Dinner Diary - Curried Rabbit Baked in a Pumpkin

Yeah, this is about to get weird...

Rabbit is one of the great under-used meats. Its plentiful, and killed as a pest species to protect vegetable crops all over the UK. Its low in fat, high in protein, and its ridiculously delicious. In some cities (I'm looking at you, Cambridge) its peculiarly expensive, but in others (yaay for Ely!) its very cheap. This one was one of two I got for a fiver, and from the looks of him its an older male. A few years ago you used to see rows of rabbits hanging in front of game butchers in the better market places in British cities, but thats a thing of the past now. The advantage of that was you could pick out your bunny for the purpose you had in mind. Gamey old buck for a stew, younger doe for frying or roasting. These days its a bit more pot-luck, but a trained nose will usually find the right bunny.

I often cook rabbit by making up a curry paste, rubbing it inside and out, and marinading it overnight before stuffing it with nuts and raisins, wrapping it tight, and baking that slowly. I thought I'd try something different this time, so I made up a curry paste by dropping everything (onions, lemon juice and zest, chili, ginger, garlic, some oil and lots of spices - coriander, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, fennel, clove, pepper, salt, mace, cayenne) into a food processor before rubbing it all over the (jointed) rabbit. I left that to marinade all day.

Later on in the afternoon I cut open the pumpkin (and yes, this is a Haloween pumpkin, they're quite delicious!) in the garden and scooped its guts (fibres and seeds) out to throw to my hens, who love them. Then I filled it up with the rabbit (with the marinade still all over it), handfulls of nuts and raisins, some more spice (garam masala), curry leaves, lots of salt (because pumpkin eats salt), some coconut milk to go about half way up, more lemon juice, and to top it off some mushrooms (I used wild parasol mushrooms, because thats what I had). 

Then the lid went on and I roasted the whole thing at about 170C for three hours or so, until it was done, and then left it in a warm (100C) oven until we were hungry. And it was, I must say, spectacular.

So we had a couple of bits of rabbit each and and a scoop of mushroomy, coconuty curry sauce with fruit and nuts in it, with rice and a nice big slice of the pumpkin. 

I don't as a rule cost my dinners, because if you're cooking from scratch its never expensive. A pumkin costs you a quid at the supermarkets, the rabbit was £2.50, the mushrooms were wild so they're free, the fruit and nuts? I dunno, but less than a quid. And a few spices and dried coconut milk? Not 50p. I'll turn the remnants into a curry soup for tomorrow night, so its going to be at least four portions, for about four quid. 

So if you want an absolute  show-stopper of a dinner, I really would recommend this.

Dinner Diary - Partridges Roasted on Horse Mushrooms

We picked up a whole lot of partridges in Ely Market yesterday. They're often cheap if you find them at a farmers market at this time of year, and they're absolutely delicious. And on the way home we came across a whole lot of horse mushrooms - nice, big, fat ones too. And that rather dictated what we had to have for dinner.

Simple stuff really - I put some stock veg (leafy celery, quartered onion and carrots) in a skillet with two big mushrooms, and then rubbed butter and seasoning over the birds (with another bit of butter inside), then drizzled just a little oil, salt and pepper on the mushrooms and put them in the pan with the birds on top.

 You need big mushrooms for this of course, but if you can get them I do urge you to try partridge this way - the juices flow through the mushrooms and help for a rich gravy, while themselves picking up a flavour thats a superb accompaniment for the partridge. 

I poured about half a glass of blackberry wine in the pan, alongside a glass of water. This went into a hot oven (200C in my fan-assist, you'd want 210C or 220C without a fan) for half an hour. Thats long enough to cook the partridges (which were put aside to rest) and to get some flavour out of the vegetables for the gravy.

Speaking of which, the gravy! Thats about the most important component of any roasted dish, right? So after while resting the partridges (and microwaving some spuds for mash) I poured the juice out of the skillet and stirred some flour in around the stock veg, before slowly adding the juice back in over a low heat. Basically to cook more flavour out of the stock veg while thickening the sauce. And again, this is simple stuff but its worth spending a few minutes getting this right. I added just the tiniest dash of soy sauce too - there was enough flavour in the gravy but a tiny bit more umame sometimes doesn't hurt.

The whole thing was served up, with the partridges still resting on the mushrooms, with mashed spuds and steamed cabbage - a really old fashioned, simple way of serving up a roast. 

Trying to work out what this cost is, as ever when you're pricing up simple food, surprising - the partridges clock in at £1.67 each, a sack of spuds is so cheap that each serving is a few pennies, and if you're buying cabbage its probably the cheapest and tastiest green vegetable at the greengrocers. So the whole thing clocks up at under £2 per serving. And trust me, this is a dish fit for royalty. 

