The Larder Lout

This blog has moved

2009-12-04T15:15:00.002Z

You should be redirected to www.jamesramsden.wordpress.com shortly.

Moving virtual home...

2009-11-30T15:07:00.002Z

Dearest louts, loutesses, and loutettes,

I am currently transferring all of Ramsden's random ramblings from blogger to wordpress. Please bear with me.

The new site (with video channels, embedded playlists, and a real talking goat) should be up and running by Friday.

Much love,

James.

Broth for a rainy day

2009-11-23T17:19:00.004Z

I once made this soup for my grandmother when she was poorly, devoted grandson that I am. A couple of hours later a fax arrived with a handwritten note from Grannie.

Dear Jammy,

Thank you for the soup. It cheered me up. Just a few criticisms:

The bits of cabbage and bacon are rather large and difficult to eat, and so as a soup it requires a knife, fork, and spoon to eat it. Perhaps next time you could chop the bits up a little smaller.

Your grandfather says it was too salty.

G

Now there's gratitude. I'm sure Grannie was right, yet part of this soup's charm is its very ruggedness - it's big and brutish and slurpy and utterly warming; ideal for this bout of miserable weather. It is also very much a blank canvas of a soup. You could tinker around with it until the cows come home, adding fennel seed and sausage, pasta and Parmesan - even some mushrooms. It's a t'riffic fridge slut. This is just how I happened to do it today.

(PS here is a 'music for making soup' spotify playlist)

Bacon and Cabbage Broth

Serves 6

150g smoked lardons, or 8 rashers of streaky smoked bacon sliced
2 onions, peeled and sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced
2 large spuds, cut into large dice
150g cherry tomatoes
a savoy cabbage, sliced
1 sprig rosemary
parsley stalks
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 litres chicken stock
Oil, salt, pepper

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan and fry the bacon until crispy. Add the onion, garlic and spuds, along with the herbs. Season with salt and pepper, cover with a lid and cook over a low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the tomatoes, cabbage, and stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.

Serve as you like.

Pizza East, Shoreditch High Street

2009-11-20T11:51:00.007Z

9/10

Translation can be difficult. Different countries have different ways of expressing what is essentially the same thing, but is yet so nuanced, so finely tuned, that the merest mispronunciation can lead to extraordinary difficulties. A friend spent a year in South America, to hone what was, until then, fairly ropey Castilian Spanish. Having somehow landed a job at an international company, he was, on his very first day, ushered into the biggest board meeting of the year. All the heads of the South American arm of the company had gathered around a large table, with Jim, a six foot six, red-haired Englishman (sore thumb, anyone?) plonked at the end. And like in a bad dream he was asked to introduce himself.

"Hola, soy Jim.....", God this is awkward, he thought - I should tell them. "Soy muy embarazado". I'm very embarrassed.

Except that isn't what he said. "Hello, I'm Jim", he said, "I'm very pregnant". The room exploded, Jim's face fast turning scarlet.

With the first hurdle having been limped over, his boss tried to put him at ease with some gentle, GCSE oral exam-style questions.

"How did you get from the airport Jim?" he enquired.

"Ah, si. Err, yo cogi un autobus. Duro cinco horas". I got a bus. It took five hours.

Except that isn't what he said. He actually said this: "Ah, yes. Erm, I fucked a bus. It took five hours".

Because in Castilian Spanish 'coger' means 'to take'. In South American Spanish it does not.

And in Britain 'pizza' means 'flat bread with tomato and cheese'. In Pizza East it does not. I have been 4 times in a week, and only once has my pizza had tomato on it.

I'll start at the beginning. Last Friday I met a friend for lunch at aforementioned and much-lauded restaurant, and I fell in love with the place immediately. It's in the Tea building on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road, and occupies the vast, expansive ground floor. And yet it manages to be utterly cosy, warm and welcoming. The decor is a delight - proper distressed wood (not the furniture equivalent of 'faded' jeans - why spend £20 extra on jeans that look just like the ones you're replacing?), great long tables with swing-out seats, and comfy banquettes to sit back and wallow in. It's immaculate yet unfussy, the service attentive but unintrusive.

The antipasti menu is as good a translation of Italian grub as I have seen - no half-arsed parma ham and melon here. Proper food, beautifully cooked. Over the course of those four visits I ate a pingingly fresh and elegantly presented mackerel escabeche with lentils, the criminally underrated fish soft and yielding and singing with lemon. Wood roasted bone marrow, all rich and wobbly and flecked with sea salt, was a joy, slathered on toast and crammed in with radish and parsley salad. Mussels were also wood roasted, and were just about the plumpest I have eaten.

But my highlight was the soft polenta with chicken livers. These are stupendous - crispy little nuggets of liver with the gentlest, warmest spicing, sitting atop a golden hillock of creamy polenta, and adorned with a piquant sauce. Potentially my favourite dish of 2009.

Onto the pizzas, and I hope I won't risk being turned away on my next visit (which, let's face it, will probably be this evening) for saying that they're a mixed bag. A great deal of thought has gone into creating these - so much so that when I asked to substitute toppings (on my 3rd visit) I was told that I couldn't. They have been meticulous in their design, yet rigour and street food don't necessarily go together. Call me a philistine, but I simply don't think pizza needs tinkering with. The bases of these pizzas are terrific, with that magical, much sought-after combination of crispness and chew. So why the need to try and make them extra-special with bizarre toppings - sprouting broccoli on a pizza? That's a mistranslation if ever I saw one.

Some of the attempts at ringing the tomato-cheese-pig changes do work. The veal meatball pizza with prosciutto, sage, lemon, parsley and cream is an absolute triumph, the duck sausage a glorious, rich delight. But the best pizza, like the best Italian food, is the simplest. The salami, tomato and mozzarella pizza is, while perhaps narrow-minded, splendid in its simplicity, the Margherita even more so.

Pizza East - you had me by the jaffers as soon as I walked in. After the starters - handsome, original, stupidly scrumptious - I was thinking about leaving home and squatting on your doorstep with a sleeping bag and a fork. You don't need to fart around with the pizzas. It's like the most beautiful woman in the world wearing make-up - perhaps minutely enhancing, but completely unnecessary.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 5 (finally)

2009-11-17T14:36:00.004Z

Well, after a week and a half in the editing suite the video for my final ethnic eating day is ready for human consumption.

This really was the highlight of the week - brilliant shop, delightful shopkeeper, and a very kind friend to help with the filming. The food was delicious to boot.

Aubergine Khoresht with jewelled rice

Serves 4

For the Khoresht
1 tin of aubergines
1 onion, peeled and finely sliced
2 potatoes, sliced
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
4 dried limes, pricked with a knife
Water
Salt, pepper, oil

For the rice
Handful of barberries
Handful of chopped pistachios
Half a pint of rice
1 pint water

Pour boiling water over the barberries and leave to swell for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a large frying pan or wok and add the aubergines. Fry until lightly coloured, remove and add the onion. Soften, remove and add the spuds. Fry until brown, then return the aubergines and onions to the pan, along with the turmeric, dried limes, and enough water to just cover the spuds. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for 30-40 minutes.

Put the rice and water in a saucepan with a little salt, cover and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes (resist the temptation to remove the lid). While your rice is simmering away, drain the barberries and press out any excess moisture. Fry in a little more oil for a minute or do, before adding the pistachios and frying for another minute. Once the rice is cooked, season with a little pepper and add the pistachios and berries.

Check the khoresht for seasoning, and walk to your nearest Persian shop. Serve to the owner with the rice and some pilfered parsley.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 4

2009-11-06T19:35:00.005Z

To Chinatown, where this little piggy lost his feet.

Five spice trotters

Serves 2

3 trotters, washed thoroughly
2 tablespoons Chinese five spice
1 clove garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1 thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 litre water (I know I say a pint, but I ended up adding more. cheeky)
4 pak choi, divided and washed
1 packet Shanghai noodles
Oyster sauce
Oil, salt and pepper

Heat a little oil over a medium heat and brown the trotters on all sides.

Add the five spice and toss to coat all the meat thoroughly, then add the garlic, ginger, vinegar, soy sauce and water. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for an hour and a half.

Remove the trotters to rest and bang up the heat, reducing the cooking liquor until sticky. Meanwhile stirfry the pak choi and noodles with a little oyster and soy sauce. Serve with the trotters, along with a generous tickle of the cooking sauce.

Tomorrow I meet the Iranian John Torode. Stay tuned.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 3

2009-11-05T21:21:00.005Z

If yesterday's ordeal was incoherent, vomit-inducing and, frankly, useless, today was a complete joy. This is really what the experiment is about - trying things that I'd usually balk at, and being pleasantly surprised by their tastiness. Huzzah for East African bread (and apologies for early mispronunciation)!

Chickpea and spinach curry for lazy bastards

Serves 4

1 red onion, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons of curry powder
1 tin coconut milk
1 tin spinach (by the way - I now LOVE tinned spinach; it's delicious)
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon (or thereabouts) tomato puree
Salt, pepper, and olive oil
Injera bread

Heat a little oil in a saucepan or wok and saute the onion until soft. Stir in the curry powder, then add coconut milk, spinach, chickpeas and tomato puree. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning and serve with injera bread.

Thank you to my two helpful and slightly tipsy helpers.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 2

2009-11-04T11:13:00.002Z

Yesterday I enjoyed a foray into Polish gastronomy, and discovered the joys of sorrel soup. But it was too easy.

So I decided to try and make my own sausages using halal meat from the ethnic food stores on Brick Lane. Turns out there's a reason somebody invented a device for this purpose.

(Parental warning - this video contains strong language and scenes of a sexual nature)

(The audio occasionally goes slightly out of sync - apologies)

I'm not going to write up the recipe for the sausage mix as it does need tweaking - the fat content was too low, and the spice balance wasn't quite right. I'd like to work on this (and perhaps invest in the attachments for my kenwood) and try it again - watch this space!)

If you fancy making your own sausages, for Pete's sake don't try my method. Read this article and we'll forget this whole sordid affair ever happened.

Investigation into London's rich cultural diversity, Day 1

2009-11-03T11:25:00.004Z

POLSKI SKLEP
- Polish provisions on your doorsklep (sorry).

Yesterday I began a week of looking at what London has to offer beyond standard supermarket fare. The results are below. Be not alarmed by the video's duration, as always there is some music at the end - this time courtesy of the wonderful Beirut.

Polish shops for you - Click here to see where they are.

Oh - the recipe:

Serves 2 - probably costs 75p a head

1 jar of szczaw
A little chicken or vegetable stock
A little cream
An egg

Empty the jar of sorrel into a saucepan and add some stock. Simmer. You won't need to season the already salty soup.

Meanwhile boil an egg for 8 minutes.

Add a little cream to the soup and stir for a minute. Peel the egg and cut it in half, before serving on top of the soup in warm bowls.

OTHER IDEAS FOR SZCZAW

- The sharpness of sorrel makes it ideal for fish; try draining the szczaw and serving it warm with a smoked mackerel fishcake.
- A szczaw sauce/white fish combo is similarly a match made in the upper reaches of Elysium
- Try the patties on this Polish blog

Hit me with further sorrel-based ideas if you have any.

Pancakes

2009-10-29T10:51:00.005Z

Turns out I'm half American. I already knew that but it's something I used to pretend I didn't. There was a time when being half American was something you kept quiet - like having a third nipple, or a verruca, or your family locked in the basement. But then a year ago Obama was made president, and all of a sudden I was proud of my roots. OK, I didn't go all-out, Randy-style nuts, but I was proud of my half-people - proud that they had proved the stereotype wrong, and so I put on some weight and got real stupid for a while to celebrate. 'Cause I'm one of them now.

A year later and my cousin Gep is staying at my parents', and I have an urge for pancakes - thick, sweet, doughy pancakes, drowned in maple syrup. They take approximately 4 minutes to make and even less time to eat. I would have put some chopped blueberries in the batter, but, alas, we had none.

Serves 4 fat Americans

300g self-raising flour
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
300ml milk
Butter
Maple syrup
Bacon

Preheat the oven to 60C.

Mix the flour and sugar in a large bowl (sieve the flour first if you can be arsed - at 8 in the morning I can't, frankly).

Stir the eggs into the milk, then make a well in the centre of your flour and pour in the wet mix. Stir until fully combined, but don't overwork the batter.

Melt a little butter over a medium heat in a non-stick frying pan, and add a couple of tablespoons of the mix. Fry for a couple of minutes, turn and fry for another minute or two. Keep warm in the oven while you make the rest of the batch, before serving with maple syrup and bacon. God bless America.

4 days to go until challenge week

And the winner is...

2009-10-27T14:56:00.006Z

I must start by thanking all of you for your humorous, constructive, and carefully considered suggestions for my next challenge. I initially suggested that I would put a final shortlist to the vote. Perhaps this would be more fair, more democratic, more brave even. But ultimately I want a project that will enrich my understanding of food and of cooking. Gruesome as it was, the raw vegan diet forced me to think outside my comfort zone regarding the essential matter of cooking and eating - and that can only be a good thing.

So Fiona Beckett's suggestion that I live on Floyd for a week, while tempting, would be far too easy, and rather too close to my own gastronomic proclivities. Georgia's idea of only cooking food that appears in song lyrics was particularly alluring - I loved the idea of having a playlist that was linked directly to what I was eating that week. But it still wasn't trying enough.

I loved Ms. Alex's suggestion of throwing a dice to determine each meal - 3 nice options, 3 nasty. This might be one for the future. But for the time being it is the mysterious 'Nibbles' who has won my vote. This was their suggestion:

"Work your way round your local international delis/corner shops to find unusual ingredients. On many local high streets now you can find Turkish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Asian, Halal... There is so much choice in Britain's ever more multicultural society. But most Brits don't know what ingredients to buy or what they can cook with them. It would be cool if you showed us how we can make use of this choice and add a dash of culinary mix to complement our cultural mix." .

How often do we shy away from strange ingredients? The same ones, again and again. How often do we feel intimidated because something is unfamiliar? I talk a lot about trying to get my friends out of their 'comfort zones', but, truth be told, I rarely saunter out of mine. Of course I try new ingredients - ox cheek, ackee, pig's ear, fish sperm (seriously) - but I tend to cook them in ways I am comfortable with, alongside familiar ingredients.

Every day for all of next week I will cook something that I have never cooked or eaten before. Perhaps we will all learn something. In the meantime, I want you to tell me which ingredients you're scared of, or, if you are feeling vindictive, dare me to go for something truly alarming. Roasted baboon, anyone?

Ta...

2009-10-26T22:09:00.000Z

Thank you for all of your suggestions for my next challenge - some interesting ones, some terrifying ones. Results tomorrow.

A NEW CHALLENGE - YOUR SUGGESTIONS PLEASE

2009-10-21T15:45:00.004+01:00

The vegan diet seems aeons ago, and I feel it is time I challenged myself once again. This time, however, I want the challenge to involve cooking. And eating. Lots of cooking and lots of eating. The question is, how masochistic am I? Or, more importantly, how sadistic are you? I don't want some cop out that I've chosen - I want YOU to decide for me.

Here are some ideas to get the cruel juices flowing:

- how much weight can I put on in a week? Not advised.
- only eating things that start with the letter 'm'
- only cooking James Martin recipes for a week
- cornershop week
- fast food week
- endangered species week

Give me your best shot. I wait with baited breath.

All you need is love

2009-10-15T09:39:00.005+01:00

Of all the cliches, adages and tautologies on Masterchef, the word that turns my stomach again and again is 'passion'. Everything is about 'passion', it seems - passion for cooking, passion for food, passion for ingredients, passion for experimentation etc etc. It's terribly perfunctory. It has become a punctuation mark, a sentence filler for when the judges can't think of anything more insightful to say about a contestant. As Tony Naylor writes on the Guardian Word of Mouth blog, Masterchef has stripped the word of any meaning through 'flagrant overuse'.It is also, more often than not, a euphemism. The cooking equivalent to the schoolmaster's "Ramsden tries hard" (i.e. Ramsden is thick as mud soup but I've got to wrestle some positive out of this car crash of a term).

For me it is not only overused, misused and abused, but it is a notion that is revered far beyond the measure it should be. This passion for food - what does it really mean? Passion is an ephemeral emotion, an intense, uncontrollable reflex. Passion doesn't sustain. It is the lusty throe of ecstasy, the impulsive stab of desire. Passion glints fleetingly in the glossy covers of food porn, or explodes magnificently in the climax of a meal. Passion does not last, and food cooked with passion and passion alone will most likely be inconsistent. There will be flashes of brilliance, sure, but in those moments when the spark is gone, what is left to support the cook?

For without love, there is nothing. Love and everything that comes with it - care, attention, nurture, devotion, and - yes - passion. Take Monday night. I had been working all day (a rarity), and returned late and hungry. Sunday's chicken had been made into stock, while any leftover meat had been stripped from the carcass and awaited my greedy advances. Against my better judgement (and due to a fairly empty fridge) I landed on making a risotto. I have never been convinced that chicken risotto works. I just don't feel that chicken's texture works well amidst the starchy grains, despite it being a leftovers staple. I'd rather prod it into a sandwich with a generous spoonful of mayonnaise, or, even better, toss it through crisp salad leaves with croutons and a piquant dressing.

But fate seemed to have decreed otherwise - the rice winked at me from the front of the cupboard, the stock was there, waiting, on the hob, the chicken already diced. There was even a bag of peas in the freezer to add bite and freshness. But because I was not convinced by the risotto's validity, I cooked it half-heartedly, one eye on the pot, one eye on the television. The result was a perfectly edible risotto, but one that did not come even close to inspiring any kind of passion in me whatsoever. The cooking had lacked care, and it tasted like it.

Two night's later I return in similar circumstances. This time there are two of us, and this time I have thought carefully about what I want to eat. I cook with all due care, attention, and love. The soup, while simplicity defined, is soothing and delicious. It is also quick and cheap.

Chilli beef noodle soup

Serves 2

4 spring onions, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 thumb of ginger, peeled and chopped into matchsticks
2 birds eye chillies, sliced
A handful of coriander, roughly chopped
300ml chicken stock
1 tablespoon fish sauce
Half a Chinese cabbage, sliced
100g oyster mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 rump steak
A handful of rice noodles
1 red chilli, halved, deseeded and sliced
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and add the spring onions, garlic, ginger and chillies. Stir constantly for 30 seconds, then add the coriander (reserving a little for the end), chicken stock and fish sauce. Bring to the boil, then add the mushrooms and cabbage. Turn the heat right down and simmer while you prepare the rest of the soup.

Boil the kettle and pour the water over the rice noodles in a bowl. Leave to soak for five minutes.

Meanwhile, season the steak with salt and pepper and rub with olive oil. Get a frying pan very hot (so that holding your hand 6 inches above it is unbearable for more than a second or two) and fry the steak for two minutes on each side. Remove to a plate to rest.

Drain the noodles and divide between serving bowls. Spoon over the soup making sure you get plenty of cabbage and mushrooms. Slice the steak thickly and arrange over the bowls. Garnish with slices of red chilli and a handful of coriander.

Is style ever more important than substance?

2009-10-08T12:53:00.009+01:00

It is Sunday morning. Early autumn and bright. You are sitting in a little cafe in Soho, a stack of papers beside you. You wallow in the false agony of which section to begin with, knowing full well that you are going to read the whole lot before you heave yourself away (and also knowing full well that you are going to read all the extraneous matter first, before finally making it to the actual news). Your eggs benedict arrives, and as if some higher being wished to emphasise the majesty of its creation, the sunlight falls onto the table at the very moment the plate is nudged in front of you. It's quite a thing to behold - a delicate poached egg, its mattress a golden toasted muffin, the bedsheets the crispest bacon you have ever seen. And hugging this aesthetic wonder is the most glistening, unctuous hollandaise sauce man has ever conceived. Trembling with lusty hunger, you cut into the egg, your entire mouth awash with saliva at the very anticipation of that joyous moment when the yolk, emancipated from its albumen chamber, trickles out to dress the bacon.

Except it doesn't. The yolk inside is overcooked and dry. Further investigation reveals bacon that is not so much crisp as burnt. The muffin, that bread so redolent of comfort and warmth, is cold and hard. To cap it all, the hollandaise is so lemony that with a little sugar you could stick a biscotti in it and call it a posset. How had a breakfast that promised so much, that looked so perfect and absolute, turned into a repeat of Christmas 1990 (when that box that you thought was a Superman costume sent from your aunt in the States was actually a box of cosmetics intended for your cousin in Nebraska)? How dare a chef promise so much to the eye and deliver so little to the palate?

Everybody judges a book by its cover. We look at people and decide subconsciously whether we like them or not, whether we fancy them or not. It's a reflex. This isn't to say it's always accurate. In fact, I love being proved wrong - when my initial opinion of a person, book, film, turns out to be miles off-radar. It's nice to be surprised. Food is no different. To drift into the realms of cliche, we eat with our eyes before eating with our mouths, and if our eyes are unmoved, our palate is less likely to be. But is it that simple? Certain 'ugly' dishes are cantilevered into the lofty realms of bewitching perfection through their very ruggedness. The pork pie, the cassoulet, bread and butter pudding - they are the Alan Rickmans of the food world, the dishes so full of surprises that every time you pile into them it's just like the first time.

Then we have the Victoria Beckhams. The plate itself is a study in aesthetic precision; the sauce so artfully skidded in with the back of a spoon (recreating the oft sought-after 'trod-in dog turd' effect), the roasted sea urchin whimsically dressed to look like an otter's ballsack, and pretty but utterly redundant microleaves scattered with an air of fancy (when we know full well that the little blighters were placed on with tweezers). Visually it is mighty impressive. But beneath the polished exterior is a dish that is completely lacking in personality, in good taste, and in intrigue. What's more, your brief foray into this one-dimensional plate has already destroyed its only raison d'etre. No wonder certain 'celebrities' have plastic surgery. If your only significant characteristic is your looks, what on earth are you going to do when you look like a weathered old muffin?

So is it possible that certain things can get away with vacuity when stunning to behold? My opinions on art certainly allow for this. I don't care if a painting represents the most intense of political struggles amongst the indigenous population of Siberia during the early 15th century - if it looks like a child has vomited on the canvas then it's not for me. Equally if I find a painting visually attractive, but discover that it represents the anguish of an early autumn mushroom, then fine. Paintings are for looking at.

Food, on the other hand, is not. Food is for eating. Yet, on Tuesday night I was forced to reconsider my standpoint on the subject. I was catering for a drinks party and, amongst other things, served blinis with smoked salmon, sour cream and wasabi caviar. Wasabi caviar, as caviar goes, is not expensive. They're hardly going to adulterate the expensive stuff with horseradish. A 100g jar was £8.45. The same sized jar of Beluga caviar £950 (yeah, I know). It looked stunning perched atop the blini, a bright, luminescent green on the crisp whiteness of the sour cream. The merest tip of a teaspoon was all that was needed for its visual effect to work, and after fashioning a tester I duly popped it in my mouth. Not a hint of wasabi. Odd. I tested another, this time with considerably more of the roes. Still nothing - not even the salty marine tang that are part of why you eat the stuff. I checked the label. Was this just plain old caviar that had the misfortune of being harvested in the waters of Chernobyl? Seemingly not.

I pushed the blinis, smoked salmon and sour cream to the side, and went at it with the teaspoon. This time I could just about taste the wasabi, but it was ever so faint, and certainly didn't have the nose-clearing bite of horseradish - a bite that goes so well with smoked fish. Now I was in a quandary. The stuff tasted of nothing, and the (flying fish) eggs were so small that you hardly got that delightful pop when you bit down on them. But it looked fantastic. Following the rule of 'only add it if it contributes to the flavour or texture' I should have dropped it altogether. But I didn't, I kept it in. And the guests were wide-eyed and exhilarated. And I didn't feel like a charlatan.

