Foraging, time, and lack thereof

In yesterday's Observer, Nigel Slater talks about making his own sloe or damson gin. An excellent idea for this time of year - I myself found a very well stocked blackthorn tree this weekend, near the Pitshanger allotments, and spent a few minutes stripping it of sloes, aided by a couple of women who stopped to enquire as to what I was doing - one of them was from Montenegro and we had a nice chat about all the things you can do with different fruits and spirits.

When I lived Norfolk, I had to drive pretty much everywhere, and always kept a bag or two in the car in case foraging opportunities arose, which they did, frequently. In London, I never know when I'm going to come across something, and am very rarely prepared - yesterday I was bagless, so ended up stuffing my haul of sloes into a pocket at the back of Adam's pushchair. A certain degree of athleticism was needed too - the sloes were quite high, so I had to do that whole thing of jumping to grab a branch, before yanking it down and holding fast whilst one handedly stripping as many sloes off as I could. No mean feat if you don't want to drop them all or impale yourself on their fiendishly long thorns. Matters weren't helped by the fact that I had to keep letting go to drop the sloes into the pushchair. I only managed to collect around half a kilo before Adam got sick of watching Mummy leap around and let it be known that he'd Had Enough and would quite like to go to the playground NOW please.

I digress. The first thing I did when I got home was stick the lot in the freezer. Why? Because we haven't yet had a first frost yet, useful if you going to make sloe gin or vodka as it helps the skins of the sloes burst and their flesh to bleed into all that sugar and alcohol. This is where Nigel comes in again:

Appreciation, too, for those who suggested freezing my damsons and sloes before macerating them in the alcohol rather than pricking them by hand. I did some that way and was impressed by the speed at which the fruit leaked its juices into the gin, but (and this is a big thing for me) the instant method rather took away from the pleasures of an autumn afternoon pricking my damsons with a pin. I suppose it is down to whether you cook purely for the end product or for the sheer joy and pleasure of the cooking process. Either way will get you your gin.

I too have spent afternoons pricking sloes with a pin. It's a light, mindless task, one which can be done whilst listening to the radio, watching TV or taken outside on a sunny, Indian Summer day. There are a few kitchen jobs like this which can be similarly enjoyed - forking through fronds of redcurrants, squelching through soft walnut flesh to get to the shell within (wear rubber gloves for this one), podding peas and beans. When I worked in the Caribbean I used to love sitting outside, always with a sea view, often with one of the kitchen helpers, podding and destringing huge piles of tamarind (or tambrin as they called them in Dominica), or cutting the large, acorn-like seed from the centre of sorrel flowers. In this way we would emulate the women who spent entire days at market doing just this in large,noisy and companionable groups. One of my favourite memories is giggling with Anise whilst we shredded and deboned a quantity of smoked herring - a fiddly, tedious job when undertaken alone.

Some such jobs are not strictly necessary, or are slightly experimental. I recently spent a very long hour removing skins from cooked chick peas because I wanted to see whether deskinned, they would make a better textured hummus. To my utter disgust and chagrin, they did, which means that in future if I skip this step I will always be annoyed with myself. If anyone knows where I can get skinned chickpeas (available in Greece, but as yet unseen here), I will be eternally grateful.

I agree with Nigel Slater that such jobs can sometimes as rewarding as the end product, but I can't see myself ever spending an afternoon pricking sloes with pins again. If the freezer does the job just as well (even, perhaps, better?) I simply can't justify the time. Reading people such as Nigel Slater these days reminds me of my childless days when food was more of a hobby - endless hours, just pottering around garden and kitchen; entire days spent on preserving or patisserie, often without a thought for proper mealtimes. Those days are long gone - now every task is interrupted with endless rounds of mealtimes and snack times and play times in between.

I'm hoping that I will eventually fire the children with enthusiasm for foraging (Adam already loves picking up acorns and will spend most of his time in the playground rolling crab apples down the slide if I let him) and that they will get as much pleasure out of some of the more agreeable kitchen tasks as I do. I'm looking forward to teaching them to enjoy pricking sloes with pins and will hope that the thrill of watching indigo sloes covered in sugar snow, give way to a deep burgundy will be enough of a reward - they certainly won't be drinking the fruits of our labours any time soon.
 
For a good guide to foraging and what to do with anything you might find, Richard Mabey's Food for Free is the classic, but I also really like John Wright's book Hedgerow, which is one of the River Cottage handbooks.
Recipes for sloe gin or vodka vary, but I always do 1 part sugar, 2 parts sloes and 4 parts alcohol. Leave to steep for a few months, decant into bottles and leave for as long as possible. I haven't touched last year's yet, and have some from 2009.

Once you have removed the sloes, there's not much that's worth doing with them. However, you can make a good savoury jelly which is excellent with game, particularly venison. I threw some in the pressure cooker with a large Bramley cooking apple, some water and a generous teaspoon of juniper berries. Cook at high pressure for 2 minutes, let it release pressure naturally, then strain through a jelly bag. Add equal quantities of sugar and 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar or verjuice. Bring to the boil and once setting point has been reached, ladle into sterilised jars. A quick and low maintenance way of recycling your sloes once more before consigning them to the bin or compost heap.

Chicory gratin

Ever think that some books are just too big? Too heavy to hold, too many recipes - to the extent that the good recipes don't stand out? I initially had that reaction to all those Phaidon books - Silver Spoon, I Know How To Cook, Vefa's Kitchen - and 1080 Recipes, the Spanish book by Simone and Ines Ortega.

