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Love. Age. Die.
Wild Garlic Seeds

Chris from my Culinary Master Class brought a whole bunch of lovage to class.
So I offered to give it a good home.
When life gives you lovage... Make love?

Speaking of leafy plants, as we were, it's Prairial - wild garlic season, and around here the spring woodlands become carpeted with them.
First you get their distinctively odoriferous versatile young leaves which you can just throw into a leafy salad, then as these turn heavy and coarse you get the flower buds, which you can pickle, apparently
And having now tried some I can attest to their potency!
Then come the flowers.
I don't know about eating them
Then you get the seeds. Which you can also pickle.
My God, perhaps I could live off them?

Chilled Cucumber and Lovage Soup
soup veg
Not a bad soup - surprisingly rich. The boiled egg garnish really works well.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 3 long cucumbers, peeled
  • 3 tbsp of crème fraîche
  • 350ml of natural yoghurt
  • ½ lemon, juiced
  • 75ml of olive oil, good-quality
  • 3 sprigs of fresh lovage, leaves picked
  • salt
  • ground white pepper

  • Garnishes:
  • hard-boiled eggs, chopped
  • chives, chopped
  • lemon zest
Method
Cut the cucumbers in half lengthways and scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon.
Discard the seeds.
Roughly chop into chunks and place in a blender.

Add the rest of the ingredients (except the garnish, if using) to the blender and season with salt and pepper.
Start initially with 12 lovage leaves.
Good advice - though I ended up using considerably more. Perhaps double.
Blend until completely smooth — the soup should have a pleasing, pale green colour.
Taste.
Is there a good balance of acidity and mellowness from the yoghurt? Add more lemon if it seems too creamy-tasting.
Can you taste the lovage enough? It should be defined but not overpowering.
Add the lovage leaves cautiously, a little at a time so as not to overpower the delicate cucumber flavour

Once you’re happy you’ve achieved a balanced flavour, place the soup in the fridge for at least 2 hours so that it is well-chilled before serving.
Sprinkle with chopped hard-boiled egg, minced chives, and lemon zest to garnish, if desired.
Pretty good soup. It needs a fair amount of seasoning, and quite a lot of lovage. Depending on your sensitivity to it, I suppose.
This makes quite a good sauce too if blended with Boursin cream cheese.

Mackerel and Lovage Tarts
fish starter snack
You can use shop-bought puff pastry. I know I did!
Though a 320g pack of ready rolled puff pastry is not enough. You'll need slightly less than twice that to make 6 or 7 10cm x 12cm tarts.

I mostly followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall but adjusted the oven temperatures a bit to encourage the blind pastries to rise.
I also think the 2cm potato cubes are a little on the large side.

You won't hear me say this very often, but it could have done with more mackerel!
I cooked my mackerel under the grill, skin-side-up. Which make it easy to peel the blistered, crispy skin off when they're cooked through.
Plus you can decorate the finished tarts with shards of their skin to serve.
They also freeze well.

Serves 6

Ingredients
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 onions, finely diced
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 3 soft lovage stems (about a stick of celery's worth), finely sliced
  • 350g potatoes, peeled, cooked and cut into 2cm cubes or smaller
  • 4 mackerel fillets, cooked, skinned and flaked or more!
  • 1 small handful lovage leaves, finely shredded, plus extra for serving
  • 2 tbsp finely chopped dill fronds, plus extra for serving
  • 3 tbsp crème fraîche
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  • For the Rough Puff Pastry:
  • 250g unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
  • 500g plain flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • About 150ml iced water
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp of milk, for glazing
  • Freshly ground black pepper
Method
First make the pastry:
Toss the butter in the flour with the salt until coated, then add just enough water (you may not need it all) to bring it together into a fairly firm dough.
Form this into a rectangular shape with your hands and, on a well-floured surface, roll it out in one direction, away from you, into a 1cm-thick rectangle.
Fold the two short ends into the middle so they overlap, like folding a letter. Give the pastry a quarter turn, repeat the rolling out five more times, then wrap in cling-film.
Rest in the fridge for an hour.
Or just go to the shops and buy some.

Heat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7.
Put the oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat, add the onion and bay, and sauté gently until soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the lovage stems, fry for a couple of minutes, then tip into a bowl with the potato, flaked fish, lovage leaves, dill and crème fraîche.
Remove the bay, season and cool.

Roll the pastry into a rectangle about 35cm x 45cm. Cut into six smaller rectangles. Cut a 1cm strip from the edge of each and reserve.
Place the rectangles on a large baking sheet lined with parchment, and lightly brush the edges with egg wash.
Place the strips around the edges to make a border, and brush lightly with egg wash.
Prick the bases of the tarts with a fork.

Bake for 10-15 minutes until they're starting to turn golden, remove from the oven and divide the filling between the tarts, piling it up quite high.
I'm trying freezing some at this stage - I'll let you know how that works out.
Yeah it works fine - you need to reheat them quite slowly or the tops will burn - about 45 minutes at Gas Mark 4/175°C/350°F. Add the mackerel skins with 5 minutes to go if you want to crisp them up.

Reduce the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6. Bake for five to 10 minutes until warmed through.
Scatter over dill and lovage, and serve hot or warm.
Not bad, if a bit mild.
They are nicely complemented with a cucumber and lovage soup beaten into some boursin to make a nice rich sauce.
You can decorate the tarts with pieces of mackerel skin crisped either in the oven or under a grill.

Salted Pickled Wild Garlic Seeds
pickle
A sort of poor man's caper.
Unless capers are consumer-man's pickled wild garlic?

The seeds always seem to be salted before pickling. This will draw any moisture from the seeds, keeping them firm and giving better subsequent vinegar penetration to increase the pickling effect.
Perhaps it also helps to prevent them from spoiling?

Fills 1x300ml jar

Ingredients
  • 200–250g green wild garlic seedheads (to yield approximately 150g picked seeds)
  • 40g fine sea salt
  • 300ml cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
  • a bay leaf or two
Method
Pick the individual seeds from the seedheads.
This requires a bit of patience, but you can speed things up with a small pair of scissors or by using a fork to strip a whole head of seeds from the main stem in one movement.
It's best to do this in a large bowl or a plastic bag - the seeds will shoot all over the place.
Don’t worry too much about any fine stems that remain attached to the seeds.

Wash the seeds thoroughly in several changes of water. Pick out any spiders or grass stalks that survive the process, then strain them into a sieve and leave to drain well.

Put a heaped tablespoon of the dry seeds into the sterilised pickling jar, and sprinkle over some of the salt.
Continue layering seeds and salt until the jar is full and all of the salt is used up. (Don’t worry too much about the salt being evenly distributed.)
Fasten the lid onto the jar, and put the jar into the fridge. Leave it there for three weeks, shaking the jar every day or so.

Once the three weeks is up, tip the salted seeds into a sieve and rinse them well. Spread them out on a clean tea towel and leave them to dry again. Meanwhile, wash and sterilise the jar again.

Put the dry wild garlic seeds back into the jar. Pour over enough vinegar to cover, fasten the lid and leave to mature for at least one month, but preferably three.
Stored in the fridge, the pickled seeds should keep for around twelve months.
Really good!
Feel free to add a bay leaf or two.
To be honest they'll easily be ready to start eating after a couple of weeks pickling.
Spring Roll
Misty Morn

As the action hero Super-Ram says: It's Lambin' Time!. Probably.

I had another go at rolling some baby lamb's breasts and roasting them, and discovered the delicious glory of a slow-braised lamb's shoulder. I really dunno why my kitchen is now covered in spare lamb parts?

And then I carried on cooking for the next 3 months.
And here it all is...

Slow Cooked Braised Rolled Lamb Breast
main meat
Round 3 of my experiments with rolled lambs' breasts.
So far I've produced them succulent with leathery hides, or crispy with (more) leathery insides.
I thought I'd try them in the slow cooker this time - and they turned out soft and succulent throughout.
So hurrah!
Either it was the longer cooking (8 hours in the slow cooker), or more likely the increased amount of liquid I used.
This time the rolls were almost covered, and I basted them a couple of times too.

Now, if I could only figure out how to get crispy skin and succulent insides I'd have covered everything.
Unfortunately if you just take the rolls from the braise and roast them for 10 minutes at Gas Mark 8 they do crisp, but it's a bit on the stringy, chewy side.
Perhaps better fat larding? Watch this space...
I repeated the high-heat roasting (well, Gas Mark 6) on cold rolls, but this time giving them a good coating of fat.
The result was a moderate crisping, but still with some tough, woody, spots.
I think I'm inclining to the notion that lamb breast is just not really suited to the production of crispy skin.
There really isn't much of a fatty layer compared with, say pork belly. Or even lamb's leg.

Serves about 2 per breast

Ingredients
  • olive oil
  • rolled lambs' breast(s)
  • garlic
  • onions
  • hot-smoked anchovies other anchovies are also available
  • thyme
  • rosemary
  • couple of tablespoons of tomato purée
  • red wine
  • zest of a lemon
  • bay leaves
  • splash balsamic vinegar
  • water
Method
First buy the rolled lamb breasts. Or, you know, buy lamb breast and roll it up yourself.
In which case you can salt the inside and cover it with the anchovies, lemon zest and herbs first. I guess.

Roughly chop the onions. Halve the head of garlic. We're going to strain the sauce before using it, so you can leave the peel on these.

Sear the rolled lamb breast(s) all over in olive oil in a large frying pan. Put them into the slow cooker.
Add thickly sliced onions, halved garlic cloves, anchovies, rosemary and thyme to the pan with more oil if required and fry until they soften and begin to colour up.
Stir through the tomato puée and cook down for a few minutes, then add the red wine and bubble the alcohol off.
Pour the contents of the pan into the slow cooker and add the bay leaves, lemon zest and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Maybe a tiny pinch of chilli flakes for some gentle warmth?
You can add the lemon's leaves too, if it happened to come with any.
Rinse the frying pan with water or stock, using enough to cover ⅔ of the rolled breasts.

Cook in the slow cooker on low for 8 hours.
Decant the rolls and set them to rest for 10 minutes while you strain the liquid into a pan and boil hard to reduce to a nice jus.
Or you could thicken the liquid with cornflour slurry if you prefer.
A reasonably good version. Well served with Date Gratin, Fennel Gratin, Charred Asparagus and Minted Pea Purée

Slow Braised Lamb Shoulder
main meat
Because of the amount of collagen and connective tissue in a lamb shoulder you can't cook it rare like you might for a leg.
Long and slow is the only way to go.

Following Nagi more-or-less exactly except for adding some grated lemon zest after the initial roast, before sealing.
Since I had a 2lb shank-side half-shoulder I only added 1 cup of liquid, half of which was white wine (and some of it was stock - just because I had some to use up).
I super-sealed the roasting dish before slow-roasting:
  • Covered the joint with baking parchment, to stop it sticking, and prevent the bone from poking through the next layers.
  • Wrapped air-tight in several layers of cling film.
  • Covered again with baking parchment, to stop the cling film melting.
  • Wrapped tightly in a couple of layers of tin foil.
Then roast it at my gas oven's lowest (¼ or S) level, which registered 90°C on my oven thermometer, for 15 hours.

Since I cooked mine overnight, the joint was ready many hours before dinner. So I just left the still-sealed dish untouched on the side, then reheated it for an hour at 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 2-3, before opening it up to reduce the jus and serve.
That's how confident I was that it was perfectly cooked, and not burned to cinders!
I suppose I could have opened it immediately to check it and prepare the jus, and then reheated just the meat and veg, covered, in the roasting tin to serve at dinner time?

Serves exactly 5. Apparently

Ingredients
  • 1.5-2.5kg / 3-4.5lb lamb shoulder, bone-in
  • 2 cups water
  • 4-6 large banana shallots, halved
  • a few large garlic cloves, peeled

  • For the Marinade:
  • zest from ½ lemon, grated
  • 1 tblsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
  • 1 tblsp dried oregano
  • 2 large garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

  • For the Jus:
  • 1 tsp cornflour optional
Method
Mix the Marinade ingredients in a small bowl. Rub thoroughly all over the lamb surface. You can do this in the roasting tin.
Leave the lamb to marinate for a couple of hours, or 24 hours in the fridge.
Nagi suggests that skipping this period does no discernable harm.
Preheat oven to 210°C fan/230°C/450°F/Gas Mark 8.
Peel and halve the shallots (or onions) lengthways.
You could leave the peel on, but if you want to serve some of the shallot with the meat you probably shouldn't.
Peel a few large garlic cloves.
Make a bed for the meat using these and lay the lamb shoulder on top. You can throw in a few extra rosemary sprigs too if you like.
Pour the water into the pan.
I used only half the suggested quantity of liquid - half wine and half water with a bit of spare stock added.
Roast uncovered for 45 minutes until nicely browned.
To be honest I'm not happy with the degree to which much of the dressing now burns in the hot oven while searing the meat.
If it were possible, I wonder if the meat couldn't be smeared with the dressing after this initial sear?
Perhaps wear latex gloves?
Turn down the oven to 100°C/210°F/Gas Mark ¼ or as low as your oven will go.
Cover lamb with baking paper, then a double layer of foil and seal very tightly to avoid water evaporation.
Braise for 12 hours.
You can cook it for longer! Nagi does it overnight. As did I.
You can also, as I did, include layers of cling film on the inside. The oven temperature will be low enough not to melt it.
Check the meat - test the side of lamb with two forks. The meat should be fall-apart tender. If not, cover and return to oven.
Remove lamb to a large dish. There will (should!) be a lot of liquid pooled under the lamb in the roasting pan.
Cover loosely with foil to keep warm. It will stay warm for 2 to 3 hours.

