Reviewing : Asda's "Family Favourites" Beef Lasagne (and trying Poutine!)

No matter how dedicated a do-it-yourself, cook from scratch, no additives, no sweeteners, no colours type of foodie you are - sometimes you need to use a Supermarket bought ready meal of some kind or another.

We use these sorts of foodstuffs as a break from the intricacies of cooking from scratch, with a very great mix of results.  Anyone who follows Rhubarb & Ginger's Facebook page will remember the horror that was the Lamb Grills.  ~shudder~

So anyway, I was sitting there today waiting for the Lasagne and oven chips to cook - I know, don't hate me for it, okay? - and I thought that I should do a little review post on the Lasagne.  After all, Rhubarb & Ginger is all about family cooking and making do with what you've got - and sometimes, you can't afford to make an entire four person Lasagne from scratch because to do so would amount to the equivalent of at least two of the frozen version from your local supermarket.  Inevitably, in that sort of circumstance, the supermarket one will win - and quite rightly too.  Who knows, maybe you could buy your son some long awaited socks with the other £3, before he winds up with tubes on his feet instead.

The more I pondered on the idea, the more I liked it.  Well, when you've got 50 minutes to wait for the Lasagne, it gives you plenty of opportunity for pondering, in between putting the chips onto a baking tray, then into the oven, then out of the oven, turn them around, back into the oven.  *sigh*  Such hard work.

The Lasagne in question was Asda's (humungous, at 1400g) "Family Favourites" Beef Lasagne from their freezer cabinet.  Now we went into the Lasagne thing this evening with some trepidation as Lasagne had become something of a minefield in the past - albeit quite a long ago past.  For a while there, it seemed impossible to find a Lasagne that wasn't all sauce and no meat.  You would try to serve it up using a fish slice, only to have it literally pour off the sides of the slice and you wound up with three pieces of empty pasta that you had to flop dejectedly onto a pool of tomato based liquid on your plate and call it dinner.  Just disgusting.

However, not so with the new breed of Lasagne!  Now bear in mind that this is just a bog standard version - a "Chosen By You" but not one of the "better" grades, just a standard, common or garden Lasagne - and at £3, I defy you to make one for less.  With no artificial colours, flavours or hydrogenated fat, I'd say we've probably come a long way since I indulged in a shop bought Lasagne.

Not only did it cut acceptably, but it served very nicely too.  It kept its filling in place and its Bechamel sauce stayed put.  The grated cheese on the top made for a nice toasty cheese flavour and I heartily approved of the small cubes of carrot that were included in the tomato and beef mince sauce.  When you are trying to get some kind of veggies into your children, hiding them in a Lasagne is often the only way with some.

The only negatives that I could pinpoint were :

a) that the sauce was a little too tomato and not enough beef in flavour, but that is probably just a personal preference.

b) that the pasta, once cooked, became a bit over soft and plasticine like.  However, again, if you're trying to feed children - soft pasta is a good thing.

c)  that the cooking time required an extra ten minutes to get the heat right through - and even then we had to blowtorch the middle of the surface to get that all over baked cheesy goodness look.

I felt that the salt content was reasonable, as at 2.2g of salt per quarter of a pack it could certainly have been better (especially bearing in mind the Government recommendation for a daily salt allowance of 5g), but then I was expecting far worse.  I suspect that without the declared level of salt there would have to be some radical work done on flavour, which would in turn have a knock-on effect on the price.  So, in this case, I'm willing to allow that you actually get a little bit more than you've paid for.

Bearing in mind that the Lasagne didn't have much to live up to, it has done very well.  However, don't forget that this isn't a swanky version with sun dried tomatoes and fresh basil - it is the "one above economy" version.  So you're not getting a Lasagne with thick layers of meat sauce that tastes amazing.  However, what you are getting is a perfectly good, honest, presentable family dinner.

Marks out of 10?  I'd give it a 9 for doing what it says on the tin.

Now, what about this Poutine thing?  Well, it had come to my attention that in Canada - Quebec, particularly - they ate this somewhat odd combination of chips, dark meaty gravy and cheese curds and called it Poutine.  It seemed to be something of a Marmite sort of thing - people either love it or hate it with no leeway inbetween.

I made a mental note to look out for cheese curds (I'll admit, the name "cheese curds" is about as off putting as they come) and maybe - just maybe - try it out one day.
 
