Category: Main Courses

Faggots

• 250g fresh pig’s liver
• 250g fatty pork scraps
• 1 fresh pig’s heart, split in half and rinsed
• 100g ham or bacon scraps
• 100g fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• Salt
• Freshly ground white pepper
• ½ tsp Mace
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp all spice
• a handful of chopped fresh parsley
• a few sage leaves, finely chopped
• small sprig of rosemary, finely chopped
• small chopped red chilli (or dried chilli)

• Caul fat or streaky bacon for wrapping (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4.
2. Roughly chop then coarsely mince all the meats and combine in a bowl.
3. Add the breadcrumbs, onion, herbs, spices and some salt and pepper and mix together thoroughly
4. Shape mixture into six balls.
5. Wrap each in a square of caul fat. Cut it large enough to overlap – it will bind on itself to hold the faggots together.
6. If you’re using streaky bacon, stretch each rasher with the back of a heavy knife, making them as long and as wide as possible (approximately two per faggot).
7. Flatten the balls slightly and place on a baking sheet or in an ovenproof dish into which they fit snugly and roast for 50 to 60 minutes, basting once or twice.

Fran’s ham

At Christmas, my sister-in-law, Fran always makes a honey glazed ham, and it’s fantastic. The cleverness is in the glaze.

So, here’s my best guess at something like it.

Ingredients

Honey- about 3 tablespoons (clear, runny)
brown sugar- about 3 tablespoons
English mustard- I used 3 teaspoons of dry powder
Worcestershire sauce-again, about 3 tablespoons
A handful of maraschino cherries
A can of pineapple rings

Hot Smoked Salmon

This is a tricky one to get right, and depending on the stove, and the pot you use, you may need to tinker with the recipe a little.

What you need.

Salmon steaks, 4 is a nice number
Oak, hickory or apple wood chips (sold in the BBQ section)
Brine (salty water)
Tin foil
A large stock pot, with a lid.

First thing. mix up a cold brine, with as much salt as you can dilute.

Leave the salmon in the brine for about an hour. No longer, or it’ll get too salty, and too dry.

Next, time for smoking. On the bottom of the stock pot, put some tin foil. on top of the tin foil, put a layer of wood chips. Put the pan on a high heat with the lid on. Eventually, it will start to smoke. This is good.

Make some long strips of foil, folding it over so that it’s a ribbon about the same width as the salmon (12 inches long, 3 inches wide). You’ll need one for each piece of salmon. Put the salmon on the middle of the foil and fold the rest up to make a handle.

Open the lid of the smoking pot, drop the salmon on top of the wood chips. You’ll probably be able to get four side by side.

Put the lid on quickly, other wise the house will smell of smoke for days.

Leave it in there for 8 minutes, then retrieve it. (This is where the foil handles come in useful.)

Serve immediately, with a hollandaise sauce, or salsa verde. It’s great as a starter or main.

Italian Beef Meatballs

500g Mince beef
3-4 slices smoked bacon, finely chopped or minced
1 slice of bread (soaked in water)
about 1cm x 1cm x 2cm chunk of parasan, grated
1/2 onion, grated
1 large clove of garlic, grated/minced
1/2 tsp celery salt
1 tblspn herbs – a mix of oregano, parsley, margarum

put it all in a bowl and mix with your hands. make sure everything is well mixed.
Once done, break into meatballs and either fry or roast. Add to a marinara or arabietta sauce and serve with pasta.

Moussaka

Serves 6. One of my mum’s favourite lamb dishes. I ate this a lot growing up! Seems like a Greek lasagne to me! Serve with a dressed garden salad.

1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
800g minced lamb
1 can tomatoes
2 bay leaves
2 tbl tomato purée
1 glass red wine
3 aubergines
1 tsp sugar
salt & peper
2tsp oregano
1/2tsp cinnamon

topping:
50g butter
50g plain flour
450ml milk
50g grated cheese
2 eggs
nutmeg

Fry the onion till translucent. Add the lamb and fry till brown. Add the garlic, wine, bay leaves, cinnamon & tomato and simmer for 20 minutes. add salt, pepper & oregano to taste.

Slice and fry the aubergine till softened.

for the sauce – make a roux with the flour & butter and slowly mix in the milk – bit by bit till you get a white sauce. Add the nutmeg and cheese and season to taste.

Once the sauce is thick and seasoned, remove from heat, and cool for 5 mins before beating in the 2 eggs.

To make the moussaka, layer the meat and aubergine in a lasagne pan. Spread the cheese sauce on top, and finish with grated nutmeg.

Bake for 50 minutes at 180°c until the sauce topping is fluffy and golden.

You can also add potato slices with or instead of the aubergine if you like.

Mum’s Pork Chops with BBQ sauce

4 Pork chops
1 small onion, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
1 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 rsp paprika
2 tsp tomato purée
1 tbl worcestershire sauce
1 tbl vinegar
2 tbl lemon juice

Roast chops until brown- 30 mins
fry veg, and add the other ingredients – pour over chops, with some water to loosen.roast for another 10 mins.

