Week 8: Grilled pork chop with almond croquettes and salad

This week I’m in a different, much larger kitchen (pictured) as a result of visiting my father in southern Spain. Now I don’t know if you find this, but when cooking in someone else’s kitchen, it’s either a joy (when you find all the utensils you’re after) or problematic (some knives just aren’t up to the job), but rarely is it uninteresting. 

So, in Spain as I say and one thing never cooked, although frequently eaten when here, are croquettes. There are fishy ones, meaty ones and also simple plain ones, but never have I had almond croquettes. This recipe comes from the BBC website and happened to be the one featured on the main ‘food’ page when I popped onto it on my first day out here and comes with a suitably Spanish accompaniment.

2 pork loin chops

1 apple, cored and cut into wedges

almond croquettes	50g/1¾oz plain flour
500g/1lb 2oz mashed potatoes	1 free-range egg, beaten
1 tbsp finely chopped flatleaf parsley	75g/3oz flaked almonds

dressing & salad	1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 free-range egg yolk	1 tbsp finely chopped flatleaf parsley
1 tsp English mustard	1 tbsp finely chopped mint
2 tsp clear honey	1 tbsp finely chopped basil
2 tbsp cider vinegar	1 tbsp finely chopped thyme
150ml/5fl oz vegetable or sunflower oil	1 head Little Gem, roughly chopped
1 banana shallot, finely chopped	2 handfuls lamb’s lettuce

Preheat the grill to high. Place the pork chops in an ovenproof frying pan along with the apple wedges, then season the pork fat with salt and place under the grill for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Place the egg yolk into a bowl along with the mustard and honey. Add the cider vinegar and whisk, then gradually add the vegetable oil, whisking all the time until thick and creamy. Add the shallot, garlic, parsley, mint, basil and thyme and whisk once more, then check the seasoning and set aside.

Check the seasoning on the mashed potatoes, then add the remaining flatleaf parsley and mix well. Take a small handful and roll into a sausage shape (mind you don’t make them too big or there’ll be a bit dry on the eating), repeat with all the mash. Roll the potato sausages in the flour, then the eggs and then the flaked almonds.

Heat the oil in a suitable saucepan – drop a bit of almond in to check the temp; when it sizzles away you’re good for frying. Now remember to be careful with the hot oil, it will hurt a lot if you get it on you! Place into the hot oil for 2-3 minutes, or until golden-brown and crisp, then remove using a slotted spoon onto some kitchen paper.

Place the salad leaves into a bowl and add enough dressing to just coat the leaves, then serve alongside the croquettes and pork chop You’ll probably want drizzle some of the dressing over the croquettes too – it’ll make everything taste good.

Today’s learning:

Croquettes are tasty and easy – shallow-fired mash. Just make them. But err on the side of smaller than big to stop them from being too dry.

Week 7: Carrot cake

I had it my mind this week to bake a cake. I’m not sure why I had this thought floating around my cerebrum, but there it was all the same. Perhaps it was the fact that it’s been a while since I cooked something sweet rather than savoury (back to Week 1 of this personal cooking challenge) or that the Orange Cake in my new Master Chef Everyday cookbook looks tasty enough to eat every day for a year. It may have even been the particular alignment of the moons in the heavens this week, but, without wishing to side-step the matter, this isn’t the place to philosophise about such things.

The fact is I decided to bake a cake. It was going to be the orange one, one which I thought I’d take to my convalescing friend Richard (broken leg after an incident combining beer, gravity and stairs – Rich and Jimmy pictured below) but it turns out that his favourite cake is carrot cake, a cake I’d never made before! So, a quick trawl of the internet and I get to Felicity Cloake’s How to make the perfect carrot cake from the Guardian website. This is a tremendous cake and as light and fluffy a carrot cake as you could hope to have, beats anything you’ll find in a shop and will even be a nose ahead of the tasty ones you find in those posh cafes in ‘up-and-coming’ areas of London. I will be making it again – rarely have I seen such wedges of cake gobbled up with quite so much alacrity.

150g butter, melted, plus extra for greasing	1 tsp ground cinnamon
150g soft light brown sugar	½ tsp grated nutmeg
3 free-range eggs	Zest of 1 orange
200g self-raising wholemeal flour	100g sultanas or raisins (I had a mix of both)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda	200g carrots, peeled and grated
½ tsp salt	100g pecans, toasted and roughly chopped, plus extra to decorate

For the icing:	50g light brown soft sugar
150g full-fat cream cheese	Zest of ½ lemon and a squeeze of juice

Preheat the oven to 180ᵒC and grease and line the bases of 2 x 18cm sandwich tins

Put the melted butter, sugar and eggs into a large mixing bowl and whisk well until the ingredients are thoroughly combined and the mixture has almost doubled in volume – this will make it super light and fluffy.

