Apparently so. On my last trip to Notting Hill’s farmers’ market I was pleasantly suprised to find a pack of pheasant breasts at the Manor Farm stall. They weren’t cheap, but I really miss pheasant when it goes out of season, so I was delighted to grab hold of these.

At first I thought they must be frozen but I was told that they were fresh. Apparently, even though the gamekeeper supplying the stall couldn’t shoot birds out of season, he would manage to catch some from time to time, and so the occasional bit of pheasant would end up on the stall in late spring.

I was so enthralled with my pheasant, I thought I should do something exciting with it. Then, on reflection, I realised one of the things I miss most about  pheasant in the summer is simple things like this.

Here I just stuffed the breasts with porcini mushrooms with I’d fried up with some onion, herbs and garlic, then wrapped them tightly in streaky bacon and roasted them. We ate them with fresh egg tagliatelle tossed in parsley and olive oil and steamed asparagus. There was a calvados cream sauce too, although I forgot to photo it.

Hooray for Manor Farm! I hope they manage to get one or two more packs in the next couple of weeks. I also discovered this week that they do some very tasty venison and chilli sausages that I’ll be going back for.

A few posts ago, I mentioned a pub meal I had that was really not as good as it should have been.

This ‘duck breast salad with pomegranate and blueberry dressing’ was a great idea, but somehow had come out all wrong. The biggest problem was the duck breast itself. It was overcooked, but hadn’t had enough time on the skin side to make it crispy. Also, whoever had prepared it apparently hadn’t heard of the benefits of removing the tendon from a duck breast.

Ignoring the duck breast, the salad itself was ok. But, after a while, the dressing, which I think was pure honey, became overpowering. The sweetness almost worked against the tartness of the blueberries but it was a little too much. I felt it needed tempering.

Even though the execution of this dish wasn’t great, I totally loved the idea behind it and that’s why I wanted to try out a variation on it myself.

The duck breast was the easy bit. I’ve cooked those dozens of times before and I think I’ve got the hang of them now. I could also easily mimic the spinach-watercress-spring onion combo of the pub for the salad but the dressing was a bit more tricky. I wanted to keep some of the honey but find a way to lessen the intensity of flavour. On a whim, I took half my pomegranate seeds, juiced them in a blender, then strained the juice into the honey. After tasting the mixture, one thing was obviously missing. So i added a capful of rosewater to the dressing and also decided to dust the meat side of the duck breasts with powdered rose petals to give the dish a very noticable rose flavour.

I prepared my duck in the same way I always do. For a start I alsways get my duck from Manor Farm’s stall at Notting Hill farmers’ market or from Furness at Borough. The quality of meat at these two places is a lot better than most supermarket duck.

As for method of preparation, this one seems to be fairly reliable.

1. Score the skin of the duck is a cross hatch pattern, with lines about 1.5cm apart. Try to cut as far as you can into the skin without exposing the meat.
2. Rub a pinch of salt into the skin to help it crisp up nicely.
3. Turn the duck meat side up and look for the white tendon. It’s a good idea to remove this as this is what makes the duck breast shrink when you cook it. I use a very small, sharp knife to do this, slipping the knife under the tendon and cutting it away. The difference you get from moving the tendon is very noticeable. The meat seems softer and jucier. 
4. When you are ready to cook the duck, get a frying pan hot (I use the highest heat setting on my electric hob) and cook the duck skin side down 8 minutes, then turn it and cook it for 1 minute 30s skin side up.
5. Rest the duck wrapped in foil for about 5 minutes before serving.
6. When you’re ready to serve, cut it into thin diagonal slices for pretty presentation. Or don’t bother, and just eat it.

If I haven’t just missed the deadline, I’m submitting thi post to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging, this week hosted by Pat at Up a Creek Without a PatL. Several ingredients make it eligible to qualify. The salad leaves, the pomegranate and the rose petals would all be good reasons to enter. But, I’ve decided to use this post to draw attention to the humble blueberry, which I think is a much underused ingredient in savoury cooking. While it’s all over the place in the form of yoghurts and muffins, you don’t often see a blueberry sauce for venison or the berries used in salads like this.. This is a shame as blueberries have a superb flavour which goes really well with game.

