Mushroom And Swiss

Burger joint Hardees has a sandwich called Mushroom n Swiss, a beef patty covered in a dark mushroom mixture and topped with a slice of something that may once have been based on emmental. Sarah has always had a fatal weakness for this particularly fine example of fast food at its most terrifying. The trouble is, of course, that it’s delicious. It’s only shortly afterwards that you realise the aftertaste isn’t a fine countryside organic wholefood experience but a powerful charge of salt, sugar and awful chemical compounds designed to smack your tastebuds so hard around the head they don’t even realise they’re eating mass produced processed gunk that, without the chemicals, would be a tasteless pile of goo leached of any goodness or flavour.

There’s a vile little recipe circulating on the interwebs that uses tinned mushrooms and Campbell’s mushroom soup to recreate the Mushroom n Swiss experience. I find it odd how many American recipes start with ingredient lists of packets of this and cans of that. It’s almost as if raw food doesn’t exist.

Anyway, here’s a go at doing a homemade mushroom n swiss that doesn’t use canned shite. Although it does use other things that my old mum wouldn’t allow in the house. It’s a guilty pleasure, this one...

Ingredients

• 250g fresh button mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tbsp mushroom soy sauce
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 100ml wine or stock
• Oil
• 500g minced beef
• Processed Emmental slices
• Golden Loaf Bakery burger baps (the sesame ones)

Splash a frying pan with the oil and fry off the mushrooms on a high heat so they brown and then start to relax and become moist. Slosh in the soy sauce and mix it all up, followed by the other ingredients. Keep it all moving in the pan and cook until it’s a mixture of soft mushroom in a thick, dark, sauce. Cover and keep in a warm place.

Split the beef into four balls of equal size and weight, then squash these into round discs – they should be 1-2 cm bigger all round than the buns and quite thin, you don’t want great thick patties that form a wodge inside the bun, you want a bun-matching beef patty experience - and the pattys shrink when you cook 'em (you might think that's too obvious to mention, but many burger-serving restaurants that aren't massive chains get it wrong time after time). You can either pan-fry the patties with a quick brush of oil (use a grillpan) or, better, grill ‘em off. Either way, you don’t want to cremate ‘em, just seal them and let them cook through a little - there should be a tinge of pink in an ideal world. This is not true to the original, of course, which is a uniform grey. They’ll keep, covered, in a warm oven for a short while. Let’s face it, the chains will keep ‘em like that for hours...

Slice the buns in half and toast the cut faces, ideally under a grill. Slap a beef patty on a bun, slather with mushroom mixture and then top with a square of shiny, suspiciously un-emmental looking stuff from a packet. If you’re feeling wicked, slip one of these slices of wrongness under the patty as well.

Serve with chips, French fries or whatever you fancy. And tomato sauce. And mayonnaise. Even mix some Dijon with the mayo.  But don’t blame us – you chose to follow this recipe and the post burger guilt thing is entirely yours to deal with.

Rich Minty Lamb Stew

Here's another lamb dish to follow on from Alexander's delicious one below.

Both Spinneys and Park'N Shop have marinated lamb kebabs in a sweetish mint sauce. They are supposed to be grilled obviously but I don’t think the quality of meat is good enough for grilling and I find that they are always quite tough. However, I have now found another use for them!

The marinade is quite sweet and very minty but they really do make a great tasting rich stew.

I have taken to adding anchovies to anything to do with lamb, I find it really seems to bring out the best of the lamb's flavours. I know it seems a really strange combination, and god alone knows what inspired the first person to give it a go, but I promise you it is a marriage made in heaven. Whenever I roast a lamb leg I stab it all over and insert slivers of garlic, sprigs of rosemary and anchovy filets into all the little holes and it tastes fantastic! Trust me, I'm in insurance.


You will need:

4 skewers of marinanded minty lamb
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 onion, chopped fine
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 tsp fennel seeds
4 medium tomatoes
3 anchovy fillets
100ml red wine
100ml beef or lamb stock
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp tomato paste
Handful of chopped flat leaf parsley
½ tsp pimento
Pinch oregano


And then you need to:

Preheat oven to 400F/200C

In a heavy based casserole dish over a low heat glug in some EV olive oil and add the onions, garlic and carrots with a pinch of salt and the fennel seeds. Leave to gently sweat for about 5 mins.

Meanwhile put the tomatoes in a glass bowl and pour boiling water over them. Leave for about a minute, then remove and slip off the skins. Cut into quarters, remove the pith and seeds (discard) and then chop the flesh into small pieces. Add to the casserole dish.

Once the tomatoes have broken down into a bit of a paste remove the lamb cubes from the wooden skewers and throw into the pot.

Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a gentle boil. Once it is gently simmering place in oven and leave with lid on for at least an hour, but longer is much more betterer. Give it a stir every so often and if it looks to be drying out a bit pour in a little boiling water.

It really is as simple as that.

Serve with peas or French beans and some lovely garlicky roasted new potatoes with their skin on.

Loin of Lamb with garlic, lemon & rosemary rub

When you find a cheeky little lamb loin staring up at you from the shelf in the Organic, it’s time to grab it and rush home to cook this dinner party pleaser – you need the skin on the loin, but not if it’s a great big fatty lump of a thing, hence the choice of the Organic’s lamb rather than Spinneys’.

I served this one on a bed of wilted Thai celery leaves (because I could, that's why) and with sautéed potatoes and peas, but you can do what you want. Each loin is cut into two, giving you pretty much what you’d serve up with a 4-bone rack, but just without the bones getting in the way.

Ingredients

• 2 lamb loins, each @400g
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
• 6 cloves garlic, roughly grated
• 4 lemons, grated zest
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Red wine sauce

• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 1 tomato, skinned, deseeded & chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• ½ stick celery, chopped
• 300ml red wine
• 300ml good stock
• 25g butter
• 1 heaped tsp flour
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Fresh peppercorns

Mix together the rosemary, zest, garlic, salt and pepper. Oil a foil-lined baking tray. (I like to line it with foil to cut down on washing up because I’m bone idle). Cut each of the lamb loins in two and brush them with oil, sprinkling a little salt and pepper on them as you do so. Heat a grillpan and quickly sear the meat side of the loins, then turn them to cook the skin side down for a little longer, about 2-3 minutes. Spread the herb mixture over the loins on the meaty side as the skin side is cooking, adding a bit to the skin side too as you remove them to the baking tray to sit skin side up. These can sit around for a while until you’re ready to finish them.

