Archive for September, 2009
Steak Pie Recipe Made Easy
Tender meat, rich gravy and golden pastry, there is something comforting and reassuring about a good steak pie. Served with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables it makes a hearty family meal. Individual sized pies are just as easy to make, for a picnic or packed lunch to savour.
To make a good steak pie you need to cook the meat slowly first until tender, just as if you are making a stew. Then it gets extra time in the oven with its pastry lid, getting even more succulent and tasty. Steak pies also freeze very well before you bake them and can be cooked straight from frozen, making a great supper with no fuss.
Recipe for Steak Pie
Ingredients
675g / 1 ½ lb stewing or braising steak
1 tablespoon plain flour
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 onion
1 carrot
4 stalks celery
bay leaf
sprig thyme
500ml / 2 cups beef stock
2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
1 x 500g packet puff or shortcrust pastry
1 egg
Put the flour on a plate and season with salt and pepper. Cut the steak into bite sized pieces and roll it in the flour till coated.
Brown the meat in 2 tablespoons oil. Set aside on a plate, then cook the onion in the same pan until softened. Add the carrots, celery and herbs and cook for a few more minutes until starting to soften. Return the meat to the pan.
Add the tinned tomatoes and stir. Add the stock. Bring to simmering point and cook over a low heat for two hours or until the meat is tender.
Check the gravy for seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary. Leave to cool slightly, while you prepare the pastry.
By all means make your own pastry, using a shortcrust pastry recipe with lard as the main fat. The pie works perfectly well with bought pastry too, if you want to make things easier. Choose puff pastry or shortcrust, depending on your own preference.
Roll out the pastry to fit, overlapping slightly, one big or six small, individual pie dishes. Spoon the meat filling into the pie dishes, making sure that the liquid doesn’t come more than 2/3 of the way up the sides of the dishes.
Brush the rim of the dish with a little beaten egg and lay the pastry over the top. Press the pastry down around the edges to seal. Brush the pastry with beaten egg and make two or three small slits in the top to allow steam to escape, so the pastry will crisp nicely.
Bake at 190C / 375F for 40 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the filling is sizzling. Let the pie rest for 10 minutes before serving your delicious steak pie.
Variations
Use a bottle of Guinness instead of the stock for a really deep, rich flavour.
Add mushrooms for a steak and mushroom pie.
Replace a third of the steak with an equal weight of kidney for steak and kidney pie.
Longing to bite into a perfect steak pie right now? Make for the Lord Nelson restaurant in Nottingham.
Simple Hollandaise Sauce Recipe
A creamy, rich sauce with a tang of lemon, hollandaise sauce is the ideal partner for steamed asparagus and eggs benedict. It is also great with grilled and poached fish, especially salmon.
Emulsified sauces using egg yolks have gathered themselves a frightening reputation with home cooks, for being difficult and curdling or separating, but hollandaise is really quick and easy to make if you follow the first recipe here and use a blender. If you prefer the classic method with double boiler, directions for that are also below.
Hollandaise sauce should be served warm and made just before you need it, though it can be kept in the fridge for up to two days. It is usually served plain, with just the tang of lemon lifting the richness, but you can add some chopped fresh herbs or even a dash of mustard or Tabasco if you like to experiment and enliven the classics.
Recipe for Hollandaise Sauce
Ingredients
175g / 6oz unsalted butter
3 tablespoons water
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon lemon juice (or more to taste)
salt and pepper
In a blender, process the egg yolks, water, lemon juice and salt and pepper for ten seconds at the lowest speed.
Melt the butter.
With the blender running on a high speed, pour the hot butter in a slow and steady stream onto the mixture, until it emulsifies and becomes thick and creamy.
If you are not serving the hollandaise immediately, keep it warm for up to 30 minutes by sitting the container in a pan of hot water.
Traditional Method for Hollandaise Sauce
This method uses a double boiler or a bowl set over a pan of simmering water without the water touching the bottom of the bowl. The ingredients are the same as for the blender method.
Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly.
Bring the water in the double boiler or pan to a steady simmer. Put the egg yolks, water and half the lemon juice in the bowl or top of the double boiler. Whisk over the heat until the eggs start to thicken (about 3 minutes).