So, next time you’ve got some duck or venison (or kangaroo for that matter) in the fridge, why not try out partnering it with blueberries? It’s a very tasty combination!

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a fish that looked so thoroughly delighted to be on my plate.

Doesn’t he look happy? What a weird creature! I didn’t even know these things existed until last week. I was in Sainsbury’s, perusing the fresh fish counter when I encountered a very talkative fishmonger.

If you’re a touch on the hung-over side early on a Sunday morning, what you don’t want to here is a very loud and unnecessarily chirpy voice saying “Oi, Luv! You don’t need all that! You should give some to me ‘ere!”

I looked up cautiously. Behind the fish counter was an old-ish gentleman pointing at his very bald, shiny, crown. “You don’t need all that ‘air! Look ‘ere! I’m the one that need’s it!”

 If I hadn’t been so keen to get my hand on some fish that week, I’d probably have laughed politely, nodded and left quickly. The irritating thing was, Dad, who was also there after giving me a lift to the shops, found this guy totally hilarious.  A short session of banter between the two of them followed.

DAD Well, it’s easy for you- at least you don’t have to colour yours.

Admittedly, my dad’s odd hybrid Sri-Lankan /Surrey accent juxtaposed with the strong cockney of the fishmonger made for fairly entertaining listening in itself. 

FISHMONGER: Ah… That’s true. And I could get meself a wig. But the white ‘air makes you look, y’know, distinguished, don’t it?
DAD: You mean past it.
FISHMONGER : Naaah -  not past it! I mean, just because there’s snow on the roof, it don’t mean the fire’s gone out, eh? (winks)

At this point I’d decided I’d had enough of this. No one wants to hear about whether or not their Dad’s fire has gone out, especially when hung-over and tired. So I hurriedly pointed at at the seabass. “How much for those  two little ones?”  It turned out they were far too expensive. But, at this point, the guy behind the counter finally made himself useful and pointed out and recommended the dabs.

The fact I’d never seen or heard of these fish was a good enough reason for me to enthusiastically grab them, then get out of earshot before Dad and the fishmonger continued their male bonding session. 

Later, at home I realised one fish was probably not quite enough for Goon to eat so,  the next day, I found some scallops and prawns (in the bargain bin - woohoo!) to keep the dabs company.

The internet yielded very few recipe suggestions for this particular species, especially since these fish weren’t boned and, hence, not really suitable for stuffing. So, I went for a simple option: the dabs, with a little champagne (well, Hardy’s sparkling pinot-noir) -cream sauce, asparagus, lemon and a small side of a lemon, herb and shellfish risotto.

Now, I don’t usually bother cutting the heads off whole fish - especially not since that incident with the mackerel- but I really couldn’t leave these ones on. Don’t worry- I haven’t gone soft. But the dabs’ faces were so comical! I couldn’t stop giggling at them. At one point, I looked at them, snorted and ended up with my fizzy pinot noir coming out of my nose. After that, the dab head just had to go.

It’s a shame, but, apart from being  very entertaining to look at, the dabs weren’t all that great. When it came down to it, they were a bit plain and lacking in flavour. I didn’t mind too much as the seafood risotto was totally gorgeous and more than compensated for the dabs’ blandness but I’m not sure I’d buy these fish again.

Well, maybe I would, just to see that smile again.

Heh… so much for the return to blogging I anticipated after handing in my last thesis draft.

It turned out that handing in thesis coincided with Goon starting his exams. This really should have meant that I left him to it and had plenty of time to write. But, in reality, this was the first time this year that Goon  and I were both at home during the day, so we ended up spending large amounts of time in Hammersmith’s gastropubs.

