Herby lamb and pea pie

I love this pie.  Now I know I sound like I love every recipe I make - which I do - but I just love this pie a little bit more.

I've had my issues with pies over the years and yes, granted, this one is just a top-only pie and not a top-and-bottom version so that's easier.  However, it hasn't always been the pastry that has been a problem, but the filling too.

Mostly, to be honest, it has been the gravy or sauce where I've failed.

However, in the Game Pie and with this lovely example here, I got the gravy right.  None of the "gravy like water", where it has been diluted in the cooking.  Equally, none of the "gravy like glue".  No, just a perfectly thick, covering, tasty, unctuous pie gravy that means every forkful will be as delicious as the last and with no resorting to gravy granules.

So I'm pleased.

The pie itself had been simmering on a low heat in my head for a couple of weeks, while I worked out what "interesting" departure from a usual lamb pie I would use.

Mint and Rosemary - home grown, don'cha know!

I was convinced that it would be the juniper berries that I bought for the game pie, right up until - with a stroke of inspiration - I remembered the pomegranate molasses.  Even when I was cooking the filling, I had the juniper berries sat there beside the pomegranate molasses, as I really wasn't sure which one to choose.  Ultimately, I had a little taste of the way the sauce was going, then a little taste of some of the molasses on a teaspoon.  The combination of the two was just so good, I didn't consider the juniper any further.

Lamb often needs something a little bit sweetly acidic to complement its own earthy sweetness and this is why redcurrant jelly does the job so well.  So, if you don't want to invest in a bottle of pomegranate molasses just for this pie (although why not try it drizzled lightly over strawberries and Greek yoghurt - it's otherworldly), add a teaspoon or more of redcurrant jelly instead.  The difference the pomegranate made to the sauce was just incredible, bring it alive in a subtle but definite kind of a way.

Another departure from the norm, is cooking the lamb in pale ale.  So often, you will find lamb cooked in wine - usually red, but I wanted to use something different.  I also wanted to keep to a "country kitchen" kind of a theme, which ale suited so much better than wine.  My plans for the pie didn't suit a very strong, hoppy kind of ale, but a lighter, milder flavour - so a pale ale was fine and the English Pale Ale (from Marstons brewery) that I chose was perfect for the cause.  If you're in a place where Pale Ale doesn't come easily, choose as light a beer as you can find without venturing into lager territory.

Now one other very important thing regarding this pie is that it takes a fair old while from beginning to end, if you want to do it properly.  So it's definitely something that you don't want to attempt when you've only got a couple of hours to spare.

Having said that, however, you can devoted two days to it and cook the filling the day before, so stretching out the effort and making it a little easier to cope with.  Plus, it means you'll be ahead of the game on the day.

Now, as for Cook's Tips, as ever I have a few for you :

Ordinary frozen peas will do if you don't have petit pois.  Nobody's going to quibble over the size of a pea.

You might be surprised that I don't recommend dusting the meat with seasoned flour, rather than adding the flour later.  Well, what I'm avoiding is the burned flour on the base of your pan.  Maybe it's just me, but it so often happens that way - and I didn't want any acrid burned flavours in my softly flavoured lamb.

Now, when you add the ale/flour mixture, if lumps do form (and it often happens), don't panic over it - just break them down into pieces that are as small as possible with the whisk and think no more of it, as they will finally dissolve during the baking.

Even if you've never made pastry before, do give this pastry a go.  It really is so easy to make!  There's no fiddling about with it, no kneading, very little mixing and so long as you add the water in one go to begin with (the 50ml), mix it lightly, add a little more, mix it lightly (just two or three passes of the knife) and keep the water to as little as possible - just enough to keep it together, you can't go wrong.  It really is SO good and suits this pie perfectly.

My last advice to you is to read the recipe a couple of times before you embark upon the bake.  It is always good to have a good idea of what you're doing, before you do it!

I do so hope you enjoy the process of making this pie and that the end result is as successful for you, as mine was.  I shall be crossing my fingers for you!  (Which makes it very difficult to type, but I'll persevere - as it's you). 

HERBY LAMB AND PEA PIE   (serves 4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil
450g diced lamb or lamb neck fillet, diced
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, chopped finely
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
1 medium carrot, diced finely
2 leeks, halved and sliced
500ml pale ale (I used Marston's English Pale Ale)
200ml water
1 heaped tsp tomato puree
1 lamb stock cube (low salt, preferably)
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tbsp fresh mint, chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp pomegranate molasses
2 tbsp plain flour
3 tbsp petit pois.

