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January is a time for Winter Warmers.

Post-Christmas and cold weather equals a time for hearty, comforting meals.  

This week we will be making – Sausage ragù with parsley dumplings

Just perfect for cold days when you need something warm and comforting, our meaty sausage and fennel ragù will be topped with light, fluffy dumplings made with natural yogurt instead of suet, making them wonderfully light.

Add bit about pork and fennel…

Cooks love pairing fennel with pork and sausage.   The herb in all of its forms is also a popular ingredient in Italy.   Fennel is a vital component to this dish, every part of it is edible, from the bulb to the flowers, and it can be eaten raw or cooked. Though the stalks and leaves are edible, fennel recipes most often call for just the bulb. When raw, it has a crisp texture similar to celery and a fresh liquorice flavour, braised fennel has a mellow orange aniseed flavour, is wonderful alongside the sweetness of pork/sausage.

Skills used include:

Weighing, measuring, slicing, chopping, sweating vegetables, squeezing, pan frying, reducing, mixing/combining, shaping into balls, boiling/simmering.

See you Saturday Junior Chefs!

This week we will be making – Pan-fried Pheasant Breast with Parsnip Puree, Charred Brussels, Pickled Blackberries and a Parkin Crumb

Let the festive cooking begin!

Wow I love this Pan-fried Pheasant Breast recipe it delivers a dish laced with detailed touches and packed with festive flavour.  Christmas is really so much about flavours we associate with this time of year. Ingredients such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, orange and winter berries can be easily introduced into a recipe to infuse it with the flavour of Christmas. The combination of game, parsnips, sprouts and tangy quick pickled blackberries with cinnamon, star anise and the ginger parkin crumb adds both texture and Christmas spice. Berries become beautiful jewels in any dish and the simple charm of Brussel sprouts treated right can give make the humble brassicas both delicious and add vibrant colour to a dish.

This also coincides nicely with this week being Great British Game Week (22 to 28 November). Game meat is delicious, healthy and wonderfully British, the aim to celebrate and encourage people to try Game meat and offer new and exciting ways to eat it.

Pheasant season in the UK begins on the first of October and ends the first of February. Once the birds have been hung for at least three days they make a fine meal, particularly when combined with seasonal produce and winter flavours. Young pheasants are wonderful roasted and make a good alternative to recipes with chicken or turkey for a stronger gamier taste. Pheasant has more protein, less fat, and less cholesterol than chicken, turkey, duck, and beef. Note cooked game meats can be pink even when the meat has reached a safe internal temperature. Pheasant breasts only need a few minutes in a pan so not to overcook them. We will marinate ours then pan fry for 2–3 minutes on each side or until just cooked through then cover and rest for 5 minutes before serving.

This week we will be using the following skills: Marinating, pickling, pan frying, peeling, slicing, simmering, straining, blending.

This week we will be making – Festive Turkey & Bacon Meatballs in a Creamy Gravy Sauce with Roasted Parsnips with Honey Mustard Dressing

Our ingredients will focus on those associated with the festive season as December is a time for delightful ingredients such as sharp cranberries to sweet parsnips with have such a complex flavour.

Our meatballs are going to be super juicy and full of goodness including turkey, pork and bacon, onions, cranberries, bread, milk, and herbs, served in a creamy gravy sauce made from the meat juices.

Meatballs nearly always include two meats normally beef, and veal/pork. Ours will use pork and turkey to keep it festive. Turkey and smoky, salty bacon pairs well with fruit which is readily associated with the festive season. Fresh and dried cranberries are excellent in sauces, cakes, desserts and stuffing’s. Fresh cranberries are used to make the popular accompaniment to turkey, cranberry sauce.

A tip for making soft meatballs is to use a panade – which is a mixture of starch like bread mixed with a liquid like cranberry juice which is then added to minced meat.

Our sauce will be made from the meat juices from pan frying our meatballs. The base of this sauce will be a velouté which is one of the five mother sauces of classical cuisine. Like béchamel, velouté is thickened with a roux. Velouté is made with stock. We will be finishing our sauce with cream and sage.

“We will serve this with Roasted Parsnips with Honey Mustard Dressing
Parsnips have a unique flavour and roasting them brings out the sweetness we will make a honey mustard dressing to drizzle over with a chestnut crumb which will take them to another level! Chestnuts have a sweet crumbly flesh and, unlike other nuts, are low in fat. Roast chestnuts are a traditional winter treat and can be cooked on an open fire, in the oven or in a frying pan. Available from mid October to December.”

Skills used include: Weighing, measuring, peeling, grating, cutting, slicing, mixing/combining, blending, simmering, boiling, reducing, roasting, soaking, and mashing, shaping into balls, pan frying, making a sauce from meat juices.

See you Saturday Junior Chefs!

This week we will be making – Chicken Comte with Smashed Baby Potatoes and Chive Butter

We are going all out French using Comté: the ultimate cheese for cooking!

This week our Teen Chefs will work with  Comté  highly prized for many reasons. It has an incredible depth of flavour that comes from the quality of the raw milk used to make it, as well as the expertise of the local cheesemakers. 

The real star of the show is the incredible sauce, which is enriched with cream and chicken stock, lifted by white wine and given a savoury complexity thanks to plenty of delicious Comté cheese. The classic way to eat Comté, of course, is on a cheeseboard, but it also makes an outstanding cooking cheese. 

Comté can be creamy, savoury, fruity, salty, umami, nutty, smoky and sweet. Famous local dishes like fondue make the most of Comté’s fantastic flavour, but also its excellent melting properties.

Traditional winter warmers suit Comté well, where that intense, comforting flavour really comes to the fore.  Potato and  Comté pair and combine well as well as our Baby Potatoes you could always make  a layered potato gratin –  topped with plenty of bubbling Comté cheese.

Skills used will include:

Coating, pan frying, dicing, sweating, reducing, blending, boiling/simmering, straining, and making a sauce with meat juices and cheese.

This week we will be making – Autumnal Chicken with Apples & Sweet Potato Mash

This week we are back on seasonality talking about apples and will prep and create a chicken dish with sautéed apples and a sweet potato mash.  This autumnal chicken dish bags lot of flavour, we will be browning Chicken and then simmering with chopped apple, shallot, garlic, and a splash of cream, for a tasty cosy dish.  You’ll want a firm, crisp apple, such as Braeburn, or Granny Smith.

Apples are one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits. There are over 7,000 varieties in existence, many of which are grown in Britain but, despite that, only around 12 varieties are commonly sold in UK supermarkets, of which many are imported.

Apples were a favourite of the ancient Greeks and considered a luxury fruit by the Romans.

Colours range from red, to yellow and green, but all varieties fall into one of two categories: eating, also sometimes called dessert apples or cooking, with the latter being more tart in flavour.

All apples are a good source of vitamins A and C, as well as fibre.

Availability; All year round, though British apples are at their best from September to November. When buying select firm fruit, with no blemishes, bruising or wrinkles. The fragrance of an apple is a good indicator of freshness and quality.

All ‘eating’ apples can be used in cooking but the opposite is not the case. Bramley is the definitive English cooking apple.  For cooked dishes requiring a firmer texture Cox, Braeburn or Granny Smith are a good choice.

In this week’s dish we will be using the following skills:

Skills used include:
Washing, peeling, measuring, cutting, chopping, slicing, coring, mincing, sautéing, boiling squeezing, simmering and mashing.

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