Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef - Recipes

Hello, What's This Recipes Blog?

2009-01-02T01:00:00.000+01:00

No - this isn't really a stand-alone recipes blog. It's an appendix of my food blog: Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef containing links to all my special recipe posts. These are in a separate file because they have a different format from the main section.

That's why this looks odd - it's not meant to be read chronologically but as a series of hyperlinked articles. It would be best to check out my food blog, but you are very welcome to browse here if you want.

My Favourite Recipes

2008-10-24T01:00:00.114+02:00

Recipes are not really my thing. As someone training as a professional chef, I'm concerned with developing my creativity, techniques, skills and knowledge of produce, rather than my ability to copy the cooking of others. Once you learn the principles behind cooking, recipes become merely checklists - in the industry these are known as specification sheets. These are used to assist the ordering process, as a basis for costings and as aides-mémoire for forgetful chefs and guidelines for stagières. Because I don't cook from recipes myself, there's a certain irony in my publishing a recipes section on my blog. However, when I started this blog I found myself producing photo-recipes to illustrate posts about my home cooking and work at college. So in this section I've indexed these photo-recipes and provided links to them, along with a few others without photos.

You'll notice that I tend not to be very precise about quantities (and sometimes about ingredients). The closest analogy I can come up with is from the world of music. Many performers spend their lives valiantly attempting to reproduce notes as documented in the sheet music. That is not to denigrate such efforts. The best classical performers make wonderful music and add their own unique colour and feeling to their output. But it's a search for reproducible perfection. I play jazz, or at least I try to. I like to extemporise, taking my cooking exactly where my mood dictates. Each time I cook a dish it will be different - recognisable as the same dish, but reflecting the mood of the moment. My toolset comprises my knowledge of ingredients, my techniques and my palate. With these invaluable friends in my kitchen I can close the cookbooks and make music.

I've separated the recipes along classic lines because that's the way most people expect to find them, although personally I'm not really interested in food that conforms to the classical courses of French haute cuisine - I'm more into tapas-style eating for everyday meals and full tasting menus when it comes to fine dining experiences.

	Butternut Soup with Shiitake		Green Cauliflower Espuma		Green Seasoning
	Latkes With Apple Sauce And Sour Cream		Okra And Cumin Soup		Pa Amb Tomàquet

Amaretto Flambéed Seafood	Arroz Negro Con Allioli	Bacalhau À Braz De Hackney
Cockles With Amaretto And Coconut Rice	Coquille Saint-Patrice	Hake With Pil-Pil
Lobster With Baby Asparagus & Mango-Chilli Mousse	Mulled Wine-Poached Cod & Lemon-Scented Asparagus On Creamy Nam Pla Spinach Polenta	Mussels With Guinness And Garlic
Salmon Fish Cakes	Seafood And Avocado Maki	Smoked Salmon And Poached Egg On Toast
Thai White Asparagus Soup, Lobster & Curry Salt	Tofu Makizushi

Atlas Mountain Soup, Hackney Style	Black Sausage And Cockles With Patatas Bravas	Catalan Steak
Chicken Burgers and Chunky Chips With Wakame And Shallot Mayonnaise	Cinnamon Pineapple Pork With Kale Bubble & Squeak	Cod And Jamón Ibérico With Mandarin & Basil
Goulash (Testing Three Different Paprikas)	Hungarian Paprika Chicken	Mallard Breast With Red Cabbage, Ginger & Marmalade
Oxtail With Cauliflower Foam And Truffle	Papaya, Garlic & Anise Marinated Lamb Rack With Panch Phoron Kabocha And Creamy Garlic Sauce	Quick And Easy Duck À L'Orange
Slow-Braised Neck Of Lamb With Mélange Viande, Chantenay Carrots, Pearl Onions And Roasted Maris Pipers	Steak Au Poivre	Surf And Turf Chicken Livers With Soy Spinach And Wild Rice
Trini Pelau (Rice, Chicken And Pigeon Peas)	Trinidad Stew Chicken	Tuscan Spicy Sausages With Leek & Onion
Two-Day Marinaded Brown Stew Chicken And Wild Rice With Sesame Sautéed Broccoli

	Chèvre And Medjool Salad		Quinoa Tabouleh		Shiitake And Saffron Risotto
	Soft Saffron Gel With Purée And Air Of Beetroot		Vegetable Noodle Soup

Apple Caviar	Apple Sauce With Rhubarb Compote And Soured Cream	Blueberry And Goats' Milk Pana Cotta
Catalan Chocolate, Olive Oil & Salt	Elderberry Baked Alaska	Gluten-Free Christmas Cake
Hazelnut pralines	Rose Water Caviar	Rhubarb Ice Cream
Twice-Churned Watermelon And Coconut Ice Cream	Wattleseed And Lemon Myrtle Rolled Pavlova

Tofu Makizushi

2007-11-09T10:49:00.016+01:00

Makizushi is essentially vinegared rice, plus selected ingredients, rolled inside nori (dried and pressed layer sheets of edible seaweed). Tofu makizushi is a makizushi made with tofu, or pressed bean curd. I made this dish at home the other day using ingredients from my Menu For Hope raffle-winning prize parcel. The art of making good glutinous rice is one that takes many many years of practice, and most Japanese sushi chefs would probably sooner let you fillet their mackerel than wash and cook their rice. I used to make sushi rice for makizushi every day when I worked at Comerç 24, so I guess the Western kitchen has allowed me to fast-track a few years. That said, I'm sure there will be some Japanese chefs shaking their heads at my Europeanised approach. I can only say that this recipe allows relatively inexperienced cooks to come somewhere close to producing the genuine article. Vegetarians should bear in mind that the bonito stock used in this recipe is made from dried fish.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 cup sushi rice
200g tofu
100g pickled ginger
4 sheets nori seaweed
2 tbsp sushi vinegar
150ml bonito stock
1 tsp wasabi paste
salt and pepper

You also need a sushi rolling mat in order to prepare this dish.

Method

The most important thing about making sushi is not to try to substitute non-Asian ingredients for the real thing. Most people will have access to a town in which suitable ingredients can be purchased from a Japanese, Korean or other east Asian food store. Don't try using basmati rice, crystalised ginger, carragheen and horseradish or you will end up with an awful mess! Just go to an Asian store, preferably a Japanese one, and ask advice.

First wash the rice in a sieve under clean running cold water for two minutes, thoroughly stirring the grains around with one hand.

Then put the rice into a solid-bottomed pan and point your index finger vertically downwards, just touching the surface of the rice. Now fill the pan with fresh cold water up to the level of the first knuckle on your index finger. This is the correct amount of water to cook the rice sufficiently so that the water will be fully absorbed, leaving none behind after cooking. Place the pan over a medium heat and bring the water to the boil.

As soon as the rice begins to bubble vigorously, remove to a minimum heat and cover. Leave for 12 minutes exactly.

While the rice is cooking, cut the tofu into 2-3" batons and marinate them in the bonito stock. The sweet and smoky flavour of the bonito will really penetrate into the protein-rich tofu, which is otherwise relatively tasteless.

After 10 minutes, remove the tofu and place it on a tray with the pickled ginger, ready for action.

These two ingredients will be the filling for your makizushi.

The rice having cooked for 12 minutes, remove it from the heat and leave it, still covered, for a further 2 minutes.

By now the rice will have become glutinous. It will appear to have the texture of a dry risotto, with the individual grains bound by a thick starchy liquid.

Add two tablespoons of sushi vinegar and stir until blended into the rice. Leave the rice to cool naturally, until it reaches room temperature.

Now it's time to lay out and roll the makizushi. Repeat the following steps for each of your sushi rolls.

Lay out a sheet of nori on the sushi rolling mat.

Now apply a thin but liberal layer of rice to the nori sheet, leaving a space of one inch at the far end which will act as an adhesive tab to seal the rolled maki.

A few light smears of wasabi paste will create little bursting surprises of spiciness throughout the finished product.

One third of the way down the sheet (from front to back, not side to side), lay out the filling ingredients of pickled ginger and marinated tofu in a horizontal line from one end to the other going right to the edges.

The more observant will notice that I made the makizushi roll in this photo without any wasabi, so as not to overload on the stuff.

Now carefully roll the sushi away from you, moistening the spare nori that you left at the end, to achieve a seal. It's pretty much the same as rolling a cigarette - just on a much larger scale.

You are bound to make a bit of a mess at first, but you'll probably be surprised how quickly you'll develop your rolling skills.

A neat slicing act with a sharp knife and the job is complete. Which reminds me of a very important piece of advice - when cutting traditional nori-rolled maki you need a really sharp knife and a very smooth and consistent slicing action in order to end up with clean, flat edges on your finished product. Of course if you're only making these for yourself then it doesn't really matter, but if you are attempting these for a dinner party then you should bear this in mind. And here they are - traditional tofu makizushi made at home in your own kitchen. Delicious!

Arroz Negro Con Allioli

2007-11-08T19:55:00.008+01:00

Arroz negro con allioli (black rice with garlic mayonnaise) is now a classical dish across Spain, including Catalunya. And it was while undertaking a brief training stage in Catalunya at the Hotel Mas Passamaner in Tarragona that I first came across it. Head Chef at the hotel's La Gigantea restaurant, the multi-Michelin-starred Joaquim Koerper, originated the technique in the early 1980s, using squid ink. In this recipe, I use octopus ink instead.

Ingredients (serves 2)

200ml octopus ink
2 Spanish onions
4 cloves garlic
150g short-grain rice
4 tbsp allioli
olive oil
garlic & guindilla oil (or 1 clove garlic and 1 guindilla chilli)
salt
black pepper

Method

I'm not expecting you to prepare your own ink, as I did. Nor would I for a home meal under normal circumstances, but I'd been preparing octopus ink at work in the kitchens of Lasarte and was able to take some perks home with me.

The strange, pearl-like globules you can see in the photo are the individual ink sacks of hundreds of baby octopi ("pulpitos" in Spanish), painstakingly squeezed from the heads of these miniature cephalopods by yours truly.

You can purchase octopus ink from specialist stores and on-line suppliers, although you may find it easier to obtain squid ink, which will do just as well.

In the bowl on the right is my raw ink, ready for cooking. I obtained this by blitzing up the ink sacks with an immersion blender and passing the resulting jet-black mess through a fine sieve.

In order to make a home-cooked arroz negro from scratch, you begin by making a stock with the ink, as a base in which to cook the short-grain rice. Begin by sautéeing off some roughly chopped Spanish onions in olive oil, with a little added garlic & guindilla oil. If you can't source the ready-made oil, just crush and finely chop the garlic and guindilla chilli and add them at this stage.

Cook the onions gently until they are translucent and have softened up considerably.

Then smash up the cloves of garlic and throw them into the pot to perfume the onions and add some extra depth of flavour.

Leave the onions to sautée together with the garlic for quite a while, allowing natural caramelisation to occur slowly and a gentle sweetness to be achieved in the finished product.

At this stage, pour in the octopus ink to deglaze the pan and cook very slowly for half an hour or so.

The photo on the left shows the resulting stock in all its filthy, murky glory.

Now you have your magic, salty, black dye all that is left to do is to cook your white short-grain rice in it.

After a while, you will find that the ink has reduced down to a dry, glutinous sauce that binds the grains of rice together much like a risotto.

Finally, no arroz negro would be complete without a big fat dollop of spicy allioli to ripple through the melting heat of the rice. Here's a dish that could just as easily be adapted to a Michelin starred restaurant's menu as it could be served in hefty portions at a hearty banquet for the local villagers. Either way - whether presented as fine dining or rustic fare - this is real Catalan soul food.

48 Hour Marinaded Chicken

2007-11-07T22:26:00.000+01:00

http://aidanbrooks-testbed.blogspot.com/2009/01/48-hour-marinated-chicken.html

Oxtail With Cauliflower Foam And Truffle

2007-11-06T19:12:00.000+01:00

This is a seemingly simple dish - just three main elements: oxtail, cauliflower and truffle. But don't be fooled by the simplicity of the dish, because in practice it's one that involves a lot of preparation and very precise execution to pull off. It also involves some expensive ingredients - so it's a dish reserved for the more experienced home cook. Known in Catalan as rabo de toro con espuma de coliflor y trufa, this dish was created by Carles Abellan at Comerç 24 in Barcelona.

Ingredients (serves 2)

500g oxtail pieces
1 medium cauliflower
100ml cream
black truffle paste
1 large onion
2 carrots
1 stick celery
2 large tomatoes
rosemary
bay leaf
thyme
flour
salt
black pepper
sunflower oil
truffle oil

Method

The oxtail pieces are first tossed in a little flour seasoned with salt and pepper and then browned in a heavy pan. Sauté a mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery in a little sunflower oil until soft, chop and add the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.

When the oxtail is caramelised, pour some boiling water into the pan, deglaze it and add the oxtail and juices to the pan with the mirepoix and tomatoes. Add rosemary, bay leaves and thyme and top up the water until everything is covered. Braise very gently for 3-4 hours until the meat falls off the bones like melting butter.

Leave the oxtails to cool in the braising liquor and then separate them from the cooked vegetables. Reduced the stock to a gravy, while stripping the meat from the bones and shredding gently. Once the stock is sufficiently syrupy, add the meat back into the reduced stock to coat it completely, allowing the two to blend into one rich, meaty amalgamation. Set the oxtail and stock aside.

Strip the leaves from the cauliflower and then break it down into florets. Boil these softly in well-salted water until a knife runs smoothly through the stalk. Strain the florets carefully, removing all of the water.

Transfer the cauliflower florets to a blender and blitz, while gradually adding cream. Continue slowly until a porridge-like consistency is achieved.

Check for seasoning, adding salt as required, before passing the purée through a fine chinois. Allow to cool and then load into a siphon, charged with nitrous oxide.

Keep the siphon warm in a bain marie until ready for use.

The garnish for this dish is again a simple preparation, but one that makes an enormous difference to the final product. Blitz together a small quantity of good quality Italian black truffle paste with sunflower oil to create a semi-emulsified sauce.

To serve: Spoon some of the oxtail and stock mixture into one side of a round bowl plate and followed with the hot cauliflower foam ejected straight from a siphon to the other side of the bowl. Then spiral the black truffle sauce over the foam and add a dash of truffle oil to enhance the aroma.

This isn't a dish that's designed to shock or take you to the edge of your comfort zone. Quite the opposite in fact - it's warming, indulgent and sumptuous comfort food. You take a spoonful of the rich meaty oxtail, scoop up some of the fluffy cloud-like cauliflower foam with some of that intoxicatingly aromatic truffle and you've got heaven in a mouthful.

Thai White Asparagus Soup, Lobster & Curry Salt

2007-11-05T22:18:00.011+01:00

This was a dinner that I cooked for myself one evening after work using ingredients left over from dishes at work that day. I surprised myself with how satisfying a dish I made and how easy it was to cook.

Ingredients

250g white asparagus
200g lobster tail
1 bird's eye chilli
1 lime
1 small piece of ginger
lemongrass
fresh coriander
curry powder*
sesame seeds (optional)
Maldon salt

* Don't use cheap commercial 'curry powder' for this. Either source a fresh mix from an Indian store or make up your own using dhania, jeera, garam masala, haldi, chilli powder, asafoetida and mace.

Method

Firstly grill or bake the lobster tail, making sure that the outside is crispy and the inside moist and soft.

Next make the soup by cooking the white asparagus very gently in a little salted water, allowing to cool in the cooking water and then puréeing together with the cooking liquid. This method of preparation ensures that every single drop of flavour and nutrition from the asparagus is kept within the soup and nothing is lost in the cooking process. Allow to cool for an hour and then add lemongrass, fresh coriander, bird's eye chilli, lime and roughly grated ginger.

Finally, create a 'curry salt' by gently grinding some Maldon salt with a little curry powder in a pestle and mortar.

Serve the lobster with the soup and curry salt, preferably on a black plate. The sesame seeds are an optional extra element in this dish, used to accentuate the colour contrast between the black of the plate and white of the soup and to add a little crunchiness to the texture of the dish.

All in all a very satisfying dish, especially when you consider that when I made it first it was simply knocked together from leftovers.

Seafood And Avocado Maki

2007-11-04T19:14:00.000+01:00

This is a dish that requires a little practice to get right, but once perfected is fairly simple to make and can be a stunning crowd-pleaser at dinner parties or buffets. The inspiration behind the dish comes from the classic Japanese makizushi, a staple of the sushi repertoire combining raw fish and cooked seasoned rice, rolled in nori seaweed. Anyone who eats sushi regularly - particularly those in the US, will know that avocado has become quite a popular ingredient in non-traditional sushi preparation, for instance in creations such as the California roll. This recipe, originally developed by Carles Abellan at Comerç 24, takes the idea of using avocado and throws the rules completely out of the window by using it as the outside instead of the filling. Inside this maki is the usual seasoned rice but, instead of raw fish, cooked lobster.

Ingredients

2 avocados
50g cooked seafood (lobster, crab, mussels or cockles preferred)
50g sushi rice
1 jalapeño chilli
crushed nachos
fresh coriander leaves
dark soy sauce
rice vinegar
sesame oil
ginger
extra virgin olive oil
sunflower oil
black pepper
freshly squeezed lime juice
salt

Method

Start by cooking the sushi rice by the evaporation method. This means placing the rice in a sieve, rinsing with clean running water and putting into a wide, stainless steel pan. Then add cold water so that the rice is covered, plus an extra two centimetres of water above the surface of the rice. Cover with a lid and steam for 12-15 minutes until the water has been completely absorbed by the rice.

Remove the pan from the heat and leave it for two minutes still covered. Make up a dressing using a little soy sauce and rice vinegar, a dash each of sesame oil and lime juice and a pinch of finely chopped ginger. Apply this to the rice while still piping hot and stir gently so that the rice is evenly seasoned. Leave to cool before covering with a skin of clingfilm and setting aside in the fridge.

Peel the ripest avocado and remove the stone, trying to retain the shape of the avocado as best as possible. Take one of the halves, cut into pieces and place in a plastic container with coriander leaves, some lime juice, salt and the jalapeño chilli with its seeds removed. Blitz with a stick blender until a completely smooth guacamole is achieved.

