The gorgeous grub thread

[Ed]

My wife can't cook. To give you an example of how inedible her food is, she made a casserole a few years ago that turned out like brown powerballs in carrot jelly. It actually wobbled in the plate. I apologised for not being able to eat it (which is normal in this house) and so it ended up in the dog's bowl. The dog picked the stew off his food and left it on the floor around the outside, then ate the dog food in preference to the stew.

So, for a while now, after craving decent food and having the kids beg me to do something, I've been cooking the occasional evening meal, and seem to have taken over all the cooking duties for the weekends. I don't mind - I actually quite like trying new stuff and it turns out I'm not bad at chef duty.

Anyhoo, I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread where I, and anybody else who feels like it, can post any recipes for good grub we've tried.

Tonight I cooked a fish pie to Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall's recipe, as detailed on this BBC web page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/creamyfishpie_82361.shtml and it was really tasty, right to the last mouthful. Washed it down with a nicely chilled Chardonnay. Very civilised

[desertwomble]

Noting this thread is called 'The Gorgeous Grub', I'm reminded of when I lived in Zimbabwe, where one of the delicacies were mopani worms. These fat, white grubs were fried, seasoned with red pepper and sold at roadsides.

They were delicious as long as you didn't look at them, with their legs all folded up, their big, bug eyes looking plaintively up at you, and the definite green colour of the flesh once you bit into them.

Bon appetit!

DW

[Ed]

You're a very bad womble for posting maggot recipes on my lovely new thread. To punish you, I'm sending my wife to cook you something ostensibly mundane and innocuous, with orders to stand over you to make sure you eat it. Be afraid - be very afraid

[desertwomble]

You're a very bad womble for posting maggot recipes on my lovely new thread. To punish you, I'm sending my wife to cook you something ostensibly mundane and innocuous, with orders to stand over you to make sure you eat it. Be afraid - be very afraid

Hey, they're not maggots! They're grubs!

Now did I tell you about the fried mice, or the grasshoppers, or the termites?

DW

[Ed]

No. But I'm sure they're delicious.

Tonight I made potatoes dauphinoise - http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/get_cooking/recipes/100.shtml - but the cooking time is way short of the mark. I think they'd be better cooking for about two hours, covered in tinfoil, so the top doesn't burn, and then browned under the grill. Three cloves of garlic was too much as well. Two would have been fine, IMO. Didn't have enough cream, so I used half and half with milk.

With the potato, I served pork tenderloin, diagonally sliced into 1" steaks and then cooked on a searing hot griddle pan, after getting a good wetting with barbecue sauce, made to this recipe -

For the sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
2 star anise
1 tsp ground fennel seeds
50g/2oz dark muscovado sugar
50ml/2fl oz soy sauce
300ml/11fl oz tomato ketchup


Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the shallot, garlic and chilli and fry for 2-3 minutes, or until softened.
2. Add the star anise and ground fennel and cook for a further minute, or until the spices are fragrant.
3. Add the muscovado sugar, soy sauce and tomato ketchup, stir well, then bring the mixture to the boil. Reduce the heat until the mixture is simmering, then continue to simmer for 4-5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened. Set aside.
4. Brush the top of the meat with some of the sauce, then turn it over and brush with more of the sauce. Continue to cook for a further 2-3 minutes (for medium), or until cooked to your liking. Remove from the heat and set aside on a warm plate to rest.

***

Didn't have any shallots, so I used an onion. We didn't have any fennel, so I replaced it with chinese five spice, not keen on chilli, so I left it out, and we didn't have enough tomato ketchup, so I halved all the quantities, and there was still tons of it left over.

It was delicious - my youngest was enjoying it so much he groaned with pleasure as he ate it. Said it tasted beautiful.  

[Ed]

Tonight I made pot stickers to this recipe - http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/porkpotstickerdumpli_90878.shtml

Served with more of that barbecue pork, as per the recipe above, and served it all with boiled rice as well as egg fried rice. It was quite tasty, and our youngest asked for me to make it again, a lot, but it struck me as an awful lot of work for nothing particularly memorable.

[Ed]

Decided to do a roast chicken with a difference tonight. I've always loved the flavour of Kentucky Fried Chicken, so I thought I'd try to track down a recipe for the batter and slap it onto a chicken before roasting it.

