Hummus Boy

If Top Gear was a cookery programme

2012-01-22T22:16:00.002Z

Whilst worshipping at the good church of Homebase one Sunday, I spotted something on the creaking shelves of a second hand book stall. It was irresistible, it was awful and at 50 pence, worth it for the cover alone. But first, some context....

It was a decade known as the eighties. In a galaxy far, far away. Man had conquered nature, explored our nearest satellite, had sent robotic landers to Mars, but he had not yet apparently, ventured into the alien landscape known as 'KITCHEN'. Despite Michael Douglas telling us that greed was good, gluttony it seemed, only extended as far as the dining room.

So Delia only knows that we thought of MAN IN THE KITCHEN.
Whilst Attenborough was wowing us with Life on Earth, and anthropologists were exploiting remote, untainted South American tribes for academic glory, homo Erectus Britannicus had crossed the landmass known as 'the hallway' and had begun to explore a brave new world of shiny Formica, Inhabited so far, only by the strange yet attractive life form in the pinny.

Ok enough flouncing. Did we men really think the kitchen was such a mystery? Had the Galloping Gourmet taught us nothing beyond how to put food into your mouth suggestively (Greg Wallace take note)?

I suspect, the answer might be yes. I mean look at our role models back then: there was no Jamie, no Hugh, no Gary, no Rick, no Heston, and certainly no Yotam.

There was Delia of course, but for male culinary influences, who did we have?
Keith Floyd - genius, flamboyant, scary, alcoholic. This was theatre, this was opera. But you weren't actually supposed to cook his food were you? I mean the drinking, sure, that was do-able. In short bursts.Michael Barry (rip) - housewife's delight and a great communicator but surely no man would admit to watching BBC2's Food and Drink programme, not unless Jilly was sloshing wine all over her silky top.The Swedish Chef - clearly some sort of pre-Noma genius at work here, if only anyone could follow his recipes.

So like 'Cooking for One' (one man) and other such publishing derivatives, 'Man in the Kitchen' went in search of a niche - but did it find one? Timing is everything. Jamie Oliver arrived at just the right moment in history, catering to an explosion of young single people with flats of their own, (ok, vespas of their own) limited time on their hands but with adventurous palates and a liking for Supergrass. I suspect Today, Man in the Kitchen might go down a treat with James May at the helm, and a sort of DIY Fat Duck approach, mixing science, explosions and stuffing your face. But not sure it hit the spot in 1984.

Inside, the cartoons, the recipes (potted sardines? Turkey beanpot?? Mayonnaise cake???) and the total absence of photos provide a reminder of just how far food and food publishing has moved on. Still, it's intention can't be faulted and who knows how many culinary minds it's tapped. Hopefully not too many. I mean, mayonnaise?!

Northern Song

2011-12-27T08:16:00.001Z

Just a quickie as we prepare to head back down south from our Northern outpost, a stones throw from Hadrian's Wall. The hummus in law laid on a spectacular feast with a haunch of venison playing the lead role.

This came with all the trimmings and was gently roasted all day in the Aga until it was meltingly tender. Nephew took care of the veg including some rather natty pots

Whilst we waited for dinner there were a thousand and one sweet treats to keep us occupied, from freshly iced gingerbread cupcakes, tangy lemon tartlets, mince pies and even an edible tree.

Copious amounts of cheese kept us well insulated against the cold winds as did a rather nice vintage port.

On Boxing day we took off to Ullswater for a brief if very satisfying walk followed by tea at the Ramsbeck Hotel which I can thoroughly recommend. Finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones, Victoria sponge, biscuits, tea bread and the best chocolate eclairs I think I have ever tasted this side of Paris.

This is also one of the few places to have allowed young children to enjoy a posh tea. Ah England.

Favourite present of christmas wasn't even mine:

It's been a ridiculously short visit oop North but we return happy and at least a stone heavier! When does the Asian detox begin!!!??

Merry Wossnames, one and all!

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Going Gallic

2011-12-20T22:34:00.002Z

Being of a certain persuasion, I don't need a double-blind placebo controlled randomized trial to tell me that chicken soup works wonders on body and spirit (though I wonder if a study would pop up on Cochrane?). Growing up, it was the first defence in our house, or if it seemed like a really serious life-threatening condition, then of course, the was matzo ball chicken soup.

No doubt every culture has its soupy saviour, and a delivery of hot steamy nutritious liquid will go a long way to restoring soul, if not heart, to a sickly child, or in my case, a sickly partner.

So this time I shunned my roots and instead went Gallic, or rather garlic, and turned to France for a (mostly) traditional take on fish soup. It's beautiful to look at, has a rich deep fishy flavour and a shedload of garlic which MUST be good for you! Just don't bother socialising for 24 hours afterwards.

Is it a bit of a faff? Not really - the techniques are basic and the only really faffy bit is making the stock which of course you can do at any time. A proper fishmonger helps of course. The good news is you don't need anything fancy. I have loosely based this dish on one by Raymond Blanc but added mussels both to the body of the soup and as a garnish. How smooth you want to make it is up to you. After blending I passed it through a sieve and then added back a couple of tables spoons of the purée giving it a smooth texture and the consistency of single cream. Worked for me. The rouille sauce ( a very garlicky mayo with a hint of cayenne) is a must and take 2 minutes and some light wrist action. But adding garlic and cayenne to jarred mayo will do, just.

Buy whole fish, get them filleted and skinned if you cant do the skinning yourself. Use the bones/heads for the stock. This really is a lovely dish, both earthy and classy. Well worth the small effort!

Fish soup with rouille croutons

Part 1: stock

Bones, bits and heads of fish

1 onion rough chopped with skin

1 carrot roughly chopped

1 stick celery roughly chopped

Herbs - what you like really: parsley stalks, thyme, rosemary, a handful will do.

650 ml water

Handful of pepper corns, large pich of course salt

1 teaspoon olive oil

Heat the oil in a deep pan, add everything except the water, give it a short fry up then add water and salt. Bring to boil the simmer for 20-30 mins. Cool for as long as you can with everything still in it, then drain through a colander into another pan or large bowl and set aside.

Part 2: soup

200-250g fillets of gunard, grey mullet and red mullet (these are easy to find and inexpensive as fish goes. Other options include hake, whiting, haddock, ling - nothing oily though, but keep it cheap)

20-30 Fresh cooked mussels. Cook them quickly by steaming them open in a lidded pan on a high heat, into which you immediately add either a ladle of stock or a splash of wine. Will take a couple of minutes.

Fish fillets and half the mussels, removed from shell (reserve others for garnish)

1 bulb fennel finely chopped

1 onion finely chopped

1 carrot finely chopped

1 stick of celery finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic finely minced

1 can chopped tomatoes or 4-5 fresh ripe ones chopped or half n half

Generous pinch saffron

1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Stock

Parsley for garnish

In a large pan, heat one tablespoon olive oil, and add the onion, fennel, carrot and celery and fry gently for 5-10 minutes til soft. Add garlic and fry for another minute. Then add fish and mussels and thyme. Sauté for a minute or so and then add tomatoes, stock, saffron and seasoning. Bring to boil the. Simmer gently for 20 minutes uncovered. Now go to part three to make the rouille.

Taste soup, adjust seasoning. Then allow to cool a little before blending. Pass through sieve without too much pressure and add back some of the un-sieved purée to get the thickness you want. Soup is done.

Part 3: rouille croutons

French stick

2-3 cloves garlic

Salt

Pinch Cayenne pepper

Squeeze lemon

Two egg yolks

200-250 ml light oil

Slice thin rounds of bread, as much as you like but 3-4 per person is good and toast them. Set aside. Then into a bowl, beat yolks and lemon together well. In a pestle and mortar crush garlic and salt until you have a paste and add this to the yolks. Then add cayenne. Now using a jug of oil in one hand and a whisk in the other, start pouring the oil into the yolk mixture in a thin drizzle beating all the time. You don't have to pour constantly, but make sure oil is well incorporated before you carry on. Within a few minutes you should have a runny pale orange mayo. Add more lemon, salt or cayenne as preferred.

Reheat soup and add remaining cooked mussels in shells. Ladle into bowls. Spread rouille onto toasted bread or allow guests to do so. Serve with a little sprinkling of parsley. breathe in deeply and enjoy.

Shall we see that pretty picture again?

A Feast from the East

2011-11-27T09:41:00.002Z

This time no excuses. Though, I've got 'em. Oh yes, sure as eggs is eggs and East is East.

And speaking of East, the most recent addition to the library has us enthralled.

Bill Granger's Everyday Asian has come into our lives and is bossing us about like a dragon mother teaching her children to cook. I mean that in an affectionate way as we can't get his food into our mouths fast enough.

Dressed in sky blue and cerise, this latest addition to the school of cooking for dummies (sorry, I mean, 'everyone') is a picture of sumptuous yet trashy Asiana. Come to think of it, less dragon mother and more dragon lady.

Some of our now treasured recipes include Vietnamese BBQ pork with caramel sauce, chicken and mushroom coconut soup, sticky prawns with rice noodles and more.

The recipes are short, easy to follow and tend to involve more or less the same collection of basic store cupboard ingredients: garlic, ginger, chilli, fish sauce etc. But we've also been introduced to the delights of white miso and mirin. The former is particularly wonderful with aubergine, to create a satisfying yet simple vegetarian main.

So, fortune cookies at the ready, we let Bill provide us with Sunday lunch. We settled on prawn and ginger dumplings for starters, followed by crispy roast pork with spring onion pancakes.

Son number two made half the dumplings whilst the pork basically cooks itself and the pancakes are essentially French crepes as opposed to the wafer thin pastry you get with your takeaway so require as much skill as you need on pancake day. Here below are recipes for the dumplings and a rather fine chilli jam that goes well with just about anything.

Prawn and ginger dumplings (makes about 12)

250g raw peeled and chopped king prawns
12 wonton skins
2 spring onions finely sliced
2-3 inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely grated
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
oil for shallow frying

Dipping Sauce:
1 tablespoons of rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar

Combine all the dipping sauce ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside. Mix the prawns, oyster sauce, ginger, spring onion and sesame oil. Place a teaspoon of the mixture in the centre of a wonton skin, run a wet finger around the edges and then fold one corner into another to form a triangle. Then bring the two long points of the triangle together and press together so it looks like a tortellini, albeit in our case one made by a six year old with a snotty nose.

When all are done, pour about 2cm depth of sunflower (or similar) oil in a pan, and fry the dumplings on both sides for about a minute or so. They puff up and turn golden fairly quickly. Drain on kitchen paper and serve with the dipping sauce.

With the chilli jam, it is really up to you what chillies you use and whether or not you want to remove the seeds. Here I use the mild to medium-hot large chillies that supermarkets sell. You end up with something that gives off a lip-tingling heat as I want to be able to use this with a wide variety of dishes but by all means ramp it up!

Tomato and Chilli jam (makes about one jam jar full)

500g tomatoes skinned and chopped

3 red chillies, deseeded and chopped

250g caster sugar

1 tablespoon fish sauce

2 garlic cloves

A thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

75 ml of sherry or cider vinegar

Squeeze of lime

Put the garlic, ginger, chilli and fish sauce in a blender or food processor and blitz. You need to get it to a purée if possible so I use a hand blender afterwards. Then place in a saucepan with the tomatoes, vinegar and sugar. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20-25 mins. It should be thicker and darker but not caramelised! Add a squeeze of lime juice. Leave to cool, jar up and keep in the fridge.

There are heaps of other versions of course - Peter Gordon's classic is more dramatic - in that it involves making a caramel and then throwing in dozens of finely sliced Thai chillies - the result is sweet and fiery from the get-go, whereas this is softer, milder and I think more versatile. Happy munching. More from Humusboy coming very soon. sooner in fact.

You Were Warned

2011-10-18T18:32:00.000+01:00

I feel like a rant*.

No, its not about last week's poorly judged facile announcement by Andrew Lansley about his (ahem) "policy" for tackling obesity. Eat fewer calories: simples. Back it up with some regulation on junk food providers? Incentivise the poor to eat fresh rather than heavily processed food? Remove chocolate machines from schools? Subsidise gym membership? I could go on. Pity the government don't.

No, it's not that.

Is it a rant about the first episode of Hugh Fearnley Slimmed-down-alot's new Channel 4 series about eating vegetables? You know how it goes: take a stroll in your three-acre cottage garden, have a chat to the avuncular Head gardener (and his two staff) get them to pull out a few peas for you and throw them in some hot water - hey presto a delicious and virtually calorie free meal! Hang on, maybe Lansley is onto something...By the way, producers of cooking programmes (yes Rick Stein's and Fearnley's lot I'm talking to you) I know we're morons but could you at least OCCASIONALLY change the bloody format/music/graphics/ANYTHING!?

No, it's not that either.

It ought to be a rant about the spiraling cost of food, especially after today's news about inflation. It seems I'm no longer shopping Waitrose or even M&S, my local supermarket appears to be basing its prices on Fortnum and Mason's. In Dubai. I tell you the price of Gentleman's Relish these days...

No. I am talking about something much more insidious. Something that has wormed its way into our culture so seamlessly that we think it's the NORM. Such is its success in creating an acceptable veneer of reality that it makes The Matrix look like something Atari developed in the 1980s

Yes, I'm talking about cooking for dummies. I'm talking about the art of cooking without cooking. The promise of turning each and every one of us into automatons capable of making a basic risotto, a Thai prawn curry, a cooked breakfast and roast chicken without ever knowing or having to think about the processes, the ingredients, or what might happen if we IMPROVISE. EXPERIMENT.

In culinary terms it can feel like a land of extremes: simplicity speed cooking with Jamie on the one hand or chemistry set cooking with Heston and the Large Hadron Collider on the other. Neither, IMHO make us a nation of interested and interesting cooks. Myself included.

Now before I come across as a complete loon, let me explain. I own the following books - books I might add that I enjoy using, if not actually reading.

Bill's Basics
Chinese Food Made Easy
Nigella Express
Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

I could also own but thankfully don't, the following:

Home Cooking Made Easy
Baking Made Easy
How to Cheat at Cooking
Gordon Ramsay Makes it Easy

And the question is: how much culinary skill and knowledge, and WISDOM would I really acquire from following these recipes and reading their prose? Why does it all have to be so easy - why has the bar been set so low? And who set it? And when does it GO UP?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising SIMPLICITY. Simplicity is a wonderful thing. A necessary thing. But it's not surely at the end of the day just about the result, is it? As long as I get something resembling a curry at the end of the day it doesn't matter that I know absolutely nothing about the subtle art of spicing. Or how to achieve heat without erasing your taste buds for a week. Or why yoghurt and cream thicken sauces or curdle when overheated or combined with too much acidity or...

... and OF COURSE, there are still so many wonderful writers and cooks who whilst keeping their recipes relatively straightforward are teaching us and challenging us with ingredients or techniques or combinations that are wonderfully freaky but oh so clever. These are the books I want to return to because it raises the bar and gives me something to aim for.

So someone in popular publishing and TV-land, please, come on, raise the bar, just a little. It doesn't ALWAYS have to be easy - we're not talking about GCSEs here after all.

*The great thing about rants is they don't have to be logical or 'right'. In fact it probably helps not to

In the meantime, has anyone written:

Cooking Made Fiendishly Complicated
Home Freakonimics
Keeping Up with the Blumenthals
Cooking for People Who Really Can Be Arsed (and then some, I mean they've even gone out and bought a whole set of Japanese kitchen knives and everything).

Kitchen Dreams: The Joy of Slow

2011-09-26T14:14:00.001+01:00

Whilst the kitchen at Hummus towers still resembles a refugee camp (albeit one with Brita water filters and a Gaggia Classic espresso maker) our culinary equivalent of medicins sans frontiers continues to shine: the gadget of which I speak is of course, THE SLOW COOKER.

Its glacial creations continues to astound. We have abandoned Jamie, Nigella and even Bill for this new kitchen celebrity (though have you seen Bill's Everyday Asian? Wow). Why isn't there a TV series dedicated to the wonders of this device?! Or at least some stupidly named children?

Ok, so erm, we quite like it. And this weekend, went all-out to host a small family dinner, Wahaca style, with the main event being Pork Pibil, a wondrous dish of pork shoulder, marinated over night then slow cooked to soft, yielding perfection.

It's a favourite when we visit Tomasina Myers's excellent London eatery but the recipe is elusive. Thanks to the hard work of a fellow blogger Gooey Cheese, I was able to put together a pretty passable version even though I did not alas have a key ingredient - achiote paste

It's made from what some call Mexico's version of saffron - annetto seeds, which produce a brilliant bright red colour when ground and added to food. The commercial paste is already spiced, or you can make your own if you can get the seeds. Both are available mail order but there wasn't time so I carried on with a few game substitutions. I did not brown the meat beforehand and can report it made little difference, we still ended up with soft shredded meat that had real depth of flavour, subtle spicing and a light unctuousness just the right side of greasy. we cooked it on low for about 8 hours. Its quite mild so the children wolfed it down. We served with corn tortillas, fresh guacamole, soured cream, chillies, tomato salsa, shredded lettuce and a little cheese.