Strain the liquid into a small pan. Retain the vegetables.
There will tons of rendered fat which you will want to remove somehow. Let the juices settle or cool to scoop it off, or suck the juice from underneath with a turkey baster.
Now you can either reduce the liquid to a decent syrupy jus by hard boiling, or you can thicken it to gravy by heating with a teaspoon of cornflour added in a slurry.
Season to taste.

Tear the meat apart with tongs or forks. Dress with the jus and serve with the well-braised shallots and garlic cloves, if you like.
Marvellous!
Delicious served on a Parmesan and Crème Fraîche Mash, with Broad Beans mashed with Mint and Lemon.

Gratin de Dattes
Potato Gratin with Dates
side
I had some fresh dates which needed eating, so I thought I'd invent a new gratin.
I used a rich chicken stock as the liquid, but I'm sure you could use cream instead. It might even be better - the stock makes the gratin rather sloppy unless you cook it all off, and that risks mis-timing the cooking and burning the gratin.
By the way, fresh dates taste best when they've gone soft and squishy and seem on the edge of rotting. Then they taste much like the dried versions.

Ingredients
  • dates, stoned, thinly sliced
  • potatoes, thinly sliced
  • chicken stock
  • butter
  • rosemary leaves, finely minced
Method
Thinly slice your potatoes into a bowl of cold water using a mandolin.
I blanched my slices afterwards because the gratin was going to sit around half the day before cooking.
Fill a casserole dish with alternate layers of potato and a filling of sliced dates ssprinkled with finely minced rosemary and dots of butter.
Pour in stock until it almost comes to the top.
Cook uncovered in the oven at Gas Mark 3-4 for a couple of hours until the stock has mostly bubbled off. It will take a while.
Meh, it's not bad. Not amazing either.
Might need to add more butter, which I resisted, so that all the stock can cook off without hardening the potato too much.

Crushed Broad Beans with Mint and Lemon
side veg
Depending on the quantities of ingredients you use this can basically become mostly gremolata thickened with beans.
But first a history lesson:

Fava or Faba beans, from their latin name Vicia Faba, are a broad bean indigenous to North Africa and have been been consumed for several thousands of years during which time they have migrated throughout Europe.
The pods are the typical long green furry bean sleeves, which you can eat raw whole like mange-tout when (very) young. Or just grilled.
When they are mature the beans themselves inside grow a thick fibrous skin which many people also prefer to remove before eating.
You (or most people anyway) can eat fava beans raw.

Broad bean, on the other hand, is a description of the shape of the bean, rather than their species, and are generally flattened - the bean not the pod.
Usually in Europe Broad Beans means Fava beans, but might sometimes be used to refer to Lima beans. Also known as Butter beans.
These younger varieties come from the Americas and indeed are named after Lima - the capital of Peru where they were first cultivated a couple of thousand years ago.
They are best not eaten raw since they are wont to contain small amounts of cyanide and various other toxins.

If you plan on double-podding your fava beans it's best, if you can, to choose pods containing either beans large enough to easily remove their skins, or small enough not to bother. Otherwise you're going to be spending a lot of time popping hundreds of fiddly piddling-sized beans.

Be aware, especially if you're double-podding, that there is an enormous amount of wastage from these beans - you'll need bushels of the things to finish up with anything more than a handful of kernels.

Ingredients
  • broad beans, podded

  • Optional Flavours:
  • fresh mint leaves, minced
  • garlic, crushed
  • parmesan, grated
  • lemon zest, grated
  • lemon juice
  • olive oil
  • salt & pepper
Method
Pop the broad beans out of their long outer sleeves.
Drop them into salted boiling water, bring back to the boil and simmer for a bare 30 seconds. Strain them immediately into iced water to cool.
With a paring knife, slit one end of each bean's thick outer skin or rind I cut the end opposite where the sprout attached and pop out the bright green, tender kernels.
Keep these in the iced water until required, then blanche them briefly in salted boiling water to reheat before using.

Drain the double-podded beans and roughly mash with chopped mint, grated lemon zest, lemon juice, puréed garlic, grated parmesan and olive oil to taste.
Season if necessary.
Not perhaps the most attractive serving, but they taste pretty good.

King Oyster Mushroom Tempura
mushroom oriental side veg
Yes, I still have leftover King Oyster mushrooms and tamarillo salsa.
These fat mushrooms are also pretty tasty halved, tempura'd and deep-fried.
I'm sure you could fry regular oyster mushrooms too the same way.

The batter flour proportions are not too critical but I mostly tried to follow my favourite tempura batter number 8.
Add whatever spices you like to the dry mixture. You could even try some dried herbs like oregano.

Ingredients
  • king oyster mushrooms, halved
  • vegetable oil for deep-frying

  • For the dry mix:
  • 1 tsp onion powder or salt
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsps wheat flour
  • ½ tsp cumin
  • ½ tsp paprika

  • For the batter:
  • 2 tblsps rice flour
  • 2 tblsps cornflour
  • 1 tblsp wheat flour
  • vodka
  • ice cold water
  • salt
Method
Mix together the dry mix in a plastic bag without holes!.
Mix the tempura batter flours, season, then stir briefly with a splash of vodka and iced water (or iced soda water) to make a usable slurry.
Don't overmix - it's fine for the batter to have floury lumps.

Halve the mushrooms lengthways and make a pattern of shallow slashes in the cut surfaces. Shake the mushrooms in the dry mix bag, then roll them in the wet batter mix to coat thickly.
You might roll them again to finish in the dry mix. If you want to try and get an even more crunchy coating.
Deep-fry the battered mushrooms in 350°F/175°C oil for 3-5 minutes until they are nicely crisped and coloured.
Drain on kitchen paper and serve with smoked salmon dip In which case you could decorate them with crispy-fried salmon skin!, or aïoli, or maybe Sriracha or wasabi mayonnaise.

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Salad Dressing. Or Dip.
dressing sauce fish cheese
I wanted to make a smoked anchovy salad dressing but the Wine 'n' Cheese didn't have any hot smoked anchovies and I didn't have any Boursin. So I made this version with hot smoked salmon and Philadelphia instead.

It makes quite a good substitute for Hollandaise sauce on an Eggs Royale, Eggs Hemingway, Eggs Atlantic, Eggs Pacifico, or whatever you like to call Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon.

I made the dressing without any anchovies to begin with, but it didn't seem quite fishy enough for me, so I added a half-dozen of the regular kind.
Your fishy-sense may vary!

Some sun-dried tomato or red pesto blended in might go quite well too. It would certainly look the part.

Serves 2-4

Ingredients
  • piece of hot smoked salmon
  • 100g cream cheese
  • 2-3 garlic cloves
  • dollop of cream or crème fraîhe
  • juice of 2-3 clementines
  • ½ red chilli
  • olive oil

  • Flavour options:
  • half a dozen anchovies
  • splash of red wine vinegar
  • teaspoon mustard
  • paprika
  • sun-dried tomatoes maybe?
Method
Remove the salmon skin.
Blend the salmon, garlic, chilli just enough to give a little warmth, anchovies, sun-dried tomatoes if using, cream and orange juice to a smooth paste.
Blend in as much cream cheese as needed to enrich the mixture, season, then drizzle in olive oil whilst beating or running the food processor until you have a consistency like mayonnaise.
Pretty tasty. Probably better as a dip than a salad dressing if I'm honest.

Sweetcorn Velouté
sauce veg
A velouté is technically a stock thickened with blond roux, but blended sweet corn is pretty much thick enough on its own.
The recipe which inspired me for this uses crème fraîche, but I don't think the sourness really works.
Go for regular cream.
It also adds turmeric, which seems too coarse for the sauce, so I went with saffron.

I used my velouté to lubricate some Culinary Masterclass spinach and mascarpone tortellinis (no, that's not an idle boast!) and served them dressed with red pepper slices and artichoke hearts.
You don't get a lot of edible heart out of an artichoke though, especially considering the effort involved 🙁

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 2 corn cobs
  • 2 tblsps double cream
  • 1 large banana shallot
  • ½ small fennel or 1 stick celery
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • glass white wine
  • pinch saffron
  • light chicken stock or water
  • salt & ground white pepper
  • butter

  • Additions:
  • artichoke hearts
  • red pepper, charred, skinned and sliced
  • a few corn kernels, toasted if you like
Method
Simmer the corn cobs in a large pot of salted water for 10 minutes or so until it softens.
Drain, allow to cool enough to handle, and slice the kernels off the cobs. Reserve some for decoration.
Meanwhile sweat the shallots, garlic and fennel or celery slices in olive oil and butter in a small pan until they soften.
De-glaze with white wine and bubble off.
Add the corn kernels to the pan with enough water or light stock to cover.
Add a pinch of saffron strands with the water/stock. Cook until the corn is well-softened, then blend until smooth and pass through a seive back into the pan.
Reheat, season with ground white pepper and salt, and stir in cream, and perhaps a knob of butter until the sauce is thick and glossy.

Globe Artichoke Hearts
Add lemon juice to the pot of boiling salted water.
Pull off the artichoke's larger outer leaves and trim the stalk.
Use a Y-shaped vegetable peeler to peel off the fibrous outer layer of the stop of the stalk and the bottom of the artichoke bulb. Cut the stalk away leaving an inch or two attached to the bulb.
Cut the top of the globe off somewhere below the mid-point. Using a paring knife remove leaves and coarse skin from the bottom of the artichoke and right in to the hairy choke.
You can add some lemon juice, and the squeezed-out lemon remains, to a bowl of cold water to wet the artichoke as you work. This will help reduce browning.
Now quarter the artichoke base vertically and cut away the choke with the paring knife, which you can now easily access.
Add to the boiling water and cook for 10-15 minutes until softened. Strain and keep in acidulated water until required.
Actually it's pretty hard to tell how much of the fibrous artichoke peel to remove, if you're a novice.
But you can quite easily tell when the artichoke is cooked since the edible parts turn a whiter shade, and are softer. Obviously. So it might be easier to do most, or all, of your trimming after the artichoke pieces (or maybe even the whole heart) are cooked.
Plus you risk less browning.
I found hardly any of the stalk to be edible, but perhaps that depends on their age and size?

Core and quarter a red pepper and char the skin over a flame or under the grill. Let them rest in a plastic bag to soften the charred skin, then peel it off and slice them thinly.
Toast a handful of corn kernels in a hot, lightly oiled frying pan.
Boil up some spinach and mascarpone tortellinis, if you like, and serve them with the artichoke hearts dressed with the corn velouté and the red pepper slices and toasted corn kernels.
It sure looks pretty. Though the whole thing is a little insipid. I think the velouté might be a better match with something else.
When I find it I'll let you know.

Minted Pea Purée
side veg cheese
One of very many pea purées on this site, though perhaps more complex than most.

Ingredients
  • peas
  • mint leaves, roughly chopped
  • lemon zest
  • olive oil
  • crème fraîche
  • parmesan, grated
Method
Blanch the peas then shock them in iced water.
Drain and blend them with the other ingredients, adding enough crème fraîche to lubricate the blender without diluting the puré too much.
Heat gently when required.
Quite colourful; you can play with the proportions to meet your tastes. Cream might make a reasonable substitute for the crème fraîche.

Pickled Jerusalem Artichokes
pickle veg vegan
Although Thyme Farm does not specify how long you should leave this pickle to mature before using it, most other sites recommend leaving it for a week or longer.
Mind you, they don't thinly slice their artichokes. So up to you I guess.
I don't believe I left mine for very long at all!

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 6 Jerusalem Artichokes
  • ½ juice of a lemon
  • 3tbsp water
  • 250ml good quality vinegar
  • 25g sugar
  • pinch salt
  • ½ teaspoon fennel seeds
  • ½ teaspoon mustard seeds
  • Sprig rosemary
Method
Add all the pickling ingredients to a heavy pot and bring to the boil.
Peel the artichokes under running water or using a large bowl of iced water.
Slice them straight into the pickle using a mandolin.
Return the pot to the boil, then immediately set aside to cool.
Press the artichokes to keep them submerged.
Not, I must admit, my favourite way of serving these artichokes, but they are crunchily different.

Pheasant Normandy
fowl main
On a visit to Edinburgh, Flora and I cooked this Two Fat Ladies recipe from their Gastronimic Adventures cookbook, which seems to be just about the only place to find it. I've scoured their TV series but it's just not in there. Which is a pity because it's pretty good.

Here's what they have to say about it:
This is a sumptuous way of preparing pheasant. It also makes the birds go quite a long way due to the richness of the sauce and the fact that it arrives fully prepared at table so there is no waste from badly carved carcasses.

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • a brace of young pheasants
  • 4 sweet apples (Cox's or similar)
  • 115g/4 oz butter
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • 150ml/¼ pint Calvados
  • 660ml/1 pint thick cream
  • salt and freshly ground pepper
Method
Peel and core the apples, slice into rings and fry in 55g/2 oz of the butter. Add the sugar and cook until golden brown and slightly caramelised. Reserve.

Melt the rest of the butter in a flameproof casserole large enough to take the birds. Brown the creatures on all sides, turning and coating with the butter. Cover with the lid and place in a preheated oven at 190°C/375°F/Gas 5 to cook for 40 minutes; or you can cook them on top of the stove, turning at half time.

Carve the birds into good-size pieces and lay them in a shallow gratin dish. Make sure to pick every little piece of meat from the bones. Place the legs at either end. Keep warm. Scrape any morsels from the carving into the casserole juices and heat until bubbling then pour in the warmed Calvados. Set fire to the mixture, but take care not to singe your eyelashes. Roll the juices round and round until the flames subside. Add the cream and continue cooking, stirring the while with a wooden spoon, until the sauce thickens. Season to taste.