Now open the least ripe avocado and, using a mandolin, cut into very fine slices directly over a sheet of silicone paper brushed lightly with sunflower oil, each slice slightly overlapping the one before as shown in the picture, left. This sheet of sliced avocado will be used in place of the usual nori seaweed as the outside wrapping of the maki.

Trim the avocado slices top and bottom with a sharp knife, so that the sheet of slices is rectangular.

The next step is to take some of the cooked rice with moist hands, and mould a line across the avocado slices - making sure that it's the same thickness all the way along.

Now add your choice of cooked seafood. In the picture right I've used Galician mussels, cooked al vapor in the traditional Spanish way. Lobster, crab, cockles or razor clam makes an equally great tasting maki.

The next step is to roll the maki. The trick to this process is taking up the loose cling film on the side closest to yourself and using it to half roll the maki, just enough so that the long edge folds around and tucks it into itself in the centre.

Once you've got that far, take the cling film away and use the loose edge again to roll the whole thing over so that the seam is hidden underneath the maki.

Having rolled the sushi, brush the surface with a little soy sauce mixed with rice vinegar and garlic and garnish with small cones of the guacamole and leaves of coriander, as shown in the photo at the top of this recipe. Finally, add a line of crushed nachos down the centre of the maki, to add some texture to the dish and finish off with a good grinding of black pepper.

The preparation for this maki dish might sound very complicated, but in essence it's actually quite a simple dish that relies more on quality produce to show its excellence. You must make sure that you use only the best quality seafood and perfectly ripe avocados.

If you look at the dish as a whole, you get wonderful fresh seafood, umami and saltiness from the rice, crunch from the tortilla chips, creaminess from the avocado, sour and spicy from the guacamole and black pepper and a pleasant bitterness from the olive oil. All in all, a fabulous composite of flavours, textures and colours.

Vegetable Noodle Soup

2007-11-03T19:15:00.001+01:00

Sopa de Fideos Vegetales as this dish is known in Catalunya is Catalan for vegetable noodle soup - which might make you think of a dish from Bangkok, Guangzhou or maybe even Haifa. But the dish, created by Carles Abellan of Comerç 24 in Barcelona, is certainly not your average vegetable noodle soup. For starters, the soup doesn't actually contain any noodles. The 'noodle' element of the dish is instead represented by fine juliennes of seven different ingredients - green mango, white asparagus, carrot, daikon, green asparagus, courgette and young asparagus shoots. When I first made this soup at home, I thought the original restaurant recipe would be too difficult to recreate in the domestic kitchen, but I was wrong. It takes time and concentration, but this is a recipe that can be followed by anyone and lead to a stunning result that would certainly impress dinner party guests.

Ingredients (2-3 servings)

50g shiitake mushroom
20g kombu seaweed
¼ courgette
¼ carrot
¼ daikon radish
½ bunch green asparagus
½ bunch white asparagus
¼ green (unripe) mango
½ packet asparagus shoots
½ lime
½ thumb-sized piece of ginger
black sesame seeds
rice wine vinegar
dark soy sauce
sesame oil
1 sprig fresh mint (optional)
a few petals of pansy, Szechuan pepper and other edible flowers (optional)
salt

Method

You should be able to find dried shiitake mushrooms in your local deli (and these days probably your local supermarket). The kombu seaweed you'll need for this dish might be a little harder to find - try a local Asian store. Failing that, it can be purchased online from Japanese food specialists. Szechuan pepper flowers can be bought from a Chinese food store and also from internet retailers. Be careful with other edible petals - if you are not absolutely sure about the flowers you are using you could easily poison yourself accidentally!

When you're ready to start, submerge the shiitake in half a litre of water for a period of two hours. During this time, bring it to the boil as if it were a tea, grate the ginger and add this along with the kombu seaweed. Then tightly cover the pan with cling film and leave it to naturally cool over a period of at least six hours.

While the infusion is heating, you'll have loads of time to get on with preparing the vegetable noodles. As you can see from the photo on the left, there are seven different ingredients, each with their own wonderfully individual texture and flavour - daikon at the top and, left to right, green asparagus, carrot, asparagus shoots, courgette, white asparagus and mango. The visual effect of the chosen ingredients is quite stunning, with a balance of green, yellow, orange and white noodles.

At this point in the proceedings you can prepare your ginger, kombu and lime. Shred the ginger on the course side of a cheese grater, skin and all. This breaks the fibres of the ginger's flesh and helps to maximise the release of its intoxicating perfume. You should also prepare your kombu by breaking it into rough pieces of a size that will fit into the pan. Zest, then segment the lime and cut a few segments in half. These will be used in the garnish.

You don't want your infusion to reach a rolling boil, but just to arrive at a gentle simmer before removing it from the heat and adding the kombu and grated ginger. Now cling film her up and leave the whole thing outside of the fridge to infuse for as many hours as you can sensibly allow for.

When you're happy with the flavour of your infusion, strain it through a fine sieve and chill immediately.

Now to prepare the vegetables (and fruit) for the 'noodles'. First of all, put on a pan of water with a lid and bring to the boil. Then carefully peel the asparagus, carrot, daikon, mango and courgette. If you possess a mandolin, use this to cut the white and green asparagus, otherwise slice everything carefully with a sharp knife. Once everything is sliced, cut the slices into julienne as shown in the picture left, taking care to discard the seedy centre parts of the courgette slices. The asparagus shoots need no preparation other than washing.

By now your blanching water should have reached a boil, so add a generous amount of salt to it. You'll also need to prepare a bath of ice water, which you should also salt. Now, one by one, blanch the different vegetables in the boiling water and refresh in the ice bath. Each vegetable has a different cooking time, ranging from five or so seconds for the courgette to a full minute for the asparagus shoots. The key is to test a julienne every few seconds as you go along, as it is very important that you keep the vegetables al dente.

You only want to take the harsh rawness away from the vegetables, not cook them until soft. The noodles are the key element of this dish - not the infusion. The point of the dish is to show off a variation of textural crunches based on the perfect preparation of the vegetables, from the cutting to the blanching.

When blanching, it's also important to start with the white juliennes - the daikon and white asparagus, then the green - courgette and green asparaus, then the asparagus shoots and finally the carrot. By blanching them in this order, you'll keep your water clearer and help to prevent discolouration of the vegetables. You don't need to cook the mango.

When your noodles are ready, lay them out in neat bunches at the bottom of a small bowl. The best order as far as colour coordination is concerned is: mango, green asparagus, daikon, carrot, courgette, white asparaus, asparagus shoots.

Now sprinkle over a few black sesame seeds, the lime zest, two pieces of the lime segment, a pinch of Szechuan pepper flower and the edible petals if you have included these. Season the noodles with a light dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. Pour over the chilled shiitake infusion and finish with a sprigette of mint. Leave for one minute before consuming as if it were a cold tea.

Black Sausage And Cockles With Patatas Bravas

2007-11-02T19:17:00.002+01:00

Butifarra Y Berberechos Con Patatas Bravasis is a Catalan feast, incorporating three of Catalunya's most loved food items - butifarra negra (black blood sausage), berberechos (cockle clams) and patatas bravas (fried potatoes in chilli and tomato sauce). I'm not at all sure that patatas bravas would ever be eaten with butifarra (or cockles for that matter) in a Catalan home, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and this dish is an excellent combination of flavours, textures, aromas and colours.

Ingredients

300g butifarra negra sausage
300g frying potatoes (Russets or similar variety)
300g live cockles
1 banana shallot
2 large tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
½ hot red chilli, de-seeded
½ tsp pimenton (sweet paprika)
Maldon salt
black pepper
sunflower oil
olive oil

Method

Chop the potatoes into rough, small chunks and blanch for a couple of minutes. Heat a little sunflower oil in a frying pan, remove and drain the chunks of potato and toss in the hot oil. Put the butifarra into a very hot second frying pan with no oil, to caramelise the skin of the sausage and get the fatty insides flowing out.

While the butifarra and the potatoes are cooking, prepared the spicy tomato sauce that will turn the otherwise ordinary fried spuds into the classic Spanish tapa patatas bravas. Finely chop the shallot, garlic and de-seeded red chilli and sweat them in a little olive oil. Add the pimenton and cook for a few minutes. Then chop the tomatoes and stir into the chilli onion. Cook for a few minutes until the tomato pieces are soft but retain some of their chunky shape.

Check that the cockles are still alive by tapping the shells of any that are open and making sure that they close quickly. Discard any that remain open.

By the time the sausages are just about ready and the potatoes have turned a golden colour, throw the cockles into the pan with the butifarra and toss them together briefly until the shells pop open and the fatty goodness from the pan combines with their salty sea-shore flavour. Discard any cockles that fail to open.

Tip the fried potatoes out onto kitchen paper to absorb any excess oil and add a sprinkling of Maldon salt. Plate the potatoes alongside the butifarra and cockles mixture and pour the hot sauce over the potatoes. Eat while piping hot.

Hake With Pil-Pil

2007-11-01T19:25:00.000+01:00

Pil-pil is just about as classic and traditional as Basque regional cooking can get. Whereas the Basques would normally make pil-pil with bacalao (cod), the recipe that I'm sharing with you here uses lluçet, or wild hake, with a touch of English fusion thrown in for good measure.

Ingredients

1 hake, filleted
2 cloves garlic
1 guindilla chilli
1 cod skin
1 Granny Smith apple
1 bunch chives
olive oil

Method

The term pil-pil essentially describes the process by which fish is cooked and served in the Basque Country. Pil-pil is also the name given to the sauce that results from the cooking process. This is based on an emulsion created between the olive oil in which the fish is cooked and the natural gelatin extracted from the skin of the fish during a long and slow cooking. The end result is a thick white sauce that has an appearance quite similar to mayonnaise, but with a strong fishiness and an almost glue-like texture.

The dish is usually made using bacalao (cod), as its skin has the perfect amount of gelatin for creating the all-important emulsion. So when cooking hake pil-pil, it's a good idea to buy some cod skin (this is available inexpensively from wholesale suppliers and some specialists) and use that to make the Pil-Pil sauce.

Heat olive oil gently in a wide casserole dish in the oven on a very low heat, with garlic, guindilla chilli and the cod skin. The process takes quite a few hours to fully extract the gelatin from the skins. Timing is a matter of experience, but it's not difficult to see when the sauce is sufficiently glutinous. When ready, leave the pil-pil to cool before carefully passing it through a fine sieve and allowing it to rest further. At this point the pil-pil it is not yet emulsified - rather it forms two separate layers, one white and one yellowish. To fully emulsify it, use a blender, preferably a specialist emulsion blender such as a Robot Coupe. Set the sauce aside.

Fillet the hake, season well and cook in hot oil in a pan, searing the skin until nicely crisp but avoiding overcooking the flesh. While the fish is cooking, cut a brunoise of Granny Smith (where the English fusion comes in). Serve the dish as shown in the picture below, with slices of fish surrounding a lake of pil-pil, with blots of garlic and guindilla oils in a ring around the border of the pil-pil and a fine dice of apple and chopped chive garnish placed in the centre of the ring.

The combination of the sweet, salty fish with the sharp acidity of the Granny Smith and chives is excellent. And the refreshing crunch of the tiny apple cubes and the raw onion-like qualities of the chive work perfectly together with the firm but delicate flavour and texture of the hake. The highly glutinous pil-pil may be a bit difficult for an Anglo-French palate, more used to buerre blanc or hollandaise. But you soon become accustomed to it.

Soft Saffron Gel With Purée And Air Of Beetroot

2007-10-30T19:26:00.000+01:00

This dish is all about using two very simple ingredients that you wouldn't normally expect to see on the same plate. This small dish brings together the flavours of beetroot and saffron, while at the same time balancing texture and colour to create something quite extra-ordinary. Is it a savoury starter? Or a dessert? Actually it's a dish that transcends the traditional boundaries of sweet and savoury. Most chefs are scared to try such a thing, but I'm certainly not. How about you?

Ingredients

1 medium beetroot
10-12 strands of saffron
1g iota carrageenan
1g soy lecithin
1 tsp honey

Method

Saffron and beetroot are about as distant from each other as any two culinary products can get. One is the world's most expensive spice - made by drying the stimga of the saffron crocus - the other is a cheap root vegetable. One is a bright orange-yellow and the other is a dark purple. One has a delicate, honey-like aromatic fragrance, the other a bold earthiness. So how to pair these two totally different ingredients? The idea of this dish is to combine the two in a way that accentuates and differentiates, their intrinsic qualities.

The starting point is to make a saffron infusion as a base for the dish. Bring water to the boil, remove the pan from the heat, add strands of saffron and leave to infuse for 10 minutes. Now take a stick blender and use it to shred and disperse all of the strands within in the water, maximising the release of 'crocin', the caretenoid dye that produces saffron's characteristic golden colour. Leave the mixture to infuse and cool for a further ten minutes, before passing it through a fine sieve. Once cool, ass a touch of honey to enhance the liquid's sweetness.

Now create a gel by adding iota carrageenan to the saffron water in accordance with the gelling instructions from the iota supplier. Now bring the mixture back to the boil to activate the gelification properties of the iota, remove the pan from the heat and very carefully decant the gel into spoons. Put these aside to set.

The next step is to make a roughly textured purée from the beetroot, offering a stark contrast to the gelatinousness of the saffron. Boil the beetroot until soft and then use a stick blender to blitz the cooked beetroot, gradually adding small amounts of cold water until it reaches the consistency shown in the picture. Don't strain the purée - just leave it with a grainy texture.

Set aside some purée for serving and thin the remainder with cold water while blitzing, passing it through a fine sieve and adding a small amount of soy lecithin. A few revs with the stick blender on the surface of the liquid will produce a bright pink cloud of foam that is stabilised by the emulsification properties of the lecithin.

Top a quenelle of beetroot purée with the beetroot air and serve the saffron gel alongside as shown in the picture below. To eat the finished product, take the spoon with the saffron gel and use it to scoop up some of the beetroot quenelle with the fluffy pink air and consume in one mouthful. The dish is an amazing combination, with perfect flavour, colour and textural balance.

Catalan Chocolate, Olive Oil & Salt

2007-10-29T22:08:00.008+01:00

The surreal marriage of flavours represented by dark chocolate, fruity olive oil and sea salt simply cries out as a modern creation of the Nuevos Cocineros de Barcelona. Visit any of the best fine dining restaurants in Catalunya and this combination will figure somewhere on the tasting menu. But actually there's nothing new about the combination at all - Catalan chocolate and olive oil desserts date back a long way. Nobody seems certain when the combination was first created, but we do know for certain that after World War II, when chocolate was rationed and fresh fruit and vegetables were hard to come by, urban Catalans would substitute a piece of chocolate for the tomato in the national dish pa amb tomàquet. They would melt a piece of chocolate, spread it on dried bread, sprinkle with olive oil and add some sea salt on top to create a sweet and savory treat.

Ingredients

1 small bar of top quality dark chocolate
extra virgin olive oil
Maldon salt crystals

Method

Here's my version of this great Catalan classic. Start with a good dark chocolate, preferably one that is 70% cocoa solids. Melt slowly (preferably over hot water), pour the molten chocolate into deep concave spoons and allow to cool, finishing in the fridge to set firm.

Remove from the spoons and set onto plates. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and finish with a single large crystal of Maldon salt.

Each portion should be eaten in a single mouthful, preferably inverting the spoon so that the salt touches the tongue first. If you are brave enough to try this this at home for the first time, let me offer you three words of advice: Expect the unexpected.

Cockles With Amaretto And Coconut Rice

2007-10-28T19:28:00.000+01:00

I'm a massive fan of cockles, or berberechos as they are known in Catalunya. And I've long been an advocate of cooking seafood with Amaretto, the bitter-sweet flavour of which I think is a perfect complement for the salty, umami flavours of the sea. Especially when given a tropical twist. So what better dish than cockles with Amaretto and coconut rice!

Ingredients (serves 1)

300g live cockles
150g short-grain rice
1 tin coconut milk
2 knobs butter
20ml Amaretto
salt

Method

Start by melting a knob of butter in a pan to which you add some short grain rice. It's important to use a dessert rice or risotto rice for this dish and not a patna or basmati long grain variety. Lightly fry the rice for ten or twenty seconds and then add some salt and a whole can of coconut milk. The idea behind this was along the lines of making a coconut "rice pudding", the texture and creaminess of which would complement the salty-sweet combination of cockles and Amaretto.

While waiting for the rice to cook, check the cockles to make sure they are all still alive. To do this, use exactly the same method you would employ for mussels or other bivalve molluscs. The procedure involves gently tapping the shells of any cockles that are slightly open and making sure that they quickly close up again. If you see no reaction it means the cockle is already dead and should be discarded. If you've ever eaten a bad cockle, or worse still a bad oyster, you'll understand the importance of this food hygiene check.

Once the rice is bubbling away and only a few minutes from being ready, take a second pan and melt another knob of butter. Toss in the cockles, quickly shake the pan around and then add a generous glug of the Amaretto. Put a lid on the pan and steam the cockles for three or four minutes until the shells have all opened, taking care not to over-cook them.

Remove the cockles from the pan, discarding any that have not opened. Turn the heat up to full and quickly reduce down the small remaining quantity of Amaretto into a syrup-like sauce. Plate the rice, place the cockles on top and drizzle the reduction around.

Cod And Jamón Ibérico With Mandarin & Basil

2007-10-27T19:29:00.001+02:00

This is a two-day recipe in which we use mandarin and basil to provide a refreshing cold sauce to cut across the flavours of salt cod and jamón ibérico. It takes two days because the salt cod must be soaked before cooking. The combination of salty cod and jamón, sharp and sour mandarin and aromatic basil is a match made in heaven. My recipe uses almost exclusively Catalan ingredients because I first made this dish in Barcelona, but there's nothing remotely Catalan about this recipe.

Ingredients

1 large piece of salt cod
150g jamón pata negra
2 mandarin oranges
1 sprig fresh basil
xantana, or similar commercial natural thickener

Start with your piece of salt cod (bacallà as it's known in Catalunya, or bacalhau as it is known across Portugal).

Soak the cod in cold water for at least 24 hours, changing the water every few hours. The result will be a succulent piece of cod with a delicate and pleasant saltiness.

Next, take your jamón ibérico. If you can afford a little extra on the price, definitely go for jamón pata negra de Bellota. This is regarded as the finest of all jamón ibérico because of the special acorn diet of the black foot pigs from which it's produced.

