February Goes Out Like A Lamb

Over two years ago now, when I was living in Ireland, we’d get up early every Saturday morning so we could make it to the Milk Market then we’d go grocery shopping. One not-so-very-special Saturday, we were in Dunnes and I was browsing through the clearance cold section when I stumbled upon cubed lamb.

Now, I guess let me back track. I don’t consider my younger self to be an extraordinarily picky person. I loved broccoli (come one, what kid loves broccoli?) and I grew to love stuffed cabbage and other things that I didn’t particularly care for originally. Lamb, however, was something that I never grew to like as many times as my mom said “Try it, you might like it.”

Yet, here it was, catching my eye and begging me to buy it. I couldn’t resist, so I picked it up. Then I thought, well, I’ve no idea how to cook this.

Balsamic vinegar came to mind (completely unbidden, I must say. Surprisingly, this happens a lot. Especially with food and art). I went and got some.

What do you pair lamb with? Rice, duh. That wasn’t even something I needed to think about.

So that night, when I was getting ready to cook dinner, I invited my dearest Dessa over to be a guinea pig.

I marinated the lamb in the vinegar for probably about twenty minutes while I cooked the rice then I cooked the lamb too – just in a skillet on the stove, with the marinade.

We poured the lamb and some juice over the rice and dug in.

Our eyes widened and little “ooh’s” issued forth and I knew I was hooked.

Much to my disappointment though, I could hardly ever find cubed lamb in the stores in the U.S. and lamb chops just didn’t have the same taste so I rarely made it at home. It was never as good anyway – much more tough. My thought is that people in the British Isles are swamped with sheep so they know what to do with them. We have more cows in the States…

So! Here I am. In the British Isles again and what did I find this week at my favorite store? Cubed lamb. Organic and free range (which actually means something here!). I bought it and then went straight to grab a bottle of balsamic vinegar. This time, though, I’d complement it with a vegetable and I had some mixed grain rice left over from what I brought here so no white rice. Here’s my recipe!

Balsamic Lamb

Cubed lamb

Balsamic vinegar

1 medium sliced onion

Rice, cooked

I put broccoli and onions with this batch. I just cooked the broccoli in a bit of water then added the onions a few minutes before the broccoli was done.

1. Put the lamb in a container and cover it with vinegar. Let sit for about twenty minutes to a half hour, or longer if you want. The vinegar isn’t’ as strong when you cook it so don’t worry. This is a good time to start the rice.
2. When the rice is about ¾ done, put the lamb in a skillet and cook on medium high until it’s done through.
3. You can add onions to the lamb a few minutes before it’s done for something a little extra.
4. When everything is done, scoop some rice out into a bowl and then some lamb and sauce. Put the veg on top or on the side and voila!

A Quintuplet of Quinces in a Perfect Puff Pastry

There are certain times during the year that you are so overburdened with certain fruits or vegetables that you don’t know what to do with them.

Sometimes, I get overburdened with too many recipes or ideas for a certain item.

A few months back, this was my life. The fruit in question was a quince.

Before being plastered with quince recipes, I had never really heard of a quince. I soon deducted that it was like an apple and I vowed to try one some day.

I guess that day was today. On Monday I found some quinces in Roots and Fruits so I bought one. I had no idea what to do with it so I bought some puff pastry as well. I’ve been looking for a reason to buy some of that.

I’ve been kind of off from school this week so I decided that tonight I’d make myself a really nice dinner and I invited my friend over. I browsed the internet quickly on how to cook a quince and set off.

1 quince, chopped

½ a large baking apple, sliced thinly

1 pkg puff pastry

Ground cinnamon

Vanilla paste (if you can’t find it, it’s not necessary but if you can find it, it’s worth the price)

Demerara (raw) sugar

1. Put the quince in some water (a few tablespoons to start off with) with some cinnamon and let them cook, adding water if it goes dry. They took about fifteen minutes for me. You want them tender.
2. While they’re cooking, cut the puff pastry into squares a few inches wide and arrange the sliced apple on top.
3. When the quince is done, put a spoonful on each puff pastry. I made little towers of apple and quince in the middle of mine, counting on the pastry to make a bowl for them.
4. To your discretion, sprinkle some sugar and cinnamon on the top and then drizzle some vanilla paste over the whole thing as well. Vanilla paste is concentrated so you don’t need a lot.
5. Bake on 220°C/430°F for about ten to fifteen minutes or until the pastry is puffed and browned. Serve warm.
   

