Toasted Sesame Oil

This is a great condiment to have around and super simple to make. After making it I find myself using it more and more often to pep up everything from fried food to salad dressing and dipping sauces. This recipe has a number of virtues:

1. Cheap: you make a large batch from a cheaper neutral flavoured oil.
2. This sesame oil can be used at high temperature (unlike oil derived from sesame seeds, which has a low smoke point) i.e. to fry meat, vegetables, etc.
3. Crunchy delicious seeds (if you desire).

Ingredients:

100g sesame seeds

1 litre neutral oil (e.g. Rapeseed or groundnut).

Toast the sesame seeds

On a medium heat toast the seeds in a dry pan. Keep the seeds moving with a spatula so that they don't burn, and toast evenly. You want a light brown colour.

Infuse into oil

Add your oil to the pan you've toasted the seeds in and turn off the heat. The oil should warm up but not be so hot as to start frying the seeds (as they will then burn). Leave to cool.

Decant into bottle

Decant the oil, seeds included into a bottle for final use. You can remove the seeds if you like but I find them a wonderful option to add to sauces and dressings when using the oil. To use the oil for frying you don't want the seeds to come out with the oil as the seeds will burn when you are frying other foods at a high temperature e.g. steak or charring vegetables. To that end cut some muslin cloth and secure it to the top of your bottle with some elastic bands. You can easily slip this cloth off when you want some seeds in the mix.

That's it!

Slow Pork Ribs

On a recent (6am!) visit to the Smithfield meat market I picked up 1.6kg of pork ribs for the tidy sum of £5. I'm a huge fan of the Waitrose's slow cooked ribs so I tried here replicate the soft, sweet and charred results they achieve.

Ingredients:

1.6kg Pork ribs

250g Pork or beef stock

Basting sauce:

3 tbs soy sauce

1 tbs honey or golden syrup

Pulp of 2 passion fruit (optional)

Juice and zest of 2 limes

2 tbs sesame oil

1 tsp grated ginger

1 tbs hot sauce or chili flakes

Baste the ribs

Combine all the ingredients and brush over the ribs. I cut the rib rack in half to put into a zip lock bag. Store overnight in the fridge.

Slow cook ribs

The trick to ribs is cooking the tough meat slowly so that they are meltingly tender but giving them a high temperature finish so that they get charred and crispy (inducing Maillard reactions that make charred meat so good). Pour the beef stock into the base of the pan and put the rib racks over this. Cover with tin foil. Bake at 80 degrees Celsius (180 F) over night or 110 degrees Celsius (230 F)  for 6 hours. Once cooled place in the same zip-lock bags you left them in and pour into these all the pan juices which will include the lovely beef stock. Marinade overnight or freeze for a quick rib dinner later.

Grill ribs to finish

20 before you're ready to serve the ribs, remove from the zip-lock bags place in a lareg roasting tray and grill on meduim-high temperature for 10 min on each side (or until charred). Even better, do this on a BBQ. 

Serve

I served these with a crisp green salad. Whilst ribs and chips are damn satisfying they are, I feel, too heavy to be a good combo. The crisp salad is light and sharp and complements the sweet and rich ribs

Crisp Salad 

Ingredients:

Crisp salad leaves (mix of Iceberg, Frisee & Radicchio)

Steamed green beans

Feta

Toasted sesame seeds

Dressing:

Juice of 1 lemon

4 tbs of olive oil (or to taste)

1 tbs Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to tattie. 

  

The Hot Sauce Fantastic

This Christmas I gave my mom the best kind of gift: one I loved. It was the Pitt Cue cookbook and it's a cracker. In preparation for a chicken wing hors d'oeuvre to a pizza night, I made their untouchable hot sauce.

Ingredients:

1 kg roasted, skinned & smoked peppers

100g charred red chilles

20g finely choped garlic

50g cider vinegar

Smoke your peppers

First you need to halve and deseed the peppers then put them on the BBQ. Ideally use some woodchips or logs in your fire to get a good amount of smoke coming through.

Leave them to get soft and turn occasionally until they're charred and softened. You can now put the chilies on which the book suggests you can blacken but you need to be careful if your fire is hot that they don't become completely burnt.

Leave the lid on the BBQ once the heat has died down and let the chillies and peppers smoke for an hour or two. Make sure the heat is not too high at this point or they will burn.

Skin, blitz and cook

Once the peppers and chilies are smoked scrap the blackened skins off the peppers and combine with the charred chilies in a food processor. Once chopped to a pulp add to a sauce pan with garlic and vinegar and simmer for 20 min. And that's it! 

This batch turned out incredible. It was the best hot sauce I've ever had. That said I think a lot will depend on smoking the peppers sufficiently and getting good meaty medium heat red chilies. I've subsequently tried to recreate this with Scotch Bonnets (Habaneros) and it's way too hot. Enjoy!