For the pastry :

150g plain flour
50g Atora vegetable suet
50g salted butter
a pinch of sea salt
50 ml cold water as a minimum.

Method :

In a deep frying pan, heat the olive oil until smoking hot.  Gently add the lamb and spread it out into one layer.  Season with a light pinch of salt and a good pinch of black pepper.  Leave it to cook, only moving it once the pan side has begun to caramelise, then turn it.  Leave until the lamb has browned, then remove the meat to a bowl using a slotted spoon to retain the oils in the pan.

Add the onion, garlic and carrot to the pan and fry until the onion is transparent.  Do not allow it to caramelise or burn.

Add the leeks and reduce the heat slightly.  Return the lamb to the pan and stir through.  Fry the leeks until softened, then decant the pan contents into a casserole dish. 

Add all but 150ml of the pale ale to the pan and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to moderate and add the water, tomato puree, lamb stock cube, rosemary, mint, parsley and pomegranate molasses.  Stir through and allow to simmer whilst you mix the remaining ale with the plain flour.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the ale/flour mix.  Whisk through as you are adding, to prevent lumps forming.   Place back onto the heat and stir well as the gravy thickens.

Pour the gravy into the casserole dish and stir through.  Cover the casserole and place into a pre-heated oven at 170degC/325degF/gas3 for 90 minutes.

Once the time is up, remove the casserole from the oven and set aside to cool.

(It is at this stage, if you are making the pie in two instalments, that it would be possible to refrigerate the filling until the following day.  Just remember to bring the filling back up to room temperature before you bake the pie).

Make the pastry for the pie, by placing the plain flour, vegetable suet, salted butter and sea salt into a large bowl.  Rub the butter into the mixture until you have a cross between breadcrumbs and cornflake shapes.

Make sure to stir the pastry with a knife and under no circumstances knead the pastry dough.  Add just enough water to bring the pastry together - just stir a few times with your knife, then pat and push the remainder of the flour into the ball.  Wrap the ball in cling film and leave in a fridge to rest for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Once the meat filling is cool, add the petit pois and decant into the pie dish.

Paint the edge of the pie dish with egg yolk.

Roll out the pastry until it is just slightly larger than the pie dish, then lay it on top of the dish, making sure it meets the edge all the way around.

Press down lightly on the edge, to seal the pastry.  Trim off any excess.

Cut several holes in the centre of the pastry to let out any steam (otherwise the pastry will detach in places) and egg wash with the remainder of the egg yolk.

Place into a pre-heated oven at 180degF/350degC/gas4 for 35 minutes, until the pastry is golden and crisp.

Serve with roasted parsnips, Savoy cabbage and baby corn - or vegetables of your choice.

Printable version

Minty aromatic pulled lamb pittas

As with the Stellar Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks, the gorgeous (huge!) rolled and boned piece of lamb shoulder came (delivered by courier, still frozen) from Farmer's Choice Free Range Ltd., for me to "play with" and develop a recipe for them to feature on their website.

I spent a week or so thinking about what to do with it.  Yes, I could have just roasted it and had the biggest slap up roast lamb dinner of all time - and it would have been utterly memorable - but you know me, things like that just seem too easy.  If every blogger does that, then how does it demonstrate what joe public could be enjoying?

I don't believe in "fiddling about" with a gorgeous product just for the sake of it - if it is something different, something a bit out of the ordinary to begin with, then I'll honour that and do the simplest thing available, so as to make the product the star of the show.

36 hours of marination is up - time to cook!

Now in this case, in no way am I implying that this gorgeous lamb shoulder was run of the mill.  I mean, just look at it!  No, it was quite the opposite.  I can honestly say I have never had a rough piece of meat from Farmer's Choice Free Range, they have all been quite special in their own right.  The lamb was no different, no more fatty than you would expect a good quality piece of lamb to be and with great muscle development, which gives you lovely lines of lean meat.  However, it was a simple rolled and boned lamb shoulder.  A normal Sunday roast cut of meat.  So, what to do with it, that makes it a little bit out of the ordinary?

