Mmmm!
This is a really simple recipe and tastes great. I cannot vouch for its authenticity; however, I can tell you I got this recipe from someone who is Mexican on her father’s side, and it was her grandmother that taught it to her.
I am sure the original recipe would have involved everything being made from scratch, but the version I was taught has a little short cut. I have absolutely no problem with cheating when it comes to cooking and nor should you!
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Starting what I think may become a theme, I have decided my first recipe should be my signature Chilli. I make no claims about authenticity, however I do know it’s extremely tasty.
Serves: 4 (generously).
Fry the mince with no oil
There are two things to note at this point: this recipe contains no oil and it does not use any salt. The salt I recommend people can add to taste once served, and the fat from the beef is used for frying the veg.
Put the minced beef in a large-bottomed pan. This should be fried on a medium heat until it has just about turned entirely brown. This should be stirred periodically to get it evenly fried all over and to make sure you do not burn the beef.
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Here’s a great one I came up with over the weekend, it’s named Punk Pie as I used Brewdog Punk IPA, but really any IPA will work in the recipe. You’ll need the following (and a couple of hours)
For the pastry –
For the filling –
You’ll also need a mixing bowl, a casserole dish or oven proof pan (with a lid) and a 30cm pie dish
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The National Winter Ales Festival is a beer festival I know well. Having been going for the last 7 years and also volunteered at a number of them. This year was the largest yet: over 300 beers! I am very much a fan of hoppy beers, particularly the aromatic hops, but I can appreciate good dark and old ales as well, and seeing as this is the Winter Ales Festival there was an emphasis on these darker beer types.
There is always an issue which I have at beer festival, and I’ve named it (as I am a nerd) the “signal to noise ratio”. This simply means the number of good beers there are compared to the number of poor beers. This year I felt this ratio was very low. There were a couple of times I thought I’d go for beers from breweries which I’d never heard of, and almost instantaneously regretted it. I can’t remember who these breweries were as their beers were really not that memorable. So I ended up being unsurprised by which beers I thought were good as even if I hadn’t had the beer before, I knew the breweries. I thought I’d make a list of the particular highlights for me and beers to look out for in the future:
If you were at the beer festival, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Hello, I am Peter and this is my first recipe for Metal Chef. A very tasty chicken and chorizo risotto.
Now I have heard that a lot of people don’t like making risotto as it is perceived as being a bit tricky. Well, it really isn’t. A little time-consuming and takes constant attention, but definitely not difficult.
OK, down to business! This recipe serves two people. It scales quite well to 4 by simply doubling the amounts.
Ingredients
1 Red onion (medium or half a large onion)
2 Chicken breasts
75g Chorizo
150g Risotto rice (Arborio or Carnaroli)
1 Litre Chicken stock*
100ml Dry white wine
25g Butter
Parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Metal (obviously)
*It may be worth having a little extra stock, as depending on the rice and other factors it can take a little more than a litre. This has only happened to me once though! Any chicken stock is fine, be it fresh or made up from cubes/concentrate.
Equipment
Thick-bottomed medium saucepan, for the risotto
Frying pan, for the chicken and chorizo
Sauce pan, for the chicken stock
Right, so you have your ingredients and your pots and pans!
The first thing you want to do is slice your chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. Now cook them for 5-10 minutes in the frying pan. You want a little bit of colour on them, so don’t be afraid to keep them in the pan as long as needed. Once done, place the chicken into a bowl off to one side. Don’t put your frying pan in the sink just yet!
Take your chorizo and slice it thinly. Add a spot of oil to the frying pan and fry the slices. Chorizo can burn very quickly. They only need 20-30 seconds each side, though I recommend keeping them moving for the duration. When they are done, remove them from the pan and put to one side. Pour the frying oil into a bowl.
Finely chop your onion.
Put your thick-bottomed sauce pan on a medium heat and put in the butter. Also add a spot of olive oil. When the butter has melted, add your onions. You want them to soften and go translucent. You don’t want them to go crispy or burn, so watch the heat. While the onions are cooking, get your stock in the other sauce pan and bring to a simmer.
When your onions are nice and soft, put the rice in with them. Mix the rice in well with the onions, butter and oil and cook in the pan for about 60 seconds, stirring often.
Add in the wine!
At this point most recipes would say something along the lines of “simmer until the alcohol evaporates”, but I am not going to. It is an utter myth that the alcohol evaporates. So instead just simmer for a minute or so.
Now the point of no return. From here on in you must ignore all distractions. You cannot leave the risotto unattended at this point. Add one or two ladles of the stock to the risotto and get stirring. Keep stirring.
Are you still stirring?
When the rice has absorbed the liquid (the mixture will get thicker and feel stiff) add another ladle of stock. Keep doing this. Add stock, stir, absorb, add stock.
The reason for constant stirring is to get the rice to release its starch. This is what makes the risotto thick and creamy.
After the 20 minute mark the rice should be almost done. It will be soft on the outside and a little firm still on the inside. You may reach this stage sooner or later, so no need to be exact with the timing.
Add in the parmesan and stir through, remembering to add more stock if all the liquid has been absorbed. Now add the chicken and risotto you cooked earlier and mix in well. The chorizo will add a gorgeous splash of colour to the risotto.
Chicken and chorizo have just been added.
Keep the risotto in the pan for another 5 minutes, or less if it is cooked through and the rice is soft enough for your taste. Feel free to add a little more stock if the risotto is too stiff. This is where you should taste to check for seasoning. The stock and chorizo are quite salty so it is important you don’t blindly add more until you have tasted it at the end.
