Shoulder of lamb baked with provencal vegetables

1 shoulder of lamb
4 tomatoes
1 small aubergine
1 orange pepper
1 yellow pepper
3 large onions
4 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
Handful basil

Slice the vegetables very thickly.  Sit the lamb on the vegetables, layered up as best possible with the basil in between.  Pour some olive oil over the lamb and season very well.  Pour a small glass of water in the tray.

Bake at 210C for 30mins to get the browning going.

Bake another 2 hours uncovered at 150C.  Baste the vegetables if required to prevent burning.

Cover loosely with foil and cook for another 1-2 hours, or as desired, at 150C as before.

Allow to rest before serving with a little olive oil drizzled over.

Sausage, pepper and mushroom casserole

I know you are going to be put off by the long ingredients list so I will try to keep the description as short as possible!

Sausage, pepper and mushroom casserole
serves ~6

1 large onion, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, peeled and finely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped

Sweat the above in butter and vegetable oil in a large casserole, adding each five minutes after the last, in that order.

6 large herby sausages, perhaps a mixture of lamb, pork and other meats, skins removed and cut into 1inch lengths
2 large packets mushrooms (any variety), wiped clean and roughly chopped into pieces of similar size to the sausage bits
2 or 3 peppers, de-seeded and chopped into rough large pieces also

Heat a film of oil in a large frying pan.  Fry the above in batches until some colour is added to each.  Remove to a plate if the vegetables in the casserole are still sweating, otherwise add straight to the casserole.  Don't stir frequently when browning as it will destroy the heat and slow things down.  Adding some salt to the mushrooms will help bring out the moisture.

1 large glass red wine
2 tins chopped tomatoes
Several sprigs of thyme
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tin chickpeas

Pour the wine in the frying pan over the heat once everything is fried.  Scrape the base to remove the nice browning residues (which are hopefully not burnt) then pour into the casserole along with all the other ingredients.  Add water so everything is just covered.  Bring up to a simmer, remove and discard any scum that forms, and cook for 25 minutes.  Easy!

PS I am working on a quick way to remove shells from tinned chickpeas... at present it involves draining and washing them, rubbing them all together in a tea towel, emptying into a deep bowl, filling the bowl with water then scooping and pouring off the top half of the water, hopefully along with most of the shells, and picking out the chickpeas from the bowl.  It doesn't get them all off, and it's not essential, but it's not that hard either.

Piedmontese peppers

There are recipe variants for Piedmontese peppers all over the place.  Delia's is top class, as one might expect, and Simon Hopkinson's is great too.  The idea here was to make a recipe that was simple but effective.

Serves 4

4 red peppers
2 x 400g tins whole plum tomatoes
1 tin anchovies packed in olive oil
Extra virgin olive oil

Wash the peppers, halve lengthways then remove all seeds, white pith and stems too (you can leave the stems on but I think they are simpler to eat without).  Place the peppers in a large shallow tray.

Place a colander in a large bowl and empty both tins of tomatoes into it.  Halve each tomato lengthways and nestle two tomato halves in each pepper half.  Spoon a little tomato juice from the bowl into each pepper but save the rest for something else (eg. a bloody mary).

Lay a pair of anchovy fillets onto each pepper in a cross.  Season very well with salt and pepper, pour around 1 tbsp of olive oil on each pepper then roast at 190C for 1 hour or until well done, basting with olive oil from the tray half way through if that might help.

Allow to cool to room temperature to serve.  You can pour a little lemon juice or balsamic vinegar over each one before serving - entirely up to personal taste.

Pork shin, chorizo and red pepper stew

This takes about 10 minutes to throw together before just being left to simmer away, and heats up easily during a week to serve with freshly cooked pasta.  Pretty basic but I think it's great!  I've done a similar lamb and bean stew before that works the same... I gotta blog about that one!

Serves approx 6


4 sections of pork shin cut in the style of osso bucco
500g pork ribs
1 large spicy chorizo sausage, sliced into 1 inch sections
3 tbsp olive oil
5 large cloves of garlic, chopped
1 jar roast red peppers
1 ~700g jar of passata or soffrito
1/2 tbsp flakey salt
Ground black pepper
2 cans canellini beans (or 1 jar of pre-cooked Spanish white beans called Alubias)
Pasta to serve with

In a very large casserole dish, heat the oil then brown the meat.  First the pork, then the chorizo which you may be able to just add to the pork leaving everything in there.  You don't strictly have to brown each piece of meat perfectly in this instance, it's just good to take the meat, and the browning which will gather on the bottom of the dish, to the right stage overall.  You certainly don't want to keep going until anything burns.

Add the garlic, season heavily with pepper and stir over a heat to fry the garlic without burning.  This takes around 30 seconds.

