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Cooking with Jonny69 Yes folks, just like you and your friends Jonny EATS! They say never trust a skinny cook and Jonny is as skinny as a rake so draw your own conclusions. Here's a selection of Jonny's favourites, why not give them a go. Take it away Jonny... 13/11/06 Corned Beef Hash As cooking and eating are one of my favourite pastimes I thought I'd start a series sharing my favourite recipies as I cook them. I'll kick off with my deluxe corned beef hash, an old favourite with a twist that can be enjoyed as a main meal, snack or breakfast. I cook in a little sliced chorizo sausage that really brings out the flavours and colour and breaks up the monotony of the corned beef. Corned beef hash is great tasty comfort food, dead easy to make and you can make loads of it in advance, keep it in the fridge and re-fry or microwave it when you're hungry. This makes one large portion with seconds. Ingredients: 2 medium potatoes, skinned and cut into 1cm cubes Get a large frying pan and heat it up on the gas, add plenty of olive oil and get the potatoes frying. This will take about 5-10 minutes depending on the spuds and take regular samples to check. The aim is to get them cooked through and nearly light brown and crispy on the outside before you add any more of the ingredients, so If there is too much oil in the pan you can soak some out with kitchen paper before you add the other ingredients. Once they are nearly done add the onions and garlic and continue to cook for a few more minutes, then add the chorizo and a pinch of chilli. You don't want to make this hot or even spicy, just a cheeky little nip in the background that will compliment the chorizo. Once the onions are soft and opaque you can add the cubed corned beef. It needs to go in right at the end and not get cooked rather than just heated through otherwise it will dissolve into the other ingredients and we want to keep it cubed. Add salt and pepper to taste and it's ready to serve. Chuck on a fried or poached egg for breakfast, add ketchup or brown sauce and DIG IN!!! 18/11/06 BBQ Chicken Wings For the second installment of my online gastric masterclass I bring you an old finger favourite: Chicken wings. Wings I think are the most overlooked part of the bird. On a roast they get overcooked and dry and not many people buy the wings themselves, despite the fact that they are dead cheap and make a fantastic meal. They work out about £1 per succulent kilo which is nothing compared to the rest of the bird. Perfect student food and guaranteed to satisfy. The recipe is as simple as: Preheat the oven to 200C 1 box of raw chicken wings, normally 10 in a pack I like to cut the wings up into wings and wing-drumsticks but you need a pretty broad sharp knife to do this so don't attempt it with a small one. They cook just as well whole, I just like them to be finger food. Chop the tails off and discard, stretch the wing open and chop through the knuckle. Put them in a baking dish, cover with the soy sauce and honey and spoon them around so the wings are well coated. As they cook the water will evaporate out the sauce and leave a delicious brown glaze on the outside. If you can leave them overnight to soak up the marinade then all the better but you can cook them straight away. Cooking: place them in the oven for about 45 minutes, turning them and shaking them around to pick up the glaze off the bottom of the dish every 15 minutes. When the wings cook they will start to change. For the first 35 minutes in the oven they will look fairly similar to when they went in. At some point around the 45 minute mark, sometimes longer, the wings will be done. The skin suddenly crisps up and browns slightly and the glaze will dry out in the pan. The oil from in the skin will start to bubble out into the glaze and this is when they are done. The texture of the cooked chicken will have gone from being slightly rubbery to succulent and juicy. If you're not sure then leave them in for another 5 minutes. This serves absolutely perfectly with mixed veg stirfry, jacket potato or spicy rice: Add to a hot saucepan a good slug of oil (stops the rice sticking together), half a cup of rice, a squeeze of tomato puree or chopped tinned tomatoes, one cup of hot water, a handful of peas, half a chicken stock cube, half a teaspoon of paprika and chilli to taste. Bring quickly to the boil, cover and reduce the heat down as low as it goes. Let it simmer down until all the liquid is gone which will take about 10-12 minutes. Turn that out onto a plate and top with the wings, mmmmm delish :) Prawn Paella One medium onion finely chopped Lightly fry off the onions and garlic in a little oil but don't allow to brown, add the tomatoes and cook for a minute or two. Add a pinch of saffron if you're feeling rich. Pour over the rice and cover with stock, allow to simmer down until the rice is cookedand add stock as necessary. This will take about 20-25 mins so after about 5-10 minutes add the seafood - make sure it's hot all the way through kids - grind black pepper over the top and serve :) Substitute the seafood for chicken pieces if you don't like seafood, add a pinch of chilli for extra zinnnnng. 