Recipe: Autumnal Sausage & Apple Pie

Earlier in the autumn, I was feeling particular autumnal, and was looking for something apt to cook one weekend and for me, sausages and apples are pretty autumnal.

So I decided to put them in to a pie. Pies are one of those things, much like casseroles, that are pretty easy to do. They are largely formulaic to the point of being boring (if it wasn't for the fact that they taste great that is!) - that’s not to say they cant be experimental, or wacky, more that if you have a solid ingredient base, then you really can't go wrong. In this case, sausage and apple being a tried and tested pairing, it was just a case of going through the motions and slapping it in some pastry.

Once again, I didn't make the pastry myself - its something I neither have the time, or any real great inclination to get involved with. Shop bought ready-to-roll works fine for my pies, and I just let the filling do all the hard work.

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Anyway, as I said, its a pretty formulaic thing - Start with a savoury base using butter and some aromatics (in this case, as often, leeks), then add some flour and a bit of flavour (whether it be tomato purée for a red meat casserole, or something else - this time wholegrain mustard, because I love mustard and pork), add the primary filling then cover with stock (or other flavoured liquids such as alcohol - even water will work though), reduce and then bang into a pie!

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Ingredients

• 10-12 sausages (judging by the size of your pie)
• 1 large apple (I have cooked this twice - the first time I used two apples, and it was just a touch too apple-y for my liking, so reduced the second time around), roughly chopped
• 1 large tablespoon butter
• 1-2 tablespoons of plain flour
• 1 large leek
• Pastry (make your own or shop bought)
• 150ml cider (I do this by eye - I bought a normal sized bottle of cider, but guess it was something like 100-150 ml I added)
• 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard 
• 200ml stock (vegetable, chicken, whatever. Cubes are fine)

Method

Pre-heat the oven according to your pastry - the filling will be cooked by the time it hits the oven, so we are just heating and cooking the pastry.

1.  Cook the sausages - either in the oven or grill, pan
2. Whilst cooking, melt the butter in a heavy frying pan and cook the leeks with a generous pinch of salt until soft and starting to brown
3. Add the chopped apples and heat for a few minutes
4. Add the plain flour and stir through to bring together the juices
5. Add the mustard and stir through to form a paste with the leeks
6. Once the sausages are cooked, add them and any juices to the pan and stir through to mix together
7. add the stock and the cider to the pan, and simmer gently on a medium heat to reduce - once reduced to a pie like thickness (well, a bit less viscous actually, as it will continue to thicken whilst cooling) take off the heat and leave to cool
8. Put together with your pastry and slap in the oven to cook. Serve with other vegetables, mash, whatever..

Beef rib casserole

Having discovered the value of beef short ribs, whilst shopping for the weekend roast I took the opportunity to grab some more from the supermarket meat counter.  The meat is cheap and its marbling makes it fantastic for slow cooking - this dish took less than 10 minutes prep time and then sat in the oven all afternoon and turned out pretty great.

(If anyone can teach me how to take a good photo of what is essentially a mush of vegetable casserole and a lump of meat then please do!)

If I'm honest, it was a fairly random, BBQ inspired casserole, whilst distinctly trying not to taste like BBQ.  What I mean is, the ingredients are really just a combination of my usual BBQ ratatouille and short beef ribs, but no BBQ rubs/spices/flavours.  As you would expect with the level of marbling in the meat, after slow cooking the meat fell off the bone and was incredibly soft - I could literally cut the meat with a spoon.

Ingredients

• 1 beef short rib (just under 500g, served two people)
• 1 tablespoon of mustard
• 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
• 250ml stock (vegetable/beef/whatever)
• 1 onion
• 1 aubergine
• 1 courgette
• 1 clove of garlic
• butter for cooking onions
• salt and pepper for seasoning
• 400gram tin of chopped tomatoes

Method

1.  Chop the onion and garlic and cook over a medium heat in the butter, untill soft (5 mins or so)
   
   
2. Whilst the onions are cooking, chop the aubergine and set aside (on a plate/kitchen towel etc) and salt liberally - this is just to draw out the moisture and bitterness - we will wash this off later
   
   
3. Next chop up the courgette
   
   
4. Once the onions are soft, stir in the tomato puree and mustard and cook for another minute or two
   
   
5. Now quickly throw the rib into the pan and brown it
   
   
6. Wash the aubergines in cold water, layer them in the bottom of a casserole dish and then sit the rib(s) on top
   
   
7. add the chopped tomatoes to the pan with the onions etc, mix through to de-glaze the pan, then pour the tomato mix over the rib in the casserole dish
   
   
8. Cover and cook in the oven at 140 degrees for 4 hours or so, serve with mash, crusty bread, or whatever!

BBQ beef short ribs

We recently celebrated older boy's birthday, and as part of celebrations we had both sets of grandparents over for another BBQ.  Once again, another opportunity to experiment, so this time I included beef short ribs - I'm not sure that I had ever tried beef ribs before, but having heard some good things I thought they could be good. The meat is great value - Waitrose sells it on their fresh meat counter at just under £7 a kilo, and you get a lot more meat on the rib than you do with normal pork ribs.


