Monday 12 January 2015

Afelia Pork

INTRODUCTION
As you may have guessed, I have a very British love of the double entendre (and, yes, the irony of something as British as football hooliganism and binge drinking having a French name does not escape me). To really enjoy a good double entendre you do have to need it to be accompanied by the appropriate sound and all the double entendres in this blog update will have a convenient player to give you a sound from that British institution, the Carry On films, to enhance your smutty enjoyment.



Cookery is chocker-block with double entendres from your coq-au-vin...



...to your spotted dick.



Afelia pork is another, though slightly disappointing in the double entendre front. Obviously it would be sound even more rude if it was made with steak and was called afelia rump.



This double entendre-rich blog entry builds on my previous one for pulled pork, though that didn't benefit from the sounds. That recipe is one of the rash of similar dishes that have been doing the rounds for various cuts of meat for a while now, and I can see why they are so popular as I really like my meat pulled.



If that sounds appealing, do look it up. You'll find my entry very satisfying.



INGREDIENTS
1 heaped tbsp whole coriander seeds
Juice of 1 lemon (works out about 2 tbsp)
2 tbsp dry white wine
3 large cloves of garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper
500g lean pork meat in 2-3cm cubes (tenderloin is good)
1 tbsp olive oil 

Meat mixed with the marinade, ready to go in the fridge to steep

RECIPE
Crush the coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar. Yes, I'm THAT kind of cookery prick who has a pestle and mortar. Crushing them between two plates also works if you don't happen to be a foodie wanker.

Mix the crushed seeds with the lemon juice, wine, garlic, salt and pepper and half of the olive oil, then mix well.

Add the pork, and stir so that it's well covered by the liquid, cover and put it in the fridge to marinate for at least a couple of hours. This allows the marinade to tenderise the meat as well as making it taste nicer.

Be aware that your fridge will smell like Dracula's worst nightmare with the garlic.


Pork on the hob, cooking


Heat the rest of the oil in a frying pan or wok on the hob and add the meat plus any remaining  marinade and keep stirring on a medium heat until the pork is cooked, about 20 minutes.

The liquid will reduce down to an almost syrupy consistency.

Serve with roasted peppers and perhaps a rice dish, like my recipe for tomato pilaf.

And here it is ready to eat

NOTES
You could make quite a feast out of this with a starter and dessert. As a starter, a nice soup and it doesn't come any nicer than the wet, fishy mouthful of clam chowder.



A good dessert to have with this dish would be something fruity, perhaps pears poached in port, since there isn't anything nicer than a big juicy pear.



This recipe doesn't have any butter in it, but I do like to stick a knob in when I'm cooking.



Afelia is usually a dish made with red wine from Cyprus but this is Delia Smith's version made with white. You can always rely on Delia but I'm a bigger fan of Fanny Craddock's recipes as well. Delia's are great, but I love the taste of Fanny's.



My wife can't think of double entendres so I had to give her one.



  Thanks to http://www.carryon.org.uk/sounds_frm.htm who I've linked to for all the Carry On sounds

Monday 10 November 2014

Lemon pilau rice

Tim Rice, as part of the award-winning writing team with Andrew Lloyd Webber, was the one that didn't resemble Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars and the least tax-averse and also the one that wrote the words. He wrote lyrics for Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar. He's got fuck all to do with this recipe, other than being called Rice.

Cooking rice can be a regal pain in the arse to get right. You can use loads of water and drain it, but lose all the flavour of the tasty things you put in. The better way is to use just the right amount of water that gets soaked up and keeps all the tasty stuff on the rice, but it's hard to get the balance right between over-cooking and under-cooking.The proportion of water and rice in this recipe just about hits the right balance, though rice does vary, depending on the type and even between different batches of the same type.

INGREDIENTS
1 mug* of basmati rice
1 1/3 mugs of water 
juice and zest of 1 lemon
5 cardamom pods
5 cloves
1 bay leaf
5cm stick of cinnamon
1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 star of anise
1 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp salt
Yeah, yeah. It's another picture of some spices. It's quite pretty. Get the fuck over it
From the top: lemon zest, bay leaf, fennel seeds, cinnamon, tumeric, star anise, cardamoms, cloves and salt in the middle

*The volume of water you need depends on the volume of rice you're using so it's easier to use the same container to measure both instead of weighing the rice

RECIPE
First it's a good idea to wash the rice to make it less stodgy when it's finished. Pour the rice into a big pan and fill the pan with water. Give it a swirl and drain out the water. Do this three more times, pouring the rice out into a sieve the final time.

