I made this using the mixer with dough hook and baked it in a silicone loaf mould.

The recipe is from Paul Hollywood’s How to Bake:

I watched this last night on a Nigella Bites repeat on the Good Food channel. It occurred to me that I’ve made it several times over the past few years – it’s always a winner for feeding friends – but have never blogged about it. This is Nigella’s recipe, from How to Eat:

Ingredients

4 tablespoons olive oil
2.5 kg boned shoulder of lamb, trimmed of excess fat and cut into cubes about 6 x 3 cm
750g or about 5 medium onions, sliced finely
Salt
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 celery stalks, minced
Leaves from 4 thyme sprigs
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3 bay leaves
2 carrots, peeled, halved lengthways, and then halved across
3 400g tinned chopped tomatoes
300ml lamb stock or water
1 bottle dry white wine
Freshly ground black pepper
500g ditalini or other small tubular pasta
300g feta cheese
finely chopped parsley, oregano or basil leaves

Directions

Preheat the oven to 160C.

Into the largest saucepan or casserole you have that will go into the oven, pour 3 tablespoons of the oil. Brown the meat in batches over high heat and remove with a slotted spoon to a plate nearby. You may need more oil as you do this. The onions will certainly need it, so pour the remaining oil or add more, add the onions, sprinkling a little salt over them and cook then until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, celery, thyme, and oregano. After a couple of minutes or so, when the smell of garlic wafts up, remove half the mixture. Add the meat to the mixture in the pan, cover with the remaining half, add the bay leaves, carrots, tomatoes, stock and wine. I use a big but flattish casserole and this amount of liquid covers the meat, but if you find you need more liquid, add water- you want a lot of liquid, because you will, eventually, be cooking some pasta in it. Bring to a boil, remove scum, and let bubble for about 3 minutes. Then cover, transfer to the oven, and bake for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours, or cook on a very low heat. The meat should be tender and yielding. Remove the carrots (and eat, cook’s treat) and bay leaves, too, if you want, and season, to taste, with the salt and pepper.

Of course you can proceed to the final stage now, but I am presuming you’re not going to. In which case, let the stew cool and keep it in the refrigerator until you want it. Skim the fat off the top, and do remember to take it out of the refrigerator a good 1 to 2 hours before you cook it again. You can reheat this in the oven, but because the pasta will be put in on the stove, I tend to heat it there. Make sure the stew is piping hot. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. When it boils, add the salt and then pasta. Cook this until it’s nearly but not quite cooked; it should have a couple of minutes still to go.

Then drain the pasta and add it quickly to the bubbling juices in the casserole, making sure first that there are enough bubbling juices. You don’t want the meat to be drowned, but you want enough for the pasta to be covered. The pasta will absorb some of the liquid as it finishes cooking, of course.

In a couple of minutes, the pasta should be cooked. Crumble some feta and put in a bowl with the chopped parsley, oregano, or basil. Stir to combine and then leave the spoon with it, so that people can sprinkle the herb-spiked cheese over the stew as they wish. Ladle the stew into shallow soup bowls.

My adaptations:
I only use 2 tins of tomatoes and I double the amount of garlic. I leave out the pasta if it’s just for Mark and myself as he’s not that keen but it’s good to add the pasta for guests as they all seem to love it. Be prepared to add more water/stock with pasta though as it absorbs liquid all the time it’s in the stew.

The potatoes are adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe. I made them to accompany homemade smoked trout. I served them together with undressed salad leaves.

Boil new potatoes until they are done (about 10 mins). Drain and allow all steam to evaporate. Place on a greaseproof sheet lightly crush, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and gently toss. Bake on a greaseproof sheet on an oven tray at 175C with fan for 15-20 mins or until there are lots of crispy brown edges. These can be flavoured with paprika and the like.

10 Mar 2013
If the new pots are large enough for it to be practical, after cooking and cooling cut in half and score as you would a mango hedgehog. Cook with the scored side facing downwards for about 10 mins, then turn over to brown the skin side.

The dip was adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe. I wanted a condiment to eat alongside rather than a pate which incorporated the smoked trout. So I put 125g cream cheese, 2 heaped tsp grated horseradish (not sauce), fried onions (I had no chives) and lemon juice into the mixer. I seasoned with pepper. It turned out really well but a little too lemony; you don’t need all the juice of half a lemon so start with half of that.

Aktar Islam made pakora on one of the Perfect…programmes. I noticed that he didn’t make the batter very runny. Whenever I’ve made pakora I always have very runny batter which makes a mess of the cooker and I also end up with lots of leftover watery batter. So I decided to change my method based on what he does.

