There are many wintry casseroles which are pepped up by these piny purple pearls – I’m thinking venison braised slowly in red wine for starters – but lately I’ve gone a bit juniper mad and seem be slinging it in just about everything. If it carries on like this I might be getting an additional pepper grinder and filling it with juniper berries [hmmm, that's actually not a bad idea...].

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s partly to blame after he devoted an entire Guardian Weekend article to it in November. I’d be quite happy with any of those dishes but getting the Shopkeeper to eat rabbit is frankly more trouble than it’s worth – he’s seen through my “it’s chicken” ruse before now and is on constant bunny alert – so I’ll save that one for another day. And whilst I was rather taken with the sound of the gratin I decided instead to use the idea of juniper infused cream in a parsnip and potato mash to go with coq au vin, and again as a topping for a red wine rich cottage pie. When I mentioned this on Twitter food writer Fiona Beckett said it sounded ‘totally delicious’ – and I don’t think she was wrong.

Then this week I decided that an onion gravy needed a juniper hit. I’d ended up buying some sausages in Fortnum and Mason’s [long story] and was in the mood for a saucy experiment worthy of my bling bangers. I always use Nigel Slater’s recipe as a base and to the caremelised onions I added crushed juniper and some slivers of sweet black garlic, and replaced the Madeira with a good glug of Hendrick’s gin. I will be doing this again.

But it’s not just a winter thing. Once the sun returns, assuming that it bothers this year, try making a simple vinaigrette and adding a few crushed juniper berries and a bruised garlic clove and allow to steep overnight. The next day make a salad of leaves and sweet little tomatoes, crumble in a mild lactic cheese like Wensleydale, or even a milder fresh goat’s cheese, anoint with the dressing and watch the juniper fall in love with the cheese.

And of course we can’t talk about juniper and not mention gin. Actually I find it difficult to have a conversation of any sort and not mention gin, especially when conversing with bar tenders. There’s more on the subject here if you’re thirsty for it.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

And coming soon will be pieces featuring some of the foodie treats Santa was kind enough to leave in my stocking, including black garlic and tonka beans. Here’s to a tasty twenty-twelve!

Looking for a Christmas distraction for the kids? If they’re old enough to wield a pair of scissors and can be trusted with the dining room table then this might keep them busy for an hour or two…

First download the template from here.

Assembly instructions:

• If you’re old enough to do so, pour yourself a glass of wine [if not, get an adult to pour one for you].
• Cut out the cheese shapes along their outer black borders.
• Score the remaining black lines and fold the cheeses into shape.
• Glue flaps and carefully assemble the components of your cheese board.
• Arrange artfully upon a suitably board-like surface – a cheese board works well [NB these can be purchased from yellowwedge cheese].
• Sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labours [and the wine, see above].
• DO NOT EAT – please remember that these are mere paper facsimiles of the real thing, for which you should visit yellowwedge cheese.

Your finished components will roughly resemble an assemblage such as the above, but arranged as you please, and slightly more colourful, unless you have made a basic error and constructed the pieces inside out – in which case it’s back to square one, but perhaps you should skip the wine next time?

The board includes replicas of Appleby’s Cheshire, Colston Bassett Stilton, Morbier and a Valencey Goat’s Pyramid. If you’re not sure which is which, you know where to come to find out.

Last Sunday was apparently ‘stir up Sunday’, the last Sunday before Advent when traditionally we’d begin preparing puddings for Christmas. However the Shopkeeper and I had been entertaining until the early hours and when I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror that morning the idea of taking some wrinkled old fruits and soaking them in booze was just a touch too ironic to contemplate.

Not to worry, there is still time to prepare your puddings. It’s really not difficult, and so much more satisfying than opening a shop bought box on Christmas day. I base mine on a recipe I first picked up in Waitrose nearly ten years ago but I’ve tinkered with and tweaked it over the years. Unlike the precise science of cake baking, puddings are very forgiving of changes so you don’t need to agonise or work with milligram precision. Last year I realised two hours into the steaming time that I’d forgotten the flour altogether, and the puddings were none the worse for it. My main changes have been to reduce the amount of sugar and flour, and to up the fruit and booze content – I really can’t imagine making a Christmas pudding with only two tablespoons of brandy! I also try to find an interesting mix of fruits to add to the basic raisins and sultanas. For instance this year we have some ‘Persian Delights’ dried fruit mixes in the shop which include pineapple, papaya and mango, so a packet of these has joined the other fruits in their brandy, orange juice and spice bath. And I have to have halved glacé cherries! They were always there in my childhood Christmas puddings, feel free to add any childhood memories of your own.

These quantities will make two 1.5 litre puddings, each big enough for eight people with some to spare [no harm in having a spare, and they make great gifts]. If you only want one, halve these quantities but the cooking time will be the same. You can also make small individual puddings which will take just two hours to steam.

• 1.2 kg dried fruits, including 350 g each of raisins and sultanas, the rest made up of a mixture of whatever takes your fancy from cranberries, apricots, cherries [dried or glacé], blueberries, candied peel, etc. The more the merrier!
• 500 ml stout
• 200 ml brandy
• 1 tbsp toffee vodka [optional]
• Finely grated zest and juice of 2 oranges
• 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp mixed spice
• 250 g suet [vegetable suet can be used if vegetarian]
• 100 g flour
• 200 g breadcrumbs
• 100 g muscovado sugar
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 1 large apple [Bramley for preference] peeled and grated
• 4 large eggs, beaten
• 1 silver coin, any currency or denomination!

Start by mixing the dried fruits with the orange juice and zest, spices, stout and brandy [and toffee vodka if using]. Leave to soak for a couple of days, stirring from time to time. Mine is doing this now [on top of the washing machine to make best use of the vibrations] and every stir fills the kitchen with the smell of Christmas.

When I’m ready to cook this tomorrow I’ll add all the other ingredients and mix well. Traditionally everyone in the house should stir the mix whilst making a wish, and I might even invite a few of the neighbours to have a go just to make sure. Grease the pudding basins [1.5 litre capacity] and fill them to a couple of centimetres below the rim, tapping and pushing down well to make sure there are no gaps or air bubbles.

The only really fiddly bit is sealing the basins for steaming, and if you really can’t be bothered then you can buy plastic versions with clip on lids. Otherwise for each basin cut two large squares of greaseproof paper and one of foil and stack them with the foil on top. Fold once near the middle, and then back again about two centimetres away to make a pleat. Cover the top of the basin with your pleated sheets and tie around with string. It will help if you can loop through another piece of string to make a handle, but this is easier with four hands so enrol a helper. You let your neighbour make a wish didn’t you? Well it’s payback time.

Place each sealed basin onto a trivet [an upturned heat-proof plate will do] in a pan and carefully pour in boiling water to around half way up the basin’s sides. Cover the pan, and once simmering steam the puddings for six hours. Check the water from time to time and top up as necessary. Six whole hours when you can’t leave them entirely alone but they will require little of your attention – time to do some online Christmas shopping perhaps, or to write your cards?

Once they’re done allow the puddings to cool, remove the foil etc., wipe the bowls clean and decide whether you plan to reheat them by steaming again or in the microwave. If the former then repeat the wrapping process described above. If you’re microwaving then simply cover well with two or three layers of clingfilm. Place the puddings somewhere cool and dark [I wrap them in plastic bags too] and forget about them until Christmas morning.

Come the big day heat your pudding by steaming for two hours, or give it six minutes on full power in an 850 watt microwave. Wrap your silver coin in foil [easier to find, less easy to swallow by accident, and cleaner] and make a slit in the base of the pudding to insert it. Ease the pudding from its bowl onto a plate, warm a ladleful of brandy, pour over and set alight. I can never resist a sprig of holly too.

You might want custard or cream, but I must have brandy butter with this. Recipe to follow when I make it a week or so before Christmas…

This was one of those times when the dish in question became the happier accidental cousin of the meal before. The pheasant was cooked as a tribute to the unforgettable River Cafe’s Rose Gray when she died in 2010. But pleasant as the original dish was, I don’t have wood fired oven in my kitchen, and I don’t have Rose’s magic in my finger tips. So having served the breasts according to the original recipe, I made this using the leg meat and carcass pickings from a large bird [a small whole bird will easily yield enough meat for two people]. I’m giving no precise measurements here other than to say that you should use 1 large egg for each 100g type 00 flour for your pasta dough. Beyond that it’s a case of let go and follow your instincts, they’re invariably right, as I’m sure Rose would agree…

Take the meat from the cooked bird and chop finely – the flavour of pheasant is potent and a little goes a long way. Use the carcass to make a stock with some onion, carrot and celery, a bouquet garni of thyme, parsley, bay and marjoram, and few crushed juniper berries. Soak a handful of raisins in a large wine glass of ruby port. Mash a squashy ball of Mozzarella with a fork and add the chopped meat and the raisins. Reduce the stock to a few tablespoons, throw in the port from the raisins and reduce again. Whilst the reduction reduces roll your pasta dough out to the thinnest setting on your machine, and make your ravioli using a
rounded teaspoon of the filling in each. Add enough cream or crème fraiche to your reduced sauce to quadruple its volume along with a teaspoon of good grain mustard and adjust the seasoning. The ravioli are cooked when the water returns to the boil and they float to the surface. Transfer them to warmed plates and drizzle sparingly with olive oil, then liberally with the sauce.

Nothing says French holiday quite like a ‘Tarte au Chevres’. Returning holiday makers however please take note – not even an award-winning local cheese shop is likely to be able to source “the wonderful little goats cheese made by the old man with a stall every other Thursday in such and such village in the Loire”, as his cheese probably never makes it as far as the next village on, let alone out of the country! This is your opportunity to recreate a happy facsimile with something more local. Last time I used Pant-Ys-Gawn, next I intend to use Dorstone.

For one large [20cm] or four individual [8cm tarts] shallow tart cases

NB – this is easiest with ready baked tart cases. If making your own blind bake first.

• 6 small tomatoes, quartered
• Half a red onion, thinly sliced and sautéed
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tablespoon crème fraiche
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon picked fresh thyme leaves OR
• 1 teaspoon dried herbes de Provence
• 1 Pant-Ys-Gawn goats cheese, or equivalent quantity of your chosen cheese

Paint the inside of the of the pastry case[s] with the mustard. Arrange the tomato quarters neatly in the bottom, strew over the sautéed onions and season well. Mix the beaten eggs, herbs and crème fraiche and pour around the tomatoes – they should just break the surface. Crumble the goats cheese over the top [or for individual tarts try slicing into four neat discs and place one in the centre of each], and season again with plenty of black pepper and any stray morsels of herb. Bake in a 220°C oven for 20 minutes. The top should be golden with brown tinged edges and corners here and there. Allow to cool and eat at room temperature. A simply dressed salad of fennel, olives and chicory eats well with it.

It all began with the cucumber pickle. Susie’s cucumber pickle, which had recently arrived at the shop and which was so good that a meal had to be created around it. It would make a great accompaniment to burgers or other barbecued meats, but I plumped that day for poached salmon. And I love potato salad with poached salmon but wanted something with a bit more poke to stand up to that pickle. Coronation potato salad was the answer.

If you’ve ever made Chicken Elizabeth, the correct name of the dish devised for the coronation of Elizabeth II by the Cordon Bleu cookery school, you’ll know that it’s not bright turmeric yellow as we usually see now, but a purpley burgundy colour thanks to the reduction of red wine and apricot jam which is added to the mayonnaise. But having changed the principal ingredient from chicken to potato I’m sure you won’t mind if I take a few liberties with the rest!

These quantities are a rough guide which you can adjust to vary the levels of spice, sweet and sharp. For around 250g of baby new potatoes I used:

• 2 tbsps mayonnaise
• 2 tbsps natural yoghurt [for a vegan version use 4 tbsps soya yoghurt]
• 1 tbsp Sharwood’s green label mango chutney
• Half a tsp of ground turmeric
• 1 to 2 tsps curry powder
• Half to 1 tsp chilli powder
• Half a tsp of ground coriander
• A few finely sliced spring onions
• Juice of half a lemon
• Some chopped coriander or flat leaved parsley to garnish

Mix everything except the chopped herbs together, taste, season and adjust. You might want to add the curry and chilli powders in half teaspoon increments as you can always add more, whilst removal is more problematic. Add the cooked and cooled potatoes and stir to combine, adding the chopped greenery at the end.

Normal autumn service [casseroles and the likes] will undoubtedly be resumed shortly.

Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto 

This all-time favourite can be pre-prepared and only takes minutes to cook.  It is a great starter whilst the steaks are cooking! Cooking time, just 3 to 4 minutes. Serves  4 to 6.

• 16 fresh asparagus spears
• 16 slices of prosciutto
• 1 cloves of minced garlic
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• Black pepper

Preheat the BBQ to medium-high heat. Trim the ends off of the asparagus. Take two asparagus spears and wrap them tightly in one slice of prosciutto around the middle. Brush lightly with the oil, minced garlic and black pepper mixture.  Place them onto the grill and cook them until the prosciutto goes crunchy.  Don’t overcook them or the asparagus will go limp!  Serve straight away. 

Grilled quail on a rocket salad 

Cooking quail on a BBQ can provide stunning results. They don’t take long to cook and only need a little extra bit of preparation to make sure the birds remain succulent. Serves 6.

• 6 fresh, oven-ready quails
• 1 litre of fresh chicken stock
• Handful of thyme and rosemary sprigs
• Olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 minced garlic cloves 

Truss the quails through their legs with a small bamboo skewer. Bring the chicken stock to the boil in a large saucepan and add the thyme.  Place 3 of the quails into the boiling stock and then reduce to a simmer.  Carefully remove the quails after 3 minutes. Bring the stock back to the boil and add the remaining quails.

Drain the quails in a colander and then pat dry with kitchen paper. Brush lightly with olive oil, salt, black pepper and garlic mix.  Insert the rosemary sprigs. Cook the quails on a hot BBQ for about 7-10 minutes.  Continue to baste and turn the quails whilst cooking until they are golden brown. Serve them on a rocket salad.

