Pork and Chestnut Meatloaf, with Hash Browns

400g of finely ground pork sausage meat from Sainsbury's prompted the making of this dish. I chopped up two small white onions, about 100g of Merchant Gourmet chestnuts (chopped), two handfuls of porridge oats, and a level dessert spoonful of cornmeal. Mixed together by hand in a glass bowl for about ten minutes. I added a little salt and a pinch of oregano. You can add a beaten egg to make sure the resulting loaf stays together, but it should be fine without it.

Place the sausage meat into a bread baking tray. I used a silicon bread tray since it is so easy to get the contents out, and to clean it. Texture the surface with a fork, and sprinkle a little paprika on the surface. Cook in the preheated oven for between fifty minutes and an hour at about 180 to 190 deg C. Check frequently toward the end of the cooking process.

The hash browns were leftover potato pieces from an earlier dish. Cooked and browned in an omelette pan. The sauce was made with onion, celery, yellow pepper and tomato puree in a small saucepan. The vegetables were stir-fried first until tender. Add a third of a vegetable stock cube and water, plus some oregano and rosemary. Simmer for twenty minutes.

Reheating the slices of meatloaf is easy in a flat lidded pan. Cook at a low heat under glass for at least fifteen minutes.

Venison Casserole with Chestnuts

A completely delicious dish, made with six venison sausages, each cut into four, and about 150g of halved chestnuts.

Other ingredients are:: chopped celery, two chopped red onions, two finely chopped chestnut mushrooms, tomato puree, beef stock, two large
splashes of red wine, a heaped dessert spoonful of cornmeal, and about 400g of water.

Begin the vegetable component of the dish first, by frying the red onion and the celery in half a dessert spoonful of sunflower oil, until the onion begins to brown. Stirring frequently. Then add the diced chestnuts, and the mushrooms. Cook for another seven minutes or so at a medium heat.

Add boiling water, the tomato puree, and the beef stock. Add cold water to a jug containing the cornmeal and stir together. Add the mix to the pan of vegetables. Stir continuously for at least three minutes.

Preheat the oven to around 190 deg C. Decant the casserole gravy into a ceramic lidded pot.

Cook the venison sausage pieces in half a dessert spoonful of sunflower oil, initially at a high heat, which should be considerably reduced. Cook the sausage pieces for at least twenty minutes, turning frequently until they are browned. Add the venison to the casserole, and place in the middle shelf of the oven. Cook for 100 minutes, lidded.

Now you have time to prepare the potato mash. Boil chopped potato for twenty minutes, then decant to a bowl with a slatted spoon. Add three spoonfuls of plain yoghurt, and half a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard. Mash together. Keep the mash hot in a bowl in a steamer.

Serve together, with or without pepper.

Christmas Chicken, with Sausage Meat Stuffing, and Chestnuts

Christmas lunch is often a complex piece of cooking. This one was no exception. The main components were: roast Maris Piper potatoes, carrots, brussels sprouts, sliced chicken breast, sausage meat and sage and onion stuffing, oven roasted sausages dressed in bacon (pigs in blankets), and a chestnut, onion and mushroom gravy.

The main trick is to get all of the components hot at the same time, and delivered to the plate within two minutes. Everything except the sausages was prepared the previous day. I used three rings on the hob to reheat the sprouts and carrot (in one pot), the chestnut gravy, and the chicken slices in some chicken stock. The roast potatoes were reheated in the microwave. The slices of sage and onion stuffing were toasted under the grill. The pigs in blankets were cooked from scratch in a fan-assisted oven. You have to watch these carefully, since they can be ready several minutes before you expect them to be.

I started with the vegetables, the chestnut sauce, and the chicken, which took three pots. Heated under glass at a low heat.

Ingredients: Brussels sprouts, chopped carrot, sliced chicken breast cooked in some chicken stock. The chicken breasts (four altogether) were cooked the previous day in the oven, in roasting trays and wrapped in aluminium foil. They can be cooked in ten to fifteen minutes at 200 deg C. These pieces had been frozen, and so I left them in the oven for forty minutes altogether, with the heat turned down for the last fifteen minutes, to ensure that they were heated all through.Wrapped in foil this is not a hazardous process, since the chicken is cooking in its own juices, and does not dry out. The chicken slices were very tender when served. 

The Chestnut sauce was made with Merchant Gourmet brand cooked chestnuts, sliced, half a white onion, and diced chestnut mushrooms. Additional ingredients were: a splash of dark soy sauce, a pinch of paprika, two bay leaves, and some oregano. Plus a splash of a dry sherry. 

The second item was the pigs in blankets.These were cooked from scratch at 180 deg C, for a notional 25 minutes. Ovens are so variable, even with an internal thermostat, that they were essentially ready in 15 minutes. I turned off the heat and put them back in the oven to make sure that they were thoroughly heated, and took them out after 20 minutes.

The first list of items were removed from heat after simmering for ten minutes or so.

The third item was the sage and onion stuffing. Because it contained pork sausage meat it was important to make sure it was thoroughly heated. Cooked under the grill, and the slices were turned once using a fish slice (about seven minutes each side - judged by eye). Made from scratch with:

Outdoor bred sausage meat from Sainsbury's, one diced apple, one diced onion, three medium handfuls of porage oats, one beaten egg, 40 g of salted butter,
a teaspoonful and a half of dried sage. Cooked in the oven on the previous day at around 180 deg C, for forty minutes (watched carefully). I used a silicon bread tin, so the stuffing was cooked much like a meatloaf. Sliced when cold, and stored in the fridge. 

I've made stuffing before, but not as good as this one!

The roast potatoes take just five minutes to reheat, so they were the fourth item to be started. I've blogged about roasting potatoes before, so search on roast potato for the details. In this case I used olive oil rather than goose fat, which is a popular choice at Christmas, but isn't strictly necessary to get excellent roast potatoes.

All components of the meal were thoroughly heated and cooked and still hot before serving. All components were on the plate within two minutes, starting with the sausages and the stuffing, followed by the chicken, the roast potatoes, the vegetables and the chestnut and onion sauce. Serve with Cranberry Sauce.

Does this seem like a military operation? Yes it does. It needs to be thought through first, with every part properly sequenced in your head before you start. After that, it is no problem. Especially if the major cooking is done on the previous day.