A Random Recipe: Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Broadbeans & Lemon

I made these with a hangover.  It's the one problem with food planning, I find.  Unpredicted hangovers.  At the start of last week I was all, Monday: Pasta Bianco.  Tuesday: Pasta Bianco (oh yeah, I totally give in to my obsessions).  Wednesday: Out for a friend's birthday.  Thursday:  Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Broadbeans & Lemon.

In fact, it should have read blah...obsessive pasta...blah.  Wednesday:  Out for a friend's birthday.  Plus pre-meal drinks.  Plus after-meal drinks.  Plus staying out till 12.30am on a weeknight (you crazy cat).  Thursday:  YOU WILL WANT TO SLAM YOUR HEAD IN THE DOOR TO TAKE AWAY THE PAIN OF A HANGOVER. WHY IS EVERYONE SHOUTING?

But - and here's the really fun bit - I'd already taken the minced beef out of the freezer, meaning I had to use it that night, or lose it forever.  And as much as the thought of having to stand upright for as long as it took to make these was pure pain, so was the thought of not eating at all that night - remember, feed a hangover - or throwing good money after bad and not using up the beef.

So.  I made these, hungover and no doubt somewhat delirious.  They took a smidge longer than I daresay they would have done if I were in the prime of health, and they had a few more steps than were ideal in my delicate state but, still easy enough to do and, as always with Ottolenghi, his spices were bright and unusual enough for me to sit up and take notice.  And, please somebody pass me a medal, I even double-podded broad beans.  Heroic, undoubtedly, but also very worth it to get the contrast between the two kinds of beans.  It fed my hangover perfectly - the meatballs were substantial enough that it was just the right level of dense protein hit needed for a hangover, and the broad beans and lemon nudged any vitamin buttons I felt I was missing that day.

This is my entry into this month's Random Recipe challenge, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.  It came from my Christmas present from my lovely and generous inlaws, a book I've mentioned my love of already, Ottolenghi's Jerusalem.  I've also noticed it's my second Ottolenghi meatball recipe, but that's the joy of a truly random recipe.  Will it replace those lost brain cells?  No.  Will I make it again?  For sure.  Will I get hungover on a weekday again?  Who am I kidding?  Luckily I've now got some of these in the freezer for next time.

Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Broadbeans and Lemon
Adapted from Ottolenghi, Jerusalem

For the meatballs:
300g minced beef
150g minced lamb
1 onion, finely chopped
120g breadcrumbs
Handful each fresh parsley, coriander, mint, dill, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon baharat spice mix (shop bought is fine; I used a bargain buy I'd got a few months ago called 'Persian Spice Mix' which had mostly the same ingredients in - otherwise, look at those ingredients and DIY)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons capers, chopped
1 egg, beaten

For the sauce:
4.5 tablespoons olive oil
350g broad beans, fresh or frozen
4 thyme sprigs
6 cloves garlic, sliced
8 spring onions, cut into 2cm slices
2.5 tablespoons lemon juice
500ml chicken stock
salt and pepper

For the meatballs, put all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until thoroughly combined.  Form into 20 balls, each about the size of a ping pong ball.  This is easier if you divide the mix in half, and then into half again, and aim to get five balls out of each section.

In a pan large enough to later take all the meatballs, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil.  In two batches, fry the meatballs so they are browned on the outside, a few minutes for each batch.  Remove from the pan.

While they are cooking, blanch the broad beans in boiling salted water for 2 minutes.  Drain and let them sit under the cold tap for a minute, to cool them down.  Double pod about half of them, by pressing gently on each one until the skin splits and removing the bright green beans from inside.  Discard the empty skins.

In the meatball pan, heat the remaining oil.  Add the thyme, garlic, spring onions and fry gently, stirring all the time, for a few minutes.  Add the unshelled broad beans, 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice, and just enough stock to cover the beans.  Cover the pan with either a lid or with a double thickness of tinfoil, and cook gently for 10 minutes.  Return the meatballs to the pan, stir gently, then add the remaining stock.  Cover the pan again and cook for 25 minutes, when the meatballs should be hot all the way through.

Just before serving, add the remaining lemon juice and shelled broad beans.  Serve immediately.

