Mary Berry's Steak Diane

Just five more recipes to go and I'm staying with the mothership for the weekend.  It was the last weekend that I've had to do battle with the 'I need to cook for my blog' issue and I thought I'd warm her up to the idea by offering to cook what used to be her favourite meal.  I don't know if it still is (I forgot to ask and can't be bothered to walk downstairs to check).  But I remember being fascinated as a child, on rare meals out to The Four Horseshoes in Nursling, by the waiter burning my mum's tea at the table whilst everyone stared.

The recipe comes from Dame Mary's Complete Cookbook.  According to my mother, the Steak Diane connoisseur  it's not authentic because it doesn't have cream in it.  A quick Google reveals that Gordon and AWT use cream.  The Wikipedia description doesn't mention cream.  There aren't that many 'sleb chef versions of it on the web - probably because it's considered naff as its a seventies throw back.

Despite its grand French name, the sauce is simple enough to make.  Sautee some onions; add that French classic Worcestershire sauce; season with parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper and then pour in some flaming brandy.  At the brandy lighting point I had to remind my mother that I am 35 and quite capable of setting light to alcohol by myself without supervision.  She's probably right not to trust me as I nearly set the extractor fan alight at Christmas when I flambeed the Christmas pudding (although she doesn't know this as she was too busy acquainting herself with the wine).

The meal went down well with the family although I found the sauce a little too oily for my taste.  I appreciate the sunflower oil was to stop the butter burning but I think I could've gotten away with one tablespoon rather than two.

Four more days and counting!

Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

Sings tunelessly ♪ ♫ "Chim chim-eny, chim chim-eny, chimichurri"♪ ♫ 

I really only chose today's recipe just so I could include a reference to my favourite film ever.  Mary Poppins for the uninitiated.  I have watched it approximately eleventy-million and one times in my life.  I know it word-perfect.  I want to be Julie Andrews in that dress when they jump into the chalk picture. Still.  

More sauce than steak

If Sir Jimmy Savile (RIP) was to pop up and ask me to name my price, I would without a doubt eschew the chance to have enough plastic surgery to deal with my wobbly belly, wobbly thighs, squirrel flaps and sagging boobs; a massive lottery win (although that would also deliver the Poppins-dream); and the chance to snog any of my guilty crushes (although there is one I'd possibly pick over the Poppins-dream) in order to wear that dress and dance with Dick van Dyke (as he was then, not as he is now).

Last week I had a bit of a win on the dinner front in that I managed to get both Miss A and the husband eating steak.  So Thursday's was declared as steak night and with that in mind, I decided to whip up some chimichurri sauce after reading all about it on Tonight's Menu during the Olympic Food Challenge.  And it gave me an excuse to open the blog with the Chimichurri pun.  

It's dead simple - a lot of parsley, a pile of garlic, some onion, lemon juice, olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt and chilli flakes.  Mix it up, dollop onto steak.  Perfect for a Thursday night tea.  And my colleagues will be eternally grateful that I'm working from home tomorrow because boy, did the raw garlic have a kick to it.  Although I'm wondering if all the parsley negated that? 

It made the steak more enjoyable than my usual staple when I'm dieting which is just simply pan fried with salt and pepper.  Although it had oil in it, the green bits at least made me feel I was being a bit healthy.  And having chosen a portion of angel hair pasta on the side, it became clear that the spare sauce would make a good raw pesto.

I chopped all my ingredients by hand because I couldn't be faffed with cleaning out the food processor. Looking at different recipes, they mostly agree on the basic recipe for the sauce with variations on the herbs but some advocate the herbs being hand chopped and the garlic and onion only going in the food processor while others process the lot.

Whatever.  If you have really fresh parsley - I had a mahoosive bunch from the Morrisons Market then it's definitely worth a make.

And it means I get to post the Argentinian flag on my blog tonight.  Huzzah!

Even better, I've volunteered to help complete the sweep up for the Olympic Food Challenge during the Paralympics so watch out for more foreign dishes (and flags!) heading to this blog shortly.  Happy days!

Argentina - previously colonised by Ewan from Tonight's Menu

Real Spaghetti Bolognaise

Spag Bol is my absolute favourite meal in the world.  I honestly would eat it every day and, provided it was a good recipe, would never tire of it.