I'm sue you won't be surprised to hear that I tossed probably dozens of ideas out before I finally hit upon "the one".

Just an hour of cooking time left to go - and smelling amazing.

Out in foodie circles, there is much talk of pulled pork - which has translated to the supermarkets and burger restaurants.  Even our local pizza chain is now offering pulled pork on their pizzas.  So, how about pulled lamb?  Let's develop a complimentary marinade or rub for the lamb, then slow roast it to render most of the fat - and pull it.  Oooh yes, now this is sounding good.  Serve the pulled lamb in a wholemeal pitta bread (the wholemeal ones have way more flavour), with a minted yoghurt sauce?  Yup.  Maybe some roast sweet potato chips (fries) alongside and a little salad for freshness.  Well there you have it.  The recipe suddenly almost wrote itself.

Why, oh why, can't blogging use smellivision?

I knew that I wanted to include mint in the marinade, because lamb with mint is just the BEST thing.  As for what spices to include, well I knew about the North African spices - Ras al Hanout, Harissa - but I didn't fancy those too much.  After all, Ras al Hanout has rose petals in it.  Rose and mint?  Maybe in a sweet - not with lamb though.  Harissa can be quite harsh and lamb doesn't need harsh treatment.

So I looked at a lot of lamb recipes just to get my head focused more on what I didn't want, rather than what I did want, to put with the lamb.  Then I went to the spice cupboard and started putting spices together.  I wound up with quite a list, but it smelled fantastic.  Added sea salt and black pepper, that was a given.  Now lamb can be quite fatty - so I wasn't pushed to decide upon how much extra to give the joint, just a little olive oil to cheer along the upper layers.  However, the marinade needed (by this time it was definitely a marinade, not a rub) more liquid.  I didn't have any fruit juice in at the time but I did have two oranges.  Mmmn, orange zest and juice!  Yes, that would work!  Oh and garlic - lamb just has to have garlic.  I did contemplate including a couple of anchovies too, but felt that was probably a bit out there in conjunction with everything else.

Quite incredibly moist, soft and tender lamb.  Just wonderful.

My goodness but what a powerful, aromatic marinade it turned out to be.  Even encased in a freezer bag - with the lamb, obviously - every time you opened the fridge door, the marinade reached out (aromatically, obviously), grabbed you by the nose and slammed your head (in a friendly kind of a way) into the freezer compartment.  In the end, for the good of everyone involved (including the milk, because nobody fancied marinated milk in their tea), I had to put the marinated lamb into a second freezer bag, which just about managed to contain the beast.  Containing the beast was very necessary, because I was taking this marinading seriously and had put everything together some 36 hours before I was due to cook the lamb.  I wanted to give those flavours time to really get to work!

Be generous with the lamb, it is too good to leave in the tin!

Amazingly, considering how the marinade had behaved on the way, when it came to releasing the lamb into the roasting dish, it had really settled down!  Mellowed, even.  You know how lamb can smell really lamby, some times?  Well this smelled really fresh and so yummy.  I didn't want the dish to run dry during its long cooking time, so added a little water.  Into the oven it went, swimming around in its paddling pool of flavour.

After an hour or so, even with having sealed it as far as was possible with silver foil, the smell from the oven was just amazing.  There was no one aroma that was dominant (well, apart from lamb anyway!), it had just all amalgamated into a gorgeous whole.  I checked it half way through - just to make sure it had enough water - and gave it a little baste.

By the end of the cooking time, our mouths were watering.

Pulling the lamb was the simplest thing.  If, like me, you have family members who are a bit fat phobic, it is very easy to pick out any fatty bits en route.  The lamb just fell apart and was so moist and juicy - no dry, miserable pulled lamb here.  Two forks and a large dish and in just a couple of minutes the dish was full and I was surrounded by hopeful (but disappointed) dogs.  I recommend adding a couple of spoonfuls of the cooking liquid to the pulled lamb, so that when it has to wait for you to prepare the breads and serve the side dishes, there is no worry about it drying out - and why not capitalise on all the flavours that are contained in the cooking liquid?

Speaking of the cooking liquid, I have kept what was in the roasting dish as I have some (as yet) vague plans to make a soup with it.  Well, it was too good to throw away!  Just set it aside for the fat to set, then you can pour the stock out from underneath with no difficulty.

Apologies for there being no lamb in this picture ...