After four years of selling cheese, frankly it felt like high time I tried my hand at making some. I had been warned, by no less an authority than writer, columnist, restaurateur, TV chef, fish fight champion, and all round food hero Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall that “making mozzarella is more difficult than today’s other cheeses”. Pah! What does he know? I’ve read the recipe, and I once saw a short video of skilled Campania artisans with decades of know how making the stuff. So what that I’ve never made so much as a simple strained curd before – how hard can it be…?

The vegetarian rennet had been sitting in the cupboard for a while, glaring at me with the resentment born of neglect every time I reached for the sea salt, and the award-winning Laverstoke Park have just opened a butchers in Twickenham which means ready access to buffalo milk. The only thing missing was citric acid, which my dad always had hanging around at home for his wine making, so I guessed it couldn’t be that hard to come by. 

What I’d missed in the follow-up correspondence from Hugh’s article, until the Anthropologist pointed it out to me, was that most household name chemists now refuse to stock the stuff because it’s used by dealers to ‘cut’ cocaine. And so it proved in my local Boots who “haven’t had that here for some time”, but who recommended, in hushed tones, and with much furtive sideways glancing, that I might try the small independent chemist round the corner. 

WFTTD: “But I only want it for making cheese.”
Chemist: “Yes sir, I’m sure you do.”

Bloody hell! I felt like a criminal already, and by the time I got to the little local shop I was in a cold sweat. I’d stayed outside to finish my fag – had they been watching me from behind the counter and wondering why I was loitering? Was I plucking up the courage for my clandestine purchase? I blurted out my request [why was my voice so high-pitched?] and then came “Certainly sir, how many packets would you like?” 

Yikes! Was this a cunning test? Could I ask for two, ‘one for a friend’? Or would that be classed as intent to supply?! I left with just the one, the suspicion that my name was already being placed on some sort of register, and nagging doubts about what my dad had been up to all those nights in the kitchen with his demijohns. If you have trouble tracking any down it might be easier just to ask your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer. 

Back in my crack den – sorry, kitchen – I got out another toy I’ve been dying to play with, my electronic food thermometer probe thingy, which would have been used for long slow roasts by now if my oven could be relied on to maintain an even low temperature [It can’t]. Happily the device is just as handy for measuring the precise milk and whey temperatures needed for this task, which by now was starting to feel more like a chemistry experiment than the production of food. And I was rubbish at chemistry at school. I’m rubbish at seeing blindingly obvious omens too. 

Mozzarella is a pasta filata or stretched-curd cheese. In other words the curd junket is heated in hot water or whey until elastic and pliable, and then stretched and folded. This creates long filaments of protein which when melted give the stringy cheese effect so beloved of pizza advertisers everywhere. But to achieve this you need a smooth, coagulated curd junket which I can now tell you won’t get if you don’t pay close attention to the instructions supplied with your rennet.

Hugh’s recipe stipulated a quarter teaspoon of rennet, and looking back it seems obvious that he was talking about powdered animal rennet. My liquid vegetable version says ten drops per pint of milk, but of course I hadn’t read that and ended up with about that amount in roughly four and a half pints. So the curds I needed to heat were not smooth but crumbly, and what should have been a gentle stretching and folding process was more akin to ‘pulling roughly apart and squashing hopefully back together’. 

Some white-ish, fairly bland balls of vaguely mozzarella like material were the result. But was it a complete disaster? My guests, who included the Shopkeeper’s Sister and her Spouse, made appreciative noises about the effort which had been gone to [though I made sure to serve some shop bought stuff on the side], and no one got sick or died, which is generally regarded as a plus when cooking. And it was a first attempt, and therefore a learning experience. 

My top learning tips for next time: 

• Take recipe, or copy thereof, to shop to avoid repeated trips for more milk.
• Find source of citric acid which doesn’t suggest criminal intent, or result in arrest.
• READ INSTRUCTIONS on rennet!
• Use more salt in the whey poaching bath.
• Sprinkle with further salt once the cheese is cut. 

I’ll let you know how the next attempt turns out. In the meantime if you want to try this or one of Hugh’s other homemade cheese recipes you can find them here.

Today I’m guesting over at my friend Jack Scott’s hugely succesful blog, Perking the Pansies, the everyday tale of “two openly gay, recently ‘married’ middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country [Turkey]“. Jack writes mainly about the ups and downs of expat life which set me wondering about the foods [and drinks] I’d miss from home if ever the Shopkeeper and I were to skip off for good – you can read the piece here.

Please note – if you enjoy your excursion to Pansy land the blog is set to spawn a book which is due out before Christmas.

I recently ordered a Pina Colada in a chi-chi Kensington cafe at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon – I was in the mood for one, it happens! – only to be told, a tad too frostily I thought, that cocktails weren’t served before 6:00. We were celebrating for heaven’s sake, and the waitress seemed to be implying that I was some sort of lush. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the first time that such an accusation’s been lobbed in my general direction, but normally by people with whom my acquaintance extends to more than just the passing of a menu. A menu which, I hasten to add, mentioned nothing about this cocktail curfew. 

Now it’s not every day that I crave a Pina Colada, and it happens more often round a Caribbean pool than in the grey of a London summer, but once decided the disappointment of a thwarted craving rankles. And it was rankling still when my friend Richard started pressing me for coconut recipes, which is where the plot thickens.

Richard and some other dedicated souls are embarking on The Three Peaks Challenge to raise money and awareness for the Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust after his friend and colleague Francesco Anstey tragically and unexpectedly died of brain tumour earlier this year, aged just 23. Coconuts, somehow, have become an emblem for the team’s efforts – there’s even talk of having a coconut shy at the top of each mountain – and hence Richard’s request for coconut based help. Which I’m more than happy to give if pottering around in the kitchen gets me out of yomping up a mountain or three. 

So I’m having my Pina Colada, as an ice-cream, in a glass. And Francesco, I’m raising that glass to you. 

You can find out more about the challenge on facebook or by following @fa3pc on twitter. And if you enjoy this recipe please consider making a donation of whatever size through the just giving page here. 

Makes one litre – ish 

• 120ml double cream
• 400ml coconut milk
• 240ml milk
• 140ml coconut flavoured rum [I used Malibu]
• 100g caster sugar
• The juice and zest of half a lime
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 75ml pineapple juice
• 6 egg yolks
• 10 maraschino cocktail cherries
• 2 tinned pineapple rings

Whisk the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl. Combine the cream, milk, coconut milk, pineapple and lime juices, sugar and vanilla paste in a pan and heat to simmering point whilst stirring. Add a ladleful of the hot liquid to the eggs, whisking all the while. Add the egg mixture back into the pan and cook on a gentle heat with constant stirring for five minutes, until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, cool, and then refrigerate until completely chilled. 

Whilst the mixture chills chop the cherries into small pieces, and pineapple rings almost to a pulp. What happens next will depend on the instructions for your ice-cream maker, but you’ll need to set the mixture churning and then five minutes before the end of the churning / chilling time add the cherries, pineapple and grated lime zest. Transfer to a sealable container and freeze overnight.

Any remaining pineapple and cherries can be used to garnish the ice-cream, cocktail style. Paper parasols optional.

 Eat within one month, if you can wait that long.

#pinacoladaicecream

By slavishly following post heart attack dietary advice for over twenty years my late father ate so much smoked mackerel that he came to loath it with a passion. But then my parents always treated even the most casual advice from someone with a white coat and stethoscope as something not to be simply heeded, but rather carved in tablets of stone and set upon an altar. Ironic then that when the family recently gathered at the home the of my eldest brother, for the sole purpose of relocating our dear departed parents’ mortal remains to a dedicated area of woodland in the Lancashire hills, that I should be treated to a lunch of smoked mackerel pate.

The fraternal recipe, borrowed from a farmer neighbour, consisted of just smoked mackerel and cream cheese [with I suspect a fish to cheese ratio of c.2:1] simply blended together. And quite delicious it was too. If you want a more straightforward approach than what follows then I can highly recommend it.

For this version though I wanted to exploit the indulgent richness of the triple cream Delice de Bourgogne, and I couldn’t resist a bit more phaffing about too [as my dad would have called it!]. So the choice is yours, farmhouse or fancy. Either way it’s a piscine treat, just don’t eat it every day for decades if you don’t want to get bored…

Six to eight people will have more than enough

• 280g smoked mackerel fillets, boned, skinned and roughly flaked
• 140g Delice de Bourgogne [or similar such as Jean Grogne or Vignotte]
• 2 tbsps creamed horseradish [as heaped as you like]
• 3 tbsps soured cream
• Juice of half a lemon
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• A good grind of black pepper

To finish [optional]

• Melted butter
• Flat leaf parsley, some chopped and a few whole leaves
• A few capers or a few preserved green or pink peppercorns
• A pinch more cayenne

Remove the delicate bloomy rind from the cheese carefully with a sharp knife so as to minimise any cheese loss. I’d never bother to do this if just eating the cheese but the flavour of the outer layer isn’t what you want here. Then just tip all the pate ingredients into a food processor and give it three or four good blitz pulses. The texture is up to you – for a coarser pate blitz less, for smoother blitz more. Check the seasoning and spoon into one big dish or a number of small ramekins. Chill.

You don’t need to top this but it does look pretty and takes no time at all. Mix the chopped parsley into the melted butter and gently pour or spoon a thin layer over the pate. Add the capers or peppercorns, and press a few whole leaves of parsley artfully into the butter. Once the butter has begun to set [after just a minute or two in the fridge] sprinkle over a little more cayenne pepper. If you do this when the butter is too liquid the little red jewels will all disperse instead of sitting prettily on the top.

Serve with bread or toast, and few more capers or some cornichons or gherkins on the side.

#smokedmackerelpate   #WFTTD

Once upon a time, probably around 18 years ago, I remember picking up a recipe card in a supermarket after seeing the recipe advertised on TV. This was a cutting edge piece of marketing in the early nineties, before we all had inter-lives and tweet-nests and books full of faces through which companies could court our affections. Not sure if this marks me out as an early adopter or a sheep, but it worked.

What now looks like an essentially simple dish felt like quite a complex ‘occasion’ piece at the time, but that’s probably due to my relative culinary inexperience, the use of the then uncommon ‘Mascarpone’ [daring!], and the flim-flamerous decoration required by the original recipe. The smiley people in the TV advert easily made chocolate leaves and sugared their grapes for the topping, but it was always a bit more of a palaver in my kitchen.

Nonetheless I persevered with, and indeed added to, the chocolate leaf display business for quite some time. And there was always some chocolate left over, which I decided to add to the cheese and lime mixture, and so this version was born. I’ve since decided it’s easier to simply drizzle some molten chocolate over the top than to put myself through the whole leaf making anxiety, but by all means go there if the fancy takes you.

For a lighter, fresher version don’t add chocolate to the cheese mix, just grate a little solid chocolate over the top of the finished dish. But do add chocolate – the beauty here lies in the marriage of the freshness of lime with the richness of deeply dark chocolate.

This recently fed six of us, but could easily have stretched to eight, or even more…

• 100g lemon shortbread biscuits
• 100g dark chocolate digestive biscuits
• 80g butter, melted
• 500g Mascarpone
• 2 limes, zest and juice
• 50g icing sugar
• 75g good dark chocolate [at least 70% cocoa solids]

Whizz the biscuits to a fine crumb in a food processor and combine with melted butter. Mix well, and press evenly into the bottom of a 20cm loose bottomed cake tin. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge until set.

Melt the chocolate in a bain marie then allow it to cool a little whilst ensuring it remains mobile. If the chocolate is too hot when added to the cheese mixture the whole thing may become a little granular.

Zest the limes, and add their juice and the sugar. Stir well to dissolve the sugar, and then fold in the Mascarpone. Pour in two-thirds of the melted chocolate and gently, but thoroughly, combine. Spread this mixture evenly over the chilled biscuit base and smooth the top surface with a spatula or, if necessary, the back of a warmed spoon [dip into hot water and dry before using].

Place the tin on a large sheet of newspaper and drizzle over the remaining chocolate in a pattern of your choosing. Cover and chill well until twenty minutes before needed, then gently release from the tin and transfer to a suitably pretty plate.

And if your guests don’t ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the table – invite different people to your next party.

I know, it’s starting to look like a branch of Waterstones in here, but honestly – you wait ages for a book full of decent, honest, but interesting grub and then two come along at once. And I think you’ll really like this. James Ramsden [like Lucas Hollweg] has a relaxed attitude to food and wants you to “…unwind, play some music, have a drink, and get stuck into some cooking.” You’ll get no arguments from me there! I like too the idea of including hash-tags for each recipe in the book so that you can comment and follow an evolving conversation on Twitter. Might well be stealing that idea soon.

Amongst other things James also has a great blog, and whilst we have both written for lovefood.com before now, he has recently become the site’s resident restaurant reviewer, and is bringing a very refreshing take to the business of deciding where to eat. One to watch, and no mistake.

Well blow me down, but a whole year has gone by since my first post on Independence Day 2010 [so Happy Birthday to America too while we're about it]. I really had no idea what to expect when I started all this, but to the thousands of visitors I’ve now welcomed along the way I’d like to say a huge thank you for your support during my first year in the blogosphere.

Looking back I find that I’m clearly more interested in purple foods than I ever realised [I'm going to have to add that as a tag now!] and a quick glance at the tag cloud over to the right tells me that garlic, cream, eggs and butter are frequently featured. A quick glance at my waistline could probably have told me the same.

Looking forward, I see also that the tag ‘recipe’ has been the most used to date and so far these have mainly been my own. In future I think I’ll also tell you more about my experiences with other people’s, and maybe even include the odd review or opinion piece. Travel, too, will hopefully also feature more.

But for now, summer fruits are everywhere – so let’s have pudding!

To fill a 1.1 litre pudding basin

• 6 or 7 slices day old white bread
• About 1kg mixed summer fruit [I used strawberries, raspberries, black currants and blueberries, but vary according to what you fancy or is available]
• 3 tbsps sweet fruit liqueur* [plus more to finish]
• 3 tsps caster sugar [or vanilla sugar]

*I had some crème de framboises lurking in the drinks cabinet but I can highly recommend one of the offerings from Bramley and Gage if you’re shopping.