Should I have? I would suggest that when it comes to canapes, the visual effect is particularly important. It's not like sitting down to a main dish, when you have to eat mouthful after mouthful of the same thing. I have a hazy memory of a chef (whose name escapes me right now) once saying that anyone can make the first mouthful taste good - a great cook will make the last one taste good too. But with canapes your first mouthful is also your last mouthful, and as such the two senses of sight and taste are on a par. This isn't to say that an abhorrent tasting canape is kosher if it looks good, but in this context I believe a whimsical, if cosmetic, flourish is entirely acceptable, if its effect is at once mouth-watering, eye-catching, and amusing.

It seems I'm starting to rewrite my own rulebook. Next week, is pineapple and ham pizza always wrong?

Smoked salmon, sour cream and wasabi caviar blinis

It's very easy to make your own blinis or pikelets - they're essentially pancakes but instead of using a ladle use a teaspoon. I, however, do not have a recipe to hand, so will give you the version I did.

Makes 36

36 miniature blinis (easily found in shops)
150g smoked salmon
50g sour cream
Wasabi caviar (otherwise use the black lumpfish which is cheap but adequate)
Lemon juice
Pepper

Cook the blinis in the oven, remove and leave to cool.

When ready to serve (not too long before as they tend to go soggy) pop a little strip of salmon on each blini, curling it both to fit on top and to give it some height. On top of that add the merest quarter tea spoon of sour cream, followed by an even more restrained dab of caviar. Squeeze over a drop of lemon juice, a twist of pepper, and serve.

Like falling in love again

2009-10-06T09:54:00.005+01:00

There's nothing like a bit of abstinence. When Jesus spent forty days (and forty nights, mind) in the wilderness, I bet the first thing he did on completion was pile into the biggest goat stew since his Dad knows when. With extra goat. And loads of water. Which he promptly turned into wine. In fact, I imagine he was so deeply enamoured by the feast that lay before him, and so terribly geoffed* from all the water-wine he'd been guzzling, that he swayed bleary-eyed, elbows on the table and cutlery swinging like pendula, and slurred:

"This meat shall inherit the earth".

The rest was lost in translation.

And I know how he felt. The simple joys of cookery have never seemed so profound to me as they have over the past week. My lunch in the Hawksmoor aside (which was transcendental in a more cathartic, singular way), every morsel that has passed my quivering lips has been adored and appreciated in a way that it wasn't before. A month ago a toasted muffin for breakfast would have been eaten as passively as any breakfast is usually eaten; a baked potato for supper par for the course. Now these things are special, magical, decadent. And hot.

So I guess the raw vegan diet had a purpose. It made me realise just how much better food tastes when it is cooked - more flavour, more vitatlity, more love. Say what you will about the health benefits (I'm just not willing to get into a debate on this - not now anyway), but raw food just don't taste as good. For that reason I'm glad I did the diet - it has made me appreciate real food all the more.

*Geoffed, abbr. exceedingly drunk. Geoff Hooned.

Grilled lamb rump with smashed chickpeas

This is a great quick supper. The marinating time aside (and if you can only do it for 15 minutes, so be it), this can be from cooker to plate in under ten minutes.

Serves 2

2 lamb rump steaks
A small clove of garlic, crushed
A handful of parsley, finely chopped
A few rosemary leaves, finely chopped
A red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
1 tin of chickpeas
Salt and pepper

Toss the lamb in the crushed garlic, herbs, chilli, anchovy and lemon juice. Add a little olive oil, season with pepper and leave for up to 2 hours.

Scrape the marinade off of the lamb (but don't for Pete's sake chuck it away). Stick a frying pan over a strong flame and, when it looks like it's thinking about smoking, add the lamb. Fry for 2 minutes on each side, then remove to a plate to rest.

Drain the chickpeas and cover with water. Pop on a medium heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain into a colander. In the same saucepan, heat a little oil and gently fry the marinade for a minute, taking care not to burn the garlic. Return the chickpeas to the pan and smash with a spoon, fork or masher, stirring the marinade through thoroughly. You're not looking for a smooth paste here; rough is how we like it.

Serve with thick slices of lamb and some (preferably cooked) green vegetables.

THE END OF THE RAW VEGAN DIET

2009-09-29T10:37:00.004+01:00

Yes, it's finally over. I shall write about it in more detail when I have longer. In the meantime, here is the video of my post-diet lunch in the Hawksmoor. Life-affirming would be an understatement.

PS Don't be alarmed by length of video - it's half that length with music at the end. That's just how I roll.

Saf, Curtain Road

2009-09-24T12:21:00.004+01:00

The one fillip to this bizarre experiment (and it is becoming, day by day, more bizarre) was the knowledge that Saf, the respected raw vegan restaurant in the east end, was just around the corner from my flat. The consolation that I was not the only person in this city who thought the concept of such a diet was anything but ludicrous offered me solace in those darker moments when I found myself seduced even by the lusty, crass allure of the kebab shop opposite. Let me tell you, that nondescript gobbet of flesh might as well be a rib of wagyu beef when, at midnight, you realise that you have eaten nothing hot, nor proteinaceous, nor truly delicious, for 10 days.

Of course, I had received mixed reviews about Saf. Some said it was wonderful, some said it was dire. (I'm not sure why I just wrote that. Surely the term "mixed reviews" intimates that opinions differed on the subject, so quite why I had to emphasize this in such a tautological manner I don't know. It must be the lack of protein. (NB lack of protein may lead to short temper and attention span)). But somewhere that so gauchely serves nothing but raw vegan food is always going to cause some controversy, and so off I went for lunch, in the hope that this eternal nightmare of salad and fruit (I'm afraid the will to 'try new things' disappeared along with my will to live) could be tempered by a lunch that was more remarkable than what I had been eating for the previous week. I wasn't entirely disappointed.

The restaurant itself sits on Curtain Road, just off Old Street. A long, clean room with a conservatory at the end, it is a pleasant space, but on this occasion it was also a very empty space. Perhaps Wednesday lunchtime is never the most rollocking of shifts in any restaurant, yet it struck me that Saf was plugging one small demographic. Of the estimated 180,000 vegans in the UK, let's reckon there are 15,000 in London (a generous assumption; surely most of them live in the woods). Then let's assume that of that 15,000, 1500 live in the catchment area of Saf (a more realistic figure - vegans tend to migrate to Hackney). Of that 1500, the number of them that are going to shaft £30 on lunch midweek is, well - there were about 5 of us in there.

I started with the beetroot ravioli with cashew herb ricotta (pictured above). It arrived quickly, as well it should have done, being raw (though there was some suspicious sizzling coming from the kitchen). It did not arrive, however, with the asparagus, carrot and fennel salad, balsamic figs and pumpkin oil, as promised by the menu. Instead it was accompanied by a pile of celeriac remoulade. This went completely over my head, as I had forgotten what it said on the menu (did I mention short attention span?), and so I piled into it uncomplainingly, being a big fan of remoulade anyway. The first mouthful was like nothing I'd ever tasted before, and as such was rather alarming. My recollection of the menu being as it was, the lump of stodge gluing together the two slices of beetroot was a complete mystery, and like putting any mysterious matter in one's mouth, unpleasant. Yet it won me over. Whether this was down to the rich meatiness of the filling, or my fetish for beetroot in any way, shape, or form, I don't know, but the dish was a great success, and as fulfilling a thing as I had eaten for some time.

Next I ordered a Pad Thai of courgette noodles with enoki mushrooms and mung shoots. Once again the menu had misled me, there being no mung shoots, replaced instead by manges tout (though this deception also escaped my notice until I looked at the menu later that day). It was pretty standard nosh for an experienced raw vegan like myself, consisting of those staple flavour-boosters of chilli, sesame, lime and coriander. It did, however, come with the added nudge of chipotle sauce, its rich smokiness adding a great deal of interest to an otherwise familiar plate. But something smelled fishy. Literally. And it was making me gag. It transpired that this rancid piscine whiff was coming from the seaweed that lined the bowl. It was like eating raw vegan food whilst someone wafted last month's sushi under my nose, and it ruined any enjoyment of an otherwise tidy and well-conceived dish.

So, as pleonastically predicted, Saf is a bit of a mixed bag. There is no doubting the inventiveness of the food, nor the skill in the not-cooking. For a vegan it is a triumph that such an impressive restaurant exists. But strip away the context and focus on the food and the food alone, and there is little that sticks with me besides the stench of seaweed clinging to my nostrils and the memory of the waiter's insistence on calling me 'mate'.

The perils of raw veganism and alcohol

2009-09-23T10:06:00.007+01:00

I have a confession to make. I have not stuck completely to my raw ve-guns. This is what happened. I went to a friend's for dinner last night, already hungry from a day's disastrous eating - a lunch of thai coconut soup went awry when I had the mexico idea of trying to blend raw carrot and ended up with something like a cold curdled curry. The soup actually had potential. Coconut milk, ginger, chilli, lime zest and juice, coriander, grated carrot and cucumber. It tasted good - its texture was not. Later that afternoon, passing a grocer, I scooped up an apple - a bad apple, it turns out. I have always said that the definition of disappointment is biting into a furry apple. On this occasion that crunchless mouthful was less a case of disappointment and more one of abject despair.

So I was famished. But my transgression didn't come in the shape of food. No, I was tricked, heartlessly, mercilessly, wonderfully, into drinking bourbon, the sweet brown liquor slipped surreptitiously into a simple but delicious cocktail with cranberry and lime (Nic's invention, so says he). Bourbon is cooked, I was later told, and so I had technically slipped up. Technically. But I was not about to start feeling guilty - 9 days had passed and not a morsel had passed my lips that wasn't kosher. I was, however, about to start getting horrifically pissed. It transpires that drinking on an empty stomach is not a wise venture, and by the end of cocktail number one I was already feeling oiled. 5 hours later I was playing the piano in Last Days of Decadence on Shoreditch High Street. In my head I sounded like Rachmaninov. I probably sounded more like the submissions for the under 7s piano competition at Ripon Cathedral Choir School (there is some hazy recollection of chopsticks being wheeled out at one point). I certainly had a rip through my piano staple, Neil Young 'Till the Morning Comes'. Unfortunately when the morning did finally come, I found myself nursing the most almighty hangover since the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you did happen to be in Last Days last night, I apologise for ruining your evening.

While veganism might have stilted my own musicality last night, it certainly worked all right for some. Here is my ultimate vegan playlist, with Spotify to boot:

Meat Is Murder - The Smiths
Close to Me - The Cure
Get Gone - Fiona Apple
Porcelain - Moby
Monty Got A Raw Deal - R.E.M.
Lime in da Coconut - Harry Nilsson
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Suzanne - Leonard Cohen
Don't Get Me Wrong - The Pretenders
Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor

Spotify playlist: Vegan Vibe: http://open.spotify.com/user/jteramsden/playlist/35LZEwuBebIEHaxUbnT5KA

Raw vegan experiment - Week 1, done.

2009-09-21T10:11:00.002+01:00

'Glosoli' - Sigur Ros

Raw vegan experiment - Day 6

2009-09-20T12:09:00.003+01:00

'Music For A Nurse', by Oceansize

Raw vegan experiment - Day 5

2009-09-19T10:11:00.005+01:00

'The Golden Age' - Beck

Beetroot salad with yogurt, lemon and cumin dressing

Serves 2

3 beetroots of varying varieties if you can find them
A pinch of ground cumin
1 tablespoon (soya) yoghurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
A handful of parsley and chives, chopped
A shallot, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper

Peel and slice the beetroot. Stir together the cumin, yoghurt, lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Arrange your beets on a plate and garnish with herbs and sliced shallots.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 4

2009-09-18T10:26:00.005+01:00

'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' - The Smiths

Cold cucumber soup

If you try and pretend that you are indeed eating soup, and not just a big bowl of tzatziki, then this is really rather delicious. Perfect for a starter in the summer. Next summer.

Serves 1

A quarter of a cucumber
4 tablespoons soya yoghurt
1 small clove garlic, peeled and crushed
A handful of mint, coriander and chives, chopped
A good squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Grate the 'cumber into a bowl. Stir in the yogurt, garlic, herbs and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper and chill for an hour or so. Remove from fridge, check for seasoning and adjust with salt or some fresh tears, and eat.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 3

2009-09-17T12:04:00.005+01:00

Couscous salad with cherry tomatoes and chilli

I'd never done couscous using cold water, and I have to say that I was not convinced it would be a success when told about it by my mate Dave. I'm thrilled to say that not only was it great, I actually preferred the texture to couscous done with boiling water. So there.

Serves 1

A handful of couscous
150ml water (or thereabouts)
A few cherry tomatoes, halved
1 chunk of cucumber, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
A good handful of mint and coriander, chopped
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Stick the couscous in a bowl and pour over the water. Leave for 15 minutes (the couscous, not the room - it's not that coy).

Fluff with a fork then add your other ingredients, seasoning with salt and pepper and olive oil. Devour like a crazed animal.

Banana and blackberry smoothie

Makes about a litre

3 bananas
A big ol' handful of blackberries
150g oats and seeds
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons soy yoghurt
200ml orange juice
Dried berries - raisins, cranberries, woteva

Stick everything but the dried berries in a blender and, you know, blend. You could sieve it if you are worried about having bits in your teeth for a week (I personally consider the detritus between my molars a cheeky mid-morning snack).

Chill for an hour and pour into a glass with a handful of dried berries on top.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 2

2009-09-16T10:57:00.003+01:00

Gazpacho

Makes 2 large portions, serves 4-6 as a starter

2 large tomatoes
300g passata
1 red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
1/4 cucumber, roughly chopped
1/4 red onion, roughly chopped
1 small clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and, you guessed it, roughly chopped
A handful of herbs - parsley and basil, a little rosemary
Salt, pepper, sugar
Olive oil
White wine vinegar, about a tablespoon

Peel the tomatoes by putting a cross in the top with a sharp knife, then leave them in boiling water for a minute. The skin should then come straight off. Quarter them and remove the seeds.

Put the tomato flesh, passata, cucumber, onion, garlic, chilli and herbs in a blender. Season with salt, pepper and sugar and add a dash of olive oil and white wine vinegar. Blend.

Chill for an hour in the fridge and serve with a blob of pesto.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 1

2009-09-15T09:17:00.009+01:00

Tagliatelle of courgettes with pesto and black olives

It might seem a little pretentious to be calling this 'tagliatelle', but for all intents and purposes the courgette was a replacement for pasta.

Serves 1

A big handful of basil leaves (no stalks)
50g pine nuts
1 crushed garlic clove
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
(N.B. - you will have pesto leftover. I intend to plonk mine in some gazpacho)
A few black olives, roughly chopped
2 small courgettes
Tarragon vinegar

Make the pesto by whizzing together the basil, pine nuts, garlic and lemon juice. Blend in olive oil until you have a loose-ish consistency. Season with pepper and salt.

Take a vegetable peeler and peel the courgettes down into strips. Toss through the pesto and olives, add a dash of vinegar, and serve.

Rocket and beansprout salad with chilli lime dressing

Again, genuinely tasty, though would have benefited from having a whacking great chargrilled steak sitting proudly atop it.

Serves 1

For the dressing
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon sesame oil (not strictly allowed, I since discovered, though just painting an honest picture. Replace with sesame seeds if being strict)
Dash of soy sauce
Dash of fish sauce (both technically fermented, I believe)
1 red chilli, finely chopped (I wouldn't recommend using a habanero as I did. A little too pokey)
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped coriander
A pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
(NON-VEGAN RECOMMENDATION: I have done this dressing before with yoghurt and it's delicious that way too)
For the rest then
Rocket leaves
Beansprouts
Some finely sliced red onion
A few coriander leaves

Make the dressing by whisking together the ingredients. Taste and adjust with a little more oil, sugar or lime juice if needed.

Assemble the salad leaves, sprouts and onion, and drizzle over the dressing. Garnish with a few coriander leaves. Try not to cry yourself to sleep.

Raw power

2009-09-14T11:37:00.005+01:00

Today I start a two-week raw vegan diet and I'm beginning to wonder why. It all started a few months ago when discussing raw veganism with Frank 'Aloe Vera Frankie Baby' Bryant. Frankie told me that it was a diet that he had done often, and that it had the most extraordinary effect on him, not only making him healthier of body but also of mind and spirit. A child once came up to him in the street and hugged him, seemingly due to the spiritual energy vibrating through his very being. In a somewhat Thatcherite manner (and therefore not particularly raw or vegan), he needed only 4 hours sleep a night. There were clearly benefits to such a diet.

But come on - raw and vegan? Just raw I could probably manage, quite happily living off sushi and salads for a couple of weeks. Were it only vegan I might get by as well (only for those two weeks, mind). Toast with tahini and jam for breakfast, vegetable curries and pastas and the like...it would be very doable. But both at the same time? This ain't going to be a picnic (and quite frankly, what would a picnic be without a pork pie and a doorstop sized hunk of cheese?).

But I like a challenge, and seeing as I'd been doing a bit of writing for a vegan magazine called Off The Hoof (whilst remaining firmly ensconced in omnivorous territory), I decided to mix business with displeasure, and embark upon this fortnight of gastronomic insanity, all the while recording its effect on my mind, body and soul.

The implications on the mind and soul will, I imagine, become clear as time progresses. There are all sorts of lofty and wafty theories out there in the ether, suggesting that I will reach spiritual enlightenment, and that my connection with Mother Earth will intensify holistically, her bounty and succour becoming one with me, as I chomp through everything she has to offer without even bothering to cook the stuff.

As for the body, there are two schools of thought. Although I am doing this principally as an experiment to challenge both my willpower and culinary creativity, I'm not going to pretend the supposed positive benefits to my health won't be a bonus. Should the experiment be a success, I will have increased energy, better skin, and better digestion (sounds ominous). I should also lose some weight (a brief perusal of the last few posts should indicate that this can only be a good thing), and my risk of heart disease will decrease. I have a feeling that two weeks is not going to have a huge effect on my heart, though as someone once said, every little helps.

The bad news then. I am likely to suffer a detoxification reaction involving headaches, nausea, and cravings. Considering I crave meat and cheese at the best of times, God only knows the level of longing that will be pawing at my (supposedly composed) brain after a few days of this. I am also likely to be deficient in calcium, iron, B12, protein and calories. So quite where all this 'energy' is supposed to be coming from I'm not sure.

But it's the anthropological arguments that I find most fascinating. A vegan (and raw vegan at that) would argue that our ancestors ate everything raw, and therefore so should we. They have clearly never heard of the theory of evolution. Our ancestors lived in caves, wore loin cloths, communicated in grunts, gnawed at raw flesh, interbred, and then died somewhere in their twenties. Not the greatest yardstick by which to conduct life in the 21st century.

As the brilliant Jeffrey Steingarten points out in his equally brilliant The Man Who Ate Everything, neanderthal became homo sapiens when he worked out that a grilled mammoth steak tasted and digested better than a raw one. Health improved, brain power developed, and the neanderthal ceased to exist, remembered only as an idiom for crudeness and vulgarity. Sort of like Jordan, only better looking.

What Steingarten also explains, is that the notion that 'raw = healthier' is not only utterly misguided, but actually often contrary to the truth. Many foodstuffs are harmful until cooked. We've just about worked that out with things like potatoes and rice, yet continue to extol the virtues of raw spinach, broad beans and broccoli. It doesn't seem to make sense.

Nevertheless, in the coming two weeks I shall try to make sense of it, and will keep a day to day video diary of my progress on this site.

In the meantime, any suggestions for good raw vegan recipes (surely you have hundreds of them?) would be much appreciated.

Agony Lout

2009-09-08T12:08:00.004+01:00

A new initiative -

Get in touch via email, comment, or even by sending me your own videos, and let's make blogging a two-way experience.

Coeur blimey!

2009-09-01T08:26:00.005+01:00

The monthly freezer lottery has always been cause for intrigue and mystery. Yesterday, however, it made the leap from such a level to one of utter bewilderment and, ultimately, elation. For this indiscernible lump of meat that I had pilfered from home God knows when had been the subject of head scratching for quite some time. There were varying theories. (Please don't think me foolish or ignorant, though I may be both - something frozen is much harder to decipher than something fresh, that's why the yardies keep bodies in freezers). One theory was that it was a lamb's neck. Not wildly idiotic. Sure, it was a little stouter than a lamb's neck, but we were ball-parking. Perhaps it is shin of beef, we ventured. Again, possible, though unlikely. It looked somewhat offally, and yet it wasn't a kidney, and it certainly wasn't liver.

"Well it's something edible," I said to my sister as I pulled it out of the freezer on Sunday evening, "and whatever it is, we can eat it tomorrow night."

It was with a mixture of trepidation and excitement that I opened the fridge door yesterday morning to see what was in store for supper. We had friends coming, see, and while somewhat tickled by the prospect of serving a giant bollock to people who had probably eaten far worse at Notting Hill Carnival that day, I wasn't particularly enamoured by the idea of chowing down on that particular gland myself, much less so working out how to cook the bloody thing. But it wasn't a bollock. It was a heart. A sinewy, fatty, wobbly heart. A once beating heart. My own heart was suddenly beating rather faster than before. I was exhilarated.

But what to do with it? I consulted my latest cooking hero, Henry Harris, for inspiration. Henry is the chef at Racine in South Kensington, a restaurant at which I have eaten only once, but whose steak tartare will remain forever seared on my memory as the finest I have ever devoured (beating the first one I ever ate at La Coupole in Paris - a dish I had ordered erroneously as an ignorant 14-year-old, in the belief that I was going to be fed a cooked steak. I didn't regret my mistake). Henry's advice was, inevitably, sound, unpretentious, and made me salivate just reading it. He suggested: "stuff it with breadcrumbs, anchovy, garlic, rosemary, lemon zest and chilli". It was the word 'stuff' that got me. Anything that is stuffed is delicious, n'est ce pas?

So I set to work after a lunch of leftover mac and cheese, dividing the ventricles (that's right, ventricles) and working out how I was going to slip this behemoth of a ticker past some potentially fussy guests. On the one hand, I decided, it would be pretty outlandish to serve unsuspecting visitors some 'beef' before savagely revealing, like Titus Andronicus, that they had in fact just wolfed down an ox's heart (or, in T.A.'s case, their own children). But I didn't much fancy the other option. To go in all guns blazing and telling the bastards what was on the menu in advance would only make them prejudiced, and much, much less likely to enjoy their dinner. So I told them it was beef, and that they had to guess which cut it was. The freezer game began anew.

"Shin?"

"Nope."

"Neck?"

"Nope."

"Bollock."

"Bingo!"

"Really?"

"Nope.....it's actually heart."

Natalie's face fell; her fork, now half way to her mouth, fell with it. Then something wonderful happened. For only the briefest of reflections led our collective to reason thus: it tasted good before we knew it was heart, why should this recent enlightenment change anything? I suppose you could use this reasoning for something rather less savoury, such as eating a dog, but I think in this case my logic stands. As Brits we are irrationally squeamish about food. Bollocks and brains I can kind of understand, but besides that I don't really think much should be avoided. I guess that's all I've got to say on the subject. Anyhoo, here's what I did. Ta Henry.

Braised Ox Heart with Polenta and Salsa Verde

Serves 6

1 Ox Heart, about 1.5kg
50g breadcrumbs
A handful of parsley
2 sprigs of rosemary
Zest of a lemon
1 red chilli
6 anchovy fillets
12 rashers of streaky bacon

1 large onion
4 cloves of garlic
Half a bottle of red wine
500ml beef stock

For the salsa verde
A big handful of flatleaf parsley
1 sprig rosemary
A small handful of tarragon
A shallot
2 plump cloves garlic
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
4 anchovy fillets
1 tablespoon capers
5 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of a lemon

For the polenta
200g polenta
1.5 litres water
100g grated Parmesan
50g butter

Salt and pepper and all that jazz.

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Finely chop the herbs (first removing the stalk from the rosemary), the chilli (first removing the seeds) and the anchovies, and mix with the lemon zest and breadcrumbs, seasoning with salt and pepper. Gingerly open up the heart between and press in the stuffing. Wrap securely with the bacon.

