Roast chicken with herb butter

Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a photo before eating. Probably because the cooking did not go smoothly.

It started off when I saw recipe for Roast chicken with sorrel butter in one of my books. What caught my eye is that the chef roasted the chicken without legs. Now, I just happened to have a legless chicken in the fridge, as I had removed the legs and smoked them.

I have no sorrel, but I thought sage and rosemary could be nice, so I made the butter and tucked it under the skin as instructed. The recipe said it should be ready in 25 minutes.

I took it out after 25 minutes, looked at it, and put it back for another 5 to brown some. It didn't brown all that much, but I left it to stand for 5 minutes and steam-fried some cabbage. When the standing time was up, I cut the chicken and it was still just too pink inside.

So I put it back in the oven for another ten minutes, and gave it some microwave help at 180 watts as well.

After letting it stand again, it was still slightly pink. I cut a thin slice off the top, that was white, and we ate that. The cat got some pink stuff.

It would seem even a legless chicken needs a full cooking time. But the herb butter was nice.

Bangers!

These pork bangers are not from the expat shop. I made them myself, with my own two hands. I used this recipe and may I say it was a good one! Yes, there are breadcrumbs in it, but spread across all that meat I doubt it matters much. I made a half recipe, and used about half a cup of breadcrumbs instead of three quarters. Also, next time I may reduce the salt in the seasoning slightly; I found the sausages marginally salty. Luckily, the cabbage was very plain.

The meat I chopped in my food processor. The butcher at In de Bogaard gave me some sausage casing when I went in to find out where to buy some; I filled the casing using a pastry bag and my widest nozzle.

I only made four, because the pastry bag was hard work. Time to look into an electric sausage machine I think, because I could do this more often. There are a whole lot of recipes on that site!

Steak and mushrooms

Paul had the day off, and what a lovely sunny day it was too! Cold meats and salads, then - let's pretend it's summer.

The carrot salad was the same easy one I've become addicted to: the dressing is one part passion fruit vinegar to three parts oil. That's it. The other dressing was leftover from the Cooking club Partner's Evening, as was the cold lamb. Otherwise it's all pretty straightforward.



We needed a quick supper, as Paul had to do a telephone survey and get to choir practice time. Grilled steak - what better or quicker? Cream does not go well with singing, so I did plain fried mushrooms. Normally I like sour cream in there, in the stroganov style. Plain, steam-fried beans.

Sole with Lemon Butter

Sole is one of my favourite fishes. We used to get quite nice frozen baby soles in South Africa, so when I saw frozen sole here I bought some and stuck it in the freezer for one of those days.

Well, today was one of those days, so I whipped out two soles. Unfortunately it seems that these soles should have defrosted in the fridge first - and not be cooked from frozen as is usually the case. Tough. I pan fried it from frozen in butter, then used the same pan to make lemon butter sauce. This is easy, just melt some butter (however much looks good to you, a couple of tablespoons is more than enough for two people) and let it get slightly brown, then stir in some lemon juice (how lemony do you like it? I never measure the lemon, I just add it until it smells right, but you could taste it I guess.)

I served the sole with lettuce, tomato and carrot salad.

It was a little tasteless, much like the sole I had in England. Whether this is because it was cooked from frozen, or because it's just naturally tasteless, I'll only know next time I cook it - then I will defrost it in advance, as suggested.

But I suspect that fresh sole from the fish shop is still the way to go.

Beef curry in coconut milk

The curries I like best are those simmered in coconut milk, so that's what I did here. I didn't use any particular recipe, just curry basics: fry onion, ginger and garlic in oil until soft but not coloured, add curry spice to taste. Then the cubed meat goes in, and you brown it slightly. Then you add the coconut milk and water to cover the lot and leave it to simmer for a couple of hours, checking to make sure it doesn't boil dry. The liquid should reduce down to a gravy that clings to the meat.
Stir in some garam masala towards the end, to round out the flavours, and check for salt at the same time.

Normally I would like to do a couple of sambals with a curry, such as yogurt, cucumber, chopped tomato and onion. In fact, I had none of these in the house. I did have a mango, and a wonderful sambal it made!

Instead of rice, I steam-fried some aubergine and then mashed it coarsely. It wasn't a great mix with the curry, because aubergine has a particular taste; it's not a bland vegetable. But it was all I had. If I were shopping particularly for this meal, I would get cauliflower, which goes with everything.

Shuwarma

This is the dead straightforward shuwarma strips you can buy at any supermarket butcher in the Netherlands. These were spiced with provencal spices.

