It seems I have finally found a little bit of time to post this week. Well, actually, I haven’t as such. I’m still supposed to be writing thesis but I have got to the stage where I’m just far too hungry to concentrate on anything challenging, so i might as well give up until I get the opportunity to eat which, if I’m lucky will be in an hour.

So this week’s enormous workload means that my cooking has also been fairly limited. There’s been a restaurant visit, a take away, a pheasant sausage linguine thing (which I’ll write up if I get the chance) and this rather strange invention of mine.

I was rooting through my cupboards at the weekend when I came across a jar of rose-petal jam, which I had bought ages ago to use with game. It got me thinking about an idea I had been meaning to try for a while.

I have made this lavender roasted lamb a few times and the success of it made me want to try out a different culinary flowers. Rose was the most obvious to go for next. I already had  rosewater and the jam so the only thing I had left to try out was dried rose petals.

Luckily for me, I live reasonably close to a bunch of Iranian shops where I could find some dried Damascus rose petals. Apparently spice specialist stores will stock them too, although I’ve never seen them anywhere else.  Dried rose petals are used in Middle Eastern cooking as a spice and are most commonly used in the powdered spice mixture Ras al Hanout.

My plan was to make a dry spice rub out of the just the petals for a half lamb leg, pour over a rose jam and lemon ‘glaze’ and roast it.

The rose petals certainly looked weird, but the smell was gorgeous when I was grinding them up. I used about one and a half heaped tablespoons of petals and ground them into a fine powder. Then I made little slits all over the leg, put a sliver of ginger into each one and rubbed the rose powder over it. The glaze was made simply by diluting rose petal jam with rose-water  and adding the grated zest of about half a lemon.

While that was all roasting in the oven I made some saffron roasted potatoes. These were suprisingly good for roast tatties without goose fat, and were also quite easy to make. I boiled a pinch of ground saffron in enough salted water to cover the potatoes for a few minutes, then added the potatoes and brought the pan back to the boil. After five minutes, I drained them and gave them a good shake to fluff them up, put them in a roasting pan and coated them in olive oil, to which i had added another pinch of ground saffron stamens. After 40 minutes roasting they came out beautifully golden.

Finally, I made a sauce of more rosewater, more jam, lamb stock, rosemary and beaujolais. I deliberately chose beaujolais because of the strawberry flavour of the gamay grape. A rose-strawberry flavour sounded great to me! I ended up simmering the stock with a sprig of rosemary for about five minutes, then adding rose water and the jam and reducing it. The beaujolais went in right at the end so it retained its strawberry flavour.

This really worked amazingly. In fact, this is the kind of meal I’d want to work on so I could make it my signature dish. The flavour of rose is lovely with lamb and the subtle strawberry and ginger was delicious. The lemon imparted a good aroma without getting in the way of the other flavours and the saffron potatoes were a perfect delicately flavoured accompaniment. I accompanied the meal with some sauteéd courgette strips tossed in butter with a tiny bit of chopped mint. Actually pretty near perfect, even if i do say so myself.

The best thing about this is I’ve found a new garnish ad it is PINK! \o/

I’ve decided to make this an entry for Weekend Herb Blogging (the brainchild of Kalyn at Kalyn’s Kitchen), since rose features so massively in this dish.  This week the event is being hosted by Anna at Morsels and Musings.

For many years now, James has been telling me stories about how his father, a security guard at Aldershot Army Base, gets goat meat from the gurka’s staying there. Apparently these guys buy whole dead animals from the local farmers and then butcher them up themselves for curry. These stories always intrigued me and I wanted to try curry goat myself.

My experience of Nepalese food has been limited to a single restaurant on the Uxbridge Road in Shepherds Bush. It certainly is good and, while I lived near it, I would visit it on almost a weekly basis after late night  rehearsals. The cuisine is very similar to North Indian cuisine, with some curries that are mild and creamy and some so hot they’d strip your tongue of tastebuds! I was always rather disappointed that goat curry was never on the menu.

It wasn’t until Franka at Can Cook must Cook mentioned Trinidadian curry goat that I suddenly realised I had a hope of finding goat meat in London. Franka pointed me in the direction of Shepherds Bush market so, on my first free Saturday, I wandered over. It didn’t take me long to find a small butchers advertising curry goat in the window for a mere £2.99 per kilo. There were other interesting looking things there too, including whole oxtails and a sheep’s head. I made a mental note to come back from some of the goat leg (again cheap at £1,89 per kilo) and the oxtail.

