Strange, or maybe not, how 'the fixings' are so often the elements of a special meal that stand out. It's a cliche, but people at Christmas are wont to say if asked to choose between the meats and the accompaniments it's the gravy, bread sauce and stuffing that they'd prefer. Maybe that's because we're too lazy or busy to do them as frequently as we'd like. I swear blind every December 25th that I will make bread sauce more often, and here we are in mid-November and I haven't made any since that date. With The Dear Leader (tremble before her power) now 98.75% vegetarian I must make some veggie-friendly stuffing with bread sauce as a Sunday special, maybe with onion gravy, something we enjoyed last night and that I do cook several times a year. The urban peasant side of me relishes the thought that such a spread is very cheap, too.
Any excuse for onion gravy. Having come across two recipes for celeriac 'steaks' in the past week I decided to give the idea a go myself, but with the twist of aiming for (pretend) steak and (real) onions, a childhood favourite.
One of said recipes boiled thick slices of celeriac for 20 minutes before frying them in butter to finish, the other roasted them, so as I had the oven on to bake bread (I'll make someone a lovely wife) I opted for the latter route, coating the 10mm-thick slices in olive oil and a dusting of smoked paprika before sliding them in with the bread. They cooked at 190C, turned once, for about 30 minutes, till starting to show charring at the edges.
The celeriac was pleasant, strangely enough still tasting of celeriac rather than braising steak, though the texture was not far off, but the onion gravy with which they were covered on the plate - a load of red onions sweated, reduced and slightly caramelised for 45 minutes - was the star of the show. Some tawny port added sweetness, plain flour thickened things, half a tsp of Marmite gave it umami depth (stop showing off, Kyle), and a knob of butter added gloss at the end.
Heston B would doubtless wish to add a vanilla pod, eyebrow trimmings and donkey cheese to give it a lift (and justify charging the price of a high-end bicycle for a jar). He'd be wrong. If it ain't broke, don't fix the fixing.
Showing posts with label bread sauce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread sauce. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 November 2019
Sunday, 3 January 2016
Good Stuff
Much to SC's annoyance I make the same pronouncement at every Christmas lunch: I'd rather have the accompaniments than the meats, if it came down to a choice. Not that it did, this year we got outside much of a turkey crown and a double wing rib of beef (the latter supplied from the fine Aberdeen Angus cattle of Henry Rowntree). Both were excellent, but it was the stuffing and the bread sauce that will live long in the taste memory.
Whisper it softly, but the bread sauce was an improvement on the blessed Delia's, whose recipe I followed in the main. The quantity of onion and pepper in the steeping milk was doubled, however, left longer, and removed and binned before the breadcrumbs were added, not returned (until it's nearly time to serve) as she suggests. I always make it with nutmeg rather than cloves which are far too medicinal for me. It tasted wonderful, and was as white as the snow that one fears we may never see again.
The stuffing was equally simple: 2oz of breadcrumbs, a medium onion chopped very finely, six sage leaves ditto, the meat from two butcher's sausages, a handful of walnuts reduced to crunchy nibs for texture, seasoning, and an egg to bind it all together. Cooked at 160C for an hour in a dish as deep as it is wide the top was brown and the inside still moist.
To prove my point, at least partly, the turkey and beef made fine sandwiches and snacks for several days; the few bites of bread sauce and stuffing went before Boxing Day was done.
Whisper it softly, but the bread sauce was an improvement on the blessed Delia's, whose recipe I followed in the main. The quantity of onion and pepper in the steeping milk was doubled, however, left longer, and removed and binned before the breadcrumbs were added, not returned (until it's nearly time to serve) as she suggests. I always make it with nutmeg rather than cloves which are far too medicinal for me. It tasted wonderful, and was as white as the snow that one fears we may never see again.