04/02/07 Lamb Stew with Kidney Tonight's dinner is lamb stew in which I tried to add a little extra. A few weeks ago I did a Lancashire hotpot and made it with about 1/3 lamb liver with the lamb. It was absolutely fantastic and added a lot of lovely flavour to it. I actually meant to buy kidney having sampled many steak and kidney pies over the years but got liver by mistake. No worries, it was fine. So today I tackled kidneys, I've never done kidneys before. They come frozen from the supermarket and are dead cheap, the perfect offal really... Well that's what I thought until I defrosted them. Ok it looked like there was a lot of liquid in there which I tipped down the sink and then found out that kidneys are literally like slime. They are hard to cut and there's a line of gristle inside them. No worries, that didn't put me off. Into the frying pan to brown some of them off. Oooooo there's suddenly a horrible smell of sheep and sheep pee in the kitchen, a REALLY horrible smell. :eek: Veggie girlfriend leaves at this point. Phonecall to mum: Help. Soak them in milk first. Half hour in milk and I have brown milky goo that smells like sheep pee, strongly of pee. Gave them a serious rinse and they start to disintegrate. Gross. Really horrible. And then threw them in the stew. So in about half an hour I can tell you what it tastes like. The gravy tastes fantastic, if a little strong. It probably didn't need anywhere near as much stock as usual because of the kidney but I think it's ok. Here's the recipe: 500g cubed lamb Brown the meat and transfer to a large pot. Brown the onions and garlic and transfer to same pot. Add stock cube, flour, pearl barley and carrot, stir it all together and cover it with boiling water. Add plenty of pepper, but not too much salt because the stock cube is quite salty. Bung on a lid and pop it in a 180 degree oven for 2 hours or more. About 30 minutes before you want to serve throw in the pasta if you like pasta in your stew. Serve up with crispy roasties :) 11/02/07 Coq au Vin Time for another installment of cooking I think, especially since it's not often you get to say coq and get away with it :D This is basically a rich chicken casserole made with red wine rather than water and has a distinct taste and colour compared with normal casserole made with just water and stock. The heaviness of the red wine means you can use a stronger tasting stock, I've used beef stock and that means that a whole host of different veggies can be added since the stock can handle the extra flavours. In mine is lots of onion, carrot and celery. Don't worry if you don't like celery, it just enhances the flavour and pretty much dissolves away. You'll never know it's there! I've used a poussin which is a young chicken, if you use a normal sized chicken simply double up the quantities. Ingredients: 1 poussin, skin removed and cut into 4 Get a large saucepan very hot and brown the chicken in a little oil or duck fat, this will add a lot of flavour. Tip in the chopped veggies and fry for a minute or two. Pour over half a bottle of cheap red and crumble in the stock cube with a tiny pinch of chilli, lots of pepper and salt to taste. Bring back to the boil, cover and reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about an hour. Near the end mix a teaspoon of cornflour with a little water and tip it in which will thicken the gravy. Serve this up with plenty of crispy roast vegetables like potatoes, parsnips, carrots and whatever is in season. :) D.P. pointed out that lardons and garlic will really improve this. I agree. 20/02/07 Pancakes for Pancake Day As it's pancake day here's how to make pancake batter for about 5-6 pancakes: 100g plain flour Bung the flour and egg in a blender and top the contents up to about 1/2 pint mark. Blitz it up so all the flour is off the sides. Add more milk if it's not runny enough or a bit more flour if it's too runny. Some people like to add a second egg but I find it a bit eggy tasting then. You can use it immediately but leave it for half an hour and top with a little more milk and you'll get smoother pancakes :) For english style pancakes the batter need the consistency of thick single cream. Get a non stick frying pan very hot (do yourself a favour) and melt a small knob of butter. Quickly add a ladel of batter and cover the bottom of the pan. Let it cook over a reasonably high heat until it is dry across the top and the edges have started