I've had a bit of a rethink though. I was having a browse through the other day (looking for octopus recipes) and realised that actually, 1080 Recipes is a very good book indeed. Georgous design (that goes without saying as it's Phaidon) as well as strong, squiggly illustrations from Javier Mariscal, but the recipes are also much, much better than I originally thought.

This makes me happy, as Amazon tells me I bought it back in 2007 (it's now selling for a minimum price of £50 on that site. Wow.)  and I've finally got round to using it. Reading it properly now, there are just so many things that I want to cook. The book is fearless in its inclusion of delightfully retro dishes including lots of ways with aspic (yes, deeply unpopular for years, but now becoming very chic again thanks, in part I think to Bob Bob Ricard), savoury eclairs, such as one stuffed with asparagus and mayonnaise, and infinite uses for bechamel - from jambon croquettes (my preference is for the brown shrimp variety, but that's a small point), to chicory gratin, an excellent section on vegetables with everything given due consideration - eight recipes for the lowly cauliflower and plenty for some of my favourites, including broad beans (broad beans with black pudding. Yes!) and swiss chard. Also, how often do you see ingredients like borage cropping up in your cookery books? It does here -there's a recipe for potatoes cooked with borage, garlic and paprika (you have to scrape the hairs from the stalks first).

Of course, I'm not sure I want to make *everything* - beetroot stuffed with rice is probably not high on my list of must cooks, neither is the cold rice with canned tuna and mayonnaise, but generally it's a book which I am very impressed with. I particularly like the egg and fish sections (the latter not just merely an homage to salt cod). and the over all thoroughness. It is one of the few books which bothers to give the odd pressure cooker instruction where relevent (such as for octopus). I also like the few recipes from Spanish chefs, including our own Jose Pizarro and Sam and Sam Clark (Moro).

Anyway, back to the chicory, which starts with an amazing tip: if you put chicory into a pan with salted water, bring it to the boil, and as soon as the water is boiling, transfer the chicory to another pan of boiling, salted water, it will help prevent bitterness. I wish I'd known this 2 weeks ago when I made a chicory soup which was just over the edge for me in terms of bitterness.

So - allow 2 heads per person. Cook whole, as described above, just simmer until tender (the recipe says 20 minutes - no way! More like 10). Meanwhile, make a bechamel. I do not need to tell you how to do this - I always heat up the milk first and infuse with bay, a clove studded onion, mace, peppercorns. Rub butter over an oven friendly gratin dish. Wrap the chicory heads in ham (I like to spread mustard over the ham first) and arrange in the gratin dish. Smother the whole in the bechamel, sprinkle with cheese (I usually stick to cheddar, the recipe recommends gruyere) and cook under a grill until brown and bubbling.

One of my most favourite things ever - and it could be my imagination, but I do think the chicory was slightly less bitter....

Soda Bread

This will sound sacriligious to some people, but I have never really liked soda bread. I've made it in an emergency when I've realised I am out of the regular or sourdough sort, but usually I avoid it. I never managed to make one which, presumably due to the bicarbonate of soda and lack of strong/sweet flavours to counter it, always tasted bitter, particularly in the crust.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I decided to try again.  I was out of bread, the kids needed some for breakfast (my step-daughter is refusing to eat porridge at the moment) and it was too late for me to want to start baking bread. Soda bread it was.

A week ago I had talked to a couple of Irish friends about it, and they both said - try treacle soda bread instead. I turned again to Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking - a wonderful book, especially for people like me who prefer to do everything from first principles and like the whole Good Life way with food.

I had already tried her brown soda bread, which unfortunately was too bitter for my tastes. The treacle version was perfect. I followed Darina's instructions for making an approximation of sour milk first (add 2 tbsp lemon juice or white wine vinegar to milk, it will start to thicken immediately), then made what is probably the quickest, easiest soda bread ever. The ingredients are minimal - a bonus actually, as most soda bread recipes have egg in, and my son is currently allergic to them (major vomiting and horrible lumpy rash. Not nice and very inconvenient).

Preheat the oven to 230C. Mix 450g plain white flour, 1 tsp salt & 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda together in a bowl. Whisk 2 tbsp treacle into 400ml sour milk/buttermilk*. Add most of this to the flour and mix. The dough should be soft, but not too sticky. If it's a bit dry, gradually add a bit more of the treacle/milk mixture.


 Shape the dough into a round of about 2.5cm deep and cut a deep cross into it. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 200C for around 30 minutes or until nicely browned and hollow sounding when tapped on the bottom.

This bread has been a great success in our family. The sweetness is slight enough that it still works with savoury (I like it with strong cheese), but is enough to offset the bicarb. It also keeps well (still has a good texture after a couple of days and toasts very well). I am going to experiment by using different flours and adding malt extract next time.

*the one thing I would suggest about the method is that the treacle should be mixed into just half of the milk, just in case you don't need to use all the milk - that way all the treacle will be incorporated.

Inauthenticity

I am returning again to Nigella Lawson and make no apology for it. Yes, I am being lazy. Since my last blog post, I have started several about more interesting books and not finished them. This, I can bash out in a few minutes before I have to cook the thing. The prep is done, I just need to grill some meat.

