Slow Cooked Oxtail

So to counteract the healthy vegan goodness of my last post, let’s have some more meat.  Slow cooked meat.  After the success of the ox cheeks, I approached my butcher about procuring some oxtail.  I think he’s got wise as he charged me substantially more for the tail than the cheeks.  It was delicious anyway.

The beauty of this recipe was that it genuinely just got thrown in the slow cooker overnight; no browning, no softening. Leave overnight and then switch off in the morning.  Sit to cool for the day and then skim to remove fat, and there will be quite a lot of fat.  You can then either remove the bones, the meat will just fall off them, or serve with the bones still in.  Reheat in the oven at 160C before serving.

Slow Cooked Oxtail

A whole oxtail – cut into 2 inch chunks.  Your butcher will do this for you if you ask nicely.

2 carrots - diced

4 stalks of celery – diced

1 red onion – diced

1 pint of beef stock

1 bottle of red wine

1 tin of tomatoes

2 tblsp tomato puree

Handful of chopped rosemary

Salt and black pepper

The plan had been to reserve some to use in the filling of some homemade ravioli.  The Very Tolerant Boyfriend bought a pasta maker for us to try out.  Unfortunately our first attempt at homemade pasta was a raging failure, so I guess that will be a blog for another day.

Vegan Sweets

We had the Very Tolerant Boyfriend’s parents to stay last weekend.  As they are his parents the Very Tolerant Boyfriend did most of the cooking.  He produced a beautiful tea smoked duck breast with fondant potatoes and wilted spinach.  He’s a pretty good cook.  

I offered to make a dessert, which is less easy than it sounds as the Very Tolerant Boyfriend’s mother is quite intolerant to a lot of food.  These include but are not limited to wheat, gluten, yeast, dairy, eggs, chocolate and pork.  So that kind of excludes most of my tried and tested “show off and impress people desserts”. 
I figured that it was going to have to be a vegan dessert, so I spent a couple of hours trawling through Pinterest.  You’d be surprised how many vegan desserts have chocolate in them; but finally I came up with the below.   

The recipe only included a list of ingredients, so I had to make up in the instructions.  It seems to have worked ok though.


Vegan Pear Tart Recipe (makes 4 small individual tarts)


crust:
1 1/2 cup gluten free flour
1/2 cup almond meal (ground almonds)
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
6~8 tablespoons melted coconut oil
2~3 tablespoons agave syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Mix the whole lot together, until a squidgy dough consistency.  Break into 4 pieces and push into the tins.  Line with foil and baking beans and bake blind for 10mins at 160C


filling:
2/3 cup almond meal
1 tablespoon gluten free flour
7 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons melted coconut oil
1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/8 teaspoons brandy
a few drops of almond extract
a pinch of salt

Mix the whole lot together.  Fill the tart cases and then arrange the sliced pears on the top.  Brush the sliced pears with lemon juice to prevent them browning.
Bake at 170C for about 25 minutes.

The tarts were actually very nice.  The crust was crumbly and biscuit and the filling was moist.  However, I personally felt that the coconut oil was too overwhelming a flavour.  I think making it again I would swap out half of the coconut oil for a vegetable oil.  I would also swap the agave syrup for honey, or at the least half the syrup as it was too sweet. 

For the filling, I think I would up the apple sauce content and reduce the oil content.

Which is handy, as I have some vegan friends coming to dinner next month, so I can fiddle with the recipe then.

Slow cooked ox cheeks

I've been meaning to try cooking some ox cheeks ever since I had some really excellent ones at Bravos on Cotham Hill.  I went out on Saturday morning to pick up some coffee and stopped off at the local butchers for some bacon as well and on the off chance asked them if they had any ox cheeks.  After they'd finished looking confused the got some out of the freezer for me and agreed that they would order some more and some oxtail as well, I'm really looking forward to doing something interesting with that.

Ingredients

• 2 ox cheeks
• 2 carrots
• 3 stalks of celery
• 750ml beef stock
• 500ml red wine
• flour
• 4 shallots
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 star anise
• 1tsp dried thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 2tbspn tomato puree
• salt and pepper 

So I took the ox cheeks, cut them in half and trimmed off the excess fat and rendered it down.  I used this to fry off the ox cheeks which I had rolled in seasoned flour until they were browned all over.

I removed them from the heat and put to one side, then I softened the diced shallots, celery and carrots before adding the rest of the ingredients and bringing to the boil.  Return the ox cheeks to the pan, cover and put in the oven for 3+hours at 150 degrees.  Half an hour before serving, turn the oven off and leave the meat to stand.

This was one of the most mouth wateringly tender dish that I've ever made.  The meat fell to pieces under the weight of a fork.  Two ox cheeks would easily feed four people.

I served with wilted spinach and crushed new potatoes, and red wine.  As it was a gorgeous evening, we got to eat in the garden as well.

Easter Treats

It's taken me absolutely ages to write this one up.  <insert generic excuse about busy life style and RTA here>

I've been quite obsessed with making bread recently, so it seemed only right to give some Hot Cross Buns a try for Easter.  This was my second attempt at them, and I had to do a fair bit of fiddling with the recipe to get it to work properly.

