U-mamma!

I read two separate tweets yesterday extolling the virtue of the new cookbook Easy Tasty Italian available in all good bookshops (and most likely those not so good) early next month. One of the tweets handily mentioned how a rampant cookbook-ophile such as me might feed their habit and procure a copy ahead of time and much to my delight a shiny copy of said cookbook was sat on the doormat awaiting my pleasure today. Who knew our post could be so efficient? And this is not just any cookbook this is a really good one! I feel I can speak from the vantage point of an expert of cookbooks, having managed to amass a veritable tower of them over the years and if there was an organisation called Cookbooks Anonymous I would be there taking the pledge.
The author of this delightful missive is the occasionally acerbic and always wise Mrs. Santini from Waitrose Food Illustrated. She’s thrown off her guise of culinary agony aunt and we get to meet the very elegant half Italian Laura Santtini (yes, in the transformation she’s gained a ‘t’!), daughter of the now retired proprietor of Frank Sinatra’s favourite restaurant Belgravia’s Santini.
So why does the world need another cookbook, Italian or otherwise? Well what Mrs Santinni is going to do is add a little va va vroom into your cooking. Her U.S.P. is the U-bomb or umami bomb, the little taste rockets she conjures up are flavoured butters, tasty pastes, salsas, marinades and most intriguingly - the potions and elixirs. The first section of Easy Tasty Italian is all about whipping up this wizardry. There is an artichoke, prosciutto, lemon & ricotta trifolata to juzz up a pasta dish. A rosemary, apple & lavender marinade to transform pork or veal, horseradish & rose butter with which to anoint red meat or oily fish. The glamorous sounding savoury enhancer wild mushroom & anchovy stardust or the secret weapon in many a risotto a Parmesan & prosciutto paste. And not forgetting the surely magical black chocolate elixir to provide that ‘je ne sais quoi’ to a beef dish. Laura Santtini defines umami as the "things that make you go 'mmmmm'" and as umami is the Japanese name for deliciousness she has christened her Italian version of this tongue tingling culinary alchemy as u-mamma! And where can you find this u-mamma in the larder? The answer is in some of those Italian stalwarts - Parmesan, prosciutto crudo, porcini mushrooms, white truffles, balsamic vinegar and salted anchovies. And though I can't bring myself to trumpet the tomato I'll concede their usefulness in Italian cooking, though frankly not in mine!
On top of the larder essentials she spices them up further with her alchemic pantry ingredients, a taster being - hibiscus flowers, pomegranate seeds, Amalfi lemon, pistachios, rose water, pink and green peppercorns, sumac, ginger and for that essential little bit of bling, edible gold and silver. Armed with this epicurean toolbox and a few grinding, cutting and cooking utensils this is where the magic happens. The rest of Easy Tasty Italian doesn't follow the usual formulaic cookbook format of chapters entitled spring, summer, autumn, winter or salads, meat, fish, vegetable accompaniments and desserts. Here in section two we have four poetically entitled chapters that are, Air ‘I was raw’, Water ‘I was cooked’, Fire ‘I was burned’ and Earth ‘I am tasty’. You’ve got to admit that’s a little different!
In Raw there’s prosciutto wrapped mozzarella balls with a soupçon of tapenade, scallops anointed with rose stardust and carpaccio and various ‘rich & thin’ alternatives. In Water the magic is applied to soups, pasta and risotti. I can’t wait to try the ‘cheeky lobster’ though the cherry tomatoes may accidently be forgotten. The creamy pesto with asparagus & crispy pancetta will be a must when asparagus comes back round again and the strawberry and balsamic with a few grinds of black pepper I already know I love but with risotto? I have to try that!
In Heat there’s the oxymoronic ‘hot carpaccios’, the beef tagliata with that ever so captivating black chocolate elixir, the strawberry and cucumber salsa’s swordfish (though I fear swordfish is now too endangered to enjoy) and veal Milanese with a variety of exotic twists. There’s a great bit headed 'roll, wrap & splash' which has all sorts of loveliness rolled in Parmesan gratings, wrapped in prosciutto and then doused in something suitably alcoholic or just extra-virgin olive oil if you must. The beef fillet with mascarpone & rose horseradish sounds truly inspirational.
And Earth is all about slow cooking so we have beautiful hunks of beef drowned in Barolo, the tongue-in-cheekily named Leg-over lamb (check out her reason for how this dish got its name), the infamous 36-clove spring chicken and a dozen twists on vegetables. I’ve always felt that mash potato is pretty tricky to beat but Mrs Santtini adds mascarpone and sweet roasted garlic to elevate it even further and she then suggests you could add an extra dimension to this mimosa with her wild mushroom and anchovy stardust.
If all this has still not whetted your appetite we round up with some charming take on desserts and if I need a licence to gather more table accoutrements Laura suggests ‘pimping your plate’ by procuring all sorts of random little glasses and cups in which to serve your accompaniments. For a final flourish the last recipe is a pink-hued Prosecco cocktail which has a sprig of rosemary as a verdant swizzle stick – sounds delicious!
I’ve been completely entranced by this book on first opening, I’ve already amassed some jazzed-up butter to slice a couple of rounds off to top steak or vegetables but after reading this I think I need to broaden my butter mountain further. I’ve been checking how my larder would pass muster as an alchemic kitbag and I fear it falls a little short, time I think to get out of a culinary rut, take a leaf out of Mrs Santtini’s enchanting book and drop a few U-bombs. They do say Italians do it better and this one may just might!