Add the passata or soffrito, the red peppers roughly sliced, salt and water to cover.  Bring to a boil, skim off any scum that gathers on the surface, reduce the heat to a very low simmer and cover, or partially cover, for 2 hours.  If you have a very low heat setting on your hob then you can fully cover it.  Otherwise partially covering the casserole should stop the contents from boiling too hard.

Drain the beans, wash them and add them for a final half an hour.

Whenever you wish to serve a portion, half cook pasta in boiling water then add to the stew to finish cooking in there.  Taste for salt before serving.  Again kale would be nice with this in a caldo-verde way.  See pork with cider onions and cloves blog for how to cook.

Simple vegetable curry

This was the result of needing to cook for a vegetarian and a spin round a North London greengrocers.

3 baby aubergines

1 small cauliflower

1 small courgette

Handful okra

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

5 dried apricots

2 medium onions

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 piece of ginger

1 large green chilli

4 tbsp vegetable oil

1 ½ tbsp madras (or other) curry powder

1 tsp fine salt (or equivalent amount of flaky)

Ground pepper

1 tin chopped tomatoes

Chop the onions very finely and sweat in the oil over a medium/high heat until darkly browned, having seasoned with salt. 

Meanwhile, halve the peppers, cut out white parts and stem, rub with oil and grill at a distance of 10cm from a grill, skin side up, until thoroughly blackened AND cooked to a good level of softness.  Place into a plastic bag to cool.

Peel most of the knob of ginger, leaving a section unpeeled to hold on to, which enables you to grate it finely.  De-seed the chilli and chop finely.  Add around 1 tbsp of the grated ginger, the chopped garlic and the chilli to the onions and stir and fry for 1 minute.

Add the curry powder and stir for another minute.

Add the aubergines, cauliflower, okra and courgette, all washed and chopped.  Cook like this for around 5 minutes to concentrate the flavour of the vegetables and get the other flavours into them.

Peel and discard the charred skins from the peppers, chop into squares and add, along with the apricots and the tin of tomatoes.

Simmer uncovered for around 15 minutes or until the vegetables are softened and the juice from the tin of tomatoes has reduced into a lovely coating for the vegetables.  Taste now and adjust for salt and pepper.

Serve with steamed basmati rice and chopped coriander.

Beef rillettes salad with rocket and orange

This is, in a word, delicious.

Simple Beef Rillettes

Some stewing beef, cubed
A good number of cloves of garlic, unpeeled
A large bunch of rosemary or thyme
Generous amount of salt
Red wine to cover (add a bit of water if you like)
Extra virgin olive oil
Ground pepper

Throw the first five ingredients into a snug pot, bring to a boil and simmer gently for 5 minutes.  This will drive off the alcohol and allow the scum to gather on the surface.  Skim off that scum, cover with a lid, turn the heat down very low and leave for 2 hours.  Remove from the heat and leave for a further 20 minutes.

Remove all the contents from the liquid with a slotted spoon into a bowl.  Discard the herbs and most of the garlic, but squeeze a couple of cloves back into the bowl.  Shred the beef with two forks.

Boil the liquid remaining in the pot hard to reduce by about 2/3rds.  Combine with the beef, add some extra virgin olive oil and plenty of black pepper.  Leave to cool then place in the fridge to mature for a day or two, if possible.  Note that dishes to be served chilled must be seasoned more strongly than if they were to be served warm.

For the salad

Salad leaves, or rocket alone if you like it
Orange segments (see below)
Other salad ingredients of your choice, optional, but could include cherry tomatoes or cooked green beans

You can make nice orange segments easily by cutting the top and bottom off an orange, placing on a flat surface then slicing off rind and pith top to bottom in curves.  Then slice either side of adjoining lines to create segments.

To make the salad, place a bed of salad leaves on a plate, some beef on top, and strew some orange segments around.  Dress with a little more olive oil and black pepper.  Very tasty.

Variation: with roasted red peppers, green beans and rocket (see below)

In the photo is a variation where some beef rillettes have been tossed in a garlicky olive oil vinaigrette with roasted red peppers, cooked green beans and rocket.

To roast the peppers, wash and half them then use a small paring knife to trim out the white pith inside.  Dry them, rub with vegetable oil then grill at a 10cm distance from a grill until blackened thoroughly.  If they aren't cooked enough, and they do need to be at the right point of softness, then you can shut the oven door and whack the oven on for a bit.  Place in a plastic bag to cool, during which time the skins will continue to steam off the peppers.  Remove and discard the skins, and slice into strips.

The juices in the bag can be added to the salad, which will need more garlic and salt than usual with these peppers added.  It's a great bit of technique to know and can be done on a bbq in its early, very hot stage.