a ladle at a time, stirring gently & waiting until the liquid is absorbed before adding more.

now if you’re using white wine you would add it in before the stock. the only reason I'm not using it myself is that i don’t have any and didn’t want to go to the shops to get some just for one 1/2 cup. you may need more or less stock depending on if you use the wine/cream.

Once the stock is fully absorbed add the squash, herbs, peas and cream and allow the veg’ to be reheated and the cream to be absorbed. Another tip if the herbs are dried you may want to add them a little earlier so that they can rehydrate a bit in the stock. Once the peas are cooked that's the Risotto complete. Because i didn’t have any cream i stirred another knob of butter (well… flora actually) through just to give a bit a shine. Dish up, top with parmesan and chopped parsley if you have some and serve.

Remember to taste as you go along to make sure its well seasoned and more importantly, tastes nice. as for seasoning i haven’t needed to use any as i used a Knorr chicken stock pot and stock cubes/pots tend to have salt in them anyway and I'm not a big salt fan.

The result was yummy, very clean and fresh and the sweetness of the squash worked really well but this was my first try so i’ll probably tweak it a bit to perfect the recipe. I’ll try it with the wine, cream and garlic next time just to see what difference it makes. This serves 2 very decent portions so if you’re on your own then simply pop the rest into a Tupperware box (those plastic microwave safe tubs Chinese's use are great if you don’t want to buy Tupperware) and either keep in the fridge for the next day or freeze.

Enjoy!

A hungry traveller stops at a monastery and is taken to the kitchens. A brother is frying chips. 'Are you the friar?' he asks. 'No. I'm the chip monk,' he replies.
St Crispun - Southampton UK