Even though goat meat is very rarely eaten in Britain it is an extremely popular meat in some other areas of the world. Despite this, I seemed to find it difficult to get some good information about cooking it. The best I could find, was one line in a Wikipedia article stating that the meat should be cooked long and slow. After doing a bit of research on the spices involved I came up with this plan:

1. Fry off some finely diced onions, garlic and red chilli, add ground cumin and coriander, garam masala, minced garlic, ginger and fennel seed.
2. Brown the goat in the spices, cover with water and leave to simmer gently for three hours.
3. Shortly before the goat has cooked, roast some more coriander and cumin seed and make a curry powder of these and fennel seed.
4. Remove goat from liquid and keep warm. Boil the liquid repidly to reduce it. 
5. Fry some more onion, garlic and ginger. Add curry powder, more garam masala, a little tomato and chopped coriander. Add reduced goat stock, simmer for a bit, taste and adjust seasoning. Stir the meat in, warm through, top with sliced spring onion and serve over boiled rice  with a vegetable curry and lentils.

That is pretty much how it worked in the end, except that, on tasting it, I decided it needed a touch of cream, to make it like the lamb curry I had in the last nepalese restaurant I visited. I’m not sure how authentic that was but it made a big difference to my curry.

The pieces of meat labeled ‘curry goat are obviously the spare bits as they had a fair bit of bone in them and a little gristle but the meat itself was gorgeous. The flavour was very much like mutton but much more rich. The three hour simmer had done it good and the meat melted in the mouth.

I decided to make an aubergine, chilli and tomato concoction to accompany my goat and also some tarka dahl and plain boiled basmati rice. It’s definitely a dish i’ll ake again, although I think Trinidadian curry goat has to be tried first. 

Up until now, Goon has always insisted his steaks are cooked for longer than mine. I think that’s probably fair considering I tend to take the ’show it the pan’ approach to cooking certain meats. But with tuna, this is no longer the case. Goon now likes his tuna seared and it’s all to do with this fab Ramsey recipe.

It’s a classic really, seared tuna in a mustard, honey and soy coating with crushed black peppercorns pressed into the fish, served with braised and caramelised chicory. If you happen to have the book ‘Secrets,’ do try this recipe.  It is really delicious and doesn’t look too bad either!

I promised I’d make it and so here it is! Poached leg of mutton with caper sauce.

Yes, I know it isn’t much to look at. It’s a boiled sheep’s leg with root vegetables a la Medieval Britain. What were you expecting?

I suppose I could have made it into a tower or something but that would ruin its old fashioned charm. You’ll have to be content with the square plate and rosemary leaves.

You’re probably asking yourself why I got started on this whole mutton thing in the first place. It all started during a conversation between James and myself a while ago. He’d mentioned in passing that during his childhood his family often tried to save money by buying meats which, for various reasons, were not popular and hence were very cheap. At that time (in the mid-late 80s) this included things such as mutton, brawn, oxtail and, due to the BSE crisis, British beef.

Apparently one of the dishes made in the Skillen household was mutton in caper sauce. I was suprised at this, mostly because I knew my mother had always bought this meat from Sri Lankan shops and I’d always believed they’d been exclusive to Sinhalese cooking.

 MY memories of mutton curry, rather like James’ memories of the caper sauce dish, were not terribly happy. I remember tough little nuggets of meat that left your jaw aching and bits in your teeth. Still, when I was told that this had once been the most popular meat in Britain, I thought I had to try it myself. Surely not everyone pre 1800 could have had bad taste?

Several years passed before managed to get my hands on the meat I needed. It wasn’t until I started shopping at Borough market that I found what I was looking for. First I got a rolled neck, the fate of which can be seen here and here. Then I got the leg which would provide me with last Tuesday’s dinner.

I searched around for recipes and found they varied enormously. Some had a sauce with cream, some thickened milk, others just capers and stock. I went for the cream option. The process was easy but lengthy. The mutton leg was simmered gently for three hours in a pot with a load ofrosemary and thyme, garlic and some white wine. About 15 minutes before the end I threw in a chopped turnip, a sliced leek and some new potatoes This produced a really rich flavoured ’stock’ to which I added a tablespoon of capers. Then I reduced it 1/8 of its original volume then added a roux and cream.

Simple really!I drained the rest of the liquid from the meat and veg and served up.

