My Recipe Archive 2- Chorizo salad and chicken rissoles

This is from last weekend but I have only just got round to writing it up. Obviously my “one archive recipe a week” has gone down the pan (as it were) but I am persevering…. No photos, sorry!

I used two recipes from my recipe archive- the first, Warm Chorizo and salad from Sophie Grigson’s Eat Your Greens, published in 1993. I had to adapt the recipe (  originally for 6) and my version goes something like this-

1/2 a standard supermarket chorizo ring,

Romaine lettuce

Garlic,

2 shallots

red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

Some olive oil if necessary.

Anja potatoes, unpeeled, cut in half.

Sophie’s original recipe calls for frisee lettuce or dandelion leaves but neither were available. The key word here is “robust”- this is an earthy salad. Potatoes don’t feature in the original recipe at all but I wanted to make a meal of it and anja potatoes have the right earthy quality.

Skin the chorizo and cut into chunks. Place in a frying pan over a low heat- the idea is to extract as much fat as possible. I like my chorizo on the point of being burnt!

Put the potatoes into some boiling water and cook until tender but still firm.

Tear up thee lettuce and chuck into a large salad bowl. Add the shallots.

Go back to the frying pan and add the garlic. Add the vinegar and swirl it all around. Add some salt and pepper. Drain the potatoes and add, still hot to the lettuce and pour  the chorizo and all its juices over the salad. Mix vigorously and add some olive oil if necessary.

It might not be what Sophie had in mind, but like all good cook books, Eat Your Greens provokes you to try different things.

Another problem with following recipes these days is that so much of our food is packaged and it is difficult to match exact quantities…hence I suppose, the rise in the supermarket recipes, adapted to the good and quantities they prescribe for their own benefit. In cooking and, in life in general, we need to relearn the art of improvisation. Jazz cooking!

To go with this we had Chicken Rissoles stuffed with Fontana (gruyere) This is from a recipe torn out of the Guardian probably 15 years ago. I haven’t got a creator for this recipe- if you recognise it as your own please let me know and I will add a credit..

Here is the recipe:

350g very good quality herby sausages such as Cumberland

400g minced chicken breast

A large handful fresh white breadcrumbs

2 large cloves of garlic

6 large fresh sage leaves finely chopped

fresh parsley, chopped

100gr fontina or gruyere cheese

22ml of chicken sock

juice of a lemon.

De skin the sausages and add the meat to a mixing bowl. Add the minced chicken, breadcrumbs, garlic, sage and parsley. Season then squeeze the mixture together with your hands. Put aside for 1/2 hr to blend and mix.

Put a heaped tablespoon of the mixture in the palm of you hand then press a cube of the cheese into the middle. Scoop up a second spoonful and squash it on top of the cheese,forming a tight patty Repeat until you have 8 patties.

Heat some oil in a shallow pan and cook the patties until lightly browned (3/4 mins) Transfer into a flame proof dish and pour in the stock. Bake in oven for 35 mins or until there is no sign of pink inside.

Transfer the meatballs into a warm dish .Put the baking dish over a high heat and let the stock bubble.  Add lemon juice, salt and pepper and reduce by half until slightly syrupy. Return the rissoles to the pan then place in oven for 5 mins.

Well I improvised a bit of course. The pack of sausages came to 400gr and the chicken, 250. I have fresh sage in the garden and used this. Don’t be tempted to use dry sage- it is horrible! If you can’t get fresh sage use sage infused sausages- the sage taste is important in this dish.

I used breadcrumbs I had from the freezer- how much bread do we waste?

I ended up with 4 patties using the same sort of quantities in the recipe which is fine. But probably didn’t use enough cheese as it wasn’t oozing enough.

The 2 dishes together produced a great earthy, tasty meal.

Remember, the key is to improvise…..

Links-

My recipe archive- an introduction

My recipe archive 1 – pot roast chicken with tomatoes and garlic

Check out all recipes in “What’s cookin”

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