Add a little melted butter at a time and keep whisking.
When all the butter has been added and the sauce has thickened, add the last of the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
Feel like eating out instead of making hollandaise sauce? Why not try Le Mistral restaurant in Sherwood, Nottingham.
Quick and Easy Prawn Cocktail Recipe
Prawn cocktail is the ultimate, tongue in cheek, retro starter, which many of us secretly love. It takes us back to childhood, when a prawn cocktail was considered sophisticated and adventurous, but had the reassuringly familiar flavours of salad cream and tomato ketchup.
Nowadays retro food is cool again and you will find that prawn cocktails have graduated to using mayonnaise and are garnished with whole prawns in their shells. You might even find grown-up ingredients like vodka and horseradish added in an attempt to turn the prawn cocktail into a serious foodie interpretation of its Seventies self. This recipe goes back to the retro roots of prawn cocktail, with an easy Marie Rose sauce keeping it simple and tasty, as well as fun.
Recipe for Prawn Cocktail
Ingredients
300g / 9oz large cooked peeled prawns
one unpeeled prawn per person to garnish
Iceberg or little gem lettuce
Paprika to sprinkle on top
Lemon wedges to serve
For the prawn cocktail sauce
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 ½ tablespoons tomato ketchup
dash of Tabasco sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Mix together the sauce ingredients and taste to make sure it is right for you. You might like another dash of Tabasco if you like spicy food.
Shred your lettuce and arrange it at the bottom of your serving glasses or bowls. Pile your peeled prawns on top, then spoon over the Marie Rose sauce. Garnish with the unpeeled prawns and sprinkle with a little paprika. Serve with a wedge of lemon.
Variations
You can use a mixture of salad cream and mayonnaise if you are hankering after that childhood memory of prawn cocktail.
Or make your own mayonnaise if you want to smarten up your prawn cocktail, and use tomato puree instead of ketchup.
Try making a sauce with mayonnaise, tomato chutney, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish and Tabasco, for a new take on the prawn cocktail.
For shrimp cocktail just use cooked peeled shrimps instead of the prawns in this recipe. The only difference is in that shrimps are smaller than prawns and can have a slightly blander flavour, so you might want to spice up the sauce a bit.
Feeling like Modern British food rather than retro tonight? Try eating out at one of the great British restaurants in Nottingham.
Easy Recipe for Guacamole Dip
Luscious ripe avocado with a hint of chilli and fresh spritz of lime, guacamole is a fantastic dip for a party or just to make for your family as a starter. Scoop it up with tortilla chips or even eat it heaped on crusty bread; it’s so moreish, you’ll have finished the bowl in no time!
The trick to really delicious guacamole is using properly ripe avocados. There’s no point trying to make it with tasteless hard ones. Perfectly ripe avos will give a little when you press gently on the outside. If they’re very soft they may be over-ripe, so check how they taste before using them.
There are hundreds of different recipes for guacamole. Most include chilli, lime juice and coriander, others add red onion and tomato and other spices too. Develop your own personal guacamole recipe from this basic one and decide how hot you like it, adding more chilli if this recipe is a little on the mild side for you.
Easy Recipe for Guacamole Dip
Ingredients
3 ripe avocados
1 lime
1 small red onion
bunch coriander
1 red chilli
1 ripe tomato
De-seed and chop the chilli finely. Chop the coriander leaves and stalks. Chop the red onion finely. Roughly chop the ripe tomato. Scoop all the avocado from its skin into a bowl and roughly mash it with the juice of the lime. Add the rest of the ingredients and combine. Keep back a little coriander to sprinkle on top. If you’re not serving it immediately put the avocado stone on top of the guacamole to keep it from turning colour, then cover and chill till needed.
Serve as a dip with tortilla chips or potato wedges.
Variations on Traditional Guacamole Dip
Some people add sour cream to their guacamole to make the avacados go further. Whilst not strictly authentic it still tastes good.
Cumin and ground coriander are extra spices you can experiment with.
A dash of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce is totally inauthentic but makes a great British version of guacamole!
