A simple recipe this week, perfect for summer evenings. Wild garlic leaf is in season, and my wife had made a batch of her excellent wild garlic leaf pesto sauce. Smokey bacon is a perfect match for it, so I cooked up some bacon wrapped stuff chicken breast with wild garlic leaf pesto pasta to enjoy in the warm summer sun.
I hosted an al fresco lunch event for my work colleagues a couple of weeks ago. We are sadly all going through a redundancy period, so to lift spirits I prayed for good weather and cooked up a few classic dishes, including some tasty sticky tamarind baby back ribs.
Lamb shoulder shanks? That was a new one on me, having roasted lamb shanks for numerous dinners in the past. Combined with spicy chorizo and textured pinto beans, and cooked low and slow to extract the rich flavours, this made for a stunning meal on a sunny evening.
It’s the second birthday of The Cook’s Digest! As our Vietnam adventures were the inspiration for becoming immersed in culinary pursuits, it seemed appropriate to cook a celebratory meal using classic Vietnamese ingredients. And thus the Vietnamese pork and lemongrass burger was created, a decidedly different take on the classic burger.
Spurred on by the awesome huckleberry glazed roast mutton, I made another glazed roast this week with apricot preserve glazed pork. The dish has sweetness, with a hint of sour. It was remarkably tasty, and something we’ll be trying again very soon.
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We’d had roast mutton a month ago for the first time, and really enjoyed it. The meat had a texture and flavour that I thought would work with a sweet glaze. We had some huckleberry syrup and jam … so voila, a quick sauce was concocted to make a delicious mutton leg with huckleberry glaze.
Sometimes a Christmas gift can be forgotten. In this case, it was Indian spice and chutney, a gift from my wife … oops. On discovering it the pantry, I made Indian spiced chicken wings a go. It turned out to be a delicious combination, so I cooked it again with chicken thighs.
We’ve had roast leg of lamb … oh, so many times I couldn’t count. Mutton however, was something on the “not tried this” list. Armed with a good quality leg of mutton and some sage advice from a recipe book, I sailed into uncharted waters and roasted my first mutton joint. Delicious. I can safely say it won’t be the last.
Pork spare ribs are tasty and fun, but sometimes I like ribs with a little more meat on them. This is where pork breast ribs come in … pork belly on a stick without the skin and fat layer. Slow cooked, these are tender, juicy and utterly delicious.
This dish came from exploring the depths of our larder in search of a winter warming meal and combining a bunch of stuff to make something with Moroccan flavours and vaguely themed on a cassoulet. Whilst being accurate, that wouldn’t have made a snappy recipe title.
So we called it Moroccan Cassoulet instead, simple and descriptive. Very flavoursome, and perfect for a cold winter night.
I’ve been working in Switzerland for most of this week, and whilst it’s been a lot of fun and hard work combined, very little time to do anything constructive with a new recipe. So instead, a simple lunch of ultra crispy chicken legs.
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I’ve garnered a wealth of bread-making knowledge from many sources, the most influential being Dan Lepard and Ken Forkish. I decided to combine a Lepard recipe and Forkish technique to bake one of the best breads so far – the sour cream loaf. It has a delicious, tangy faux sourdough flavour and makes the most amazing toast.
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