I found this recipe:


2 cups flour
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon dry thyme
2 eggs


Which is meant for coating pieces of chicken by making a batter with 2 cups of added milk. What I did instead was beat a couple of eggs and roll the chicken in it, then rolled the chicken in the flour/herb/spice mix, before repeating to give two layers of the coating. I had already loosened the skin over the breast, put a couple of good sized knobs of butter under the skin and massaged it around. I also half stuffed the chicken with good old Paxo. After adding the coating I chucked it in the oven at 225C and roasted it for two hours, basting occasionally with olive oil.

Served it up with roast potatoes, runner beans, honey glazed carrots and a good gravy made from the meat juices. I added a sprinkling of plain flour to the roasting tin and placed it over a hot ring, combined the flour with the meat juices and oils to make a roux, which I then thinned with a pint of chicken stock.

Very tasty. Not quite the same as KFC, though. The flavour was incredibly close, but apparently you can only get that nice chewy texture they get with their chicken coating by adding MSG. The texture of the flour mix was similar to a powdery pastry - not good, but I found if I flaked off the coating, the skin beneath tasted just like KFC, but without the texture.

All in all, I'd give it 7/10 - it was very tasty, but not quite there. If I do it again, I think I'll forget the flour and just rub the herb/spice mix into a well oiled bird.

[delph_ambi]

I suspect the only way to make this work is to drop the whole chicken into a vat of boiling oil.

Last time I had a KFC was Deptford, 1982, I think. I haven't felt the urge to recreate the flavour.

[Ed]

Yep - it definitely would have been better deep fried in the proper batter. Apparently KFC use a pressure fryer, which I assume is something like a standard pressure cooker filled with boiling oil. Those things give me the willies filled with plain water, let alone boiling oil. My mother once made the mistake of taking the weight off the top while it was under pressure, which resulted in our dinner liquifying in a split second and spreading itself over the whole kitchen ceiling.

[delph_ambi]

Ah yes, been there, done that. Only I didn't lift the weight - it blew off, leaving a small hole in the ceiling and lots of super-heated pea soup all over the place. I've managed to buckle about three pressure cookers. You're not supposed to be able to do that.

I still love them. Use them a lot. Quick, simple, with an enticing air of danger...

[Ed]

Whenever I see the words 'air of danger' I think of a 'parp!' sound

Aah... the smell of fear....

[Ed]

Made myself a delicious lunch today. Had a pannini sliced in half, which I drizzled with olive oil and then toasted on a griddle pan, both sides of both pieces. Put a slice of smoked Wiltshire ham on top of each half, then a slice of extra mature cheddar cheese, a layer of chopped fresh tomatoes from our greenhouse, final drizzling of olive oil, chopped oregano, salt, pepper. Under a hot grill for a few minutes until the tomato is soft and the cheese is bubbling.

Absolutely gorgeous

[Dragoro]

I had so much olive oil while I was in Greece, Id rather kill myself then ever taste that nasty substance again.

[Ed]

It's funny, but a few years ago I wouldn't have eaten anything drizzled in olive oil, purely because we're conditioned to avoid 'greasy' food and fat/oil in all its forms. But when you understand how your sense of taste works, it makes perfect sense to include oil.

We're used to smearing bread with butter or margarine (which even flies avoid pitching on), and we accept it as a necessary part of a sandwich, but in countries like Italy and Greece they rarely seem to use butter for anything - probably because it's so hot that the butter ends up in a pool in the bottom of the dish whenever you get it out of the fridge.

How butter/marge/oil works is it takes on the flavour of whatever its mixed with and then coats your tongue with all those flavours, so that the taste is more intense and lingers longer. So when you're munching through a sandwich, all the various things you put into it are tumbling around in your mouth, combining flavours with the butter/oil and making that sandwich taste even better than it would on dry bread. Now that I understand that, and I've actually tasted the difference, I don't mind eating olive oil instead of butter. It's healthier, too.

[Rev. Austin]

The Hairy Bikers put butter in EVERYTHING they cook.  Unbelievable. 

My dad keeps asking what I want for tea, and then comes back from the shops with random stuff and says "You're having Corned Beef Hash".  Am I?  Oh alright then 

How Northern is Corned Beef Hash?!