Put the fruit, liqueur and sugar into a pan and cook gently for about 5 minutes so that the fruit juices start to run but the fruits still retain some body and shape. Using a sweet fruit liqueur like this significantly cuts down on the amount of sugar you’d otherwise add.

Drain the fruit in a sieve into a bowl to catch all the juices. Cut a circle from the middle of one slice of bread. Remove the crusts from the other slices and cut through the middle at an angle, thus:

Dip the circle of bread into the reserved juices and place in the bottom of the bowl. Do the same with the cut pieces and arrange in overlapping layers around the sides. Fill with fruit, and top with more juice-dipped pieces of bread, tucking the ends of the side pieces over this base. Sprinkle over a little more fruit liqueur if it’s for a grown-up party! Wrap with clingfilm, set the bowl into a shallow dish to catch any drips, place a saucer or small plate on top, and top this with a heavy weight [or a couple of tins of beans].

Refrigerate for 24 hours, and when ready to serve unwrap, place a plate over the bowl and invert. A couple of sharp taps or a good shake should see the pudding break free from the bowl, usually with a satisfying ‘schlurping’ sound.

If you have juices remaining reduce them in a pan to a syrupy sauce and pour this over the pud. And if you’re in the mood add another sprinkle of the fruit liqueur too. All you need now is some clotted cream. And a spoon.

So, there I am mooching around the farmers market in the sunshine, the asparagus and strawberries are in the bag, and I’ve already got my eye on some lovely looking crabs at the fishmongers stall, and I’m thinking that dinner’s a done deal. Spaghetti with crab and chilli (about which I’ll post another day). When all of a sudden I come across a fascinating little stall selling dishes from India to the Philippines and stopping at a few fun sounding places along the way. I’d have happily scoffed several there and then if I hadn’t already stuffed my face with a lamb bourek from the nice couple on the Algerian stall. One of their offerings was a kedgeree fish cake, and now I’m craving warm curry spices with the crab. I need to pimp my pasta, kedgeree style, and luckily there a couple of hot smoked salmon fillets in the fridge to provide the required smoky notes. Raj era bureaucrat’s breakfast it may not be, but we’re having it for tea…

For two

• I medium brown crab [brown and white meat, and claws too if you have them]
• 1 onion, chopped
• 150g hot smoked salmon, flaked
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• ½ tsp turmeric
• ¼ tsp chilli powder
• ¾ tsp garam masala
• 180 ml double cream
• 220g spaghetti
• 20g parmesan
• A splash of vermouth
• Some chopped fresh coriander
• A mild green chilli, deseeded and chopped

Cook the spaghetti as directed until al dente. Sauté the onion in the oil until softened then add the spices and cook for a couple more minutes. Add the vermouth and quickly bubble away to almost nothing. Add the cream and once bubbling toss in the crab, the salmon and the parmesan [fish and cheese? yes, but it’s really more of a seasoning here], taste and season with salt and pepper. Throw the spaghetti into the sauce with a ladle of its cooking water, strew the coriander and chopped chilli over the top, stir, and you’re done.

I had some halved boiled quails eggs with mine for the full kedgeree effect, but left them out for the Shopkeeper whose egg aversion seems to be growing ever deeper roots.

It will come as either a great disappointment or a huge relief to discover that this recipe does not in fact contain any wallpaper. Duck yes, Sanderson print or Anaglypta no. The name comes from the fact that I have based this on one which appeared in the launch issue of Wallpaper* Magazine way back in 1996.

When Tyler Brûlé’s original style bible first hit the newsstands I was one of the salivating fashionistas desperately drooling over the dreamily hip lifestyle portrayed within its pages. The editor’s eye for a handsome male model [first time I’d seen two pretty boys cavorting in an expensive hotel pool for a mainstream magazine travel piece!] certainly didn’t hurt.

Fifteen years on it’s interesting to see what has and hasn’t changed in the world of über-cool lifestyle publishing. In the resources section of the launch issue not a single supplier lists a ‘website’, and the London phone numbers begin with either 0171 or 0181 [not many of the latter though!]. But you could take just about any of the pieces devoted to beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes and surrounded by beautiful stuff and drop them into a magazine tomorrow and I swear no-one would bat a perfectly mascara-ed eyelid.

One thing that has certainly endured through the years for me though is my somewhat re-calibrated version of this dish. Perhaps it’s just a sign of the ever increasing speed with which the fashion wheel spins that when I make this roughly two or three times a year it now probably counts as a ‘revival’! The original came from a piece about how we trendy young things were reclaiming and re-inventing Sunday lunch, and even came with a playlist. Whatever day you choose to serve it, just don’t forget to be ravishingly beautiful when you do…

For two, though there may be some leftover sauce to play with

• 2 duck legs
• 1 tbsp groundnut oil
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 3cm ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• 150ml light chicken stock
• 200ml red wine
• 50ml Japanese soy sauce
• Chinese five spice powder
• 2 soupspoons runny honey
• 2 whole star anise

Preheat your oven to 180˚C. In a heavy lidded casserole on a highish heat brown the duck legs all over and season them with salt and pepper as you go, then remove them from the pot and the pot from the heat, and pour off all but a scant tablespoonful of the fat which will have been rendered from the duck [excess duck fat can be saved and used later for roast potatoes]. Pop this back onto a gentle heat and sauté the garlic and ginger until softened but not coloured. Add all the liquids and simmer for five minutes.

Smear the browned duck legs with the five spice powder and return them to the pan. The liquid should come to no higher than halfway up the legs, and if scaling up this recipe keep the proportions the same but only add enough liquor to reach the same height in your pan. Drizzle a soupspoon of honey over each leg and top it with a star anise. Cover and give this an hour and fifteen minutes in the oven.

Whack the oven up to 230˚C, remove the duck from the sauce and place them back in the oven [on a tray] to crisp up the skin a little. Meanwhile strain the sauce into a pan and reduce gently. You can thicken this with cornflour, or glaze and emulsify with a little chilled butter if you like.

I like to serve this with moulded rings of twice-baked potato [coming soon!] and simply steamed pack-choi, the irony bitterness of the greens being a great foil for the very rich sauce. But this week it was asparagus as I’m eating it just about every day before the season ends.

There are uses for any leftover sauce and options with the potato which we will return to at a later stage…

My favourite mushroom soup began life as a stuffed cabbage which, as opening gambits go, is going to require more explanation than most.

I’d intended to make Valentine Warner’s spectacular savoy cabbage stuffed with mushrooms, leeks, walnuts and stilton. It’s a vegetarian friendly dish so splendid that you might want to invite your non carnivorous friends over just for an excuse to make the blighter, assuming of course that you eat meat in the first place. As one of my guests on the night in question eschews red meat I was glad of the opportunity. Seriously, even if you don’t try these soups you must try Val’s cabbage.

But it was one of those days. Time had completely run away with me in the kitchen and, even though I’d prepared the mushroom and leek component of the stuffing [PS - you'll need to do the same], when it came to preparing the cabbage the leaves all split on me. And you can’t make stuffed cabbage with a pile of shredded, tatty leaves.

What was a boy to do? The close [though geographically distant] relatives were starving to death in the other room after a long drive, and were being ‘entertained’ by the Shopkeeper. Food was needed, and fast.

As luck would have it there was double cream in the fridge and some decent vegetable bouillon powder in the cupboard. A good splash of dry sherry went into the mushroom pan and once almost evaporated was joined by half a litre of vegetable stock, 300ml of cream, and a bunch of thyme tied with string. After a few minutes of simmering, a very good dose of seasoning [as I think I’ve said before, cream dishes need plenty of seasoning], and a blitz with a stick blender – hey presto, soup!

NB – if you also need to do this quickly then don’t repeat my mistake and remember to remove the bunch of thyme tied with string before blending. Stick blenders, it turns out, don’t get on well with string [who knew?], and the time spent disentangling it and then passing the soup through a sieve causes further and entirely avoidable delay!

Whilst the above is not really time consuming [especially if you’re not in a flap at the time] what follows is even quicker and easier. I made it one day when working in the shop and with half an hour off to come up with some lunchtime sustenance for three hungry cheesemongers. This will make three decent sized mug-fulls.

• 125g chestnut mushrooms, diced to your preferred size [mine is chunky, and they will shrink with cooking]
• Garlic, crushed
• Rosemary, finely chopped
• Olive oil
• 500ml rich chicken stock
• 3 tbsps double cream
• Chilli sherry to finish [optional, but highly recommended]

Fry the mushrooms in the oil over a relatively high heat and season with salt and black pepper. Once well coloured add the garlic and rosemary and cook for a couple of minutes more. Add the chicken stock and cream, bring back to the simmer and cook for five minutes. There is less cream here but you will still need to check and adjust the seasoning. Ladle into mugs and top with a splash of chilli sherry*, another marvel from Mr Warner.

*Sorry but I can’t find a recipe for Valentine’s chilli sherry online, and I wouldn’t reproduce it without permission, so if you don’t already have it you’ll need to buy his book.

My “full English breakfast on a stick” was invented over a dozen years ago when I was asked to help cater the 30th birthday party of an old friend. His then partner (now wife) didn’t share his fondness for baked beans and I was tasked with devising a comestible Trojan horse to sneak them into the feast. Deciding that a canapé can cover a multitude of sins I set about hatching my egg and beans plot, and now it’s become my drinks party must have. Besides, if a full English breakfast is such a good hangover cure, surely there must be some preventative benefit to be gained by eating one with your cocktails?

This canapé essentially consists of a ‘fried bread’ crouton with a layer of baked beans, a slice of sausage, a dollop of ketchup and a boiled quails egg. Allow 2 or 3 per guest – once over the initial shock they’ll be back for more.

You will need

• Sliced white bread [this can be as cheap as you like, but everything else should be the best you can buy]
• Good pork sausages
• Olive oil
• Baked beans [would you use anything other than Heinz?]
• Tomato ketchup [see above]
• Quail’s eggs

First grill the sausages and allow to cool. Each will probably yield about 7 or 8 slices around the thickness of a £1 coin. Simmer the baked beans for a few minutes, all the better if a few break up, and allow these to cool too. This thickens the sauce and makes it much easier to perch a few beans on each crouton.

Cut small circles from slices of the bread with a pastry cutter or liqueur glass and slather them with olive oil. You will get between 6 and 9 croutons from each slice depending on the size of the loaf. Spread out evenly on a baking sheet and cook in a 180˚C oven for about 10 minutes until golden and crunchy, but do keep an eye on them – one minute they’re golden brown and the next they’re charcoal! Drain on kitchen paper and allow to cool.

For years I cooked my own quails eggs and laboriously shelled them, which is easier if you roll the egg between your palm and a hard surface to crack the shell, and then peel under a running tap. Now I buy them ready cooked and peeled and suggest you do the same. It saves hours.

Pour some tomato ketchup into a small bowl, arm yourself with a couple of teaspoons and some cocktail sticks, and you’re ready to assemble. First top each crouton with a few beans using a teaspoon. Then balance a sausage slice on each. Next use the other teaspoon to dab on a blob of ketchup. Skewer an egg with a cocktail stick and push the bottom of the stick through the middle of the canapé, squishing the egg into its ketchupy cushion.

And voila, full English breakfast on a stick! Even if it looks slightly daunting at first the whole thing should be taken in one mouthful to be best appreciated. Recently a four year old guest of mine managed it [several times!] so I’m sure you can.

As with most canapés the best way to present these is in repeating rows – they look particularly good on a black slate.

The Shopkeeper has always been egg-averse, which somewhat lessens his enjoyment of this otherwise remarkable morsel. If you find yourself with similarly afflicted guests then a quarter of a mushroom sautéed with garlic and rosemary can stand in for the egg.

Perhaps it’s the unseasonably warm and sunny weather we’ve been enjoying of late, or maybe it’s got something to do with my having done two whole weeks of full-time work [I know, poor me!], but I’m yearning to get on a plane and head for distant shores. And with my own planned odyssey to explore the food of Indochina currently on indefinite hold it doesn’t help that you can’t turn on the TV at the moment without seeing a certain bum-chinned, potty-mouthed chef trampling all over South East Asia and its peoples and cuisines. Ah well, if departure lounges must remain a distant dream for now there’s nothing to stop me rustling up a mini-break from the comfort of my own kitchen.

Last July I wrote about the versatility of a simple chicken pot roast and this is yet another variation on the theme, this time conceived with thoughts of a cold Tiger beer on a Thai beach at the forefront of my mind.

Follow the same basic method as before [you can substitute water for the wine if you think it feels more ‘authentic’, but I didn’t] but this time add the following:

• A couple of bruised lemon grass stalks and the stems of a handful of basil [reserve the leaves for later] these to be inserted into the cavity, the rest strewn about the chicken in the liquor…
• Two small shallots, finely chopped
• A thumb of ginger, peeled and grated
• Two or three red chillies, chopped
• Strips of the peel of half a lime
• Three or four crushed cloves of garlic
• Half a teaspoon of ground turmeric

Season well and cook as before. Once the chicken is done allow it to rest and strain the juices into another pan. Reduce by a third. Add a tin of coconut milk, simmer for a few minutes more, and check the seasoning. Add some previously steamed and refreshed green veg to the sauce and warm through. I used new season asparagus and some pak choi, but green beans, peas, spinach, pea aubergines, etc. would all be fine.

Finish the sauce with a squeeze of lime, a splash of fish sauce, the reserved basil leaves, and a few further strips of freshly sliced chilli if you fancy. Serve chunks of the chicken in bowls on a bed of warm noodles and with plenty of the sauce.

Now then, where did I put my postcards…?

Apologies for the James Martin style egg puns but this is an ideal recipe if you find yourself with too much Easter chocolate on your hands, especially if that includes 350g of dark chocolate and a packet of Cadbury’s mini eggs. I can take no credit for the recipe which belongs to Dan Lepard of the Guardian – only the  decorative tweaks and techniques are my own.