Place the apple rings over the pheasant pieces, then pour the sauce over the whole dish and bring to the table. If you prefer, you can serve the apple rings separately. Wild rice with fried celery would be excellent with this dish, and a watercress salad should suffice.
Or you can serve it with a juniper berry mash. Either way it's delicious.

Roslyn's Kebabs
meat snack
Roslyn passed along this masala paste recipe from a friend of hers, with which she coated some field mushrooms for barbecueing.
And said were delicious!
I'm ashamed to say that I have yet to try it out.

Incidentally, she also barbecued aubergine slices dressed with tamarind paste, which sounded interesting too.

Ingredients
  • diced chicken or mushrooms!
  • oil
  • 2 tblsps soy sauce
  • 2 tblsps Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tblsps tomato purée
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp coriander powder
  • 1 tsp garam masala powder
  • 1 tsp chilli powder
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp green masala
  • ½ tsp salt
  • dash of lemon juice (optional)
Method
Mix well and marinate for a minimum of half an hour, the longer you leave it the better the taste! (Marinate overnight for best results.)
Put on skewers and cook in oven under grill or barbecue.
The chicken, that is.
If you're using field mushrooms then just smear them all over then slap them on the grill or barbecue.

Roslyn's Green Masala
sauce veg vegan
This green masala is an ingredient in Roslyn's friend's kebab recipe.
According to her friend's notes:
A teaspoon of Green Masala can be added to any Indian dish to give it flavour and a kick.
The idea is that it is pre-made to save you making it every time you make a curry.
It only has 3 ingredients, balanced as follows:

Makes about 4 teaspoons

Ingredients
  • 4-5 green chillies (preferably birds eye chillies) I'd use finger chillies!
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 inch ginger
Method
Cut the stem off the chillies and take the skin off the garlic and ginger. Throw into a food processor and mix until it becomes a finely minced paste (not liquified!).
You can chop by hand if you do not have a food processor.

The above is how much a curry should contain.
If you are making a small batch then times the above by 5 or more and consume with a week.
The key thing my parents told me is that it should be greener than it is white, so if your paste isn't that green, then add more green chillies.

If you wish to make a larger batch that will cover you for a longer period of time then add a tablespoon of oil and a teaspoon of salt into your Green Masala to extend its life.

Keep your Green Masala in a pot in the fridge, or keep half of it in the fridge and freeze the other half for another time.
You can even put your Green Masala into an ice cube tray (one teaspoon per ice cube hole) and use one cube per curry, which will extend the life of your Green Masala hugely!
Included for completeness. After all, it's just ginger/garlic/chilli paste.

Cordyceps
mushroom ingredient veg vegan
Cordyceps are thin wormy orange mushrooms.
Pretty nice tasting raw, in fact, but they have a nice mellower nutty taste when cooked too.
You might need to be warned that they are also known as the Zombie Fungus and do have an unpleasant habit of parasitising insects brains in order to operate them like a meat suit. So perhaps don't stick them in your ears.

Although you can just stir-fry them, apparently, I deep-fried mine for a fairly short time in really hot oil to crisp them up a bit.
Less than a minute.
They colour up nicely, but don't go exactly crispy, though they might if you fry them longer I suppose. I didn't experiment too much with them since they're pretty expensive.
Though not as expensive as Lion's Manes: £33 a kilo they are!

Ingredients
  • cordyceps
  • oil for deep frying
Method
Heat oil.
Throw in cordyceps.
Swirl.
Remove.
Drain.
Serve.
Must. Eat. Cordyceps!

Choy Sum with Garlic and Ginger
oriental side veg vegan
The method write-up below is more-or-less verbatim from Daddy Lau.
Except for the changes required for legal fair use, of course 😉

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 1 lb choy sum
  • 1" ginger, shredded
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tblsp cooking oil
  • 1 tblsp mirin
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • salt or soy sauce
Method
To prepare the choy sum, you want to separate the quick-to-cook leaves and the slower-to-cook stems.
You can either make one horizontal cut to separate the leaves and clump of stems of each plant all at once, or you can separate the joined stems (at an angle for extra style points) and then cut away the leaves and set aside.

Slice the garlic: For maximum visual appeal, slice a couple of cloves and mince the rest.

Cut the (small amount of) ginger into roughly 1/8 slices. He (Daddy Lau) uses about 4 slices of ginger for 1 lb of choy sum.

Heat your wok over high heat for a bare minute. Add a dash of oil (about 1 tbsp), then turn the heat to medium low.
Lowering the heat here is important to avoid burning the aromatics.
Add the ginger and garlic.
Stir-fry for 15 seconds so that you can smell the ginger and garlic releasing their aromas.

Add the choy sum; stems first since they'll take longer to cook through. Stir-fry the stems for about 30 seconds.
Then, add the leaves. Raise the heat to high and add the mirin and sugar to balance the texture of the leaves; these ingredients help make the dish silky smooth.
Mix these in and stir-fry for another 30 seconds.

DON'T ADD THE SALT YET!
If you add salt now, all the water in the vegetables will release (thank you, osmosis) and you'll end up with less tender vegetables in a puddle of juice.

Lower the heat to medium or low heat. Cover with the lid and let it steam for about 1½-2 minutes, or until the choy sum is tender and just cooked through.

Uncover the wok and bring the heat up to the highest setting. Stir-fry on high heat for a minute, then add the salt.
Now you're allowed to add the salt 🙂
Drizzle a table of oil over the leaves to finish for a smooth texture, a glossy look, and to help preserve their vibrant green color.
Toss with the finishing oil for another 20 seconds, and then plate.
Enjoy!
OK, Daddy Lau's instructions are a bit of a song-and-dance for what is basically fried spinach, but the result is pleasant enough!

Lion's Mane with Garlic and Tamari Soy Sauce
mushroom side veg vegan
You could dust the mushrooms with flour before frying to try and give them a bit more of a crunchy texture.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 8 ounces Lion’s Mane mushrooms, thickly sliced
  • 2 tablespoons ghee or butter
  • 2 tablespoons tamari, or coconut aminos
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • pinch of salt
  • freshly chopped parsley for garnish
Method
Place ghee or butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.
Once hot, add the sliced mushrooms and cook until browned on both sides. Don't touch the mushrooms as they cook to let them deeply caramelize on each side.
Add the tamari and garlic to the pan and cook for an additional minute until the liquid is absorbed by the mushrooms, tossing them in the mixture.
Garnish with parsley and serve as desired.
Meh, they're not the greatest, if I'm honest. They do have a noticeable bitterness.
If you've splashed out £33 a kilo on them, you probably want something more impressive. Perhaps try them battered and deep-fried?

Pimientos de Padrón
spanish veg vegan snack
Often served as a tapas, these bright green heirloom peppers from Padró in Galicia, Spain are pretty mild for the most part.
But you get the occasional surprisingly hot one, so snacking on them is a bit like playing chilli roulette.
Enjoy!

Serves 4-6

Ingredients
  • 1 tablespoon neutral oil, like canola or grapeseed
  • 12 ounces Padrón peppers
  • flaked sea salt
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Method
Heat oil over high heat in a cast iron skillet large enough to fit the peppers in a single layer. Heat until lightly smoking, then add peppers.
Cook without moving until blistered on first side, about 30 seconds.
Flip and shake the peppers and continue to cook, turning occasionally, until well blistered all over and tender-crisp, about 1½ minutes total.
Of course it would be even better to char them on a charcoal grill or barbecue instead.
But some of us have kitchens to cook in.
Season with salt.
Transfer peppers to a serving plate. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkle with more flaked salt. The need to be well-salted!
Serve immediately.
Very tasty when you get them right.
Though they do need to be cooked to the point of collapsing or they'll be a bit stringy, and they need to be served immediately or they'll become soggy.

Son-In-Law Eggs
oriental snack
Apparently, because these eggs resemble shrivelled amputated bollocks, they are prepared as a warning to wayward sons by their mothers-in-law. In Asia.
Well, where else?

1 tsp of tamarind concentrate is approximately the equivalent of 1 tblsp of the liquid from soaked, strained tamarind pulp.
So if using concentrate in the recipe below, substitute 2 tsps of concentrate diluted with 4 tsps water for the 2 tblsps of tamarind paste.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 1 tblsp finely diced shallots optional
  • 2 tblsps tamarind paste
  • ¼ cup/4 tblsps palm sugar, chopped, packed
  • couple tblsps water
  • ¼ cup/4 tblsps fish sauce
  • 4 medium boiled duck eggs, or 5 chicken eggs, peeled and cooled completely
  • 2 head of shallot for fried shallots, thinly sliced lengthwise
  • 3-4 cloves garlic for garlic chips (or make as much as you like and keep for miscellaneous sprinkling!)
  • dried chilies optional
  • coriander leaves
Method
Make the sauce:
Add palm sugar, tamarind, water and fish sauce. Let simmer, stirring and crushing, for a few minutes until the sugar is all dissolved and the sauce is thickened slightly.
You can caramelize some shallots as the base for this sauce if you like.

After simmering for 3-5 minutes, the sauce should have a darker colour, becomes shiny, and has the consistency of maple syrup (it will thicken slightly as it cools).
Taste and adjust seasoning, keeping in mind that the sauce will be mellowed out by the eggs.

Make fried shallots:
Thinly slice the shallots and lay them on a plate lined with paper towel. Sprinkle salt over them and let sit for at least 10 minutes.
Once it has had time to sit, press a piece of paper towel onto the shallots to absorb all the liquid that has been drawn out by the salt.

Heat just enough oil in a wok or a shallow saucepan to cover the shallots. Turn the heat on medium high and add all the shallots to the oil without waiting for the oil to become hot.
Once the shallots are bubbling, turn the heat down to low and keep them bubbling gently until they are golden browned and crispy. Keep an eye on them as they burn quickly!
Remove the shallots with a slotted or mesh skimmer and drain on paper towel. Turn off the heat.
Frankly, that all sounds unnecessarily complicated. Just throw the shallots in oil over a low heat and leave them until they caramelize. That's it!

Make garlic chips:
To the same oil you used the fry shallots, add the garlic slices THEN turn the heat back on low.
Keep frying the garlic on low heat (gentle bubbling) until the garlic has turned a light golden colour and the bubbling has stopped.
Remove the garlic chips and drain on paper towel.
Turn off the heat.

Make fried chilies:
To the same oil, add the dried chilies and fry them on low heat until they turn a maroon colour and smell smoky.
This will take less than a minute so do not walk away!
Remove and drain on paper towel.
Definitely optional - alternatively just garnish the eggs with sliced fresh red chillies to serve.

Fry the eggs:
Add more oil to the pot so that it comes halfway up the eggs. Heat the oil on medium high heat until the oil reaches 375-400°F.
While you wait for the oil, dry the eggs really well with paper towel to prevent oil from splattering too much. Then add the eggs to the oil, one at a time and fry them until they become golden brown (it should take just less than 1 minute).
Flip the eggs and brown the other side.
Remove from heat and drain on paper towel.

To assemble:
Cut the eggs in half with a sharp knife and arrange on a plate, cut side up.
Reheat the sauce (add a little more water if it has become too thick) then drizzle the sauce over the eggs.
Top with fried shallots, garlic, chilies and cilantro. Serve immediately with jasmine rice. Enjoy!

Liquorice Pudding
sweet veg
Nigella says:
I use the tiny liquorice pellets that come, usually, from Calabria and are seen everywhere in Italy. Outside of Italy, you can find them in Italian delis and via the internet.

I followed her advice and ordered some from Amazon. Worth every penny!

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 60 millilitres water
  • 1 teaspoon pure Italian liquorice pellets (such as Amarelli Rossano)
  • 2 tablespoons light brown muscovado sugar
  • 175 millilitres double cream
  • 2 teaspoons cornflour
  • 1 tablespoon milk
  • Maldon sea salt flakes (to serve)
Method
Put the water and liquorice pellets in your smallest pan and bring to the boil, stirring or whisking frequently to help the liquorice melt. Once it starts bubbling, turn off the heat and leave for 5 minutes, stirring or whisking every now and again.
Turn the heat back on and whisk in the sugar, then the cream, and bring to a bubble.
Remove from the heat.

Spoon the cornflour into a little bowl, cup or ramekin and slake it with the milk: which is to say, whisk in the milk until you have a smooth paste.
Pour this, whisking as you go, into the mixture in the saucepan. Still whisking, put the pan back on the heat and bring back to a bubble, whisking all the while, for 20-30 seconds, or until thickened.

Divide between 2 heatproof glasses or cups and - unless you want to eat this hot - cover, touching the surface of the puddings, with clingfilm or baking parchment that you've wet with cold water then wrung out (this is to prevent a skin forming, a thing she Ed: That's Nigella cannot tolerate), and put them in the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Let the puddings come to room temperature before serving, and remove the clingfilm or baking parchment and smooth the tops with the back of a teaspoon.
Put the soft sea salt on the table to sprinkle over as you eat, if wished. For those of us Ed: Like Nigella! who love liquorice, this pudding is a sheer, spine-tingling joy.
You might think that you could briefly dunk the ramekin in very hot water in order to loosen the pudding and neatly turn it out onto a plate by inverting the ramekin.
You would be wrong 🙁
The pudding will stick belligerently to the ceramic and only emerge untidily at the point of a knife.
I guess this kind of loosening only works best with gelatine-based thickeners.
The Week After the Morning After The Week Before
Frying a Sirloin

And is there runny cheese still for tea?
Yes, dear reader, yes there is!

About a month later I'm finally chewing through the last of the Christmas cheeses - mostly Gorgonzola.
I rolled some into a surprisingly long puff pastry log, which I then struggled to fit into the oven.
In the end I had to slide it in at a diagonal, and keep rotating it to limit the scorching of the ends.
I combined the finished, and impressively glossy, cheese roll with some colourful celeriac and pea purées and experimented with different presentations.
What do you think?