Stepping back in time

Wow the month has whipped round quickly again, the Retro themed blogging party is nigh and I’ve been immersed in mandarin slices, pear cider, lashings of cheese, pineapple, fat garlic bulbs, breadcrumbs and three flavours of ice cream. In fact I thought last week was the deadline and had a mad panic to finish everything. Stephanie assured me that I was being a tad too eager and I relaxed slightly, and that transpired to be the fatal mistake! When I turned on my laptop to titivate my photos, write my blog and get posting, that’s where it all went wrong. The lights were very much on but there was no-one home. I could hear the comforting sound of the hard drive whirring but the screen was utterly blank. Disaster, it would have to return to the laptop hospital again and I would have to find another computer to toil over. That would mean my attempt to finish posting all the GrandLuxe escapades would have to wait also. Fortunately I was able to take my work laptop on a holiday and use that but even that one has been playing up. What highly strung little computers I seem to be saddled with; they are like race horses or possibly premier league football players! So I figure I better write this sharpish before something else goes wrong.

Stephanie announced that the first month of the fourth year of monthly blogging parties would be a return to old theme – Retro. Immediately my mind was a whirl of prawn cocktails, black forest gateau or something in enrobed in the dreaded aspic. And then I remembered I didn’t actually like any of them so I think of some old classic dishes that I would actually deign to eat. Next I had to consider the crockery, I had some fabulous 50’s black and white side plates I purchased off eBay last year and I turned to that global marketplace again for a couple of other bits. I found some vintage looking 'homage to Missoni' black and white plates when I went looking for the infamous Midwinter crockery I recall so well from my childhood. Actually as could be expected I did unearth some fine examples of the brown and burnt orange flowered chunky Denby plates from the 70’s but that it was rather terrifying then and utterly excruciating now so stuck to the black and white theme much closer to my little monochrome heart. But I did get inspiration for the drink which is always a challenge for me at these events, it’s a party, it’s digging out some glitzy jewellery and you know what they say “nothing sparkles like a Babycham” So whilst perusing eBay I bid for an old Babycham glass, I purposely choose the the one where the gold rim was rather worn and almost non-existent as even though I was aiming for authenticity I had to retain a modicum of my own tastes and I can’t bear a gold rim.

So I have the table laid, the frock picked out, I just need to get the food sorted and I can have my very own Abigail’s party.

After my initial thoughts leapt to food I didn’t even really like I consulted Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham “The Prawn Cocktail Years” cookbook for a little taste bud stimulation. And there I realised many of the food I still love transpires to be the bistro and trattoria fare of days gone by. There was so much to choose from but eventually I whittled them down to a smaller selection.

I did consider whether the retro look should extend to the photography as well and had a vague attempt at emulating that slightly over-garish and brown tinged look but I think the styling gives it away. There’s too little in the picture to really conjure up the food photography of the 70’s, there should be a plush patterned curtain, coloured napkins many of, bowls overflowing fruit, cut flowers everywhere, candles preferably lit and the shot should be much wider taking in the chunky dining chairs and much of the room beyond. We do so like our” less is more” now, the Donna Hay way of clean white lines, the odd folded again white or ecru napkin (or possibly tea-towel – so very outré!) and minimum accoutrements. The polka dot plate, although retro is totally the wrong era for the look I was aiming for, it should have been the chunky brown glazed slightly rustic Denby. If I’d really wanted to go the whole hog maybe I should have scoured charity shops for inspiration instead!

My first thought turned to cheese fondue; I just recall many a party at home would have one of these kirshed-spiked creations bubbly at the side of the table with that evocative smell of the burner mingling in with the aromas of hot cheese and wine. I had bought a bottle of pear cider or perry and figured that would do the job for a mini-fondue. I did look around for a suitable volcanic orange or red ramekin to serve the fondue in but I must have left all these back in the 80’s so a Serious Food ceramic pot it is. The best thing about individual cheese fondues is you don’t really have to mess around with the fondue burner et al. Though saying that it is a crucial part of a fondue party, setting forfeits for losing your impaled bread cube and everyone tipping a little extra white wine into the dregs to revitalise it. And if truth be told I now have an electric fondue set so I don’t have to mess around with all those vapours but in this case I wanted the scaled down cheese fondue experience. I made the fondue in a pan with various rinds of cheese, the perry and cornflour. The smell of the wine cooking is very evocative and I am instantly transported back to many a previous fondue. The unctuous cheesy mixture turned out to be the perfect vehicle for my poppy-seeded bread cubes skewered on little cocktail forks.

My next ambitious plan was to make dinky little Chicken Kiev bites. Like many children I couldn’t initially cope with garlic so would eschew the fragrant garlic bread, garlic-laced mushrooms and garlic butter spurting chicken Kiev so this was a chance to make amends. I first replenished my freezer of its stock of heavily garlic studded parsley butter for the Kiev innards. I often pummel ends of pack butter with garlic, herbs or other zesty ingredients in the pestle and mortar to add a bit of interest to some steaming vegetables or plain fillet of fish. I wrap the butter into cling-filmed sausages and pop in the freezer to just slice off a couple of flavoursome discs when needed. I flattened the recently free-ranging chicken breast between two more pieces of cling film and wrapped the tiny slices around a pat of the garlic butter. It would have been easier to turn the chicken into a mousse but I thought it might change the whole dish so I soldiered on. I had some ends of a white loaf I’d been saving so Bamixed them up into the finest of breadcrumbs. The diminutive chicken parcels were floured, eggs and then drenched in the seasoned breadcrumbs and popped in the fridge to firm up. I pan-fried the nuggets just to get a nice golden colour and then finished them off in the oven. The worked perfectly, as long as you didn’t mind possibly taking an eye out with a spurt of hot garlic butter that made excellent little party nibbles. Maybe next time I’d serve them with safety goggles.

I recall an always present though rather naff table adornment to any self-respecting buffet was some tin foiled covered half a melon speared with cubes of cheese, pineapple and sometimes but not in my house – tiny silverskin onions. I remembered I was a huge fan of cheese, pineapple and ham or tuna in a toasted cheese sandwich which I used to conjure up in our first sandwich toaster as a gourmet treat for me and friends after school. But would the cheese and pineapple work without the ham or tuna I wondered? Well it was okay, I scaled down my little savoury hedgehog for the occasion and they did indeed take me back to plates of flaccid sausage rolls, Twiglets – ugghh Marmite!, strange pale possibly chicken v ol au vents and rivers of salad cream. Being such a fussy child I was never in my element being presented with platters of unidentifiable foodstuffs, especially when it was anyone’s guess what it was supposed to be. Maybe that’s why I like a good menu now, less nasty surprises!