How to Eat was a book which really excited me when it first came out. It's the kind of book I hope I end up writing eventually, it seamlessly unites food writing with recipe writing in a similar way to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. I love its informality, the chattiness and, of course, the food. I've already talked about Nigella's inauthenticity and will no doubt return to the subject again in a more general way. There was probably a time when I was too precious to cook her "Cambodian Beef Salad", preferring to find a proper Cambodian recipe, but that was silly of me. Most of our best food writers write about cuisines other than their own and the roll call is impressive - think Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson on France, David Thompson on Thai Food, Fuchsia Dunlop on Sechzuan Cookery, Colman Andrews on the Riviera and Spain. Do we dismiss these people out of hand? Of course not. We as a nation are magpies, hoarders of other people's recipes - my specialist cusine is the Caribbean and because I've been collecting recipes from all the islands, I feel as though my knowledge base is probably much wider than many Caribbean chefs, as I am not hampered by island and family custom, but can learn wherever I go.

I digress. What I meant to say is that I am sure that if Nigella Lawson decided to focus on one particular cuisine (I imagine it would be those states in the Deep South USA, judging by her books to date), she would do it just as well as those mentioned above. As it is, she prefers to generalise, and there's nothing wrong with that. I have made this particular salad countless times, because it is very quick, exceedingly tasty and also very adaptable. Here's my adapted version, which, simply due to the fact I always have scotch bonnets in the house, always ends up a bit of a Cambodian/Caribbean hybrid:

Cambodian Hot and Sour Beef Salad

lettuce leaves (I ususally use little gem)
225g tender steak (I usually use a big piece of sirloin or rump)
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp sugar
1 shallot, finely sliced (I subsitute spring onions)
1-2 red chillies, deseeded & chopped finely (I use between 1/2 - 1 scotch bonnet)
handful mint (I will also add coriander leaf and sometimes basil too)

Tear the lettuce onto a serving dish. Grill the steak - I make sure mine is bloody in the middle. Mix together the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, shallot and chillies. Cut the steak into long, slender slices and add these to your sauce, along with any juices. Add the herbs and turn out onto the lettuce.

I have been known to combine allspice and anise (a very Caribbean combination) and rub it over the steak before grilling it, but generally, I prefer without - the flavours are much, much cleaner that way.

Jelly

There's been a bit of a jelly/blancmange thing going on in my house recently. We keep coming down with lurgies and it occurred to me that jelly was perfect food for a baby with a sore throat. It's also ridiculously easy. All I've been doing is soak 4 gelatine leaves in water until soft, wring out, then stir over a low heat into 500ml of whatever juice I have handy - grape, orange, cherry, then strain them through a sieve into a mould. Easy peasy. Sometimes I suspend fruit in the jelly too (blueberries work well, or I copy my granny and use tinned clementine segments). What I haven't yet done is try to make a lime jelly. My granny used to give me lime jelly, which we used to break up and cover with evaporated milk. Lovely. I wonder how it would taste to me now?

Seeing Adam experience jelly for the first time was hilarious - his face cracked into a wide grin at the wobble factor, only to be replaced by consternation when he tried to pick it up and get it to his mouth. He soon got to grips with it (literally) and learned a technique for slurping it into his mouth from loosely clenched fist.

Then Kerstin (MsMarmiteLover) decided to make blancmange for the Fire and Knives Mixed Grill lunch. I didn't manage to try any (too busy scoffing meringue swans and truffled cheeses from the deli station) and it reminded me of the one time I made blancmange as a child. It wasn't nice - it was from a packet and I think it was peach flavoured. We had old friends of my parents staying with us, who ate some and complimented, but my mother, quite honestly, told me that they were being polite.

Looking at the recipe in Bompass and Parr's jelly book, I now wonder why I used a packet as it is as easy to make as jelly (and now I think about it we always had packets of Rowntree's jelly in the larder too - I used to steal cubes of it to suck when there was nothing else sweet available - a favourite, illicit treat). I didn't do a very good job of it though. The Bompass and Parr recipe called for infusing the milk with cardamon. I knew that my step daughter won't eat anything with cardamon in but that she and Adam both like almonds, so I decided to flavour it with honey and almond extract. Big mistake - I used too much extract and not only was the almond flavour too strong, but I could still taste the milk and the honey was barely discernable.

See, that's the main problem with blancmange - it tastes of milk, which is fine for the children (they liked it), but not fine for me. I am going to try blancmange again - this time with cardamon, rose water and honey, but I don't hold out much hope. However, there are other seriously adult recipes in the Bompass and Parr book which have to be done. I am going to be making bacon vodka to make a fizzy bacon and cola jelly very soon. Watch this space.

Mother-in-law's Madeira Cake

This is a mother-in-law's cake in more ways than one. It's the cake I always make for mine - she only likes fairly plain cakes, and she isn't supposed to have much in the way of sugar anyway, as she's diabetic. I only make it for her occasionally - any more and I feel as though I'm feeding a habit.

The recipe I usually use is in Nigella's Domestic Goddess, and is her own mother-in-law's cake. I am not one of Nigella Lawson's detractors. I think for the most part, her books are excellent - I loved How to Eat when it came out, have baked my way through Domestic Goddess and have recently raved about Kitchen - I couldn't watch the TV programme but the book - I loved it from all the advice on kitting out a kitchen (especially the her Kitchen Hall of Shame) to the totally inauthentic dishes she makes (I have no problem with this, being someone who can take pot luck with a label-less something from the freezer and consequently end up eating mutton curry with pasta and cheddar cheese). I was not so keen about the premise behind Forever Summer (strawberries in winter, natch) or her silly comments about "saving your sanity or the environment" which she fortunately readdressed in Feast.

