Attempt #26: Roast potatoes with sage and orange

Decided to make this dish to compliment the salmon in Attempt #25 for my dinner guests.

Somehow, I thought the sage and orange would add some level of ‘sexiness’ to simple roast potatoes. Plus, the photo of the dish on Jamie’s website looks mouth watering.

However, my attempt…the potatoes turned out quite dry and the tanginess of the orange didn’t seemed to come through much. Perhaps I should just leave the entire peeled fruit into the baking tray and into the oven together.

Jamie’s rendition:

 

My rendition:

 Ingredients

• 2kg King Edward potatoes, peeled and cut to the size of golf balls
• 8–9 garlic cloves, skins left on and squashed
• peel of 2 oranges, cut into long thin strips
• a large bunch of fresh sage, leaves picked
• 6 tablespoons goose fat or olive oil

method

Preheat the oven to 220ºC/425ºF/gas 7. In a large pan, parboil the potatoes in boiling, salted water for 10 minutes, then drain in a colander, shaking it to chuff up the edges of the spuds.

Heat a large roasting tray on the hob over a low heat. (You may need 2 trays.) Add the goose fat or oil and the garlic, orange peel and sage, then fry for 30 seconds. Add the spuds and toss them until well coated.

Place the tray in the oven and cook for 45 minutes or until golden and crisp.

 

Attempt #17: One Hot Pot Basic Stew

Anything that says stew or one hot pot, I couldn’t resist trying this recipe out.

For the sheer fact that stews means that all ingredients goes into 1 pot and as they are usually slow cooked, all the nutrients are conserved. In short, nutritious and fewer number of cooking utensils required to be washed! J

To make this even easier, Jamie recommended an add-on ingredient i.e. POTATOES.

Once the stew is cooked, just fill a large baking dish with the fully cooked stew and lay your boiled and sliced (1/4 inch thick) potatoes over the top of your stew. Drizzle with a little olive oil (or melted butter) and brush this over across the potatoes. Sprinkle some picked thyme leaves over the potatoes and add a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook in the oven for 40 minutes on a 190 degrees temperature.

The result:

 

As I replaced white wine with Apple Juice, the stew came out rather sweet. I had couple of friends over for dinner and general feedback was quite OK. Nothing spectacular about the stew but easy on the taste bud.

However, biggest lesson learnt, when cooking stew, do not use an induction cooker as when we had to slow cook the stew, an induction cookers works in a way where the heat is spread out across the entire ceramic surface that holds the pot. And unlike a gas stove, you are unable to reduce the heat towards the center of the pot which helps when you are slow cooking stews. So, I realized this too late. Some of the vegetables were burnt which could have affected the quality of the stew.

My burnt pot:

 

 

 

 

 

Recipe:

• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 1 pound diced, boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• 2 cups of white wine
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 medium onions
• 2 carrots
• olive oil
• 1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
• 1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

If using the oven to cook your stew, preheat it to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4 • Trim the ends off your celery and roughly chop the sticks • Peel and roughly chop the onions • Peel the carrots, slice lengthways and roughly chop • Put a casserole pan on a medium heat • Put all the vegetables and the bay leaves into the pan with 2 lugs of olive oil and fry for 10 minutes • Add your meat and flour • Pour in the booze and tinned tomatoes • Give it a good stir, then season with a teaspoon of sea salt (less if using table salt) and a few grinds of pepper • Bring to the boil, put the lid on and either simmer slowly on your hob or cook in an oven for 3 hours • Remove the lid for the final half hour of simmering or cooking • When done, your meat should be tender and delicious • Remember to remove the bay leaves before serving, and taste it to see if it needs a bit more salt and pepper • You can eat your stew as it is, or you can add some lovely dumplings to it.

Attempt #9: Cod potato and spring onion stew

Who would have thought that a little bit of orange zest would make a difference in the taste of the stew!

I bought my cod fillet from a friend and wanted to try something different apart from steaming the cod seasoned with garlic, pepper, soya sauce, sesame oil and fried shallots. Browsing through Jamie’s site, I thought this recipe looks simple and different.

Result:

Very very interesting. And more importantly, the kids love it. It could be that the recipe calls for milk to be added into the broth and this thickens the stew making it creamier and tastes almost like their own formula milk! J  

The idea of adding in the anchovies was a good way to add the element of saltiness to the stew. And because I did replaced the white wine with apple juice and the final touch of grating the zest of the orange to the stew, it makes the whole dish flavoured with a kind of salty, zesty and fruity taste to it.  

Jamie's rendition:

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 leek, washed and finely sliced
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2 medium courgettes, halved lengthways
• 1kg potatoes, peeled
• 2 anchovies
• 1 wine glass white wine
• 565ml milk
• 565ml stock
• 1kg cod fillet, skinned and pin-boned
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• a handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• a bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
• juice of ½ a lemon

Method

In an appropriately sized large pan, slowly fry your onion and leek with around 5 tablespoons of olive oil for 5 minutes until soft and tender. With a teaspoon, remove and discard the fluffy tasteless core from the courgettes and grate the rest into the pan. Chop the potatoes into rough 2cm dice and add to the pan. Give everything a good stir and then add the anchovies. Turn the heat up and add the white wine. Allow to cook down by half before adding your milk and stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for half an hour until the potatoes are tender. At this point, add your cod and simmer for a further 15 minutes until the flesh flakes away; feel free to stir and break up the fish, but it's quite nice to leave some big chunks as well. Season carefully to taste. Divide between your bowls, and serve with a small handful of parsley and spring onion dressed with a little olive oil and lemon juice.

Try this: Sprinkle a little orange zest over the parsley and spring onion. It really works with the cod.

Attempt #6: Home-made crab cakes with a hot blackened salsa

Biggest mistake was not to get fresh or premium crabmeat. So, should you plan to attempt crab cakes, make sure that you get premium crab meat. And try not to get flower crab as these are not as sweet as other types of crabs in general.

Another unique element to this crab cake recipe (link to Jamie's website) was it doesn’t ask for eggs or breadcumbs or flour to hold the patties together. Instead, the recipe asked for potatoes and mashing the steamed potatoes together with the crabmeat.

Although I did pop the nicely shaped patties into the fridge overnight which was supposedly to help hold the patties together, I still had a difficult time trying to keep them together when frying them. In the end, I still had to re-shaped them into patties for the presentation of the finished dish.

My rendition:

Jamie's rendition:

Result: As I bought frozen flower crabmeat, I couldn’t taste the crabs nor its sweetness. Instead, it felt more like having potato cakes L

But the salsa recipe was yummy. Think we enjoyed the salsa more than the crab cakes this round.

Curious Corner:

How many potatoes make up to 500gm?

That was my first challenge. Well, for those who doesn’t have a weighing scale readily available, 500gm of potatoes is about 4 pieces of a medium sized potato.

 

Here’s a photo to help you make that gauge. Hope this helps!