Lay the slices of jamón out onto a plastic sheet and trim up the edges. Place the cod on top and roll it up in the jamón. This forms a salty protection barrier from the heat of the oven and also help to keep the renewed moisture of the fish intact for the end result. Place the cod and ham roll onto a lightly greased tray and put into a pre-heated oven at 200ºC for about 20 mins until perfectly cooked.

Meanwhile, remove one segment of mandarin and set aside for garnish. Zest and juice the remaining mandarin segments into a pan. Heat slowly on the stove with stalks of basil, thereby infusing the flavour of the herb into the liquid.

Cool the infusion, remove the stalks, add some fresh basil leaves and blitz with a little xantana to thicken to the desired consistency.

When the rolled cod is cooked, take it out of the oven and rest it for a few minutes before cutting the roll into thick slices, pouring the thick sauce over the meat and garnishing with a segment of mandarin and a basil leaf.

Green Cauliflower Espuma

2007-10-26T22:04:00.018+02:00

'Espuma' is Spanish for 'foam' and the same term is also used in Catalan to distinguish foam from scum ('escuma'), which is just as well because there's nothing unpleasant about cauliflower espuma. There was a recent craze for reinventing the boring old cauliflower with cheese sauce - turning it on its head as fried Greek cheese with cauliflower espuma. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm told it's excellent and I don't doubt it. In this recipe I show you how to make your own green cauliflower espuma. This makes a great pairing with any meat that has flavoursome melting fat - especially lamb. I like it with butifarra negra, or Catalan blood sausage.

Ingredients

1 green cauliflower or Romanesco broccoli
250ml single cream
salt
freshly grated nutmeg

Method

You can make cauliflower espuma with ordinary white cauliflower, but I think the colour of green cauliflower adds to the excitement of the dish. You can also make this with the closely-related Romanesco broccoli - this and green cauliflower are often grouped together under the classification of 'broccoflower'.

To prepare the green cauliflower the principle remains the same as for an ordinary cauliflower: remove the green leaves that surround the brassica, cut out the tough central stem and break the remainder of the vegetable down by hand into even sized florets. Place these into salted boiling water and cook until a knife runs smoothly in and out of the stalk of each floret.

Strain in a colander, then transfer to a bowl and purée the cauliflower with full cream, a good seasoning of salt and a little freshly grated nutmeg.

The trick at this point is to go against your instincts by deliberately over-salting the purée relative to your palate. This is because when you charge the cauliflower with compressed air in the siphon to make the foam, it loses salinity. When you release some of the espuma from the siphon and taste it you'll find that what tasted too salty before will now be just right.

Having made your cauliflower purée, pass it through a fine sieve and pour the smooth mixture into a siphon. To serve, simply spray onto the plate from the siphon.

When serving green cauliflower espuma, a little crispy deep fried julienne of leek will add a complementary flavour and a crunchy texture to this absolutely delicious and luxurious dish.

Rose Water Caviar

2007-10-25T22:04:00.025+02:00

Eat at any top fine dining restaurant these days and you'll experience some of the products of molecular gastronomy - foams, gels, crumbs and spheres. Most people assume that only trained chefs with complicated equipment can produce these new culinary products, whereas the truth is that just about anyone can do it.

Ingredients

A commercial spherification kit, comprising: alginic acid, calcium chloride, spherical spoons, syringe, slotted spoon.
1 large bag dehydrated rose petals
white sugar

Method

All you need are a few simple tools and some chemicals. And it's easier than that, because there are ready-made kits available at a price that most home cooks can afford. My own preference is for the Texturas, developed by Ferran Adrià at the El Bulli laboratory and marketed through a variety of suppliers that can be found through a simple internet search.

'Caviar' is the result of the spherification process, sealing a flavoured liquid into small droplets designed to imitate the famous sturgeon roe. In this recipe, I demonstrate how, in your own kitchen, you can make rose water caviar - tiny edible spheres of sweet and fragrant rose water that make the perfect accompaniment for strawberries and ice cream.

These days you can buy rose water from supermarkets, Asian food stores and health food shops, but it's better to make your own. Start with a large bag of good quality dehydrated rose petals that can be purchased from Indian and Chinese food distributors. From these you can make rose water through the process of infusion.

Bring a pan of water to the boil, add the dehydrated rose petals and wait until the water comes back to the boil, remove from the heat, cover and set aside for ten minutes to infuse. After ten or so minutes are up, pass the infusion through a fine sieve and taste for sweetness. You'll probably find that the rose water requires a little sugar to accentuate the delicate floral aroma.

Once you are happy with the rose water, set it aside to cool while you prepare the chemicals which will turn this simple liquid into little perfumed balls of delight.

The next step is to measure out the alginic acid according to the mixing instructions on the pack, add it to the cold rose water and then use a stick blender to agitate the two together. This stage needs to be done as soon as possible (preferably even ahead of time), because the mixture needs to be left to settle for a good while so the air that was incorporated into the liquid by the blending can disperse naturally. This is very important because if there are any air bubbles in the mixture when you come to make the spheres you'll be left with holes in the spheres.

While waiting for the rose/alginic acid mixture to settle, measure out calcium chloride for the sperification bath. This is a much easier preparation and simply involves blending 2.5g of calcium chloride into 500ml of water. In the demonstration picture here, I worked on a very small scale which didn't need anything like a half litre water bath, so I scaled down the measures accordingly.

Adjacent to the water bath, you need to lay down a bath of pure cold water which will be used to wash the spheres of any excess calcium chloride once they've formed and are ready to be removed. If like me you purchase a Texturas kit, the spherification tools come as part of the kit. The Catalan word for 'tools' is 'eines', and the eines canister which comes with the kit contains all of the equipment necessary for making various spherical sizes.

It's a good idea to start small, and work your way up to larger spheres once you've mastered the somewhat easier technique of caviar-making. For this you need the syringe provided with the eines, loaded with the rose water/alginic acid mixture. Holding the syringe over the calcium chloride bath, quite close to the surface, very gently squeeze down on the plunger so that tiny droplets of the mixture fall into the bath. The liquid quickly gelifies on the outside as the alginic acid in the mixture reacts with the calcium chloride in the water, forming spheres with thin membranes just like an egg yolk.

You need to leave the "caviar" in the calcium chloride bath for a few minutes until their membranes are sturdy enough to touch. Now you use the special slotted spoon provided to transfer the caviar into the clean water bath. They're now ready to eat.

You can employ the exact same process to make larger spheres, this time using a larger member of the set of spherical spoons. Serve your rose caviar on their own as an amuse bouche or incorporate them into a suitable dish. I like to eat mine for dessert, accompanied by fresh strawberries and some really good quality vanilla ice cream.

It's hard to get the full effect from still pictures, so we shot a couple of short video clips to demonstrate the spherification process. Have a look for yourself. The first video shows how to use the syringe to drop the rose water in tiny pearls for the caviar. The second shows me rupturing one of the rose spheres to show that the inside of the sphere is still completely liquid. The textural sensation of a sphere bursting inside your mouth is an experience in itself, but then as the stream of flavour-packed aromatic liquid flows out and fills the mouth it truly leaves you in a state of amazement.

Pa Amb Tomàquet

2007-10-24T21:59:00.010+02:00

Ask any Brit to name their country's national dish and the answer is likely to be fish & chips, shepherd's pie or chicken tikka masala. Make the same enquiry of a Catalan and you'll be treated as if you came from another planet. Everyone, but everyone, recognises their national dish to be pa amb tomàquet (literally, bread with tomato). Although there's considerable dispute as to the origins of this ubiquitous peasant snack, the simple bruschetta-style combination of white bread, tomato, olive oil and salt is widely regarded as the epitome of Catalan cuisine. It may sound too simple to write up, but believe me it must be made properly. Catalans are very particular about the way to create this traditional dish.

Ingredients

1 white baguette
3-4 ripe summer tomatoes
extra-virgin olive oil
Maldon or other sea salt
Fuet, espetec or other salami

Method

In truth, there is no one official way of making pa amb tomàquet, no matter how angry a Barcelonan may be that Manresans use espetec instead of fuet as their meat. So here's my at-home attempt at this classical dish. I tried as best I could to make it in the traditional way that I was taught in a Barcelona kitchen, so I hope any Catalan readers won't be grossly offended if this English chef's pa amb tomàquet is not exactly the way they know it.

Start with a white baguette from your local baker (in my case from La Boqueria). Open it up by slicing in half as per usual for making a sandwich with a baguette. Then take some ripe tomatoes for rubbing into the fresh bread. Catalans use a special type of tomato which is grown only for the purpose of making pa amb tomàquet. They're not as vibrant in colour as a salad tomato, are smaller and slightly knobbly and are only ever used for spreading - never for slicing.

Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally (not through the eye), and have your olive oil and salt ready. Rub each tomato half into the bread - starting along the edges and rubbing into the centre - until nothing is left of the tomato in your hand but skin. You'll know when your bread is ready because the surface will be completely red, with seeds scattered all over.

The next stage is the olive oil, which you should drizzle with a generous hand so that the bread can absorb all of its flavour with the tomato. Then finally comes the salt, which must be sprinkled with great care as to achieve the correct and proper balance between the flavours of the dish. Be sure take your time and get it spot on. This is a dish that should be made at leisure, with absolutely no need to rush things.

Finally complete the dish with the cured meat of your choice. I used espetec here on the advice of my former flatmate (being from Manresa, he assured me this was the "proper" way). Barcelonas are more likely to use fuet. Now all that's left to do is to stand back and admire your beautiful creation. And when you've finished admiring it... eat it. "Bon profit!" as we say here in Catalunya.

Apple Caviar

2007-10-23T22:09:00.000+02:00

I'm delighted to present the El Bulli recipe for apple caviar, as demonstrated to a delighted audience at Lo Mejor de la Gastronomía 2003 in San Sebastian by a member of Ferran Adrià's team.

Ingredients (for a large quantity)

A commercial spherification kit comprising: alginic acid, calcium chloride, syringes, slotted spoon.
1¼ pounds golden apples (for the apple juice)
¾ pound Granny Smith apples (for the apple reduction)
½ teaspoon calcium chloride
½ teaspoon alginato
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
⅜ teaspoon balsamic vinegar
4 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and very cold (for garnish)

Preparation

For the Apple Juice:

Wash and core the apples and cut into quarters. Purée the apples and pour the liquid into a tall and narrow container. Freeze for about 30 minutes so that the impurities solidify and rise to the top. Remove from freezer and extract impurities with a skimmer. Strain the juice and reserve 250ml.

For the Apple Reduction:

Proceed exactly as for the apple juice, but using the Granny Smith apples. Strain the juice and place over a medium heat until reduced to caramel consistency.

For the Apple Caviar:

While cold, mix ⅓ of the apple juice with alginic acid in a blender until the alginic acid has completely dissolved. Heat the mixture to 96°C (do not allow to boil!), then remove it from heat and stir in remaining juice. Add the baking soda and stir to dissolve. Strain and freeze until service.

Service

Purée Granny Smith apples and freeze in a very tall and narrow container for 5 minutes. Fill 4 syringes with apple solution. Release one drop at a time into calcium chloride solution and leave for 1 minute in the liquid. Remove the caviar using the slotted spoon, then rinse the caviar in a cold water bath and drain. For each serving, put ¾ ounce of caviar into a cylindrical mold, season the caviar with a little apple reduction, small pieces of apple, a dash of cinnamon and three drops of balsamic vinegar.

I don't have any photos of this recipe being prepared, but I do have a video clip from the demonstration at Lo Mejor de la Gastronomía. Enjoy.

Catalan Steak

2007-10-22T21:55:00.006+02:00

For as long as I can remember, I've always been partial to a good steak. My dad used to cook me almost inedible ones when I was very young, so I soon learnt how to do it properly. After I taught him the importance of searing the meat at the right temperature and the even greater importance of leaving it to rest properly, the quality of his own steak dinners improved dramatically. What makes this recipe specifically Catalan is simply that I cooked it here in Barcelona, using entirely Catalan produce.

Ingredients

200g rump steak
150g rovellones de país (Catalan mushrooms)
2 cloves garlic
150ml Rioja wine
20g brown sugar
20g butter
small bunch flat-leaf parsley
salt
black pepper
olive oil

Method

The most important thing is to start with the best quality produce. Use rump or sirloin rather than fillet because the rump has far better flavour and if sourced from a reliable butcher can be perfectly tender. Note the fat marbling in my steak - this is what you are looking for. And use local, fresh, seasonal wild mushrooms if at all possible. Failing that, use whatever open cap mushrooms are available and make sure they are fresh.

Finely slice the garlic, cut the mushrooms into big chunky pieces and roughly shred the parsley.

Pour the red wine into a pan, add the sugar and bring to the boil. Now turn down the heat to a gentle simmer and allow to reduce slowly, for a rich sauce. Put the rovellones into a frying pan with some bubbling butter, the sliced garlic, a pinch of salt and a generous grinding of freshly cracked black pepper. Let the mushrooms tenderise for a while before adding the parsley for the last minute of cooking. Meanwhile, slowly heat a second pan with a good splash of olive oil for the steak.

Make sure the oil is really hot - on the verge of smoking - and place the steak into the hot oil. Always lay anything going into a hot pan like this away from you, to avoid splash burns. Cook the steak for a minute and a half on each side, resisting the temptation to touch the meat while cooking except to turn it once. Remove the steak and allow a four minute resting time to relax the fibres. Wipe clean any juices before plating up. Add the mushrooms, garlic and parsely and spoon the reduced sauce over the plate.

Smoked Salmon And Poached Egg On Toast

2007-10-21T14:58:00.006+02:00

Well, not quite as simple as it sounds. Smoked salmon and poached egg is a classic combination, but when I made this hangover cure for breakfast with my friend Alex after a late night drinking real ale and playing poker, I was determined to do something a bit more adventurous than the basics. I chose to prepare Columbian Blacktail hens' eggs in a sauce made from fromage frais and moutarde de Charroux, served on toasted olive bread with sautéed cherry tomatoes. The result was something very special.

Ingredients

1 small loaf of wholemeal olive bread
4 Columbian Blacktail hens' eggs
200ml fromage frais
4 tsp French mustard
6 cherry tomatoes
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp caster sugar
paprika
cayenne pepper
herbes de Provence
sesame oil
olive oil margarine
Maldon salt
white pepper

Method

Fold the mustard slowly into the fromage frais, checking until the perfect balance is achieved to suit your taste (remember that you can easily make a taste stronger, but it's hard to make it lighter). Grind a little Maldon salt and white pepper into the sauce and leave to the mixture to infuse.

Cut the olive bread into thick "doorstep" slices and toast lightly, then spread with olive oil margarine.

Boil a saucepan of water for poaching the eggs in. Add plenty of salt to the water and a little white wine vinegar (this helps the egg's albumen to coagulate around the yolk faster, producing a superior result).

A good tip when poaching eggs, especially if you have to coordinate their timing with many other elements, is to half-cook them and then remove them into a bowl of iced water. When ready, you simply drop the eggs back into the simmering water for a brief moment before plating up. This technique, known as "refreshing", is used for many ingredients in the professional restaurant environment to stop the cooking process and control timing.

While the eggs are poaching, slice the tomatoes in half and sautée them in sesame oil with a little caster sugar and a pinch each of paprika, cayenne pepper and herbes de Provence. Now spread out the smoked salmon across the toast as a cushion for the poached egg to sit on. Pour the sauce over the eggs and add the sautéed tomatoes.

Amaretto Flambéed Seafood

2007-10-20T11:18:00.005+02:00

Almost every first-world recipe I've come across that uses amaretto is for a dessert, with very few employing the almond/apricot liqueur for meat and seafood dishes. But there are savoury applications for this subtle, bitter-sweet Italian liqueur - typically with chicken, lamb and ham - that reflect the traditional combination of these meats with bittersweet fruits in the cuisines of the Maghreb. This recipe surprises everyone who tries it - the flavour of the caramelised liqueur is quite different from the flavour when first poured.

Ingredients

250g mixed seafood*
1 clove garlic
40g butter
1 tbsp double cream
black pepper
25ml Amaretto

* mix your own to taste, chopping as required, making sure that all pieces are roughly the same size to ensure even cooking. Ideal ingredients include prawns, mussels, cockles, scallops, crab, lobster and small pieces of raw seafish.

Method

Mix the seafood, making sure that you thoroughly wash any ingredients that have been preserved in brine (e.g. cockles sold in jars). Turn out the seafood onto kitchen roll and pat until completely dry. This stage is very important - excess water will cause the seafood to boil rather than fry and the mixture won't flambée.

Melt the butter in a pan with the finely-chopped garlic and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Add the seafood and toss in the butter for no more than 2 minutes. Remove the pan from the flame for safety, pour in a large dash of amaretto, place the pan back over the fire, tilt it away from you towards the flame (use a match if cooking with electricity) and allow to flambée until the flame disappears.

Add a tablespoon of double cream at this stage and stir with a wooden spatula to deglaze the pan, allowing the mixture to absorb all the delicious flavours and restoring the sweet-bitter balance to the final dish. Serve immediately and enjoy with pasta, rice, bread or salad.

Gluten-Free Christmas Cake

2007-10-19T10:47:00.004+02:00

Just because you are a coeliac, it doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy the same variety of foods as everyone else. With gluten-free flour readily available these days, there are plenty of pastry dishes that can be easily made - although those that depend on the gluten for elasticity can be a problem. But here's a flour-free cake recipe, courtesy of my mum, developed from an ancient Marks & Spencer recipe. What binds this cake, apart from the eggs, is a large quantity of a product now rarely used in Britain because of its post-war poverty connotations - condensed milk. You'd expect it to make the result sickly sweet, but not at all. The result is soft, crumbly, mouth-watering and perfectly balanced.

Ingredients

400g mincemeat
400g mixed dried fruit
100g mixed chopped nuts
200g crushed cornflakes
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 large tin condensed milk
5ml mixed spice*
5ml baking powder

* Mixed spice (pudding spice or sweet spice) is sold as a ground spice mixture in Britain and comprises the following in approximate ratios: cinnamon (35%), nutmeg (20%), allspice (20%), clove (10%), coriander seed (10%), and ginger (5%).

