Tag: garlic

Gratin Dauphinois

Potatoes, cream and cheese- what’s not to like.  Whenever I make this I make more than I need, because it’s just sooo more-ish. It’s a cheesey potato side dish that goes really well with rich food or a steak. It takes a little time to prepare and cook up, but worth the wait.

Once cooked, the cheesey browned topping just looks great. Deird usually eats the toppng off any leftovers before it gets a chance to make it to the fridge. Dang.

Sometimes restaurants make this with a lot of cream and not a lot of potato- so there’s potato swimming in cream. I make it drier, so that you slice out a portion from a big dish, and it just about holds it’s shape.  Mmmmm. 

The best advice for making this is to cut the potato slices as thinly as you can. Use a mandolin if you have one, buy one if you haven’t.

1kg floury potatoes
2 Cloves garlic, crushed
Pinch nutmeg
75g gruyere, grated
300ml double cream
100ml milk

Slice potatoes thinly on a mandolin,
Butter a “lasagne” dish and layer in potatoes, with some garlic, nutmeg and cheese between layers.
Pour cream and milk over, so that it fills in the gaps, ans just covers the potatoes.
Sprinkle on remaining cheese.

Bake, for about 45 minutes- although it depends on how big a dish, and how deep it all is.

Chinese Red Pork Stew

This is a strongly aromatic main course, and is really good with just some plain rice. Deird doesn’t like me cooking this because the house smells of star anise for a couple of days. You have to cook it for a long time (2-3 hours) to get the pork to be tender and fall-aparty. 

The weird thing about this recipe is that you marinade the pork in soy sauce, then when you fry off the pork before stewing, it turns a dark red. Some of the pork juices and marinade will probably stick to the pan- which is good, because that makes the stock look good later on. If the pork has a bit of fat in it, then this adds to the flavour. Don’t use too lean a meat.

Once it’s all cooked up, you need to sieve the sauce because it can be bitty from the bits of garlic, ginger and star anise floating round in it. The sauce should be thick, rich and sticky, and well condensed down.

Diced pork, about 1lb (1 fillet)
Dark Soy sauce (enough to marinade pork)
1 Onion, sliced into ½ rings
Ginger root- size of thumb
2 garlic cloves
2 star anise
Orange peel- potato peeled from ½ an orange (or mandarin, for authenticity.) Any spare peel- dry it for use later)
2-3 tablespoons of honey
Corn flour to thicken

In a frying pan, Fry pork and pour off juices
Add onion and soften
Add soy sauce from marinade and water to cover.
Add garlic (crushed) orange peel, star anise, peeled crushed ginger and honey
Stew for 60-90 mins
Remove pork, sieve sauce, and thicken with corn flour. Reintroduce pork and serve.

Irish Pasta

It’s called Irish pasta because it has it has pasta (white) carrots (orange) and broccoli (green). OK, I suppose it’s actually a Pasta Premavera. 

A Premavera is made with crisp spring veg- like broccoli, carrots, mange tout- but the trick is the sauce. It’s a mix of melted parmesan cheese, juices and the starchy water from the pasta. It’s a very light sauce, and you have to mix it ‘as it happens’ in the pan with the pasta, cheese and sauce.  

 You can add a chicken breast if you like. I think this is one of my favourite pasta dishes a the mo. It feels quite healthy but, well, probably isn’t, with the cheese, butter and bacon hoofed in.

Deird and Poppy love this recipe too.

250g fuselli Pasta
2 carrots (medium)- cut into thin carrot strips
2 handfuls broccoli
4 slices smoked bacon
clove of garlic
glug dry sherry or white wine
1 mozzarella ball
large knob of butter
2x4cm parmesan cheese
toasted pine nuts
Boil pasta, in the last two minutes add broccoli and carrots. drain and butter.
dice and fry bacon and garlic, and deglaze with sherry/wine.
add bacon and parmesan to pasta, carrot & broccoli
stir till parmesan melts, and makes a light sauce (add back some pasta water if too dry)
chop the mozzarella and add it, along with the pine nuts, stir and serve

Pasta Salsa

The is a really quick pasta sauce that I discovered. A friend of mine makes a sauce for chicken like this- roasting the ingredients with the chicken in a hot oven. Anywho… frying it all up for a pan is quicker, and well, works a treat. It takes longer to cook the pasta than it does to prep and cook the sauce. the ingredients are a bit salsa-y, thus the name.

It works best if the cherry tomatoes are sweet and ripe. If they’re a bit sharp or hard, add a little extra sugar to compensate. You can make this with bigger tomatoes, but, well, it just ain’t the same. It also works quite well with a few olives thrown in for good measure.

Pasta- fuselli or similar
2 mugs cherry tomatoes
1/2 a chilli
1/2 clove garlic
1/2 tsp sugar
Pinch salt
Balsamic vinegar

Fry the chilli & garlic
Add 1/4-ed tomatoes + sugar
Put on lid & fry for 2 mins
Add vinegar
Fry & reduce (really hot heat, 2 mins tops)
Salt & black pepper to taste