4 posts tagged “wine”

I saw this recipe in a recent Waitrose magazine, and adapted it for our tea today.

800 gm pack diced braising steak
1 oz plain flour, seasoned
4 banana shallots
2 tbsps oil
1 piece star anise
Half bottle (250ml) fresh clementine juice
250 ml reserve (red top) ginger wine
75 ml beef stock

Heat oven to Gas Mark 2. Toss the meat in the flour, fry in batches in half the oil. Put aside. Chop and fry the shallots in the rest of the oil. Stir in the anise and the liquids, tip the meat back in and boil. Put a lid on it and bung it in the oven for an hour. Take the lid off and give it a stir, and another hour. If you're not ready to eat it, chill it and reheat, or keep on very low for another hour or so.

It was nicely orangey, and a tart orange rather than a sickly one. The ginger smelled good initially, but faded and you could only just taste it. Maybe a bit more fresh or powdered ginger towards the end? It smelled of a good Chinese restaurant while it was cooking, they recommended mash and green veg with it (which is what we had), but I'm thinking boiled rice and a crisp veg stir fry. There was lots of gravy, it was a bit pale and pasty, like flour-based stews often are. Perhaps keep the flour out, just cook in less liquid initially and then thicken at the end with some cornflour and more ginger wine. That was quite a hit of sugar, though. That quantity gave us two large portions each and there's a good portion left.

I've been very bad about posting here. Some of that is to do with not being interested in food a lot pretty much since Christmas, some of it is sheer laziness. I want to get back into the habit, so I'm going to post regularly as much as I can. Which may mean a few posts will look at bit make-weight, but it's all in a good cause.

So, where are we?

Back on the DrGourmet plan mostly, in fact I had an email from them the other day saying that because I'm in some discussion groups and forums and mailing lists and suchlike, I can beta test a more interactive customised plan. I've sent off the data on us (height, weight, targets, dislikes) and we'll see what happens. Our major slippage, which is still a temptation, and we fell for it again this week, is to buy picnic lunches for the weekends. French crusty bread, real butter, pates, cheeses, salami, creamy dressed salads, especially coleslaw. We are better at it than we used to be, we eat less I think, but a lot of it is high in fat and salt. I try to buy fruit to go with it - apples, grapes, cherries, soft summer fruit, but it's very much an afterthought. And of course we don't finish it all in one go, so you end up buying top-ups and having it again.

In product news, our Waitrose has started stocking a whole new section of Japanese foods, with different brands and a wider range than they had before. No wasabi paste anymore, but they do have the powder, even if it is one of the cheaper ones that's cut with horseradish. Lower sodium soy sauce, which is one of the DrGourmet ingredients I haven't been able to get before. Some seaweeds, umeboshi puree, things like that. The Thai range looks a lot better too, I didn't go poking around in any detail.

For tea tonight we have four each large scallops with the roe, which I intend poaching in some white wine with herbs, and serving with some white bread and plain sliced pan-fried courgettes with a squeeze of lemon. It should be this - Scallops with Herbed Butter - but that's a lot of faff for a very similar result.

That's enough for today, I can feel more words dribbling out of my fingers and I want to save them for later.

I like bread sauce, John doesn't. And it doesn't really go with goose anyway (although it's divine with sprouts). One year I found a German idea, which was like bread sauce except made with gingernut biscuits instead of bread. And that's proved quite popular. Except this year I messed it up, and every rescue attempt took it further and further away from the original. It ended up quite interesting, though, worth making a note of to repeat as a thing in its own right, or at least using as a starting point for something better.

• Most of a big tub of half fat creme fraiche
• A finely chopped shallot
• About half a pint of Chardonnay
• About half a pack of gingernuts
• Some powdered ginger, allspice, pepper and salt

Heat the cream, mix in the wine and shallots and cook slowly for an hour or so until the shallots don't taste raw and crunchy any more. Crumble in the biscuits. Taste and add the spices to suit. Keep warm until ready to serve the goose - any chunks of biscuit will dissolve if whisked, or you could leave the lumps in if you like.

Next time - cook the shallots better first! maybe in a bit of butter. A drier wine wouldn't hurt, it was a bit oversweet. Or just chicken stock.

Breakfast:

Beetroot-cured salmon, blinis, hardboiled quail eggs, creme fraiche, Ovruga fake caviar, chives and dill. Champagne or clementine juice, coffee.

Dinner:

Glass of Taylor's Chip Dry White Port, chilled.

Roast goose, goosefat roast potatoes, butter roast parsnips, sausages in bacon, sage and onion stuffing balls, plain boiled sprouts, petits pois, ginger cream sauce, port and redcurrant gravy. Choice of spiced pickled pears, sweet spiced prunes, cherry compote, cranberry and horseradish relish. Chateau Neuf du Pape.

Christmas pudding with cream or white sauce or rum butter. Orange Muscat Flora.

Coffee and Bendicks mints.

Late supper:

Winter apple, Comte cheese, clementine.

Phew.