Method

It couldn't get much simpler. Grease a 25cm round cake tin and line the base with grease-proof paper. Pour all of the ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. This requires a good degree of strength and considerable patience! Turn the mixture into the cake tin and level off. Bake for 2 hours in an oven at 150ºC (gas mark 2). Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before turning onto a rack to cool fully.

Quinoa Tabouleh

2007-10-18T01:00:00.000+02:00

The Lebanese salad dish "tabouleh" is made from bulgar wheat, a cereal product from the Middle East and North Africa. But a similar and equally excellent result can be obtained using an alternative carbohydrate such as couscous or, in this case, quinoa. This originates from the South American Andes and is not strictly a cereal (grass seed), but the seed of a variety of goosefoot plant. Quinoa tabouleh has the added advantage that it is gluten free. It needs to be prepared with care, as quinoa is not the easiest product to cook perfectly and the final dish also depends on a delicate balance of flavours. But if you get it right, the result is fantastic.

Ingredients (4 portions)

150g quinoa
8 cherry tomatoes
2 small shallots
3 spring onions
1/2 medium red bell pepper
1/3 medium cucumber
juice from 1 lemon
1 chilli*
fresh coriander
olive oil**
basil**
salt
black pepper

* Use chilli to taste. I used one Scotch Bonnet.
** I used basil-infused olive oil

Method

This is the quinoa in its raw state. You may need to rinse it thoroughly before boiling. This depends on whether or not your quinoa has been pre-soaked.

When ready, the first stage of making the tabouleh is to cook the quinoa. This will need time to cool while you prep the additional ingredients. Boil as per the packet instructions. You'll know when it's cooked because the white germ will have separated from the grain.

Meanwhile you can start prepping the vegetables.

A wonderfully colourful array of reds and greens.

Remove the pith and seeds from the pepper and cut into julienne. Then cut the strips finely on the slant to make diamond shapes.

This is often called a paysanne.

Wash the cherry tomatoes thoroughly and cut into quarters or whatever size you desire.

Peel and finely chop the shallots into brunoise. Slice the spring onions finely on the slant and cut the cucumber into a rough dice. Cut the lemon in half and shred the coriander roughly - we chefs refer to this cut as a chiffonade.

Always leave the chilli until last when prepping multiple items, especially when using one board for everything. Remove the pith and seeds, cut into strips and finely dice them. Wash your hands immediately and very thoroughly.

When the cooked quinoa is cool enough, combine with the vegetables and coriander and then add the juice from the lemon and the oil.

If you like, you could make a vinaigrette with the oil and some vinegar before adding to the quinoa. Season well.

Serve by itself as a salad, or perhaps with some fried fish such as sardines as shown here.

Avoid fish or meat with strong flavours as the tabouleh is delicately flavoured. The rest is up to you...

Hazelnut Pralines

2007-10-17T13:00:00.000+02:00

Hazelnut (or Cobnut) Pralines is an extremely quick and relatively easy recipe, it's basically just caramel with nuts in it. However, it requires patience as it is very easy to burn the ingredients or create a lumpy end result. But with a little practice, this can turn into a 10-minute wonder of your kitchen.

Ingredients (about 30 pieces)

225g white sugar
175g brown sugar
150ml condensed milk
1/2 tsp salt
60g butter
1 tsp vanilla extract (a little less or more to suit your taste)
150g roughly chopped hazelnuts

Method

These are my cobnuts, also known as the common hazel. Just peel off their small leaves and crack open to reveal the edible kernel.

If you can't find the fresh nuts, use packet nuts, but watch out for added salt. If you use these, do not add the additional salt listed in the ingredients.

Roughly break them up in a pestle and mortar for a chunky texture. Or if you prefer a smoother finish, blitz them in a machine to your desired consistency.

Combine the white and brown sugars and the condensed milk in a heavy-bottomed pan and bring gently to the boil.

If you have a "candy thermometer", test the mixture and look for a temperature of 120ºC. At this temperature, the mixture is at "soft ball" stage. A small amount of mixture dropped into cold water forms a soft, flexible ball, but flattens on its own without squeezing after a few seconds in your hand. When at this stage, remove from the heat and throw in the butter, nuts and vanilla. Stir thoroughly to combine.

Now spoon the mixture onto greaseproof paper and leave your delicious pralines to cool before enjoying!

Atlas Mountain Soup, Hackney Style

2007-10-17T01:00:00.000+02:00

This recipe and write-up is brought to you by my father, Mike.

This isn't really Atlas Mountain Soup. According to my son, the word "soup" is not appropriate to this dish. The truth is that, when I came to cook the classic Moroccan dish I simply couldn't find a recipe. We used to have one in a cookbook but it seems to have gone walkabout - it's probably headed off back to the peace and tranquility of the High Atlas Mountains. And we couldn't find anything on the web, either. So this is my entirely invented dish of Atlas Mountain Stew, with a few comments on how it can be improved still further.

Ingredients (4 portions)

½ kg minced lamb
6 tangerines (select tart fruits, don't use the over-sweet types)
3 tsps ras el hanout spice mixture
2 green bell peppers (I used one red and one green, but both green for added bitterness would be better)
1 large yellow onion
4 tomatoes
4 apricots
6 greengages (tart plums would be a good substitute)
6 figs (with hindsight I would have omitted this ingredient)
1 tsp mixed herbs (herbes de Provence works well in this)
2 bay leaves
olive oil
salt
black pepper
couscous, rice, bread or other carbohydrate base with which to serve the sauce.

Method

The first step is to make a marinade for the meat. Squeeze the tangerines, blitz the juice and pulp in a food processor and strain out the solid material using a strainer with large holes.

Using your (washed) hands, mix the minced lamb thoroughly with the tangerine juice, two teaspoons of the ras el hanout mixture and some salt and freshly ground black pepper to season.

Translated as "head of the shop" in Arabic, the term ras el hanout refers to a mixture of the best spices a seller has to offer. These days the mixture is readily available in spice stores and larger supermarkets. Some mixtures can contain ingredients that are now illegal, so be sure to buy from a reputable source.

While the meat is marinating for a couple of hours, prepare the fruits (note that although we often refer to tomatoes and peppers as vegetables, they are both fruits).

This dish is intended to show a display of colours and plenty of texture, so everything should be rough chopped as shown.

I removed the skins from the tomatoes, greengages and apricots although you could leave these on. The trick for removal is to plunge the fruit into boiling water for twenty seconds and then transfer into iced water. The skins can then be peeled easily by hand.

After the meat has marinated for a couple of hours it will be ready for the main stage of cooking.

Sweat off the onions for a few minutes in olive oil until they start to turn translucent. Then drain off any excess marinade from the lamb and add the meat to the pan.

Stir well until the meat is lightly browned, but be careful not to overheat and allow it to burn.

Add the tomatoes and allow to cook for a few minutes. Then stir in the remaining fruits and add boiling water to just about cover the ingredients.

Season lightly with salt and pepper and add the bay leaves and herbs.

You can either cook the mixture on the hob in a heavy bottomed pan, or place it in the oven on a low-medium heat.

Either way, stir regularly and cook slowly until the liquid has reduced down. This should take about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

At this stage add the remaining teaspoon of spice mixture and some more boiling water and continue to cook for another 30-45 minutes.

The real Atlas Mountain Soup would be eaten as it comes, with chunks of soft, absorbent Moroccan bread. As this is a ragout, rather than a soup, it should be served on the traditional Maghreb carbohydrate staple: couscous. On this occasion, being a coeliac and thus unable to eat couscous, I used boiled basmati rice.

My Atlas Mountain Stew was very tasty and I'd certainly cook it again. But I'll try to find the original recipe and make a proper Atlas Mountain Soup. There was something very special about that.

Blueberry And Goat's Milk Pana Cotta

2007-10-16T13:00:00.000+02:00

It just so happens that the blueberry season in the UK coincides with the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on the city of New Orleans, which made me think of one man who was for several days missing presumed dead. Fats Domino's biggest UK hit was Blueberry Hill, so when I found myself with some blueberries in the anniversary week I made this dish as a commemorative offering. It's a very simple and absolutely delicious dessert.

Ingredients (8 portions)

600g blueberries
100g caster sugar (superfine sugar)
100ml water
600ml goat's milk
3 gelatin sheets

Method

These are the juicy blueberries I used in the recipe. Because blueberries are fairly mild to taste, I always use a good amount of them in recipes so my end product boasts plenty of their delicate yet distinctive flavour.

I started by making a simple sugar syrup with the caster sugar and water. Equal quantities of each in a saucepan, brought to a boil and simmered gently until thickened. I then added my whole blueberries to the syrup and let it all bubble away until the berries had broken down and released their wonderful colour and aroma to the syrup.

I'd never actually tasted goat's milk before I made this panna cotta with it and I was surprised by its relatively mild flavour. I had expected it to be quite sharp with (as my dad described it) a "strange aftertaste". But to my surprise it actually tasted very much like cow's milk. In fact it was only the slightly odd taste it left in the mouth that allowed me to distinguish it from regular cow's milk.

OK - so I slowly brought 600ml of the milk to the boil.

In the meantime I soaked my gelatin leaves in cold water for a few minutes until they'd softened. Then I squeezed them to get rid of the excess water and set aside ready for action.

While the milk came to the boil I also blitzed the blueberry syrup mixture and passed it through a fine sieve to take out any bits of blueberry skin that hadn't been pulverised.

Just before the milk came to the boil, I removed it from the heat to prevent it from overflowing (this can happen all too easily if you take your eye off the pan). I added my softened gelatin leaves and stirred thoroughly until they'd dissolved. Then I gradually added the blueberry mixture while tasting, until it had the right consistency and flavour.

There was far too much mixture to fit in the five ramekins we own. Besides that we'd been shopping the day I made this, and so there would have been no room for them in the fridge anyway. So I ended up pouring all of the mix into a large bowl and letting it set in the freezer for an hour or two until some space was available.

By the time space became available the mix had already started to set, so I had to leave it in the bowl in the fridge overnight. So apologies for the lack of presentability of the panna cotta, but as you can see I had to scoop large chunks from the bowl to serve it.

I finished it with a drizzle of double cream. It was absolutely delicious. Next time maybe I'll make a little blueberry compote to pour on top and add a little contrast in texture and temperature.

Slow-Braised Neck Of Lamb With Mélange Viande, Chantenay Carrots, Pearl Onions And Roasted Maris Pipers

2007-10-16T01:00:00.000+02:00

This recipe is a showcase for the spice mixture, mélange viande. The other ingredients - lamb, carrot, onion and potato - are almost incidental to the recipe. Try the mixture with other meats and with fish or cheese. The summery, flowery perfume of the spice mix is exquisite and unforgetable.

Ingredients (4 portions)

2 lamb neck fillets
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
4 tbsp melange viande spice mixture
30g Butter
30g Plain flour
24 Chantennay carrots
1 large onion, roughly diced
2l lamb stock
8 silverskin pearl onions
2 Maris Piper potatoes*
Vegetable oil
Duck or goose fat
Salt
Black pepper

* Maris Piper is the best roasting potato, but an alternative floury potato can be used.

Method

I can't help you here. Cooking this recipe depends on being able to track down some mélange viande, which translates literally as "meat mixture" but more correctly as "a fantastic collision of flowery spices ideal for use in flavouring meats".

This is a mixture of Sichuan pepper, tarragon, parsley, pink peppercorns, niora peppers, rosemary, sumac, turmeric, herbes de Provence, capsicum, rosebuds, yellow and black mustard.

As I said when linking this spice mixture to the opening car crash scene in Jean-Luc Godard's film "Weekend", it's not a blend - it's a flowery, country-road, weekend traffic jam of spices piled into eachother in a surreal fantasy.

With mélange viande your senses are attacked simultaneously with the fragrant perfumes of country spices, the contrasting textures of rosebuds, sumac berries, rosemary needles and peppercorns and the diverse colours of gay traffic lights: green, amber, pink and red.

Ok, so start with your lamb neck fillets. A good marbling of fat is essential for extra flavour. The first thing you need to do is bring the lamb stock to the boil with the melange in it. This will allow the flavours to infuse.

Melt the sugar in a large skillet and allow a light caramel to form. Season your lamb and caramelise in the hot pan until evenly coloured, as per the picture right.

Remove from the pan and set aside.

These are the perfect carrots for a stew. Because of their size you won't need to cut them into pieces, so they can keep the natural shape that Mother Nature gave them.

Fry the onions in vegetable oil in the same pan you caramelised the meat in. Then deglace all of the meaty flavours with the stock - don't be shy, give the pan a good scrape. Place the lamb back into the pan and allow to braise for an hour.

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables. Don't peel the carrots, scrub them clean and you'll retain much more nutrients. Peel the potatoes and keep them in cold water until they're ready for roasting. Place a roasting tray in a hot oven (or on the stove) and allow to get very hot. When you're ready to get the spuds on, pour the duck or goose fat onto the roasting tray and thoroughly coat the surface. Dry the potatoes thoroughly and pop them onto the tray, you should get a nice loud sizzle. Toss them around so they're evenly coated with the fat and roast until crispy and golden on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Add the carrots to the roasting dish roughly 20 minutes before the potatoes are done.

When the hour is up, remove the meat from the skillet and set to one side. Make a roux with the flour and butter and cook to the blonde stage (a few minutes, stirring constantly). Strain the braising liquour and gradually add to the roux while again constantly stirring. Keep adding the stock until you reach a sauce consistency, then add a little more to account for thickening during the cooking out of the flour. This is now a velouté (no, not the fake kind that some chefs masquerade as veloutés. A real one). So place the lamb necks back into the sauce, cover with a cartouche (greasproof paper cut into a circle to match the diameter of the pan and buttered) and cook on a low heat for about 20-25 minutes.

I chose to finish the dish with some silverskin onions, which add great texture as well as a sour note from the vinegar they're pickled in. Simply run through the sauce a few minutes from serving to keep the crunchy texture.

Voila! Serve piping hot and eat with glee.

Surf And Turf Chicken Livers With Soy Spinach And Wild Rice

2007-10-15T13:00:00.000+02:00

This recipe is very much inspired by the Thai dish pad kueng niey gay, with some twists of my own. Chicken livers can be very expensive when purchased in the form of paté, but the raw prime ingredient is virtually given away these days. Modern home cooks tend to find raw offal unpleasant, both to view and to smell, so few home cooks try this excellent product. The texture of properly cooked chicken livers is one of the best in the culinary world and, cooked with the right seasonings, chicken livers can also have a great taste.

Ingredients (2-3 portions)

300 gm chicken livers
250 gm spinach leaves (fresh or bagged)
1 medium yellow onion
1 cup mixed basmati and wild rice*
4 cloves garlic
3 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp oyster and spring onion sauce (or use oyster sauce and add your own chopped spring onion)
1 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 cube vegetable stock
1 pinch mixed herbs (e.g. herbes de Provence)
vegetable oil
salt
black pepper

* Supermarkets sell rice mixtures in which the wild rice is part-cooked. If using separate wild rice, pre-cook in accordance with instructions.

Method

Thoroughly wash the chicken livers, but don't leave them around as they start to go off very rapidly. This dish depends on very light cooking, so freshness is very important.

These are are key seasoning ingredients, apart from the salt and pepper.

Oyster sauce is now readily available in supermarkets or in South-East Asian speciality food outlets. I like the variety with spring onion.

Other ingredients are nam pla, light soy sauce, vegetable stock and garlic. I started with 2 cloves but soon realised this was not enough!

First, chop the onion and garlic and sweat off one half in a little vegetable oil. Be careful not to let the onion burn.

Set the other half aside for later.

Once the onion and garlic have softened, add the rice and stir in well.

Fry gently for a few minutes, stirring frequently until the white rice starts to become translucent.

In the meantime, make up your cooking stock. Into some boiling water, add the stock cube and a pinch of herbs and season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add half of the soy, oyster and nam pla sauces, holding the rest back to add at the last minute.

As a guide to quantities, add the same amount of stock that you would use when making risotto, i.e. cover the rice with about 1/2 inch of liquid above the rice surface.

While the rice is simmering, prepare the chicken livers.

Boil some water with a pinch of salt and add the livers when the water is boiling. The object is to extract the free blood as surface scum (see the photo) in as little time as possible (preferably less than 30 seconds).

Now strain and wash the livers to remove the scum and plunge them into iced water to prevent them from cooking any further.

This is the critical stage of the recipe. Overcooked livers are horrible - redolent of school meals. But get this right and they will melt in your mouth like butter.

When the rice is almost ready, fry off the remainder of the onions and garlic in some vegetable oil, with salt and black pepper.

This time get the temperature higher and allow some browning.

Now toss the livers into the frying pan and allow the temperature to rise, gently browning the livers.

Chop the spinach leaves and add to the pan, stirring regularly. Once the spinach has begun to wilt, add the remainder of the oyster sauce, soy sauce and nam pla.

It is important not to overdo this stage. Try to get some colour into the livers while wilting the spinach, but don't cook for too long. A couple of minutes should be ample.

During this final stage, drain and serve the rice.

Now turn out your livers, spinach and sauce onto the rice and serve.

Eat immediately - chicken livers cool quickly and go tough when they cool.

If you time all this correctly, the result will astound you. You'll wonder why you never bought chicken livers before. Unless, of course, like me you still can't be doing with liver even when it's cooked perfectly!

How I Made Goulash To Test Three Different Paprikas

2007-10-15T01:00:00.000+02:00

Not so much a photo recipe - more a photographic record of how I cooked Jenny Redfern's Gulyás, from the blog post Mothers’ Distinctive Goulash/Gulyas by Karen Coates of Rambling Spoon. The idea was to test three different paprikas by cooking the same goulash dish in three portions, one with each pepper, and then blind tasting them.

I started with three different paprikas.

At the front is "Hungarian 1st class paprika" from my local spice stall in Broadway Market. At the rear is a packet of "genuine Spanish paprika" from my local supermarket and a packet of "Indian paprika" from my local shop. I suspect that this was actually Turkish paprika.

Once I'd measured a portion of each into a glass, you can see just how much difference there was in colour.

The Hungarian paprika was bright red, the Spanish paprika a brownish-red and the Indian/Turkish paprika a darker reddish-brown.

I started by sautéeing a coarsely-chopped onion.

Then I roasted some caraway seed in the oven, to bring out the flavour.

I used pork for my dishes, rather than veal, as I have an objection to the way that veal is raised and slaughtered.