For the red wine sauce, fry the onion, garlic and celery gently in a saucepan until everything’s nicely softened, then crank up the heat a little and add the tomato and then the stock and wine, then leave to cook away, partially covered, for 20-30 minutes over a medium heat, before blitzing it with a hand blender. Heat it for another 10-15 minutes, then strain it. Mix together the butter and flour to make a roux and add this to the sauce, re-heating it when you’re ready to serve.

I’m also fond of adding in a teaspoon of fresh pink peppercorns at the last minute.

Heat the oven to GM7/220C/425 and bake the lamb loins for 15 minutes (20 minutes for well done just a hint of pink showing and 25 minutes for cremated, Lamb Grise á la Goute de Femme Irlandais). Let them rest for five minutes in a warm place then serve ‘em up!

Boeuf en Daube Provençale

When I was a kid, my parents took me to eat at a posh restaurant (The Pheasant at Chalfont St Giles, if I recall) and I chose 'Scampi Provençale' from the menu. So I was precocious, sue me.

I loathed it - I knew what scampi was, it came fried in breadcrumbs with mayonnaise on the side and these dolts served it in a dish filled with tomatoes and red peppers and stuff! Yew!

I think my tastes may have matured a little since then.

Provençale means in the style of Provence and really, as far as I can see, in classic French cookery, means "with a bit o' tomato and maybe the odd mushroom and olive, if you must some red pepper and perhaps some 'erbs". It doesn't mean 'all sloshed with a red and raw sauce, tomato and pepper dominated with lots of bitter olives'. It's subtler than that.

Uber-cooks Elizabeth David and Margaret Costa's Boeuf Provençal recipes inspired me, Auguste Escoffier's repelled me ('cut up cold boiled beef and stew it in tomatoes and stuff. You can chuck in some olives and mushroom if you want' would be a reasonable precis). I've messed around with quite a few versions of this recipe quite a bit over the years and I love this, the result of all that messing.

All you need is a little time in hand but, like most smashing recipes, you can actually do all the prep the night before and then just store it in the fridge before taking it out to come to room temperature and then doing the oven baking the next day. As a party dish, this is perfect - you can simply forget about it until you're ready to serve it up. For a dinner party, I'd do it with some fresh boiled vegetables enlivened with a herb or two (dill seed for carrots, mint with peas, that sort of idea) and a really rich cream, truffle oil and butter laced potato mash. But that's just me...

The crushed garlic in this recipe is literally crushed with the blade of a knife so that it remains sort of intact, but in smashed up lumps rather than in garlic-crusher mush. If you know what I mean. If you can get your hands on good quality bouquets garnis, use these instead of the dried herbs and leave a comment telling us where you got ‘em. If you don’t live in the UAE, in Provence, for instance, don’t bother with the note, smartarse. As for olives, black are best but if you happen to only have green at hand (like the night I took this photo), I think St Peter may possibly overlook your transgression at the final reckoning.

You’ll also need some greaseproof paper, a casserole and an oven. I find a second glass of wine helps, too.

Ingredients
600g beef in small cube
70g smoked lardons or pancetta cubes
2 carrots, roughly chopped
2 largeish tomatoes, deskinned, deseeded & chopped
2 onions, sliced
6 cloves garlic, crushed
8-10 olives, quartered
250g button mushrooms, halved
2 bay leaves
2 tsp dried herbes de provence
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
250ml red wine
150ml good, strong stock
Olive oil

Heat your oven to GM2/150C/300F.

Heat up a good slosh of oil in a large frying pan and fry off the beef over a high heat. You’ll want to do this in batches, three or four of them, replenishing the oil as required. Space each batch of beef out in the pan so that it fries fast and hot and doesn’t ‘sweat’ and end up stewing. Turn it over when one side has browned, to seal it all around.

Sling the cooked beef into your casserole and sprinkle in the flour, stirring it in to coat the meat. Add some more oil to the pan (and, if you’re feeling ‘naughty’, a good sized chunk of butter) and fry off the onions, stirring them to stop them sticking and burning. Bring the mushrooms and then the lardons into the picture and stir fry them so that the onion softens and the mushrooms start to brown. Add the garlic and keep stir frying for a short while until everything’s looking browned (but not, please, burned), cooked and generally ready to heft into the casserole.

At this stage, I’d suggest hefting it into the casserole.

Add the carrot, the stock and the red wine, the seasonings and the herbs to the casserole and give it all a good stir. Place a sheet of greaseproof paper between the base and lid of the casserole and trim it around with a pair of scissors, then place it in the oven and leave it for 2 ½ hours while you do something more interesting, like compare that second glass of wine to the rest of the bottle (channeling Floyd, I know).

At the end of cooking, fling in the olives and stir them in, letting them heat through for a few minutes while you pour out the red and warm the plates.

Personally, I like to serve this with fresh vegetables (cauliflower, beans, peas) and chunks of warmed French bread with butter. But, as I said above, for a dinner party I'd do a rich, buttery mash.

Beef Wellington Recipe #2

Alexander already has a fabulous Beef Wellington recipe on TFE but I thought I would throw in my version, which of course is soooo much more betterer than his. Hmmm.

Anyway, this is a pretty much direct steal from Gordon 'Effing' Ramsey with a few of my own add-ins.

Before I start I just want to have one little lecture. This recipe is all about MEAT, it’s showcasing beef in a very opulent and sophisticated way, and so you need to make sure that the beef you buy and serve is of the very best quality.

In Dubai the beef available to us is pretty dire so we need to make the most of a bad lot. I am very fortunate that I have access to some of the best beef I have ever tasted through a great SA chum who brings it up from home but that avenue is closed at the moment sadly due to nonsensical local custom restrictions. Anyway, you need to splurge here, get the very best beef fillet that you can afford, a nice long thick piece, tied if necessary into a good log shape. Make sure the butcher has trimmed off any membrane or fatty bits. I work on approx 175-200g of beef per person.

You will need:

700-800g beef filet
500g puff pastry
2 large Portobello mushrooms
200g button mushrooms,
3 cloves of garlic
6 slices parma ham
1 heaped tbsp English mustard
3 tbsp brandy
Flat leaf parsley


And then you need to:

Put the mushrooms and the garlic in to a food processor and whizz to a coarse paste.