Neapolitan ice cream was another retro treat, slices of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream cut into slices so you could admire the strata. To be honest I don’t think the ice cream was of the highest quality I did briefly consider for my re-enactment that I should procure some Belgium chocolate, homemade juicy strawberry and vanilla seed dotted and not vanilla essence ‘the proper stuff’ vanilla ice cream. But then it probably wouldn’t really be Neapolitan ice cream. So Waitrose Neapolitan ice cream obtained, all I had to do was make the slices much thinner to recreate the slabs I remembered but miniaturised. This proved tricky as the ice cream was determined to melt instantly on contact with the air and I had to wrestle with it to obtain any semblance of the dish I was striving for. In the end I was able to cut some vague slices from my reassembled ice cream and serve them on spoons – quickly!

A couple of stalwarts of early M catered gatherings I recall were Quiche Lorraine (still a favourite of mine, sorry D but not rustled up on this occasion), a mandarin sliced cheesecake and she assures me an apple tarte thin. Though I can’t really recall the later, maybe I was more excited by the prospect of crushing digestive biscuits, stirring the resultant crumbs in melted butter and squishing them down to in the tart mould to make the base – still as satisfying as ever it seems! The minute slice-ettes of mandarin proved tricky but baby wedges of tinned mandarin topped cheesecake were eventually produced.

Whilst reacquainting myself with the various Babycham adverts kindly preserved on youtube.com I was reminded of the “I’ll have a Babycham” tagline that once uttered by a cool person would mean that it was then acceptable for everyone else in a bar to also shout “I’ll have a Babycham” I was certainly aware of it as a drink, as an alternative to Cinzano, a snowball or the slightly racier Martini Bianco that were the acceptable drinks for the females at a party. I was definitely under the legal drinking age when I had my first daring sip of a Babycham. I was enjoying a festive meal at my friend’s house and her mother produced two little bottles of this glamorous elixir to allow us to join in the toast at the dinner table. I know it seemed terribly grown up to be drinking the ‘Little Miss’ version of Champagne (and I use the term Champagne in the loosest sense) but it was billed as Perry Champagne before the dreadful might of the French Champagne houses would descend upon you in all their wrath at the merest suggestion that Champagne is available outside France and horreur de horreurs was made of pears! Babycham was advertised by a prancing, spindly legged Bambi that with its doe-eyes and endearing smile was supposed to attract the younger, girlier drinkers. I’m not sure that such a tactic would be permissible now and frankly I’m not sure the alcopop swigging generation would actually be remotely interested in such a cute drink.

I’m not sure if Babycham is still available in its little blue foil topped bottles, I must admit that I didn’t look particularly look hard and just got a bottle of sparkling perry from Waitrose to top up my new Babycham saucer instead. Well at least I had enough left over to make the cheese fondue!

For the final flourish with this being such an elegant party I thought I better get out the Ferrero Rocher. As the infamous voice-over said - "The Ambassador's receptions are noted in society for their host's exquisite taste that captivates his guests", and when the waiters pass round platters of golden pyramids of Ferrero Rocher the entranced partygoers exclaim "Eccellente" and "Monsieur, with these Rocher, you're really spoiling us" and a kitsch way to treat your guests was born. I must admit that my attempts at turning mine into a pyramid didn’t quite work so perfectly, I guess the Ambassadors staff are better at Ferrero Rocher stacking than I am. I also wanted to preserve the chocolates so I could take them to work. Being recently made an Ambassador for my team it seemed a very appropriate way to ‘spoil’ my team mates.

Well despite the best efforts of my various laptops, a retro post is finally produced. See you Saturday, enjoy the party everyone! I'll add the other guests retro offerings here when they arrive...

Update: I was delighted to see all the other guests, everyone with their best frock on. Lots of interesting and tasty goodies for us all to sample and ne'er a Twiglet in sight. I saw that Stephanie produced the obligatory Prawn Cocktail, but being a true vegetarian she has made a 'Prawn Mocktail' replacing the seafood for a shrimp substitute and I'm guessing that's not the squishy too pink shrimps some would favour from the sweet shop. The problem of course with me that even though I can take or prawn or leave it, nothing would persuade me to sample the seafood cocktail sauce so I'd be asking "is their a substitute for tomatoes?". Another fabulous party, Stephanie - see you next month!

A real good time at the Real Food Festival

If you like visiting farmers’ markets then you will just love the Real Food Festival at Earls’ Court. It a giant farmers’ market, jam-packed with small food and drink producers where you can meet the people who really know and care about their produce, who’ve grown it, tended it and now are here to sell it. You get to sample their produce, discuss the provenance and uses and in some cases you can even meet the produce. As soon as I entered I was intrigued by the sawdust strewn floor, this isn’t Earls’ Court as I’m familiar with and then the second thing you spot is a pen. A pig pen! And the two rather sleepy and porky inhabitants are Pinky – the Middlewhite and Perky – the large black pig (though he was quite small really).

I think they were the only livestock, I spotted a chicken but as it didn’t move from the spot where it was perch proud atop a pyramid of eggs, I am assuming it wasn’t live. After stopping to greet the porkers, I didn’t really know where to turn, I was literally like a child in a sweetshop, and it was truly a cornucopia of foodie delights. There were Pooh-hypnotising jars of honey and a petition to save the bees, stands chock full of chocolate, gardens of herbs, mountains of goats’ cheese (ughh), pots of tea, links upon links of sausages and cupboards full of every condiment imaginable.