Pork Pibil - serves 6 plus leftovers - warning: you need to marinade the meat overnight or as long as possible before cooking!

Ingredients
1.5 kilos pork shoulder cut into large chunks, trim off excess fat where you can
3 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon of paprika
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon cloves
generous pinch of salt
shot of tequila
80ml freshly squeezed orange juice
2 limes juiced

nb: If you have located some of the achiote paste then you just need to add the liquids and salt to the pork. not the spices.

Method
In a cast iron or suitably heavy pan, gently roast the spices for a couple of minutes then place in a pestle and mortar with the salt and garlic. crush to a decent paste, add the lime juice, the orange juice and the tequila, and then mix well into the pork. LEAVE to marinade as long as possible, overnight is best, in the fridge. Take it out an hour before going into the slow cooker if you can.

Show it all in the slow cooker - you won't need any additional liquid. it will release quite a lot and after about 5 hours in there, I drained several ladles of liquid then carried on with it for another 2-3 hours - basically I put it on 'low' at 1030 and we ate about 1930 that day! Shred before serving - suggestion below:

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Kitchen Nightmares part 1

2011-09-21T09:46:00.002+01:00

So we have a new house, all very exciting. We have a new kitchen, all very disappointing. Why? No cooker. Our sellers took it (wrongly as it turns out). So whilst we allow messrs. Flywheel Shyster & Flywheel to sort out that one, the task ahead is to prepare family meals with an assortment of old and ugly odd-job appliances. It's the culinary equivalent of the Dirty Dozen. Mission: to take down the enemy's appetites and get out alive and preferably without gastroenteritis.

Cast:
1 x camping stove
1 x dodgy microwave (whose plate no longer turns)
1 x French electric grill thing we hardly ever use
1 x slow cooker purchased for 14.99 (really)
10 x takeaway menus

We've pretty much given up the idea of having fresh veg with our meals as the timing and dexerity required with a single gas ring is too exhausting. Microwave rice is probably the most useful invention of the last 50 years in my opinion and one day it will even be tasty. The stir frys are ok except when you unexpectedly run out of gas (about every three days) and the strange grill thing though largely unloved for a decade has proved it's worth with chicken kebabs and cheese toasties. But the star of the show, the wrongly convicted hero in our band of kitchen brigands is the slow cooker. I often looked at these and thought, 'not for me', not for a wannabe chef with pretensions. surely. Ok, so I'm a late convert and everyone else knows how cool these objects are. Well now, so do I. well, we picked up an anonymous looking model at a supermarket and initially hopes were not high. Controls were: off, low, high, warm.

On the web, recipes seem to vary, all the way from: fry some stuff then whack it in the cooker for 9 hours, to: forget frying and whack it in anyway. We opted for the former and it has so far not disappointed.

Beef chilli, lamb tagine and sausage with lentils has provided the family with our first mouthfuls of tasty hot food in a while. I'd still rather have a proper cooker of course but friends tell me that you can make cakes in these things. Really? REALLY!?

I await your instructions. Meanwhile here is a photo of some slow cooked sausages with lentils. Method? See above.

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Cafe Fish - Catalan style

2011-08-23T12:56:00.001+01:00

We're enjoying a short break in Catalonia which kicked off with three hot and sticky days in Barcelona. Whilst many of the recommended restaurants in our guides were closed for the summer, we managed to get by very well on down-at-heel bars serving simple authentic pinxos and tapas - well tapas is apparently not very traditional round here but there's still plenty of it. However one night we did strike gold - in the form of clams, king prawns, tuna and bream - fresh off the boats and served up in the most wonderful place.

La Paradeta is a canteen where you line up, grab a tray, and pick whatever takes your fancy from the fish counter: razor clams, whitebait, cuttlefish, mussels, three kinds of prawns, crayfish, hunks of deep red tuna - whatever looks good, and it all does. Each portion is weighed, priced and cooked to your liking. You order sauces, drinks, bread and giant mixed salads, at the next counter then sit and wait a few minutes for the first of your dishes to be called out, according to ticket number. We were no. 11 or 'onze' in Catalan.

At La Paradeta, not only do you line up to order but you have to fetch your own dishes from the kitchen hatch. Each one comes as and when, so whatever arrives first - in our case, squid - becomes the starter. We stared impatiently at the kitchen, waiting for the call, salivating with abandon and more than once I showed myself up as a touristico by marching up there only to discover I'd misheard the number.

The place is simple yet magical and it felt like everyone around us: couples, families and friends had come to do nothing else but enjoy fish at its freshest with a little gossip on the side.

I particularly admired a couple to our right who were pretty focused when it came to their food: a huge mound of whitebait followed by two plates, both bulging with steamed crayfish, and glistening with a garlic and herb sauce. That was it - that and a couple of bottles of cava - no accompaniments. Nice.

As for us, the squid was followed by steamed clams, giant gambas on the shell and a seared slab of tuna that would have set you back 15 quid in a restaurant back home, here it was 5 euros.
Add a large mixed salad, bread and soft drinks plus wine and we were left with a total bill of 50 euros, a full belly and a big smile.

As is usual when finding a gem like this abroad, English foodies get rather depressed when they try and compare it to the experience back home. Here in Spain, fish is as common as bread and nearly as cheap. This might not always be the case with concern over fish stocks but I don't need to tell you that in the UK, the experience could hardly be more different, with premium prices, dodgy quality and a tired homogeneity to the selection on offer. Of course we do have plenty of spanking fresh gorgeous fish in our waters too, but as any visitor to Spain knows, most of it ends up over there.

Buen Appetito!

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Location:Barcelona

Fun with Food

2011-08-12T07:33:00.005+01:00

After another long absence I return with a vengence. Actually I return with a herniated disc. Made sitting and typing about as much fun as reading the Anthony Worral Thompson's Lo-GI diet book I just threw away. Oh Wozza, why ja do it?

A bad back and lack of time stopped me writing but it didn't stop me cooking. And now that I'm better acquainted with the wonderful world of Tramadol, it's time to get back to the blogosphere.

On the culinary front there were some fine times. First off, an Arvon food writers reunion. A real grown-up treat, at a Devonian retreat, with 10 foodies and 2 'sleb chefs and a Prius full of food, most of it looted (ahem, I mean legitimately written off as wastage), from the good kitchens of Providores and Ottolenghi. The wonderful and generous Mozart's Girl brought us all together, almost exactly one year from the original Arvon course we'd all attended, at an 18th century restored stables, available to rent at all good Landmark Trust websites near you. In truth not everyone of the writers, bloggers and chefs could make it - those who couldn't were sadly missed - but the gathering was quorate nonetheless and suitably raucous. Quarous in fact.

We had plenty of cake - oh and such cake! Salted caramel this and apple maple that .... And pork crackling (not a cake, though that's a thought), indeed, probably the best roasted pork belly that I have ever eaten, cooked by a Kiwi. Finally there was ping-pong. Lots of ping-pong. Turns out the Israeli uberchef knows his way around a table tennis bat. And is quite the, erm, competitor. Meanwhile, Peter o' the Providores, simply rose above such infancy and attended to his palm sugar suffused tapioca pudding - which was sublime. It was all sublime. Just don't mention the sleeping arrangements.

Recently I also had the fortune to return to NOPI, the Ottolenghi group's "proper" restaurant, in London's Soho. On my last visit (opening night way back in February 2011 was it?) I'd remarked that the portions and the price points didn't quite match up. Last week's visit put paid to that issue - there was food in abundance - someone had clearly taken portion control by the cohones but loosened their grip a little, making the dish-to-diner ratio more like 3: 1 instead of 4:1. We left pretty full, without dessert, and it was all top notch, with particular plaudits going to the aubergine tart. Might not look like much but the aubergine had been slow cooked to create fantastic depth of flavour - smokey, sweet, spicy. Amazing. Like an aubergine version of membrillo!

On the home front, the hummus household turned out some fine dishes. Tahini girl scored a real winner with this sublime orange and polenta cake from Ottolenghi 1.

There was a Nasi Goreng for all the family. A seared bream, home made som tum salad, some delightful lamb cutlets and steamed fish with a chilli and ginger dressing which was particularly good.

We also got treated to lunch at the newly restored and wonderful Ship in Winchelsea, which will feature in a separate post. There we had a wonderful thai broth made with fish cheeks and some of the best roast lamb I have ever noshed. Apparently a few days ago it was standing in the field opposite the pub. Now that's local!

Meanwhile, I whipped up a simple but elegant fish dish for a saturday night supper, part improvised, part borrowed from a (deep intake of breath) Rich Stein recipe that I heartily recommend. Well, sort of. Actually this version is better, IMO. I am rather enjoying Rick's Spanish TV adventure, inspite of its "what-I-did-on-my-holidays" feel. We're off to Spain soon as well as it happens, to sample the delights of Barcelona. Restaurant recommendations welcome!

Anyway, thought I'd share that dish with you:

Red Mullet with Red Pepper Dressing

4 red mullet fillets (will work with other fish: bream, mackerel)
2 red peppers
5-6 cherry tomatoes
1 mild red chilli
85 ml / 3 oz sherry vinegar
Half teaspoon ground cumin
small handful basil leaves
EV olive oil
Salt & Pepper (Malden salt if you can)

Once you've dealt with the pepper, tomatoes, and chilli, which takes a little time, the rest is easy.
So begin by drizzling on a little oil and roasting them all in a hot oven. You want the tomatoes to start to collapse a little and develop that lovely sweetness. The peppers meanwhile will need to roast for longer, until the skin blisters and blackens and you can peel it off. The chilli will be ready after the tomatoes but before the peppers. Peel its skin and de-seed as well. All this roasting should take about 40 minutes as long as your oven is already very hot. Go and put the kids to bed or polish that mountain bike again...

Honestly, it's worth the faff, but you might perfer to speed this process up by blackening the peppers and chilli on the hob - which I do sometimes. It's quicker but you usually don't get that same depth of flavour as you do with roasting.

Whizz everything up in a food processor til relatively smooth - loosen with a little hot water if necessary and a dash of olive oil. Then push the whole lot through a sieve - this isn't as arduous as it sounds, as you're after a thin sauce and don't need to push every last bit of pulp through that mesh! The resulting fiery red liquid should then be placed in a pan and boiled til about half remains. Meanwhile in another pan, boil off the sherry vinegar until only 2 tablespoons remain.

When the sherry has cooled a little, add half to the red pepper sauce. Taste it and decide if you think it needs a bit more. I decided to stop at one spoon but you may want more of an acidic kick to the dressing.

Heat up a cast iron ridge pan til nearly smoking, brish your mullet pieces on both sides with olive oil and some salt, and whack onto the pan for about 1.5 minutes a side.

Serve the fish on warm plates, skin side up, with the dressing elegantly drizzled around it. scatter a few torn shreds of basil around the plate and finish off with a drizzle of good quality olive oil and some turns of freshly ground pepper and some flakes of sea salt.

I served with this some lovely Swiss chard from my mother-in-law's garden, blanched and tossed in a little olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon.

To drink: try an Albarino from Galicia - available in Tesco, M&S and well, nearly everywhere these days.

Tonight I'm off to Roganic, which calls itself a pop-up restaurant. A very exciting menu lies ahead - could be a triumph, could be a costly disaster. Reviews will follow.

Have a great weekend!

Instant Supper no. 134: chicken tikka kebabs

2011-07-07T17:27:00.001+01:00

Wotcha. Another pathetically easy evening supper when you've little energy or enthusiasm for cooking but can't quite face a takeaway. It's also pretty healthy.

Scientifically speaking (well, more or less) the lactic acid in yoghurt helps the flavours of the marinade to penetrate/tenderise chicken quicker and deeper than say, wine or soy etc. I remember a Heston TV show, in search of The perfect Tikka Masala or something, putting batches of marinated chick into an MRI scanner but not having one to hand today you'll have to trust me. But if you don't then nerds can read a transcript of the tv show in question Here

So, for a simple supper for two, proceed this-a-way:

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts cut into approx 2 in chunks
5 tablespoons plain low fat yoghurt.
1 tablespoon jarred tikka paste (I used Pataks)
1 tablespoon chopped coriander
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
Veg for skewering - optional

Method
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, set aside 5-10 mins, whilst you chop some onion, pepper and tomato into chunks to go on the skewers.

Put some rice on the boil and turn the grill up to full power.

Thread skewers alternating chicken with veg.

Grill about 10-15 mins turning skewers a few times. Check a couple of the pieces of chicken before you serve to ensure they're done. Serve with rice, lemon wedge and more plain yoghurt.

The real sweet and sour pork - in minutes

2011-07-03T08:58:00.001+01:00

This thai-inspired pork and pineapple dish comes (yet again) from my favourite book of 2011 - and one I was rather cynical about when I first saw it, and that is Bill's Basics, by Bill Granger.

The only specialist ingredient you will need is yellow curry paste. We found the Mae Ploy brand in our local Asian store and I've even heard tell that a certain up-market SE based chain of supermarkets sells it too.
After obtaining this pot, which will last forever, the rest is DEAD easy and will take about 15 minutes from start to finish.

The paste is pretty fiery stuff, so a little goes a long way. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons. If you like spice but appreciate actually tasting food, start with one tablespoon and see how it feels. Balancing the sour with the sweet is a personal thing I find, so before you add the sauce to the wok, combine the fish sauce sugar and lime, taste and adjust as necessary. Go easy on the lime though. Never thought I'd ever say that.

This comfortably serves 2 with seconds. Serve with plain rice. And cold beer.

Pork with pineapple and basil

Ingredients
600g lean pork, thinly sliced (fillet works well or slices off a pork chop)
1-2 tablespoons of yellow curry paste
2 tablespoons sunflower or groundnut oil
200g pineapple pieces (canned is fine, fresh is better)
1 red onion sliced into thin wedges
200g green beans topped and tailed
200g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1-2 tablespoon soft brown sugar
1-2 tablespoons of lime juice - about half a lime or so
Large handful of basil leaves - no need for Thai basil but nice if you can get it.

Method
1. Put the pork in a bowl and mix with the paste
2. Heat up a wok til just smoking, add half the oil, fry the pork in batches until golden and cooked
3. Remove the pork, wipe the wok if necessary and add the pineapple. Stir fry for 1 minute to caramelise
4. Remove the pineapple, add the rest of the oil to the wok, heat it up and add the onion, fry for 2 mins
5. Add the beans and fry for 2 minute and then the tomatoes for another minute.
6. Return the pork and pineapple to the work, toss around and then add the sugar, lime juice and fish sauce.
7. Add the basil leaves and give it all a final stir about.
8. Devour.

A Stew for Summer

2011-06-09T09:02:00.001+01:00

When you think of summer you don't think of stews which is a shame because last night I threw one together that was light, summery and a snip to prepare. So I want to share it. It was so good I forgot to take any photos! There are just a few basic ingredients and the whole thing can be done in an hour from prep to plate though an extra 30 mins won't hurt.

Chicken with white beans, orange and thyme (catchy eh?) Serves two, comfortably.

Ingredients
Three chicken thighs on the bone, each chopped into 2 or 3 pieces across the bone.
Tablespoon of plain flour
Half an orange, cut into 6 pieces
1 can of White beans such as butter
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 small onion, diced
Olive oil
Small bunch fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1 ripe tomato, chopped
500 ml water or stock
1 small whole dried chilli
salt & pepper

Method
Preheat oven to 175C. In an oven proof dish with a lid, sweat the onions and garlic with a little olive oil for a few minutes, add a pinch of salt to prevent burning. Then add the tomato and cook gently for 2 minutes, remove and set aside. De-glaze the pan with a little water, scraping up any sticky bits with a wooden spoon. Then add a teaspoon of oil, toss the chicken in a little seasoned flour and fry along with the thyme leaves until the chicken pieces have a little colour on them. Then add the onions, oranges, bay, chilli and stock (or water). A few turns of pepper, lid on, bring to the boil and simmer on the hob for 10 minutes. Then add the beans, stir well and place the covered dish in the oven and bake for around 45 minutes.

After 45 mins or so, the chicken should fall off the bone easily, the sauce should have thickened up and turned a light orange and the beans should be melting. If not give it another 10 mins with the lid off.

Season and serve with some finely chopped flat leave parsley and if you're not currently of the view that bread is a product of the Anti-Christ, then a nice hunk of baguette to soak up the sauce does nicely.

As Greg would say, 'nom, non, nom!'

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Masala Mackerel Magic

2011-06-05T09:25:00.001+01:00

My recovery continues and to help, I cooked up a simple mackerel dish poached (surprisingly) from a Rick Stein book (Food Heroes) with a few small changes to the spice mix. Eating this reminded me of being on holiday in Goa. I have never been to Goa, or India for that matter - that's how good this dish is!

The heart of the chilli marinade is made with reconstituted whole dried chillies, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes. When supple, scrape off the seeds. Here I used Kashmiri chillies from the Cool Chile Company, which are mild to medium but by all means go for something hotter. You can usually get whole dried chillies from any Asian grocer as well as some supermarkets.

Use 2 mackerel fillets per person - this recipe serves 2-3 adults.

