Bitterballen

I've just returned from a weekend in Rotterdam- and, as ever, I was keen to come back with some ideas for the blog. I don't think I've featured Dutch recipes before, so an extra reason to be curious about the cuisine.
Well, if you like your food crispy- and usually deep fried- then Holland is for you!
Fish and chips, kroketten- and bitterballen- seemed to be the order of the day.
I confess rather guiltily that I was taken with these crunchy treats- especially with a cold glass of beer and some strong mustard for dipping.

Back home, I searched out the recipe- and discovered a brilliant new way to use up leftovers, be it a bit of Sunday roast, some spag bol, corned beef, ham, cauliflower cheese...you name it, they can be made into delicious bitterballen in no time.

Bitterballen- the originals

To start, you need a roux sauce base- melt 1 tbsp of butter in a pan and add 1 and a half tbsp of plain flour. Mix together to cook out the flour over a low heat.

Mix the flour into the melted butter

Add just a splash of milk and plenty of salt and pepper. Your are aiming for a thick paste- with a really glue-like consistency. (A bit like the base for Welsh Rarebit)http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/welsh%20rarebit

Then- mix in 1-2  tbsp of your chosen filling. I suggest:

• leftover roast beef, shredded, with horseradish
• pulled pork with apple or BBQ sauce
• shredded Chinese duck
• corned beef or ham, finely chopped
• spring onions, grated cheese and mustard
• leftover veg with cheese or spring onion
• leftover  ragout or spaghetti sauce

I chose some leftover cauliflower and broccoli cheese, chopped it up quite small and mixed it in with the sauce.

Now turn the mixture out onto a chopping board and leave it to cool, until it can be handled.

Bitterballen 'dough' ready for coating

Line up 3 saucers- one with flour, one with beaten egg or milk and on with soft breadcrumbs or chapelure ( made from blitzed biscottes or crispbreads).

Flour, egg/milk and breadcrumbs at the ready

Break off walnut sized pieces of the 'dough' and coat them first in the flour, then the liquid and finally roll in the breadcrumbs.

Coat in breadcrumbs

Now, you can either fry your bitterballen in hot oil until crispy- which is the traditional way- or you can bake them in a lightly oiled baking tray at 180 degrees until golden brown.

Baked bitterballen

 They may spread a bit in the oven but can easily be reshaped with a spoon when you take them out to drain on kitchen paper.

Cauliflower Cheese Bitterballen

If you prefer, you can use leftover couscous as a coating, as I have done before on the blog with my Chicken Doris

http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=chicken+doris

You can mix it up too- to make a bittergarnituur- lots of different flavoured ballen and kroketten, for a party. 

  

Bittergarnituur

The sky ( or probably the fridge) is the limit.

Enjoy!

Week 35- Harvest Festival Recipes

We've ploughed the fields and scattered...well, I haven't personally, but good people have on my behalf...and now it's time to reap the harvest.

This really is the best time for fruit, veg, fish, shellfish, nuts and seeds. Take a look at your local farm shop or fishmongers- virtually everything you can think of is either coming to the end of its season, or coming into season. Hence the celebration in many cultures and countries of plenty from the land.

Traditionally, harvest festivals occur in the week following the Harvest Moon- whether that is Jewish sukkoth, Chinese Autumn Moon celebrations or any number of similar feasts and thanksgivings. This year the Harvest Moon was early- 18th September- so I'm a bit late with this blog but, a bit like Bonfire Night, here in Sussex we spread these things out over a period of a month or more.

Golden Vegetable Soup*

Chicken and rice Soup*

Spicy Pumpkin Soup*

Bloody Mary Soup*

Celeriac Soup with bacon*

Hot and Sour Soup*

Leek and Watercress Soup*

Miso Ramen Soup*

This week has been a tricky one for me, as I had my wisdom teeth out and have been existing on soup sucked through a straw for a few days now- but soup is a good thing at this time of year with so many vegetables to choose from. So it gave me a chance to re-visit many of the soups which have featured on the blog: spiced pumpkin soup*, french onion soup*, courgette and coconut* aubergine and white bean, golden vegetable*, chicken noodle*, miso ramen* and many others featured in these pix.

