Coq au Vin

Coq au Vin can seem a little passé these days. It is a dish that reminds most of us of the 1970’s along with prawn cocktail, Spaghetti Bolognese and trifle. However, I think Coq au Vin makes a wonderfully warming dish. It is hearty and delicious to eat with family or a group of friends.

Traditionally the dish was made with older chicken birds, the ones known as old boilers. If you can’t source an older chicken then a good free range chicken will work just as well. I buy the chicken whole and then cut up the bird into four large portions. All good butchers will do this for you if you need a little help. You can then roast off the main carcass and use it to make a stock.

For complete authenticity and especially if using an older bird, marinade the chicken for 24 hrs in the red wine. Only use a wine you would be happy to drink. When cooked the sauce should be thick, dark and glossy. Originally it would have been thickened with chicken blood! But don't worry, I don't advocate using this particular ingredient. These days the sauce is just well reduced then thickened with “beurre manie”.

INGREDIENTS
Serves four

One good free range chicken apx 3lb cut into four or eight portions

One fat clove of garlic thinly sliced

Good sprig each of thyme and parsley plus parsley to garnish

1 Celery stick

125 gm unsmoked bacon lardons
12 shallots (cut in half)

20 button mushrooms

Bottle of red wine

3 tbs Cognac

100ml good chicken stock

METHOD

Marinade your chicken in the wine overnight in the fridge (or for at least 6 hours).

Using an oven proof casserole, heat a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Let the butter foam but not burn and then add the shallots and fry for about three minutes until they start to colour. Add the bacon lardons and continue to cook over a medium heat until the bacon begins to brown. Then add the garlic and cook for three or four minutes more. Don’t let the garlic colour, merely melt. Remove the vegetables and bacon from the pan, leaving the fats behind, and keep on one side.

Dry your chicken pieces with kitchen paper, turn up the heat under the pan to get the fats really hot and then pieces of chicken, skin side down and fry them without moving them for about four minutes. This will allow the chicken pieces to take on a good colour.

After about four minutes when the chicken pieces are golden, turn them over and cook for about another three minutes, remove from the pan and repeat the process until all of your chicken has been sealed and browned.

Put all the ingredients back in the casserole and turn the heat down. Have a box of matches ready, tip in the cognac, lean back away from the pan and hold a lighted match quickly a couple of inches over the bubbling liquid. It will ignite! When the flames have died down you will be left with essence of cognac without the bitter alcohol.

Season the chicken with a little salt and black pepper and add the red wine (reserving two small glasses) fairly slowly so that a simmer is maintained. Tie the herbs in the celery stick to make a bouquet garni. Then add the herbs and chicken stock, cover the casserole and transfer to a slow oven 150˚C for 1 hour.

After one hour check the chicken – take a skewer or small sharp knife and poke the thigh pieces. If the meat is separating from the bone easily, it is ready.

Whilst the coq is cooking, prepare the beurre manie for thickening the sauce. This is merely two teaspoons of butter and two teaspoons of flour mixed together until amalgamated. Keep in the fridge until needed later.

Also at this stage you could prepare the mushrooms. Clean them with a damp cloth, and add them to a mixture of two teaspoons of butter and half a glass of the reserved wine brought to a simmer in a small pan. Season with some salt and black pepper, cover and cook gently for twenty minutes giving the pan a little shake every now and then, draw them off the heat and keep till later.

When you are happy that the chicken cooked, carefully lift it out of the casserole, cover and keep warm. Remove the bouquet garni. Add any liquid from the mushrooms and then boil hard until reduced by two thirds. Taste the sauce for seasoning and then whisk in the beurre manie in small pieces a little at a time until you have the sauce as thick as you like.

Add in the chicken and mushrooms to reheat and serve the Coq au Vin, surrounded by the mushrooms and ladle the sauce over. This dish is delicious served with new boiled potatoes or mash and some seasonal vegetables.

Salmon fish cakes

These fish cakes are made with a semolina and flour coating on the outside which gives them a wonderfully crunchy texture. You can make a big batch of these and store them in your freezer for when you want to use them. We like to eat them with some home made chilli jam. They are just as good with a blob of ketchup!

INGREDIENTS

Makes 8 fishcakes

300 gms potatoes

100 gms salmon fillet, skin on and no scales on the skin, all bones removed

A small handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

Bunch of chives, roughly chopped

Salt and pepper

1 egg

Olive oil

1 tablespoon plain flour, plus a little more for dusting

Semolina

METHOD

Preparing your ingredients

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Peel your potatoes, chop them into even sized chunks (or use the left over potatoes from your baked potatoes – scoop out the potato and discard the skin), add the potatoes to the boiling water and bring back to the boil. Rub the salmon fillet all over with a little olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. When your potatoes have half way cooked, place the salmon into a colander, then cover this with foil, and place the colander over the pot of boiling potatoes. Turn the heat down and cook for 8-10 minutes, until the salmon and potatoes are both cooked. Remove the fish from the colander and put to one side. Drain the potatoes in the same colander, then return them to the pot and let them steam dry for a minute. Pick the parsley leaves chop them, discarding the stalks. Chop up the chives. Mash the potatoes, spreading the mash round the sides of the pan to help it cook down quickly. Remove any skin from the salmon. When the potatoes are cooled, put it into a bowl and flake the fish into it with 1 tablespoon of flour. Add the egg and chopped parsley and chopped chives with a really good pinch of salt and pepper. Finely grate over the lemon zest, then mash and mix it up really well.