The issue here is how to serve them without pita? I piled it onto slices of grilled aubergine. Slice the aubergine lengthwise for best effect, brush with olive oil (NOT extra-virgin!) and grill in a hot grillpan for a couple of minutes each side. You can pour in a little water while grilling: aubergines absorb an awful lot of stuff, and while I have no religious objections to eating oil-soaked aubergine, I just think it tastes better if the oil is diluted somewhat.

For the rest, do all the normal shuwarma toppings: chopped onion, chopped tomato, sour cream. It was yummy.

Cooking Club Leftovers

A three course tasting menu of leftovers! First on the list is the salad with liver and black pudding. Luckily I had some leftover, if somewhat bitter, lettuce in the fridge to make the liver and black pudding look more like a salad.



This is the leftover langoustine I described yesterday, complete with foamy goat's cheese sauce. Also the leftover ratatouille.



Finally, the leftover rabbit tournedo. Here I stirred mustard into the leftover goat's cheese sauce to make a mustard sauce to accompany the morsel of meat.

That gives you a brief glimpse of what we do at cooking club. There is a movie you can watch, taken in April last year, if you'd like to know more.

Cooking Club

No photos today as I don't usually take a camera to cooking club. I did once make a movie, which you can see here if you're really interested. I may redo it with a voice-over and post it elsewhere.

One of the things my cooking club has to understand is that if you're serving a six-course meal, then each course needs to be just a couple of mouthfuls. I usually eat half or less when the courses grow too big, and take the rest of the plate home, so you may still get to see some photos during the week.

The menu was:
Trio of Amuses. Well, I always through trio meant three, not an entire platter. I guess because they made a lot they thought it best to serve it all. The trio comprised:
- choux pastry filled with a trout cream. I managed to snag one of the platters with just one of these, as I'm not supposed to be eating any flour at the moment. I did, of course, on the principle that one day should not make that much of a difference in the bigger scheme of things.
- courgette roll-ups filled with ricotta. These were very nice and low-carb friendly. I may well make them and then you will be able to see what they were.
- A quails egg on a bed of radish.

Salad with calf liver and black pudding
Those are heavy meats, and you would expect just a sliver of each. Nope. That was a main meal and most of it came home with me. It was a bit of lettuce topped with a generous slice each of liver, black pudding and fried apple. The black pudding is one specially made for Paul van Waarden, one of our Michelin chefs, and you can buy it at Slagerij Waayer , 275 Frederik Hendriklaan, The Hague. I've never eaten black pudding before and found it delicious!

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Jerusalem Artichoke Chips
A very nice soup made with equal parts poultry stock and milk and finished with cream. Some lemon and shallots, but just a touch. Some of the artichokes were sliced thin and deep fried for garnish. I don't know if Jerusalem Artichokes are on the allowed list, they aren't mentioned, but I guess they're not commonly eaten in this part of the world.

Smoked langoustines with ratatouille and Goat's Cheese sauce
This was the dish I cooked, with Martine. We peeled and cleaned the langoustines (2 per person) and then smoked them for about seven minutes in stove-top smoker. Those are cute and I may get one. Then me poured basil and garlic oil over them (15 basil leaves, a clove of garlic, 100ml oil blended together) and left them covered in the fridge.

Interesting ratatouille method: chop up one aubergine, one red pepper, one yellow pepper, one courgette, into tiny 1/4 inch squares. These are each fried separately, until soft and just cooked, without colouring. One onion+one shallot+one clove garlic are all chopped finely and softened and then combined with a bit of tomato paste. I think I'd leave the paste out, it dominated the dish somewhate. The vegetables are combined and warmed just before serving.

The sauce was dead easy: 100ml vegetable stock, 200 ml cream and 75 gram goat's cheese for 15 people. Warm through and melt the cheese, then beat until foamy.

Just before serving we warmed the langoustines in the oven for about two minutes.

I have leftover ratatouille, sauce, and uncooked langoustines. The smoked ones were very rich, by the way, and two was more than enough.

Rabbit tournedos with mustard sauce

I brought most of this home as well, so a picture will come later.

Mandarin sorbet, chocolate tarte and orange compote

Yes, I did, I'm afraid. They did give me the merest sliver of chocolate tarte, which was a buttery crust with nuts and a chocolate ganache topping. Something I will make I think, it was delicious - but it will wait till I'm at least the weight I was in England. The biggest culprit was certainly the sorbet, as this is made with sugar syrup.

However, I am no heavier this morning than I was yesterday. I may take an extra dose of metformin during the day to compensate for the sugars.

Lunch was leftover greek chicken with carrot salad and tomato. Breakfast was simply a bowl of all-bran with milk though I had a bit of yoghurt at around 11. I just did not wake up hungry like I normally do!