Mid-holiday time wasting

 Working in a school is great for a number of reasons. One of them is MASSIVE amounts of time off! Possibly too much time off. A 3 week easter break leads to a large amount of boredom, and therefore, I tend to do plenty of cooking. 

 Yesterday was proof of this. I went to the cinema in Berkhamsted to see the new Oz film with my brother (If you haven't been to The Rex, it's amazing), and realised when I was leaving that I had far too much time left in the day; cue, a trip to Waitrose. 

My workstation

 Probably my favourite item in the house is the oven. I love it. As you can see from the picture though, im not the most organised cook. Things get a bit crazy when it comes to plating up. There are pans literally everywhere. Anyway. Food......


 I decided to cook a duck dish, mainly because I was watching masterchef in the morning and saw someone cook duck. 

 Sooooo this is just Pan-fried duck breast with a confit duck leg hash, fondant potato, broad beans and a red wine and plum reduction. 

 Duck breast part is easy, just fry skin side down on a fairly high heat for about 5 minutes, or until crispy. Then fry on the flesh side for 30 seconds before placing in a 180 degree oven for 7 minutes or so. Resting the meat afterward is important.

 The duck legs were more complicated. Put legs in roasting pan and cover with oil or fat, cook on a low heat for a few hours, then allow to cool in the oil. Scrape of oil or fat and shred, then roll in cling film and chill in fridge for a few hours if possible. When close to serving, remove from fridge and roll in flour, then egg wash, then seasoned panko breadcrumbs. Deep fry until golden brown.

 The fondant potato was just like a nice roast potato to be honest. Cut into the desired shape, then shallow fry in a pan on all sides until nicely coloured, then place in a hot oven for half an hour or so.

 Broad beans are broad beans. Just boil in salted water.

 The sauce was a different matter, it required some saving. I made a standard red wine reduction (onion and garlic sweated down with bay leaf. Then add red wine and reduce by half, add beef stock and reduce by half again), and then added plums that I had softened earlier. I had to add a lot of different things to save it, but it tasted pretty good in the end. From experience, I would recommend making a cherry sauce out of a red wine reduction to go with duck, it's easier and less stressful.

 This wasn't the end of my meal, because my mother had made pudding the day before, and we had lots left. It was apple and blueberry crumble. It was amazing. I ate a lot of it.

 I don't know a whole lot about how she made it, what I do know though, is that she uses grated marzipan in with the crumble mix to give it more taste and texture. Its literally amazing. It helps that I LOVE marzipan.

 Unfortunately my mother doesn't have a food blog. Maybe she should. She is well known for her baking ability. 

 I apologise for my photography once again, I have absolutely no idea what to do with a camera. I shall learn.

 Planning a trip to Costco this week to buy an outrageous amount of seafood for a meal, I shall write a post about it if it happens.

First foodie blog

I like food. If you've seen me lately, this will have been obvious.

I also like to cook, and if you've seen my twitter account, you'll know that to the annoyance to my followers, I like to put pictures up. 

This blog is therefore, dedicated to the food I cook, and other food-related musings. I shall put up some pictures with descriptions of food I have cooked lately, and then will endeavour to cook something interesting weekly for this blog.

First up.... Cooked this last week for my sister for lunch, nothing too fancy: 

Simply.... Steak, with salad, a peppercorn sauce, and triple cooked chips (I bought a deep-fat frier just for this purpose). 

The chips are a Heston recipe, from a book I was given for christmas last year. Requires removing the starch, then boiling, chilling, deep frying at a low temp, then chilling again before finally deep frying at a higher temperature just before serving. They are NICE. 

Next up, something a bit fancier. My brother and sister have been back from university this week, so I decided to cook something a bit more special.

This is a braised lamb dish, with celeriac pureé, potato gratin, a broad bean and garden pea salad, and jus (or GRAVY (my family are northern)). 

The lamb was braised in stock and a concoction of other stuff for a few hours, before chilling and rolling. To serve, the rolled lamb was sliced and then fried in sunflower oil, before being glazed in some of the lamb's cooking liquor.

The remaining dishes aren't quite as recent, but are the pick of the bunch from the last year or so.

Butterflied Prawns in a chilli, garlic and tomato sauce, served with garlic ciabatta. 

Not too much to say about this, just de-vein and butterfly some large-ish raw prawns and cook very quickly on a high heat, with chilli, garlic, onions and tomato.

Ballotine of chicken, with fondant potatoes, mango and summer vegetable salsa, and a mushroom sauce. 

This one was crazily complicated, and definitely not worth the length of time it took to think up and make! Chicken was stuffed with minced pork belly, and then rolled and chilled. Fondant potatoes require boiling, then frying, then roasting. The salsa type thing was a bit of a bonkers idea, but worked fairly well. 

Roast pork belly, savoy cabbage, potato pureé, mushroom sauce and crackling. 

This is probably the dish that I know best. The pork is roasted at a low temperature, then heated up later on in a pan. Potato pureé is just fancy mashed potato, passed through a sieve. The mushroom sauce served with this dish, and the chicken dish above, is fairly simple. It consists of sautéing mushrooms, then adding cream, red wine, dijon mustard, vegetable stock, salt, pepper, and then letting it cook out for 10 minutes or so on a low heat.

And finally, a homemade neapolitan pizza. 

Method is completely stolen from my sister, and is the most authentic attempt you can make without a pizza oven. Dough was made by her, and then left for 4 days before cooking. My sister is really the pizza expert, and her foodie based blog can be found at justanotherpizzalover.wordpress.com. Its pretty good.

If you want to see the real me, then follow me on twitter (@joelwalker14).

Got to get thinking of what to cook next week now!