To ensure I wasn’t absolutely laden within moments of arriving I vowed to flit from stand to stand like a butterfly and make a considered opinion after exploring the entire hall. Halfway round I found one of the cooking demos and thought I would watch for a while and then continue my grand tour. However they wanted more participants for the next session which is how I ended up making some dough and then a slightly wonky fougasse under the tutorage of Richard Bertinet.

It was a lovely idea, you got to shape (or butcher) the dough as Richard the French boulanger wandered around and wielded his scraper. He doesn’t believe in kneading and pummelling in the traditional way, he works the dough in a very distinctive fashion. And when your dough was “like a baby’s bottom” you dusted it with the merest amount of flour and returned it to the bowl to rest. As his audience might tire of expectantly lurking around the stand for an hour, he instead produced large bowls of previously proven dough which he portioned and handed out so we could each make our own fougasse loaf. These could be customised with black olives, tomatoes, rosemary and/or salt. Naturally I chose just the latter and after about half and hour returned to collect my warm, fragrant and surprisingly good-looking albeit rather arrow-headish loaf. And unsurprisingly I also furnished myself with Richard’s latest book Dough, luckily complete with CD so I can examine his unique dough working technique at leisure.

Whilst my bread is happily baking, I continue my culinary expedition, I wandered onto the white and airily modern Daylesford Organics stand to try and get another deliciously smelling ginger candle but they only seem to have grapefruit and horror of horrors, vine tomatoes!

I find a fabulous array of Richard Bramble gorgeously decorated plates, bowls, boards and linen. It is definitely a collection I would give house-room to if I had any room in my house or flat even.

I’ve hankered after the stunning mussel-festooned porcelain bowls for just so long but I always did wonder if I would feel obliged to only heap them up with creamy, garlicky, finely diced leek-flecked mussels. Such a quandary!

And the same theory applies to the limited edition Jersey Royals bowl, produced to commemorate 125 years of Jersey Royals. They are also on the Jersey stand itself, filled to the brim with the first-of-the-year flaky skinned tubers.

For once to be sensible I have to concede that I have neither the space nor the arm power to transport these highly covetable delights home I console myself with some of their cards itself. I think they will adorn my kitchen cupboards beautifully until I acquire additional enough cupboards to start housing my collection.

On my travels I bought some tasty free-range chicken liver pâté from Brookland White Artisan Poulterers and some of my favourite Stark Naked pesto (come on Waitrose, when will you finally stock this?), they have a bunch of varieties but I went for the usual basil and for a change, some chives.

Harvey Nichols were there promoting their wonderful Grana Padano cheese which I discovered at their cheese and wine evening back in October and have enjoyed ever since. I learnt two intriguing facts, the leftover denuded Grana Padano wheel is often use to house a risotto for a party (what a wonderful idea) and apparently it is also suitable for lactose intolerant diners. Though I've been unable to confirm either statement.

After tasting several balsamic vinegars I went for some unusual varieties from Apulia Blend, firstly a couple of gold meal winners balsamic vinegar syrup with white truffle, a balsamic vinegar with orange and a very intriguing white balsamic vinegar.

I was initiated into the world of granola with some tasty snack pots of jumbo oats, dates and apples from LoveDean. I’ve never liked adding milk to cereal and the fact that these granolas are promoted as milk free nibbles is all terribly interesting.

To enhance my green credentials I purchased some Onya Bags incredibly light nylon bags to use when weighing fruit and vegetables at the supermarket, instead of the usual plastic ones.

I pondered getting some oysters from Fishworks for a future ‘project’ but decided to get them nearer to home so in the interim grabbed a few photos of the magnificent looking crabs and lobsters – a veritable shoal of Pinchies!

Amongst the food and drink producers were also a smattering of the regular suspects at food shows, Proven Products selling my beloved silver Swissline Bamix, Woll Pans and a new one for me some rather fabulous Titan turbo peeler from the ebullient peeler man (who's not going to love a silver versatile peeler with turbo written down the side?) As astonishing as it may seem, I managed to find a shiny contraption that I didn’t possess so I just had to nab this new gadget.

Action against Hunger have been able to procure all sorts of treats for a “Love Food, Fight Hunger” campaign goodie bag. They kindly swapped the Hardens’ guide (which I get anyway) for the Tana Ramsay book (yes, another cookbook that I don’t possess, astonishingly!) and as well of the edible delights pictured there was also a big bag of porridge and another of crisps. It is of course an awfully good cause, and despite the alarming weight of the resultant bag, I hope they will be snapped up by everyone.

I don’t even think I managed to get round the entire show, by the final bell I was flagging considerably looking like a flour dusted packhorse toting all my exciting purchases as well as lashings of pamphlets and frankly couldn’t carry much more even if I did find more things I wanted. I am pleased that sanity prevailed and I didn’t squirrel away some Richard Bramble porcelain in my copious bags, well almost pleased now I’m home!

There are two more days left of possibly my number one ever food show. I noticed that their tagline is ‘fall in love with food all over again’ - I don’t think I needed to fall in love with food again but I’ve certainly fallen in love with food shows again!

Hurry, hurry, hurry to Earls’ Court tomorrow or Sunday, you will have a real good time!

One perfect dinner party

Not that I think that my dinner party was perfect it was that tonight’s menu was based pretty much on Marcus Wareing’s new cookbook “One Perfect Ingredient”. When this latest tome arrived to join my ever-burgeoning shelves I was immediately struck by it. And I know I’ve said that before but I never cease to be amazed how whenever I think I surely must have reached some sort of limit to my capacity for cookbook-love, my propensity for those hard-backed faintly ink perfumed volumes just seems indefatigable. And despite not wanting to murder my darlings - obviously I have favourites, and this one has instantly joined the A–list (or should that be J-list!) I can’t really put my finger on what makes one cookbook shine above another, I guess it’s a mixture a feeling of instant gastronomic connection, the belief I could rely on it in a sudden culinary emergency and a old friend that I could curl up in a comfy armchair with.

