It’s six fifteen and it’s all over bar the shouting, the arguments over monopoly (my nephew is a slippery little bugger), doctor who, indigestion and falling asleep during It’s a Wonderful Life (I don’t know what it is about that film, but I’ve tried three times to watch it and I’ve failed every time).

I’m not feeling at all inspired creatively at this moment, so I fear that all I’m going to be able to manage is to document the cooking events of the day that have taken this family on a journey from hunger to light inebriation, food ecstasy and utter fulfilment, where we stayed for a brief moment, before plummeting into overindulgence, fatigue and mild sickness (all, as ever, with no regrets).

Roast goose

This may take a while, but I want to get it down for the record (even if only to refer back to next year).

We’ll start by concentrating on the goose. Remove the giblets and any excess fat and set aside. Now prick the skin of the goose all over, rub with olive oil and season really well with salt and pepper (and five spice if you wish). Put it in a large roasting tin on top of a selection of roughly chopped carrots, onions, celery and a garlic bulb cut in half. You’re going to cook it for 30 mins per kg and then let it rest for 30 mins, so time it accordingly.

Take the giblets (not the fat) and put them into a pan with an onion chopped in half, a bay leaf, some peppercorns, a carrot and water. Heat the water and boil for 30 mins then set aside to cool – this is your stock.

For the stuffing, finely chop a large onion and two cloves of garlic, add to four large handfuls of breadcrumbs, a small handful of chopped sage, seasoning, a beaten egg, olive oil and 300g of sausage meat. Mix it all together and put a few balls of it into the goose. put the rest into a shallow wide ovenproof dish (you want the maximum surface area exposed) and rough it up a little so there are plenty of rough edges to get nice and crispy.

Preheat the oven to 220c and when it’s ready put in the goose for 30 minutes, then take it out, turn the heat down to 180c, remove the excess fat in the bottom of the pan, cover the legs in foil and then put it back into the oven for the remaining cooking time.

When your time is up, take the beautifully cooked goose out of the oven, cover it in foil and a few tablecloths and leave it to rest. After about 10 mins, drain all the juices from inside the carcas into the roasting tin and transfer it to a large warm plate, keeping the foil and tablecloths over it to keep the residual heat it. It can now sit for another 20 mins before you carve and serve it.

Now, everything else you do needs to work around this timing. What I have done for years is start with when you want to eat and work backwards with each step above along with the appropriate timing, then slot in all the other things you have to do and when you have to do them. Then you have your plan for the morning – here’s one I made earlier, complete with goose fat…(don’t worry about the upside-down bits)…

Now for everything else. We had the following – naturally I’d recommend them all:

Roast potatoes and parsnips, peas, carrots and leeks, shredded sprouts with bacon, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, sausages wrapped in bacon, red cabbage, stuffing and gravy. So here we go:

The red cabbage is best done the night before – chop a whole red cabbage, an onion and a few cloves of garlic very finely and put them in a large saucepan with a large block of butter and a couple of peeled and chopped apples. Add a few large tablespoons of berry jam, a glass of port and season well. Let it cook on a low heat for a couple of hours stirring from time to time. Now all it needs is reheating when you need it.

Now prepare all your veg – peel and chop the spuds, parsnips and carrots and leave them in cold water until you need them, also finely shred the sprouts and blanche them for just a few minutes and refresh in cold water before setting aside.
Next you can kick off the bread sauce: Chop an onion into four and put it in a saucepan with 6 cloves, 6 peppercorns , a bay leaf and a 500ml of milk. Bring it to just below simmering point for ten minutes and then set it aside for later.
Then, take a load of cocktail sausages, wrap them in streaky bacon rashers cut in half and pop them in a roasting tin.

For the cranberry sauce, take an onion and chop it finely along with a quarter of a chilli (no seeds) and a clove of garlic. Fry in plenty of butter and then add a bag of cranberries and a glass of port. season well, add two tablespoons of sugar and cook it gently on the hob until the berries pop, creating a semi smooth sauce, while maintaining a decent level of texture. Now taste for sweetness and add more sugar if necessary. Season with salt and pepper and set aside in a serving dish – it’s done.

About an hour before you’re going to eat, drain as much fat from under the goose as you can without throwing it around the kitchen and save for later use (putting the goose straight back into the oven and turning it up again to 220c). Take some of the fat, pour it into a roasting tin and place in the oven to heat. Par boil the spuds in boiling salty water for about 8 minutes, then drain off the water (into the saucepan with the parsnips), rough the spuds up in the saucepan with the lid on and then put them into the roasting tin with the hot fat, roll them around, season them well with salt and pepper and straight into the top of the oven. Put the dish with the stuffing in now too.

Now par boil the parsnips for about 5 minutes, drain them (keeping the water again) and set them aside.

By this time, the goose will be ready to take out of the oven, so take it out and replace it with the parsnips in a roasting tin with boiling hot goose fat (not too much by the way) and seasoned as with the spuds. Now’s probably a good time to put in the sausages too…

Right. So the goose is out of the oven wrapped in foil and tea towels, the spuds and parsnips are cooking nicely, the stuffing is in the oven and the cranberry sauce is sitting on the table ready – you’re nearly there…

Bread sauce – drain the infused milk into a fresh saucepan and add 4-5 handfuls of white breadcrumbs, and a very large knob of butter grate in a quarter of a nutmeg and pour in 200ml of double cream. Season and then heat it gently, adding more cream if necessary until you get the consistency you like (I know how personal the desired consistency of bread sauce can be so I’m not going try to tell you how it should be) bearing in mind that it will thicken up when it cools.

Nearly there…

Gravy – remove most of the fat from the bottom of the goose’s roasting tin, take all the vegetables that were roasting under the goose and put them into a saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of flour. deglaze the roasting tin with a large glass of red wine or port making sure you get as much of the juices from it as you can and into the saucepan. Mix in the flour well and put in the hob along with the goose stock. Bring it to the boil and reduce and season if necessary. This will give you the most beautiful gravy.

Finely chop a leek and fry in a saucepan in butter for a few minutes before adding the carrots, then a little of the water from the spuds to steam the carrots. Season with pepper (no salt as it was already in the water). After five minutes add the peas (which you defrosted by putting them straight from the freezer into a bowl of hot water).

Sprouts – finely chop 6 streaky rashers of bacon and two cloves of garlic and fry in lots of butter until the bacon starts to crisp a little. drop in the shredded sprouts and some of the buttery water from the carrots and heat for a few minutes…

Phew – I think that’s it. Serve. Enjoy. Receive praise. Eat too much. Feel sick. Fall asleep on the sofa. (oh and Happy Christmas)

(this one has the bread sauce and gravy added…)

It seems that I’m writing, yet again, about something people either crave or despise. But love them or hate them, you can’t deny that Oysters bring with them a certain magic, and despite the fact that the British food standards agency has recently found that three-quarters of British grown oysters contain the noro-virus (otherwise sensitively known as the winter vomiting bug), they are always an exciting prospect. Don’t worry by the way –  this is not a new phenomenon – they always have contained the virus and apparently most strains are non-infectious (saying that, if you do this and you get sick, don’t come running to me. In fact it was with interest that I noted the BBC food website has no recipes with raw oysters. Lily livered chickens).

I don’t know what it is about these little rocky molluscs, but they seem to give you license to go properly mad – they’re sexy, edgy and just a little bit dangerous – what other food can boast the same? They also demand that you have a drink in your hand when you eat them – champagne, martini or bloody mary – all work beautifully. I’m sure this is why people mistakenly consider oysters to be an aphrodisiac – it’s got nothing to do with the oyster itself, it’s to do with the fact that after a dozen oysters, you’re 10 units down and your beer goggles are well and truly strapped to your head.

Many years ago, when we lived in Antibes, we used to go to the supermarket a few days before Christmas and there would be a huge mountain of boxes filled with oysters with masses of people queuing up to gets theirs in, ready for Christmas eve. It’s an absolute must for the last dinner before Christmas day for many French families – and I think we should be doing the same over here (followed by a beautiful pan fried sea bass – maybe I’ll do that one later on in the week…)

Oysters for Christmas eve

This is so simple. You need a big platter with lots of crushed ice and enough oysters for 4-5 for each person. Open them and serve with the following three sauces, which your guests simply dribble over the top of their oyster before slipping them gently into their mouths…

1. Red wine vinegar, very finely chopped shallot, salt and papper and a little finely chopped parsley (and a little chilli if you like)
2. Lime juice, very finely chopped garlic and fresh red chilli, caster sugar, rice wine vinegar and finely chopped fresh coriander (oh my god this one is good)
3. Lemon juice and a few drops of tabasco, straight onto the little fella

And don’t forget the martini, bloody mary, champagne – it doesn’t work without…

I’m going to do this one today if I can find some oysters in town, so pictures will come later.

I’ve done this before, but it was a long time ago and in the spirit of keeping up this Christmas food thing, I think it’s worth including again -

Sadly though, it seems to be another one of those foods that divides people – mention chicken liver pate in passing conversation and you can bet that someone will pull the same sort of face that you would expect them to reserve for bee stings and treading in particularly squidgy dog turds. I understand that we all have different tastes, I really do, but I will never understand how people can have such a violent reaction to foods that millions of other people are perfectly happy to put in their mouths and enjoy? You’re just a bunch of chickens – give it a try and see. It won’t poison you. You won’t spend a week on the loo. And you may just find that you like it. As long as you open your mind and give it a chance.

For those that don’t need convincing, do give this a go – it’s very quick, it freezes well and it’s another great thing to have on the table at Christmas.

Chicken liver pate

Roughly chop an onion, a few cloves of garlic and a little chopped red chilli and fry in a pan with butter. After a few minutes add about 250g of chicken livers to the pan and continue to fry on a moderate heat. Next add half a glass of white wine and a good splash of brandy, plenty of seasoning and cook for about five minutes allowing the wine to reduce and the livers to cook through.

In a blender, add a handful of chopped parsley and few tablespoons of cream cheese then add the liver mixture and blend to a smooth paste.
Turn in out into a bowl and top with  a large nob of butter which will melt and form a seal over the pate.

Leave it in the fridge – if you can bear to wait then give it a day before cracking it open…

It seems I’m getting into some sort of rhythm with DATW (it must suggest too much free time, which can’t be a good sign) so I’m going to try to keep the momentum going. I’m still a country mile away from the 500 views in one day that I set out to achieve back in January, but it’s been fun failing to get there.

