The elusive Beef "Red Dragon" and Aduki Bean Pie

Why is it elusive, you ask?  Well, because we were initially supposed to be having it two weeks ago but it got bumped until last week owing to the fact that I just couldn't find Aduki (or Adzuki, or Azuki) beans.

Of course, I should have gone to Makkha's on the Ashley Road - the best ethnic food store in the area - straight away, but life just didn't take us that way.  Hubby eventually called in there on his way to another appointment and bingo - got the beans.

So, we were all set for this last weekend, when we were due to be having the pie on Saturday.  I even remembered to put the beans in to soak before going to bed on Friday evening - which was a start!

Of course, we hadn't foreseen the problems that arose with Son & heir and his sleepover guest, which culminated in said sleepover guest returning home rather earlier than previously anticipated.  Not through any fault of his own - she hastened to add - but because they both ran out of things to amuse themselves with and terminal boredom set in.  All of which stamped all over the time I should have been preparing the Beef "Red Dragon" Pie.

So we had bacon & egg sandwiches that night and the pie got bumped to Sunday evening.  I was beginning to think that perhaps I might have stepped on a gypsy's toe and had the hex put on me - especially considering how a number of different dishes lately had failed!

Would you believe it, having woken up Sunday morning thinking we had a free day, we ultimately found ourselves heading in Bournemouth's direction for an unavoidable, emergency bit of shopping! 

I was so determined to make the flipping pie, I managed to make it in stages.  I put the dish together - consisting of beef brisket, it required a couple of hours of slow cooking before adding the potatoes and beans - and took advantage of the automatic cooking function on our cooker to switch the oven on at the right time to begin cooking.

Consequently, it seemed to take all day to make - but goodness me, it was worth it!

I had my first taste once I'd combined the sauce ingredients prior to putting it in the oven and it showed promise even then.  I have got to say, though, that was nothing compared to how it tasted after the first 2 hours of cooking.  It was rich and tasty and so very unlike a Shepherd's Pie as to be incomparable.  I was relieved about that, as I had been under instructions from the recipe's source, Martin Kitcher, to make sure it went in a Stir Fried Beef direction and not in a Shepherd's Pie direction!  So I felt all was as it should be.

Hey Martin - did you notice the extra ingredient?  *chuckle*

Having added the beans, some more peppers and the sliced potato to the top, I put it back into the oven for another hour and felt a whole lot more confident about it than I had been!

After what seemed to be an unconscionably long time, we sat down to tuck in.  I'd served it with some steamed Pak Choi and Broccoli, which seemed to go very well.  Hubby had insisted on some gravy, which amazingly went absolutely perfectly with the pie too.  All in all, we were very happy bunnies with our dinner that night.  Everyone cleared their plates and, if I hadn't have been so full, I'd have made inroads into the leftovers!

So, Beef "Red Dragon" and Aduki Bean Pie was not only a hit, but was marked as a "Do again" recipe.  Can't wait to see what Martin finds for me next!

BEEF "RED DRAGON" AND ADUKI BEAN PIE  (Serves 4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil
500g brisket of beef, finely sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 red pepper, sliced and divided into two halves
1 green pepper, sliced and divided into two halves
1.5 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 tsp sugar
1 flat tsp of paprika
1 tsp Tikka Masala powder
2 cups soaked & reconstituted Aduki beans, boiled for 15-20 minutes
3 or 4 par cooked peeled, sliced potatoes
olive oil to drizzle
sea salt & ground black pepper.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 160deg fan.  In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil until hot and sear the beef.  Remove to a large casserole dish.

2.  Place the onion and half the two peppers into the pan and cook on a medium heat until everything has softened and the onion is becoming transparent.

3.  Add the cumin, coriander, tomato puree, tomato ketchup, sugar, paprika and tikka masala powder into the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes, before adding a little water - just enough to mobilise the spices and create a thick sauce.

4.  Add to the beef and stir to combine.  Add seasoning, cover and place into the oven for 2 hours.  Take a look after an hour to ensure it hasn't dried out.  If it is looking dry, then just add a little water to take it back to being saucy - but not runny.

