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Written by Tony Carson

Category: Recipes

Created: 17 November 2020

• Quick and Easy
• Beef Mince
• Gluten Free

“Let’s make a simple Bacon & Cheese Burger” Sue said. We had half of a pack of Yellow Sticker Beef Mince ( We’ve doing Spagboll with the rest tonight ) Where we always fail is the “Simple” part!!!!!

Nobody in their right minds will try to replicate this, so a recipe would be pointless. But basically we had toasted home made Gluten free Buns, cut and grilled. Home made Marie Rose sauce on the bottom section of bun. A layers of Salad, Gherkins and sliced Tomatoes. Then the hand pressed Burger with Chilli Cheese melted over the top. Well grilled Bacon and the top bun. Then three home made Onion Rings!

See we can do a simple Burger – It’s just that we don’t…...

The Gluten free Onion Ring ring recipe is here - http://www.eatwellonuc.org.uk/index.php/recipes/361-onion-fest

The Gluten free bun recipe is here - http://www.eatwellonuc.org.uk/index.php/recipes/27-gluten-free-diy-bread-buns

We had Discount fridge Stuffed Vine Leaves and hand cut chips with ours. The Food Coma is still lingering!!!!!

Details

Written by Tony Carson

Category: Recipes

Created: 16 November 2020

• Takes a bit of time
• Pork Shoulder
• Gluten Free

An odd name for a recipe? It refers to the very old Simon and Garfunkel song  “Scarborough Fair” which has Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme in the lyrics – Which were all in this crusting!

Ingredients:-

2 Slices of (Gluten free in our case) Bread, crumbed
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme – Fresh if you have it, or dried
1 Shallot, chopped
1 Egg beaten
Salt & Pepper
Oil

Method:-

(1) Lightly fry the Shallot until it has softened and set aside.
(2) Whisk the Egg.
(3) In a large bowl combine all the ingredients to form a stuffing sort of texture
(4) Press the crust onto the top of a Pork Shoulder joint and cover with foil.
(5) Roast at 180c for about 45 minutes.
(6) Remove the foil and roast for a further 10 minutes.

We served this with Sprout Bhaji in a bit (Gluten free ) Yorkshire Pudding, Carrots and Peas, Roast Spuds and lots of Onion Gravy.

Details

Written by Tony Carson

Category: Recipes

Created: 12 November 2020

• Sausage
• Gluten Free

There are thousands of Sausage variations, you only need to set foot in your local Polish Deli to realise that. But in the UK there are two distinct styles.

(1) The generic Smooth Sausage.
(2) The courser grained Traditional Sausages which are to be seen on the counters of more artisan Butchers.

Both styles can be flavoured with various Herbs and Spices to make the likes of Lincolnshire, Cumberland, Pork & Leek, Hot Chilli etc. But essentially the difference in style is in the way they are made. It is also visible in the price of the resulting Sausages.

When I initially worked at the butchers some years ago their Sausages were all the smooth kind. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them and I quickly learned how to mince, season, extrude and link them. But as I soon learned there are three main differences from the courser grained style.

(1) Mincing process.
(2) Seasoning content.
(1) Water content.

For a small batch of the smooth style sausages you would typically mince 10kg of boned out Pork shoulder. Add a whole pouch of seasoning mix and 3 litres of water. Then mix well and feed the whole mix through the commercial mincer again. This is then loaded into the extruder and extruded into casings and linked into Sausages. The resulting sausages are very soft in texture but after a couple of hours in the walk-in fridge they will have swelled and set. They are then good to cut up and display on the counter.

One morning when I went in I found my counter was stacked high with boxes of Pork Shoulder. I opened the walk-in fridge to find it was absolutely full. Having put my pinny on and stuck my head through the chains I found Geoff dressing the display counter and muttering various profanities. “Morning Geoff, what with the monster delivery?” - “Bloody Barry fell for the sales patter, I’ve no idea what we’re going to do with it all and he’s hiding from me!” I’m not sure Barry was hiding to be fair, he was probably just sleeping. It was 4.07am after all!

I suggested that I might make a few batches of Traditional Sausages and we could sell them as a special. Geoff basically said “ Fill your boots if you think you can link them!” So I dug out a previous mistakenly ordered box of Traditional Sausage seasoning and casings and set to work.

The process was outlined on the seasoning pack and was quite different. Basically you mince the Pork shoulder once, add the seasoning mix and combine everything with 500ml of water by hand. The seasoning pack doesn’t have rusk or Carmine colouring in it. So you end up with a very firm mix to bundle into the extruder. At this stage I began to worry. Would I be able to get this consistency of mix to extrude and link without bursting the ‘Skins’ - casings? As it happens the casings for Traditional style Sausages are .006 grade rather than .004 grade for smooth Sausages. So the extruding into the casings part went reasonably well, even though the extruder made various sounds of complaint and the motor smelled of overheated windings…. Linking them was very slow as I had to nip the casing between my thumb and forefinger for each twist because the filling would not move freely within the casing. But I did it! 90Kg of Sausages in various flavours in the the single mince Traditional style were dutifully hung in the walk-in fridge. Boxes flattened, counter cleaned, extruder and mincer stripped and cleaned.

As there is no Carmine colouring in the mix they look a bit less artificially pink and more meat coloured, so I moved some bits and bobs about of the chilled counter and used the Bacon to separate the Smooth style from the Traditional style. Geoff actually gave me a pat on the back and a nod of approval – a very rare and appreciated gesture.

I priced them at 30% by weight above their smooth cousins and hoped for the best.

Two weeks down the line we were selling 65 / 35 by weight Traditional / Smooth and our restaurant customers had all asked to switch! I also didn’t get stabbed and fed through the mincer - Which is good!

Details

Written by Tony Carson

Category: Recipes

Created: 11 November 2020

• Takes a bit of time
• Chicken
• Gluten Free

Yellow sticker win for us again. The normal price on these was £3.17 which will buy us a medium Chicken which will last us for at least 2 days. But at £1 each we thought they deserved something a bit special.

Ingredients:-

Butter
Bacon
1 Poussin per serving
2 Shallots, sliced
Mushrooms, sliced
Fresh Thyme
Almond Milk
150g White Wine
2 Cloves of Garlic, minced
Carrot, finely batoned
2 Bay Leaves
1 Egg York
Gluten free Flour
Chicken Stock
Parsley
Salt & Pepper
Oil & Margarine

Method:-

(1) Melt the Butter and slowly add Flour to form a Roux. Add Milk and whisk until you have a smooth sauce.
(2) In a separate pan fry the Shallots in Butter or Margarine then add the Garlic, Bacon, Carrot and Mushrooms. Season this with salt & Pepper.
(3) Fry the vegetables on a low heat until they are softened.
(4) Remove these from the pan and set aside to drain any excess oil.
(5) In the same pan add a little extra Oil and sear the Poussin on all sides.
(6) Transfer the Poussin to a casserole dish.
(7) Add the Bacon and vegetable combination you created earlier and some Chicken Stock, the Wine, Bay Leaves, chopped Parsley, Thyme and Egg Yoke.
(8) Simmer for 10 minutes stirring regularly.
(9) Pour the Roux sauce over the Poussins and cover the casserole disk with kitchen foil.
(10) Place in a pre – heated over at 180c for 30 to 40 minutes.

We served ours on a bed of baked Vegetables and it was a very restaurant style treat for us, whilst still being within our £4 budget!