Scrape out the mushrooms into a large dry frying pan (no oil) add 1 tbsp of brandy and over a medium heat cook the mushroom mixture until it is dry. Add the chopped flat leaf parsley, seasoning and put to one side.

Lay the beef fillet on a board and grind a generous amount of black pepper all over. In the same frying pan heat 2 tbsp olive oil over high heat and sear the beef one all sides. Cook it pretty quick, just sear and colour the outside of the beef.

When almost done splash in 2 tbsp brandy and set light to it. FLAMBE!

Remove the beef and set to one side. Scrape any bits and pour the juices into a small pan in which you are going to make the port wine sauce.

Brush the English mustard over the beef.

Roll out the pastry into a large rectangle on a lightly floured surface.

Lay out the parma ham in the middle of the pastry in slightly overlapping layers. With a palette knife smear the mushroom mixture on top of the ham. Lay the beef on top and roll the pastry around the beef making sure it is covered first by the ham and mushroom layer. Trim off any pastry not needed and neatly tuck the ends in and lay on a lightly oiled metal baking tray with the seam side down.

Brush the pastry with beaten egg yolk and then bake in a hot oven (400F/200C) for 40 minutes. This will produce beef medium rare.

I serve this delicious beef with these potatoes and with green beans cooked in a thick tomato paste. I also make a small bowl of port wine sauce to go with it.

Grilled Pork Tenderloin Argie Style

From Francis Mallman's new book "Seven Fires" - Grilling the Argentine Way. If you like grilling, get this book. Throw away your other books on grilling.

Try this outside (it's smoky) on a cast iron griddle. ( a Lodge 30 cm ridged pan works well) This is so striking and delicious. For so few ingredients it is deeply complex. First the burnt-ness of the sugar (not incinerated just burnt) really punctuates the other flavors. There is a bitter, fruity floral aspect to the orange peel (and its olive oil), and that floral herbal aspect is heightened by thyme. Then there's that funky thing you get when you bite down on pork, and as you naturally breathe out through your nose, it's a wonderful mix of herbal, floral, meaty.

Pork Tenderloin with Burnt Brown Sugar, Orange Confit, and Thyme

2 boneless pork tenderloins, about 500g each

6 pieces orange confit, about 5 cm each (see below)

30 mlfresh thyme leaves

15 ml coarse salt (or to taste)

45 ml light brown sugar

30 ml oil from the orange confit

Lay the pork tenderloins on a work surface. Flatten with the palm of your hand. Tear the orange confit into 2.5 cm pieces and distribute over the top surface of the meat. Sprinkle with the fresh thyme and half the salt. Sprinkle the brown sugar on top and pat it down firmly with your hand. Drizzle with 30 ml of oil from the orange confit. Preheat the grill plate (not a perforated grill) or a large cast iron griddle over medium heat until a drop of water sizzles.

Using a wide spatula, lift the pork tenderloins one by one and invert them sugar side down onto the griddle. Do not move them for 5 minutes. If the sugar begins to smell unpleasantly burned, adjust the heat by moving the griddle and lowering the flame. When the sugar side is well browned, turn the tenderloins. Cook on all sides for 10 to 15 minutes more, or until done to taste. The internal temperature should be 60 degrees for a rosy pink. If you dont like rare pork, take it up to 70 degrees (Celsius) Remove the meat to a carving board and allow to rest, tented with foil, for 10 minutes before slicing.

Serves 6

Orange Confit

4 oranges

3 bay leaves

12 whole black peppercorns

500 ml plus 45 ml evoo

200 ml cup white wine

30 ml coarse salt

Cut the oranges in half. Squeeze the juice and reserve for another use. Place the squeezed orange halves in a 3 litre saucepan. Add the bay leaves, peppercorns, 3 tablespoons olive oil, white wine and water to cover. Add salt and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook until the orange peel is tender, about 25 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool in the liquid.

When cool enough to handle, drain the oranges. Tear the peel into rough strips about 25 mm wide. Place a strip of orange peel skin side down on a work surface and, using a very sharp paring knife, scrape away every bit of the white pith.

Place the strips of orange zest in a bowl and cover completely with extra virgin olive oil. This will keep, covered tightly in the refrigerator, for at least a week.

Slow Roasted Lamb Shanks

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe and is an absolute winner. For some extraordinary reason this dish is a big hit with my children, who are the world’s fussiest eaters, so double bonus points all round.

I serve this with a big pile of slightly sloppy creamy mashed potatoes.

You will need:

4 lamb shanks
180ml white wine
2tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 celery stalks, chopped fine
1 carrot, chopped very fine
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 can chopped tomatoes
6 anchovy fillets
Pinch of dried mixed herbs
Fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped.
1 tbsp fresh rosemary chopped fine
Plain flour
Dried herbs



And then you need to:

Heat a heavy casserole dish over a medium flame and glug some EV olive oil in.

Rub the fresh rosemary over each of the shanks and then dust with a little flour which has been seasoned with sea salt and pepper.

When the oil is hot brown the four lamb shanks and then remove and set to one side.

Turn the heat down a little and throw in the onion, garlic, carrot and celery and a pinch of salt. Gently sweat the vegetables for about 10 minutes.

Add the balsamic vinegar and reduce. Add the white wine and again reduce by about half.

Add the tomatoes, pinch of dried herbs and the anchovies, bring to the the boil, and put the lamb shanks back in the pot. Put on a lid and place in a preheated over (350F/175C). After 1 hour and 30 minutes remove the lid and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Place one lamb shank on each plate, stir the flat leaf parsley into the remaining sauce and then spoon over the delicious thick tomatoey stew and serve with creamy mashed potatoes.

Risotto

Right! That's enough American food! Time to bring things back to the 'old continent'!

This is not the only risotto on The Fat Expat – HMHB’s prawn number is linked here – but this is how I likes it and should be a pretty foolproof approach to a dish that many people find a little intimidating. Like most rice cookery, it's a great deal less fuss than they'd have you believe. Whoever 'they' are - the same people that tell you not to eat potatoes with your roast or that wine is bad for you or whatever other mad fad 'they' have decided to burden us with.

This one is actually a ‘rizi bizi’, but you can play about with ingredients based around the basic principle, which remains the idea of frying the rice with onion and garlic, adding wine to cook and soak into the fat grains of Arborio rice and then cooking the rice in a good, rich stock that’s kept hot throughout the cooking process.