Anyway, back to the recipe, which is an absolute cinch to make.


Cream together 240g butter, 200g caster sugar and the zest of one lemon. Gradually beat in 3 eggs along with 300g self raising flour. Add the juice from the lemon - you should have a fairly stiff dropping consistency. Put into a lined loaf tin, sprinkle with a couple of tbsp caster sugar, and bake in an oven, pre-heated to 170C for approximately one hour. Simple. 

You can of course change the flavourings. Caraway or poppy seed work very well - I recently made an orange and rosemary version which was lovely and will definitely be made again.

The only issue with the Nigella recipe, is that she specifies using a 450g loaf tin which is too small - I use a 900g/2lb tin.

West Ealing Farmers' Market

A rare non cookery book post - sometimes the ingredients are so good, you don't need to do anything to them.                                                               

The other thing which made this cold-filled weekend bearable was a two hour double bill of The Killing (to which S & I are both addicted), served up with an array of produce from our farmers' market, which is a 5 minute walk away every Saturday.

I always go, whatever the weather - I always feel that if they've made the effort and are going to stand in the rain and cold, then I should at least go and see what they're selling. I always buy from Angela Malik (her Thai pesto and an assortment of samosas, usually), who have been loyal to the market since it started - this despite the fact the demographic of WEFM is quite elderly and generally pass over a stall selling Indian food. Shame. Yesterday I bought some sourdough, feeling too lazy and ill to make any,some lovely, sweet, fresh tomatoes from the tomato stall (organic certified from the Isle of Wight - I don't usually buy tomatoes out of season at elevated prices, but yesterday I just couldn't resist) and cheese from the Bath Soft Cheese Co - inspired combination of West Country organic dairy and an Italian cheesemaker, for a lovely creamy blue cheese (much more reminiscent of a dolcelate torta than anything I've before tasted from the UK) and a delicious soft cheese which oozed its way across the plate in minutes.

So, toasted sourdough with butter melted through it, a tomato and onion salad, and the cheese, along with a bottle of wine, and for me, a couple of rum hot toddies for afters. Just what I needed.

My only other purchase at the farmers market was a pot of hyacinths for a mere £2. So I'm looking forward to their scent filling my kitchen in the next few weeks.

I hear rumblings from the stallholders at West Ealing that the market isn't doing well in terms of footfall. I'd hate for any of them to give up - it may be a small market, but it's much better value than most of them (eg., Marylebone, which is lovely, but expensive)  if you are on a budget. I regularly buy chicken carcasses/backs for stock and soup, odd cuts like rolled lamb breasts, very cheap game (one supplier even has rook and squirrel) as well as all the regular deals with the fruit and vegetable stalls. It's an important part of my weekly shop.

Curry Easy - Maddhur Jaffrey

4 reasons why this weekend has been horrible:

After congratulating myself for throwing off a cold, I woke up on Saturday morning without a voice - cold back with a vengeance.

My father-in-law (who probably gave me the cold), also has a bad cold, which meant that S couldn't take the kids to the in-laws. Apparently he caught his cold from an out of date cheesecake. Don't ask.

Both of these combined meant I couldn't take advantage of the free pass I'd been given by S to go out and enjoy myself. So my day of treats, including some shopping, tea and cakes in Great Titchfield Street's Scandikitchen and cocktails in Bob Bob Ricard was cancelled.

This meant there was little to take my mind of the fact I'd just sold my beloved car- a pepper white and black Mini Copper, which went by the name of Pig (a prize for anyone who works out why). I desperately wanted to keep it, but it just wasn't practical - we don't need two cars, and Pig simply isn't big enough to cope with 2 car seats and Adam's pushchair, let alone any luggage or shopping we might have.

So was feeling very miserable.

So, I made what I usually make when I want something comforting with least amount of effort: a big pot of spicy, cold-combatting dahl.

I've never actually followed a recipe before. Instead, I make a vague approximation of what my mother-in-law does instinctively - lazily, I usually just select a load of whole spices (clove, cardamon, cumin & coriander seed, cinnamon bark, bay, black pepper), some ground spices (turmeric, cayenne) throw them into some oil, along with some chopped onion, garlic and ginger, then add water, lentils, and either one or other of tomatoes/coconut milk - sometimes both. Sometimes I'll add some diced lamb at the beginning. I'll always cook in a pressure cooker - 10 minutes on high for the meat, before adding the lentils. If I'm just cooking lentils, the whole thing is done in 5 minutes. So you can see - minimal effort and really tasty.

But the point of this blog is to try actual recipes, so I thought I'd better put a dahl recipe to the test for the first time - I have loads of them. I'm not sure how many Indian cookery books I have, but they would fill a long shelf. As I was (am) feeling delicate, I thought a simple one would be best, so I went for one of several options in Maddhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy, Red Lentils with Ginger.

It was the most pared down I could find - onions, garlic, ginger fried in oil with ground coriander, cumin, cayenne and turmeric, then cooked with tomatoes and red lentils, with fresh coriander leaf and some butter stirred in at the end. It was nice, but unfortunately, nowhere near  as good as the one I usually make.

I have lots of dahl recipes to try (another 7 recipes in this book alone), so I'm going to keep a tally but so far, it's Me 1: Cookbooks 0.