Marinade:
5-6 whole Kashmiri chillies soaked in hot water for 20-30 mins, then seeds removed - preserve some of the liquid.
3-4 teaspoons of red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
3 whole peppercorns
5 cloves of garlic
thumb sized piece of ginger un-peeled
3 whole cloves

Red onion salad:

1 medium red onion finely sliced

handful of coriander roughly chopped

1 fresh red chilli finely sliced, no seeds

4 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 lime

Method
Boil the kettle, let it cool for a minute then pour into a bowl over the dried chillies and let the soak for 20-30 mins; put the fresh sliced chilli into a small cup and pour over the vinegar; crush the peppercorns and cloves with a pestle and mortar; roughly chop the garlic and ginger and then place all the ingredients for the marinade except the chilli, into a blender or food processor.

When they're soft and supple, add the chillies but remove the seeds first - and keep some of that soaking liquid to one side; blend everything together as finely as possible. I find that a food processor alone will not do this and often use a hand blender to get the mixture to a proper fine paste - it is well worth the extra effort. You should have a dark red sweet and smokey paste. Paint it generously over the flesh of the fish, working it into every space.

To finish off the salad, drain the fresh red chilli and toss in a bowl with the onion and coriander. squeeze over the juice of half a lime, cut the other half into small wedges to serve with the fish. Fry the mackerel in a hot non-stick pan with a little sunflower oil, skin side down for 2-3 mins, then flip and cook for another 1-2 minutes.

Serve with mound of the crispy salad, a wedge of lime and plain boiled rice.

You can't spell diet without spelling DIE!

2011-05-31T07:48:00.002+01:00

We re in a strange place at hummus towers. No booze except on weekends. Not even Thursdays. Lower fat meals, less bread and smaller portions. Fruit for dessert and no snacking during the day.

Result: I've lost weight and now I'm actually sick. Picked up a bug. SEE!!?

Must be how vegans feel.

Anyways just time to post a few shots of a recent 'low fat' dinner option. Actually it was restrained but still tasty.

Home made spinach and ricotta ravioli, served with a little broth and some crispy sage leaves. A light dusting of Parmesan. This like Italian temple food, really. To the ricotta and spinach I added lemon zest, nutmeg, And er, a little Parmesan.

And for secondo, a risotto with clams and fennel. I caramelised some fennel as a garnish and again served with a little broth to moisten it but NO Parmesan. Not on fish.

Bought the clams at Waitrose but only half of them opened after cooking. As a friend of a friend duly said, 'story of my life'.

So true.

Enjoy!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Et Tu Bill?

2011-05-05T09:05:00.002+01:00

Bill Granger is fast becoming one of my favourite metrosexual cooks and writers. I first came across his food in Sydney whilst working there in 2005. His eponymous cafe in Paddington was where we'd go for relaxed long Sunday brunches of buttermilk pancakes, toasted coconut bread and pillowy poached eggs (not all on one plate you understand).

We returned to blighty with one of his books but frankly never really attempted that much. Perhaps we just felt the book and its recipes belonged back in sunny Oz.

So I was surprised when Tahini Girl came home recently with Bill's Basics. Yet another attempt to capture the all-work-no-time middle class foodie market entered into most recently by Nigella, Delia and now so dominated by Jamie.

But you know what? It's take on classics - and it really is filled with everyday dishes - seems strangely refreshing. Even a lasagne is given a twist so simple and effective you wonder why it's not done more often. The salads are particularly good and as you might expect there's plenty of Asiana to satisfy pacific rim junkies.

Of the various recipes I've tried the one for Caesar salad is noteworthy NOT because of the salad itself but because of it's dressing, which you make yourself. As readers will know I'm rather fond of making sauces and condiments - mayo, tatare, ketchup and now Caesar salad dressing. It's really no more than a few mins work and very satisfying. Bill also does croutons in a lovely, less greasy and tastier way. I've modified the dressing recipe slightly, adding lemon juice and a dollop of Greek yoghurt as I wanted more acidity and a paler colour.

Bill's Caesar Salad Dressing

Ingredients
1 egg at room temperature
4 anchovy fillets, finely chopped or mashed
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon capers, finely chopped (try and get the small salted ones, but rinse first)
Juice of half a lemon
Salt & pepper
100 ml light olive oil or else just a neutral veg oil
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

First boil the egg for 3 mins. You want it soft and runny. When ready cool it down under a tap, then carefully peel and place whole egg in a bowl. Add capers, anchovies, mustard, parmesan and mash all together well. Then slowly, with the oil in a jug, trickle it into the bowl and whisk as you pour. Remember to keep the oil to a thin stream. The sauce will start to thicken. When its all gone and the sauce is thick but still pourable, add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste. If desired a dollop of Greek yoghurt will whiten up the dressing which will be more yellow than a bottled version.

Croutons

2-3 medium thick slices of bread, crusts removed and cubed
Large knob of butter (25 g approx)
1-2 garlic cloves, squashed but still whole
A small handful grated parmesan.

Melt a large knob of butter in a pan, when foaming add bread and garlic. Let the bread absorb the butter and after a minute or so place the croutons on an oven tray and bake for around 7-8 minutes on 175C.

They should be crispy when done. Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle over some grated parmesan, mix and leave to cool. The effect is astonishingly morish.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Paprika Nights

2011-04-04T14:49:00.000+01:00

Its been too long! Whilst I have been cooking, writing is harder to make time for at the moment. Not when there's 20 episodes of The Killing to watch. Anyway here's two simple Spanish dishes on a Moro theme.

I love the first Moro book and the sense of discovery it evokes written from the perspective of two talented cooks on an Andalucian adventure.

It was written at a time when Spanish basics like chorizo were uncommon in some supermarkets let alone delicasies manchego and membrillo.

These two dishes are relatively quick, simple and delicious of course.

The aubergine comes from the book, the stew is inspired by it. We fried up some patatas bravas with a fresh chilli and tomato sauce for the carbs.

To drink: a fantastic palo cortado sherry from Waitrose: tangy, nutty, light caramel notes. Serve nicely chilled. And remember it's 15 percent abv!

Aubergines with chilli, garlic and mint

Ingredients:
1 aubergine sliced into half inch thick rounds
1 large red chilli sliced into super -thin strips
1 garlic clove sliced into slivers
A few fresh mint leaves rolled up and shredded
Olive oil for frying
Salt
Dressing: 3 teaspoons sherry vinegar; 1 mashed garlic clove, seasalt.

Method
Sprinkle the aubergine slices with salt. Leave 20 mins. Pat dry then fry til golden on both sides.
Drain on kitchen paper; then fry slivers of garlic until golden. Arrange aubergine on a plate and sprinkle over with the garlic, mint and chilli. Then make the dressing by combining the mashed garlic and vinegar and spoon over the aubergines. Leave for as long as possible before eating. A few hours is best.

chickpea and chorizo stew

Ingredients:
100g of chorizo sausage
2 small squid, cleaned & sliced
200g chickpeas (tinned is fine)
1/2 can chopped tomatoes
1 small onion sliced
1 clove garlic sliced
Half a red pepper, the skin charred and peeled and the flesh sliced
1-2 whole dried chillies (up to you how mild/strong)
Olive oil for frying
Handful flat leaf parsley
Salt and pepper

Method
Fry onion til soft, then add garlic, then chorizo. After 3 mins add squid and after 2 mins add tomatoes, chickpeas, crumble in the chillies and add the sliced pepper. Season, stir, tuned heat down and simmer with lid on for 20 mins, add splash of water if it looks like drying out. Stir now and then. The squid will toughen up a bit at first then become more tender. The result is rich and a little smokey with a subtle chilli heat. Just before serving adjust seasoning and sprinkle with chopped flat leaf parsley.

NOPI - a review

2011-03-01T23:31:00.000Z

NOPI, the new "proper" restaurant from the Ottolenghi group, has arrived and as the acronym suggests, sits just north of Piccadilly, on Warwick Street at the edge of London's Soho district. Inside there's a maître d', an elegant array of tables and chairs, lots of waiting staff, gold trimmings, fancy toilets and a bar- yup, it's a restaurant alright. Not a pink meringue in sight.

Design-wise, NOPI shares the Ottolenghi group's trademark minimalism but this time with added gold bling accessories which adorn everything from door handles and light fittings to the napkin rings. At first you might be forgiven for thinking you'd stepped into a Lebanese restaurant on the Edgware Rd, but I must say, after 5 minutes, it grew on me. Downstairs, you'll find a fabulous large open kitchen and two communal eating tables giving you a front row seat on the drama of service.

kitchen as theatre

I'd decided to go along to NOPI on a whim, on opening night no less, with no reservation and as a single diner. I turned up early – barely past six o'clock – to find several tables already occupied. The greeting as was warm and friendly as I could wish and they even offered me a table but instead opted for a chance to prop myself up at the bar.

Sharing is still a major trend in London restaurant circles and the same applies to NOPI. The menu changes in the evening, with all of the dishes presented as sharing plates (some are offered as main courses at lunch) and is pleasingly divided into veg, meat, fish and sweets. The style of food is modern and covers Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Ottolenghi knows his audience and anyone familiar with his books, column or delis will like it here.

Dishes include seared scallops with picked daikon and green apple, baked lamb belly with mushrooms and sumac and the intriguing yet rather scary sounding salad of raw brussel sprouts, oyster mushrooms and quail eggs. Friends who have since tasted this assure me it is delicious and not at all frightening. In fact the recipe was recently published in the Guardian.

After a quick discussion with the well-brief waiter, I ordered from the meat section: beef brisket croquettes with Asian slaw and slow-cooked pig cheek with celeriac and barberry salad; from Fish, I took Grilled Mackerel, fresh coconut, mint and peanut salad and from Veg, the braised winter greens with tahini yoghurt sauce.

brisket croquettes

As you would expect from Ottolenghi and his head chef, Ramael Scully who used to run the Islington branch, the emphasis is on a delightful juxtaposition of bold flavours, textures and plenty of careful preparation and cooking on show. The brisket had been slow cooked for hours in an Asian stock base, then painstakingly shredded, dipped, rolled and fried. The meat soft, rich and yielding was perfectly complemented with the crisp zingy slaw. The only thing missing for me was a touch of heat – a few wisps of raw chilli perhaps? The mackerel filets were cooked on the slightly pink side (perfect to me) and once again accompanied by something bright and fresh. In this case, a mound of coconut shards, slivers of chilli, coriander leaves and crunchy peanuts, dressed in lime juice, palm sugar and fish sauce. In fact the salad rather outshone the fish, good though it was, and I could have happily eaten this on its own. The theme of contrasts continued with the slow cooked, rich and meaty, gelatinous pig cheek, offset by the sour salad of celeriac sticks and jewel-red barberries. Finally the braised greens with tahini sauce, something utterly different but comforting, familiar and strangely, moreish.

pig cheek, well most of it

As I sat there at the bar, merrily hopping from one dish to the next and polishing off a decent glass of Valpolicella Classico, the place began filling up. Ottolenghi himself was there, discreetly chatting to some of the diners, this writer included, casting for feedback and offering some suggestions of what to order. The rest of his management team chatted at the bar and eyed me and my plates with a faint degree of suspicion, until realising all too quickly that I was merely an amateur critic. Oh how we laughed and to their credit, they seemed very happy to chat about the NOPI's development to the strange man and his empty plates. I tell you, when it comes to eating alone, head for the bar every time.

In the end I left happy and stuffed. The menu suggests three dishes per person, I chose four. I strode out (well, waddled more like) my jeans now feeling just the wrong side of comfortable. I guess they got that one right. Portions are pretty decent but even so, if there is one issue I am uncertain about then it's the prices. The average sharing plate is £9-10 pounds each. The veggie options tend to hover around the £8 mark. To me, this makes NOPI more about dinner than lunch but you can bet I'll be back. And with friends. After all, I've got to try those brussel sprouts.

The Silver Spoon and Spot of Luck

2011-02-20T21:30:00.002Z

Lunch today came out of the blue, sort of. A fraught trip to the supermarket with two kids and no time produced a strange shopping basket. If it was up to them, I'd have bought nothing but jammy dodgers, crisps and toffee sauce. But I had the sense to grab some rump steak and a tub of mascarpone.

With Mum coming for lunch, I turned to the The Silver Spoon and discovered I had just about enough ingredients for Tagliata and to finish, that old classic, tiramisu.

Tagliata is basically a marinaded steak that's then grilled, rested and sliced. Some recipes do it with capers and lemon, others with garlic and chili. I did mine with garlic, wine, olive oil and crushed fennel seeds. I served it with small-cut rosemary and garlic fried potatoes and rocket and watercress salad. for good measure I also made a simple cooked tomato sauce.

Note: you need to start this whole menu off in the morning as both the meat and the tiramisu need time to rest, but the actual prep and cooking is quick.

Beef Tagliata - Serves 4

500g thick cut rump or sirloin steak
1-2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
A splash of red wine
salt and pepper

In a pestle and mortar, crush the fennel seeds to a powder, add the garlic and continue crushing, then add the oil, wine and good few turns of coarse black pepper and a little salt - not much, you'll be putting this on the cooked steak later. Put the steak in a shallow dish, and pour over the marinade. massage it in and leave for as long as you can - one hour, several or overnight. But as I started in the morning, I managed 2-3 hours and it was very tasty!

When ready to cook, get a grill pan smoking hot, whack the steak on, press down and cook according to your preference. I prefer rare, mum does not. When done to your/her satisfaction, take the meat off the heat and leave on a wooden board for a few minutes to rest. Now is a good time to salt your steak. If you have Maldon salt in the house even better.

Just before serving, slice your steak into thick strips, arrange on a plate with the potatoes and salad and don't forget to tip over any meat juices!

Tiramisu - Serves 4

By sheer bloody luck I found tucked away in the back of the store cupboard a box of sponge biscuits. This recipe was inspired by The Silver Spoon and DOES NOT CONTAIN CREAM! And it really doesn't need it. I used 1 less egg yolk and a third less sugar than the actual recipe and it still tasted delicious. This recipe allowed for 2 layers of sponge biscuits in a fairly small dish.

1 packet sponge finger/biscuits
1 tub Mascarpone cheese (about 250g)
3 eggs: you will need 2 whites, 3 yolks
100 grams of icing sugar
Freshly made espresso coffee, cooled.
Good quality milk or plain chocolate for grating (milk works better I think)

Place the first layer of sponge biscuits in a dish, soak with the cooled coffee. Whip the egg whites to medium peaks (not too soft, not too stiff either). Beat the yolks and sugar together in a bowl until pale and creamy. Then add the cheese and mix in well, then fold in the egg whites. Now spoon over about half the mascarpone cream over the first layer of biscuits, give the dish a good tap, sprinkle over some grated chocolate and then repeat, adding a new layer of coffee-soaked biscuits. After your final generous grating of chocolate, refrigerate for around 2-3 hours. The longer the better.

In the end, it all seemed like it was meant to be.

Boy Wonder: A Kid's Guide to Food in Brighton

2011-02-19T14:28:00.001Z

As readers of my posts and tweets will know, my children already have the makings of discerning foodies. So it was no surprise that my eldest wanted to get in on the game. Brighton has a thousand and one places to eat with the esoteric far outnumbering high street chains. My kids tend to shun child menus and want what we're eating. My wallet aches but it makes me proud. I'll hand over to Hummus Boy Junior for what I am sure will not be the last post.

HBJ

Hello my name is Joe aka Hummus Boy Junior. In this post I’m going to tell you about some of my favourite places to eat in Brighton where I live.

0900: The day began at Bills, a massive restaurant/shop that’s like a very colourful indoor market, crammed with shelves with all sorts of stuff.

I had a pancake and freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast and my dad had scrambled egg on toast. That was all delicious! The pancake had lots of flavour and had orangey syrup and came with pumpkin seeds. And the egg was creamy and fluffy. The toast was crispy and buttery. Daddy had black coffee to drink.

1040: Then we had a little snack at Shakeaway which is a milkshake company here’s how it works:

At the counter there are shelves of practically every sweet in Brighton. You pick the sweets you want like an aero mint bar, starburst or minstrels. I had a milkshake with Oreo cookies and marshmallows on top. Anyway once you’ve chosen your sweet they grind it into a milkshake and walla! You have a sweety milkshake!

blogging is thirsty work

oreo heaven

1215: Next we went to El Taco. This little corner cafe on Western Road serves delicious Mexican food. Me and my dad shared a plate of nachos and I tried guacamole and liked it alot! PS. It even had chillies on it!

1330: We finished at Yo Sushi, what I like to call a café of the future. I also like it that you don’t have to wait for the food. It comes to you on a conveyor belt.

We ate:

Aubergine with miso.

Salmon sashimi

Dumplings

Miso soup

Prawn tempura

Sticky rice

aubergine with miso

salmon and wasabi (ouch!)

Dad said he couldn't eat anymore so we called it a day. I haven't got time to tell you about China Garden, UniThai, Juliette's or the Angel Food Bakery. Brighton is full of lovely places to eat for kids. These are only some of my favourites. I’ll be back with more.

HBJ xx

Nearly NOPI

2011-02-13T10:48:00.000Z

Am quite excited by the up-and-coming prospect of lunch at NOPI, a new restaurant by the people who brought you Ottolenghi.