Anyway – the other day my friend Eve told me that I should put up a few things for Christmas, which I think is a great idea. So I’m going to start with something that I did a few years ago and I think works really well in the lead-up to Christmas, or as an antidote to cold turkey. One thing though – you do need to have a lot of hefty meat eaters in the vicinity – this isn’t something you can get through on your own in a hurry…

Winter terrine with duck and chicken

This takes a little work, but it’s so good and certainly worth it if you’re a full-on carnivore.

Start with the duck, as this takes the longest time: take four duck legs, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and then cook them in a warm oven (150c) for two hours covered in foil – this will essentially confit them, making them beautifully tender. Once done, pull the duck meat from the legs with your fingers – leaving them in little pieces, and put them aside.

While the duck is cooking, you can do the rest. Firstly, make the forcemeat (which helps bind the terrine while keeping the duck and chicken from drying out) by taking a bowl and putting in 500g good quality sausagemeat, a few chicken livers (chopped), two handfuls of white breadcrumbs, half a red chilli and two cloves of garlic, finely chopped, a good glug of olive oil, vermouth and brandy, an egg and a handful each of parsley and thyme along with 4 juniper berries ground down with a generous amount of salt and pepper.

Next fry four chicken thighs (skin removed) in butter and oil until golden brown, and almost cooked, and as with the duck, remove them from the bone, cut into strips and set aside.

Now, take a rectangular loaf tin and line the bottom and sides with slices of good streaky bacon so that they will wrap around the terrine. Into the bottom of the tin put a layer of the forcemeat, then a layer of the duck (with some of the juices from the roasting tin, but not too much of the fat), then another layer of forcemeat, then a layer of the chicken thighs (again with their juices), then a final layer of forcemeat and then finally wrap around the edges of the bacon strips. now press it all down and place foil over the top.

Cook the terrine in a bain marie (roasting tin half filled with water) in a warm oven (160c) for 2 hours. Then take it out and let it cool fully before putting it in the fridge. There are loads of juices in there which will set into a lovely jelly, but you have to let them cool fully – I made the mistake of taking the terrine out too soon and they went everywhere – precious precious juices…

That’s it – take the terrine out of the tin and serve with a really good chutney, bread, salad, cheese, etc.

(by the way, If you wish, you can substitute the chicken and duck for any game you like – rabbit, pheasant, partridge etc)

Chilli fig chutney

I did this is Spain earlier in the year with figs from my mothers garden and it goes perfectly with cheese and cold meats and especially the terrine. Start by cutting about 20 figs into quarters, or eighths (keeping the skins on). Then take two large onions, five cloves of garlic, an inch of fresh ginger and a whole red chilli (or two if you’re in a dangerous mood), chop them and fry them just for a few minutes in olive oil. Put them in a saucepan with the figs along with about 200-300g sugar, 500ml of red wine vinegar, seasoning and a sprinkling of (freshly) ground coriander and cumin seeds. Let it boil away for 5-7 minutes until the figs are just cooked, then remove the figs and continue to reduce the liquid for another 10 minutes or so, until it takes on the thickness of double cream. While you’re doing this, taste the liquid and adjust for sweetness and seasoning. Replace the figs, and then decant the whole lot into sterilised jars. You can use it pretty much straight away, but of course it gets better with age.

Whilst I think being single is healthy on so many levels, I’m starting to wonder whether there is something about living alone that makes me eat and drink far less healthily than I should. Firstly, I’m out more, which needless to say leads to eating and drinking in quantities that I’d like not to think about. But also, when I’m at home I tend to wander between the living room and the fridge, substituting my desire to constantly spew forth banalities with other ways of keeping my mouth full – the most popular of which I’ve found to be stuffing food into it (to be honest I’m not sure there are many other options but I’m open to suggestions).

And so it was that I came upon the novel idea of making biscuits that would fill said mouth while maintaining some sense of healthiness and still, hopefully, tasting rather good.

Chocolate chip ginger oat biscuits

I’ve never been very good with measuring quantities, so every time I’ve made these, they have been slightly different. I think the key is just to get a good balance between sweetness (syrup & honey), ballast (flour & oats), moisture (oil or butter) and interesting bits (chocolate chips & raisins).

Anyway – start with a mixing bowl, into which you put the following: at least two inches of fresh ginger, grated finely (more if you like it spicy), a handful of raisins, 100g of green and blacks dark chocolate broken into little pieces (before you open the pack, smash it a few times on the kitchen counter – that should do it), three handfuls of organic porridge oats and one of plain flour. Now add four tablespoons of honey, a tablespoon of syrup and a few good glugs of sunflower oil (this is me trying to be healthy by avoiding butter, which to be honest would probably taste much better, but as the whole point of this was to be healthy, bear with me and use oil (or ignore me completely and substitute for butter, then tell me how much better yours are than mine). Thinking about it, you could use a little butter and a little oil. You decide. Mix it all together well (I use a kitchen aid mixer at this point).

Now this is where you come in – what you are looking for is a moist but not too sticky biscuit dough that comes together in your hands in one big ball. It should also taste good, so this is the time to add more honey/sugar/syrup/oats/oil to get the flavour and consistency you prefer.

Once you have it, flour a suface, roll out the dough to 8mm thickness (I think the ones in the photo are a little too thick), and cut into biscuits. Bake in the overn at 180c for about 10 minutes, but keep your eye on them – they are inedible if you overcook them. They should go golden brown but still be a little soft when they are done. They’ll continue to harden once you take them out. And be careful of the burning hot melted chocolate when you put them on the cooling rack. If you like, sprinkle a little caster sugar on top of them while they’re still hot.

Once cooled, they are like a cross between a flap jack and a chocolate cookie. But without the butter. So they’re healthy. Kind of.

When Kiliaen told me he was going to take me to brunch with his two recently married (and lovely, as it turns out) friends, I was expecting what any normal person would expect in the circumstances. Classic New York brunch – leather sofas, newspapers, eggs benedict, one or two cheeky bloody marys and back home in time to relax before the onslaught of another night out with Kiliaen – which, if you know him, is a thing to be taken lightly at your peril.

And so it was that the four of us arrive at Lavo at 2.30 in the afternoon, ready for a civilised, grown up and relaxed brunch. But rather than being greeted by a neatly pressed waiter in a white apron, Kiliaen is approached and hugged by two big guys who pull aside the purple velvet rope that’s holding back a line of about 45 twenty-somethings dressed not entirely differently to a group of girls out on the town in Blackpool on a Friday November evening (but being New Yorkers, they were of course beautiful, and not falling over and vomiting in the gutter).

And then we enter. It’s a restaurant. And if the lights were up, I suppose there’s a chance that people might have been sitting there quietly enjoying their coffees and the Wall Street Journal (sorry, still have my allegiances). But the lights aren’t up. There are no papers. There is no coffee. It’s basically a club. With food. Tables. Music. Lights. Whistles. People dancing on tables. Champagne buckets being flung around with dry ice billowing down onto the the beautifully manicured hands of the frighteningly pretty waitresses.

So we go to our table, drink too many bloody marys, eat too many oysters, just about manage to chat to each other, eat more fantastic food, narrowly avoid dancing on the tables, ammo fails to avoid having something rather sharp thrown at him from a distant table, Kiliaen gets the table thrown out and we have the best time I have had in far too long. It’s only after all this that we try to play tennis. Bad idea.

There are other things to say. But not here sadly. And thanks Kiliaen.

Not sure there’s a recipe in here, except to say that the next time you have oysters, make sure you have a bloody mary in your hand (and if at all possible, make sure you’re in Lavo while you’re eating and drinking them).

My god I think I’m getting old. I just started writing “it’s that time of year again…”, which I’m sure is the sort of thing I used to think old people said, along with “it’s a bit nippy” and “why did I come in here again?”, not to mention*, and this really is the worst, mixing up the names of the kids. I remember how irksome it was when my parents did it to me (and I had two sisters, imagine the embarrassment) but now I’m doing it myself. Put me down now please.

But it is though isn’t it? It’s the time of year when you’re allowed to start eating buttery, creamy, oily, salty, rich food that is, for the rest of the year, deemed too unhealthy. And I’ve been wanting to do this one for ages – it’s the perfect meal for a weekend lunch in winter. And it goes so well with the cabbage I did the other day.

Daube

Start by flouring the beef (use stewing or braising steak) and frying it in in small batches in a hot pan with olive oil. Make sure the meat is nicely caramelised before you put it into a large casserole. Then take a couple of handfuls of shallots and fry them gently with 4-5 roughly chopped cloves of garlic, followed by (if you like) a few handfuls of chestnut mushrooms each cut in half. Put these into the casserole and then deglaze the pan with a glass of French red wine – preferably from provence, but it’s not that important. Now pour in the rest of the bottle (not taking a cheeky little glass because you’re oh so naughty, unless of course you’re a mediocre celebrity chef).

Now all you have to is add fresh herbs – I’d go for bay leaves and a few sprigs of thyme and some seasoning – only a tiny bit of salt right now – you don’t want to dry out the beef.

Put the lid on the casserole and put it in a low oven (150c) for 2.5 hours. The picture below is before it went into the oven.

Once the daube is ready, make sure you season it to taste before you serve – it will certainly need salt.

Now, there are loads of things you can serve this with. When we used to eat it in France they would serve it with a bowl of buttery penne with a few sprigs of parsley thrown on top – which was lovely. You can also go with mashed potato (with sweet potato and plenty of butter, milk, cream, grainy mustard and seasoning). Of course, the cabbage is a must if you go with the spud option…Or even red cabbage…

Whatever you do with it – they’re going to love it. And, as ever, you’ll get loads of leftovers to keep you going for the rest of the week…

OK – I realise it’s somewhat reminiscent of dog food in the picture, but please trust me, it takes really good…

*I think “not to mention” is probably one too, no?

Cabbage is often misunderstood. People see it as the Pat Sharpe of the vegetable world – outdated, with no taste and to be avoided at all costs. Now that may be true of the mullet-sporting, back-stabbing (apparently) amateur DJ (who one of my ex-closest chums likened me to the other day – note the ex), but it certainly isn’t the case when it comes to that lovely round green bundle of crunchy sweetness that I have come to love more and more over the last few years.

As with most food, it’s simply a matter of what you do with it that will mean the difference between you offering your friends a pile of vomitous mess and the most beautiful mouthful of goodness they have ever had the pleasure of consuming.

So, here are two ways I’ve used it over the last few weeks – both of which I wholeheartedly recommend you try…

Coleslaw – really decent coleslaw. nothing like the crap from Tesco

This is so easy. all you have to do is finely chop a spring cabbage (see pic above), a fresh red chilli (with the seeds removed) and few spring onions along with a few grated carrots and a handful of raisins. You can also throw in a few cashews if you like. Now you have a choice: You can either go East by adding sesame oil, soy sauce and a little rice vinegar, or you can stay in Europe and go with olive oil, red wine vinegar and plenty of salt and pepper. Either way it’s fantastic with chicken, lamb and pork, and works really well in a wrap with any of the above.