Dinner Diary - Chili Horse Mushrooms and Pasta

Had a nice little bonus find on the way home from shopping in Ely today. A bike basket full of horse mushrooms...

Now I was planning hot and sour soup for lunch but there's something almost sinfully good about gong straight home and eating the mushrooms you've picked, so as soon as we got in the door I put some pasta on to boil (yes, sometimes I'm lazy and use bought pasta) and chopped an onion up to sizzle in oil. While waiting for the onions to look like this, I grabbed some parsley from the garden and chopped up some chili.

Once the pasta was almost done I added the chopped chili, softened that for a while, and then added some sliced horse mushrooms and most of the parsley (and some salt and pepper). 

At the end that was all tossed in with the pasta, a little butter and olive oil, and dressed with some sliced cheese (I used some Lincolnshire Poacher) and the rest of the parsley. And it looked and tasted superb.

I wouldn't have said that by my standards this is dinner party amazing, but its the kind of thing you can rustle up if you've got unexpected guests and a few mushrooms in the fridge, and its an excellent quick lunch. Its great with horse mushrooms, indeed anything kind of firm-ish and tasty. If you're lucky enough to have any prince mushrooms (Agaricus augustus) they're probably the finest mushrooms for this dish, but more or less anything will work. And if you want to leave the chili out, or fry in some bacon at the start, that also works. Even add in a dollop of cream or soft cheese at the end and mix it in to form a thick sauce. 

But today this was just a good way of using up a few of a surprise haul of mushrooms on the way back from the Station after a visit to Ely market. I guess the hot and sour soup may have to be another day...

Dinner Diary - Gurnard and Rosti

So after having eaten a fab gurnard at the weekend I thought I might see if I could feed it to my other half too. She's really fussy about fish, and its always a challenge, but gurnard is a firm, tasty, white fish and it should be just down her alley. And I'm glad to say she loved it.

I came home from the fishmonger with Bernard here. Thats what I'm calling him, Bernard the Gurnard. Suits him, right?

So as well as being a firm, tasty white fish thats really plentiful and under no threat right now, another great thing about this fish is its cheap - this one was eight quid and it will do us four servings (well, two meaty servings and a soup for both of us too). So, out with the guts, and its he only fish I often get where you're better cutting a Y shape rather than a straight cut.

It always strikes me as weird that people would rather get the fishmonger to do this - if is a good, fresh fish it isn't an unpleasant job, and if there are roes in there you'll get another tasty snack out of it. Anyway, after you've got rid of its innards cut all the fins off (and its fleshy little feet - see those tendrils? those) and pitch them into your stock pot. Here they are.

After that (and giving it a run under the tap) its almost as simple as filleting any other fish - run a filleting knife down either side of the backbone, cut through the cavity, and down to the tail. Don't forget to go well under the head shield to get all the flesh off - and if you're really hungry pick out the meat from the cheeks underneath. I didn't, because thats all going in stock anyway. Then hold the fillet skin side down and work your knife along the inside of the skin, down against the board, from the tail end to the front. 

For this dish I then cut the fillets down the line in the middle of them, either side of the pin bones (which join the rest of the wreckage). And then I sliced them up into little cubes and put them into a dish with lemon juice, salt, zest, and a little dash of rice wine. That went into the fridge for an hour or so to marinade. 

Then the rest of Bernard the Gurnard - skin, bones, head, fins, little fleshy feet all goes into the pressure cooker for stock. Maybe for hot and sour soup on Saturday.

So on to the rosti. We all know this, right? Potato, shredded fine, spoon full of salt, left for 10 minutes or so then squeeze as much juice out as you can before pushing handfulls down onto a hot pan to fry it. Put a lid on it, turn it when it looks about right, and when it looks done it is. Nothing cheffy or dainty here, splodge it on, cook it until browned.

While it was cooking I sliced up a bunch of salad veg, and when it was nearly done I beat an egg white almost to soft peaks, folded in the yolk and about a dessert spoon full of cornflour, and a pinch of salt. Thats one of my favourite really light coatings for fish - it gets a lovely colour, keeps the fish moist and doesn't overpower the flavour. Drop the fish in it, and then into a hot pan with oil...

The fish only takes a couple of minutes to cook on either side, and being gurnard you can cook it quite hard, it stays moist and holds its form. Serve on the rosti, with salad, and a slice of lemon, and this is a lovely little dish even for a fish-skeptic. And for fresh fish, its dirt cheap. 