The Tête de Moine, or Monk's Head cheese, with which I creamed some kale, was believe it or not, a post-Christmas purchase.
It's a fine-grained semi-hard Swiss cheese which coincidentally originated from Bellalay Abbey near Berne, and is usually scraped or pared for serving, rather than being cut or sliced.
In fact there's a whole device called a Girolle which is sold for scraping this conveniently cylindrical cheese into beautiful rosette-like swirls.
You can manage to produce similarly attractive curls with a regular cheese slicer, or if you are particularly skilled, a sharp knife.

So after that, it's back to my habitual weekly steak, obtained at the end of my meat walk into Brighouse.
Now serving with a fruity liquorice sauce.

Chestnut, Gorgonzola & Spinach en Croûte
main veg cheese
I had the last of my Christmas gorgonzola to use up, and this seemed like an ideal vehicle. Indeed, it's not too bad - just a couple of observations:
  • Firstly the filling quantity is huge - far too much for a single roll. Probably you should halve the quantities for the same amount of pastry.
  • Secondly I used about ⅔ volume of stock in the sauce, and also correspondingly less cream. It seemed to produce a reasonably flavoured sauce, which I think would have been far too dilute with the recommended stock volume.
  • Although the original recipe calls for Shropshire Blue cheese I used Gorgonzola. Of course any blue cheese will be satisfactory.
  • I reduced the oven temperature from Gas 7 to 6. But perhaps it should have been even lower?
  • I kept back some of the sauce leeks and fried them in oil and butter until they caramelised to make a crispy topping. Which Flora described as The Spider Corpses. So maybe you shouldn't do that?
  • Finally I found 200g bags of whole cooked chestnuts and puréed chestnuts at my Local Fucking Supermarket™ and that seemed like sufficient quantities.
  • Good luck finding all-butter puff pastry at your Local Fucking Supermarket™.

Serves 8

Ingredients
  • 50g butter
  • 500g pack leeks, thickly sliced
  • 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 240g bag baby spinach
  • 415g can chestnut purée or 200g of whole cooked
  • 3 large eggs, plus 1 for glazing
  • ½ nutmeg, finely grated
  • 200g pack vacuum-packed whole cooked chestnuts, halved
  • 85g fresh white breadcrumbs
  • 220g blue cheese, rind trimmed, diced
  • 500g pack all-butter puff pastry

  • For the Sauce:
  • 500ml vegetable stock
  • 2 leeks, thinly sliced
  • 1 tbsp cornflour
  • 300ml pot double cream
Method
Melt the butter in a large frying pan.
Add the leeks and garlic, stir well, cover and cook for 10 mins until the leeks are soft, stirring a few times to check that they don’t catch.
Tip into a large bowl.
Put the spinach in the pan and allow it to wilt. Leave to cool and, when cold, squeeze out as much liquid from it as you possibly can.

Tip the chestnut purée into the bowl with the leeks and add the 3 eggs, the nutmeg, chestnuts, spinach, breadcrumbs, cheese and seasoning, and stir until well mixed.
Chill for at least 1 hr until the mixture firms up.

Heat oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 6.
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the pastry to a rectangle large enough to completely enclose the filling.
Carefully lift onto a large, long baking tray that has been lined with baking parchment, then brush round all the edges of the pastry with the remaining egg.
Spoon the filling down the centre of the length of the pastry, leaving the ends clear.
Tuck the ends over the filling, then firmly lift up the sides to wrap them round, trimming away any excess pastry as you go.
Brush with more egg to glaze, then make a few holes in the top so steam can escape as it cooks.
Bake for 40 mins until golden and the filling is firm. Remove from the oven, brush with more glaze and then bake for 10 mins more.


To make the sauce, heat the stock in a medium pan, add the leeks, boil for 5 mins, then take off the heat and scoop out 2 tbsp of the leeks.
Or reserve them from the beginning and caramelise as a topping.
Don't just blend in all the cornflour - better to make a slurry first with a little water, then add only as much as required to achieve your preferred consistency.
Blitz the rest in the pan with the cornflour using a hand blender, then cook, stirring, until thickened.
Pour in the cream and reserved leeks and warm through.
Can be made 2 days ahead and chilled. Serve the pastry in thick slices with the sauce.
It's pretty decent, if you can fit the roll in your oven! Mine was a bit soggy inside, if I'm honest, so perhaps cooking for longer at an even lower temperature might help.

Celeriac and Sun-Dried Tomato Purée
side veg
I really wanted a pink purée to suit my meal plan's colour scheme.
This seemed like it would work, and the flavours are quite complementary too.
Bonus!

It's the celeriac and the sun-dried tomatoes which are puréed by the way, not just the tomatoes. To clear up any confusion 😉

Ingredients
  • celeriac
  • sun-dried tomato
  • large knob of butter
  • cream
  • splash stock optional
Method
Peel the celeriac and chop into chunks.
Simmer in salted water until soft and drain.
Blend together with a knob of butter and as many sun-dried tomato pieces as you need to get the colour or taste you require.
Lubricate and thin with cream or stock as needed.
Season and serve.
Pretty and tasty!

Red Wine, Redcurrant and Liquorice Steak Sauce
meat sauce
A rather thick and delicious alternative to McPhail's steak sauce, and another step taken in my crusade to combine liquorice with everything.
The fruit jelly is optional.

Serves 1 Steak

Ingredients
  • butter
  • garlic
  • red wine
  • herbs - rosemary and thyme
  • redcurrant or rowan jelly
  • liquorice pellets
Method
After you've fried your steak, add a large knob of butter and some garlic and herbs to the pan, if you didn't already.
Add shallots too, if you like.
Fry until the garlic becomes to colour, then de-glaze with red wine.
Add stock and redcurrant or rowan jelly if you like and bubble to reduce and thicken.
Grind liquorice pellets to a powder in a mortar and mix through the sauce to taste.
Season, strain, and serve with the steak.
Strange, but tasty.
If you like liquorice.

Kale with Tête de Moine and Lemon Cream Sauce
veg side cheese
You'll need a generous amount of kale - it will disappear almost like spinach in this recipe.
You'll want to use a melty cheese. I liked the tète de moine, but any hard melty cheese like gruyère, emmental, or even parmesan would work well.
You can make a decorative rose out of a Tête de Moine by shaving thin slices from the around the centre of the cheese wheel with a specialist Girolle.
Or a coarse approximation using a potato peeler or a cheese slicer.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 10 oz kale leaves
  • 1-2 garlic cloves, sliced or minced
  • large knob of butter
  • 4 tblsps double cream
  • stock optional
  • ¼ cup Tête de Moine or similar cheese, grated
  • juice of 1 lemon
Method
Cut away the stalks from the kale, wash and drain them and roughly tear or chop.
Mix the lemon juice with about an equal quantity of the cream.

Heat a large knob of butter or a splash of olive oil in a saucepan or skillet and sweat the kale until it begins to collapse, but still retains its vibrant green colour. Add sliced garlic and sweat until fragrant.
You can add some stock to deepen the flavour if you like, cook most of it off before continuing.
Add some cream, bubble and then add grated cheese and stir until it thickens and all melts together. Off the heat stir in the cream and lemon juice mixture.
Season if required and serve.
Very good. If a bit watery.
The Morning After The Week Before
River Wharfe at Otley

Today I will be mostly eating cheese. And brussels sprouts.
And catching up with the cooking and eating I've been doing over the last few weeks.

Vacherin Mont d'Or is a winter cheese made on the French/Swiss border using milk from the same cows responsible for Comté. They come down from the mountains when the season turns cold and their milk is too meagre and too fatty to make the summer cheese.
It's delicious baked in its spruce-bark box and scooped out with sourdough soldiers.
Like Époisse it also pairs surprisingly well with a Tamarillo Salsa.


The delightful snowy scene on the river Wharfe above comes courtesy of Otley's Traditionale Victoriane Fayre - well worth a visit on the first Sunday in December.
So a bit of a wait now then.

In the meantime - have some more local wintry scenes...


King Oyster Mushrooms with Cream Cheese and Bacon
meat starter side cheese
Making my annual Advent tom khaa kai I came across King Oyster mushrooms in the Chinese supermarket.
Some of them went into the soup, and the others went into some bacon.
You could probably use some other kind of fat mushroom, but it will have to be substantial enough to wrap bacon around.
About 2 per mushroom.

Ingredients
  • king oyster mushrooms or similar
  • bacon slices
  • Boursin
  • olive oil for drizzling

  • Optional extras:
  • garlic
  • butter
Method
Mash up a garlic clove with some butter if you fancy some extra flavour.
Drag the blade of a knife along the length of the bacon slices to stretch them out a little.

Slice the fat mushrooms in half lengthwise, and cut or scoop out a groove the length of the insides.
Fill the grooves with Boursin.
Smear the cut surfaces with garlic butter if you're using it.
Press the mushroom halves back together and wind bacon slices around each mushroom starting from the bottom of the stalk, until it's completely wrapped, possibly excepting the head. Pin the bacon in place with a cocktail stick right through the mushroom.
Place in a small oven dish and drizzle with olive oil and a dab of garlic butter, if using. Throw in any of the mushroom cuttings too - waste not want not!

Roast at Gas Mark 4-5 for about 20-30 minutes until the bacon is starting to crisp at the edges and the mushrooms are cooked through.
Remove the cocktail sticks and serve the mushrooms dressed with all their lovely juices.
Perhaps with a few green vegetables. Maybe some broccoli.
Delicious!

Braised Celery with Cheese Sauce
veg side cheese
Delia's Recipe has a lot more onion than mine, and a lot less bacon.
And I didn't bother with the egg yolks.
Or the parmesan.
Or par-boiling the celery.
But they're otherwise identical!

Serves 4

Ingredients

  • For the Celery:
  • 1 large or 2 small heads of celery
  • 1 oz (25 g) butter
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 carrot, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 6 slices of bacon, cut into fat batons an optional extra
  • splash of Kümmel optional
  • ½ teaspoon celery (or fennel) seeds
  • Salt and freshly milled black pepper
  • 150 ml stock or water

  • For the Sauce:
  • 3 oz (75 g) mature Cheddar cheese, grated
  • 1 smallish onion, finely chopped or not
  • about 5 fl oz (150 ml) milk
  • 1 oz (25 g) butter
  • ½ oz (10 g) plain flour
  • 1 large egg yolk or not
  • 1 tablespoon Parmesan, freshly grated other cheeses are available
Method
Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 350°F (180°C).

Prepare the celery by discarding any outer stalks if they are coarse and damaged.
Separate the rest of the stalks, leaving the inner ones attached to the root. Clean any dirt off under cold running water. Cut the inner stalks and their roots vertically, then cut all the stalks in half horizontally.
Blanch the celery by putting it in boiling, salted water or use stock for about 5 minutes. Drain well, reserving the cooking water.
Or don't bother with the blanching - I'm not sure it will make much difference since you're going to braise them in the liquid anyway.

Now, in the flameproof casserole, heat 1 oz (25 g) butter and the oil, add the prepared carrot and onion and cook for about 5 minutes. I also fried up a few slices of bacon, cut into fat lardons.
Add the drained celery and 5 fl oz (150 ml) of the cooking water or stock.
If you didn't blanch your celery, give it a good stir around in the butter for a few minutes before adding the water.
De-glaze the pot with a splash of Kümmel or some other herby liquor. If you like.
A fennel liqueur would be perfect, if you had any!
Sprinkle with the celery (or fennel) seeds and season with a little salt and black pepper.
Place the casserole in the oven and bake, covered, for 30 minutes or until the celery is tender.
When ready, transfer the vegetables to a shallow ovenproof dish, using a slotted spoon.
Empty the cooking liquid from the casserole into a measuring jug and make it up to 10 fl oz (275 ml) with the milk.

To make the sauce, heat the butter in a saucepan and fry the finely chopped onion until golden (I didn't bother with extra onion), then blend in the flour and cook for a couple of minutes before adding the milk mixture a little at a time, stirring well after each addition.
Bring to simmering point, still stirring, and simmer gently for a minute or two, then remove from the heat and beat in the Cheddar cheese and egg yolk.
I didn't bother with the egg either, but I wanted to re-use the mixture in smaller re-cooked servings later and didn't want the sauce setting.
Pour the sauce over the vegetables, sprinkle on the Parmesan cheese, and bake uncovered in the oven for a further 25-30 minutes or until it's heated through and the top is starting to colour.
It's pretty good for celery, which is challenging to make tasty.
A bit on the sloppy side though - try not to have too much sauce so that it leaves plenty of the celery uncovered.
I used slices of a brie-like post-Christmas cheese instead of the parmesan. Which also worked fine.

Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad
veg salad cheese
When Christmas gives you Brussels...
The inspiration for this salad uses pine nuts and dried cranberries. But I didn't have those.
However I did have flaked almonds.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 4 cups brussels sprouts, thinly shredded
  • ¼ cup lemon juice
  • lemon zest
  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • ½ cup flaked almonds, toasted
  • ½ cup pecorino cheese, finely grated
  • salt & pepper

  • Options:
  • chives or parsley, minced
Method
Trim the sprouts, then slice them very thinly on a mandoline.
Break the slices up with your hands or a fork.
Grate over lemon zest and a squeeze of lemon juice.
Dress with olive oil until glistening.
Mix through some grated pecorino.
Add chopped herbs, if using.
Heat a small frying pan and dry-fry a handful of flaked almonds and toss over the salad before serving.
Pretty good brussels!