In the mood for something spicy but don’t want to cook? Eat out at Chutney restaurant in Nottingham instead.
Simple Recipe for Quiche Lorraine
A classic quiche lorraine with its rich creamy filling balanced by the smokiness of bacon needs nothing more than a salad and a glass of wine to make a perfect lunch when friends come round. A home made quiche has none of the stodginess that can make bought quiches disappointing and is just as good cold as it is warm from the oven.
According to Elizabeth David, the traditional quiche from the Lorraine area of France just has smoked bacon added to the cream and egg filling, no onions, no cheese. I’ve included cheese in this recipe just because it adds depth to it. You can adapt this recipe and add any fillings you like, but it’s best to limit yourself to just two or three so that your quiche retains the classic simplicity of the original recipe.
Recipe for Quiche Lorraine
Ingredients
For the pastry
125g / 4oz plain flour
60g / 2oz cold butter
4-5 tablespoons iced water
pinch salt
For the filling
3 eggs
250 -300 ml cream
200g / 7oz smoked bacon
pinch ground nutmeg
50g / 2oz gruyere or mature cheddar (optional)
Make the pastry first. Rub the chilled butter into the flour until it looks like crumbs. You can do this in the processor if you prefer, just make sure that the ingredients are chilled before you start. Add iced water a little at a time until the pastry will clump together in a ball (you might not need all the water, so just add 1 tablespoon at a time). Wrap the ball of pastry in cling film and rest it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
Roll the pastry out to fit your quiche tin of about 23cm / 9 inches diameter. Blind bake, by putting some foil in the base and weighing it with dry beans. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove beans and foil.
While it is blind baking prepare the filling. Fry the bacon until done. Grate the cheese if using. Beat the eggs with the cream, nutmeg and a little salt and pepper.
Scatter the bacon on the base of the pastry case pour in the egg mixture and scatter over the cheese. Lower the temperature to 190C / 375F and bake for 30-40 minutes until golden. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Other good filling combinations to try:
Spinach and feta cheese
Bacon and onion
Mushroom and courgette with garlic
Don’t feel like baking your own quiche lorraine today? Why not try the lunch menu at 1877 restaurant in Nottingham for some tasty light lunches.
Nottingham’s First Food Festival Goes Down A Storm
An action-packed 5-day event has been heralded a huge success for the city as over 18,000 visitors, attracted by the celebrity chefs’ theatre and the speciality local and regional food and drink market in the Market Square, attended the first ever Nottingham Food & Drink Festival this month. Funded by the Nottingham Leisure Partnership, an organisation that represents the city centre licensees, and the Greater Nottinghamshire Partnership, the Festival took place from Wednesday 16th to Sunday 20th September to help showcase the city’s diverse offer of fine food and drink.
The new chief executive of the Nottingham Leisure Partnership, Sylvia Manser, commented: “We are delighted with the success of the first Food and Drink Festival. Nottingham has one of the greatest variety of food and drink venues in the country and the festival felt like a real celebration of that. It was fantastic to see so many people enjoying the wonderfully diverse programme of events that took place all over the city.”
The Rangemaster Chefs’ Theatre in the Market Square hosted celebrity chefs James Martin, host of Saturday Morning Kitchen, Nottingham’s own Michelin star chef, Sat Bains, Step Up To The Plate regular, James Tanner, Ready Steady Cook favourite Brian Turner and Something for the Weekend’s Simon Rimmer. Tickets for James Martin’s first demonstration on the Wednesday morning went before midday on the day of release, proving what a popular draw he is.
James commented “it’s good to be back in Nottingham and I’m delighted that they’ve finally got their own food and drink festival, my last visit here was as a judge for the Nottingham Restaurant Awards. It’s a great city and an event such as this continues to showcase the food and drink offering to its fullest.”