You need a fat-grained Italian rice like Arborio. Don't blame me if you do something daft like trying this with basmati...

Ingredients

• 215g Arborio rice
• 900ml good chicken stock
• 150ml white wine
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 70g smoked lardons/pancetta cubes
• 150g peas
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp truffle oil
• 50g fresh parmesan, grated

Put the stock in a pan and heat until it’s just about to start bubbling. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a covered frying pan over a medium heat, adding the onion and cooking for a few minutes to soften. Add in the lardons (or pancetta or other small cubes of smoky stuff you have to hand, garlic and rice and stir fry for another couple of minutes, then add the wine. Keep stirring the mixture until the wine soaks into the rice, another couple of minutes. Now ladle some of the stock into the rice mixture and give it a stir. Repeat this every time the rice mixture looks like drying out, it’ll take something like 20-25 minutes for the rice to be cooked – you’re aiming for ‘al dente’, so that there’s still some bite in the grains, so do check it frequently towards the end of the cooking time. About 15 minutes in, add the peas and the truffle oil. When it’s done, add in the parmesan and serve immediately.

Can you cook a risotto and reheat it when you want to serve it? Everyone says no, but I've tried turning off the heat when the frozen peas go in, adding the rest of the stock then reheating it later on when I'm almost ready to serve it and I've got away with it. Purists the world over are screaming blue murder, I know. But sometimes you do just want to 'get away with it', no?

Fillet Steak

With Date Caramelised Onions and Red Wine Sauce



I have come close to employing physical violence when trying to get Spinneys' butchers to cut me a decent set of fillet steaks 'in the round' without gristle, lumpy bits and so on. You're after a 'restaurant' steak, a little round tower of warm, tender fillet - not some misshapen wodge of scraps that belongs in the mincer. And don't let 'em get away with the trick of wrapping said wodge in cling film. It might look like Keira Knightley on the shelf, but when you take that plastic wrap off, you'll be looking at Matt Lucas.

If you're a) super-rich or b) financially screwed so badly you're beyond caring, then the Organic Supermarket has steak that defies superlatives and butchers that give a hoot. The combination is compelling.

Ingredients

• 4 fillet steaks cut ‘in the round’
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 4 bunches fresh local spinach
• 1 red chilli, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• 1 tsp salt

Red Wine Sauce

Date Caramelised Onions


Wash and de-stem the spinach and then leave it in a colander or large bowl to drain thoroughly.

Pan fry each fillet steak to seal them in 2 tbsp of oil and place them on an oiled baking tray.

When you’re almost ready to serve, put them in the oven (and have the red wine sauce and caramelised onions warming) at GM9/240C/475F for 5 minutes blue, 10 minutes medium rare, 15 minutes medium and 20 minutes cremated. While the steak is cooking, heat the rest of the oil in a large covered pan and add the chilli, garlic and onions, then the spinach, fry this, turning so that it wilts and then cover it on a low heat. You’re looking to time this so that you’re covering the spinach as the steaks finish, so about five minutes before the steak is due is about right.

When the steaks are cooked, turn the heat off and let them sit for five minutes while you get everything ready to plate up.

Use a cooking ring to place the spinach on each warmed plate (let it drain off when you remove each batch from the pan and then use a paper towel to soak up any liquid on the plate. Place the steak on top of the spinach, the caramelised onion on the steak and then the sauce around. Remove the ring, add the potato or other vegetables to the plate and you’re in business.

True Tex-Mex Chili.- The Great Chili Cook-off

The Gauntlet has been thrown. The weapons? Pots of chili at dawn.

To bean or not to bean? That is the question!      Sorry.

This chili contains no tomatoes, you could add beans, but not black beans, please. It is supposed to be the authentic border chili. Adapted from a family chuckwagon recipe given me by the Sanchez brothers from Houston, whose family had been cattle drovers and ranged from Texas to Canada. (Used to be called Cowboys.) The original recipe had no garlic either, and substitutes white hominy for the beans.

First, very important to note that the chilies which should be used to make this are not any of those commonly used in the orient. Most of the chiles are not very hot, but give a deep base to the dish. The heat is provided to taste by a few hotter types, like Jalapeño/Scotch bonnet/Habanero/Cayenne.

A word about the spelling. Chile is correct in Spanish. Chili is correct in English. 

Ingredients.

15 Guajillo chilies.

5 Puja Chilies

3 New Mexico Chilies

2 Chipotle Chilies

1 Habanero Chili or substitute 15 g ground cayenne. 

All the chilies above are dried.

About 300 g of each of the following:

Skirt steak, finely cubed, not minced

Chuck steak finely cubed.

Brisket, finely cubed.

5 large onions, diced

15 large cloves of garlic, chopped.

30 g whole cumin, toasted in a dry pan and then ground

15 g oregano (Mexican, if you can get it)

Black pepper straight from the grinder to taste.

Salt to taste.

75 g dark chocolate

Water as necessary.

Cornmeal or masa harina as necessary. 1 can of white hominy (optional)

or red or pinto beans.

If you can't get the chiles, then use 100g Gebhardt's chili powder, but only as a last resort. All the types aren't available everywhere. If using Gebhardt's, go directly to step 2. If not, skip step 2. It works OK with chile powder, but is not quite the same, true chile.

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1. Take your chilies and pull off the stem and shake out the seeds. If want a milder chili you can also remove the white veins. Make sure to get all the seeds. Once you have your deseeded chilies you need to boil water equivalent to the volume of chilies and the turn off the heat. 

Make sure that the pot has a lid or when you add the chilies you'll pepper-spray your kitchen with the spicy steam. Add the chilies, and put on the lid. Wait until the pot has cooled to the point where you can touch the sides with your hand. Then puree the whole lot until it's smooth. An immersion blender is good for this. This is your chile paste.

OR

2. Put 100g Gebhardt's in a dry pan, and heat slowly until very slightly toasted, careful not to burn it. Once the aroma comes up, you can take the pan of the heat. Blend this with 100 ml of beef stock or water. 

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Next you need to brown your meat. Do this in batches. Add a little salt, pepper and toasted, freshly ground cumin at this point. Don't overdo it you just want to make the meat suck in some flavor but not make it bitter and over spiced. Brown until, well, brown.

