Month: May 2020

Posted on

Chocolate ribs

Yes, that’s right – chocolate. Mexican inspired flavours really. Very easy to make and the meat is very tender, falling off the bone.

I used one rack of pork ribs and to achieve a maximum surface area for the sauce to cling onto, I pre-cut the ribs before marinating. You can also use this recipe on a whole rack if you like.

Mix the dry ingredients of 1 tsp salt, 1tbsp of cocoa powder, 1tsp of chilli flakes and 1 tsp of allspice. The allspice brings a slight tangy twist to the cocoa that goes really well. Add about 2 tbsp of olive oil to make it into a loose paste so that you have enough to coat your ribs. If the paste isn’t loose enough, add a spoonful or two of water.

Then using my ‘go to’ method of marinating in a ziplock bag, pour the marinade into the bag and massage your ribs through the bag so they are all coated. Marinade for at least an hour or longer if you can.

Once the ribs have had enough time to soak up the goodness, preheat the oven to 200C. The texture we’re looking for is falling off the bone yet lickably sticky sauce. Place a piece of foil that is larger than your baking tray as the bottom of your parcel, pour your ribs with all the marinade liquid onto the foiled baking tray. Then use a piece of foil which is smaller in size than the bottom one to cover the ribs loosely and crimp the edges of the foil parcel with the bottom layer of foil. You want to create a slight cavern for the ribs to steam within the parcel. Create a few holes on the top layer of your parcel so some of the steam can escape.

Place into the preheated oven and turn it down to 180C. After 25 mins, turn the ribs over and place the top foil loosely back onto the parcel for the last 10 minutes – this will give you the slight burnt edges on the ribs.

When serving, spoon over some of the juices which will have caramelised on your baking foil tray (not the oil!).

Happy eating! 🤤

Posted on

Baked crab with salted egg mince, garlic and shallots butter

One of the challenges thrown up by an approach of cook whatever is available, is having to learn to prep something you’ve never cooked before and thinking how best to make it tasty. My local fishmonger had two big crabs in stock so I thought I would give it a go. Armed with Sam, the fishmonger’s, instructions of cooking them in boiling water for 12 minutes, I then went home and started trawling through my cookbooks as to how best to make a meal out of them.

It turned out that none of the cookbooks I had have a recipe for a whole crab. There are many recipes using crab meat but I wasn’t going to just use the meat when I had the whole crab to play with. Unfortunately we do not have a gas hob otherwise the most obvious way of cooking these crabs to showcase their freshness would be to simply fry them in a hot wok with shallots and garlic.

Fortunately my mum still has her late 80s/early 90s cookbooks from Hong Kong including the classic ⌈方太與你⌋ by the great Mrs Lisa Fong who pioneered television cooking on Hong Kong television that I grew up with. One of the recipes in this was a whole crab recipe with salted egg and mince sauce that required frying the crab and then baking in a casserole dish.  

I was lazy and didn’t want to have to deep fry the crab first so I modified 方太 ‘s(Mrs Fong) recipe a bit. I also wanted a buttery richness to it so decided to make a butter sauce with some shallots that I bought from our local farm shop that morning. 

  • with ginger and fennel
  • colour changes after its cooked
  • before gutting
  • After gutting, cleaning and dismembering – rearranged into shape

Prepping the crab was a bit more fiddly than I thought partly because I realised I didn’t have a pot that was big enough to cook both the crabs at once. Had to do them separately and boiled them with a few pieces of ginger and a bit from an old quarter of a left over fennel, just because… The crabs were sold to me on ice so they weren’t alive. 

Then I removed the ’apron’ – that fan shaped covering at the bottom of the underside of the crab, this is also where you find out if a crab is male or female as I learnt. Removing the top shell was actually a bit more difficult than I thought, took a lot of brute force. Innards were then gutted and cleaned leaving the white meat. If I wasn’t hoping to serve the whole crab, this is when I would have picked all the white meat out for another dish. 

Now to prepare the other bits:

  • salted eggs
  • salted egg yolks
  • for the butter

The twist in this recipe is to use salted egg and pork mince which goes remarkably well with crab. Once the mince has been mixed with the mashed salted egg. Salted egg (鹹蛋) is a pre-salted duck egg that you can buy from Chinese supermarkets. The salting process solidifies the yokes so don’t be too surprised when you crack that duck egg to find a ball of yoke. We are only using the salted egg yoke in this recipe which needs to be mashed and added to the pork mince along with the seasoning. 

In the meantime, sauteed the garlic, shallots and spring onions in copious amount of butter, ready for use.  

Spoon the mince pork on top of the reassembled crab, then spoon over the butter all over the crab. Place the top shell back on and bake in a pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes at 180°C. 

Happy eating!