Beetroot and Cider Soup
soup veg vegan
An unusually fruity beetroot soup, if a bit on the thick side.

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 1 large onion
  • 1 bulb fennel
  • 4 beetroots
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 4 bay leaves
  • 2 granny smith apples
  • 500ml dry cider or less
  • stock, as required

  • To Garnish:
  • crème fraîche
  • mussels, cooked
  • black pudding cubes, fried
Method
Roughly chop the onion, fennel and garlic and sweat in butter over a medium heat until softened.
Peel the beetroot, finely slice and add to onion and fennel.
Add bay leaves and cider and enough stock or water to cover the vegetables.
Simmer over a medium heat until the beetroot is softened.
Peel, core and slice the apples and add to pan.
Remove the bay leaves then blend the soup, in batches if necessary.
Season with salt & pepper.
Pour into bowls and garnish with a dollop of crème fraîche.
Quite good, though you could hold back on the cider a little - it can be a bit overpowering.

It's nice also dressed with a few cooked mussels and cubes of fried black pudding.
You know, if that's what you happen to have around.

Steak and Kidney Pudding
meat main
You can either pre-braise your pudding filling for a couple of hours to give you more control over the result as I do here, or cook everything from raw inside the pudding.
In that case you would need to steam it for a good few hours longer - perhaps 5. You might be able to do this in a slow cooker on high, or for 8-10 hours on low.
You should also then chop the vegetables up small and consider dusting the meat with cornflour rather than wheat flour, which will clump less.
And don't add too much liquid.

Your stewing steak could be neck, chuck, blade, shin, skirt or cheek. Or maybe brisket.
I used shin, and had so many trimmings that I fried them up with some chopped onions, carrots and celery and then boiled them to make a simple stock. Which I strained and used for the pudding filling. Though you could also use them to make a gravy.
Don't cut the pieces too small or they'll disintegrate before you even get them in the puddings.

For the kidneys you will be best using veal or lamb. Ox might be a bit strong.

You can add any extra fillings or flavourings you like, I suppose even (shudder) carrots. Though I did add mushrooms, and garlic, so who am I to talk?
You could substitute red wine for the stout, include some kind of tomato in the filling, and some type of mustard is quite a popular addition, either as a powder in the crust, or a paste in the filling.

I grated some gorgonzola into my pastry after cohering it with the water. But then it is post-Christmas, so now I've got 10 pounds of cheese to get through.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 1 tbsp plain flour
  • 400g chuck or stewing-type steak, cut into 1" chunks
  • 150g rose veal kidney
  • 1½ tbsp beef dripping or oil, to cook
  • 1 onion or leek, thinly sliced
  • 1 bay leaf
  • Small bunch of thyme, leaves picked
  • 150ml stout
  • 150ml beef stock

  • Optional Fillings:
  • half a dozen chestnut or field mushrooms, chunked
  • garlic, sliced
  • gorgonzola!
  • anchovies
  • oysters
  • soy sauce
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • whole grain mustard

  • For the Pastry:
  • 250g self raising flour
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 125g chopped suet
  • butter, to grease

  • Optional Pastry Flavours:
  • ½ tsp English mustard powder
  • herbs - thyme/parsley/sage/tarragon
  • cheese, crumbled or grated
  • nuts, chopped
  • lemon or orange zest
Method
Cut the beef into chunks about 1-1½ large. Be sure to remove any silverskin or connective tissue. Especially if you're using shin.
Quarter the kidneys and remove their core along with any additional stringy bits.
Put the meat and the kidneys in plastic bags and shake up with well-seasoned flour.

Heat the dripping, or oil, in a large frying pan. Adding more along the way as required:
Fry the floured beef in batches to brown, then scoop into a pot.
Fry the floured kidney in batches until browned, then scoop into a pot.
Chop or slice the onion or leek and fry until they begin to caramelise, then scoop into the pot.
Add any other non-canon vegetables like garlic or carrots.
De-glaze the frying pan with the stout and bubble until reduced by half. Add to the pot along with enough stock to cover everything.
Add a dash of soy and Worcestershire sauce, thyme, and a couple of bay leaves and simmer gently for 1¾ hours until the meat is tender.
Keep stirring it occasionally because the flour will stick and burn if you let it. If you're adding mushrooms, cut them into chunks the size of the meat and stir them through towards the end of the simmering.
Adjust the position of the lid, so as to finish with a thick gravy. You may need to boil more vigorously at the end.
Taste and adjust the flavourings and seasoning. Remove the bay leaves and allow to cool.

Two hours before you want to eat, sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt. Add mustard powder if using.
Rub in the suet briefly to mix together with herbs/cheese/nuts if using. Add just enough cold water to bring together into a firm dough using a knife.
Pinch off a quarter of the dough and set aside, then roll out the rest to about ½ cm thick. Butter a 1 litre pudding basin generously, and use the pastry to line it, being careful not to stretch it.

Fill the pastry with meat and gravy, stopping about 2cm from the top, and then roll out the lid and stick it on with a little cold water.
If you want to add some blue cheese, crumble it into the filling in a couple of layers.
Cover the basin with foil, with a pleat to allow the pastry to rise, and fashion a handle out of string to lift the basin out of the water. Put the pudding in a large pan half-filled with boiling water, cover and simmer for 1½ hours.
Though I think it's easier to use a proper steamer. Then you won't need the improvised handle. Or worry about drowning it.
Check the water level regularly and top up with more boiling water as necessary. Turn out and serve immediately.
Delicious!
You will probably want to have extra gravy - either strain some off the filling you made, or make up a separate batch.
I served mine with a cherry and red wine sauce, some charred shallots, piped pea purée and champ (mashed potato and spring onions).

Ecuadoran Tamarillo Salsa
salad veg vegan
Tamarillo, or tree-tomato is a South American fruit. Bright red and pretty tart.
The skin is rather tough, but you can eat all the rest of the fruit even though the seeds are a bit on the large side.
I looked these facts up, because my Local Greengrocer had some, and I therefore had to give them a try.

Makes about ½ cup

Ingredients
  • 1 fresh tamarillo (tree tomato)
  • 1 fresh serrano chilli (preferably red), coarsely chopped, with seeds if desired
  • 2 large scallions or ½ red onion, coarsely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon chopped coriander
  • 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
  • brown sugar optional
  • salt to taste
Method
Either halve the tamarillo and scoop out the flesh and seeds with a spoon, or quarter it and remove the skin with a horizontal cut with a knife by holding the tamarillo piece flat on a chopping board.
Apparently you can also peel them like tomatoes by dropping them into boiling water for a few seconds.
Chop the flesh. Mince the other solid ingredients.
Mix everything together.
Season with salt and sugar if required to take some of the edge off the bitterness.
Really good.
The original recipe blends everything, but I liked it chunky.
Goes surprisingly well on toast with Époisses cheese. Well, you have cranberry sauce and brie - why can't you have tamarillo salsa and Époisses?

Roast Poussin Stuffed with Black Pudding and Apple
fowl main
Poussin is French for spring chicken, but you could also manage this with any small bird.

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 1 poussin
  • 100g black pudding
  • 100g fresh breadcrumbs optional
  • 1 apple
  • herbs, chopped
  • streaky bacon
  • brown sugar

  • Optional Dressings:
  • butter or olive oil
  • paprika
Method
Break up the black pudding with a fork - avoid turning it to mush.
Fry small cubes of apple in butter to brown, then mix with the black pudding and some chopped herbs.
I used parsley - but chives or sage would work.
You might consider bulking it with some fresh breadcrumbs if the stuffing is too dense.

Stuff the poussin with the mixture, lard the breast and top of the legs with bacon and roast at Gas Mark 5-6 for about an hour until the stuffing is hot in the centre.
Insert a cake tester, then touch it to your lower lip to check the temperature.
If the bacon starts to burn, cover the bird loosely with tin foil.
I first smeared butter over my poussin, and also rubbed the (thin, streaky) bacon with soft brown sugar.
The sugar was probably a good idea and produced nice crispy strips of caramelised sweet bacon, but the strips curled off and detached themselves from the bird, probably defeating their entire larding purpose. So perhaps don't grease the skin, and perhaps wrap the bacon right round the bird to better hold it in place?
Alternatively roll the wrapped bird around in olive oil and paprika to lubricate before roasting.
Leave the bird loosely covered to rest for 10-15 minutes.

Peel the remains of your apple and cut ¼" slices across the near-middle. Remove the cores if necessary.
Roll in soft brown sugar, then fry both sides over high heat in clarified butter until nicely caramelised.

To serve, carve away the birds legs and breasts.
Scoop some stuffing from inside, pile onto fried apple disks and decorate with chicken pieces.
Well it's no spring chicken. Oh wait, it is! 🤣

Liquorice Beetroot
side veg
Another stage on my mission to combine liquorice with everything.

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 3 beetroots
  • 6 liquorice pellets
Method
Cut a beetroot into cubes, or use the small end of a melon-baller to carve out spheres of beetroot.
Juice the leftover parts, and two more beets until you have enough juice to cover the balls.
Throw in a half dozen pieces of liquorice and simmer gently until the beetroot is cooked.
Drain to serve.
Rather nice combination.

Celeriac Chips
veg vegan side experimental
Serves 2

Ingredients
  • celeriac, cut into chips
  • oil for deep-frying
Method
Peel and trim the celeriac and simmer in salted water until softened, but not collapsing.
Cut into chips and deep-fry twice: First at 140°C until cooked but not coloured, then 190°C until brown.
Yeah, no. Celeriac chips are rubbish.
The outsides don't crisp up like potato ones do. Best cook them another way!

Raspberry, Beetroot and Red Wine Sauce
sauce veg vegan
Handy for using up beetroot leftovers.

Ingredients
Method
Slice garlic and shallots or red onion.
Fry until coloured in a little butter along with any spare parts of herbs you have.
De-glaze with red wine, and throw in a large handful of raspberries while you bubble off the alcohol.
Add the liqourice-y juice from cooking liquorice beetroots and continue cooking until the raspberries completely collapse.
Strain the sauce, return to the pan, and bubble until reduced to a sufficiently thick syrup.
Good sauce.
Serve with a roast bird, and don't forget to add the bird's juices.
That's Not a Goose!
Pol Roger's Winston Churchill Champagne

Ducks are not geese, you know. And when you order a goose for Christmas, you expect to collect a goose for Christmas.
Not a small goose and duck.
Sigh.
Fortunately even a small(er) goose is large enough for one dinner for three people. And even provides enough for leftovers.
Plus you get to make two stocks.
Christmas is saved!

This year's pre-christmas preparations involved some of our traditional undertakings but this year Kurt also pushed the boat out on Elfy activities. Or Elf-On-The-Shelfy activities.
He spent many late nights building complex Elf dioramas, featuring regular and naughty elf, for George's dawn delight.
Any morning they might be found playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, toasting marshmallows over the Advent candle, TP'ing the light fitting or taking a shit in George's breakfast juice glass.
Those little minxes!



So then finally we have all the usual trimmings - the food, the drink (a rather fine Pol Roger Champagne, since you ask), the lights and the presents.
The MERRY CHRISTMAS to one and all!


Kirsch-Cherry and Black Pudding Canapé
meat starter
It's easy to overwhelm the cherry with too much black pudding, so do your best to roll the pudding as thinly as possible around the cherry, while being sure to cover it completely.
You are also going to need some quality cherries for these canapés. I first tried using an inferior black cherry by Opies.
They're too feeble, soft and squidgy to stand up to the wrapping process, never mind packing insufficient flavour.
Griottines' Morello cherries are definitely better here, though the quality does cost extra 😉

Makes about 30-40 balls

Ingredients
  • kirsch-cured cherries, 1 jar of at least 30
  • 400g of black pudding, good quality
  • 2 eggs
  • 20g of cornflour
  • 100g of flour, for coating
  • 300g of Rice Krispies, placed in a large bowl
Method
Drain the cherries thoroughly and use kitchen paper to absorb any excess liquor. Blitz the black pudding in a food processor, then add 1 egg and the cornflour and blitz again.

Place a small amount of the black pudding mix in the palm of your hand and flatten out slightly.
Place a cherry in the centre and lift the sides of the black pudding mix around the cherry to enclose, like you would do to make Scotch eggs.
Repeat until all of the cherries are enclosed.

Add the remaining egg to a bowl and whisk lightly to make an egg wash. Lightly coat the black pudding balls in the flour and shake off any excess.

Dredge each ball in the egg 3-4 times to coat well, then place in the Rice Krispies bowl, shaking vigorously so the balls are well-coated.

Deep-fry the balls at 180°C for 2-3 minutes, drain on kitchen paper and serve warm.
With their special sauce of course!
You can also create a sprinkling of festive snow by blending up some Rice Krispies™ to make a white(ish) powder, and sieving it over the plate.

Savoury Cherry, Beetroot and Red Wine Sauce
sauce
The basis for a terrific sauce for your Black Pudding Canapés.
I've left the quantities up to you, and some extra flavours you might want to try.
As long as the stock is reasonably good quality you'll be able to reduce the sauce to a suitably rich and sticky consistency.

Ingredients
  • shallots
  • garlic
  • thyme
  • butter
  • red wine
  • balsamic vinegar
  • cherries
  • beetroot juice
  • stock

  • Flavours you could try adding:
  • nutmeg
  • almond essence
  • liquorice!
  • Kirsch cherry syrup
Method
Finely slice the shallots and garlic and sweat in butter until collapsed.
Cover with red wine, drizzle in balsamic vinegar add the cherries you can leave the stones in - we're going to strain everything later and bubble until the alcohol cooks off.
Add the beetroot juice and stock and cook until the red wine mellows and the cherries disintegrate.