It's in London's Soho, On Warwick Street and in a move away from the informal deli-style dining of the eponymous mini-chain, NOPI (short for North of Piccadilly) is a 'proper' grown up fine diner. There's a great little blog set up by the owners, chronicling the restaurant's evolution and you can also get links to the menus and booking.

Like the recently reviewed Kopapa, NOPI offers all day dining, from breakfast to supper and with a menu that gets increasingly more sophisticated the later you eat. tapas and sharing plates are very on trend and same goes for the menu at NOPI, with most options available as sharing plates. On Sundays they do a brunch menu. I have a feeling that is going to be popular.

Breakfast includes pancakes, muffins and croissants at one end of the spectrum, or chickpea and merguez stew at the other. Lunch operates loosely within a Mediterranean framework, encompassing things like Ossobuco, grilled hake kebabs, mackerel with coconut or lamb with spicy aubergine. Dinner gets slightly yet more of a middle eastern flavour, with some of the lunch specials plus things like pigeon pastilla and grilled pork neck and twice cooked baby chicken with lemon salt and chilli sauce.

I drooleth.

I'm there next week and will report back with pictures and (I'm sure) lovely things to say. NOPI is NOT officially open yet - this is what they call a soft opening, which I think runs to 24 February, to allow them time to get things right. In exchange they're offering diners 50 percent off the bill until the official opening.

The one area they're going to have to work on though is getting their Google rating up a bit. At the moment, put NOPI into a search engine and you end up here. About as far from the Ottolenghi principle as you could get.

Have a great week. x

BANG! Adventures in Sausage Making

2011-01-22T09:48:00.000Z

So when did Christopher Trotter first realise he was destined to write a book about pork cookery? The Whole Hog is an entertaining and extremely useful book, packed with interesting pork recipes and the history of this amazing animal. It also includes a chapter on making your own sausages. So that is what I did. But first, a little light reading.

Sausages are not everyone's cup of tea. Try reading Wikipedia's sausage entry for Britain and Ireland and there's a risk that they won't be yours either. Here's a digestible digest. When the big chef in the sky was handing out the food safety regulations, He decided to create a large loophole where sausages now reside. Want to make a pork sausage? That's a whopping 42 % minimum meat content my friend. Yep, that leaves 58 % to fill the casing with crap.

Want to go one better? Try making a 'meat' sausage. That's just 30 % minimum meat content. I say 'meat', but the law allows for that to be made up of 30 % fat and 25 % connective tissue. Yum. And, if you really like dicing with CJD, see if you can find a pack simply labelled 'sausages', cause they don't really have to contain meat at all, they can be filled with MRM. I won't even tell you what that is (though you probably know) click on the link if you dare. No wonder the Eurocrats in the classic BBC series 'Yes Minister' wanted to re-designate the 'good old British Banger' as an emulsified high-fat offal tube.

Now of course anyone likely to read a food blog makes sure their sausages are the real deal. As it happened, Father Christmas, in his wisdom, delivered unto me, a meat grinder with sausage making accessories. How could I resist? Luckily I have a wonderful butcher up the road who makes bangers and burgers out of actual pieces of (organic) meat and herbs and pretty much nothing else. So it was to him I turned for advice and ingredients when finally I got a chance to make my own.

Making sausages is good fun and pretty simple, but neither is it particularly cheap nor especially quick. However like making your own pasta, the end product is well worth the effort. As any foodie know.

Top Tips:

Meat: for a basic pork sausage you need fatty pork (belly or shoulder) and lean pork (leg steak) in equal quantities. Cut into small chunks and freeze for 30 mins to make it easier to grind the meat.

Casings: my butcher gave me the real thing, stomach lining which had been soaked and washed and was ready to use. But you can also order collagen casings which come dried and they are also ready to go but require that you leave the finished sausage overnight in the fridge before cooking to allow the skins to rehydrate. Most butchers will let you have some natural skins for a small price.

Spicing: this is a tricky one as it can very easily go wrong. Salt, pepper and some chopped fresh sage leaves is probably a goo way to go. I opted to for a sausage making kit from these guys which came with some Cumberland herb and spice mix. I used 35 grams for about 800 grams of minced pork.

Equipment: a grinder is pretty essential. A food processor is a no-no as it will turned the meat to a sticky gloop. My grinder had attachments for the actual sausage stuffing bit but you can I am told use a piping bag.

Time: you really need to leave your finished sausage for a few hours - 4 minimum, or overnight is best - before eating, which will greatly improve your sausage experience.

Ingredients - makes 12-14 Sausages depending on size.
400g pork belly cubed, frozen 30 minutes
400g pork leg steak cubed, frozen 30 minutes
20-25g seasoning (your collection of herbs and spices plus salt and pepper)
70g breadcrumbs
100ml ice cold water
optional: 10g sausage stabiliser. This came with the sausage kit. It consists of lactose and vegetable protein and helps the sausage to bind, It is not essential but you get a better, firmer result with it.

Method: Part 1
Grind the cubed meat
Mix with the seasoning and stabiliser
Add water
Mix really well with your hands. Get stuck in there!
Fry off a small amount and see if it needs more seasoning

Part 2: (if you have a kit it will have better instructions)
Fit sausage skins onto your grinder's sausage 'funnel' - you'll want to gently ease about 50-70 cm worth on there if you can. Make amusing saucy shapes ... giggle... (yes it does looks a bit like a ...) then get back to sausage making! Add the minced meat mixture and turn the grinder handle. You might need to use a rolling pin the help the mixture into the top of the grinder.

As the stuffing begins to fill up the skins (which happens pretty slowly) try and keep the speed of turning and density of the filling consistent so that you get a nice shape. When you've got a good 30-40 cm of sausage, twist several links to the size you want. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it and a few odd shapes is par for the course for your first time. At least that's what I'm telling people!

Part 3: Chill
The Sausages need to sit in the fridge for at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. I guess this is to help firm them up. When Cooking be aware that for home made sausages it is best to be cautious and cook more gently for longer - so roasting is good - to avoid the sausage from bursting - though this won't affect the taste only the look.

We did bangers and mash the following day with onion gravy and though I would say I need to use a tad less seasoning next time for my own personal taste, the texture and flavour was wonderful: meaty, dense but slightly crumbly.

I am rather proud of these beauties and will be moving onto Chorizo next time!

Time Frittered Away

2011-01-20T23:25:00.002Z

Fritters come in for a lot of stick. There's spam for one thing. Hasn't helped their image and you rarely see a fritter on a restaurant menu. Or a rissole for that matter. Come to think of it what's the difference?

Anyway I love a good fritter. Their delicate crispy edges and slightly wobbly insides.

All knocked up in a few minutes and eaten warm perhaps with some creme fraiche or sweet chilli sauce or both.

These ones come from Ottolenghi (the first book). They are fab and very satisfying. Eat hot, cold or as he suggests in a warm pitta like falafel. With hummus pickles and salad. Here I added the chopped chilli as I fancied fritters with a bit more bite.

Cauliflower and cumin fritters with a lime yoghurt sauce - makes 6-8 large fritters.

Fritters:
1 small cauliflower
2 shallots finely chopped
2 Tbsps chopped parsley
120 grams of plain flour
4 eggs
Squeeze lemon
1.5 tsps ground cumin
1/2 tsps ground coriander
1 tsp tumeric
1 finely minced green chilli (optional)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Salt & Pepper
Oil for shallow frying

Yoghurt lime sauce:
350ml plain yoghurt
Juice of one lime
Zest of one lime
2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsps chopped coriander

Method
Make the sauce first by mixing all the ingredients and then chill for 30 minutes or more.

Cut the cauliflower into florets and boil till soft.

Whilst the cauliflower is cooking mix together all the other ingredients in a bowl until you have a uniform batter. Then add the soft drained cauliflower and work that in, breaking the florets down in the process. The result will be a semi-solid mixture.

Put an inch or so of oil in a non stick pan on a medium heat. When hot, put in large spoonfuls of the 'batter' and flatten down slightly. Be generous. No more than 2 or 3 fritters at a time. Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side.

We served these with a tomato salad, some buttery couscous and Harissa mixed with lemon and honey.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Whose the Papa? Daddy of Fusion 'Returns'

2011-01-17T22:10:00.006Z

In 2001, Peter Gordon opened The Providores and Tapa Room in Marylebone and blew London away with fusion cuisine. Gordon may not have been the first (if he was let me know) but he is by any measure today, the Daddy: the most consistently successful and recognizable fusion chef in the UK and very probably anywhere in the world. Whilst most chefs treated fusion as a passing fad, Providores carried on rewarding diners for ten more years, bringing together elements and ingredients from around the world to produce something new, challenging and delicious.

Now Peter Gordon and three partners have opened a new venture: Kopapa, on Monmouth Street, a stone's throw from Covent Garden. It's a smart yet informal cafe-come-restaurant with a distinctly diner-ish feel to it. Kopapa is open all day, from breakfast and brunch through to lunch, afternoon tea and dinner.

I went on a grey Friday lunchtime with my friend and fellow blogger, the delightful Mozart's Girl. We arrived at 1330, so the main rush has passed but the place was still comfortably 'buzzy'. MG noticed we were sat next to a leading female food critic. Kopapa has received a fair bit of interest since it opened in mid December 2010, most of it positive.

Now, before we get to the food, I'll declare an interest. I am a little acquainted with Peter Gordon due to my recent experience at the Arvon School, where I did once scrub some carrots for him. And maybe washed a little spinach. Oh and he praised some banana bread I had a hand in making (with MG for that matter). In fact I'm pretty sure he ate a second piece on the sly.

Kopapa's menu is just the kind I like - in that I would like everything on it. It's also very modular, with different sections, allowing you to pick and choose the perfect combination according to appetite, occasion, finances or all three. There's quick bites, tapas, soups, sharing platters, main courses (divided into meat, fish and veggie) and that's just for the all-day dining section. Yet it didn't feel overly long, pretentious or in the least daunting.

To help us choose we ordered a Tamarillo and Jasmine Daiquiri. Quite the most brilliant thing.

In the end we ordered mostly from the tapas menu which produced dishes that 2 could share quite happily:

Grilled baby ciabatta with babaganoush and olives
Cassava chips with avocado, sriracha chilli sauce and crème frâiche
Parmesan and bone marrow sauce on toast with chrain
Char-grilled aubergine with tamarind caramel, coriander, pickled ginger and za’atar
Tempura spicy dahl stuffed inari pocket on sugar snaps with caramelised coconut, plantain fritter, pickled green papaya and coriander

Much to our delight "chef" had left instructions that we were to be 'helped along' with some additional dishes that came up after we had ordered, making us look very piggy indeed. So joining us for lunch were:

Glazed duck liver parfait with sweet and sour raisin chutney and grilled flat bread
Sesame infused tuna tartare with soy wasabi tapioca, crispy lotus root and shiso
Smoked magret duck breast, goats curd, beetroot confit and pickled pineapple

Ever the professionals, we got stuck in. The dish that immediately caught my eye was the bone marrow toast with chrain. The meaty spread oozing down the sides of the grilled bread had an intense savoury flavour - like a very meaty marmite, its richness cut through by the peppery sour-sweet beetroot relish. For me, chrain is one of those nostalgic foods that conjure up my mother's cooking, in particular her famous chopped liver pate. Well it was famous to me. Whilst the bone marrow sauce was good, the chrain was the star.

Another leading actor upstaged by the extra was the glazed duck parfait. It came in a tiny ramkin complete with a crackly creme brulee-style glaze and it was delicious and fun. But it was the chutney which picked up the award, even though I'm not entirely sure it contained any raisins. A critical tasting revealed licorice, date, maybe some fig but in any case it was tip top. If they had been selling that by the jar I would have bought some there and then.

The tuna tartare was fine, if a little too cold. Tapioca is still something I am getting used to as a texture. It was the one dish that came up as unremarkable though perfectly pleasant. The smoked duck was velvety and moist and nicely offset by the pineapple. Goat curd with beetroot is a well worn but effective combo. All together on the same plate I am not entirely sure it quite worked for me but I ate it all very happily.

The meal reached a crescendo of flavours and textures with the inari pocket. The recipe for this dish can be found in Gordon's new book, Fusion and I often find myself staring in wonder at the photo in the book and the list of ingredients and thinking 'if only I cook that...'. Luckily I don't have to. By the way, an inari pocket for those of us who might be asking, (most of you I hope, myself included) is a pocket or pouch made of soya bean (tofu), which you can stuff with tasty things. I guess you could say it's a sort of Japanese vol au vent. Now that I've stripped away the glamour, what you actually get is a jewel of a dish with depth and complexity. the earthy dahl, the crunchy sugar snaps, the zingy papaya, the sweet caramel - What Nigel Slater might call an 'orgy of flavour'. For me it was the highlight, along with the chutney and a lovely way to end lunch.

Leaving aside our declared freebies, the 5 dishes, plus 2 cocktails, coffee and service came to almost exactly £25 a head.

If you're wondering why I never mentioned the casava chips it's because I never got any. They were polished of by Mozart's Girl (and a mystery guest) and you can read about her experience of lunch in her blog.

Some of the dishes are familiar having migrated over from Providores but perhaps this will change. The menu still has many unknown delights to tempt me and I'll definitely be returning for breakfast, brunch plus any other meals they can design a menu for (Tiffin anyone?).

Fish Market – A Reykjavik Review

2011-01-11T22:07:00.003Z

April in Paris, Tokyo in the Fall. Er, Reykjavik in January? Anyone?

Not content with the recent sub-zero shenanigans here in the UK, Tahini Girl and I went in search of frostbite and frozen food by hopping over to Iceland for the weekend. We flew to Reykjavik, where it was -7C, jumped into the Blue Lagoon where it was 40C and after several facepacks worth of mud, eventually made our way to a restaurant in the town centre that came highly recommended by a friend.

The Fish Market is consistently regarded as one of the city's best restaurants (and one of the world's best I later discovered) and on the evidence of last Saturday night, I ain't complaining. Outside, there are but 4 hours of daylight in the winter and Icelanders seem to prefer it that way on the inside as well. We were guided to our table – literally – as the lighting was so dim, I could barely see a thing – and were sat down in a cosy corner (the darkness partly explains the quality and scarcity of the photos, for which I apologise).

After a short squint at the Asian-inspired fusion menu (stay with me people) we opted for the tasting menu. No dishes were specified but at 8900 ISK – around £48 a head – it proved to be the bargain of the trip and from what I am told, relatively cheap compared to Reykjavik's restaurant prices a decade ago. In the end, we were treated to nine courses, including some stunning combinations, a few weird ones and portions so generous we barely made it through to the end.

The meal started with a plate of grilled king crab legs, with a citrus-butter. Just one apiece but WHAT LEGS. Succulent, meaty yet light and lemony with a texture more lobster than crab. Each one measured about 12 inches long and an inch across.

Next up a plate of calamari with wakame (seaweed) and deep fried lemon grass fronds. Soft squid, crunchy batter, a slight greasiness cut through nicely by a squeeze of lime and the sour-sweet wakame strands.

Then a real star of a dish – and one which shames me to my liberal core. Vegetarians look away now: sashimi of minki whale. In case you missed that, SASHIMI OF MINKI WHALE*. Now, in our defence we had no idea it was coming. Case for the prosecution: we didn't exactly send it back either. It came with a lemon soy dipping sauce and each slice was wrapped around a baton of … well, we never did find out but to us, it tasted like sugar cane and reminded me of a Vietnamese speciality called chao tom, where prawn is wrapped around sugar cane sticks. What we were sure of however was the taste. Utterly delectable. The texture is half-way between the best rare fillet steak and the most melting raw tuna. Very lean, but quite meaty (it is a mammal after all). The combination of rare meat and the resinous sauce resulted in a mouthful that was sweet, smokey, and very, very naughty.

Next up, slices of local smoked lamb with a blueberry and star anise sauce. Delish but sitting on the plate alongside this were small fried balls of bacon and cheese. Possibly the worst mismatch since someone thought of getting Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood to present the Brit awards.

We moved on.

Sushi and Sashimi as you might have gathered are staples of Reykjavik eateries and The Fish Market is no exception. We were offered tuna, halibut and wild Icelandic salmon sashimi topped with tobikko – or green flying fish roe. The halibut was particularly good. Alongside these delicate slices were crab tempura sushi rolls, probably the best I had ever tasted. Each dish, I should say was lovingly presented on earthenware plates and expertly introduced by the waitress but at the time we had no idea how many there were still to come. We suspected the sushi was it but then she whipped off the empty plate and informed us that it was now time for the main course. I won't deny it, I did a little shoulder shuffle in celebration and possibly there was some white man's overbite action too.

Main course number one arrived: Fillet of roast wild salmon terriaki, served with some most unusual pearl barley croquettes. Together I wasn't entirely sure this worked but individually they both shone. The salmon was perfectly (under) cooked and as Salmon does so well, it had absorbed the unctuous sticky sauce. The croquettes however were the star of this plate. Like little Italian arrancini but made with pearl barley, they smelt of winter: of warm fires, kilts, and steaming porridge. Okay maybe not kilts, but there was a lovely nutty, toasty warmth to them. Again it reminded me of herring with oatmeal and bacon – a dish I used to make now and then from a Nick Nairn recipe many eons ago.