The premise of “One Perfect Ingredient” is to take one ingredient and then to conjure up three very different meals. And on my first flick through I realised that it would be a perfect accompaniment for tonight’s extravaganza. I’d been meaning to have T and ML around ummm, maybe forever and now I had to concoct a suitable menu. I had a few ideas; T doesn’t really do red meat but has rather a penchant for risotto which would help my deliberations so with this in mind I consulted Marcus and I think he had some fine suggestions.

I wanted to use my lovely new lead crystal champagne saucers for the dessert so knowing that I can whip it up very quickly I went for the chocolate mousse Gordon Ramsay devised for his cook-along a couple of months ago, as Marcus didn't have something unctuous enough and chocolaty enough. With the crystal theme in mind I went for full crystal-tastic overload on the table décor again and also christened my crystal tea-light holders and crystal rose-bowl for a terribly grown-up table centre. I got some lovely white flowers as I didn’t want the more typical roses but I can’t recall their genus, unfortunately.

For the starter I selected the Leek and Potato Risotto. I did toy with adding my first handful of this year’s English asparagus spears (not counting those cooked by Mark Hix at Divertimenti forced in a Kent micro-climate) but I found out just in the nick of time that ML doesn’t appreciate the spear. I had a small pile of Jersey royals for the new potato ingredient but I actually had stockpiled over double what the recipe needed but T suggested that I boiled them all anyway and we could either have some with the main course or use the leftovers for another meal. I used the rest of my Acquerello risotto rice and boy was it thirsty tonight. I poured in the wonderfully gelatinous stock, the glass of white wine, more wine, some Evian (just because it was handy), more wine, more water and still it drank. It just soaked up every drop of liquid in its vicinity; I could only assume it was drunk when it finally reached that perfect creamy texture. I add the Parmesan, the butter and then the potatoes but was rather alarmed by the texture. This risotto could never be accused of assuming the infamous Italian rippling wave effect across the plate, the all’ onda. It was way more pert than that, actually positively gravity-defying, I assumed it was the potato but not having a picture to reference and more importantly, loving the taste I went ahead and served it. And we certainly cleaned our plates, and then I remembered, I cooked well over twice the amount of crushed potato that the risotto required and then somehow added all of it to this to the dish – mmm, that might explain it. And then there was also the delicious very welcome glass or two of Fortnum & Mason Brut Rosé Champagne (Billecart-Salmon in disguise nonetheless!) that made everything all a little rosé around the edges - that could have explained it also!

For the main course I chose the simple Chicken with Bacon and Pesto accompanied by a version of the Pea and Broad bean Salad with Manchego Cheese from the Pea chapter – clearly I had a premonition that by that stage of the meal I might need 'simple'. The plump organic, free-range chicken breast (yes, I have chickened out – but I have always been a devotee of a happy chicken!) were rather annoying three different sizes. I definitely had daddy, mummy and baby chicken to stuff with pesto and wrapped in bacon. Daddy was feisty and struggling out of its bacon jacket but I managed to pan fry it and wrestle it into the oven without losing too much of its oozy verdant core.

With the help of T and ML's frantic depodding the broad beans were swiftly denuded and I dealt with the frozen petit pois which had all bonded into one great fat pea and needed a little gentle persuasion to return back to their individual little peas. I didn't have any Manchego so used Parmesan and a slurp of double cream to loosen it up a little and then a handful of my favourite floppy lamb's lettuce also.
That all seemed to go down pretty well also. Obviously I didn’t serve potatoes with the chicken because a) it didn’t really need it and b) we’d somehow managed to eat all the Jersey Royals with the risotto in some freak pink Champagne induced accident.

Having produced this Chocolate Mousse recipe before whilst under great time pressure I was pretty confident I could get it to the table pretty sharpish i.e. ideally before either of my guests fell asleep but it didn’t turn out quite as smooth as I would have liked. I used some of the amazing Willie Harcourt-Cooze Venezuelan Black 100% chocolate that T had managed to get at their local Waitrose as mine had nothing but a photograph of smiling Willie and information about this special chocolate, which was hardly going to help my mousse. I read the recipe carefully and then perhaps due to the wine on top of the Champagne and the boozy risotto meant that I read it but totally ignored it so when I was supposed to stir the smashed shards of Crunchie into the chocolate mixture I just got T to heap some in the gorgeous Champagne Saucers (very Babycham but without the cartoon Bambi and way more diva-ish!) and then add a little golden shower on top and then some chocolate flakes. We didn’t eat it all, hopefully because it wasn’t too imperfect but because I made enough for four of us (frankly four people who hadn't had a meal for a few days) and we’d eaten quite a lot of risotto et al! And T and I managed to save room for a soupçon of gooey Camembert with Truffle Butter on French bread as it would have been rude not to!

Maybe not the perfect dinner party but hopefully pretty damn fine!

Oh, and I should really mention another little fabulous touch to the table - get a load of the Evian bottle, not just soon-to-be-recycled plastic but designed by Christian Lacroix etched glass definitely not for recycling - don't you know. Diva - moi!

Food for thought

Today I had a positive windfall of cookbooks turn up to my desk, an embarrassment of riches no less. The first one I started poring over is Rose Prince’s new book The New English Table. And I utterly adore it already. It’s a book that manages to make you salivate but feel also slightly guilty at the same time. Rose’s rather fetching rose coloured tome is a manifesto for eating well, eating cheaply and eating ecologically. The subtitle of the book is “over 200 recipes that will not cost the earth”. She explains how diversity is essential for us and also absolutely everyone. If we just eat the same foods all the time we run the risk of being dependant on a dwindling set of ingredients that if some pestilence or disaster befell them we would be scuppered.

