One Pot Two Dishes - One Flame Rides Again

My son, aka Sternest Critic, has some quirky dislikes. One is that he likes meat that is stewed (let's face it he likes meat), but hates it to come with the liquid in which it cooked. A neat solution to this enjoyed last week was a version of the French Pot au Feu, where the liquid is served as a soup before the rest makes it to table as a main course. Two courses, one pot.

It helped the soup part that the dish was made with stock prepared previously using free bones from the butcher (I've taken to doing this when buying a load of meat, and never get any hassle) and another from the freezer, the penultimate bit of our Serrano ham bone. Those had cooked with some veg and other flavour enhancers, so the stock itself would have done as a soup (some more in fact did at the weekend, with mushrooms, noodles and star anise). But after it had in addition been the cooking medium for chuck steak and shin, with more veg, it was excellent - served without any thickening, likewise sans meat and veg, it was a really really good beef consome.

The original stock benefited btw from a beetroot being one of the vegetables, giving an earthy depth, but more importantly a fine colour.

The solid components were tasty enough, the beef not needing a knife to cut it, but not in the same league as the soup.

I've been trying to think of similar two-dishes-one-pot stuff, with little success. The only one that sprang to mind could in fact be a threefor, doing a similar stew for the soup and solids, but cooking a sweet dumpling or several in with the savoury bits. To modern eyes that may seem odd, but to cooks of centuries past (including the last one) with limited cooking equipment it made sense, and our contemporary separation of sweet and savoury would seem weird to medieval cooks in particular, but even our grandmothers (for those of us in the third decade of our thirties) were not averse to such things.

I have made apple dumplings in this way to eat as pudding, the edge with its meaty tang not putting anyone off devouring them.

A Whole Ham for the Hambone?

Though Ruth said I was being foolish to do so, I went early to Aldi to buy - on the day they were to be in store - one of their Serrano hams advertised at £49.99 with knife, stand and sharpening steel. For some reason (it being sold cheaper on the internet apparently) it was actually £39.99. Not surprisingly perhaps the one I got at 8:30 was the last then in stock, the store having opened at 8:00.

The ham weighs 6.5kg, so quite a bit to go at over the Christmas break. It will make life easy when we have friends and neighbours (who generally are friends anyway) over. I'm looking forward to the meat, but having a hambone with which to make stock is a massive bonus. For the next few days I'll be thinking of recipes for the scraps and the mis-shapes too as we try to cut see-through slices. Omelette, pizza, risotto, tiny cubes in paella...

As per a previous post, however, the simplicity of the thing appeals hugely too. Any of us fancying a snack or a quick starter will be able - with a bit of practice - to dig in. It does take practice, as we found pre-Joe when I brought a whole cured ham back from France, nestled among the wine that filled the boot at the end of every continental business trip by car. We had no long thin knife then, and so every other slice was too thick, chewed determinedly or cut up and used in stews etc. 

Cooking with the stuff is not, though, the real point of it. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity again: ham, bread, wine, salad, talk. And more ham. That's the point.

Serendipitous Substitution - One Flame Fish Stew

Once a month or so in the  autumn and winter we have chowder as a weekday supper. Or dinner. Or tea, depending on class, pretension and region.

I am not a believer in strict recipes unless they are needed. Yesterday's chowder had kippers and basa as the majority of the protein, but lacking bacon (the shame) and with some chorizo to use up I added that, a happy circumstance as it gave a nice paprika spice to the dish. As ever it was bulked out with potatoes and sweetcorn, both of which like onions cook beautifully in the milk that forms a good half of the liquid.

We discussed as we always do if chowder is a soup or a stew - this one was definitely a stew - and if, with chorizo, it actually qualified as chowder at all. That takes me back to the point about strict adherence to recipes. Chowder is said to have originated as a one-pot dish cooked by fishermen (the word chowder derived from the French chaudiere, a big cooking pot or in modern French a boiler), with a bit of the catch, some spuds, bacon and onions cooked in water at sea. Some - me included - use milk plus stock now for the smoked fish version, not a luxury that those driftermen enjoyed, so it is already different from the pure original if indeed such a thing ever existed.

This is not to say that you can bung in whatever comes to hand, some discrimination is needed. My version includes garlic, red pepper and carrot, all chopped finely to cook quickly (the onions likewise, the spuds big dice), to add flavour, 'goodness' and a bit of colour. The chorizo helped with that too, the paprika sending the milk a rather fetching pink.

All Together Now or One at a Time

With good weather we have the opportunity to eat outside, and our favoured way of doing this is for me to prepare a mezze, that is have a variety of dishes ready to bring to the table in one lot, to avoid traipsing in and out of the kitchen with floor cleaning and atmosphere breaking consequences. Behind that is perhaps the additional motivation that this manner of eating reminds us of Greece, hot sunshine and great simple food.

