I was productive today.
For lunch, I made the Hunger Games Lamb & Dried Plum Stew, which turned out pretty well. So of course, at 10pm, I felt like second course. Or should I say... coarse. Read on.
Coarsely Baked Pasta Goodness:
3 tbsp. butter (or more... I'm bad with butter)
6 Portobello Mushrooms, chopped coarsely into cubes about 1cm (Sobeys had a sale - plus they're local!)
3-4 shallots, chopped or sliced coarsely
6 dinner sausages (I used Bratwurst. That's Italian, right?)
coarsely ground black pepper
"italian seasoning"
1 big clove garlic, chopped or sliced coarsely
2 cups fusilli (or other fun-to-bake pasta, like bowties or penne)
handful of fresh basil, chopped (you guessed it) coarsely
Fresh tomatoes, sliced (I used about 8 smaller Campari ones)
olive oil
Oven to 400F
Start by choppin' up your portobellos in a very coarse manner. Like, see how UNcubelike you can make them. (See, whenever I'm doing a baked dinner dish, I feel the need to chop things coarsely. If I'm frying, I like to grate or slice finely. Don't know why.) Season with coarse language. Chop up your shallots too. Coarsely. Put a bigass frying pan on the stove and melt a tbsp of the butter. Once that's up to about medium-high heat, throw the onions in. Let 'em get a little see-through (man, this recipe just gets more inappropriate...) and then let the mushrooms join them.
Important here - don't throw all the mushrooms in at one go. Six portobellos is a LOT of mushroom, and they do shrink and sweat, but they cook much better if you do 'em in batches so they're not crowding each other.
Get a bigass bowl to mix all your non-pasta ingredients in. Once all the mushrooms are done, throw them in the bowl and let them wait for the sausages to join the taste orgy. And don't throw away the juices - you want that liquid.
Putting water on to boil for your pasta at this point is a good plan, but keep in mind that the pasta does NOT need to be cooked the whole way, because you're baking it. Al dente at the farthest point. So don't start the pasta until about halfway through the sausages.
Speaking of them, skin the sausages. Easiest to just make a single line with a very sharp knife, then undress them like you're um, peeling a banana. Throw them in the medium-high hot bigass pan and break them up with a spatula until they're like ground meat - bite-sized for your dining convenience. Throw in the coarsely chopped garlic to keep them company. I added a little black pepper and "italian seasoning" (so mysterious) to them too. Keep tossing them around until they're good and brown, and the garlic's soft, then remove from pan to join the mushrooms and onions.
Once your mix is all together, throw the basil in and toss it all up. Let that sit and explore its inner gustatory beauty while you drain your pasta and ready some casserole dishes. First layer, pasta. Second layer, sausage mix. Third layer, use the slices of the tomatoes to create a fancyshmancy top to your pasta, then drizzle the whole damn thing with some tasty olive oil.
Throw in the oven and check after 15 min. Or, conversely, you can decide to broil it like I did and forget it's in there, and have an overly-caramelized top to your pasta. So trust me when I say, USE CAUTION with broiling. It does NOT take very long.
Pictures to come... maybe.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
The Hunger Games' - Lamb & Prune Stew
One of the best book series I've read lately is Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy. Not only is it my usual genre (Young Adult Fantasy/Fiction), but it combines a fast-packed action plot with scads of Roman History references. And being a Classics major, I couldn't help but devour it voraciously.
Speaking of devouring voraciously, one of the meals alluded to in the book is a Lamb Stew with Dried Plums and Honey. Now, I won't lie - I had to google extensively to find out that dried prunes ARE in fact dried plums. All prunes are plums; not all plums are prunes. But after doing that, I cobbled together a few recipes of Moroccan Tagines and Kormas and Mediterranean stews to get MY version of Katniss' favourite Capitol dish. Here's how she describes it:
"The stew's made with tender chunks of lamb and dried plums today. Perfect on the bed of wild rice."
Not too much to go on, but enough to inspire a creative response. Here's my version:
Katniss' Lamb Stew with Dried Prunes
2 tbsp. butter
1 1/2 lb. (approx .650kg) of stewing lamb (I used fresh Ontario lamb - yay local!) cut into bite-sized pieces
2 medium sized cooking onions, chopped
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. garam masala
1 pinch saffron (because I'm posh that way. And I have an in in Spain.)
