Mattthechef's Blog

I just had to post about this recipie because it’s really easy and makes people think you are a master chef when actually you can’t decide what to make for dinner and you don’t have much time. Everyone I know likes Thai food, here is how to make some.
The key to this dish is the sauce. The meat is irrelevant, it could be any meat, fish or even vegetable (if you like that sort of thing). All the flavour is in the sauce, for which you will need:

Dark soy sauce
Light soy sauce
Ginger
Chilli
Garlic
Thai fish sauce
Juice of one lime

Get a small cup or ramekin and pour in 1/3dark soy 1/3 light soy and 1/3 fish sauce. Add the lime juice, finely slice some ginger into thin strips (a lump about the size of the end of your thumb) and finely chop some garlic. Add all that to the cup. Get the chilli, either de-seed or don’t depending on how much heat you want, chop it up and stick it in the sauce. Stir it all together briefly and leave for a while to infuse.

For the sake of argument, boil some rice, cook a chicken breast and fry (or poach because it’s healthier) an egg. Serve the sliced chicken on the rice and the egg on the chicken. Drizzle the sauce around the rice, on the egg or wherever you like it… Eat… Enjoy.

Like I said before the flavour is in the sauce, you can even use it as a condiment for just about anything and it’s especially good for barbeques.

My wife told me that I was probably mad this weekend as I was embarking on cooking roast chicken on the hottest day of the year so far. This would probably have been true if I had been undertaking my normal roast procedures that require about three hours of hard labour. In this case I did not serve roast potatos or any complicated purees or anything like that and I would reccommend what follows to anyone (good thing too since I’m posting it on a public page on the internet).

Summer roast chicken:

Get a Chicken, the higher the quality the better. Leave the elastic band/string on the bird and then take half a lemon and stick it into the cavity of the chicken. Make sure that if you have bought a chicken with the Giblets in then you have removed them!
Now get some butter and mix with whatever flavourings you want. In my opinion this is dependant on the quality of the meat, if you have a fully organic corn fed uberchicken then that has all the flavour you need so just use butter. You need enough butter to cover the breasts of the chicken with a layer roughly 5mm thick. The hardest part is where you put this layer, it needs to be between the skin and the flesh of the breasts. You can gently peel the skin away from the breasts, starting at the cavity end. DO NOT use a knife for this or it could go horribly wrong in many ways. Once the butter is in the chicken, season the outside of the skin with salt and pepper… Don’t put it in the oven yet.

Next step is to get one large baking potato for each person eating. Cover a baking tray in a thin layer of salt and put the potatos on that (prick them if you wish but it’s not necessary). Now put the potatos and the chicken in a preheated oven at about 180 degrees celsius (don’t ask what gas mark that is, gas ovens are rubbish). DO NOT COVER THE CHICKEN, this is very important. The whole thing should take about an hour and a half to cook (depending on the size of the bird and the potatos).

All you need to do now is make the gravy and cook the veg. What veg you have is up to you so I won’t get involved there, the gravy is another matter. You will need about a pint of chicken stock ready to go when the bird comes out of the oven which should be 20 minutes before serving. Remove the chicken from your roasting tin and carefully tip it so that all the juice runs out of the cavity and into the tin, then remove the lemon half from the bird and place the chicken on a board to rest.

Get the roasting tin on the stove and heat, add the chicken stock and use a wooden spoon to combine the caremelised roasting juices with the stock, this takes about one and a half minutes. Now add all this liquid into a saucepan. You can thicken your gravy using several methods, cornflour, gravy powder or a mixture of butter and flour (in equal quantities) called “beurre manie”. Mix this into your sauce base with a whisk over a medium heat.

Final job before serving is to prepare the potato. Remove the potato flesh from the skins (careful not to burn yourself) into a bowl and add finely chopped spring onions with a little butter and salt and pepper. Use a fork to mix it all up. You’re not trying to properly mash the potato here, just crush it up and mix.

Now serve. If this isn’t really really tasty then to be honest, you’ve done it wrong.

Helpful hints.

Use a brush to periodically baste the skin of the chicken during roasting using the juices from the pan. You want it as crispy as possible.
When removing the flesh from the potatos, just cut them in half and squeeze them (you’ll need a cloth round your hand to avoid painful burns)
Allow the gravy to cool slightly before serving it as you can then skim a lot of the fat off the top.
Always recycle. The bones can be used to make stock once you’ve finished eating the meat and you will probably get enough chicken left over to make a tasty risotto later in the week!