Serves 4

Waste Not, Want Not

Even as the ultimate omnivore, the news about the horsemeat scandal sweeping Europe has made me incredibly sad and angry, especially as it is food at the lower end of the budget scale that appears to have been targeted.  My thoughts on this are too long and unoriginal to repeat, but all this made me think even more than usual about how much meat we eat, and how we use that meat.  With this in mind, I would much rather buy less meat, but buy smarter and use every single last bit of it well - we have a freezer full of what Andy calls "bones and juice" due to my reluctance to throw out even the smallest chicken bone, but instead chucking it in a large freezer bag until I have enough to provide an unctuous, nurturing stock.  The difference that a good stock can make to a soup is indescribable - a velvety depth of flavour that chemical stock just can't provide.  Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if things like this were taught, either through community or school - but I suppose that everybody feels that way about their passion.

This was all playing on my mind recently when, driving home from a Saturday market, we spontaneously decided to make a Sunday roast (on a Saturday!  Get us, edgy).  We bought a smallish piece - a kilo or so - of topside, and it did us proud on the Saturday and for the re-run on the Sunday, with a sandwich or two inbetween.  Still having 300g left on the Monday, I wanted to make it into something transformed.  While I often go down the curry or chilli route for leftovers, I think with all the news about meat swirling round my brain made me feel the need to return to a much-loved, much older meal.  I said to Andy at the time that making this cottage pie made me feel like someone from our grandparent's generation; we all know that it was very much the common pattern back then to have roast on Sunday, pie on Monday, soup on Tuesday.  Cottage pie was always made as a way of using up leftover meat - the extra layer of flavour from the ready-roasted meat is exceptional.  And how to make a great thing even greater?  Put a layer of caramelised onions and cheese on the top, of course.  

Finally - to pea or not to pea?  I did put peas in mine, but whether that's because I think it's for the best, or because I still have a bag hanging ominously round my freezer despite the fact that we'll be moving soon, I can't honestly say.  What I can honestly say is that two of us got four main meals each and a couple of snacks out of that piece of beef, and I'm very grateful that we have the choice and the knowledge to be able to do that, and know exactly what has gone into our mouths.

Cottage Pie

300g leftover roast beef
2 onions
1 tablespoon Vegetable oil or duck fat (I used the latter, still having some left in my fridge from Christmas)
Few sprigs fresh thyme, leaves stripped or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
1 litre good beef stock
Salt and pepper
Handful frozen peas
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into even sized chunks.
40g strong cheese (this time I used blue cheese but would usually use strong cheddar), cut into small pieces
1 tablespoon butter
0.25 cup full fat milk or cream

Preheat the oven to 200C.

First, chop your beef up into very small pieces.  I am usually super lazy and use the processor, but this time it was elsewhere so I chopped it by hand, which meant I ended up with slightly chunkier pieces.
Chop one of the onions and, in a large frying pan over medium-high heat, fry it in the oil or fat until soft and starting to brown at the edges.
Add the beef, stirring until warm through and starting to brown.  Stir in the thyme.
Add the flour, and keep stirring until everything is coated.
Very gradually add the beef stock, keep at it with your wooden spoon until you end up with a thick, smooth gravy.  Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper as you like.
Throw in the peas and mix them in.
Turn down the heat and leave to bubble very gently while you make the mash.

Add the potatoes to a pan with enough cold water to cover them.  Put them on a high heat, bring to a boil and add salt.  Turn down the heat to medium, and cook for 10 minutes, or until tender -when you can stick a knife in it with no resistance.

While these are cooking, slice the onion and fry it in oil or fat until lovely and caramelised.  Remove from the heat.

Drain and leave to steam for a minute or so to let most of the moisture leave them.  Return them to the warm pan.  Now, how much butter and milk or cream you use will depend on your potatoes - what you don't want is an overly butterly, overly liquid mash - it actually needs to be smooth enough to spread over the top of the beef but firm enough not to sink in.  So take it easy and add the butter and milk bit by bit, then go generously with the salt and pepper.

Butter a baking dish - I use my 23cm square Le Creuset dish which is a great fit - then scrape the beef mixture in.  Dollop the potatoes on top of this, using a silicone spatula to spread them out, then finally top with the caramelised onions and chopped cheese.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until bubbling and the cheese has melted.

Weekends in the Wairarapa

When we first moved to New Zealand, Andy and I put all our worldly goods on a ship and set off with our backpacks to get here overland.  We arrived in Auckland, miraculously within a couple of weeks of our furniture getting here - through luck rather than good judgement, believe me - hired a car and mooched our way down the country slowly, heading for Wellington, our final destination.  We spent some time on the Coromandel, in Hawke's Bay, through Rotorua and Taupo, getting further and further south, until we were within one day's drive of the city.  Talking to people on the way down, their comments started to change from general "oh lovely, it's a great city" observations to "the journey's not so bad, once you get over the hill", and "just the hill to cope with now!" We'd laugh and nod along, then when alone, turn to each other, confused, and wonder, "what hill?"