I deliberately chose a cut of pork (rolled shoulder) that had a good marbling of fat when diced, as you can see from the photo. This fat helps the meat to tenderise and adds flavour to the broth as the meat is braised.

With the meat divided into three portions, I rubbed each portion thoroughly with a mixture of paprika, garlic, caraway, salt and pepper - using a different paprika for each bowl.

At this stage it was still obvious which portion was which, from the different colours of the paprika.

After browning the meat one batch at a time (carefully, to avoid burning the paprika and turning it bitter), I put each portion into a separate covered pan to braise with the onions, wine and tomato paste.

From time to time I added additional white wine to prevent the meat from burning and to keep the braising process going.

Doesn't the combination of red paprika and red tomato paste look fantastic on the pork as it cooks?

The next task was to grate some potato and mix it with sauerkraut. Rather than make my own sauerkraut, which would have been a time-consuming activity, I used a commercial sauerkraut from the local supermarket.

Not something you would have found a few years ago, but now plentiful as a result of the large influx of Polish migrants into Britain.

I folded the potato and sauerkraut into each of the meat and onion mixes and then cooked the dishes for another hour and a half, with occasional stirring and topping up with boiling water.

Eventually, all three goulashes were cooked. The process treated each portion identically - or at least as close as I could get.

I served each bowl with a generous topping of soured cream.

With the portions secretly labelled, dad and I sampled each one and made our decisions as to which was the best.

And then we wolfed the lot down. Delicious!

Lobster With Baby Asparagus & Mango-Chilli Mousse

2007-10-14T13:00:00.000+02:00

There's always a danger with lobster that you drown its delicate flavour with sauces and accompaniments. This frequently leads to timid options, pairing the lobster with Hollandaise sauce or with a little citrus sweetened with cream. When I was offered a pair of lobsters to take home, I was determined that I would try something more adventurous. I'd been thinking about making a mango-chilli mousse for quite a while and this was the perfect time. It worked well - despite the potency of the mousse, the flavour of the lobster was maintained. And there was an unexpected bonus because I made enough mousse to allow me to reconstitute the leftovers later... but that's another story.

Ingredients (4 portions)

For the meat and veg:
2 medium sized lobsters
20 spears of baby asparagus
salt
black pepper
lemon-infused olive oil

For the mousse:*
1/4 cup lime juice (2 large or 4 small limes)
2 lbs ripe mango (or tinned pure mango pulp)
1 red chilli, very finely chopped**
1/4 cup sugar***
1 egg white
4 leaves unflavoured gelatin
1/4 cup double cream
pinch of salt

* Note that the quantities listed here make perhaps 20 portions of mousse and are ideal if you want to put some away to use later, as I did. My photographs show these quantities. It would be very difficult to make mousse in the quantity required just for this recipe, but you can certainly scale down.
** With the chilli you need to experiment and use a type and quantity suitable for your personal taste. I used one small Scotch Bonnet, which gives a unique flavour as well as a strong pungency. Most important is to chop it very finely, so you don't end up with hot spots in the mousse!
*** Add less if your mango pulp is sweetened, a little more if using fresh fruit.

Method

As always, the most important thing is to start with fresh, good quality ingredients. In the case of lobsters this means live until the point of cooking.

Note that all live lobsters in the UK are sold with rubber bands on their claws to protect them from each other and to protect handlers. Do not be tempted to remove these - a lobster can easily remove one of your fingers!

Click on the photo to enlarge and you will see that the crustaceans are sat on a bag of ice. The box is kept covered with a wet cloth and this provides a semi-dark, cool and damp environment that keeps the lobsters de-stressed.

This might surprise you! It's not every day that I cook with canned fruit rather than fresh, but in this instance the choice was well-justified.

This mango pulp is 92% pure mango and it worked very well in this dish. For those without direct access to fresh mangoes, this canned product is a very acceptable alternative choice.

Halve the limes and squeeze into a cup.

Now add the gelatin leaves to 1/4 cup of hot water in a bowl and allow the gelatin to dissolve.

Put the mango pulp into a bowl, stir in the sugar, the gelatin and the finely chopped chilli.

Beat the cream to soft peaks.

And beat the egg white to firm peaks.

Now fold the cream into the beaten egg white.

And then gently fold the cream and egg into the mango, sugar and chilli mixture.

You need patience here - keep folding gently until thoroughly blended. Avoid the temptation to use a blender at this stage, as this will knock out the air you've just add to the cream and albumen.

Now chill in a fridge for two hours or more, or put in the freezer for 30 minutes or so (don't allow it to freeze!)

Boil a pan of water, having previously checked that the pan is large enough to take the fully-extended lobster.

Being careful not to scald your hand, plunge the lobster into the boiling water and, a few seconds later, turn off the heat. Repeat with the second lobster in another pan.

Don't be squeamish. Although lobsters can detect the danger associated with steam and will try to take avoiding action as a basic survival mechanism, they do not experience suffering because they don't possess a central nervous system advanced enough to allow the processing of emotional information. And any squeaking sound you hear is air escaping from the shell.

As with crustaceans such as prawns, the lobster turns bright pink almost instantly in boiling water. Langoustines are an exception to this, as they are naturally pink.

Rest the cooked lobsters and allow to fully cool.

In the meantime, cook the asparagus spears. Break off the woody end sections and drop into boiling water or place in a steamer for a minute or so. When cooked to your desired degree, remove and plunge into ice water to refresh.

In the photo below I show sliced lobster tail sitting on a bed of mousse.

Other lobster meat can be better presented lightly folded into the mousse.

Extracting the flesh is no easy task. In this photo I use the back of a cleaver to crack the shell.

At the end of the day there's no substitute for washing your hands and getting stuck in!

This is how my lobster and mango-chilli mousse looked, plated up.

Asparagus spears laid on the plate, mousse spooned over and sliced lobster tail sat on top. With a little mango-chilli mousse and lemon-infused oil drizzled around.

In most restaurants the tail is served as the main element in a dish, the claw is used for presentation and the head is often used to make bisques and shellfish stocks.

Papaya, Garlic & Anise Marinated Lamb Rack With Panch Phoron Kabocha And Creamy Garlic Sauce

2007-10-14T01:00:00.000+02:00

This is a recipe for rack of lamb inspired by a marinade prepared by Chef Atul Kochhar of Benares as part of his presentation for the South-Eastern regional heats of Great British Menu 2007. I've changed a few things and made a creamy garlic sauce from the marinade. Although a lot of flavoursome ingredients are used, the result is a subtle combination of flavours that does not at all dominate the delicate sweetness of the lamb. My vegetable accompaniment is the highly versatile Japanese kabocha squash, roasted with Bengali panch phoron spice mix. It's a great combination! (Note: some roasted carrot turns up in the final picture here because I had some carrot that needed using up so I cooked it with the kabocha).

Ingredients (3 portions)

For the marinade
2 tbsps finely chopped papaya (about half a typical papaya, deseeded and chopped)
5 cloves of garlic
2 green chillies
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp sweet paprika (good quality Hungarian paprika is recommended)
3 tbsps mustard oil
100 ml single cream
3 tbsps double cream
2 tbsps gram flour
2 tbsps anise liqueur (anisette, pastis, sambuca, ouzo, etc.)
1 pinch grated nutmeg
salt
pepper

For the lamb
2 racks of lamb with 6 ribs each
salt
pepper

For the vegetable
1 medium Japanese kabocha
1 tbsp panch phoron mixture
salt
pepper
vegetable oil

For the sauce
Marinade excess removed from the meat after marination
2 banana shallots
2 cloves garlic
a knob of butter
salt
black pepper
150ml double cream
1 tsp fresh finely chopped rosemary (or 1 tsp of dried rosemary)
a dash of Worcestershire sauce

Method

These are the ingredients for the marinade. Start by halving the papaya, peeling one half and putting the other half away. Remove the seeds and roughly chop the flesh.

Finely chop the cloves of garlic and the green chillies. It is important that these are finely chopped for reasons that will be apparent later.

Grind the fennel seeds, using a mortar and pestle preferably, or otherwise in an electric grinder.

Put the papaya, garlic, chilli and fennel into a food processor and add the ground black pepper and the paprika, followed by the mustard oil.

Now pour in the single and double cream, followed by the gram flour, a pinch of nutmeg and the anise liqueur.

Blend the marinade mixture thoroughly.

Although a very smooth mixture would not normally be necessary for marinating, we are going to use part of the marinade to make the sauce - hence the importance of fine chopping and thorough blending, especially of the chilli and garlic.

My racks of lamb had five bones each, but the ingredients I have listed here are adequate for 3 portions using two 6-bone racks.

Massage the marinade into the meat, focusing on the eye of the rack but ensuring that marinade reaches all the nooks and crannies.

Cover with clingfilm or foil. The minimum time for the marinating process is one hour, but as long as possible up to about 24 hours would be better.

Use common sense to decide whether to refrigerate it during the marination process. This will depend on the marinating time and the ambient temperature. Don't leave it out for hours in a warm room!

Now for the kabocha. This Japanese variety of squash has a particularly tough skin. It's not hard to peel once you know how to go about it, so ask someone for advice or look it up on the web, but don't try to work it out for yourself as you will probably hurt yourself in the attempt!

Once peeled and segmented, put the squash into a roasting tray and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

This is the panch phoron spice mix - a mixture of fennel, mustard, nigella, fenugreek and cumin seeds.

Heat a little oil gently and add the spices. Leave them until they start to pop and you can smell the aromas releasing into the oil. This process is known as tempering.

Pour the tempered panch phoron and its oil over the kabocha. Prepare for roasting a bit later.

Scrape off the excess marinade from the lamb and set aside.

Place the lamb into a roasting dish, drizzle with oil and put into a pre-heated oven at 200º (gas mark 6).

Now start to prepare the sauce, beginning with the excess marinade.

Finely chop the shallots and crush the garlic with some salt, using the flat blade of the knife. Sweat the shallots and garlic in a pan in a little butter, adding some freshly ground black pepper.

When adequately sweated (the shallot will be translucent), add the marinade mix and the cream and blitz the mixture in a blender while it is still warm.

At this stage (7 or 8 minutes after the lamb has gone into the oven) put the kabocha into the oven to roast.

Turn the sauce into a pan over a low flame and stir. Cook slowly to reduce and thicken the sauce.

To add extra flavour, I used rosemary. As I didn't have any fresh at the time, I made an infusion by adding a little boiling water and leaving for a few minutes, then straining the liquid into the sauce.

Finally, add the Worcestershire sauce a few drops at a time, to taste.

The lamb should take 12-20 minutes depending on your oven and how rare you like your meat. Check the meat and return to the oven if necessary.

When done, remove from the oven and rest the meat for at least 10 minutes.

Before carving the meat, check that the kabocha is just about ready. The timings for this dish will come with practice - beware that kabocha turns from undercooked to overcooked very quickly!

After resting and carving my lamb, I found the cutlets were too rare for my liking, so I pan-fried them in hot oil for ten seconds or so on each side.

This is a simple way to rescue undercooked lamb cutlets.

Plate up the meal and serve.

Sorry about the picture - it's not my best effort at photography. But the meal was absolutely delicious.

Rhubarb Ice Cream

2007-10-13T13:00:00.001+02:00

Rhubarb ice cream is something you don't often see, but believe me it's fantastic. When I made some recently my dad raved about the subtleness of the rhubarb flavour (quite unlike the in-your-face taste of rhubarb crumble). It's the time-separation of the flavour sensations that made this really special. The sweetness of the cream hits you first and the rhubarb tartness rushes onto your palate a second or two later and lingers for ages.

Ingredients (8 portions)

6 egg yolks
125g caster sugar
700ml milk (substitute part for cream to make richer if desired)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
500ml rhubarb compote (see my recipe)

Method

Separate the yolks from the whites, add the sugar and whisk until fully combined.

Heat the milk until close to boiling (do not allow to boil).

This is the vanilla extract I use. Do not confuse extract with essence, which is an artificial substitute.

Add the vanilla extract to the hot milk and stir.

Now temper the eggs and sugar gradually with the milk. This process involves slowly adding about one third of the milk to the eggs and sugar and whisking.

This allows the eggs to warm and the milk to cool slowly, so the eggs do not scramble as they would do if you poured them into the hot milk.

This picture shows the eggs combined with about one third of the milk.

At this stage, pour this back into the rest of the milk and place over the lowest heat possible for a few minutes until it thickens slightly.

The result is known as a crème anglais (or custard to us Brits).

Once thickened, strain the mixture through a fine chinois to remove any shell or lumps.

This is the rhubarb compote that I made earlier (see the separate recipe). When cold, it is a deep pink colour.

Add the rhubarb gradually, while continuously tasting to your desired strength of flavour.

Once the mixture tastes OK, pour into a blender and blitz to aerate and fully disperse the rhubarb through the crème anglais.

Put into the fridge until completely cold.

Start up your ice cream maker and pour in the cold mixture slowly.

After about 20 minutes (depending on your machine), the ice cream will be ready.

Eat and enjoy!

Bacalhau À Braz De Hackney

2007-10-13T01:00:00.001+02:00

Bacalhau à braz (alternate spelling Bacalhau à brás), or cod with scrambled eggs and fried potatoes is one of the traditional dishes of Portugal. The Portuguese have 1001 ways to cook bacalhau, but this is one of the best of their recipes and quite unlike anything we eat in Britain. In Portugal the dish is prepared with salt fish because, with the principal fishing grounds in the North Atlantic and a relatively inefficient distribution system, it is not possible to get fresh enough cod to the typical home. If you have access to fresh cod, as I do, then use it.

Before anyone complains that this recipe is not genuine, let me point out that in Portugal, as with Italy, each village likes to claim that its own recipe is the most original and superior. All I can say for this recipe is that it was cooked under the direction of four women from the Minho (north of Porto) and it tasted absolutely delicious.

Ingredients (8 portions)

1½ kilo cod fillets*
6 eggs
1 kilo potatoes**
1 red onion
4 cloves garlic
200 gm pitted black olives***
parsley
vegetable oil

* Please ensure that your cod is sourced from sustainable stocks
** these should be a floury variety suitable for making chips - I used Maris Pipers
*** look for olives that have not been marinated in anything too flavoursome, as otherwise you could upset the delicate flavour of the fish.

Method

Here is my beautiful fresh cod. Note the Portuguese dish!

The Portuguese make their bacalhau dishes with salt cod, i.e. cod that has been salted and dried. So it may seem to be a crime to use fresh cod in this recipe.

Not a bit of it! The reason for the salt cod is that, as with ackee saltfish in Jamaica, fresh supplies of cod are simply not available. But if you can obtain fresh fish, as we can in the UK, it's the best option.

The first step is to put the cod into boiling water. Leave for about 30 seconds before removing to a dish cloth. Lightly sprinkle with a good salt and leave to one side.

Roughly slice the onion and chop the garlic finely.

Peel the spuds and slice very thinly. Now cut the slices into very fine chips and keep in water to stop them discolouring.

Being very slender, the chips will absorb more fat, the flavour and texture of which is essential to this dish.

Bring all edges of the dish cloth into one clasp and squeeze the excess moisture from the cod into the sink. The salt you added before aids this process by withdrawing the moisture.

Crack the eggs into a bowl or jug. Steady the bowl with one hand and crack an egg with each of your other two hands.

D'oh! That's given away my chef's secret.

Beat thoroughly and season.

Fry all the chips together at a low temperature to cook them through without colour.

Turn them out and leave until just before the end of the cooking.

Now fry the onion and garlic in a large wok or skillet. Don't allow the onions to brown too much, but do make sure they are properly cooked.

Flake in the drained cod by hand and stir well.

After a few minutes, second fry the crisps one batch at a time in smoking oil. You must make sure the oil is hot enough for this step or the potatoes will absorb oil.

They should look like this. Turn them and season generously.

Now fold them into the pan with the onions, garlic and cod.

And gently stir over the heat.

At the last minute add the scrambled egg and stir until cooked.

Chop some parsley.

Turn it all out into a serving dish, add the de-pitted olives and the chopped parsley for garnish.

There you go. Classic Portuguese bacalhau à braz, cooked Hackney-style!

Apple Sauce With Rhubarb Compote And Soured Cream

2007-10-12T13:00:00.000+02:00

This is a very simple dessert that will surprise you. The beauty of this dish is that, like so many great culinary inventions, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The chunky apple sauce is served hot, alongside chilled rhubarb compote, with the soured cream third component at room temperature. The result is an elegant balance of temperatures, textures and flavours, with the tartness of the apple offset by the sweetness of the rhubarb, and a strong sour note constantly refreshing and surprising the palate. The difficult thing here is judging the amount of sugar to use, so taste and adjust as you cook. You want the rhubarb to be sweet and the apple to be tart.

Ingredients (6 portions)

4 medium cooking apples*
4 large stalks of rhubarb
1 lemon
300 ml soured cream
½ quill of cinnamon**
3 cloves
150 gm sugar
knob of butter

* I used Bramley apples for this dish, but you could substitute Granny Smiths or other cooking apples.
** Sri Lankan cinnamon is recommended.

Method

We start with the rhubarb, as this part of the dish is served chilled and thus requires more time than the apple sauce.

Cut the leaf end off. If the stalk is green at this end then cut down further.

The other end of the stalk will probably be dried out (like asparagus spears). If so, cut a few mm off until you expose moist flesh.

Wash the trimmed stalks, cut into manageable lengths and split them in half lengthways as shown.

Now chop the split stalks into a Macédoine (1cm dice).

Repeat this with all of the rhubarb, placing the diced pieces in a bowl.

Now melt a generous knob of butter (about 20gm) in a large pan.

Add the rhubarb and allow it to "sweat" for a few minutes, stirring regularly. Make sure the flame is not too high as you do not want to brown the rhubarb.

Now add two thirds of the brown sugar and a very small amount of water (2 or 3 tablespoons).

Turn the heat down very low.

The rhubarb will slowly break down to form a sauce.

When the rhubarb looks like this, remove it from the heat, put into a dish and chill. You should leave it uncovered at this stage, applying clingfilm to the dish when cool.

The photo shows the texture you want in your compote. This texture adds importantly to the taste experience when you eat it. You don't want to make a purée!

Now for the apple. This will discolour rapidly when peeled and cored, so you want to have the lemon ready first.