5.  At the end of the two hours, remove from the oven and stir in the remaining peppers and the beans.  Add a little more water if necessary, bearing in mind it's got another 45 minutes at least, to go.

6.  Finally, add the sliced potatoes in a neat layer on top, drizzle olive oil over, season and put back in the oven for 45-50 minutes or until the potatoes are golden.

Serve.

So Jenny - what's the plan for this week, then? 21-27 June 11

That, is a very good question.  After last week, it could be anything at any time, it seems to me!  We did a spectacularly good job of swapping meals around and exchanging them for other incarnations of the same basic ingredient.


So I'm crossing my fingers that this week stays a bit more settled!


For starters, it's unusual that I'm in a position to write the meal plan post on the day it kicks off!  I blame the Strawberry Stacks, they were so gorgeous I just couldn't not blog about them - so then the Beef stew needed blogging - and so here we are.

In actual fact, we've just returned from doing the food shop at the supermarket and everything came to much less than I was fearing it would, cost-wise.  I had an enormous shopping list going in there, so either we've shopped very well or the prices aren't as bad as I thought they would be!  Fresh salmon was a bit of an eye-opener, as from the fish counter it was £7 a kilo, whereas pre-packed it was £14 - yes, FOURTEEN! - a kilo.  The wet fish counter didn't even have it on special offer, either.  It just proves how it's worth looking at all the options before buying!


So anyway - to business.  This week (she says, whilst emerging from a shed and adopting a West Country accent - and if you haven't seen that T.V. Programme, just ignore that bit) we shall mostly be having :

Tuesday : Warm Salmon Salad with Little Gem, Asparagus, Avocado and Jersey Royals

Wednesday : Onion tart, salad and Jersey Royals

Thursday : Meatballs and Pasta

Friday : Kedgeree

Saturday : Red Dragon Beef Pie with steamed Pak Choi & carrots

Sunday : Shepherd's Pie with carrots, broccoli and peas

Monday : Prawn & Pea risotto.

There now.  That all sounds just lovely, doesn't it?

Today's salmon salad started out life in my head as one of the BBC Good Food recipes for a warm potato & tuna salad with pesto dressing.  It required some fine tuning, in that almost everything on the ingredients list someone had something they objected to.  So, I swapped Salmon for the tuna (Son & heir doesn't like tuna), swapped green beans for asparagus (hubby doesn't like green beans, we all love asparagus) and swapped baby spinach for little gem lettuce (Son & heir doesn't like baby spinach used as a salad leaf).  Truth be told, it doesn't resemble the original recipe in the slightest any more.  The only resemblance is in the structure of the salad and the pesto dressing!

I've bought some garlic & herb tear'n'share bread to have with it, as although hubby likes Jersey Royals they are still potatoes and he won't cope with too  many of them on the plate.  Son & heir will be disgusted by the fact that it's a salad and the bread is to make the whole thing seem worthwhile to him.  I know, I'm a pushover.

I'm also planning on making some muffins today, as the ones I made for Son & heir's break time snacks have all disappeared now.  It's an intriguing recipe, being a Camembert and Redcurrant muffin.  Should be absolutely gorgeous, but I'll let you know!

I'm looking forward to making tomorrow's dinner, the Onion tart.  I was always terribly allergic to onions to the point where I couldn't eat them at all - not even cooked away to nothing in a stew.  My system would still know they were there, with the ensuing consequences - the worst being that I'd spend some time calling to God on the great white telephone.  Which is what makes it all the more remarkable that, having been pregnant, I can now eat onions again.  ~shrug~  Don't ask me how it happened, but I can now risk a cheese & red onion sandwich, which was such a no-no in the past!  Hence, to make an entire tart dedicated to my nemesis of old is something of an triumph.

Thursday is hubby's day to cook and he's going down the sausage meatball route again, except in a rather more classic sauce this time.  Meatballs and pasta has always been one of Son & heir's favourite dinners, so it should be a trouble-free meal time.

Son & heir is bringing one of his friends, J, home from school for a sleepover on Friday.  I recalled when J was here last (when we had the Shoulder of Pork) that he commented on how much he enjoyed fish.  Everyone here loves my Kedgeree, so I thought that would be a nice thing to make for J.  It has the added benefit of being incredibly easy to produce, too!