Pour the oil into a heavy based pan and heat. Add the lemon zest and the spices and gently fry for a minute. Add the rinsed rice and stir until the all the rice grains look yellow. Add the water plus the lemon juice.

Heat gently until it boils then immediately turn down the heat as low as possible and cover tightly with the lid. Leave it for 20 minutes then turn off the heat completely.

When ready to serve, fluff up the rice. Before you do that though, it's not a bad idea to get rid of the whole spices that have floated to the top of the cooking rice. Nothing spoils a good curry more than lacerating the inside of your cheek on a sharp piece of cinnamon bark.

It depends on how big the mug is, but this makes plenty for two adults.


Yes, it's another blurred picture. I've got a crap phone but the rice does look nice and golden

NOTES

If you've done this right, the rice should be nice and fluffy and neither a sloppy, stodgy mess (overcooked) or like small pieces of grit (undercooked). If there is any left, it can be stored in the fridge for a day or frozen for longer, once it's cooled. When you do reheat it, make sure it's hotter than a bombardier beetle's arse after participating in a chilli eating competition the day before to kill off any nasty bugs. If it is a sloppy mess, it will be even worse the next day so better to throw it out, as nobody likes sloppy seconds.

Admit it, you never get phrases like "sloppy seconds" in any of Rick Stein's programmes

Monday 3 November 2014

Butternut squash curry

Despite resembling a large, cream-coloured sex toy, the butternut squash is one of the most delicious vegetables you can get and it makes fucking great curries. This also means that, yes, I'm doing another vegetable dish. The Indian subcontinent provides some of the absolute best vegetarian cuisine in the world, which isn't too surprising given it's the place that Buddhism started. If there was stuff like this to eat all the time I could happily remain vegetarian for the rest of my life. Well, almost, until I start jonesing for pork scratchings, a juicy steak or even just some roast chicken flavoured crisps because sometimes a tub of fucking dhal just won't cut it.

INGREDIENTS

Spices for the curry
Clockwise from the leaf: Bay, cloves, cardamom, onion seeds, black pepper, coriander, mustard seed, salt, cinnamon and star anise in the middle

2 tbsp vegetables oil
1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 star of whole anise
1 piece of cinnamon, about 4 cm
4 green cardamon pods
4 cloves
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp onion seeds
1 bayleaf
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
half a butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into big (2-4 cm) chunks
1 green pepper, in 1-2 cm dice
150 ml water
2tsp tomato puree

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion, garlic and spices and stir fry until the onion is soft (5-10 minutes). Throw in the pepper and squash and fry for another 5 minutes. Add the water and tomato puree, cover and leave the curry to stew for 30-60 minutes, whenever the squash is tender.

This makes enough for two adults as an accompaniment, leaving enough for a lunch the next day. Serve it with rice and/or Indian bread, on its own or with other curries (like my profanity-laced chicken tikka curry)

Nothing says dinner like a pan full of curry, even a crap, blurred picture of one

NOTES
I did the recipe with butternut squash, but any other pumpkin-like vegetables will work, including pumpkin itself. Just the thing if you get pissed off with the enormous fucking mountain of pumpkin flesh you end up with at Hallowe'en when carving a lantern.

You would be right to anticipate that a recipe I do sometime following Hallowe'en will be some shit with pumpkin in it for this exact reason. Hey, this is Sweary Chef, not Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith or Genghis fucking Ramsay. I do the recipes I have the ingredients for at the time, take shit pictures on my phone then write them up, usually libelling, or else being generally unpleasant about other, more accomplished people in the process. I'm basically Fanny Cradock with a penis.

Friday 31 October 2014

Sweary chicken tikka curry

Curry really is such a fucking woolly name for a dish. What does it actually mean? For example, you have your Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani from curry houses all over the UK which have become so very much part of the fabric of the UK that chicken tikka masala is, for all intents and purposes, our national dish. So much so, in fact, that former BNP leader and hypothyroid guppy-faced, racist cockwomble, Nick Griffin, apparently insists that his favourite food is actually that self same dish. Of course, most of us probably wouldn't have exactly the same culinary experience of dining in Indian restaurants that you might imagine Mr Griffin would get:

"Abdul, guess who'd just ordered chicken tikka masala!"
"Who?
"Only that twat from the BNP, Nick Griffin!"
"You'd better pass me my copy of Penthouse, then. We're all out of 'special sauce'"