Making the fishcakes

Dust a plate with a little of the extra flour and some semolina. Divide your fish cakes into 4, lightly shape and pat into circles about 2cm thick, dusting them with flour as you go. Put them onto a clean plate also dusted with a little flour. – If you are going to freeze them at this point, wrap them in clingfilm and put them into the freezer. Otherwise simply pop them into the fridge for an hour before cooking – this will allow them to firm up slightly.

Cooking the fishcakes

Put a large fry pan on a medium heat and add a couple of lugs of olive oil. When the oil is nice and hot, add your fishcakes and cook for about 3 – 4 minutes on each side or until crisp and golden – you may need to cook them in two batches. Serve straight away, with lemon halves for squeezing over, serve with vegetables of your choice or a cool crisp salad. These fish cakes also go really well will some chilli jam (recipe on this blog).

Chocolate muffins

Muffins are a delicious teatime treat. This chocolate muffin recipe is very quick and easy to make. It is a good recipe to let your children loose with in the kitchen. The muffins are always a great hit with children. You can reduce the sugar content to make a less sweet version.

INGREDIENTS

Makes 12

250g self-raising flour

25g cocoa powder

2tsp baking powder

175g caster sugar (or 125g caster sugar and 50g muscovado sugar)

175ml milk

2 large eggs, beaten

100ml sunflower oil

75g plain chocolate chunks

1-2tsp vanilla extract

METHOD

1.Preheat the oven to 170ºC (375ºF, gas mark 5).

2.Line a 12-hole deep muffin tray with paper muffin cases.

3.Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder; stir in the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and mix lightly together.

4.Spoon the mixture into the prepared cases. Bake for approximately 20 mins or until golden and springy to the touch. Cool for 10 mins; transfer to a wire rack and leave until cold.

Spicy squash soup

You know that Halloween is just around the corner when pumpkin and squash start to appear in the shops. My husband plants different varieties of squash in our garden every year. Last year we had an abundance of the ‘carnival squash’ (one of my favourites). It is cream speckled with orange and dark green colours. The flesh tastes rather like a sweet potato and it is delicious in soups. 

This year he planted some ‘sweet dumpling squash’, which are pale skinned with green flecks. The flesh of this squash suits both sweet and savoury dishes. He also planted some good old butternut squash for us to savour.

As the autumn nights are starting to draw in, I decided to whizz up some warming soup for a family supper and use up some of the squash from our garden. You can make this soup using either squash or pumpkin. I personally prefer to use squash as it has a lower water content. Whatever you use, you can make this soup as spicy as you wish to suit your taste. It really is very good and very warming.

INGREDIENTS

Serves 6

1.5 kg/lbs 5oz squash or pumpkin

4 tbspns olive oil

1 onion, sliced

1 tbspn grated fresh ginger

1 400ml can coconut milk (reserve 4 tablespoons if you want to drizzle some on the plate for service)

2 lemongrass sticks

850ml/1 ½ pts vegetable or chicken stock

1 teaspoon hot red Thai curry paste (remember, you can always add more if you want a really spicy soup)

lime juice and sugar to season

1 red chilli, sliced for serving (optional as the soup may be hot enough)

2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt (or to taste)

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C/gas 6.

2. Cut each squash/pumpkin into pieces, sprinkle with half the oil and season. Roast for about an hour or until the squash is tender throughout.

3. Meanwhile, put the remaining oil in a pan, put in the onion, ginger and lemongrass and cook for about 10 minutes until the onions are soft over a medium heat (take care not to let them take on colour).

4. Stir in the curry paste and cook for one minute. The add the roasted squash or pumpkin and the stock. Bring to a simmer and cook for five minutes. Take out the lemongrass and blitz the ingredients with a blender. Return the soup to the pan and season with salt, pepper, lime juice and sugar to taste.

5. To serve, you can drizzle some of the coconut milk if you have reserved some, and sprinkle with the chopped chilli if you want the dish really spicy. Serve with a hunk of bread.

Making sushi

Makizushi (rolled sushi)

My son and youngest daughter have this thing about sushi, they love the stuff. They will eat Sushi with all sorts of toppings and fillings, raw fish, salmon roe, sea urchin even.  Years ago I lived in Japan, so I also share their love for sushi and quite like making it for dinner. Our issue is that we can’t really source fish fresh enough to slice and make the full range of  traditional sushi. So instead we make rolled sushi called ‘makizushi’. Maki means ‘to roll’. Sometimes this type of sushi is also called ‘norimaki’, which means a dried seaweed (nori) roll.