Dan’s recipe produces a very easy to work crust [although I used an extra egg yolk and a splash more water] which can be rolled to less than the thickness of a £1 coin. The key thing is the freeze chilling. I also doubled the quantity of bourbon in the filling [hic!].

To make a well in the centre which can be filled with mini eggs or whatever you fancy [raspberries would be good when in season] pour half the filling into the baked pastry base and chill to set. Meanwhile keep the rest of the filling liquid over a barely simmering bain marie [see the temperature guides in the original recipe]. When the first half has set [after about 10 to 15 minutes] place a glass or jar in the middle and pour the rest of the filling around. The first time I did this I used a metal moulding ring which was a mistake – a glass or jar gives you more purchase when you come to gently twist and remove it which you should do once everything is completely set and after the tart has been out of the fridge for a few minutes.

If using fruit pile it high and allow it to spill over the edges of the centre well. This is less easy however with chocolate eggs. And if you haven’t spent enough time recently in your local cardiac unit you could serve this with cream, but it is easily rich enough without.

Whilst to some of my younger readers this will clearly mark me out as some sort of antediluvian anachronism, I can actually remember a Britain before McDonalds. The golden arches didn’t make it to our sceptred isle until 1974, fully 6 years after I first landed, and it would be many years more before Ronald showed his face in the provincial backwater that was my childhood home.

Colonel Sanders on the other hand was quicker off the mark and KFC opened its first UK outlet in Preston in 1965. I don’t think the one I remember, a roadhouse style takeaway on Preston New Road, was the ground-breaker but it seemed always to have been there. We didn’t use it often – it was enough of a drive for the food to get cold before we got home, and being ‘foreign’ was clearly not intended for everyday consumption – but it was my first real introduction to the then exotic world of the fast food takeaway.

Perhaps because of this childhood association fried chicken still holds a special place in my arteries, and is one of the few fast food staples that I might still crave before 2:00 a.m. and whilst stone cold sober. The colonel’s spice mix is of course as secret as the recipe for Coca Cola [apparently not even the factories who make it know the exact proportions, which I would have thought could prove to be a tad awkward, manufacturing-wise?] but it’s not actually that difficult to cook up a reasonable facsimile at home. Many of the myriad American recipes available online use frankly frightening amounts of MSG but even if this did figure in the Colonel’s own mysterious mix you don’t need it. Plenty of good old fashioned salt and pepper does the trick.

Of course you can’t have fried chicken without some sort of slaw. When making this I had crunchy celery and apple to hand [as in a Waldorf Salad] and hey presto, Wal-Slaw was born! The sweet-corn is another classic fried chicken accompaniment so into the salad it went. A buttered baked potato finished off the finger lickin’ feast.

Wal-Slaw

• Half a small red cabbage, finely shredded
• Half an apple, diced
• A shallot, finely diced
• One carrot, grated
• A small tin of sweet-corn kernels (not Colonels!)
• Two sticks of celery, finely sliced
• The juice of half a lemon
• A splash of malt vinegar
• Sufficient mayonnaise to bind

First dice the apple and toss in the lemon juice and vinegar. Then just throw everything else in and stir in the mayonnaise to your liking. Season and chill.

Philip’s Fried Chicken [PFC]

• 6 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on
• 4 tbsps plain flour
• 1 soupspoon cornflour [optional]
• 2 medium eggs, beaten
• 2 tsps salt
• 2 tsps ground black pepper
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp celery salt
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 stick of celery broken into four [optional]
• Vegetable oil for frying

Soak the chicken thighs in the beaten egg and allow them to wallow for a while. Place the flour [and cornflour if using], seasoning and spices into a zip-lock plastic bag and shake well to combine. Throw the chicken pieces into the spiced flour, zip up the bag and shake well to coat them evenly. Rest the whole lot in the fridge for a few minutes whilst you heat up the oil and shake again.

In a heavy, lidded skillet or frying pan heat about half an inch of vegetable oil. The depth needs to be such that once the chicken is in the oil will not reach higher than half way up the side of the pan. To see when the oil is hot enough for frying insert the handle of a wooden spoon – when the oil forms lively bubbles around the handle you’re ready to go [NB very vigorous bubbling means the oil is too hot, allow it to cool a little and try again]. Using tongs gently place the chicken pieces into the oil, skin side down, and add the celery pieces if using – it may be an old wives’ tale but this is supposed to help to crisp the chicken.

Cover and cook for nine to ten minutes, checking from time to time that the underside isn’t browning too quickly – if it is, lower the heat. Again using tongs turn the pieces and cook for another nine to ten minutes but this time without the lid. When all the chicken pieces are beautifully golden brown all over remove from the oil and drain. Some say this is best done on brown paper such as a grocer’s bag but kitchen roll will do too. Let the chicken cool for a few minutes before you dig in to avoid southern fried lips, a less appealing dish by far.

A few years ago we were lucky enough to be visiting friends in Jersey in early March, and driving round the island on a gloriously sunny Sunday we found the first Jersey Royals of the season for sale in a farmer’s ‘honesty shop’, a shed full of produce with a box for you to leave your payment. I was as excited as a Yukon gold miner and dashing home with them felt like being on the old Beaujolais Nouveau run [does anyone else remember when that actually used to make the 6 o’clock BBC news?]. It being the Shopkeeper’s birthday we were due to meet friends at the local bistro for dinner, and my breathless call on landing at Gatwick was the first, and so far only, time I have phoned ahead to a restaurant to ask if the kitchen would mind if we were to bring our own potatoes! I can only hope that if it happens again our hosts will be as accommodating as Brula were that evening.

Last year was an altogether different story. The drawn out winter chilled the island’s coastal fields for months and had us forlornly scouring the empty shelves well into early May. I remember speaking to a man whose job title was roughly along the lines of ‘The States of Jersey’s Potato Ambassador to the Court of St James’ at last year’s Real Food Festival when he’d managed to bring just one sack of potatoes to Earl’s Court, and had made some mortal enemies by removing even those from their native soil with supplies so short.

2011 though has been far kinder and the Jersey Royals have now landed, with this year’s first consignments arriving on the mainland in the third week of March. The most exciting part of cooking with the seasons is the change of season when the yearly re-appearance of old favourites is like the greeting of old friends you haven’t seen for far too long. And nothing says “Spring’s here!” like a bowl of Jersey Royals. I bought a bag last week and the sun shone for three days in a row, what more empirical evidence could you need?

There are things you can do with Jersey Royals besides boiling them and serving with lashings of butter, but why would you when the simplest treatment produces such majestic results? If you really must then the Atlantic Hotel’s canapé with lemon mayonnaise and caviar sounds suitably regal. But if like me your budget doesn’t run to such things just follow these simple dos and don’ts and enjoy these precious jewels wearing little more than the emperor’s new clothes.

DO…

• boil or steam until just tender, checking often. The exact time is likely to be between five and ten minutes but this will depend on crop, size, and whether boiling or steaming.
• anoint their majesties with plenty of melted butter or [and only if you’re allergic to butter] very good olive oil.
• season thoughtfully.
• swirl in a little chopped parsley and maybe just a leaf or two of chopped mint [no more] with the butter.
• only use in salads if you have excellent quality or homemade mayonnaise available.

DO NOT…

• over-cook!!
• under any circumstances, add mint to the cooking water!
• mash, although a little light crushing is OK and can help the potatoes to absorb more butter.

When you live in or around London there seems to be no bigger a challenge than getting from one side of it to the other. You pick your compass point [I’ve done them all over the years] and can normally manage to make it from there to the centre and back, but god forbid you should be forced to make the tortuous schlep across town. We’ve got friends in Switzerland we see more often than those round the South Circular.

So I was surprised and delighted when the lovely Lucie and Lucas trekked all the way from Camberwell for my recent birthday drinks in St Margarets! I daren’t even check the details on the Transport for London Journey Planner for fear that the sheer number of connections and modes of transport will crash the site permanently. But arrive they did, both beaming broadly and bearing a fragrant birthday bouquet – of wild garlic! Lucas had been in Somerset that morning [the boy clearly likes to get about] and had been so excited to see such an early crop that he must have denuded an entire forest floor.

Wild garlic is excellent forager’s food being easy to identify, difficult to confuse with anything dangerous, and abundant. And in this age of austerity free foraged food can only be a good thing. When walking in the woods keep a nostril open for the perfume of garlic, then look for the spear shaped leaves, similar to lily of the valley. Just don’t forget to give it a wash when you get home – you know what bears [and other more common quadrupeds] do in woods.

Then use it, well, just about everywhere and anywhere. This week so far it’s been popping up in soups, salads, sauces, and mashed potato [let it infuse in warm milk or cream], and there’s a pesto still to come. But I think my favourite was a simple omelette, topped with chopped wild garlic while the egg still ran, some Somerset cheddar [in case it was feeling homesick], a good grind of black pepper and finished under the grill. Eggs, cheese and sweet, sweet garlic – I don’t know what it’s like for you reading that list but I can’t write it without salivating.

So much tastier than a bunch of tulips.

I have always known this as a recipe for Jansonn’s Temptation, a dish so delicious as to have allegedly made the eponymous Mr Jansonn renounce his vow to give up earthly pleasures, hence the name. But it would seem not. My research tells me that the Swedish original is not made with anchovies [as here] but with pickled sprats, and apparently the genuine article has a crunchy breadcrumb topping, which this doesn’t.

No matter. Whatever this is it is certainly tempting enough for me – as you can see I couldn’t even wait for my camera to recharge before digging in. It eats beautifully with lamb, but this one partnered first some pan fried rainbow trout fillets and then some braised duck legs the next day. And in the absence of any of the above I’d happily eat it on its own, on my own, with the lights off.

A simple recipe like this is just the sort of thing to tempt me to tinker and tweak – some garlic perhaps, or maybe a bit of grated gruyere? Take it from me, I have tried, and there is no need. There’s a beauty in the simplicity which does not need to compete with extraneous embellishments.

And in the unlikely event that you find me on the verge of renouncing earthly pleasures, do me a favour and rustle up a batch will you?

Whilst this could probably feed two to four as a side dish you may well begrudge sharing it with anyone else

• 500g waxy potatoes cut into fine juliennes [see below]
• A 50g tin of anchovies in olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely sliced
• 150ml double cream

First peel the potatoes and cut into fine matchsticks about 2 or 3mm square. A mandolin with the right attachments will help but do be careful with your fingers and use a guard – you will have noticed that chef’s blood is not listed in the ingredients above and in almost all cases it is an unwelcome addition to a dish. Leave your matchstick juliennes to soak in cold water.

Drain the oil from the anchovies into a pan, place on a medium heat and soften the onions in the oil. Chop / mince the anchovies and add to the onions – they will disappear into mix as they cook. Drain the potatoes and add to the pan, giving them a stir for  a couple minutes to warm, soften slightly and absorb the flavours going on around them. Pour in the cream and do the same.

Tip all into a gratin dish, season with black pepper and pop into a 180˚C oven for half an hour. Check from time to time and if burning on top cover with foil. If after thirty minutes the potatoes don’t yield to a sharp knife give it a few minutes extra. The top should be browned and slightly crispy, the innards soft, moist and frankly heavenly.

February means it’s time to toast the short Seville orange season again and even if you haven’t been making your own marmalade chances are that somebody you know has. Whether you have a glut or not, don’t make it the exclusive preserve of the breakfast table. The bitterness of the bigarade [as the French call Seville oranges] brings an added dimension to otherwise sweet dishes.

A partially shared Scottish heritage might explain the long affinity of marmalade and whisky– it’s not uncommon to find marmalade with whisky in it, but you can also turn the combination on its head and add a dollop of marmalade to a whisky cocktail. So if you have some whisky marmalade lurking in the cupboard this is the place to use it. I used brioche this time but the beauty of bread and butter pudding is that you can use any old bread, one or two days old being best.

This quantity fed two, twice.

• 75g raisins, soaked for at least 24 hours in…
• 100ml scotch whisky
• 6 small brioche rolls, sliced diagonally in half and generously buttered
• Enough marmalade to smear over the buttered brioche
• 3 eggs
• 300ml milk
• 100ml double cream
• A grating of fresh nutmeg
• 1 tbsp unrefined caster sugar, or vanilla sugar*

Arrange your buttered and marmalade covered pieces of brioche in a round dish, tucking them in to overlap slightly, to resemble the petals of a flower. Take the end of another roll, butter it and squeeze into the middle to complete your ‘pudding daisy’. Alternatively cut sliced bread into triangles and arrange in overlapping layers.

Drain the raisins, reserving the liquor, and scatter them around the dish. Mix the eggs, milk and cream and add the reserved whisky. Pour half this mixture over the bread base and allow to soak in for a few minutes before adding the rest. If there seem to be too many raisins on the top poke some into the gaps between the bread. Allow to soak for another half hour or so before cooking.

Heat the oven to 180˚C, place your pudding bowl into a roasting tray and fill with hot water to half way up the side of the pudding container. Sprinkle the surface of the pud’ with sugar and grated nutmeg and bake for 45 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

* Making vanilla sugar couldn’t be easier. Place a split vanilla pod in a jar, fill with sugar, and shake from time to time. As you use it you can continue to top up with more sugar, the vanilla pod will go on imparting its fragrance for months.

Happy New Year to everyone celebrating the Spring Festival – may the year of the rabbit bring you prosperity, happiness and good health.

Learning a language as an adult is far more difficult than doing so as a child when the relevant bits of our brains are more plastic, malleable and hungry for linguistic stimuli. And as it is with language, so with tableware. I could read English by the time I went to nursery school, but I didn’t meet my first pair of chopsticks until I was in my twenties. By then I could speak knife and fork with ease, and could happily conjugate the correct cutlery course combinations for soup, fish, cheese etc. But my adult mind has never mastered more than a rudimentary grasp of chopsticks. My fingers lack fluency, and even when I do successfully manage to convey a morsel of food to my mouth I’m sure it’s done with a thick English accent, clearly audible to anyone within spitting distance whose mother tongue is chopsticks.