Also, the unthinkable happened. I temporarily lost my will to cook! In fact I pretty much lost my will to eat, probably because of the exhaustion incurred by the weeks around Easter. Then I had an argument with my supervisor over my thesis which caused me to sulk for a few days. Then I got a bad case of flu. Bah!

But, as it inevitably would, my food enthusiasm has started to return, triggered off by a wonderful idea on a pub menu that was, as they so often are, VERY badly executed.

You see this here?

It’s a duck salad with pomegranate and blueberries. Congrats to the head chef of this chain for thinking of it -  what a great concept. Shame someone in the Hammersmith kitchen buggered it up. The duck was well overcooked and dry, and the dressing was really overpowering. Also, I think the duck breast tendon hadn’t been removed so it shrivelled more than it needed to. I feel I need to make my own version of it because I feel this idea could actually turn out to be excellent with a bit of care and attention. As soon as I get through our current kitchen supplies, that will happen.

And now that I’ve finished disecting my lunch, let’s get back to the important stuff. I think I’ll start with that ostrich wellington……

The best way to confuse a foodie is to ask them one question: “What is your favourite food?”

Someone distinctly non-foodie, like my Dad, will be able to answer this immediately: “‘Tesco crusty bread”.  In fact I’ve found bread is a very common choice amongst those who aren’t that bothered about food. Other popular answers include chips, chicken and steak (medium well). A foodie, on the other hand, will probably find that question a real challenge to answer. They’ll think for a while, then reel off a list of several things they can’t decide between. On the odd occasions they can answer, it will either be oysters, foie gras, or something really obscure. 

I was recently forced to answer this question myself,  by someone even more stubborn than me. The inquisitor was one of my ten year old students. I don’t know why ten year olds are so inquisitive about random things, but, for some reason, my eating habits held much more interest to her than our work on percentages.

She flatly refused to do anything until I gave her a proper answer. Apparently my honest response of ‘I can’t choose’ was not acceptable. After a long, stubborn silence from both of us, I gave in and chose something that I absolutely love that would also alert her to the fact I am a bit of a weirdo, so, hopefully, she’d never ask me anything like that again.

My food of choice was rare ostrich fillet. There’s something about the rich game flavour combined with its beefiness that makes me happy to travel half way across London on a regular basis to make sure I get my next fix. The problem was that, once I’d given my small tormentor my answer, I had a craving for ostrich I couldn’t get rid of. Luckily, it was Thursday night and so I had the option of running off to Borough the next morning.

And so the subject of the picture above came into being. It was Goon who inadvertently came up with the idea for what to do with this particular fillet. He wanted “that thing I made for his brother“. I could do that, but I had a hankering for madeira, so I decided that this time, for a change, I would make a Wellington in a more traditional way.

As far as I’m aware a ‘traditional’ Wellington is made by lightly coating a beef fillet in foie gras paté, topping it with a thin layer of chopped flat field mushrooms cooked with cream and madeira wine, wrapping the whole thing in crepes, then pastry and finally baking it.  My plans for minor alterations (apart from the obvious meat substitute) involved replacing the field mushrooms with porcini and the foie gras with a mixed game paté.

i started off following this recipe for crepes (half way down the page). This combination produces a very light batter which is just right for making thin crepes that keep the pastry dry but are otherwise barely noticable in your end product. Before the batter went into a frying pan, I added a handful of finely chopped rosemary and thyme for extra flavour. 

My next job was to brush the ostrich fillet with my paté. This turned out to be the only problematic part of this meal. Someone (I wonder who ) had binned the game paté I’d left in Goon’s fridge. As I stode off towards a certain flatmate’s room, brandishing a large sharpened kitchen knife, Goon picked me up, told me to calm down and reminded me about the three tins of French duck paté that Dad had brought back on his last trip to Paris.

The three tins quickly turned into one as Goon got his hands on the paté and started scoffing, but I salvaged the last one and spread it thinly over the ostrich fillet. Finally, I soaked some porcini mushrooms, and fried them with a splash of madeira and cream for a couple of minutes until the mixture was dry enough to spread over the top of the fillet. Once that was done, the fillet got wrapped in crepes, then the pastry and went in the oven.

