Yummy lamb leftovers

When I cook a big piece of meat like roast meat or the lamb from the previous post, I always have some sauce left over.
In the Trieste area (the city where I lived for long time before moving to Austria) this left over sauce is used to cook some gnocchi or some pasta. It is so common, that is not only a way to clean the fridge at home, you can find it also in a restaurant menu. And it tastes good!

Here below is my version, for 2 people.

Meat sauce left over out of the fridge
2 ts Bread crumbs
150ml cream
250g pasta

Peel away the fat part of the sauce solidified on the top and make it melt in a frying pan.

Add the bread and roast at strong heat. If you have also a bit of meat left over, you can cut small stripes and add it to the sauce, it will taste even better.

Add the rest of the sauce and reduce the heat.

When homogenous mix in the cream and let it get thick.

In the while cook the pasta in hot salted water according time on the package.
Strain the pasta, add the sauce and blend with parmesan.

The amount of sauce and cream are related. If you have a lot of meat sauce you need only a bit of
cream. If you have just few sauce string it out with more cream. But do not be too strict, it is a left over recipe, it has to be flexible :)

Yummy Lamb

Last week I saw some organic lamb meat at the supermarket which was looking just gorgeous. I am not a meat expert, but in this case was easy to understand.

And the meat was also not pre-marinated, like I normally see lamb meat for sale here in Austria where I live.

So I brought home a couple of packages and this is what I did. Result has been gorgeous. The meat was tasty and juicy and extremely soft!

For 4 people I prepared 4 steaks (lamb ones are pretty small) and 6 ribs. Do not exaggerate with portions because lamb meat is pretty fat and after few of it, especially if you plan also some appetizer, you are fine. I recommend also to serve some salad for side dish to help to remove the sense of fat.

Ingredients amounts are indicative, you do not need to follow it strictly.

Ingredients for 4

Lamb meat (eg 4 steaks and 6 ribs)

2 ½ onions

White wine 250ml

1 garlic clove

Rosemary

Thyme

Salt, pepper

Meat spices mix

Bouillon powder

5 potatoes

Olive oil  

Chop half onion in small pieces. Cover the meat with spices: rosemary, thyme, pepper and a bit of meat spices mix.

Take a big enough plastic bag (eg the one for deep frozen) and pile the meat with the onion inside the bag.

Pour gently white wine in the bag until the meat is almost covered. Close the bag and for safety place it in a bowl.

Store the meat in the fridge for some hours. The beast would be over night or even 24h marinating. From time to time shake the bag to uniform the marination.

At the end of the marinating time take a large frying pan and warm up a couple of spoons of oil. When the pan is hot place few meat pieces per time and brown them on both sides at strong heat.

When you are done with the meat, boil in the same pan half of the marination for few minutes.

Cut 2 onions in thin slices. Add one spoon of olive oil in the pressure cooker and pile layers of meat and onion slices.

Add some rosemary and the boiled marination and 2 cups of water. Sprinkle with 1 tbs of bouillon powder.

Cook under pressure for 60minutes.

(If you do not use the pressure cooker I think you can cook the meat in the oven covering the tray with aluminum foil. Cooking for few hours (3h?) until the meat is soft. Add further liquid if evaporating too much. Do not let the meat dry)

Pre heat the oven at 200°C. Wash the potatoes and cut them in 4mm slices.

Cover a baking tray with baking paper and fat it with 1 tbs of olive oil. Align the potatoes slices. Drop some of the meat sauce over the potatoes to give lamb taste. Bake for 30min.

Remove the meat from the pressure cooker and align it over the potatoes. Take care in this step and use a couple of tools because now the meat is very soft and will fell in pieces, eg the ribs meat will slide away from the bones.

Wet the meat in the tray with some spoons of the sauce out of the pressure cooker and bake again for other 15-20min until the meat will start to brown.

In the while process the sauce with an immersion blender and boil it softly.