For those who don't know, it's not the citric acid in the lemon that inhibits oxidisation of the apple flesh, but the ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Start by zesting a lemon with a zester or a grater as shown, setting the zest aside for use in a minute.

Now squeeze the lemon, removing the pips. There are modern devices for this, but I've got a classical lemon squeezer that dates from the 1950s.

Now for the apples. Don't they just look fantastic?

There are many ways to core an apple, but a peeler like this inserted concave face inwards and dragged around the core works very well.

You need to repeat the process on the other side, extract the core and scrape any residual core and pips from the tunnel.

Now quickly peel the apples.

Cut each apple into quarters, place in a large pan and add the lemon juice and zest.

Now add the remaining brown sugar.

Grind the cinnamon and cloves, preferably using a mortar and pestle but otherwise using a mechanical or electrical grinder. You may find that you need to give the ground spice a quick chop after grinding to ensure that all pieces are small.

Now add the ground spice to the pan.

The best result comes from fruit reduced in its own liquid, but you may need to add a very small amount of boiling water.

Bring to the boil, cover the pan, reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Check for sweetness and adjust with brown sugar. The sauce should not be too sweet.

When cooked, the apple sauce should have plenty of texture and a golden colour as shown in the photo.

Turn the hot apple sauce into a bowl.

Now our fruit ingredients are ready to serve. Note how the rhubarb has darkened substantially during the chilling phase.

Serve the cold rhubarb compote alongside the hot apple sauce, with soured cream at room temperature. You can design your own arrangement.

The important point about the presentation is that each mouthful should create experiences of different temperatures, different textures (the rhubarb stringy and the apple chunky) and flavours.

If you get it right, you will be amazed!

Two-Day Marinaded Brown Stew Chicken And Wild Rice With Sesame Sautéed Broccoli

2007-10-12T01:00:00.000+02:00

This recipe is for those prepared to plan ahead. It's a two-day marinading process that results in chicken that is fabulously tender and full of flavour. As usual, all measurements are roughly estimated, because who has time to put every single ingredient on a set of scales? I served my stew with seasonal and delicious broccoli lightly tossed in sesame oil, but you should chose whatever is seasonal to you. Chicken marinaded in this way also barbecues really well, by the way. So it's an ideal preparation for the summer months.

Ingredients (3 portions)

For the marinade
1 medium chicken (jointed)*
100 ml green seasoning**
1 large drizzle of Worcestershire sauce
1 slightly smaller drizzle of dark soy sauce
10 ml hot pepper sauce (I use Encona)
1 pinch of chilli powder
25 ml honey***
A sprinkling of nigella seeds
A larger sprinkling of mustard seeds
Plenty of freshly ground black pepper

For cooking the chicken and rice
1 mug of mixed basmati and wild rice****
5g tomato purée (I used a "sun-dried" variety)
2 banana shallots, finely diced
1 Scotch Bonnet chilli, finely diced
30ml vegetable oil
25g brown sugar
1 litre of brown chicken stock

For the broccoli
1 broccoli head
15ml toasted sesame oil

* For a video demonstration of how to break down a chicken, see this video post.
** For green seasoning, see this post.
*** I used organic New Zealand forest honey but any honey that is clear and liquid at room temperature will work.
**** Supermarkets now sell rice mixtures in which the wild rice has been part-cooked. If using separate wild rice, pre-cook in accordance with instructions.

Method

Gather together all of the marinade ingredients, ready for use.

Take your green seasoning out of the fridge. The vinegar in the mixture will have preserved the fresh green colour of the herbs. To learn how to make this marinade, see my Green Seasoning recipe.

Place the chicken pieces into a large bowl. Using the point of a sharp kitchen knife, repeatedly stab the chicken. This will create gashes in the flesh which will allow for much deeper flavour penetration during the marinating process.

Thanks to my Trini friends Sarina and Chennette for explaining the fine art of stabbing and gashing to me. I didn't include any scenes of chicken violence here so as not to upset those of a more delicate disposition.

Add all of the marinade ingredients to the bowl.

Now mix everything thoroughly, massaging the flavours into the chicken.

When you've had enough of massaging the chicken, make sure that each piece is sufficiently smothered with the marinade and cling film the bowl (after washing your hands of course).

Put the bowl into the fridge and come back two days later. Yes, you could use it after a day, but 48 hours is best. Any longer than that is not advisable on health grounds.

You can use the tomato purée in the marinade process or later on during the cooking process.

On this occasion I chose to leave it until browning the chicken, adding the tomato into the hot wok with the meat.

Heat a large wok and add the vegetable oil. Let the oil become quite hot before adding the brown sugar. Now stir constantly until the sugar turns to caramel and flows freely. This will help create the golden brown colouring of the chicken that we want to achieve.

Add the chicken to the very hot oil and sugar in the wok and allow to brown.

Get your finely diced shallots and chilli ready, because they'll come into the picture very shortly.

When nice and browned, turn the chicken over and brown on the other side. Try to resist the temptation to keep the chicken moving in the wok, as this will bring the temperature down and prevent the chicken from browning properly.

I always measure rice in a mug. I go by half a mug per person, so for three people you will need a mug and a half.

By now your chicken pieces should have browned enough. Getting good colour at this stage is vital to the colour of the end result.

You'll find that, just like when making stocks, the darker you get the meat (or bones) when roasting, the darker the finished stew (or stock) will be.

I couldn't resist using this photo, just to give you an idea of how hot the wok needs to be.

If like me you don't have an extractor over your stove, you might want to disconnect your smoke alarm before you begin!

At this point you should add the rice, shallots and chilli.

Give it all a very good mixing with a spatula or wooden spoon, so as not to burn the raw rice grains on the wok.

Now add your stock, which will gradually thicken through evaporation and will also absorb into the rice during the cooking.

Now we play the waiting game. The stew will take 30-40 minutes simmering on a low flame, which will give you ample time to prepare the broccoli to accompany it.

Just a cooking note, if you think the stew is cooking a little too fast then don't hesitate to turn it to the minimum heat. The slower this cooks the more tender the chicken will be.

If by any chance the stew begins to thicken before the rice and/or chicken is cooked properly, just add a little more stock or water.

You should now have some time away from the stew to prepare the broccoli. Chop off the thick stalks and then break down the broccoli (preferably by hand) into small florets.

Prepare some salted boiling water and, very crucially, a bowl of ice water. Plunge the broccoli into the boiling water and allow just to soften slightly.

After about 15 seconds, remove the florets into the ice water. This will prevent the residual heat from cooking the broccoli any further. When cold, remove from the ice water and keep on a plate by the stove.

If you can anticipate when the stew is about 2 minutes from being ready, place a frying pan over a high heat.

Add a little sesame oil to the pan and immediately throw in the broccoli. Stir fry the broccoli while continuously moving around the pan. Sesame oil burns quite easily, so it's important not to allow that to happen, leaving a bitter taste.

Now it's all ready, all that's left to do is to eat it. Enjoy!

Green Seasoning

2007-10-11T13:00:00.000+02:00

Green Seasoning is a herb mixture preserved in vinegar and salt, generally associated with Trinidad & Tobago but commonly found across the Caribbean and as far away as Brazil and the southern United States. Trinidadan green seasoning is distinguished by the use of the local herb shado beni (Mexican coriander). The term "seasoning" in this context refers to what most of us would call a marinade, as opposed to something added during or after cooking. The precise mix of herbs differs from island to island and some chefs will vary the mixture according to what they are planning to cook.

Ingredients (enough to use for marinading 2-3 meals for 4 people)

I have not given quantities for the herbs, as this depends entirely on taste. The best approach is to experiment and adjust until you have a balance that you are happy with. Some herbs such as parsley are less dominant than others such as thyme or coriander, so you can afford to use more of them without upsetting the balance. All herbs should be in fresh leaf form if at all possible, although I guess that oregano could be used in dried form as it holds its flavour well when dried. Recipes tend to advise against including onion and garlic in green seasoning, but rather using these at the cooking stage.

chives
oregano
thyme
basil
parsley
coriander
celery
salt
white wine vinegar

Method

Gather your fresh herbs. Pictured here you can see (left-right) broad-leaf parsley, celery, basil, chives, oregano, thyme. Although there's almost always fresh coriander in my house, on this occasion I decided to make my seasoning without.

The first task is to prepare the herbs. Pick all of the leaves (except the chives of course) and then wash and thoroughly dry the prepared herbs.

The chives should be cut into roughly 8cm lengths, this will make the blitzing process much easier.

The celery doesn't need to be peeled, just washed and cut into 4cm pieces.

Put the mixture into a blender, add some vinegar and begin to purée.

You need to be patient here, stopping the machine and stirring the mix from time to time. It is important that you do not add too much vinegar or the seasoning will end up thin and runny.

Eventually, with patience, you will get a thick, foamy seasoning mix.

If you have overdone the vinegar and the result is too thin, don't despair. Drain quickly through a sieve, collecting both solids and liquid.

Then put the solids into a container and stir some of the strained liquid back in until the consistency is just right.

Finally, add some salt to taste.

Et voilà. Your green seasoning. Seal the container and store in the fridge. It should retain its potency for a good couple of weeks.

Coquille Saint-Patrice

2007-10-11T01:00:00.000+02:00

This dish came about after I made mussels with garlic and Guinness for St. Patrick's Day. There was plenty of the fishy, creamy Guiness broth left over, so I decided to make and add a caramel to it in order to balance the flavours. I did this while aerating the broth in a blender, which produced a great foam which I used to dress the seared scallops. Obviously this isn't the sort of meal you make every night and I enjoyed myself preparing a dish with a fine dining level of presentation. But it tasted absolutely fantastic. The flavour balance between the umami of the seafood, the sweetness of the caramel and the bitterness of the stout was really delicate.

Ingredients (2 portions)

6 scallops*
1 cup seafood, Guiness & cream broth (to make this broth, see my recipe for Mussels with Garlic and Guinness)
100 gm butter
100 gm brown sugar
30 ml vegetable oil
garnish (I used radish and coriander)

* I used the fantastic Loch Fyne scallops in this dish.

Method

Bring the seafood, Guiness & cream broth briefly to the boil and then immediately remove from the heat.

Pass it through a muslin cloth to filter pieces of shallot etc. as well as any grit left behind by the mussels.

Pour the strained broth into a liquidiser, in order to aerate it. At this stage it will have a dull, creamy grey appearance.

Now blitz the broth while slowly adding cubes of very cold butter to give the liquid a glossy finish, a process called "monter au beurre".

As well as creating a shiny broth, this process also adds plenty of air and turns the previously flat sauce into a vibrant foam.

In the meantime, heat the brown sugar in a stainless steel pan to create a simple caramel. Stir steadily as the sugar crystals turn into a honey-coloured liquid.

When the caramel has turned into a golden coloured liquid, add some butter and cream to stop the cooking process. As you fold in the butter and cream the caramel will become smooth and creamy and turn into a fudge.

Now slowly add the caramel while continuing to blitz the broth and regularly tasting the result.

If you get the balance right you will have a sauce that is wonderfully balanced between being gently bitter from the Guinness and pleasantly sweet from the caramel, with an underlying savoury umami taste from the mussel juice.

When I made this, I had a lot of fun preparing the plate for the scallops. I wanted to serve the dish as it might be served in a formal restaurant, so I added some classy touches.

I had some radishes that needed using so I cut some very thin slices and arranged them into overlapping steps as you can see. I then decorated them with a coriander leaf rubbed with chilli oil and cut the radish trimmings into a neat brunoise to scatter around the plate.

Once the sauce foam is ready, you can cook the scallops.

I was once told that really fresh scallops need no more than 10 seconds each side in a hot pan. But you must be careful and should cook them for longer unless you are completely comfortable with the source and freshness of your molluscs.

Despite the fact that my scallops were bought from a highly reputable fishmonger, I think at least 20 seconds on the first side...

and a minimum of 10 seconds on the other side is advisable, just to be on the safe side.

You can serve the dish however you chose - perhaps in a small dish or on individual spoons.

I placed my scallops in triangular fashion on a round plate.

Give the sauce one last very brief blitz before taking the foam to top each scallop.

Serve and eat immediately.

Later on when you look at the cup containing the unused creamy caramel you'll find it's turned into a chalky, fudge-like substance.

Break it out, crumble, and eat it with your cappuccino.

Mmmm. Delicious.

Trini Pelau (Rice, Chicken And Pigeon Peas)

2007-10-10T13:00:00.000+02:00

Pelau is one of the great dishes of Trinidad & Tobago - to some it is the nation's signature dish. It has been described as a Trinidadan version of the Persian dish Pilaf, but it is much more than that. This is a dish that is deliciously edible even when cooked by an amateur and a work of culinary art when cooked by an expert. So everyone should have a go at it. If you prepare everything in advance, there is very little to be done at cooking time.

Ingredients (4 portions)

For the marinade (referred to in the Caribbean as "seasoning"):
1 medium chicken (or 750gm chicken pieces)
1 tbsp mixed green seasoning*
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp tomato purée
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper

For the rice and peas:
1 cup rice
1 large onion
1 green bell pepper
1 large tin cooked pigeon peas (or gungo peas)
1 hot chilli pepper
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup chicken stock (previously made fresh stock or ½ chicken stock cube, boiling water and mixed herbs)
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil

* Be sure to use Caribbean green seasoning. There are other green seasoning mixes, such as the one from Brazil used for cooking fish. The one I used was from Montserrat.

Method

These are most, but not all, of the ingredients. There's also onion, pepper and coconut milk.

I started out with a tin of brown gungo peas but swapped these for green pigeon peas before I cooked the rice. I stand to be corrected but I think both peas are closely related and make perfect substitutes for each other.

The first task is to prepare the seasoning, or marinade, for the chicken.

In a bowl, mix together the green seasoning, crushed garlic, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, tomato purée, salt and pepper.

Prepare the vegetables by finely chopping the onion, bell pepper and hot chilli pepper.

Now prepare the chicken.

If you have bought chicken pieces, remove the skin.

If like me you are starting from a whole chicken, remove the legs and breasts. Divide the legs into thigh and drumstick and cut the breasts in half. Remember the breast is much thicker at the wing end so make sure to consider this when equally dividing them in half.

Remove the skin from all of the pieces.

Now for the fun bit. Massage the marinade into the chicken pieces so that the flesh is thoroughly plastered with seasoning.

Now cover and leave to marinate for at least an hour and more if you have the time.

While the meat is marinating, get the chicken stock and coconut milk ready.

If you have previously made your own chicken stock, this is the time to bring it to the boil and then leave it on a simmer. Otherwise add your stock cube to the boiling water, add herbs and stir until the stock is dissolved.

Also at this time, par-boil the rice by cooking in boiling salted water for about 3 minutes. Drain the rice and refrigerate.

Now to start the cooking in that most traditional of Trinidadan ways.

Heat a little vegetable oil in a wok and add the brown sugar. Keep it moving, as the wok will get very hot much quicker than a pan. The sugar will dissolve after a few minutes and form a gooey caramel.

Now add the seasoned chicken pieces and cook for about 5 minutes on all surfaces until they have a golden brown surface colour.

When your chicken pieces look like this, you are ready for the next stage of the cooking.

Now for the par-boiled rice.

This should be fluffy and separate but still need plenty of cooking.

Stir the par-boiled rice into the wok with the chicken. Mix thoroughly.

Now add in the chopped onion and pepper and the pigeon peas and continue to cook, stirring for a few minutes.

Next add in the chilli pepper and then pour in the coconut milk and the chicken stock.

Stir all of the ingredients together well, bring to the boil, cover and reduce the heat so the mixture is just simmering.

As an alternative to simmering on the hob you can put the pelau into an oven proof dish, cover and bake in the oven.

Cook for about 20 minutes until all liquid has been absorbed. Add more liquid if needed until the rice is cooked. The final dish should be nicely dry, but not dried out.

Now turn your pelau out into bowls and serve.

Enjoy your taste of Trinidad!

Here is the ideal drink to accompany your meal. Naturally iced spring water from Trinidad's Northern Range Mountains. Or, in my case, London tap water and ice from the freezer.
	Just kidding there, but what about a dessert that is genuinely from Trinidad. The ubiquitous mango. Simply peel, slice and serve...

Mussels With Guinness And Garlic

2007-10-10T01:00:00.000+02:00

This dish, a variant of moules marinière, is the ideal meal to serve on St. Patrick's Day (March 17th). My recipe is modeled closely on the original classic from "The Irish Pub Cookbook" by Margaret Johnson, as served at Ireland's oldest pub, The Brazen Head in Dublin. Surprisingly, although you use a lot of flavoursome ingredients in making this dish, the mussels hold their own flavour very well. Mind you, starting with really top quality mussels does help! The sweet cream combines fantastically with the bitter stout.

Ingredients (4 portions)

2 kg live mussels
2 shallots
3 cloves of garlic
1/4 bunch flat-leaf parsley
1/4 bunch fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
400 ml Guinness
100 ml double cream
30 gm butter
salt and black pepper

Method

Although this meal is very quick to make, you must allow time for cleaning the mussels.

These should be kept moist and cool during the prep period. Don't keep them fully submersed in water for too long before you cook them as you don't want them to open.

This tutorial from "All Recipes" provides excellent guidance on how to prepare your mussels, including removal of the byssal threads, or "beard".

Do make sure all of your mussel shells are firmly closed and undamaged. Test any open shellfish for signs of life by tapping on the shell or gently prodding the creature with a blunt knife inserted into the opening. If the shell does not close, the mussel is dead and should be discarded.

The real secret of this dish is to use fresh herbs. Carefully remove the leaves from broad-leaf parsley (left) and thyme (right) and chiffonade (finely shread) the parsley. The thyme doesn't need to be cut, even if it's as large-leafed as the bunch I was lucky enough to find for my St. Patrick's Eve meal.

If you are unable to use fresh herbs, use an equivalent quantity of dried herbs instead, but fresh is much better.

Just before you start cooking, finely chop your shallots and cloves of garlic.

OK - so could could use any butter, but why spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar? This is a great Irish dish and it deserves a great Irish butter.

Gently sweat off the shallots and garlic for about 3 minutes in a pan with the butter, adding a little salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Make sure you use a pan large enough to take all of the mussels later on and allow plenty of room for steaming.

Just before the end, add about half of your freshly chopped herbs and break a bay leaf into the pan.