In the beef chapter she wags her finger at those of us who leap straight for the fillet steak when there are so many other cuts available. As the fillet is a relatively small part of a cow and if we always favour that cut, surely somewhere there should be a glut of all the remaining beefy parts. I recall considering such a conundrum many years ago when a crowd of us spent a happy afternoon in a tapas bar in Brussels and ate primarily chicken wings. In fact the European chicken wing mountain nonetheless! And whilst washing down these little poultry flying limbs with a glass or two of Sangria I started to worry about all the rest of the chicken, and how those flocks of wingless chickens were doing. Hmmm, maybe there was quite a lot of Sangria involved! But you get the point.

However all is not lost; Rose gives us lots of alternatives especially if you can find a meat purveyor that can butcher in the continental style. It seems that there are some great unconventional cuts that lend themselves to a medium-rare or even better, rare cooking and I can’t wait to locate such a knowledgeable butcher.

And it’s not just beef, my thoughts have been provoked by her prose on apples, asparagus, bacon, beans, barley and blackberries. Yes I'm already a fan and I haven’t even finished the B’s yet.

I’m not surprised I have fallen for this book as I was impressed by Rose when I first met her when she hosted a cookbook event alongside Jeremy Lee at Blueprint Café to launch A New English Kitchen a couple of years ago. In fact much of the barley chapter is inspired by Jeremy or strictly his mother who seemed to really know her barley.

I would wax more lyrically about this impressively substantial pink volume but I want to go back to absorbing it and having my conscience pricked further, so if you’re interested you should get your own, I don't think you'll regret it!

The return of the Moo!

D and I are planning Sunday lunch today, LLcT (now renamed GT) is on some carb-free, steamed fish and salad only regime. Entirely self-inflicted I must add, I’m not even sure that a size 0 model has a smaller BMI than GT, but each to their own! So we ask GT what would tickle his fancy today and he requested Beef Wellington! We did have to check that he understood the concept of the Wellington part and how puff pastry wasn’t normally considered to be carb free but he was happy that we proceeded. Methinks that a certain orange-y one has had a little too much steamed fish!

We decide to base our meat monster on Gordon Ramsay’s version from Sunday Dinners, enveloping the plump beef fillet and mushroom duxelle with Parma ham before the pastry jacket. Though I had to make a small adjustment, the skinnier end of the fillet was spread with finely sliced and sautéed leeks as E(D) doesn’t do mushrooms. And also she likes her beef a lot more cooked than the rest of us so the thinner end should just be perfect!

Beef Wellington
Gordon Ramsay and from the F Word – serves 2

400g Beef fillet
400g Flat mushrooms
4 slices Parma ham
English mustard for brushing meat
200g puff pastry
2 Egg yolks

Approx 8 Charlotte/New potatoes
1 Clove garlic, crushed
1 Sprig thyme
2 large baby gem lettuce
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Mustard vinaigrette, optional

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200c.
2. Heat some oil in a large pan and quickly fry the seasoned beef all over until it's brown. Remove and allow to cool. The point of this is simply to sear the beef and seal all those juices in, you don't want to cook the meat at this stage. Allow to cool and brush generously with the mustard.
3. Roughly chop the mushrooms and blend in a food processor to form a puree. Scrape the mixture into a hot, dry pan and allow the water to evaporate. When sufficiently dry (the mixture should be sticking together easily), set aside and cool.
4. Roll out a generous length of cling film, lay out the four slices of Parma ham, each one slightly overlapping the last. With a pallet knife spread the mushroom mixture evenly over the ham.
5. Place the beef fillet in the middle and keeping a tight hold of the cling film from the outside edge, neatly roll the Parma ham and mushrooms over the beef into a tight barrel shape. Twist the ends to secure the clingfilm. Refrigerate for 10 -15 minutes, this allows the Wellington to set and helps keep the shape.
6. Roll out the pastry quite thinly to a size which will cover your beef. Unwrap the meat from the cling film.
7. Egg wash the edge of the pastry and place the beef in the middle. Roll up the pastry, cut any excess off the ends and fold neatly to the 'underside'. Turnover and egg wash over the top.
8. Chill again to let the pastry cool, approximately 5 minutes. Egg wash again before baking at 200c for 35 - 40 minutes. Rest 8 -10 minutes before slicing.
9. Par boil the potatoes in salted water. Quarter them and leave the skin on. Sauté in olive oil and butter with the garlic and thyme, until browned and cooked through. Season. Remove the thyme and garlic before serving.
10. Separate the outside leaves of the baby gem (leaving the smaller inner ones for salads) and very quickly sauté them in a pan of olive oil with a little salt and pepper - just enough to wilt them.
11. Serve hearty slices of the Wellington alongside the sautéed potatoes and wilted baby gems. A classic mustard vinaigrette makes a great dressing.
    

As ever I tweaked the recipe a little, for example I don’t want to assemble, disassemble and wash a food processor to make the mushroom puree so I cut the mushroom much finer instead. Gordon’s recipe demands various stages of chilling, resting and anointing, but as long as you’ve left yourself enough time this seemed a very good idea so all the necessary resting and chilling was adhered to. The wrapping tightly in clingfilm is not something I would normally do but it does make for a wonderfully neat parcel so it is worth the effort.

The first time I made a Beef Wellington here several years ago I tried to decorate the top with pastry cows but my free-form cut cows just looked strangely alien so I abandoned these horned blobs in favour of D’s suggestion of the letters M, O and O. This one fed everyone and the extra additions of the fluffy one and extravagantly eyebrowed J.

So for my second pastry clad hunk of beef here I guessed really the only answer is to crown it with the letters MOO2. I don’t have that large letter cutters but they are easy enough to cut by hand and thoroughly glaze to ensure a golden glow after baking.

The new Moo seemed to go down very well, with the plates licked clean;. We accompanied the fat juicy slices with some sautéed potatoes and creamy frozen peas with shredded floppy lettuce which wilted seductively into the creamy juices. And it must have hit the spot as the possibility of there being a MOO3 was discussed.