1 1/2 to 2 cups stock, chicken or beef (I used homemade beef marrowbone stock)
1 big handful dried prunes/plums, cut into chunks (I say about half an inch squared, at most)
1 tbsp honey
salt to taste
Served on:
1 cup wild rice
1 cup brown basmati
2 cloves garlic
Set your oven at 350F. Then melt a tbsp. of the butter in a bigass saucepan. Get it up to medium-high/high heat to brown the lamb. Once lamb is browned, remove and pop into crockery - a tagine, a stoneware crock, something that'll go in the oven to slow-cook and not melt or burn you. When the pan's empty and medium-high hot again, throw the onions in. Toss them until translucent, then throw your spices in to get all fragrant - cinnamon, garam masala, saffron. Throw in the other tbsp. of butter if the pan's low on liquid. Once the onions start to golden and the scents are definitely flavouring the air, throw that mix in the crockery with your lamb.
Your pan is now probably covered with tasty brown goodness stuck to the bottom of the pan. To not waste this flavour, I throw some stock in here and dissolve it all up. Throw that stock and whatever else is needed to cover your lamb and onions in the crockery. Put the top on and pop it in the oven for 1 1/2 hours (90 min.). The trick to 'tender lamb' is cooking it a LONG time and making sure it's covered in liquid while it cooks; so once the time's up, check the liquid level, pop in the prunes and stick it in the oven AGAIN for another 3/4 of an hour (45 min.). You can put the rice on at this point too, as it doesn't take more than 45 min. I just cook it in the rice cooker, with the garlic clove peeled, but whole and squashed.
I like adding the salt and honey at the end, because getting that sweet/salty balance is tricky. But make sure you let it cool quite a bit before sampling - believe me when I say OW. Mouth burns when stew is right out of oven. If it's too liquidy, you can reduce it simply by taking the cover off and boiling it down on the element.
Serve over the cooked rice mix, and enjoy!
(Picture is on its way; the stew's currently in the oven)
Speaking of devouring voraciously, one of the meals alluded to in the book is a Lamb Stew with Dried Plums and Honey. Now, I won't lie - I had to google extensively to find out that dried prunes ARE in fact dried plums. All prunes are plums; not all plums are prunes. But after doing that, I cobbled together a few recipes of Moroccan Tagines and Kormas and Mediterranean stews to get MY version of Katniss' favourite Capitol dish. Here's how she describes it:
"The stew's made with tender chunks of lamb and dried plums today. Perfect on the bed of wild rice."
Not too much to go on, but enough to inspire a creative response. Here's my version:
Katniss' Lamb Stew with Dried Prunes
2 tbsp. butter
1 1/2 lb. (approx .650kg) of stewing lamb (I used fresh Ontario lamb - yay local!) cut into bite-sized pieces
2 medium sized cooking onions, chopped
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. garam masala
1 pinch saffron (because I'm posh that way. And I have an in in Spain.)
1 1/2 to 2 cups stock, chicken or beef (I used homemade beef marrowbone stock)
1 big handful dried prunes/plums, cut into chunks (I say about half an inch squared, at most)
1 tbsp honey
salt to taste
Served on:
1 cup wild rice
1 cup brown basmati
2 cloves garlic
Set your oven at 350F. Then melt a tbsp. of the butter in a bigass saucepan. Get it up to medium-high/high heat to brown the lamb. Once lamb is browned, remove and pop into crockery - a tagine, a stoneware crock, something that'll go in the oven to slow-cook and not melt or burn you. When the pan's empty and medium-high hot again, throw the onions in. Toss them until translucent, then throw your spices in to get all fragrant - cinnamon, garam masala, saffron. Throw in the other tbsp. of butter if the pan's low on liquid. Once the onions start to golden and the scents are definitely flavouring the air, throw that mix in the crockery with your lamb.
Your pan is now probably covered with tasty brown goodness stuck to the bottom of the pan. To not waste this flavour, I throw some stock in here and dissolve it all up. Throw that stock and whatever else is needed to cover your lamb and onions in the crockery. Put the top on and pop it in the oven for 1 1/2 hours (90 min.). The trick to 'tender lamb' is cooking it a LONG time and making sure it's covered in liquid while it cooks; so once the time's up, check the liquid level, pop in the prunes and stick it in the oven AGAIN for another 3/4 of an hour (45 min.). You can put the rice on at this point too, as it doesn't take more than 45 min. I just cook it in the rice cooker, with the garlic clove peeled, but whole and squashed.
I like adding the salt and honey at the end, because getting that sweet/salty balance is tricky. But make sure you let it cool quite a bit before sampling - believe me when I say OW. Mouth burns when stew is right out of oven. If it's too liquidy, you can reduce it simply by taking the cover off and boiling it down on the element.
Serve over the cooked rice mix, and enjoy!
(Picture is on its way; the stew's currently in the oven)
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