I had some leftover medium-grated potato which has been wrung in a teatowel to get rid of excess water. I added finely sliced onion and enough gram flour to lightly cover all the veg. To flavour I added salt, turmeric, cumin, chilli powder, garlic and ginger pastes. Then to slacken the mixture just slightly I used fresh lemon juice and NO WATER at all. I sprinkled a little bicarbonate of soda over and mixed thoroughly. I then put flattened (so that they cook through without leaving any uncooked batter) dessertspoonfuls into hot oil to fry gently. The result was very good but they did absorb a lot of oil so I will probably leave out the bicarb next time.

We were given a Gressingham Spatchcock Poussin today. It came in a four pepper seasoning. I noticed that glucose syrup was listed in the ingredients so I thought, why not go the whole hog and give it a Chinese marinade? So, using a Ken Hom recipe as a template I mixed

minced ginger
1 tsp groundnut oil
dark soy sauce
chilli bean sauce
onion powder

and pushed it under the poussin skin. Then I baked in the oven at 175C without fan, aiming for the temperature of the thickest part of the breast to reach 60C (as per Heston’s roast chicken recipe). It actually got to about 65 so was very slightly overcooked but still very nice indeed, as was the rest of the bird. I will definitely cook poussin again, and will also ask the butcher to spatchcock (and perhaps halve) a whole chicken too.

Mark made a pasta soup for me last week which I enjoyed very much. It inspired me to make one for myself. When I was given some very salty, thinly sliced ham to use up, I seized the opportunity. I made a pasta soup adapted from this bacon, bean and pasta soup with the following ingredients:

1 onion, chopped finely – no salt when frying
1 tbsp minced garlic
120g dry pasta
1 carrot halved lengthway (just to flavour broth)
1 tin flageolet beans
0.5 pack green beans, sliced lengthways
chicken stock from 0.5 cube (no more as ham was v salty)
bay leaf
2 tbsp tomato puree
3 large handfuls sliced ham, sliced and torn into bite size pieces
lemon juice
pepper

Note: My soup was a bit cloudy, I think it was caused by the tomato puree.

20 Feb 2013
I made a veggie version of this for my uni friends, replacing the meat with chestnut mushrooms, swapping chicken stock for veg stock and leaving out the tomato puree. I served it with a small bowl of harissa and creme fraiche for them to blend in if required and a sliced giraffe loaf from Sainsburys. They loved it.

1 Feb 2013

Kale disintegrates in this soup – don’t use again.

I made these using the recipe in the Primrose Bakery book. I’ve made them several times before but this time I used the food processor for everything: finely grating the carrot, beating the eggs and sugar, mixing the carrot and raisins into the batter and beating the cream cheese icing. I didn’t think it would but it made a big difference to the end result: the cake was very light and the icing very smooth. That I didn’t end up with aching arms also made the experience far more enjoyable. I am a food processor convert.

I found a Waitrose roast chicken thighs & potatoes recipe online which suited the ingredients I’d got to hand. It wasn’t a bad meal considering the minimal amount of effort and lack of planning. The thighs turned out well with lovely crispy skin – before putting in the tray I sprinkled the skin with salt and leaving to draw the moisture out, then dried with kitchen roll. I did find it necessary to take the thighs out and then return the potatoes to the oven to brown. The potatoes are a little bit dry too so might be nice to serve with something to counter this such as gravy.

6 March 2013

I watched an episode of Perfect (Roast) in which Mark Sargeant made a similar dish but he cooked his potatoes beforehand.

What I did

Preheat oven to 175C.
Peel 2 very large Maris Pipers. Cut into roastie size chunks. Parboil in UNsalted water for 5 mins. Drain and allow all steam to escape.

Tenderise the 4 large chicken thighs a la Jamie i.e. put them between greaseproof and smack with a rolling pin, then spread a mix of 1 tsp fennel (ground), 1 deseeded chopped fresh red chilli, salt and minced garlic under the skin. Then salt the skin to draw moisture out – leave for about 5 mins – and dab dry with kitchen roll.

Cube half a peeled celariac. Toss that and the potatoes in olive oil, garlic salt and a little powdered chilli. Arrange in large baking tray lined with parchment along with thighs. Put lemon segments from 1 large lemon in as well. Give the potatoes and celariac an extra dab of oil with a brush then bake for 40 mins.

Switch to grill to crisp up chicken skin and brown the celariac and potatoes.

Serve with green veg.

Verdict

The chicken was overcooked though the skin got nice and crispy under the grill. The potatoes were better than last time for being parboiled and the celariac was underdone. Nothing was inedible but overall it was a disappointment.

What I should have done was take the chicken out when it got to 60C (this would have been after 20 -25 mins) and let it rest until the rest of the meal was ready; it wouldn’t have done it any harm.

I think this is the problem with one tray bakes: you can’t get everything done as well as doing it all separately. Next time I will cook the chicken in the small oven at 175C with the flavourings and lemon segments until they get to 60C, and rest under loose kitchen roll and foil. I will make wedges and roast celeriac in the large oven at 175C + fan. Finally I will grill the chicken skin only to crisp it up.