Liver and Bacon Casserole

I had a couple of guests coming for dinner last night and was looking for something very tasty that would chase away the cold winter blues.

I settled on a four course meal with Liver and Bacon Casserole as the main.    I coupled it with a liver pate for the starter to keep the liver theme going and then served a quinteplet of French cheeses before finishing with my own cherry crumble, using cherries I picked back in the autumn and froze.

Ingredients:

• · 1lb liver –pig or lamb
• · 4 rashers of smoked bacon, chopped
• · 2 onions, chopped
• · 14oz tin of chopped tomatoes
• · 6 carrots
• · a little bit of oil for frying
• · some seasoned flour
• · 1 tablespoon Worcester sauce
• · ½ pint beer (light)
• · 100 gms mushrooms (sliced)

Method:

• · Peel and slice the carrots and boil in lightly salted water for about 15 minutes
• · Fry the onion and bacon together in the oil for a few minutes to soften,
• · Put in casserole dish.
• · Chop the liver into bite-sized pieces, lightly coat in flour and fry gently
• · Add into casserole dish
• · Deglaze the frying pan with boiling water and a splash or red wine
• · Add the beer to the water/wine mix and bring to boil
• · Add to the granules to make gravy, stirring until smooth
• · Add tinned tomatoes and Worcester sauce and bring to the boil
• · Stir well and pour into the casserole dish.
• · Cook, covered at 210C for 45/60 minutes.

I served this with boiled potatoes but I think it would be nice with a mashed potato and peas.  

Hope you enjoy it.

Beef Bourgignon with a few carrots

The French have a gorgeous traditional beef dish from Burgundy, Boeuf Bourgignon.    I've put my own slant on it here to make it "Traditional English cooking in France".  The wine really should be a bottle of Burgundy red..... but I tend to use any good full bodied red wine.

This recipe is so incredibly easy,  and relies on a slow cooker to gently simmer everything for about 12 hours.

I hope you love it as much as I do

Beef Bourgignon

1 tbsp duck fat (use olive oil if you don't have duck fat)
600g beef shin, cut into large chunks
100g smoked streaky bacon, chopped  (Lardon)
2 onions, peeled and chopped
3 carrots peeled and sliced 
4 garlic cloves crushed, peeled and sliced
2 heaped tablespoons Herbes de Provence
1 small can tomato purée
1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
750ml bottle red wine, Burgundy is good 
A glass of water

200gms mushrooms, sliced into largish chinks

In the Slow Cooker
Heat the duck fat in a frying pan and brown the beef for about 3 minutes a side.  (cook the beef in batches)  Toss the browned beef in flour then add to slow cooker.   After frying the beef, fry the bacon, onions and garlic in the same pan, adding a little more goose fat if needed.  Add to slow cooker

Rinse out the pan with a little red wine, making sure to get all the lovely juices and add this to the pot.

Reserve out the Mushrooms and put the rest of the ingredients into the slow cooker.  Give everything a good stir

Cook for 4 hours on the high setting and then a further 8 hours on low.

Add the mushrooms 2 or 3 hours before finishing.  (after about 9 hours cooking)

From time to time check the mixture for liquid and give a stir.  If the liquid gets a bit low, just add a bit of water

Oh, one last little thing, I have a friend who lives just down the road from here and owns and runs a "Restaurant Gastronomique". He hails from Burgundy and makes, what I believe is the best Boeuf Bourgignon in South West France.... Please, please, please, I want you all to promise not to mention this cheating recipe of mine, I'm sure he would seriously disapprove! Hervé, I apologise.

Yorkshire Pudding

Back in the 15th century there were a series of wars in which England was involved.   Here in France, the 100  years war between France and  England was coming to a disastrous end after stewardship for that war was wrest from the successful Duke of York and handed to the non military Duke of Somerset, leading to numerous defeats until in 1451 Bordeaux and Gascony were lost to the French.... Of course, there are those locals who say that in the 21st Century, the British are winning back the territory by stealth!

About the same time, The Duke of York set himself against the Duke of Somerset, and with the various alliances, the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster were born.  The house of Lancaster wore a red rose , whilst the house of York wore a white one and so it was that this became known as the Wars of the Roses.

By now, I'm sure many of you are wondering why on earth this is all relevant to Ian's French Kitchen??

Well, to understand a bit more you need another piece of information..... and that is that Ian was actually born in Lancashire.... and now, here I am living not that far from Bordeaux....

We British tend to take our heritage quite seriously and so, all my life my family have jokingly set themselves against the Yorkists.  As it happens, my family hails from the borders between Yorkshire and Lancashire so, in fact, there are just as many Yorkshire men as Lancastrians in it.

However, one thing I have learned over the years is that there are some things that the Yorkists certainly got right.  One of those things is Yorkshire Pudding.    I'm not sure how familiar people outside the UK are with Yorkshire Pudding so I'll explain that, despite it's name, it is not a dessert.  It's a savoury batter dish which was served to help fill you up during times of hardship and is usually served with Beef, although, today, it has found many fans who eat it with all sorts of savoury fillings.  Yorkshire pudding itself, apparently, dates back to the mid 18th century and is a truly delicious accompaniment to beef gravy

So, enough waffle, here is an easy recipe made in a food processor.  There are as many Yorkshire Pudding recipes as there are Yorkshire housewives, but this is a Lancastrian's version!

Try Yorkshire pudding cold with honey too, if you have any left over!