What hill indeed.  For those of you that don't know New Zealand, Wellington is cut off from a large part of the North Island by a hill range (or, as we call them in NW England, mountains) named The Rimutakas.  We have since learned that they get better with experience but that first time, to two newbies from the UK, they were horrible.  Hugging the wall of the hill to one side, with sheer drops on the other and nothing to separate you from plunging down a ravine but a rickety fence (oh, and actual driving skills of course), they will never be a favourite way to spend an afternoon but two things make it marginally better: 1) Wilson, our van, refuses to go uphill at speed (or anywhere at speed) so we take it fairly easy, pulling over frequently to let people past and feeling like the most popular people on the hill at all the thank you beeps and waves for doing this, and 2) the Wairarapa, on the other side of the hill, is just lovely.  

We went over to the Wairarapa for two weekends in a row - the first, we camped at Martinborough, home of wine in this neck of the woods, while we went on a day trip to watch a rugby match at the Tui Brewery - fully recommended as a day out, it was relaxed and sunny and fun and a bit of an eye opener so perfect all round really.  Combined with a lunch at our favourite vineyard, Vynfields, on the Sunday, it was pretty fantastic.

The main house at Vynfields was originally located about 10 houses away from where we currently live, which gives me a mild thrill.  Moving house here can sometimes be meant quite literally.

The second weekend was to the small village of Featherston, to celebrate the wedding of two good friends.  They're a very fun and stylish couple, and this was reflected in their fun and stylish wedding - such generous hosts, the emphasis was very much on the party - after all the dancing I would willingly have paid someone to remove my feet if it meant removing my VERY high heels with them.  Similarly my head the next day after all that lovely wine.

Two busy weekends in a row meant that by the Sunday night I was craving beef.  And broccoli.  My withered head couldn't make sense of that at that moment in time; when I processed it a day or so later it was obvious I was feeling somewhat low on iron.  And so Monday, coinciding with Chinese New Year, found me making Chinese Beef & Broccoli with Special Fried Rice.  Good job I left it a day really; on Sunday I was lying on my sofa pitifully whimpering "beeeeeeef", and I definitely could not have coped with all the last-minute togetherness that these two dishes require.  Really good though.

Chinese Beef & Broccoli with Special Fried Rice
Adapted from the brilliant blog, Steamy Kitchen

The rice you need to start much earlier than you want to eat - it's a good use for leftover plain boiled or steamed rice, provided you cool it down quickly and keep it in the fridge.  I wasn't this organised, so cooked some in the rice cooker earlier on in the day then fridged it.

Beef

1 decent sized sirloin steak, thinly sliced (if you find it difficult to slice, put it in the freezer for 10 minutes and it will be a bit easier)

1 head of broccoli

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed (or do as I do and finely grate it on the Microplane)

1 teaspoon cornflour, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon soy sauce plus 1 tablespoon

1 teaspoon plus another teaspoon Chinese rice wine

0.5 teaspoon cornflour

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

0.25 cup chicken stock

Start off by marinating the beef in the teaspoon of soy sauce, teaspoon of rice wine, 0.5 teaspoon cornflour and plenty of black pepper.  Leave for at least 10 minutes.

While this is marinating, cook the brocolli for about a minute until still crunchy.  Drain and give a quick dunk under the cold tap to stop the cooking process.

Put the oyster sauce, chicken stock, teaspoon of rice wine and tablespoon of soy sauce in a small bowl, and stir well - this is the sauce.

Heat a wok or large frying pan over a high heat, and when hot, add the cooking oil.  Add the beef and leave it, no stirring, for about a minute.  Turn the slices over, keeping them in one layer as much as you can, then add the garlic.  After about 30 seconds - this is really quick work - pour in the sauce, add the broccoli and bring to a boil.  Pour in the cornflour in the water and stir until thickened - about 30 seconds.

Rice

10 large prawns (I used frozen ones that I'd left to defrost while the rice was cooling)

salt and freshly ground pepper

0.5 teaspoons cornflour

1 tablespoon plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 eggs, beaten

2 spring onions, finely sliced

Cooked and cooled rice - from 1 cup of uncooked rice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Handful of frozen peas, thawed

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Marinade the prawns in the salt, pepper, and cornflour.  Leave it for 10 minutes.  This is the same length of time as the beef marinades for which is either kismet or coincidence.

