The Untidy Cook

Cakey Breaky Tart

Out and about today.  Having been hunkered down over the festivities it seemed like time to mill around the sales.  Funnily enough there wasn't much to be had.  If only I had the capacity to plan so far ahead that I could purchase all next years presents, wrapping, cards etc without losing them to the alternative space/time continuum that exists in my cupboards.  Never mind, we must accept ourselves as we are.

I did try on all manner of unsuitable, but bargain-a-licious, items.  An exquisite wheat toned crushed italian linen smock that spontaneously caused an Edina moment.  All I needed was a Louis Vuitton travelling easel, a few simple stretched canvases and some hand-ground oil paints to complete the oh-so-simple paysanne look.  So chic! So odd! So left on the shelf!

Having resisted most of the charms of the sales, and after a refreshing visit to the bookshop, it seemed like time for a bit of a sit down.  I hie'd me to a teashop, sort of.  The Hilton's coffee shop was most handy and they have a suprisingly pleasing selection of cakes. 

I had a good review of the cake cabinet - lemon meringue, hazlenut creamy stack, berry cheesecake, strawberry tart - and then settled down with a lovely large flat white (coffee creation of the mediterraneo-australis gods), the strawb number and a new book. 

It was pretty nearly perfect too.  Super crispy pastry shell, chantilly cream, sliced glazed strawberries and chopped pistachios.  I'm rather partial, though, to a biscuit base.  Adds a whole other dimension to a sweet tart, it does.  Still, supplemented by watching the ebb and flow of people through the foyer, it was a splendid way to tootle away half an hour or so.

Beef Fillet

Well, it is Christmas.  OK, it was.  But who needs an excuse to cook something as delicious as a neat little piece of beef?  Anyway, my best friend asked me how I'd cook a fillet so I was practically made to do this.

My second excuse is that it was sat there in the butcher's glass fronted display looking all lost and forlorn.  It was just begging to be picked and subjected to some heat treatment. In my defence I didn't get a big bit - that would have been simply greedy - even if you can eat it cold, in secret, with some mustard on it.

I'm a bit of a born again meat eater - as a youth I used to weep in butchers shops, or at least gag at the smell.  But now I love a trip to the meat counter.  It's partly to do with the quality of produce.  Australia has most excellent ingredients and the meat is just the start of it.  The other part is the flirty butchers. Lovely solid chaps in blood stained pinnies asking if I prefer rump or loin.  Just how does one answer with going ever so slightly pink and sniggering?  Must be my age you know.

Having dragged my meaty lump back to my lair I was in two minds about frying or baking it.  Settling for baking, because I find it hard to get consistent results when I fry it, I turned the oven up to really rather hot and let it get up to speed. 

I avoided cooking anything steak-like for years.  I either seemed to cremate it to a pallid greyness or leave it so blue that it was positively pulsating.  But I figured out that lots of people seem to be able to cook it and so could I.  Some reading up on the topic resulted in a plan that I've found works for me, pretty much every time. 

Firstly, I rub the meat in some dry spices.  Currently I'm favouring chinese five spice powder along with some coarse ground black pepper.  I read somewhere, or heard, or saw, or whatever, that if you salt meat before you cook it you draw out the juices and make your lovely cut all dry and horrid.  However, I just read/heard/saw that it doesn't make a blind bit of difference.  Anyhow, I've left it off for so long and it doesn't seem to affect the result negatively.  Sometimes I smear a bit of soy, or ketjup manis on it, but sometimes not.  Then I leave it until I'm ready to cook.

 
Heating a frying pan to seriously searing hot, I rub a smidgeon of oil into the beef and then quickly sear it on all sides.  Seared so that it's good and browned without leaving it to cook for too long.  Then I stick it in a small (or appropriate sized) roasting tray and put it into the equally dang hot oven. 

For this small piece I'm going to give it about 10 to 12 minutes.  For a bigger bit - say a kilo's worth - I'd give it about 15 to 20 mins.   Then I whip it out of the oven and sit it under a (hopefully) clean tea towel to rest for at least as long as I've cooked it.  You can leave it for hours and serve it tepid in a salad type affair if you like.  This way it will have nice crusty ends (for those who can't bear pink stuff) and then gently pink middle bits (for the more bloody minded).

 
As to gravy I've finally got to grips with just using whatever seeps out of the joint as it cooks and cools.  It's savoury, uncomplicated and unclaggy. 

The Loved One's not a huge potato man so I've opted for a some fettucini and a few sliced mushrooms cooked quickly in butter.  The beef, cut into nice thick slices gets cheerfully polished off with bang bang sauce*.  All in all a rather nice way to farewell Christmas and prepare for the New Year.