The thing about South Asian curries is that they're all about dried spices. In contrast you  have Thai curries, which use fresh, aromatic flavours from herbs like lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves plus lots and lots of chilli. Then there are "curries" from other countries in SE Asia, from Japan, from parts of Africa, from the Caribbean. Yet the tagine I posted in this blog earlier on isn't a curry, though it has a lot of the same spice flavours. So, what about the celebrity chefs? Jamie Oliver, on the pay roll of Sainsbury's a few years ago, did an ad for the supermarket where he declared he was making a "Ruby" for his mates,before hopping onto his scooter to pick up the ingredients, the mockney wanker.

This recipe requires a lot of effort and takes frigging ages, but it is worth it.

INGREDIENTS
Chicken tikka
150g plain natural yoghurt
Piece of ginger (about the size of your thumb) coarsely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
 Juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp tandoori spice
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp tumeric
1 green chilli, finely chopped
400g chicken, cubed

Curry sauce
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 medium onions
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2-3 cm ginger (about a thumbsworth), finely chopped
4 green cardamom pods
4 cloves
1 bay leaf
stick of cinnamon (about 5cm)
2 or 3 fresh chillies
grate of nutmeg
2 tsp whole cumin
2 tsp whole coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1tsp paprika
1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
1/2 tin of tomatoes
1 green pepper
2 tsp garam masala

RECIPE
First you need to prepare the chicken tikka marinade. Put the garlic and ginger in a pestle and mortar and pound them into a paste. Put the paste plus all the other ingredients, minus the chicken, into a dish and mix well. Add the chicken and make sure all the pieces are well covered by the marinade mixture. Cover, put the bowl in the fridge and leave it for at least three hours.

Marination

Have a beer or two while you wait, watch a film or do something else like have sex (with someone else or on your own, just don't forget to wash your hands afterwards).

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan and add the marinated chicken. Fry it gently for 15-20 minutes until it's cooked. You could do this on a griddle pan, under a grill or even on a barbecue if you can be truly arsed. Remove the chicken from the pan and keep on the side on a plate


Spices
(from the leaf: bay, red chillies, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, cardamom pods, tumeric, cloves, fennel, black pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon in the middle)
For the curry sauce, heat 2 tbsp oil in a nice, solid pan, and add the sliced onion, garlic and ginger. Fry them gently for a couple of minutes then add all the spices (and I know, there are shitloads), and fry for another 5-7 minutes while the onion gets nice and soft. Pour the tinned tomatoes into a blender then add the onion/spice mixture from the pan and liquidise to give a nice, smooth sauce.

Add the rest of the oil to the pan, add the chunky onion and fry for 7 minutes. Add the pepper and fry for another 5 minutes. Return the chicken (including any liquid that might have seeped out of the chicken) to the pan and mix well. Add the sauce from the blender. It might be pretty thick, so add a splash of water to the blender jug to get all the mixture into the pan.

Leave the curry to simmer on a low heat for 20-30 minutes then add the garam masala. Mix well and serve.

Apologies for the crap photo, but that's the curry with rice and squash curry
This makes plenty for two adults and is great with Indian bread, like naan, and/or rice (like my pilau to be posted soon) plus a vegetable accompaniment like the squash curry, also to be posted soon.

NOTES
As I said, this is quite a laboured task to do all the way through. You can cut the time down by doing away with the chicken tikka marination palava and frying up some chopped ginger and garlic with the tandoori spice and cooking the chicken in that as the first stage. To be honest, this is the way I usually cook this dish when I'm not pursuing my mission to bring the best recipes with the foulest language to the fucking masses.

It's a little known fact that the aforementioned guppy-faced racist cockwomble, Nick Griffin, actually has tried his hand at a cookery video blog of his own. I resent this, since I feel it's challenging my crown to be the most offensive food blog on the web. And no, I'm not posting a link to it and giving old endocrinologically-challenged-goldfish chops more traffic.

As I said above, this dish has more spices in it than you can shake a shitty stick at. You could buy branded spices in tiny jars by companies like Schwarz if you really like. However, they cost a fucking fortune. One alternative is supermarket own brand jars which are a lot cheaper. Better still, get spices from an Asian grocer or supermarket. They cost a lot less and come in much bigger packets. On the down side you need to get airtight containers to put them in.

This version wasn't especially hot with chilli, though it really needs a kick like a mule with a urinary tract infection to enjoy it's full potential.