Yesterday, partly because we were too hungry to wait while the roast chicken rested, we opted for a la Russe, i.e. the more conventional series of dishes: pate on toast starter, stuffed peppers as a vegetable course, then the chicken with rice and mushrooms. The day before we had gone for the mezze, with about eight different things on the table at once, albeit in relatively small quantities, though the beef stiffado (that's posh for stew with peppers, paprika and oregano) was substantial.

So I had the chance to compare. The mezze was by far the more enjoyable meal, even though the chicken with rice was really tasty. It's the exchange of plates and bowls, the sharing aspect, and perhaps the informality that comes perforce with such activity, that makes the difference to mood. Of course that preference probably depends on personality. On business travels in my old career I loved visiting mom and pop and middle range restaurants, where there was no danger of maitre D snobbery and whispered conversations. Phillip's Foote restaurant in Sydney where you not only serve yourself but cook your steak yourself is one of the few places visited in those years whose name I recall.

A la Russe as the norm here only dates from the mid-19th century. It has practical benefits with hot food that you want really hot - if soup, casserole and some steaming baked pudding are all brought out together something will go cold before it's eaten. But if the heat of dishes (something about which we British can be maniacal) is not vitally important as is the case in summer, then for me it's all together now.

Cowboy Hotpot - Historic One Flame Ingenuity

Just back from spending a few days with my father in Norfolk. As tradition demands we were met after our horrible A17 journey with plates of cowboy hotpot. This is a dish of family legend, though it only dates back one generation.

My mother was an infants' school teacher who would rope my father in to help with school trips various. On one brief camping expedition he was volunteered to do the cooking, and faced with limited resources (big pot and big camping stove) came up with the ideal meal for kids, or at least kids 30 or 40 years ago. Ideal in both its name and consistency. He had as ingredients potatoes, onions, corned beef, carrots, and baked beans, plus some stock cubes. The veg were diced very small - say 5mm wide, the corned beef likewise, and the lot simmered briefly in not a great deal of stock before the beans were added to warm through.

Kids are picky, especially away from home, but my father overcame all such thoughts by dubbing it when asked 'Cowboy Hotpot'. The reflected glamour and adventure of the food, surely cooked over open fires in the Badlands by John Wayne and James Stewart, saw it eaten - with spoons - to the last morsel. And the moist, almost sloppy consistency is great for kids too, they tend to hate dry foodstuffs.

Since then it has more often than not been made with fresh beef rather than corned. What would Randolph Scott have said?

What name for the plateful would have the same effect today? Sadly the horrific 'Celebrity Stew' springs to mind.

One Flame Cooking Fish Soup

Fish soup, or fish stew? The terminology is not really important, though the different words trigger different responses and attitudes. So if served as a starter or accompaniment to an oriental meal say soup, if it is supper or lunch on its own go with stew.

An acknowledgement here to Nick Fisher (now there's a name that helped determine a career) whose River Cottage handbook on fishing inspired a change to a recent version of my own one-pot oriental fish soupy-stew, namely the addition of miso paste, which worked beautifully to give a bit of depth to the broth.

In a medium/large saucepan fry a chopped onion and a carrot cut into small dice, plus a chili in the thinnest possible rings - a minute or so is enough to give them a bit of a start on cooking and a touch of the caramelised surface that adds flavour. Add about a litre of light chicken stock. I am not a huge fan of fish stock, hitting the golden moment between insipid and gluey is not easy. If I want some fishy depth I'd add a tin of anchovies to the onion and carrot at frying stage. Or you can use boiling water and a cube if that's what you have to hand, but then a tsp of miso paste is extremely useful to make the stock more interesting.

Simmer for a couple of minutes only, then lob in noodles that can cook this way - one purchase made during my recent expedition to the local Chinese supermarket - Preston has a big Chinese student population - was a big packet of flat wheat noodles for £2.25, a steal compared to Sainsbury's. How many noodles depends on your needs and space in the pot. Use your imagination.

When the noodles are just about cooked add your fish - I used tilapia but pollock would be fine too, or any other good firm white fish that is from a sustainable source - in large chucks, you want it to hold together and be recognizable.

Season with soy sauce, pepper, and a dash of sesame oil if you have some. Five spice powder helps too. Taste to see if it is interesting enough, and if not add more of those enhancers, and maybe a touch more miso if you feel it is needed. But be quick, the fish should be just done, not overdone - once it is nicely opaque you are there, but taste a bit to be sure.