There are quite a few people who have been waiting for me to write something on this subject and I felt that now was the time. In a previous job I used to cook burgers for people in the kitchen using nothing more than a two person size George Foreman grill. These were less than ideal conditions for cooking the perfect burger but the key is not what you use to cook the thing, it’s what you put in it prior to cooking. What follows is my “perfect” burger recipie and instructions for serving.

You will need:

Some beef mince. Don’t use lean steak mince, you need the fat content of normal mince to help stick the thing together. Only you know how much mince you want per person, remember that the burger will shrink slightly during cooking so allow for this when making the patties.
Egg. For two people you will need one small beaten egg. This binds the ingredients together and helps to create a slightly crispy outside.
Plain flour. You need about one heaped tablespoon of plain flour per person.
One pinch of salt per person.
One pinch of ground black pepper per person.
Half a beef oxo stock cube per person (this is the “secret” ingredient… The reason for this will be made clear later on)

Some people like to add Paprika and other spices to their burger mix. There is no real reason why you can’t do this but my preference is to have my beefburger tasting of just beef.

Add all the ingredients above to a bowl and mix them all up. Don’t be afraid to use your hands, in fact I urge you to use nothing else. It’s the easiest way and saves on the washing up. Once everything is completely mixed, leave to stand for about 30 minutes to allow the seasoning to infuse properly.
To make your patties you need to again use your hands but make sure they are cold. If you run your hands under the cold tap until it becomes uncomfortable then they should be the right temperature, the reason for this is that the burger mix won’t stick to a cold surface so you should have non-gunky hands once you’ve finished.

Having made the patties you can either grill, fry, barbeque or do whatever you want to them. The method doesn’t really matter but make sure that it’s a reasonably high temperature. If doing these on the BBQ then brush them with olive oil first to make sure they don’t stick and then keep them moving around to avoid leaving the best bits on the bbq. As the burgers cook, the combination of egg, flour and fat helps to create the crunchy outside. The beef stock cube also cooks on the outside and creates the almost smoky “flamegrilled” taste that you’ll get from a certain well known fast food emporium. You’ll know when the burger is cooked as the center should have about the same resistanceto the touch as your tongue.

When serving there are a few things to remember. Always lightly toast the bun you are going to serve the burger in, this prevents any liquids from soaking into the bread. Always add some kind of light dressing to the salad leaves inside the bun. I use just olive oil, salt and pepper for this. Finally if making a cheeseburger, make sure that the cheese has the opportunity to melt before serving and don’t cut it too thick.

As with any dish you might make, the key is balance of flavour. You must be able to taste the bread, the beef and the salad all together without one overpowering the other. When balanced properly, the flavours contained in a decent burger serve to intensify each other and create something greater than the sum of its parts so don’t try to add too many things inside the bun unless you either know exactly what you’re doing or you just want to pig out. Let’s face it, if you’re making yourself a burger in the first place then the latter is highly likely… As long as you can actually fit it in your mouth once you’ve finished building it, it’s allowed.

It is always said that fish is good for the brain. While this is essentially true I find the thing about cooking fish dishes that helps my brain the most is the mental exercise involved in doing something interesting with it.
I do not generally follow recipies set by other people unless I want to cook some classic dish that I have never attempted before and so I leave it to my imagination. Sadly after spending a day looking after the storm of destructive power that is a one year old boy, I find my imagination slightly hindered by general brainfail and this leaves me falling back on the standard tried and tested methods that I have stored away in the recesses of my memory. This isn’t to say however that these methods aren’t tasty, what follows are two of my tried and tested favourites.

Mackerel fillets with warm potato salad.

First you need a Mackerel for each person eating. If you have a tame fishmonger handy, get them to fillet the fish for you. If you don’t then trim the fins off with scissors and then place the fish flat on a board with the tail on the right (if you’re right handed). Cut into the fish just above the tail and use the backbone as a guide while you slice towards the gills to take the first fillet off. You need not gut the fish first, you can wash the fillets off after you’ve done. Once you’ve taken the first fillet, turn the fish over and repeat. You may need to use tweezers to remove smaller bones from the fillet after you’ve cut it off.

Now that’s done, heat up a non-stick pan with a little olive oil and butter in ready to fry the fish. Season the skin lightly with salt and place in the pan skin side down. Don’t turn the fish over while cooking, if you need to cook the top of the fillets, get a spoon and use that to get hot oil/butter mix over the fish. While you are frying the fish you should be boiling your potatos.
Once the fish is cooked (skin crispy and colour of the meat changed) take out of the pan and place on a kitchen towel to soak the fat off.