I learnt years ago that to leave one’s chopsticks in a bowl of food shows disrespect for one’s ancestors [that’s what the rests are for people, do not dis the dead], but I’m usually more worried about the disrespect for my dining companions shown by showering them with flicks of my food.

However having recently received some smart new pairs emblazoned with the animals of our birth years I decided we needed to inaugurate them at the dawn of the year of the rabbit. And that’s where a sticky sauce like this comes in very handy for a chopsticks dunce like me. It’s effectively food glue, and I’ll be less likely to starve if I can use it to entrap some errant grains of egg fried rice. There’ll be forks involved before we’ve finished for sure, but like learning just a few words of a new language, at least I’ll feel like I’ve made an effort.

“Gung Hay Fat Choy!”

Very many recipes suggest this same basic technique and combination of ingredients though the proportions vary slightly. I’m not sure how traditional an ingredient tomato ketchup is but it’s certainly popular! Take 100ml of Chinese rice vinegar, 3.5 tbsps brown or cane sugar, 2 tbsps tomato ketchup and 1 tsp of soy sauce. Boil all together in a small pan for a couple of minutes and then thicken with a rounded tsp of cornflour mixed with water. This gives you quite a thick, dark sauce which is probably best for dipping.

I wanted something looser and less intense, so added 200ml of passata, 100ml of water and another good glug of rice vinegar. If you’re doing the same taste the sauce and adjust with more vinegar or sugar to balance the sweet and sour. Quickly stir fry an onion and a pepper [roughly chopped], add cooked chicken [unsurprisingly leftovers in my case], then the sauce and chunks of tinned pineapple. After a quick bubble and stir it’s time to check and adjust again.

I had another wok on the go to fry cooked rice, spring onion, small strips of chilli, some finely shredded smoked duck, peas, a beaten egg and a generous splash of soy sauce. Fried rice is another good place to use up scraps of this and that – the duck was leftover from our recent fondue. If only I’d had a bit of rabbit.

The sauce itself is suitable for vegetarians and vegans. If you prefer not to have it with meat then some fried tofu would eat very well.

 

Do not adjust your sets – this is supposed to be purple. It’s the red wine you see. Anyway it’s three for the price of one today, two fondues and a leftovers tip.

Here’s a game for you to play – try mentioning the word ‘fondue’ in conversation and see how long it is before someone says ‘retro revival’, or something similar. Well I’m sorry, but it’s got to stop. Fondue is no longer in ‘revival’. It is, officially, revived! Delicious but easy to prepare food which is ideal for sharing with friends is not only very contemporary but indeed a timeless concept, so ditch the flares [unless of course they’re the latest ‘revival’!] and dig out your fondue sets.

I’m done lecturing now.

For several  years I have owned a copy of the excellent recipe collection “Fondue – Great Food to Dip, Dunk, Savor and Swirl” by Rick Rodgers, but am so partial to my standard recipe that I have seldom strayed from it. Until now. ‘My’ recipe is not really mine at all but was given to me by my good friend Sophie Scott whose genius as a neuroscientist is equalled only by her genius in the vegetarian kitchen. Sophie, please forgive my meaty intrusions [and people, I will not tell you again about sniggering at the back!]. To make it use 200g each of Emmental, Gruyere and Keen’s Cheddar and 550ml white wine and follow the method below.

One of Rick’s recipes in particular had always intrigued me – a simple but intriguing mixture of fruity red Zinfandel, sweet roasted garlic and sharp cheddar. Then it occurred to me to substitute the cheddar with Andy Shorrock’s glorious Aged Lancashire Bomb [if you haven’t yet met the Lancashire Bomb you clearly haven’t been to yellowwedge cheese lately] and the excitement generated provided the momentum to break free of my customary ways. I have made some other slight changes to Rick’s recipe. If you want to see the original do buy the book [click on the picture below to find it on Amazon] – it’s a worthwhile investment.

Even the greatest fondue can be elevated further by the choice of dipping ingredients. My top tip?
V A R I E T Y. Yes there must be bread, but it doesn’t all have to be the same. A baguette is almost compulsory but accompany it with one or more others. We had a potato and rosemary sourdough. Cherry tomatoes are good, as are big chunks of mushroom sautéed with garlic, rosemary and a splash of sherry. Raid your local deli or deli counter too. Good chunks of thickly sliced ham, turkey, salami, pieces of smoked duck breast or slices of speck – whatever takes your fancy. What about mini chorizos, or big pieces of grilled Cumberland sausage [or like me, both]? Even pieces of apple and pear can make interesting dips for a cheese fondue. See below for some all vegetable suggestions if you don’t eat meat. Another top tip? Secure slipperier items like tomato or mushroom with a piece of bread on the fork too.

As I mentioned above, this does produce a purple coloured fondue. You might want to warn people about this. If you’re expecting a golden coloured gloop then it can come as something of a surprise. The Shopkeeper never quite got over the shock, and I think enjoyed the meal less because of it. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

Feeds six lactose tolerant adults

• 1 original Shorrock’s Lancashire Bomb, wax and muslin removed
• 100g Gruyere
• 100g Beaufort [or if unavailable just use 200g Gruyere]
• 40g Parmesan
• 600ml Zinfandel, or other fruity red wine
• 3 medium sized bulbs and 1 clove garlic
• Some sprigs of thyme
• A splash of olive oil
• 1.5 tbsps cornflour slaked with Kirsch, Vodka, Cognac or water
• Kitchen foil
• A fondue set

First roast your garlic. Take the three bulbs, slice in half across their equators and drizzle with the olive oil, some thyme and salt, and re-assemble. Make a foil parcel for the bulbs, add the rest of the thyme and a splash more olive oil, seal tightly and roast in a 200˚C oven for around fifty minutes to an hour. They are done when the garlic is a deep caramel colour and can be easily squeezed from its skin. Squeeze out this sweet fragrant pulp, mash with a fork and set aside.

Next grate the cheese – for this amount I use a food processor. Cut the single clove of garlic in half and rub the insides of the fondue pot well with the cut surfaces.

Prepare your dipping ingredients other than the bread and arrange on a large platter around the base of the fondue. Tear or cut the bread at the last minute so that it doesn’t become dry. Warm the fondue pot over a low flame or in a low oven.

To make the fondue warm the wine in a pan until you see the tremble just before the simmer. Add one handful of cheese at a time, stirring with a whisk until each has melted before adding the next. Once it is all incorporated add the puree of roast garlic and stir well, then add the cornflour mixture until the fondue thickens to your desired consistency. Transfer to the warmed fondue pot and set this atop it’s burner in the centre of the table.

Asking your guests to stir well with each dip will to help to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pan. You can also introduce forfeits for dropped morsels of food, but if you go as far as something like removing an item of clothing you might want to have a few stiff shots of the kirsch before you begin!

However much fondue I start with, and however many people are eating, I always seem to end up with about an inch left in the bottom of the pot. If you have the same then allow it to cool, scrape it out of the pot [removing any mislaid bits of bread], and reserve for the following day along with any stray scraps of your meatier dipping ingredients.

The following day…

Sauté an onion and a clove of garlic. Add your leftover pieces of mushroom, ham etc. and a splash of wine. Tip in a tin of tomatoes or some passata, simmer away for a few minutes then stir in your leftover fondue. Serve with some penne or macaroni, straight away or as a pasta bake.

At the risk of sounding obvious all of the above can serve as a vegetarian feast by omitting meaty dipping ingredients. The list of vegetable alternatives is endless, but why not try some chunks of caramelised fennel, charred wedges of red pepper and sautéed baby onions? With the exception of tomatoes I find that cooked [but still crunchy] veg make happier fondue bed fellows than raw.

Half a leftover chicken in the fridge. Half a leftover bottle of red wine in the kitchen [no idea how that happened, must have been a guest]. There are also mushrooms, shallots and bacon lardons in the house. The stage seems set for a Coq au Vin, but I’m in the mood for a pie, so it’s time for the best of both worlds. Anyway, what is a pie if not a casserole in a pastry coat? Or a casserole if not an exhibitionist pie?

More than enough for two

• 8 shallots
• 120g button mushrooms
• 70g pancetta or bacon lardons
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 300ml red wine
• 50ml brandy
• 300ml chicken stock
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• A dash of Worcestershire sauce
• 150g leftover chicken, torn and / or diced into bite-sized pieces
• 1 sheet ready-made puff pastry

Slowly fry the lardons over a low heat until browned.  Turn the heat up a notch and colour the shallots and mushrooms in the fat from the lardons. Add the garlic towards the end and soften without colouring. Pour in the brandy and reduce until almost gone, then do the same with 50ml of the wine. Tip in the flour and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring. Introduce the rest of the wine, the chicken stock, and the Worcestershire sauce, stir well and simmer for around 10 minutes. Then in with the lardons and chicken and give them a couple of minutes to warm through. Check and adjust seasoning.

You can now leave this until needed or go straight to the pie stage, for which…

Top with the puff pastry using any trimmings to make decorations of your choice – whatever I try usually ends up looking like leaves, so I usually go straight for leaves. Brush with beaten egg or milk and pop into a 220 degree oven for 25 minutes. This should give you lovely risen golden pastry but the innards will be piping hot so give it a minute or two to calm down before serving.

Since my old friend Geoff first taught me to make a proper risotto in his tiny Battersea kitchen some twenty odd years ago I’ve always found it a really gratifying way to spend twenty odd minutes of my time. It does demand your 100% attention for a while but your efforts are repaid many-fold, and the constant, controlled stirring and the slow addition of stock have a meditative rhythm all of their own.

Paški Sir is a hard ewe’s milk cheese from Croatian island of Pag, and we think it’s quite a discovery. The cheese has the sweetness of sheep’s milk, hints of the herby meadows where the sheep graze, and gains further complexity by being rubbed with olive and ash before maturing. Last time I checked yellowwedge cheese was one of only two UK stockists but after its recent success at the World Cheese Awards [winning the Barber’s Trophy for Best New Cheese] I’m pretty sure that there will soon be plenty of others.

Use a good flavourful stock for this dish, perhaps reduce one you already have until further intensified. I had a bulb of roasted garlic to hand and added this to my stock for its sweetness and depth of flavour.

The leftover lamb is not essential, and if making a vegetarian version clearly you’ll want to leave it out, but I had some leftover shank from an earlier braise and the other ingredients – peas, garlic, mint for heaven’s sake – seemed to be crying out for it. And as I had hoped it worked well with the Paški Sir, but then ewe’s milk cheeses do have an almost incestuous affinity with lamb. If you don’t believe me trying following your next roast lamb dinner with a cheese board of Wigmore, Beenleigh Blue and Paški Sir [or Manchego if you can’t get hold of any]. If you are using it tear and / or chop the lamb into small slivers and nuggets. Be sure to do this and all the other prep before you start.

The shopkeeper has a deep seated aversion to re-heated lamb [I have not been able to cook proper shepherd’s pie at home for over 15 years!] and there was much grumbling and muttering about potential take-aways during the preparation, but in the end the entire bowlful disappeared without complaint. It may even have been enjoyed.

Easily feeds two, especially when one of them doesn’t want any in the first place

• 175g risotto rice
• 60g butter
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 fat clove of garlic, or a couple of skinny ones, crushed
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh mint
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• 1.5 tsps mint sauce
• 200g frozen peas, defrosted
• 750ml of good chicken or vegetable stock [see above]
• 75ml vermouth or white wine
• 120g leftover lamb [optional]
• 120g Paški Sir, two thirds finely grated and one third coarsely grated or shaved into ribbons

Melt the butter and add the onions, some salt and about a teaspoonful of the mint, the rest of which will be added towards the end. Sauté over a low to medium heat for 10 minutes until softened, adding the garlic for the last two minutes. Meanwhile heat the stock in another pan and hold at a barely trembling simmer. Add the rice to the softened onions, stir well to coat with the buttery juices and give it minute or two more.

Turn up the heat under the risotto pan and add the vermouth. Stir constantly, around and in a figure of eight, exposing the hot base of the pan where the returning liquids will turn to steam and cook the rice. Once the liquid has all but disappeared add a ladleful of hot stock and repeat. Continue in this manner for around 15 minutes.

Test a grain or two of rice between your teeth, it should be almost cooked with a bit of crunch still at the core. If not continue as above, testing after each ladleful of stock has been absorbed. Now add the lamb, and a ladle or two more of stock. With the last addition of stock add the mint, parsley, peas, mint sauce and finely grated Paški Sir.

The risotto is ready when the rice is just al dente and the consistency is creamy and moist, usually after around twenty minutes. If necessary add a final dose of stock, turn off the heat and allow to rest, covered with a clean tea towel. Check the seasoning, you’ll want plenty of black pepper, top with the rest of the Paški Sir, and serve.

When I was a child mashed potatoes were made by robots from Mars and required no more complex preparation than the addition of some boiling water and a quick stir. Now, barely forty years later, we are once again reduced to grubbing up the raw tubers from the earth, washing them, peeling them, dicing, boiling and mashing them. Clearly not as straight forward as it looks this progress business. Back in my youth, if we’d been really good we might be allowed the cheese and onion version, though as it cost the same as the plain stuff I was never quite sure how it earned its ‘special treat’ status. My attempts to recreate this childhood comfort food par excellence though always lacked a certain something. The original had a slight tang which I could never quite reproduce, and then came my Eureka moment – yoghurt! Believe me, this will transport you straight back to the land of space hoppers and spangles.