This is more method than recipe. There are innumerable tunes to be played on it - the most recent version had at the noodle stage half a tin of matchstick thin bamboo shoots added and the whites of six very thin leeks cut into thin rings, and with the onion-carrot-chili mix I added an inch of ginger cut into thin slivers.

I made this as one of three dishes for our evening meal, but had we not just had brunch that day it would have done on its own.

Noodles btw are a wonderfully social ingredient to a dinner: you cannot eat them stuffily. Slurping is the order of the day; spillage and shirt-stains are unavoidable. I would not like to know someone who could eat them and remain entirely dignified.

I was a Norfolk Dumpling

I may have been born in Lancashire, and returned here in my twenties to work, but brought up in Norfolk I still feel that is my spiritual home. Thus the national dish of the Norfolker (say that in a hurry and cause consternation) is one to which I return as regularly as mutinous family and culinary pride will allow. That dish is of course the Norfolk Dumpling.

Dumplings of all sorts are definitely austerity fare: filling, cheap, and essentially satisfying. They are rarely subtle, though if you give them a French or Russian name they can seem a bit more exotic. Few words can be as demotic as dumpling, although if you think of the word as the gerund of the verb to dumple, which it isn't, some interest could be engendered.

The Norfolk Dumpling (which merits capitals) is very simply made if you have a bread-maker, which I do, as it is just bread dough allowed to rise then dropped into salted boiling water to bobble about and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. They are rarely light, for which read never, the surface takes on the appearance of wallpaper paste, and even if you include a flavouring like yesterday's dried sage they still taste predominantly of being full. But as that is their point, job done.

In my hometown, the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth, clever and careful guest house landladies would serve them at least three times in a week's stay, anything more frequent risking violence. A few pence worth of flour, a bit of fat, some yeast, salt and sugar, and plenty of elbow grease was/is what they cost.

Yet they enhance a stew wonderfully, once broken into soaking up the gravy like a sponge. Or like the bread they are. And the secret to them is not to cut the things, which crushes them and creates a lump of goo, but to pull them apart with two forks. Simple, as is the dumpling.

Ah! Sugar Sugar

Sugar, especially white sugar, has become one of the pariahs of contemporary food. We have various plant extracts and chemical substitutes offered in place of it; warnings about the damage it does to our teeth and our overall health; chefs finding ways to avoid it. This is very different from the way cooks a few centuries ago looked upon what was then a luxury item. And to me it seems as with so much in life moderation is the key rather than abstinence; and as a natural product I have more confidence in sugar than most alternatives, just as I prefer butter to processed spreads.

This thought came from reading Gervase Markham. I have doubts about his real culinary knowledge. Some of his pronouncements don't make much sense, but he like Elinor Fettiplace regularly used sugar as a spice, to perk up sauces, gravies, to prettify dishes and to correct seasoning generally. It remains a valid and cheap way of improving flavour - sweet after all is one of the basic tastes. Thus a spoon of sugar in a simple spaghetti sauce rounds it out, bringing the flavour of tomatoes to the fore. It doesn't hurt in many beefy or porky stews either.

I'm not advocating sugar butties or loading the stuff into everything as old Gervase seemed to wish, but it is not something we can afford to consign to the outer reaches because of fashion and our fears about obesity.

Capital Investment - The Vacuum Flask

We lashed out a possibly ridiculous £25 for a wide-mouthed vacuum flask on Saturday, the idea being that I can save/freeze and later use reheated for Ruth's lunches the small portions of leftover stews and soups that otherwise end up too often in the fridge for a week, then shifted to the bin. In this weather something hot is more welcome than any salad. It's a Stanley, tough as old boots - and like good boots should last a lifetime. Though 20 years ago she had another drinks flask by the same company that was also supposed to be unbreakable. She left it in a bag behind the car, forgot about it, for some reason reversed the car out of the drive... we did not claim on the guarantee.

I am less nervous about buying expensive things than cheap ones. Cheap usually means short-lived, expensive the opposite. Unless you back a car over something.

Cheap Cuts - The Cheek of It

One truism of economical shopping is that meat needing longer cooking will generally be cheaper than something you can flash fry. The savings on the meat have to be balanced with the fuel used over two hours and more in the oven, but with a little planning several dishes can be done at once.

Two days ago I cooked a stew of ox-cheek, meat purchased at Waitrose (not famed for cheapness, but this was a fairly thrifty £6.50/kg). With carrots, onions, and a leek there was the basis of something nutritious, and I added a bowl of mango chutney to the liquid (leftover from a party) plus some of our own dried sage and a tea-spoon of Bovril, a magical meaty ingredient in beef stews and gravies. Cooked very slowly in the morning and into the afternoon (for four hours at 120C actually, while I was out interviewing someone for an article) and then cooled it was kept to mature in the fridge overnight - stews pretty much always benefit from this, the flavours developing and melding.