Heat another large pan over high heat.  When it is hot, add one tablespoon of vegetable oil, fry the prawns without moving them for 30 seconds, then turn them, and cook for another 30 seconds.  Try to make sure they are in a single layer.  Using a slotted spoon, remove them to a plate, leaving as much oil in the pan as you can.

Turn the heat down to medium.  Pour in the eggs and scramble them then, when they are nearly cooked, tip them out to the same plate as the prawns.  Wipe out the pan with kitchen roll.  Heat back up to high.

Add the remaining tablespoon of oil, add the spring onions, stirring them for about 15 seconds, then add the cold rice, mixing well with the onions and to coat with the oil.  Spread it out over the surface of the pan and leave it, no touching, for about a minute or so - listen to it and you will hear it start to crackle and pop - that's when you flip it, and spread it out again.  

Pour the soy sauce over the top, then the peas, the prawns, eggs and sesame oil.  Heat it all back up again 'till it's super scorching hot.  Taste it, adding some more soy sauce if you think it needs it.

Bolognese, my way

I'm not exactly sure why but whenever I've been away from my kitchen for a while, bolognese is the meal I start craving to make.  There's a distinct difference between meals I yearn to eat and meals I yearn to cook, and with bolognese possibly more than any other it's about the rituals.  Possibly because it is the antithesis of cooking on the road; there, by necessity, food is fast - either cooked on a barbecue, campsite kitchen, or on the hob in the van.  Also, bolognese is one of the meals of my childhood - born in 1976, growing up in north-west England the Mediterranean diet hadn't quite swept through our industrial town, but my Mum fully embraced this dish.  She is a wonderful cook, truly my first teacher, but the bolognese I make today is a different entity to the one we used to eat.  

I also like to think this played its part in Andy's and my burgeoning relationship, back when it was still in its infancy - it formed part of the first meal I cooked for Andy in a kitchen of our own, in our lovely flat with parquet floors in Bario Norte, Buenos Aries.

And listen, I know, I know, there are a million and one recipes for bolognese out there.  Everyone I know makes it slightly differently.  Every Italian Mama makes it differently.  This is how I make it, and this works for me -   I just wanted to send it out there.  This is my culinary home, and home can be beautiful place to be.

Bolognese Sauce

The one thing that you can't skimp on with this recipe is time.  It's the perfect recipe for a rainy day, when you have lots of pottering to do.  I also think it's a great recipe for sneaking veggies into vegetable-averse people - the vegetables are about equal to the volume of meat.  And about that meat - I vary between doing 50/50 beef mince to pork mince, and just beef mince.  This time round, beef mince was what I had in the freezer, so beef mince it was.  Final point - I rely quite heavily on my food processor for this, but I'm sure there is nothing that couldn't be done with a knife and a bit more time.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion
1 carrot, peeled
1 stick celery
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 rashers streaky bacon
200g mushrooms
500g best quality beef mince (see note above)
1 glass red wine
1 glass full fat milk
1 can tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato puree
Beef stock cube
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried thyme
Pinch of sugar

In a food processor, blitz the onion, carrot and celery until they are in small pieces (think the size of mince).  Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan over a medium heat, and fry the blitzed vegetables in this. This will take some time until they fully soften; be patient.

Blitz the bacon, then the mushrooms.

Add the garlic to the pan, cook for a few minutes.  Add the bacon and cook until its colour changes and it starts to release its fat.  Add the mushrooms (it will look like loads).  Cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the mushrooms are cooked and some of the water has evaporated from them.

Add the mince and cook until browned.

Add the glass of red wine - stir until most has been absorbed by the other ingredients.
Add the milk and do the same. Do not be freaked out by how horrible it looks right now - the milk acts as a tenderiser for the mince and results in a velvety texture.  I promise, you will not taste it at the end.

Chop the tomatoes in the can (or, if you are impatient like me, get the kitchen scissors in there and chop them that way) and add to the pan along with the tablespoon of tomato puree.

Put the beef stock cube in the tomato can and fill it to the top with hot water.  Add this to the pan.

Add the herbs, sugar, salt and pepper to taste.

Bring to the boil, then reduce to a low simmer - it should bubble and gloop at you occasionally, but nowhere near a rolling boil.  Then LEAVE IT.

Seriously, it needs about 4 hours to become a beautiful bol.

Taste it every so often - it might need upping on the herbs and the s&p.

After about 4 hours it will miraculously come together into the beautiful sauce that we all know and love.

