lamb

Masterchef challenge day 21: Anchovy bread pudding, Lamb Bourgignon, Barley Pilaf and Braised Swiss Chard Stems

maki — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 21:52:40 +0100

I almost gave up on continuing the Masterchef challenge when it was revealed that for the final week of preliminaries, they were going to make the candidates do two dishes within 50 minutes, instead of one dish in 40 minutes. The reason for this is that this week's candidates are also-rans from last season, who were invited back because they demonstrated potential.

Nevertheless, at least the first day of this two-dish round had some interesting ingredients, so I was able to do something with them. Those ingredients are:

Anchovies
Savoy cabbage
Rainbow chard (Swiss chard with colorful stems)
Honey
Bananas
Chocolate
Brioche bread
Lamb filet

I decided to make a savory bread pudding as a starter, and Bourgignon-like lamb stew with pearl barley as a main course. The anchovy bread pudding is sort of like a souffle, light and eggy, and as you can see from the photo it does puff up like one. But it's much easier to make and is just about foolproof. The anchovy in it is very subtle, just adding an intriguing salty background flavor; I've used chopped up filets here, but anchovy paste can be used too. Since brioche is so full of butter, no further oil or butter is added. This is a very impressive little item for a dinner party. It just has to be served immediately as soon as it exits the oven, just like a soufflé does.

For the main course portion, I made a quick stew base with onions, garlic, red wine and a can of tomatoes, flavored with dried herbs, with sautéed thinly sliced lamb added to it in the last minutes of cooking. It's not authentic bourgignon of course, but it is very tasty for something made within such a short time. Accompanying it is pearl barley cooked like a pilaf, in a vegetable stock. Barley is a fantastic grain that swells up like nothing else (just 1 cup of dry barley will make 6 cups of cooked), absorbs any flavors, and is a great accompaniment to stews.

I couldn't get the rainbow chard they used on the show, but that didn't bother me - I've grown the colorful chard in the garden before, and it's pretty but not as useful as regular Swiss chard with the fat white stems. Those stems have a wonderful crunchy texture that's like a mild version of celery; they are great in stir fries, or braised like I have done here. The leaves of the chard can be reserved for another meal.

Unused ingredients: bananas, chocolate, honey, savoy cabbage.

Technorati Tags: anchovies, eggs, masterchef

Menu note: The bread pudding must be cooked last. The rest of the menu can be prepared a bit in advance, though you should add the lamb slices to the sauce at the last minute.

Anchovy bread pudding

This makes 4 small ramekins of the pudding.

1 50g / 2 oz tin anchovy filets
2 cups of roughly cubed brioche bread (about 2 slices)
2 eggs
1/2 cup whole milk
a pinch grated nutmeg
2 Tbs grated Parmesan or Grana Padano

Preheat the oven to 225°C / 450°F.

Drain the anchovies, and chop them up finely.

Beat the eggs and milk together. Add the cubed brioche to this mixture with the nutmeg and the anchovies. Let this stand for at least 10 minutes.

Butter 4 small ramekins. Pour in the egg-milk-bread mixture into them evenly, nearly to the top rim. Sprinkle the tops with the grated cheese.

15 minutes before the start of dinner, put in the hot oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and puffed up. Serve immediately!

Barley pilaf

To make 3 cups

1/2 cup barley
3 cups hot stock (water + vegetable stock cube is fine)
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
3 Tbs chopped parsley
Olive oil or butter

Heat the oil or butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan.

Sauté the onion and garlic in the oil or butter until softened, then add the barley. Cook until the barley is lightly browned. Add the hot stock and parsley, and bring to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer. Put on a lid and cook for about 30 minutes or until all the water is absorbed and the barley is done. Add extra water or stock if necessary.

If you serve this on its own, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

Quick lamb bourgignon

300g lamb filet, sliced thinly against the grain (crosswise)
2 large onions, sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 400g / about 8 oz. can of chopped tomatoes
1 cup red wine
1 tsp dried thyme
1 stock cube (beef or vegetable)
1 bay leaf
Oil or butter
3 Tbs flour
Salt and pepper

Sauté the onion and garlic in oil or butter until limp and transparent. Add the tomatoes, wine, thyme, bay leaf and stock cube. Add a canful of water.

Simmer this sauce until the onions are very tender, about 20 minutes.

In the meantime, heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan, until it stops sizzling. Add the flour, and stir around until it turns a toasty brown. Set aside. This is your brown roux.

Sauté the lamb slices very briefly in a hot pan; season lightly with salt and pepper.

Add the brown roux to the sauce, and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the lamb together with any pan juices. Take off the heat right away; adjust the seasoning if necessary with salt and pepper. Serve with the barley pilaf.

Braised Swiss chard stems

About 3 cups of Swiss chard stems, trimmed of the green parts and cut into pieces
Oil or butter
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil or butter in a pan, and add the Swiss chard. Let this cook over a medium low heat with a lid on, turning occasionally, until the stems are just a bit brownish on the edges - about 15 to 20 minutes. Season with salt and lots of black pepper.

MasterChef challenge, day 5: Baby Lamb Chops and Stove-Top Pommes Anna

maki — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:49:09 +0100

It's now the second week. The ingredients for this day (day 5 overall, and the first day of the 2nd preliminary round) were:

Lamb chops
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Basil
Dried apricots
Mozzarella cheese

I couldn't get my head around the dried apricots in this one - I love them to snack on, but in savory food? Also, mozzarella cheese and lamb just didn't seem like a good match to me. So out those ingredients went.

The lamb chops were the easiest to figure out - I don't know of a better way of cooking baby lamb chops other than simply pan-frying or grilling them briefly, leaving them a bit pink on the inside. (On the show they used larger lamb chops but these small (about 5cm / 2-3 inch long) ones were what were available.)

