Venison and Ale Stew

Not an everyday dish, what with venison being so expensive! It is very tasty, and a fantastic stew for winter.

Ingredients

60g butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 spring onions
4 cloves garlic
500g venison
15ml Whisky
300ml ale
2 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
300ml beef stock


Pepper and salt to taste

Method:

Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan and saute the onions and garlic. Lay the venison on top then tip in the whisky and stir the ingredients together. If you don't have whisky just use some of the ale. The whisky just adds another hit of flavour.

Add in the ale and stock, along with the vinegar, sugar and bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper.

Bring to boil, then simmer until the meat is tender - about 40 minutes. Check occassionally to make sure the sauce is not over-reducing.

Serve with your choice of vegetables. This goes particularly well with red cabbage, potato, sweet potato, and beetroot.

Pea and fennel soup

This is a lovely soup, with the sweetness of leeks and peas, the fragrance of fennel, and the savouriness of garlic. I just love the vivid green of this soup, it really brightens my day!

Quick and easy to make, and reasonably cheap when in season (fennel is really cheap at the moment!) this is a fantastic go-to soup for weekday meals. Serve with crusty bread for optimal eating pleasure ;) 

Ingredients

1 fennel bulb, finely chopped
1/2 leek, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
750ml vegetable stock
500g frozen peas - fresh or frozen
1 bunch spinach, chopped.

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat, add fennel, leek and garlic, sauté until soft.
Add stock, peas, fennel, and spinach.
Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer until all the veg is cooked.
Purée until soft and smooth. 

Serve and enjoy!
 

Sweet potato and goats chèvre ravioli

I am glad to report my pasta making skills seem to be improving. While this still isn't the silkiest, thinnest, most luscious ravioli I've ever had - it was certainly presentable, the pasta was a good texture, and the filling was definitely delicious. You don't need a pasta machine to make ravioli, though it does help to get the dough nice and thin. A rolling pin and some patience work just as well. Fortunately, courtesy of a christmas present from my best friend I have a pasta machine so I didn't have to be so patient ;)

Method 

 The pasta dough:
200 g flour, Italian Type 00
2 eggs
olive oil

Sift the flour into a huge mixing bowl or on a chopping board. Make a well in the centre, add  the eggs, then incorporate the flour with your fingers and knead for about 5 minutes or until the dough comes together nicely. If the mix is too firm, add another egg or egg yolk or a teaspoon of olive oil (or, at a pinch a  little water), if it’s too soft, use a little more flour. Knead it lightly, and then shape it into a ball, tightly wrap in cling film and let rest for at least 30 minutes on the counter.

The filling
100g goats chèvre or ricotta (drained, squeezed dry in a cheesecloth)
2 sweet potatoes, roasted till soft and then cooled and peeled
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Mix together the sweet potatoes, chèvre and nutmeg, season with salt and pepper to taste.


Assembly
Roll the pasta into thin sheets with either a pasta machine or your trusty rolling pin.

Place teaspoonful balls of the sweet potato mixture on the dough, and then cover with more dough. Press down to form sealed edges, and cut into shapes.

Cook in boiling salted water until the pasta is al dente.

for the sage burnt butter sauce
100g butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice
5 sage leaves

Add butter to pan and heat until butter begins to foam. At this point, add the sage and cook until butter has browned. Squeeze in the lemon juice and serve sauce immediately over ravioli.

Variation: I had actually intended to use toasted walnuts instead of the sage leaves, but did not have any at the time. I've used them since, and they work well.

Putting it all together

Place the ravioli on a plate with some extra goats chèvre crumbled on top. Finish with the sage burnt butter sauce. Enjoy!

Skidne Æg - Dirty eggs

This is part of our Eurovision inspired Danish-fest. Skidne Æg is a traditional dish, and makes a lovely sharing entree when plated up as we did, or you can serve in individual dishes.

The eggs are meant to be a little runnier than this - that lovely inbetween softboiled and hardboiled, but we overshot the mark as we were too engrossed in the pre-show buildup! Even so, it was a very tasty dish. I'm thinking, too, that you could replace the mustard with curry powder for a, well, curried version.

