I’ve been doing a lot of nostalgic cooking recently, largely inspired by the Canteen cookbook.
This steak and kidney pie is another example.
I don’t need to say a great deal about it, except that Canteen’s version of this British classic is a little more polished and more refined than my usual attempts. The secret is in gently nurturing the stew until the meat becomes tender and the sauce thick. A night in the fridge helps the flavours to develop, as well.
Start by browning one medium onion, 100g of celery and 150g of carrots, each cut into 1cm dice, in a hot pan with a good glug of olive oil.
Remove the vegetables to a plate and brown a kilo of chuck steak, cut into two to three centimetre dice and seasoned with salt and pepper, in the same pan with some more olive oil if it’s needed. Keep the flame high and the pan hot. The idea is to sear the meat and give it some colour. Do this in batches. Hit the jump for the rest….
As part of the preparation for the Leeds Loves Food festival later on this summer (1st to 4th July, to be exact), ten of the city’s restaurants are offering ‘starters for 10p’ on Saturday 8th May.
Think of it as a taster day for the main festival.
The restaurants involved are The Angel’s Share, Bretts, Casa Mia Grande, Casa Mia Millennium, Lounge Bar & Grill, The Mustard Pot, Neon Cactus, Normans, Pomegranate Organics etc. and Thorpe Park Hotel & Spa.
My pick of that bunch would probably be Normans for some excellent southeast Asian food in a bar so hip it doesn’t need a sign.
There’s some printing off of vouchers and reading of terms and conditions to be done here.
The Leeds Loves Food festival is the result of the combined might of Marketing Leeds, Leeds City Centre Management, Leeds City Council’s events team and the Leeds Restaurant Association. A calendar of events is shaping up well, including cookery demonstrations, food masterclasses, sampling and plenty of promotions and special offers. More on Leeds Loves Food…
Last week, I made a dish of confit rabbit, coated in breadcrumbs and then deep fried.
A couple of people made comments about the inherent unhealthiness of the meal.
True, this was a meal of rabbit cooked in goose fat and then deep fried. It had its fair share of calories, but it tasted unlike anything I’ve ever eaten before – gamey, crisp and meltingly soft with undertones of garlic and bay and a sharp saltiness that proved irresistible. It wasn’t in the slightest bit healthy.
Phil’s comment stood out:
“That sounds super nice! Although in theory it doesn’t sound super healthy – it’s all natural food with no crap added. Just remember the Gascon Paradox in France…”
The Gascon paradox, you say?
The Gascon, or French paradox is a medical conundrum. It undermines nearly everything we currently understand about the relationship between food and health. more on the French paradox this way
A little while ago, I made some confit rabbit by slowly and gently cooking the jointed legs from a brace of rabbits in goose fat for a couple of hours and then storing them in the fat. It’s a centuries-old technique that produces the most flavourful and tender meat imaginable.
To use the rabbit, all you have to do is dig a joint out of it’s blanket of fat and flash it in a hot oven to crisp it up a bit, or shred the meat directly into a salad, perhaps.
Or you could do this… Deep-fried rabbity goodness this way…
This has everything you’d want in a cake – it’s sweet, moist and delicious, it keeps well and it’s straightforward to make.
I may go so far as to say that it’s nearly foolproof, but that I don’t want to tempt fate.
Start – as you start every single cake baking adventure – by greasing a 23cm baking tin with a removable bottom with butter and lining the base with greaseproof paper.
The rest of the recipe is equally unsurprising.
Butter, sugar, eggs, flour.
Beaten, folded, baked.
There are a few secrets, though, and it’s these little tricks and extras that make this particular cake stand out. click here to reveal everything…