Far Eastern Odyssey - Rick Stein

Rick Stein. The only "celebrity" chef I will go out of my way to watch. Not only do I have all his books, I've cooked from them all too, and even bother to get the DVDs. He just ticks all the boxes for me - I don't mind the Clarkson-esque jeans & Ralph Lauren shirt combo, or Floydian exuberance of his red faced, drink fueled cri de coeurs to camera. It's endearing. He has boundless enthusiasm, a sense of humour and a strong ethical bent, hence his campaigning for Food Heroes.

More importantly, he writes as he speaks - extremely well, and his recipes are interesting and always (for me at least) work.

So last night I had a crack at a recipe from Far Eastern Odyssey. I may have remembered this wrong, but when he cooked this recipe on the television show, he did say something along the lines of, "If you only cook one recipe from this series, make it this one." I will check in due course, as I have the DVD coming. Anyway, it's Vit Nau Cam - Duck braised in a spiced orange juice.

I'm not a fan of duck a l'orange, but slightly tart orange works so well with rich duck and some heat, I hoped it might work. And it did - even S, who doesn't like anything very sweet, loved it. Strangely, it tasted more like a Thai curry than a Vietnamese dish. It's definitely something I'll cook again.

Here's my abbreviated version of the recipe - I followed it almost to the letter, just used the breasts and legs of duck (so I could make stock with the rest), used half the amount of orange juice, because I was cooking it in the pressure cooker (for 20 mins instead of 1/1/2 hours simmering) because there isn't any evaporation, and then, as it reduced well when I added the spring onions, I didn't bother with the cornflour. 

Take a 2.5kg duck and joint it into 6 pieces. Put them in a heavy based casserole (I used the pressure cooker) and fry, skin side down, until crisp and golden, then turn over. Remove the duck pieces, then drain off most of the rendered fat. Reduce the heat, then add 50g crushed garlic and 50g thinly sliced ginger. Fry gently for a couple of minutes, then add 1 litre orange juice, 4tbsp fish sauce, 5 star anise, 2 finely chopped lemon grass stalks, 4 red bird's eye chillies and seasonings. Return the duck pieces to the pan, part-cover and leave to simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Take a the white parts of a bunch of spring onions (reserving one), halve lengthwise and add to the duck, and simmer for another half an hour. Shred the remaining spring onion, lengthways, for a garnish. Lift the duck pieces into a warmed serving dish, skim the remaining sauce of fat (if you like), then simmer vigorously until reduced and concentrated. Mix 1/2 tsp cornflour with 1 tsp water, stir into the sauce and simmer for 1 minute more, stirring all the while. Pour over the duck and garnish with the shredded spring onion.

Valentines, Schmalentines

We aren't great believers in Valentines Day in our house, both hating the idea of prescribed romance. Despite this, S inexplicably bought me a huge bunch of flowers yesterday ("in case you're being a girl and saying that you don't care about Valentine's Day when you do really."), so I thought I'd better mark the occasion somehow. Nothing sweet for us though. He loves offal, so I thought I'd be a bit more literal with the heart motif and cook actual hearts*. I have had a couple of lambs' hearts knocking around the freezer for a while (bought on a whim, for £1 the pair, at the local farmers' market) - ideal opportunity to use them up, right?

Let me say right away that I feel a bit let down by my cookery book collection this time round, as there aren't many recipes out there which use heart. I could have made faggots (from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Meat Book) or Paprikash (ditto) - but I wanted to preserve the heart shape, which ruled out cutting up or mincing. The other common method is to stuff them, but I couldn't find a stuffing recipe that inspired me. Most were variations on sage and onion stuffing, even the recipe in Nose to Tail Eating, although this one at least was a much richer affair (including a red wine reduction). Rachael McCormack recommended looking in Turkish/Middle Eastern books - nothing. Perhaps I haven't got the right books? I had high hopes of Claudia Roden and Arto der Haroutunian, but no luck.

So in the end I abandoned the books. I used Nose to Tail Eating as it had the best description on how to prepare the hearts:

"trim the hearts of any excess fat nodules at their openings and any obvious sinews, and the flap at the top that looks like the bit that has a string to tighten at the top of a knapsack. Finally, with your finger, scoop out any blood clots at the base of the ventricles."

I gave them a quick wash too. Next for the stuffing. I wanted more meat, so into the Thermomix went an onion, some lamb mince, then seasonings - lemon zest, dried mint, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, lots of sumac, a merest hint of cayenne and, of course, salt and pepper. Everything was whizzed up together, then stuffed into the hearts (I had lots left over, so they got fried up as little patties for Adam's dinner). I browned the hearts in butter and olive oil, then added some lamb stock, a glug of beer (no wine to hand) and threw in some unpeeled garlic cloves, then simmered for a good couple of hours. I should have followed Marguerite Patten's lead** and pressure cooked them, but I was worried about the stuffing falling out. Next time.

I ended up with two hearts, which somehow managed to be tender and retain firmness at the same time, with a sauce which had reduced enough to be almost a glaze, and a stuffing which had just enough zest to it to cut through the richness of the hearts. We ate it simply on toasted sourdough. Very tasty.



*slightly inspired by an old Buffy episode in which Angel-as-Angelus gives Drusilla a fresh human heart to suck on. Yum.

** Marguerite Patten is a big fan of hearts. When I interviewed her last year she recounted a time when she asked her local butcher if people still bought hearts, and his reply was yes - for their dogs. She said that she was happy for the dogs of course, but what a shame that people didn't eat them themselves.

A Risotto for Optimising Sofa Time.