This quantity could feasibly feed four as a side dish, unless they are as greedy as I am with mashed potatoes

• 800g potatoes
• 200ml milk
• 50g butter
• 3 spring onions [white and green parts] diced into half centimetre slices
• 130g Appleby’s Cheshire cheese, grated
• 1.5 heaped tbsps natural yoghurt

Peel the potatoes [with your metal knives, as the Martians used to say], dice into even sized pieces and boil in salted water until tender. As the potatoes cook gently warm the milk, butter and spring onions in another pan. You don’t want this to boil, the heat is just to help the onion flavour infuse into the milk, so once it starts to tremble just turn it off and leave until needed. These days I always use a potato ricer for mash, a device which in the 70’s kitchen would have seemed more alien than one of those robots, but a potato masher will do the job. Add the infused milk and butter mixture, onions and all, and whisk with a fork to combine. Add the grated cheese and yoghurt and continue to whisk over a low heat until the cheese has disappeared. Check seasoning and serve with whatever you like – last night it was braised lamb shanks and peas, but go for fish fingers and spaghetti hoops if the fancy takes you.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to taste 45 cheeses in two and a half hours, in the middle of a vast arena under the gaze of thousands of visitors to the BBC Good Food Show? If so then this might amuse you…

Firstly, a very happy new year to all my readers. For my first post of 2011 I’d like to share a favourite recipe which would be ideal for a twelfth night supper – an antidote to too many treatments of left-over turkey, but still with hints of Christmas from the sherry and the fruit. And the whole thing is oven baked like a Ligurian Arrosto so you won’t need to spend forever stirring at the stove. Perfect for chilly early January.

What began as an old friend from Delia Smith’s winter collection took a new twist one day when I was looking at the photo in the book and thought I saw raisins. Hang on, I thought, why not? The dish is rich with the forest floor earthiness of the mushrooms, salty and savoury with Parmesan, and warmed by the booze – why not add some sweet pearls of fruitiness? Trust me on this one, you’ll be back for more.

For two hungry people

• 50g raisins
• 180ml Oloroso sherry [or Amontillado if you prefer]
• 20g dried porcini
• 250g chestnut or portobello mushrooms cut into 1 cm dice
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 175g canaroli or arborio rice
• 70g butter
• At least 150g grated parmesan, plus more to finish if you wish [grated or shaved]*
• 1 tsp table salt
• Plenty of freshly ground black pepper

First pour 570ml of boiling water over the dried porcini and leave for a couple of hours. The soaking liquor will provide your stock, so don’t rush it as the longer it soaks the richer it will be. At the same time soak the raisins in the sherry.

Melt the butter and sauté the onions for a few minutes, then add the diced mushrooms. Drain the porcini [reserving the stock liquor], chop, and add to the pan along with the garlic. Allow this mixture to sweat on a low heat for another fifteen minutes, stirring from time to time. As the mushrooms sweat heat the oven to 150˚C and set a shallow dish to warm.

Turn up the heat under the pan, add the rice and stir well to coat with the buttery mushroom juices. After a minute or so pour in the sherry from the raisins and stir for another thirty seconds. Pour in the mushroom stock, the raisins, the salt and pepper and stir thoroughly. Tip everything into the warmed dish and give it twenty minutes in the oven.

Remove from the oven and gently turn everything over with a slotted spoon whilst also incorporating the grated parmesan. Back in the oven for another fifteen minutes, and it’s done. The finished dish will sit happily under a tea towel for a couple of minutes whilst you warm a couple of serving bowls. Top with more parmesan before serving.

*For a strictly vegetarian version try replacing the parmesan with Old Winchester, a British hard cheese from Lyburn Dairy made with vegetarian rennet.

I was quite surprised a few years ago to find a recipe in one of Gary Rhodes’ books for Worcestershire Sauce given that this is supposed to be one of world’s best kept secrets, the recipe only discussed by ‘those who know’ in the middle of a field. Anyway I made it as per Gary’s instructions for several years and it always went down very well with people who received it as a Christmas present – very good for cheese on toast apparently, as any Worcestershire Sauce worthy of the name should be. And then the there was the bombshell in 2009 of a Lee and Perrins employee apparently finding the original recipe in a skip! So much for the field, but frankly little we couldn’t have already deduced from the label, which brings me back to Mr Rhodes. Why, in his recipe, did he ignore so much of what the bottle already tells us about its contents? He includes no molasses or tamarind, and I was a tad sceptical about some of his other ingredients. Mushroom ketchup? It’s practically another version of what you’re making. I think he might be onto something with the mushroom flavour though so when it came to concocting my own I have added some dried porcini for their savoury depth. Yes, I’ve scoured the various printed and online versions I could find and have devised my own blend. It’s steeping now [this does take a little time to mature] so I can’t yet vouch for the final version, but the signs and smells so far are positive. I don’t think Lea and Perrins should shut up shop just yet, but if you fancy spicing up Christmas for your nearest and dearest you’ve just about got time.

Should make close to 1 litre

• 900ml malt vinegar
• 3 shallots, finely chopped
• 5 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp black treacle
• 50g salted anchovy fillets, rinsed and finely chopped
• 15g dried porcini mushrooms
• 1cm piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 birds-eye chilli, deseeded
• 2 tsps muscovado sugar
• 3 tbsps soy sauce
• 1 tbsp tamarind paste
• 6 cloves
• 2 cardamom pods, bruised with the back of a knife
• 1 quarter tsp cinnamon and a fragment of cinnamon bark
• 1 third of a nutmeg [grated] and few blades of mace
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• A few drops of ‘colatura di alici’* – strictly optional, and only if you can find any!

Place the vinegar, shallots and garlic into a pan and slowly bring to a simmer. Dribble in the treacle and stir well to dissolve, then allow to tremble gently for twenty minutes or so. Add all the other ingredients and stir well then cook for a couple of minutes more. Take off the heat and allow to cool slightly as you warm a large glass jar in a low oven. Pour the warm mixture into the warmed jar and seal. This now need to sit for a week, ten days, or even a fortnight, and should be shaken each time you pass the jar. Mine sits on the washing machine so that the spin cycle can shake it for me when I’m out.

When ready strain through a fine sieve, heat until just below simmering for two minutes, and when still warm decant into heated sterilised bottles. Never pour hot liquids into cold glass bottles, or cold liquids into hot ones – they should both be quite warm. Then seal and keep somewhere cool and out of direct sunlight until needed. There will be some sediment and you’ll need to shake the bottle before each use. I’d also keep the bottle in the fridge once opened.

As I say this is a first outing for my new recipe and there are likely to be tweaks and twists with future batches. Do check back in the new year, and please feel free to leave your own suggestions as comments.

Now then, who’s for cheese on toast and a Bloody Mary?

* ‘Colatura di alici’ is an Italian condiment descended from the ancient Roman ‘garum’. It is made from fermented anchovies and contrary to the advice of the TV chef who I first saw use it is fiendishly difficult to find in the UK. If you have some by all means use it. If not don’t worry, there are enough anchovies included here to render it all but superfluous. Add an extra anchovy fillet if you feel the need.

I recently published a version of this recipe in My St Margarets Magazine and as the online version is not yet available am more than happy to share it here. PS – the picture above is not my own ham as the tester versions were wolfed down before I could I lay hands on my camera. Once the next ham is out of the oven I will fend off the ravening hordes for long enough to take a couple of quick snaps. Promise.

By now your Christmas menu is undoubtedly decided, but what about Boxing Day, the very feast of Stephen? Well one of my own traditions for 26^th December is to pre-prepare a ham to provide ample grazing opportunities whilst leaving me with plenty of time to try on my new slippers [hint?] and gaze out at the snow – all deep and crisp and even.

Nigella famously does it with cola, so why not try this version with an even more aromatically herbal fizzy pop? This can be made up to a week in advance and will happily simmer away to itself whilst you get on with something else like, oh, wrapping my new slippers [enough hints already?].

Take a 2.75kg boneless mild cure piece of gammon and place in a pan along with 250ml red wine, 1 litre dandelion and burdock, 1 large onion roughly chopped, 1 halved head of fennel, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 star anise, 6 cloves, 1 tablespoon caraway seeds and 1 of black peppercorns. Top up with water if necessary to cover the ham and simmer for 3 hours.

When the ham has cooked and cooled carefully remove the skin, make a diamond pattern of crossed lines in the fat and stud with cloves at the centre of each diamond. In a pan melt 50g membrillo and a tablespoon of redcurrant jelly with 3 tablespoons dry cider, 1 teaspoon wine vinegar and a pinch of smoked paprika. Pour over the ham and glaze in a 230˚C oven for around 15 minutes, brushing and basting from time to time with the glaze. Allow to cool, wrap, and refrigerate until needed.

After watching a television programme last night which made a picture perfect Christmas look sickeningly easy I think I might even spear halved glacé cherries with the cloves before I impale the ham – watch this space to see how that turns out…

Last Sunday was apparently ‘stir up Sunday’, the last Sunday before Advent when traditionally we’d begin preparing puddings for Christmas. However the Shopkeeper and I had been entertaining until the early hours and when I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror that morning the idea of taking some wrinkled old fruits and soaking them in booze was just a touch too ironic to contemplate.

Not to worry, there is still time to prepare your puddings. It’s really not difficult, and so much more satisfying than opening a shop bought box on Christmas day. I base mine on a recipe I first picked up in Waitrose nearly ten years ago but I’ve tinkered with and tweaked it over the years. Unlike the precise science of cake baking, puddings are very forgiving of changes so you don’t need to agonise or work with milligram precision. Last year I realised two hours into the steaming time that I’d forgotten the flour altogether, and the puddings were none the worse for it. My main changes have been to reduce the amount of sugar and flour, and to up the fruit and booze content – I really can’t imagine making a Christmas pudding with only two tablespoons of brandy! I also try to find an interesting mix of fruits to add to the basic raisins and sultanas. For instance this year we have some ‘Persian Delights’ dried fruit mixes in the shop which include pineapple, papaya and mango, so a packet of these has joined the other fruits in their brandy, orange juice and spice bath. And I have to have halved glacé cherries! They were always there in my childhood Christmas puddings, feel free to add any childhood memories of your own.

These quantities will make two 1.5 litre puddings, each big enough for eight people with some to spare [no harm in having a spare, and they make great gifts]. If you only want one, halve these quantities but the cooking time will be the same. You can also make small individual puddings which will take just two hours to steam.

• 1.2 kg dried fruits, including 350 g each of raisins and sultanas, the rest made up of a mixture of whatever takes your fancy from cranberries, apricots, cherries [dried or glacé], blueberries, candied peel, etc. The more the merrier!
• 500 ml stout
• 200 ml brandy
• 1 tbsp toffee vodka [optional]
• Finely grated zest and juice of 2 oranges
• 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp mixed spice
• 250 g suet [vegetable suet can be used if vegetarian]
• 100 g flour
• 200 g breadcrumbs
• 100 g muscovado sugar
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 1 large apple [Bramley for preference] peeled and grated
• 4 large eggs, beaten
• 1 silver coin, any currency or denomination!

Start by mixing the dried fruits with the orange juice and zest, spices, stout and brandy [and toffee vodka if using]. Leave to soak for a couple of days, stirring from time to time. Mine is doing this now [on top of the washing machine to make best use of the vibrations] and every stir fills the kitchen with the smell of Christmas.

When I’m ready to cook this tomorrow I’ll add all the other ingredients and mix well. Traditionally everyone in the house should stir the mix whilst making a wish, and I might even invite a few of the neighbours to have a go just to make sure. Grease the pudding basins [1.5 litre capacity] and fill them to a couple of centimetres below the rim, tapping and pushing down well to make sure there are no gaps or air bubbles.

The only really fiddly bit is sealing the basins for steaming, and if you really can’t be bothered then you can buy plastic versions with clip on lids. Otherwise for each basin cut two large squares of greaseproof paper and one of foil and stack them with the foil on top. Fold once near the middle, and then back again about two centimetres away to make a pleat. Cover the top of the basin with your pleated sheets and tie around with string. It will help if you can loop through another piece of string to make a handle, but this is easier with four hands so enrol a helper. You let your neighbour make a wish didn’t you? Well it’s payback time.

Place each sealed basin onto a trivet [an upturned heat-proof plate will do] in a pan and carefully pour in boiling water to around half way up the basin’s sides. Cover the pan, and once simmering steam the puddings for six hours. Check the water from time to time and top up as necessary. Six whole hours when you can’t leave them entirely alone but they will require little of your attention – time to do some online Christmas shopping perhaps, or to write your cards?

Once they’re done allow the puddings to cool, remove the foil etc., wipe the bowls clean and decide whether you plan to reheat them by steaming again or in the microwave. If the former then repeat the wrapping process described above. If you’re microwaving then simply cover well with two or three layers of clingfilm. Place the puddings somewhere cool and dark [I wrap them in plastic bags too] and forget about them until Christmas morning.

Come the big day heat your pudding by steaming for two hours, or give it six minutes on full power in an 850 watt microwave. Wrap your silver coin in foil [easier to find, less easy to swallow by accident, and cleaner] and make a slit in the base of the pudding to insert it. Ease the pudding from its bowl onto a plate, warm a ladleful of brandy, pour over and set alight. I can never resist a sprig of holly too.

You might want custard or cream, but I must have brandy butter with this. Recipe to follow when I make it a week or so before Christmas…

It’s almost twenty five years since I first set foot in the John Peel Inn in Bowness on Windermere. It was only supposed to be for a week’s work, but it would be more than three years before I was to finally leave. I’d say my plans have a habit of turning out this way, but that would be to imply that I’ve ever actually had a plan in the first place. On that first day I’d never even heard of Theakston’s Old Peculier (no, not ‘Peculiar’ but ‘Peculier’), a dark strong ale, let alone drunk a pint of it, or ever dreamed of turning it into a casserole. And there was no way I could have known how much water was to flow under those particular bridges in the years that were to come.

My employers were Michael and Vivian, and I owe them both a debt of gratitude for what they taught and gave to me during those three years. From Michael I learned how to cellar fine traditional ales, and how to approach the bar of any four star hotel with insouciance no matter how many unruly golden retrievers I was wrangling at the time. Whilst Vivian taught me not only how to cook, but how to care about my cooking, and that doing so was no bad thing. I have had reason to be grateful for all of these in varying degrees over the years, and if you’re reading this Michael or Vivian, I thank you.

In the pub kitchen we’d make great batches of Old Peculier Casserole with forty pounds of diced beef and chopped onions measured by the bucketful. A cauldron large enough to accommodate a skinny teenager [‘Mark! Get out of that pan!’] would quietly tremble away all afternoon and anyone passing through the kitchen would know to take the huge wooden spoon and give it a good stir. As I’m working from memory and scaling this down considerably for the benefit of those who are feeding less than 100 I have had to extemporise here and there, but when I made this recently it really didn’t seem a million miles away from the original.