For the potato salad you can either use small salad potatos or small chunks of normal boiled potatos. Once they are cooked, add a couple of tablespoons of mayonaisse and half a teaspoon of mustard for every person eating. I haven’t provided any quantities for the potatos as only you know what an acceptable portion size is.
Chop up a couple of spring onions per person and add to your potato salad then mix in.

Place your potato salad on a plate and lay the fish fillets on top. Go and eat. You may want to vary the mustard quantities as my wife can’t stand this amount but I love it.

Next, Cod with cheesy mash and spicy tomato sauce.

This is pure comfort food, I love it.

Get some cod. I find it highly unlikely that anyone would buy an entire Cod so let’s just assume you have it ready portioned.
Take the portions of fish, season the skin again and cook using the same method as the recipie above. ALWAYS cook fish skin side down. While this is cooking, make your mashed potato (making mash properly is a whole different post) before you mash the mash you add the cheese. Use about a fistfull of grated mature cheddar per serving. When you mix it all up the finished article should be almost elastic, a similar consistency to half set glue.
The sauce is simple. Use passata or chopped tomatoes for the base, if using chopped tomatoes don’t forget to slightly reduce them in a pan to remove excess water and intensify the flavour. Next, add a teaspoon of tobasco per serving and season to taste. Don’t be afraid of giving the sauce a big kick as there is a lot of stodge in the potato for it to cut through.
Big scoop of mash on the plate, sauce round it and fish skin side up on top of the mash. You can add whatever vegetables you like to this but I would suggest broad beans or spinach.
The Cod in this recipie can be substituted for pretty much any white fish, trial and error are the best ways to find out what you prefer.

It’s been a long time since I last posted here so after a bout of small child induced insomnia I thought it was about time I start again.

Recent economic events have meant that many people are without the cash for ingredients that they used to have and therefore some things that were considered weekly or monthly necessities have been relegated to the “luxury” bracket. I find that decent Chicken breasts are such an item, 2 of these can cost up to £6 in some places which is ridiculous and not at all cost effective when you consider what is possible.
It is important that you have good sharp knives to attempt what I a writing about in this post. I believe that one of the absolute must-haves for any serious cook is a proper set of decent sharp knives, what make and types you get are up to you (I am not going to get involved in the which knife debate here) but I would suggest the most important three are:

A narrow bladed “multi-purpose” knife about 10cm blade
A much longer “cook’s knife”which should have a blade about 20cm long
A “filleting knife” which has a strange shaped and flexible blade

To avoid any confusion let’s assume you only have the multi-purpose knife available, it’s totally acceptable to use just that in the home kitchen. It’s not like Marco is going to magically appear and grief you about your knife skills.

So, you have £6. Do you buy 2 Chicken breasts which is going to provide you with one meal between two people or do you buy a whole Chicken for the same amount of money which can provide much more than that. I go for the whole bird every time, getting all the meat off the carcass is very quick and easy so here are the instructions:

1 ) Get a chopping board with plenty of room for the bird and prevent it from slipping around your work surface, best way to do this is to use a wet piece of kitchen roll under the board.
2 ) Get a couple of containers to place your jointed meat in.
3 ) Make sure your knife is sharp.
4 ) Place the bird on the board and remove all packaging, including the elastic/string that is holding the legs.
5 ) Start with the legs. Locate the “hip” joint for the first leg, it should take little force to pop that out.
6 ) Slice between leg and breast to seperate your first piece of meat. Now that the hip joint is popped out you can slice through that gap meaning you don’t need to cut any bone.
7 ) Repeat for the second leg.
8 ) Using a similar process, locate the “shoulder” joint between wing and breast, pop that out.
9 ) Slice the first wing away from the breast once again through the popped out joint.
10 ) Repeat for the second wing.
11 ) Locate the breast bone and slice in a straight line using the bone as a guide from back to front to seperate the first breast. Once you hit the wishbone, don’t try to cut through it, use it as a guide to now cut down towards where the wings were. You now need to slice the breast away from the ribs, this takes very little effort.
12 ) Repeat for the second breast.

You have now removed the meat from the Chicken. Do NOT throw away the carcass, we’re going to use that.

The leg portions can either be left as they are or you can make them into two joints each by seperating the thigh from the drumstick. Once again, pop the joint out of its socket and slice through. Now cut the “feet” part at the end of the drumsticks off. Keep those.
The wings should be cut up using a similar process that provides you with a mini-drumstick and another piece of meat. The third part of the wing is not good to eat but it is useful so this should be cut off and left with the rest of the carcass.
You should now have:

2 Large Chicken breasts
2 Chicken Drumsticks
4 Chicken wing portions
2 Chicken Thighs
some bones.

If there is still meat left on the carcass (if this is your first attempt there probably is) then remove that by whatever means are necessary and keep it, that’s something else you can have in a curry later providing you with yet another meal from the same bird.

