Meat and Two Veg. Fancy Style.

So despite my declarations of loyalty to my little Blog unsurprisingly something came along to bugger them. To explain my month long absence could be rather complicated but to put it simply, a full time London based job, whilst still trying to maintain my Brighton citizenship along with my sanity and some semblance of a social life is not cohesive with a large amount of free time.

Before you get me wrong though, I enjoy the busy-ness and the new job. It is film production orientated and Old Street based and a steady income whilst learning loads are some of the larger perks of the situation. However. It is also admittedly rather dangerous regarding my retail habits. I managed to spend £50 in Urban Outfitters yesterday and then a further £70 in Zara (must open a saving account and start doing sensible things with my money).

But anyway back to the case in hand. This recipe is firm family favorite and with my little sister heading back to boarding school Sunday evening it seemed like a fitting way to set her up for the week. It is absolutely delicious but surprisingly light, given of course you don’t stuff yourself, but I must say it probably doesn’t exactly fit the Indian summer we’ve been subjected to over the last few weeks.

Serves 4

4 Venison Steaks at room temperature trimmed and lightly covered in olive oil and seasoned.

1kg floury potato, Maris Piper or something similar

1 head of cabbage, shredded

a couple of sprigs of rosemary

½ a red onion finely chopped

½ a garlic clove finely sliced

2 good knobs of butter

400ml red wine

400ml good stock, ideally chicken

1 dessert spoon red currant jelly

olive oil

salt and pepper

Firstly chop your spuds so they’re about the size of a big walnut and par boil them for a few minutes.

Drain them and let them sit and steam for a minute whilst you shred your cabbage.

Tip the potatoes back into your empty pan, cover them in a couple of good glugs of olive oil, season liberally and gently rough them up a bit. The idea is to get the edges of each potato to go a bit flaky and floury but these bits to stay stuck to the potato with the olive oil because this is the bit that will go amazingly crunchy when roasted.

Tip them out onto a roasting tray and nestle a few sprigs of rosemary rubbed with olive oil amongst them. Stick the whole lot in a hot oven say about 220 degrees turning every 15 minutes until they’re gloriously golden and crunchy (around 30-40 minutes).

Whilst your potatoes are roasting get on with your sauce, in a knob of melted butter and a glug of oil sweat the onion and when soft add a sprig of rosemary and your garlic. 

Sweat that until fragrant, add your stock and wine and leave to simmer until it has reduced by two thirds. At this point stir you can sieve the sauce if you want, I couldn’t be bothered.

Stir in the red currant jelly and whisk in a cold knob of butter to thicken the sauce slightly. Leave to keep warm.

Steam your cabbage and when everything is ready it's venison o'clock. 

Fry for 5 minutes on each side for medium and 4 on each side for rare, if you must have it well done go ahead and massacre it but you might as well go and have a chew on a pair of old leather boots. Just saying.

(Apologies for how fluro the photos are. My dad's kitchen lights combined with a crappy camera don't equal the most forgiving photos. )

Chorizo, Spinach, Mushroom and Red Pepper Rice.

Last night I came home from University and knew one thing. I wanted a glass of wine. I’d had a productive day finalizing what to write my dissertation on and was feeling smug.

When I got home though my dreams of a cooling beverage to celebrate my dissertation-awesomeness were dashed. There wasn’t any wine in the house. Disaster.

However… What’s the best excuse for getting a bottle in? Making risotto. Of course.

So, off to co-op my housemate and I went. A skip, hop and a purchase of white Chilean later, happily with wine in hand I threw this together for the both of us.

I feel like this would be created if a risotto got it on with a paella and had sweet, sweet, rice-y babies.  Here the smoky, heat of the sausage, marries with the hearty, irony spinach and the sweet red pepper beautifully.

As usual this was amalgamated out of what I had in the fridge, which unfortunately was missing some fresh herbs last night. I feel either some fresh thyme, or chives might have gone down a treat stirred in at the end. Nonetheless the final product was de-lish.

Serves 2.

A medium sized white onion, chopped finely.

2 cloves of garlic, chopped.

200g cooking chorizo, chopped. 

1 tsp paprika.

½ tsp dried thyme

Enough Arborio/risotto rice for two

A good slug of a dry white wine

1 pint good chicken stock

Half a red pepper, sliced

A large handful of good mushrooms, chopped

Large handful of freshly grated parmesan

To start with get your stock hot.

Secondly in another pan melt half the butter and then add the olive oil to raise the butters burning point. Over a low heat sweat the onions and as it goes translucent add the peppers, mushrooms and chorizo, when the sausage starts to leak it’s oils, add the garlic, paprika and thyme and sweat until fragrant, season.

Throw in the rice and increase the heat, fry for a minute then add the wine and simmer until the harsh alcohol smell burns off and the rice absorbs the liquid.

Now start to add the stock bit-by-bit adding more after the last has been completely absorbed, stirring frequently, massaging the starch out of the rice.

When the rice is nearly cooked, pour in a last slug of stock and cover. Leave the rice to stand for a couple of minutes with the heat off so it can relax. Stir in the parmesan and serve.