Strain, taste, add flavourings, adjust the seasoning, then boil to reduce until it coats the back of a spoon, or as required.
Hey - you can throw in some Kirsch juice if you happen to have a jar of Kirsch-soaked cherries on the go.
And best of all, you can use those cheaper crappy Opies cherries, keeping the quality Griottines for the actual canapés.
Livin' La Vida Liquorica
Barratt Liquorice Stick

It all started with the squid.

On my weekly Meat Walk through Brighouse I noticed that the outdoor market's squalid fish stall had some surprisingly attractive-looking squid.
Now I've been burned there before with the worst scallops I've ever eaten so I kept on going, but as I collected my fillet steak for dinner I just couldn't stop thinking about that damned squid.
And as I passed the little traditional sweetie shop my mind turned to thoughts of liquorice. And squid. Liquorice and squid. And after all, why not?
So I bought some liquorice and went to collect a squid, just as the guy was packing up his van to take his rotting fish home to marinate in their own exudation before bringing them back again the next week.
Probably.

I noticed the stench of decaying squid wafting out of the bag on my way home on the bus, so I immediately gave the smelly fellow a damn good scrubbing, peeled him, chopped him up, and left him to soak in some milk in the hope of him being edible the next day.
And reader, he was. Squid and liquorice is delicious. Who knew?

And thus began my period of liquorice experimentation. It turns out that there are very few things that don't actually go with liquorice.
And many more that are definitely improved. I may make it my signature flavour!

Since Flora no longer joins us for Christmas she is obligated to visit in November, usually around my birthday 🙂, in order to deliver our Christmas presents. And collect her own, if she's been a good girl.
Reader, she has been a good girl.
Her reward was a ludicrously expensive (but delicious) bottle of Burgundy long story, but she has particularly fond memories of this estate from visiting it with her father as a child - lucky girl! and a Fondue.


I tried working with a few different liquorice forms:
- The spongy molasses-based sweet is the least palatable,
- Barrett's floury sticks are certainly the worst to work with,
- but hard Italian pellets of pure liquorice are definitely (and probably unsurprisingly) the best.
Grind them up with a pestle and mortar, catching the ones that leap out - they're really hard.
I guess you could use a spice grinder but I'm not convinced they aren't so hard they'd crack the blades!

So anyway, here are a couple of the liquorice meals I've produced recently, with my new-found enthusiasm for the unprepossessing brown root...

menu
Liquorice Prawns
Liquorice Prawns with Garlic and Chilli
Artistically arranged around the edge of a plate, which is then sifted with liquorice powder. A small plate in the centre is used to keep an area clear of the black snow for the vegetables.
Creamed Spinach with Garlic Cream
Piled into a cooking ring or cookie cutter to produce a tidy circle.
Minted Potatoes
Steam some new potatoes steaming definitely produces potatoes with a better texture and dress with minted butter.
Arrange them carefully on top of the creamed spinach ring.


menu
Liquorice Steak
Sirloin Steak with Red Pepper and Mint Sauce
Plated cubes of beautifully rare steak arranged on a puddle of Red Pepper sauce, jauntily decorated with a couple of mini-mint leaves.
Roast Squash and Garlic Mash
A bold smear of the smooth orange purée.
Truffled Savoy Cabbage with Ogleshield Cheese
Enjoy a slice of the this truffled, cheesed, cabbage.
Cavalo Nero with Liquorice and Black Garlic
A stack of vibrant cavalo nero squares moistened with garlic liquorice.


A Man-Overboard Buoy goes Overboard off Naples
Sorrento Coastline

Why-oh-why would you attach a man-overboard horseshoe buoy to a yacht by miles of floating plastic line?
Or any line for that matter.
In a typical use case, in which a crewperson fell overboard while the boat was underway and not immediately brought to a stop, the boat would either drag the buoy away from the struggling victim at speed, or possibly drown them if they'd been unlucky enough to get a hold of it. Potentially breaking their arms in the process.
Or just snapping the line. And now you have an even worse problem to deal with, which is that the line you have trailing in the water around the victim presents a serious propeller-fouling hazard should you attempt to motor back up to rescue them.
It just doesn't make sense!

Anyhow, long story short, some friends and I recently rented a yacht for a week out of a marina on the picturesque Italian island of Procida just off the coast of Naples; home to the Bourbon fort and ex-prison Palazzo d’Avalos.
The boat was a comfortable, but somewhat tired Oceanis 48 Serenesse, not without its problems. Probably due to it being the end of season - when the rental is cheaper but and? the weather livelier.

We sailed from Procida to the charming ex-prison island of Ventotene and anchored off its historic Roman harbour Porto Vecchio carved from the volcanic tuff around the time of Christ.
From there a hop back to Sant'Angelo harbour on Isola d'Ischia - the island next door to Procida featuring fine views of Castello Aragonese - its prominent medieval castle and ex-prison, then across the Gulf of Naples to pick up a mooring buoy off the fishing village of Nerano.
The short hop from there further along the coast, past the dolphin-shaped monastic and ex-prison island of Gallo Lungo, to Amalfi harbour gave us the time to hike the terrifying Path of the Gods (il Sentiero degli dei) - a high trail with spectacular cliff views carved into the earth by the Gods in their haste to save Ulysses from the Mermaids' song, that runs along the top of the mountains from Bomerano to Nocelle, finishing up with a descent to Positano down more steps than the human frame can bear to catch a bus back to Amalfi along the coast road.
In the face of increasingly threatening southerly winds, next day we made a lively retreat from the south-facing Amalfi coast, round the libidinous island of Capri, to Marina Piccola under the fantastically carved cliffs of the northern side of the Sorrento peninsula.
Our final day of sailing took us back across the choppy Gulf of Naples to Procida, with a brief stop for lunch. Over which, apparently, we had no time to linger.


But the important point is that while we were sailing between Ventotene and Ischia, at some speed in strong winds, our horseshoe buoy blew overboard due to the aged weakness in its elastic clips.
The line very quickly uncoiled from its reel (quickly enough to burn the hand of anyone foolish enough to try and grab it), then snapped off at the end, leaving the buoy and a massive cloud of cheap floating plastic line rapidly receding into the distance.
We decided to attempt a (successful) recovery under sail, turning on the engine but not engaging the gear.
Pretty safe you might think.
Unfortunately somehow the line still managed to wrap itself around the prop shaft so tightly that it couldn't be pulled out. We had a couple of swimmers jump in to brave the bath-temperature waters and try to get a proper look at the problem, and for a while we were seriously worried that we might not be able to free it at all, but fortunately the line was so sunburned and frail that it simply tore apart when we eventually gave the prop a couple of experimental spins.
Problem solved!

Overall the sailing was pretty good, warm enough to be fun even in strong wind and rain, and I realised how much I'd missed it. We packed in a lot of it too; even the Sunsail staff seemed genuinely impressed at the amount of distance we had covered.
It was also nice to be sleeping at sea again - though many of my shipmates struggled with the rolling: I just lay crossways on my bunk which helped enormously.

Naples itself, however, seemed to me an ugly, dirty, confusing mess consisting of filth-covered graffiti-ridden buildings, a transport system that struggles to function, or that I struggled to understand, and a vast industrial zone that resembles a dystopian ruin.
(Though I'm told that all the areas I didn't visit are delightful!)
And now I come to think about it, does seem to be surrounded by an awful lot of prisons!


Seen from offshore the Campanian coastline is quite beautiful, even if like much of Naples the settlements look better after dark, but it is beset with arbitrary sailing and anchoring restrictions, and mooring or berthing is limited and expensive. Even in the off season.
I also found the heat difficult to manage at night despite having my cabin fan running at full blast.
Still, the Mediterranean sea was warm, the fish plentiful, the food excellent if pricey, and the Aperol spritzers the perfect end to many perfect lunches afloat.

Arrivederci!


Marinated Salmon Risotto
fish main italian
I made this risotto (mostly) to use up our leftovers - and we had gherkins so that's what I added. But I think capers might have worked better.
The salmon slices I used, marinated in oil, were pretty tasty, and kept well on the boat. But I'm sure you could use fresh salmon. Or smoked.

If you're making some Aperol fennel with this you can use their trimmings to make a vegetable stock and wash in any orange zest trapped in your grater. Or you could use a fish, or a chicken stock. Otherwise include any other spare vegetable and basil stalks.

I followed the traditional five stages of risotto cookery (your terms may vary):
  • il soffritto: Frying! Finely chopped onions (and possibly other vegetables such as the classic celery and carrot) are sweated in oil or butter without browning.
  • la tostatura: Toasting! The rice grains are pre-cooked so they retain some coherence. You can toast the rice separately in a dry pan, or in the sweated onions.
  • lo sfumato o l'umidità o Il Sospiro: Steaming or Sighing! Wine (or spirit or even lemon juice) is added, whereupon it should sizzle as it hits the hot rice, then is cooked off.
  • la cottura, la bagnatura o il brodo: Cooking! The main ingredient may be added here, then broth is added a little at a time to the rice, stirring until each is absorbed to the preferred degree of sloppiness. This continues until the rice is cooked, retaining just a little bite. About 15-20 minutes.
  • il riposo: Resting? An optional step to allow the rice to cool slightly and finish cooking off the heat before adding the cheese.
  • la mantecatura: Creaming! Off the heat add cold butter and grated cheese and beat until smooth.
  • Eating! Serve!

Serves 6

Ingredients
  • 1 pack bacon/pancetta, chopped
  • bag shallots, minced
  • 3 cups risotto rice ½ cup per person
  • a few cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup white wine
  • 2 litres stock or as required
  • tub marinated salmon, chopped
  • 2-3 gherkins chopped, or capers
  • large handful rocket, chopped
  • zest of ½ orange, grated
  • 150g butter
  • 150g parmesan, grated

  • Dressings:
  • mozzarella, sliced
  • basil leaves
Method
First chop and fry the pancetta or bacon in a little olive oil until it crisps. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Chop the salmon, gherkin leave capers whole, or just lightly crush, if using, roughly chop the rocket and mix everything with the reserved crisped bacon.
Add a light grating of orange zest.

Soffritto: Mince the shallots and sweat gently in the fat left in the pan until they turn transparent.
Tostatura: Raise the heat. Add the rice and stir well to coat and lightly fry, without allowing the onions to brown.
Umifità: Add the minced garlic, stir through then pour in a generous amount of white wine and cook it off. Lower the heat again.
Bagnatura: Have the stock simmering in a pot to hand and add one ladleful at a time to the rice until each is absorbed.
Continue this process until the rice is cooked. Leave the risotto as sloppy or firm as you like it.
Mantecatura: Remove from the heat and beat in the butter and grated parmesan until the risotto turns smooth and creamy.

Now carefully stir through the other prepared ingredients, season if necessary, and dress with a layer of thinly sliced mozzarella.
Once the mozzarella has begun to melt it might need some warm encouragement, serve with a few basil leaves for decoration.
Surprisingly good, I thought.
But then I was very, very drunk.

Aperol Fennel
side
I used some fresh red chillies, but dried chilli flakes would work fine. You could substitute maple syrup for the honey, which is what inspired this dish.
There was no oven thermometer on board the yacht, so I have no idea at what temperature I roasted these, but I'd guess Gas 4-6.
The Aperol is, of course, optional - but when in Naples...

Serves 6

Ingredients
  • 2 large fennel bulbs
  • 6-12 anchovies, minced
  • a few tblsps honey
  • a splash of Aperol
  • orange juice and zest
  • olive oil
  • 1-2 red chillies, minced
Method
Trim the fennel bulbs of tough or brown bits, strip the fronds for garnish, and par-boil them whole until you can pierce them with a knife. Drain and cut into fat segments vertically from root to stalks. Pack them into a single layer in a shallow oven dish.

Mix together minced anchovies, a good glug or two of honey, a splash of Aperol, the juice of an orange and the zest of about half, 1 or 2 minced red chillies, and a generous amount of olive oil. Season.
You'll need to adjust the amount of chilli according to their heat - you only want a hint of warmth. Don't overdo the orange zest, which can be a bit overwhelming, but the proportions are pretty much up to you 🙂. Use plenty of olive oil - enough to almost cover the fennel.
Pour this over the fennel, and mix thoroughly.
Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 4-6/175-200°C/350-400°F.
Bake for about an hour until the sauce melts into the fennel and they just begin to caramelize. Keep an eye on them and baste the juices over the fennel occasionally. Don't let the honey burn.
Serve dressed with the chopped fennel fronds. Perhaps extra grated orange zest. Maybe some parsley.
Really gorgeous.

Feta Salad with Lemon Honey Dressing
salad veg
I didn't have any cucumber, or rather, it turns out we did but I thought they were courgettes so didn't include them.
But you could.
I also used green olives, since that's what we had, but you could also use black, I reckon.

Ingredients

  • For the Salad:
  • feta, broken
  • crisp lettuce, torn
  • tomatoes, chunked
  • olive, sliced
  • cucumber, de-seeded, chunked
  • pecorino, grated

  • For the Dressing:
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tblsps honey or to taste
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • olive oil
  • salt & pepper
Method
Chop or tear the crisp lettuce.
Chop the tomatoes into decent chunks.
Slice the olives.
Remove any coarse peel from the cucumber, de-seed and cut into chunks.
Grate pecorino and mix everything.
Break or cut the feta into chunks and add to the salad.

Mash a garlic clove or two with a grinding of salt & pepper using the side of a chef's knife. Mix the juice of a lemon with the garlic and about the same volume of olive oil and honey to taste.
Dress the salad and serve.
You could also grate some of the lemon's zest over the salad.

Breaded Aubergine
veg side
I made this using grated gluten-free bread, for our gluten-intolerant skipper. And we didn't have any gluten-free flour so I skipped that dressing step. You'll need to season the aubergine slices. You can do this directly, or add the seasoning with the garlic, or season the egg wash. Whichever you prefer.