Eat with the pasta of your choice - I'm too much of a realist to be a pasta nazi - I prefer spaghetti whereas Andy prefers penne, but any port in a storm.  It serves, what, about 8? Maybe more, maybe less, all depends.  It freezes beautifully, if you can stop eating it straight from the pan long enough to portion it up.

A week of eating dangerously

Like most people, as much as I try to vary my diet, there are some definite tried and tested favourites that I return to, time and time again - either through ease, those dishes you can churn out without recourse to cookery book; a wish to make people happy, one of my prime motivators in cooking, I'm the consumate people pleaser and so love doing the meals that Andy counts as his favourite; or just good standby recipes for those days when the supermarket has evaded my to-do list yet again.

My guilty pleasure, though, is cookbooks.  I have, quite literally, hundreds of them - it is a genuine addiction, a growing collection, and in my opinion, once something classes as a collection, it is A Good Thing to add to it.  I have a hobby! I am a well-rounded individual!  One of my favourite mantras about reading is to describe it as 'where time out meets time well spent', and I have no hesitation in adding my cookbook hoard into that part of the Venn diagram entitled How I Spend My Time.  Got to be honest: time spent browsing Go Fug Yourself takes up way too much of the rest of my free time, and can't really be classed as time well spent, so I'm shoehorning cookbooks into the quality time category.

So when I saw a blogging monthly challenge involving random recipe selection, I knew instantly they were on to a winner, and I had to join in, no question.  I'm going to write more details in the next post, as that is the real entry into the challenge, but Andy, my willing accomplice in choosing a random recipe, was so enamoured with the idea that he wanted in, as well.  He turned around while I ran my hands up and down the cookbook towers (surely an earthquake risk in Wellington?), said stop, and then stopped me again as I flicked through the book.

The book he chose was very apt - The Return of the Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver.  This was actually a perfect choice for Andy - because I am so overwhelmingly controlling and bossy in the kitchen, he doesn't get a chance to cook as often as such a talented chef should.  He's used Jamie's recipes in the past, and for the most part, gets on really well with them, so I was super excited when he randomly chose the recipe on page 186, Roasted Fillet of Beef Rolled in Herbs and Porcini and Wrapped in Prosciutto

After a false start with the grocery shopping - we'd run out of dried porcini and couldn't find a replacement in a couple of stores (although I'm guessing Moore Wilsons would have had them), so he subbed a combination of dried shiitake and fresh brown mushrooms - he was off.  And you know what, it was really delicious.  Tasted almost decadent to have something so rich for a midweek dinner, but without being too heavy - it was almost like a lighter, pared-back version of Beef Wellington.  The beef fillet was done to a perfect medium (pinker than it looks in the photo above), and the real wow for me was the fresh herbs - we took them straight from the garden so they were absolutely fresh - the rosemary and thyme really made both the beef and the mushrooms pop with flavour.  If anyone's looking for a last-minute Valentine's dinner, this could be The One.

Adapted from Jamie Oliver

1 packet prosciutto or Parma ham
2 cloves of peeled garlic
1 handful of shiitake mushrooms, soaked in around half a pint of boiling water
1 handful of brown mushrooms
2 good knobs of butter
Juice of half a lemon
sea salt and fresh black pepper
450g fillet of beef, left whole
A good handful of fresh rosemary and thyme, leaves picked and chopped
2 glasses of red wine

Preheat the oven and a small roasting tray that will fit the beef snugly to 230 C.  Lay the prosciutto out so they are all overlapping, leaving no spaces (this was one of the hardest parts; the prosciutto slices stuck together).  Chop a garlic clove and fry in one knob of butter with the mushrooms (drain the shiitake first but keep the water).  Add half the soaking water, simmer on a low heat for about 5 minutes then stir in the lemon juice, the rest of the butter, salt and pepper.
Spread the mushrooms out over half of the prosciutto, keeping a few back for later.  Lay the chopped herbs out on a board, then roll the beef in these herbs so they stick to the outside.  Place this on top of the mushrooms and prosciutto, and slowly roll up the meat in the prosciutto.  Secure with either string or, like us, you can use toothpicks as that was first to hand.
Put the beef in the hot roasting tray with the remaining garlic and cook for 40 minutes for medium (plus or minus 10 minutes for well done or rare).  Half way through the cooking time, add the red wine to the tray.  When it's had its time, remove it to a board and let it rest.  In the meantime, put the tray on the hob, scraping up any bits from the bottom or side so they all go into the gravy. 
We served this with potatoes, which were fantastic for soaking up all the winey juices, and spinach sauteed with the reserved mushrooms. 

Serves 2