Roast tomato, roast paprika and shrimp gumbo

It was our cookery club Autumn menu, this time the venue was at our good friend and goumet Kalle. As normal the host provides the  "Raumlichkeit" and does the main course, this time it was to be an Autumn Risotto. Alas Martin could not be with us as he was partying on the Havel or the Spree or may be both, I do hope it was on and not in as it is a little cool this time of the year. But I digress (as usual), the rest of the menu is described in my following blog. 

 

Saturday morning was a quick visit to Kiels wonderful "Wochenmarkt" at Exerzierplatz, alas on reaching Exerzierplatz I found not the market but  a tented enclosure with much winnying and naying going on, it was the stabling for the Baltic horse show that was taking place in the adjacent arena. So I then knew that the market would be taking place on the other large platz, The Wilhelmplatz, so a quick leg up to Willi (as it is known in Kiel). I bought my shrimps and visited out favorite vegetable stall, run by Anka and her husband. I then left Linda and Kalle to head for home as I had bread proving and I wanted to get the soup on the go.

Ankas big pumpkins

 



The  Soup

 

To make 6 large servings.

1kg ripe tomatoes

4 large red peppers

500g brown shrimps in their shells

 

To make the stock

1 small onion halved and each half studded with bay leaf held in place with a clove

2 cloves of garlic crushed

White of a leek (about 10 cm long x 3 cm in dia) sliced

1 piece of celeriac (or a stalk of celery) diced

A sprig each of thyme, rosemary and parsley

2 carrots diced

 

Shells from the shrimps

2 L water (or a good stock for a stronger soup)

The remainder of the ingredients

2L of vegetable/fish stock (made with the shells and veg)

125g of sour cream

1 good pinch of smoked Spanish paprika powder

1 twig of rosemary

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

 

For the decoration

The flesh from the brown shrimps

1 yellow pepper diced quite small (5mmx5mm)

Flesh of 2 tomatoes (or better sun dried in oil) also diced small

6 sprigs of rosemary

 

Method

1)   Roast the peppers and the tomatoes, remove the skin (this is easiest done by removing them from the oven when the skins start to blacken, put them in a freezer bag and allow to sweat, after about 30 minutes the skins will just come away from the flesh, cut open and remove the seeds, pith  and stalks 

 

2)    Shell the brown shrimps (keeping the meat to one side)

Making the stock

3)   Put the shells in a pan with a table spoon of oil and fry over a high heat, put the soup vegetables in another pan and add the garlic, fry the lot in the rest of the oil until the veg starts to soften, transfer the shells and top up with 2 litre of water (or better still a good vegetable of fish stock stock), add spiked onion and bring to the boil, skim and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

 

4)    Strain through a sieve lined with muslin into a clean pan, squeezing as much of the goodness out as possible (you can of course buy ready made shrimp paste, but this is much more fun).

 

5)    Chop the paprika and tomato flesh (remove the seeds, when you remove the skins) add this to the stock.

6)    Remove the rosemary leaves from the stem and chop quite fine (reserve 6 sprigs to decorate) add this to the soup bring to the boil and simmer for 5minutes.

7)    Add the smoked paprika powder and blend the whole lot either in a blender of use a magic wand (this is a gumbo so it doesn’t have to be really smooth, you’re going to put some more bits in anyway.

 

 

8)    Add the sour cream and blend. Adjust seasoning (salt, pepper and smoked paprika)

9) Add the shrimps allow to warm through (keep 25g back for the butter)

10) Here you can either pour into a terrine and add the diced yellow pepper, and tomatoes, or as I prefer to do, ladle into individual soup bowls and crown with a cream foam topping dusted with smoked paprika and a sprig of rosemary resting on the foam. Or roast a crouton spread with shrimp butter (or potted shrimps) and topped with a solitary unpeeled shrimp. (looks very good, but the shell is a bit of a fumble so most just leave it). Or snip some chive over the top and serve potted shrimp toast as a side accompaniment.

11) I served with the fougasse bread, a shrimp butter, my soup was topped with wasabi foam and rosemary 

 
Making the foam, Linda has a special pot for making foam for coffee, I comandeered this to make my wasabi foam. Warm the milk through ,add a teaspoon of aga-aga powder (this helps to maintain the foam).