Ingredients

• 300ml whole milk
• zest orange
• 50g butter cubed
• 500g strong white flour plus 140g for the crosses (I found that the dough was far too wet and ended up added almost an additional 100g)
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 85g golden caster sugar
• 7g dried yeast
• 1 large egg plus an egg to glaze
• oil for greasing 
• 100g mixed fruit (I doubled this to 200g the recipe can easily take it)

-warm the milk and zest together until steaming and then remove from heat. Stir in the butter and leave to cool until hand temp.
- mix the flour, cinnamon (I threw in some nutmeg as well) sugar and yeast together in a bowl with a pinch of salt and then add the milk mixture.
- once these are combined add the egg and knead until smooth and elastic, then return to an oiled bowl and cover
- leave to prove until it doubles in size
- remove from the bowl and knock back, add the dried fruit and knead until it is totally combined.
-split into 12 individual buns and space evenly on a baking tray
- cover and allow to rise again.
- when the buns have doubled in size, make a paste of plain flour and water and put the paste mix in a plastic bag.  Snip off a corner and use this to pipe the crosses on the top of the buns.
-glaze the buns with a beaten egg and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180c

• 
  

One for my Dad

My dad regularly tells me that he is the biggest fan of my blog.  Apparently he makes my little sister read it to him and my mum in a silly voice whenever she’s visiting.  Which is kind of nice.  I’m glad he hasn’t found my sweary, ranty twitter account yet though as I think that would probably make him much less proud of me.

Anyway – this one is for him, because the things that I baked are coming North with me later tonight .

Nutella Twist Bread

I saw a picture of this on the internet a while ago, in the guise of a gluten free recipe and although I really loved the idea behind it I wasn’t so sold on the actual recipe.  So I used the dough recipe from my cinnamon buns instead.

Once the dough had proved and been knocked back, I cut it in half and rolled each piece out flat before spreading it thinly with Nutella (other branded chocolate spreads are available)

I then rolled the dough and chocolate squares up into sausages, transferred them to a baking tray and popped them in the fridge for half an hour.

When the half hour was up, I took a sharp knife and starting about an inch away from one end cut down the middle of the dough sausage.  I then twisted these over so the freshly cut chocolate layers were facing up.

The two sides were twisted together carefully.  I squidged down the ends to hold them together and then pushed the uncooked loaf in from each end to make it shorter and fatter.

The dough then proved again, before being washed down with an egg wash and baked at 180 for 20 minutes.

Oh and I made a quick set of these as well, as The Very Tolerant Boyfriend is slightly intolerant to chocolate

 Half of each have gone off to work with The Very Tolerant Boyfriend and the other half are in the back of the car to come up to Shropshire with us later on.  Wonder if my dad is actually going to enjoy them or just make polite faces….

Taking on Pinterest #359

I quite like (minor understatement) pinterest for inspiration and ideas.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it goes horribly wrong (the balloons, embroidery thread and starch Easter egg idea does NOT work in case you were wondering and there was starch everywhere for weeks afterwards).  I kind of thought that this would be another of those Pinterest disasters, but much to my surprise it worked out perfectly.  So I present chocolate balloon bowls.

The concept is quite simple, blow up some balloons to the desired size.  Melt some chocolate and allow it to cool slightly.  Dip the bottom of the balloons in the chocolate and allow to cool while standing on a piece of baking parchment.  Burst the balloons and pull the rubber away from the inside of the bowl and TAH DAH chocolate bowls.

I used two bars of chocolate to make four bowls.  There is quite a bit of wastage as you need to be able to dip freely without smearing against the glass bowl the chocolate has been melted in.  I also put a couple of coats of chocolate on the balloons, this could probably be negated it I had allowed the chocolate to temper more.  I popped them in the fridge for an hour to cool.

The tips for this one are to run your hands under a cold tap before handling the bowls and to touch them as little as possible – they melt fast. 

I served them with an Eton Mess inside, but fresh fruit would probably have been healthier.

and only slightly rustic looking

Sweet Treats

As I may have mentioned at some point I quite enjoy playing with fire and blow torches.  Although I liked the crème brulee we made on holiday last year I do prefer a non-baked version.  So I made these up for Valentine’s day dessert (I know it was ages ago, I’ve been busy).   

·         600ml/1 pint double cream

·         ½ vanilla pod split lengthways

·         6 large free-range egg yolks

·         2 tbsp caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

Take the double cream and pour into a non-stick saucepan.  Heat gently and at the same time, cut the vanilla pod in half and scrape the seeds out and deposit into the pan along with the rest of the pod.  Keep this over a medium heat until almost boiling.

Beat the eggs and sugar together until combined, but do not over beat.  The mixture should not become light and fluffy.

Pour the warm cream mixture over the eggs and stir in until combined.

Return to a low heat and cook until the mixture has thickened.  Stir constantly and do not allow to boil.

Test to see if the custard is ready by running your finger through the custard on the back of a spoon. If the custard stays apart, it is ready. Remove the large vanilla pods at this point

Pour the custard into ramekins and put in the fridge overnight.  When you are ready to serve, scatter caster sugar over the top before caramelising with a blow torch.

You can do lots of different things with this basic recipe.  In the summer I like to add some fresh raspberries to the bottom of the ramekins before pouring in the custard and if you wanted to make them chocolate crème brulee you can melt in 80g of plain chocolate to the cream before you add it to the eggs.