So I don't know whether my current gurnard obsession is going to continue, it depends on whether the fishmonger keeps getting good ones in. But I really also need to do something with this fridge full of mushrooms next...

Dinner Diary - Curried Lamb Necks and Pumpkin

I was feeding the mother in law on Saturday, and wanted something spicy but not TOO spicy. Thankfully I had a couple of lamb necks in, waiting to be used. Normally you get them already portioned into chops, but if you can get them whole from the butcher do so. You won't get any little shards of bone in the finished meal, and you get so much flavour out of them cooked whole.

So, I took plenty of spices (cardamon, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, turmeric, a little chilli) toasted them and ground them up. I put an onion, lemon juice, salt, pepper, oil, ginger and garlic into the food processor and added the ground spices, and rubbed them in to the lamb. I put a tea-towel over the bowl and went mushroom picking...

When we got back hours later, I scraped them clean (keeping all the goo) and browned them off before putting them into the pressure cooker with the goo I'd rubbed off, stock, a tin of tomatoes and fresh coriander. You can boil it in a normal pan but the pressure cooker makes short work of even the toughest cuts - I gave this 25 minutes at full pressure.

While that was cooking I softened off more of the same spices with the addition of some fennel seeds, and fresh ginger, sliced onion, and chilli and put in loads of peeled, chopped pumpkin and fresh coriander. Yes, the kind you get for Halloween, its delicious. When it was good and smelly, I covered it with water and dried coconut powder, added lime juice and salt, and cooked it until it was soft.

Thats a really easy way to cook punmpkin, and quite lovely. At the end I added in some shredded cabbage, garam masala and let it steam through.

The lamb necks stripped clean of meat really easily, and went back in to their sauce with bell peppers just to reduce for a minute or two, and the whole shebang was served with rice. 

Is this a stand out dinner? Well no, I wouldn't have said so. This is a simple, tasty, easy, every day kind of dish. You can rub the marinade on the lamb after dinner one night and cook it the next, or even freeze it in the marinade. Well worth a go, its a cracking dish.

Dinner Diary - Baked Gurnard and Wild Mushrooms

People often seem kind of surprised when they ask what we've been eating and I actually tell them. Its like you're not meant to eat this way. So I thought I might start blogging a few dishes that we eat, as we eat them. And tonight happened to be one where I was only cooking for myself so I could be a bit basic and just hurl some nice ingredients into the pan. 

I've always loved fish and while my other half will eat some fish dishes she's a lot fussier than I am, so anything like a whole cooked fish is a treat for a night on my own. 

I popped into town and picked up a grey gurnard. Its a really under-rated fish - firm, white, well flavoured and has a great structure that allows you to cook it quite hard without losing any structure. For some reason the gurnards (red and grey) have always been under-rated by the British public so if your fishmonger has them they're always cheap. I suppose its because they're fiddly to fillet and process, but thats fine because they're superb cooked whole. And best of all its very under-fished, there are loads of them in the ocean and its an ideal one from a sustainability perspective. 

I had the fish monger gut it (I'd usually not, because if there are roes I'd like to eat them!) but otherwise all I did was give it a wash and slash the sides.

On the way home I stopped off at one of my mushrooming spots and picked a few honey mushrooms (Armillarea mellea). Its not my favourite mushroom but its one to remember the spots where it grows because it does go well with fish. Usually you find it on dead wood, but often peoples first response to finding it is to cut the tree down and burn it (it being a terrible pest that can spread between trees and kill them), and what you find is a clump like this growing on the stump. I suppose button mushrooms would have done, but I wanted some of these...

Its only the caps of honey mushrooms I use, the stems are rather tough and fibrous. I used about a dozen (with a couple of wood mushrooms thrown in), which were sauteed with some parsley and shallot until they looked like this...

I seasoned the fish with salt and pepper, rubbed some butter in the slashed sides, and put it on top of the mushrooms. This was covered and baked at 180C for 25 minutes before uncovering and cooking for ten more minutes with the cover off. That gets all the juice from the fish and the mushrooms reduced down with the butter to make a rich sauce. The result was superb.

Alongside a bread bun from yesterdays bake, that was dinner. A really simple, superb treat of a dish for a night in alone.

Field Blewit: The King of Autumn Mushrooms

As summer moves on into Autumn the late-summer foraging of fruit and greens recedes into more of a specialised mushrooming time. Yeah, there are some apples left on the trees, but the blackberries are way past their best now and we've enough greens on the allotment and in the garden such that we don't need to be gathering them wild right now. 