Peel and slice the onion and squish the garlic (leave the peel on). In a large saucepan heat some olive oil and soften the onion with the garlic, until lightly caramelised (seasoning first, of course). Add the heart to the pan before sloshing over the wine and stock. Bring to the boil, pop a lid on top and slip into the oven. Cook for 4-5 hours.

Meanwhile crack on with the salsa verde, finely chopping the herbs, shallot, anchovies and capers, and crushing the garlic. Mix together with the mustard, lemon juice and olive oil. Season with pepper (no salt, due to the saltiness of the anchovies and the capers), cover and refrigerate until needed.

45 minutes before you're ready to serve, bring the water to the boil with 2 teaspoons salt. In a steady stream, pour in the polenta, whisking continuously. Stir for 10 minutes, then cook for a further 30, stirring regularly and topping up with water as and when needed. Remove the heart from yon oven and rest.

Stir the butter and Parmesan into the polenta and taste for seasoning. Serve with slices of heart, a dollop of salsa verde, and a watercress salad. I'd show you the snaps, but I've only gone and lost the friggin laptop lead.

So would you try this recipe? Honestly? I'm curious to know. I know that I wouldn't have necessarily searched out a heart for my tea, but I'm thrilled I did. A lesson, I hope, that I - that we - should all be more adventurous in the kitchen.

Why does no one write letters anymore?

2009-08-27T14:00:00.009+01:00

Nearly a week has passed since yet another idyllic few days in France, and I am yet to write a letter of thanks to my hosts for a sojourn that was, even by my own prodigiously gluttonous standards, hard to beat. The days passed like one long meal, punctuated by the odd (sometimes very) game of tennis, or a brief lollop in the swimming pool. Breakfasts were spent fighting over the myrtilles sauvages (is there a better jam?) and discussing what to eat for lunch. Lunch, in turn, consisted of wondrously smooth mousse de canard slathered on crusty loaves, beetroot and goats' cheese salad, and the juiciest peaches. Then around 4, as the last of the salad was being mopped up and the cheese rinds gnawed at, talk would turn to supper. And on it went, in this perfect cycle of insatiability.

You will, then, understand my horror of taking so long to write after such a delightful week. I finally made it to a stationers by Old Street, in search of writing paper. I get a bit overexcited in stationers. All the pens, the paper, the funky notebooks and glossy diaries - it's the sort of procrastinatory nonsense I'm such a sucker for, as if buying pens and notebooks makes you feel like you've actually done something constructive. With blinkers firmly on, I wandered up to the counter:

"I say, old boy," I whispered conspiratorially (I often do this, when buying something as banal as writing paper - adds a bit of intrigue). "I say," I continued, "could you point me in the direction of the letter-writing paper".

"I'm sorry sir," replied the shopkeeper amiably, "but we don't sell that shit anymore."

"I beg your parsnips!" I ejaculated. "What is the meaning of this?!"

"Well," started the man, his wizened old face a strange amalgam of shame, amusement, and confusion, "no one writes letters anymore".

"But you sell envelopes," quoth I, aghast.

The man smiled.

"Seriously, are you joking?" I chuckled nervously. The oxymoron was beyond me at this particular moment of peturbation. You see, I'd been lamenting the slow death of the art of letter writing for some time now. So much so that a friend and I had resolved to write a letter once a week. I wrote two in a day and then, well, I went to France. Though I did write to my grandfather from there. So I guess that counts. Though it was a thank you letter. Quite a late one. Pattern emerging, I fear.

He was not joking, it turns out.

"Surely you could stock just some paper old bean, couldn't you? It's not like it goes off."

He mumbled something about quota-filling, then something that sounded like an swear word. I made a swift exit and stomped back to my flat to send an email to someone about the experience.

And that, my friend, is just the problem. If e'er there were a stupid title for a blog post, it sits atop this one. No one writes letters anymore because of email. This was highlighted for me during a previous trip to France, when a 95-year-old madame enquired of my friend as to his profession. His French shaky, his acting skills less so, he mimed typing (he is, you see, a writer).

"Ah, tu es pianiste alors!" she exclaimed, enthused to have a musician in the house. Ah, the technological follies of old age.

I was struck by Ed's reflex of miming writing as something that one does on a keyboard, not with pen and paper, and realised I do the same thing. It's a little bewildering.

I'm not saying this must change. God knows the internet, email, and all that comes with it (bloggers, facebookers, stalkers, twitterers, pornographers) have made our lives easier. But they've also taken the soul out of correspondence. Do you remember the elation of receiving a hand-written letter? There are few things more special, few things that can, in such an understated manner, say 'I care'. A revival is in order.

A plan is forming in my mind. A hand-written cookery book. How this might work, I'm not yet sure. In the meantime, do you think you have the discipline to write a letter a week, in which you have also written a recipe? If you email me your address, I'll send you a recipe. Could be the start of a whole new kind of food chain. Who knows?

Away (again)

2009-08-12T19:25:00.002+01:00

Dear all,

I'm currently up north honing my other great passion (music) whilst endeavouring not to enrage the neighbours too greatly with our (aspiringly) epic post-rock. I will write when I can, but for the time being Mum is feeding our hungry bellies.

France next week - more from there.

Love,

James.

Mackerel, braised shallots with chorizo and chilli, and tomato salad

2009-08-09T11:52:00.004+01:00

After bemoaning my fragile relationship with the kitchen, I again headed to the market in search of a delicious but deeply thrifty supper for me and my flatmate. Thrifty it was not - £17 I spent for 2 mackerel, a handful of tomatoes, ditto shallots, a bunch of basil and a loaf of bread. I hope my parents don't read this, as if they discover their unemployed son is splurging this sort of wonga then I fear sympathy may start to wear thin.

Nonetheless, for the time being (that is, until the bailiff starts bashing down the door) spending more than is strictly necessary on ingredients is worth it when they are of such good quality. Last night's supper was one of the best I have eaten in a long time - not on the strength of the cooking, but just because everything was so fresh. The tomatoes juicy and meaty, the shallots sweet and slippery, and the fish just perfect. Serve with new potatoes fried with rosemary and garlic.

Serves 2

4 banana shallots, whole and peeled, ends trimmed
25g butter
A little oil
100ml marsala or something similar. Or wine. Or not. Up to you. Marsala or sherry best though.
300ml chicken stock
50g chopped chorizo
1 chilli, seeded and finely chopped
4 mackerel fillets
2 large tomatoes
A few basil leaves
White wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt, pepper and sugar

Melt the butter in a saute pan with a little oil over a moderate heat. Add the shallots, season and allow to gently colour on all sides, until well browned all over. Increase the flame and add the booze. Boil for a minute or so then add the stock. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 25 minutes until the shallots are soft and the cooking liquor has reduced to a sticky consistency.

Meanwhile, fry the chorizo in another frying pan, again in a little oil, until crispy. Remove and keep warm, though wash the pan at your peril. Make the tomato salad, slicing the tomatoes and tossing with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar and vinegar. Tear the basil leaves and stir in.

Season the fish with salt and pepper. Heat the pan in which you fried the chorizo over a medium-high flame, and add the mackerel, skin side down. Fry for 2 minutes on each side then rest for a further 2 minutes. Serve with the tomato salad and the shallots garnished with the chorizo and chopped chilli.

A seismic shift

2009-08-07T10:16:00.006+01:00

Something odd has happened since I moved to London. Something that perhaps I should have seen coming. I'm cooking less, and it's really alarming me. At university I probably cooked 5 nights out of 7. It was something to look forward to at the end of a long day, or something to wallow in at weekends. It hardly needed any planning. A vegetable box arrived weekly, and because I pretty much knew which nights I would be out my flatmates and I could do a weekly shop.

Not so in London, it turns out. The pace of life is completely different - and I don't even have a job yet. Last week for example. On Monday evening I went to play football in Battersea which was followed by a pint. Then another pint, and then before I knew it it was midnight and I hadn't eaten a thing. The following evening was a friend's birthday, so once again, supper was a hastily gobbled (but truly delicious) Vietnamese noodle soup on my way home. On Wednesday evening I was kindly invited to a do round the corner, where Vauxhall were promoting their cars, I guess, and free cocktails were accompanied by free hotdogs, and I returned home sated but to a depressingly unsullied kitchen. Thursday I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Rankin opening night at the Truman brewery. The swathes of photographs and gallons of mojito were sadly bereft of any kind of nibble, and sustenance wasn't found until the early hours of Friday morning, when a Brick Lane bagel was all I could unearth. I might have done much worse.

By Friday panic had set in, and I jumped on the number 48 to London Bridge with the express intention of losing myself in Borough Market. Considering it might well be the most expensive market in the universe I was pretty chuffed to pick up a spatchcock poussin for £2.50, as well as a seemingly cheap beef cheek. I say seemingly cheap, because a kilo for £9.20 was certainly a good price, but the thing was so fatty that before cooking I had to trim a considerable amount of it off. With the cheek I made a curry. It was good, without being astonishing. Once honed I shall write about it.

Until then I shall tell you about the venison loin we ate last night. I cook with venison a lot, and, as often happens with such things, had got into something of a rut (no pun intended), cooking it in a similar way every time, convincing myself that such good quality meat needed no adornment. But the time had come for a change. Ollie Thring (of the excellent Thring for your Supper blog) recommended ginger and chilli and bok choi. It sounded heavenly, and light. Here's what I did:

Marinated loin of venison with pak choi and oyster sauce

Serves 4

2 roe buck loins, each about a foot long and no thicker than your wrist
1 thumb of ginger
2 cloves of garlic
1 green chilli
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 small pak choi
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
Salt and pepper

The slight bugger about venison is that it has a thin film on it - don't mistake this for fat, 'cause it ain't. You need to take a sharp knife and remove this as you would skin a fish. You don't need to be overly fussy, but it tends to become tough and gristly, so the more you remove the better.

Right - now grated the ginger into a bowl. Peel and crush the garlic, deseed and finely chop the chilli and add with the spices to the marinade. Strip the rosemary leaves from their sprigs and finely chop. Rosemary might seem an incongruous addition, but it was truly delicious. That said, coriander would make a fine replacement, and you might try adding a little yoghurt too. (oh for a barbeque!).

Add the rosemary, soy sauce and olive oil, season with pepper and toss in the venison. Leave to marinate for as long as you can - ideally 24 hours, but at least 2.

Get a heavy-bottomed frying pan hot over a bullish flame and add the venison. Fry for 4 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile wash the pak choi and halve them. Blanch in boiling salted water and drain. Then heat a little oil in a frying pan over a moderate heat and stir fry with a pinch of salt and twist of pepper.

Remove the venison to a warm plate and rest for 5 minutes while you finish the pak choi by adding the oyster sauce and stir-frying for another few minutes until coating the greens.

Thickly slice the venison and serve with the pak choi. You could also serve this with noodles if you're feeling particularly hungry, though I'm not convinced it really needs it.

I hope this heralds the start of some sort of routine. Cooking once a week just doesn't come close to being enough.

In Flaubert country

2009-07-30T11:28:00.008+01:00

It isn't difficult to see why Emma Bovary envisaged for herself such a life of bucolic bliss after growing up in Normandy. The undulating countryside, idyllic villages, and dramatic coastline vibrate with a romanticism and purity that is largely unsullied by modernity. Gloss over the happenings of 1944 and their aftermath and there is little to distinguish the landscape from how it might have looked 150 years ago. Close your eyes and all you smell is the sea, all you hear is the swell of the ocean, and the (incessant) squawk of gulls. No trains chuntering past; traffic sporadic at best; sirens? You kidding? It is utterly peaceful.

But let me tell you, some bad shit went down round here. Nazi officers occupied the very house that we ate dinner in on our first night. Elsewhere in the village, the grandmother of my dear friend Danielle returned home to find it had been used as a field hospital for the German army. Out of spite the recently vanished soldiers had blocked sinks and drains and turned the taps on, leaving the house 6 inches deep in water and rising. Going down into the basement she found a lone Nazi soldier, too poorly to have left with his division and close to death. The collaboration was in full flow, and to be discovered housing one of the enemy was to, at best, be ostracized for life; at worse, well....She fed the invalid supper and ordered him to leave. He died before reaching the end of the garden.

Down on the beach, lazily gazing along the cliff tops yields further reminders of this terrible moment in history. The chalky battlements are punctuated by concrete pill boxes, sinister evidence of a time that everyone would rather forget. Further west from the sleepy village of Yport the cliffs spill down onto Le Havre, where allied bombardment of the German stronghold spared but the churches, leaving a wasteland little improved by the post-war industrialisation. Yet further on you come to Colleville-sur-Mer, also known as Omaha Beach, where thousands of American troops were killed on D-Day. In short, there must be a lot of lost souls in Normandy.

And yet there is an air of positivity. Those still around today will happily talk about their experiences, their lives strangely enriched by having lived through such an extraordinary time. Or perhaps it is just because they eat so well. Because my word did we eat well. Lunch was, in a funny way, always the highlight. Cold cuts, salads, tarts and pates. Chunks of creamy coulommiers were slapped onto roughly hewn hooves of baguette and washed down with cider. Heart-stoppingly rich pork rillettes were similarly gobbled uncomplainingly. Indeed, bread became a vehicle for pretty much everything. A starter of mushrooms on toast was a particular highlight:

Champignons a la Normande

Serves 8

25g butter
2 tablespoons oil
2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced
225ml cider
225ml double cream
500g button mushrooms, quartered
A lemon
8 slices of pain de mie or a rustic loaf
A handful of parsley or chives
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan with the oil. Add the onions, season with salt and pepper, cover and sweat over a low heat for 30-60 minutes (the longer the better), stirring every few minutes. Your onions should be rich, soft and lightly caramelised. The kitchen should smell heavenly and you should want to bury your face in the onions. You might choose to add a little crushed garlic here. I don't think it's necessary, but by all means do.

Increase the heat and add the cider. Bring it to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes until the alcohol has cooked off. Add the cream and bring to a simmer before adding the mushrooms. Cover and simmer until the mushrooms are cooked - 15-20 minutes - stirring occasionally. Add the juice of the lemon and keep warm. Toast the bread and roughly chop your herbs. Serve the mushrooms on the toast scattered with a generous handful of herbs and another squeeze of lemon juice.

A simple tarte a l'oignons made for another elegant lunch, though slightly marred by some careless shopping on my part. Ideally buy anchovy fillets (not whole anchovies, as in the picture) and arrange them in a lattice over the top of the tart.

Serves 6-8

Shortcrust pastry - I couldn't be arsed to make my own, though it's always better to
6 large onions, peeled and sliced
50g butter
2 teaspoons finely chopped thyme leaves
2 egg
100ml double cream
100g grated comte or emmental (optional)
a tin of anchovy fillets
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the onions. Season with salt and pepper and gently cook until you've reached the stage explained above.

Meanwhile, roll out your pastry and lay it into a tart tin, pricking it a few times with a fork. Chill in the fridge for half an hour (the tart, that is).

Preheat the oven to 170C. Line the tart tin with baking parchment and pour in some baking beans, or some old pasta. (What you're doing is holding the tart shell in place so that it holds its shape as it cooks.) Put in the oven and 'blind bake' for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and pour away the beans (saving for the next time you make a tart). Whisk the eggs and, with a pastry brush (though kitchen towel does the job) lightly brush the pastry case with egg wash (you won't need much). Return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

Meanwhile, stir the thyme into the onions and remove from the heat. Cool for a couple of minutes before stirring in the cream, the cheese, and finally the rest of your whisked egg. Mix together thoroughly and season with salt and pepper. Pour into your waiting pastry case and arrange the anchovy fillets artfully on top. Slide into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes until set.

Cool for a good hour before serving with a green salad.

Lot of cream in these recipes, I know. That's Normandy. That's also me, sure. But mainly it's Normandy. A la Normande pretty much just means 'add cream and cider'. I didn't complain, though by the end of our daily prandial plethora of cream and butter there was little room for anything but a piece of fruit and a nap.

At dinner I tried to ease off on the cream, though that didn't mean we couldn't eat handsomely and indulgently. One ingredient that seemed to be everywhere, and that intrigued me (having never come across it before) was foie de lotte - monkfish liver. If you've ever seen a monkfish you will know how terrifying they look. If you've ever eaten monkfish you will know how delicious they taste. Their livers do little to buck this trend. They are vast. I didn't want to imagine how big the owner of the particular one that I bought must have been, its liver being, no exaggeration, 2 foot long and as thick as a beef fillet. I was tickled by the idea of farming foie de lotte like foie gras, imagining the intrepid farmer trying to force feed a fish that could devour his dog like an old twix.

The flavour of the liver was extraordinary - rich and fishy, in its incarnation below the dressing was essential as a foil to the intensity of the flesh. I'd like to track down some of this stuff in London to experiment with - it's terribly cheap - so if anyone knows where I might find some do point me in the right direction.

Salade de foie de lotte

Serves 4

A piece of monkfish liver, about 6 inches long
25g butter
A little oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons dijon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 slices of pain de mie
Frisee salad leaves
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a frying pan with a little oil and warm over a medium heat. Season the liver with pepper and a pinch of salt and add to the pan. There should be a gentle sizzle, not the sort of hiss you'd look for when cooking a steak. Leave the liver for 5 minutes while you make the dressing.

Whisk together the vinegar and mustard, then whisk in the olive oil before seasoning with salt and pepper. Carefully turn the liver and cook for a further 5 minutes on the other side, basting with the butter continually. It should be lightly caramelised and rich, without having to thick a crust.

Remove the pan from the heat and rest the monkfish while you toast the bread. Cut the toast into rounds and arrange the salad on plates. Put the toast on the salad, slice the monkfish and put a slice of liver on each piece of toast, before drizzling generously with the dressing. Serve immediately.

There are many other recipes I'd love to divulge, though I fear this post has already drifted into the realms of self-indulgence (as did the holiday). After all, it's the month of holidays, and you have better things to do than read my ramblings - like telling me about your own favourite holiday recipes. Bring them on.

A bientot

2009-07-17T10:14:00.002+01:00

I'm quaffing cider and munching cheese in Normandy for 10 days. Full update on return. Until then.

Carluccio's, St. Pancras

2009-07-13T15:02:00.005+01:00

It must be a difficult thing to become extremely successful while remaining in touch with your own human limitations. History is littered like the streets of Shoreditch with the stories of great men who bit off more than they could chew. Napoleon, Hitler (when I say 'great' I don't mean like, "hey, what a great guy", I mean, you know...impressive, in their own psychopathic bastard kind of way), Hannibal, Ricky Ponting. These men - wildly, ruthlessly ambitious, just didn't know when to say 'enough is enough'.

Neither, it would seem, do many chefs. Gordon Ramsay, if reports are to be believed, is a whisker away from filing for bankruptcy, having tried to break a record by opening a restaurant in every city in the world. Unfortunately he did this just as the global economy came to a shuddering standstill. In 'Kitchen Confidential', Anthony Bourdain warns potential restaurateurs of this very problem - just because one of your restaurants is booming, that in no way means that another one will be as successful. Yet Antonio Carluccio, the godfather of southern Italian cooking, and one of the most charming men on the planet, is in danger of falling into this trap and badly overcooking the Carluccio's franchise, if my dinner last week was anything to go by.

I was seeing my mother onto a 7 o' clock train at Kings Cross, and so we decided to treat ourselves to an early supper, and I tell you what, I'd forgotten how fucking horrendous that statue at yon end is. What were they thinking? It's an absolute monstrosity - the man's wearing a nerdy little rucksack for chrissakes! No chic little overnight bag at his feet - a rucksack. Beggars belief. Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower so much that his favourite restaurant was in the tower itself, as it was the only place where he didn't have to look at it (though with his head so far up his arse it's a wonder he was able to see anything at all). Perhaps subconsciously following similar snobbish principles we made a beeline for the restaurant below the statue - Carluccio's - and ate a pitifully average meal.

Nothing was bad, per se, just woefully indifferent. Bruschetta that was neither charred nor garlicky enough; a green salad with Parmesan for my mother that was fine but a rip-off even at £4. My sister's boyfriend's calamari were clearly frozen and rubbery, and lacking the salty crispness that one so yearns for in calamari. My antipasti were good (the foccaccia exceptional), with particularly tasty meats, but the bits that had been, I hope, made on the premises - roasted peppers and pesto - really let the side down, lacking seasoning and zip.

My heart had leapt when I saw spaghetti alle vongole on the menu. It was less buoyant when the dish arrived. It's hard to say why this dish wasn't a success. The clams seemed fresh enough, the chilli poky enough, the spaghetti cooked well... I just don't know. It didn't feel loved. Mum's vitello tonnato found itself in a similar category. Adequate but underwhelming. Mary's penne with sausage tasted like it had been made ahead in a central kitchen, along with the sauce to go to Bristol, Reading, Manchester, Leicester etc, as I suspect it was. Again, it was fine - if a friend served it at home you'd probably quite enjoy it. But not for £7.60. Even looking at the menu I can't remember what Adam ate. It can't have been very good.

A shared chocolate pudding wrestled a positive out of the meal, though that is hardly testament to the skill of the kitchen. If that thing was made on site I'm a Dutchman. Adam and I went for the vin santo with cantucci. Though the little biscuits were good, the wine tasted like it came from a bottle that had been open too long, slightly bitter and stale-tasting.

It was far from being a bad meal, but it highlighted the flaw in the franchise. Antonio Carluccio has been absolutely instrumental in helping to diffuse the idea of 'less is more' when it comes to cooking - just a few choice ingredients cooked well. Unfortunately it is this very concept that is his downfall. Because when these few ingredients are not cooked with complete care and attention, and not sourced from the very best places, they, like Napoleon in Russia, inevitably fall short of the mark.

The silk purse

2009-07-04T13:34:00.004+01:00

You can't, as Aristotle once said, shine a shite. If a piece of fruit is rotten, let it rot; if a piece of meat has gone off, throw it away; and if you are Prime Minister and not a naturally handsome or smiley sort, well then so be it - wearing make up and a grin that makes you look like a bipolar Shrek is only going to frighten the children. But we are a nation of turd polishers, locked in interminable attempts to rebuild that which should be knocked down, tippex that which should be erased, justify that which should be forgotten about. Betjeman was dead right.

Or was he? A particularly successful bit of poo polishing has happened only recently in my home town of Ripon. The area behind Philip Hall, "Ripon's very own department store" (and somewhere that has to be seen to be believed), was, until a couple of years ago, the most desolate, depressing piece of land imaginable. Walking into that car park from the aforementioned retro (not in a good way) Philip Hall was like walking through the back of a wardrobe, but instead of walking into Narnia, you found you'd walked into Warsaw, c.1940. To say there were potholes would suggest that there were also areas of flat, solid concrete. Instead, the entire surface of this sump-cracking wilderness undulated with boulders and fractures, the aftermath of an earthquake so artfully recreated, if only it were intentional. Dead trees lined crumbling walls, cats scratched around the bins for last night's pizza from the eternally moribund Italian restaurant, and the smell of smoke and nicotine drifted across the wasteland from the lung of William Hill in the south-east corner. It was an abject disgrace.

Fast forward to June 2009 and the years of closed roads, diversions and drilling seem worth it. The car park, for one, now has real bays and everything, and is flat and concreted and really rather smart. The seemingly recession-proof Philip Hall is somehow, impossibly, still there (though Ripon wouldn't be Ripon without it), but across the concourse now stand our two newest imports - an Argos, that most surreal of shopping experiences, and the uber-fancy, up-yours-Waitrose northern supermarket, Booths. And it is super. Sure, it's expensive, but it's big and light, and the jars are all shiny and contain stuff you'd want to eat. Even the ready meals look good. And - AND - the basket check out actually says "10 items or fewer". A grammatically accurate upmarket supermarket is exactly what we've been waiting for up here. I give it 6 months.