Chicken Noodle Soup*

Carrot and Cumin Soup*

Aubergine and White Bean Soup with croutons

Courgette, Pea and Mint

With soup, and with harvest, you need bread. I've already featured soda bread* and corn bread*- so now we let's have some focaccia- to soak up our soup.

Focaccia

(All recipes starred with * can be found in the cloud above or by using the Search option)

Soda bread

Corn bread

Focaccia is one of the easiest breads to make. I've flavoured mine with chopped fresh rosemary- but any herbs, olives, garlic etc go well.

Warm 250g bread flour for 1 minute in the microwave and add some salt, pepper and chopped rosemary. Mix in a tbsp of olive oil. Mix a sachet of yeast with 150ml warm water and then add to the flour. Mix in well with a knife and then turn out onto a work surface and knead well until smooth and elastic. Put in a warm place to rise. When it has doubled in size, turn out again and knead again. Then place it on an oiled baking sheet, make dimples in the surface with your fingers, spray with water and leave to prove again until it has re-doubled. Bake at 200 degrees for 25 minutes or so.

For main course, I have made stuffed marrow and/or courgettes. (These latter are getting quite large now and easily substituted for marrow if you prefer). Stuff either with beef ragout (leftover from lasagne or bolognaise earlier in the week perhaps) and slather with cheese sauce or make a cauliflower cheese (with or without bacon) and do the same.

Courgette stuffed with ragout

Topped with cheese sauce

For either recipe you will need a good cheese sauce- and this is simple to make yourself:

Melt 20g of butter in a saucepan, mix in a tablespoon of plain flour and stir quickly to absorb. Then splash in a cupful of milk and keep stirring over a low heat until it thickens. Add more milk, stirring all the time until you are happy with the consistency- a good coating sauce is needed, not too runny. If it goes lumpy, just whisk with an egg whisk until the lumps disappear.
Season well with salt, pepper and a teaspoon of mustard and then add 1-2 cups of grated cheese (mature Cheddar or Emmental). Stir to melt.

Slice your marrow or courgette in half lengthways and into smaller chunks if it's a real giant.

Steam for 15 minutes or microwave for 6 minutes and then scoop out the seeds (if it's a marrow) or the flesh (if it's a courgette) until you have a fillable trench. Keep the courgette flesh and use it for soup- as I did with the above pea, mint and courgette soup.

Fill your trenches with either beef ragout or steamed cauliflower (with fried bacon lardons if you want) and pour on the cheese sauce. Bake in a moderate (180 degree oven) until brown and bubbling. Lovely with garlic bread and salad.

Cauli cheese and bacon stuffed courgettes

Dessert is plum clafoutis- made with autumn plums.

Grease a pudding dish well with some butter and lay about 8 plums, stoned and halved in the base. Make a pancake batter from 50g of flour, 50g of caster sugar, 2 beaten eggs, a pinch of salt, 1 tbsp vegetable oil, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 275ml of milk. Pour it over the plums and finish with a dusting of brown sugar. Bake in a hot (200 degree oven) until risen and golden. Serve warm with custard, cream or ice cream. Equally good the next day cold for breakfast!

Plum clafoutis

So, a harvest menu to celebrate all that's good from the land: vegetable soups, bread,  stuffed vegetables and autumn fruit.

Happy Harvest Time!

Week 9- Sunday Lunch

The great Easter cookathon has begun- and kicked off in style with Easter Sunday lunch.

Although I love other cuisines- indeed this blog is testament to all the different recipes from around the world that I like to try- you can't beat a British Sunday lunch.

Cooking one is not a Herculean task- it is just simple fare cooked well- but I do love to let someone else
do it and go out every now and then for a pub roast : log fire crackling, rosy cheeks from wine or beer and hearty food. A pub Sunday roast is one of life's great pleasures.