And as we move on into Autumn the kind of mushrooms we find changes too - in a typical suburb we get fewer Boletus and Suillus, and the assorted Agaricus and the like slowly tail off. By October, providing we've had enough rain to make the ground soggy on occasion, my main mushroom of choice is the blewit.

Specifically, I mean the field blewit, Lepista saeva. This one here...

This mushroom is, just sometimes, rudiculously plentiful in the UK. I've found it from the Scottish borders down to the South Coast. And in my opinion it is one of the finest wild mushrooms we have - its got an intense flavour, a meaty texture, its filling, and it is easy to identify.

Mostly it grows in rings, on grass, and its one of the many organic matter degraders that isn't just tolerant of mowing but seems to thrive where grass clippings are continuously reapplied to the ground. And as we mow the grass progressively less as the days get shorter and cooler, you can often find great rings of it after rain from late September onwards. Sometimes you find it frozen in place in December, no worse off for it.

Its ridiculously easy to identify. The cap is smooth, sort of buttery and brown, and the underside has quite crowded gills that make a pink spore print if you need to do so. They aren't quite attached to the stem, and they're pale brown with maybe a touch of pinkishness sometimes. The stem is fibrous and has a purple tinge to it, which is a giveaway. And the smell is floral-mushroomy, intense and pleasant.

Here's a closer look at one...

There are a couple of rather more purple Cortinarius species you could maybe mistake for it, if you were an idiot, but it would be hard. This really is one of the easiest shrooms to ID. 

It has a long history of use wherever it grows, which is why it has so many common names. Bluey, blue leg, bluebutton etc. all referring to the distinctive purple stem. It is especially popular in the East Midlands, and I've seen crates of it for sale in greengrocers in Nottingham, Beeston and Long Eaton. I was once stopped by a copper in Nottingham who wanted to know what I was doing under the trees in a park with a knife in my hand, and when I showed him what I was picking he was delighted to relate how his mum used to cook 'blueys' for him as a kid.

The only down-side to blewits is that they've a tendency to get water-logged. They soak up water like a sponge, which you need to be aware of when cooking them. Maybe you'll need to cook them a bit longer to get the water out of them if you need them drier in a dish, or just add less wine or stock in a stew.

The ways of cooking it are many and varied, and I don't intend to bore you with loads of recipes needlessly repeating what you can find elsewhere. So I'll restrict myself to a few ideas that might wet your appetite.

BlewBird Stew

1 pigeon (or partridge, or half a pheasant) per person

Enough field blewits to cover the top of the stew pot

Stock (chicken or game)

Red Wine

Onion, carrot, celery

Garlic

About a dessertspoon full of juniper berries

Salt, pepper, flour

Chop a couple of celery sticks, an onion, and a carrot fine and brown them slowly in a stew pot. Take them out, and coat the birds in well seasoned flour. Brown them in the same pan, add in enough wine and stock to half cover them and put the sauteed veg and crushed garlic clove back in. Squash the juniper berries and drop them in, along with the mushrooms. Bring it to the boil and pop it in the oven for about an hour at 180C, turning the birds over half way through. Serve it with mashed spuds and steamed greens, its a delicious seasonal stew.

Blewit Pate

Blewitts

Garlic

Parsley

Salt and pepper

Cream cheese

This recipe makes the most of the intense flavour of this mushroom. Chop the mushrooms, sautee them off with a bit of butter, and when they're cooked and starting to dry up just a but add in the garlic and parsley, just until they're soft. Season with salt and pepper and let it cool down.

Put the cooked shrooms with a scoop of cream cheese (Philadephia is fine) in a blender, and zuzz them about until they're a pate consistency. Taste and season further if you need to, flatten it in a dish, and chill it until its set. Serve it with crackers or toast.

Blewits and Pasta

Blewits

Onion

Flour

Milk

Salt and pepper

Parsley

Pasta

This is based on the traditional way of cooking blewits in Nottingham, but I think its a bit better to serve with pasta than with mashed potato.

Chop and sautee the blewit stems with a chopped onion. Mix in a couple of spoons of flour, and slowly add milk to form a thick sauce. Season with salt and pepper, and handfull of chopped parsley, and add the mushroom caps (sliced) and cook for ten minutes or so. Keep it on the heat until the flour is fully cooked out. Mix it in with cooked pasta, and serve. 

If you were doing this in Nottingham in the 1930s you'd serve it in a well in the middle of a plate of mashed spuds, and you'd have cooked it for an hour. I like it a little less over-cooked, and seasoned with lots of pepper, tossed into pasta.