Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker (27 page)
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Authors: Miss South
It’s traditionally a beef broth, but it works very well as a pork version too. I’ve made both several times and like them equally well. Pho (which is actually pronounced more like ‘fuhr’) is a great dish for lots of people as you can each customise your bowlful to your own tastes, making it very sociable.
SERVES 4
For the broth:
2 onions, quartered
5 spring onions, whole
5cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled
5 cloves of garlic, peeled
500g pork ribs or beef bones
3 star anise
5cm cinnamon stick
3 whole cloves
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1.5 litres cold water
For the bowls:
4 bunches of rice noodles or rice vermicelli
1 carrot
370g bag of bean sprouts
3 spring onions
50g fresh coriander
50g fresh mint (optional)
1–2 red chillies
1 lime
The pho requires a few steps before it goes into the slow cooker, but it’s still very easy.
Put the onion, spring onions, ginger and whole garlic cloves into a very hot, dry frying pan or under the grill and allow them all to char and blacken slightly for about 5–7 minutes. This charring adds fabulous flavour to the broth. If you have a gas hob, carefully use the flame to char them. Don’t allow them to cook and soften. Put in the slow-cooker crock and set aside at this stage.
If you are using cooked bones from a roast, you can put them directly into the slow cooker. If you are using raw bones, put them into a large saucepan on the stove and cover with cold water. Bring the water to the boil and boil vigorously for 10 minutes. Skim as much froth and scum from the surface as possible.
After 10 minutes boiling, drain the bones into the sink and rinse well with cold water so that you remove any impurities from the bones or the water you boiled them in. Remove little gristly or red bits and put the rinsed bones in the slow cooker.
Add the star anise, cinnamon, cloves, Thai fish sauce and sugar and add the cold water. Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the bones and aromatics together on low for 8–9 hours.
At this stage, keep the heat on the slow cooker and remove the bones from the stock. If you are using pork bones, set them aside to cool so you can remove the meat from them. You don’t need to do this with beef bones. Remove and discard all the charred aromatics and star anise and cinnamon.
Taste the broth. It should be rich with a meaty taste and a salty-sweet background flavour. Add some sea salt or a drop or two more Thai fish sauce, if needed. The long, slow cooking will have made the broth incredibly clear and tasty without accidentally boiling and becoming cloudy.
Put the rice noodles into the still-warm stock. These are very thin, almost translucent noodles, which you can often buy for mere pence in the ‘world foods’ section of the supermarkets. They may be easier to find online if you don’t live near a large store. Put the lid back on the slow cooker and leave for 10 minutes to allow the noodles to cook.
Slice the leftover beef into the bowls or strip the pork off the ribs into the bowls. Peel the carrot and, using the peeler, peel off thin ribbons of carrot. Put these in a small bowl. Add the bean sprouts to a small bowl too. Slice the spring onions and put in a small bowl. Shred the coriander and the mint and put in small dishes. Chop the red chilli and do the same. Cut the lime into wedges. Put all the bowls on the table in the centre.
Ladle out some of the broth and the noodles into the bowls with the cooked meat in. Allow everyone to customise theirs with herbs, chilli and vegetables. Squeeze the lime over it all and slurp up your noodles with gusto. The soup is surprisingly filling, but incredibly satisfying and fortifying. I can’t eat mine with any decorum, only great joy.
For something so fundamentally simple as soup there seems to be a version for every community and culture in the world. Some become celebrities of the soup world, known and loved beyond their own region. Ramen, or Japanese noodles in broth, is definitely in this category. Big bowls of it fuel not just Japan, but thousands of wooden-benched noodle bars around the world on a daily basis.
Its secret is the broth, which is cooked for up to 18 hours, bursting with the flavour of meat and bones. This can be very time consuming when done on the stove, but the slow cooker makes it very simple to get a broth of such flavour you’ll almost swoon when you taste it.
Japanese and Asian stocks differ from European ones in that they are usually white and creamy compared to the clear Continental versions. Getting that creamy, rich, white version requires one extra step, which is very worthwhile. Few dishes in my life have made me happier than this one. It’s like cuddling up on a cold night with someone you love.
SERVES 4–6 AND FREEZES WELL
250g chicken wings or chicken bones
250g pork ribs, cut individually
2 pigs’ trotters, cut in half
2 onions
8 cloves of garlic
5cm piece of fresh ginger
4 spring onions, whole
100g brown mushrooms, left whole
2 litres cold water
salt and pepper
To serve (per person):
1 egg
1 heaped dessertspoon peanut butter or tahini
1 block of ramen or instant noodles
1 spring onion, sliced
½ teaspoon soy sauce
To get the creamy white Asian-style stock, start by putting the bones, ribs and trotters in a large pan of cold water on the hob and bringing them to the boil. Boil for 10–15 minutes. You’ll notice some froth come to the top.