A purple dinner

I’ve been left alone to decorate the table whilst D tends to the incredible roasted shoulder of lamb with smashed veg and greens from Jamie Oliver’s wonderful Jamie at Home book. And to celebrate that we’ve supplemented the purple crockery and platter collection I go slightly purple crazy! The purple hued layered runners are supplemented with the sparkly magenta napkins and purple sparkly napkin rings for the girls and purple not so sparkly with silver stars for the boys. D’s new purple satin handbags and shoe Christmas decorations are removed form the tree and transferred to the table, with the purple shiny ex-Mardi Gras beads, mirrored candles and the metal snowflakes strewn randomly (?) in the gaps in between.

Everyone has got customised cutlery for tonight - D her purple set (of course!), LLcT with iron weapons forged in a volcano fire by Thor, MC with his Christmas Global-esque knife and fork, E(D) with dinky little dusty sized (aka baby’s first) cutlery and me with my ever so elegant new today LLB silverware.

I was determined not to waste the remaining lobster and whipped up the tiniest starters of puff pastry cases stuffed to the brim with creamy lobster and remaining seafood goodies. These I topped with puff pastry initials which I did unfortunately singe a tad. But everything was polished off rather sharpish so I don’t think anyone really minded.

The main event of the evening was the juicy Mr. Knibbs’ lamb, which is slashed, anointed with oil and then slow roasted for four hours on a bed of large sprigs of rosemary and unpeeled garlic cloves. The stunning woolly beast is served with gently sautéed cabbage and potatoes, Swedes and carrots all smashed together. The popular piquant sauce is capers, chicken stock, a large bunch of mint and red vinegar. Jamie is right, the shredded lamb is incredible and melt-in-the mouth and the vegetables aren't too bad either.

A purple-tastic meal indeed!

Nigella for breakfast

I have always been a huge fan of Nigella, her attitude to food and life seem to be very healthy and she brings a voluptuous vivacity to TV cookery shows. Though I do have some niggles about the latest show, there does seem to be a little too much of an entirely manufactured idyllic working mother lifestyle. Now I can’t claim to be a mother but I seem to have plenty of that work stuff and clearly I must be doing wrong as I would be sauntering around whisking aromatic chocolate croissants out of the oven for an impromptu breakfast every day. However undoubtedly her express culinary expertise helped me out considerably when I needed to produce a speedy supper for the strangely B’s (MC and E(D) are included in this collective despite them not being strictly B’s) and hopefully just about serve all the courses before MC was asleep! But I am still a little dubious about her new show, perhaps next time she’ll take a leaf out of the latest Jamie Oliver Kitchen show and concentrate on the fine cooking and less of the artificial made-for-TV way of life, I am sure Nigella has an extremely covetable existence but we don’t need to be reminded how much our real life differs from hers.

One idea that did catch my eye on her show what her potato cakes, and she used that stalwart of the store cupboard from my childhood – Smash. Though I have to admit it looked different from the last time I experienced those curious little moon rocks of dried potato, lumps that were often tricky to get out of the resultant mash potato. But when Nigella used it she poured it in a thin stream so clearly the consistency has altered in the several decades that have passed since I last experienced it.

Potato cakes with smoked salmon
by Nigella Lawson - from Nigella Express
Makes 30
Prep: less than 30 mins Cooking: less than 10 mins

For the potato cakes
3 free-range eggs
125ml/4½fl oz whole milk
2 spring onions, finely sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
60g/2¼oz instant mashed potato mix
40g/1½oz plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp lemon juice
For the topping
300g/10½oz smoked salmon
small bunch fresh dill

1. In a jug, whisk the eggs, milk, finely sliced spring onions and olive oil together.
2. Stir in the instant mashed potato mix, plain flour, baking powder and the lemon juice.
3. Heat a flat griddle and drop tablespoon-sized dollops of the mixture onto the hot griddle.
4. Cook for about 30 seconds a side, or until golden-brown and firm enough at the sides to flip.
5. Once you have made the pancakes, and they've cooled a little, tear off strips of smoked salmon and arrange the small slices on each pancake.
6. Decorate each salmon-topped pancake with a tiny feather of dill.

I decided to finish my fluffy little puffed potato pancakes with generous dollops of pesto crème fraîche underneath the smoked salmon. Though one thing I forgot to take into account that Nigella’s recipes generally always feed a large hungry village so even scaling down the recipe meant that we were rather potato pancaked out very quickly. Maybe next time I'll use the same quantities but for a larger and perhaps hungrier crowd!

Piggy back-up

It’s not just me that intends to spend best part of the day tomorrow hanging around a television studio touting my tart as H has slightly reluctantly agreed to accompany me. But she’s really not crazy about cooking the requisite dish to sit in front of. So I promised that I would produce a second dish from my beloved piggy book – Pork & Sons. After making my star attraction of the black pudding, apple and potato tart I thought I’d whip up a quick quiche also. I hadn’t made this particular quiche before it was a huge relief how simple this was. First of all no blind baking – what a result! But in the usual style of Pork & Sons there was an abundance of ingredients. I thought I used a deeper quiche tin than his and wondered if the filling would seem a tad scant. But on the contrary there was lashing of egg and cream filling leftover and that’s before I added the fourth egg. Also I was probably a little too generous with pouring the eggy mixture into the flan case and the filling ballooned so excessively I wondered how on earth I would transport it to the film studios. Fortunately after a night to cool it settled to a more acceptable level and I was able to carry it safely and intact to the filming.