Braised spring cabbage

This is even easier, and it takes no more than a few minutes…

As above, finely chop a spring cabbage and put it into a large saucepan of salted boiling water. Leave it for no more than 2 minutes and then drain it in a sieve and put it back into the saucepan with fresh cold water. drain again and put back into the pan again with freash cold water, so that the cabbage stops cooking completely.

Now leave it until a few minutes before you want to eat, at which point you drain the cabbage and put it to one side, put a big knob of butter in the pan with a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic and let them soften for a few seconds before putting the cabbage back in and gently cooking in the butter for about 3-4 minutes until it’s warmed through, then season generously. That’s it. Nothing more to see here folks…

If you ever cook a beef stew (see my next post) then you must, must, must have this with it. Consider yourself told.

We did it. We finally did it.
Kerin, Alex, Paul, Tim, Matt, Michael, Xandie, Paul, Harry, Jon, James, William, Carlos, Clare, Laura, pugpig and many others worked together for 5 months to develop something beautiful and truly unique. And so there we were at the launch party, glass of champagne in one hand, phone In the other, talking to Apple in the US and making the last few adjustments before Alex was able to hit the button, bringing our little baby, neither kicking nor screaming, into the app world. This was a good week indeed. If you have an iPad go and check it out. Download it. Read it. Rate it 5 stars on the App Store.

And now I sit here on a beautiful Saturday morning in Enfield and realise how much I love living here. It’s a little surprise in the North of London – with Tottenham and Edmonton on one side and the M25 on the other, you’d be forgiven for expecting it to resemble an inner city warzone packed with hooded youths stalking the streets (actually, one Sunday night a few months ago that’s exactly what it resembled). But in fact it’s rather leafy. Went for a run this morning and within a few minutes I found myself in the midst of fields and views of the London skyline – Hampstead eat your heart out…

Anyway, I suppose I better do something foodie. I took a photo of this a few days ago after cooking it for the shorts and thinking I’d add it to a post I had written earlier. As it turns out, I hadn’t written about it, so here goes:

Lasagne

I know it’s an easy one and everyone knows it well, but I’m going to quickly do this, just for the record. Please, please, please do not use Delia Smith’s recipe – if I remember correctly, for some bizarre reason she puts chicken livers and bacon in hers – nutter.

So there are two things to do – the ragu and the bechamel. Start with the ragu -
Take 500g of beef mince and fry in batches until it caramelises and then stick it in a large saucepan with a tin of chopped tomatoes (and a little extra water). Now gently fry a finely chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil and again add to the saucepan. Deglaze the frying pan with a glass of red wine, and into the saucepan with it. Now season with salt and pepper and and a big handful of finely chopped fresh basil and/or oregano.

Now make the bechamel. in another saucepan melt a large knob of butter (25g) and add four tablespoons of plain flour, mixing it well, Gradually add milk constantly stirring until you have a thick smooth paste. Now, keeping it on the heat, add more milk and single cream until you have the consistency of thick double cream (as you cook it, it will get thicker). grate in a third of a nutmeg and again season with salt and pepper. The sauce should taste rich and creamy.

Now assemble the dish. Start with a very thin layer of ragu, then the bechamel, then a layer of lasagne sheets, then ragu, bechamel, lasagne, ragu, bechamel… you’re done. If you like, grate parmesan on the top.

You can now leave this as long as you like in the fridge. When you’re ready to eat, stick it in the oven preheated to 180c, leave it for 40 mins, get it out and eat it…

Chilli chocolate torte

The chilli works really well in this recipe – it gives it a depth and intensity that really appeals to me. I thoroughly recommend giving it a try – embrace the heat…

Start by greasing a loose bottomed cake tin (about 10cm in diameter) and lining the bottom with greaseproof paper. Now for the base – I’m not sure I have this completely right yet, so I’ll update this bit when have the best bottom, but so far two options: One is to finely crush amaretti biscuits and the other is to use galettes au buerre. The key is to get a rich, crispy base that will give the torte a little crunch. You need just enough for a base of about 1.5mm, no more. Next time I’m going to add a little melted butter too so that it binds together. Spread the crushed biscuits evenly on the base of the tin and put it in the fridge.

Now break up 100g of Green and Blacks milk chocolate and 100g of a good 70% cocoa dark chocolate into a bowl above very gently simmering water along with two tablespoons of dark rum, a small fresh medium hot red chilli, very finely chopped (with all the seeds removed) and three teaspoons of liquid glucose. Turn off the hob so that the bowl doesn’t get too hot – the latent heat from the steam in the pan will be enough to melt the chocolate.

Whip about 300ml of double cream into soft peaks. Take a large spoonful of the cream and mix it gently into the melted chocolate (make sure the bottom of the melting bowl isn’t too hot at this point – if it is, you can dip it into cold water) – this will loosen it a little so that you can now very carefully fold the remainder of the cream into the mixture, ensuring mix the cream and chocolate thoroughly (best done with a large metal serving spoon).

Now pour the chocolate over the top of the base, smooth the top with a knife and leave it in the fridge for a few hours. Before serving you can either dust it with cocoa powder, or grate more chocolate over the top (I prefer the latter). Oh and make sure you take it out of the tin before you do this – I find removing the torte from the edges of the tin, turning it upside down onto a plate, lifting the tin base and baking paper from the bottom of the torte, putting your serving plate on top of the upturned torte and then flipping the whole thing back the right way around is the best approach. Hope that didn’t sound too confusing.

Serve with single cream and eat with gusto…

I’m not an idiot. And I know that the vast majority of Hindus do not eat beef. I know that. And I can’t ever remember having beef curry anywhere outside South East Asia (or possibly, in the very distant past of 1970s Lytham St Annes, out of a tin), but that doesn’t mean that it’s not allowed. Or indeed that it, in fact, cannot be a tantalisingly delicious dish. Because, as it turns out, it can – here’s how -

Curry with Beef

Start by putting the following into a dry frying pan: two teaspoons of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, cinnamon bark and a couple of cardamom pods and warm them up, then pound them with salt (not too much just yet – you don’t want to dry out the beef) and pepper corns and put them into a large casserole with a tin of chopped tomatoes and swoosh the tin out with a little water – into the casserole also.

Now cover about 500g of chunkily cut stewing steak with a little flour and seasoning and fry them in batches in the same frying pan until they are brown all over. Not to ‘seal’ them, but to caramelise the sugars in the beef thus bringing out more flavour (I mean really – what does sealing mean? Come on people – It’s time to destroy the fallacy of the scientific chef – do you honestly believe Heston Blumenthal got better than a C at O’ Level chemistry?)

Next, take four fresh red chillies, a large onion and 6 cloves of garlic, chop them all finely and fry them gently in oil and butter and add the spices. Next, into a liquidiser pour a big handful of raw cashews and enough milk to allow them to blend into something like a smoothie. blend them. Into something like a smoothie. Put it all in the casserole along with a handful of chopped fresh coriander and a tablespoon of turmeric, and put the casserole with its lid on in the oven at 150c for at least 2 hours.

Now, when you want to eat, make some of this brilliant rice (you can follow the same recipe but only cook for 15 mins if you prefer, the 40 mins is only if you want a crunchy bottom).

5 minutes before the rice is ready, take the casserole out, pour in 150-200ml of double cream and another handful of chopped fresh coriander into it and put it back in the oven.

That’s it. really really good. And even better on day two…

Question – What’s the best thing about cooking for friends?

Catching up on all their news, hearing about their work and their kids? Being gently tickled by their dazzling repartee? Sharing memories and nostalgia of years gone by? Perhaps just enjoying the presence of people who you care about? Or (more likely) getting a little kick out of the fact that you cook better than they do?

No, no, no, no and no.

The fact of the matter is that the best thing about cooking for friends, by far, is the chance to cook too much food and eat it all over again the next night (or the next two nights if you’re really lucky. or single).

And here I am with what are, without a shadow of a doubt, the best leftovers you could ever, ever eat:

Dauphinoise potatoes – infinitely better the day after you cooked them
Red cabbage – barely getting going until day two, let’s be honest
Confit of duck leg – not even worth eating until at least a month after it was so lovingly poached in its own fat

That’s it – put the three together and you have heaven on a plate. Stick a glass of bordeaux next to it and you may as well just kill yourself there and then, because it’s never going to get any better. Try it. And then try telling me I’m wrong (if you’re still alive that is…)

Confit of duck, red cabbage and dauphinoise potatoes

The confit is easy – have a look here to see how it’s done.

For the red cabbage, take a whole small red cabbage, cut it finely and put it in a large pan with a small jar of redcurrant jelly (or something similar), and couple of peeled and chopped apples, a finely sliced onion, a large knob of butter and plenty of seasoning. Add 100ml of water, put the lid on and cook it on a low low heat for an hour or two, stirring every 10 mins or so.

For the spuds, get out the mandoline and finely slice a couple of handfuls of waxy potatoes and put them into a shallow over proof dish (preferably standing on edge – you’ll get more in and they will cook so much better) with half a pint of cream mixed with a quarter of a pint of milk (enough to ensure the spuds are almost completely submerged, and few cloves of finely chopped garlic, plenty of little knobs of butter and season it well. Cook it in a low oven (150-160c) for about an hour.

Now, get your friends over for dinner (preferably ones who don’t like eating too much), serve them a tiny portion of your feast, have a quick chat, get rid of them as quickly as you can and then wait…with all the patience you can muster…

And as I think about it, the problem isn’t entirely about my laziness, in fact it’s not even my fault –  it’s the shorts – they are the ones to blame. And the reason is very simple – that despite their unequalled faculty for adventure and imagination in so many aspects of their lives (monsters under the bed, imaginary friends, sticks=guns, etc), they seem to have absolutely none when it comes to food.

And so it is that week after week I’m commanded to trot out the same old dishes that I wrote about over two years ago in this very journal. And they won’t let me try anything new. I’ve tried believe me. Every week I beg them to let me feed them something new. Something simple and tasty. Something that’s not Friday Night Pasta. And it’s not like I’m presenting them with a blowfish or pig’s trotters. I’m talking really basic stuff here – Am I expecting too much?