Perhaps a more elegant way of phrasing Aristotle's somewhat crude version is the old adage "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". Well I disagree. I mean, you can't literally do this, sure, but the implication that a sow's ear is a lost cause is a foolish one, a proclamation by somebody who clearly had no interest in food. The only bit of a pig that you can't eat is its oink. A pig's head, in all its various permutations, is utterly delicious - ears, tongue, cheeks, brain, snout, they all play an important role in the gastronomic tapestry and history of the world. One of the better things I've eaten lately was fried pig's head in the Albion in Bristol, a breaded and fried pig cake of the most tender meat, singing with gribiche, topped by a less apologetic manifestation of pig's head (in that it was just the meat, unadorned, unfussy, unbelievable), and then finished with a poached duck egg. It was perfection, and anyone squeamish about the idea of eating pig's head would do well to try that dish.

Yesterday it was the ears I was after. Two quivering, pink, waxy (I know), hairy (yep), ears that I had swiped from Martin and Rachel (who run a forest garden at home) before they embarked upon their day's butchery.

I started by trimming the hair with a pair of kitchen scissors before singeing off the remaining stubble with a cigarette lighter (a blowtorch would have been considerably more effective). Next job was to get the ears clean. You'd be amazed at the nooks and crannies that wax finds its way into. The best method is to wrap a couple of pieces of kitchen roll around a sharpening steel and working it into all the gaps until you have two clean ears.

Pop the ears in a medium saucepan, cover with water and add some peppercorns, a bay leaf, and a handful of thyme. You might also add a few crushed juniper berries and a clove or two, though considering the end product I'm not sure there's much point. Cover the saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer for 3 hours, maybe more. My final product was crisp, though still had a strip of cartilage running through the middle that had the look and texture of calamari. I'm not convinced it's possible to get rid of this.

After three hours, remove the ears, shake dry and place on separate plates. Flatten them out as best you can, and pop one plate on top of the other, then a final plate on top of that with something to hold it down. The idea is to press the ears so that when you come to roasting/frying them they won't curl up. Once thoroughly weighed down, refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Preheat the oven to 250C.

Remove the ears from the fridge and place on a roasting tray. Season generously on both sides with sea salt and olive oil, and pop in the oven for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile make the tartare sauce:

2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons mustard
A pinch of salt
200ml olive oil
juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons chopped gherkins
1 tablespoon chopped capers
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

Whisk the egg yolks with the salt and mustard, then slowly whisk in the olive oil. You want to start with the merest of trickles. Then as you see the mixture emulsifying (ie coming together) you can start being more bold, by which I mean a gentle, steady stream, never more forceful than a little cream being elegantly poured over a duchess's dessert. When you have a lovely, thick, wobbly mayonnaise (for this is indeed what you have), whisk in the lemon juice, gherkins, capers and parsley. Taste and adjust the acidity of necessary. Ideally the tartare sauce needs to be, well, tart.

Now, when the half hour is up, turn the pig's ears over and roast for a further 5 minutes, just to ensure the underside is crispy. Remove from the oven and rest for 5 minutes, before slicing and serving with the tartare sauce. It's up to you whether or not you tell people what they're eating. I like to see people's faces when I tell them what it is, and silently judge them if they refuse to at least try a little. Though you might prefer the more cruel method if offering your guests 'crackling' before revealing the truth.

Either way, it's silly for people to be squeamish about these things. The pig we ate was a happy little thing, free range and as good as organic (though Martin and Rachel, quite rightly, see no need to fart about jumping through hoops in order to be 'certified' - 'organic' means nothing these days). Compared to the kind of pork one finds in a supermarket (yes, even Booths) a nibble on this little piggie's ear is far less abhorrent than a budget pork chop. And just tell me, what on earth is the difference between eating a pig's ear and a pig's arse?

The unbearable wetness of sweating

2009-07-01T13:05:00.005+01:00

It's blinkingly hot outside. I'm up north for a week doing a cooking job at a rather wonderful 13th century house just south of Ripon, and while cranking out endless lemon polenta cakes (or 'lemon placenta cake' as one of my brother's friends once called it when waitering for me) is just about bearable on a drizzly day, when the weather is like this it is not much fun. I want to be swimming in the river, or fishing, or, ideally, sitting with a book and a beer. Even sitting in the window writing this has given my forehead a light sheen - us northerners just aren't built for the heat. I'm dreading my return to London and my stuffy bedroom. There it's a toss up between the unbearable wetness of sweating and the excruciating noise that greets me when I open my window onto the Hackney Road. It's like trying to get some kip on the hard shoulder of the M1. Industrial earplugs and an industrial fan are probably the only ways to get through this heat wave. But I'm not complaining. Last summer was utterly miserable, and I vowed never to complain about good weather again. Bring it on.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, pot-roast chicken, as I discovered a couple of nights ago, is a better summer feed than your standard roast chicken, which is associated with root vegetables, bread sauce and a roaring fire. This pullet, juicy in its light broth and perky with the accompaniment of broad beans and peas, was just the ticket.

Pot-roast chicken

Serves 4

A little groundnut oil
6 rashers of streaky smoked bacon, sliced finely
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
4 sticks of celery, trimmed and roughly chopped
A handful of whole and unpeeled garlic cloves
200ml white wine
A chicken, 2kg in weight or so
A bouquet garni
As many new potatoes as you think you can eat - they are fantastic cold the next day with a little Maldon sea salt
Salt and pepper

In a large saucepan (one large enough to house your fowl), heat the groundnut oil over a medium heat and add the bacon. Fry until golden, then add the butter, onions, celery and garlic, season, stir, cover and soften for 5-10 minutes, giving them a poke occasionally.

Slosh in the white wine and scrape up all the bacon bits from the bottom of the pan. Season the chicken generously, inside and out, and place on top of the vegetables. Add enough water to come halfway up, along with the bouquet garni and potatoes, and bring to the boil. Put a lid on and gently simmer for 1 hour.

After 45 minutes or so, preheat the oven to 220C. When the hour is up, remove lid and potatoes (keep them warm somewhere - they don't need to be stinking hot), and put the pan in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the skin on the chicken has crisped up (you made need to add a little oil to help it along).

Rest the chicken for 15 minutes, during which time prepare any other vegetables you want to accompany - broad beans/peas are perfect, sauted courgettes would be lovely too. Serve with the spuds and green veg, with a generous ladleful of broth.

Summertime eating

2009-06-17T07:37:00.007+01:00

The best kind of cooking, I don't need to tell you, is the kind that uses a few excellent ingredients well. This is by no means a revelation. Chefs and cookery writers have been trying to drum this into us for years. The 'old guard', if you will, by which I mean Simon Hopkinson, Rowley Leigh, Nigel Slater, Alastair Little - all the Elizabeth David acolytes - pioneered the mantra of 'less is more', inspired by the Franco-Italian attitude towards food. The phrase 'a few good ingredients, cooked with love' has become something of a cliche, but with good reason. Don't get me wrong, I love the Hestons of this world, but in my view that kind of cooking should remain firmly in the professional kitchen. This isn't to say don't experiment - if you find yourself cooking the same things week after week then maybe it's time to start being a bit more ambitious - but ultimately the emphasis should always come down to the ingredient.

With this in mind, I'd like to champion summer as the Queen of Seasons. 'Summer', in the gastronomic sense (or at least my gastronomic sense) stretches from early May until late-September, lavishing on us the heavenly asparagus, spinach, beetroot and broad beans from the off, and tumbling with tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes (it's like ratatouille was some wonderful and pre-ordained September Slut), and the last of the new potatoes as Autumn approaches. And let's not forget the wonders that come and go in this period - strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries, and currants; french beans, salads, sweetcorn, radishes, and artichokes. It's all so fresh, so lively. God bless the parsnips and swedes of this world - I truly love you - but by March I've had just about enough.

Notwithstanding item 2 of 'Restau-rant' (see below), these are the ingredients that need the least attention. A radish, plucked warm from the earth and given a cursory scrubbing with the shirt before being popped in the mouth, is close to perfection (though brought closer by being dipped into soft, salty French butter). Courgettes are a joy sliced paper thin and eaten tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and shaved parmesan. Boiled artichokes need little more than a pot of melted, salty butter, the leaves plucked off, dipped, and stripped of their flesh. This stage is really just the build-up to the final event when, having removed the 'choke', you can devour the heart, dripping with butter.

It's also a season for toast - sourdough rubbed with garlic and olive oil and grilled on a barbeque, its crunchy chewiness working so well with smashed broad beans and mint, or asparagus and parma ham. Mediterranean eating at its very best.

And that's exactly where I'm going at early o' clock tomorrow - flying to the south of France for a week's post-exam celebration with 30 friends. I will, most likely, be off air till next weekend. Until then...

Fridge slut

2009-06-15T17:58:00.004+01:00

slut n. a slovenly or promiscuous woman.

fridge slut n. any dish that is fashioned from various and usually unconnected ingredients found in the fridge. Most often encountered in student digs or my grandmother's kitchen.

I am moving to London this week, and so as a flat we have taken it upon ourselves to eat the entire fridge and freezer. It's a gargantuan task, and one that is not free of surprises. Some things should have been chucked out long ago - the indiscernible mayonnaisey thing that appears to have anchovies in, though I don't remember having used anchovies in the last 3 months (alas! fussy flatmates); the handful of tiramisu, saved with good intentions but that, realistically, was never going to get eaten unless by someone ravenous yet miraculously lucid at 4am, tucked as it was at the back of the fridge behind a jar of gherkins; the thai green curry paste that ought really to be edible still, yet whose odour is ever-so-slightly rancid, the coriander discoloured and the fish sauce just a little higher than is desirable.

The freezer houses further delights - a small zip-lock bag of crumble mix left over from Lydia's (10/10) rhubarb crumble a while back, hanging in there optimistically but with little chance of employment (ah, the poetic similarities between myself and that little bag of crumble); a plastic bag full of rhubarb from home, whose marriage to the crumble would have proved so perfect, so serendipitous, and yet whose consummation was just a bridge too far during exams; another zip-lock bag of burgers, purloined furtively from the freezer at home - wasted, it transpires.

Last night's supper did manage to make a dent, if only a small one, in the vast quantities of food that we have somehow amassed over the last couple of weeks. A Caesar Salad made with some roast chicken legs, baby gems, tomatoes, frozen peas, basil, and parsley, and humming with tabasco and English mustard, was a good, light Sunday night supper after sitting in the sun all day - Lydia had put on a Bollywood festival, a joyous end to the year, and so we'd spent the afternoon idling on the grass, drinking cider, watching some magical outdoor theatre, and wolfing down curry from Bristol's Thali Cafe.

I ambitiously defrosted some fish stock that I had made with some crab shell swiped from the Albion - it seemed to be the last thing that would get eaten, and yet I was adamant that it would. We had so many wonderful green vegetables, some leftover noodles, and, controversially (for the Asian purists), some smoked bacon from home. There was only one thing for it - fridge slut. And quite a slut it was too - spring onion, celery, courgette, pak choi et al were hoyed into a saucepan and simmered for a matter of minutes in the stock before being slurped up greedily for lunch.

Fridge slut soup

Serves 4-6

Some smoky bacon - 8 rashers or so
A bunch of spring onions, finely chopped
4 sticks of celery, sliced
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
A pinch of chilli flakes
25g butter
2 large courgettes, diced
White wine, a glass or so
1 1/2 litres of hot fish stock (chicken stock would do)
2 pak choi, sliced, the smaller ones left whole
Some noodles (optional)

Slice the bacon into thin strips and fry in a little oil until crispy - you'll need to stir them every now and then. Remove with a slotted spoon into a bowl, and pour off most of the excess fat. Return the pan to a moderate heat and add the onions and celery. Season with salt and pepper and soften for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, while you crush the fennel seeds in a pestle and mortar. Add these, along with the cayenne and chilli flakes, to the onion and celery, and stir for another minute. Increase the temperature and add the butter, stirring it until it coats the vegetables and they start to think about changing colour. Add the white wine and boil for 30 seconds, then add the stock. Bring to the boil and add the pak choi, most of the bacon, and noodles if you're using them. Simmer for 3 minutes and serve sprinkled with crispy smoked bacon.

Restau-Rant

2009-06-13T11:03:00.003+01:00

I never set out to be a ranter, I really didn’t. I think it’s a bit of a cop out, a little bit lazy – a biased, subjective way of addressing something while being vaguely amusing and controversial at the same time. Kick off with an exasperated intro à la Jeremy Clarkson – Can you believe the state of the bloody underground? I literally can’t believe it, can you believe it? (Note use of rhetorical question to draw the reader in). Then develop the theme with some highly topical and highly predictable similes that contain some awfully shocking profanity or other – those tube drivers are as lazy as an MP that employs a Pole to feed their ducks and then charge it to their bl**dy expense account. Then rant, rant, rant, send to sub, and go to pub (where there is no doubt something else to whinge about).
But some things do need saying. Spleen needs venting; bees need releasing from bonnets, ants from pants, snakes from boots. As a sort of precursor to my upcoming comprehensive, and somewhat valedictory, guide to eating in Bristol, there are a few things about restaurants that I need to get off my chest, mainly because I simply do not have the balls to make a fuss at the time. I don’t personally think there is any superciliousness here, nor do I think these are complaints that I alone have. But let me know if you think I’m way off the mark here, and I’ll retreat back into my nest of simmering resto-resentment.

1) How often do you receive a fairly passable burger or sandwich or whatever, perhaps with some decent chips, but accompanied by the most depressing pile of dry salad you’ve ever laid eyes on? Way too often. Dress. The. F**king. Salad. Please. Surely it is obvious to whoever has produced this leg-side dross that this is a culinary abomination. If you, Monsieur le Chef, can come into the dining room, look me in the eye, and say “I think salad is nicer undressed” then fine, I’ll let this one slide. But come on, there is more chance of Gordon Brown resigning than there is of you believing that, and your refusal (and I am talking to a large percentage of cooks/chefs of the café/pub/bistro ilk) to try to make this sorry heap of iceberg lettuce, sliced pepper and tinned sweetcorn taste at all edible simply shows that you do not care. It’s a very small thing, I know, but if a chef is firing something out of his kitchen that he is not 100% happy with then something is seriously wrong.
2) Vegetables suffer from the same ignominy in these places, pubs in particular. If I’ve just paid £12 for roast lamb, how dare you send it with a soggy roast potato that’s been sitting in the warming oven for hours, and a few lame pieces of carrot, broccoli and cauliflower that have been cooked with about as much love as, oh I don’t know – Ronaldo for Fergie? Gordon for Hazel? Morrissey for a big ol’ T-bone? Just a little salt and pepper please chef, maybe some melted butter – would a sprig of parsley be too much to ask? If the answer to this is ‘yes’, then you should take off your toque, hang up your jacket and throw in the tea towel, because you do not belong in a kitchen. You clearly do not understand food.
If you, reader, can name one vegetable that is not improved by a little salt and pepper, or a little oil and vinegar, then I’ll take you out for dinner. But I think my money is safe. Such a miraculous thing does not exist.
3) ‘Discretionary 12.5% Service Charge’. All too bloody discreet most of the time. A A Gill has already had a pretty big go at this one, so I’ll leave this particular flag in his very capable hands. I do not possess the minerals to send the bill back when restaurants do this, like he does, but I do now insist on paying the bill to the penny, maybe even a penny short. That’ll show ‘em.
4) Menu spelling. Real head in hands stuff, this. For one thing, you run the risk of sounding like an absolute arsehead if you are going to insist on using the French or Italian name when the English one will suffice. Spell it wrong, however, and you are in the running for ‘Arsehead of the Year’. I’m pretty happy not to correct a restaurant that offers ravioli (plural) and then appears with a single raviolo, because in English that’s pretty much what it has come to mean. Ditto on the panini front (though some horribly pedantic part of me always insists on ordering a panino – I mean, you’d chuckle if you heard an Italian asking for a sandwiches, wouldn’t you?), but I just can’t help but make a kneejerk judgement about a place that serves pollo alla parmiggano, or confit de cannard. Come on. Oh, and if you ever correct my pronunciation of bruschetta (hard ‘k’) and tell me it’s bruscetta (soft ‘sh’) I’ll rip your tongue out. It’s one thing to get it wrong yourself, it’s quite another to try and correct somebody’s already correct pronunciation.
5) Water. If you bring a bottle of mineral water when the patron has asked for a jug, you’re liable to find that bottle smashed over the back of your head. It is daylight robbery, pure and simple, and underhand at that. If they ask for a glass of Prosecco is it acceptable to bring a bottle of Bollinger? Clearly not. If they order the vegetarian risotto and a side salad, is it OK to bring lobster and chips? Hell no! (Well, I probably wouldn’t complain too vehemently). But seriously, why the frig do people let this go so often? It’s abominable behaviour, and must stop.

Oh God there are hundreds of others, but most of them petty and pernickety. The five above are the main offenders, on the whole, and ones that I think most people will sympathise with. That said, I’d love to hear others, and specific stories too, because there are some real corkers. Not a complaint in the slightest, but amusing nonetheless, was the time I went into a Bristol pub during one of my (frankly idiotic) Lenten, beer-free fasts, and asked what wine they had. A befuddled look was followed by the hesitant riposte – “red… and white”.
I hate to come across as a snob, inevitable though it probably is. I would argue that my views are actually far from snobbish or patronising. These aren’t complaints about restaurants that claim to serve foie gras when it’s really only chicken liver pâté, or sommeliers who bring the ’83 instead of the ’82, or waiters who serve from the wrong side (does anyone even care about this anymore?). No, ultimately all of these gripes come down to apathy – the fact that someone in the kitchen staff simply does not care enough to make the infinitesimally small effort to do the even smaller things well, and more importantly, with love. And frankly, if you’re one of these people, you’re in the wrong profession mate. Go and be a tube driver. Apparently they don’t give a fuck.

The end is in sight...

2009-05-25T17:30:00.005+01:00

After 15 years, in three different corners of the country, I am now 3 days away from finishing my education. Give or take, that's 3,750 days of schooling, approximately 22,500 different lessons (can this be right?), 7,500 school dinners (only one of which I can actually recall ralphing, though I'm sure there were more), and a few pieces of paper with various letters on them denoting generally underwhelming grades. And I still feel pretty ignorant. This might be because I was more interested in playing cricket or going to the pub than studying, or that I was so easily seduced by the work-shy notion that grades were meaningless, or because I am prattling on about poor work ethic when I ought to be revising for two exams tomorrow - I'm not really sure which.

Whatever the reason, without wanting to drift too close to cliche (though I fear that is inevitable), you never really stop learning. I learned a great deal at cookery school, but nothing compared to what I have picked up since then. Every split custard or mayonnaise, every loaf of over-risen bread, every poorly-executed sorbet, every piece of overcooked fish - they have all taught me something. Life is, after all, one big lesson, man, and the world is one big mutha-effin kitchen.

Unfortunately for me, at least as far as Italian grammar goes, I never quite started learning, so the last few weeks have been a semi-frantic rush to try and get through tomorrow without humiliating myself too much, hence lack of postage. The nice thing about working hard is that you feel you can treat yourself at the end of the day - nothing fancy, but it's lovely to be able to put the books to one side for an hour or two and get cooking. What follow are a couple of the things we've eaten lately.

Thai green prawn curry

You can certainly use jarred curry paste, but the flavour is incomparable to what you get if you make it yourself...

Serves 4

For the curry paste
A big handful of fresh coriander, stalks and leaves
2 cloves garlic
2 green chillies, seeds in
1 stalk lemongrass, outer layer removed
A few Kaffir lime leaves (you can find them in big supermarkets)
A thumb of ginger
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tablespoons coconut milk
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
For the rest of the curry
1 large red onion, peeled and sliced
1 aubergine, roughly diced
1 tin coconut milk
200ml fish stock
200g raw prawns

Coriander to serve

Make the curry paste by blending the ingredients together.

Heat some oil in a saucepan or wok and add the onions. Season with salt and pepper and stir over a medium heat for a couple of minutes until soft. Whack up the heat and add the paste. Endeavour not to choke on the fumes that kick up and keep the stuff moving for a minute or so before adding aubergine, coconut milk and stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes or so until the aubergine is cooked.

Add the prawns and simmer for a further two minutes. Serve immediately with some chopped coriander and rice.

Lamb kebabs with tomato and mint salad

Serves 4

One shoulder of lamb, bone removed and diced into 2 inch chunks
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil

A good handful of tomatoes
Good olive oil
A handful of fresh mint
Salt, pepper and sugar

Mix spices, garlic, rosemary, lemon juice and olive oil and toss through the lamb with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate for as long as possible.

Prod the pieces of lamb onto skewers, cover and leave out of the fridge for a decent hour.

Preheat the oven to 230C, and stick the lamb kebabs in for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the tomatoes into hearty and uneven sized chunks. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar, toss through some good olive oil and shredded mint and serve with the lamb kebabs and some couscous.

Saturday lunches

2009-05-02T15:36:00.004+01:00

Why is Sunday lunch so revered as a mark of Britishness, while Saturday lunch tends to be swept under the carpet somewhat? True, a good roast is something we Brits do extremely well - nomenclature alone attests to that, with Yorkshire puddings being a staple of a roast lunch, and even the usually anglophobic French deigning to name custard crème à l’anglaise. Sunday lunch is undoubtedly a huge contribution to the gastronomic tapestry.

But what of Saturday lunch? You barely ever hear of the notion, yet I think it's something that ought to be celebrated, embraced, indulged in. Let's imagine, for a second, that we don't live in a Godless country, and that some people do actually go to church on Sunday (or, for the sake of argument, let's put this in the context of Christmas Day when everyone really should go to church, if only to give abstract thanks to the possibly less abstract man who gave us an excuse to spend an entire day shitfaced once a year). Trying to cook lunch around churchgoing is a complete nightmare, especially if you have demanding and habitual grandparents who insist on sitting down for lunch at 1. On Saturday, however, there is no such problem (unless you are observing the Sabbath, in which case cooking anything is pretty much out of the question). It is a wonderful day, especially at this time of year.

For students it's a good day to get stuck in to an essay or revision without the interruption of lectures. For young professionals, it's a day to have a lie in, watch Soccer A.M. or Friends repeats in your dressing gown before spending the afternoon in a beer garden. For parents, you can take the kids round the park, to the zoo or a city farm (probably avoiding the pig section), and stick 'em in front of Britain's Got Talent while you do the crossword with a hefty glass of wine. Whatever it is you get up to, what I am getting at, is that it is also the perfect day for cooking. I have, of late, been using my Saturdays to bake bread using a sourdough starter (indeed, the latest batch is rising at the moment). It works well - I feed the starter on Tuesday, build it up for baking on Friday, and bake on Saturday. The method (which I will write about, I hope, in the not too distant future), requires your effort every couple of hours for about 3 minutes at a time, and by 6 you have a couple of beautiful sourdough loaves, ideal for bruschetta for supper, or toast on Sunday morning. It's an incredibly therapeutic process.

Lunch ought to be similarly reparative. While a Sunday roast requires a pretty large amount of work and washing up, Saturday lunch is at its best when mediterranean in feel. Breads, salads, cheeses - that kind of thing. Today I bought (though next Saturday I will make and tell you about it) a wedge of focaccia from the deli, a ball of mozzarella, a few slices of parma ham and some tomatoes. Between two of us (and it could have fed more) it cost £3 each. Less than a sandwich and coke from the library cafe, much less than a pub lunch. The recipe follows. Beer essential.

Focaccia pizza

Serves 2-4

1 good hunk of focaccia bread (home-made version to follow in the next week or so)
1 small red onion
4 sage leaves
150g mozzarella
1 tomato
A few slices of Parma ham
A few mint or basil leaves

Preheat the oven to 240C.

Peel and slice the onion and scatter over the bread. Finely chop the sage, tear up the mozzarella and slice the tomato. Spread out over the bread, season with salt and pepper, and put in the oven for 8-10 minutes, until the mozzarella is starting to colour. Remove from oven and plonk the Parma ham on here and there, with a few torn mint leaves. Drizzle with olive oil and serve with a green salad.