So Goon and I went about ’assessing’ the mutton leg with the sauce and vegetables. The conclusion? It was good. Not amazing, but pleasant. I’ve come to the conclusion  that mutton meat was made to put in curry. The flavour was a little strong and, well, ‘meaty’ for the caper sauce.

It makes damn good sandwiches though! I’ve been eating it in little soft rolls with mustard. Now how does that old saying go…. ‘Mustard and Mutton is the sign of a Glutton’!

I’ve not got around to reviewing it yet, but about a week ago I went back to Mimouza restaurant in Shepherds Bush. I love most of the food here and as usual was unsure on  what to have for a starter. Goon decded he wanted bastilla (probably my favourite) so I was torn between the merguez and the zaalouka (a mixture of aubergine, tomato and coriander.) I decided to have the merguez but a couple of days later I found I was still craving zaalouka.

Now that surely is something that doesn’t happen very often. Nevertheless I really wanted zaalouka and by last Thursday, I couldn’t take it any more. I needed to at least try and make my own.

I’m not really one for making starters for midweek meals, so I decided the zaalouka would have to be a side dish for something. I also had a spaghetti squash that needed using up so I decided use them both as acompaniments to some lamb kebabs. 

I made the kebabs by lightly griddling chunks of lamb leg steak (which had been marinating in harissa for a few hours) and skewering them with aubergine and yellow pepper which had been griled with lots of olive oil and garlic. I served these on top of the zaalouka, which was made by simply pan frying aubergine and onion  then simmering these with plenty of tomato, lots of ground cumin, coriander seed and garlic and freshly chopped coriander with just a hint of turneric.

I had some chilli oil for dipping too.

This was the first time I’d tried spaghetti squash. I have to admit the whole ’squash-turning-to-spaghetti’ thing is very exciting. Ok, I didn’t love the flavour and texture quite as much as pasta type spaghetti, but it was still damn good. I tossed it in olive oil, cumin, grond coriander and cinnamon to make it an appropriate side dish to the kebab-zaalouka combination.

The only problem was i did’t realise quite how much it would make. We still have left-over squash in the fridge. :/

Hmm… maybe I should have de-speckled that photo.

Anyone for lots of leftover squash?

Yes, I succumbed to mutton curry again. I know it isn’t as exciting as trying out caper sauce (and I promise I will do that as soon as I buy a mutton leg) but last night I was in the mood for something rich and comforting with lots of flavour. A cream and nut based curry was ideal and gentle spices appealed so I decided to make a korma.

The recipe for this curry is subtley different to the Mughlai-korma I made with king prawns a few weeks ago. The spice level is a bit higher to balance the stronger flavour of the meat. Also this curry takes about 3 times longer to make as the mutton needs to stew in the sauce for at least two and a half hours. The good news is the meat is on a very gentle simmer and requires minimal attention, so you can go and amuse yourself in whichever way you please until it is done.

Being the sad and solitary person I am, I decided to was my hair. :/

The mutton came from the leftovers of the rolled neck I used to make my biryani, which had been taking up space in the freezer for a while. It appears that mutton freezes well. The meat cooked just as well as it had when it was fresh. I began by blending some finely chopped onion with cardamom seeds, garlic and ginger to make a paste. Then I gently fried some sliced onion in the paste with ground cumin, coriander, cinnamon and garam masala until the onion was soft. Then I added the paste and the mutton and browned the meat, topped it up with lamb stock and left it to simmer.

After 3 hours had passed and the liquid had reduced a lot I skimmed off the fat, added ground almonds and cream and adjusted the spice balance. Then it was pretty much ready to serve so I quickly made some pilau rice.

Typically, I ate far too much curry and spent a large portion of the rest of the evening unable to move from  the sofa. I think it was worth it though. Nothing beats a good curry!*

*Well, maybe a decent sized slice of ostrich fillet does, but you know what I mean.

Well, sort of simple. You know that when a food blogger says “simple” it is a very relative term!

The Imperial College undergraduates have returned to University which means three things.

1. The Union Bar is a lot more crowded
2. I have to go to various fresher welcome events (damn me for being on society comittees).
3. I have to get up before 9am for a change so that I can get there in time to teach.

Well, maybe four things. The college smells a lot more. This what happens when 18 yr old mommy’s boys are left to fend for themselves. They forget about things like washing and changing clothes. 