Main course number two was another fillet of fish – Blue Ling, served with giant couscous, cashews, nori, mango and a halibut mousse. Mango is big in Iceland and guess what? It's grown out here. Polytunnels are everywhere and with all that natural geo-thermal central heating, tropical fruit is an obvious choice. You might say, 'the man from Dagverðareyri, he say YES'. The meaty fish and soft couscous totally worked and the crisp squares of Nori and roasted cashews gave the dish much needed texture. I loved it, although the mousse and mango seemed unnecessary, tasty as they were all the same.

Still here? Nearly at the end.

Our last savoury course was one of the very best. It featured slices of local duck breast, and in a faintly duck a l'orange way, came with a citrus sauce, toasted pecans and some fluffy mashed potato, topped with sauteed julienne of leeks and sprinkled with Nigella seeds. It was a comforting, well executed subtle dish that made us both smile. Or maybe we were relieved our aching bellies would be spared any more. I was already starting to feel like a goose in the fois gras season.

But what's this? Dessert? No. Not a dessert, but six of them! A plate arrived with, briefly: cherry sorbet (wow), lychee sorbet (oh WOW), a white and dark chocolate brownie, some fruit compote, slices of dragon fruit and pineapple AND, in what seemed a nod to Heston Blumenthal's nostalgia cooking, a white chocolate mousse sprinkled with green MOON DUST. You know, the 80s sweet that frothed and crackled on your tongue. It was fab – and a fun way to end the food-fest.

The final surprise came as we made out way upstairs – our eyes now accustomed to the dimness – to discover the head chef was, according to the photo on the cover of her cookbook, about 20 years old. Her name a multi-course meal in itself, but Hrefna Rósa Jóhannsdóttir Sætran however one pronounces it, we salute you!

And just to prove we were paying attention when photo opportunities arose here is a STUNNING picture of the landscape taken by TG. Casper David Friedrich, eat your heart out!

*Some things I did not eat in Iceland, included: Puffin (widely available) Seal, smoked and/or putrifying shark, cod chins (their version of scallops) and Mexican food (tempting but my insurance policy doesn't cover it)

Turbot & Champagne - Hello 2011!

2011-01-03T21:02:00.000Z

I am standing at the counter in Fish, in Hove, staring at a Turbot. And the price. But this is no time for scrimping. It's New Year's Eve and Tahini Girl and I have decided to celebrate the New Year quietly but in style.

Crevettesand smoked salmon salad
Whole toast turbot with roasted roots, fine beans and beurre blanc
pistachio meringues with cinnamon ice-cream
Piper Heidseck Monopole NV (1 bottle)

I haven't cooked turbot before - the price has always scared me off: such responsibility! This recipe however is simple and works a treat. The fish is softer than I had imagined but also rich and delicate. It works well with the root veg and the buttery sauce. And chilled champagne. The recipe is courtesy of Hugh F-W, via Waitrose.com

The main point of this post however is the sauce. Beurre blanc is a classic buttery sauce that is lighter than hollandaise (or should be) with a bit more of an acidic tang. It's delicate, in theory, but still seems to require an artery-busting amount of butter. Don't worry, somehow it all works.

Ingredients - Buerre Blanc
130g cold butter cut into small cubes (keep it chilled til the last minute)
1-2 medium shallots finely diced
1/2 clove garlic thinly sliced
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
3-4 whole black peppercorns
150 ml of dry white wine
1 tsp white wine vinegar
salt
2 tbsp lemon juice

Method
On a low heat, put a knob of butter in a small stainless steal saucepan, and gently fry the shallots, garlic, bay, thyme and peppercorns for 3-4 mins, making sure the shallots have softened but do not brown. Add the wine and vinegar and boil until almost nothing is left - a couple of tablespoons maybe. Then add the cold butter cubes ONE AT A TIME, whisking them in. Be patient. don't be tempted to throw in several at a time. When all the butter has been incorporated, turn off the heat and strain the mixture into a warmed bowl. Add the first spoon of lemon and a pinch of salt. Taste and adjust as you prefer.

A variation on this comes form Peter Gordon's fabulous book Fusion, which features a Wasabi beurre blanc, made in pretty much the same way (but adding wasabi), which he serves with sashimi. Y-U-M.

Speaking of Peter G, I'm off to his new restaurant soon, Kopapa, for lunch and will report back.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Details

2010-12-25T21:46:00.005Z

I am spreading garlicky artichoke paste onto sourdough crostini. I am slicing a dark and syrupy dried fig to put, membrillo-style, atop a piece of crumbly cheese. I am pouring myself a glass of rich tangy oloroso and contemplating another dollop of brandy butter on the Christmas pud.

And then there are

cold

roast

potatoes

(cooked in goose fat....ohhhhhh)

Christmas Day is drawing to a close, the house has fallen silent (the kids were up at 3am thank you very much) the embers of the fire are barely glowing and I sit here looking back on a day of extravagance.

This Christmas was pretty full on, food-wise. After fizz and nibbles, we gave salmon a rest and opted for winter crostini starters: artichoke pate (quite hummus-like, actually) prosciutto with fennel, red pepper pesto with buffalo mozzarella. The artichoke pate came from a local deli recently acquired by talented chef and friend Carlo . The turkey, a bronze organic butcher up the road was subjected this year to a simple and succinct Italian recipe from the Silver Spoon. The stuffing was a rough mix of fresh Italian sausages, prunes, apples, pancetta, juniper, sage and chestnuts.

Puddings came courtesy of the mother-in-law - a luscious, traditional pud that barely held its shape after re-heating but was all the better for it, as home-made brandy butter gently melted into its dark raisiny folds. There were also some pretty delicious and rather boozy clementines (the, erm, healthy option?).

For me, the stars of the evening were the wines and cheese. My wife's French cousin brought the smelliest rucksack imaginable over on the Eurostar, filled with fromage of all descriptions. The boys tasted them all and 'helpfully', scored a few:

Reblochon: 3/5

Cantal Desalers: 4/5

La Fourme D'ambert: 5/5

Lou Perac: 3/5

The wines, which I'd been saving for a several years, turned out to be a revelation. The first, a gift originally, was pretty good. Segla 2003 from Chateau Rauzan, owned by Chateau Margaux. A special treat and though this is the second wine from this estimable Chateau, the quality is very high (as it the price - around £30 a bottle these days). It was wonderful and powerful but not overpowering: smooth velvet tanin, soft dark fruits still in abundance, earthy and complex and with lots of structure. It cut through the richness of Christmas dinner perfectly.

With that finished we opened, this time from the other side of the tracks, a bottle of Grand Barrail Lamarzelle Figeac 1989, a St Emillion Grand Cru Classe. It was something that I feared had long since died but we took a punt on it and boy did that pay off. At first it was very tight, delivering a rather off-putting (I guess some would say complex and developed) aroma of barnyard animals - dead ones at that. But twenty minutes in the glass was all it needed to reveal it's rounded and robust character. The fruit which was absent on opening had returned, along with an inky and powerfully peppery finish. It was fantastic with Stilton. But the best bit was the pleasure it brought to my wife's grandfather - a distinguished and entirely genial man of 94. I think a case might be going on his christmas list next year!

Now, the real question is: left over roasties - do they count as one of your five a day? I really hope so...

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

The Ultimate Hummus Recipe

2010-12-14T20:39:00.001Z

After 26 posts, I was surprised and rather ashamed to realise that I had not actually added a hummus recipe.

So here it is. My credibility on a plate.

I’m no hummus snob – I’m not ashamed to say I like most of the UK supermarket brands though I’m not a fan of flavoured hummus but I do think the essentials: lemon and garlic and tahina are, well, essential. But for me, after years of experimentation, I've arrived at what I consider to be a very tasty recipe, which does involve a few extras. I recently made a batch for colleagues and I've never seen it disappear so fast with plenty of appreciative lipsmacking. The excellent hummus blog - motto "give chickpeas a chance", might disapprove of my interpretation but I stand by it, for now.

Texture is all important. Hummus is not sculptural. Like a good risotto there should be some movement – a little wobble – not as runny as double cream, not as stiff as cream cheese.

Chickpeas

Canned is fine if you don’t have time, but the dried ones, soaked overnight and boiled are infinitely better. Honestly, the taste and texture improves dramatically. If you have a pressure cooker you can get the chickpeas done in about 20 minutes. If not, it’ll take about 1.5 hours. Please try it. You need roughly half the dried amount for the equivalent of canned.

Garlic

Hummus needs garlic but it's tricky to get the balance right. Here I use 2 cloves, but some of you demand MORE. So go for it. All I would say is start with one, then two then three, etc. and keep tasting. You can't easily disguise garlic once you've added too much.

Lemon

Absolutely necessary but like the garlic, add in stages as you don’t want to over do it. Bottled lemon juice is fine but never seems to have the zing of the real thing.

Tahina/tahineh

The power behind the paste! Hummus without tahina is just so much mashed chickpeas. It’s the backbone, the key to texture and flavour but should never dominate.

Extras

Cumin, coriander, za'atar, etc. These are optional and worth experimenting with but always in moderation. My latest discovery is the addition of pomegranate molasses. Adds a lovely sweet-sour note. And this may be heresy but a tablespoon or two of Greek yoghurt adds a touch of creamy acidity.

Equipment

You do need a food processor for this. Once you have the first four ingredients mixed together, thereafter it's all about adjustments to get the right flavour and texture to suit your palate.

Ingredients

250g dried/soaked/cooked chickpeas or 2 x 400g cans (you'll get about 480g of chickpeas).

3-4 tbsps of light tahina. My favourite brand is Lebanese -
Al-Rabih but Cypressa which is more common in supermarkets, is fine.

1 lemon juiced

2 cloves of garlic

4-5 tbsps water

1-2 tbsps light olive oil

Small pinch salt

1 pinch ground cumin

1 pinch ground coriander

1 tsp pomegranate molasses (optional)
1 tbsp Greek yoghurt (optional)

Method

Sort the tahina first. Put 4 tbsps in a bowl, add half the water, mix in. The paste will sieze up. Then add the rest of the water and it should loosen up a lot. Add the juice of half a lemon and mix in. You want the consistency of thick double cream, so add a touch more water if necessary.

Whether canned or cooked, rinse the chickpeas well before you put them in the food processor. Then blitz. If you still have some of the water they were cooked in, add a couple of tablespoons to loosen it up. At this stage it will look like chickpea mush.

Then with the processor running, add the tahina gradually. You might have to stop, open the lid and scrap some of the paste back into the centre of the mixing bowl. Keep blitzing and add a tablespoon of olive oil. The paste should be paler now and starting to look like hummus.

Mash the garlic - with a little sea salt and work it into a fine paste. add to the hummus and blitz to mix it all in.

How's the texture? Still too thick? Add more lemon juice, another spoon of oil, maybe a glug of water. Blitz. Getting the right texture takes longer than you think. But whatever you add do so gradually.

Keep tasting.

The hummus should be getting nice and creamy now. Add the cumin, coriander and the molasses. a pinch of salt - work it all in.

Taste. Is there enough garlic for you? If not mash another half clove and mix in. A splash more lemon perhaps? Another pinch of salt?

When you're happy with the taste and texture, put into a relatively shallow bowl and add a good splash of extra virgin olive oil over the top and dusting of paprika. For more on how to dress your olive oil see an earlier post.

Tarte's Progress

2010-12-13T17:39:00.002Z

Baking is NOT my forte. I leave that to the likes of Mozart's Girl and her excellent blog. Or my sister-in-law, the cupcake queen. But on the weekend I attempted a Tarte Tatin, my first. This recipe owes most of its success to a You Tube video. The result was delicious and very impressive to look at. And surprisingly easy. The caramel is virtually foolproof and works with bananas and ice-cream or pancakes. Really yummy.

Tarte Tatin, legend has it was created by accident. One of the Tatin sisters was attempting to make another dish. Beef Wellington or something - ok so my version of the legend gets a bit patchy.

I myself of course have produced many dishes that are the result of mistakes. Many of them inedible and unlikely to bear my name. But making something like Tarte Tatin, which seems too good to be the result of an accident, reminds me that one should always experiment a little with every dish you make. Tweak, tweak and tweak again. And take the credit of course as well.

The world doesn't need 500 Tarte Tatin recipes but here's one anyway. Easy as pie, literally.

You will need:

5-6 eating apples - some sweet, some tarte if you have a mixture

Half a lemon

500g puff pastry (you won't need it all)

100g caster sugar

100ml brandy/calvados/armagnac - calvados is better if you have it - use cheap booze here.

50g cold butter cubed

A frying pan about 20-25 cm in diameter that you can safely put in the oven

Put oven on to 180C. Roll out pastry to about 5 cm diameter larger than the pan you're using. It should be about 5mm thick. You might not need all the pastry. Peel apples. Slice in half horizontally along the middle and place in a bowl of water in to which you've squeezed the lemon. The acidity will prevent the apples from browning.

With a small spoon dig out the core of each half to remove pips. Place sugar and booze in a non stick pan and put on a medium heat. Leave until it is bubbling away and the caramel is light in colour and coats the back of a teaspoon. this takes longer than you think though it starts to bubble quite quickly.

Just before you;re ready to put them in, drain the apples and add to the pan carefully. Caramel is much hotter than boiling water. Cook on both sides til apples are nicely coated, evenly brown, sticky and softer but still maintaining their shape. Around 10-15 mins. Just before you're ready to add the pastry, pop the cubes of butter into the pan, random fashion, and watch them melt into the caramel. give a quick shake.

Making sure all the apples are 'ugly'-side up, place the rolled out pastry on top of the apples then gently and carefully tuck the edges of the pastry inside the pan.

Put in oven for 30-40 mins. Should come out puffed up and golden. Some caramel might have leaked through and gone very crispy - YUM. let it sit for a minute or so.

Lightly run a palette knife around the edge then place a plate over the pastry and a board over the plate. With care, turn over the whole lot quickly in one movement so you end up with the lovely apple caramel side facing upwards on the plate. a tea towel is handy to help you hold the baking dish as you flip it.

Enjoy with creme fraiche or ice-cream.

Ours was polished off fast

I've since gone a little caramel crazy and wonder what can't be "Tatin'd"? Parsnips? Courgettes? Tomatoes? Sardines? Okay stop.

Books, Cooks and Confessions

2010-11-15T22:15:00.002Z

Sorting through my recipe books this weekend, I faced some hard truths - it was time to give some of these cooks their marching h'ordeurves.

Goodbye, Wozza (what was I thinking?). So long yet another book on muffins / gelato / juice. Arrivederci repetitive volumes by Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall - one book will do just fine, thanks. Ciao, The Walnut Tree – Sorry, I wasn't worthy (But I'll hang onto Carluccio for now) and (sniff) farewell, Alistair Little, one of my oldest books. I can still remember the first time I cooked marinated duck breast with aubergine parfait. But the 90s are no more.

Then I moved onto the magazines. Amazing how much these pile up. More ads than articles or recipes these days, I ripped out the best, recycled the rest. Observer Food monthly seems to have already been recycling for months. Jay Rayner's "brilliant new book" indeed...

So what I am left with? See for yourself. If it was solely up to me, quite a few of these books would also fly off the shelf. But I've OPFs to consider*.

Silver Spoon. 50 years an Italian best seller but about as appetising a read as a dictionary. Still, it looks fab and has proved useful a few times - as a sort of Italian food fact-checker.

Nigella Nigella Nigella. In How to Eat, you co-wrote one of the finest British cookbooks of the last 2 decades. Where did it all go wrong? TV killed the literary star.

Claudia Roden. The only sensible thing ever written on the Middle East. Plus her forays into Italy are as lucid and well researched as anything she writes.

Jamie - as documented in this blog already, we've reached an understanding him and me. "We" buy all of his books and in return he promises never to name any of my future children. Or their children. Sorted, Tiger.

Madhur Jaffrey. As essential as Delia.

Nigel Nigel Nigel. Ah well, the man is a saint and saviour, in spite of his recent foray into grow-your-own fascism. But seriously, how can you not like a man who writes in Real Cooking, of Squid: "In Greece I have often watched the island boys, all suntans and wet shorts, battering the sad ghostly things against the rocks to tenderise them." At least I hope he was talking about squid.

Then there are the Italians whom I treasure, in spite of their faults:

Locatelli – Ah Giorgio, one day I really will cook your food.

River Café x 2 - still a wonderful and highly useable introduction to rustico Italiano.

Carluccio, An Invitation to Italian Cooking. Delightfully un-anglicised recipes. The boned and stuffed chicken leg is a thing of beauty.

Elizabeth David. Nuff said.

Finally some of the ad hoc writers who pepper my cooking with wise words and inventive recipes:

Moro: I hear the second book is even better.
Leon: Allegra and friends unique take on healthy eating.
Plenty: Yotam Ottolenghi making vegetarian food as sexy as steak. Well, almost.
Fusion: Peter Gordon's travel food writing is beautifully judged with inspiring recipes.
Les Halles: Anthony Bourdain's take on French classics. For when I feel like cooking with a bourbon in one hand and a large knife in the other.