Another of the highlights in the Rangemaster Chefs’ Theatre over the five day festival, was the Ready Steady Cook style cook-offs with local chefs pairing up with radio, TV and sporting personalities. BBC East Midlands Today’s Sara Blizzard took on BBC Radio Nottingham’s Richard Spurr in a contest that ultimately ended in a draw. Lucky for Sara who didn’t seem to know her way around the kitchen too well and was found looking for butternut squash in a bottle! They were followed by Heart 106 breakfast presenters Sam and Amy and Smooth Radio’s Mike Ashley and Tim Gough. Assistant coach and captain of Nottingham Panthers, Bruce Richardson, who didn’t know what an aubergine was, took on the might of Nottingham Rugby’s Sam McDonald who had big shoes to fill as his father is a Michelin star chef! The contestants were all guided through their challenges by chefs from venues around the city.
Other activities in the Rangemaster Chefs’ Theatre included specialist classes led by city restaurants including Wagamama, YO! Sushi, The Curry Lounge, Kean’s Head, World Service, Memsaab and The Old Angel. Local producers and suppliers held master classes including meat by butcher Owen Taylor, fish by M&J Seafood, simply sausages by Johnny Pusztai, perfect pork pies by Stephen Hallam and cooking made easy by home economist Teresa Bovey.
Coping with all this work were the festival’s unsung heroes in the prep kitchen, ably managed by Teresa Bovey and supported by students and apprentices from New College Nottingham who are studying the new Professional Chefs Diploma Programme – what a great opportunity for them.
Sunday 20th was family fun day with Sunday brunch, perfect sausage making and fun and easy bread making demonstrations on stage, plus interactive activities for children including cake decorating with Homemade and pizza topping with Strada. The adjoining Smooth FM chill-out area also proved a popular retreat with deck chairs and parasols in the sunshine.
City centre restaurants and bars also held special events in-house making it a city wide event and attracting up to 100 customers at a time. The events included a 7 course gourmet menu at Tonic, a beer and food matching event with expert Richard Fox at the Pitcher and Piano, cocktail making classes at The Living Room and a chocolate and beer tasting experience at Bluu.
Owner of The Curry Lounge Razak Arfan, who first approached the Nottingham Leisure Partnership with the idea two years ago, spoke of their involvement during the festival: “It was a fantastic experience, from cooking in the Chefs’ Theatre to showcasing the restaurant to new visitors during our week-long events. It was also nice to see my idea finally get off the ground. I’m sure it will grow to become one of Nottingham’s must-visit occasions! Great to see so many Nottingham folk supporting this unique event, there was a real buzz in the city. We were delighted with the response and look forward to next year.”
Craig Sharpe-Weir, manager of The Bell Inn, commented: “We held a ‘Best of British’ beer and food tasting on Friday evening, offering a few tasters from our menu with different beers, with Phil Darby from Nottingham Brewery co-presenting it with me. The event was a great success, attracting around 50 customers. Among these, there were a number of new faces who’d not been into the pub before, including some local CAMRA members who we’re keen to engage with as we’re proud of our cask beers. And for the pub regulars, the event was a way of rewarding them, giving them another reason to come to the pub, and getting them to try something new. The overall marketing of the Food & Drink Festival definitely created awareness of our event, especially as we’re so close to the Market Square – there was a great buzz about the place while it was on.”
Elsewhere, the regional speciality food and drink market in Market Square proved a huge hit with visitors, with a number of stalls selling out of produce and having to rapidly re-stock.
Stuart Isbister’s The Worm that Turned was one of the extremely popular stalls. Stuart said “We thoroughly enjoyed participating the first Nottingham Food & Drink Festival and demonstrating our range of ‘grow your own’ seeds and accessories. We met some interesting new people and I’m sure that after this strong start, the Festival will only get bigger and better in future years. There’s loads to celebrate about our regional food and we look forward to playing our part.”
Pat Parkes, organiser of the event, summarised: “The Food and Drink Festival was a great initiative for the city centre restaurants and bars to lay on and is a great example of what can be achieved by businesses working together. The festival attracted people from far and wide to enjoy what our wonderful city has to offer. It was a fantastic event and it can only get bigger and better over the forthcoming years.”
Funding is already in place to make the Nottingham Food & Drink Festival an annual event for at least a further 2 years.
Delicious Green Thai Curry Recipe
Taste tickling spice with the creamy comfort of coconut milk, a green thai curry makes an easy and satisfying meal. It keeps well and the flavours are even better the next day, so it is a wonderful recipe to cook ahead the evening before, when you’ll be having guests to dinner after work.