No, you're not seeing double. Only one of these 440ml cans is needed for the cooking, but no self-respecting chef would ever be caught consuming alcohol in the kitchen, so the second can should be set aside to quench the thirst of any visiting leprechauns.

As soon as the shallots are translucent, put all of the cleaned mussels into the pan and pour in the Guinness.

Turn up the heat so that the liquid comes to the boil and then turn the heat back down, cover the pan and allow the mussels to steam for 2-3 minutes.

You will know when the mussels are cooked, as they will all open. Stir occasionally while they are steaming. Once the cooking is complete, fold in the cream.

At this point, add the rest of your herbs.

Taste the broth and adjust your seasoning if necessary.

Now quickly turn out your mussels into pre-heated bowls and pour a lavish helping of the Guinness and cream broth over them.

Mussels get cold quickly, so serve immediately.

Crusty fresh-baked bread rolls make the perfect accompaniment to this fantastic Irish dish.

Enjoy!

Mulled Wine-Poached Cod & Lemon Scented Asparagus On Creamy Nam Pla Spinach Polenta

2007-10-09T13:00:00.000+02:00

This is a dish with a balance of delicate flavours and textures. The lightly-wilted creamy spinach with nam pla fish sauce adds texture to the polenta and a complementary flavour to the fish, a foaming butter drizzle on the asparagus balances the gentle hint of cinnamon, cardamom and clove from the mulled wine and the colours tie the whole plate together. Cod stains to a brownish-red colour, but if you substitute swordfish (which will need to cook for longer) you can achieve an attractive deep purple.

Ingredients (3 portions)

For the fish:
3 fillets of cod*, approximately 250g each
1/2 bottle of red wine**
1 large orange
1 cinnamon quill
1 star anise
3 cloves
2 black cardamoms
1 bay leaf

For the asparagus:
15 spears of asparagus
A few drops of lemon oil

For the polenta:
180g Italian polenta***
750ml veg or fish stock
20g butter
200g fresh baby spinach leaf
150ml double cream
1tsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)

* Use cod from sustainable stocks.
** Or equivalent of boxed wine. Preferably use a full bodied wine from a Shiraz or Cabernet grape.
*** Valsugana is recommended.

Method

Heat the red wine in a large, wide pan. Before you start, check that the pan is big enough to fit all of the pieces of fish, as otherwise you'll get in a bit of a pickle at the crucial moment.

Don't use the cheapest wine for this, but don't use good wine either. A boxed, full-bodied red wine is just fine.

Roughly cut the orange into eighths, squeeze to extract the juice and add the pieces and the juice to the hot wine.

Throw in your whole spices and mix in thoroughly. Leave on a low heat for 10 minutes to infuse the flavours together.

After roughly 10 minutes, remove the orange pieces so you have enough room for the fish, which will go in shortly.

In a steamer, add plenty of water and a good few drops of lemon oil.

Because the oil won't be coming into direct contact with the food, it won't impart nearly as much of its potent flavour as it would otherwise. So be considerably more generous than if you were adding lemon oil to a sauce.

Now remove the first inch from the base of the asparagus spears. You'll find this part woody and unpleasant to eat, so it can be discarded. Either cut or bend the spears and snap off the base.

Put the asparagus into the steamer. The spears will need about 4 minutes to cook al dente, which I prefer. A little longer in the steamer will give a softer result.

If you don't have a steamer, boiling water is fine. However, this method won't help to retain as much of the health-beneficial nutrient found naturally in the stems.

Place the cod into the mulled wine at the same time, its cooking time is the same as that of the asparagus.

Get your vegetable or fish stock boiling rapidly.

Have the polenta measured out and in a cup or container ready for use. The one I used for this meal is the same brand that we use at college, so I'm already familiar with the cooking instructions.

With the stock at a rolling boil, rain the polenta into the pan while whisking very quickly. At first it will seem as if there is too much stock, but keep whisking and suddenly the mixture will thicken up.

If you allow the polenta to cool it will begin to firm up and go hard, so you will need to work fast.

Leave the polenta on a low heat and melt the butter for the spinach in a large frying pan. Wilt the leaves and then add salt, pepper and the cream and fish sauce.

Immediately add the hot polenta and mix thoroughly.

Check for consistency and seasoning. If the mixture is too thick, add a little extra cream. If too thin, allow to cook out a little longer.

By the time the polenta is ready, the asparagus and cod should also be ready, give or take a minute.

Arrange the components however you like on the plate. I've gone for this simple style, but you can be more or less arty as you choose.

Despite the fact that the fish is cooked in mulled red wine, it is best accompanied by a white wine.

I won't give advice here, only to say that I chose a Pouille Fumé which has a stronger character than most French white wines.

There was also an in-joke here (see my posting on unpronounceable food and drink).

Cinnamon Pineapple Pork With Kale Bubble & Squeak

2007-10-09T01:00:00.000+02:00

This is an unusual dish, based on a recipe by Peggy Trowbridge Filiponne and modified by me. An orange-coloured sweet and sour sauce is made without orange ingredients by combining yellow pineapple with red capsicum, ginger, cinnamon and chilli. It's not the most obvious group of ingredients, but they produce a surprising result.

Ingredients (2-4 portions)

For the meat:
4 pork medallions
1 tsp course salt*
vegetable oil
butter

For the sauce:
1 medium red bell pepper (capsicum)
1 small pineapple (or 1 large tin of pineapple chunks in natural juice)
1 piece of ginger
1-2 red chillies**
1 quill of Sri Lankan cinnamon (other cinnamon could be used)
1/2 cup of white wine
salt
black pepper
vegetable oil

For the bubble & squeak:
1/2 kilo potatoes (Marris Piper or other dry mashing potato)
1/4 kilo Russian kale (other kale could be used)
1/2 red chilli
1/2 small onion
1 clove garlic

* Sea salt, kosher salt, etc.
**1 hot chilli or 2 of a less hot variety. Type and quantity will depend on your tolerance to chilli.

Method

Start this meal by preparing the potato for the bubble & squeak, which will be chilled and then fried at the last moment.

Peel the potatoes and put them on to boil.

This photo and the picture of the kale below show twice the quantities required for the recipe, as extra bubble & squeak was made for a subsequent meal.

The kale does not need to be cooked yet as it will require only a minute or two in boiling water. Prepare it by thoroughly washing and removing the stalks by hand, setting aside the clean vegetable leaves.

When the potatoes are boiled, drain thoroughly, heat for a minute or two over a flame and mash, adding a little butter. The objective is to achieve a relatively stiff and smooth potato mash. Add a little milk if necessary, but do not allow the mash to become soft.

Now prepare the pork medallions.

Even meat that has been prepared by a butcher will probably have a little residual fat and this should be removed carefully with a sharp knife.

You could also use a piece of pork tenderloin for this dish, slicing the meat into steaks no more than 1cm thick.

Cover the meat and set it aside.

Now prepare the pineapple.

Top and tail the fruit, remove the skin and dice into 1-2 cm cubes.

Next, prepare the red bell pepper.

Remove the core and seeds.

Cut and separate about 1/4 of the pepper, roughly dice it and set it aside. We will use this later in the bubble & squeak dish.

Cut the rest of the pepper into julienne strips.

By this point the potatoes should be nearly cooked and it is time to cook the kale.

Boil some water in a pan and plunge the leaves into the water for a couple of minutes. Remove and taste to check that it is properly cooked. It should retain texture but not be too chewy.

Now finely chop the chilli, ginger and garlic and finely slice the onion.

In this photograph I've chopped the ginger first, but it is a good idea to leave this until last as chopped ginger quickly oxidises and turns a dark grey-brown colour. For the same reason, leave the onion until the last minute as well.

Separate a little of the chopped chilli for the bubble & squeak dish.

Grind the cinnamon to a fine powder using a mortar and pestle and then pass through a fine sieve. You should end up with about 1 tsp of powdered cinnamon.

We are now going to prepare the remaining ingredients for the bubble & squeak and start cooking the cinnamon pineapple sauce at the same time.

Heat a little vegetable oil with a small knob of butter in a pan and add the sliced onion, finely chopped garlic and rough chopped red pepper. Add salt and pepper and sweat over a low heat until the onion is cooked but not browned. You are aiming to cook this mixture but leave some crunchy texture rather than allow it all to go soft and mushy.

Now add some vegetable oil and a small knob of butter to a pan and sweat down the julienne of capsicum. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Now add the diced pineapple, the chilli, ginger, cinnamon and some of the white wine and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring regularly.

While the sauce is cooking, prepare the bubble & squeak.

Turn the cooked kale into the pan with the onion, garlic, capsicum and chilli and fold together over a low flame until well mixed.

Then remove from the flame and allow to cool, before mixing in the cooled mashed potato. Fold together until well mixed and set aside to cool further.

After 10 minutes of cooking the sauce, the pineapple chunks should be softening. At this point transfer the entire sauce mix to a blender and purée the mix, returning it to the pan to continue cooking.

Repeat the exercise if there are still chunks of pineapple remaining.

Return the sauce to a pan to bring back up to temperature, taste and adjusting seasoning as required.

At this point the sauce should be a golden orange colour, as shown in the photograph. You need to be very careful not to allow the sauce to reduce too much, because this may result in some of the water content separating from the mass of the sauce once on the plate.

Now it is time to cook the bubble & squeak and the pork medallions. Neither of these require more than a few minutes to cook. Heat a little vegetable oil in a pan until it just starts to smoke.

For the best presentational results, use a ring on a small tray or plate and pack the cold bubble mixture into it by hand. Now lift the ring and contents with a flat knife and transfer to the pan. Remove the pan from the flame for a moment before removing the ring, to avoid the risk of burning yourself.

Repeat until all of the bubble and squeak is frying and remove when cooked in the same order. You shouldn't try to cook more than three or four in any given pan/skillet, as this will bring the temperature down too drastically and prevent you from achieving a golden colour in the final product.

Heat some oil in another pan and, when hot, place the seasoned medallions into the pan. Cook for two minutes on each side and then add the pineapple, capsicum and cinnamon sauce. This is effectively a braising method, but a quick braise rather to finish the cooking than a slow tenderising process.

No matter how experienced you are, with pork it's always sensible to check that the juices are running clear by cutting into the thickest part of the meat. If the juices are still pinkish, simply leave the medallions in for another minute or two.

When cooked, remove from the sauce and leave to rest on a plate for 2-3 minutes for the meat fibres to relax.

You might want to take this opportunity to pour yourself a glass of vino.

Here I've simply sliced the medallion into two for presentation purposes for a photo, but it's not really necessary for home cooking.

As you can see from my photo, my lack of concentration due to my genetic inability to multi-task (cooking and talking on the phone) lead to my sauce reducing too much.

It's clearly visible that my sauce had separated during the delay between plating, photographing and eating. So a valuable lesson has been learned here, leave the multi-tasking to the professionals...

Wattleseed and Lemon Myrtle Rolled Pavlova

2007-10-08T13:00:00.000+02:00

Wattleseed Pavlova is a serious contender for an Australian national dessert. Pavlova originates from the 1920s, when it was invented in honour of the visiting ballerina of the same name (Australians and New Zealanders both claim to have created it first). The idea of serving the Pavlova with wattleseed-flavoured cream, garnished with lemon myrtle and presented in Swiss roll fashion instead of flat is the invention of Australian celebrity chef Vic Cherikoff and is reputed to be his flagship dish. My recipe is almost identical to the original.

Ingredients (10 portions)

For the cream:
300 ml double cream
1 tbsp wattleseed (or 2 tbsp of wattleseed extract)*

For the meringue:
7 egg whites
350 gm caster sugar (superfine sugar in the US)
pinch of salt
2 tsps cornflour
pinch of cream of tartar
1 tsp white wine vinegar
6 drops of vanilla extract (or the seeds from one whole pod)

For the crust:
50 gm shortbread, digestive or similar biscuit (or cornflakes, rice crispies or similar cereal)
10 gm lemon myrtle sprinkle*

For garnish/presentation:
jam (or sweetened reduced fruit compote or similar)

* These are Australian native herbs that can be obtained from a specialist supplier or directly from Australian product suppliers such as Vic Cherikoff, who originated this recipe.

Method

The starting point for this dish should be the cream, as the longer it rests infused with the wattleseed extract the more the coffee/hazlenut flavour will penetrate.

If you don't have wattleseed extract, use the ground seed instead. Add a small amount of boiling water to the grounds in a cup or simmer gently in a pan for a few seconds.

Once the flavour has been drawn from the wattleseed, filter the result through a fine mesh and collect the extract.

It is not essential to remove all of the grounds as a small amount of residue can impart an interesting texture to the cream.

Next, whip the double cream to stiff peaks, i.e. the point where peaks form and stay upright.

I used a hand whisk for this as it is very easy to overwhip the cream using an electric beater.

You will know when cream is overwhipped because it will begin to separate and form butter and buttermilk.

Now fold the wattleseed extract into the cream. Put your wattleseed cream into the fridge or somewhere cool, but do not allow it to freeze!

Now for the meringue. This dish requires a soft meringue that can be rolled, not the crisp and brittle meringue that we often see on cakes and in conventional Pavlova dishes.

This means special care must be taken with sourcing the eggs to avoid health risks. Pasteurised eggs are recommended.

Note to myself: I wonder whether Italian meringue (made with hot sugar syrup) would work better with this dish?

Start by separating the eggs and setting aside the yolks to use whenever possible.

Whisk the egg whites and gradually add half of the caster sugar and a pinch of salt.

Start whisking slowly, preferably by hand, until the sugar has been absorbed. At this point the chance of overwhipping has been significantly reduced and you can use an electric beater.

This exercise will take much more effort than whipping the cream.

Once soft peaks have formed, beat in the remaining sugar a little at a time.

You will either need to use an electric beater for this stage or be very strong and fit!

You will know when you have reached stiff peaks as the mixture will really hold its own and you can show off.

Don't try this trick with the stiff cream as this is likely to result in the need for a shower, a good shampoo and a repeat cream-making exercise!

At this stage sprinkle the cornflour, cream of tartar, vinegar and vanilla extract onto the surface and fold gently into the mix until evenly dispersed.

Your meringue mix should have the gleaming white appearance shown here. If not, you have probably not used sufficient caster sugar.

Cut pieces of greaseproof paper to fit the size of the base and sides of a tray and lightly grease. Spread the meringue out until roughly 2cm thick and bake at 140° until the surface is no longer tacky (roughly 10-15 mins).

Be sure not to allow the meringue to colour.

Don't be afraid of opening the oven to check the meringue a few times, doing this won't harm your product but will ensure you stop the cooking process before its too late.

When the surface of the meringue is no longer sticky and is beginning to harden, remove it from the oven and sprinkle with the biscuit crust (it will adhere better if added while the meringue is warm).

Flip the meringue over onto a new sheet of greaseproof paper and carefully peel off the paper on which the meringue was baked.

Now cool the meringue a bit and then then trim off any rough edges if necessary.

Cool thoroughly for spreading.

The meringue must be cold or the cream will melt and become a gooey mess.

Now spread the wattlecream on top to roughly the same thickness as the meringue and proceed to roll widthways in similar fashion to a swiss roll.

Start the rolling process by lifting the greaseproof paper up at one end and bringing it gently over the bulk of the Pavlova.

Once rolled, you'll need to allow the Pavlova to harden a little further before it's ready to be sliced.

The Pavlova in the photo was rolled when slightly too firm, causing it to partly fold rather than roll into a smooth roulade.

Simply leave in a cool, dry place (preferably in a cake box) until it feels right to the touch. Be sure not to leave the Pavlova in a fridge or seal it in a container, as this will cause it to sweat and go very soft (the meringue will also absorb any odours from a fridge).

As soon as it is ready, simply slice to your own preference and serve with jam or fruit compote.

Latkes With Apple Sauce And Sour Cream

2007-10-08T01:00:00.000+02:00

Latkes or fried potato pancakes (Yiddish: לאַטקעס), have a special place in Jewish history. They originated in the Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine of Eastern Europe and spread from that source to the diaspora, but the roots of latke as a dish probably pre-date Jewish settlement in Poland. They are traditionally eaten during the Jewish winter festival of Hannukah. This dish celebrates my grandmother and great grandmother who escaped from Poland as refugees and settled in Britain.

Ingredients (makes 10-12 latkes)

5 large potatoes (Maris Piper or similar variety)*
1 large onion
3 large eggs
75g white flour (gluten-free white flour works fine) (or matzo meal)
pinch salt
black pepper
5 cloves
small piece of cinnamon
50g brown sugar
3 large cooking apples (Bramleys, Granny Smith or similar)
1 lemon
75ml soured cream
vegetable oil
vanilla extract

* It's important to use "mealy" potatoes of the sort that produce dry mash. These are ones with relatively high solid mass to water ratio).

Method

In the old days in the poverty of Eastern Europe, latkes would have been made from the simplest of ingredients - potato, onion, flour and eggs with a little salt.

Black pepper would probably have been a luxury addition to the dish.

Luckily, today we can enrich and enliven this dish without losing sight of the original basic fried potato pancake.

The perfect accompaniments for latkes are apple sauce (made with cinnamon and cloves) and soured cream with a dash of vanilla.

Although the onions and potatoes can be finely chopped and then pureed by hand, it is much easier these days to roughly chop the vegetables and use a food processor to create the mixture.

If you can't use the potato immediately, keep in under water until used.

Gently beat the eggs.

Chop the potatoes and onions in a processor and then transfer if necessary into a blender attachment and add the eggs, salt, freshly ground black pepper and the flour or matzo meal.

One thing to note is that latke mix requires more salt than you might assume.

Puree the mixture until you achieve a smooth mix with plenty of aeration.

Test for sesasoning and add more if required.

The latke mix now needs to be left to cool before use. It can be left overnight in the fridge, but a better way to prepare latkes in advance is to part-fry (not too much!), cool and store and then complete the frying as required.

Next for the apple sauce. Peel the apples and remove the cores and pips.

A peeler such as the one shown is an ideal implement for gauging out the core.

Insert tip down, concave side facing the core and rotate around until the core lifts clean out.

Next, zest the lemon and put the zest to one side.

Quarter the peeled apples and squeeze the lemon's juice over the pieces, being careful to avoid pips falling into the pan.

Take about 1 tsp of the zest and add this to the pan.