Pork chops with rhubarb chutney

2009-04-30T19:43:00.004+01:00

Ever more rhubarb arrived on the doorstep over the past week or so, either tucked shyly in the vegetable box or splitting the sides of a plastic bag brought down from home. With a view to providing sandwich filling, roast pork accoutrements and an opportunity for sycophancy with the neighbours, I made a big batch of chutney, which we have slowly been chipping away at when not forcing jars of the stuff on our guests.

The other night it made an excellent companion to pork chops. I had a bit of an epiphany with the chops too. The rind, I find, however much you score it, tends to amount to little more than an inedible, chewy annoyance on what otherwise is an excellent piece of meat. However, by cutting off the rind, drying it with a paper towel, rubbing it with salt and sticking it in a really hot oven for 10-15 minutes, you end up with a rather handsome, dainty stick of crackling to serve with your rind free chop.

To make the chutney:

50g butter
2 onions, peeled and sliced
A thumb of ginger, peeled and grated
1kg rhubarb, washed and chopped into chunks
500g caster sugar
150ml red wine vinegar
150ml red wine
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan and soften the onion with the ginger over a low heat for 10 minutes or so. Add the rhubarb, sugar, vinegar, wine and season. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for an hour to an hour and a half, until it has reduced and thickened (it will continue to thicken on cooling). Store in the fridge in sterilised jars.

Serve with pork chops that you have fried for 4 minutes or so on each side, grain mustard and parsley mash, and a stick of crackling. Some broccoli wouldn't go amiss.

First exam tomorrow. I ought to be working.

Rhubarb cock-ups and the godfather cocktail

2009-04-16T11:22:00.007+01:00

I had a complete, abject kitchen disaster last night. And not just cooking for myself (which ought to be the time for experimentation and culinary abandon). Lachlan, a family friend of my flatmate Sam, was in Bristol for a conference and needed feeding. It seemed like a good moment to make use of some of the meat and veg that I had brought back from home after Easter - in particular the groaning bag of rhubarb that was firing wonderful, earthy, acidic notes out of the fridge every time I opened it. I settled upon the idea of rhubarb and custard. But my mind was elsewhere, completely distracted from the important issue of belly fodder and rather more focused on my dissertation. I poached the rhubarb in far too much water, which robbed it of its delightful astrigency while diluting the caster sugar I had added, leaving me with a colourless and fairly tasteless rhubarb soup. I should have chucked it and started again. I didn't. Develop the soup idea, that seemed like the thing to do. A hot and cold rhubarb and custard soup - that is what this ruddy dissertation has reduced me to. I made custard, curdling it then only semi-rectifying it in the same way one might try and salvage a split mayonnaise - whisk another egg yolk and pour your curdled mixture, ever so slowly, into it, whisking all the while. By this point it had been about half an hour since we had finished our pearl barley risotto and I feared Lachlan might start banging his spoon on the table. I ended up serving a custard that was neither hot nor thick nor sweet enough, and a tasteless rhubarb slop. I reckon there is a recipe there though, if executed well - the reverse effect of cold cream on hot crumble, in hot custard on cold rhubarb? I just don't know anymore.

The pudding aside, it was an evening that has proved disastrous for the aforementioned dissertation. It is 11.40 and I am writing this in bed with a stinking hangover, mainly thanks to Lachlan's reckless off license purchase of whiskey and amaretto to make the Godfather - 1 part of each with ice. Tasted amazing. I feel terrible.

And yes, the writing as gone astray, and I fear I will be able to offer little before June, what with my finals coming up and that. I'll try posting something every now and then, but don't get your hopes up.

Meantime, here is something I knocked up at home, using the wild garlic that carpets the woods at this time of year.

Steamed sea bass with couscous and harissa mayonnaise

Serves 4

4 whole sea bass
Wild garlic leaves if you have 'em
Couscous
2 egg yolks
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
200ml groundnut oil
1 tablespoon of harissa

Fill a roasting tray 3 inches deep with water, stick it on the heat and bring to the boil. Stuff the sea bass with the wild garlic, season and place on a rack above the water. Cover tightly with foil and steam for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of your fish.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks, mustard and vinegar with a pinch of salt and very, very slowly, pour in the oil. It should start to thicken pretty quickly, at which point you can marginally speed up the pouring operation. If it starts to split you can add a little milk, or follow instructions above. When you have your finished mayonnaise, stir in the harissa. Some chopped garlic leaves too, if you fancy.

Cook the couscous according to the pack instructions and serve with the steamed fish, harissa mayonnaise, and a green salad.

Supermarket scavenging

2009-03-27T12:49:00.005Z

It's remarkable what you can sniff out at the meat counter in the supermarket if you time your run. In Sainsbury's yesterday I managed to purloin 3 sirloin steaks for £4.50 (down from £20/kg to £.650!), a kilo of sausages for £2 and a lamb neck fillet for £1.80. The trick, I believe, is to rock up a couple of hours before closing, when they are really just trying to fob off any meat that will be past its sell-by in the next couple of hours.

I had never tackled lamb neck before, but was aware that, like squid or octopus, it's a case of either fiendishly hot, quick cooking, or long and slow. Anywhere in between and you will end up with something akin to a handbag in texture. In spite of giving the meat a good rest, I was still a wee bit alarmed by how rare it was, as in my book, lamb is best served medium to medium well done, having the tendency to be chewy if served too pink. Yet the neck was incredibly soft and tender and, sat lazily on a bed of pearl barley, with the zip of vinegary roast beetroot to lift this rich and frugal supper, was a very successful foray into the latest and trendiest 'cheap cut'.

Lamb neck fillet with pearl barley and roast beetroot

Serves 1

1 large beetroot
A few thyme leaves
Cyder vinegar
Olive oil
Tin foil

1 tablespoon chopped shallot
A good handful of chopped parsley
80g pearl barley
50ml red wine
500ml hot chicken stock

A 300g lamb neck fillet
A little red wine and stock

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Quarter the beetroot or cut into chunks. Place on a large sheet of tin foil, drizzle with vinegar, olive oil and thyme leaves and season with salt and pepper. Wrap up in the foil and roast for 45 minutes. Allow to cool - this only needs to be served a little warm.

Meanwhile, soften the shallot in a little oil with salt and pepper. Stir in the parsley and pearl barley and add the red wine. Simmer for a minute or two, then add the stock. Simmer gently uncovered for an hour, stirring occasionally.

Season the neck fillet with salt and pepper and rub with olive oil. Get a heavy-based frying or griddle pan smoking hot and add the lamb. Fry for 4 minutes on each side, remove to a warm plate to rest for a good 10 minutes.

Add some wine and stock to the frying pan and scrape up all the lovely caramelised juices. Slice the lamb thickly and serve with the pearl barley and beetroot, drizzled with the remaining cooking juices.

Fish and Chips

2009-03-15T13:48:00.006Z

Are there two happier words in the gastronomic world, honestly? I'm not suggesting this would be my final meal, not by a long shot. Roast chicken remains firmly at the top of that list, followed by, I suppose, roast lamb in some form or other, or a beautiful, quivering tarte a l'oignons, with buttery pastry that crumbles in the mouth. Or perhaps a steaming bowl of pasta, the noodles hugged generously by a rich ragu, a snowdrift of Parmesan on top might be a worthy last mouthful.

It's just that there is something completely and wonderfully naughty about fish and chips. Maybe it's our culture of instant gratification, but I think the lines run deeper. As a young boy we'd go every Saturday to Drakes in Ripon (though the slightly further Southgate Fisheries was always superior), and I remember the drive home being utterly interminable, the waft of vinegary, crisp batter and slightly soggy newspaper making my tongue do a little jig all of its own, as if warming up for the heavenly onslaught that edged ever closer. Later, when in my teens, I'd spend August driving a tractor for Dad during harvest, often late into the night. When this was the case he'd pitch up at some point in the evening clutching that paper parcel of joy and a can of Tetley's. Reward for hard work. Fish and chips remains, in my eyes, the last bastion of completely acceptable British fast food.

It must be the association of hard work with fish and chips that led me to making some yesterday. I'd been in the library most of the weekend and needed some relief. There's actually a chippy nearby in Clifton that I haven't ventured into yet, but I felt doing it myself would be lighter, cheaper and, well, better. Incidentally, does anyone know the chippy I mean? It's round the corner from the Quadrant on Princess Victoria Street....let me know if it's any good. (I have since been. It's bloody awful).

Trout and chips with crushed peas and parsley

Serves 1

2 medium spuds
2 medium trout fillets
1 egg
2 heaped tablespoons plain flour
A good handful of peas
1 tablespoon freshly chopped parsley
Lemon
Salt, pepper, paprika and oil

Cut the potatoes into wedges and bring to the boil in a pan of salted water. Simmer until cooked (15 minutes or so), drain. Heat a couple of tablespoons oil in a frying pan and add the wedges, frying on each side until golden. Remove from the pan and keep warm in the oven.

Put a small pan of water on the boil for the peas. Season the flour with salt, pepper and a tiny bit of paprika. Beat the egg. Dip the fish into the egg, shake off a little, then toss in the flour, again shaking off the excess. In the same pan that you fried the spuds in, add the fish, skin side down. Fry for 3 minutes on each side. Meanwhile, boil the peas for 3 minutes. Drain, add the parsley and season with salt and pepper. Gently crush with a potato masher.

Dry the fish on kitchen paper and serve with the chips and peas, and a good squeeze of lemon.

Stuffed fillet of pork

2009-03-14T09:45:00.006Z

I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to let this thing slip again, but unfortunately I have been under the academic kosh these past couple of weeks so any gastronomic scribing has had to be put on hold. My new year's resolution was actually to keep a food diary - scribblings of recipes and recipe ideas, and magazine cut outs of foody stuff. What is it with starting things and not carrying them through? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Lent is not a time for abstinence, but instead for making everyone feel thoroughly rotten about their failure to stick to their lenten fasts. That said, I'm doing OK. My theory (and it was one shared by the chaplain at school) is that, because lent is actually 47 days long, once a week you can let it slip. So since lent began I have allowed myself two beers, which is not bad going....My parents cut out the booze altogether except for Sundays, Dad going so far as to fast during daylight hours. Nutjob. I'd be interested to hear people's reasons for lenten deprivation - I would gingerly suggest that most of them do not do it on religious grounds, but health. It certainly seems that the vast majority abstain from chocolate, or crisps, or cigarettes. It's a good moment to do it - less indefinite (and thus absolutely no chance of sustaining) than a new years resolution. Let me know how you're getting on.

And what of the new, dairy free life? It's really not all that bad. Well, I say that, I probably dream about cheese or butter in one form or other about 5 days a week, but, rather like when you give up smoking, it is in the context of horror when you dream you've relapsed. Last night I made the first dairy free mash potato, using rapeseed oil instead of butter and milk, and it was really good. When pushed through a ricer, the mash is incredibly smooth, and the oil gives it an interesting texture. Definitely thumbs up. Similarly soya yoghurt - with honey and granola, it is an excellent breakfast. The only thorn being that my blood test results arrived, telling me to avoid sesame seeds and nuts. If anyone has a good homemade granola recipe that I could tinker with, fire it my way - jteramsden@hotmail.com - thanks.

This recipe errs towards restaurant-y, but in a pretty homely way. It doesn't feel too heavy, and is remarkably easy.

Stuffed loin of pork with swede and parsnip bubble and squeak cakes

Serves 4

For the bubble and squeak
A small swede
2 parsnips
1 small savoy cabbage
For the pork
1 shallot or small onion
2 flat field mushrooms
1 tablespoon freshly chopped parsley
1 apple
A little cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 fillet of pork, trimmed of any excess fat
6 slices of prosciutto
100ml cider
100ml hot stock
Salt, pepper and oil

N.B. If you're allowed, I'd recommend adding butter to the bubble and squeak.

Kick off by peeling the swede and parsnips, chopping into chunks and bringing to the boil in salted water. Meanwhile, finely slice the cabbage and steam or boil until tender, drain and blanche in cold water. Once the root veg are cooked, drain and mash thoroughly, or ideally whizz up in a magimix until smooth, adding butter if using, and lots of salt and pepper. Mix with the cabbage and allow to cool (they hold their shape better this way).

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Peel and finely chop the shallot and soften in a little oil. Finely chop the mushrooms and add to the pan. Increase the heat and stir for a minute or two until the mushrooms start to soften. Grate the apple into the stuffing, add a dash of vinegar and the mustard. Stir through, season, and take off the heat.

Lay the prosciutto slices out alongside each other, overlapping at the edges. Lay the thicker half of the pork fillet over the ham and pile the stuffing on top. Fold the other half of the pork over the top of the stuffing, and wrap up tightly with the prosciutto. Tie up, if necessary, though the natural oils in the prosciutto should act as a glue. Heat an oven proof-frying pan over a lively flame with a little oil, and quickly brown the pork on all sides, before popping in the oven for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, shape the bubble and squeak into cakes. After 20 minutes are up, remove the pork to a warm resting plate, and put the pan back over a medium flame. Add the cider and stock and simmer for 10 minutes or so, scraping any caramelised meat juices off the pan. Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat, and fry the bubble and squeak cakes for 4 minutes on each side.

Slice the pork and serve with the bubble and squeak and a drizzle of gravy.

Heaven nose I'm mooserable now....

2009-02-26T09:50:00.006Z

I went to the doctor yesterday. Bad news I'm afraid. Apparently I might be lactose intolerant.

For as long as I can remember I have carried a handkerchief as a result of my nose running endlessly. Last year I'd had enough, and went to the doctor to try and work out what was wrong with me. My septum was so deviated from various bashes that my right nostril was pretty much closed up, on top of which I had several polyps, little mucus producing gribblers, taking up residence in my nose - sexy, yes? In June I had the septum straightened and the polyps removed. This made little or no difference.

So yesterday I went to a complementary medicine clinic where I had my toe prodded to see what I was allergic to. As feared, I was told to avoid dairy completely for 4 weeks and see what happens. That means no milk, no butter, no cheese, no fun. Breakfast is a complete nightmare - no cereal, obviously. No butter on toast - I am quite fond of Tahini as a good alternative but there is only so much peanut butter (Tahini's 1st cousin) and jam a man can eat. No yoghurt and muesli, no tea with milk in it. Lunch is more manageable. Indeed as I write there is a carrot and coriander soup bubbling away next door. But no swirl of cream on top of that for the Larder Lout.

It's the cheese that I'm really, really going to miss. Cheese on toast for lunch, generous snowdrifts of Parmesan on a bowl of pasta, a chunk of maturest cheddar and a nip of peaty whisky on a cold night, oozy bits of brie flopping lazily on hunks of french bread whilst sitting in the August sun with a cold glass of rose. Were this parchment I was writing on and not a blog, it would be stained with my teardrops.

So I'm in a bit of quandary guys, and urgently needing cooking suggestions. It's not that I relied on dairy products before particularly, it's just that now I'm not allowed them, they're all I can think about. The only upside is the benefit to my health. No dairy for a month, coupled with being off beer and cider for lent should do wonders...

So people, throw some thoughts my way - you, friends, family with the same problem, fave recipes, when you stop having cheese nightmares, that kind of thing...would be good to know.

Ciao for now.

Falling unlike Domino's...

2009-02-17T10:24:00.004Z

No wonder nobody has any money at the moment, if Domino's latest figures are anything to go by. Somehow, impossibly, their profits are 10% up on last year. This makes no sense. The smallest, 'personal' pizza, costs a whopping £5.99. And I am not using this word with even a noodle of irony, because that is a whopping price for what you are getting. I'm not sure it's even worth my highlighting the health implications of eating a Domino's pizza - it's clearly not a salad. My beef is with the horde of people seen on the news almost daily complaining about lack of money. Now, I'm not for a second suggesting that they are lying, or that they all eat daily at Domino's, but someone must be. And it is a fantastic waste of money, it really is. Six quid can go a hell of a long way, food-wise, yet people are seduced into believing that a take-away pizza, or a trip to a dreaded All-You-Can-Hold-Down Chinese buffet is somehow a bargain. It is not. End of story.

For what I reckon cost me a pound, I had one of the best, impulsive pasta dishes I have had in a long time the other night. Incredibly simple, quicker than ordering a pizza and with little more washing up, it was a prime example of how even at moments lacking inspiration, time, or energy, it can be so easy to throw together a delicious supper.

Tagliatelle with leeks, mushrooms and creme fraiche

Serves 1

100g Tagliatelle
1 medium leek, trimmed, washed, and cut diagonally in thick slices
1 large field mushroom, sliced
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1 tablespoon reduced fat creme fraiche
A squeeze of lemon juice
Salt, pepper and olive oil
Parmesan cheese

Bring some salted water to the boil and thrown in your pasta.

Heat a little oil in a large saute or sauce pan. Add the leeks, mushrooms and parsley, season and stir over a medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat and add the creme fraiche and lemon juice. Simmer for a minute or two. Drain the pasta when cooked, and toss into the sauce. Season with more pepper (it likes pepper, does this) and serve with some freshly grated Parmesan. Don't wait for the doorbell to ring, don't hand over any money.

Roast squash and goat's cheese risotto

2009-02-13T15:19:00.006Z

Risotto is still a somewhat misunderstood entity for many Brits. When I say many Brits, I mean at least my grandmother, and I imagine many others besides. For Grannie, risotto translates as 'ricey graveyard for leftovers' - any kind of rice (but preferably not risotto rice) slung in the oven with vegetables and perhaps some leftover chicken. Is she unique, or are there others who take this view? Either way, it's not really what risotto is all about.

For starters, it needs to be a particular kind of rice. A medium-grained, starchy rice, the main ones used in Italy being Vialone Nano, Carnaroli and Arborio (the one least used in Italy, most used in the UK). The idea is that the rice releases starch in the cooking, making it stickier and creamier than, say, basmati, and at the same time absorbs the stock and other flavours used in the dish.

And this is the fun part. Once you have got beyond the standard technique used to make a white risotto, it is a fantastic canvas on which to paint. This does not mean putting half of the larder into it, but instead using one or two carefully chosen ingredients to add body, flavour, and texture. This version is a little more time consuming than others, in that there are three separate processes, but I promise it is worth the effort, and if you keep on top the washing up you shouldn't have a filthy kitchen by the end of cooking.

Roast sqaush and goat's cheese risotto

Serves 4

1 small squash - I used Sweet Mama from the veg box, butternut would be grand
1 red onion, peeled and sliced thickly
6 cloves garlic
A few sprigs of thyme
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
300g risotto rice
1 glass white wine
2 litres of hot vegetable or chicken stock
50g goat's cheese

Preheat the oven to 220C.

Peel and deseed the squash, and cut into large chunks. Put 75% of these in a roasting tray with the red onion, garlic and thyme, toss in olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, boil the remaining squash in salted water and liquidize.

Heat a little butter in a large saute pan and stir in the chopped onion. Season, cover, and leave over a low heat for 5 minutes, taking care not to burn it. Remove the lid, increase the heat and add the rice. Stir for a couple of minutes before adding the wine. Once the wine has reduced add a ladle of stock. Continue stirring, adding stock each time the rice has absorbed the previous batch. After 15-17 minutes taste the rice. It should be a couple of minutes away from being cooked. Adjust the seasoning and stir in the pureed squash, goat's cheese, and most of the roasted squash, and a final ladle of stock. Turn off the heat but continue stirring for a couple more minutes.

Serve the risotto in warmed bowls, with a few chunks of roasted squash and red onion on top.

Cosmo Pan-Asian Restaurant, Bristol

2009-02-09T17:19:00.002Z

There is not a sharp enough pencil to describe the horror that will greet you if you are brave enough to venture into Cosmo, the new pan-Asian, all-you-dare-to-eat buffet on the Triangle. The place is a study in how badly one can get a restaurant wrong, a lesson in crashing mediocrity, vile cynicism, and loveless cooking; an experiment in just how low people will stoop in order to save a few pennies. You are not a customer in Cosmo, you are a commodity, someone to be pillaged for money and then cast back into the street.

For one thing, you are press-ganged into paying on arrival – whether this is because they don’t trust people to pay the bill or because they are aware that, after a meal so abhorrent, few sober people will be willing to part with their money, who can say? Either way, this charmless, industrial service made one very uneasy. Having had your money practically fleeced from you at gunpoint, you are then led, not to a table in the light window – which may well have been what attracted you to this place originally – but down, down, down, past the buffets and into the nuclear bunker at the back. It is like eating in a submarine – airless, dark, claustrophobic, and unsettling. Waiters seem more like minions, all geared up with headsets, at the other end of which was presumably either the Samaritans helpline or the restaurant manager/commander barking orders at them. When at one point a waitress dropped a plate, we half-expected her to fall to the floor, gunned down by some invisible sniper.

It seems almost redundant to mention the food, as you know by now that it is going to be nothing short of apocalyptic, but it seems churlish to write a restaurant review without bringing it up (which, incidentally, I almost did on several occasions). For a place that apparently prides itself on fresh, healthy cooking, the starters were either a postscript of this notion, or somebody had accidentally dropped most of them into a deep fat fryer on their way to the buffet. The rather disconcertingly named ‘dragon’s balls’ were wan and sludgy and lacking in any discernible provenance, and the spring rolls were about as palatable as a jockstrap. The spare ribs were just about edible, and while the satay tasted OK, the chicken (and this went for every chicken dish) was alarmingly soft, not in a perfectly cooked kinda way but in a what-the-fuck-is-this kinda way. Question upon question begs itself. Has the prawn toast ever actually encountered a prawn? What really is the chef’s special? Did my dragon’s ball just move?

Out of the frying pan of the starters and into the fire of the mains. What have we here at our authentic Asian buffet? It’s sausage and chips! Can you bloody believe it? Perhaps they were the best sausage and chips in town, perhaps they would have rescued this car crash of a lunch, it doesn’t really matter – we were there for Asian food, for better or for worse, and that’s what we ate. The beef in green peppers with black bean sauce was like eating an oily shoe, only, somehow, even worse. Let’s try some of the ‘chef’s special balls’ (seriously, what is this testicular obsession? It’s like a 14-year-old wrote the menu). Nope, they’re disgusting too. Lamb stir-fried ‘Mongolian style’ (almost sounds like a threat) certainly helped to explain why Genghis Kahn was such a belligerent little bugger – if I had to eat this kind of swill on a daily basis I’d be waging some pretty serious wars myself. It was monstrous. Ditto duck pancakes, chicken madras, and Thai green curry – all just dire.

In an attempt to wrestle some sort of positive from what, until now, had been an abject disaster, we bravely had a sniff around the pudding station, which yielded nothing but further disappointment. Jelly that more bounced than wobbled, cakes that looked about as appetizing as a dog’s arse, and strawberry ice cream that we doubted had ever been near a cow or a strawberry, all put the final nail in Cosmo’s coffin. Minutes from a serious panic attack we left the bunker gratefully, vowing to never return.

Surely this is a joke? Somewhere in the Midlands there must be a fat man in a loud suit having a ruddy good laugh at our expense. Because no restaurateur could open a place like Cosmo with a straight face, genuinely believing they were offering an authentic Asian experience to their diners. Sausage and chips? Pull the other one.

If anyone else has been to the Bristol Cosmo, or any of the other ones, for that matter, let me know your thoughts.

Lunchbox no.2

2009-02-04T18:25:00.005Z

To those of you who have sent me lunch box ideas, thank you very much. Indeed, thanks to all of you who send recipes, thoughts, suggestions in. The thing is that I tend not to plan what I'm cooking, but more deal with what I've got to hand, so I'm a bit crap at actually going out and shopping for the recipes you have sent me, all of which sound delicious - Fred's coronation partridge, Adam's chicken with sherry and cream (must try asap, sounds right up my street), and Jack's squirrel in breadcrumbs. Time will come when I'll try these things (well, maybe not the squirrel).