What adds to the frustration is the fact that they are not born this way – The smallest of the shorts is the most adventurous (he’s a big fish-eater is William) but I see him descending into a bisto gravy of food apathy just like the other two, slowly but surely, week by week. Any day now he’s going to refuse to eat mushrooms and all will be lost. I dread the moment…

I know I shouldn’t fret. I’m confident that in just a few years my kids’ culinary promiscuity will take a slow but definite U-turn back towards the light – I’m just not sure I can wait that long before I put another recipe on here…

Anyway – the good news is that the one thing that I can still cook for William (not the others sadly) is smoked mackerel. And I found out the other the day that the best way to get smoked mackerel is to do it yourself. It’s really really good, and not at all difficult. All you need is a saw, a random bit of wood (preferably from a tree, not an old Ikea table), a large old pan with a lid and a vegetable steamer. And a couple of very fresh mackerel.

Smoking Mackerel

So, take your wood (I use an old branch from a tree in the garden – fruit trees are especially good) and saw off very thin slices, making sure you capture all the saw dust for the pan (I put the pan under the saw and it just drops straight in). Once you have enough wood chips and sawdust to lightly cover the bottom of the pan, you’re done. Now put the steamer in the pan and place the mackerel, gutted and with heads and tails removed if they don’t fit neatly in the pan. Put the pan on the hob under a high heat with the lid off until the wood starts smoking, then lower the heat and put the lid on. Leave it like this on the heat for about 20 minutes and then turn off the hob. After another few minutes, you can take them out and they are ready to use. And they are lovely – sweet and very lightly smoked with just a hint of colour – nothing like the radioactive jobs they sell in the supermarket. I’d recommend two ways of eating them. For both, I start by removing the fillets from the bones with your fingers. They should pull away with very little effort (if they don’t you may not have cooked them for long enough). The simplest route now is to gently fry the fillets in butter and eat them with buttered toast and a cup of Earl Grey (no milk). Alternatively, use my smoked mackerel pate recipe.

Anyway – it’s on sale now at Waitrose at an uncharacteristically reasonable price – go and grab a bottle..

P.S. Is it just me or does that look more like a cat with a huge arse than a cat on an egg?

Another postscript – don’t try the red or white – they are awful..

Vitello Tonnato (DATW style)

The classic recipe requires you to used veal poached in a herby broth as the basis for this dish, but I used seared beef carpaccio instead which I think works really well.

To make the sauce, you need to put the following in a blender and give it a good whizz – a tin of really good tuna in oil and a tin of anchovies in oil (after having drained the oil), two hard boiled egg yolks, a tablespoon of capers, the juice of a lemon and a good glug of good olive oil. Once blended, season with black pepper and salt (carefully – you don’t need much salt).

For the beef, use my carpaccio recipe – take a piece of really good beef fillet and roll it in a dry rub of herbs and spices that you’ve pounded with a pestle and mortar. My favourites are finely chopped thyme and rosemary with cumin and corainder seeds and lots of maldon sea salt and black pepper (Note – whenever I refer to salt in here, just assume it’s maldon sea salt…). Then sear the beef all over in a very hot frying pan with a little oil and leave it rest for ten minutes. If there are any lovely juices at this point, add them to the sauce.

Now take the beef and slice it thinly onto a plate, covering the surface (and again adding any juices to the sauce). Spoon over the tuna sauce and sprinkle over a little chopped parsley and capers. As always, serve with really good bread and a bottle of crisp white wine or a bottle of Bandol rose if the sun is shining…

I was just on the phone to the shorts who unexpectedly wished me happy pancake day, reminding me about a post that I have been meaning to do for some time. So now I’m madly rushing to get this published in order to to help you lot in your quest to provide something appropriate for your kids to eat on what Unilever would like us to believe is Jif lemon day.

It’s ridiculously easy and probably a little patronising to be including this here, but I’m going to include it anyway, if for no other reason than to honour Saint Shrove…

Pancakes

Take a mixing bowl and into it sieve some flour – I have no idea of the weight, but probably enough to fill a mug, followed by milk and a couple of eggs. The amount you put in is completely up to you – you can have lovely thin pancakes for which you will want a runny batter, or big fat ones which will require something a little thicker. Mix it all together well with a whisk and leave it in the fridge to settle for about half an hour (this bit is important).

To cook the pancakes, take a small frying pan (a good condition non-stick one please) and get it very hot. Add a smidge of oil and then ladle in some of the batter and cook your first. Flip it over (a silicone fish slice tends to work well), cook until golden brown. then chuck it. Or eat it yourself, but whatever you do, don’t serve it to anyone – it will not be good.

Then just start churning them out, thick, thin, small, wide (with a little oil from time to time)… and as you finish them, pop them in a warm oven on a plate, stacking them on top of each other little by little until you have a small mountain of pancakes.

Once you’ve finished the batter, serve the pancakes with whatever you like. The shorts prefer either lemon and caster sugar (like the old days) or sliced banana and chocolate spread (I put the pot of spread in the warm oven to loosen it up a bit and turn it into a sauce – seems to work well). Oh – and maple syrup for the Canadians…

Enjoy.

To be honest – I just wanted to try making a little goats cheese tart, so I went out and bought some stuff, came home and cooked it. So here it is…

Roasted red pepper and goats cheese tart (makes two)

Take a couple of long sweet red peppers, cut them lengthways in half or thirds and lay on a roasting tin, sprinkle with salt and olive oil and put into a hot oven for about half an hour. Keep an eye on them so that they don’t badly burn (a little charring is good though). When you’re done, take them out, let them cool and then peel the flesh from the skin. Chop the flesh roughly and pop in a mixing bowl, making sure you get as much of the lovely salty oil from the roasting tin in there too.

Now take a small tub of mild goats cheese (are they 100g?), add about half (or as much as you want) to the red pepper and mix well with some chopped herbs – parsley actually works pretty well with this – and season well.

Ok – rewind a second – while the peppers are cooking prepare a small batch of shortcrust pastry – you can look it up in any recipe book – just don’t make the sweet variety. Once it’s made pop it in the fridge for half an hour or so…

So now you have you red pepper and goats cheese mix and your pastry has nicely chilled…

Get the pastry from the fridge, roll it out and pop it into a tart mould (I have these cool little stainless steel jobs with loose bottoms and sharp edges – they work a treat). Leave a little lip of pastry over the top of the mould and blind bake (with baking beans or rice to stop it rising) for about 15 mins. Then, before they cool too much, trim off the excess pastry with a very sharp knife so you have a good straight edge.

Now you’re pretty much done and you can leave the tart cases and mixture as long as you like, until you are about 20 mins from serving…

…at which point you fill the pastry cases with the mixture and pop back into a hot oven for about 20 mins, take them out and serve with a rocket salad dressed with a little good olive oil and balsamic vinegar (no drizzling please). I don’t advocate the overuse of balsamic vinegar, but it really does work well with rocket and goats cheese, so it’s allowed here..

I know the pic is poor (as ever) but believe me it tastes very good…

I’m having trouble deciding what I should and shouldn’t be saying through the new age loudhailer. There are schools of thought (@micycle) that insist twitter should be used solely as a professional tool and if you’ve got something to say of a personal nature, keep it to facebook (or to yourself if you’re a normal person who can allow an emotion to pass through your brain without a primal urge to share it with as many people as you can). There are others though – columnists, for example – who spend much of their day sharing personal thoughts and experiences with massive armies of loyal followers who they don’t know from Adam. I suppose that’s their job though, so they’re allowed to do that, right?

The thing is, however much I’d like to be, I am not a columnist. And I wouldn’t dare to suggest that my life holds any interest for anyone apart from the odd stalker (I know you’re out there) and my mother (I’m sure you’re out there, but you’re not reading this anymore it seems). My friends certainly don’t give a shit – in fact even the more progressive of them take every opportunity to take the piss out of me for “being a gay and writing a big gay food blog”. Perhaps new friends are in order…

The thing is, I was given very specific advice when I first kicked off this blog to not, under any circumstances, talk about myself. People are simply not interested. But surely I’m allowed to share my opinion about things that affect us all (like children, flying on Virgin, doing nothing untoward in Las Vegas, writing blogs, being recursive) even if that opinion is articulated in a roundabout, meandering sort of way, and never really gets to a substantive conclusion.

So, I think I’m going to bumble along on under the assumption that one or two people may just have a vague interest in my musings (you can comment on here if you think I’m deluded) and get down with @caitlynmoran and @alaindebotton (now there’s a guy who’s got something to say that’s worth reading). Sorry @micycle.

Of course, I have a more fundamental problem, which makes much the above musing somewhat moot. When I said one or two people, it wasn’t simply a figure of speech. It is my sad reality that I have a grand total of bugger-all followers on twitter. Anyone who knows me or who is interested in what I’ve got to say is already on facebook getting all my tweets in the form of status updates hot off the press thanks to the wonders of modern technology, so there’s no reason for them to inflate my rather miserable followership (should that be fellowship? I don’t think so – sounds a bit religious).

So how do I persuade complete strangers to come and find me and follow me? Why do I even care? Well, at the onset of the new year, and at the deranged direction of my sister, I set out a goal to try to get over 500 views on this blog in a single day before the year is out (along with write a book, a song, conquer everest, become chief exec of NewsCorp…), and I’m not going to do that with 32 followers. Not even I’m that deluded. So if you’re reading this and you’re one of the lucky ones with the twitter equivalent of a big nob (in case it’s unclear, that means you have lots of followers. and no it’s not sexist), then go on – do me a favour and retweet…

All that said, I think I’m ignoring the elephant in the room here – what has all this got to do with fish? Feck all as it appears…

So – to business – this is a brilliant starter – I do it all the time and now my pa seems to love it too (that’s father, not assistant by the way…)

Potted salmon

Take a couple of really good salmon fillets and place them in a saucepan submerged in olive oil. Heat the pan very carefully so that the fillets slowly poach (but don’t fry) in the oil. This will take less than 10 minutes, and you may want to turn them over during the process. After about ten minutes take the pan off the heat and set aside to cool down.

Now chop, fairly roughly a small pack of good, mildly smoked salmon – nothing too smokey.

Once the poached salmon has cooled a little, carefully peel off the skin with your fingers along with the unsightly brown flesh, and falke the good stuff into a bowl, along with the smoked salmon.

Now add the following to the bowl: two tablespoons of capers a couple of spring onions and a handful of cornichons all chopped finely, the juice of a lemon, two or three large tablespoons of soured cream, a large teaspoon of dijon mustard, a little finely chopped and seeded chilli (for warmth) a handful of chopped coriander and salt and pepper to taste. Mix it all and serve at room temperature in ramekins with melba toast or crusty bread. And it freezes really well if you make too much (which I recommend you do..)

