Wrap it up- Duck Ballotine, Beetroot Puree, and Fondant Potato

The weather has been particularly uncharacteristic for Birmingham the past two weeks, and this weekend Mother Nature has decided to dump almost 30cm of snow. Snow in England means stay inside. Stay inside makes Kristyn go crazy, so what to do? Get busy in the kitchen.

This weekend's challenge is brought to you by MasterChef Everyday. This book is sponsored by John Torode and Gregg Wallace and is a combination of past winner recipes and "everyday" takes on some quite complex techniques. I've tried some recipes in this book already- some successful (and will repost), others disastrous (naming and shaming the Malaysian Beef and Potato Curry by Linda Lusardi). 

I'm not enamoured by the content of the book and will more than likely pull what the recipes that work and pass the book along.Gregg and John have described the content as "great food, delivered with love from great contestants- here for you to create yourselves at home." and "fantastic flavours, wonderful textures, creating really beautiful plates of food... that takes practice.". A lot of the techniques take practice (like wrapping ballotines). To create some of the more beautiful plates, you need to plan in advance to search for ingredients that are not common stock. And speaking of stock- what a wasteful exercise for a handful of meals. The edits on the show hide this tremendously well; one risotto recipe that I tried gave you a veggie stock recipe to make, but you threw away all of the stock veg at the end of it. I know it's mainly just root veg and some celery, but I hate throwing food away, nor did I have the time to Google "what to do with leftover stock veg" after sssslllllooooowwwllly basting a risotto. In any case... this post is about an attempt at a Duck Ballotine Wrapped in Pancetta with a shot of Beetroot Puree: so Ingredients Out!

Duck breasts, pancetta (I've used smoked bacon), olive oil, butter, salt and pepper, parsley, garlic, onion/ shallot, duck breast trimmings, beetroot, more butter, and double cream. The title of this recipe says it was submitted by James Perry MasterChef 2011 final 5= high hopes for good flavours. Downside is that for this to be a "final" dish, then it is more than likely a fine-ish dining dish and I'm going to need to plump it up to be an actual dinner sized portion. Cue the fondant potato:  potatoes, more butter, more garlic, and for effect... whatever leftover fresh herbs that I have. Looks pretty!

So, how does this come together? Firstly trim the thin end of the duck and keep to the side. With a bit of exercise: taking an Jamie-style 15 Minute Meal approach, beat out the skinned and trimmed duck breast to 5mm thick with a rolling pin. Aaaaahh! Duck breast isn't cheap and I'm smashing the heck out of it. It needs to be thin for the ballotine, but I don't want to to be too thin to make it into duck leather.

In the meantime, get Kenny out and make the stuffing from the onions, herbs, garlic, and trimmings from the duck breast. There is a "simplify for EVERYday" tip telling you to use reconstituted stuffing and jazz it up with the parsley and garlic. I'm not really sure how much faster that is vs. putting some herbs and veg in the food processor. Nice try, though.

Next up, layer up: cling film + bacon layer + beaten breast + stuffing. Use the cling film to help roll up the ballotine tightly. This has brought flashbacks to sushi rolling parties I've had in the past, or any type of food that is rolled- burritos, enchilladas, etc and my inability to keep it neat and tidy. I fully recognise that this is a weakness of mine. Oh well, let's see how it ends up.

 So far so good... looks as it should.

The assembled ballotine is then poached in boiling water for 15 minutes, left to rest (for an nondescript amount  of time) while the beetroot puree is prepared. The beetroot is "freshly cooked" in the ingredient line, so I have had it on the boil while I prepared the duck. The beetroot is chopped into small chunks, and pureed until smooth with some melted butter and double cream. The recipe specifies food processor, but after blitzing until steady, the puree is a bit choppy. I tried to "puree" it in the blender, but it still didn't budge. The instructions also say to pass through a conical sieve (and to serve the juice in a shot glass). I've decided instead that the bits are small and the flavour is nice, so I will serve as a minced beetroot bed to add some fibre to the plate.

Back to the ballotines and it's the moment of truth: have these set as one continuous sausage-looking mass or have they turned into a bacon wrapped taco? Wa wa: bacon wrapped taco, just like seaweed wrapped taco for my sushi. Oh well, nothing a bit of string can't fix. Into the pan for browning off in delicious butter.

Looks good from the top.

A bit open from the bottom.

Fondant potatoes have been on the go this whole time. I poached this recipe (and the spuds) from a few pages down from the duck and these barrelled buttered beauties are winners. This was also a new thing for me to try, and the only correction would be to use a different (smaller) pan (or pot). Potatoes on the butter and the pan filled with water until the tops are exposed, the concoction is simmered for an hour.