As you can see, I'm something of a whore. Spreading my custom without (much) prejudice, across the spectrum of food writing but still, this is just the tip of the food writing iceberg lettuce and I'm keen to hear about other books I should hunt down. Just one last confession. I held onto Rick Stein. I will live with the shame. For now.

* OPF = other people's feelings

The Host’s Table

2010-11-07T20:54:00.002Z

After my night out at Terroirs, and with Tahini Girl back in the UK, we decided to create a little bit of Terroirs, here on Earth. The restaurant is famous for its charcuterie. So after some successful foraging amongst Brighton's artisanal shops, we returned to create our own table d'hôte. The result was pork and pistachio terrine with juniper, dressed crab with fresh mayonnaise, a delicious French dip called Cervelle du Canut and charcuterie from the wondrous La Cave a Fromage in Hove. We purchased modestly: wild boar salami, Lomo (Spanish pork loin with paprika) and three cheeses, including a truffled goat and a chebrie – a brie style goat's milk cheese.

Cervelle du Canut is made from mixing up fromage blanc (an ultra-mild, ultra-fresh soft cheese) fromage frais, shallots, fresh chives and fresh chervil and olive oil and vinegar and a little garlic. How something so simple can taste so good I don't know but you must try it. It may sound like cheese and chive dip but it's on another level really. It also works very well on baked potatoes! If you can't find fromage blanc, it works almost as well with a light cream cheese.

By the way, the dish is from Lyon and literally means "silk worker's brain,", and reflects the poor opinion that the 19^th century French bourgeoisie had of the lowly canuts (the silk workers). Nice eh?

As for the terrine it was my first attempt at something I had always believed was very 'cheffy' and required lots of skill. Actually the opposite is true – you put everything in a tin, wrap it in bacon and the oven does all the work. But the result looks very professional. The recipe came from Waitrose.com, which I've found to be slightly more interesting and less confusing than the hallowed web portals of BBC Food, which is so vast that you end up with 20 recipes for something and unable to decide which one to go for.

The recipes for the terrine, the cervelle and the mayo are below. The terrine keeps well, is easy to slice and goes terrifically well with mustard or sweet vinegary gherkins.

Pork Terrine with pistachios and juniper

300g pork mince

5-8 rashers of streaky smoked bacon

150 grams of cubetti di pancetta

5 juniper berries, chopped.

1 chicken breast

75 grams of shelled unsalted pistachios

Salt and pepper

Olive oil for frying

1 clove garlic, peeled and slightly bashed but not still whole (optional)

You'll also need a standard loaf tin, some cling film, foil and a large roasting pan

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Fry the pancetta (and the garlic if you want to use it) in a tablespoon of oil until just starting to brown. Remove the pancetta with a slotted spoon, discard the garlic.

Combine the pork mince and the cooked pancetta in a bowl. Season well, add the pistachios and the juniper berries, mix well.

Slice the chicken breast lengthways – 5-6 slices should be right.

Now build your terrine:

Line the tin with a large piece of cling film, you want it rising up over the sides as you'll use this to lift the whole terrine out at the end.
Then line the tin with bacon rashers, widthways, (i.e., at right angles to the length of the tin) with each rasher slightly overlapping the next. You want as much of the rasher as possible climbing up the sides of the tin.
Add half the pork mixture and pat down so it's nice and even
Then place the strips of chicken breast along the length of the tin. The chicken should more or less cover the layer of pork mince below it.
Then add the rest of the mince, pat down.
Then fold over the bacon to more or less completely cover the mince. The terrine will shrink during cooking and generally, any small gaps will disappear.
Fold over any overlapping cling film, and then cover tightly with foil.
Place the loaf tin in the larger roasting tin and fill with just boiled water so that it comes about half way up the side of the loaf tin
Cook in the (hot) oven for 55 minutes, remove, stick a skewer in and if the juices run clear it is done, if not bung it back in for another 5-10 minutes.

When done, remove the foil, and use the cling film to lift out the terrine and place gently onto a board. Remove the cling film and let the terrine cool. It tastes even better after a day or two (keep in the fridge) and let it come back up to near room temperature when you want to eat it. Serve with pickles and mustard.

Cervelle du Canut

250g fromage blanc or very fresh mild chèvre or cream cheese

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

3 tbsps. crème fraiche

1 tbsp. light olive oil

1 small shallots, very finely chopped

1 small garlic clove, finely chopped/mashed

1 tbsp. fresh chives, chopped

1 tbsp. fresh chervil, chopped

½ tsp. sea salt

A few turns of fresh black pepper

Method

Combine the fromages blanc and frais and mix to get a light yoghurt consistency. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix well and leave in the fridge for half an hour before serving. Use as a tip with crudités, crostini or bread sticks. Also works a treat on spuds.

Home made mayonnaise People think this is hard to make or that it can go horribly wrong at any moment, but honestly, if you've not made your own mayo before, give it a go. It takes a few minutes and is dead easy for such a glorious result. The general rule is 1 yolk per 100 ml of oil. Don't use a strong oil like extra virgin. Sunflower or vegetable oil is fine, rapeseed works well, as does a light olive oil. You can combine them too – half light olive and half rapeseed for example.

Tip: to avoid the risk of the mayo splitting, use eggs/yolks that are room temperature rather than straight from the fridge.

2 x medium sized egg yolks

200 ml oil, poured into a small jug

1 tbsp. lemon juice

Salt and pepper

Method

With a hand whisk, beat the yolks and lemon juice together well. Then with one hand still beating, use the other to pour a THIN stream of oil into the bowl. Keep whisking and after a couple of minutes you'll see it all thickening up. You can do it in short bursts, making sure the oil is properly combined before adding more. In less than five minutes you'll have mayo.

Downstairs Diner

2010-10-23T17:45:00.006+01:00

Sometimes the perfect meal sneaks up on you. It's not the one you planned for weeks or the restaurant booking that took months to get. This one came out of the blue. Whilst Tahini girl is living it up in Tokyo, and the kids were on a sleepover, I found myself with a late pass, called a friend and on a whim headed to Terroirs near Trafalgar Square, one of my all time favourite places to eat and drink in London. Or anywhere.

In their basement rooms, the extremely helpful and friendly Corsican waiter, with suitable disdain for most of the French wines on the menu of this, er, French restaurant, pointed us towards a bottle of Pittacum Bierzo 2006 from Spain. It was well within our price range and as he promised, full bodied with plenty of punch. my fellow diner, Robert, a knowledgeable wine buff, agreed.

He also suggested the perfect dish to go with it, Bavette (steak) artichokes and trompettes mushrooms with roasted salsify. The combination was gobsmackingly good. It was simply one of those special moments, where gastronomique universe was in perfect alignment.

No sides, no dessert, no coffee. It would have spoiled it. The bavette was beautifully cooked, flash grilled with a salty crispy edge and a soft pink juicy middle. The mushrooms were earthy and the salsify, which I had never had before, provided a comforting texture and lighter than mash. The wine, with lots of fruit, ripe tannins and a liquorice finish brought a smile to every mouthful.

Terroirs if you don't know, has been an instant success from the day it opened. Part wine bar, part (French) tapas style dining, it has after half a dozen visits never disappointed on food, wine, service or price. I don't think I can even say that about any other restaurant I have been to. Not even Pizza Express!

It's current menu is all pretty tempting.

Wholefoods bargain shocker

2010-10-21T11:50:00.006+01:00

I've read about Wholefoods, the upmarket US organics food store, which arrived on London's Kensington High Street last year but never visited. Famous for its high quality ingredients and equally high prices, I just had to take a peek when I found myself walking past it today.

It certainly lived up to the hype when it came to the ingredients. An artisanal smorgasbord (thank God for spell check) replete with faux farmers-market barrows, creaking under the weight of perfectly arranged 'rustic' mounds of fresh fruit, baked goods, exotic foods and shiny vegetables. It's grocery shopping by Willy Wonka, only the Oompah Loompahs are taller and better dressed.

And the prices? Well, yes they were also very um, 'artisanal' too, though not nearly as steep as the hype. In fact, the naysayers will be disappointed to learn there were bargains to be had here, the best of which I found in the bakery section.

There was unbridled joy and salivation when I lighted upon a mound of bargain basement freshly baked Italian loaves: a variety called Sperlonga. It's basically Ciabatta but heavier, longer, more doughy – all in a good way. It was warm, it was crusty, it was 89 pence. Yep 0.89p. In fact it was less – I got a 5p discount for using my own bag. So I bought, I tore, I chewed. Delicious.

Now home with a lot of fresh bread to consume, what to consume it with? How about a classic Italian-inspired bean soup? This comes in many forms, with Tuscan origins, traditionally called a Ribolitta (reboiled) but it's not that far off its cousin, minestrone, either, although this is more robust and contains no pasta! But we'll steal something from minestrone to go with our soup, which some might see as sacrilegious. I just think it tastes good.

Basically you start with a 'soffritto' – a fry up of diced of onions, celery and carrots and garlic which is your soup base. In French this is known as a mirepoix in Spanish, Sofrito. Then add some tomatoes, herbs, stock or water, beans (Borlotti, or Cannellini or Butter. Canned is fine, but add much later) and something green – often Cavolo Nero but in this case, it was Kale.

Traditionally the soup also had bread to thicken it, but here, I prefer to liquidize a small portion of the soup to make the rest a little thicker and give it more depth. But this remains a chunky soup – a soup with bits – closer to a stew perhaps. Our version is vegetarian but you can also add pancetta or streaky bacon to the base.

This soup takes little time to prepare but the magic happens right at the end. Take your steaming bowlful, add a good drizzle (or a glug) of extra virgin olive oil, a healthy sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan and a dollop of fresh pesto. ARGH! WHAT? Yep, I killed it right at the end didn't I – mentioned a whole other dish you have to prepare! But you can do this quickly whilst the soup is simmering and if you check out one of my earliest posts you'll see it is child's play, literally. Here I use canned tomatoes for speed but also flavour, given tomatoes in the UK, in winter, are generally awful (actually in summer they are not that great either).

Pesto is what is traditionally plonked onto minestrone but it works wonders here and in most places. Just don't put in on hummus. EVER.

Italian Bean Soup with Pesto (made by my long term collaborator, Tahini Girl)

2 medium carrots, diced
2 sticks celery diced
2 medium onions diced
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped/mashed
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 Sprig's worth of rosemary leaves (are they leaves?)
1.5 litres of stock (chicken or veg) or water but better then to just use a cube or similar.
200 g of curly kale leaves or cavolo nero, chopped – small pieces of stalk are fine.
To serve: olive oil, parmesan, and fresh basil pesto

Method

Gently fry the soffritto (onions, carrots and celery) until soft and the onions are translucent. Do not brown. Then add the garlic and rosemary fry for another minute. Add tomatoes, stock, pinch of salt, several good grinds of pepper.

Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Add the beans and simmer for 5 minutes (dried beans that have been soaked and boiled will need longer).
Add the kale leaves and simmer for another 5 minutes or until tender but still with some bite to them. Then blitz 2-3 ladles worth of soup in a blender or liquidiser and stir back into the rest of the soup. Adjust seasoning.

Decant into warm bowls and add a drizzle of good olive oil, some shavings of fresh parmesan and a dollop of fresh pesto. Stir with a spoon and enjoy (with some Italian bread if you have it) This soup will keep for a day or two and is even better reheated the next day.

Ready Steady Go: Speed Cooking for all the Family

2010-10-10T22:02:00.005+01:00

Tonight we cooked from Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals. The premise as you might have guessed is complete family meals (serving 6-8) – that's several dishes, with desserts, ready from start to finish in half an hour. I am not sure if I like this concept. I suppose like many people passionate about food, cooking is as much a source of pleasure as eating. Why rush? Okay so life is busy and we have no time and the kids are hungry and I've had a hard day, I get it... but it still feels like you're cheating.

I have to confess, the 'mockney maestro' and I have a love-hate relationship. True, I do own many of his books and the vast majority of his recipes work. Simple as that. But his books have very little to do with food writing. His food philosophy, such as it is, has certainly matured since The Naked Chef, but his books rely heavily on a familiar visual style: part cookery book, part colouring book, which nevertheless, has the desired effect of making every recipe seem easy and fun. This is the foodie's version of 'how to win friends and influence people'.

So why do I feel a slight sense of guilt and shame whenever I cook from his books? Because I am a food writing snob. There I said it. I'd much rather be leafing through Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, Anthony Bourdain, Peter Gordon or Nigel Slater. As the saying goes, they feed the soul.

But after all that, I still need to feed the family. It's Sunday evening and so, we're going to put Jamie's 30 minute test … to the test.

Menu: Mustard Chicken, Greens, Quick Dauphinoise and Black Forest Afogato

I know what you're thinking: dauphinoise potatoes in under thirty minutes?? Is he mad!? We'll see…

We got all the ingredients out onto the worktop, set the timer to 30 minutes and got to work. The recipe isn't linear, but jumps from one dish to the next and back again. It's well planned, guiding you though the various stages, which are designed to have everything hot and ready at the same time. First prep the dauphinoise, then get the chicken breasts on, then wash and blanch the greens, then back to the potatoes, add leaks and wine to the chicken and so on … it was frantic and time was ebbing away.

This idea – and it's a good one – is not for the faint-hearted or hesitant cook. Nor for anyone prone to a touch of OCD, if the mess left behind in the kitchen was anything to go by. There simply isn't time to clean up as you go along. And just as you think you're reaching the end, up pops dessert. Argh! The buzzer came and went. Dinner never made it to the table in 30 minutes. It took me 45, but the results were impressive and I reckon on a second attempt I'll nail it. Six hungry, happy people devoured the lot. Damn, he did it again!

And reader, know this: you CAN make very good gratin dauphinoise in 30 minutes and here's how:

Ingredients

1 kg potatoes

1 red onion

Quarter teaspoon grated nutmeg

4 anchovy fillets, drained and chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled

A glug of olive oil

225 ml single cream (actually we used about 200 ml of double and added a little milk, worked fine)

Fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

Large handful freshly grated parmesan

A few turns of freshly ground black pepper

Extra Parmesan (to put on before it goes into the oven)

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 220C. Using the slicer attachment of a food processor, slice 1 kilo of potatoes, skins on, then slice the red onion.

Toss into a baking dish

To this add all the other ingredients (except the extra parmesan) and mix up with your hands

Arrange the potatoes and onions evenly across the dish

Place the dish on a hob, medium heat and add 200 ml of boiling water (sounds crazy but it works)

Cover tightly with foil and leave on the heat for around 10 minutes – at 5 mins, give the pan a quick shake to prevent sticking.

Remove the foil, sprinkle with more parmesan and a few more thyme leaves and put the dish uncovered into the oven for 15-20 minutes.

The gratin should be bubbling and nicely browned in places. Serve immediately.

The dish is hardly refined but to my surprise, the onions and potatoes were soft and the sauce had depth and richness from the anchovies and parmesan. The key twist for me was putting it on the hob first and adding boiling water.

Falafel abuse?

2010-10-03T17:22:00.010+01:00

Ok, so having posted about the whole pesto/hummus evil axis, I later found myself making ... sweet potato falafel. Is that wrong? These are made famous of course by Leon, the fast food foodie emporium, slowly transforming the high street sandwich experience. The cookbook is wonderful and very useful. These are a little bit of a faff (handy if you're making falafel I guess) but only in terms of time, not effort.

Sweet Potato Falafel (makes about 15)

Bake 2 med potatoes in their skins for 45 mins to an hour, then peel and put in a bowl
Add ground cumin, ground coriander, crushed garlic, lemon juice and chopped fresh coriander, salt & pepper.
Mash well. No lumps. Put the mixture in the fridge for 30 mins to firm up.
Shape the mixture between 2 spoons to make a rough fafalel shape and place on an oiled baking tray.
sprinkle on a few sesame seeds and bake at 180C for 15-20 mins.

We ate then in a pitta with chopped tomatoes, rocket, (some left over) baba ganoush, harrisa, yoghurt and pickled chillies. We should have added some sliced red onion too. but forgot. Still they were tasty and filling and basically (once again) pretty much all we had left in the house.

Tip: nicked this off Nigella - mix the harissa with some lemon juice and honey - and if you're feeling brave, half a clove of raw garlic crushed to a paste. powerful stuff but very transformative.

Hummus Abuse

2010-10-02T09:45:00.004+01:00

So when was it okay for supermarkets to mess about with hummus? A bit of cumin? Fine, lovely. Some whole chickpeas? Traditional.

Red pepper hummus? Kinky but each to his own. I'm open minded.

But hummus with pesto?! HELLO?!

I love fusion when done right. Peter Gordon now there's a man who knows his fusion.

HUMMUS WITH PESTO?! I'm not talking hummus with basil or hummus with pine nuts but a tub of hummus on top of which has been placed a huge dollop of rich cheesy pesto. The calorie count alone must make it a crime.

I don't know where to begin. I have friends who work in product development for supermarkets. I hope they're not responsible.

It's Thai Beef Salad, just not as we know it.