Saturday 18 October 2014

Pineapple fried rice

Fucking grass! It's everywhere. You get it growing up through the cracks in your drive, sprouting in your flower beds and you keep having to mow the fucker every few days in the summer. Fucking annoying. On the other hand, grass also provides most of the bulk calorific content for the diet of the majority of the human race. Wheat, barley, maize, oats, rye and especially rice all come from types of grass. Some people even drink grass juice, but they are fucking idiots falling for psuedoscientific bullshit. Well, that, or they are channeling Ermintrude from the Magic Roundabout.

Rice has been the major food source of a huge proportion of the world's population over the last few thousands of years. However, in the 1970s, rice in the house I grew up in was always bland American long grain rice from some company like Uncle Ben or Bachelors. By God, it was dull, tasteless and generally quit shit. It was akin to eating oily polystyrene chips. However, trust my parents to make a bland thing truly bad, they developed a concoction (I hesitate to call it a recipe) that had crap like chopped spam in it which tasted like death probably feels. I last had it maybe 35 years ago but it took until about 2006 until it stopped repeating on me whenever I burped. This almost put me off rice for ever. Then, later in life, I tried new varieties of rice. Rice that had taste and texture and was made into recipes containing any meat that you needed a tin opener to access. Pilau rice in Indian restaurants, egg fried rice in Chinese. Later on it was risotto, pilaf and paella. Truth be told, rice is a fantastic accompaniment to the right dish, as long as it's a decent quality rice used to start with. This means basmati for a curry or Thai jasmine rice for anything east of India.

Now, anyone reading my blog may have realised that I'm not especially arsed about how a dish looks. However, this recipe looks fucking great, served up in half a pineapple.

INGREDIENTS

200g rice
2 tbsp vegetable oil (not olive, it's too strongly flavoured)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 spring onions
5 large, raw prawns, chopped
1 pineapple, halved and flesh scooped out and chopped finely
1 egg, beaten
black pepper
splash of light soy sauce

RECIPE
Put the rice in a pan of water and bring it to the boil. Boil it for about 12-15 minutes (it needs to e firm or, if you're a foodie wanker, al dente). Drain it in a sieve and keep it on the side.

Add the oil to a wok (or frying pan if you prefer, it tastes the same). Put on the heat and once the oil is hot add the garlic and fry for a minute. Add the prawns and the spring onion for about another minute (the raw prawn should change colour to a nice pink). Add the chopped pineapple then throw in the egg and stir it around so it makes a sort of scrambled mess with the other ingredients. Return the rice to the pan and stir it all up so everything gets mixed. Add the black pepper and the soy sauce and continue to mix until it's a consistent colour. Take the rice out of the pan and onto a plate it's almost time to serve it.

A few minutes before you want to serve dinner, put the oven on at 170°. When it's warm, remove the rice from the pan and pile it into the empty half pineapple. Cover the rice with foil and put the whole lot in the oven in an oven-proof dish. Heat it for 10-15 minutes.Take it out, remove the foil and serve.
This is a fantastic accompaniment to my baked fish recipe or anything vaguely East/southeast Asian.


NOTES
This is about as fucking close as you will get to a wanky dinner party dish in this blog. To be fair, if you made it this far, you probably realise that isn't really my style. Even I, though, have to admit that this does look quite impressive brought to the table in the pineapple. In fact you might find that your guests apparently gasp at the spectacle, but you can guarantee they are thinking "You pretentious fucking twat!". However, if they aren't, and they actually are genuinely impressed by some rice in half a pineapple you need to get new friends since, if you're like me, you're only serving it like that because it saves on the washing up.

Rice is a great foodstuff: cheap, fairly easy to cook and quick to prepare. However, as a rule of thumb, avoid buying the shit they sell in the supermarket in 500g or 1kg packets. Either it's going to be cheap, which will mean it's of crap quality (see above about American long grain rice), or else it's grossly overpriced. The best place to buy rice is a Chinese or other Asian supermarket, and in as big a pack as you can afford/store. It costs more to buy the pack but per kg it's much cheaper. Also, it lasts for ages. I am a bit of a foodie wanker, but I buy Thai fragrant rice by the 5kg sack. It's better quality, costs about a third of the price per kg as a small pack in Tesco's and lasts for literally months. Having said this, the local demographic in your area may dictate that your local supermarket does stock decent Asian rice in big quantities, so have a look.

Tim Rice, you got away without being in the blog... this time