Over the ensuing months, I learned a little more about Poutine - and the cheese curds aspect particularly.  It would seem that cheese curds are no more than a dry Cottage Cheese.  Now in Canada, they recommend using Cheddar cheese curds.  As to where I could find some of those, I have no clue.  For a long time, I had no clue about what cheese curds were in relation to where you got them from, never mind specific Cheddar versions!  It seemed to me that if you had Cheddar cheese curds on hand, you'd be far better employed turning them into Cheddar cheese than selling your basic product out from under your own two feet!  I had a number of products suggested - from buying a pot of standard creamy Cottage Cheese and draining it, to using Quark.  None of those sounded right.

Just - literally - a few days ago, hubby discovered a pack of full fat cheese curds in the Polish section of Asda - Twarog Lowicki.  He mentioned it to me and I lit up like a roman candle.  Taking that as a declaration of extreme interest (clever lad!), he bought some today.  Of course, the fact that we were a) having chips with the Lasagne and b) we were due in Asda anyway, helped enormously.

So, these cheese curds are intriguing and from what I could gather, absolutely right.  Imagine our kind of cottage cheese, but without the loose creaminess, being put through a sieve.  Tiny little pearls of white, very young, cheese.  Put a teaspoonful on your tongue and you taste nothing.  They're akin to water.  Allow some heat to permeate through and you start to taste their creaminess - which grows as you move them around.  They aren't anything like as chalky as Cottage Cheese, they are much smoother.  A little tart tasting - but very good.

On the chips, with the addition of beef gravy and malt vinegar, they are a revelation.  Poutine - count me in!

Bournemouth Echo "Jenny's Week" blog : Easter Sunday lunch : I'm getting better at it!

The Bournemouth Echo have posted my newest blog, so at last I can tell you all about the Easter Sunday lunch!

The following post can be seen in situ here

It’s not so much that last Easter Sunday’s lunch was a disaster (in truth, I can’t remember last Easter!), but more thinking back to the last time I cooked for anyone other than immediate family, it was a long, hard old slog.

I’d arranged for my parents to come over on Boxing Day last year.  I wanted to have a special celebration dinner, so I’d been cooking for a couple of days previously and the cooking on the day seemed to take FOR EVER.  I can remember pots steaming on the cooker top, me sitting peeling quail’s eggs for what seemed like an aeon and hubby washing up the pots as quickly as they appeared, only to have them dirtied again in a second.  It wasn’t chaos, but it was very close to it.

A rather hurried and particularly poor, snap of the assembled dinner!

So, when I invited my parents over for Easter Sunday lunch, I resolved that this time I’d learn from the previous time’s lesson – and not over face myself.

I’d decided, fairly early on, that we’d have a piece of pot-roasted brisket of beef, as not only is that gorgeous, but it almost guarantees a piece of tender, flavoursome beef with the added bonus of some lovely stock with which to make a superb gravy.

Hubby placed a request for another of the Ottolenghi Fennel & Cherry Tomato Gratin, and I decided to do some Boulangere potatoes, as I could prepare them ahead with the Gratin and both could go in the oven and be forgotten about until they were done.

The accompanying vegetables went from steamed curly kale, through tender stem broccoli to what we settled upon, which was stringless runner beans (because they’re forgiving to cook) and some British asparagus – because if you can’t eat asparagus at such a time as Easter, when can you?

The preparations began early on Sunday morning, when I seared the Beef almost before I’d had a cup of tea.  Through bleary eyes I turned it this way and that, making sure every side had a good colour, whilst trying not to get in the way of the exploding fat.  Having made a complete mess of the cooker top, I chopped up a couple of carrots, a leek and some celery, bashed a couple of garlic cloves, added a handful of fresh parsley plus some dried sage and crumbled in an oxo cube to a stockpot full of water.  Into its bath went the piece of brisket (with some seasoning), on went the lid and I sat and waited for the whole lot to boil.  Once it was boiling briskly, I turned down the heat to the minimum required to keep the pot simmering – and went for that cup of tea.

A little while later – and in a much improved frame of mind – I set to on the preparation for the two oven-bound dishes.

Half-way through, just added crumble & tomatoes

First thing was to make some crumble for the Ottolenghi fennel dish.  That done, I was able to use our Mandolin food slicer (after a cautionary word from hubby about how having to go to Casualty at that stage would seriously put the dinner back) to slice up the three fennel bulbs and the potatoes for the Boulangere.

The finished article - ready to be served

The fennel gratin is true testament to the magic that Ottolenghi brings to their dishes.  Cooked with garlic, thyme and cream, the fennel stops tasting like fennel and tastes utterly different.  With the sweet crumble on top, together with the oven-roasted cherry tomatoes, every mouthful takes on a character all of its own.  It’s a gorgeously rich but light, creamy but crunchy, sweet but sharp delightful flavour and texture combination.  I heartily recommend it to you!