I did, however, try one recipe given to me by a girl on my course, Eve, for Ackee and Salt fish. Apparently this is the quintessential Jamaican dish, and so I spent a frankly nightmarish hour in Tesco extra trying to rootle out these ingredients. If you're familiar with French, or indeed Eastern European cookery, salt fish shouldn't be too controversial a notion. The Russians eat the stuff as it comes, cardiac-arrestingly brackish and verging on the inedible, washed down with vodka. The French are rather more delicate with their morue - salt cod - gently poaching it in milk and herbs before mixing it with mashed potato to make a brandade.

The Jamaican method is somewhere in between the two, retaining the essence of the salt fish rather more than the French, but not erring into the ghoulish chewing on something that looks more like a giant's crusty sock than something one would want to eat that the Russians go for. You boil the salt fish in water, drain, cool and remove skin and bone. Chop up some onions, chilli and tomatoes and soften in oil for ten minutes. Ackee is a fruit that comes in a tin, which looks somewhere in between cod's roe and rooster's testicles (if you have ever seen rooster's testicles) but tastes rather better. Anyway, you drain this, chuck it in with the vegetables, simmer for 10 minutes with the fish and serve with rice. It was pretty good - I was pleasantly surprised - but with a blizzard blowing outside it just didn't feel right. Maybe I'll give it a proper write up when I give it proper attention. I fear I let it down, so wouldn't want to pass this on.

Meantime, it's about time I posted another lunchbox. Yesterday I sat hungry in a language class, ruminating over what I might have for lunch. The fridge at home was bare, and seeing as I only had half an hour for lunch, resigned myself to forking out £5 for a sandwich. Remembering, however, the half carton of chopped tomatoes in the fridge and the tin of butterbeans in the cupboard, I came upon the most frugal, quickest, yet most delicious of lunches. Soup is a great lunchbox fallback - improves when made ahead, and can be quite easily popped in the microwave.

Tomato and butterbean soup

Serves 1

200g good chopped tomatoes
1 tin of butter beans
Pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
Small handful of parsley, chopped
A little grated parmesan
Good olive oil
Salt, pepper and sugar

Heat a little oil in a saucepan. Pour in the tomatoes, drain the butterbeans and add to the pan with the chilli flakes if using. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve with a sprinkle of parsley, parmesan, and a drizzle of good olive oil.

PS - if you have a must-do recipe, take a picture of it and email it to me - jteramsden@hotmail.com - and I'll put it up, I promise.

Spanish venison

2009-02-02T12:22:00.003Z

There seems to be a bit of a problem with deer in the country at the moment. There are around 2 million deer in Britain, of which the main species are red deer, roe deer, fallow deer and muntjac. This, it seems, is far too many, and a serious cull has been called for. Bad for the deer, good for us.

OK, let's look at both sides of this before people start telephoning the RSPCA. On the one hand there is no denying that they are absolutely magnificent animals - dignified, even kingly - and that the unabated slaughter of them (or indeed any animal) is completely unjustified and verging on the insane. However, if you look at both the human and ecological impact of so many deer, the argument for culling is compelling. The damage that deer do to the natural habitat of literally thousands of species renders it uninhabitable, so the biodiversity in vast swathes of forest is shrinking at an alarming rate. Wildlife needs delicate management. Furthermore, the road accidents caused by the sheer volume of deer is perhaps reason enough to cull ("just don't drive!" I hear you cry...a discussion for another day/blog perhaps).

Anyway, either way experts reckon that we need to cull about 100,000 deer a year, which means that venison (the meat from deer) is going to become more and more available. At home we have a lot of roe deer in particular who, while beautiful to look at themselves, render the woodland less so, destroying young woods with ease. As a result there is often a fair bit of venison around, and I have found it rather too easy to get into the habit of basic 'roast, rest and eat' cookery. But it's such a wonderful meat that it lends itself well to adaptation. It is very lean, so any stewing needs doing with a hefty amount of bacon or something similar. But its loin makes wonderful carpaccio, or can be a great replacement for a steak.

This is what I did with a haunch the other night. If you're not confident with a knife you could get the butcher to do the first part, but it's not a particularly complicated piece of butchery.

Braised haunch of venison with chorizo and mushrooms

Serves 6

1 roe deer haunch
2 large onions, peeled and sliced
300g chorizo, roughly chopped
500g button mushrooms, halved
200ml red wine
200ml stock
Salt and pepper
Oil

Preheat the oven to 190C.

First remove the bone from the haunch by cutting down the length of the bone and working the flesh away around it. Lay the meat out flat like a giant steak and season all over with salt and pepper.

Heat some oil in a large saute pan or roasting dish, brown the meat on all sides (this will take a few minutes) and set aside.

Add the onions, chorizo and mushrooms and stir over the heat for a couple of minutes, then add the wine and stock. Bring to a boil, add the meat, cover (tightly with foil, if using a roasting pan) and cook in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.

Rest and serve with butternut squash mash and purple sprouting broccoli. And a hefty amount of the chorizo and mushroom jus.

Undone in London

2009-01-29T12:07:00.007Z

Nipping up to London for a couple of days is all at once exciting, overwhelming, tiring and expensive. Even my friends who actually live there full time complain about how you can't leave the house without shedding money. So for a greedy spendthrift like me, London - gastronomic (and actual) capital of the country - can be far from a frugal place to spend time in. The other problem is the excitement of being in a place where so many friends are too, and inevitably I try and see far too many people and end up either letting people down or drinking a flurry of hurried half-finished pints and having a flurry of half-finished conversations.

This week I at least had a game plan. My brother was off to India for 5 months on Tuesday so we had dinner at my sister's flat on Monday night - a cracking curry that I may coerce her into putting on here if she gets a minute. Tuesday the only real plan, at least to start with, was to go to a friend's birthday drinks in the evening, but with a day to kill I suggested to a cousin that we ought to go for lunch in a place called the Boot and Flogger. We had been there together in the summer and I had fallen instantly in love with the place.

If you head north from Union Street towards Borough Market you will go up Redcross Way and will, most likely, find your gaze distracted by a large gate adorned with withering wreaths and crossbones. Neither the deserted scrub behind, nor the modernistic gate will detract from the sinisterness of the place. It was a medieval mass-burial site for prostitutes. Being outside the City of London's jurisdiction, the area became a haven for brothels and gambling dens, and these 'single women' were, for their sins (literally), buried in unconsecrated graves - 'the outcast dead'. Cheery stuff. Anyway, should you turn around, you will find the Boot and Flogger.

It is an establishment that defies definition. A complete anachronism, it is somewhere between a pub, restaurant and gents' club - the sort of place where, my cousin pointed out, the waitresses wouldn't think twice if you patted them on the bottom (though we are far too polite for that sort of tomfoolery). With us was cousin Tom's son Sebastien, who is a little older than me, and his (and my Dad's, for that matter) godson Tobie. The menu, like me, is simple, and demands little dithering, something which I love. I'd much rather just be told what I'm eating - can't stand a big menu. We kicked off with a bottle of German Riesling, the name of which I could not tell you. What I can tell you is that it was a cracking wine, being a little sweet as Rieslings tend to be, but sharp as well, which Rieslings often are not. The ideal pre-lunch drink. We nibbled at quails' eggs while waiting for the food proper to arrive - cold ham, tongue and rare sirloin of beef, with salad and new potatoes. A more perfect lunch there could not be. If you have an aversion to tongue I might suggest this would be a good place to start. Incredibly soft and delicate, not as rich as offal but still singing with the addition of horseradish, it is a really underrated, frugal cut. A couple of bottles of Rioja somehow slipped down along with this real meat feast, and arms were twisted towards the pudding menu. Sticky toffee pud with custard, trifle, and fruitcake soaked in Madeira were all yomped down gleefully, coffee was foregone in favour of stonking great glasses of chilled Muscat, and before we knew it we were emerging into the late afternoon, a little light-headed.

Tom disappeared for a meeting while Sebastien, Tobie and I went in search of coffee and more delights at Borough Market. The Market was closed, which was a huge shame. The pub was not. It was heaving in fact, the artisans, grocers, butchers and fishmongers having a well deserved pint after what had certainly been a longer day than ours. We felt out of place - what had we achieved other than a slight afternoon hangover? We were pottering towards Monmouth Coffee Shop on the corner when we spotted Wrights next door - an oyster bar. Tobie had never had oysters, and it didn't take much cajolery to get him out of Monmouth's (excellent coffee, by the way) and into Wrights, where fresh (I assume) oysters were wolfed down with a bottle of Picpoul de Pinet - a Languedoc wine that was sharp and citrus-ey, ideal for oysters.

If Wrights was a little empty, somehow, impossibly, we were not. With fire in our bellies and a glint in our eye we went in search of somewhere else to continue this, frankly ridiculous, afternoon of indulgence. We happened upon Brindisa, a Spanish bar on the other side of the market, and sherry seemed the thing to drink. Ice cold and bone dry, perfect with chorizo and some crunchy broad beans, which is just how we had it. And it was fantastic. Some might say it's a little odd, a little pretentious, a little bit old-ladyish to be drinking sherry on a Tuesday evening, and I would have been inclined to agree. But try it. Not recommended for daily consumption, but it made a really nice change from a bloaty pint of lager.

By this point we all had to go our separate ways, but it seemed churlish not to have one more swift glass of something before disappearing, so we nipped into a wine bar for glug of wine and some bread, more to soak up the alcohol than any real need for nourishment. Off we stepped into the night, and I headed towards Caspar's birthday party in Shoreditch. I tried to resist the offer of champagne, but really that would have been rude, it being his birthday. His Mum had done some delicious canapes, too - in particular quail scotch eggs, ones to remember in future. Sadly I had to head off far too soon to have a relatively late supper with my sister, her boyfriend, a friend of theirs and a friend of my parents.

We went to Green and Red, a Mexican restaurant on the Bethnal Green Road that has had outstanding press, impressive considering Mexican food, or at least the British interpretation of it, is hardly a world-beater. This place was fab, however. Fantastic cocktails knocked up by friendly, knowledgeable bar staff, and a menu that had not made its way to us via the southern United States, though wittily nodded towards current 'gastropub' trends - slow-roast pork belly was given two thumbs up, and my slow-braised lamb shank was all melting and tender, without the heart-stopping amount of fat that you often find on lamb shanks. Sides of guacamole, refried beans and tortillas were gobbled with equal glee which, considering that I had been eating pretty much non-stop since 1 o clock, says a lot about the food. Or just that I am prodigiously greedy. Perhaps both.

I have come to the conclusion that there are different types of binge. The one where you spend five hours throwing as much lager down your throat as you can, the other the type where you spend all day nibbling and sipping, without ever getting horrendously drunk or full. While I'm sure no doctor would recommend either practice were done regularly, as a twice a year treat I can honestly say that it was the best day I have had in a long time. I'm sorry this has been such a long post, but it seemed like the kind of day that ought to be written about. Anyone else had a similar sort of day recently?

This little piggy went in my tummy

2009-01-24T19:59:00.007Z

Good ol' Jamie was on the BBC breakfast programme this week telling us about his new mission to raise awareness about how pigs are being raised in Europe. While in the UK our porkers are raised in relatively good conditions, E.U. legislation is not so uncompromising, and the poor swines, and in particular pregant sows, are kept in horrendous conditions - for the period of gestation (3 months or so) they are kept in pens that don't enable them to turn round, walk, go to the post office...nothing. Terrible really. So, in the real spirit of Jamie-ness, from this day forth let's all make a concerted effort to buy British pork.

I am lucky enough to have oinkers at home rooting around in the forest garden, chomping down leftovers and having happy, organic, outdoor upbringings, and so the freezer in Bristol is groaning with sausages and pork chops and bellies and shoulders...a real treat. Cuts like shoulder and belly are really cheap too, British or not. It shouldn't be difficult to eat British (and there are environmental implications too, of course). This recipe is fab with pickled red cabbage, beetroot, anything really.

Roast shoulder of pork

Serves 4

1 rolled, boned, shoulder of pork, about 1.4kg
Salt, pepper and olive oil

It's important with any cooking, if at all possible, that you take the ingredients out of the fridge a good hour before you start cooking. Part of the reason, I think, that people find recipes don't work is because they are putting a freezing cold piece of meat into the oven...inevitably this elongates cooking time...

Anyway...preheat the oven to full whack. Score the skin with a sharp knife several at 1 inch intervals or so. This helps to render the fat and get really good crackling. Season the joint copiously with salt and pepper and rub with olive oil. Sling in the oven and turn the heat down immediately to 170C. Cook for 3 hours.

Remove from the oven and pop on a warm plate to rest while you make your gravy. Degrease the pan by pouring off any excess fat, then put it over a fairly rigorous heat. Pour in some booze (cider, wine, marsala - whatever is kicking about really) and some stock and simmer for five minutes.

Carve the pork and serve with the crackling and your vegetables - a bit of apple sauce would be nice too.

Finally got the ruddy internet!

2009-01-20T22:23:00.004Z

Exam on Thursday but I just had to celebrate the fact that, after three and a half months of to-ing and fro-ing with Sky and BT, we finally have the internet. My revision has been transformed - no longer do I have to schlep it to the library to get distracted by the myriad weird and wonderful websites, I can do it at home with a cup of tea clasped in my fist. Huzzah!

So to kick off what I hope will be a return to slightly more regular blogging here is, as promised, the first of the weekly(ish) luscious lavish lunchbox luxuries on a budget.

Cous cous salad with roasted peppers, cherry tomatoes, feta, and whatever else you wanna sling in it

Serves 3-4

2 red or orange peppers, halved and seeded
150g cherry tomatoes
200g cous cous
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped
feta, mint, prosciutto...go nuts.

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Season the peppers and drizzle with oil. Roast for half an hour, adding the cherry tomatoes for the last 10 minutes. Meanwhile, pour 300ml water over the cous cous (or whatever the packet says), cover and leave for 5 minutes. Stir thoroughly with a fork. Roughly chop the peppers and sling them in with the tomatoes, (which should be in tact so that they pop wonderfully intense tomato-ey juice in your mouth (though take care not to spray your desk neighbour with the stuff)) chilli and whatever else you are putting in it. Serve warm, ideally.

Sorry if this seems rushed, it is.

Update/Apology

2009-01-17T10:13:00.002Z

I must apologise for this second hiatus in the blog, for anyone who is reading (Fred, perhaps).

I am in the middle of my finals at the moment so there is little time to write, though so much to write about! Anyway, come next weekend I will, for the time being, be done so plenty more recipes to follow, as well as an intended weekly 'lunchbox' theme (on the recommendation of my sister).

If you have some good ideas for lunchbox recipes then post them as a comment or email me at jteramsden@hotmail.com

Till then,

x

Rice is nice

2008-12-22T15:55:00.005Z

I imagine that if the people who went to school in Britain that have never eaten rice pudding met up somewhere, there probably wouldn't be enough of them to make a water polo team (I don't actually remember how many people there are in a water polo team, but I don't think it's very many). It is surely the quintessential school children's pudding, along with tapioca (frog spawn), spotted dick (if you went to school in the Victorian age), bananas and custard (if you were lucky), and poached pears in saffron syrup (if you went to private school).

The tapioca aversion I can understand, and whoever is responsible for inventing this stomach-turning excuse for a dessert - the sort of dessert that would make even the toughest boy in school's top lip start a-quivering and claiming infirmity - should be dragged by their dangly bits around the town while local school children bombard them with cabbages, hot bovril and gravel. But rice pudding, heavenly, comforting rice pudding, why the vitriol, eh? Everything about it is an absolute joy - the skin on top that you sort of feel shouldn't really be there, and is thus a little bit naughty; the oozy, creamy depth of soft grains of rice that coat your tongue with an ever so slightly savory hug; and, most wonderfully, the way you feel the diffusion of warmth from your mouth all the way down into your belly. It's like swallowing a radiator. In a good way.

Jam versus no jam, then....entirely up to you. You could leave the lemon zest out of this version and go for something tart like damson jam, or stick to the classic raspberry or strawberry (ah, the eternal conflict - surely raspberry wins hands down), or try something really controversial and see how you get on - nutella (not recommended), peanut butter, honey, red currant jelly? Go nuts, let me know how you get on.

Rice pudding

Serves 6

15g unsalted butter
1 vanilla pod
850 ml whole milk
60g pudding rice
(this milk/rice ratio will seem barmy to you, rest assured this is not a typo...)
Zest of half a lemon
A little freshly grated nutmeg
3 tablespoons caster sugar
100 ml double cream

Preheat the oven to 150C and butter an ovenproof dish, such as the one in the slightly dark photograph.

Put the milk in a saucepan, split the vanilla pod and add. Bring to just below a boil.

Next rinse your rice quickly under cold water and pop in the dish with a few little knobs of butter, the lemon zest, a pinch of nutmeg and the sugar. Pour over the milk and stir. Place in the oven and leave for an hour, removing to stir every fifteen minutes. Stir in the cream and cook for a further 15-20 minutes until the rice is fully tender.

Serve with raspberry jam, or honey, or something a little more bizarre, depending on the extent of your Christmas breakdown.

Happy Christmas, too! x

Stir in the cream

Moroccan feast

2008-12-05T11:09:00.005Z

It's amazing how quickly your desires and cravings can shift, especially at this time of year. One minute you want mulled cider, mashed potato and rich, deep stews to stave off the cold, then before you know it, you can't look at another root vegetable without feeling bloated and overfed. I reached such a point yesterday. On Wednesday night we had jugged hare which was delicious and all, but there comes a time when enough is enough, and I just couldn't face doing another 'wintry' dish with the duck breasts I defrosted last night.

So we went Moroccan (ish) - there was no cinnamon or raisins, indeed there were very few bells and whistles, just good, informal salads and dips and wine and smiles. That's all you really need. It was a bit of a renaissance for me, actually. It's so easy to get into a complete frenzy trying to keep warm, then plate and serve your guests supper before it gets cold. My flatmate Sam is especially good at taking two plates through then standing there nattering to everyone while the food slowly drops in temperature and the mash congeals. This way is so much easier. Dishes that don't rely on being piping hot, and they don't even need 'plating'. Just stick everything on the table and let them go at it.

Duck, watercress and pomegranate salad

Duck ain't cheap, but this reduces the amount you need to serve people. You could do this very well with pigeon too. Indeed, your suggestions towards this dish are welcome, though I'm not sure it needs much fiddling with. I was tempted to sling in some pear, or toasted pine nuts too, but this is lovely in its simplicity.

Serves 6

4 duck breasts, fat removed (don't throw it away! render it over a medium heat in a saucepan and keep for christmas roasties)
1 pomegranate
100g watercress
olive oil
white wine vinegar

First get stuck into the pomegranate. It's a little time consuming, but it's a job to enjoy, not endure. There are a lot of jobs like this in the kitchen. If you look upon them as a chore then you're not doing yourself any favours, but if you stick some music on and enjoy a few quiet minutes of reflection then it turns into quite a pleasant task. Aaanyway, quarter the pomegranates and separate all the pith and membrane, keeping the pink pearls and chucking the rest.
To make the dressing, take a couple of tablespoons of pomegranate seeds and liquidize or chop. Whisk in about 30 ml of vinegar then 50 ml of oil. Taste and adjust. It shouldn't need seasoning.
Pat the duck breasts dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat a little olive oil over a high heat until it's thinking about smoking, and pop in the duck. How long you cook it for both depends on the size of the breasts and how you like them cooked. These were pretty small, so I did 3 minutes a side, but the sort of breasts you see in butchers shops might need double that. I'd suggest cooking for 5 minutes and turning. Give the breast a prod with a finger after a minute or two. If it's slightly firm to the touch you're about right.
Put on the carving board and rest for a few minutes. Put the watercress on a serving plate, slice the duck and lay on top. Scatter with pomegranate seeds and then drizzle with the dressing.

Cous cous with roast squash, feta and mint

Serves 6

1 medium squash
100g cherry tomatoes
2 red chillies
250g cous cous
100g feta
A good handful of fresh mint

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Peel and deseed the squash. Chop into chunks and place on a roasting tray. Drizzle with oil, season and roast for 40 minutes. Add the cherry tomatoes and roast for a further 10 minutes. Pour 300 ml of boiling water over the cous cous, stir, cover and leave for 5 minutes. Meanwhile deseed and finely slice the chillies, crumble the feta and chop the mint. Stir into the cous cous with the squash and cherry tomatoes and season with salt and pepper.

Baba ganoush

Serves 6

2 large aubergines
Juice of a lemon
Chilli powder
100g Tahini
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Turn on two gas hobs, prick the aubergines all over with a fork and place them directly onto the flame. Char for about 15 minutes, turning occasionally. This gives the baba ganoush a wonderful smokey flavour. Pop in the oven and cook for 40 minutes or so, until completely tender. Remove and cool.

Peel the skin off the aubergine and cut in half lengthways. Scoop out the seeds and discard. Put in a magimix with the lemon juice, a pinch of chilli powder, the tahini and salt and pepper. Blend, pouring in about 50 ml of olive oil as you go. Leave to cool and serve.

Eat the whole lot with some flatbreads from my August blog, or some warm pitta breads. A light, nourishing, warming, heavenly supper. And not a potato in sight.

Recipe index needed

2008-11-25T10:54:00.003Z

After a suggestion from a friend I'm trying to work out how I can stick up a recipe index on the blog as well as the 'Blog Archive'...the label thing is about as close as I have managed but I don't think it's ideal - any thoughts, people? x

Cold nights, so long...

2008-11-25T10:22:00.005Z

Blimey it's cold. I returned from a scintillating Italian oral class yesterday and practically fell upon the washing up, principally as a means of warming my ruddy hands. It's the sort of weather that calls for hot, spicy soup. Soup that warms the heart and puts a spring in your step. And there is proper stock in the fridge from last week's roast chicken, a more successful stock than that of some friends...

On Sunday night I went to their house for roast chicken, a real treat after an academically unproductive but quite 'heavy' weekend. I discovered the next morning that they had forgotten about the stock they put on and left it overnight, waking the next morning to a flat that was practically vibrating with the stench of charred chicken carcass. The place now has a police line around it.

Anyway, the soup....you might want to add a tin of tomatoes to this just to add another layer - I almost reckon you should, I just didn't have one at the time.

Spiced pepper and lentil soup

Serves 2-3

1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon hot chilli powder
2 peppers (red, yellow, orange all fine - avoid green)
100g red lentils
1 tin of tomatoes
750ml hot chicken or vegetable stock (cubed is grand)
Salt, pepper and sugar
Yoghurt to finish

Heat a little oil in a saucepan and add the onion. Season and cook, covered, over a gentle heat for 5 minutes or so. Remove the lid and increase the flame. Stir in the chilli powder for 30 seconds, then add the peppers, lentils and tomatoes. Stir for a minute or two to get them going, then add the stock. Season with a little sugar, bring to the boil and simmer for 30-40 minutes, until the lentils are fully cooked (no al dente here, please) and liquidize. Taste for seasoning and serve with a blob of yoghurt. Will keep a human body warm for 1-2 hours. Top up as needed.

Braised oxtail with polenta and gremolata

2008-11-23T15:04:00.002Z

You could certainly argue that oxtail is up there with belly pork as one of the big guns in the sensation that is the slow food movement. I'd actually never cooked it before, but this seemed the right way to cook something like this, and with the polenta it becomes an unbelievably hearty supper. The gremolata really gives it a zip, cutting through the richness of the meat. Savoy cabbage with fennel would make a good accompaniment.