The result when reheated next day was very tasty: the meat could be cut with a spoon, the juices were sweet and unctuous, and there was next to nothing left. I added a tin of Heinz beans when reheating it, as the meat needed some bulk other than carrots to balance it.

My planning was a bit off, the only thing I 'cooked' with it some lemon and lime skins. After they are juiced don't throw them away, believe it or not once dried out they make very effective firelighters.

A Good Butcher is a Pearl Beyond Price

We just got back from visiting my father in rural Norfolk. His village is a sizable one, with two very small supermarkets and a variety of other shops. Happily for him and the rest of the village (or the carnivores at least) that includes two good butchers. A good butcher in my book can be judged on his (or her) sausages and minced beef (ground beef for our American friends). Simple things maybe, but they reflect the care and attitude of a skilled tradesman.

I live in a city, but the only butcher's shop nearby was not very good - mince gristly, sausages when I tried them tasteless - and unsurprisingly it closed some time ago. Strange how in this aspect of retail supply a city should be poorer than a village - maybe the supermarkets here the reason. One strand of my freelance writing work, however, takes me to towns and villages where there are still good craft butchers, a definite perk. A couple of years ago Roy Porter (picture) who has a shop near Clitheroe was very impressive, and recently Riley's in Crawshawbooth was equally good.

The difference between a butcher and the butchery at a supermarket seems to be mainly to do with the cheaper cuts - try to find them in your supermarket, where it appears animals no longer come with innards - rather than at the top end. Doubtless margins are lower on the cheaper bits than the expensive ones. At one butcher in the village I bought some excellent beef shin to make a simple stew for the four of us yesterday. Browned and then stewed for two-and-a-half hours with root veg and onions the meat made its own sauce, and even after seconds there was enough for my father to use as the basis of a meal today after we had gone. It cost about £2 each. There are exceptions to the supermarket butcher rule - Morrison's is good on offal and the tough bits that need slow cooking, and so (at the other end of the social scale perhaps) is Waitrose, where I bought ox cheek on Saturday.

The stew made with shin beef was another dish demonstrated to my son in preparation for his eventual escape into the big wide world as a student. He is learning the easy core skills of the home cook, in that case: brown the meat in small batches so it fries not steams; fry the onions before putting them in the stewpot (nobody likes boiled onions do they?); use some suitable liquid to deglaze the pan in which the meat browned (Adnams Broadside that time); cut the carrots and other root veg in good chunks so they retain their shape rather than disappear into the sauce; stew in a low oven for two hours or more. We sprinkled a bit of flour on the meat and veg before adding the beer from the frying pan and some boiling water. No stock cube, no stupid packets of casserole sauce mix. And it tasted great, because the meat was top notch. 

Star Star Anise

Home-made Chinese food too often focuses on stir fries to the exclusion of many more interesting methods and recipes. In my past life I got to travel in China, Taiwan and various Asian countries where the Chinese tended to dominate business (as they soon will around the world). A frequent favourite dish on those travels was variations on beef soup flavoured with star anise, the best being made with oxtail.

I have since found that a passable imitation can be made with leftover beef gravy (real gravy, not the stuff made with powder) or the juices from a beef stew. On Saturday we had one such, started as ever with a gently fried chopped onion, to which a finely chopped red chilli was added before the sieved juices of a stew from two days earlier were poured in and two whole star anise and a couple of big chunks of ginger were plopped in to simmer nicely for the best part of an hour (the few scraps of meat added at the last minute to avoid them going stringy along with a ready softened nest of noodles).

Not haute cuisine, but a good element of a Chinese meal that had the twin virtues of tasting great and costing next to nothing. Made with leftovers but there were no leftovers afterwards this time.

Simple Is Best

Three dishes made last night showed that KISS as with so many other things in life definitely applies to food. I did a stew with too many ingredients that was messy and had loads leftover, with thin juices - the horror. I will find a home for the juices, but guess that the veg, unless I try to pass it off as a soup having zapped the stuff, will be wasted. I hate waste, and I feel that every meal should be a good one: eating is one of life's great pleasures.

On the other hand as we had started to build an intervention stock of eggs I did a small starter of egg mayonnaise (Hellmann's, sorry purists) of which barely a molecule was left on our plates.

For pudding (adults only) I had soaked some figs, bought cheaply at Booth's, in spiced rum (a freebie for a review), plus a few spices and some sugar and lime-juice. After half a day in the liquid they were well and truly infused, and very lovely too. Two minutes of prep and a very rich pudding with a certain healthy credibility (of the figs are the digestion's Draino type) resulted.