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This week is meat week. You may be thinking that we've had meat weeks before, which is true, but this week we have been focussing particularly on steaks of various kinds: beef steaks (fillet, rib-eye), a cut from beef skirt which Hervé favours, and which was particularly delicious (it's a French thing), ostrich, and on. Various game birds were also thrown in for good measure (partridge, pigeon) and then there was a special appearance this morning from Jade, of whom more later, when we've cooked her. She's in the fridge at the moment.
Hervé spent a good few hours hacking around with a bull's chest cavity on Monday, carving out various attachments for us to use. On Tuesday Lizzie kind of threw the remaining ribs and backbone at me and said "Frank, just make some stock out of that will you?"
A word of advice at this point: always make sure you have a pan big enough to take the bones before you start roasting them to make stock. I learned the hard way, roasting them in the oven and only then wondering how I was going to submerge them in water. I ended up losing half a stone hacking them around before they would fit in the pan, and burning myself in the process - even man-mountain Butcher Graham gave up on me half way through.
On Friday of this week we have our "creative meat" assessment, which is a 3 course dinner of which one course has to feature meat. Not particularly challenging, the sort of thing you do every Sunday at home no doubt. However, I spent Tuesday evening calculating all the homework I have to do over the next 10 weeks or so, and it is frightening! We have the various assessments to prep for, our portfolio of 5 starters and 5 mains to plan, prepare and photograph, a business plan to put together (20-25 pages of write-up, plus profit and loss and cash flow forecasts), a food writing course submission, revision for our wines & spirits intermediate exam, and planning and organisation for our diploma lunch (have you had the email, would you like to come?), among the major tasks. It's a good job the football season is drawing to a close.
Today we cooked various meats: all those mentioned above plus corn-fed chicken and beef skirt were to hand. Lizzie had been banging on about using lettuce in ways other than salads, so I thought I'd give it a try, given that I am planning to do a Greek dish using lettuce in a casserole for Friday's assessment, and this was a good chance to suss things out.
We also did a pudding. Now I'm not a pudding person, as most of you will know. However my sticky toffee pudding was, to quote my partner Sam, "A Real Crowd Pleaser". So much so that not only were the two portions put out for assessment devoured in an instant (Ian, the boss, ate most of both portions), but when I brought the rest of the (large) dish to the table that disappeared very quickly also. You've got to remember here the amount of food that ends up on our average lunch table, and that people are generally groaning under the weight of calories. Yesterday Butcher Graham's chair collapsed when he attempted a last mouthful of coconut cake. Anyway, it was all eaten, and I am now officially the Sticky Toffee Pudding King.
Hervé spent a good few hours hacking around with a bull's chest cavity on Monday, carving out various attachments for us to use. On Tuesday Lizzie kind of threw the remaining ribs and backbone at me and said "Frank, just make some stock out of that will you?"
A word of advice at this point: always make sure you have a pan big enough to take the bones before you start roasting them to make stock. I learned the hard way, roasting them in the oven and only then wondering how I was going to submerge them in water. I ended up losing half a stone hacking them around before they would fit in the pan, and burning myself in the process - even man-mountain Butcher Graham gave up on me half way through.
On Friday of this week we have our "creative meat" assessment, which is a 3 course dinner of which one course has to feature meat. Not particularly challenging, the sort of thing you do every Sunday at home no doubt. However, I spent Tuesday evening calculating all the homework I have to do over the next 10 weeks or so, and it is frightening! We have the various assessments to prep for, our portfolio of 5 starters and 5 mains to plan, prepare and photograph, a business plan to put together (20-25 pages of write-up, plus profit and loss and cash flow forecasts), a food writing course submission, revision for our wines & spirits intermediate exam, and planning and organisation for our diploma lunch (have you had the email, would you like to come?), among the major tasks. It's a good job the football season is drawing to a close.
Today we cooked various meats: all those mentioned above plus corn-fed chicken and beef skirt were to hand. Lizzie had been banging on about using lettuce in ways other than salads, so I thought I'd give it a try, given that I am planning to do a Greek dish using lettuce in a casserole for Friday's assessment, and this was a good chance to suss things out.
We also did a pudding. Now I'm not a pudding person, as most of you will know. However my sticky toffee pudding was, to quote my partner Sam, "A Real Crowd Pleaser". So much so that not only were the two portions put out for assessment devoured in an instant (Ian, the boss, ate most of both portions), but when I brought the rest of the (large) dish to the table that disappeared very quickly also. You've got to remember here the amount of food that ends up on our average lunch table, and that people are generally groaning under the weight of calories. Yesterday Butcher Graham's chair collapsed when he attempted a last mouthful of coconut cake. Anyway, it was all eaten, and I am now officially the Sticky Toffee Pudding King.
TARRAGON CHICKEN WITH FENNEL AND LETTUCE RISOTTOThis dish is nice and simple, but tastes fresh and delicious. Try it.
Serves 1 (or 2 for light lunch)
1 chicken breast
fresh tarragon
butter
2-3 oz risotto rice
2 shallots
1 clove garlic
small piece fennel
fennel seeds
1/2 glass white wine
chicken (or veg) stock (about 1/2 pint)
1/2 cos lettuce, finely shredded
1 tbl parmesan, grated
salt and pepper
1. mash the butter (and a little salt if required) with the tarragon to make - you guessed it - tarragon butter.
2. Make a split in the chicken breast and stuff with tarragon butter. Rub a little tarragon butter on the outside of the chicken, sprinkle with tarragon leaves, salt and pepper and leave to rest in the fridge for a hour or so
3. Gently fry the finely chopped shallots, garlic and fennel in a little oil and butter. Do not brown.
4. Add fennel seeds for a few seconds, then rice, and stir until opaque (2 mins)
5. Add white wine (it should sizzle a little). Turn heat to low.
6. Gradually add stock, allowing each ladle to be absorbed, covered. Takes 30-40 minutes.
At this point you can stop if you are not ready to serve - just reheat the rice when required
7. Put a few cocktail sticks through the chicken to hold it together. Pan fry the chicken in hot butter and oil, until browned. Put in baking tray in medium oven, covered, for 15 minutes to finish.
8. When rice is al dente, remove from heat, stir in parmesan, lettuce and knobs of butter. Season.
9. Remove cocktail sticks from chicken, slice diagonally into (ideally) 5 pieces
10. Serve risotto with chicken on top, and an extra knob of tarragon butter to guarantee a heart attack (that's two heart attacks in two blogs!).
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