Serves 4

For the oxtail
8 hearty chunks of oxtail
Plain flour
1 onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely diced
2 sticks celery, finely diced
1 clove garlic, sliced
200ml red wine
600ml hot beef or chicken stock
A bay leaf
A handful of rosemary
For the gremolata
50 g flat leaf parsley
The zest of a lemon
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
For the polenta
200g quick cook polenta
800ml water
40g grated Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Pat the oxtail with flour and season generously. Heat a little oil in a casserole or large saucepan. Brown the meat for a minute or two on each side, this will aid the intense richness of the sauce that is so vital. Remove the meat and set aside, then add the vegetables and stir for 5 minutes until lightly caramelised. Add the wine and stir, scraping up all the meat juices from the pan. Simmer for a minute then add the herbs and return the meat to the pan. Pour over the hot stock, cover and bring to the boil. Cook in the oven for 2-3 hours, until the meat is falling off the bone.

Remove the meat and the herbs. Liquidize the cooking liquor thoroughly and return to the pan. Reduce over a medium heat until thickened. Once again return the meat to the proceedings and keep warm.

Finely chop the parsley and add the lemon zest and garlic. To make the polenta, bring the water to the boil and pour in the polenta slowly, whisking as you go. Whisk over a low heat for 1 minute, stir in the parmesan, and serve immediately with the braised oxtail and the gremolata sprinkled on top.

Return of the larder lout

2008-11-21T10:40:00.007Z

I can't believe it has been over a month since my last post. I'm embarrassed. How has this happened, you might ask, though it is more likely that you actually haven't noticed my lack of posts as you have had far better things to do - because a lot has happened in the last month. Hallowe'en, bonfire night, Remembrance Sunday, England beating Germany, and apparently there has been some sort of election in the States. Indeed, with the economic hysteria increasing evermore in intensity, it really feels like world has changed a lot since that chicken curry.

The world of a Bristol final year student has not changed a great deal. A mountain of work and the fact that I still don't have any internet at the flat is responsible for the dearth of postings. Please don't think that I ain't been cooking, though. We have been eating famously, and perhaps one day all the new discoveries will make their meandering way onto this blog. We've had cauliflower cheese with crumbled doritos on top (unbelievably good); pigeon with roast jerusalem artichokes; pumpkin risotto....the list goes on, and we are utterly beholden to Riverford Organic Veg for giving us such inspiration.

This recipe is a really surprising delight. Super simple and comforting, yet surprisingly light. A cracking Saturday lunch.

Potato cakes with brussel sprouts and bacon

Serves 2

2 medium floury potatoes
40 ml whole milk
20g butter
1 teaspoon English mustard
A good handful of Brussels sprouts, cut in half
4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, diced
Soy sauce

Peel the potatoes and chop into chunks. Bring to the boil in salted water and boil until cooked. About 20 minutes. Drain and set aside. In the same pan heat the milk over a gentle flame. Add the spuds and mash them thoroughly. Add the butter and mustard, salt and pepper and whip furiously. Leave to cool for half an hour.

Pat the mash into two cakes. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and add the bacon and sprouts. Cook over a medium high heat, stirring regularly, till the bacon is crispy and sprouts cooked through. Transfer to a warm bowl and drizzle with a little soy sauce. In the same pan fry the potato cakes for 3-4 minutes on each side, till brown and crisp. Serve with the sprouts and bacon.

Heston in da house!

2008-10-15T10:17:00.004+01:00

If you have ever watched Heston Blumenthal (of Fat Duck fame)'s programme 'In Search of Perfection' you will be aware of the frankly ridiculous lengths he goes to in order to find the perfect dish of chilli con carne, peking duck, or whatever -

To achieve the perfect roast chicken, you must first take a bath, wearing the chicken as a shower cap - this really helps to keep the bird moist, as well as giving it that faint 'Head and Shoulders' whiff that really adds so much to a roast lunch. Next season the chicken by standing at the bottom of a stairwell and getting a mate whose name is either Bruno or Malcolm (other names don't work as well) to sprinkle freshly ground black pepper and salt (that you have crystallised from the waters of the Aegean sea that morning) from at least three floors up. Next turn the oven on by getting on your knees and doing it with your teeth (no one wants suds on the oven knob), before stuffing an onion that you have peeled and played cricket with and a lemon that is exactly 8.9cm in diameter up the chicken's rear end. Now you can start preparing the chicken....

That sort of thing.

But seriously, Heston, of whom I'm a huge fan, really drills home the idea that however good a recipe is, it can always be refined. As a home cook I just think you need to draw the line at where cooking stops being enjoyable, and starts being a complete nightmare.

Take chicken curry. I probably make this, in one shape or other (though usually just the one) about once a month. Standard, peaceful procedure. Grind a random combination of cumin, coriander, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, garlic and chilli powder. Add it to sweating onions, add some coconut milk, tin tomatoes, chopped chillies and reduce. Liquidize if you can be arsed. Add chicken, cook, serve with rice. And I love it. It's really pretty good. But it could be so much better. I usually find that, while the sauce is the right consistency at first, the liquid leaking from the chicken waters it down, so I need to fart around taking out the meat with a slotted spoon and reducing it further. Until last night, that is...

Perfect chicken, lentil and butternut squash korma

This is a little hotter than your average korma. Deseed the chillies if you want it milder, but don't then rub your eyes. Or your balls.

Serves 6

5 large chicken breasts
20g fresh coriander
2 fresh red chillies
1 plump clove of garlic, peeled
Half a teaspoon ground cumin
Juice of half a lemon
A good slug of olive oil
A large onion, peeled and sliced
10 cardamom pods
2 cloves
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seed
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
1 teaspoon hot chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tin coconut milk
2 tablespoons tomato puree
300 ml chicken stock
100g lentils
A small butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and chopped into chunks

Chop the chicken into large chunks and place in a bowl. Put the coriander, chillies, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, olive oil and a little salt in a food processor. Blend thoroughly. Add to the chicken, stir well to coat the meat, cover and leave in a fridge for a couple of hours, or preferably overnight.

Preheat the oven to 210C.

In olive oil, sweat the onion in a large pan. Meanwhile remove the seeds from the cardamom and discard the pods, or save to boil with the rice. Grind with the cloves, coriander and cumin seeds, and add the turmeric, chilli powder, ginger and cinnamon. Increase the heat in the saucepan, stir the onions for 2 minutes then add the spices. Stir for a further minute then add the coconut milk, tomato puree and stock. Bring to the boil and stir in the lentils and squash. Season with salt and pepper, cover and simmer over a low heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After 20 minutes, tip the chicken and marinade into an oven proof dish and bake for 25 minutes. Check the consitency of the squash and lentil component and simmer uncovered until reduced, if necessary. Add the chicken, stir through and serve with basmati rice and a glass of cold beer or a punchy red wine (Shiraz would be good).

Sam's Marquess Chicken

2008-10-13T11:25:00.004+01:00

I have never been a massive fan of sweet chilli sauce, finding it too much 'sweet' and not enough 'chilli'. It seemed to be the sort of sauce that people used to pretend they could make things taste good when in fact they were just shaking a bottle full of E numbers over a piece of meat and calling it 'authentic Thai cookery'. Until my flatmate Sam produced a bottle of Lingham's Sweet Chilli Sauce and cooked this delicious recipe of his Dad's last week, and my opinion was changed forever. Stirred into some homemade mayonnaise to go with chips or chicken wings, added to a curry paste or used in a marinade, Linghams is a far superior sauce to its Blue Dragon counterpart.

Serves 2

Two chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
Olive oil
Linghams sweet chilli sauce
Garlic, crushed
Soy sauce
Fresh coriander, chopped
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Slice the chicken breasts into diagonal strips and place in a bowl. Pour over a generous slug of olive oil and add the remaining ingredients to taste. Stir well together, cover and marinade in the fridge for a couple of hours. Get a non stick frying pan nice and hot and add the chicken and a hefty measure of the marinade. Fry until the chicken is cooked (5-7 minutes) and the marinade has reduced and is lovely and sticky. Serve with buttered broccoli and some boiled rice (or rice with sweetcorn, as pictured).

Beetroot and horseradish gratin

2008-10-06T12:20:00.002+01:00

My apologies for the lack of posts lately. This is not due to any laziness or culinary inertia on my part, only down to the fact that we are yet to get internet in the flat yet, and so any 'blogging' is done in the library when I should really be doing more important things (like now). But Rabelais can wait. Last night we treated ourselves to roast beef (TIP - do your shopping on Sunday afternoon, when supermarkets need to get rid of things like meat and you get some seriously good deals), with which we had what I can only describe as the best vegetable accompaniment to beef I have ever eaten. If you think you have one better, send me the recipe and I'll add it to this.

Serves 4

750 g raw beetroot, washed and trimmed
150 ml cream
150 ml whole milk
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons horseradish sauce
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Whisk together the cream, milk, garlic, thyme and horseradish, and season with salt and pepper.

Slice the beetroot 1/2 cm thick and lay a layer in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Pour over a little horseradish mixture, then add another layer of beetroot. Continue just so until you have used all the ingredients, and bake in the oven for 1 hour until pink juices are bubbling at the sides and the kitchen is filled with a heavenly aroma of earthy beetroot, peppy horseradish and heady garlic. Serve with thin slices of roast beef.

Organic vegetables and a punchy soup

2008-09-26T12:15:00.004+01:00

You are probably aware by now that something is afoot in the atmosphere, and there are rumblings from Toyota Pious drivers everywhere that it might even be our fault, and that we should be doing our best to make a change. It's a bit of a moral nightmare for most of us. For every cause that we support, for every time we walk instead of drive, or for every shower we take instead of bath, there is always someone rolling their eyes and telling us that we could be doing more. While finding eco-piety utterly nauseating there is no escaping the fact that these people are unequivocally right (perhaps part of the reason for the nausea). It can be quite daunting.

I would gingerly suggest that the current economic climate might go some way to aiding the ecological one. The implications of driving everywhere or leaving the lights on are no longer focused on the effect your wastage is having on the environment, but also on your wallet. We now have two reasons for being careful with our energy. And this can only be a good thing.

So what can we do to stay green in the kitchen? Well, the possibilities are endless - use the oven as little as possible, keep your fridge at the right temperature, avoid the dishwasher, buy a pressure cooker. But my big beef is with supermarket vegetables, so I have started getting an organic vegetable box delivered weekly to the flat. In my box were, amongst other things, sweet potatoes and broccoli. Local, organic, in season. In the supermarket these had come from Israel and Kenya. Alarm bells are ringing. Can you sit down with a clear conscience and eat greens that are so clearly not green at all? The ecological effect of imported produce is terrifying, not to mention the fact that it cripples our own farmers (oh, I just did).

The quality of my local veg is, needless to say, remarkably better than its supermarket counterparts, but, as I have pointed out, we're now more wary of our wallets than ever, so I think it's only fair to compare prices. I can't start harping on about buying local organic ingredients when you can get them for half the price in the shops. So I dismount from my high horse and get out my calculator. Long story short, the equivalent (in weight and size, not quality) vegetables came to just under a pound cheaper in total than the organic box. Now, if this is the difference between you sleeping on the street and having a roof over your head, then fine. If not, have a think about what you're doing next time you reach for Brazilian beans.

Perhaps the most majestic of the Gourd family, the butternut squash, is sitting proudly in my box. Unwilling to go through the rigmarole of peeling the thing, I cleaver it in half down the middle, pull out the seeds and roast it with some garlic. The result is a rich, intense and velvety soup. Just try not to feel too guilty about using the oven - it's a cooking blog for Pete's sake, it's going to come into play at some point.

Roast butternut squash soup

Serves 6

1 large butternut squash
1 head of garlic
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 litres chicken stock

Preheat the oven to 200C.

With a large knife (with a small one you will find this nigh on impossible) cut the squash straight down the middle and pull out the seeds. Cut the garlic in half horizontally and put half in each scoop of the squash. Season generously with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for an hour and a half until it is as soft as an over-ripe peach and deliciously brown at the edges.

Leave to cool a little while you soften the onion in a little oil in a large saucepan. Scoop out the amber flesh from the squash, discarding the skin and half the garlic. Add the squash to the pan and squidge out the roast garlic into it also. Add the stock and simmer for 5 minutes. Blend thoroughly (make sure the soup is really hot at this point, which helps to ensure a smooth soup) and serve with a swirl of cream and some crusty bread.

Sausage ragu with penne

2008-09-15T12:02:00.004+01:00

The combination of sausage and pasta is one I deal with probably once a month. This might be because I am a greedy fatty who doesn't consider it a meal if an animal hasn't perished in the process, or it might just be because there is something utterly sublime about the way pork mince hugs a pasta noodle like an over-affectionate aunt, or nestles inside a tube of penne, generously offering itself as a little self-made pig in blanket (or perhaps just hiding from my hungry gaze). There is just something so perfect, so comforting about sausage pasta, in any shape or form.

A traditional beef ragu often contains minced pork anyway, a real treat in itself and adding a lot of interest to a standard Bolognese sauce (try it next time you knock up a spag bol) but it is often lean and therefore tends to dry out a little when cooked on its own. The beauty of sausage is that it is a mixture of both meat and fat (hence the bingo wings on many a full English-noshing lorry driver) and so doesn't have the same inclination to dry out.

One of my favourite versions of the sausage pasta is a Nigel Slater concoction, whereby you sweat a chopped onion, add your sausage meat, some white wine, grainy mustard and cream and simmer for 10 minutes or so before stirring in lots of fresh chopped parsley. It's almost unbeatable, and very quick.

This recipe requires little more of your own time, just some more cooking time.

Sausage ragu with penne

Serves 4

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 stick of celery, diced
a handful finely chopped parsley
a sprig of rosemary, leaves pulled off and finely chopped
6-8 plump sausages
150 ml red wine
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 bay leaf
Some freshly grated Parmesan

Heat a little oil over a low heat and add the onion, garlic, carrots and celery. Season and cover. Cook for 30 minutes over the lowest heat you can muster, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, slit the skin of the sausages and remove the meat, discarding the suspicious looking membrane. When the vegetables (the soffritto it is known as in Italy - that's one to impress the ladies, ahem) are completely softened increase the heat and stir in the herbs. Stir for a couple of minutes before adding the sausage meat. Crush with a fork and stir for a further 5 minutes until the meat is completely broken up. Add the wine and simmer for a couple more minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and add the tomatoes and bay leaf. Simmer for 30 minutes. Stir in 400g penne that you have cooked according to pack instructions, and serve in warmed bowls with a sprinkle of parmesan and a little more chopped parsley.

Chicken noodle soup

2008-09-12T09:41:00.004+01:00

Yes yes, I know - more bloody chicken (and 'where's a pudding recipe?' I hear you scream), but come on, roast chicken is something we all encounter a couple of times a month, so it's good to have some top notch leftover recipes up your sleeve. I am still down in Sussex at a friend's house (hence the lack of recent entries) endeavouring to write some music, where we have been fed incredibly well by his Mum. Her roast chicken is sensational, with slippery and caramelised roast onions. We are left to our own devices the following day however, and seeing as there is a lot of roast chicken left and the weather has turned cold a zingy soup is clamoured for. We reckon we're the most gourmet band in the world.

If you don't have any leftover roast chicken (and why should you?) do this with 4 sliced chicken breasts simmered in the broth for 7-8 minutes. I do actually think roast chicken is much better for this, though, with a better texture and flavour. This is also excellent with prawns. Simmer in the broth until pink and firm.

Serves 4-6 easily

For the stock

Leftover chicken carcasses, with plenty of meat on them if possible
2 litres water
a splash of white wine
an onion, peeled and sliced
a stick of celery, sliced
a carrot, chopped into chunks
a few peppercorns

For the rest

2 red onions, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
4 birds eye chillies, sliced (seeds left in)
a thumb of ginger peeled and thinly sliced
a stick of lemongrass, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
a big handful of beansprouts
a packet of udon noodles
a good handful roughly chopped coriander

To make the stock, strip all the meat from the carcass and keep for the soup. With your hands, break up the bones into smaller bits. Put your roasting tray on a high heat and add the onion, celery and carrot. Stir for a couple of minutes, adding oil if necessary (the fat from the roasting should perform this task, however). Add the bones and continue to colour over a high heat for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add a good splash of white wine and scrape up the juices. Transfer the contents to a saucepan, cover with water and add the peppercorns. Bring to a boil and simmer, with the lid off, for 2-3 hours. Pass through a fine sieve and set the stock aside.

Heat a little oil over a low heat in a large saucepan. Add the onions and garlic and stir for a couple of minutes until softened. Add the chillies, ginger and lemon grass, increase the heat and stir for a further two minutes. Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer. Add the soy, beansprouts, noodles and your leftover chicken and simmer for 3 minutes or so. Add the chopped coriander and taste for seasoning. Serve in warm bowls.

A glut of tomatoes

2008-09-09T09:42:00.006+01:00

It's getting to the time of year when you might, if you're very lucky, have a bundle of tomatoes leftover and, if you're unlucky, slowly edging towards a state of inedibility in the larder. I'm not going to pretend you're having a headache about what to do with them, as there are a million freezable things to do with a tomato. Pasta sauce bases are the obvious ones - in Italy they might set three or four days aside for the annual tomato prulping, dragging dusty machines from the cupboards that will skin and seed the fruits quicker than you can say 'penne alla arabbiata' (not that quick, then) and making enough passata to last till the following autumn.

But I can't be doing with the faffing about of skinning and seeding the things. It's certainly worth it in some circumstances. A tomato salad, for example, is improved immeasurably by being skinless. To peel a tomato, by the way, you want to cut a cross in the skin at the base of the fruit, pour boiling water over it and leave to sit for a minute or two - a riper tomato shouldn't need more than a minute. Drain the water, allow to cool and pull off the skin. But I'm not doing that now, because it's a weekday evening and I can't be arsed. I just want something quick and delicious to go with the sea bass I am eating for supper. This recipe can be made in the quantities you are dealing with - it's really a case of approximation, feeling your way through quantities. This is for 500g tomatoes or so, but if you have 5 kg, go for it. As long as you are careful with the vinegar and chilli you will be fine. The jam is absolutely delicious with fish, sausages, cold meat, or added to a pasta sauce.

Oh, another note on tomatoes. They are best kept as far away from the fridge as possible. Picture biting into a cold tomato - not very nice eh? Hard and insipid, not exactly an enjoyable mouthful. Stored at room temperature, or even above (as, of course, it would be on the vine) a tomato will ripen, redden, and be a completely different eating experience.

Tomato chilli jam

2 tablespoons olive oil
4 sprigs rosemary
2 cloves garlic (unpeeled)
500g tomatoes, cut into chunks
50 ml red wine vinegar
200 ml red wine
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper

In a non stick pan, heat the oil over a medium heat and add the rosemary and garlic. Stir for a minute or two and add the tomatoes, vinegar, wine, sugar and chilli flakes. Season well with salt and pepper and bring to a strong simmer. Leave to bubble away for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced completely and you have a thick, dark, unctuous consistency. Taste for seasoning, and add a little more sugar if necessary. Serve hot or cold.

Hot chicken curry for a mild(ish) evening

2008-08-28T12:10:00.005+01:00

Once again there is a chicken from the farm defrosting for supper. Large (almost a small turkey), and organically raised, the skin is a light yellowish hue, and the legs are big enough to knock someone out, or at least chew on and pretend that you are a hobbit eating a partridge leg. And the flavour is phenomenal. I don't have to tell you that a bird that has been raised scratching around in the outdoors, eating grass, grain and vegetable scraps and living for 3 months before being killed and hung for 2 weeks is going to taste a hell of a lot better than birds that are intensively reared, given growth promoters and killed after 6 weeks before being stuffed in polythene and shipped off to a shelf. It really is worth spending an extra few quid on a decent chicken, both in terms of promoting animal welfare and eating meat that isn't full of antibiotics (and actually tastes of something).

I am tempted to roast the chicken, but as eagle-eyed readers will know I roasted a chicken a couple of weeks ago. So I joint the bird, keeping the carcass and wings for stock, and the legs for lunch, and cut the breasts and thigh meat into chunks. The likelihood is that you will, as I usually do, just buy the meat ready-jointed so we'll work on that premise...

Chicken madras

Serves 4

1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
10 cardamom pods
2 cloves
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 medium red onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 green chillies, sliced (seeds removed if you prefer it less spicy!)
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin coconut milk
8 boneless and skinless chicken thighs, cut into chunks

To remove the seeds from the cardamom, crush the green pods under the back of a spoon and pull out the little black seeds. Save the pods to simmer with your rice, and crush the coriander and cumin seeds with the cardamom and cloves. Sweat the onion and garlic over a low heat in a little olive oil or butter, increase the heat and add the crushed spices plus the turmeric, cinnamon and chillies. Stir for a couple of minutes and add the tomatoes. Season with salt and a little sugar. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5-7 minutes. Pour the sauce into a magimix and blend thoroughly, then return to the pan (via a sieve if you can be arsed). Stir in the coconut milk, bring to a gentle simmer and add the chicken. Simmer for 8-10 minutes till the chicken is cooked*. Garnish with chopped coriander and serve with basmati rice.

*You may well find at this point that the sauce is thinner than you prefer. If so, remove the chicken with a slotted spoon, increase the heat, and simmer till reduced to desired consistency.

The best cheese on toast I have ever eaten...

2008-08-25T11:01:00.002+01:00

It's about time the onion was appreciated more. It's not just a base to a soup or stew. It's not just something French people drape over their shoulders and cycle around with all day long. And it's not just the thing your weird neighbour's house smells of, even though you have never actually seen them with an onion. It is one of the most gloriously versatile vegetables around. Baked slowly in the oven it is slippery and gently aromatic; finely sliced into a tomato salad it is crunchy and clean; or chopped and simmered for hours with red wine, sugar and vinegar it makes a fantastic accompaniment to cheese or cold meat. Huzzah for the onion!

On Saturday I made an onion tart, the making of which I won't go into right now. Right now I'm all about the onion, of which I sliced four large ones (not too thinly - you want some bite to the onion in an onion tart) and melted a large knob of butter in a heavy bottomed saute pan. I stirred in the onion, seasoned generously with salt and pepper, covered and cooked over a very low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally. When completely soft, gooey and golden the lid was removed and I added a tablespoon or so of thyme leaves (dried would be fine if that's all you have), increased the heat and cooked uncovered for a further 15 minutes, stirring regularly.

Having made the tart there was still a little onion left. The lunch that followed was a modest, yet utterly self-indulgent feast.

You will need:

A couple of slices of good bread
Grainy mustard
A couple of tablespoons of slow-cooked onion
A good handful of mature cheddar, grated
Worcestershire sauce

Preheat the grill to high.

Toast the bread in the toaster. Spread some mustard over each slice, followed by a good dollop of onion, which you will spread to the edges. Add a handful of cheese and pop under the grill until lightly brown on top. Remove to a plate, add a couple of shakes of Worcestershire sauce and scoff.

The Royal Well Tavern

2008-08-22T15:06:00.004+01:00

I think I have found the best restaurant in the country. Honestly. I'm quite fussy at times, and I do think it is important to be objective about restaurants - to analyse why you did or didn't like a place, what was good, what was bad, and so on. But I can not think of a single bad thing to say about this place. Everything about it was complete perfection.

I went for lunch with my Mum, sister and brother yesterday, and in a small way my life changed forever. After ordering a pint of Tribute at the bar we were shown to our table where we found, to my complete wonderment, a jug of iced water already waiting. I have never, ever seen that before. To boot, there was proper sea salt in a little bowl, and a pepper grinder - items that you seldom see in any restaurant. The real spank-my-arse-and-call-me-Charlie touch was the pot of cornichons (mini gherkins) on the table. Unbelievable! I bloody love cornichons - undoubtedly the best thing to nibble at with a drink. As we mulled over the menu (I am awful with menus - super indecisive) we were brought bread - not just plonked on the table, but offered to us from a basket that they were handing round to everyone - a lovely touch that showed you got well looked after without the service being invasive, which was how things went throughout lunch.