I'm aiming to make a rhubarb & ginger upside down cake for dessert (just a little one - 4 slices big) that day, too.

Saturday brings the return of the Red Dragon beef pie, now that I'm fully armed with the Aduki beans!  All I've got to do is remember to put the blinking things on to soak on Friday evening!  lol  @MartinK10 - if you're reading this and you're around on Friday evening, send me a twitter to remind me!  *chuckle*

Hubby's volunteered to cook again on Sunday and he's doing one of his gorgeous Shepherd's Pies.  It really IS a Shepherd's Pie, as it will be made with lamb mince.  Oooh, I can hardly wait, as Shepherd's Pie is one of my very favourite meals.

I'll be aiming to make a Gooseberry & Almond Cake on Sunday morning, so long as I get time!  I'm intrigued by how the gooseberries sink from the top of the cake while it's cooking, and have to see it in action.

All of which brings us around to Monday again, when hubby is promising us a prawn & pea risotto.  Being the Risotto King, I just know this is going to be a success - to the point where I can almost taste it if I think about it for long enough.

So there we are!  Sounds like a bit of a busy week, one way and another.  I reckon I'd better get on with those Camembert & Redcurrant muffins, because they won't cook themselves!

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Exciting menu list for Father's Day week! Meal Plan 14/6/11 - 20/6/11

Just lately, I seem to go through the week wondering vaguely what we'll be eating next week and keeping an eye open for interesting recipes - yet not finding any.  Then, when I sit down on a Sunday to trawl the cookbooks and internet for inspiration, suddenly there appears all those interesting recipes that had been hiding previously!  Now, I'm not complaining, but it's  a bit weird how it happens.

Anyhow, before we get into this week, let's deal with the end of last week.

We had a couple of meals that we won't be repeating.  Firstly, and most regrettably, was the Caribbean Chicken Curry.  When the curry was almost ready, I got Hubby to taste it with a view to whether it needed sweetening or not.  Bear in mind that he's mildly diabetic, so we're quite wary of the sugar content of ingredients.  However, after putting in ginger, pineapple, tomato, banana and a whole lemon's-worth of zest and juice (and it was a BIG lemon), I was understandably concerned that it was too acidic.  He declared it was okay for sugar, but terribly wishy-washy and weak and "didn't taste of curry".  Now I'd been tasting it as we went along and it tasted fine to me, I agree it didn't taste of curry - but I didn't really think that it would taste of curry.  Not the Indian Takeaway kind of curry, anyway!  After all, it was supposed to be Caribbean, not Indian.  I think I may have lost the plot at that stage, as I dumped a heaped teaspoon full of Garam Masala into it - which of course didn't help matters at all.  It then became a thoroughly confused curry, which we won't be repeating.


So that idea needs some refining, to put it mildly!


The other meal that we won't be repeating was the Venison sausages that we bought to have on Monday evening.  For all that they were quite nice and the venison flavour was good, there was also an odd stale flavour going on in there.  Like cheap stale pork sausagemeat that tastes really "piggy".  Do you know what I mean?  I don't think we'll be investing in the amount it cost to buy venison sausages, when their good old Cumberland are ten times nicer!


So, apart from those two, a dish that bit the dust was the Asparagus & Gorgonzola Risotto.  Hubby just wasn't in a happy place that evening and was having serious misgivings about this risotto.  He was highly relieved when I suggested that we have fish & chips instead.

However, the biscuits I baked to accompany the Gooseberry Creams were light, crisp and delicious - and the dessert itself was just beyond gorgeous.  So it wasn't all bad.


Now then, let's turn our attention to this week.  I'm a little bit late in posting this, as with one thing and another I've not had the opportunity.  As a consequence, this week has begun without you - but it does enable me to tell you that a) Tuesday's dinner was amazingly gorgeous and Wednesday's dinner didn't happen and became something else!


So here's how this week is looking :

Tuesday : Smoked Haddock & Sweetcorn Tart, Jersey Royals & salad

Wednesday : Sweet Potato Gnocchi with spring vegetables

(which became Spring Vegetable Chowder)

Thursday : Thai meatball curry with rice

Friday : Chicken ala Jao (or Chicken in liver sauce) with rice & stir fry veggies

c/o Adora's Box

Saturday : Beef stew & horseradish dumplings, but has since been changed to :

Beef Red Dragon & Aduki Bean Pie, veggies (yet to be decided).

