British Enchiladas

Fusion food. I like the idea. I like enchiladas and I'm British. Putting all this together, inevitably, lead to this.

1. Take some fancy sausages. I used 2 leek and Stilton and 2 pork, black pudding and apple.
   
2. I chopped up a Bramley apple.
   
   
3. Apple and sausages and cider vinegar and a little sugar. In a pan. With heat.
   
4. Extra flavour from mustard, parsley, rosemary and thyme. At this point dice and boil some swede and parsnip.
   
   
5. After a while on a medium heat the apple softens. I kept adding water to keep the consistency a little runny.
   
   
6. Take out about half the apple sauce and put in a bowl. As the remainder in the plan looked a little like sick I felt obliged to add carrots, as well as some of the chunks of swede and parsnip.
   
   
7. Put quarter of the mix long ways in a tortilla wrap, and wrap it.
   
   
8. End up with a dish with four wraps in it. Mash the remaining swede and parsnip.
   
   
9. Coat the wraps with the remaining apple sauce and then a layer of the swede and parsnip mash.
   
   
10. Serve. Here I've used a plate, you may use whatever you like.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Review
    
    
    This meal was a gamble. So I was pretty happy it was even edible. It was actually quite nice, although the apple sauce was a little too sharp in the end. I guess using a little less vinegar and maybe a standard non-cooking apple would have worked better. Overall I think this idea has some merit- the wrap in the middle of what seemed more like a pie actually didn't taste out of place.

An attempt to follow a Vietnamese recipe

So I went on holiday to Vietnam and did a cooking course in Hoi An. It was good. They gave me a recipe recipe booklet of the stuff I'd cooked. So here is my version of  Bun Bo Nam Bo (Southern style Beef Vermicelli).

1. I pan fried some shallots garlic and a some lumps of ginger, take the stuff out the pan and set aside. Realise at this point you didn't really want the ginger in there and put it away.
   
   
2. My first major deviation. I used salmon instead of beef. Thinly sliced whatever is used.
   
   
3. A bed of salad, it suggest slightly different in the recipe but I'd say this was a fair substitution. There's some basil and dried mint in there as well.
   
   
4. Pan fry the slices of salmon in the oil from the shallots.
   
   
5. OK I didn't take many photos. Two important steps- first cook some rice (my second main deviation from the recipe), pile it in the middle of the salad and rest the salmon on this, second deglaze the pan with  light soy sauce, stock (I stuck with beef), some sugar, pepper and some lime juice. Reduce this by half and then pour this over the rice and salmon. Sprinkle the shallots over this and garnish with some basil.
   
   
   
   
   I like this, pretty simple, quick and could be made to look really fancy. The swaps seemed to work despite the fact I barely kept anything from the original. I'll definitely be frying salmon in this way in the future.

Ross's pulled pork experiment

I decided I should actually do something a bit more experimenty. By that I mean I decided I'd try cooking basically the same meal in two different ways. That meal would be pulled pork. I went for a quick method and a slower method to see if I could tell the difference.

Quick pulled pork

1. Spice rub- mix loads of paprika, smoked paprika, ground corriander, black pepper, ground mustard seeds, ground cumin, sugar and garlic together. 
   
2. I coated two pork chops in this rub and but this in a the fridge for use with pulled pork attempt two on the next day.
   
3. I wanted a wetter rub for the quick pork- so i added olive oil, tomato puree and white wine vinegar to the remaining spice mix (which was about half the total). I rubbed 3 skinny pork chops with this mix.
   
4. Boiling some new potatoes, with mint and half a lemon,
   
5. I chucked the pork in the oven(lowish temp) with some chopped spring onion, some white wine vinegar and a little water. 
   
6. Salad. Contained some basil leaves but pretty standard otherwise. Unlike people salad is better dressed.
   
7. Potato salad. Chop potatoes, mix in some chopped gherkin and whatever spice mix you have left.
   
8. The pork looked like this (but less blurry) when I took it out the oven. I'd basted it a bit whilst cooking.
   
   
   
9. The crucial pulling of the pork, tare the meat to shreds using two forks. Its fun to begin with but gets dull.
   

The assembled meal. On the sink because its the only surface I hadn't made a mess of.

Slower Pulled Pork

The next day...

1. Take the two pork chops out the fridge and put in the oven with some white wine vinegar water and spring onions. I tried for some honey and mustard glaze but used the wrong jar and ended up coating this in honey and horse radish sauce. 
   
   
   
2. Create some more spice rub because you ran out.
   
3. Cook some tomatoes in in this spice with a little olive oil.
   
4. Add in some mixed Mexican beans (they were in Asda and looked interesting) and a little tomato puree and you have something similar to baked beans.
   
5. For some reason this pork comes out the oven a lot drier, maybe i didn't baste enough
   
6. This should have been the pulling stage :( I chopped the pork up small instead and then mixed it in with the beans.
   
7. Same salad. The potatoes I did strangely- I cut them in half and tried to pan fry in a little oil. After about 15 mins they were crispy on the outside and raw in the middle, so I shifted them to the oven. They look like roast potatoes but tasted liked baked.
   