I've written before about having to twist my grandad's arm to get him to let my mum make it.  Eventually, we got to a point where he actually made it for the family.  He used to laugh at the recipe I wrote out for him because it included 'two squirts of garlic' in the ingredient list.  We used to use Gia Garlic Puree in a tube (in fact, I still use it sometimes) but because he wasn't a 'throw it all in the pot and see how it turns out' cook, he could never quite figure out how much two squirts was.  I think it's because he was an accountant and everything had to be perfectly counted in his world.

The husband is very much like him.  He used to make spag bol when I first met him.  Whereas I'm very much of the tweak-as-you-go school, he mechanicially made his recipe time after time with no variation.

Spag bol.  On a plate.  Sorted!

Of course, this caused me trouble because no two spag bols I produced ever tasted the same.  Even if I use all the same ingredients and am consistent with my quantities of mince, onions and tomatoes; the twiddly bits (Bovril cubes, Lea and Perrins, bacon, carrots, celery, mushrooms, wine, herbs) may or may not make an appearance - and in varying quantities each time.  For me, it always tasted somewhere between okay and amazing because I adore spag bol.  But the hubby couldn't deal with the variance.

When I started this blog, I wanted to find the ultimate spag bol recipe that I would promise to myself I'd never tweak.  But I've not been brave enough to make it for him again until now.  Miss A and I eat it sometimes but since I found a recipe for meatballs he loves (Waitrose meatballs with Rachel Allen's pasta sauce - homemade of course!), he refuses to eat spag bol.

Given that we're on holiday and I have decided that I will only be cooking one meal each night for the duration, he is going to have to eat up and shut up for once.  I may ask his opinion but sometimes his honesty is a little brutal (I've learned never to ask if my bum looks big in anything - you can read some of his critical feedback here).

I found this recipe by Googling for 'The Ultimate Spaghetti Bolognese'.  This comes straight from a real, genuine Italian chef who is unimpressed by various English variations on a classic dish.  I find that amusing because my understanding was that Italians don't really eat Spag Bol.  Instead, eating a similar meat ragu which comes with something other than spaghetti (can't remember exactly what).  But whatever, I have to give it a whirl if you'll pardon the pun.

Sorry for yet another pre-written blog post - don't worry, I will update them all soon!

In the meantime, if you want to try it yourself, you can find the recipe here.

Updated: 20th July 2012 @ 15:21

Well the verdict was 'It's just spag bol'.  It wasn't a bad spag bol.  For someone who loves spag bol as much as I do, it was very edible.  It just didn't set my world on fire, thus leaving me still bereft of the ultimate go-to spag bol recipe.

There will definitely be further research in this area in the future when I start my new blog and I'm not having to post every single day.  I know that a combination of beef and pork or veal mince is supposed to work very well so I have some options to try.

But I did achieve my ultimate goal of ensuring that all three family members ate the same thing at the same time with this recipe.  Job done.

Lorraine Pascale's Chilli Con Carne

Today was yet another day that didn't quite go to plan.  I won't bore you with the tedious details as I'm saving the wry observations about where I went for another blog post.  I'll just mention that my intention was to capitalise on the husband and child both being out (separately) for the day and have a go at making sushi.  This has now been postponed to a rush-job tomorrow during the twenty minutes or so of the child's afternoon nap.

Finished chilli with rice

In some ways, I'm quite glad that I didn't have time to potter at home as on Day 4 of the diet, I am craving cake.  It doesn't help that lots of my Twitter pals are busy tweeting pictures of the glorious cakes they're able to make because they are not having to be ridiculously healthy to shift a lot of weight.  @kateselwood1, @dickybundock, and @harbourhussy being just some of the culprits (definitely worth a follow as they're all lovely tweeps though).


And so it was that I ended up making Lorraine Pascale's chilli for tea.  This had been planned for another time as I wanted to start stockpiling a few meals for when I go back to work next week.  Sometimes, there's nothing I want to do less than cook three separate meals when I've been out of the house since 6am.  It's worse when I'm on a healthy eating jag, so having calculated that this was a reasonably diet- (I hate that word) friendly recipe, I gave it a go with the plan to freeze several portions.

This particular recipe is one that Pascale's mum used to make her with a few tweaks.  Despite eating chilli a fair bit, it's something I've never made from scratch.  I've always used the Old El Paso Chilli Seasoning pouches.  Which is silly. Because you still have to do all the chopping and adding of extra things like tomatoes and veg.  It just saves having to wade through cupboards looking for rarely used herbs and spices (although now, my spice collection is just taking up all the spare space on my microwave I use them so often).