The potatoes are then "left to warm" whatever that means. In the case of my potatoes vs. fondant potatoes I have ordered from a restaurant, mine needed a bit of frying off. I elected to scoop the butter and herbs off of the top of the concoction in the pan and get the supds in the oven while I finished off the ballotine.

So, how was it? Tasty! Great flavours as promised by John and Gregg, but the textures were amiss. How cooked is cooked beetroot? How firm should a fondant potato be? This, I am sure, must come from the practice-element. Although, the descriptions are vague at times which I believe is a reason why the textures do go wrong. This is the challenge of getting "fine dining" into an everyday-type book. Everyday cooking shouldn't span more than a page and the shortcuts are noticed in the dish. Everyday cooking should be tasty, and this dish distinctly delivers.

15 Minute Meals- Part 4: Greek Chicken

15 Minute Meal #4: Gorgeous Greek Chicken

More gloating from Jamie in the title, but... did it deliver?! Oh god, now I am starting to sound like a food reality TV commentator. I would suspect so with all of the Great British Menu and MasterChef that I watch. Rather that, though then Shameless or Trailer Park Boys. Anyways, into the kitchen and Ingredients Out (9-ish minutes later), and what a colourful array of ingredients as to be expected from such a colourful culture.

One of the tips and tricks in this book, in addition to introducing you to all of the attachments of your food processor, is to bang the heck out of your meat in between some parchment paper to thin it out and cook it faster. I'm in two minds about this because I love a juicy thick piece of meat, but do realise to meet the 15 minutes, thin is to win. Pfaffing about with the parchment paper, grating the lemon, and sprinkling the herbs, etc has eaten into one-fourth of my time. Time to crack on with the tzatziki...

Grated cucumber + salt and pepper into a bowl and get stuck in to scrunch out the water. Mix the dried cucumber with yoghurt, lemon juice, and mint and question to myself why that took 6-minutes to do. Looks like I need to get faster at grating or else be less hesitant with getting my hands wet in squidgy materials.

Meanwhile, my chicken and herbs are frying and almost 11 minutes in, I'm thinking that this is actually a 20-Minute meal again. Probably should have taken some anger to my meat at the start.

Time to put Kenny to use again and 12-minutes in, I have roughly chopped my peppers, tomatoes, and green onions. The veg gets a quick blitz and these obligatory Greek ingredients (and part of your five-a-day) are poured on the platter. I keep reading and realise that these veggies will be cold= Fail (for the Mr). Yes, fresh veg are part of Greek cuisine, but unfortunately not part of Edge cuisine in the winter...

Blitzed veg from the platter to the pan and let's get those frozen beans (rather than peas for the Mrs.) cooking, because we technically only have a minute and a half. Eeek! There is still a whole paragraph to get through in this time.

Tear olives, squeeze juice, drizzle olive oil, fluff couscous, mix with (now lightly sauteed) peppers, beans, and tomatoes. The chicken needed an extra 5 minutes, and by the time I get everything to "the pass" a.k.a the prep counter in my kitchen, I have a 23-Minute Meal.

But, how did this one go down? Quite well. These are flavours that are not new nor is it a dish that I haven't cooked before (in my own way). Again, a good mid-week meal within an hour (prep and cooking). It goes far, fills you up, is tasty, and is good for guests. Is it Gorgeous? Well, maybe with some garlic and a slow cooked, then grilled piece of chicken we would reach the brief of Gorgeous... and there I go again with my commentator speak.

What is missing is an absolute staple of Greek food: garlic! Doing this again, I would add it to the chicken and the tzatziki... but more than likely at the expense of a few extra minutes to get that pesky garlic skin off. The absolute winner of this dish is the tzatziki... I have failed to find such a simple and tasty recipe in the past and this one met both. In closing and for your benefit, the tzatziki recipe:

1/2 a cucumber

250g fat-free natural yoghurt (or not fat free for extra creaminess)

1/2 a lemon

1/2 a bunch of fresh mint

(1 finely chopped clove of garlic)

salt and pepper to sprinkle

"Using a box grater, coarsely grate the cucumber- Sprinkle it with a pinch of salt, then squeeze and scrunch with clean hands o get rid of the excess salty water- Pop in a bowl with the yoghurt, juice of 1/2 a lemon and a pinch of pepper (and your garlic, if you choose), finely chop and add the top leafy half of the mint, then mix together."