When the meat is ready serve the tray on the table with the sauce on the side.

This is  the only picture I managed to take during the dinner.. we were too busy :)

Fall pasta: sausage and leek

I just noticed that so far I have never posted a recipe related to pasta. I could just not believe it because we are Italians and we have pasta almost once a day!! So it is time to start, here we go!

A combination that I like in this season it is sausage and leek. And it fits well also with whole wheat pasta (so it makes me feel like i cook something healthy in spite of the fat sausage).
Unfortunately this recipe is only for a few. In fact outside from Italy it is not easy to find fresh sausage. Even me, that I live just a few km away from the border, I can not find it in the regular stores.

If you cannot find any fresh Italian sausage you can use simply minced meat (mixed beef and pork), but even if still ok it will definitely not taste the same.

as usual ingridients are for 2

1 Fresh sausage

1 glass White wine

Half onion

1/3 leek (some of the white and some of the green part)

200ml Cream

250g organic whole wheat Pasta (I recommended fusilli shape)

Start heating the salted water and when boiling add the pasta and cook according time and procedure on the package.

Peel the sausage and get rid of the skin. Chop the sausage filling in big pieces and place it in a frying pan at strong heat. Smash the meat with a wooden spoon.

When start to brown add the wine and let the alcohol evaporate (the wine will reduce the sense of fat from the sausage).

Chop the onion in small pieces and add it to the sausage.

Reduce the heat. Wash the leek and cut it in rings. Add them in the pan.

Cook with gently heat until the onion is transparent. Then add the cream, adjust with salt and let become thick. If it gets too thick adjust with a couple of milk spoons. When finished add a generous amount of fresh grinded black pepper.

Strain the pasta and blend with the sauce.

Must time

Here in Austria grapes must “Sturm” is a popular drink for the fall and you can find it but only for a short period in most pubs and supermarkets.

After Martina posted this recipe on her lovely blogI knew it was the perfect one for the “Sturm” in my fridge!

Here is the translation to English with few notes from my trial. I mainly skipped or changed some ingredients because I did not have them and because I like to add always a bit of whole wheat flour to give a “healthy touch” to my cakes.

With the listed amounts you will get 4 donuts.

Must donuts

Poolish ingredients

75g flour
75g water
10g 20g baker's yeast
1 ts honey sugar

Ingredients

poolish
250g W 330 whole wheat flour
275g flour
315g must
115g sugar
70g oil
salt
2 ts anice skipped, I do not like anise


Method

Dissolve the sugar and the yeast in warm water (about 30-40°C, try with a finger. Not too hot or you will kill the bacteria). Add the flour and cover until doubled in volume.
Place the poolish in a food processor and blend with must, sugar and half of the flour (add alternately part of liquid and a bit of solid).

Then add oil and the rest of the flour and knead. Now add a pinch of salt and knead until the dough is smooth, uniform, elastic and almost gloss. It may be that a couple of times you need to stop and with a spoon manually turn up side down the whole mass.

In the end the dough has to roll up the food processor tool and slide off from the bowl walls.

Now move the dough in an oiled container and cover it with a plastic wrap until doubled in size.

I placed the bowl inside the oven warmed up 2min at 50°C (and then off) and the rising time was approximately 3hours.

At this point my dough was much more sticky than expected and I had to add a lot of flour on the working area during the kneading. Maybe because of my flour choice.

Devide the mass in 4 equal parts. With each of them form a ball and with your thumb make a hole in the center. Push the hole until you have a 10-12cm donuts. Place the donuts on a tray protected with baking paper and cover them with a dishcloth and a plastic bag. Again let the donuts rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

I let made them rise for 1h in the oven and then the whole night in the fridge, but without cover to avoid any sticking. Like this I could bake them in the morning while making the café and having them still warm for breakfast!

Bake at 180-190°C for 20-25minutes. Let cool down (if you can resist) and then cut and fill with marmalade or nutella