Poppy’s Cottage Pie

1 Large Onion
2-3 large carrots, diced.
500g Mince Beef
Worcestershire sauce
2 tbl tomato puree
1tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp white pepper
corn-flour to thicken
2-3 large potatoes (bakers, or something floury)

Fry 1 large onion, medium diced. (whilst frying onions, peel the potatoes.) once softened and browned,
Add 500g minced beef. keep the beef and onions moving whilst the beef cooks (it helps break up the bigger bits of beef). Once all cooked through, and browned a little, add enough water to nearly cover the beef and onion. Add the carrots.
Add 2 tablespoons of tomato puree 6-8 glugs of Worcestershire sauce (loads), 1 tsp white pepper,  1 tsp sugar, 1tsp salt.
Let it simmer for a few minutes, and taste for seasoning- add salt, sugar, worcestershire sauce or pasata to taste. Simmer for 15-30 minutes, until the carrots are well cooked and thicken with cornflour to make gravy.  (Add a little water when cooking if it looks like it’s getting too dry and sticky)
Boil and mash the potatoes
Make the pie, and brush with butter.
If the pie is still warm, then bake it in the hottest oven you can until the potato crisps
If making ahead, cook from cold at 180c for 30 mins

Pork Sausages

I’ve tried making these once, and it never really worked out. The pork I used was too lean, and the sausage were solid, and not overly nice. Use really fatty cuts like belly and shoulder.

Sausage casing, 2–3 metres
Free-range or organic pork shoulder, 500g, minced
Free-range or organic pork belly, 250g, minced
Fine dried breadcrumbs, 25g (optional)
Salt (start with 1 heaped teaspoon)
Sage leaves, 16
Black pepper
White pepper if you have some
Nutmeg or mace, a good grinding or 1/4 teaspoon
A little oil for frying

2 large bowls, wooden spoon, sharp knife, chopping board, teaspoon, frying pan, a wide-necked funnel (hardware shops sell cheap ones), something to act as a plunger to push the meat down the neck of the funnel (the handle of a rolling pin, perhaps), clean string, scissors, an assistant (sausage making is much easier and far more fun when there are two of you)

1. Put one of the large bowls in the sink and fill it with cold water. Drop the length of casing into it. Find one of the ends and hold it close under the cold tap. Turn the tap on a little. You’ll see the water run in and the skin will gradually swell as the water travels down, so it looks like a long, curly snake – an amazing sight! Keep running the water through the casing for a minute or two and then leave the casing to soak in the bowl of water while you make the sausage meat.
2. Put all the minced pork in the other large bowl. Add the breadcrumbs if you are using them (a small amount is good for the texture of the sausage), then add the salt and stir well with the wooden spoon.
3. Chop the sage leaves and add them to the mixture with some pepper and nutmeg or mace.
4. Before you start going into sausage production, make a little ‘cake’ of a couple of teaspoons of the sausage meat and fry it for a couple of minutes on each side until cooked through. Taste it for seasoning – do you need more herbs, more salt, more pepper?
5. Now to fill the sausages. Take the casing out of the water and slide your fingers down it to push out any water trapped inside. Find one end of the casing and draw it over the spout of the funnel. Gather up all the casing over the spout (rather like putting a legwarmer on over your foot), leaving a little bit of the casing overlapping the tip of the funnel.
6. Take a spoonful of the sausage meat and push it down through the neck of the funnel. When the meat appears in the tip of the casing, tie a piece of string around the bottom to pinch it closed (if you tie the casing closed before you put the meat in, you’ll get a big bubble of trapped air).
7. Take it in turns with your assistant to keep pushing the sausage meat through the funnel and into the casing, which will slide off the spout of the funnel as it fills up with meat. Try not to make the sausages too thick and fat or they’ll burst when you twist them into lengths. It’s difficult to make them really even at first and you’ll probably find that the end of your string of sausages is a bit more professional looking than the start.
8. When you’ve used up all the sausage meat, you’ll need to twist the filled casing into individual sausages – unless you’re going to cook the sausage in one big coil like a Cumberland sausage. Starting at the tied-up end, gently pinch the casing and twirl the sausage clockwise every so often, so that you get a classic ‘string of sausages’, like something out of a cartoon. Then find the middle of the string (roughly) and start twisting ‘opposite’ sausages into pairs (see the picture). There is a clever butcher’s way of twisting them into bunches of 3, but it’s too hard to explain!
9. When you get to the end, tie it up with string and snip off any remaining casing. Hang up the sausages somewhere cool and airy for a few hours and then either cook them straight away or, better still but you’ll need unbelievable patience, put them on the bottom shelf of the fridge overnight to let the flavour settle.
10. When you want to cook your sausages, heat a little oil in a frying pan over a low heat. Fry the sausages fairly gently, turning them every few minutes so that they brown all over without burning. They should cook gently for at least 15 minutes, depending on their thickness; cut one open to make sure they are cooked all the way through.

Potato & Sausage Bake

30 minutes preparation time
1 hour 5 minutes cooking
time
819 Kcal per portion
59.7g fat per portion of which
26.8g is saturated
4 servings
Baking potatoes 900g (2lb), peeled and cut into 1cm (%in) dice
Onions 2 large, peeled and halved, each half cut into three lengthways and the wedges fanned
Smoked pork sausage rings 2 x 227g, each one cut into thick diagonal slices
Butter 50g (2oz), melted Olive oil 2 tbsp
Mixed dried herbs
1-2 tsp
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Single cream 4 tbsp
Cheddar cheese 75g
(3oz), grated
Torn flat-leaved parsley
to garnish

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/ Gas 6. Put the potatoes into a large saucepan, cover with cold water and add a little salt. Bring to the boil and cook for 2 minutes. Pour into a colander and drain well.

Transfer the potatoes to a large baking dish, or small roasting tin, add the onions, sausage slices, butter, oil and herbs. Season lightly with salt and mix well. Cover with a lid or foil and bake for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove the baking dish or roasting tin from the oven and uncover it. Drizzle the cream over the potato mixture, season with freshly ground black pepper and then sprinkle with the cheese.

Increase the oven temperature to 220°C/425°F/Gas 7. Return the potato and sausage bake to the oven and continue cooking for a further 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown and the potatoes are cooked. Serve hot, sprinkled with parsley.