I served the lamb with a yoghurt, mint, cucumber & caper sauce drizzled over and some yummy mint jelly under (the vinegary flavours of a standard mint sauce would work too), in the wholemeal pitta bread.  Absolutely divine.

The flavours that the marinade brought to the lamb were in no way overpowering.  I was so happy with that!  The citrus juice had helped to tenderise the meat and even though I was expecting some warmth from the black pepper and cayenne pepper, it was so subtle.  Beautiful.

Everyone loved this recipe and there were murmurs of disappointment when told "no, there's none left".  Of course, I didn't tell them about the other half of the joint that I'd put in the freezer.  *wink*  Let it be a lovely surprise one day!

A fantastically easy recipe, the very next time you lay your hands on a piece of lamb - and I recommend you have a look at the Farmer's Choice website, to see what they've got - give this a go.  You can't possibly regret it.  Even if you don't pull the lamb and just go with a roast dinner, the flavour of the lamb won't disappoint.  However, the combination of the lamb, the sauce, the mint jelly and pitta bread is just perfect.  Go on, give it a go!

MINTY AROMATIC PULLED LAMB PITTAS   (serves 8)

Ingredients :

1kg boned and rolled, lamb shoulder

For the marinade :

1 bunch fresh mint, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
2 oranges, zest and juice
50ml olive oil
1 and a half tsp ground coriander
1 tsp smoked sweet paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp sea salt
half a tsp cayenne pepper
half a tsp ground cumin
half a tsp ground cardamom
half a tsp ground allspice
quarter of a tsp ground cloves

3 tbsp plain yoghurt (Greek or Goat yoghurt are best)
3 inch piece of cucumber
1 tsp capers, chopped
2 tbsp fresh mint, chopped finely
8 wholemeal pitta bread
Mint jelly to taste.

Method :

1.  Between 48 and 36 hours before you plan to cook the lamb, place all the marinade ingredients into a bowl and mix well.

2.  Take the lamb and pierce 2 inches into the piece repeatedly all over, with a sharp butcher's knife.  This will allow the marinade to really get in there and do its work.

3.  Place the lamb into a large stout plastic freezer bag and pour the marinade over.  Seal the bag and turn over repeatedly until the lamb is entirely covered.  I recommend you then place it into another large stout plastic freezer bag, as I discovered the aromas were very good at escaping!

4.  Put the bagged lamb into a dish - just in case of leakage - and keep it in your fridge until around an hour or so before you plan to cook it.  Turn the lamb over, to redistribute the marinade, whenever you pass by.

5.  Pre-heat the oven to 140degC/275degF/Gas 1, it shouldn't take long!

6.  Line a large roasting tin with a double layer of silver foil.  This will help when it comes to doing the dishes and you'll be glad you did.

7.  Open the bag and tip the lamb together with the marinade, into the lined roasting dish.  Add up to 500ml of water around the lamb (don't wash the marinade off the actual joint though!) and cover it all tightly with more silver foil.

8.  Place into the oven for the next three and half hours.  Check it half way through, just to make sure that the liquid levels are good.  Add a little more water, if necessary.

9.  In the meantime, make the yoghurt sauce by placing the yoghurt into a bowl.

10.  Using a fine grater, grate the cucumber into the bowl and add the capers, fresh mint, a pinch of sea salt and black pepper.  Stir to combine, then set aside in the fridge for the flavours to develop.

11.  Remove the top layer of silver foil from the lamb when there is a half an hour to go.  This will help colour the lamb and develop the flavours.

12.  Once the cooking time is up, remove the lamb from the roasting tin onto a chopping board.  I recommend dealing with half at a time, so cut it in half and return the other half to the roasting tin, cover it with foil, to keep warm.

13.  Using two forks, pull the lamb apart into shreds.  It is fairly easy to remove any large lumps of fat at this stage, if you so require.  Once the first half is pulled, move on to the second half.  Once the lamb is pulled, add two tablespoonfuls of the cooking liquid to the meat and set aside to keep warm while you prepare the pitta bread.

14.  Lightly toast the pitta bread and make a slit down one side of each.

15.  Smooth a teaspoonful of mint jelly (or you could use mint sauce if the sweet flavour of jelly isn't to your liking) onto one side of each pitta bread.