And here’s a really good variation using mackerel (although I still prefer the salmon one):

Smoked Mackerel Pate

Take a whole smoked mackerel (or fillets if you must) and gently fry in butter, without letting it colour. Once cooked, flake it into a bowl with your fingers, making sure you remove all the bones and dark brown flesh. Add another knob of butter and a teaspoon of mustard along with a little finely chopped parsley and a couple of tablesspoons of soured cream and the juice of half a lemon. Then add either finely chopped spring oninions or chives, mix together, season carefully and serve in ramekins again with crusty bread.

The two are entirely unrelated except for the fact that the day I got back from Las Vegas earlier this week, all I had the energy to cook was a carbonara – and that’s really the point – it’s a perfect quick and simple, yet amazingly tasty meal.

So what to say about Vegas? Not everything, is the first thought that springs to mind. Each of us who goes there experiences at least one incident (from a simple indiscreet glance, to a chemical-fuelled, alcohol-enhanced Romanesque orgy) that we are unable to bring home with us except in the form of a fond, guilty or terrifying memory, depending on situation and disposition.

As it turns out, I was there to work and as such, didn’t even register a blip on the hedonist’s wallchart of excess, but it was a blast nonetheless. There’s no denying that it is an ultimately shallow, plastic, materialistic and boob-crazed environment, but that’s probably why we love it.

Remember those old mechanical slot machines that would play out a little scene every time you shoved in a coin? Well that pretty much perfectly sums up Las Vegas. Pop in a coin and it dances for you. Once the money has run out, there’s nothing left.

And if you do go, just be careful who you buy breakfast for…

Carbonara

Fill a saucepan with boiling water, a dash of salt and a little oil. Pop in as much spaghetti or linguine as you feel you can handle.

Next, finely chop an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, a little red chilli if you fancy and four or five strips of streaky smoked bacon. Start by frying the bacon in a little olive oil – I like to get some colour in there – and then add the onion, garlic and chilli and fry gently – you don’t want to burn the onion…

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add the mixture from the frying pan. Every little bit of it. Now crack an egg into the pasta and stir vigorously allowing the egg to cook slightly from the residual heat of the pasta. Season to taste and serve with generous sprinklings of parmesan.

As ever, make sure you have some good bread and wine to go with it…

Anyway, I recently started regularly cooking risotto and after a few attempts, I think I just about have it down. To be honest it’s not so difficult, just more time consuming than you would expect. Here goes…

Mushroom risotto

You need a litre of good chicken stock for this dish, which I suggest you make, but if you have to you can buy ready made.

Start by chopping a few handfuls of whatever mushrooms you fancy (I used organic chestnut mushrooms) and take a small handful of dried porcini mushrooms and pop them in a glass of hot water for a little while. Fry the mushrooms in butter with plenty of salt and pepper and set aside for later.

Next, finely chop an onion and a clove of garlic, and fry gently without taking on any colour in butter and a little olive oil. Once softened, add your arborio (risotto) rice (a mug of rice should be enough for two people) and completely coat it in the oniony oil. Add a glass of wine to the pan and gently stir as the liquid reduces. Then add a ladle of the chicken stock and continue to stir.

Each time the liquid reduces, add another ladle and keep stirring. Now just keep doing this until the rice is almost cooked (but still has a bite) and the whole dish starts to look a little creamy. Add seasoning as necessary, remembering that the chicken stock already will have been seasoned.

Stir in all your mushrooms and keep on the heat for a few more minutes before grating loads of good parmesan into the pan, followed by a handful of chopped parsley.

Serve.

Receive praise.

We ate well though – two dishes for the record, neither of which I can take credit for – both of these came from Nigel Slater, who may be a little annoying on the tv but he is a great writer and his food is always brilliant (if you buy any cookery book, buy Good Food – you’ll thank me for it)

Thai Chicken Wings

Easy one this and the best chicken wings I’ve made for a while. Take the wings and put them in a freezer bag with a few finely chopped cloves of garlic, a few seeded red chillies, a few tablespoons of Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce) and of sesame oil, the juice of a lime and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Give it a good jiggle about and leave it for as long as you can (an hour is enough, but a few hours is better).

Heat the oven to about 200 c and roast the wings on a baking tray for about 35 minutes, turning once or twice throughout.

When you take them out, sprinkle them with some fresh coriander and serve with a chilli dipping sauce, made with a simple mix of rice wine vinegar, lime juice, dark soy sauce, sugar, finely chopped red chillies (again seeded) and fresh coriander…

Thai Green Curry

I think this one is probably more strenuous to write than to cook, so here goes…

You start by making the curry paste. Take a blender and put the following in it, all roughly chopped: four seeded green chillies, three cloves of garlic, two lemongrass stems, a big thumb of ginger, two small onions or shallots and a handful of fresh coriander. Then get a pestle and mortar and grind a teaspoon each of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns. pop them in the mixer along with the zest and juice of a lime and a glug of Nam Pla. Blend it. That’s it.

You will only need about four tablespoons of this for the curry so you’ll probably have some spare. In order to keep the vibrant green colour, put the remainder in an ice cube mould and freeze – you can then store in the freezer for ages…

Now, about half an hour before you want to eat, take a saucepan and pour into it a 400ml can of coconut milk, half a pint of chicken stock, 8 lime leaves, more Nam Pla, a tablespoon of green peppercorns and a handful of chopped coriander. At this point, I also added the leftover dipping sauce from the wings (which really worked – so if you haven’t done the wings, just add a nice glug of rice wine vinegar – adds a lovely sourness to the dish).

Take a few breasts of chicken cut into thin strips and fry them until golden brown in small batches in a wok, and them pop them into the saucepan. Do the same with  a couple of handfuls of chestnuts mushrooms.

Now cook it all together for about 10 minutes and you’re done…

You can serve this with rice (see the Iranian rice recipe in my archives – I know, I should have done sticky fragrant Thai rice, but I didn’t so you’ll have to make do. Or go to a proper food blog and get the recipe there…). Alternatively, do what I did and serve with rice noodles, boiled and then fried in the wok you used for the chicken and mushrooms, with a little butter and sesame oil.

Oh, and chuck another handful of chopped coriander over the lot just before serving.

Anyway, on to food. This is an old one that I just saw a picture of and it’s a good crowd pleaser – especially for the house wrecking entourage. It’s also really easy to do, so well worth a try…

Roast chicken, in a casserole dish, with some onions and garlic.

Start with a whole chicken (splash out and get a decent one – it makes a big difference especially with this recipe) and cut it into pieces (wings, breasts, legs and thighs), putting them all in the dish with the skin facing up. Next, take some small onions or shallots, peel and cut in half, and a few bulbs of garlic also cut in half. Now pour over half a bottle of half decent white wine (with a large spoonful of wholegrain mustard) and some good olive oil -  covering the onions, chicken and garlic. Season it very well with lots of salt and pepper and loads of tarragon.

Shove it in a hot (220 degrees) oven for 40 minutes and you’re done (for the avoidance of doubt this is before it went into the oven…)

In the meantime make whatever veg you like – this time I made mash (with milk and cream and wholegrain mustard), and steamed green beans tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and chopped garlic – my favourite…

Actually, you can see a mushroom in the pic (you can’t any more because I removed the picture from the post) – I must have added a few half way through the cooking – makes sense – give it a try…

As I think about it, I really need to get some decent lighting for these photos. And a decent camera. And maybe some photography lessons, because they really are quite crap…

This is, I think, the best cauliflower cheese you will ever have eaten – oh yes…

Cauliflower Cheese – for a few people

Take a cauliflower, cut the core in half and pull it into two big pieces. Next, cut out the core and pull the cauliflower into decent sized florets. Keep some of the outer leaves – there’s nothing wrong with them and they deseve to sit alongside the rest of the cauli when it goes into the oven…

Put the florets into a pan of boiling salted water and cook for about 5 minutes, then drain and put them into a casserole dish along with the outer leaves that you set aside.

Chop a red chilli (I know I use chillies all the time, but believe me it really works in here – just gives it an extra depth and a little splash of red), and sprinkle over the cauliflower.

Now make a quick roux – melt a really large knob of butter in a saucepan, add a 3-4 heaped tablespoons of flour and mix together over the heat, add two big glugs of marsala and whisk, then slowly add milk, constantly whisking (I think you’re supposed to use a wooden spoon but it’s far too much work and one of those whisks that has a flat bottom works so much better in my experience). You probably need between a quarter to half a pint. When you’re done, you will have a rich thick sauce. Now pour in a few glugs of double cream, a big tablespoon of dijon mustard and season with salt and pepper. Oh yep – forgot the cheese. Grate mature cheddar (as much as you want depending on how cheesy you want it – I think I used about 100g), and then give it all a good stir.

Now we all have different tastes with regards to how thick things should be, so I’ll let you decide what works for you – what you should know however is that the sauce will thin very very slightly in the oven as the cauliflower loses some of its water during the cooking process (and when it cools it will thicken like mad).

Pour this mixture over the cauliflower and give it a nudge so that it’s penetrated fully. Put it the oven at 180 degrees c and cook for 35-40 minutes.

It will come out golden brown and gloopy – perfect with a crusty loaf!

Enjoy…

I just bought a Nespresso machine.

As a general principle I have a problem with the whole Nespresso thing. It’s akin to expensive ready meals, requiring no skill or effort apart from inserting a shiny little aluminium capsule (M&S meal for one) into the coffee machine (microwave). It goes against my most closely held food principle – don’t get someone else to make something that you can make yourself, better. It also follows the slightly chilling model pioneered by printer manufacturers and games console companies – sell the machine cheap (relatively that is) and make a killing on the ink/games/coffee capsules.

But despite all that, I went ahead and bought one. Mainly because I’ve spent the last two years trying to get a good cup of coffee out of a range of traditional devices and I have failed miserably. I bought stove-top espresso machines and expensive pump-driven Gaggias, yet still couldn’t make a cup of coffee that tasted like anything other than dishwater with a day old fag end stubbed in it.

It took me an age (and countless cups of truly revolting muck) to realise that unless you are making hundreds of cups of espresso every day, a traditional coffee machine will always give you thin, bitter tasting coffee – the same coffee that each morning in a decent coffee shop gets thrown away as part of the machine cleaning process (it’s a bit like the first pancake – sort of. Or the first pint of beer – hopefully you get the idea).

So it was with a heavy, and yet secretly excited, heart that I trudged (maybe I jaunted) along to John Lewis to buy myself a “Nespresso Citiz and Milk” machine. I know – crap name. It’s almost enough to put you off buying the machine, but the competition isn’t much better and with pride duly swallowed, I went ahead and made the purchase.