I followed a fairly simple, time-honoured BBQ pattern - dry-rub + slow cooking. The dry-rub wasn't anything special, just a few simple spices, but it worked well.

Ingredients

• American style yellow mustard (probably a tablespoon or two, but its just got to be enough to coat the ribs)
• 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt (sea salt or something similar)
• 2-3 short beef ribs (obviously cook more if you want more! but you might need more dry rub if you do)
• salt and pepper 

Method

1. Mix the sugar & spices in a bowl until combined
   
   
2. Coat the ribs in the yellow mustard, it doesn't have to be thick, just make sure it is coated evenly across
   
   
3. apply the dry rub to the ribs - rub/pat to apply evenly
   
   
4. I cheated the slow cooking, by pre-cooking them in the oven - I popped them in the oven at 110 degrees centigrade, for about 3 hours or so.  I sat the ribs on a rack sitting in the roasting tray, adding water to the roasting tray (not so much that it touches the meat) and then place a foil tent over the top of the ribs
   
   
5. When I was then BBQ-ing, I moved the ribs to the cooler side of the grill (indirect heat) and cooked them there with the rest of the food for about an hour or so (I had smoking chips on the BBQ too)

Sticky BBQ chicken

Last weekend was Fathers Day here in the UK, so we decided to have a family BBQ (reasoning I like to BBQ, I had a decent box of craft beers to drink and it was warm weather)

I did a few things, a standard pulled pork & coleslaw, burgers (I always enjoy burgers, and Tescos have started selling brioche burger buns again, so was a no brainer), chicken legs with oregano/sumac (this is SeriousEats fault - I happened to read a recipe they had about grilled chicken with za'atar which was basically sumac plus some other herbs, so when I then saw the sumac in the supermarket I impulse bought some) - but to be honest, it was a little bit of a let down.  The pork wasn't as good as my previous outing (I'm putting it down to a worse piece of meat) and the chicken was a little overdone. However, the one highlight was a BBQ chicken experiment.

I didn't really put any thought into it, I just thought I would slap some dry rub and BBQ sauce on some chicken legs and leave it at that - and they came out better than I expected.

They had a good contrast of the standard sweet/smoky BBQ flavour you would expect, plus a little heat and the deep red, sticky effect you have with good BBQ wings (these were legs though).


There are two elements, to it - one is a basic update to my last BBQ sauce (although either would work) and my latest dry-rub, which is pretty basic, but can be used on pretty much anything (as I have said before, stick it on potato wedges etc). The key is to apply the rub to the chicken before grilling, then 10 minutes or so before they are ready to come off, liberally brush the legs with the BBQ sauce and grill further - This will thicken up the sauce and give it the sticky consistency, but applying the sauce at the start of cooking will just result in burnt sauce.

BBQ Sauce - Ingredients

• 2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons american mustard (like Frenchs)
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• couple dashes hot sauce (something like Franks Hot Sauce)
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 3 tablespoon cider vinegar
• salt & pepper seasoning
• 250ml ketchup

1. Again, really simple - stick all the ingredients except the ketchup into a saucepan and mix and then bring to a simmer
   
   
2. Add the ketchup and a tablespoon or two of water and simmer for 30minutes or so - or until the sauce is reduced to a BBQ sauce like consistency

Dry rub

Dry rubs are really simple, just get all the ingredients and mix them together. They can happily last a few months in a jar so will last the summer - although this quantity is reduced - this probably covers a medium piece of pulled pork (1-2 kg) and 8 chicken legs or so.

• 1 1/2 tablespoon coarse sea salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 tablespoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/2 tablespoon chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional - adjust according to how hot you like)

Recipe: Chicken nuggets & beans

Having moved on from perfecting my grilled cheese, I have a new food obsession: Southern fried chicken.  To be honest, it is something I have thought about for a while, but have always skipped making it on account of not having a deep fat fryer (and generally not wanting to deep fry things).  However, last weekend, I was planning on making some baked beans with my older boy and suddenly thought maybe we should also make some chicken nuggets. I then thought, why not make chicken nuggets but trying to get a similar taste/texture to southern fried chicken?