16.  Fill each pitta generously with pulled lamb, then add two teaspoonfuls or so of the yoghurt sauce.

Serve with oven baked sweet potato fries and a small salad.

Printable version

Roasted leg of kid goat with almond & orange blossom sauce

Do you recall the Seco de chivo (or Goat with Green Peppers) that I cooked some while ago?  Well, I was talking to Jason at Farmer's Choice via Twitter about the results and how the fattiness of the stewing goat pieces wasn't to my family's taste - although I liked it well enough.

He very kindly arranged to send me a boned leg of kid goat, so that I could try a leaner cut on the menfolk and see what they thought.

The joint arrived and looked fantastic, with light marbling through the meat that said it would be succulent and tasty, without the huge lines of fat that put my menfolk off the whole thing.

I'm really dead keen to use kid goat as and when possible - and it is becoming easier to get hold of and a little bit more affordable than it was.  By rights, it should be extremely affordable, so as to avoid the terrible wastage of the boy kid goats that aren't useful to the goat milk trade.

Now this whole thing happened around the time that Yotam Ottolenghi's t.v. programme "Jerusalem" was out on television for the first time.  (It's been around again since - yes, that's how long ago this was!).  I'm sure you all know my opinion as to just how much of a god Yotam Ottolenghi is to me - and we'd been watching "Jerusalem" alternately salivating like mad and watching with our mouths wide open in astonishment at the ingredients and combinations.

So when the kid goat meat arrived, it seemed right to consult Ottolenghi's genius as to what to do with it.

I recalled seeing a completely amazing Ottolenghi recipe involving young lamb - what we'd term, here in the U.K., as "spring lamb" - and as kid goat can be treated in the same way - in cooking terms - as spring lamb, I didn't look any further.

Now, it has to be said that I was a bit hamstrung where following the recipe to the letter was concerned, as the meat should have been barbecued.  We do have a barbecue, but it had been pouring with rain for the last three weeks and seemed set to continue for the next three weeks, so being able to barbecue was unlikely.  I do have a griddle pan - and I suspect I could have used that to better effect - but hindsight is a marvellous thing, as is experience.  Having done this recipe the once, I would be a bit braver the second time around.  However, I was very conscious that I may not get the chance to use kid goat again for a while (it was really very expensive then) and just didn't want to be too robust with it and wind up making it inedible.

I opted to leave the meat in its rolled state and seared the outside using the griddle pan.  That gave us a degree of charring effect that added to the flavour - but done again, I'd cut the meat into smaller chunks and just griddle the lot (assuming I didn't have a barbecue available, that is!).  Having marinated the goat in garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, thyme and rapeseed oil, you can just imagine the mouthwatering smells that were issuing forth from the griddle pan.  Just gorgeous.

Having seared the meat, I then oven roasted it in the same way as you would spring lamb.  I opted to go for well done - with no pink in evidence - purely because I knew that son & heir wouldn't be able to eat kid goat if it was at all rare.  He was having trouble enough getting his head around the fact that what he had on his plate was a bit of a baby goat, as it was.

Now, I will say - straight away - that my almond & orange blossom sauce was a bit of a disaster.  I admit it.  However, not in flavour - which was completely and utterly fabulous - but in texture.  I used our food processor to grind the cooked almonds - which was where I went wrong.  All it seemed to achieve is grinding a certain amount of the almonds into a virtual flour, while the remainder stayed in huge lumps.  Not good at all.  As a consequence, any liquid was slurped up by the finely ground nuts and the whole thing turned into a beautifully flavoured almond butter type mixture.  Nowhere near sauce consistency!

So - if you're considering following this recipe yourself, I recommend that you use a pestle and mortar for grinding your nuts!  At least, that way, you can be more in control of what degree of pulverisation you give them.

Now, a special mention has to go to the almonds.  Just straight almonds - not blanched - were what I used and the revelation of how they turned out after spending a few minutes in hot oil in a frying pan, was immense.  I was very tempted to just eat the lot and pretend I'd dropped them into the sink or something.  Try it sometime (not dropping them in the sink - but frying some to nibble on), even if you don't make the recipe.  Just heat up a nice oil - olive or rapeseed - and cook some almonds until they're turning golden, then toss them in something nice like sea salt or a combination of herbs and spices.   I can imagine that lemon zest and black pepper with the sea salt would be amazing.  No, it's not low fat, but yes it is good for you - especially if you use an oil that is low in saturated fat.