You can use whatever mustard you enjoy, but be cautious with the hotter ones as you may need to use less or face the wrath of the mustard god.  We used dijon because it is one of my favourites, and I had it in the house at the time!

Ingredients

4 eggs
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 litre milk
3 tablespoon mustard
salt to taste

Method

Boil eggs and boil until they are cooked as you desire (technically medium boiled is what you aim for, but do whatever you like best). Peel.

Make a roux with the butter and flour.  Add milk in gradually until you have a white sauce. Add mustard, stir through, season with salt and pepper to taste. If your eggs have cooled too much add them to the sauce to reheat, otherwise place eggs in bowl/s and pour sauce over.

Eat with rye bread, flatbread, or even with strips of crispy bacon... we served it with my flatbread recipe (just omitting the caraway!)

Lazy winter vegetable soup

I remember in my early 20's a friend of mine asking me "How do you make soup?" I remember staring at her with bemusement. How could anyone not know how to make soup? It's as easy as toasting bread - well, some soup is. I realised later that there are some techniques with cooking soup that you do need to know, even though most of them are fairly simple. Anyway, I guess she was never taught to cook at home, another thing I couldn't fathom. I remember making pikelets with my mum when I was very small - maybe 4 years old - and soups with my Babcia when I was maybe 8 years old. I grew up cooking, helping to cook, and trying to avoid having to cut up all the vegetables... I guess not everyone is lucky enough to have these experiences.

Anyway, I digress. I think this is the first soup I taught my friend to make. It is super easy, as all it requires is to prepare the vegetables and use a bought stock - a good quality one though, that relies on the flavour of the ingredients and not an over-abundance of salt. No blending, no roux, no cream to add and hope it doesn't split, just a simple basic vegetable soup. I think it is delicious though, and I make it a lot during winter. Obviously if you have the time and know-how to make your own stock that will make it even better. 

I cut my vegetables on the chunky side, but if you prefer them finely sliced that will work just as well.

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped
2 carrots,sliced
1 parsnip,sliced
1 turnip, sliced
1 potato, diced
1 litre of stock

Method

Sauté onion in a little oil or butter until translucent.
Add in the remaining ingredients, bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer until all the vegetables are cooked. If soup is too thick, add water to increase the liquid.

Serve with crusty bread. 

Kale Stew

I've been enjoying kale over the last few months - baby kale in salads, older kale in stirfrys or cooked similar to cabbage and served with whatever it is I'm eating. And crispy kale chips are a perennial favourite in this house! This dish is nowhere near as healthy as any of those options, but it is very delicious. This stew is great as an accompaniment to ham or other meats, and it is just as nice on its own with some mashed potato.

Ingredients

1 kg Kale
75 g butter
200ml cream
1 cup of good quality vegetable stock
2 tablespoon flour

Method

Rinse kale well and Discard any discoloured leaves and tough stems.

Slice into ½ inch thick slices with a sharp knife.
Make a roux with 50 gram of butter and the flour, stir in the vegetable stock and stir till it is smooth.
Add kale and the cream, then season to taste.

Boil gently for 10-15 minutes. The kale stew should not be overly runny, it should have a rich creamy consistency.

Caramelised Potatoes

This is another of those nice-but-naughty recipes. Not especially healthy, but very tasty. This little side dish comes from Denmark, who were the hosts for Eurovision this year. In honour of our hosts we had a traditional Danish dish - ham, with kale stew, and caramelised potatoes. The sweet caramel potatoes went very well with the saltiness of the ham.

1kg Small potatoes, peeled
40g sugar
50g butter

Boil the potatoes until cooked.

Heat the sugar in a frying pan over a medium-low heat for 2-3 minutes until the sugar melts. DO NOT STIR THE MIXTURE. If you need to redistribute the melted sugar shake the pan. If you stir it you may crystallise the sugar.

Add the butter & When it starts foaming add the potatoes and coat them with the mixture. I find a pair of tongs and a spoon works well to do this.

Cook for a further 4-5 minutes until nicely golden and browned. Serve.