Sam, the Maitre d', was informative, funny (without trying to be a cruise-ship entertainer) and generally very helpful. Our crippling indecision over a menu that was making me froth at the mouth led to us asking for a surprise from the kitchen. Turned out to be the best bit of ordering I've ever done. The first surprise came before the starters in the shape of four bits of grilled chorizo (possibly my favourite sausage) on chickpea puree, which we yomped down. The surprise starters arrived soon afterwards - the Terrine de campagne with celeriac remoulade and (absolutely delicious) toast was what it said on the tin, and what else would you ask of it? Classics don't need faffing, it was cracking. We played musical plates with our starters, the next one coming to me being baked cherry tomatoes with goat's cheese and mint, the tomatoes popping in your mouth and oozing with the creaminess of the cheese, and then the cleansing minty finish; then a delightfully smoky taramasalata on toast followed by a simple, toothsome and very French green bean salad.

After the mayhem of the musical plates our mains arrived. My lamb cutlets were crisp and salty and a deep medium rare, and served with a smashing ratatouille and anchoide (an anchovy paste of sorts, anchovy and lamb being quite magnificent bed partners). Mum had a really lovely chicken dish that came with a sweetcorn pancake - an inspired idea and absolutely scrumptious. My sister's poached sea trout with brown shrimps, samphire and beurre noisette was so good that, having convinced herself that there was no more room at the inn, she picked the last bit of trout out of the waiter's hand as he walked away. And I don't think I have seen a better looking steak than the one my brother greedily devoured, that came with an enormous bowl of golden frites, the lucky bugger.

Everything possible has been thought of in this place - there is a smoking exit signed out the back, so that you don't arrive at the place and have to walk through a plume of cigarette smoke, and apparently there were lillies and proper towels in the ladies' loo. And who said French food was fussy? Humphrey Fletcher's cooking is simple, infinitely tasty and very, very clever. I can't wait to go back.

The Royal Well Tavern is, by the way, in Cheltenham, on Royal Well Place. The phone number is 01242221212, I suggest you give 'em a bell.

Leftover chicken

2008-08-19T17:39:00.007+01:00

Yes indeed, leftovers are quite the hip thing nowadays. Our Prime Minister has given us a ruddy good wrist-slapping (and rightly so) about the appalling amount of food wasted each year by us Brits, and so it's about time we thought twice before a) buying something or b) throwing it away.

There are 101 things you can do with a leftover chicken - stick it in a sandwich with some baby gem lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise; toss it through some pasta with broccoli, lemon juice and olive oil; add it to a risotto with mushrooms, or have it in a salad with some croutons, caesar dressing and shaved parmesan - yum!

But it's still raining, and all I want for lunch is hot soup. It's worth having proper stock for soup - there's nothing wrong with cubed, but a homemade stock is pretty irreplaceable. Making a stock is easy and an excellent way to use every last bit of the bird. Strip the remaining meat from the carcass (this will go in your soup) and put the carcass in a medium saucepan. Cover with water. Add half an onion, a carrot, a stick of celery, a couple of bay leaves, a few peppercorns and, if you have any left, gravy (a lot of people use a clove or two as well - I find their flavour a little bossy). Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 hours. Drain through a sieve and either freeze or use for a risotto or soup, like this one.

If smooth, rich chicken soup is your thing then this ain't it - but it might convert you. This is very simple, rustic broth. Pearl barley is a really lovely grain, and also makes an excellent risotto-style dish. You can find it in most supermarkets these days, and certainly in health food shops.

Chicken and pearl barley broth

Serves 6

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 stick celery, trimmed and finely chopped
200g pearl barley
2 litres hot chicken stock
As much leftover chicken as you have, shredded

Heat a little oil over a low heat in a large saucepan and stir in the onion and celery. Season, cover and soften for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Increase the heat and stir in the pearl barley, then add the stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for an hour or so, until the barley is soft. Add the chicken and simmer for a further 5 minutes before serving. This soup is excellent done in advance and reheated.

Chickening out

2008-08-18T21:46:00.006+01:00

I'm surprised more songs haven't been written about roast chicken. Plenty of good songs about whiskey (Doors 'Alabama Song', Van Morrison 'Moonshine Whiskey'); good songs about bakery (Rolling Stones 'Brown Sugar', The Beatles 'Honey Pie' (not one of their best)) and, of course, Kings of Leon stunning ode to the dairy cow, 'Milk'; but dammit, I can't find a single song about roast chicken. What the hell is going on? Arguably the most perfect, beautiful, and, dare I say, sexy thing to put in front of someone and no one has bothered to strum two notes about it.

Because is there anything more perfect than a well roasted chicken? A juicy steak, charred on the edges, bloody in the middle, might be challenging for a bronze, and sure, a leg of lamb roasted medium rare, on the right day will take the silver no problem (I really hope you're enjoying my Olympic metaphor here), but nothing can put a smile on my face quite as consistently as a chicken fresh from the oven - the earthy undertones of herbs, the pungency of the lemon you have stuffed up its bottom, and the pop and crackle of the skin make it the ultimate crowd pleaser - the 'Brown Sugar' of the meat world?

In terms of bells and whistles I think a chicken responds extremely well to most seasoning, within reason - by this I mean a variety of herbs, garlic, shallots or onions etc etc...I do not mean pineapple or apricots. What I happen to do on this occasion is largely due to what I have at hand - although the unpeeled shallots are a Nigella Lawson touch, and an excellent one.

Roast chicken

Serves 4

A medium sized free range organic chicken
15 shallots
2 heads garlic
a handful of rosemary, thyme and tarragon
half a lemon
Olive oil
100ml vermouth or white wine
100ml water

Preheat the oven to 200C (fan 190C).

Make sure you take the bird out of the fridge an hour before cooking. Putting a cold bit of meat in a hot oven only lengthens the cooking time (quite considerably if it is a large bird). Season the bird inside and out with salt and pepper and stuff the herbs and lemon up its backside. Place it in a roasting dish and throw the (unpeeled) shallots around it. Cut the garlic heads in half horizontally and add to the tin. Drizzle liberally with olive oil, both the shallots, garlic and the chicken, and place in the oven for an hour.

Pierce the thigh, if the juices run clear you have a cooked chicken. Remove it, the shallots and the garlic to a warm plate to rest, and place the roasting tin over a medium heat. Add the vermouth and scrape up all the lovely juices from the chicken. Add the water and simmer for 5 minutes till desired consistency. (If you like a thicker gravy, whisk in a tablespoon flour).

Carve the bird and serve with the gravy and a couple of shallots, and whatever vegetables you are having.

Spiced flatbreads

2008-08-17T16:58:00.004+01:00

Just about every time I bake I ask myself the question 'why don't I do this every day?', before vowing that, from this day forth, I shall. And, inevitably, after the two days of enthusiastic bakery I forget about it for a month before doing it all over again. I don't know why, it's just the way it is. Baking is such a peaceful pleasure - tactile, composed and unhurried, the perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon. These flatbreads are extremely easy (as is most baking) and are such an impressive thing to produce for lunch, or as an accompaniment to a curry or even Moroccan feast.

Don't be put off by the 10 minutes kneading (I'm not quite sure why you would be), or by the fact that, at first the dough will seem wet and unmanageable. As you knead you develop the gluten in the flour and the dough becomes springy and elastic. I will not claim to be an expert in baking, however, being very much an amateur every-now-and-again type of guy. A great baking blog is www.scandilicious.blogspot.com - check it out if you are a keen baker.

Makes 8 slipper sized breads

500g strong white flour
7g sachet dry yeast
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon crushed chillis
350 ml warm water

Lightly crush the coriander, fennel, cumin and chilli in a pestle and mortar and, in a large bowl, mix with the flour, yeast and salt. Make a well in the centre and pour in the water, stirring as you go. When it has come together tip it out onto a lightly floured surface and start working with it with your hands (I find that it actually sticks less if you have wet hands, though is slippery!). Hold the dough with one hand and push it away with the other, fold it back, turn and repeat for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and springy. Return to your bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place for an hour or so, till it has risen in volume considerably. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Pull off a small handful of dough, one at a time, and roll thinly into small slippers. Place in the dry pan and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side. Allow to cool before eating, as the bread will continue to cook during this period. They can then be reheated as and when.

Linguine with prawns, rocket and chilli

2008-08-16T12:11:00.003+01:00

I really want to pretend it's summer - that the sun is shining, and that I am sitting outside drinking rose with friends. The reality is too depressing to fathom. If you are of the same thinking then this dish is for you. Linguine are like spaghetti that someone has sat on - long, narrow, flat noodles ('linguine' means 'little tongues'). This combination is about as fresh and summery as it gets, and will, I hope, make you forget that the rain is lashing at the window and you haven't been outside for about a week.

Linguine with prawns, rocket and chilli

Serves 4

400g dried linguine
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
200g cherry tomatoes, halved
100 ml dry white wine
250g raw king prawns, sliced in half lengthways
75g fresh rocket, washed and roughly chopped
Half a lemon
Salt and pepper

The Italian rule of thumb for a pasta sauce is that one should be able to cook it in the same time it takes the pasta to cook (at least with dried pasta - fresh cooks in minutes). This is one such dish - that is if you have all the prep work done.

So, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and add the linguine. Heat some olive oil in another large pan and add the onion. Stir for a couple of minutes over a medium high heat. Season with salt and pepper and add the parsley, chilli, tomatoes and wine. Cover and simmer for 2-3 minutes until the tomatoes have softened (If you don't have faith in your speed you can do this bit of the sauce in advance). Uncover and add the prawns, stirring for a couple of minutes over a high heat until they are pink and firm to the touch. Stir in the rocket and a squeeze of lemon juice. Taste for seasoning.

Drain the pasta and add to the sauce. Toss thoroughly and serve with a green salad. Another Italian rule of thumb is no Parmesan with fishy pasta, but who am I to tell you not to add it if you want?

Steak and chips

2008-08-13T17:00:00.003+01:00

I'm criminally hung over after a big night in Leeds with a friend and his Argentian ex-colleague. I don't really have the mental ability to write anything coherent or funny, but I promised Hernan I would put this up asap. Slightly thoughtless, you might say, serving steak to an Argentinian. Sort of like giving a Geordie some coal, except less weird. But I feel like steak. I get like that sometimes - the only thing that I could possibly want to eat is a bloody piece of cow with lots of chips and salad. Done.

If you would like to do the chips healthier then preheat the oven to 210 C, and after par-boiling them toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper and cook in the oven for 45 minutes or so. I had actually bought my Mum some truffle butter for her birthday but we ended up having it on the steaks - I'm a bad son, I know, and it sort of ruined the meat. Better beaten into mash potato.

Steak and chips

Serves 4

4 steaks (I like rib-eye best, but whatever you prefer)

6 large Maris Piper potatoes - these are best for chipping and easily found in most supermarkets
2 litres of vegetable oil

Pat the steaks dry and leave uncovered in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Peel the spuds and chop into chips of required size - I am a chunky chip man, you perhaps are not. Put in a pan of salted water, bring to the boil and simmer for 5-10 minutes, depending on their size. Drain and spread on a roasting tray. Put in the fridge for an hour - this dries the potatoes out and means that your chips will be fluffy and crispy, not crap and soggy. Pour the oil into a large saucepan and put over a medium high heat. The oil wants to be about 190C - it is hot enough when a bit of bread sizzles immediately - too hot if it leaps out of the pan. Carefully put your chips into the oil and fry for 10 minutes or so till nicely brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and pop on kitchen paper. Keep warm while you cook the steak.

Season the meat on both sides and rub with a little oil. Heat a heavy cast iron griddle pan over a high heat till smoking. Cook the steaks for two minutes on each side. Rest for 4 minutes in a warm place and serve. Ooh la la.

There's more to life than potatoes

2008-08-11T09:49:00.007+01:00

I love a potato, me. In pretty much any way, shape or form - a mound of mash with sausages and a blob of fiery mustard, a bowl of chips with some aioli in front of the telly on a quiet evening, or a soothing plate of creamy, nutmeggy dauphinoise with roast beef, it is the ultimate accompaniment to a meal, and one I don't reckon I could do without for more than a week. But it is not the only accompaniment.

My friend Pete was literally horrified - wouldn't stop going on about it - at the weekend when I didn't serve potatoes with supper - I mean, really, is this Ireland? Is it still 1912? Darina Allen at Ballymaloe Cookery School once said that the Irish, God bless them, do not consider it a meal without the presence of potatoes in one form or another. But cookery has come such a long way, there are so many equally delicious foods that provide the starch and carb hit we like with our protein. We ate roast lamb (protein) with flageolet bean salad (starch), grilled aubergines and courgettes (vitamins and that) and watercress, rocket and pomegranate salad (er...salad I guess) - were spuds necessary? Am I a culinary dunderhead who does not produce what the average man wants of a Saturday night supper - enough potato to soak up the wine he is glugging? I'll leave that to you to decide, but in the context of the evening menu - a lot of crostini (see below), the main course described above, cheese, and then for pudding basil ice cream with shortbread and raspberries - I thought that the beans would be less heavy than a mountain of spuds. Neither were as heavy, it turns out, as this friend (a 16 stone Hungarian) sitting on me on the kitchen floor at two in the morning.

This was in fact a punishment for the basil ice cream - 'why can't we just have something normal, like vanilla?' (dear oh dear) - which had got him really riled. In his defence, (and I really shouldn't be defending such a narrow-minded philistine), he did taste it three times before becoming absolutely convinced he didn't like it, and I think that's fine. If you say you don't like something and refuse to try it you are a moron. If you try it and don't like it, then you are absolutely entitled to that opinion. There is no right or wrong in cookery. The ice cream went down extremely well with everyone else - it's a corker, and you can find it in Sarah Raven's Garden Book which is my book of the month.

Here are the recipes for two of the crostini we had to start. To make the crostini, preheat the oven to 200C, slice up a country-style baguette, rub with a little garlic, drizzle with oil and pop in the oven for a couple of minutes.

Broad bean, mint and pecorino

Makes enough for 20 small crostini I reckon

250g broad beans, podded
6 large mint leaves, roughly chopped
30g grated pecorino or parmesan
1 clove garlic, crushed
Juice of a lemon, plus extra if needed
A good slug of extra virgin olive oil

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil, add the beans and simmer for four minutes. Drain and run under cold water for a couple of seconds. Put in a food processor with the mint, cheese, garlic, lemon juice and salt and pepper and blend, pouring in the oil as you go till required consistency. Taste and adjust for seasoning, perhaps adding a little more lemon juice if you fancy. Spread on the crostini.

Chicken liver and caramelized shallot

Enough for 20

25g butter
5 shallots, peeled and sliced
100 ml marsala or sherry
250g chicken livers, washed and roughly chopped
2 teaspoons capers, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon chopped gherkin
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Melt half the butter in a saute pan over a low heat and add the shallots. Season and gently cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, till soft and slippery. Whack up the heat and add the marsala. Boil for 10 seconds scraping the onion juices from the bottom of the pan and add the liver, breaking it up a little more as you stir. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the capers, gherkin, parsley and the rest of the butter. Stir and simmer for a further minute. Serve hot or cold on crostini.

Load of old rubbish

2008-08-08T12:32:00.003+01:00

There is a Bialetti coffee pot growing mould in the larder. I'm not sure how long it has been there for, but I am fairly sure it was mouldy when it moved with us to this house 3 years ago, and had probably been mouldy for some time before that. Why hasn't it been thrown away? Rather like the partridges (yes, they're still in the fridge - yesterday Dad was on the verge of chucking them, before deciding to have a leg for lunch, before wimping out when I told him I had bought some ox tongue at the butcher), the coffee pot's loitering is a result of a fear of wasting anything. Quite why a furry percolator or rancid birds will be wasted or missed I can't fathom, but one thing is for sure - this is a habit which is showing no signs of slowing down, what with Mr. Brown's encouragement for us NOT TO WASTE FOOD. But we're missing the point. He's not saying 'don't throw food away' thus creating a sub-culture (culture, get it?) of grime in the fridge, he's saying don't let it get to the point where things go off and need chucking - only buy what you're going to eat. So if you only need 200g beans, don't buy 400g just because it is two for one. It's backwards economics and leads to you having a fridge full of crap you don't want or need.

Dad's a real culprit, in the best possible way. His post-war Yorkshire upbringing led to a frugality often beyond comprehension. One day we had about 40 pheasants to gut. 4 or 5 bin liners were laid out, on which we drew the birds, making an incision in the bird's bottom with a sharp knife and cutting diagonally along towards the thigh for two or three inches, before bravely plunging a hand inside and pulling out the innards. All in all it took us a very messy couple of hours to do this and put the birds in freezer bags. As we were washing our hands, Dad starting washing the bin bags. When asked what the hell he was doing, he explained that he wasn't about to throw away 'perfectly good' bin liners. It beggars belief. Last night I returned from the market with a 3 pound rainbow trout I had bought for our supper. He was horrified - there is a 'perfectly good' river nearby where he could have caught a fish and saved us £4. I apologised, more to appease him than because I was sorry - there weren't many fish in the river, and what there were were tiny - and cooked the thing -

Gut and clean a 1.5 kg trout, and slash the flesh deeply, four times on each side. Into each incision push a sprig of thyme. Season the fish inside and push in a few slices of lemon and a handful of parsley. Place on foil and half wrap. Pour over a slug of olive oil and vermouth or white wine, wrap up completely and cook for 25 minutes at 190C.

We ate it with rosemary roast new potatoes and a green salad. As Dad is mopping up the salad juices he confesses that the last fish he caught and ate, a couple of weeks ago, was white-fleshed and muddy tasting. Sometimes it's worth spending a few pounds for something edible.

A summer risotto

2008-08-06T20:57:00.004+01:00

My no-alcohol endeavours came to a fairly untimely end after 2 long and sweaty sets of tennis when my friend Anthony suggested a pint in our local. The newly refurbished Bull Inn in West Tanfield sits at the bottom of the Yorkshire Dales and perched along the River Ure which becomes the Ouse later in its south-easterly meanderings. It has one of the prettiest beer gardens I have ever been in, beside a stunning old stone bridge. In short, the idea of supping a lime and soda there seems ludicrous. In spitting distance are the Black Sheep and Theaston breweries, with Timothy Taylors not far either, and a great swathe of smaller breweries all producing sublime bitter and ale.

But a man must eat, and our foray into the Bull's menu had to be postponed as Anthony's mother had already cooked for him. Me, I had Dad breathing down my neck to eat whatever was in the fridge (he and Mum were going out for supper) - two barbecued partridges which had been in there for God knows how long, and a huge bag of fresh peas from the garden. The partridges, I decided, could wait for the dogs. I set about shelling the peas, a job made less tiresome by the fact that you could pop them in your mouth as you went, but more so because you had to shell double as a result of this practice. The peas are slung in a risotto with some bacon and fresh mint, and although I burn my tongue in my over-zealousness to gobble it down (it would be soothed by Theakstons later) it is comforting yet inherently summery. These quantities serve 1 but can all be multiplied within reason.

I took a photo but it was crap - you know what a risotto looks like.

Pea, bacon and mint risotto

3 rashers streaky bacon

2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot or onion

75g Arborio risotto rice

A splash of white wine or vermouth

650ml hot chicken stock (cubed is fine)

a handful of freshly shelled peas - frozen are perfectly good too though

25g Parmesan cheese

A few mint leaves, sliced

In a saute pan (like a large saucepan that never grew tall) fry the bacon over a medium heat till lightly crispy and pop on kitchen paper to drain a little. Reduce the heat and add the shallot to the pan with a little olive oil and a crunch of pepper (don't add salt at this point - the bacon, Parmesan and, I find, stock cubes all have a fair amount of salt so only add salt at the end if you feel it is necessary). Soften the shallot, increase the heat and add the rice, stirring for a minute or two. Add the white wine and stir till the rice has absorbed it. Then add a ladle of stock. Once this has been absorbed, add another. Continue in this fashion for 15 minutes, stirring regularly but not constantly - there's really no need. Chop the bacon into bits. When the rice is almost cooked but still has a little bite to it, add the bacon, peas, cheese and mint, and a final ladle of stock and stir for another 2 minutes. Taste for seasoning and add a little salt and/or pepper if necessary. Eat. Don't burn your tongue.

The Detox Begins

2008-08-06T11:26:00.009+01:00

The last seven weeks have consisted largely of uninterrupted over-eating and over-drinking - my internship with a food magazine has taken its toll on my jowls, while seemingly endless parties and, this past weekend, a festival, are proudly making themselves known in both my liver and belly. I feel utterly deranged. Tired, unhealthy and morose. But I'm back home in Yorkshire now and it's time to sharpen up. A couple of booze-free, healthy-eating days and I'll be right as rain...probably. I mean it's all very well having good intentions, but in the middle of August (I won't say summer - I'm not entirely sure summer is actually a season anymore; more the odd day here and there - like bank holidays) when there are pubs to go to, parties to attend and homemade cider to drink, it's going to be hard staying sober and avoiding naughty food.

What makes it easier is the fact that the garden is producing some of the most wonderful vegetables imaginable. Tomatoes so sweet and juicy that you can eat them like an apple; courgettes and chillies, and anya potatoes that are earthy and delightfully savoury. A light sprinkling of sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil and I'll eat an entire saucepan before you can say spicy zinger burger. Oh! and the salads, so fresh and crunchy they hardly need dressing. This one does however, the punch of the mustard and the fizz of the vinegar going so well with the rich mackerel and poached egg.

Smoked mackerel and poached egg salad

Serves 2

25 ml white wine vinegar (plus a little extra)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

40 ml extra virgin olive oil

2 fillets smoked mackerel

2 free range eggs (preferably organic)

A few small tomatoes, quartered

1/2 a small red onion, finely sliced

100g salad leaves

Salt and pepper

Put a small pan of water on the boil with a little salt and a dash of white wine vinegar.

Make the dressing by whisking the vinegar into the mustard in a large bowl, then whisking in the olive oil. Season with a little salt and plenty of pepper.

When the water is boiling furiously, pour your eggs into separate espresso cups, or something similar. Whisk the water round so you have yourself a little tempestuous whirlpool, and drop the eggs, one by one, into the middle. Simmer for 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the skins from the mackerel and pull the flesh into pieces. Toss through the leaves with the onion, tomatoes and dressing. Transfer to a plate or shallow bowl, pop the egg on top, season with a pinch of sea salt and scrunch of pepper and serve.

If you don't like: Mackerel - try it with some crispy smoked bacon.

Ladies and jellyspoons, I give you...The Larder Lout

2008-08-05T15:23:00.006+01:00

Oh how I abhor the stereotyping of students - slobbish ne'er-do-wells with government loans, unwashed clothes, several days' stubble and an alcohol problem. Fie on you nay sayers, you! The vast majority of my fellow students are civilised, cultured and diligent. But my God do they eat some absolute slurry. Before I continue, and hopefully before you close this blog, I will say this, however - there will absolutely not be any food snobbery in this blog whatsoever. When I say 'slurry' I mean only that I don't consider a take-away pizza or microwave chicken kiev a suitable supper for a student (you know who you are), the first being uneconomical and greasy, the second quite a health risk. No, there will be no snobbery here. All there will be is delicious recipes made with good ingredients.

In our house in Bristol last year the five of us ate together pretty much every night - certainly whoever was around would eat together, and it meant that by the end of that year we felt like a family. Food is such an intimate thing, that feeding someone and watching them enjoy it is a real pleasure. I am also convinced that we spent less money than others who didn't cook every night. Good food isn't expensive. Take-aways are.

In an ideal world you should buy organic produce wherever possible. However, I think that much more important than organic produce is that it is local produce. There are environmental implications to eating basil that has been flown over from Israel, or beans from Brazil, but there are gastronomic implications also. A vegetable that comes from soil near to where you're eating it will have grown in the same environment in which you live, breathed the same air you breath, been quenched by the same water you drink. It will taste infinitely better than one that has grown in foreign soils, been sprayed to keep it fresh, packed onto a ship and crossed oceans and time zones. The day you eat a potato that you have dug out of the soil an hour before is the day you eat perfection.

So, here I am, taking a hammer to the public perception of students as kebab-munching, beer-swilling lager louts...I am the Larder Lout.