At the same time saute the ton of diced onions and garlic, being careful not to burn the garlic. If you're going for perfection you could immersion blend this after it's cooked and then add it to the meat. Now add your chili paste and more cumin and maybe black pepper. Taste it. It should be tasting nice but raw and not quite integrated. Add the choclate and mix it in. After it simmers for a while taste it again and correct the seasoning. Usually you will find that it either needs more garlic, heat (add powdered cayenne), cumin or black pepper and salt.

Your chili should have simmered a good while now. Time to add cornmeal or masa flour, add corn meal or  masa a few tablespoons at a time. Let it settle in for ten minutes and then reevaluate and add more if needed. Tip in the hominy or beans if you must.....

You're trying for Hormel consistency here. Too thick?  Add beer or chili water or stock. Too fatty? Add some vinegar. Done. If you don't add the beans directly to the chili, here is a recipe for the proper beans. To be served separately. Also serve grated cheddar and chopped onion in separate bowls.

Drunken Beans. (Frijoles Borrachos)

300 g dried pinto beans, picked over.for stones & debris.

500-600 ml pilsner beer 

1 large onion, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic

Sofrito

2 green peppers, deseeded and roughly chopped.

1 small onion roughly chopped

4 cloves garlic roughly chopped

a large pinch of freshly ground cumin

a pinch of freshly ground oregano.

30 ml olive oil.

Salt to taste

Vinegar to taste.

Soak the beans overnight in water to cover. Drain and place in a 2-litre saucepan or pressure cooker. Puree the onion and 3 cloves garlic with the beer, and pour over the beans. Don't add salt at this point. Cook over low heat until the beans are soft (depending on how old the beans are the time will vary. Using a pressure-cooker, about 35 minutes, if not, maybe 1 hour. Keep the pot covered, stir regularly  

Saute the sofrito ingredients in the olive oil and add them to the beans, Now add the salt/vinegar to taste, stir, and simmer for 10 minutes more. The consistency should be slightly soupy. Ready.

Red Beans & Rice

Serves 8

The quintessential New Orleans dish, traditionally served on Mondays.(washing day) A lot of this can be trial-and-error, and it's going to take a little practice before you ll get it just right. This dish is special. It's delicious, it's cheap, it's simple, and it makes you feel good. It's the number one comfort food in the world.

You'll probably want to fiddle with it each time you make it, and arrive at the exact, instinctual combinations of seasonings that you like. Feel free to alter this recipe to your taste, but don't stray too far.

You can make this dish completely vegetarian, and it's still really good. Instructions below. There are probably as many versions as there are cooks. This one is from Chuck Taggart, a New Orleans native.(adapted slightly for use outside the U.S.)

Ingredients

• 500g red kidney beans, dry
  
• 1 large onion, chopped
  
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
  
• 5 ribs celery, chopped
  
• As much garlic as you like, minced (5 or 7 cloves, always use odd numbers of cloves)
  
• 1 large smoked ham hock, 300g of Creole-style pickle meat (pickled pork), or 300g smoked ham, diced.
  
• 500-750g mild or hot smoked sausage or andouille, bias sliced.
  
• A large pinch of dried thyme leaves, crushed
  
• 1 or 2 bay leaves
  
• As many dashes of Crystal hot sauce or Tabasco as you like
  
• A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
  
• Red pepper and black pepper to taste
  
• Salt to taste
  
• Fresh Creole hot sausage or chaurice, links, grilled or fried, one link per person (optional) Any kind of good sausage will do.
  

Pickled onions (optional)

Soak the beans overnight, if possible. The next day, drain and put fresh water in the pot. (This helps reduce the, erm, flatulence factor.) Bring the beans to a rolling boil. Make sure they are always covered by water, or they will discolor and get hard. Boil for about 45 - 60 minutes, until they are tender but not falling apart. Drain.

While the beans are cooking, sauté the Trinity (onions, celery, bell pepper) until the onions turn translucent. Add the garlic and saute for 2 more minutes, stirring occasionally. After the beans are boiled and drained, add the sautéed vegetables to the beans, then add the ham hock (or ham or pickle meat), smoked sausage, seasonings, and just enough water to cover.Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a low simmer.

Cook for 2 hours at least, preferably 3, until the whole thing gets nice and creamy. Adjust seasonings as you go along. Stir well, stir well. (If the beans are old -- say, older than six months to a year -- they won't get creamy. Make sure the beans are reasonably fresh. If it's still not getting creamy, take 1 or 2 cups of beans out and mash them, then return them to the pot and stir.) If you can ... let the beans cool, stick them in the fridge, and reheat and serve the next day. They'll taste a lot better. If you do this, you'll need to add a little water to get them back to the right consistency.

Serve generous ladles over hot white long-grain rice, with good French bread and good beer. grilled or broiled fresh Creole hot sausage or chaurice on the side is also good. Try serving a few small pickled onions with the red beans -- Chop them up and mix them in with the beans. Also a good idea to sprinkle some spring onions on top.

Vegetarian Version

Follow the same instructions as for the regular version above, except:

Omit the ham hock (or ham or pickle meat), and the smoked sausage.

Add 2 tablespoons vegetable oil along with the seasonings.

Add 1 teaspoon (or enough as you like, to taste) of liquid smoke seasoning. The vegetable oil helps replace the fat you get from the sausage, and the liquid smoke flavoring helps replace the smokiness you get from the smoked sausage and smoked ham hock. Be very careful with liquid smoke, though ... a little goes a long way and it's really easy to overdo it.

Fillet Steaks with Mushroom Topping

This is an adaptation of a Gordon Ramsey recipe. It’s very simple, much of it can be done ahead and yet is pretty sophisticated. A great dinner party dish.

Get the best quality steaks you can afford.


You will need:

4 lovely pieces of fillet steak
200g button mushrooms
2 large or 4 medium Portobello mushrooms
50g grated parmesan
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 tbsp brandy
75ml whipping cream
Small handful of chopped flat leaf parsley


And then you need to:

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Chop all the mushrooms quite small.

Heat a frying pan and put the chopped mushrooms in along with the chopped garlic and the brandy. No oil, butter etc. Fry over lowish heat until the mushroom mixture is quite dry, it’ll take about 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile whip the cream until firm. Once the mushrooms are cooked add them to the cream along with the parmesan and the parsley. Set to one side.

Lightly cover the steaks with EV olive oil and then liberally grind black pepper all over the steaks.

Using a very hot cast iron griddle (or a BBQ, or a frying pan) quickly sear the steaks on all sides. You are not cooking the steaks just searing them.