The stuffing was equally simple: 2oz of breadcrumbs, a medium onion chopped very finely, six sage leaves ditto, the meat from two butcher's sausages, a handful of walnuts reduced to crunchy nibs for texture, seasoning, and an egg to bind it all together. Cooked at 160C for an hour in a dish as deep as it is wide the top was brown and the inside still moist.
To prove my point, at least partly, the turkey and beef made fine sandwiches and snacks for several days; the few bites of bread sauce and stuffing went before Boxing Day was done.
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Don't Trim the Trimmings
I wrote a post the other day about a sprout not being just for Christmas, and this one is along the same lines - why should bread sauce only appear on December 25th, never to be seen again for the rest of the year?
I'm not sure if this is about leftovers - though the crumbs now waiting to be added to steeping milk were from a roll past its best - or about making the ordinary special with a bit of forethought. Today's main meal is to be roast chicken, with a few if not all the trimmings: gravy made from the meat juices, stuffing (cooked on its own not in the bird), and the bread sauce. I'll make roast potatoes too, with the fat skimmed off some beef stock as part of the cooking medium.
There is a pleasing continuity in this, with that beef stock and thus fat made from a previous roast; the use of the ageing roll; and the promise of chicken and bread sauce sandwiches tomorrow if as expected neither element is finished today.
Of course there is nothing wrong with throwing together a stir-fry when time is tight, or if it takes your fancy. But when as on a cold January Sunday one has time aplenty why not think ahead? A case in point is the milk brought to a near boil with a quartered onion and four bay-leaves, plus a chip or two of nutmeg (my bread sauce favours those flavours over the more traditional cloves) and some peppercorns, then removed from the heat to infuse for several hours. There will be glazed carrots, started a good hour before we sit down to eat. And the roast spuds, parboiled to near-doneness well before they are to be finished in a super-hot oven as the chicken rests.
Our Sunday is far from empty - two of us working, one doing homework, and various leisure pursuits pursued. Some in that position would rather graze, trying to fit more activities into an amorphous day (and avoiding others in the house). A Torygraph article yesterday (I became a convert to their crossword if not their politics during the MPs' expenses scandal) also made once more the obvious point that those eating together are likely to be healthier - grazing fodder not famed for its balance and nutrition. Sitting down together over our main meal (as we already did over brunch) punctuates the day, provides structure, and is in itself leisure. And we eat well.
I'm not sure if this is about leftovers - though the crumbs now waiting to be added to steeping milk were from a roll past its best - or about making the ordinary special with a bit of forethought. Today's main meal is to be roast chicken, with a few if not all the trimmings: gravy made from the meat juices, stuffing (cooked on its own not in the bird), and the bread sauce. I'll make roast potatoes too, with the fat skimmed off some beef stock as part of the cooking medium.
There is a pleasing continuity in this, with that beef stock and thus fat made from a previous roast; the use of the ageing roll; and the promise of chicken and bread sauce sandwiches tomorrow if as expected neither element is finished today.
Of course there is nothing wrong with throwing together a stir-fry when time is tight, or if it takes your fancy. But when as on a cold January Sunday one has time aplenty why not think ahead? A case in point is the milk brought to a near boil with a quartered onion and four bay-leaves, plus a chip or two of nutmeg (my bread sauce favours those flavours over the more traditional cloves) and some peppercorns, then removed from the heat to infuse for several hours. There will be glazed carrots, started a good hour before we sit down to eat. And the roast spuds, parboiled to near-doneness well before they are to be finished in a super-hot oven as the chicken rests.
Our Sunday is far from empty - two of us working, one doing homework, and various leisure pursuits pursued. Some in that position would rather graze, trying to fit more activities into an amorphous day (and avoiding others in the house). A Torygraph article yesterday (I became a convert to their crossword if not their politics during the MPs' expenses scandal) also made once more the obvious point that those eating together are likely to be healthier - grazing fodder not famed for its balance and nutrition. Sitting down together over our main meal (as we already did over brunch) punctuates the day, provides structure, and is in itself leisure. And we eat well.
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