Now, there are two elements to the experiment:

1. Making up a recipe for the batter/seasoning
   
   
2. Finding the best non-deep frying alternatives

Plus, there's the baked beans.

KFC style chicken nuggets

I guess I should clarify that the title is probably more aspirational (kind of anyway, really we are aiming for much better than KFC, plus healthier) - also, as mentioned above, we were free-styling with this one and will be a work in progress)

Ingredients

• 400 grams chopped chicken breast
• 300ml buttermilk
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal/polenta (can be swapped for flour)
• 1 teaspoon mixed italian herbs (can be swapped for just one tablespoon of dried oregano, basil & thyme)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• vegetable oil for frying (if you are frying)

Method

1. Leave the chicken to rest in a bowl with the buttermilk - I put mine in the buttermilk first thing in the morning before cooking in the evening, but if you don't have time then just stick them in the buttermilk whilst you prepare the rest of the ingredients
   
   
2. Mix the dry ingredients together in another bowl, add a tablespoon of the buttermilk to the dry mix and stir through - this is to achieve that nobbly type texture that you often get on KFC (see the picture above of the coated chicken), and I got this tip from Kenji at the FoodLab (although also apparently a known technique) - the alternative technique suggested to achieve this effect is to double-dip the chicken (buttermilk, roll in batter, dip in buttermilk then back in the batter).
   
   
3. Cook the chicken - I tried both shallow frying and oven baking:
   
   Shallow fry - This was the first approach I tried, the problem was I was too conservative with the oil, and the chicken was sticking to the pan a bit, which resulted in a lot of the batter falling off every time I had to scrape it up to turn over.  I think the recommended amount is about one inch of oil.  The chicken tasted good, and the batter had a good oil-y texture, but  still seemed too fried for me.
   
   Oven bake - The second half of the batch went on a very lightly oiled baking tray in the oven, at about 180degrees (fan oven), cook until the chicken is cooked (I think it was probably about 20 minutes for me).  The batter remained intact, and the seasoned batter tasted good, but it wasn't the texture (or appearance) of fried chicken.
   

It largely tasted pretty good, and went down well, but in my opinion it needs a few tweaks:

• It tasted too oregano-y - I will keep some Italian herbs in the mix, but probably reduce it
• There wasn't enough black pepper.  Pepper is a big part of normal KFC type seasoning, and whilst I didn't want to replicate it completely, it needed more

My next experiment will be an updated batter, used with chicken legs but cooked on the BBQ - The BBQ seems to be pretty good at keeping chicken legs juicy, which I am hoping will provide more moisture to the batter without needing a tonne of oil.

Baked beans 

In our house, we actually call these "tomato beans" - because if you are familiar with "Reasons my kid is crying", we feared that if we called them baked beans, and then the boys ate them, they may take a grievance with the fact that they aren't actually the baked beans they might expect.

And honestly, there isn't really any recipe/reason to this one. Its just tomatoes and beans, then anything we decide to throw in.  But here is more or less what we put in the last batch (which went down well, including with my wife - which made me think they would actually go down well as a side at our next BBQ):

Ingredients

• 400 gram tin of tomatoes (preferably whole, but doesn't matter)
• 400 gram tin haricot beans
• punch of sugar
• smoked sweet paprika
• dash of balsamic vinegar
• tomato purée
• squirt tomato ketchup (optional - this is just for fun)
• any other spices/herbs you want

Method

1. First step is what we call "messy hands" - jam the tomatoes into a bowl and squash them all up (this is why we use whole tomatoes - its more fun for the boy to squash them)
   
   
2. Add the rest of the ingredients - this is a fun one to cook just because its all done by taste really, and the boy gets to taste the ingredients as we add them in and taste the work in progress as we go
   
   
3. Purée the tomato sauce in a blender/food processor
   
   
4. Add the tomato and beans to a pan, simmer on the hob until heated through

Recipe: Barbecue pulled pork

We have now had two fairly warm/dry-ish weekends on the bounce which is enough for me to declare it BBQ season!  I decided to kick off with some pulled pork - which requires minimal fuss or BBQ maintenance, and mostly just falls back on slow cooking.

It turned out really well - better than my last pulled pork (which was still a big hit at the bbq), and people seemed to enjoy it.

The BBQ sauce

(my coleslaw/pulled pork/bbq sauce sandwich made with leftovers today!) 