See recipe

Posted on

Homemade sushi (maki)

Homemade maki sushi

Our local fishmonger (Bristol Fish Ltd) had some sashimi grade tuna in stock over the recent gloriously hot bank holiday weekend. So I decided on a whim to get some as I hadn’t had sushi for a while. Nothing beats freshly made sushi and they are so easy to make!

  • Daikon
  • Just look at this beauty!

Cook your sushi rice according to the packet. If you have a rice cooker then this step will be minimal effort. Prepare the ingredients you want to assemble within your maki roll sushi by cutting them into thin strips, the idea being that you will then line the ingredients up across horizontally on top of your nori seaweed and bed layer of rice, ready to roll.

The ingredients I used this time were my sashimi tuna, daikon radish, cucumber and crab sticks. You can pretty much add anything you want into your sushi rolls, even cooked meats like the korean gimbaps.

When your rice is cooked, add sushi vinegar to the rice and mix it up and allow your rice to cool a little bit. Tip: keep your rice spatula or spoon in a mug/bowl of water between scooping your rice, it will stop the rice from sticking to your spoon/spatula. Then you can start rolling. I would recommend using a sheet of cling film between your sushi mat and the nori sheets so that you do not have to keep washing your sushi mat between each roll. Place your nori sheet on top of your cling film, followed by a thin-ish layer of rice, then lay your ingredients across your rice horizontally. Around an inch from the bottom edge of your nori sheet. Now roll up your seaweed cylinder of deliciousness.

Once you have made all of your seaweed cylinders, then it is time to cut them up into the bite size maki rolls that one is more familiar with. Tip: wet your knife when cutting the rolls to stop the rice from sticking.

Now enjoy it with a bit of wasabi and sushi soy sauce. A cold beer also goes nicely…

Happy eating!

Posted on

Spiced lamb kebabs

With minimal prep ahead of time, this is a meal that can be ready quickly with flavours that pack a punch.

  • Lamb kebab spices 1
    Lamb kebab marinade
  • Lamb kebab spices 2

I usually use lamb neck fillet as I find the marbling throughout somewhat self-bastes whilst grilling keeping the meat tender. I frequently find recipes and tips out there where they advise lamb neck is best left for slow cooking as otherwise it will be tough. But having made these kebabs for a number of years now, I can say the neck is one of the best cuts to use for these kebabs. By all means try other cuts of lamb that you can get your hands on, but look for cuts that have some marbling of fat/fascia through the meat. If your lamb neck comes boned, then first de-bone your neck and cut them into chunks that are big enough to skewer through. Remember – the meat shrinks after cooking so make them slightly bigger than the pieces you’d like to eat.

Now for the marinade. You can’t really go wrong with the usual spices like cardamom, turmeric, cumin and the like. Using a pestle and mortar to bash any whole spice releases their flavours. But you can also use pre-grounded spices from a bottle, or a mixture like I did. Add some salt in your pestle and mortar to add some additional surfaces for your spices to grind against – that’s also some of your seasoning done. Add some olive oil to your spice mix to the consistency of a thickish sauce, you want it to be runny enough to be able to coat all your lamb pieces. This is the only oil you will use on the kebabs and most of it will drip off during the grilling process so don’t be shy.

I always use either a zip-lock bag or a plastic food container to do my marinades in. They don’t leak and you can leave them in the fridge to marinade away without using an awkwardly shaped bowl that takes up valuable tetris gaps on your fridge shelves. Just a couple of tips though – if you’re using marinades that might stain such as turmeric, either use a disposable zip-lock bag or a food container that you don’t mind staining! Zip-lock bags are also great for ‘massaging’ the marinade into the meats without getting your hands dirty. Pop in the meat, pour in the marinade, zip and massage the bag away.

  • lamb kebab marinade 2
    Lamb kebab marinade
  • Marinating lamb

Leave your lamb to marinade in the fridge for an hour or so, longer if possible. I usually marinade around lunchtime (if on a weekend for example) then make it for dinner. Otherwise, you can also make it the night before and leave it marinating overnight for dinner the following day. If you have too much lamb neck fillets for one meal, you can also marinade it all and make them over a couple of evenings. 

Tip for wooden skewers – soak them in water thoroughly before use, both ends! Otherwise, the exposed ends with burn to a crisp under the grill and you won’t have anything to hold the kebabs with. 

When you’re ready, prep some veg to be skewered with the lamb. Onions, peppers, tomatoes and even courgettes are good spacers. Assemble the skewers, alternating between veg and meat or whatever combination takes your fancy and use a piece of your lamb to dot some of your oily marinade on the veg after they have been skewered. 

Place under the grill for about 15 – 20 minutes turning once in between. 

Serve with some grilled halloumi and a salad if you like. Happy eating!

See the full recipe