Now you have the skeletal remains of a Chicken sat in front of you. Turn your oven on and heat up to about 200c, place the chicken carcass, wingtips, feet etc in a large (over 3l) oven proof saucepan and drizzle olive oil and liberally sprinkle salt and pepper on top of it. Don’t use the lid, just put the pan in the oven and roast for about 30 mins. Once that’s done, take the pan out and place on the hob. Add two quartered onions, some crushed garlic and about 2 tablespoons of salt. Pour 3l of boiling water over the bones and boil, allow this to reduce by 1/3 to 1/2 which should take an hour or so. Once that’s done allow it to cool and pour through a sieve into a jug. Now you have a really nice stock to use as a base for soups, risotto, gravy or anything else. Please note the ingredients for the stock are not set in stone, you can vary these to taste. If everybody made stock exactly the same then restaurants would be boring. In future, every recipie I post here will use “stock” which I will assume has been made in this way unless otherwise stated.

As for the rest of the Chicken, it’s up to you. There are so many things you can do and so many different techniques that it would mean a whole new blog to even attempt to cover all of them. I’ll post a few over the coming weeks and I’ll start with an awesome soup to use that stock.

(Nearly) everyone likes eggs for breakfast but there are so many vehicles for this humble food item that sometimes it’s difficult to choose. Currently my personal favourite has to be Kedgeree, this is a mix of curried rice and smoked haddock and the traditional method of preparation calls for hard boiled eggs to be quartered and added but I prefer to use poached eggs and rest two of them on top of the dish to finish it. My next favourite method for eggs has to be a variation on Eggs Benedict using smoked salmon instead of ham, I also use a quick, easy method for making the Hollandaise sauce which produces slightly less washing up than the traditional one.

Both of these recipes are the quick and easy versions so you can actually make them for breakfast (I am usually still asleep at this point so simple is good).

First, Kedgeree (for 2 people or 1 fat/hungry one).

For this you need:

Enough smoked haddock for however much you want to make (only you know what 1 portion looks like)
A tin of chopped tomatos
A largeish onion
Curry powder
1 clove of Garlic
half a chilli (preferably a weakish one)
Some cooked rice
Some butter
4 poached eggs (I’m not providing instructions on how to poach eggs here but try to ensure the yolks are still runny)

Method is as follows:
Grate the onion into a pan, chop the garlic and crush under the knife then add as well. Chop the half chilli and add curry powder to the mix.
Now put the butter in the pan, turn up the heat and sweat it all off until the house smells of curry.
Add the chopped tomatos and stir in, you now need to leave the heat up high to reduce the liquid as there is a lot of water in those tins that you don’t want. Once you’ve reduced the overall volume by about a third, flake the fish into the mixture and warm through after reducing the heat.
Add the rice and stir together.
Once this is done, serve in bowls and place the 2 eggs on the top of each serving.

Eggs Benedict? I’m sure this has another name if you don’t use ham but I don’t know it.

For this you need:

1 breakfast muffin
2 poached eggs and 2 egg yolks
some butter (a lump about the same size as a large egg in its shell)
2 tsp lemon juice
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
As much smoked salmon as you feel comfortable eating in one serving

First add the egg yolks, butter, salt, pepper and lemon juice into a saucepan and then put on the lowest heat you can have. Whisk constantly.
IMPORTANT at no point should you stop whisking. If this goes wrong you end up with lemony scrambled eggs which is not what you’re after.
Toast the muffin halves and butter them. Place on a plate for each person and then add the salmon on top of them.
Place a poached egg on each muffin half (1 each)
Keep whisking the sauce.
You know when the sauce is done when it starts to thicken slightly. You should end up with something the consistency of double cream and a nice yellow colour. The longer the yolks cook over that low heat the thicker the sauce gets so be careful. Once the sauce is done (usually takes around 5-10 minutes) pour over the eggs and serve, preferably with champagne or Bucks Fizz.

As I have stated earlier, these recipes are the quick and easy labour saving versions. The last thing you want at breakfast time is a lot of work and processes you can’t handle when half asleep so I’ve tried to keep it simple.
If anyone wants more complicated and “correct” versions then please don’t hesitate to ask but then again, why would you? These taste awesome.