Bloody brilliant – I think that’s all I need to say – except I love it – apart from the fact that you can only buy coffee through their (wanky) website or at Selfridges (not elitist then), it’s completely perfect. All you do is turn it on, press a button to run hot water into your cup (to warm it), slip in a capsule, drain the water from your cup and press a button again. Done. Then just run it again without the capsule to clean it. Bloody brilliant like I said.

Oh and the result is very, very good – seriously – it makes a really, really good cup of coffee.

It also does cappuccino if you’re so inclined, but to be honest, you shouldn’t be.

And if you want an old Gaggia just give me a shout…

In fact, while the traditional food was fun (pastry parcels, tagines, couscous, pastry parcels, tagines, couscous, etc), the properly good nosh was to be found in the colonial restaurants in the new town and the frantic open air food stalls in the main square of the Medina. I urge you to give it a whirl – even for a weekend – it’s a lovely place with really lovely people…(and make sure you stay in a riad in the Medina, not one of those soulless hotels in the middle of nowhere)

If you feel inclined to read about Bob Dylan and random thoughts on technology, or if you want to leave a rude comment, then give him a try… http://jonontech.com/

After having made my now famous ceviche a few nights ago (yes, I have had people come up to me in the street telling me about how they loved it), I had left over stuff that needed eating and this turned out really well.

Coriander and chilli tuna
Finely chop a handful of fresh coriander and half a red chilli and sprinkle over course ground sea salt and black pepper (with a dash of cumin if you fancy it), then rub a couple of nice thick tuna steaks with olive oil and dip them into the spicy herby mix, covering them all over. Let them sit for as long as you like and then fry in a searing hot pan for 45 seconds on each side. Leave to stand and serve with a green salad with red onion, dressed simply with lemon or lime juice and a good olive oil, well seasoned.

Turns out that last night I still had some coriander left over, so I did the same as above but with beef fillet (and added freshly ground cumin, coriander and fennel seeds) – really really good…

The problem is that my kids (and yours, I might guess) display a somewhat limited sense of adventure when it comes to food and as a result, Friday Night Pasta tends to be the only thing they ask for, regardless of whether it is indeed Friday night, Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. I just have to be strong. That said, Friday night pasta is a goodie, and one that I don’t think I’ve covered as I always thought it too simple – but it is probably a good way of easing myself back in – I’ll add a photo next time I cook it (next Friday I would imagine), but in the meantime…

Friday Night Pasta
Finely chop a decent sized onion and three cloves of garlic and fry them in lots of olive oil. Add orgeno, salt, black pepper and caraway seeds to the pan (have you noticed how many spices start with c?).
As they are frying gently, add boiling water to a pan along with salt and oil, and add whatever dried pasta you fancy – I like to use penne or rigatoni.

Add the onions to the a saucepan of tinned chopped tomatoes and let them simmer together as the pasta is cooking. Add a dash of red wine if you fancy it rich.

When the pasta is ready, drain it, add it to the sauce and if you have it, throw in a handful of chopped basil.

Serve it in bowls, grate parmesan all over and if you fancy, drop a big dollop of yoghurt or soured cream on top (and if you need to spice it up, just a few drops of tabasco).

Kids are happy, I’m happy…

I used to turn over to those shopping channels from time to time and smirk at the infomercials selling the new “wonderchopper pro” a device so innovative that it would change your life by slicing, julienning(?) and chopping the hell out of anything that you dare to pass through its plastic protected jaws, but as far as I was concerned a good knife was all you needed to prepare anything you want. Year after year however, I’ve been gradually worn down to the point where I have come to the conclusion that a decent quality mandoline is probably a good idea. And so it was that this morning I succumbed and got myself one – not on the shopping channel – god no – but from somewhere probably just as bad – so bad in fact that I dare not speak its name.

Anyway, armed with mandoline and a desire to chop, I got myself some veg and a fish and set out trying to decide what to do with them. This is what I came up with:

Pan fried herring with courgette, onion and chilli salad

You need a herring for each person. Gut and fillet the herring and slice across the skin with a sharp knife (so that when you fry it, it doesn’t curl), then season the fillets and set aside.

Now take a courgette and julienne it, then put it in a bowl with finely sliced red onion, red chilli and basil or coriander leaves. Season well and add the juice of a lime and plenty of olive oil.

Fry the herring and when it’s ready serve with the courgette salad.

It’s very light indeed so would work well as a starter or with two fish for a main course. So light in fact that I’m still hungry…

Anyway, now I’m hungry. I’ve spent the last two weeks having this breakfast every weekday morning and it is so good, although perhaps a little too simple.

Granola with blueberries and yoghurt

At the start of the week, buy a 500ml pot of natural yoghurt, a 425g pot of granola (Lovedean is my favourite) and two punnets of blueberries.

Then each morning, take a few large spoonfuls the granola, a few spoonfuls of the yoghurt and a good handful of the blueberries. Put them in a bowl. Eat them. Then feel good about yourself for the rest of the day.

Do this every morning and, if you got the measures right, on Friday you can take the yoghurt pot with hopefully a welcoming glut of uneaten yoghurt looking up at you and tip in the remaining granola and blueberries – perfect.

The idea that I end the week having eaten everything I started the week with – and in the pot I bought it in – panders nicely to my need for symmetry

(By the way – you don’t strictly need two punnets of blueberries, but I like to allow for the theft off the odd sneaky handful for when I need perking up during the day…)

Chorizo with beans and tomatoes

Take a tin of butter beans, drain it and pop into a saucepan with a large handful of cherry tomatoes cut in half. Season and add lots of good olive oil.

In the meantime, cut the chorizo into healthy slices, and put in a hot frying pan. Finely chop a clove of garlic and just before the chorizo is lovely and crispy on the outside (should only take a couple of minutes) add the garlic into the pan. After another thirty seconds, tip all the contents of the frying pan into the now bubbling bean and tomato mixture and take it off the heat and tip into a serving bowl.

Finely chop a small red onion and a handful of parsley/thyme/basil/whatever you prefer.

Serve with bread and maybe even a dollop of soured cream if you’re feeling adventurous (or Polish)

Sausage egg fried rice

Take a pack of sausages and fry them gently in a pan.

When they are almost done, take another frying pan with a good glug of olive oil and fry a finely chopped shallot. Once it has softened, add your cold rice and a few sprigs of thyme and heat for a few minutes on a moderate flame. If you’re using the Iranian rice recipe below, there is plenty of butter in it so no need for more. If you’re not, add a nob of butter.

Now break up the sausages with a wooden spatula (amazing how easy it is to misspell that word) and add them to the rice and pour in two beaten eggs. Now stir the whole lot vigorously for about 30 seconds ensuring the egg gets well distributed.

Immediately take off the heat and serve. You’ll see from the picture that I got there a little too late with the camera…

I’m going to do this in proportions – I’ll leave the quantities up to you although to be honest there is absolutely nothing wrong with cooking too much rice – in fact you should try to cook too much rice – soo many things can be done with leftover rice, so just go crazy. Saying that, I reckon that half a mug of rice should just about do for one person…

Anyway, measure out how much rice you want and put it into a saucepan. Make sure it’s plain Basmati rice – no other rice will work for this recipe. Then pour in cold water from the tap and clean the rice by agitating it with your fingers. Pour out most of the water (while keeping the rice in the pan – it’s easier than it sounds) and refill with fresh water. Keep doing this until the water stops getting cloudy (this is you removing the excess starch from the rice), then drain off the remaining water.

Now add fresh water – one and a half times as much water as you had rice (that doesn’t read particularly well – so if you had a cup of rice, add a cup and a half of water…)

Add a LARGE knob of butter, a large sprinkle of salt, give it a good stir and put it on a medium heat on the hob. Uncovered. Once it comes to the boil, watch it closely.

As soon as the water level is just above the rice, put the saucepan lid, wrapped in a clean tea towel, firmly onto the pan. You need to make a tight seal so steam can’t escape. Now turn the heat to its lowest setting. Seriously – find the smallest ring on your hob and turn it down as far as it will go.

Now leave it for 40 minutes. Yes I know, but just give it a try. And don’t be tempted to have a peek. 40 minutes, all closed up and then open the lid to the best rice you ever had. It will have a golden crunchy crust on the bottom and the rest will be light and fluffy. Break up the crunchy bottom, give it all a little mix and serve it up. Oh yes…

Minced lamb wraps

Fry the lamb and put it into a saucepan with a tin of chopped tomatoes. Now fry a finely chopped onion, half a red chilli and a good sprinkling of cumin seeds, caraway seeds, thyme, parsley and anything else you fancy. Add it to the saucepan, season well and let it cook together for 15 minutes.

Take a flour tortilla (or wrap – I think they’re pretty much the same thing) lay it on a plate and spoon some of the mince on to it with chopped lettuce, a nice dollop of sour cream and tabasco if you like it spicy.

Wrap the wrap and eat it quickly. Tastes good. And no more feelings of guilt…

Postscript:
A day later and I’ve got a load of last night’s lamb left over – so a couple of ideas: it would be really good as a stuffing for red peppers (ok so it’s a bit 70s but it’s pretty good – just give it a go – or try aubergine instead – perfect for lamb) – just chuck the mix in a red pepper and shove it in the over for half an hour at about 180 degrees. Or, with Basmati rice – even better… Next time I write, I’ll explain how to cook rice the Iranian way – by far the best rice you’ll ever eat…

Anyway, as it turns out, the sun is out, there’s warmth in the air and I have a hankering for clams with linguine. Sadly the fishmonger is closed and Waitrose aren’t playing ball – but no worries, I decide to give it a go with mussels – here’s what to do:

Mussels with Linguine

Clean up your mussels, removing the beards and leave in water. They should all be pretty much closed – discard those that are not. Now get a saucepan with a few glugs of white wine and bring to the boil, then add the mussels and put on the lid. After a few minutes have a quick look – the mussels should now be open – take them off the heat and put to the side.

In the meantime, finely chop a couple of shallots, an inch of red chilli and a handful of parsley.

Fill a saucepan with boiling salty water and drop in the linguine.
Fry the shallots and chilli in a saucepan with butter and olive oil, salt and pepper. Pick the mussels from the shells (discard any that don’t fully open) and when the shallots are soft start to incorporate the liquid from the pan you cooked the mussels in and let it reduce.

When the linguine is ready, drain the linguine and throw in the mussels, chopped parsley and the reduced wine and shallot sauce. Mix it all together and serve with crusty bread (as always it seems) – Gorge!!