Being full of cold and generally grumpy today I've been in a bit of a rant mode. One of my main sources of irritation was a tweet from Ruch Reichl who never fails to annoy. She epitomises a particular style of food writing which takes itself oh, so seriously. It's very stylised and tries to be spare, but is in fact adjective rich, humourless and intensely precious. Ms Reichl's tweets are almost self-paradic. Here's a sample: 

"So cold. Heavy snow-swollen sky. Butter-toasted oatmeal, rivers of thick cream, brown sugar. Fresh orange juice: such fragrant hope."

And my favourite:

"Chilly morning; summer ebbing away. Last night's peach pie, fragile and fragrant on this bright morning. Each bite a tiny farewell."

I just can't stand it. The other thing I can't stand is the way in which some writers fall into the trap of the easy

cliche. I'm sure the first time I read a passage which talked about the soothing, meditative, zen like effects of stirring risotto, I would have found it original, but now everyone's at it and it's just annoying. I'm sure I enjoy stirring risottos (or anything else for that matter) as much as the next person, but please, can't we find something else to say about it? Why is there always this need to mysticise cooking. Do I think cooking is good for the soul? Yes, I do, but sometimes, the main benefit is simply that I want something good to eat.

So, as I said at the top, coldy and moany and the last thing I want to do is cook anything, but I have three other people in the house to feed and S is already floundering about wondering what to do. So I check the method in Richard Ehrlich's "80 Recipes For Your Pressure Cooker". Do a quick search and grab in fridge and cupboard (this was made with roast chicken leftovers) and make a risotto in less than 10 minutes. No stirring, beyond a bit of sauteeing at the beginning, and beating in of cheese at the end, and it tasted bloody good too.

Risotto, for those days when you are too tired to stand up and need some extra sofa time:

1 onion, finely chopped

250g risotto rice

A splash of vermouth

600ml chicken stock (mine was very garlicky, so no extra garlic, if you like add some chopped garlic with the rice) 
A pinch of saffron, wetted in some of the chicken stock
Some cooked chicken
A cupful of peas
Tarragon if you have it, or any other herb you fancy
A squeeze of lemon juice
As much grated parmesan as you fancy.


Heat a large knob of butter in your pressure cooker and add the onion. Saute until starting to soften, then add the rice and garlic if you are using it. Stir for a minute or two until the rice is well coated with the butter. Add the vermouth, let it sizzle, then add the chicken stock, saffron,  herbs and seasoning. Lock the pressure cooker lid into place, quickly bring up to pressure and cook for 5 minutes. Fast release under water, then add the chicken, peas and parmesan. If there is still too much liquid left, half cover and leave on a very low heat for 2-3 minutes. Beat to combine and for extra smoothness. Check for seasoning and add a squeeze of lemon juice if you like.

The Omelette Book - Narcissa Chamberlain

Whoops. I started this blog just over a month ago, posted about 5 times, and then got so busy the whole thing got abandoned - yet, today I garner a mention in The Times. Better get cracking then, hadn't I?


I do 99% of the cooking in our household, but there's one thing my partner, S, excels at - omelettes. That is, if I manage to persuade him to keep things straightforward and not throw in anything he might find in fridge or kitchen cupboard. His philosophy is, if he likes x ingredient, and he likes eggs, it follows that he will like them together. And he usually does. I, however, am harder to please. I do not generally like my omelettes to contain tinned stuff - no to corned beef and tinned sardines in tomato sauce. Another no to tinned squid in ink, mainly due to aesthetics, although I have acknowledged that this wasn't too far removed from an omelette made with dark gilled mushrooms (I didn't point out that I have in the past removed the gills to stop my omelette going grey. I know this sounds mad, but I am sure I have read of chefs doing such things.)

Narcissa Chamberlain's book from the 1950s makes me feel conservative and unadventurous, as she has no qualms about experimenting with flavours and agrees with S that tinned goods are often expedient. There are over 300 recipes in this book - savoury omelettes, sweet omelettes, cold omelettes, Danish, Chinese, Japanese and  Russian omelettes. There are omelettes which seem designed to use up leftovers (brussel sprouts, mincemeat), those which are luxurious in the extreme (foie gras, truffles, caviar), some which I can't quite imagine the taste of (an Iraqi omelette, flavoured with walnuts, raisins, saffron, turmeric, chives, breadcrumbs).

So, considering the variety, and the fact that Narcissa Chamberlain is OK with tinned goods, I think telling S that he can cook any omelette as long as it is in this book is quite brave of me. Fortunately, after a heavy weekend, including a pork fest on Saturday (fry up for breakfast, roast pork belly for lunch, ham hock cooked for stock and cold cuts) he as well as I needed something green yesterday. So we made this:

Omelette Clamart


Braise a cupful of peas on a bed of shredded lettuce (we used little gems and frozen peas with no apology), with 1 or 2 spring onions, a pinch of thyme (I substituted tarragon), a sprig of parsley, a lump of butter, salt and pepper and a little sugar (presumably to counteract any bitterness of the lettuce?). Add 2 or 3 tablespoons of water (I used white wine) and braise slowly until tender and most of the liquid has evaporated, but the peas are still moist.


Make your omelette. Put 3/4 of the peas in the centre of the omelette before folding. After folding make a shallow slit on the top of the omelette and place the remaining peas in this.

Delicious, but felt the lack of cheese!