2010-09-15T11:53:00.009+01:00

It's that old chestnut: can you recreate at home what you ate on holiday? Maybe it’s the sun, the sand, the cheap beer or the near constant and pungent aromas of dried shrimp paste and durian fruit that seems all pervasive in a place like Bangkok. It hard to get any of that in East Sussex. Especially the sand.

So when the other night we knocked up a Thai beef salad, it was jolly nice and pretty spicy but something was missing. It felt like a shadow of what we ate in Thailand.

The dressing we use here (and there are lots of variations) came not from Sri Owen to whom we usually turn, but from a bashed up and abused copy of Sophie Grigson's Meat Course - a book to treasure for carnivores.

Lime juice, shallots, chillies, sugar, fish sauce - the usual. To give it a touch more richness I sometimes add light olive oil and a drop or two of sesame oil.

This salad is a very easy weekday dinner, the sort of thing that you can prepare in minutes without too much thought or energy, but it’s absolutely delicious and will leave your lips tingling.

I tend to use a ribeye cut or sirloin or even rump. Filet steak seems too refined for this dish but up to you. A little fat in the meat is no bad thing when it is being fiercely flame grilled.

Thai Beef Salad, serves 2. Time to prepare and cook - 15 minutes

Salad
1 steak, ideally ribeye, sirloin, or rump around 8 oz
Salad leaves - whatever you like, enough to cover a dinner plate generously
1 small carrot, peeled
1 piece of cucumber about 2-3 inches long, thinly sliced into rounds or batons
2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
2 spring onions, sliced
Handful of coriander leaves - roughly chopped
Handful mint leaves - roughly chopped
Handful of beansprouts

Dressing
2 tbsps fish sauce
2 tbsps lime juice
1 tsp caster sugar or palm sugar if you have it
1 clove garlic bruised/bashed but more or less still intact
1 tbsp light olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 red chilli, thinly sliced, as much as you see fit

First, make the dressing: combine the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar. Then beat in the oils. Then add the chilli and the garlic which you want to infuse the dressing with for about 10 minutes. You need a balance of sharp, sour and sweet so add a touch more sugar or lime juice as needed.

Then arrange the salad leaves on a plate; with a potato peeler, add shavings of carrot. Scatter the cucumber, spring onions and half the sliced shallots on top.

Cook your steak. If using a grill pan, remember to oil the steak, NOT the pan. A grind or two of salt and pepper on both sides of the meat is a good idea too.

Whack your steak onto a SMOKING hot grill pan. Press down with your hands to ensure all the meat is touching the pan and cook on each side for probably no more than a minute, (depending on how thick it is. slightly more if you want it well done or medium)

If the pan is truly hot then you'll get a lovely crusty caramelisation happening on the surface of the steak but it will remain soft, pink and juicy within.

LET THE MEAT REST. I can't tell you how much better the experience of eating meat is when you let it rest. But you know that.
5 mins should be enough for this. Any juices that run out you can put into the dressing.

Then slice the steak into strips, scatter over the salad leaves, follow that with the rest of the shallots. then add the dressing - FIRST remembering to fish out and discard the garlic - and finally scatter over the beansprouts and the herbs.

Serve with plain rice and cold beer.

Ahh…

Hey Pesto Mark II

2010-09-05T09:22:00.006+01:00

In March 2010 I was lucky enough to visit the heartland of Chianti - Chianti Classico - on a trip organised by the WSET. On our first night we ate linguine with pesto - but pesto made from Cavolo Nero - the almost black-green Italian cabbage that is fairly easy to find these days. I bought some yesterday as a small but perfectly formed new Farmer's Market in Brighton.

Making this couldn't be easier and its colour is stunning. Unlike the traditional Genovese pesto, this is made without pine nuts. There is a recipe for something like this in the original River Cafe Cookbook which also involves cream but this version is much more basic yet still very yummy.
The key thing about cavolo nero is to de-stalk it first - the stalk running down the middle is tough and by the time you've boiled it long enough to soften, the leaves have gone to mush, so strip the leaves off the stem first.

Serves 2:

Into a pan of boiling water add 2 peeled whole cloves of garlic and 2 large handfuls of cavelo nero leaves, roughly chopped or torn. After about 2-3 minutes, remove the leaves (but keep the cloves in for another minute or so). The leaves should be tender but not mushy and still a vibrant dark green. Drain and throw into a bowl of iced/cold water to prevent them cooking any longer. Remove the garlic cloves and place them into a blender with the drained cavolo nero. blend to a paste with a few glugs of extra virgin olive oil, some Maldon sea salt and a few round of freshly ground black pepper. If you want it more garlicky, finely chop or shave another raw clove and mix it in.

optional: grate 4 tbsps Parmesan and mix in with another dribble of oil. I did and it was delicious.

Cook your pasta, drain, remembering to reserve a few tbsps of the boiling liquid, then put the pasta back in the pan, on a low heat and mix in the paste. Add the left over boiling liquid. You're not looking to cook the paste, just warm it up. Plate up with lots of freshly grated Parmesan on top. As I had a fair bit of cabbage left over and some lovely rosemary sourdough bread, I also knocked up some crostini, topped with a few blanched cavolo nero leaves, some Napoli salami, fresh tomato and some dried chilli crumbled over the top along with a good glug of olive oil and sea salt.

Thai Adventures: Salad on Haad Salad

2010-08-26T04:01:00.001+01:00

A (not so) quickie on one of my favourite Thai dishes of the trip: the humble Som Tam, a salad made from unripe 'julienned' green papaya. Sounds unappetising but stay with me. I've eaten several on this trip already and so far the best has come from the kitchen of the Salad Hut, a set of beach-side bungalows we're staying in on the NW side of the Island of Koh Phangan.

The photo above is one of several stunning sunsets we were forced to watch, whilst sipping long drinks and batting away mosquitos. Even more amazing it was taken on an iphone.

A good Som Tam is sweet, sour, fiery and incredibly moreish. It can also be very refreshing when you order it alongside a Thai curry. How spicy depends on how many chillies and whether or not you leave the seeds in. But it's a strangely addictive dish, and even though your tastebuds might be on fire, a few swigs of beer and you're back for more.

In addition to papaya, Som Tam also contains julienned carrot, julienned cucumber (though I've noticed only some of the salads I've eaten contain this). There's also red chilli, long beans, dried shrimp (not the paste), ripe tomatoes and whole roasted peanuts. The dressing, which is really the star here, is made with lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and tamarind juice (which Barts do in handy little jars these days). The palm sugar should be melted with a little hot water to make a syrup, or just use caster sugar. I'm a bit vague about quantities because the key is to get a really good balance of spicy, sweet and sour - and that is often a personal thing. Cucumber is tricky too because you only really want to julienne the outer part, not the watery centre. I'd use 2 papayas here, 1 smallish carrot and about a quarter length of a whole cucumber. The juliennes need to be long - about 4-5 inches or more, almost spaghetti-like.

As with Guacamole, Som Tam is traditionally made with a pestle and mortar.

1. Bash up the whole chillies (1-2, up to you) and 2-3-4 cloves of garlic, not quite to a paste but fairly well beaten.

2. Add the dried shrimp (1 tbsp) and about 4-5 long beans (which should be cut into 2 in pieces) and bash to bruise them.

3. Add the papaya, carrot and if using, cucumber, but now, pound lightly and use a spoon to mix and bruise slightly - the idea is to get the chilli and garlic infused into the vegetables.

4. Add the juice of 2 limes, 2-3 tbsps(palm) sugar, 1-2 tbsps tamarind and 2-3 tbsps fish sauce - you're after a balance of sweet and sour, so go slowly and keep tasting as you go along. mix in well.

5. Add the 1-2 tomatoes, de-seeded and sliced and mix.

6. Turn it all out carefully and artfully onto a plate and sprinkle with a few roasted peanuts.

Making this dish yourself depends entirely on getting hold of unripe green papayas. Don't even think about using the ripe kind. I'm lucky to have a Thai grocer in my home town. I'm sure some Chinese grocers supply them as well. Otherwise order it next time you go for Thai food.

Thai Adventures: squid pier and crab legs

2010-08-20T15:44:00.013+01:00

Rain. Quite a lot of it. Hot rain. Light rain. Heavy rain. Serious downpours. We swam and we ate. Lunchtime we headed off to squid pier for seafood on a jetty. Saw them bringing it in off picturesque junk-like fishing boats. Not a very adventurous meal but super tasty: prawn coconut soup, chicken pad Thai (they never call it that here but that is pretty much what it was) with fat flat rice noodles, beansprouts and that sour sweet orange/pink sauce. To this we added some pork satay, king prawns with fresh chilli and some rice soup to which one adds an assortment of condiments from sweet to sour to spicy. I had a taste for breakfast and fancied some more.

After a brief burst of sun, a horse ride for the kids and a Chivas on the rocks for mum 'n dad, we took ourselves back to the night market. Rain came down in buckets so we took shelter in one of several fish joints, un-originally called Hua Hin Seafood. As ever the staff were delightful and the cooks, skillful.

We ordered steamed crab legs with the hottest, garlickiest sauce but also strangely addictive; whole deep fried sea bass with garlic and pepper; and tamarind prawns whose tangy sauce was nicely offset by a mound of crispy shallots and er, yet more garlic.

Our eldest dug in declaring the crab 'the best ever'. The youngest never made it to the entrees. He fell asleep at the table still holding half a spring roll. Oh for a photo!
With dinner over, we stayed on and digested until the torrent of rain became a
trickle, then grabbed a tuk tuk home and packed up ready for tomorrow's adventure: the island of Koh Panghan.

Thai Adventures: Hua Hin night market - the Thai food odyssey begins

2010-08-19T14:41:00.015+01:00

Day one. Writing this on a phone so don't expect Ulysses despite the odyssey remark.

Back in Hua Hin after ten years. This is Bangkok's weekend seaside resort. Their Brighton or Southend perhaps. After some 'cooling off' in the warm sea and a snooze we head off to the local night market. Will upload pictures when I get a chance but dinner turned out to be one of the finest Thai meals we'd ever eaten. A corner dive popular with Thai families, right on a noisy main road. Picked at random and partly because we were hungry and a bit tired, this place turned out fine examples of classic Thai food: minced pork with chilli and Thai basil; fish cakes; chicken and cashew nuts and squid with sweet peppers. All fresh, sharp and delicious.

The boys did us proud managing to eat everything though the chicken with cashew was the winner. Nothing like it's bland English cousin, this was sticky sweet with caramelised garlic and shallot plus a little chilli too. The fish cakes were still bubbling from the wok when they arrived, served with sweet sour vineager cucumber dipping sauce. Washed it down with cold Chang beer (6.4%!). All happy and stuffed.

Some coconut milk ice cream from the Market to finish and then a wander around the fish restaraunts where chefs gathered around charcoal BBQs grilling giant prawns. That's tomorrow sorted then

Comfort Eating – when nothing else will do

2010-08-12T14:17:00.014+01:00

I think one of the best things about being able to cook is not producing fancy meals for your friends, though showing off is fun. Having some cooking skills allows you to create something tasty out of a few basic ingredients that can turn your crappy day into something rewarding. As clichéd as it sounds, comfort food really does give you a great big hug, particularly when you make it yourself.

Here are two recipes that fit the bill and are very easy to make. Both are made in quantities to suit two eaters in need of serious comforting.

Green Couscous
Taken from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, I made this the other day and it will surely become a regular. It’s essentially couscous mixed with a herb paste, and once you have made it with these ingredients, then it’s easy to see how you can vary the recipe according to what you have in the house.

What and how: put 300g couscous in a heat-proof bowl, cover with boiling water, then cover the bowl with a plate. Thinly slice a small onion, fry til golden in a little oil, then add a dash of cumin and mix. Leave to cool. In a food processor, whizz up bunches of herbs: tarragon, parsley, mint, coriander, basil, with around 90-100 ml of good olive oil. You may need to use a hand blender to achieve a paste-like consistency. Mix the herb paste into the cooked couscous, fluffing it up with a fork. To this add the onion mixture, 3 finely chopped spring onions, 1 finely chopped fresh green chilli, and a handful of shelled pistachios that have been lightly toasted and roughly chopped or bashed and a handful of rocket leaves. Salt, pepper and a good squeeze of lemon (my addition). Serve at room temperature with some Greek yoghurt on the side.

Mujadara
Been eating this for years. It’s essentially a pilaf, containing rice, lentils and caramelised onions. It’s a cheap, easy and nutritious staple of Middle Eastern cookery though Mujadara’s origins, like those of hummus are disputed. Countries with a claim on it include Libya, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and even India. In this recipe I cook the rice and lentils separately but you can cook them together. Apart you have better control of the texture of each ingredient – you want to avoid overcooking either or it just ends up as a mush.

What and how: gently fry 3 large thinly sliced onions until golden, in 2 tbsps oil and a knob of butter. Add pinch of salt to help draw out the moisture. In one pan cook 200g of basmati in your usual way. I use double the quantity of water to rice and always cook with the lid on until steam stops escaping from the pan. Then I take off the lid to let it dry out and help avoid overcooking. In another pan cook 150g brown lentils in plenty of water until they are soft but still with some bite to them. Mix the lentils and rice together, with a pinch of cumin and a pinch of cinnamon, salt and fresh ground pepper. Some people also mix in the onions at this stage, others place them on top – up to you. Sprinkle with chopped herbs and if you like some toasted pine nuts. Serve with Greek yoghurt or tahina (mixed with lemon juice, garlic and a little water so it has the consistency of thick double cream)

Eat slowly out of a very large bowl with a giant serving spoon, curled up on a sofa watching trash TV or turning the pages of a coffee table cook book.

In search of the perfect meal

2010-08-09T09:02:00.012+01:00

I’m re-reading A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain, author of the now ground-breaking what-not-to-eat cook-and-tell autobiography Kitchen Confidential. It’s sub-title is In Search of the Perfect Meal, so in true SJP mode, “I couldn’t help but wonder”, what is my perfect meal?

One thing for sure, the perfect meal is unlikely to be something from a restaurant. The Fat Duck or El Bulli win all the stars but that’s not what I would hunger for on a desert island. Actually my desert island food, at the moment, is steak Fiorentina. There is nothing quite like it for a carnivore, that huge slab of meat, a kilo or more in weight, 2 inches thick, perfectly seasoned and seared on a fierce flame. I’ve never had it in Florence, but do remember a special night out with the missus in Torgiano, a town in Umbria reasonably famous for red wine. I can remember my wife’s disappointment as the waiter removed the dainty filet (“for the ladies”) whilst leaving the bloody t-bone for me to tear into.

Where was I? Oh yes, food is as much about context as it is about taste. My best meals are connected in my brain with smells, sounds and situations where I was either happiest or on occasion, my unhappy state was turned around by the food.

I have also had memorable meals alone. I can remember one quite clearly. I was 15 and had amassed a fair amount of cash that summer from a combination of crappy jobs. I was brought up in London and in the school holidays, a Chinese school friend, Eddie and I, would sometimes visit some of his relatives in Chinatown – distant cousins who worked as chefs or waiters in various restaurants. The food was free of course but the downside was we always ate ‘off menu’ – I suspect whatever was lying around the kitchen that could be easily fried up and secreted past the watchful eye of the manager, to the table with the 2 chubby teenagers in the corner – the one usually reserved for staff meals. plates of steaming white jasmine rice would arrive, piled with odd ends of char siu barbecued pork or the toughest pieces of roast duck with maybe some anaemic white cabbage leaves, all covered in the same slightly gelatinous sweet sauce. I think one time we tucked into a plate of ‘innards’. It tasted good but it wasn’t good form to enquire too closely exactly what we were eating.

It was about this time that I had also discovered the delights of Dim Sum. My father had taken me once or twice but at the time this was a weekend treat – many restaurants if not all of them served it only on Saturdays or more likely, Sundays, until 2pm. However I can remember having a Saturday in August with little to do and money in my pocket. I caught the no 6 bus to town, jumped off at Haymarket and headed into Chinatown.

I picked a Dim Sum place on the end of Gerrard Street and wandered in. I sat near the window and can remember to this day the guilty pleasure of dining alone. I was about to throw a week’s paper round and shelf-stacking money on a dim sum blow out for one. I ordered most of the dishes I had eaten before, starting with the fried options: Vietnamese spring rolls, deep fried won ton, squid cakes. Then the steamed dishes: crab and prawn dumpling, beef ball with ginger, tiny little nubs of pork ribs in black bean sauce and char siu pork buns – faintly sweet stodgy white pillows of dough with a sickly sweet porky centre. I also added a dish I mistakenly thought would mark me out as a connoisseur: glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaf.

As the dishes arrived, I sat there in majesty, with my ‘little treasures’ arranged before me on the table, savouring the moment. I must have looked an odd site, this diminutive, spotty, bon viveur. It certainly wasn’t the best technical execution of dim sum that I would ever eat but it was pretty special and almost, perfect.

Sri Cheers for Thailand

2010-08-08T10:29:00.014+01:00

We're about to test the idea that kids and spicy food don't mix too well. We're off to Thailand. True, our two are quite the gastronauts, when they want to be, but this is still extreme territory.

For two weeks they'll have constant exposure to the delights of the Thai table: ginger, galangal, fish sauce, lime leaf, lemon grass and CHILLI. So we're introducing them to a few classics to whet the appetite. with a large glass of iced water on standby. First up, Sweetcorn Fritters.