With the catering quantities method there was no opportunity for browning the meat, softening the veg, deglazing the pan, and all the things we’ve become conditioned to think are essential when making a casserole. We simply tossed everything into the pot and allowed the ingredients and the alchemy of long, slow cooking to do their work. So that is what I have tried to recreate here. This would probably work very well in a slow cooker too if you have one. NB this needs to be made at least the day before it is to be eaten.

Feeds two, plus one for lunch the following day

• 400g chuck steak or other casseroling beef, cut into 1.5cm dice
• 500ml Theakston’s Old Peculier
• 400ml beef stock
• 150ml water
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 bouquet garni [preferably thyme, parsley, bay and marjoram]
• 1 additional bay leaf
• 100g mushrooms, sliced very thinly
• around 1 tbsp cornflour mixed with water to thicken

Tip the beef, onion, liquids and herbs into a casserole and slowly bring to a simmer over a low to medium heat. Cover with a tight-fitting lid and place in a 150˚C oven for four hours. Ignore. After the four hours cooking time remove the casserole from the oven and, back on the hob over a low heat, add the cornflour to thicken whilst stirring gently. Remove from the heat, add the mushrooms, and stir well to combine – they will cook as the dish cools. Cool and refrigerate for at least a day, two would be even better, three if you can bear the wait. Serve with a buttered baked potato, and maybe a glass of Old Peculier. Or two.

Pour yourself a large one, and come this way for a moment…

‘Fish Amok’ is not a verbally economical headline trailing the story of a school of barracuda gone berserk, but the best known of Cambodia’s national dishes. You can also make Amok with chicken, pork or tofu for a vegetarian version, but fish is the most common and can be found everywhere from market stalls to the menus of Phnom Penh’s best restaurants. It will also be the centrepiece of your day on the Cambodia Cooking Class run by chef Heng of Frizz Restaurant [a must for any foodie visitor] where you’ll make not only the ‘kroeung’ [the paste at the heart of the dish] from scratch, but even the banana leaf bowls in which to cook it. It seems that others are catching on to foodie tourists’ desire to roll up their sleeves, with a couple of new courses now appearing in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, but it would be difficult to beat this, the original, for value – US$20 buys you a day of tuition in the rooftop classroom, all ingredients [and therefore ultimately all your food] and the market visit I described elsewhere. To say nothing of the fact that Heng is a thoroughly affable and very patient teacher. You’ll also get a recipe booklet to take home at the end of the day, though I’d recommend making your own notes too as you go.

If you’re going to do this on a regular basis you might want to consider investing in a serious pestle and mortar, perhaps whilst in the country – suitcase permitting. The ones we used had deep wooden bowls [at least 20cm] and big wooden pestles with the weight and heft of a squat baseball bat. My typically puny English version, which in any case normally sits on a shelf looking pretty and holding the garlic, needed three times the effort produce a smooth paste. And whilst you could feasibly steam your Amok in small ceramic bowls you really should go to the effort of making the traditional banana leaf cups. All in all something of a labour of love, but then if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. Isn’t it?

Like traditional dishes everywhere you can find any number of variations to the recipe. The good people at Romdeng Restaurant produce a pared down, simple version with minimal spicing. Whilst Luu Meng of Malis, as you might expect from this rising star of Cambodian cuisine who recently played host to Gordon Ramsey, finesses his dish with smoked fish roes. Prahok [a paste of matured, fermented fish] is often included, but we didn’t use it on the day and I have not included it here as you’ll not find it easy to come by outside of Cambodia. It’s also something of an acquired taste if you haven’t grown up eating it at every meal.

The quantities I’ve given here are for one portion of Amok, simply scale as required.

For the kroeung

• 1.5 cm galangal, peeled and chopped
• A thumbnail sized piece of kaffir lime zest
• 2 cm fresh turmeric root, peeled [or half a teaspoon of powdered turmeric]
• 1 clove garlic
• Half a small shallot
• 4 cm of the thinner parts of lemongrass stalks, finely sliced
• 1 or 2 mild red chillies [to taste] finely minced
• A pinch of salt

For the rest

• 120 g firm fleshed fish such as cod, sliced or diced as you prefer
• 70 ml coconut milk
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• ¼ tsp shrimp paste
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 dsp roughly crushed roasted peanuts
• 1 tbsp coconut cream
• Red chilli and kaffir lime leaf finely sliced to garnish

For the bowls

• Enough banana leaf to make 2 x 25cm circles for each bowl
• Cocktail sticks or toothpicks, cut in half

Begin by pounding the lime zest and galangal until breaking down. Next add the lemongrass and pound again. Then add all the other kroeung ingredients and pound until you have a smooth, thick paste. As you can see there is much pounding to be done, but this can be very therapeutic and with the right kit should take no more than about ten to fifteen minutes. Once smooth add the finely minced chilli and stir to incorporate.

In a separate bowl mash the shrimp paste into the coconut milk until dissolved, then add the fish sauce, egg yolk and peanuts. Combine this mixture with the kroeung and the fish and mix well. Pour the resulting mixture into your banana leaf cup, top with the coconut cream, and place in a steamer for twenty minutes. The end result should still be moist but slightly set by the egg, like a wobbly, spicy, fishy custard, yet infinitely more pleasant than that description sounds! Serve with plain boiled rice, and garnish the Amok with finely sliced chilli and kaffir lime leaf.

To make the banana leaf bowls

I managed to buy banana leaves at a local Thai mini market and they can usually be found without too much hassle. Wash and dry the leaves. For each bowl cut two circles about 25cm in diameter – a saucepan lid and a craft knife will come in handy.

You need to soften the leaves slightly which can be done by blanching in boiling water. Alternatively [Heng’s way] light a gas ring and using tongs lay on a leaf circle, quickly flip over, and remove. You’ll see the leaves soften almost instantly, and they should not burn or colour. Lay one disc on another, placing the rough sides of the leaves together, shiny surfaces facing out. Fold up the sides to make a pleat in four or five places, securing each pleat with a half cocktail stick ‘pin’, to make a cup shape. This can take a bit of practice, so the first time you try it you might want to arm yourself with a few extra leaf circles.

The – frankly poor - example pictured below [my own] is clearly not a masterpiece of the genre, but is offered merely as a visual example of the techniques described!

If you plan to go shopping in the smaller local markets of Phnom Penh my two top tips are 1) do so with a local guide and 2) plan things such that you don’t go with a hangover. My one day Cambodian cooking course began with a nine o’clock tuk-tuk ride to Kandal Market and being accompanied by our teacher and chef Heng took care of number one. A thorough and comprehensive introduction to the bars of the Cambodian capital the previous evening however is why I am able, with some authority, to offer the second piece of advice.  Cambodian markets are lively, colourful, noisy places and there is no shortage of stimulation for all the senses. Most Cambodians will make daily visits as fridges are a rare luxury, but some of the sights and smells can prove something of a shock to an unsuspecting westerner who’s had one or two too many the night before. Fruit and vegetable stalls will be piled high with produce both familiar and not, with herbs like fresh caraway a real revelation, and shouldn’t overly challenge the constitution, unless of course you’re surrounded by a large quantity of ripe Durian on a hot sunny day.

Venturing further into the narrow alleyways [and avoiding the motorbikes which people will ride down them] the atmosphere ripens amongst the stalls selling poultry, pork and fish – alive, dead, dried, or despatched to order – until you come across the highly prized ‘Cambodian cheese’, Prahok. Prahok is crushed, salted, fermented fish which is allowed to mature for up to three years. It is added to soups and sauces, or just eaten raw as a dip with vegetable crudités. It’s a rich, heady brew, and is your first real reason to avoid this trip whilst worse for wear.

After the Prahok baskets of sulphurous charcoal aged eggs [similar to a Chinese century egg] will barely raise a nostril. My first visit though was rounded off by a visit to a frog stall. A steel tray held deep layers of frogs, all freshly skinned, beheaded and shining in the morning sun. It turns out that a recently skinned and decapitated frog doesn’t need any encouragement from Mr Volta to flex its muscles, and two of the beasts leapt out and onto the street and began hopping blindly about. A lady intent on her morning shop didn’t notice and stepped on one – the headless frog of course had precious little chance of seeing her coming. This is when you really wish you’d gone to bed early with a cup of tea the previous evening.

Whatever else you stumble upon one thing you will find is banana blossoms in abundance. They resemble purplish brown elongated cabbages around 45cm in length. The tender creamy white inner layers are the edible parts, and as you strip away each layer to get to them you’ll find little proto-hands of bananas between each. The petals are rolled and thinly shredded, but discolour quickly so need to be immersed in water acidulated with lime juice as soon as they are cut. Whilst they’re slightly less abundant here they are by no means impossible to come by; my local Thai supermarket has them in stock ‘from time to time’ and recommends that if you see one you should buy it, but they also stock a tinned version which I had to buy but am yet to try. If you absolutely cannot track one down then use finely shredded hard white cabbage instead.

You will need around half a large or one whole small petal layer per person.

Serves two

• Banana Blossom
• 2 tablespoons of roughly torn mixed herbs including mint, basil and coriander [Asian varieties if available]
• A handful of torn spinach leaves
• 1 large mild red chilli cut into thin strips
• 1 tablespoon of roasted peanuts, slightly crushed
• Juice of 1 lime added to a shallow bowl of cold water
• 150g to 180g of poached chicken or any leftover poultry

For the dressing

• 1 or 2 mild red chillies
• 1 small birds eye chilli [optional]
• Juice of 2 limes
• 3 cloves of garlic.
• 1 shallot finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon Cambodian fish sauce [or two thirds that amount of Thai Nam Pla]
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 4 tablespoons water

The dressing can be made a few days beforehand and stored [covered] in the fridge. Chop the chilli finely and crush the garlic, then smash together a little with a mortar and pestle but do not reduce to a paste. Mix all the other ingredients and stir to dissolve the sugar, then add the chilli and garlic.

To make the salad roll the banana ‘petals’ into cylinders and slice finely across to produce strips about 1mm wide. Place these into the cold water with lime juice to prevent browning. Drain after five minutes. Tear the meat into thin strips with your fingers. Toss everything together in a bowl and add the dressing bit by bit until you are happy with the balance of flavours. It should be sprightly and fresh, lively with herbs and with a kick from the dressing.

‘Heresy!’ I hear you cry ‘I thought this man was supposed to be a cheesemonger?’. You’re right of course, and I will throw myself upon the mercy of the cheesemongers’ inquisitorial council in due course. But whilst I’m in full possession of my fingernails I should probably dash off the following. Use it wisely, for it may cost me dear.

It’s actually not a cheesecake at all but a lemon posset, set on a biscuit and butter base – something I’ve been dying to try for a while. My first attempt was a spectacular failure due to insufficient setting time – it’s a good job I was standing by the sink when I released it from the loose-bottomed tin – and our guests that night were treated instead to an emergency cheeseboard [inquisitors, please note!]. So be prepared, I would recommend that you give yourself a good twenty four hours for this, which of course means that the hard work is done in advance leaving you more time on the day for whatever else you need to do. And whilst this is not complex – there are only six ingredients – it is fiddly in parts, so do come to it in a patient frame of mind.

I ate my first lemon posset several years ago at The Glasshouse in Kew and it’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to love at first bite. The lovely people there were happy to give me the recipe not only that night but again when I rang them a couple of weeks ago having lost the notebook containing the original. It’s such a simple thing that at first I thought they must be trying to hoodwink me and had left out some magical ingredient or process, but posset really is just cream, lemon and sugar, and a little bit of alchemy.

This would feed six, but if there are just four of you divide it into eight – and watch everyone come back for seconds…

• 600ml double cream
• 2 lemons, zest and juice
• 100g caster sugar
• 200g biscuits of your choice, try half digestives and half lemon shortbread
• 90g butter, melted
• 20g dark chocolate

Whizz the biscuits to a fine crumb in a food processor and combine with melted butter. Grate in the chocolate, mix well,  and press the mix evenly into the bottom of a 20cm loose bottomed cake tin. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge to set for a good four hours – you want this to be completely chilled and set firm.

Making the posset couldn’t be easier. Pour the cream into a saucepan, add the sugar, zest, and lemon juice and bring to the boil whilst stirring gently with a balloon whisk. Simmer for two minutes and continue to stir, then pass through a fine sieve. And that’s it! You can see why I thought there must be something missing from the recipe. If serving this on its own at this stage I’d pour into individual ramekins and chill to set for at least six hours.

However, we now have a dilemma, hence the fiddly bit. You have a cold set base, and a hot posset which sets as it cools. Pour the posset straight onto the base and the butter will melt, and the base disintegrate. Leave the posset to cool on its own and it will be too set to pour by the time it’s cool enough not to melt the base. What are we to do? Well this seems to work…

Half fill the kitchen sink with cold water. When the posset has had its two minutes of simmering pass it through a sieve and into a stainless steel bowl. Sit the bowl in the cold water, and stir the posset around the bowl with a whisk, bringing in from the edges any which is starting to set. Do not stir so vigorously as to actually whisk the mixture. The stirring stops the posset from setting whilst the metal bowl rapidly conducts heat away. After a minute or two the posset should feel just comfortably warm to an inserted finger, and can now be poured onto the chilled base. Smooth any slight surface bubbles with a spatula or your finger and return the tin to the fridge without delay. Leave this to set at least overnight. When ready to serve release the bottom from the tin [standing close to the sink if you’re worried!], carefully slide a palette knife or cake slice between it and the ‘cheesecake’ base, and transfer to a plate.

I’m sure I’ll be forgiven for the absence of cheese in this ‘cheesecake’ when you taste this. Let’s just hope the inquisition agree!