The Independent Cook by Jeremy Round

S is a garlic fiend. I just had a little bet with myself - I was sure that if I were to ask him what his favourite food was (yes, food, not even flavour) he'd say garlic, and I was right, he did. Such is my confidence in his garlic obsession that I knew that he'd be very happy with a series of garlic themed presents last Christmas and I made a whole pile of them - confits, sauces, jams - the only thing which didn't particularly work was the garlic pickles as they somehow lost their garlic flavour in the cooking.

I often deliberately hold back on the garlic, because otherwise we would be eating it with everything, but I do look out for recipes in which garlic is the shining star not one of a multitude of flavours. I found one such dish yesterday - the late Jeremy Round (he died tragically young at the age of 32) was a brilliant food writer - erudite and entertaining. The Independent Cook, based on his colums for that paper, was his only book and was one of  few to take seasonality seriously at that time - not just from the point of view of the locavore, but including the best of the imported produce too. This garlic recipe is included in his section on April, when spring garlic is probably at its best. I made do with the winter stuff, but did take the time to devein.  Here's the recipe, rewritten by me for brevity:

Garlic Custard

Skin, trim and devein the cloves from 2 heads of garlic. Steam for 15 mins over rapidly boiling water, then puree. Whisk with 1 egg yolk and 2 whites. Add 1 tsp potato flour and whisk again. Season. Add 4 tbsp creme fraiche or fromage blanc and whisk again.


Grease 4 ramekins with butter. Divide the mixture between the ramekins, cover with foil and steam for 15 mins - 10 mins with the steamer lid fully on, 5 with it half off.  Turn out to serve.

I would like to know why potato flour is specified, but it does work, and as I am not particularly a fan of wheat or corn flour sauces and custards, I'm happy. S loved it, although he prefers the zing of raw or sauteed garlic, to the creaminess of steamed or poached.

Jeremy recommends serving it with roast lamb, but we ate straight out of the ramekins, and took a leaf out of Rowley Leigh's book and made a version of anchovy toasts.

Cakes from around the World by Julie Duff

I had a bit of a culinary disaster on Boxing Day. I was, as usual, trying to use up father-in-law's fruit and decided to make an apple cake. I like the sort which are often called "Swedish" - slices of apple, coated in cinnamon and demerara sugar and suspended in a sponge. Being short of time, I grabbed baking books off the shelves instead of Scandinavian ones, and found Julie Duff's Pennsylvanian Dutch Apple Cake. Being even shorter of time, I threw all the ingredients in a smaller, deeper cake tin and hoped for the best. The cake rose beautifullyand was firm to touch, a skewer came out clean, there was a little shrinkage away from the tin and it smelled delicious - everything you hope for when you take a cake out of the oven. Being shorter still of time, I left it in the tin and put it in a bag while it was still hot - by the time we'd got to my brother's house for lunch, the cake had sunk dramatically and turned out to be totally raw in the middle. I wasn't given the chance to hollow it out and serve it as a ring cake (my usual save) - instead everyone stood around the table, cutting themselves pieces from around the edge until they got to the uncooked stuff. My brother baked the rest again later.

As everyone agreed that the outer ring of the cake was delicious, I thought it was worth making again, so did so today with my latest batch of apples. These weren't too bad - I have no idea where they came from, but the texture is crisp (no pappiness) and there is some concession to flavour. To be on the safe side, I decided to bake it in a brownie tin, thus making it slightly shallower than suggested in the recipe. This was my only deviation - a batter was made with the usual suspects but with oil instead of butter and included vanilla and lemon juice.  The apples were coated in sugar and cinnamon and layered with the batter. I sprinkled a good amount of demerara sugar on top too. And, fortunately, today it cooked through.

ETA: Ugh, oil though. I didn't have vegetable oil when I made it on Boxing Day so used melted butter instead and it had a lovely rich, buttery flavour. Today I stuck to the recipe and used vegetable (sunflower) oil. No comparison. I always use vegetable oil in banana bread and it's fine, but here - never again.

Feasts by Silvena Rowe

My father-in-law is one of those people who knows exactly when his local supermarket reduces everything to around 10p, and makes a daily trip for bargains. Whilst he does occasionally come away with some gems, this practice generally drives us a bit nuts. My mother-in-law suffers as she can never find any space in her freezer, packed as it is with stinky fish none of us want to eat (due to a combination of ethics and self preservation).  Father-in-law prides himself on his cast iron stomach and how he can eat food days, if not weeks, out of date. This, of course, is fine if done sensibly. I myself have used eggs 3 months past their bbe date because they were still fresh enough to use in baking, and I generally take no notice of dates on anything other than dairy and meat. However, father-in-law's tastebuds and sense of smell are such that he doesn't realise when cream has turned, or when a cake tastes musty. This used to particularly infuriate my OH when I was pregnant, and was being encouraged to eat all kinds of nasties which were "only out of date by a week!"

Lately it has all been about fruit and he's been coming round with carrier bags filled with the stuff. Sometimes he's got some brilliant bargains, such as lots of organic citrus. However, usually we are presented with dozens of non fairtrade bananas (I feel guilty about using them, but even guiltier for wasting them, what to do?) and imported orchard fruits. A couple of days the haul included some peaches (most had frozen at some point and had gone grey and soggy) and some South African plums, the size and texture of a snooker ball. 