Points 2 and 3 together have meant I’ve had a few days where I had really late nights and fairly early mornings so I couldn’t do my usual three hour marathon cooking. So instead I had to have relatively simple meals. This one impressed me the most.

These are some honey and mustard chicken thighs. They’re easy to make, pretty cheap and very tasty. The marinade is just honey, Dijon mustard and English mustard mixed together. The chicken can be left in the oven for 40 minutes while you do other stuff and after that it’s just a case of crisping up the skin and maybe adding a bit of cream to the marinade to make it into a sauce. I had these with some string beans and crisped new potatoes.

The recipe was so cheap and easy that I’ll have to budget it and put it on the student recipe page.

MY other meal of the week was properly simple! This is griddled lamb steak with roasted mediterranean vegetable couscous. It also was suprisingly cheap because the lamb leg steaks were half price.

All I did was marinate the leg steaks in harissa while I went out, then came back and griddled them for a few minutes either side. The cous-cous took about 20 minutes to make. I shoved the vegetables in the oven with olive oil and garlic for 10 minutes till they were tender then mixed with the couscous, some coriander and toasted pine nuts.

In the next few days I’ll devote a few hours to catching up recipes. Blame the Civil Engineering students for me getting behind! If they didn’t get so many questions wrong I’d have finished marking their work hours ago!

And now we have the baked honey and mustard chicken thigh recipe.

Yet again I'd been caught out by the Sunday trading laws. I wasn't expecting to be staying at my own flat last night, so I hadn't thought about what to cook for dinner. This caused me a few problems at 6pm when I realised I really needed to go shopping. 

The one thing I can be certain of having around my flat is a range of spices suitable for Indian and Sri Lankan curries. It looked like that was going to be the only option for food that night.

In general the stores that are open post 5pm on Sundays are rubbish. You're fine if you're after pot noodle but anything else is a real struggle to find. After fighting my way through the crowds of tourists in the Tesco Metro, I despaired of ever finding anything useful. Luckily, I also passed a small Sainsbury which had much better stuff. I managed to get my hands on some yoghurt and a packet of almonds which enabled me to make a nice creamy pasanda plus a little aubergine to make a side dish. 

The term “Balti” in the title just meant I couldn't be bothered with a long slow simmer to cook the curry. I was using fairly good quality lamb leg steaks so I could get away with sealing and simmering them in sauce for about 10 minutes. The marinading should have taken 3 hours, but I got bored after two. I don't think it made much any difference at all!

I haven't got the hang of presenting curries yet. The grey-ish colour of pasanda doesn't exactly help either. You'll have to trust me when I say the curry was lovely. It was rich and creamy with flavours of cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. There was a little subtle heat from a green chilli. Really, it should have had a peshwari naan to accompany it, but I wasn't about to start baking. Instead I had some pilau style rice flavoured with caraway seed, cardamom pods and turmeric. The aubergine was diced and fried with garam masala and mustard seed. Here’s the lamb balti pasanda recipe. And here is one for caraway and turmeric rice.

I think I’ve found the signature dish for my imaginary restaurant.

Yes, I ate all that meat. It was that good. This is a rare leg of lamb roasted with lavender, rosemary and garlic and served with butterbeans crushed with cream and thyme and asparagus.  It tasted absolutely fantastic and made the whole kitchen smell of lavender.

I got the idea from the BBC food website’s page about cooking with flowers. After investigating the herb stalls in Borough Market, I came across some culinary lavender and then made up my mind to find a nice juicy lamb leg. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to get my hand on the last half leg in Tesco and rushed home to get it in the oven.

The recipe for this is suprisingly simple given how good it tasted. I made little slits all over the lamb leg and stuffed them with garlic and rosemary. Then I ground 1 tablespoon of lavender into a powder, rubbed it all over the leg and roasted the lamb until it was rare.

The flavours were incredibly good. I love rare lamb, and the combination of this with the subtle lavender and bursts of rosemary and garlic was fantastic.

The butterbeans were inspired by a dish I had in Solo in Leamington Spa. They did an excellent lamb neck fillet with creamy white beans. for my version I simmered the butterbeans in cream with fresh thyme and a little crushed garlic. I used a potato masher to crush them then added more cream until they were the consistency I wanted. Butterbeans don’t taste of much but have a great texture. Their lack of flavour is not a problem because they will take on the taste of any herb you cook with them

Recipes is here now. This is definitely one to try!