You can also add lemon zest to the breadcrumbs, but don't mix the garlic in there because it will probably burn and turn bitter.

Ingredients
  • aubergines, sliced thinly
  • flour
  • egg, beaten
  • breadcrumbs
  • lemon zest
  • garlic
  • salt & pepper
  • olive oil for shallow frying

  • Dressing:
  • pecorino, grated
  • lemon zest, grated
  • parsley, chopped
Method
Slice the aubergines pretty thinly.
Set out bowls containing the flour if using, the beaten egg, and the breadcrumbs I used fresh, grated, bread.
Mash the garlic with salt & pepper.
Take each slice of aubergine, rub with the seasoned garlic, then roll through the flour if using, the egg wash, and finally the breadcrumbs. Lay in a single layer in a large frying pan and fry in a generous amount of olive oil until browned and crispy, turning to fry the other sides.
Lay the slices on a warmed serving dish, then repeat the frying in batches until all the slices are cooked.

Scatter with grated cheese, grated lemon zest and some chopped parsley to serve.
Pretty good.
I did try adding grated pecorino to the breadcrumbs, but then my crispy coating started falling off during frying, so maybe that doesn't work.
Street Food
Ingleborough Viaduct

This week I will be mostly eating street food.

Chinese Chicken Ballotine
main fowl oriental
My Kirklees College Cookery Course tutor Aaron showed me another way of de-boning a chicken that involves a lot more cutting than peeling.
Starting with removing the spine, as for spatchcocking, scraping free the skeleton, then also slicing along the legs and wings to remove their bones and spread their flesh flat. As opposed to just pulling out their bones to leave little fleshy socks.
The result was flatter with more surface area than before, but in my case somewhat messier. Though perhaps you lose less meat on the skeleton. Maybe.
You also don't have the convenient leg stubs to help with tying it into a roll.

Since I already had Chinese-y ingredients on hand as a part of the rest of the class, that's what I used for my stuffing.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 1 chicken
  • salt & pepper
  • bicarbonate of soda
  • pancetta, or bacon, thinly sliced

  • For the Stuffing:
  • chinese leaf cabbage, shredded
  • carrots, grated
  • soy or hoisin sauce
  • sticky rice if you don't forget
  • shiitake mushrooms, sliced
  • garlic, sliced
  • ginger, shredded
  • rice vinegar
  • chinese five spice powder
  • plums, sliced
  • red onion, sliced

  • To Serve:
  • hoisin or satay sauce
Method
First de-bone your chicken.
Lay it out flat. Season generously inside and out, and if you have the time, leave overnight in the fridge.
You can also rub a little bicarbonate of soda into the chicken to tenderise it. You will need to wash that off if you use very much though, or you'll be able to taste it. And it's better to make this with a dry chicken. Hence leaving it overnight in the fridge.

Make the stuffing by frying the shredded ginger and sliced shiitake in a little oil until the mushrooms have nicely wilted.
Stir through some five spice powder, then deglaze the pan with rice vinegar and a dash of soy sauce, reducing so the mixture is not wet.
Mix with the rest of the stuffing ingredients.
I'm not absolutely sure you need to pre-fry the mushrooms, but they do hold a lot of moisture.
Also I forgot the damn sticky rice!
And that was the main thing I went shopping for!
Oh well.
Lay the chicken skin-side down, sprinkle with more five spice powder, cover with a layer of pancetta slices, then spread over the stuffing. Not too much - you need to be able to roll it!
If I could have found some, I'd have tried to incorporate Chinese sausage instead of the pancetta. But I live in a culinary desert 😢.
Roll up the chicken from the wing/leg sides a sheet of clingfilm is useful for holding everything together, and tie up with string - not too tightly and after removing any clingfilm!.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.
Fry the rolled chicken on all sides in duck fat or oil until nicely coloured, lay on a rack over a roasting tin (or the oven-proof frying pan) and roast for 45-60 minutes, until cooked through and golden.
Serve with a salad made from some of your spare stuffing ingredients dressed with sesame seeds and sesame oil, and some hoisin or satay sauce.
Really good.
My stuffing was a bit wet and leaky, but it still cooked just fine.
Did I mention that I forgot the sticky rice??
Scone
Samye Ling Rock Garden

Ha - fooled you! It's not that kind of scone!

I recently made trips up to Scotland, once to visit the ashes of my Mum, or the river where they were scattered, and once to visit Scone Palace, amongst other things.
Those things included Flora, Cambo Country House, and the Lands of Loyal hotel, where we drank possibly the most revolting red wine I've every tried: an unfiltered, organic Nero D'Avola horror from Sicily.
To be fair, they did warn us it might not be what we expected, if what we had expected was drinkable. It turns out to make an excellent cooking wine though - so nothing wasted, nothing lost.
The hotel is an impressive building, even if their wine cellar leaves something to be desired, featuring a striking sitting room with obligatory open fireplace, a fine bird-cage, and a magnificent Lagonda.

Scone Palace is, of course, the original home of the Scone of Destiny - whose recipe was famously stolen in 1296 by Edward Longshanks and removed to Westminster Abbey from where it was broken up and distributed to all the seaside tearooms of England.
It was also the seat of most, if not all, of Scottish history between Shakespeare's 11th century MacBeth and the crowning of Charles II there in 1651.
After which its story ended.
It is now a venue for meetings of Scottish dog-fanciers. Though it still possesses remarkable gardens, including an historic arboretum, and a delightful maze which will reward your dedication to navigating your way to its centre with a nice statue of a lady and an empty pond. And an emergency exit, so you don't have to Ariadne your way back.


My family, or at least some of us, have been regularly heading up to Eskdalemuir in the Scottish Borders to celebrate Mum's death. Obviously celebrate isn't the right word, though you wouldn't know it from the photos.
We visit the Buddhist monastery at Samye Ling and the Naga House in the White Esk river where we scattered Mum's ashes.
But our usual camping ground became unavailable over COVID so we've had to find somewhere else. Fortunately there's a lovely place near Hawick called Rue Du Chateau; it's a bit further away but it's a much nicer campsite, since you don't have to share it with caravans and mobile homes.
It has a river and a composting toilet in an old horse box, and if you're lucky you may be visited by the local ducks and chickens. If you're unlucky you'll be visited by the wasps.
As is traditional we dined on camping spag bol for which I had prepared an ersatz Campbell's oxtail soup at great expense.
It tasted almost like the real thing 😢


Lamb Shanks Braised in Red Wine
main meat
During an otherwise pleasant dinner at a very old-fashioned Scottish holiday lodge Flora and I made the mistake of choosing a particularly horrible organic, vegan, unfiltered Scicilian Nero D'avola red wine by Fabrizio Vella. It was utterly undrinkable.
Fortunately it makes an excellent braising wine.

Thanks to Nagi for the basic outline, though I enhanced the recipe with a touch of soy and fish sauce, and some extra shallots and mushrooms à la beef bourgignon. Don't worry you won't taste the fish sauce, but maybe you could throw in a few minced anchovies instead?

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 4 lamb shanks
  • oil for shallow frying
  • 3 carrots, finely chopped
  • a few bay leaves
  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • large handful of thyme
  • 3 sticks celery, finely chopped
  • half a dozen cloves garlic, crushed
  • 2 tblsps tomato purée
  • glass brandy
  • 1 bottle red wine
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon fish sauce
  • 1 tin chopped tomatoes
  • chicken stock

  • Extras:
  • oil
  • butter
  • a dozen round shallots or pickling onions, peeled
  • 200g button mushrooms, cleaned
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180-200°C/360-400°F/Gas Mark 5-6.

Heat a large oven-proof casserole with a generous puddle of oil. Season the shanks with salt & pepper and sear them all, all over. Do it in batches so as not to overload the pan. Set aside.

Over high heat add the chopped carrots and fry until colouring.
Throw in the bay leaves, the chopped onions and the crushed garlic cloves and fry until colouring.
Add the chopped celery and the thyme and fry until softened.
Add the tomato purée and cook until the oil separates. De-glaze the pan with a glass of brandy, then add the red wine and bubble it up. Stir in the tin of tomatoes, the soy and fish sauce.
Then tightly pack the browned shanks back in to the pot along with any of their juices. Add enough stock or water to almost cover everything.
Bring to the boil, cover and put in the oven for 2 hours until the meat is tender.

Now lift out the shanks, pour out the cooking liquid and press it through a sieve. Return everything (except the exhausted pulp which you can keep for sandwiches Reader - do not use it in sandwiches) back into the casserole and put it back in the oven uncovered. Continue cooking and reducing for 30-60 minutes until the meat is almost falling off the bones.

In the meantime heat oil in a frying pan and brown the shallots all over, shaking occasionally, and add them to the casserole. Then add a generous knob of butter and the sliced garlic to the pan, allow the butter to foam and the garlic to begin to colour then add the mushrooms. Fry until they begin to colour, shaking occasionally. Add these and their juices to the casserole.
These extras, particularly the onions, will fall apart if you cook them for much over 20 minutes, so only add them when the meat is approaching done.
Serve each shank on bed of mashed potato or cauliflower purée with a selection of the shallots and mushrooms and a drizzle of the reduced sauce.
Absolutely gorgeous.
I served mine with the cauliflower purée and peas with minted butter - a great combination of flavours.
If, like mine, your cooking liquid hasn't thickened sufficiently then boil it hard after you've removed the meat and vegetables for serving until it turns syrupy and coats the back of a spoon.

Minted Butter
ingredient
Ingredients
  • mint leaves, minced
  • squeeze of lemon or lime juice
  • lemon or lime zest
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed
  • salt & pepper
  • softened butter
Method
Mince the mint leaves then grind them in a pestle and mortar with a grating of sea salt and coarse pepper.
Add crushed garlic, a squeeze of lemon or lime and some of the zest and churn to a paste.
Blend with melted butter, roll up in clingfilm or baking paper and chill.
Really good.
Adjust the proportions as you like, I wanted mine a vivid green with a strong mint flavour, so I used plenty of mint. If you're making enough I guess you could use a food processor. Maybe.

Cauliflower Purée with Parmesan
side veg cheese
I took Nagi's mashed cauliflower, replaced the parmesan with pecorino romano and multiplied the quantity by 10. It seemed to like it.
I also threw a bunch of dill into the water to cook with the cauliflower florets for extra flavour, then just discarded it before draining and blending.
You could cook garlic cloves with the cauliflower and blend them in too as Nagi does.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 1 cauliflower
  • 200g parmesan or similar hard cheese
  • cream, sour cream or milk

  • To Serve:
  • parsley or dill, chopped
  • butter herbed or minted, melted
Method
Break or chop the cauliflower into similar-sized florets. Cook until completely soft in boiling salted water. Drain, then blend until smooth with just enough of the cooking water, cream, crème fraîche, or milk. Beat in the grated cheese.
Season to taste and serve with melted herb butter, chopped parsley or dill.
Excellent.

Warmed Burrata Salad with Roast Tomatoes and Grilled Nectarine
salad cheese
The recipe from which I stole this idea used apricots, but I had nectarines - so there. I'm sure any stone fruit would do it justice.

Ingredients
  • rocket
  • cherry tomatoes
  • burrata cheese
  • apricot, peaches, nectarines or green plums
  • red or spring onion, or shallots, sliced
  • garlic, minced
  • sliced ham
  • olive oil
  • salt & pepper

  • Dressings:
  • parsley, thyme, or basil
  • balsamic vinegar
  • chilli
  • vinaigrette
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.
Heat a grill or griddle pan.

Mix cherry tomatoes with olive oil, minced garlic and thinly sliced red onion, spring onions or shallots. Season with a little salt and pepper and some thyme leaves if you like.
Lay in a layer in a small ovenproof dish, and bake for 10-15 minutes until the tomatoes begin to split. Place the burrata on top and return to the oven for another 2-3 minutes until the cheese begins to soften, but don't let it collapse.

Meanwhile, halve the apricot, peach, nectarine, or plum, remove the stone, season the cut with salt and a generous amount of pepper, drizzle with olive oil and grill the cut-side or fry it in a roasting hot griddle pan until the griddle lines are nicely charred into the fruit.
Add a slice of ham and griddle that too. Slice up the ham across the griddle lines.

Dress the tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and serve everything up on a bed of rocket, topped with the warm burrata.
Scatter with herbs of choice and preferred salad dressing.
You can flavour with parsley, thyme, basil, sliced chilli, or coriander. Dress with olive oil, lime or lemon juice, a vinaigrette, or just the tomatoes' juices.
I used some coconut-lime dressing and a sliced chilli, it was delicious.

You could mix frisée or thinly sliced radicchio in with the rocket.

Langoustine and Black Pudding Crumble
fish meat main
Whilst on a recent holiday in Edinburgh, Flora treated me to a haunch of McLeod's Stornaway black pudding. But we couldn't eat it all, so she generously donated the leftovers for my return to Bradford, whereupon I thought I'd match it up with another Scottish staple - langoustines.

Well, I couldn't find any langoustines - there's a rumour Sainsbury sells them, but not in the poxy Sainsbury near me, apparently. So I used a bag of frozen king prawns instead.
I took some advice on the subject of making shellfish stock and roasted the prawn heads and shells before frying them to make the sauce. I also added paprika and deglazed with brandy before adding the white wine.

It's not the season for wild garlic, so I threw a couple of minced garlic cloves in with the bread, as well as a very generous handful of parsley leaves and all the fennel fronds that came with the bulb so it blends up good and green.

I felt the sauce was a little thin, so I sliced half the fennel bulb and cooked it in the sauce for a few minutes before adding the beans. If you wanted to bulk it further you might add some cubes of cooked potato.