Sift together the flour, bicarb, salt and spices and then fold very gently into the liquid mixture, being careful to knock as little air out as possible. Fold in the remaining ingredients and divide between the tins. Bake for about 30 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Keep an eye on it from 20 mins as you may find them browning up a little early. Cool in the tins.

Meanwhile, beat the icing ingredients together and refrigerate. When the cakes are cool enough to ice, remove from the tins, top one with half the icing, and then the other cake. Ice the top, and decorate with the remaining pecans. With the icing, consider ‘less is more’. It’s tasty stuff but the cake is pretty much good enough to eat on its own.

Today’s learning:
Whisking the melted butter, eggs and sugar together helped make the mixture amazingly light and moist, although this may have been the moisture from the carrots too.

Week 6: Smoked haddock and pancetta soufflé

Although there’s been a little gap since the last post, I think I’m just in time for my weekly challenge. On Sunday last I cooked a smoked haddock and pancetta soufflé – yes, a soufflé! But why the delay? Well, there was a slight issue of having a new kitchen fitted which caused the upheaval you see on the left and the reincarnation you also see (lower left) and which was the setting for this latest gastronomic experiment.

This recipe comes from MasterChef Everyday, a collection of tasty dishes which have been placed in a realm ranging from relatively easy (baked apples) to particularly tricky (rabbit ballotine and offal sausage, offal toasts, parsnip puree, radishes, and mustard cream sauce). So, opting for something never cooked before but possible to cook up in a new kitchen yet to be tried and tested, I opted for the soufflé. I couldn’t get any pancetta (only the local shop was open), so I used bacon instead. All-in-all a touch tricky but very good – fine starter dish. I had mixture left over so popped it in the fridge and ate it on the next day. It didn’t rise quite so well on the second day, but rise it still did and just as tasty it was too! This recipe makes 6.

Softened unsalted butter for greasing	1 small white onion, finely chopped
75g fine white breadcrumbs	225g undyed smoked haddock
75g parmesan cheese, finely grated	50g pancetta (or bacon!)
300ml whole milk (semi-skimmed also fine)	2 tsp chopped chervil (I couldn’t get his)
2 sprigs of parsley	2 tsp chopped dill (or this, either)
1 bay leaf	Knob of unsalted butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper	40g plain flour
½ teaspoon of grated nutmeg	40g butter
Zest of ½ a lemon	4 large eggs, separated

Pre-heat the oven to 190ᵒc, pour water into a roasting tin to 2cm depth and butter the inside of 6 ramekins. Combine the breadcrumbs and parmesan and coat the insides of the ramekins – there’s plenty of mixture so you can have about 5mm or more of breadcrumbs and parmesan at the bottom of the ramekin. Pop in the fridge until needed.

Put the milk, parsley, bay leaf, pepper, nutmeg, lemon zest and onion into a wide pan. Bring to a gentle simmer and then lay the haddock in the milk. Cover with a lid and poach for 5-10 minutes. When the fish is ready, it’ll break apart easily. Set aside to cool a bit and then, removing skin and any bones, flake the fish apart with a fork.

Meanwhile, sauté the pancetta/bacon in butter for 5 minutes and then drain on kitchen paper.
Strain the milk for the poached fish through a sieve, discarding parsley and bay leaf but keeping the rest. Mix the fish, onion mix, pancetta, etc. and the chopped herbs (if used) together.

Make a roux with the butter and flour and then slowly add the milk, stirring as you go. Heat gently for 10 minutes to thicken up. Whisk in the egg yolks and then add the fish mixture, stirring it in. Season to taste.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks. Put a spoonful of the whites into the fish mix to loosen it, then fold in the remainder. Divide the mixture between the ramekins and smooth over the top. Place in the prepared roasting tin and cook for 15-20 minutes / until they’re golden on top. Serve immediately!

Today’s learning:
The soufflé business itself is fairly straight forward – just whipping up of eggs and folding in some tasty ingredients and popping into a buttered ramekin.  Try it with different mixes although the haddock infused milk is particularly good.

Recipe taken from: BBC Masterchef (2012) MasterChef Everyday. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited