Madhur Jaffrey's Sri Lankan Beef Smore

The subtitle for this could be "When recipes go wrong!". Or maybe, "When recipes aren't tested", or even "Make sure you proof read".

We got this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy book. It's well presented with pictures that just make you want to cook the recipes. And the titles of the recipes are pretty good as well. Sri Lankan Beef Smore - sounds exotic, unusual and right up my street.

The recipe:

Braising beef - chuck, blade or brisket
Salt and pepper
4 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds - we used ground as we didn't have the seeds
4 tablespoons oil
5 cm stick of cinnamon
1 large onion - chopped
5 cm piece of ginger - grated
4 cloves garlic - chopped
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
350ml stock - beef or chicken
1 teaspoon cayenne
250ml coconut milk

All good so far, as long as you've got a decent store cupboard. The problem lies with the instructions. The recipe calls for the toasting and grinding of the seeds. No problem. But then it doesn't tell you what to do with them! A bit of an oversight.

So we decided to treat it like the Jamie Oliver brisket chili recipe, and rubbed the ground seeds into the meat. Then it's into the pan to brown. Whilst that's doing fry the onion, ginger and garlic with the cinnamon.

After a few minutes and the vinegar, stock, cayenne, salt (lots of salt) and then the beef. Bring to the boil, cover and put in a low oven until the meat is tender - which will depend on how much you're cooking. For 2, about 2 and a half hours, for 4 more like 3 and a half. Add the coconut milk 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time.

In the end it turned out ok. Not great, not fantastic and not really very hot. But ok. If I did it again I'd have to throw some chillies in there. Hot ones. But there's other things I'd do before doing this again - no doubt the subject of my next blog posts!

Steak and Gidleigh

That's Gidleigh Park, of course, Michael Caines' restaurant in Devon - http://www.gidleigh.com/.

Apparently Ruby and White - http://www.rubyandwhite.com/ - supply the beef to Gidleigh Park. Which must mean that the diners there really enjoy their steaks because the ones we ate tonight were very, very good. As they should be, 2 8oz rib-eyes and a 6oz sirloin cost little shy of £20. This is not supermarket meat.

And that's a good thing. A very good thing.

It's been a long time since I've eaten steak as tasty. I'm not one for basting in half a pound of butter, which would do a lot to give even the most meagre steak a nice taste. I simply seasoned and griddled mine over a high heat and gave it a few minutes to rest afterwards. This made for a really tender steak with a surprisingly intense, robust meaty taste which was supremely satisfying.

When eating as simply as this - we had some potato wedges and mushrooms with our steaks - it seems to make so much more sense to spend this kind of money on good ingredients to cook at home rather than go and spend the same amount or more at a restaurant where you couldn't guarantee getting the same quality.

The Reuben - the perfect sandwich



Messy but perfect

 Saturday. A very precious day when you work Monday to Friday. Me and the missus like to really indulge our food passions on a Saturday. Today that meant hunting down the ingredients for a Reuben.

First, bread. We often stop off in Shirehampton first. There's a great butchers in Shirehampton run by Tubbs and Paul. Their ham is tremendous, and the new cider ham is a knockout. We weren't heading into Shire for ham, but when we tasted it we had to get some.

What we were going to Shire for was some sourdough bread for our Reubens. The village bakery in Shire is supplied by the Redland Village Bakery and is always excellent. The sourdough we had today is some of the best bread I've tasted. Gorgeous!

Next, pastrami. Bristol isn't short on delis, but we favour the deli counter at Murray's butchers (T & P.A. Murray) on Gloucester Road. Or is it Cheltenham Road? I dunno, I don't know where one ends and the other begins. They stock the best salamis, chorizos, cheeses and pies in town. The pastrami we bought was great and very good value.

And so back home. The kitchen almost immediately looked like a bomb site as we undid packages for tasting and got cracking with the Reubens.

I sliced some sourdough, drizzled it with olive oil and put it in a hot griddle pan. I then busied myself doing very little whilst the missus made the all-important Russian dressing, using a recipe from Tom Oldroyd of Mishkins (winner of best menu item award - All pork Big Apple dog, dragged through the garden)!

Place an egg, juice of 1/2 a lemon, pinch of salt and one of pepper and 2 tsp of Dijon into a processor. Add 2 tsp of jarred horseradish, 3 tbsp ketchup, a few drops of Tabasco and a few of Worcestershire sauce and 1 tsp of paprika. Sounds like a lot I know, but it is all stuff that you'll probably have. Blitz. Then stir in a some chopped gherkin and a couple of chopped spring onions. Pow! A totally knockout dressing, and vital for the perfect Reuben.

With the bread toasting nicely in the pan I grated some cheddar. Ideally we'd have had some emmenthal or other Swiss cheese. Not to worry, it's hard to beat a good cheddar.

And so to the Reuben. A piece of toasted sourdough is given a generous spread of Russian dressing. Then follows a generous portion of pastrami, a small mountain of sauerkraut and a reasonably sized hill of cheddar. Top that with another slice of toasted sourdough which has been liberally covered with Russian dressing.

Sandwich perfection

And there you have it. The Reuben. The monumental mother of all sandwiches. And a very good way of spending a Saturday.

Jamie Oliver's braised oxtail

Sprouts? Yeah, sprouts.

To be accurate, this isn't a Jamie Oliver recipe. It's one by Aaron Craze, an early student at Fifteen London. Award winning apparently, and to be fair, Jamie gives him his dues in the book this first appeared in - Cook with Jamie.

The original recipe includes gnocchi but my Mum isn't a fan of that, so I served this with a mash of celeriac and potato that had been flavoured with lots of fresh thyme which was itself quite delicious. Just boil equalish quantities of potato and celeriac and mash with lots of butter when cooked. I added 5-6 fronds worth of fresh thyme leaves which gave a nice aromatic taste to the mash and the little green leaves made it look very appealing.

Due to some missing ingredients I had to tweak things a bit, but what I came up with still very nice. This dish, and the brisket chili, that I've blogged about before have really put me off using mince for good. There just isn't any point. It is so much more satisfying to both cook and eat proper meat.

The recipe for the braised oxtail as shown in the book is:
1 oxtail (jointed) - I got mine from Ruby & White, must butchers would be able to supply it if given notice. I've also seen it for sale in Waitrose.
1 celery stick finely chopped
1 onion peeled and finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped (carrot, onion and celery = sofritto)
1 leek, trimmed and finely chopped
1/2 bottle of white wine (I used Chenin Blanc, avoid Sauvignon Blanc as it is too fruity)
1 tablespoon crushed fennel seeds (I didn't have these so used a little star anise)
1 tablespoon crushed juniper berries
1/2 cinnamon stick
1 dried chilli
1 tablespoon tomato puree (I used tommy k)
4 x 400g tins plum tomatoes (a silly amount, I used 1 tin in a dish to feed 3 people)
1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves
A handful of fresh sage
Salt and pepper

It's worth noting that the original recipe is for 6 people. I'm not convinced by that. I used 1 oxtail and fed 3 people. The oxtail uncooked weighed a little over a kilo, but the meat was less than half that weight. Maybe I made the sauce a lot meatier than it is meant to be, but I'm glad I did.

The cooking is easy. Sear the oxtail in a large pan then add the chopped the veg, turn the heat down and cook till the veg is lightly browned. Then add the wine, spices, tomato puree and tinned tomatoes. Top up with water if necessary to make sure all the meat is covered then put in an oven (150 degrees Celsius) for about 4 hours.

When the meat is beginning to fall off the bone, remove the pan or dish from the oven and shred all the meat off the bones. Then return it to the pot. Add the oregano and simmer to a nice thickness. Serve with fried sage leaves and gnocchi.

Although what I cooked was a slight departure from the original it was still very nice. It may have been better if I'd left the star anise out, which I would next time, but I was still very pleased. As were my missus and my mum - and they can be a tough crowd.

If you are tempted to give this a go then do, it's not difficult and the final dish is as tasty as they come.

A Great British Burger

Saturday night this week found me trying to find the perfect topping to a burger. It's a search that I am more than happy to undertake, you should understand, as I love burgers. Not crap, fast-food burgers, although there is occasionally time made for a Whopper. But McDonald's taste far too sweet these days. They may not advertise to kids as much any more, but they certainly cater solely to their tastes.