Serves 4

Ingredients
  • 16 langoustines, cooked (or about 400g prawns)
  • 1 onion, peeled, chopped
  • 1 leek, chopped
  • 1 fennel bulb, chopped
  • couple garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 star anise
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika optional
  • 200ml of white wine
  • 200ml of double cream
  • 200-250g of white beans, cooked
  • vegetable oil
  • 150g of black pudding

  • For the Wild Garlic Crust:
  • 10 wild garlic leaves or a few garlic cloves
  • 150g of white breadcrumbs
  • 60g of butter, melted
  • parsley
  • salt
Method
Remove the tail meat from the langoustine and set aside, reserving the shells to make a stock for the sauce.
My prawns were frozen uncooked, so after defrosting then shelling them I blanched the bodies in salted water for about 2 minutes, then cooled them quickly in iced water.
You'll need to remove the intestinal tract, and cut them in half or sections cross-ways - about the same size as the black pudding.
Lubricate the shells and heads with a little oil, then roast for 20-30 minutes at Gas Mark 4 until they colour deep red and slightly caramalise. Heat oil and butter in a large pan and fry the roast shells until nicely coated, then add the onion, leek and fennel. Add the garlic, star anise and paprika if using. Fry a little more, then deglaze with brandy if you like then white wine.

Pour in enough water to just cover. Simmer for 1 hour then strain through a sieve into another saucepan. Place back on the heat and reduce down to 200ml, then add the cream and reduce to a sauce consistency. Keep the sauce warm.

Cut the black pudding into 2cm pieces and deep-fry at 180°C until just crispy. Remove and drain on kitchen paper.

For the wild garlic crust, add the breadcrumbs, a few or many! parsley leaves and 6 leaves of wild garlic or a couple of garlic cloves to a blender and blitz until green in colour. Add any fronds from the fennel bulb. Place in a bowl, mix through the melted butter and season with a little salt and pepper.

Warm the sauce over a gentle heat, I sliced half my fennel bulb and added it to the sauce to cook. add the white beans and cook until the beans have warmed through. Add the crispy black pudding and the langoustine meat.

To finish the sauce, add a little chopped wild garlic and reheat for 2 minutes. Spoon the mixture into a shallow serving dish or 4 individual dishes or ramekins.
Sprinkle the wild garlic crumbs over the top and place under a hot grill to colour and crisp up the crumb. Serve immediately.
Really good, if a bit on the sloppy side.
I served mine with a lettuce and tomato salad dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Accidental Liver, Deep Fried
main meat
On my weekly meat-walk into Brighouse I developed a craving for devilled kidneys, so kidney is what I tried to order when I finally arrived at the butcher's. Unfortunately, the word which came out of my mouth was liver. After the butcher spent ten minutes rummaging through the bottom of his fridges (I always seem to arrive just before he closes up) for the last bag of calf livers I didn't have the heart to tell him.
So I went home with accidental liver.

I bought a couple of cheeses from Brighouse's wine-and-cheese shop to try some possible liver pairings, and hunted around for novelty cooking ideas: It seems American southerners will deep-fry their chicken livers (they'll deep-fry anything), and Azerbaijanis like flouring and deep-frying beef liver. So I thought I'd try that out.

I can report that deep-fried liver is pretty good - crispy on the outside and oozing bloody succulence in the centre. Served with a blue cheese dressing on an onion-heavy salad makes for a great match.
Yum!
Shallow-fried with feta and sweetcorn is less good. Especially if you overcook the liver 🙁

Too late to trial, I also came across an intriguing suggestion for poaching liver in a mixture of butter and Vermouth. As a particularly disappointing movie sequel puts it: A good question, for another time...

Ingredients
  • liver
  • milk or buttermilk
  • flour
  • salt & pepper
  • oil for deep-frying
Method
Trim the livers of membranes, gristle, connective tissue or excess fat. Cut into equal-sized pieces (if they're large); use the natural lobe-lines as guides.
Put in a bowl, cover with milk and leave for an hour.
Opinions vary about the utility of this milky bathing - allegedly it can remove any excess bitterness, impurities, and blood from the liver. I don't normally find liver particularly bitter, but I did the soaking in this case anyway 'cos the liver was pretty old and I wanted to give it all the help I could.
Buttermilk might be a better choice since it's greater acidity should also help tenderize the meat.
Feel free to add hot sauce or other flavourings to your milk.
Sieve some flour into a shallow bowl and season it generously. Again you could add flavourings like cayenne or paprika.
Preheat a deep pan of oil to 350°F/175°C.
Drain the liver and roll the pieces in the flour. Drop them into the oil and fry for 2-3 minutes until golden.
If you want an even crispier Southern coating (and why wouldn't you?) then prepare two extra bowls with beaten egg and panko breadcrumbs. Roll the livers first in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, then fry them.
Scoop out the liver and drain on kitchen paper.
Quite good. For liver 😉
Serve with hot (as in spice) sauce, a blue cheese dressing (add minced spring onions) or a hot (as in temperature) blue cheese sauce.
Thai-Red of Curry Paste
Thai-red bear!

I bought some Thai red curry paste before last Christmas for my annual Tom Khaa Kai, because I read it would help. It does!.
It's a whole thing I have going on; to do with needing to eat a chicken so I can use its bones to make stock for the gravy for the Christmas goose. Long story.
Anyway the only decent prepared pots of this stuff are really big, so now I have toooo much Thai red curry paste! I'm getting tired of it. Thai-red of it. Geddit?
Oh please yourselves...


Fried Thai Red Curry Salmon
thai fish main
I thought I'd try coating some salmon with Thai red curry paste, of which I currently have excess, for frying.
You'll need to thin the paste enough that it will smear over the fish. I used fish sauce, rice vinegar, and toyomansi sauce as thinners but I thought that the thick cream from coconut milk might be ideal.
I'm sure you could also use mirin, citrus juice or most salad vinaigrettes. Even water!

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • a side of salmon
  • 1-2 tblsp Thai red curry paste
  • 1-2 tsps fish sauce
  • 1-2 tsps toyomansi sauce
  • 1-2 tsps rice vinegar
  • plain flour

  • To Serve:
  • more toyomansi sauce
Method
De-scale the salmon if necessary.
Mix the curry paste with the liquids until you have a smearable consistency. It will probably remain coarse, but you need to be able to scrape it thinly over the surface of the fish.

Cut the salmon into fat steaks. Pat them dry, then roll them in flour and shake off excess.
Smear the loosened paste thinly on all sides.
If the sauce is thin enough you can squidge it over the fish pieces in a freezer bag to coat them evenly.
Heat a frying pan with a fairly generous puddle of neutral oil until smoking hot. Fry the salmon pieces skin-side down over high heat until singed and crisping nicely, then turn and brown on all sides.
Check the centre of the salmon has reached 45-50°C then remove and allow to relax for 5-10 minutes before serving.

You can use this time to pan-fry some side vegetables in the flavoured oil if you like. Blanched, halved tenderstem broccoli stalks charred cut-side down in the same pan worked well for me.
Excellent, but can be super-spicy. You probably want only a thin, transparent coating on your fish. If you can see a visible thickness of paste you probably have too much.
Having used a much thinner curry paste I have to say you can make the coating milder, but it does then lose a great deal of its distinctive flavours.
So I guess you get to choose - but choose larding on the heat 😉

Give the fish and veg a drizzle of toyomansi sauce to serve if you like. I imagine a coconut-based sauce or dressing would also go well.

Thai Red Curry Marinated Steak
thai main meat
More Thai red curry paste used up.
At this rate I won't have any left for my Christmas Tom Khaa Kai and I'll have to buy another huge pot and start the cycle all over again!

Coconut cream is just thick coconut milk, which you can buy separately, or scrape off the rich thick crust which floats to the top of settled coconut milk.

Serves 2

Ingredients
  • 24 oz sirloin steak
  • 2-3 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
  • 2 tablespoons coconut cream
  • 1-2 teaspoons fish sauce

  • For a Sauce:
  • spring onions, sliced on a bias
  • cream or coconut cream
  • peanut dressing
Method
Mix the curry paste and the coconut cream and cook it gently in a small pot until it starts to bubble and the aromas are released.
Stir through the fish sauce and leave to cool.
Cut the steak widthways into two fat pieces, put them in a freezer bag, smear them with the paste and squidge everything together.
Leave to marinate for 24 hours.

Put a large frying pan over a high heat, add a drizzle of neutral oil and when it's smoking hot put in the sirloin fat-side down. Allow to crisp for a couple of minute and then fry each side so they caramelize and blacken slightly.
Remove fat-side up to a low oven until the centre of the steaks reach your preferred temperature (50°C for rare), then allow the meat to rest tented in foil for ten minutes.

Meanwhile rinse out the freezer bag with hot water and use it to deglaze the pan. Bubble off to reduce, add a couple of tablespoons of peanut dressing if you like then pour in a little cream or coconut cream and bubble until it thickens to coat the back of a spoon.

Slice the steak, scatter with sliced spring onions and serve with the sauce.
Ooh good!

Thai Salad
thai salad veg vegan
Is it a lettuce? Is it a cabbage? Yes: it's Chinese leaf!
Store the chopped lettuce separate from the juicy fruit if you're keeping them for any length of time to retain the lettuce's crispness.

There's a common Thai salad made with hard green papaya, but I couldn't find any of those. Or any ripe papayas for that matter, despite finding mangosteens and rambutans. So this is what I used.

Ingredients
  • napa cabbage/Chinese leaf lettuce
  • a few mangosteen
  • a dozen rambutan, or lychee
  • a few spring onions, sliced
  • red chilli
  • 10 cherry tomatoes
  • 1 papaya or mango
  • 2-3" cucumber
  • a few lemon grass stalks
  • generous bunch of coriander
Method
Put out a bowl for the fruit.
Split and peel the rambutan skins. Cut the white inner flesh away from the central seed, and add the flesh to the bowl.
Split and tear away the mangosteen skins and inner purple sponge. Break apart the fleshy white segments and add them to the bowl.
Slice the spring onions on a bias. Include the white and green parts - stop before the leaves become gritty. Add to the bowl.
De-seed a red chilli or two, slice thinly and add to the bowl.
Halve or quarter cherry tomatoes and add.

If you're lucky enough to find a proper green papaya, peel it, and holding in one hand make long vertical cuts in the upper surface, then slice thinly horizontally, or use a peeler to create thin strips.
If it's a ripe papaya then halve, scoop out the seeds from the middle with a spoon, peel and cube the flesh.
If you're using a mango - run a large knife down either side of the mango stone. Cut the flesh in each (almost) half into squares down to the skin. Press flat and cut along the skin to release the cubes.
Add the flesh to your bowl.

Take a length of cucumber, wipe the skin, and quarter it vertically. Cut away the watery seeds from the middle, then thinly slice the outer part with the skin on. You can use a potato peeler for this. Add the strips to the bowl.

Cut away the (probably) dirty tip of the lemon grass root. Remove thick, hard and coarse leaves to reveal the pithy interior. Slice this thinly from the root end until you reach more leafy covering. Remove more tough leaves and continue to thinly slice the pith. Keep going until you run out of soft(ish) centre. You'll probably end up with a disappointingly small amount of edible stalk 🙁 (though you can crush the woody parts to flavour a neutral oil or a salad dressing).
Add to the bowl.

Roughly chop coriander leaves and mix with the fruit.

Starting from the top, slice the napa cabbage and break the slices apart. Dress or mix the lettuce with the fruit to serve.
Good with coconut-lime or Thai peanut dressing. Or toyomansi. Though really you'll want something with fish sauce.
Maybe just mash up palm sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, soy sauce and chillies?

Coconut-Lime Dressing
salad dressing
I used coconut cream, which produced a richer dressing. Leave out the coriander and the chilli if you like.

Ingredients
  • 4 tablespoons coconut milk or cream
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
  • 3 teaspoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped spring onion
  • 1 tablespoon palm sugar
  • 2 tablespoons coriander leaves
  • 1 green chilli, minced
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Method
Blend everything together except the oil until smooth. Adjust the flavour balance to your preference.
Beat in a neutral oil (avocado/grapeseed/sunflower etc.) until you have a dressing consistency.
Not bad. I used a rather strongly flavoured oil which slightly spoiled mine, but the concept is good.

Thai Peanut Dressing
salad dressing
I loosely followed Culinary Hill in creating this fairly generic Indonesian satay or Thai peanut sauce.
Though I say so myself!
You can mix up any or all of the ingredients below in whatever proportions you prefer, though I guess the peanut butter, rice vinegar, and the soy sauce are pretty standard.
I might also have been inclined to add red curry paste for heat and complexity, and tamarind for sourness.
I used crunchy peanut butter, didn't have any ginger and blended the lime's zest and a red chilli up with everything else.
It was pretty fabulous!

Ingredients
  • ½ cup smooth or not peanut butter
  • 2 tablespoons coconut cream
  • 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons palm sugar
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice (from 1 lime)
  • zest of 1 lime
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • 1 tablespoon spring onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon fish sauce

  • Optional Extras:
  • 1 tablespoon fresh ginger minced if you have any
  • tamarind paste
  • Thai red curry paste

  • To Season:
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 red chilli, finely chopped or ¼ tsp red chili flakes
Method
You can grind your own peanut butter from roasted de-skinned peanuts if you like. Otherwise use something from a jar.
Whisk everything together, or if you've got some big lumps or just prefer a smoother result, blend it all up.
Adjust the balance, add salt, pepper or chilli flakes if you think it needs it (mine didn't).
Add a teaspoon or so of water if it's too thick.
Excellent!
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