Saturday 8 January 2011

Steak au Poivre

Two rump steaks from Fellers
One tablespoon of black pepper
A cup full of double cream
A large splash of brandy

Grind peppers with a mortar and pestle.
Put ground peppers on a plate and lay steaks in it.
Mop up all pepper with the meat.

Bring 50g of butter to browning in a frying pan.
Add peppered steaks.
Fry for 5 minutes.
Remove steaks from pan.
Add cream.
Add a teaspoon full of flour.
Stir continuously (next time get help with vegetables at this point).
Add brandy (recipe said add before cream, but this made no difference).
Keep stirring.
At this point we diverged:
  1. Add steaks back
  2. Place sauce as dollup on plate
Both options worked for respective diners :)


Serve with boiled potatoes, broccoli, deep fried parsnip chips.

Turkey and Ham Pie and Brawn

Turkey leftovers from Christmas, mixed brown and white, 825g.

Two ham hocks from David John in the Covered Market
Eight fresh Bay Leaves
Peel of one Orange
Two teaspoon fulls South Indian whole Black Pepper corns (from Green Winter Fair)
Three Onions
Five Shallots

Separate the hocks into meat and other.
Add pepper corns, orange peel and bay leaves to ham in a pan, add one litre water.
Bring to the boil and simmer for fifteen minutes, this is intended to remove the excess salt.

Drain liquor, allow meat to cool.
I then added more, cold, water to meat and left to stand for an hour, in the hope of removing more salt. Drained salty water. Meat now weighed 755g.

Fry onions, lightly, with shallots.
Allow to cool and place in sealed container.
This large amount of turkey and ham will form the basis for a number of meals.

Turkey, Ham and Mushroom Potatoe pie


Slice eight medium, open cup, dark mushrooms.
Fry in wok and add two tablespoons of milk.
Add four spoon fulls of Turkey and Ham base.
Bring milk to boil.


Slice eight new potatoes and cook in a microwave, with a little butter.
Place pie mix into pie dish.
Flatten and then arrange potatoe slices on top, ensure that any melted butter is added to dish.
Cook in oven at 150°C for 30 minutes.

Brawn

The other from the hocks consists of fat, jelly, bone and skin, with a little meat. It now has broth from meat desalination. We will see if this ruins it. I am thinking, at this point, of adding a raw potato next time, or giving the hock a quick boil when whole to remove some of the salt.

The boil for two hours.
Next time remove the orange peel after half an hour.
Remove bay leaves, as many peppers as you can be bothered with, as much of the orange peel as you can find.
Poor into bowl with a plate on top, place outside to cool.
Next time Do not remove orange peel it is a welcome addition. Boil whole hocks in two changes of fresh water before anything else.

Verdict Whilst a bit too salt this worked very well, will try again.