I’m clearly on a roll as I manage to cook something noteworthy for the kids lunch today -

Lamb meatballs with linguine

Take half a kilo of lamb mince and mix it in a bowl with olive oil, ground cumin, finely chopped red chilli, plenty of salt and pepper and a good handful of chopped herbs – I used basil, rosemary, thyme and mint. Form the mince in balls the size of a small apricot, fry them and set aside in a saucepan, then fry an onion and two cloves of garlic, finely chopped, and add to the saucepan. Now add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a teaspoon of caraway seeds and sea salt and ground pepper to taste. Let it all simmer for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, ten minutes before the meatballs are ready, boil a pan of linguine until al dente. Finally drain the linguine and add to the meatballs, along with another handful of chopped basil (you can also add tabasco at this stage if you like it spicy).

Serve all together with a big dollop of soured cream…

Frankly the major challenge over the last six months has been talking the kids into eating something other than the same old stuff I trot out week after week.

Anyway – as luck would have it, I managed to take a photo of something I cooked recently, so I may as well commit it to e-paper -

Tuna Nicoise Salad

You need a lovely thick piece of fresh tuna to make this really good, although tinned can still work well. Bars and restaurants up and down the country attempt to wow us with this dish but it invariably ends up disappointing. Try this version – you’ll love it…

In a pestle and mortar, grind sea salt, black peppercorns and a pinch of cumin, then rub it all over the tuna. Put the tuna in a hot pan with some olive oil and sear for just  one minute on each side – no more – then set aside.

Boil a handful of new potatoes and when cooked, cut into slices the thickness of a pound coin. If you like, you can then fry them lightly in butter. At the same time, steam a handful of green beans. When they are just done, toss them in a pan with good olive oil, salt, pepper and finely chopped garlic for just 30 seconds and leave – they will soak up all the lovely salty, garlicy oil.

Boil a few eggs for a few minutes until just hard boiled (hopefully the yolks will still be a litte runny) and peel.

Cut up a cos/romaine lettuce, a handful of plum tomatoes and a small red onion.

Now the dressing – a creamy one works best and if you have the patience (it’s really not that difficult to be honest) then I would do the following:

Separate an organic egg yolk into a bowl and add a teaspoon of dijon mustard, salt, pepper and a good splash of white wine vinegar and some tarragon. Now take a whisk and start beating while adding very slowly either very light olive oil or sunflower oil (It’s essentially a mayonnaise that you’re making – perfect for this salad). Keep adding oil until it reaches your desired consistency – for me that is thick and creamy…

Now to put it all together on a large plate. Cut the tuna into large slices and lay over the salad along with five or six anchovy fillets. then pour over the dressing and season further if needed.

Eat with really good stone baked organic white bread and a bottle of provence rose. Perfect for a hot/warm/rainy summer’s day.

We go to Carcraft in Enfield (one of those huge car supermarkets) for a quick look at what’s on the market – not that I need a car right now, but mine’s on its last legs and I know that at some point in the next 12 months it’s going to finally give up the ghost and leave me somewhere half way up the M56 with nothing but a bag of murray mints and a towel to keep me amused while I wait to be rescued by the AA for the 10th time this year. From the moment we arrive til the second we leave, we are harassed by hoards of slimy, overzealous used car salesmen vying for our attention. At least five of them home in on us throughout the ten minutes we manage to stay there. I think I now know what it’s like to be a single woman in a cheap bar – constantly being approached by barely post-pubescent youths with ill-fitting suits and the charm of a dose of pig-flu trying any line they can to engage you in conversation. But I’m not playing ball – I try various tactics from smiling to scowling to pretending they are not there all. What I really want to do is tell them to bugger off and leave me a alone but my upbringing doesn’t allow for such bravado. I stick to the ignoring them tactic – it’s not really working, but at least I’m avoiding conversation. I notice a young couple sitting at a small Ikea desk who were not so lucky – they failed to hold the line and now they are stuck – like a pair of hapless wildebeest being savaged by a pack of hungry hyenas (and boy are they hungry right now). Luckily for us they have created the diversion we need and we make our escape relatively unscathed.
What I don’t really understand is how making people so uncomfortable that they want to leave as quickly as possible can be good for business. At some point I’ll have to bite the bullet and spend long enough in of of these places to go through with it and buy a car – but I make a promise to myself to delay the day as long as I possibly can – and to never risk this place again. I’ll be chancing my arm on ebay…

Anyway, once back it’s time to make a simple Chicken Liver Pate…

Roughly chop an onion, a few cloves of garlic and a little chopped red chilli and fry in a pan with butter. After a few minutes add about 250g of chicken livers to the pan and continue to fry on a moderate heat. Next add half a glass of white wine, plenty of seasoning and cook for about five minutes allowing the wine to reduce and the livers to cook through.

In a blender, add a handful of chopped parsley and few tablespoons of cream cheese then add the liver mixture and blend to a smooth paste.
Turn in out into a bowl and top with  a large nob of butter which will melt and form a seal over the pate.

Leave it in the fridge – if you can bear to wait then give it a day before cracking it open…

The weekend is over (in fact it was a week this time, which made the goodbyes harder than usual, and the missing them less manageable) and now I’m on a plane bound for New York where I’ll be driven from meeting to meeting and probably get very little time to breathe.
By contrast, there will be plenty of time to eat. I fully expect to be fed at least fifteen times a day throughout the trip (thank god it’s only two days). It is little surprise that the American people are the size they are when you experience a typical business trip pretty much anywhere in the United States: wake up – breakfast in the hotel, taxi to meeting, breakfast in the corner of the meeting room (and before you say “hang on – you don’t have to eat two breakfasts”, just be honest with yourself – if the food is put in front of you and its free then I defy you not to eat it), coffee and biscuits all morning, lunch, more coffee, more biscuits, dinner and it continues. And just when you think it’s all over and you return to your room, get undressed, brush your teeth and approach the bed – there it is, taunting you – a little minty chocolate sitting on your pillow – the inclusion of the mint somehow suggesting that it can be eaten sans-guilt and that you might even get away with not having to re-brush your teeth.
I reluctantly reach for the little square, unwrap it, close my eyes and think of Mr. Creosote as it completes my day of gluttony. I need to go for a run…

Anyway – back to the plane – it’s Virgin Atlantic and the stewardesses are desperately trying to look like the ones on the ad (the one with the hoard of post-coital beauties, confidently strutting through the departure lounge on their way to ensure another plane full of middle-aged middle managers reach the climax they have been looking for – and failing to achieve – for so many years).
The reality of course is that out of the three in my eye-shot, I see (in order of attractiveness) a tank-shaped (that’s world war two tank rather than fish tank) brunette called Lisa-Marie whose voice does not match her physique (you know when you speak to someone you have never met on a phone over a period of time and then finally meet them? Whoever did that with Lisa-Marie must have had a shock), a fifty year old ex-headmistress called Shelley who’s nail polish has more chips on it than an Apprentice contestant’s shoulder and a nice chap called Bruce (no I’m not – that should give you an idea of how good things really are on board…)
Of course I’m being unfair (and failing to talk about food it seems) – they are all very nice and professional, and I’m getting a lot of work done, so top marks dear Richard.

So here we are in Dartmouth in the heart of the English Riviera – a lovely seaside (or should it be estuary-side?) town full of anorak-clad tourists and resentful natives (which is bizarre given that the majority of the natives are only able to feed their families thanks to the anorak-clad tourists). We’re visiting Grandpa and Sally and good food is at the top of the agenda (after swimming, crabbing and generally playing havoc with my fathers customers in the gallery).

My job was pudding – and I decided to make something I haven’t made for years – Tiramisu – as taught to me by Barbara and Carol – two Italian friends who, like most Italians, know which side of their ciabatta is oiled.

For the uninitiated, there are two big Tiramisu debates – alcohol vs no alcohol; and Savoiardi vs Pavesini. According to the Barbara and Carol school it’s no alcohol and its pavesini every time (unfortunately the shelf stacker in Dartmouth’s shiny new Sainsburys didn’t have a clue what I was talking about so last night’s pud was made with sponge fingers – generally the closest a briton can get)

Anyway here goes -

Tiramisu
Separate four large very fresh organic eggs and add 6 tablespoons of caster sugar to the yolks (or more if you want it sweet) and beat with a whisk until they have roughly doubled in sized a turned from bright yellow to a rich creamy colour.

Now take two 250g tubs of mascarpone and mix in with the beaten egg yolk mixture.
Whisk half of the eggs whites to stiff peaks (I’ll come back to this in a mo)
Brew a pot of very good very strong black coffee – enough to fill a large mug.

Next, take a suitable dish (best rectangular and not too deep) then take the biscuits and submerge each one into the coffee ensuring they get a good soaking but don’t get completely soggy (I normally dip for about a second) and place each one into the dish, side by side covering the bottom. After a little while check that they have gone spongy – if they haven’t just dribble a tiny bit of coffee over them to wet them a little more.

Now – this is where I departed from B&Cs recipe (and I think it worked) – firstly, add a few drops of vanilla extract into the mascarpone egg mixture, then fold in the two stiffly beaten egg whites. The latter makes the pud just a little lighter (so you can eat more).
Then spoon the mixture over the biscuits.

Depending on the size of the dish, you can either do a single layer, or two layers of biscuits – but you must end with a good thick layer of the mascarpone mixture on top. If in doubt stick to one layer.

Now put the whole lot in the fridge until about 20 mins before serving…
…and then comes my final departure. B&C would go for a simple dusting of cocoa powder just before serving (tastes lovely but if you leave it too long before serving it can get damp and looks bad). Last night however I went for finely grated Green and Blacks milk chocolate, which not only tastes brilliant, it also stays looking great however long you leave it.
That’s it – perfect with an orange muscat. (and even better a day later straight out of the fridge for lunch)

I hope you enjoy it Sally!