Finally, add most of the brown sugar.

Many people add their spices whole and remove them after cooking and before serving.

Personally I like to grind the spices and leave them in the mixture when cooked.

Either way, add the cinnamon and cloves.

The best result comes from fruit reduced in its own liquid, but you may need to add a small amount of boiling water.

Bring to the boil, cover the pan, reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Check for sweetness and adjust with brown sugar. The sauce is best if not too sweet.

When cooked, the apple sauce will have a pleasant texture and a golden colour.

Some people like to blend their sauce at this stage, but I prefer it textured.

Chill the mixture thoroughly. You could serve the sauce hot, but for this recipe the best result is with hot latkes and chilled sauce and cream.

To cook the latkes, heat a little oil into a frying pan and add a large spoonful of mix.

Traditional recipes often use olive oil for the frying, but vegetable oil will allow a hotter frying temperature without smoking.

It's best to start with one latke and make two or three together in subsequent batches.

Most important is that the mixture is allowed to spread so the latkes are relatively thin.

Remember that the mixture ingredients are uncooked, so if the pancakes are thicker they will not cook properly in the centre.

With a little practice you will be able to achieve a perfect brown colour with the centre soft but cooked, without too much oil being absorbed.

It's still a good idea to turn them out onto absorbent paper, though, to soak up any excess oil.

Plate your latkes and add a good dollop of apple sauce.

Add a drop or two of vanilla extract and top off with a tablespoon or two of soured cream.

A grating of black pepper makes the perfect final touch, adding a hint of bitterness to the sweetness of the apple and sourness of the cream.

Enjoy! Mazel Tov!

Mallard Breast With Red Cabbage, Ginger & Marmalade

2007-10-07T13:00:00.000+02:00

There are not many savoury recipes for marmalade. This is a pity because unlike honey, which is often used as a meat glaze, marmalade has the advantage of bringing bitter tones as well as sweetness. With use of a flavoursome meat and a little careful balancing you can add some sourness as well and end up with a dish that delivers all five basic tastes to the palate. And apart from its technical excellence... it's yummy!

Ingredients (serves 2-4)

2 mallard duck breasts
1 medium red cabbage
50 gm butter
50 gm root ginger
250 gm marmalade
20 gm duck or goose fat (or vegetable oil)
10 ml balsamic vinegar
1/4 bottle red wine
2 tsps Dijon mustard
salt
black pepper

Method

For this recipe we are using breast of mallard duck, but it would work equally well with any game bird. The flesh on these breasts is rather on the light side, indicating that I didn't use the best quality meat, but it tasted great anyway!

These cuts include the fillets, which cut away from the rest of the breast easily to make pockets that we will stuff with the cabbage later on.

These are the stuffing ingredients - red cabbage, root ginger and the key ingredient, marmalade.

My attempt at arty-farty photography makes the ginger look alarmingly large. Don't use more than 3 or 4 nodules of a standard sized piece of ginger.

I'm sure wasabi would work well in this recipe instead of ginger.

The first task is to trim the meat. You should leave the main area of fat intact, but remove sinews and odd areas of fat from the other side with the aid of a sharp knife.

Then shred the ginger. If you are less comfortable with ginger, grate it finely, otherwise use a shredder or coarse grater to give some texture to the ingredient.

Similarly, chop the red cabbage according to taste. If you prefer a smoother result then chop finely, otherwise chop more roughly and the cooked cabbage will retain some crispness to its texture, even after cooking for an hour.

With the fat side uppermost, score the fat with a sharp knife, taking care not to cut into the meat. Cut every 1/2 inch or so in both directions or diagonally if you prefer.

Season the duck well with salt and black pepper, rubbing salt into the fat scores to help it crispen when cooked. Sea salt crushed between your fingers is the best.

Now for the fun part. With clean hands, take 2/3 of the marmalade and rub into the scored fat. Then turn the breasts over and rub some into the meat. While doing this, extract the peel from the marmalade to use later.

Leave for as long as possible to marinate.

Sweating off the cabbage properly is a critical part of the process. Melt the butter in a pan and add the cabbage, ginger and mustard, seasoning with salt and pepper.

The idea is to sweat this down until the cabbage and ginger soften, but without letting the mixture burn. This is a stage when you need to be present, stirring every minute or so. The degree of softening you should aim for is a matter of taste.

Once softened, turn the stuffing into a pan and the remainder of the marmalade, the peel (rescued from the marinade and chopped), a good measure of red wine and the balsamic vinegar.

Simmer the mixture for 45-60 mins, topping it up (with wine at first and boiling water later) and then reducing it down. The cabbage will not soften much now, so if you underdid the frying your result may be too crunchy.

Towards the end of cooking down the cabbage stuffing, sear the duck breasts. Set aside most of the marmalade marinade to avoid burning and place the breasts fat side down in a pan with hot oil. Use duck or goose fat if possible.

Once the fat sides are browned (about 3 mins), turn each breast over and sear the meat side for a little less time. Caramelising some of the marmalade is fine, but be careful not to burn it!

At this stage, turn on your oven and set it to gas mark 9 (240 ^oC). Let the meat rest for at least 5 minutes, retaining any juices that leak out but wiping away any blood. Open each breast along the line of the fillet and use a sharp knife to open up a larger pocket as shown in the photo.

For this recipe I chose sweet potato as an accompaniment because I'm especially fond of it, but you could equally well choose your own vegetables.

Make sure you season well to bring out the flavours or your vegetables will probably be overpowered by the richness of the stuffed meat.

Apply the stuffing generously and cover the breasts with any that you can't fit into the pockets.

Note that the meat at this stage is very pink - virtually uncooked. By the time the dish is finished the meat should be cooked, but still slightly pink. With practice you'll get the balance just right.

Rub an oven dish with fat and place the breasts in it fat side upwards. Put into the hot oven.

About 7-8 minutes should suffice to cook the meat to the colour shown in this photo of the plated serving. Don't overcook it as it will quickly dry out and toughen.

Serve on pre-heated plates with the sweet potato and a large glass of full-bodied red wine!

Okra And Cumin Soup

2007-10-07T01:00:00.000+02:00

Ingredients (serves 3)

2 Shallots (sliced)
2 Garlic cloves
25g Butter
4 handfuls of Okra (remove tops and tails)
3 large pinches of Cumin seeds
500ml Vegetable stock

Method

Place the cumin seeds in a pestle and mortar

Grind to a fine powder to release the aromatic fragrance

Roughly slice the shallots

Finely chop the garlic

Sweat the shallots and garlic in the butter

Add a bay leaf, the okra and the vegetable stock. Let simmer until the okra is cooked

Liquidise everything in a blender until smooth and aerated

Return to a clean pan, bring back to the heat and correct seasoning. Adding a small amount of lemon juice will bring out the natural flavour of the okra

Pour into a soup plate and enjoy.

Shiitake and Saffron Risotto

2007-10-06T13:00:00.000+02:00

This recipe is not at all strict as I never measure the relative amount of stock to rice. Instead, I find it's easier just to estimate - to use a little culinary knowledge, but proportionately more plain old-fashioned common sense.

Ingredients (to serve 2)

1 cup of Arborio or Carnaroli rice (I'm not American, but I always measure rice in a cup)
Half a vegetable stock cube with 1 litre of water (or 1 litre of home-made vegetable stock, if possible)
25g butter

1/2 a medium red onion

3 cloves of garlic

1/4 of a large pointed pepper (any colour)

20g crème fraîche

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

25g haloumi cheese

Small pinch of saffron strands

5 shiitake mushrooms

Method

Before you start preparing any other ingredients, you'll need to heat the stock to a simmer in a pan.

Now finely slice the half red onion. The garlic needs to be finely chopped or crushed. If you don't have a garlic crusher, finely chop it and then sprinkle with a little salt. Now use the side of your knife flat against the board to crush the garlic.

Cut the pepper in half lengthways and remove all the pith. This needs to be finely chopped. You now have your risotto base.

Melt the butter into a non-stick pan and throw in your base vegetables. Now sweat the base until the onions are translucent (sweating is a process where you cook on a low heat, without colouring).

Once the base is softened, add your rice.

It's imperative to use a short grained rice in this dish. Don't try using basmati or American long grain, because they just won't provide enough starch.

Immediately stir to prevent the rice from sticking to the pan.

Now add a ladle of the vegetable stock and continuously stir until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. You'll need to keep adding ladles of stock gradually as the liquid is absorbed by the rice, stirring all the while.

Add the saffron to a small amount of warm water, preferably in a ramekin or small bowl. Stir the strands around, then leave to infuse for a 5 minutes while you stir and top up the risotto. The water should now be bright yellow in colour, and is ready to go into the pan.

I always add garlic pepper during every stage of the cooking process.

You will also need some salt. The amount you use will depend completely on your own taste, but bear in mind that if you're using a commercial stock cube it will already contain salt, so you will not need to add nearly as much as you think.

Next up is the star of the show - the ingredient that adds all the texture to the dish.

Shiitake mushrooms need to be cleaned under a little cold running water and rubbed gently, then dried. Once cleaned, the mushrooms can be thinly sliced (as above), or diced according to your own preference.

They will need to be sautéed briefly in a little oil before being added to the risotto.

When you start to notice that the risotto is becoming thick and starchy, you can add the shiitake and the juice of half a lemon.

A little citric acid will bring out the natural flavours of the fungi without dominating the dish.

Next, after vigorous stirring to ensure the risotto doesn't stick at this crucial stage, add the crème fraîche.

Other than for the obvious health reasons, I find that using crème fraîche instead of double cream adds a lovely sour note.

In this recipe, sourness is not provided by the lemon because of the small quantity used.

Now at this point, most people would automatically throw in a big handful of parmesan, as it is the cheese classically used in this dish.

But I'm never one for following orders, so I used Greek haloumi instead.

So that's it really, as simple as that. A delicious, warming bowl of shiitake and saffron risotto, just as good as any Italian could make!

By chance, the night I cooked this and took the photographs I happened to have brought my knife belt home from college for its bi-weekly clean.

It felt strange using one of my professional knives at home, but the Furi East-West knife really helped me to slice the mushrooms finely.

Tuscan Spicy Sausages With Leek & Onion

2007-10-06T01:00:00.000+02:00

This meal is so simple, even my dad can cook it pretty well. It's a simple recipe that uses beautiful peppered gluten-free, preservative-free sausages that we buy from our favourite Italian deli Gallo Nero in Stoke Newington. They are flown in from Tuscany and delivered to owner Michael every few days. They are simply wonderful, but with no preservative they don't keep at all well - so imagine how much better they would be eaten fresh in Firenze.

Ingredients (serves 2)

6 Italian spicy sausages
1 very large yellow onion
½ kg unwashed new potatoes
2 large leeks (or 3 medium-sized ones)
2-3 cloves of garlic
black pepper
mixed herbs (preferably a mix including marjoram or fennel)
1 bay leaf
vegetable oil
1 can of beer or ½ bottle of red cooking wine (or left-over wine that has not gone to vinegar)
1 knob butter
2 tbsp double cream

Method

Like so many great meals, start with chopped onions and chopped crushed garlic.

For this recipe for 2-3 people, use 1 very large onion and 2-3 cloves of garlic. Slice and add 2 large or 3 medium leeks.

Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan, put the leek and onion mix into the hot oil and add a little salt and plenty of black pepper.

Sweat off the leek and onion mix.

Don't be afraid to add more black pepper. This is going to be a dish that bites back!

Now for the sausages. The black bits you can see in the picture below are pieces of crushed black pepper.

By the time these sausages have disembarked from the plane and passed through customs, they are costing about 80p (about $1.50 at current echange rates). It may be tempting to swap for something cheaper, but this will destroy the meal. Accept no substitutes!

Unlike cheap sausages, these pure meat beasts take quite a long time to cook properly.

The trick with the leek and onion is to remove almost all of it at this stage and re-introduce it during the cooking, in several stages.

This is the same trick that can give Lyonnaise potato that wonderful graduated texture, with some firm, some soft and some almost disintegrated.

Put the sausages into the pan and sear them, ready for the braising stage of the cooking.

The sausages need to cook slowly for about 1 hour. Either braise on the gas with a glass lid on the pan, or put into a casserole dish and cook in the oven on gas mark 3½ (170˚C).

It is best to cook them in red wine, or as I did the other night, in beer. Add enough to braise the sausages and top up 4 or 5 times during the cooking process.

Here you see the sausages beginning to take on colour.

Some leek and onion is already well cooked and some more of it has just been added.

This is a good time to add some herbs to the dish. I used French herbes de Provence, but any herb mix you like would be good.

Marjoram, bay leaf and fennel are the traditional herbs for sausage.

These sausages go best with a very dry mashed potato. Boil some young potatoes in their scrubbed skins and remove from the heat while still very firm.

Drain off and dry over the flame to get rid of any remaining excess water.

Then add a knob of butter, two tablespoons of double cream, salt and pepper and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the creamed potato is thoroughly blended.

Very different from pomme purée, this dish is rustic, robust and well-textured. This allows it to stand up for itself and not be drowned by the sausage and leek & onion.

Drain any excess oil from the sausage, leek & onions.

Serve with the mashed potato on pre-heated plates or in large hot bowls.

Find a friend, sit down and enjoy a great, filling, spicy winter meal.

Quick And Easy Duck A L'Orange

2007-10-05T13:00:00.000+02:00

This is a dish that sounds complex but is actually so simple that you can cook it easily in less than an hour and a half, while busy doing other things.

Ingredients

1 duck
6 large Seville oranges
1 large black cardamom
sea salt
black pepper
vegetable oil
vegetable accompaniments of your choice

Method

	Preparation for this particular recipe is incredibly simple. The bird is made ready for roasting by removing the wishbone, checking the cavity carefully to remove any giblet residues and, finally, scoring the fat that covers the breasts and rubbing oil, salt and pepper into the scores.
Once the duck is prepared, put it into a preheated oven at 185^oC (gas mark 4½) for about an hour. If you have the time, cook the bird for longer at a lower temperature, reducing moisture loss and improving flavour. It is very important to baste (pour the natural juices over) the duck every 10-15 minutes to ensure the moisture is retained and the outside does not dry out and burn.
	The orange sauce is very simple to make. You must use bitter (Seville) oranges. Duck is naturally sweet and the use of Sevilles gives the characteristic bitter-sweet note that is the true signature flavour of this dish. You can use sweet oranges, but this will make the sauce taste more like marmalade, though delicious all the same. Grate the zest from four large oranges and sweat in a little butter until softened. Then pour in a swig of cognac and flambée it until cooked out.
Finally add the freshly-squeezed juice from the four de-zested oranges (and two more), and throw in a large black cardamom (cinnamon and clove may also be used). Slowly reduced this sauce while the duck roasted. Take the skins of the additional juiced oranges, cut into quarters and pack into the roasting dish alongside the duck. When the duck is cooked (insert a fine blade or skewer to check that the juices run clear), remove from the oven and allow to rest for at least 5 minutes, before carving and puring on the reduced sauce.
	You can serve roast duck like this with the accompaniments of your choice. Roast potatoes (brought to the boil to blanch before roasting) are always a favourite. Because this dish has a robust flavouring almost all vegetables work well with it - though very delicate vegetables such as asparagus would be drowned in the meat and sauce flavour.

Chicken Burgers And Chunky Chips with Wakame and Spring Onion Mayonnaise

2007-10-05T01:00:00.000+02:00

Work in progress...

Ingredients

Method

	Preparation starts with the wakame...
Next prepare the mixture for the burgers...
	And then fold in the chicken mince...
Really good quality salt is needed for this disk, especially for the chips. I use Maldon sea salt, crushed by hand. Black peppercorns are freshly ground, as always. If the mixture is too soft and wet, I add finely grated rice cake to thicken it a little. This ingredient has the advantage of keeping the dish gluten-free.
	Next for the chips. Start with some large, mealy potatoes and cut into chunky chips.
Keep in water until ready to fry. The pieces removed from the potatoes are kept separately to make potato crisps another day.
	Mayonnaise starts with egg and mustard. For this recipe I use Dijon mustard.
Blending...
	Drizzling in white wine vinegar...
And beating while slowly adding vegetable oil.
	Continue beating and adding the oil slowly until the taste is just right. The sourness of the vinegar should be just balanced by the sweetness of the oil.
And the mixture should form peaks, rather like meringue.
	Form the chicken mixture into burger shapes, coating with a little polenta.
The potatoes are deep fried in a vegetable oil, in this case I used sunflower oil. It's important to get the oil hot for the initial, blanching, stage and then even hotter for the last few minutes when the chips are browned.
	Just before the burgers and chips are ready, I make up the mayonnaise, adding the wakame...
Dry the chips on paper and hand crush and sprinkle Maldon salt.
	And finally, serve and enjoy!

Steak Au Poivre

2007-10-04T13:00:00.000+02:00

Here's a great, satisfying meal that looks complicated but in fact takes just 30 minutes from start to finish. Sirloin steak with a pepper sauce on a bed of mashed potato and sweet potato with wilted spinach. I've written this recipe for two people.

Ingredients

2 sirloin steaks
15ml vegetable oil (for frying)
2 sweet potatoes (peeled and washed)
2 potatoes (washed, peeled and washed again)
100ml Double cream (10ml for the mash, 90ml for the sauce)
25g Butter
2 banana shallots (finely chopped)
10g whole black peppercorns (coarsely crushed)
50ml red wine

Method

First start by making the sauce, which will taste better the longer it is left to infuse.


Sweat off the shallots with the peppercorns until translucency is achieved.	Add the red wine and reduce by half. Then add the 90ml of double cream and turn the heat down. Allow to slowly reduce while infusing.

Cut the potatoes and sweet potatoes into uniform sizes. Place into cold salted water and bring to the boil. Simmer until a knife can penetrate smoothly into them.	Meanwhile, blitz the sauce to break up the peppercorns, this will add further flavour.

Dry the potatoes before mashing	Fry the steaks in the vegetable oil

Wilt the spinach in hot oil with nutmeg, sugar, salt and pepper (this takes a matter of moments, I recommend leaving this until literally the last second)	Turn the steaks and cook the other side, cook to your own desire (I have mine quite rare)

A little double cream helps the mash become creamy. Be aware that this will detract from the seasoning, so add plenty pepper and salt	Serve and eat