The Boulangere potatoes couldn’t have been easier to put together, now I’d got the Mandolin to help out.  Previously, the long old process of attempting to slice potatoes to even thicknesses – and all without cutting your fingers off – would have been enough to make me think twice.  However, with the Mandolin I just pop a peeled spud into the holder and slice away knowing that my fingers are safe from harm and lovely evenly sliced spuds await.

Just butter the baking dish and add sliced onion & chopped garlic in layers with the potato.  Pour over just enough stock to keep everything moist, add the obligatory knobs of butter to the surface and cover over until you’re ready to put it in the oven.

As for the fennel dish, it can be prepared up to just before the adding the crumble stage, whereupon it will wait, covered, until you’re ready.  Then just add the crumble and pop in the oven.  You just need to remember to put the tomatoes on top somewhere near the end of cooking, so that they will be baked nicely.

After that, it was just decanting some of the stock from the beef pot to make the gravy and preparing the beans & asparagus.

I’m really not sure I did manage to carve the meat – it just sort of fell apart, rather than stayed in lovely carved rounds.  However, it was deliciously unctuous and beefy – and went so very well with the lovely horseradish cream.

Yes, I think I got this one right.

Ham Pot Roast

The Gammon is hiding under the creamed leeks
see the slices, peeping out all pinkly, there?

Sunday, to me, demands something a bit special in the meal department.  There's no real reason why - it's not as though we starve for the remaining six days, so need to stock up for leaner times ahead.  I suspect that it's just a hangover from my upbringing when we would always have a roast on a Sunday, with a special dessert.  When people came round to eat with us, wine was served - and at Christmas, we had the Mother and Father of all roasts, with fruit or tomato juice to drink beforehand, a starter, then the Roast Turkey with all the trimmings, together with three choices of dessert - all followed by sweetmeats such as Turkish Delight, glace fruits, chocolate eclairs and nuts, served with a sweet dessert wine or liqueurs.  I take my hat off to my Mum and my Aunt - and in earlier days, my Nanna - who slaved over hot stoves for days beforehand doing all the baking and then got up before we'd gone to bed to put the Turkey in the oven.

All this, has resulted in it not being Sunday unless there's a roast on the table.

So, this Sunday (and because they're on special offer at the supermarket), we pushed the boat out and got a gammon joint.  Not, regrettably, one of the "real" gammon joints (we're saving up for one for Christmas), but one of the rolled, munched up and stuck back together again, gammon joints.  It may not have been your pukka thing - but it sure tasted good!

Considering I'd had such success with pot roasting chickens, I thought I'd step it up a gear and pot roast the gammon.  I thought that at least, that way, it wouldn't shrink as terribly as they often do when just plain roasted and it would stand a chance of staying succulent and moist.

The recipe was one of my own, gleaned from various recipes I'd read during my research.  I wanted it to be a veggie-based broth it was cooked in, rather than a spice-based broth.  Even though I'm just hopping up and down to use my new Star Anise, I thought I'd stay on the veggie side and see how we got on.

So, as we were having creamed leeks, I used the leek tops and two onions cut into quarters, plus a hoary old carrot that was looking for a home.  All these, combined with the cider, made a glorious stock that was just beyond tasty when made into gravy.

I served the Gammon with the creamed leeks, which were easily made by sweating the sliced leek in butter and, when softened, a large tablespoon of creme fraiche and some Worcestershire Sauce is added.  Mix it all together, add some seasoning and there you have it - creamed leeks.  I'd planned to serve some Chantenais carrots and swede batons, but discovered some Brussels sprouts in the veggie drawer, so they got included too.  With roast potatoes and roast parsnips, together with the ubiquitous Yorkshire Puddings, it was the kind of dinner that Sundays were made for.

GAMMON HAM POT ROAST

Ingredients :

1.5kg gammon ham joint

2 onions, quartered

Any other veg., like leek tops, carrot, celery

300ml dry cider

4 tbsp clear honey

1 tsp ground coriander

3 heaped tsp English mustard powder

Method :

Lay the vegetables into the bottom of a large lidded oven-proof saucepan or casserole.

Nestle the joint into the vegetables and pour over the cider.

“Paint” spoonfuls of the honey/mustard mixture over the joint.

Bring to the boil on the stove top and then place, covered, into a pre-heated oven at 170deg C for 2 to 2½ hours.

When done, remove the meat and put it to rest, covered in foil in a warm place, for around 20 minutes.

Pour the juices from the pan into a smaller saucepan, add cornflour or gravy granules to thicken for gravy.

Delicious!