I have just published a version of the following recipe in the September issue of My St Margarets Magazine, but the online version is not yet available so I’m sharing it here too…

So – September’s here. The Indian summer begins to wane and as we roll into autumn I can’t entirely agree with Keats. The mists are here on Marble Hill Park, and yes the shelves of the grocers are groaning with the orchards’ fruitfulness, but this change of season is never a mellow time in my kitchen. At home the Shopkeeper will be turning the last of the tomato harvest [red and green] into Putney – not quite a pickle, not quite a chutney! There are preserves and fruit vinegars to be made with the final fruits of summer. Game returned to the table with a vengeance at the start of September. And as you read this farmers in the Swiss Alps are bringing their herds down from the high summer pastures so within a month the first of this season’s Vacherin will be on the shelves.

But it’s back to orchard for one of my early autumn favourites, ripe and juicy British pears. My neighbour’s pear tree should be bursting with fruit around now, and I’ll happily help myself to the piles of windfalls she leaves out on the gatepost. Pears also partner perfectly with many cheeses. The great champion of seasonal cuisine Valentine Warner makes a splendid savoury tart using pears and Stinking Bishop, a marriage which works so well because Charles Martell’s delightfully smelly cheese gains it’s aroma from being washed in pear perry. I’ve used this partnership to create a savoury bread and butter pudding which makes a tempting lunch or supper dish, or which can be made in individual ramekins for a dinner party starter – or indeed a cheesy dessert, or for that matter a fruity cheese course…!

Feeds two generously:

• 3 medium to thick slices of English Farmhouse white bread, preferably a day or two old, buttered
• 2 ripe but firm large pears, peeled, cored and cut into 1.5 cm chunks
• 180g Stinking Bishop cut into the same sized pieces as the pears
• 2 large eggs and 1 yolk
• 300ml single cream
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• A knob of butter

Preheat your oven to 180˚C and set the kettle boiling. Melt the knob of butter in a frying pan roomy enough to accommodate the pears in a single layer, and when it’s bubbling add them to the pan. Sauté the pears on a highish heat until they start to take on some colour and then set them aside to cool. Meanwhile whisk together the eggs, cream, nutmeg and cayenne pepper and season with generous pinches of sea salt and black pepper. Cut the buttered bread slices into quarters and arrange them, points uppermost, in overlapping layers in a gratin dish, tucking about three quarters of the pear and cheese between them as you go. Scatter the remaining pear and cheese across the top. Pour over the savoury custard and let everything sit and soak for a few minutes. Place the dish into a roasting tray and pour in boiling water to two thirds the way up the sides of the dish. Pop everything into the middle of the oven and give it 35 minutes. The top should be golden brown and crunchy. Dust with a little more cayenne if you like a spicy kick. Give it a few minutes to rest and serve warm, with a salad of your choice.

This is a versatile base from which to experiment – If you want a sweeter dish try using brioche or a hazelnut and raisin sourdough. If you want to turn the savoury dial up a notch then try potato and rosemary bread, or replace one of the pears with a sliced leek sautéed with a little thyme. For the individual ramekin versions slice the bread thinly, and cut the pear and cheese into slightly smaller dice. Cut out three circles of bread the same size as the ramekin for each. Start with a disc of buttered bread in the base, buttered side up, and add a layer of pear and cheese, then bread, another pear and cheese layer, and top with a final slice of bread. Pour in the custard in stages, allowing each addition to seep and soak through before the next. These will only need about 25 minutes cooking time.

[recipe entered in the 'Simple and In Season' event over at Fablicious Food!]

At last, I’m proud to be able to bring you the long awaited pictorial follow up to my original guide to apple feathering! When I produced the original [which you can view here] I illustrated it using the basic version of Google SketchUp which doesn’t allow for the necessary manipulation of spheres, hence the strangely cuboid apple. A wise friend suggested that photos might make the guide easier to follow, a not unreasonable suggestion I felt, and so here it is.

I know that Juliet Harbutt would not agree that such fripperies are necessary for the decoration of a cheeseboard, but I have been adorning mine with feathered apples for as long as I can remember and I don’t intend to stop now.  A friend who moved house recently decided to clear out his boxes of old photos and produced one of me carrying a cheeseboard from my old kitchen some fifteen or so years ago. Not only could I remember the names of each of the cheeses and the shops where I’d bought them [this was some time before yellowwedge cheese was born] but there, standing proud in the centre of the board, was a feathered apple. I have even designed a new kitchen implement for carrying out the task, but until it makes it into production, which will undoubtedly make me a millionaire several times over into the bargain, you’ll need to follow these instructions [by the way if anyone has advice on producing prototype kitchen wares do get in touch!].

First, find a handsome, blemish-free apple.

You will also need a chopping board, a long sharp chef’s knife [you might think a paring knife would be better suited but trust me on this one], and a lemon.

Next cut out a neat quarter – that’s the easy bit!

Now cut a slightly smaller quarter from the first quarter.

From this point on in your knife skills are put to the test as the trick is to cut into the apple deeply enough to create a new segment, without cutting through the walls of the last one. Keep cutting progressively smaller quarters, taking care to keep them of a nice, even size. Remember to keep the new cuts parallel to the old, meeting at a 90˚ angle – the most common mistake for the novice featherer is to be tempted to cut wedge shapes with an ever decreasing corner angle. As you cut dribble a little lemon juice over the cut surfaces to stop discolouration.

Reassemble your apple, and give the pieces a quick slither over each other to evenly coat with lemon juice. Finally push out each wedge by an even amount [either up or down], and voila! A beautiful addition to your cheeseboard.

All you have to do now is bask in the guaranteed adulation of your guests and resist the temptation to kill the first of them who picks off a piece and eats it! You might also want to cut a small wedge from the bottom of the apple to angle it artfully on the board and show off your efforts to best effect.

Once you’ve been bitten by the apple feathering bug and honed your skills you might want to try your hand at multiple arrangements like the one shown here.

Happy feathering…!

Fractals [geometric shapes exhibiting self-similarity] are all around us in nature it seems, from the shapes of galaxies and clouds to snowflakes and ferns. But surely the most visually astounding example of complex mathematics in vegetable form is the Romanesco cauliflower [if indeed it is a cauliflower, see http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/].

The term ‘fractal’ was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975, although the thinking behind them had been developing for several hundred years by this point, but for many of my generation they’re inextricably linked to the ‘magic eye’ images of the late 1980s and early 90s where they concealed patterns which when viewed with eyes crossed to focus somewhere behind the plane of the page revealed 3D images of dinosaurs and skyscrapers. Hours of fun, nausea and  headaches, normally to be found on posters sold in the sort of shops where you could also find tie-dyed scarves, soapstone trinket boxes and jossticks.

It was some time after all this that I met my first Romanesco and so, despite the obvious evolutionary timeline, it appeared to me have been ‘invented’ sometime in the late 20^th century, and yet still it managed to look like a visitor from the future. Or perhaps the wild imaginings of a Martian audience on hearing  one of their explorers freshly returned from a visit to Earth, minus his camera, and trying to describe a cauliflower.

The striking appearance of the Romanesco has even landed it a starring role in the sort of debates which concern themselves with whether such naturally occurring complexity provides definitive proof for or against the existence of a creator god – a quick trawl of the internet will turn up numerous arguments on both sides. Quite the perfect side dish then if you happen to be entertaining Pope Benedict and Stephen Hawking at the same table this weekend.  If you are, and you have a spare place, do give me a call because a] I love Romanesco and b] I wouldn’t mind a ringside seat for the debate, though I should tell you now that my money’s on Stephen to win.

As a side dish for two:

• 1 small to medium Romanesco
• 3 to 4 tbsps rapeseed oil*
• Dried chilli flakes or chilli powder to taste
• A pinch of ground coriander seeds
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• Salt and pepper

Heat your oven to 190˚C, and divide your Romanesco into roughly equally sized florets, trying not to fall into an ever decreasing spiral of infinitely smaller measurements [an ever-present danger with fractals!] as you do so. Toss well with the oil – the surface area of fractal vegetables can tend worryingly towards the infinite, but thankfully the coverage will eventually be limited by the size of the molecules  of both oil and vegetable –  the spices and seasoning, and squeeze over the lemon juice. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes until there are crunchy brown tinges to many of the green corners. And that’s’ it, a surprisingly simple recipe for such a multifaceted vegetable.

* I cooked my Martian mathematical marvel in rapeseed oil as they both have a certain nuttiness which is mutually complimentary, but olive oil will do just as well.

Can there be a more beautiful sight in early autumn than a bowl full of juicy ripe plums [no sniggering at the back there!]? Red and purple as a sky bruised by sunset, a fine dusty must misting their taut skins. As the evenings begin to close in around you like the cardigans now emerging from the cupboards these beauties are crying out for a crumble made with warming wintry spice and, in this case, a hint of toffee and vanilla. This recipe is actually the offspring of the marriage of several others and combines the tart with the sweet – the final balance of the two being up to you and your tastes to decide. Regular readers will know that when cooking I often reach for the bottle, and this is no exception including as it does both damson or sloe gin and toffee vodka, but the alcohol here will all cook away so the crumble is quite safe for drivers, children and anyone following the twelve step programme.

For a crumble big enough for four, or six if you’ve already eaten well:

• 250g damsons
• 750g plums – you can mix varieties and degrees of ripeness
• 150ml damson or sloe gin
• 1 or 2 tbsps toffee vodka
• 3 cloves
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 50g butter
• 2 tbsps golden syrup
• ½ a vanilla pod, split down the middle
• Caster sugar to taste, probably no more than 4 or 5 tbsps in total

For the crumble topping:

• 190g plain flour
• 100g caster sugar
• 120g butter
• The zest of a small orange

Start by preparing the damsons. I have seen recipes which ask you to stone the damsons first, but life is frankly too short, so rinse the fruit and place whole into a pan with your chosen gin, the cloves, and a cinnamon stick. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 15 minutes.  Take off the heat and taste, adding sugar to taste but remembering that this should be the tart component of your pudding. When cool fish out the cloves and cinnamon, then you can either pick out the now obvious stones from the damson pulp, or pass the whole lot through a fine sieve.

Next come the plums, which should be de-stoned and quartered. Heat the butter in a heavy bottomed pan and when foaming tip in the plums. Add the golden syrup, the toffee vodka, the other cinnamon stick and the vanilla pod and allow to bubble merrily away for five to ten minutes so that the plums begin to break down, but don’t collapse completely. Taste again for sweetness and add sugar if needed, but with the golden syrup in there you may not need any – much will depend on the sweetness of your plums. Remove from the heat and allow to cool before removing the cinnamon and vanilla. Add the damson puree and combine the two then give a final taste to check the overall balance of tart to sweet – not sweet enough, add more sugar, not tart enough, a squeeze of lemon juice.

To make the topping mix the flour and sugar with the grated orange zest, then cut the butter into cubes and rub into the flour and sugar mix with the tips of your fingers until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Pile this onto your fruity base. Place the dish on a tray [there is likely to be some spillage] and bake in a 200˚C oven for 25 to 30 minutes. The top should be golden and crunchy – a quick flash under a hot grill may help to finish it off – with slight eruptions of sticky sauce from within. My last attempt, made around the time of the Christchurch earthquake, and possibly in sympathy with it, experienced a little more seismic activity from beneath the crust than the ideal, but such is the way of crumbles. I was going to serve this with some homemade custard but there was a rare outbreak of clotted cream in the local store, so the custard recipe will have to wait for another day.

[recipe entered in the 'Simple and In Season' event over at Fablicious Food!]

The other day I watched James Martin make this soup in five minutes, so – stopwatch at the ready –  I’m attempting the same.  I’m doing no pre-prep other than to line the ingredients up on the kitchen counter, possibly in nice little dishes and ramekins just like they do on the telly, and setting up equipment like plugging in the food processor [I’ll just have to manage without the lights and cameras]. In fact I’m sure James had his pan warming before he set off so I’m giving myself the same advantage. Other than that it’ll be a tomato soup time trial from a standing start.

I have made a couple of tiny tweaks to James’ recipe. My tomato to stock ratio is a little more tomato heavy, and there’s the addition of my secret ingredient for any tomato soup – gin! I’m not sure my mother would approve of this as a tin of Heinz tomato soup was always her restorative food of choice for an ailing infant, but tomato and gin soup has long been a favourite, and was my first course at the ‘everything must contain booze’ dinner I cooked for friends in Singapore some thirteen years ago. The same dinner, incidentally, where I flambéed eight fillet steaks all at once for the first time, producing a tremendous fireball which briefly engulfed my head, taking with it my fringe, eyebrows and lashes. I was told by the waiting guests who could see into the kitchen through a large hatch from the dining room that the pyrotechnics  rivalled the harbour fireworks display at the Singapore National Day celebrations, but it’s not a trick I’ve been keen to repeat since, and I most certainly would not recommend that you try it at home!

Anyhow I digress. For four dainty or two hefty portions of the soup you will need:

• 1.2kg tomatoes
• 4 fat garlic cloves
• 1 small handful fresh basil leaves
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• A good glug of olive oil
• 500ml hot vegetable  or chicken stock [vegetarians and vegans will clearly want the former]
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tsp caster sugar [or to taste]
• 60ml double cream, plus extra to serve [this can be omitted for a vegan version]
• 50ml gin, plus a dash to serve [optional]

So then, we’re under starters orders – and we’re off!

Pan’s on the heat, in with the oil and start to quarter the tomatoes. Tomatoes into the hot oil and as they fizz and spit chop the garlic. Garlic in, and tear the basil. Add tomato puree, stir, and gin. Salt, pepper, sugar. Basil in. Back to the simmer then pour in the hot stock, and back to simmering point again. Now into the blender or food processor. Whizz, adding the cream as you go. Ready a sieve over a waiting pan [I used the one where the stock had been warming], and pass through the blended soup. Return to a simmer for the final time, taste and adjust seasoning and sugar, and add a splash more gin.

Stop the clock!

My time? A not very respectable 15:00.2. This is not boding well for the three egg omelette challenge, but I’ll post any new personal bests here as and when. Do add comments with your own times. But even at 15 minutes, it’s hardly a huge investment of time for a fresh and tasty soup to beat any can.