Add a thumb nail size piece of ready made wasabi paste and stir in. Put the top on work the plunger a few times and there it is, wasabi foam done. spoon it onto the soup and top with a sprig of rosemary.

 

The fougasse the dough made to Remond Blanc's recipe, great, but he should have said how much dough this makes. Linda has now enough fougasse dough frozen away to make another two loafs.

 

The shrimp butter
75g of salted butter
100g 17% goats cream cheese
25g of shrimps kept back from the soup shrimps.
1 pinch of smoked paprika

Blend the butter and cream cheese together, dice the shrimps into quite big bits and add 50% to the blended butter, blend until quite smooth, then stir in the remainder of the chopped shrimps. Put into pots and decorate with a solitary shrimp.

 

 We drank a nice Grey Burgundy

 

 

The Sunday roast a leg of Lamb

Roast leg of lamb

2.2kg of leg of lamb

1 leek white only

2 carrots

1 large piece of celeriac (or stalk of celery)

1 onion

A couple of tomatoes (I used 4 small ones, the last of Linda’s balcony harvest)

10 cloves of garlic cut 2 into 15-20 slithers

 5-6 salted anchovy filets in oil cut into 15-20 slithers

Bunch of mixed herbs

2 stalks of rosemary (picked into sprigs)

1 tsp. capers

400 ml of vegetable stock

100 ml of red wine

Remove the lamb from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature, trim any excess fat.

Roughly dice the carrot, leek, celeriac, onion put this into a deep roasting tin, peel the remainder of garlic cloves, ¼ the tomatoes and put into the roasting tin,

 

 

With a small sharp knife make small slits in the leg of lamb (15-20 depending on the size and how much you like garlic) push a slither of garlic, anchovy and a sprig of rosemary into each slit. 

 

 Chop the capers and add to the roasting tin, add the herbs (you can remove some of the thyme leaves and sprinkle over the  leg of lamb) 

 

 

 

Put the oven on to 225°C to heat.

Make your stock and add the wine, pour the whole lot into the roasting tin. Put the studded leg on top and drizzle all over with olive oil, give it a good grinding of salt and pepper.

Into the oven (rare 12 min per 450g – medium rare(pink) 15 min per 450g), cook at 220-225°C for 20 minutes and then reduce to 180° until it is cooked, if you used a meat thermometer for rare you are looking for 60° at the centre and for pink 65 - 70°.

 

I cannot help you for anything else, I only cook well done meat in a casserole, stew or Eintopf. I always use a meat thermometer when roasting, it takes the guess work out of the roasting process. There are two main types a round analog one with a long steel probe, this gives the oven temperature as well as the internal meat temperature, these are very cheap and well worth the few pounds – Euros investment. Then there are the digital ones, you can pay a hell of a lot of dosh for a real good one (I have an engineering one with about 5 different functions including measuring high temperature flue gasses) but even a simple one is very good and can be used for measuring freezer temperatures as well as oven temperatures

I keep a jug of water to add to the base of the pan in case it is evaporating too quickly (keep having a peek).

Remove the leg of lamb put it into a dish and cover with aluminium foil to rest, the resting process is as critical to good joint of meat as the rest of the cooking procedure, as it allows the juices that have been driven to the centre of the piece of meat to slowly permiate outwards making for a juicy, succulant joint

 

 

Pour the roasting tin liquids and vegetables through a sieve, into a sauce pan, pushing as much of the liquid out of the vegetables as possible.

Add another slug of red wine if you want a stronger tasting sauce, bring to a rapid boil and reduce by half, add 2 tsps. of redcurrant jelly to the sauce and thicken with a buerre manié (made by mixing butter and flour together at a ratio of 50/50).

When it is thickened to your liking, strain once again into a sauce boat. Serve with the lamb.

Traditionally roast lamb is served with mint sauce and we are very traditional.

A jolly good plate of meat.








The accompaniments, Yorkshire puddings, roast vegetables (parsnips, potatoes, beetroot and kohlrabi), glazed carrots and Brussel sprouts.

Linda Has also made a Damson crumble for pudding, I only had a tiny little bit honest Gov.