Thirteen minutes at 220C was enough to make the Wellington a perfect rare.

The dark liquid you can see in the first picture is a port reduction. There were some purple potatoes too, which I was disappointed to find I didn’t like. I’m hoping I just cooked them badly… now if ony I could find out what the damn things were called, I’d ask for tips on how to do it next time!

In spite of the oddly dry purple potatoes, this meal was was really good and there was some left for lunch the next day which makes it even better. If I had been available at the time I might have submitted this to Sam’s event, Fish and Quips. It’s a shame I was too busy.

Putting two foodies in a flat with three typical students can occasionally have disastrous consequences.

It seems that Goon’s dislike for his squeamish blonde flatmate ran a little deeper than I thought. True, she did throw away the pheasant pasta that was supposed to be his lunch because she didn’t like its smell. True, she does appear to have a cleaning OCD and whines constantly. True,she does squeal and make yuck faces at us and our food (particularly offal), before tucking into processed sausages and burgers. And true, she whinges it’s ‘horrible and mean’ to eat wild rabbit but doesn’t mind eating intensively farmed animals.

But apart from that there’s not that much to dislike about her.

I can totally see why this flatmate irritates the hell out of Goon. She irritates me too. This is why I couldn’t stop laughing when this happened.

On Thursday I popped round to our local fishmongers with Goon to choose something for dinner. I had my eye on the John Dory but Goon disagreed.

GOON: No. The stripy fish.
ME: But there’s a Gordon Ramsay recipe I want to try for this John Dory.
GOON: No! The stripy fish.
ME: Do you even know what the stripy fish IS?

(pause)

GOON:Uhhh….no.
ME: It’s mackerel. Do you even like mackerel? 
GOON: (shrugs)
ME: I’ll get the John Dory
GOON: NO! STRIPY FISH!

And there you have the Goon way of winning an argument. You have to agree that it is  effective. To be honest, I was happy enough with mackerel. They are tasty and cheap. I decided cook them simply, so studded them with slices of lemon (a slice went inside each cavity too), baked them and made a garlic and chilli infused oil to drizzle over them.

. 

Ok, I admit Goon is right. They are very pretty fish. 

Recently, inpired by the River Cottage Meat book, I have been trying to make as much use of our food as I can. In particular, I’ve been trying to make stocks from all my leftover whole animals. I hadn’t got around to making fish stock before so I’d asked the fishmonger to just gut our mackerel and leave me the rest. I thought the bones, leftover skin and heads would make great stock.

That evening, whilst cooking, I told Goon to cut off the fish heads pop them in a bowl with clingfilm to use later. Instead, Goon decided to torment his other squeamish (but not at all irritating) flatmate with them for a while. It seems that to the right people, a pair of fishheads by a door is a better barrier than an electrified fence.  

After our meal, I told Goon to put all the fish leftovers together, covered, in the fridge so I could make my stock the next day. And that, I thought, would be the end of it.

It appears that Goon had other, slightly mean, but extremely funny ideas. Apparently Miss Squeamish got up the following morning at 5:45am, opened the fridge door and found…..

the two heads of our mackerel, placed with care in the cheese box so that when you opened the fridge they were staring straight back at you.

Apprently the scream woke up the whole flat and possibly some of the neighbouring ones too. The fish heads got binned, which was a shame, but  worth it for the amusement it caused us.

The next day, when Goon encountered the blonde one, there was a lot more angry jibbering, squealing and whining. Trust me, it is best not to show weakness in front of Goon. Particularly not an idiotic weakness like that one. All Goon will do is take the piss, which he did to an enormous degree. He even took the fish heads out of the bin and chased her out of the flat with them. :D

Hehehe. If it had been anyone else,  I might have felt sorry for them  The prissy one currently appears to not be talking to Goon. Goon is happy with that and to be honest, we’re finding it hard to not provoke her again. After all, I still have those octopuses in the freezer and they will have to be defrosted at some point. That should be fun. Hmmmm….. I wonder what would happen if I got myself a couple of lobsters (a treat I’d been saving for when I had a flat of my own) and put them in the bath.  

