Unctuous meals

Kimia

My favourite dishes are meals that are fatty, slow roasted with a decadent gravy or jus. Very bold I know but I love it. My faves so far are pork belly, duck confit, beef stew, ribs, and slow roasted lamb shoulder.

Any other suggestions for this type of meal?

The Sweeper

Braised oxtail. There's a recipe that slow braises it in red wine and orange juice. It's the sort of dish you may crave, and you'll have it, and that's enough then for another year until you crave it again.

duploelabs

Kimia wrote: »

My favourite dishes are meals that are fatty, slow roasted with a decadent gravy or jus. Very bold I know but I love it. My faves so far are pork belly, duck confit, beef stew, ribs, and slow roasted lamb shoulder.

Any other suggestions for this type of meal?

Osso buco

Am writing a post for the recipe I adapted for it . It's a stunning dish

Dizzyblonde

Braised lamb shanks Neven Maguire has a good recipe although I'm not usually a fan of his.

Minder

Brunswick Stew - An old fashioned American stew made with squirrel originally, and with rabbit or chicken in later recipes. It's a tomato based stew with a load of veggies - onion, garlic, green peppers, celery, carrot, bay, thyme, chilli and white wine. It also has bacon and the tomatoes and meat.

A few others...

Chicken Basquaise with artichokes - a chicken stew flovoured with chorizo and espelette pepper, a regional chilli powder from the Basque country.

Feijoada - The national dish of Brazil. Impossible to make in small quantities. It a black bean stew with a variety of meats - pork ribs, beef tongue, black pudding, chorizo, smoked bacon and chunks of beef.

Chairman Mao's Red Braised Pork The red colour comes from a deep caramel sauce that the pork is cooked in at the start of the recipe.

Turkey Mole Poblano - Turkey in Mole Sauce Recipe

Kimia

Fabulous, keep em coming guys. I was hoping posters like The Sweeper, Minder, Dizzyblonde would post here - I'm also hoping the Beer Revolu makes an appearance too. duploelabs i love the sound of osso buco - definitely post the recipe when you have it finished.

More I've thought of - warming curries - like Massaman or Thai red.

The Sweeper

Curries - I have a long-standing love affair with Madjur Jaffray's Rogan Josh recipe - the original, lamb recipe that includes cauliflower and potatoes in the stew. There's quite a bit of cooking on it but the flavour is marvellous.

OH OH OH !!!!!

Cradle of Flavour - James Oseland - his beef rendang recipe is fantastic. I found a link to the recipe here - http://lipsmackinggoodness.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-there-anymore-of-that-orangatan.html - looks pretty authentic versus the one in the book (don't have the book in front of me).

The one caveat with that beef rendang recipe is you need to watch it like a hawk for the last 30-45 minutes because the sauce reduces down to a sticky pasty coating on the beef chunks, absolutely amazing, but if not watched it can go a step too far and burn, and that is a serious waste of time and effort.

Minder

Anything with wet polenta. Look for luganega sausages - a coil of spicy pork sausage flavoured with fennel seed and chilli. Traditionally these are coiled and skewered to keep the sausage from unravelling. Pan fry in a little oilve oil, add some garlic, a splash of white wine and a tin of chopped tomatoes. When cooked, serve over a mound of wet polenta.

Valentine Warner made a fish stew in the BBC series. I've made it a number of times and it is exceptionally delicious. Use hake or grey mullet. Recipe here

Peter Kuruvita is a Sri Lankan born Australian chef with a recent cookbook called Serendip:My Sri Lankan Kitchen. He has a recipe in there for a crab curry with has become a firm favourite in our house. Some of the ingredients (spices) will be hard to find, goroka (kokum) may be available in Indian stores. I use frozen blue swimmer crabs for this - they come halved and cleaned. They have large pockets of sweet white meat in the main shells and are best eaten with fingers. Here's the recipe.

olaola

I love a good chilli, cooked for a few hours. With loads of grated (strong) cheddar, sour cream, jalapenos and flatbreads. NYOMZ!

duploelabs

Kimia wrote: »

Fabulous, keep em coming guys. I was hoping posters like The Sweeper, Minder, Dizzyblonde would post here - I'm also hoping the Beer Revolu makes an appearance too. duploelabs i love the sound of osso buco - definitely post the recipe when you have it finished.

More I've thought of - warming curries - like Massaman or Thai red.

Hi Kimia,

You can find the full post and pictures on my blog with is contained in my sig but here's my recipe for....