 

*bang bang sauce? During one of my low fat/high fibre moments I took to mixing a teaspoon of finely grated parmesan with a tablespoon of skinny yoghurt to use as a dressing.  Turned out, it was savoury yum and to my mind just that much better for you than mayonnaise.  It's morphed, somewhat, over time.  This time round it was a tablespoon of thick full fat biodynamic bunny hugger yoghurt (it's actually got a cream top, like the milk used to get before they went and homogenised most of it), a teaspoon of mayo, a teaspoon of sour cream and a tablespoon of grated parmesan.  Not so low fat.  Tastes nice though. 

Fridge Soup

Don't you just love soup?  For me, it makes me feel instantly - better, home, calmer, loved, warm, full, safe.  All these things.  Powerful stuff, is soup.

When I was small, I knew when I must be ill because I got fed tomato soup with crustless ham sandwiches on white bread with butter and mustard.  Soup is my mother's cure-all. With it you can shift a cold, flu, glandular fever (ok, even she has to admit that last one didn't work).  

Whilst we're on the topic, other un-patented maternal cure-all's include (1) having a haircut (you'll feel better) and (b) having a hot bath (you'll feel better).  Can you see a pattern here?  Not sure I can, but there you go.

So, to soup.  It's flexible, forgiving and flavoursome.  And now it's my cure-all too.  Here's how I generally approach it.  

Firstly, I open the fridge and see what's in there.  Hmm.  I fear, from the odd odour, that something has died somewhere at the back of the vegetable drawer, I think I'll leave investigating that until I've had some restorative soup.  Right, we've got some mushrooms of varying ages that could do with eating up. Bingo! Some garlic too.  Double Bingo!  One remaining potato that isn't too sprouty or squishy.  I've also got a small brown onion, butter, chicken oxo cubes and milk.   

Here we go - heat butter gently in saucepan, add roughly chopped garlic and onions and sweat gently until transparent.  I'm going to blitz it at the end with a hand blender so you don't have to mince things up.  Peel potato, chunk up and add to onions and sweat them a bit.  You don't want it to brown, but if it gets some goldeny bits in that all just adds to the depth of flavour.  Chunk up mushrooms and add, sweat etc.  

     
 

If you've got some chicken stock squirrelled away in the freezer then use that.  Otherwise, put a couple of stock cubes in and add water until its level with the top of the mix.  You're going to add some milk later so you don't want it too watery.  

 

Stick on lid and leave to simmer for about twenty minutes until the potatoes are squashable and it's all generally infused together.

 

Blend the mix - you could use a hand blender like this type of thing or a food processor.   Depending on how much potato's in it it should be thick but not too gluey.  Thin the soup by adding some milk - I used up some skim milk (urgh!) that had found its way into the fridge.  Check seasoning.  I put in a spot of pudding wine to give it a bit of ooomph.  Vague memories of adding sherry to soups drove that choice.  

Here's the result.  Looks a bit alarming but this one tastes fab.  Mine's the one in the bowl.  The Loved One likes his in a cup.  To mine I added a dab of sour cream, some pepper and a few coriander leaves.  He likes his plain.  It's all set off with toast and some sticks of cheddar. Bloody yum.

I feel all snug now.  The source of the odd fridgey odour can wait for a braver person.  Time to go and catch up on my reading heap, methinks. 

Shepherds Pie

The still cooling remains ... just couldn't wait to photograph it, had to tuck into it first.

Shepherds Pie

In recovery from Christmas lunch, the leftovers of which still lurk in pots and tubs in the fridge. 

It seemed time to move firmly towards some comfort food and away from a diet of turkey and chocolates (although that turkey could still see the light as a bit of a pie or a fricasse).

With 500g of acceptable minced beef cooked in the frying pan and then drained of fat, I threw in the remains of a sort of breakfast baked bean mix and some cooked mushrooms.  Adding a tin of chopped tomatoes, a squidge* of basil, salt, pepper and a slug of black cherry balsamic vinegar, it cooked down into a nice gloopy mix. 

Mash, from about 5 Desiree potatoes cooked in their skins and then pushed through a mouli, was then beaten with butter and well seasoned.  The skin comes off in the mouli, brilliant for the indolent cook - no need to peel.

The mince went on the bottom of a nice deep ceramic dish with straight sides and was topped with the mash, the top evened out but roughed up and put into a moderate oven to cook until browned and the sauce had bubbled up in small crunchy bits down the edges.

Digging about in the vegetable drawer revealed a glut of carrots.  So I caramelised them - bit of water in the bottom of a saucepan, sprinkle of sugar and dob of butter along with sliced carrots.  Apply the heat and cook with the lid on until the carrots are half cooked, then take off the lid, season well and finish them off over the heat until the water/butter/sugar combo goes thick and caramelly.

Altogether, a very tooth-some supper. 

*what do you mean, squidge of basil?   Sometimes I've got fresh herbs in the fridge, but sometimes I've got either the slimy remains of some ancient herb purchase or none at all.   But do I panic?  I do not!  I've got some tubes of herbs that I keep in the freezer.  What a wizard wheeze these things are.  Last for ages and are proximitous to the real thing.