Guinea fowl with cabbage and bacon

Ever since making Da Pan Ji way back in June I've had a second guinea fowl in my freezer. Now I'm a big fan of the fowl - to me it's like a farmyard-charged chicken. Not as fully gamed up as pheasant by a long way, but a hint of something beyond the quotidian enjoyment of the much abused chicken.

This recipe is a piece of piss I have to say. It's also really, really nice.

• one guinea fowl
• one cabbage
• two glasses white wine and a bit of water (by eye - about half the amount of wine)
• some smoked bacon
• sage and/or bay, juniper berries, peppercorns

Brown your bird in some fat. You can walk around here and do a few odd jobs, just coming back every so often to flip the fowl.

When it's brown add the bacon in biggish pieces. It's really worthwhile using something smoked as this merges with the wine and meat juice to make an amazing light broth.

When this is cooked toss in all the other ingredients. It's nice to keep the cabbage fairly large, but small enough to cook through, so use your judgement here. I lifted the recipe from Ripailles, which suggested sage but I lacked that herb so substituted bay. I think the occasional peppercorn adds a certain pleasurably spicy note to this otherwise deliciously moderate combination.

Cook it all for forth-five minutes to an hour on a low simmer. The bird should stay very moist. Serve with boiled potatoes, a ladle of broth and some wholegrain mustard if feeling exotic.

This dish is that wonderful type of French farmhouse or basic bistro cooking and hits all the right notes - smoked meat, fresh green veg, fowl, wine, herbs. It doesn't get much easier for a top-notch Sunday dinner. I think I prefer this type of thing to a full on roast with all it's greasy crispness, but then I am generally predisposed towards things in liquid or stock.

Easy peasy curry goat

I have tried cooking curry goat various ways, including building the spice mix from scratch as per Hugh FW's instruction, and the method I now do is a simple and easy version I have ended up settling on. I'm not sure I tasted much different be doing it from scratch Vs a decent spice paste (Pataks in this case).

Ingredients

• goat (after experimenting with different cuts I this time went for goat chops which was very meaty. I love the fact the Dalston butcher has a cut of goat in the shop just labelled 'curry goat'.)
• two onions
• tin of tomatoes
• curry paste
• garlic, scotch bonnet, cloves, thyme, brown sauce
• additional veg (optional) 

The three key steps seem to be (if I may be so bold) - use plenty of onions for a good thick sauce, cook for a long time (so the onions cook down and dissolve in the sauce and the bones can give up their flavour) and, of course, use scotch bonnets to get the distinctive Caribbean heat. I used one whole chilli for a big pot and it was plenty hot.

Start by frying the sliced onions in vegetable oil with a big tablespoon of spice paste and some sliced garlic, cloves, thyme. They just need to soften so ten minutes should do. Next, add the chilli and thyme, brown sauce (this is from HFW's recipe and he claims his mate said is considered legit among connoisseurs, I have no idea but I like the idea of adding it! it's nice to have a slightly sweet taste as part of the heat) and tin of tomatoes. Cook for half an hour to get the sauce going.

Brown the meat (look how meaty the goat is - four quid a kilo I think!) if you like, along with any other veg if you want to (I like, and added carrots and right near the end spinach and peas) and cook for one and a half hours. Plenty of versions don't have additional veg in but I like the bulking it out a bit and getting some extra bits into the meal. I did mine in the oven as I wanted to cook some sweet potatoes to have with it but other times I have successfully just used the hob. It is also lovely with rice and a crunchy slaw of cabbage, peas and carrots.

 

<!--5c5f3dcba6fc402cbd7cc56045573af0-->

Six-hour lamb

Long cooked shoulders of lamb seem to be everywhere at the minute. And they sound like a wonderful idea for this time of year when each days seem noticeably shorter than the last - the cut is a bit cheaper than leg but still very meaty and palatable to those that don't like sucking and fiddling with bones to get their food. I got a half-shoulder from a supermarket and after browsing a few different recipes decided to go for a simple moist roast with lots of onions and garlic and a little white wine. The food went in to a low oven at about 1pm and the inclement weather meant I felt only a small speck of guilt at lounging at home and finishing watching Series 4 of The Tudors (err..).

For The Vegetarian a butternut squash and veg sausage toad-in-the-hole seemed like a good idea. I cut up the squash to roast and toasted the seeds with salt as a snack (forgetting to keep an eye on it and burning them in the process).

Every hour or so the lamb was inspected, prodded and puzzled over. Was it actually cooking at such a low temperature? Should I add more liquid? When, if at all, should I cover with foil? Would the onions be cooked, in fact should I have cut them into much smaller pieces?

As the hours progressed the meat was undeniably being cooked, but the great gusts of appetising lamb smells multiple blogs had promised me were not apparent.

Eventually everything seemed cooked and it was time to serve. I allowed the lamb a good rest of half an hour whilst the toad was being done.

It's very fatty lamb shoulder isn't it? I hadn't fully appreciated this. Big ribbons of stiff, opaque fat were all over the joint on both sides before cooking. It had been at least partially rendered during cooking of course, but in truth the grease of it was a little over-facing. It also tasted exactly like a normal piece of roast lamb. Bah! Am I doing it right? Maybe a full on braise next time: it's sure to become very moist and will allow a fat-skimming stage.