Osso Buco

Serves 5

1 kg of veal shank cut horizontally in 5cm wedges
3 carrots
3 onions
2 tomatoes
1 stick of celery
Flour
Seasoning
Olive oil
Glass of white wine
500ml of good beef/chicken stock
Bouquet garni (Parsley stalk, bay leaf, and thyme tied together)
1 rind of a lemon, finely chopped
Bunch of Basil

Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Heat some oil in a large heavy weight dish, big enough so you can fit all the veal shank flat in one layer. Next dust the shanks in seasoned flour, notice the way from the photo how they’re cut (I spent ages on the phone to the butcher, trying to describe ‘Flowers of meat’). Next brown off the shanks until you get a nice caramelisation-type crust.

. Remove the meat, and add the roughly chopped carrots, onions, and celery.

Cook them until soft and add the chopped tomatoes (remember this is a peasant dish, so a rough chop is fine). Next add the bouquet garni and then the white wine. Reduce the liquid until nearly dry, then add the meat back in on top of the veg. Add the stock in to nearly cover the meat.

Cover and put the dish into the oven for 2 and a half to 3 hours, or until the meat falls off the bone.


Next finely chop the basil and lemon rind together to make a gremolata. Serve the shanks on a bed of the vegetable stew, with the gremolata dressed over the bone marrow. Delicious

pickarooney

Stoofvlees or Carbonades de boeuf - Belgian stew made with beef cheeks, beer, chocolate, gingerbread and mustard.

Frank Black

Whenever I think unctuous, I think risotto – Parma Ham, Cherry Tomatoes, Butter, Loads of Parmesan Cheese and some Rocket on the side.

lucylu

Greek Beef Stifado ...

Ingredients
• 1.5kg stewing beef, such as chuck or top rump, trimmed and cut
• 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 24 baby onions or shallots, peeled and left whole
• 4 ripe tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped, or 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato purée

Marinade
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2–3 fresh bay leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 20 whole peppercorns
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 125ml dry red wine
• 4 tbsp red wine vinegar

1. Place the beef in a large bowl. Add the marinade ingredients, cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, or preferably overnight.
2. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large saucepan and sauté the shallots for 5 minutes or until softened. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
3. Sauté the beef, reserving the marinade, for about 8–10 minutes or until browned on all sides. Return onions to the saucepan, add the marinade mixture, tomatoes and tomato purée and enough water to just cover the stew. Season salt . Bring to the boil then simmer for 1½–2 hours or until the beef is tender and the sauce has thickened.

Kimia

This is the best thread ever!! Thanks guys, amazing stuff there to try. The beef rendang is next on the list for sure (YUM), and then the fish stew. Glorious.

Not a massive fan of chilli for some reason - I cannot get my taste buds to accept tomato. It's this weird kink with me - I really don't like tomato-ey sauces.. Cheers for sharing anyway tho!

The risotto and the other stew sound amazing, and the greek beef looks yum. Thanks guys - deffo going on the list.

I made a homemade Fettuccine Alfredo last night - the sauce was delicious. Here's the recipe for the sauce for anyone who likes VERY rich, unctuous sauces (I do the quantities mostly by eye):

Heavy cream (or double cream),
Grated parmesan
Real butter
Pinch of nutmeg (secret ingredient)
Pinch of flour (thickener)

Heat the cream, add about 3 tablespoons of parm, more or less depending on your own taste buds. I added a good chunk of butter to give some gloss and about a teaspoon of nutmeg. Thickened it up with flour and then popped my cooked pasta right in. As it cools it thickens every more and sticks to the pasta very well. I added chicken to mine. Nice and easy recipe!

The Sweeper

Kimia wrote: »

This is the best thread ever!! Thanks guys, amazing stuff there to try. The beef rendang is next on the list for sure (YUM), and then the fish stew. Glorious.

I checked the link I posted and it is indeed the faithful recipe from the internet - however towards the end the blog owner says she has difficulty getting the meat tender so adds chicken stock towards the end and cranks the heat up to cook it out - don't do this!!!

Use shin of beef and trim out any particularly large bits of connective tissue, but leave the fat and smaller connective tissue in place. You don't want gristle, you want whatever will melt. It'll be tender after all that cooking - I've made this plenty of times using beef shin and never had a problem with toughness.

nompere

I cook this roast duck recipe from Gary Rhodes on a regular basis. Too often, probably!

http://www.west175productions.com/gfseason3/recipes/recipe004.htm

I find his temperatures a bit high - over the years I have found that starting it at about 140 degrees (in a fan oven) and slowly reducing it during the three hours of cooking to about 120 degrees works out well.