Thesis draft 2 is finally in! \o/. Now I can finally emerge from my relative silence. To those of you that I’ve been ignoring over e-mail etc, my sincere apologies. It really has been THAT hectic over the last two weeks.

Tuition sessions have also settled down a little (she says returning from teaching until 9pm :s) so I have time to blog again . Of course, whilst sleeping and generally living became low of my priority list, cooking certainly didn’t (except on the one day that Goon demanded Chinese take away) so here a few of the things I really wanted to blog about but couldn’t.

My favourite of the week was this.

Between teaching sessions on Saturday morning, I managed a quick detour through Shepherds Bush market, picked up some goat, which went into a Jamaican goat curry and the lovely red sea bream you can see in the picture above. The fish only cost £4, which is a lot cheaper than the supermarket bream I’ve seen. That evening the fish was marinated in orange and ginger,  grilled until the skin was cripy and served on egg fried rice with a sweet and sour sauce and some prawn crackers.

Of course, with Easter weekend came a host of supermarket special offers, including half price duck. This, in imitation of a very good pub lunch I had, was rubbed with star anise and then roasted with cloves and cinnamon under its skin. I served it with a pear chutney and attempted to make ginger flavoured roast potatoes, although the ginger turned out much more subtle than I’d hoped. I always have trouble making things taste of ginger. Any tips on that front would be much appreciated.

Also, I took advantage of a half price lamb leg which was the principal ingredient in this rather colourful dish.

The whole leg was crusted in a mixture of coriander seed, cumin, fennel, and turmeric, roasted to rare (for a change) and served with vegetable couscous, a sweet red pepper sauce (recipe adapted from Sher’s at ‘What Did you Eat?’) and minted courgettes.

Finally there was the super-lemony guinea fowl. Super lemony because, before I roasted it, I slipped very thin lemon slices (and herbs, garlic and butter) under its skin. For some reason lemon seems to keep poultry really moist if you squeeze it on before cooking. In the case of my guinea fowl, the juice of the lemon trickled out over the flesh during t cooking and kept it really succulent as well as giving it a great flavour. As usual, giving the skin a stuffing make it go very crisp.

I also shamelessly stole this fab idea for mussels with leeks and blue cheese from Anna at Morsel’s and Musings. I omitted the spinach and served my version over some linguine. My picture didn’t come out well at all. My mussels glowed so much they looked radioactive.  I don’t mind too much though, as Anna’s green lipped mussels look way better than  the ones I had to buy from Tesco.

So there we go, a selection of the things that kept me sane during the nightmare that was the last ten days. Since things are much calmer now, I’ll hopefully be able to tell you abou my visit to Market Kitchen soon and the exciting time I’ve been having with my new favourite food book.

This was the second of my late night midweek dinners that grew into something unexpected. These pigeon breasts had been sitting in the freezer from the time I made my unfortunate bastilla. Since there was just enough for one, it seemed sensible to use them while Goon was away.

Again, I was just planing to cook them lightly, have some new potatoes and rocket and, maybe, a red wine reduction if I wasn’t falling asleep by that point. As you can see, the new potatoes and salad stayed. But, just before I started cooking, I was flicking through one of my newest cookery books, Geat British Menu, and spotted a starter for pigeon with caramelised red onions. This seemed like a good idea to me so I started frying one small sliced onion with a level tablespoon of sugar and a large knob of butter

As usual, as the onion was caramelising, I had a nose through everything else on the worksurfaces and in our cupboard. This time I discovered one of our mostly finished bottles of plum wine, which I had bought in Borough Market. I could see the plum flavours working very well with the gaminess of the pigeon and the sweet onion.