For this recipe, as always I reach for Sainsbury's The Cooking of Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, by the legendary Sri Owen, bought for me in 1992, complete with a saucy inscription from my then girlfriend. Don't worry I'm not about to repeat it here.

Sri was a young university lecturer in Java when she met her English husband. They returned to England where she worked as producer and broadcaster on the BBC World Service. Her first cookbook was published by Faber in 1976, The Home Book of Indonesian Cookery. Many more book followed. This small unimposing little book is an utter delight and completely trustworthy, if rather unstylish these days where visceral photography is everything.

This recipe works best with fresh corn but canned is fine. You can up the chilli as well - this is a mild, kid-friendly version. Recently on the Arvon food writing course I attended, the lovely Lucia made some, adding fresh spinach and they were wonderful.

Sweet Corn Fritters - makes 10-12 fritters about 2 inches in diameter

325 g sweet corn (a medium can or 2 fresh cobs, with the kernels sliced off with a knife)

4 shallots, finely chopped (or one medium onion)

1 red chilli de-seeded (or not if you want it fiery)

2 cloves garlic chopped finely

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 spring onions finely chopped

3 tablespoons plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

touch of salt

1 egg

oil for shallow frying - 125 ml roughly

Empty the sweetcorn kernels into a food processor and whizz up very briefly (a few seconds) just so the kernels are a little broken up but you do NOT want a mush. You can also do this with a folk instead. Tip into a bowl and add all the other ingredients except the oil. Mix well.

Heat oil in wok or frying pan, gently push a heaped dessert spoon of the mixture into the hot oil, and flatten it out with a fork. You don't want to overcrowd the pan so cook 4-5 at a time. It will take about 2-3 minutes to bring each side to a golden brown. drain on kitchen paper. Serve plain, hot or cold, but I prefer some dipping sauce. The cheats version is:

Cheat's chilli sauce

3 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce

juice of half a lime

1 tablespoon fresh coriander

1 tablespoon of small-dice cucumber

1 tablespoon of unsalted roast peanuts crushed a little

Squeeze the lime into the chilli sauce, mix, then garnish with the cucumber, peanuts and coriander.

Mastering The Art of Yemenite Cookery

2010-07-27T10:34:00.020+01:00

In 1963 my parents published a cookbook in their native Israel, called Yemenite and Sabra Cookery. It was something of a first, a book focusing on the 'indigenous' Jewish cooking of the region, that has much in common with Arab and Palestinian cuisine. It was aimed at the growing number of 'tzabars' or sabras - Jews born in Israel. Dad illustrated it with a series of beautiful wood cuts and mum, who is of Yemenite extraction, visited the kitchens of her community to compile and test recipes. The setting up of this blog is in fact partly a response to the book, as I would like to try and update it, together with recipes tested by my mum, now in her 80s.

Yemenites are one of the oldest of Jewish tribes. The interesting introduction to the book by academic Solomon H. Steckoll tells of people with “dark, fine complexions, carved features and wiry frames” and describes their ancient customs such as the locust hunt, which doubled up as a sort of mating ritual, being only time when young men and women were allowed to mingle socially.

The book is divided into two parts. First, Yemenite dishes, which include rubs, seasonings and spice-dips still very much around today such as Hawayij, Zhug and Hilbeh – which you can mix with zhug and it sort of forms a dip cum marinade, often with added tomato pulp. Then there are examples of the dishes that are probably best forgotten (or perhaps are ripe for rebranding), such as Geed – Penis of Ram (probably should be on the menu at St John's) and not surprisingly Locust.

My mum explained to me that her mother used to go on the locust hunt. It involved turning a large barrel, lined with clay into a giant oven cum furnace into which the captured locusts would be roasted and then the legs pulled off before being eaten. How do you capture locusts? Get them in the morning, when they're docile, before the sun comes up. Apparently granny never ate them herself.

On the BBC World Service's Science In Action programme this week there is an interview with a Dutch academic who believes the world's food shortages could be solved if we ate more insects - specifically locusts - so there you are, everything comes back into fashion eventually.

The second half of the book focuses on Sabra cookery - much more familiar to the modern reader: falafel, humus and tahina, ful and kibbeh - things you'll find in most Arab restaurants on London's Edgware road and then some. But in the early 60s, this was still a relatively new cuisine to Israelis.

So in my own version of the film Julie and Julia I'll be working my way through many of these recipes and updating them, with help from family and friends.

Now, does anyone know where to get a ram's penis?

In Devon with Peter and Yotam

2010-07-23T17:04:00.007+01:00

I am scrubbing potatoes in a farmhouse sink full of brown water. There are dozens of the buggers. After that I have to wash and dry a kilo of freshly-picked spinach and then chop a thousand carrots. I could not be happier.

Ten minutes after arriving at the Arvon Foundation’s HQ, in Totleigh Barton, deepest Devon, I am up to my elbows in veg peelings, playing the ad hoc commis chef to Peter Gordon and Yotam Ottolenghi. Yotam's account of the week is on his blog

I came here to write – food writing to be precise – an intensive, residential writing course, the kind that Arvon runs most weeks on all manner of subjects, from comedy, and travel, to poetry and food. Our tutors, Peter and Yotam, well-known chefs and prolific authors, have decided to cook for the students on the first night. This is exciting. I wander over to the sink to make polite chit-chat with Peter, who is washing spuds. But it seems odd, me drinking tea while he works away, so I offer to help. He declines twice but gives in on my third attempt (pushy? Moi?) and hands me the scrubber. Does this count as professional kitchen experience on my CV, I wonder?

Like a high-end, fusion version of Ready Steady Cook, Yotam and Peter have each brought along a selection of special ingredients: Peter’s stash includes a jar of red moromi miso (its umami savouriness works wonders on new potatoes), some home made garam masala (it will have a starring role in a curry we make later in the week), fresh lime leaves (from his very own tree), and an intriguing bag of fragrant and spicy red ‘berbere’ pepper.

Meanwhile over in the Middle Eastern corner, Yotam has brought some tahina paste (natch), barberries (little red hits of sourness), lemon grass (interesting cross-over there) and bags of giant couscous (we will eat a lot of this stuff in the coming days). Thankfully Ainsley is nowhere in sight. Instead our tutors conjure up dinner for twenty: an array of imaginative vegetarian dishes that could have come straight from their latest books, Plenty or Fusion. The spread includes whole roast cauliflower with tahina, broccoli with quinoa, the aforementioned potatoes with miso and some amazing carrots roasted with spices. The food is wonderful, the students incredulous with delight. It must be the way I washed the spinach.

The course finished a week ago today but I'll dinning out on it for months to come, thanks to some fantastic fellow students and the tutors, who were warm open and giving to 16 complete strangers in the middle of nowhere.

My Delicious Ms Dhal

2010-07-22T17:13:00.009+01:00

Wednesday evening and the fridge contains some fresh spinach (on the turn), the last few garlic cloves and some gnarly ginger. That's about it.

I'm just reaching for the local Indian take-away menu when I remember there's a bag of yellow split peas in the cupboard. Time for one of the simplest and most satisfying of cheap dinners: dhal, or at least my version of it. The garam masala produces a lovely warm earthiness to the dish. I'm using, of course, a 'celebrity' spice mix, prepared by the loving Kiwi hands of fusion food supremo Peter Gordon, which I (ahem) 'procured' at the end of the Arvon Food Writing course I attended last week in Devon, on which Peter taught. This is a very wholesome dish, so for balance, drink beer.

Dhal, serves 2 with leftovers

2 x gloves garlic, minced/crushed/finely chopped

1 x piece of ginger, about an inch long, grated with the skin on

2 x spring onions finely chopped

1 tsp black mustard seeds

1 tsp turmeric

1-2 dried chillies crumbled

1 tbsp garam masala

200 g of yellow split peas

1 tomato diced roughly

Couple of handfuls of fresh washed spinach, exact amount up to you

1 tsp salt

Water – enough to cover the peas plus extra

2 tbsp vegetable oil

Squeeze of lemon

2 tbsp chopped coriander (or as much as you like)

Heat the oil in a pan. When hot add the mustard seeds. When they start to pop, add the garlic, ginger and spring onions for a couple of minutes, make sure they don’t stick or burn. Add the garam masala, chillies, and tomatoes and turmeric, stir fry for another minute, then add the peas and salt. Stir this around to get the peas well coated for a minute or so, then add enough water to cover the peas. cook on a low to medium heat, with a lid on the pan for around 35-40 minutes, checking the peas regularly and adding more water when necessary (you will have to add more water towards the end). After 40 minutes the peas will be soft but still have a little bite to them. Just before serving, with the heat turned off, throw in the spinach, mix well, put the lid back on and give it 5 minutes before serving, during which time the spinach would have wilted nicely. Squeeze on lemon and add chopped coriander. Serve with mango chutney, some home made riata and nan or pitta bread.

Thank Fiona it's Fritti!

2010-07-20T21:55:00.000+01:00

My colleague Fiona came into the office this morning with a bumper bag of fresh courgettes (zucchini if you must) straight from her garden. I grabbed three. There were surprisingly few takers by the end of the day, so I grabbed three more and on the way home decided to make a simple Italian classic, Zucchini Fritti, with a batter from the River Café Easy Cookbook.

The best ones I ever ate were at Locanda Locatelli, in London’s Marble Arch, eponymous home to celeb chef, Giorgio. They were terribly refined, the batter light, crisp and translucent. More tempura than fritti but very nice. They make a great casual aperitif, hot from the pan, with a good squeeze of lemon and a chilled glass of Gavi, Soave or Lugana. We didn’t have any of those wines tonight but we did have some Portuguese Vinho Verde, which hit the spot.

A note about the recipe: I love the River Café Easy book but after cooking this several times, there are two obvious flaws: the amount of water originally specified (in my copy at least) for the full recipe is waaaay to little. 3 tbsp of water does nothing to turn a paste of flour and oil into a creamy batter with the consistency of double cream. So if you’re using the book, and haven’t cooked it before, forget that and just have a jug of warm water at the ready, to pour in small amounts until you get the right consistency. I would guess around 150 ml.

The other big problem, for me anyway, are the overall quantities. If you’re making this dish for a dinner party of 8 then by all means, use 500 g of courgettes, 3 egg whites, etc. But for 2-4 people as a snack, I reduced most of the ingredients to a third and found it worked really well, so that is what is listed below.

btw way, as the dish is Italian I will use the term zucchini, even though it feels so wrong...

Zucchini Fritti (serves 2-4 as a snack)
Approx 200g Zucchini – any variety
75 g flour, sifted
1.5 tbsp Olive oil (extra or not, up to you)
1 x large egg white
salt
Oil for frying – not olive
Half a lemon

Method
Cut Zucchini into batons, sprinkle over some salt and leave for 30 mins. For the batter, sift 75 g flour into a bowl, make a well and add 1.5 tbsp of good olive oil, mix to a paste. Add warm water a couple of tablespoons at a time and mix until the batter loosens up and eventually has the consistency of double cream – thicker than French crepe batter, but probably thinner than American pancake batter, if that makes sense. Leave 30 mins.

Whisk egg white until pretty stiff, then fold into the batter gently. Use kitchen paper to pat down your zucchini batons – then drop into the batter. Heat oil (I often use a wok for relatively small amounts and get the oil up about 2 inches deep) around 300 ml should be plenty.

Place the batons in the oil using tongs or a folk. A bit like tempura you don’t want too much batter on the zucchini before you drop them into the oil. Cook in small batches (6-8 pieces) and remove when they start to brown slightly, which should be less than a minute. Drain on kitchen paper and eat as soon as possible with a good squeeze of lemon. They’ll go a little soggy with the lemon but the taste more than makes up for this.

Okay so how vague was that? And I have the temerity to accuse the River Café of sloppiness! But seriously make sure your oil is really hot and your batter not too gloopy and you’ll get a lovely result.

Hummus, Hummous, Hamos or Hommos?

2010-07-20T14:12:00.002+01:00

If the Middle East didn't have real problems to fight about then surely there would be wars over the origin and correct spelling of this chickpea paste, which is slowly taking over the world. I wouldn't be surprised if 'McHummus' arrived on the scene soon. Someone will probably point out it already exists.

So, I opted for 'Hummus', which along with 'Hummous' is probably the most common way of spelling in the UK. Personally, I prefer it with one 'm' but in English this has the unfortunate effect of confusing your discussion of a chickpea-based foodstuff with the organic matter in soil.

Other spellings include Hamos, Humous, and Hommos (seriously?)

Hummus: Gateway to the Middle East

2010-07-20T13:07:00.001+01:00

I was brought up on hummus [and to a lesser extent, tahina**]. My Dad ate it practically every day, often for breakfast and then for lunch. Now it's my 'go-to' comfort food. But then, as now, it also felt like an illicit pleasure - carefully tearing off the pitta, and scooping up the garlicky paste with your hands, whilst calculating the proportion of bread to hummus to ensure you ended up with nothing left over. My father would adorn his with a variety of garnishes and even today I prefer to have these embellishments than go 'naked'.

Typically, you'd start with a round smear of hummus, moulded with a knife, in the centre of the plate. Then place 4-6 black nicoise olives around the edge of the circle and in between these add 4-6 pieces of ripe de-seeded tomato (plum if possible). A good glug of extra virgin olive oil (Greek works best in my view), followed by a light sprinkling of hot paprika.

Optional extras included: pickled chilli peppers, hamisha cucumbers, kalamata olives. Also, instead of hot paprika, a variety of chilli sauces work well including, surprisingly, West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce and that Vietnamese brand, generally known as "Rooster", which comes in a squeezy bottle with a green top. As for hummus with whole chickpeas weaved in, (popular in Israel) it's nice but not what I yearn for.

For me, hummus solves most problems, or at least puts them in perspective, like a good cup of tea. Hummus is also the gateway to the culinary delights of the Middle East, of which more later.

** of course good hummus is made with tahina but tahina on its own, with garlic, lemon and parsley is wonderful too, especially as a dressing for vegetables or to accompany garlicky roast lamb. Tahina is also the correct condiment for Falafel, rather than what is so often served in the UK, Hummus, which is of course like adding ketchup to a tomato salad or garnishing your fries with mash.

Cauliflower Surprise

2010-07-19T22:15:00.001+01:00

Cauliflower - possibly the world's trickiest vegetable?

I have just returned from a week at the Arvon Foundation writing school in Devon, on a food writing course. The tutors were Yotam Ottolenghi and Peter Gordon. So obviously they are my new food gods, until someone else comes along. At the end of the week, Yotam gave me a heap of ingredients to take home (or possibly I stole them, forget which) and one of those was a bottle of pomegranate molasses. Useful stuff.

I'll post more about the course soon but in the meantime, here is a picture of a cauliflower dish I made from Yotam's column, The New Vegetarian, in the Guardian's Saturday supplement. I toned down the garlic just a tad and added less yoghurt but more lemon juice and another half teaspoon of pomegranate molasses. I also sprinkled on a handful of Persian barberries, tiny red jewel-like berries that give anything a sweet-sour ZING. It was delicious and unusual and somewhat over-shadowed the butterfly leg of lamb with za'atar (a middle eastern herb mix/rub) that I made to go with it. But in a good way. The recipe is a keeper. Especially if like me you're always stumped by Cauliflower.

You can find that recipe here and it is well worth it. It's pretty easy even though it may at first glance look like a bit of a faff. http://http//www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/thenewvegetarian

Hey Pesto!

2010-07-19T21:21:00.000+01:00

It's about time my kids earned their keep. They have fantastic appetites and lucky for us, adventurous palates. Thai, Japanese, Lebanese and Indian - they're game for anything save for mushrooms and parsley, though we are slowly winning that battle of hearts and stomachs. So when we asked them to make lunch on Sunday they opted for one of their favourite dishes, pasta with (fresh) pesto. The boys pounded the basil, oil, garlic, cheese and pine nuts with a pestle and mortar, shouting "kill, kill kill!". Amazingly most of the mixture stayed in the mortar and the result was good: a rich, dark, almost algae like green nutty paste that tasted like pesto, only better. They ate the lot and made room for fresh picked raspberries, meringue and clotted cream.

We probably should have started with toast and worked our way up slowly from there. But this is I suspect a family trait. I remember, as an ambitious 12 year old, I'd just watched Chinese Cookery with Ken Hom on the BBC and declared that I was going to cook chicken in black bean sauce for my mum, having cooked virtually nothing else before. The following week, having convinced mum to purchase Hom's book along with some suspicious looking fermented black beans from a Chinese grocer on Gerrard Street in London, I managed to pull off possibly the worst version of that dish ever created. Certainly the saltiest. This was back in the early 80s when there simply wasn't the profusion of ready made sauces in supermarkets that there are now (eee...lad). I think children should be ambitious in their cooking as they are in their eating and hopefully one influences the other. Trying to get children to eat healthily can seem like a self-defeating exercise at times, as futile as the 'war on drugs' though slightly less expensive. But almost everyone who cooks enthusiastically loves food and as any kid who has licked the back of a spoon knows, cooking has fringe benefits.