Put the steaks in an oven dish and carefully spoon the mushroom mixture equally over each of them. The mushroom mixture should be quite firm, not sloppy. You can do up to this point quite a way ahead and just stick the prepared steaks in the fridge. If you do however, take them out of the fridge for a while before going in the oven.

Please the steaks in the oven for 10 minutes until the mushroom mixture has started to bubble and brown a little.

Serve straightaway.

I served this dish last week with these yummy potatoes, green beans with a tomato sauce and carrots cooked in a little butter, orange juice, pinch of sugar and 1 tsp sesame seeds. It all went down a treat.

Dublin Coddle

Right. This is amazing winter food and is probably about as far from a ‘real and genuine’ Dublin Coddle as you’re likely to get. It's simple, straightforward and invariably stunning.

Order this in Dublin and you’re likely to be confronted with a plate of flaccid Galtee sausages and pale streaky bacon rashers floating in a thick, clear, parsley-dotted gleet that looks like the kind of snot you get when you inhale CS gas.

This is different. It’s dark, rich, multi-layered and wickedly saucy. It's salty and meaty, smoky and deep. Topped with light dumplings that have been grilled off to make the top bit crunchy, served with warm brown soda bread and pats of rich butter, this is a totally original recipe and therefore an Englishman’s take on Coddle.

My advice, chaps? Take the soup...

You can use new potatoes, incidentally, when you can find them. The crushed garlic is flattened on the blade of a knife, not put through a mincing thingy.

Ingredients

• 8 Cumberland sausages
• 8 rashers smoked streaky bacon
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 pint Guinness
• 1 kg potato in 2cm cube
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 300 ml good stock
• 1 tsp salt

Dumplings

• 100 mg vegetable suet
• 100mg self raising flour
• 2 tsp dried parsley
• Cold water

In a large, covered, frying pan over a medium heat, dry fry the sausages, turning until they are browned on all sides. Reserve to cool, then slice each sausage into four pieces. Cut each of the the rashers into four pieces, and fry them until well cooked, adding a little oil and the chopped onion. Add in the flour and mix it in well to coat everything, then add the Guinness, the stock and the potatoes. Cook on a low, low heat for 40 minutes, then season, uncover and leave to cool until you’re ready to serve.

Mix the suet and flour together, add the parsley and then add the water until a soft dough is formed. When you’re almost ready to serve it up, reheat the coddle and use a cold spoon to form quenelles of dumpling mixture and dump them onto the surface of the mixture. Replace the lid and steam the dumplings on top of the softly bubbling coddle for 20 minutes over a low to medium heat, then fire up the grill and grill off the dumplings until they brown on top.

Serve with mustard on the side, warm soda bread, lashings of cold butter and a massive, rich deep sauvignon. And drink a toast to alexander.

Bouef Bourgignone

Serves 6




This is an all time classic. I use smoked bacon, which would earn me the rough edge of Elizabeth David’s tongue for a start. I also use a lot of garlic. Which I do in general. Follow this straightforward, classic French recipe and you’ll have a stunning, rich, unctuous dish that will make your dinner party guests empty their bank accounts in your favour just so that they get invited back. It's pronounced berf borginion.

Ingredients

• 1.3kg beef in 2cm cube
• 250g small button mushrooms
• 15 shallots
• 10-12 rashers smoked streaky bacon, sliced
• 8 cloves garlic, smashed
• 500ml red wine
• 45ml brandy
• 250 ml good stock
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 3-4 bay leaves
• Olive oil

Pour a kettle of boiling water over the shallots to make ‘em easier to skin, then skin them, slicing off any stray black rooty stuff but leaving the root end sealed so that the onions don’t separate during cooking. Flash fry the beef in batches so that it fries off and browns on all sides without stewing: you’ll need a glug of oil for each batch and a pretty fierce heat. Reserve each batch of beef in a large bowl, then drizzle the flour over it, cover it with cling film and give it a good toss.

Stop laughing there at the back of the class, Simon.

Now fry off the shallots in a glug of oil, adding in the bacon and stirring it to fry nicely, giving the shallots some brown spots and letting the bacon fry dry and start to brown. Add in the smashed garlic (by which I mean crushed with the blade of a knife) and then stir it all up before adding the beef and the bay leaves.

Mix everything up, leaving it cooking all the while over a high-ish heat, then add the stock and finally the wine. Incidentally, I like to put in 250ml of wine and reduce the other 250ml to about half before adding it, but it’s up to you.

And now turn the heat to as low as it’ll go and leave it to bubble away. I like to stir it every now and then, uncover it every now and then. But we’re looking at a 3-hour stint here. I also like to take it off the heat for 30 mins or so in that time, just to let it all get settled. And cooking it earlier in the day is a great idea, because you can take it off the heat after 1.5 hours and really let it cool before bringing it back up.

At the 1.5 hour mark, pan fry the mushrooms until they’re browned, turn the heat of the pan down (you do NOT want it too hot if you’re using gas, believe me) and add the brandy. Toss the mushrooms and brandy into the mixture and let nature do its work for the rest of the cooking time. Season, of course.

Serve with nothing more or less than a good dollop of creamy mashed potato.

Roast Duck with Grand Marnier Sauce

I really love duck, it is one of my most favourites meats, and feel that I don’t really cook it enough. Unfortunately it is very expensive to buy here in Dubai which probably restricts many of us from eating it often.

The glaze isn’t really necessary but does add quite a rich orange-y taste and of course a great colour.

Ingredients:

1 whole duck

Despite their size a duck doesn't actually contain that much meat and really one duck will only feed two or three people. You can stretch it out to four but piling on the veggies, but the serving is going to be pretty small.


For the Glaze:

100ml orange juice
100ml cointreau or Grand Marnier liquer
2 tsp orange zest
1 tbsp brown sugar

For the Sauce:

100ml orange juice
250ml chicken stock
100ml Grand Marnier
2 tbsp port
4 tsp orange zest
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp butter


And then you need to

For the glaze heat all ingredients together in a saucepan until very hot and all the sugar has melted. Lower heat to a simmer and reduce by about half.

Prick duck all over with a fork, give it a really good going over. Cover with foil, place on wire rack over roasting tray and place in hot oven (200C/400F). After 30mins take out, remove foil and pour off some of the fat and then pour the glaze over. Put back in and roast for another 30 to 45 mins. If you glaze the bird at the beginning the skin will burn with all the sugars in the glaze.

