Here’s a secret to some of my best gravies and sauces, a toasted garlic roux. Adding a bit of minced garlic to the roux just gives it that extra something. Use it as a base for just about any sauce you like: gravy made with drippings from a roast, tomato based creole, or a basic white sauce with milk.
To make simply add 1 part butter to 1 part plain flour in a heavy skillet (I only use cast iron) and stir often with a wooden spoon for 10-15 minutes. Then add some minced fresh garlic and cook for 5 minutes or so until the garlic is as brown and toasty as the roux. When the roux is nice and brown (like in the photo) slowly stir in your liquid, bring to a simmer and reduce until the desired thickness is reached. I included a photo to show you how brown I like to toast this roux. This colour is what the Cajuns call a peanut butter roux which is in between the blond and the dark.
Tonight I used this roux to thicken the drippings and deglasing liquid from a roasted chicken. I used about 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, and a heaping teaspoon and a half of minced garlic. The liquid amounted to about 500 ml. I reduced it by about 1/3, steeped in a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary for a few minutes and seasoned with salt and pepper.
No more sliced white bread! Kim’s been baking bread twice a week. She found a good recipe from Delia Online that she tweaked and perfected. I’m not much of a baker but I thought I’d give it a try today. It worked out!
The nice thing about a good white loaf recipe is that you can use it as a base to make different kinds of bread. Kim worked out that you can add a cup of granary or wheat flour and it gives the bread a great flavour. She also threw in some seeds and rolled oats. Ummmm.
Kim increased the size of the recipe to better fill out our loaf tins. The altered Delia recipe is as follows:
- 5 cups strong white bread flour
- 1 cup wheat or granary flour
- 1 level tablespoon salt
- 1 1/4 teaspoon of dry yeast
- 1 1/4 teaspoon sugar
- 510 ml hand-hot water
- 3-4 tablespoon mixed seeds and 3-4 tablespoon rolled oats
Follow Delia’s by-hand recipe except for the following changes:
- Combine the yeast with some of the warm water in a small bowl and leave it to sit while the flour warms in the oven.
- Use a ceramic serving bowl so that the dough doesn’t take on a metallic taste. But make sure you cover the dough loosely with the plastic wrap so that it can rise above the rim of the bowl.
- Rise the dough in a warm place.
- Don’t bother with the polythene bags once the dough is in the tins, just use the oiled plastic wrap from the first rising time
- Start the oven heating about 1/2 hour before you need to put the bread in the oven.
- Check the bread after 30 minutes of baking. Ours was done by then, but oven temperatures vary.
- We found that the bottom and sides of the bread are browned and crusty enough without turning the bread upside down and baking for an additional 5 minutes.
We haven’t tried it yet but I bet you could use all white flour and add in all kinds of stuff like herbs or sliced olives instead of the seeds and oats.
Every few months we buy a pack of lamb from Highgate Farms at the local farmer’s market that contains a shoulder, leg, chops, chump steaks, and a few riblets. We save them up in the freezer until we can make a meal with them. You might not see them too often in the meat case, but I bet you can get some if you ask the butcher. They are fantastically fatty and need braising to tenderise them, but they are inexpensive and great for BBQ.
- 2 lbs lamb riblets
- 1 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
- 1 large clove garlic thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup cider vinegar
- 1 1/2 cup orange juice
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/4 cup clear honey
- 1 teaspoon Chinese 5 spice
In a dutch oven or large pan with a tight fitting lid, heat some oil on high until it starts to smoke. Season the riblets with salt and pepper and brown them in batches. Remove the ribs from the pan and set aside.
Turn off the heat as the pan will be very hot and let cool for a minute. Drop the ginger and garlic into the pan and cook for a minute or two (with the heat off if the pan is still hot). Then deglaze the pan with the cider vinegar and put the heat back on. Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer.
Meanwhile, heat the oven to 300F. Layer the riblets in the pan, turning or basting them to coat with the braising liquid. Bring back to a simmer, cover and place in the oven. The oven temperature should just be hot enough to simmer the riblets. Simmer covered for about an hour turning and basting every 15 minutes or so.
Remove the lid from the pan and place back in the oven. Continue to baste and turn the ribs every 10 minutes and reduce the liquid until it just covers the bottom of the pan. Remove the pan and heat the oven to 425F.
Place the riblets on a wire rack over a baking tray covered in foil to catch any drips. Baste the ribs with the remaining cooking liquid and place in the oven for 10-15 minutes to crisp and brown nicely.
Garnish (I used chopped green onion) and serve.