Drain the boiling water out of the pan and then run cold water over the bones. Using a chopstick, if needed, remove any blood or dark spots from the bones, ribs and trotters and clean all the froth off them well. Layer the cleaned bones, ribs and trotters into the slow cooker.
Peel your onions and take the top and bottom off them with a sharp knife. If you have a gas flame on your hob, stick a fork in the base of the onion and carefully blacken it in the flame until the outside is softened and charred. Leave it to cool and then slice into rings.
If you don’t have a gas flame, slice the onions thickly and cook in a dry pan on a high heat until the rings begin to char. Move them around to make sure they don’t actually burn and become acrid. You just want colour on the onions. This increases the savoury flavour of the onions and thus the stock.
Peel your garlic cloves and ginger. Leave them both whole and drop into the slow-cooker crock. Add the onion, spring onions and the mushrooms. Season well and add the cold water. Cook on low for between 12–18 hours without opening the lid, depending on how much time you have.
After 2 hours, the stock will smell so good you will be tempted to stand by the slow cooker breathing in deeply. It will have a darkish tinge up until about the sixth hour and then it will soften and mellow in the lighter, creamier Japanese style. This is further enhanced by starting the stock from cold and bringing it to a rolling boil.
About 30 minutes before you are ready to eat, put the desired number of eggs into a pan of boiling water. Bring back to the boil and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and lower into a bowl of iced water to stop them cooking further.
Take the lid off the slow cooker and, using a slotted spoon, remove the bones, ribs and trotters from the stock. If you are using chicken wings, remove as much meat as possible and reserve. Do the same with the pork ribs. Discard the chicken bones, rib bones and the trotters.
Whisk the tahini or peanut butter into the hot stock, setting aside any you want to freeze for later. This helps add creaminess and to emulsify the fat from the meat to make the soup feel even more luxurious in your mouth. Put the noodles in the stock and put the lid back on. Allow to cook for about 5 minutes.
As the noodles soften, peel the eggs and slice in half. Your yolks should still be nice and soft in the middle. Put one egg in each bowl. Ladle the stock and noodles on top. Scatter the sliced spring onion on top. Add the reserved meat and drizzle over the soy sauce. Eat and feel the soup’s warm embrace.
Note:
I’ve also made this soup with leftover turkey bones, making it a great post-Christmas dish.
You’ll be amazed how well some curries work in the slow cooker. Low slow cooking can help create layers of flavour. Meat-based curries tend to work best this way, but some root vegetables also work well.
Using whole spices really adds an extra dimension of flavour to your curries. I lightly toast them and then grind them to release those wonderful aromas and flavours. This takes only a minute or two before putting everything in the slow-cooker crock.
You may worry that the spices for a curry will be very expensive to buy or be difficult to source. I’ve deliberately used the same selection of spices in a variety of ways so you can maximise your spice cupboard to its full potential.
If you can look for spices in the ‘world foods’ section of a supermarket or visit your local Asian grocer, you’ll get big bags of spices for a fraction of the cost of buying jars. Simply decant what you will use to sealed jars and store the spare spices in the freezer to keep them fresh. You can also buy big bags online at a well-known auction site, which is how I got my dried chillies!
Just to give you a sense of how far spices (and herbs) go, I tested everything in the book multiple times and didn’t have to replace any of them except the coriander seeds, which I dropped on the kitchen floor. Build your collection up gradually, starting with your favourites. I didn’t use ready-made pastes as they tend to be specific to one dish and much more restrictive than buying the basic spices long term.
Sweet Potato, Spinach and Paneer Curry
Rendang is a Malaysian dish full of spices and coconut. It is slow cooked until it is incredibly flavoursome and the coconut is thick. I’ve tweaked it a bit here because it usually involves buying ingredients specially, which often I’m not organised enough to have done. However, if you do have lemon grass and fresh chillies, use them. You should be able to get tins of coconut milk for a good price in the ‘world foods’ section of the supermarket. If you can only find expensive branded ones, use creamed coconut from a block and mix with warm water to make your own version at a fraction of the price.
Cook this one for a long time, up to 12 hours, and then if possible leave overnight to absorb the flavours. This is a very easy dish and a lot of the work can be done the night before if you want to make it for dinner.