to lift. It will now shake free from the bottom of the pan and you can toss it over. The first one never cooks as well as the others :D Serve with lemon juice and white sugar, maple syrup, chocolate sauce etc. For american pancakes I use self raising flour and have the batter like extra thick double cream, you use more flour until it's thicker. As you ladle it into the pan it holds its shape and puffs up with bubbles, then you turn it over when the edges have gone dry. Enjoy guys and gals! Quality idea from Jez: stick it all in a litre bottle (eg an empty robinsons cordial bottle) add water. Stick the lid on a shake a hell of a lot. Add more water if its too thick or add more flour is its too thins and reshake. Handy thing with it all being in the bottle means you have no washing up and you can pour it stright into the pan from the bottle. Plus any unused batter can live in the bottle in the fridge for a few days! 06/03/2007 Bangers, mash and a killer onion gravy The weather is miserable and wet outside, it's cold, windy and there's nothing like coming home to a plate of sausages, a pile of creamy buttery mash, shredded cabbage and ladles of onion gravy. Pick some pork sausages that don't dry out too much when they cook. Sometimes the premium brands are a bit too meaty with not enough fat and can make the meal hard work so I like sausages with a decent fat content. Butchers Choice in Sainsburys are good as are the Duchy's if you're feeling rich. For the mash the secret is to use a floury white potato, make sure it's cooked well, loads of salted butter and milk. You can mash it with a fork if it's cooked enough and it won't have any lumps, just work in the butter and milk. I actually cook the spuds in their skins on the jacket potato setting, scoop the insides out for the mash and use the skins the next day filled with bacon and cheese. If you use a waxy potato (most red skinned potatoes) the mash will turn out quite sticky and you'll need a lot of milk to loosen it. Shredded Savoy cabbage or peas, no substitute :D Now here's the bit that will make a plate of bangers and mash quite special: A killer onion gravy. This will make quite a lot of and takes about an hour. The effort is so worth it and it freezes perfectly so make lots, then you just have to microwave it next time and the time after that :) You will need: 2 onions Chop up the couple onions quite fine. In a big pan get the fat melted and start the onions sweating. Duck or beef fat adds a lot to the flavour so use it if you can, otherwise use butter or oil. Duck fat comes from one roast duck when it's on special offer in the supermarket. One duck makes about 1/2 pint of top quality fat that keeps for months in the fridge and literally makes everything taste fantastic. Beef fat comes from roast beef and beef mince. Never throw it away! When the onions are opaque pour over the two wines and allow to reduce. The sweetness of the ginger wine really brings out the onion flavour but won't make it taste gingery, if you have it chuck in a generous splash or add a bit of fresh or powdered ginger. A bottle of beer is a perfect substitution for the wine - basically get some booze in there! Top it up with about half a pint of boiling water so it can simmer nicely, add the stock cubes to taste, salt, lots of pepper and a tiny pinch of chilli. Let it simmer for at least half an hour and add the cornflour to thicken it up near the end. Mix it up with a bit of cold water first and add it bit by bit and it will dissolve in with no lumps. Assembly: Mash goes in the middle of the plate, a huge pile of it, the sausages are stuck in the sides and the veg goes wherever you can fit it on. Then drown the lot in the extra thick onion gravy. I really need to start taking some pictures :D 09/04/2007 Roast duck, roast veggies and real duck gravy Whole ducks are on offer in Sainsburys right now, half price, so now is a great time to try your hand at roast duck! Lots of people are put off duck because it’s a fatty bird but it’s delicious and if cooked properly it isn’t fatty at all. It’s dead simple to prepare and you can cook any other bird in the same way. Allow about 2-3 hours. So what to look for when choosing your bird: Firstly don’t get the most expensive one on the shelf. I’ve noticed that the bigger the bird the fattier it is and you don’t necessarily get more meat. I picked one that is between £5.50 and £6 and that is ~2Kg in weight. This is enough to feed four at a stretch or two with seconds and plenty left over for sandwiches and a stirfry off the carcas. For a full roast dinner you will need the following: 1 Duck Inside the duck is a bag containing the giblets. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES THROW THIS AWAY!!! This is the doorway to a delicious duck gravy and I’ll take you through how to make that first. Open the giblet bag and chop everything into smaller 2cm pieces. This makes more surface area therefore it can release more flavour. Chop an onion in half, chop a small carrot in half and chop a celery stick into 3. Get a large saucepan very hot, add a small dash of oil and bung that lot into the pan and brown it off. Browning it is important because you release some great flavours and it’ll make a richer gravy. Splash over half a glass of white wine, and pour over about ¾ pint of boiling water. Chuck in a pinch of salt and about 5 whole peppercorns. Reduce heat to a low simmer, cover the saucepan and leave it to bubble away for 1-2 hours. Then scoop all the bits out, chuck them away or give them to the dog and this is your stock ready for the gravy. The duck will take about 2 hours to cook at 200 degrees in the oven. Don’t stuff the bird, cook the sausagemeat or stuffing separately. You need a large roasting pan, sit the duck in breast side up with no extra oil, sprinkle a little salt over it and stab the skin on the breast side and down the sides of the legs. When it cooks this will let the fat drain out and you can pour it off. Put the bird in the oven and leave it to roast for about ½ hour to 45 minutes. You’ll notice a lot of fat has come out, give it a baste and pour all that excess fat into a large jug. Check it every half hour and pour the fat off each time until it’s done. You can tell when it’s cooked because it’ll brown off nicely, not so much fat will be coming out and if you push a knife into the back of the leg area the juice should be clear not bloody. Take the bird out the oven and cover it with a bit of foil and it can stand for about 15 minutes on a chopping board while you finish the gravy. Don't chuck the fat away, pour the clear stuff into a jar and it'll solidify and keep for months in the fridge. For your roast potatoes boil them for 5 minutes and transfer to a roasting tray, then they need 45-50 minutes in the top of the oven so they are nice and crunchy on the outside. I like to use a good slug of olive oil and a good slug of Crisp n Dry and a good sprinkle of salt and pepper. The roast veggies take about ½ hour and I do the same with the oil. You can use some of the duck fat if you want for added flavour. To finish your gravy you need reduce it and thicken it up. Do this right at the end after you have taken the duck out the oven. Scrape all the tasty stuff out the bottom of the pan you roasted the duck in and add that to the gravy pan. Boil it down until it’s about half the volume, check the seasoning and if it’s a bit weak tasting add some chicken stock cube, then add a little cornflour mixed with cold water when you’re happy with the taste. Add it little at a time so you don’t over thicken it. Carve it up and serve, I’m looking forward to mine tonight quack quack :) Mr Nice adds rosemary to his roasties. 28/04/07 Ultimate unhealthy chicken skin pork scratchings Technically these aren't pork because there's no pork in them but unhealthy and satisfying they most certainly are :cool: Last night I cooked some chicken thighs and I don't like the skin going all gooey in the sauce and spoiling my meal so I came up with a cunning plan to use the skins up rather than throw them away. I hate wasting meat and try to use everything up if I can. I'm guessing since it's chicken it won't be as unhealthy as pork scratchings but meh, what would I know :p So what I did was got a non-stick frying pan nice and hot, pulled each skin out flat and layed two in the pan at once. They shrink and curl up so you have to flip them over and they straighten back out again. Keep flipping them until they are a nice even golden bown and crispy on each side. Put them on some kitchen paper to soak up the excess oil and give them a light sprinkle of salt. Hey presto chicken-pork scratchings :D A surprising amount of fat comes out of them and I poured that off into a tuppaware so I can use it later in cooking and that is currently sat in the fridge next to my prize jar of duck fat. It's perfect for stir fries, rice, roasty spuds etc. And I just noshed my way through them now. Clogged arteries anyone? Trojan 698 says: and for his next trick, Jonny69 will eat 10 slabs of lard! 10/05/2007 Real pasta sauce ***WORLD EXCLUSIVE*** with pics Yes, there are finally pictures gracing the cooking page! Don't get your hopes up too high just yet. Firstly I'm no photographer and secondly they are from my camera phone so they are pretty shonky. Squint a bit and they should look fine... Today folks we're going to cook a real tomato pasta sauce just like they do back home. It's so so simple to make, REALLY cheap and ultra versatile. This forms the base for pretty much any tomato pasta sauce from seafood, bolognese and also pizza topping. There are just two ingredients: Tinned tomatoes x2 This will make about 4 portions, make plenty and stick it in the freezer. Chop up about 4-5 cloves of garlic really fine and get them frying really lightly in some olive oil. The garlic is the key here and you need plenty:
In the meantime open two tins of tomatoes (note my miniature saucepan lid in the background):
Now I find the cheaper the tomatoes the better because they have plenty of tomato juice in them and they seem to cook down more satisfactorily and make a smoother sauce. With the more expensive ones I end up adding water so they can bubble down without burning. You can also use fresh tomatoes but you will need to remove the skins and take the cores out, plus it works out quite expensive with the price of fresh tommys in this country. After the garlic starts to go opaque chuck in the toms:
Season with salt and pepper. Now a lot of people don't know this, table salt is about 50% anti-caking agent which is a flavourless sodium-based substance to make it sit in those little balls and run out your salt shaker. So only half of what you put in your food is actual salt and you use twice as much as you need to make it just as salty. Because the anti-caking agent is sodium based your sodium intake is rammed up really high by using table salt. If you use rock salt it is pure salt so you don't need anywhere near as much. Use about this much if your hands are the same size as mine:
Now out with the pepper grinder and get plenty of pepper in there:
My pepper grinder is a hollow baseball bat and I have to stand right in the middle of the kitchen to be able to get it in the pan. Grind in about this much:
Give it a stir and bring it to the boil. Now pop on a lid, drop the flame right down and let it simmer for at least 45 minutes to an hour, stirring every now and then. This is a good time to pop a bottle of red wine and go sit down and relax. The sauce should reduce by about 1/3 and the colour will deepen, the flavour will really change as the sugars in the tomatoes cook out and it should become quite smooth so there's no need to blitz it. Now it's pretty much ready to serve. Cook some pasta and ladle it on top in a big bowl! I did two variations, the veggie option:
Pasta in the middle, nice bitter rocket round the edge, sauce on top, broke up some hard strong cheese and shaved some parmesan using a potato peeler. This is what I did for me for the non-veggie option:
Same as the veggie option except I used smoked salmon trimmings (cheap) sprinkled over the top instead of the cheese. You'll be wanting to know how to do bolognese. At the beginning I fry off a pack of mince and some onion in a frying pan and drop it in once I've got the tomato sauce going and boil it down for the same time and it's as simple as that, nothing else. Seafood works perfectly, pop it in a few minutes before the end and you'll get a lovely seaside taste in the tomato. Also as I mentioned it makes a perfect pizza topping. And enjoy. Edit: and don't forget this is a pasta sauce base that you can add anything else you like to ;) platypus says: Man, wash your hands before cooking! I replied: Oh yeah I've been working on the car earlier, forgot to mention that! 10/09/2007 Baked bean feast This is an old favourite from my student days. I started making it on a Sunday morning as the ultimate all-in-one pan hangover killing satisfying breakfast treat but it's great for dinner or lunch. You can make loads of it in one go and keep it in the fridge ready to microwave. Then once you've had a go at this one you can progress to my sausage and bean casserole which is a more formal version of this with proper beans, better for dinner and great for the upcoming cold nights. Both are a hearty meal and will impress your friends be they dinner guests or hangover buddies. You need: 1 pack of sausages Large frying pan Fry the sausages until cooked and in the meantime chop the onion and chop the bacon into small pieces. Once the sausages are cooked remove them from the pan and cut them into bite sized pieces. Fry the chopped bacon until crispy and in the bacon fat fry the onions until soft. Add the potatoes in with the onion so that the outsides become browned slightly. Return the sausage to the pan and pour over the two tins of baked beans. Now season it up nicely with the sauce of your choice making sure it's as spicy as you can handle and it's ready to eat. But wait, we're not done yet! Pull out a baking dish and you can make this really cool. Pour the beanfeast into the dish and crack 6 eggs over the top and pop it in the oeven for 15 minutes until the eggs are cooked. Now you can take slices out the dish and serve it as it is. This will keep for up to a week in the fridge. Oh and serve up with a large mug of tea or coffee. It's much better with ;) |
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