So my perfect burger is not a mass-produced one. It's made at home from minced beef. Good mince is the key, and it's not always possible to get ahold of. The stuff I used this weekend wasn't that great, but this was really just a battle of the toppings.

On, or rather in, one hand was a burger topped with grilled portabello mushroom, Swiss cheese, ketchup (such a satisfying word) and American mustard. In the other hand, and straight out of left field, was a burger topped with horseradish and sliced beetroot.

The thinking behind the mushroom and cheese burger was memories of the Mushroom Double Swiss which Burger King used to offer. And it really wasn't bad. But the title of best burger topping belonged to beetroot and horseradish.

Beef and horseradish work great as a Sunday roast, and I thought they would pair really well in a burger. But I wanted another dimension, and thought that the sweetish earthiness of beetroot would work well. And it did. The overall taste was a meaty, sweet and sour taste. But with really pronounced tastes.

The taste of all the ingredients seemed to turn up the taste of the others. Beef and horseradish brought out the sweetness of the beetroot. That in turn contrasted nicely with the savoury beef and the heat of the horseradish. Great British ingredients teaming up to make a great British burger.

I never imagined my perfect burger would be one without cheese or relish. I have always thought a bit of lettuce and onion or tomato was vital. Which just isn't the case. At least for me it isn't. But I will keep checking on that.

The Thank You list

Have you ever been in the middle of eating your tea and stopped to think how many people you would have to thank for the food on your plate?

How many people would you end up with? There might be farmers and growers, pickers, sorters, packers, drivers, pilots, more drivers, warehouse staff, more drivers, shelf stackers and the checkout lady. Not to mention the buyers, sales & marketing, finance and HR departments of the supermarkets.

It might be fair to say, then, that the shorter the list, the better the food.

Judging by the steak I've just eaten I'd say that's a fair bet. The thank you list for my steak? Farmer, butcher. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I even said a little thank you to the cow. The list doesn't get a lot shorter than that, not for meat anyway. And steaks don't get much better.

The great thing about buying steak, or any meat for that matter, from a butcher is that you can get exactly what you want. I wanted a big sirloin with a decent amount of fat on it. And that's what I got. A thick slab of deep red meat with a good edge of creamy white fat.

I covered this in freshly ground black pepper and laid it in a hot pan which had a crushed clove of garlic frying in it. I rubbed the garlic of the cooked side when I turned the meat to impart a nice garlic flavour which I think really complements beef. After cooking for around 8 minutes I laid it on the chopping to rest for a few minutes before I ate it.

It tasted every bit as good as I hoped it would, which made me consider who I needed to say thank you to. So thank you, Maskill's of Hebden Bridge, farmers and butchers. And thank you, cow.

Jamie Oliver's Brisket Chili

Without a doubt this is the finest Chili you will ever eat. And if you like this, then I would recommend giving his braised oxtail a go, just as easy and just as tasty.


I made the chili for 2 hungry adults, and it fed us handsomely.

First of all, finely chop an onion, a chilli or two and a couple of cloves of garlic and soften over a low heat. I used some Hotel Chocolat Cocoa & chilli oil to try and add a bit more flavour. 

Whilst the onion, garlic and chilli mixture are cooking score a 1.5lb piece of brisket. Season the meat and then rub in some ground cumin seed, dried oregano and a good amount of paprika. This then goes into a casserole or pan which can go into the oven. Fry the meat over a medium heat, to get some colour. Turn it regularly to ensure it gets browned on all sides.

Add the onion mixture to the casserole along with a cinnamon stick, 3 bay leaves, about 400ml of good beef stock and about the same amount again of passata or a tin of chunky chopped tomatoes.

Turn up the heat and get everything simmering vigorously, the put it into a medium oven (160 Celsius) for about 3 hours, until the meat pulls apart with little effort. If you want you could add some kidney beans a few minutes before serving to add a bit of texture.

True enough, just like on the tele, the meat fell apart. And it tasted very, very good. I now understand why Jamie and Gennaro react they way they do to some of the stuff they cook. It made us go "umm" and "cor" and make bold statements of intimate activity to each other. Satisfyingly big chunks of rich meat, and some small slithers, in a moreish, slightly sweet, spicy, savoury sauce. It didn't stand a chance. We finished the lot off in two big bowls each. Writing this I simply want to eat it again right now.