To make the sauce heat the balsamic vinegar and sugar over low heat until the sugar has melted. Never heat balsamic over a too high a heat as it can taste a bit bitter as a result.

Add stock and orange juice and boil for about 10 minutes. Add port and orange zest, boil for a further 5 minutes. Add Grand Marnier and boil again for a further 5 minutes, reducing and thickening the sauce all the time. Just before serving cut the butter into small cubes and whisk into sauce (off the heat).

Remove the duck from the oven and let sit for about 10 minutes or so. Slice the duck and put onto a platter, spoon some of the sauce over the duck and bring to the table. Pour the rest of the sauce into a gravy boat.

Steak au Poivre

Here is a fantastic retro dish that was all the rage in the 80’s and seems to have fallen off the menu somewhat.

It goes without saying that you need to buy the best quality steak you can for this dish. My personal preference would be for rib-eye, I just like the taste of more fat through my steak, but tradition demands a good sirloin.

You will need:

4 sirloin steaks
2 tbsp mixed peppercorns (black, red and green)
1 tsp butter
2 tbsp brandy
2 tbsp red wine
4 tbsp double thick cream


And then you need to:

Crush the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle and then press the peppercorns into both sides of each steak.

Heat a large frying pan (or a cast iron griddle if you have one) over a medium high heat and add the butter. It will foam pretty much immediately. Throw in the steaks and cook them for 3 minutes on each side. Depending on thickness this will likely give you medium rare steaks.

Pour in the brandy, hold a lighted match over the pan and stand well back.

FLAMBE!!!!

Put on extractor fan to remove smell of singed eyebrows and remove steaks and put on a warmed plate.

Add the wine to the pan, scraping up all the crispy bits. Add the cream and stir. If it looks like it is curdling add a little water and stir vigorously, it’ll be fine.

Let it bubble and thicken a little, and then pour gently over each of the steaks. Serve with my fantastic pomme frites and some crisp green salad leaves.

Bacon, Cabbage and Potatoes

The thermometer’s popping 50 and the humdity’s up and down: everyone’s down to dashing between car and house, car and work, car and mall. It’s that time of year, folks, when you just HAVE to sit down to eat a hot meal of food that was meant to be eaten in cold, winter climates!
This is traditional Irish cooking at its most traditional and Irish. And there’s only one way to cook it, too.

Sarah’s dad is a builder and, as men go, is pretty set in his ways. He’s home for lunch on the dot of noon and home for tea at 6 precisely. This is his favourite food, eaten with a glass of milk and great hunks of golden butter for the ‘shpuds’. And God help anyone that introduced a slip of garlic or, shudder, omitted the parsley sauce. The shpuds are the great challenge because, as anyone who has ever even looked across the Irish Sea knows, Irish shpuds are ‘floury’: there’s nothing like a bag of Irish ‘British Queens’ (and they giggle every time they buy them, because of the name), properly boiled up so that the skins split when they’re removed from the water and put on the hot range to wait for everyone to be good and ready - light, fluffy and just right for that all-important slab of butter to melt across them and soak into them. How can you get a spud like it in the Emirates? Well, you could pile down to the organic, where you’ll likely find ‘Irish potatoes’ on sale (they’re actually African, but let us not to quibble). You can use the red-skinned things that Spinneys sells, but they’re a bit waxy, as are the Lebanese potatoes that are all around us. If you can find something a little ‘older’ with a thicker skin, try it. But whatever you use, it’s very important to shake your head while you’re eating them and talk about how they’re not the same as a ‘good Irish shpud’.

A few words on bacon. Bacon is Irish for ham.

This is the national food of a nation of people that disdain formality and pomp: simple, good grub to line your stomach before you pile off down to Mahers, Molly’s or Mungovans, whichever it may be, for the craic and a few pints. Do give it a whirl - it’s just ideal for the Emirates in August!!!

Ingredients

• @1.5kg piece of bacon
• @750g savoy cabbage
• @1.2kg potatoes

Soak the bacon in a pan, covered with water, ideally overnight but you can do it for an hour or so. You can use green or smoked bacon: entirely up to you: if you’ve got it from Spinneys it should be nicely tied. If not, you’d better know how to tie bacon! Now bring the bacon up to a boil. While it’s doing that, boil a kettle of water. Now remove the water the bacon’s boiling in, including the foam that will have formed around and about, and then pour the boiling water in to cover the bacon and boil it again. Bring the boil down to a lively simmer so that bubbles are forming but it’s not going mad – and now give the bacon around 25 minutes per 500g of weight. At the end of the cooking time, test it by putting a sharp knife through the middle, it should plunge in quite easily. If not, give it a few more minutes and then retest it. Obviously you have to be sensible here, because if you keep going at it like a bunch of senators around a Caesar, you’ll end up with an awful mess of hacked bacon.

While the bacon’s doing its boiling, you can focus on the vegetables. First the shpuds: give these a good scrub, but leave them in their skins. You can either remove any ‘eyes’ from the potatoes or, as is traditional in Ireland, leave ‘em in. Start them off by pouring boiling water over them. They’ll need to boil for something like 25 minutes, but that’s really a product of your cooker – again, a test with a sharp, pointy knife should tell you, you’re looking for a clean plunge with perhaps a slight touch of 'edge' as you get near the centre. Remove them from the heat, drain them and put them somewhere warm in a dish. (While the shpuds are boiling is when I’d usually knock up the parsley sauce.)

The cabbage should be quartered and the tough stalk cut out. Then you can chop it into chunky, 3cm pieces. Incidentally, I would use the tougher outer leaves to make cabbage soup rather than chuck ‘em away.

As soon as the bacon’s cooked, remove it from the boiling water and do not throw the water out! Put the bacon to rest somewhere warm and add the cabbage to the bacon water. This will not take too long to cook, 10 minutes or so. You’re looking for just tender and still with a slight 'bite' rather than grey and slimy. Drain the cabbage and replace it in the pan with a knob of butter.

And now you’re good to go: slice the bacon, add the cabbage to each plate and serve it up along with a dish of piping hot spuds and a boat of parsley sauce for people to serve themselves. And don’t forget the butter for the shpuds!!!