Usually I wouldn’t add fruit wine to food as it is a bit pricey and I have to go all the way to Borough to get more, but this one needed to be used soon. Plus, those bottles are STRONG with 14.5 % alcohol. I knew what would happen if i started drinking it by myself and I figured that adding a hangover to my already hectic week would be a bad idea.

So my remaining third of a bottle of wine went into my saucepan, not my mouth and, as I let the wine bubble down, the onions turned a very pleasing shade of pinky-purple.This on its own made me love this dish! A quick taste revealed that the sauce was crying out for star anise and cinnamon, so I ground a teaspoon of each and added them to the pan. Finally, I seared the pigeon breasts to medium rare and tossed them in the reduction which by then was very thick.

I think an tangy orange dressing on my rocket and potatoes would have been best to offset the rich sweetness of the pigeon dish but I had no oranges and so a bog standard balsamic vinaigrette had to do. The sweet-tangy combination still worked very well.

This was another one of those dishes that I need to make again. I believe it’s got potential to be really good if I ever get the time to think about it properly. The pigeon itself was great but could have been better with some marinating and a citrus dressing on the salad would have been better. However, in this state it was a very nice midweek dinner and fairly quick to make, which is just what I’ve needed this week. 

It’s been a funny old week. I thought that since half my students were going on holiday I’d have loads of free time. But it seems the few remaining ones had other ideas. Ideas involving three hours of tutorials a day. Each. I have been starting teaching at 9am and finishing at around 9pm, with a few hours in between to hurriedly type thesis. 

In the midst of all this I got a call from these guys at Market Kitchen. Apparently I will be on the telly soon. More on that when I know what exactly is going on.

To add to the already huge stress levels, Goon has been away this week, working in Newcastle for his web-hosting company, Byethost. I thought this would mean that cooking for me this week would be reduced to quick and fairly boring meals as there was no way I could cope with arriving home at 10pm, getting up at 8am, cooking properly and cleaning up the kitchen.

It seems however that I was wrong. The basic meals took on a life of their own. For the first night, I had a fresh tuna steak. I thought this was perfect for my situation. It would be quick to cook and still really tasty. My plan was to just sear it and have it with new potatoes and a salad to give myself time to sleep that night, but then an idea struck me.

My dad had brought me some gotu-kola leaves the previous weekend. I guess this is a bit of an obscure plant. It goes by a variety of names, including, Antanan, Brahmi and, over here, we have a close relative of it called pennywort. The leaf is important in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine and, in Sri Lanka, the leaf is used in salads and also blended with coconut to make a breakfast drink.

I hadn’t eaten these leaves since my childhood and, when I tried them from the box in the fridge, I remembered why. They are a bit of an acquired taste, at least on their own. Adding a little bit of dessicated coconut and lime, however, gives the leaves a new lease of life. The sweetness of coconut balances the leaves’ bitterness and the lime gives it a pleasant freshness. This flavour combination was the basis of the spontaneous idea I had to jazz up my dinner.

I scored  my tuna steak and left it to marinate briefly in a blend of chilli oil, grated ginger, garlic and grated lime zest. 

The gotu-kola leaves went in the blender. I blitzed them, adding coconut milk slowly until I had a pesto like consisitency. I also blended in a couple of teaspoons of grated coconut, some lime zest and a little fresh red chilli. The result was very interesting, in a good way. The bitterness of the leaves had gone but the distinctive ‘medicinal’ taste was still there. I tried to find some rice noodles in my cupboard, failed and settled for spaghetti instead and tossed the cooked stands in my makeshift pesto.

Centalla Asiatica (gotu-kola). Picture from Wikipedia

The balance of flavour here was really good. There was the classic gotu-kola, coconut, lime combination balanced by the ginger and chilli in the tuna. I think more ginger was needed somwhere but, other than that, I couldn’t complain about this dish. I also made a quick tomato and aubergine side dish with coriander, which, again, because if its sweetness, completmented the gotu-kola flavour really well.