See my family don't like spicy things.  And of course growing up in the early eighties, and living with my grandparents who had survived on war rations, exciting food was hardly de-rigueur. I remember pleading with my grandfather on one occasion to let my mum cook spaghetti bolognaise for tea.  Such a meal was positively cosmopolitan as far as my granddad was concerned.  It eventually became a household staple.  To be fair, when my gran retired, she did try some more adventurous meals, but her cooking was best when it was simple comfort food.

Ingredients

Another household staple (and my second favourite after spag bol) was mince, beans and rice.  Which is basically my mother's bolognaise sauce with a tin of baked beans mixed in.  So chilli without the spice.  But suggest to my mother now that she should try chilli that isn't spicy but just tasty and she will turn her nose up at it without further consideration.  She's missing out.

Spicy food is really an anathema to my mother.  Mention Indian food and she breaks out into a cold sweat.  Likewise, anything from the Chinese that even mentions it's been near a chilli and she wouldn't entertain it.  So she made me chuckle last week when she asked what Thai food was like.  My normal response is 'really tasty Chinese food'.  Because it is.  The dishes are similar, but the flavourings are just much more intense.  But to my mother, I said 'it's like really tasty Chinese food BUT it's really hot'.  Oddly, that didn't deter her.  She's still intent on going out on whatever shindig it is that's frequenting a Thai restaurant.  The woman who won't eat tasty chilli going for an all out Thai chilli fest.  Oh to be a fly on the wall.

Getting back to Lorraine's mum's chilli.  It is one of those comforting dishes.  It really tasted like something a mum would make.  There's nothing massively special and mindblowing about it.  But on a cold, wet, windy night tonight, it's like having a lovely foodie hug.

It required a lot of tasting during cooking.  To start with I wasn't convinced by the flavours.  I'd added a carrot and a couple of celery sticks to bulk it out a little and to try to get some veg into my fussy toddler's diet (she's having this for tea tomorrow if I don't sneak downstairs and make a midnight snack of it).

But if I'd paid attention to the blurb around the recipe, I would have read that the flavours take time to develop.  Even after an hour of simmering, it wasn't doing it for me.  But then I left it for another hour and reheated it.  And as if by magic, it tasted just about right.  I did add a little tomato puree (about 1tbsp) to compensate for the less than tasty chopped toms I used.

When I'm done with the stricter side of healthy eating, I'd love to give Thomasina Miers' chilli a go as that's a more authentic Mexican type recipe that takes nearly all day to cook, has a touch of chocolate in it (still intrigued by this one) and uses stewing steak rather than mince.

I think this will become a staple in the Crowdey household - at least for me!

The recipe can be found in Home Cooking Made Easy although there is a very similar one on the BBC Good Food website that is very highly rated too.

Beef and Red Wine Pie Filling

I was going to make a croquembouche for dessert today.  I did my research, found my recipe, tweeted the lovely @Wotchers (Mary-Ann from the Great British Bake Off) for advice.  I then got given the GBBO book for Christmas and decided I'd use the recipe in there to create my masterpiece.

Dinner tonight was going to be a proper dinner party.  But I'd deluded myself that because we have guests, my husband might actually attempt to eat what was in front of him without being all whiney like a spoilt toddler.  School-girl error.  I picked something that was relatively low cost, not poultry based and not creamy as I wanted to do the choux buns for pudding.

Ingredients

I've mentioned before that he will generally only eat chicken and sausages.  Every so often, he'll eat a beefburger or if he's feeling radical, a lamb kebab (the mush-on-a-stick ones that you get from the supermarket in barbecue season).  Why on earth I thought I might be able to change this, I don't know.  And now having thrown my toys out of the pram and flounced upstairs to spill my woes on my blog, I'm feeling rather silly.  We've been together nearly eight years so I should know by now that he will do as he pleases.

We're trying to economise as he is running his own business and we've gone from being a two salary, no child household to a one salary household with child and astronomical business expenses to boot.  He recently (on my birthday!) visited a friend of his who lives in a smug, self-satisfied world of thrift.  They got to discussing how much each household spends on their weekly shop.  The friend - £60 for two adults and one child, allegedly including beer for three nights of the week.  Us - around £120.