When you are happy, portion up the risotto on to two dishes and lightly drizzle with the chorizo frying oil.
Serve!
How tasty does that look!
A quick recommendation for you all, I can’t take any credit for the recipe which can be found here – http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/baharat.html
I’m referring to the Kebsa spice mix, aka ‘Gulf Baharat’ – one of the more interesting mixes I’ve come across because of its use of dried lime and saffron. I’ve just tested it out on a piece of salmon cooked up in a grill pan and finished with a squeeze of lemon and wow… Is it tasty! I would highly, highly recommend giving this a shot. And just to clarify – the first ingredient listed is red pepper, I believe it is referring to paprika
Dried lime is a bit of an uncommon ingredient in spice blends (I’ve never seen it used before) and as such I doubt many will have it to hand, but it’s easy enough to make yourself – simply get a lime and slice it as thinly as you possibly can, then lay the slices evenly across a non-stick baking tray and place on the top shelf of your oven at its lowest temperature. At 50C it took about an hour and 20 minutes to dry to the point where it could be powdered in a spice mill.
Damned tasty salmon consumed whilst listening to – Demonaz – “March of the Norse”
See those kebabs at the top of the page? Wanna know how I made them? It’s a very, very simple recipe and tastes great –
It’s a marinade, so I’m sure you can guess how this is put together – in a bowl add the soy and vinegar along with the sugar and stir until dissolved. Mince the garlic and chilli and add to the marinade along with powered star anise. If you can’t find star anise or don’t have any to hand then I’m sure some Chinese 5 spice would work quite well, maybe try 1/2 a tsp? Give it a taste and see how it works. Add the white pepper and mix together well, you want a balance of sweetness and saltiness as well as a little bit of tang from the vinegar. Use as a marinade for chicken, pork or beef a few hours before you plan on cooking it – thread the meat onto bamboo skewers that’ve been pre-soaked in water to prevent them from burning along with chunks of bell peppers and red onion. You can cook in a grill pan, under the grill (broiler, for any of you across the pond) or for best results on a BBQ. Feel free to mess around with the measurements to suit your tastes
So, recipe number one… Here it comes! Are ya ready? Are ya!? Well it’s bacon and eggs, with a twist
For this you will need –
Begin by slicing your bacon up, you don’t want it chopped too small, it’s meant to be a fairly chunky dish. With that done chuck it in a bowl and get started on the onions, garlic and chilli, these you do want to chop up pretty finely so it mixes in well with the eggs. Leaving the root on the onion and slicing from root to cut end, and then across will give you nice small pieces
Huge knife not entirely necessary, but this is metal chef after all – the bigger the better!
And everything else chopped…
I probably don’t need to show you all of these steps, but it’s my first post here and everyone loves pictures, right?
Now it’s time to get that bacon cooking. Add a drop of olive oil to a pan on a medium heat and gently cook the bacon until crisp, don’t go overboard on the oil – as the bacon cooks and the fat is rendered out it’ll start to cook in that. You can cook to your desired level of done-ness, personally I hold the firm belief that if it’s not smoked and it’s not crispy, it’s not bacon. This looks pretty good to me –
Once you’re happy with how your bacon’s looking you can add the onions, garlic and chillis and continue to cook gently on a medium heat for a couple of minutes. Whilst that’s cooking you can chop up the tomatoes and coriander, again you want these pretty chunky
I didn’t use all of that coriander, just about a handful of the chopped leaves is plenty
By now everything in the pan should be looking good, when the onions are turning slightly golden in parts it’s done
Next break in your two eggs and mix in with the onion, you don’t want to stir too much or you’ll break up the egg into very small pieces. It should take around 45 seconds to 1 minute for your eggs to be just cooked through – when they reach this stage add the tomatoes and coriander and continue to cook for a further 45 seconds just to take the chill out of the tomatoes. It’s very easy to overcook eggs and have them turn rubbery, you want these to remain nice and soft and they will continue to cook once served. Serve in a pre-warmed bowl, season with black pepper and tuck in!
To pimp it up even more you can serve it in a warm tortilla wrap with slices of avocado and some grated cheese. Personally I just like it with a good squirt of sriracha hot sauce. So there we have it, post number one completed – a nice and easy, but very tasty alternative to the normal bacon and eggs. Stay tuned for more folks!
Cooked whilst listening to – Mors Principum Est – “The Unborn”
Welcome to our brand new blog! We are a bunch of friends who share a passion for music (particularly heavy metal) and also for good food (both cooking and eating). Forget those tasteless ready meals, take-out pizzas and pre-made curry pastes and enjoy a blog about how to cook great, tasty food from scratch with influences from all over the globe.
In this blog expect recipes which we have come up with from scratch, or adapted for our own tastes. We all love chillies so many of the recipes will be on the hot side. We are not shy about experimenting, so we will happily be posting the “cock ups” which do not go quite so well (with a disclaimer at the top warning people not to follow these recipes). Many of the recipes will not be authentic because we are not cooking for authenticity, but for what tastes good. The only important thing is how much we enjoy eating it. Also there may be a few posts about other things we get up (music and food related).
We do not cook lowest-common-denominator food, bland food that will not offend anyone. We don’t care if you don’t like it. We are cooking for ourselves and wish to share our dishes with anyone who is interested.
We have no absolute grand plan for this blog, and we are just going to see how it goes. We want you to find it enjoyable to read and useful, and we are hoping that we can learn from others and each other, so please post comments with opinions and additional experimentation and improvements which you have come up with.
We hope you enjoy this blog!