This was a suprising success for such a random idea. I think I’ll work on it because there’s  potential for an interesting and tasty Sri-Lankan- British fusion dish. 

Also, since it contains a weird and relatively unheard of plant, it is perfect for Kalyn’s  Weekend Herb Blogging which, this week is hosted by  Anh from Food Lover’s Journey. I found an interesting fact about the leaf as I researched it for this post. Apparently in ancient times it was regarded as a natural version of viagra. A story tells of a Sri Lankan king, Aruna, mustering the energy to satisfy his harem of fifty on the powers of the gotu-kola leaf.     

More believably, the leaf also promotes the healing of wounds by speeding up the scarring process and is an anti-oxidant.

Unfortunately things haven’t eased off on the work front quite yet. My impending deadline was revoked when, in a fit of utter frustration, I visited my supervisor to inform him that I was getting nowhere with the proof he asked me to complete. It turned out there was a good reason for this. There had been a slight discrepancy between what he had ASKED me to do and what he actually MEANT,  which meant that I’d spent the last two weeks trying to do something that was probably impossible.

Such is the world of academia I suppose. At least I’m now on the right track and, since Goon has exams in a few weeks, he is spending most of his time at home revising learning the material. I thought that meant that I could indulge in some slow-cooked food as Goon was there to put things in the oven and keep an eye on them.

I first took advantage of this by trying to make a simple but rich dish of beef stewed in red wine - a bourguignon type thing adapted to include whatever vegetables and wine I had in the kitchen. I left the beef marinating in a rich, mellow red with the partially cooked veg and gave Goon the instructions to brown the beef, return it to the casserole with the wine and put it in the oven at 150C, adding a little stock if it looked like it would dry out.

You’d think that with such a simple dish nothing could go wrong. You’d be mistaken. I arrived home at about 9:30pm after failing yet again to finish my Chapter 4. Goon wasn’t around. I tutted, thinking he should have stuck around to check on the food, especially since it turned out that he’d left the dish in the oven uncovered. Closer inspection revelaed that things were much worse than I thought.

The extremely large casserole dish was full, and I mean FULL of liquid. I had intended to cook the beef in almost pure red wine but it looked like Goon had added a couple of litres of something to it. I removed dish from oven and tasted. Something inside me died. My beef was cooking two litres of plain water!

I panicked. There was far too much water to boil away. My best option would be to drain the beef as soon as possible, replace the cooking liquid with something appropriate and give it some extra cooking time so it developed a flavour. That is exactly what I tried to do, grabbing the nearest bottle of red from the worksurface. I relaxed slightly and tasted again.

Who’d have thought we’d have a bottle of red wine out that was OFF!?

It was at this point that Goon walked into the flat and immediately had to duck as every kitchen implement I could lay me hands on went flying at high speed towards his head. Once he’d taken cover in his room I drained the casserole again and found an unopened bottle of red, tasted that and added it to the dish. 

I was seriously worried that the food was going to be inedible. The casserole had retained some of the flavour of the slightly vinegared wine.  Goon, who’d stopped hiding in his room, wandered into the kitchen, picked up a spoon and tasted the casserole.

“What have you done to this? It tastes very tart to me!”

I very nearly killed him.

At this point the casserole turned into a stew and I did everything I could to save it. In went extra tomato and garlic plus a couple more bay leaves. I put it on the lowest heat possible and gave it another hour to see if it recovered.

Suprisingly, the tartness did start to soften. I added extra herbs and black pepper and a little bit of lamb stock, which really helped to alleviate the sharpness of the dish. In the end we actually had an edible and actively pleasant meal, although not nearly as good as I had wanted it to be. It took AGES for the flavour to recover and we ate at about 11:30pm, but still, it was better than beef cooked in water or off wine. 

So the lesson for today was, if the wine for your bourguignon is a bit tart, lamb stock, winter herbs, bay leaves and garlic seem to really help. Also, even the most simple instructions can be misinterpreted by a Goon.