I know a lot of people who would throw their hands up in horror at my weekly spend.  We get through a lot of fruit.  I include nappies in that figure and all the other household cleaning stuff (why do I spend so much on that and still live in a dump of a house??).  The child eats an awful lot of expensive fruit - I can't believe how expensive grapes are these days.  But a lot of it is squandered on me planning the food for the week and then when the husband says a couple of hours before dinner 'I don't want that', dashing off to Tesco Express to buy something else for him.  My freezer is positively groaning with stuff I've had to freeze that he decided he didn't want to eat that day.  And I rarely dare defrost anything just in case 'he doesn't feel like that today'  and it ends up in the bin.

That's not burnt (bottom right) it's the red wine reduction

Conversely, Mr Smug knows 40 days in advance what is for dinner on any given day because they have a planner.  How organised.  The husband tried to tell me I should do this to save money.  I pointed out that much as it would make my life so much easier as a full-time working mother, it wouldn't work because of him.  He thought about that one for a while.   And agreed.  So the cycle has not been and will never be broken.  Just my cooking spirit.

So just why did he buy me Lorraine Pascale's Home Cooking Made Easy for Christmas?  Because there's nothing in there he will eat (well other than cake) so I doubt I'll ever use it as we never have dinner guests.  He said the other day that he was really proud of me keeping up this blog for so long and he actually read it and thought it to be not bad.  But I've shifted away from my original goal which was to try to get him to eat new food.  On that front, I've completely failed, although really I was doomed from the start.

Finished pie filling

When we've been out to restaurants, he'll eat stuff I wouldn't dare offer him at home.  He took me to the Ritz for our first wedding anniversary and he actually ate and enjoyed ballotine of duck.  He once at someone else's lamb curry (it was a friend of ours!) at a Thai restaurant.  But in his own castle, he is king.  And if he doesn't want to eat something, it's harder than trying to feed a toddler with pursed lips.

I thought he might at least eat the profiteroles (after everyone failing to keep the child out of the kitchen while I was cooking yesterday I figured that hot caramel for a croquembouche was a bad idea) but no, he doesn't even want those today.  He's just going to eat the leftovers from Christmas.  How eco-friendly of him so I can't denounce him for not trying something new, can I?

Anyway, the pie filling is made and I want to blog now while I still have some spare time and sanity - the child is out at the zoo with the grandparents.

In the end, I ditched the BBC Good Food recipe I was going to use in favour of one from the GBBO book.  This is a really lovely book with loads of recipes from the series plus practical guides on how to do things.  Not sure who cooked this on the Bake Off but it's a really nice recipe.  This from someone (me) who doesn't like beef much and especially not beef pie, but is willing to make a sacrifice at Christmas for other people who will (hopefully) enjoy it more (my family - if they've not stuffed themselves silly pre-dinner like they did yesterday).

Fills a 23cm pie dish

• 750g lean stewing steak, cut into 2.5cm dice
• 1 1/2 tbsp plain flour
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped (I used whole shallots)
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 350ml red wine
• 250ml beef stock
• large sprig of fresh thyme
• 125g small button mushrooms
• salt and black pepper

1. Toss the beef in the flour, seasoned with a little salt and pepper, to coat thoroughly.  Heat the oil in a large, lidded frying pan.  Add the pieces of meat, a few at a time and fry for about 2 mins on each side or until nicely browned.  Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate.
2. When all the meat has been browned, turn the heat right down and add the onions and garlic to the pot, stirring well to dislodge any bits stuck to the base.  Cover the pot and cook very gently, stirring occasionally, for about 12 minutes or until the onions are very soft and lightly golden.
3. Meanwhile, simmer the red wine in a small pan until reduced by about one-third.  Pour into a measuring jug and make up to 500ml with beef stock.   Uncover the onions and stir in the wine and stock mixture followed by the beef (plus any juices on the plate) and the leaves from the sprig of thyme.   Bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover the pot and cook gently for 1 hour, stirring from time to time.
4. Add the mushrooms and stir well.  Simmer, uncovered for another hour or until the meat is tender and the gravy is very thick and coats the meat.  Taste and add mofe salt and pepper as needed.  Leave to cool then cover and chill until you are ready to fill the pie.

As served (pic taken after blog was posted originally)

I'm planning to serve this with puff pastry lids, new potatoes and fresh asparagus (I know it's not in season here!).  Pudding will now be leftover mince pies, birthday cake or Christmas pudding (in the spirit of thrift) and I may just put my toys back in the pram and not give up on this blog - I'll just give up on the idea of my husband ever trying something new.  Although if the husband reads this and doesn't forgive me, there may be no blog tomorrow as I may be homeless.  Watch this space...