I decided not to be too wild with the sauce and just create a simple sweet/smokey ketchup based sauce for the pork - it only takes 10 minutes and is super simple (plus, it can actually be kept in the fridge for a while if you make more of it - this recipe is basically just the amount needed for this amount of pork)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon honey
• couple dashes worcestshire sauce
• couple dashes hot sauce (something like Franks Hot Sauce)
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/ teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• salt & pepper seasoning
• 250ml ketchup

Method

1. Stick all the ingredients except the ketchup in a saucepan, stir together over a medium heat
2. It should fairly quickly become a dark, tar-like substance (sounds delicious right?), once combined stir in the ketchup and heat further. It should probably be a reasonable consistency after about 10 minutes simmering, but if not then just reduce until it hits your desired thickness
3. Transfer to a bowl/jar/bottle for serving

The Pork

It was actually a massive piece of pork that I ended up cooking - having fed 4 people for dinner and lunch, plus with about a third left over.  For the rub, I just used the end of a previous batch (see recipe here) - which is good timing as it means I will be creating a new rub pretty soon.  For reasons of convenience and time, I cheated on the cooking and did the bulk of the work in the oven.

Ingredients

• A decent piece of pork shoulder - the piece I had was easily 1.5kg. If you have a butcher or decent meat counter at your local supermarket you can just tell them how many you are cooking for and they should be able to advise
• Some dry rub (see here for the one I used) - enough to liberally season the pork - I probably had about 5 heaped tablespoons (going by eye)
• A barbecue with a lid 
• Smoking chips (optional)

Method

1. Liberally season the pork with the dry rub and pat on with your fingertips
   
   
2. Sit the pork in a roasting tray - ideally sitting on a rack if possible so not sitting directly on the base of the tin
   
   
3. Add cold water to the tin to about 1cm deep (again, if using the rack, fill so the water doesn't reach the pork), then cover the tin with a foil tent
   
   
4. Heat the oven to 110 degrees centigrade (for a fan oven - adjust accordingly for your own oven, but probably adding around 20 degrees for non fan) and put the pork in
   
   
5. Cook in the oven for 4+ hours (depending on your time and size of the pork) - I cooked mine in the oven for about 6 hours
   
   
6. As you are approaching time to remove the pork from the oven, start the barbecue. Once flames have simmered own and the coals are white hot, but the pork on the barbecue and cook indirectly (e.g. have the hot coals on one side of the barbecue and place the pork on the other side so not directly over the coals
   
   
7. Add your smoking chips if using, and close the barbecue - leave to cook for at least an hour (I left mine on the barbecue for more like 3 hours), replenishing smoking chips appropriately
   
   
8. Remove from barbecue and fork the pork to serve (making sure it is cooked properly of course!)

Birthday cake

It was my wife's birthday recently, so I had to go on the hunt for a good cake recipe. It's fairly un-familiar ground for me, normally when looking for a recipe or technique there are one or two sites that I would be my de-facto go-to sites, but I don't really have that baseline for cake recipes.

My not-very-inspired googling lead to this site:  The best chocolate cake recipe ever and failing to find anything else that was convincing enough I used this.  One other plus of the recipe is that it is measured in cups - which is much more child friendly - with digital scales its far too easy to get precious about precise figures, but its much easier to let a 3 year old just fill up some cups and not worry than to get them to read the scales!

The cake was fine. Wife was happy that it tasted good and was very moist, but my conclusion is that I'm not really a fan of chocolate cake. I mean, of course I like brownies, and sticky fudgey goo that resembles a cake, but chocolate-y sponge-y type cakes just don't do it for me.

I just used the sponge recipe, and only made one tier and then used a chocolate icing recipe from Peggy Porschen - which for me was the highlight. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure that any recipe that is made up of cream, cream cheese, sugar, chocolate and butter could be anything but amazing.  The original was taken from her Boutique Baking - I amended the ingredients for convenience (enough to easily cover a cake)

Ingredients

• 225 grams sifted icing sugar
• 100 grams unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 70ml whipping cream
• 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
• 80 grams choc chunks
• 180 grams cream cheese (this is more than needed, but I just jammed in the whole tub of phillidelphia)

Method

1.  Heat the cream on a medium heat, once it brings to simmer take it off the heat and pour it over the choc chunks and caster sugar in a bowl. Mix together until smoothe and glossy. Set aside to set at room temperature.
   
   
2. In another bowl, whisk the cream cheese until light and creamy
   
   
3. In a final bowl add the icing sugar, butter and salt - cream until light and fluffy
   
   
4. Once the choc mix has set, probably only 10 minutes or so - I didn't have to wait around whilst doing the other bits - add a third of it into the cream cheese and mix through
   
   
5. Next, add the remaining choc mix to the buttercream, mixing as you go. Once fully mixed jam in the choc-cheese mix and combine again.