My friend happened to bite into hers just before I did and she exclaimed on how good they were. In my head I scoffed a little, they couldn’t be that good, but I bit in and… she was right! They were good! They were like little mini pies – but without all that yukky pie crust. And, they were incredibly easy to make. (Perhaps I’ve been watching too much Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals…)

Inventor Scones

Recently, I’ve discovered, I’m a lot more brazen with my cooking. If I lack an ingredient or I don’t know what to make I just say “BAH!” and throw things in and alter things at whim.

Perhaps it’s that I’m cooking only for myself, and thus if the food is terrible only I’m subjected to it, or perhaps it’s something else. I don’t know, but I hope that it stays around. I’ve created some really great things because of it.

I do know that part of the transformation from semi-timid recipe mostly follower to willy nilly noodle thrower is partly (but definitely not fully) a child of two things: having a vegan friend who has opened me up to the glories of wok-dom and being too lazy to figure out how many cups of flour is equivalent to 225 grams.

These two came together today when I decided that I needed a pick-me-up and I’d finally make the scones I’ve wanted to make. (It’s the first time I’ve ever really made scones by myself. I know!)

I was really excited so I posted that I was going to make them then I did shortly thereafter. However, I realized that the recipe called for an egg and I had invited a vegan to come and eat them.

“BAH!”

I just threw in some olive oil instead.

That was after, of course, I went “BAH!” and threw two cups of self-rising flour in when it called for 225 grams – for all I know, that’s accurate. I went willy nilly with the rest of the recipe as well, just adding as I saw fit until it looked like a scone dough.

Being cheap and abroad, I used a bottle of soy sauce to roll the dough out then I cut them into tiny scone shapes and…. DA DA DA! Dinosaurs!

They actually were pretty good. Plain, but good (I meant to make seeded scones but I forgot to put the seed flour in. Oops.)

So, my recipe was willy nilly and I substituted about an eggs worth of olive oil, but here is the original recipe:

225 g/8 oz self-raising flour

½ tsp salt

55 g/8 oz butter

30 g/1 oz sugar (or leave this out and put fruit, cheese, etc. in)

1 egg, beaten,

100 ml/3 fl oz milk

1. Preheat the oven to 210 degrees Celsius, gas mark 7.

2. Mix the flour and salt then cut the butter into pieces and mix it in to the flour, rubbing it so it get’s crumbly.

3. Make a well and add the milk and egg. Mix into a soft dough, kneading just a little.

4. Roll out on a floured surface to about 1 ½ cm thick and then cut into your shape (Traditionally scones are round with a scalloped edge, not triangular – or dino shaped)

5. For softer topped scones, dust the top with flour.

Neep? Not a bird sound...

There’s one problem with me and this food blog: trying to figure out how much of something I threw in to make a delicious dish.

This habit trickles down from my grandma who knows what she makes so well she just doesn’t think about it. When I go to her to learn one of her recipes, she tries her hardest to measure things out – or I try my hardest to guess how much she dumped in – and it always seems to work out because I’m going from making it to paper and from paper right to making it. I can tweak it as I remember it. While I blog though, I go from making it to paper and then it goes to YOU to making it (hopefully).

So, I guess the point is that this following recipe may not necessarily be “accurate.” I want you, the maker, to add and subtract until it tastes great to you.

Sweet and Salty Neeps and Tatties

3 medium potatoes (whole are better because the skin hold in the starch, but my saucepan is tiny so I cut them up into chunks)

A good sized chunk of a swede (probably about ½ to ¾ the amount of potatoes), cut into smaller chunks than the potato chunks

Rashers (I got a gammon joint that I just cubed)

½ a medium onion, sliced

A clove or two of garlic

3 tbs (to your discretion) Goats butter or regular butter is fine

Goats cheese. I can’t even guess at a measurement here. Just “some” enough for you to be able to taste it.

1. Boil the swede and the potatoes
2. Meanwhile, cook the bacon on a low heat.
3. When the bacon is near to being done, throw in the sliced onion and the garlic and cook them just until they are a bit soft.
4. When the potatoes and swede are done, mash them with the butter and cheese
5. Stir in the bacon and onion mixture.

This recipe serves about two people (I cook for myself, so they’re all small batches).

I love this recipe because it’s really close to Colcannon – it actually was meant to be a kind of offshoot of it, but I couldn’t get cabbage this week – but it has a sweet side to it because of the swede and the cheese.

Also, living in Scotland and surfing through Scottish recipes gives me different words for things – a neep is a swede and tattie is a potato. It just makes things more fun!