   
   
   
   
   Review
   
   
   Firstly the quick method made pulled pork, the second didn't. Although I think this is more to do with how long I kept the meat in the oven and the temperature. Really I should be using a fatty join of meat not a steak anyway. The taste of both was good although not as strong as I'd hoped. I think if you do successfully manage to pull the pork a sticky spicy sauce of some kind should be added. The pork and beans were probably the best tasting, although I'm not overly convince by leaving the meat in the spice rub for 24 hours. I guess a proper marinade should be wetter. The crazy failed sauteed potatoes I made by accident were good, I'll use this again. 

Spicy ham rolls with squashed potatoes

A proper 'ready steady cook!' dish this one. I had ham, potatoes and some vegetables, along with some very stale bread. This is what happened.

1. Boil some new potatoes. Nothing smart here.
   
2. I had some crusty bread rolls that had gone hard over the past 3 weeks. These were destroyed into read crumbs using a rolling pin.
   
   
3. For the spiciness I used some caraway seeds, cinnamon, star anise, cardamon pods garlic a pinch of cloves and a little oil. I heated this in a pan until the first pod popped. Then I emptied out about half the pods and peeled the garlic before grinding it all in the pestle and mortar.
   
   
4. Next I sweated an onion for about 15 mins before adding a pepper, some balsamic vinegar and some sugar and then kept cooking this on a medium heat for about 10 more minutes.
   
   
5. After they were boiled I was meant to crack the potatoes next. I smashed them. I added a little oil and a lot of mint and then chucked them in the oven.
   
   
6. Next I added some mushrooms to the onions, and after about 30 seconds added the spice mix and the bread crumbs, taking the pan off the heat.
   
   
7. I laid out 3 large slices of ham, added a layer of lettuce (I wanted this to be healthy) and a good blob of the mix from the pan to each. I then rolled up each ham slice with the contents inside.
   
   
8. The 3 ham rolls were chucked in an oven dish thing, covered in the remaining mix and a little layer of cheese. This was then placed in the oven for about 5 mins.
   
   
9. Once the potatoes were slightly crispy and the cheese was going brownish I took it out the oven and served.
   
   
10. As a random special treat my housemate Gez had left me some profiteroles he'd made (white and dark chocolate). They were really good.
    
    
    
    
    Review
    I think this meal worked better than it had any right to so I'm fairly pleased. The filling mixture was a little dry maybe... some tomato might be used to make it more liquidy, or to coat the whole thing in the dish enchilada style. Saying that the food did taste a little Christmassy, as I think with the cinnamon and cloves I was most of the way to making a mince pie. I'm glad I didn't go with chilies- I think they would have distracted from the taste of the ham. I would have like for the potatoes to have had come out crispier as well, but they tasted fine anyway.
    
    

Chocolate Roast Chicken Jambalaya

So I bought a chicken and thought I should try and do it in a kind of Mexican style with rice. Then I decided to do it all together to see if it'd work... the results are as follows;

1. What makes food Mexican? To me chilies, cumin and chocolate. I added some garlic, two chilies, some cumin seeds, a table spoon of cocoa and some extra chili flakes along with some oil. WARNING- this makes chilies exploded splattering your shirt with oily chocolate. You should prick the chilies or something I guess.
   
2. Now you peel the garlic and put it, along with the rest of the stuff, into a pestle and mortar to be ground up. I added some extra ground coriander seed and paprika at this stage.
   
3. Now shove half an onion in a chicken and massage the chili chocolate paste into the skin of the chicken. This is probably the creepiest step... it gets better.
   
4. Add the chicken to to pan along with some water and white wine vinegar and lime juice to make a simple stock. Cover the chicken with some foil and chuck in the oven.
   
5. Now to start on the rice. I used all the risotto rice I had left, a pepper, an onion and 3 mushrooms. I fried this in a generous glug of olive oil for a couple of minutes before adding any water.
   
6. Add water and cook until the rice starts becoming soft- not copletly done
   
7. Now after the chicken has been roasting for about 20 minutes add the rice into the pan with the chicken and spread around evenly. Baste the chicken with any excess fluid. If you do not have any add some extra water. Recover with foil and add back to the oven.
   
8. Every 15 minutes or so check this in the oven, baste and add about 1/3 a mug of water- you don't want the rice to be dry yet.
9. After a few repetitions the chicken starts looking like its being done. Stab in with a knife to see if its done. If it is, or near is, add a little more water and then put in the oven at a slightly lower temperature for about 20 minutes more.
   
   
   
   
10. When it is finished add about a quarter of the rice along with about a quarter of the chicken to a plate. Eating usually follows.
    
    
    
    
    Review
    This did not quite come out as I expected - the Mexican flavours were not as strong as I'd hoped- I guess the chicken should have been marinaded in the fridge in the paste for several hours and maybe some extra paste should have been added to the rice.  
    However the chicken came out very tender, better than dry roasting, and the peppers in particular worked very well. I'd probably be simpler and just as effective to put a normal risotto in the oven to get these benifits.