Quiche with two kinds of ham
Stéphane Reynaud's Pork & Sons - serves 6

4 eggs
150ml double cream
500ml milk
350g shortcrust pastry
Plain flour, for dusting
175g jambon de Paris or other unsmoked ham diced
150g mature Comté or Gruyère, diced
3 slices or prosciutto or other dry-cure ham, cut into thin strips
50g shelled walnuts, chopped

- Preheat oven to 180c
- Beat the eggs with the cream and milk in a bowl
- Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use to line a 23 cm (9") flan tin
- Trim the edge, prick the base and place on a baking sheet
- Add the diced ham, cheese, prosciutto and walnuts
- Pour in the egg mixture and bake for 30 minutes, or until the mixture is just set

Having this quiche perched on a cake stand in front of H and I wafting over its delightful porky scent made us determined to cut a wedge out carefully out to display the walnut and hammy filling. And also it would be rude not to try a bit for size and it was surprisingly delicious! Only surprising because it had been lurking around a warm studio all day but actually it seems to have done it good. I think that often quiche is served too cold, frequently straight from the fridge and the eggy mixture that D is so very suspicious of doesn't have chance to warm up and complement the other fillings. I had intended on leaving my two porky dishes in the studio for the next filming session but even though I thought sadly the black pudding, apple and potato tart wasn't worth retrieving as it really needs to be eaten directly from the oven the quiche would be quite happy warm or eaten at room temperature so I bundled it up back for its return journey. The touch of walnut was an unexpected bonus and the two hams and the still cubed Gruyère certainly made the tart sing. The next day I heated up a slice again and was pleased to see that the Gruyère melted just slightly and made it taste even more wonderful. Well done Stéphane, you've done it again!

Pigging out on pork

I’ve been asked to choose another favourite cookbook and whip up a tasty dish from one of the recipes within for another piece on Channel five’s Cooking the Books. And a book that that totally captured my imagination the moment it turned up on my desk and immersed me in its pink porkiness was Pork & Sons by Stéphane Reynaud, the French purveyor of all things pig. I decided to make the black pudding, apple, potato and fennel tart as I thought it would look tasty on television, travel well to the studio and I know from previous experience - is damn tasty!

Black pudding, apple, potato and fennel tart

Stéphane Reynaud's Pork & Sons - serves 6

3 shallots, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons crème fraîche
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
4 Charlotte or other waxy potatoes
2 eating apples
100g smoked lardons, rindless
400g black pudding
350g puff pastry dough, thawed if frozen
Plain flour for dusting
1/4 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 bunch of rocket, optional, torn into pieces

Mix together the shallots and crème fraîche in a bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Cook the potatoes in lightly salted boiling water for 15-20 minutes, until tender. Drain well, then cut into thin rounds. Preheat the grill.

Peel, core and slice the apple. Heat the remaining olive oil in a frying pan, add the apple slices and cook until they're just beginning to colour.

Spread out the lardons on a baking sheet and cook under the grill, turning once for 5-8 minutes, until tender. Meanwhile, remove the skin from the black pudding and cut into thin slices.

Preheat the oven to 180oC

Roll out the puff pastry dough on a lightly floured surface to a 25cm round and place on a baking sheet. Spread 2 tablespoons of the shallot cream evenly over the dough round. Sprinkle with the fennel and lardons, and then arrange alternate layers of black pudding, potato and apple slices on top. Cover with the remaining shallot cream. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Cover the tart with the rocket, if using, drizzle with olive oil and serve immediately.

Despite making it before I seemed to have totally forgotten how much preparation it requires as potato and apples have to be thinly sliced and pre cooked and the lardons had to be sautéed also before the tart can be constructed for the for baking in the oven. And the other thing I’d forgot from following a Pork & Sons recipe is that the quantities shown are extremely generous, I didn’t even bother with the fennel but there was barely room for all the delicious layers of apples, potatoes, smoky lardons and the leeky crème fraîche. But I was pleased with the result; obviously I made a few tweaks as generally I feel a recipe is more a suggestion and some ideas to get the creative juices running but not a blueprint to adhere to slavishly. This time I omitted the fennel, substituted the shallots for leeks and didn’t peel the Red Delicious apples as I thought the red skin would add an extra burst of colour to the finished dish. I think not peeling the apples also prevented the slices getting too soggy in the sautéing process.

I was pretty delighted with the tart as I think the finished dish on the plate really matched the dish on the page, if that was my main objective. And actually is a bit of a stunner really!

It's a shame that the next day my tart got bumped for a slightly depressed poppy seed topped tart but the cook was the mother of a friend of the show so I was usurped. Never mind, the tart looked fabulous anyhow and if it didn't get its five minutes of fame it attracted a lot of admiring glances!

I'm in love with a food romance

Ever since discovering the Tamasin Day Lewis’ "West of Ireland Summers" cookbook serendipitously whilst in Ireland celebrating H’s wedding I have been a fan of her writing. And when I knew that a new one – “Where shall we go for dinner?” was appearing on the horizon, I made sure I added it to my wish list. I didn’t know what to expect as The Kitchen Bible and Kitchen Classics had been thorough tomes and I was intrigued how she would follow this up. And this is how she did it with a very personal foodie narrative winkling out some incredible edible experiences in Europe, meeting a wonderful American cheese emporium owner and exploring their respective gastronomic worlds together both sides of the Atlantic. Tamasin also explains her early evolution into a foodie and I have to admit I have never coveted someone’s relatives so much before. She evocatively described her early years with her Irish poet father and his friends, the extraordinarily poignant last weeks of her father’s life in the rambling home of her godmother Elizabeth Jane Howard who was married to the inveterate alcoholic Kingsley Amis. After her father’s death she asked King’s College Cambridge to hold one of the first places they offered to women and live with her second cousin in London and learns to cook via osmosis from his dress designer first wife who produced miraculous Sunday lunches for their many glamorous friends like Manolo Blahnik and Katherine Hamnett.

At the end of each chapter the essence of the culinary adventures described are captured in a handful in a few perfect recipes - the Risotto Balsamico sounds so decadent and unusual, the White Truffle Pasta fabulously extravagant and the Quiche Lorraine with a Crisp Bacon Top a nice twist on a classic.

The book is subtitled “A food romance” and it is very apt, a romance with good food and with the new man in her life and could possible be summed up by one of my favourite food quotes from Harriet Van Horne - "Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all."