Here are a few roasts I have known and loved:

Roast Turkey at the Pilot

Rolled Roast Belly of Pork at the Royal

Roast beef and yorkshire pud at The Bridge

But  for today, I am doing the cooking and we are having roast chicken.

Today's three course menu starts with an entree gourmand: just like the desserts gourmands that I often feature but with a savoury theme (seafood in this case), followed by roast chicken with all the trimmings and chocolate cake to finish.

For the starter, I laid out little tastes of different seafood entrees- a small prawn cocktail in sauce marie rose (ketchup, tomato sauce and a squeeze of lemon), a smoked salmon parcel ( filled with salmon mousse: 1 cup of smoked or flaked salmon, 1 cup of low fat cream cheese and a squeeze of lemon blitzed together) and blinis topped with creme fraiche and onuga caviar. (Click on the cloud at the top of this blog for the blini recipe from 2 weeks ago- these were made then and frozen. They reheat in a minute or two in a hot oven.)

entree gourmand

To roast chicken to perfection- I like to part-steam/part-roast mine. I place the bird in a casserole dish (glass is best), squeeze lemon juice over it, strategically place the squeezed lemon (in the cavity), drizzle over some olive oil, herbs and salt and pepper- then add a full glass of water to the dish. Pop on the lid and roast for 1- 1and a half hours at 170 degrees depending on the size of the chicken. The water makes the roast beautifully moist and produces a large quantity of jus for gravy- and the glass top ensures that the bird browns nicely in the oven. The chicken is cooked when a knife inserted into the thickest part of the thigh comes out with only clear juices (not pink) bubbling out of the hole.

Cauliflower cheese

Chicken ready for roasting

The secret to a successful Sunday roast is - gravy and vegetable accompaniments. We had cauliflower cheese, steamed leeks with spring greens, maple glazed parsnips, carrots and roast potatoes. (The parsnips are par boiled, then fried in butter and maple syrup and put in the oven to finish browning and crisping). For cauliflower cheese- lightly steam a head of cauliflower and break it into florets. Place in a gratin dish and pour over 500ml of bechamel sauce and 125g grated mature cheddar. Cook in the oven for 40 minutes alongside the roast chicken and the roast potatoes.

Maple glazed parsnips

Pudding has to be something chocolatey for Easter- so I opted for a chocolate cake. The only choc cake I am any good at is a dense French one not unlike a chocolate brownie (called a moelleux au chocolat)- but so delicious and simple:

You need
 200g of dark chocolate
150 g soft butter
100g sugar
50 g self raising flour
2 whole eggs and 2 egg whites

Beat the egg whites until just forming soft peaks, beat the butter with the sugar and then add the whole eggs one by one. Melt the chocolate in the microwave with a splash of water for 1 minute. Mix it into the eggs and butter, then add the flour. Carefully slide in the egg whites, folding them into the mixture rather than stirring them in. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake at 150 degrees for 25-30 minutes- crucially, until the top is firm but a cocktail stick inserted into the very centre still comes out with some gooey mixture on it. That way you have a chocolate cake with a squidgy centre which is the key to it success.

Straight out of the oven

Moelleux- ready to eat

A meal like this one generates loads of leftovers- I have half a chicken, some cauliflower cheese, vegetables of all sorts, gravy and half a chocolate cake to finish up.

With the chicken, leeks and gravy, I plan to make a Chow Phan (Chinese rice dish with chicken, spring onions and leeks, bacon, egg, mushroom and anything else I have to hand. Type it into the search box for the recipe).

Chow Phan

I also plan to use the carcass to make a chicken, noodle and vegetable soup for later in the week.

Noodle soup

With the leftover vegetables, I could make soup or bubble and squeak as you know I often do- but this time I am going to experiment with a vegetable crumble. If it works, I'll post it up on the blog with the recipe.

As for the chocolate cake- it will keep on being munched until the last few slices which I plan to chop and make part of chocolate and caramel ice cream sundaes. Photos will follow!

But for now, it's time to curl up with the Sunday papers, a cup of tea and nibble a little Easter egg from my edible table centre piece:

Don't look so sad little chick- I'll take the cocktail stick out later!