Sunday : Father's Day takeaway

Monday : Chicken noodles.

So you can see how things have changed - and not all of them intentional.

Tuesday's Smoked Haddock & Sweetcorn tart turned out to be beautiful.  Largely, I think, because of a piece of top quality smoked haddock from Asda.  Kudos to Asda, because it really isn't often that the words "top quality" and "Asda" are uttered in the same sentence.

Anyway, I won't witter on about this here, as it will just spoil the next blog entry - which will detail the tart in all its loveliness.

Poor old Wednesday.  Oh dear, what a disaster the home-made gnocchi became.  It was a great idea, to make gnocchi with the three sweet potatoes and two huge baking potatoes I had left over, but I'd say that a) there's a reason why you can't find recipes detailing that mixture for gnocchi and b) there's also a reason why it is recommended you make your first two or three goes at gnocchi with just plain old potato.

The sweet potato mixture was just too wet, even though I oven-baked the potatoes to attempt to dry them out a little.  We put enough flour in the mix to have made several batches of scones - and the resultant gnocchi were just sweet potato flavoured plasticine.  Not nice.

Definitely Gnot Gnocchi!

All the dough went in the bin and I made a Spring Vegetable Chowder with the milk I was going to make the sauce with and the celeriac, fennel, carrot and asparagus.  I also added an onion, sweetcorn and potato just to bulk it up a bit.  As a last-minute addition, I remembered we had some ham in the fridge and some strips of that went in.  As it happened, it turned out to be a really lovely combination that we had with bread and butter, so I think it was a disaster averted.

It was a shame, because it was Hubby's brainchild and it will have knocked his confidence right at a moment when he could do without it, as he's up on Thursday cooking a Thai Meatball Curry, with rice.  This is another of his brainchildren and I suspect he won't be following a recipe other than the one that is in his head, so fingers crossed that he is happy with the results!

Friday brings a variation on a recipe (Chicken Adobo), that I've cooked in the past.  I found this recipe on the mouthwatering Adora's Box blogsite.  There are just so many interesting dishes on that site, I suspect it'll keep me busy for a while!  The one I'll be trying on Friday is Chicken ala Jao - or Chicken in liver sauce.

If Hubby is reading this, please don't panic over the "liver" bit.  The sauce comprises a hugely interesting combination of ingredients such as fish sauce, soy sauce, sherry (which we bought yesterday and which has been subject to some serious quality control.  I think I'll just need to check it once or twice again, before the day!), onion, liver pate and curry powder.  I'm imagining a rich, savoury mildly spicy and tangy sauce.  We'll see what it turns out to be!  Can't be worse than the Gnocchi.

Saturday - and the menu here has been subject to change thanks to my lovely Twitter friend @Martink10, who tweeted me the suggestion of Beef Red Dragon & Aduki Bean Pie.  It sounds so interesting - and uses the same brisket that I was contemplating using for the stew, that I did a bit of a swap around.  It involves finely sliced brisket with an assortment of spices, the Aduki beans, then covered over with potato slices and baked.  I think I can see where it is going, and am just hoping that it doesn't turn out to be a glorified cottage pie of sorts.  Once again, time will tell!

Father's Day is on Sunday and Hubby's one desire is not to have to do the washing up, all day.  :)  I'm sure we can accommodate that - and a lovely Indian Takeaway will do nothing but help that become a reality.

The prawn version!

Which leaves us with Chicken Noodles on Monday.  Again it's one of Hubby's recipes that is going to resemble the Chilli Prawn Noodles, except with chicken.  As I love the prawn version, I see absolutely no reason why I shouldn't love the chicken version and I'm quite looking forward to it.

So there we are.  Apart from a Strawberry Shortcake idea that's formulating in my mind for dessert on Saturday and maybe some muffins of some denomination, I suspect it'll be Sunday all too soon and I'll be sat here wondering what the heck to eat this week.  You never know, we might even be able to schedule some meals and actually have those meals - or am I being too hopeful?