In her Fruit Book, Jane Grigson says late winter plums from South Africa are "of a beauty that holds your eye" with "a subtle charming flavour which has managed to survive the exigencies of transportation."   Alas mine are of the earlier sort which "are sweet and acid and little more."  On this occasion, apart from the reminder to extract the kernel from the stone for extra flavour,  Jane Grigson isn't much help. My absolute favourite thing to do with plums is to make Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's plumpote and by product of plum dipping sauce from The River Cottage Year. However, I save the best plums for that. At the moment, I don't feel like pie, or pudding or yeasty cakes. Instead, I settle for simple poached plums and hit on a recipe from Silvena Rowe's Feasts. Normally I would use spices such as cinnamon, ginger or star anise, this time I am following her Bulgarian inspired recipe to the letter. The halved and stoned plums are simmered in a sugar syrup to which cloves and lemon juice have been added.  When the plums are soft, add rose water to taste. Silvena Rowe serves this with rose water sorbet, which I may try in the summer. For now, it is lovely with a warm vanilla custard or some thick Greek-style yoghurt.

Beyond Nose to Tail by Fergus Henderson

Not really a recipe, more of a suggestion.

I bought a toaster yesterday. Up until a couple of years ago, my toast was made on an Aga and since moving back to London, I've always used the grill or my Breville panini maker, which is always a bit of a faff when all you want is hot buttered toast in a hurry.

I'm not sure why the toasterless situation suddenly became untenable. It could have been because I watched Toast last week. More likely, it's because I found one reduced to half price in Sainsbury's. A Breville - not the best of toasters, but, according to Which?, not the worst, either.

Anyway, today I found myself in possession of a toaster, some white sourdough, the last remaining slices of rib of beef and best of all, a huge beakerful of beef dripping - all that is required for Mr Henderson's Cold Roast Beef on Dripping Toast. I love dripping - used to covet my granny's stash when I was a child. She kept it in a china cup in the fridge. Her roast beef was dreadful - a small joint would go into the oven before church and wouldn't come out until every last drop of moisture had been extracted from it. She'd then shave it into transparent slices (you could tell she'd had eight children to feed) and douse it in Bisto gravy (also made in a china cup). None of the roasting dish juices went into the gravy - they were all reserved for the dripping pot, the saving grace of her roast. Bread was buttered, then spread with dripping whilst still on the loaf, then shaved as thinly as the beef and sprinkled with salt. If we were lucky, we'd get a scant taste of the beef jelly too.

Back to Mr Henderson; he suggests spreading beef dripping on buttered toast and then warming it under the grill for a minute or two to make sure it has melted  - an excellent tip as cold dripping is claggy and will coat the mouth unpleasantly. He sprinkles with sea salt and then adds roast beef. Simplicity itself. I will, however, swap his favoured pickled walnuts for horseradish.

New British Classics by Gary Rhodes

This entry is a bit of a cheat. I've been cooking Gary Rhodes' version of cottage pie for years. In fact, I've been cooking from all of Gary Rhodes' books for years. He gets a lot of stick, not least for his spiky hair and Tiggerish demeanour (in the early years at least), but I think he's brilliant - his books and accompanying TV shows from around the time of New British Classics are like masterclasses in their precision and attention to detail. NBC is full of dishes which have since become trendy - think of last year's craze for Scotch eggs, and the flurry of interest in malt loaf (his recipe is the maltiest I've tried, much more expensive than buying Soreen, but worth every penny). For a book which is claiming to be British, there's a  bit of tendency towards heavy French style jus, but he redeems himself in my eyes by not only including rib sticking stuff like suet puddings and fig rolls (where else are you likely to see a recipe for these?!), but curly kale gets a mention, way before it was deemed suitable for anything other than animal feed.

Anyway, back to cottage pie. As I say, it's a bit of a cheat because I've cooked his version so many times before. However, I'd been looking forward to using up the remains of our Christmas rib of beef, and it seemed like just the thing after a long walk in the cold this afternoon. Just taking the book off the shelf and refreshing my memory reminded me why I preferred the version to the one I had been cobbling together since I was a child. For one thing, it includes tomato ketchup (banned when I was a child),  and the flavourings  - pungent and earthy rosemary and thyme, along with some ground cinnamon for sweetness - work equally well with beef (cottage pie) and lamb (for shepherd's pie).

Changes? I used beef stock from the rib bones instead of jus, anchovy ketchup instead of Worcestershire sauce and a few cooked lentils (to eke it out a bit and to get some extra nutritrion into my step-daughter). Oh, and this time, no mashed potatoes as I was feeling too lazy. Instead, sliced potatoes with their skins on, with a generous amount of grated cheddar on top.

The beginning

Some days I feel as though I'm being buried alive in cookery books. Everywhere I look, every room I enter in my tiny flat, my eyes are accosted by them. Squashed together on bookshelves, hidden behind chairs, stacked up and used as lamp stands, piled precariously on my bedside table, even occasionally propped open on the worktops of my kitchen, they are impossible to ignore.

This is partly a hazard of reviewing them for a living, but is also due to my obsession with food and books and my inability to stop buying the latter. I justify every Oxfam or Amazon purchase of some out of print tome by saying I need it for research. This is often true, but the sad fact is, these days I rarely have time to cook from any of those which I'm not reviewing. A fraction of my books have made it to the kitchen, even less have recipes which I have followed to the letter. So in an effort not to turn my collection into a semi obsolete pile of food porn, I'm going to try to cook from them, at least one every day. This will take a while, possibly forever, considering how the pile keeps growing and growing, but I'm going to try. Hopefully, I'll learn something about the books along the way.

I'll start tomorrow ;-)