YORKSHIRE PUDDING

Preheat oven to 220°C 

Preparation 10 minutes plus 30 waiting
Cooking time – 1 hour

Serves 4

125gms Plain Flour 
½  teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon Baking Powder
1 large egg
300ml milk
1 tbs oil

In a food processor
Sift together the salt, baking powder and flour
Mix in the egg with half of the milk and beat for a couple of minutes until the batter is bubbly
Stir in remaining milk
Cover and set aside for 30 minutes
Heat the oil, in an ovenproof dish until very hot, then pour in the batter
Place in the centre of the oven and bake for one hour .

The pudding should be golden brown and have risen nicely.  When cut it should not be wet inside.

 

The hot oven is essential.as is the hard beating to get lots of air into the mixture

A Surprise Sunday Lunch

I'm sure most of you will by now have heard about the problems in the skies above Northern Europe and the resulting no fly zone which has been in place, more or less continuously since it's imposition on Thursday.  The zone covers much of Northern Europe and is the result of  a volcano erupting in Iceland.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers are finding themselves stranded in the wrong place as air travel plans fall apart.  There is, as yet, no real sign of the situation abating and many experts are now suggesting that nothing will fly in the affected areas until the middle or end of the coming week or even later.

One unexpected aside that has arisen out of this situation was a very pleasant Sunday lunch which I have just enjoyed with five friends.  All of the friends should have been in the UK, having left France yesterday afternoon for the short flight to Bristol.  But they are all still here.   Two of them live here and have cancelled their short break and the other three have been offered replacement flights next Saturday afternoon, a week after they should have returned from their holiday.

As a result of this, I offered all five of them Sunday lunch "Chez Moi" and prepared a simple meal.

For starter I mixed several leaves from the garden and prepared a small salad with cucumber.  I then turned it into a Perigordine Salad by making a bacon and crouton mix, stirring it into the salad leaves and then dressing with a garlic and herb vinaigrette.   I served it with a sliced tomato salad dressed in a tomato vinaigrette.

For the main course I prepared Pork in Cider to my own recipe.  It takes it's inspiration from a Porc de Normandie recipe but has been developed over the years.

• Coarsely chop a whole onion
• Peal and thinly slice several garlic cloves
• add a good quantity of herbes de Provence
• Fry the onion, garlic and herbs in a little olive oil until tender then line a large ovenproof dish with them
• Lightly fry pork chops in a little olive oil in the same pan until they are just slightly browned on both sides. (They don't need to be cooked through) I use one large chop per person.
• Arrange the chops in the dish on top of the onions and garlic
• In the same pan,mix about 50ml of cider vinegar and a 75cl bottle of light cider, (I use a sparkling cider)
• Cut an apple into  large pieces, (cored but not peeled) and add to the cider
• Bring the cider, vinegar and apple gently to the boil.
• Arrange the apple pieces around the chops and pour the liquid over to completely cover
• Add lots of freshly ground pepper and some salt
• Bake in the middle of an oven at 180 C for about 1 hour
• Check midway through cooking and add more cider if the chops are showing above the liquid
• Remove from oven after 1 hour and add a good tablespoon or two of fromage blanc to the top of each chop
• return to oven for about 15 to 20 minutes
• Serve the chops and apple and thicken the juice to make a delicious gravy

I served this dish with cous cous.

I simply measured the amount of cous cous I need, (2 cups for 6 people) into a serving basin.  In a sauce pan I put the same amount of water, a handful of dried sultanas and some macedoine of vegetables and added just a dribble of olive oil.  I brought the saucepan to the boil and as soon as the vegetables were cooked I poured the whole lot on to the couscous and left to stand for exactly 3 minutes

Fluff up the mixture and serve immediately.

Three or four french cheese and the remains of the fromage blanc made up the cheese board and for dessert, one of the guests brought a wonderful peach and apple tart which we devoured!  As always there was a big basket of french bread and several bottles of red wine on the table from the start.

It was a surprise meal for my surprise guests.  I'm sorry I don't have any photographs but maybe this is one of those occasions when the words will leave enough to your imagination to let you savour the flavours and dream of the occasion.   My guests don't seem to be too upset about being stranded in France!

Frittata

This is a frittata made with Courgette(Zucchini), Pumpkin, Celeriac and Feta cheese

I made it the other day, guided by a recipe I had not tried before, but adapting the ingredients to use up some leftover vegetables.

I used a metal frying pan that I could put under the grill at the end.

Ingredients:

300gms (12ozs) of pumpkin cut into 1 cm cubes
100gms (4ozs)of pumpkin grated
200gms (8 ozs)celeriac grated
200ml (1 cup) Apple Juice
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 green courgette cut into 1cm cubes
2 salad onions sliced
4 eggs
200ml (1 cup) liquid cream
200gms (8ozs) feta cheese, crumbled
1/4cup chopped fresh basil leaves 
3 tbs olive oil to fry

Method:

Turn the grill on high. Heat the oil in a large 25cms(10"~) frying pan, over a high heat.
Add the garlic and onion and cook until you can smell the garlic/onion mix. 
Add the pumpkin cubes and cook for 3 or 4 minutes, then add the grated pumpkin and celeriac.
Add the Apple Juice and bring to the boil and cook for a further 3 or 4 minutes.
Add the courgette(zucchini) and then carry on cooking on high heat until the liquid has gone again. 

Whilst this is happening beat the cream and four eggs together and then add the crumbled feta and chopped basil leaves and stir it all together.  Once the liquid has gone, turn the heat down and evenly distribute this mixture in the pan.  Cook for a few minutes(6 or 7) until the edges are just set but the middle is still quite runny.

Remove pan from heat and place under grill for about 5 minutes. The frittata should be set and lightly grilled on the top.

Serve immediately accompanied by fresh salad leaves.

I opened a young Bergerac Red to drink with this meal and it went very well, the lightness of the young wine nicely complementing the lightness of the omelette.