So, getting back to the sauce.  The alchemy that goes on, just by mixing the few seemingly odd ingredients together, is just stunning.  Oh and yes, I use the word "stunning" in the full knowledge of its meaning.  I tasted the nuts when they were cooked and they were lovely.  Very moreish.  I tasted the sauce once I'd added and combined the lemon zest, juice, honey, orange blossom water, salt & pepper and rapeseed oil - to test for seasoning - and it was just incredible, without even having had the fresh herbs included.   Once you add the mint and coriander, it just takes you to a hot and dusty atmosphere, with cool shady colonnades beneath big airy villas, the smell of donkey, dust and humanity in the air.  How does he do that?  So, as I say - stunning.

We all loved the roasted kid goat.  It was succulent, the flavour of the marinade serving to accentuate the delicate sweetness and earthiness that is uniquely kid goat.  Coupled with the chargrilled red peppers and the almond & orange blossom sauce, this is one of the most jaw droppingly good dishes I've cooked since starting Rhubarb & Ginger.  Even with a sauce that had an incorrect consistency!

I served it with a jacket potato dressed with coriander and lime chilli yoghurt, which was amazingly well suited.  The only thing I would have added would be some green leaves of one sort or another.  Ottolenghi suggest fresh parsley, which I can imagine would be very good indeed.

I would dearly love to have another crack at this one - and I'll be keeping my eye open for kid goat leg, in future!

ROASTED LEG OF KID GOAT WITH ALMOND & ORANGE BLOSSOM SAUCE

Ingredients :

1kg piece of boneless kid goat leg
2 long red peppers, cut into quarters and seeds removed
olive or rapeseed oil
sea salt & black pepper

Marinade :
  2 garlic cloves, crushed
  grated zest of 1 lemon
  45ml lemon juice
  one and a half tbsp fresh thyme leaves, woody stems removed
  45ml olive or rapeseed oil

Sauce :
  50ml olive or rapeseed oil
  80g whole almonds
  grated zest of half a lemon
  2 tbsp lemon juice
  half a tbsp of runny honey
  quarter of a tbsp of orange blossom water
  10g fresh mint, finely chopped
  10g fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped.

Method :

1.  In a large bowl combine all the marinade ingredients and season well.  Divide the goat meat into several large pieces and add them to the marinade.  Using your hands, massage the marinade into the meat and leave for a minimum of 2 hours, or preferably, overnight.

2.  Pre-heat the oven to 220degC/425degF/Gas 7.

3.  Whilst the oven is heating up, and for the sauce, heat 3 tbsp of the oil in a small frying pan and add the almonds.  Cook - stirring often - until the nuts are golden and evenly cooked.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

4.  Place the nuts into a pestle and mortar (or any other method of crushing them that doesn't involve a food processor!) and pulverise them until they are broken, but not powdery.

5.  Decant into a bowl and add the remaining ingredients.  Stir well and taste for seasoning. 

6.  Heat a griddle pan until blisteringly hot.

7.  Drizzle the peppers with a little rapeseed or olive oil and a pinch of salt, then cook on the griddle until charred on all sides and softened.  Set aside to cool.

8.  Place the goat meat pieces onto the griddle pan (you will probably need to do this in batches, so as not to overcrowd the pan) and sear for 2-3 minutes on each side until starting to caramelise.  Transfer onto a roasting tray.

9.  Place the goat meat into the oven for a minimum of 4-5 minutes, leaving it longer depending on how thick the pieces are and how you like your lamb.  (Use lamb as a measure for pinkness.  If you like your lamb pink - you'll like your goat pink).

10.  Once done, cover with foil and set aside in a warm place, to rest.

11.  Add the freshly chopped mint and coriander to the sauce and stir to combine.

12.  Slice the goat meat into thick slices and serve with the peppers and the sauce drizzled over the top.

Heaven.

Printable version

Risotto Primavera with herby glazed chicken

The emphasis of this recipe is on the Risotto Primavera, as I will admit to having used a shop bought chicken glaze.  Now don't you go telling me that you never use such a thing, I refuse to believe it.