I thought briefly of mashed potatoes, but instead I went for an individual-sized Pommes (Potatoes) Anna that are started on the stove in a frying pan, then finished in the oven.

I am fairly sure that the show was taped during the warmer months, or at least not in the dead of winter, otherwise I don't think they would have selected tomatoes and basil. Right now tomatoes are totally out of season, and the ones we can get in the supermarket are hard and rather awful. Nevertheless, I did use them for this dish - and even those pink, hard and slightly mealy-textured beasts came out fairly ok in the tomato-basil-red onion relish. With really ripe tomatoes it should be even better. The sweet-sourness went very well with the lamb.

All in all, this one was a winner - quite quick, and something I think I could repeat even for guests, though I think I'd need more small frying pans for multiple portions.

Here is the order to make this meal:

Heat up the oven
Make the relish and put in the refrigerator
Peel, slice and start cooking the potatoes
Once the potatoes are in the oven, prepare the lamb chops if you need to. Heat the pan you're going to cook them in and start cooking. Once they are done, take off the heat and let rest.
Take out the potatoes and invert on the plate.
Put the lamb chops on top of the potatoes, and garnish with the relish.

Individual sized Stove-Top Pommes Anna

Per serving:

2 or 3 small boiling-type potatoes - new potatoes would be ideal (you can use larger potatoes, but small (about 3 cm / 1 1/2 inch) diameter potatoes are a nice match to the tiny lamb chops)
Butter
Salt and pepper

Equipment needed: a small, non-stick frying pan with an oven-safe handle

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Peel the potatoes, and cut off the tapered end parts so you will end up with more or less even-diameter cylinders. Slice into thin rounds, and pat them dry with a paper towel. Do not put into water - you want to keep the starchiness on the surface so the rounds will stick to each other.

Melt some butter in the frying pan, and line the bottom in as attractive a pattern as you can manage with the potato rounds. Careful, don't burn your fingers! Salt and pepper the top. Press down firmly with a spatula, so that the potato slices stick to each other: just do this one then don't touch the slices anymore or they will separate! Cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes until the bottom has browned (you can tell by looking at the edges).

Put the frying pan in the oven, and set the timer for 10 minutes.

To plate up, turn a plate over the frying pan and carefully invert. If you are lucky the whole thing will flop over intact. If not, just rearrange the potatoes on the plate into more or less a circle.

Note: If you don't want to bother with the individual sized portions, and you are making dinner for several people, consider the classic oven-baked Pommes Anna - this one you can just leave in the oven and forget until it's done.

Tomato, red onion and basil relish

2 medium-sized ripe as possible tomatoes
1 small red onion, to produce about 1 1/2 Tbs. of finely chopped
4-5 fresh basil leaves
1 tsp red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Dunk the tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds and peel. De-seed and chop up into very small cubes.

Chop the onion as finely as you can imagine.

Chiffonade the basil leaves (finely julienne.. argh these French terms. I mean roll up the leaves into a tight roll and slice as finely as you can manage.)

Mix all of the above together with the vinegar. Season carefully with salt and vinegar.

MasterChef challenge, day 4: Lamb Pilau with Beet and Kumquat Chutney

maki — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 22:12:26 +0100

First off, I must apologize for this picture and the placement of the chutney on the plate. I didn't realize until all the food was consumed, thus making it too late for a re-shoot, that it looks like Mickey Mouse had a very unfortunate accident and got his brains shot out.

Well now that I've whet your appetite, the ingredients for of the MasterChef preliminaries were:

Beets
Ground lamb
Red chili peppers
Kumquats
Coriander
Long grain rice
Red onions

This was a difficult one to get a handle on initially. Kumquats are not something I'm used to cooking with, and my favorite way to cook beets is to bake them. But again, the time constraints played against that idea. So I settled on a vaguely Middle Eastern combination of a pilau, or pilaf, with ground lamb, the red chilis, raisins and spices, with a sweet-sour chutney made from the beets, kumquats and onion. The coriander was used just as a garnish. The flavors this time worked a lot better than the day 3 items, so the recipes follow. The key is to make the chutney fairly sweet to counterbalance the spiciness of the pilau.

This meal was completed quite quickly, within about 30 minutes. With a green salad I think this might enter the regular rotation.

Lamb pilau

250g / 8 oz. ground lamb
2 cups long grain rice
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
1 red chili pepper, chopped
spices: ground coriander, cardamon, cinnamon, or use a "falafel spice mix". (You can also use curry powder instead)
olive oil
4 cups of chicken stock (water + soup cubes is fine)
Salt and pepper Heat the chicken stock.

Sauté onion in oliver oil until limp, and add the garlic and chili. Add the rice, and sauté until the rice has absorbed much of the oil. Add the raisins.

Add the hot chicken stock, and immediately put the lid on the pot and turn it off. Leave it like that for at least 20 minutes, then check the rice - it should be tender but not sticky. If not, put the lid back on and leave for another 5-10 minutes. Drain any excess moisture off by putting the rice in a sieve.

In the meantime, saut´ the lamb until browned in some more olive oil. Add your spices - start with maybe 1/2 tsp. of each spice you have selected, or 1 tsp. of a mixed falafel spice mix. Add more if you think it can stand more spice.

Fluff up the rice and stir in the spicy lamb, and season with salt and pepper. Garnish with coriander leaves.

Beet, red onion and kumquat chutney

1 medium sized beetroot, cut into small cubes
1 small red onion, chopped
2-3 kumquats, cut into rounds then halved
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Heat up the vinegar, water and sugar in a small pan to melt the sugar. Add the onion and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the beetroot and kumquats, and simmer for an additional 20 minutes, until the liquid is almost gone. (The beets will still be a bit crunchy.) Add salt to taste.