The meat ends up close to the texture of confit, just falling off the bone, and the honey sauce is a great accompaniment.

Both on TV and in the book he had mash with it.

The bonus is lots of lovely duck fat, so I use a tablespoon or two of that to slowly and gently fry heaps of onions to go with the duck and mash.

Minder

The Sweeper wrote: »

Use shin of beef and trim out any particularly large bits of connective tissue, but leave the fat and smaller connective tissue in place. You don't want gristle, you want whatever will melt. It'll be tender after all that cooking - I've made this plenty of times using beef shin and never had a problem with toughness.

A couple of points to add to Sweepers post...

I've made this many times and it's delicious. I use very large chunks of shin of beef to prevent the meat from drying out or becoming tough. James Oseland describes the final cooking process - the coconut will reduce to the point where it splits, the beef then sautes in the intensely flavoured oils left in the pot.

Beef rendang takes ages to cook, 2 to 3 hours. It's best made in a wide non-stick skillet or frying pan to prevent it sticking in the last 30 minutes. Worth remembering that rendang is a dry curry. Once cooked, you will be left with a very thick sauce coating the meat, the colour of roasted coffee beans.

the beer revolu

Well, if I'm asked to post by name, who am I to refuse??!!

I like this dish of shin beef.
It's not really a stew not enough gravy but rather like slow roast beef pieces with very rich meaty jus.

I simply brown large chunks of shin beef and put in a casserole.
I brown some whole, peeled shallots and put them in along with several whole garlic cloves, some chopped celery and lots of carrots in little sticks, a bay leaf and some fresh thyme, salt and pepper and some beef bone if you have it.
Throw in a full glass of brandy - the liquid wont come close to covering the meat and veg - that's fine - the meat and veg will release liquid while cooking.
Into a low oven for around three hours.
I like to serve with rosemary and garlic roast potatoes and something green.

The meat comes out in big tender chunks, the carrots are soft and sweet and the jus is wonderfully rich and meaty but not at all like gravy and very precious!

Kimia

Shin of beef is on the shopping list so for next week. Delicious.

Stupid question Beer Revolu (thanks for the yummy recipe) - do you cover the casserole dish when putting it in the oven? If I don't have a casserole dish, would a baking tray work with tin foil covering?

CaptainPendulum

Kimia wrote: »

Shin of beef is on the shopping list so for next week. Delicious.

+1 (and a bottle of brandy )

the beer revolu

Kimia wrote: »

Shin of beef is on the shopping list so for next week. Delicious.

Stupid question Beer Revolu (thanks for the yummy recipe) - do you cover the casserole dish when putting it in the oven? If I don't have a casserole dish, would a baking tray work with tin foil covering?

Yes, it's covered.
A baking tray covered with foil would be fine.

CaptainPendulum

That sounds lovely...what temp do you set the over at when you say "low"?
Thanks,
CP

the beer revolu

CaptainPendulum wrote: »

That sounds lovely...what temp do you set the over at when you say "low"?
Thanks,
CP

Around 150c

duploelabs

the beer revolu wrote: »

Around 150c

without fan

the beer revolu

duploelabs wrote: »

without fan

It's not an exact science.
If you're cooking something for three hours then the temp isn't that critical provided it'd somewhere between 120 and 150. If you oven can operate without fan, then I'd use that setting.

I'm feeling under pressure here!
I hope people like this dish - it's very simple and rustic. It was inspired by a dish I had in France of calves feet and carrots which had a more gelatinous jus than my version which is a bit more approachable for the slightly squeamish.

duploelabs

What I mean to say is that most cooking books and recipes quote a temperature, and unless it's stated, this should be on conventional, not fan.
Most ovens, and people, have a default setting of putting the oven on fan, which pushes the temperature of the oven up by between 15%-23% which in turn means a lot of stuff will turn out over-cooked

CaptainPendulum

the beer revolu wrote: »

I'm feeling under pressure here!
I hope people like this dish - it's very simple and rustic. It was inspired by a dish I had in France of calves feet and carrots which had a more gelatinous jus than my version which is a bit more approachable for the slightly squeamish.

Hi beer,

Just wondering if you have the French calves feet recipe as I'd like to give that a go....wouldn't mention what I was cooking until after the meal!