The glaze we used was one of the Maggi range of "So Juicy" cook-in-a-bag products.  In fact, it was really not bad at all.  We tried the mixed herbs one, which seemed to have a significant amount of tomato in its mixed herbs, but with no artificial colours, flavourings or Aspartame in its ingredients, we were prepared to give it a go.

Owing to the cooking method, which involves your cooking the chicken sealed into a cook-in bag, the chicken comes out the other end enticingly moist and tender.  I'd definitely give others of the same range a go.

As a fairly foolproof and easy way of obtaining a very acceptable chicken dish, I recommend it to you!

Now the big question was what to put with it.  I'm always on the lookout for interesting and easy vegetable dishes that can be use as a side to a meat dish, for just these moments.

We had a number of meals planned that included potatoes already - and owing to hubby's antipathy towards the 'umble spud, I needed to find something else to use as the carbohydrate in this dish.

Hubby suggested vegetable rice, but son & heir isn't always terribly keen on that.  As hubby was the one who was going to be cooking this meal, I suddenly hit on the idea of a risotto.  Well, he is the Risotto Cooking King!  I remembered that I had picked up a baked Risotto Primavera recipe from a magazine, but knew he wouldn't be struck on the idea of doing a baked risotto (being a newly crowned risotto purist, and all that).  So we just used the recipe as a guide for the amounts and types of vegetables to use - and he made a straight, cooker top, in a saucepan, ordinary risotto - but using frozen peas, asparagus, fine green beans, tenderstem broccoli, mint, chives and parsley instead.

The combination of the highly flavoursome chicken and the clean, fresh flavours of the risotto with its herbs, were just perfect together.

Hubby even reserved a few asparagus spears for decoration, which was good because although it is great in a risotto, I do love the flavour of asparagus and it was a treat to have some to enjoy on its own.

I'll have to remember to use vegetable risotto in this context again in future.  I have used Risotto Milanese (saffron risotto) in this way in the past and it worked exceptionally well there, too.  The light and springlike flavours were a lovely break from the somewhat heavier mid-winter flavours that we've been enjoying before and since, thanks to the awful weather.  Hopefully, we'll get a chance to put them to the test in another combination very soon!

RISOTTO PRIMAVERA  (Serves 3)

Ingredients :

150g asparagus spears

2 handfuls of frozen peas

150g tenderstem broccoli

50g fine green beans

3 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil

2 banana shallots, very finely diced

25g butter

300g Arborio or Carnaroli rice

100ml of white wine

1.5 litres of vegetable stock (we used Essential cuisine vegetable stock powder)

10g fresh chopped parsley

10g fresh chopped chives

10g fresh chopped mint

50g grated parmesan

sea salt and finely ground black pepper.

Method :

1.  Bring a saucepan of salted water to a rolling boil and prepare the asparagus by snapping at the weak point (around one third of the way up the stem from the cut end).  Retain the woody ends for use in the stock and blanch the tipped ends for 60 seconds.  Drain (retaining the water) and then plunge into bowl of iced water to stop the cooking process.

2.  Repeat with the frozen peas, tenderstem broccoli and green beans - blanching for 3 minutes and adding them to the same iced water.

3.  Prepare the stock by adding the stock cube or powder to the cooking water and add the woody ends of the asparagus, cut lengthwise.  Bring up to a simmer and keep the stock over a very low heat until required, not allowing it to boil.  Remove the asparagus pieces just before use.

4.  Heat the olive oil and butter gently together in a large pan.  Add the shallots and cook until they are soft and transparent, not allowing them to brown.

5.  Add rice to the shallot mix and stir well to coat with the oils, then turn the heat up as hot as you dare - without burning - before quenching the pan with the white wine.

6.  Cook until the wine has reduced by two thirds and add a ladleful of the vegetable stock (minus the asparagus pieces).  Reduce heat to a simmer.

7.  Continue adding ladlefuls whenever the mixture runs dry, stirring well and keeping it moving to avoid catching on the bottom of the pan.

8.  Continue in this way until the rice is cooked al dente.  You may find you have stock left over, which is normal as different rices require different amounts of liquid.

9.  Drain the vegetables from the iced water and add them to the risotto to warm them through, stirring gently so as not to break them up.

10.  Add the parsley, chives, mint and grated parmesan, reserving a small amount of parsley for garnish.  Stir gently through and taste for seasoning.

11.  Serve and garnish with shaved parmesan and chopped parsley.

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