It’s simple enough to make your own thai curry paste in the food processor, but to save time and make things simpler you can use a good ready-made brand. The vegetables you include in your curry are up to you: spinach, red peppers, bamboo shoots, green beans and mushrooms all work well, but you probably want to choose just two of those.
Recipe for Green Thai Curry
Ingredients to serve six
6 chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 onions sliced thinly
2.5cm / 1 inch fresh ginger root peeled and grated
6 cloves garlic finely chopped
75g green thai curry paste (see below to make your own)
2 x 400g tins coconut milk
1 tablespoons soft brown sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice
8 lime leaves (optional)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 – 3 cups of the chopped or sliced vegetables of your choice from the list above
20 basil leaves
1 bunch fresh coriander
In a heavy based casserole, brown the chicken pieces in the oil. Set aside on a warm plate. Cook the onions and garlic in the same oil over a medium heat, until the onions are soft and starting to colour. Add the ginger and green thai curry paste. Cook stirring for 3 minutes. Add the vegetables you have chosen (except for the spinach which can go in at the last stage of cooking) and cook for 1 minute stirring.
Return the chicken to the pan and add half the coconut milk, the lime leaves and the sugar. Bring the green thai curry to simmering point and cook over a low heat for 40 minutes. (If you are cooking it ahead of time, stop at this point and cool, then refrigerate).
Add the remaining coconut milk, lime juice, basil, spinach (if using) and fish sauce and cook for 5 more minutes.
Serve sprinkled with chopped coriander accompanied by fragrant rice or noodles.
To make your own Green thai curry paste:
Ingredients
6 green chilis
2 stalks lemongrass
2 tablespoons fresh coriander with its root
1 teaspoon cumin
2.5cm / 1 inch fresh ginger root
2 shallots
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon lime zest
1 tablespoon lime juice
Chop, peel and deseed the above and blitz to a paste in the processor or blender. You can keep the green thai curry in a jar with a film of oil over the top to store for a week or two.
In the mood for a Green curry? Taste the authentic flavours of Thai cuisine at Pretty Orchid restaurant in Nottingham.
Simple Tomato Soup Recipe
Velvety smooth tomato soup can be comforting and tasty as a starter to a three course meal, or as a lunchtime meal in itself. If you’ve only ever eaten tomato soup from a tin, it’s time to try making your own for a revelation to your taste-buds. Remember though that you need ripe tomatoes with plenty of flavour to make a good fresh tomato soup otherwise you might as well use tinned tomatoes.
Look for tomatoes sold ripe on the vine, which should be at their best in late summer and early autumn. Plum tomatoes also work very well.
Tomato Soup Recipe
Ingredients
1kg / 2.2lbs ripe tomatoes
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick of celery
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons tomato puree
½ teaspoon sugar
2 bay leaves
1.2 litres vegetable stock
Chop the onions, carrot and celery quite finely. Chop the tomatoes into chunks and remove any hard bits from their cores if they are the big beefsteak variety.
Heat the oil in a large heavy based pan over a low heat. Cook the onion, celery and carrot for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally until they are softened.
Add the tomato puree and the chopped tomatoes. Sprinkle in the sugar, some freshly ground black pepper and the bay leaves. Stir it all together then cover and allow to cook gently over a low heat for 10 more minutes.
Pour in the hot stock, cover and simmer for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove the bay leaves and puree the tomato soup in a blender. You’ll probably have to do this in two or more batches. Check the seasoning. You can add salt to taste and a little more pepper if you like. Return the pureed soup to the pan and reheat gently when you are ready to eat.
Serving suggestions:
Sprinkle with some torn fresh basil leaves
Swirl in a little sour cream
Serve chilled in summer with cream.
Crusty white bread is an essential accompaniment.
Other things you can put in your tomato soup:
2 cloves garlic chopped and cooked with the vegetables
1 potato to make a thicker soup
In winter when ripe tomatoes are rare, use tinned tomatoes instead.
Should tomato soup be eaten as a starter to be followed by a Sunday roast? Why not eat Sunday lunch out at one of Nottingham’s British restaurants.