So – we’ll start with the Spicy Apple Chutney and go from there…
There are one or two key ingredients in this, beyond that you can chuck all sorts of things into it. This is what I did –
Peel a few bramley apples and chop into chunks along with a handful of roughly red onion, white onion, red chilli and finely chopped ginger. Grind a good quantity of spices – cinnamon, star anise, salt, black pepper and cloves.
Put the lot in a saucepan along with half a litre of malt vinegar and a couple of table spoons of muscovado sugar for about half an hour, then add roughly chopped cucumber and tomatoes and cook for a further 15 minutes. I also added a handful of pickled jalapenos for an extra little kick, and a teaspoon of saffron for colour and depth.
Spoon the contents into sterilized jars and leave to cool. That’s it.
Perfect for dark meat and cheese…

Next, the Game Terrine – I’ve been looking forward to doing this for ages…
I used a couple of pigeon breasts, six pheasant thighs, some venison steak and 300 g of sausage meat. Cut all the meat into thin strips and colour in a hot frying pan them put in a large bowl. add the sausage meat, a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs, a glug or two of cognac, salt, pepper and olive oil. Fry a finely chopped onion and add to the mix, then add lots of chooped fresh herbs – thyme and parsley for me…
Mix the whole lot up and put it into a greased, lined loaf tin and put in the oven in a bain marie at 180c for an hour and half. Take it out, let it cool, turn it out, cut it up and eat it with the chutney…

By this time the Christmas gang had arrived and it’s time to eat.
We start with Tuna and Scallop Ceviche
I practiced this a few weeks ago knowing that I wanted to cook it for Christmas Eve – it was brilliant then and it was even better the second time – and it is seriously easy to do:
Take fresh tuna steak and cut very finely into slices. Now take fresh scallops without the roe and again slice very thinly.
Lay the tuna and the scallops onto separate plates and add the following:
Finely chopped red chillies, red onions, and coriander, lots of lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Leave it to marinade for about 15 minutes and serve with lovely bread. Simple and completely fantastic…

And then to continue in fishy fashion we continue with one of my favourites – a really good Fish Pie that my sister taught me – you must try this one…

I used a mixture of fish and seafood – a monkfish tail, fillets of plaice, haddock and trout – to be honest it doesn’t matter what you use (although the monkfish works very well as it stays nice and meaty when the pie is cooked), a handful of peeled raw king prawns and a handful of scallops (cut in to pieces if necessary) depending on size.
Take the fillets and put them in a frying pan skin side down with a knob of butter and heat gently for a few minutes. Turn them over and take the pan off the heat. While the pan is cooling, carefully peel the skin off the fillets. They should not be cooked at this stage. Take a large dish and rip the fish into pieces and place in the dish, then leave to cool.
Now take your pan and make a roux (butter, then flour, then milk) and add 1/3 of a bottle of white wine, a couple of tablespoons of Dijon mustard, tarragon, salt and pepper to taste. When it starts to thicken, add cream. It should now taste great 0 if it doesn’t adjust accordingly. Make sure the sauce is quite thick as liquid from the fish will thin it during cooking – it should be the consistency of custard (not crème anglais).
When you come back to the fish, there should be liquid in the bottom of the dish that has come out of the fish as it cooled. Drain this away before adding the cooled sauce and mixing thoroughly.
For the topping, peel and par boil potatoes, then once cooled, grate them into a bowl with a huge lump of butter, salt, pepper and finely chopped capers (a must).
Put the topping over the fish mixture and place in an oven at 180c for 35 minutes.
Leave it to calm down a few minutes before serving…
Posted in Fishy Tagged: ceviche, scallop, Tuna ]]> http://dadattheweekend.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/christmas-eve/feed/ 0 jonny kaldor http://dadattheweekend.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/friday-5th-and-saturday-6th-december-2008/ http://dadattheweekend.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/friday-5th-and-saturday-6th-december-2008/#comments Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:11:00 +0000 Jonny Kaldor http://dadattheweekend.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/friday-5th-and-saturday-6th-december-2008/ Continue reading →]]> It’s the weekend again and the shorts are back!

I pick them up at 5 and we come straight back for our now traditional meal of penne with tomato, garlic and basil sauce (with a dash of cream of course)In the morning we go to Tesco (I know, I’m sorry but we don’t have local shops any more and I can’t afford Waitrose at the moment – I will sort this out at some point I promise) and I notice that egg sizes at Tesco have gone all MacDonalds – you can now only buy eggs in Medium, Large and Very Large…Just pick up a carton of 6 medium eggs and have a look inside. Tiny. That’s what they are.

Then off to Cambridge and Immie’s skating party. It’s unnatural for english people to ice-skate. We simply have no grace and it’s all too obvious when we strap blades to our feet and try to look like we know what we’re doing. And that lack of grace is compounded by the fact that we can’t maintain ice rinks either – it feels more like skating along a rocky mountain pass than a placid lake. Why can’t we do these things properly?

Anyway – we get back and it’s time to cook the thing I have been waiting to do ever since I started this blog -

Confit of duck leg, pan fried duck breast with mustard mash and garlic fine beans

The thing to know about this meal is that you should prepare the confit at least a day before you eat it (although you don’t have to).

For four people you need a whole duck and an extra pair of legs. Take the duck and remove the legs and the breasts. Remove any fatty skin from the bird cut into small chunks and put in a saucepan. Trim the excess fat off legs and breasts (not too closely) and put the fat into the pan, then put the pan on a low heat. When the fat has fully melted you can take the pan off the heat and set aside. In the meantime, take the legs and cover them in salt (and pounded juniper berries if you have any) and leave for a few hours (or overnight if you’re patient – although to be honest – you can probably skip this step if you are in a rush)

When that’s done – take the legs and scrape off the excess salt and juniper berries and put them in an oven proof dish (that is just big enough for all four legs) and pour over the duck fat – they should be virtually covered in the fat. Cover with foil and put in a low oven (about 150c) for two hours then just turn off the heat and leave them. You can turn them over half way through cooking if you like. The trick is to make sure they cook in the fat and that they don’t cook too quickly. Once they are cool, that’s it – they can stay in the fat for a very long time (old French preserving technique).

Right – now you’re ready to cook the meal -

I think I’ve done mashed potato before so just look down this blog – the key here is to make sure there is a enough cream, mustard, salt and pepper in there.

Take the legs – scrape off the excess fat, place on a baking tray, brush with a little honey and place in the oven at 180c. They will take about 20 mins – but check them to make sure they don’t overcook. Take the duck breasts, season well and place into a frying pan at a moderate heat (about 3/4 strength) fat side down. Now the timing completely depends on the thickness of the breasts but I would go for about 5 mins on the fat side, turn over for 4 mins, and then do a last couple of mins on the fat side again. The breast needs to give when you prod it – otherwise it’s overcooked – and that is a disaster. When done, take them out of the pan and onto some foil to rest. While the duck is frying, steam the fine beans for about 5 mins until almost cooked. Then take the beans out of the pan, finely chop a large clove of garlic and put it in the pan with a good shot of olive oil for one minute, then put the beans back into the pan with lots of salt and pepper – they will be the best beans you have ever tasted – trust me.

Finally, put equal amounts of honey and balsamic vinegar into the pan and let it reduce a little to make a glaze. Now you just need to serve -

Cut the duck breasts into 1 cm slices and place on the plate, covering with the glaze. then add the leg, mash and beans. Works every time.

Lovely with Rioja.

The days starts with – need I say it – croissants and pain au chocolat – I have to find something different next week. Then simple spaghetti with ragu sauce for lunch. But supper is a little more interesting -

Trout and Smoked Salmon Fishcakes

Peel a handful of potatoes and place them in salted boiling water. Take a couple of trout fillets and very gently fry them in a pan with butter – not cooking them fully through.

When the potatoes are cooked, mash them with butter, double cream salt and pepper, then take the skin off the trout and flake it into the potato mixture. Finally, pull the smoked salmon into little pieces and add.

Finely chop a handful of dill and mix it all together, checking that the mixture is well seasoned. If it is a little too wet, add a handful or two of breadcrunbs.

Now form the mixture into individual cakes, no more than about 1 cm thick and 3-4 cms in diameter. Fry them in butter and serve with a green salad.

Brilliant with a bottle of Australian Riesling (Tim Adams is a good one)

Three hours trying to amuse 17 eight years olds in a sports hall with a football, a basketball and a bouncy castle – it is a fact that they get more frightening as every year passes. And not one of the little buggers ate my sandwiches

I’m on my own tonight and I decided to try something different –

Beef fillet with pureed cauliflower and parsnip chips (for two)

Take half a cauliflower and cut it into small florets then heat in a saucepan heated with a good knob of butter (and with the lid on). After 5 minutes add a good glug of white wine and leave it to cook in the wine for a further 5 minutes. In the meantime peel a few parsnips, cut in half lengthways and cut into thin chips, then put them in a deep pan of sunflower oil for 5 minutes (hot but not too hot). Take them out and turn up the heat to get the oil really hot (but not smoking). In the meantime add some cream and dijon mustard to the cauliflower and use a hand blender to puree the mixture. finally add tarragon and season with salt and pepper.

Now put the beef fillets into a very hot frying pan (after seasoning and rubbing with olive oil). After a few minutes turn over and put the parsnip chips back into the (now) hot oil.

As soon as the parsnips start to turn brown, bring them out of the pan and onto some kitchen roll, then season. Take the fillets out of the frying pan when ready (for perfectly rare you just need a few mins on each side) and leave to rest.

Now put the cauliflower puree on the plates with the fillets on top (probably best sliced into three or four pieces and hopefully beautifully red inside) and the chips on the side – lovely. Personally I think the more mustard you use the better….

And then back to the X factor – finally Daniel goes – fingers crossed for Rachel to go next week… How is it that either of these people managed to stay on the show for so long – they are hopeless, simple as that…

Roast chicken with mashed garlic swede, cabbage, roast spuds and parsnips

Firstly prepare the chicken by stuffing with half an onion a handful of rosemary and thyme and a stick of celery, then slash the thighs and cover the whole thing with lots of salt, pepper, tarragon and olive oil. put it in a 220c oven – it needs to stay in there for about an hour and twenty minutes then pull it out out and rest it in foil while you make the gravy with the juices from the bottom of the pan, some flour, a glug of wine and the water that you used to cook the veg.

A few things to mention about the veg (although I’m not going to take you through it step by step – this isn’t a cookery book).  To get perfect results you must par-boild the spuds (10 mins) and parsnips (5 mins) before you put them in the oven (this time I used extra virgin rapeseed oil – bright yellow and beautiful) for about 40 mins. 

The cabbage should also be cooked in boiling water for a just a few minutes before dropping into cold water and leaving until ready to reheat in a pan with butter and lots of seasoning. The swede just needs to be cut into chunks and boiled in the water you used from the spuds. When the swede is cooked, take it out of the pan, and drop in a good chunk of butter with a couple of cloves of garlic finely chopped. Then put it back into the pan and mash – perfect…

Of course – all of this is for nothing without a big bowl of bread sauce – milk heated to simmering point with an onion and a few cloves, left to cool a little then strained into another saucepan. Add a few handfuls of breadcrumbs, lots of butter, a few glugs of cream and season…

Very simple but loads of work and loads of washing up. It’s well worth it though – especially for the chicken sandwiches later that evening. And DON’T forget to keep the carcass – put it in a saucepan with an onion, a few peppercorns and a carrot, then add boiling water and simmer for about forty minutes – perfect chicken stock and none of those rubbish stock cubes in sight.

Lunch is over and the weekend is drawing to a close – just enough time for a quick outing on the bikes and more wii (although no more wii sports which was an unfortunate casualty of the weekend – left on the floor and scratched to death by a careless short…)