Making makizushi only takes a few ingredients. Most of them can be found in good supermarkets, or from specialist Chinese or Thai shops. You will need some sushi rice, dried seaweed sheets, rice wine, some wasabi (a hot horseradish paste) and some good soya sauce. I think Kikoman is the best. I make my makizushi with some cooked salmon and cucumber strips flavoured with soya sauce and ginger. 

You can also make it with a whole range of other items:-

Smoked makerel, cut into thin strips

Smoked salmon – you can use sheets or scraps cut into srtips

Tuna mayonnaise

Avocado – cut into strips and use with crab stick or makeral strips

Crab stick

Takuan – pickled radish

Umeboshi = pickled plum (an aquired taste)

Shitake mushrooms

HOW TO MAKE YOUR MAKIZUSHI

It is important to use sushi rice when making any type of sushi. This is a short grain rice that cooks up into a wonderful sticky consistency. If you use an ordinary long grain rice it will end up being too dry.

Serves 4-6, or you can make smaller rolls to serve as canapes

10oz Japanese rice

3 tbspns  rice vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1. Wash the rice well to remove excess starch, cook it and let it steam. To do this, put the rice in a pot and cover the rice with water (double the amount of rice). Allow the rice to come to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Turn the heat off, cover with a lid and allow the rice to steam and cook for a further 15 minutes.

2. Prepare sushi vinegar (sushi-zu) by mixing rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a cup. Stir well to dissolve the granules.

3. Spread the hot steamed rice into a large plate or a large bowl. Use a non-metallic bowl to prevent any interaction with rice vinegar. Sprinkle the vinegar mixture over the rice with a spoon or spatula quickly. Take care not to smash the rice.

4. Allow the rice to cool and use sushi rice right away. Use a bamboo rolling sheet to help roll up the sushi. 

6. Put the filling of your choice in the middle.

7. Roll it.

8. Then cut the roll into slices and serve with soya sauce and some wasabi.

Cooking with lavender

Lavender has been widely recognized over the centuries for its healing qualities. The Romans first called it lavender which may have come from the Latin verb “lavare” meaning “to wash”, or from the word “livendulo” which means “livid or bluish”. For me the flower immediately conjures up all sorts of images of soaps and oils. It also reminds me of the perfumes worn by my primary school dinner ladies who predominantly seemed to wear a blue rinse in their hair.

Traditionally it is not something that we Brits add to our food, although the French have several recipes where they use lavender in a dish or preserve. However, it is fair to say that lavender has undergone a revival in our kitchens over the past ten years. It is starting to be seen in British cuisine and it can now be found on menus in the more adventurous eateries across the UK. I think that using lavender in cooking adds a really interesting dimension to a dish, both savoury and sweet. It is perhaps an acquired taste and a bit like Marmite – you either love the taste, or you hate it - but it definitely is worth a try.

You can buy dried lavender for use in food direct or online from lavender farms across the UK. Be sure to ask for one specifically for use in food as it will not have all the pesticides sprayed on the flowers. I pick lavender from my own garden, dry it and store it in containers. You can store the flowers on their own in a jar, or if you wish to use the flowers for sweet dishes only, mix a handful with some sugar (about a quarter of the quantity of the total should be flowers the rest sugar).

I thoroughly recommend that you give lavender a whirl in your cooking. It tastes fantastic in ice-cream, in meringues, in biscuits (my children adore these) and cooked with lamb. Another delicious way to use lavender is to add a tablespoon of the dried flowers to some chopped strawberries, add a sprinkling of sugar and leave them to macerate for an hour. These strawberries will taste fantastic with a piece of chocolate cake! Go on, have a go, there are some delicious recipes for you to try out below.

Lavender meringues

INGREDIENTS

3-4 fresh unsprayed lavender stems, flowers only or 1 tablespoon of dried flowers

2 large free-range egg whites

100g/3½oz caster sugar

150ml/5fl oz double cream

½ tbsp icing sugar

METHOD

1.Preheat the oven to 130C/250F/Gas ½. Line a large baking tray with baking paper.

2.Grind the lavender flowers in a mortar and pestle for 1-2 minutes, or until fragrant.

3.In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites using an electric whisk until stiff peaks form when the whisk is removed. 
Gradually whisk in the caster sugar, a tablespoonful at a time, until all of the caster sugar has been incorporated into the mixture and the mixture is thick and glossy.

4.Sprinkle one tablespoonful of the ground lavender flowers over the egg white mixture and whisk until combined.

5.Spoon the meringue mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large plain nozzle. Pipe 32 small swirls of the meringue mixture onto the prepared baking tray. 


6.Transfer the meringues to the oven and immediately reduce the temperature to 100C/225F/Gas ¼. Bake the meringues for two hours, or until crisp but not coloured. Turn off the oven and leave the meringues inside until the oven is cool. When the meringues have cooled, store them in an airtight tin until needed.

7.No more than 30 minutes before serving, pour the cream into a mixing bowl and sift over the icing sugar. Whip using an electric whisk until soft peaks form when the whisk is removed.


8.Place a teaspoonful of the cream mixture onto the base of one of the lavender meringues, then sandwich the cream between a second meringue. Place onto a large serving plate. Repeat the process with the remaining meringues, then serve immediately.