Recipe for Minestrone Soup Made Easy
A hearty, slow-cooked vegetable soup is just what you need to warm you up on a cold evening. Minestrone has an assortment of seasonal vegetables slowly cooked in meat stock and tomatoes until the vegetables are tender and all the flavours have amalgamated to a rich and mellow flavour.
There are as many variations of Minestrone as there are regions of Italy, or more. In the north, rice is a standard addition, beans in central Italy and in the south plenty of tomato and garlic. This minestrone soup recipe is a basic one, to which you can add other vegetables according to the season, and rice or small pasta shapes as you wish. It is even better eaten the next day and freezes well without the pasta in it, so make a big pot of soup, while you are about it.
Minestrone Soup recipe
Ingredients
Serve 6-8
6 tablespoons olive oil
40g / 1 ½ oz butter
3 large onions finely chopped
4 carrots diced
2 sticks celery diced
250g / 8oz potatoes, peeled and diced
1 tin cannellini beans
2 courgettes
200g / 8oz savoy cabbage, shredded
1.5 litres / 2 ½ pints beef stock
175g / 6oz tinned tomatoes, chopped with their juice
40g / 1 ½ freshly grated parmesan
Ina large pot put the oil, butter and chopped onion and cook gently over a medium low heat until the onion softens and turns a pale gold. Add the carrots and cook for 2 minutes, then add celery, followed by the potatoes and courgettes. Give each vegetable a minute or two, stirring occasionally before tyou put in the nexgt one. Lastly add the shredde cabbage and cook everything for 5 more minutes or so.
Add the tomatoes and their juice and the stock Bring to a simmer and cook over the lowest possible heat for 3 hours. A slow cooker is excellent for this. At the end the soup should be thick and not too watery. If it is too thick you can add water.
Check for seasoning and add salt if necessary, add the cannellini beans (you can use borlotti beans instead if you prefer) and pasta or rice if you are using them and simmer for 10 more minutes. Before serving stir in the parmesan cheese.
Other things you can add to your minestrone soup: bacon or pancetta, green beans, a little garlic, fresh herbs, any other vegetables in season. If you have the end rind of a hunk of parmesan you can throw that into the soup with the stock too for a really wonderful, mellow flavour.
Three hours cooking time too long for you? Why not try the minestrone at one of the Italian restaurants in Nottingham.
Delicious Shortbread Recipe
Plain but luxurious, shortbread has been a traditional teatime treat for centuries and was reputedly a favourite of Mary Queen of Scots. It was made all over Britain but is now often associated with Scotland, perhaps because it has always played a role in their traditional New Year celebrations when it was given to first footers.
Luxurious and rich because of the amount of pure butter in it, all its flavour comes from the butter itself, so on no account should you ever substitute margarine. Shortbread is quick and simple to make with only three ingredients in most recipes. It is great for tea but you can use this shortbread recipe as a base for a traditional summer dessert, strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries and cream.
Shortbread Recipe
Ingredients
125g / 4oz pure butter, softened
55g / 2oz caster sugar
180g / 6oz plain flour
Preheat the oven to 190C / 375F.
Cream together the butter and sugar and beat till pale.
Work in the flour.
When you have a smooth dough, roll it out to about 1cm / ½ inch thick. Cut into fingers or rounds and place on a baking sheet. Alternatively press the mixture into a baking tin to the same thickness and cut into fingers after baking.
Sprinkle with more caster sugar.
Bake for 15-20 minutes until pale golden.
Cool on a wire rack.
Store in an airtight tin.
Shaping shortcake
You can get lots of different moulds for baking shortcake, pressing it into various traditional shapes, such as the petticoat tails round, that is cut into triangles. Plain is often better though and you can get lots of different effects by experimenting at home.
Try making your own petticoat tails, effectively a circle with a fluted edge. Roll the dough in to a ball and then roll out into a circle. Press your thumb round the edge to make regular indentations and score across the centre to mark out the slices it will be cut into later. You’ll have made your own petticoat tails without using a mould!
Not in the mood for baking shortbread right now? Why not enjoy the teatime treats at Woodborough Hall restaurant in Nottingham.