Fast Beef in Red Wine

Bouef Bourgignone, that brilliant classic of great, rich French cuisine, is to my mind about as desirable as a stew can get. But it has drawbacks. It takes ages and it needs the right ingredients – and as we all know, sometimes those ingredients can be scarce. So if you don’t have pork belly and small shallots (or pickling onions) to hand and lack the (at least) two and a half hours’ cooking time that it’ll take to turn that braising steak into something edible, then this recipe will, within the hour, reward with something just as deep and delicious in under half the time. I look forward to the usual death threats from purists.

Fillet steak? Am I mad? Probably. That’s the key to getting a tender stew so quickly and in fact how this recipe got developed: I ended up with a slab of awful fillet, falling for the Spinneys’ trick of wrapping scraggy fillet-ends in cling film. With no time to take it back and feeling lazy, I did this. I can only justify using such an expensive cut for a stew with the time argument! As for mushrooms, I often use Carrefours’ mixed frozen mushrooms: quickly pan-fried before adding to the stew, you’d never notice they weren’t fresh. Use button mushrooms otherwise, though.

I like to serve this with pan-fried sweet cherry tomatoes and herby toast alongside something green (wilted spinach, peas, asparagus: whatever). So now you know I haven’t been going mad this week – it’s all been a cunning lead-up.

Try this with a cheeky Musar. If you’re going to eat fillet steak stew, at least do it in style...


Ingredients

• 500g fillet steak, in 2cm cube
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 8 smoked streaky rashers, roughly chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 500ml red wine
• 1 tbsp flour
• 150g mushrooms
• 1 tsp herbes de provence
• ½ tsp thyme
• 1 tsp salt

Heat a splash of oil in a covered, deep frying pan over a high heat and add the steak in two batches so that it fries dry rather than stewing in its own juices. Put the flour and herbs in a bowl and reserve the browned all round steak into this, tossing it to coat it with flour. Slosh the wine into the pan and boil it to reduce by half: this should take 10 minutes or so. Reserve the reduced wine. Wipe out the pan, add the oil and then add the onion to fry over a medium heat until it turns transparent. Turn the heat up and add the bacon, then the mushrooms and then the garlic, stir frying it all so that it starts to brown but doesn’t catch and burn. Re-introduce the steak and fry, stirring, for a minute more before adding the wine and stirring everything together well. Cover and turn the heat to low and leave for 45-60 minutes, depending on how much time you’ve got. Serve!

Beef Wellington

I stole this recipe from Michelle Bearryman, who deserves better, but then I’m a totally unprincipled cad when it comes to a good recipe. It’s an interesting and totally delicious variation on a ‘traditional’ Beef Wellington, adding a touch of creaminess and lightness rather than the old fashioned heavy, red flavours. Give it a whirl!

Ingredients

• 675g fillet steak
• Black pepper
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 350g puff pastry, thawed if frozen
• 1 egg, beaten

Parsley pancakes

• 50g plain flour
• Pinch salt
• 150ml of milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

Mushroom Pate

• 25g unsalted butter
• 1 local red onion, chopped
• 450g of assorted wild mushrooms, chopped
• 50g fresh white breadcrumbs
• 8 tbsp double cream
• 2 egg yolks

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/GM7. Season the fillet with plenty of pepper, some salt and perhaps a quick scattering of brandy. Heat the oil in a roasting tin, add the steak and quickly sear to brown all sides.

Transfer the fillet to the oven and roast for 20 minutes – you can give it 25 minutes if you’re keen on well done steak. Set aside to cool.

For the pancakes, beat the flour, salt, half the milk, the egg and parsley together until the mixture’s smooth, then stir in the remaining milk. Heat a greased, non-stick pan and pour in enough batter to coat the bottom. When set, turn over and cook the other side briefly until lightly browned. Continue with remaining batter - the recipe makes three or flour.

Fry the shallots or onion in butter to soften without colouring. Add the mushrooms and cook until their juices begin to run. Increase the heat and cook briskly so that the juices evaporate. Combine the breadcrumbs with the cream and egg yolks. When the mushroom are quite dry, add the bread and cream mixture and blend to make a smooth paste. Allow to cool.

Now roll out the pastry and cut into a rectangle around 36x30cm. Place two of the pancakes on the pastry and spread with mushroom pate. Place the beef on top and spread over any remaining pate, then cover with the remaining pancakes. Cut out four squares from the corners of the pastry, moisten the pastry edges with egg and then wrap them over the meat. Use the reserved pastry trimmings to decorate the top.

When you’re ready to finish the Wellington, turn the oven to 190C/375F/Gas5. Brush the pastry with beaten egg. Cook the Wellington for about 30-35 minutes until it’s golden brown.

Beef Madras

This is a wickedly strong, dark and rich curry: spicy enough to need a raita on the side for the more genteel palate. Although you can use tomato puree, I prefer to use pureed tomato: tinned tomato drained and given a quick whizz, which is slightly lighter. The whole curry is thickened by the whopping dose of powdered spice together with the natural reduction during cooking. The end result can only be described as ‘massive’...

Ingredients

• 500g lean beef in 2cm cube
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 local red onions, finely chopped
• 2 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 200 ml pureed tomato
• 250ml good beef stock
• 3 tbsp oil
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 2 tsp garam masala

Marinate the beef in the lemon juice and salt for a good 30 minutes. You’ll need a good extractor fan for the next step. Heat the oil in a wide-bottomed, covered pan and add the onion, garlic and chilli flakes. Stir ‘em up and fry for a couple of minutes, taking care to keep your face well away from the pan: the chilli hit is enormous and will have you coughing like a tear-gassed demonstrator outside a WEF plenary if you don’t watch it.

Add the coriander, ginger, pepper, cumin and turmeric, stirring the mixture so that it mixes well and doesn’t stick too much. Add the beef pieces, lifting them out of the lemon juice and fry to seal and brown them a little. After another couple of minutes, slip the remaining lemon juice into the pan and stir it in, then the pureed tomato. Once this has been stirred in, add the beef stock and then bring to a boil. Turn the heat to low and cover the pan and cook for a good 30 minutes, giving it the occasional stir (and discarding any water that’s gathered on the pan lid). If you’re doing this for entertaining, you can remove the lid and leave it to stand and cool a little before reheating. Otherwise, remove the pan lid, add the garam masala and cook for a further ten minutes. By now you should have a thick sauce. If not, cook it for a little more uncovered.

Serve with a cooling raita and, perhaps, an excellently rich dal.