Brunch for a summer's day

I love brunch. I think it's the slightly luxurious nature of it - that you have the time to spend late morning and early afternoon ingesting copious amounts of carbohydrate, and yet somehow it is OK because you're combining breakfast and lunch, so you're allowed to eat more than you normally would at either. Except I don't really do that, and end up having lunch a couple of hours later. I think it's in the nature of brunch to fill you up horribly, but temporarily, and once all that sugar has left your system, you are ravenous again. Either that, or I am just a pig. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the latter is the case. 

A big stack of banana and blueberry pancakes is always good, but sometimes something a bit more nutritious is called for - in these cases, I usually make smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, and asparagus. The asparagus is English (still around...must be global warming), and I griddled it instead of boiling it, which gave it a nice crispy outside. The smoked salmon is some of the better stuff you can buy and has some sort of pepper and juniper berry mixture on it. I debated between baking soda bread and making potato farls, and the latter won out because I have never made them before. They're literally just mashed potato, salt, flour and melted butter shaped into cakes and then pan-fried. The only problem I always have with pan-frying any form of cake like this (fishcakes, falafel, carrot and coriander cakes...) is that it is hard to get the inside cooked. I often end up with a lovely golden exterior, but the interior still undercooked. As a result, it was a bit like eating crispy mashed potato, but I actually think it works quite well with the smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.

For afterwards, a summer fruit salad. Baked apricots (with honey and orange flower water), blueberries, raspberries, some superb Spanish cherries, and vanilla sugar. Baking the apricots really made a difference - it's a delicious combination and one I recommend.

Food for when the sun comes out

Predominantly green, with a splash of colour. That seems to be a good rule for food that is still appetising even in the freak heatwave we are blessed with at the moment. I find myself deciding what to eat by choosing what is most colourful at the market stall (I am a big fan of these little tomatoes, I think they're called Santa, which are not round like a cherry tomato but oblong, and come in yellow and red), adding a lot of herbs, some sort of carbohydrate (couscous is my favourite), maybe some milky cheese (feta or mozzarella): lunch. 

We have a field of fresh oregano growing in our herb garden, a huge basil plant on the shelf and a big bunch of coriander that I bought. Combined, they make a lovely salad, like this one I made earlier:

It's just cooked lentils, tossed while warm with sliced chicory, grilled yellow peppers, torn oregano leaves, halved cherry tomatoes, little balls of mozzarella (torn in half), pumpkin seeds, and a dressing - a bunch of coriander, a handful of basil, the juice of a lime, a garlic clove and some olive oil blitzed in a blender. Sounds an odd combination, but I was surprised to find it works rather well - filling, flavoursome and summery. I think it would also work well with cannellini or butter beans.

Steak salad, and a rhubarb and cardamom tart

I'm not really much of a carnivore, and I would never order steak in a restaurant - I find it far too predictable. Satisfying primal, yes, tearing at a slab of steaming flesh with my teeth, but this doesn't really do that much for me. I think it has something to do with being female; my instinct is perhaps more for gathering than for hunting. I always think, whenever customers order steak and chips at the restaurant where I work, why didn't you choose the swordfish with guacamole or the truffle risotto? Obviously, this is just a personal thing, because I have a desire to try anything and everything, and there's only so many variations one can find on a good steak. 

So when I find myself buying steak for dinner, it feels novel. In fact, I don't think I've ever cooked steak for myself. However, there was an exciting-sounding recipe in the Guardian magazine a few weeks ago that I wanted to try: a steak, mango and avocado salad. Seeing as there was a mango languishing in the fruit bowl and two avocados in the fridge, it seemed sensible. I am glad that said mango went into the salad: when I nibbled a piece (for quality control purposes, obviously), I came away with a mouth full of string. Not a fine specimen. It was literally like having pieces of dental floss stuck between my teeth, which I then had to get actual dental floss to remove. Unpleasant. 

Fruit-related dental hygiene issues aside, the salad was delicious. It sounds like an odd combination of ingredients, but they work together beautifully, and the dressing makes all the difference. Plus, I got to perform one of my absolute favourite cooking tasks of all time: heating up a griddle pan until smoking and slapping down a lovely piece of marinated steak on it (normally I would choose tuna, but beef is still good). The sizzling sound it makes has to be one of the best you will ever hear in the kitchen. I seem to have an odd knack for timing steaks exactly: I don't use a timer, but somehow instinctively always know when it is done to my liking. I like my steak (be it tuna or beef) seared on the outside and beautifully soft and pink in the middle (or blue, in the case of tuna). There's something beautiful about slicing it and laying it out in vibrant pink stripes atop a luscious verdant salad. Then, of course, eating it; the juices from the meat mix with the dressing and soften the salad leaves, and the whole thing becomes a mass of vibrant flavours. 

Another attempt to use up various ingredients lying around the house: a rhubarb tart. There are a couple of kilos of the stuff in the freezer from when my mum's colleague gave her a glut of rhubarb from his allotment. There is also a packet of feuilles de brik pastry in the fridge - a Middle Eastern fine pastry similar to filo but slightly more porous and less brittle. The sheets come in circles, so it was easy to just layer them, brushed with melted butter, into a tart tin and bake it blind for 10 minutes or so until crispy. I made a creme patisserie (the same recipe I used for the rhubarb millefeuille in the Masterchef cookbook, but infused with cardamom rather than vanilla), layered it on top of the pastry, and topped the whole thing with poached rhubarb flavoured with ginger (I wanted to use orange zest and juice, but lacked an orange). I suppose this is basically rhubarb and custard, on pastry. It was tasty. Next time I am going to use poached apricots instead of rhubarb, and maybe make individual mini tartlets, because they look prettier.

Cheddar and onion cornbread

I thought I'd share this with you because a) it is very tasty and b) it is possibly the easiest bread product you will ever make. I'm a big fan of the slow, lazy way of making bread, involving lots of kneading and proving, but sometimes only a home-baked loaf will do, and you only have an hour. Luckily, there are lots of breads out there that are not off limits. They often rely on a chemical reaction between buttermilk or yoghurt, and bicarbonate of soda, to make them rise, instead of yeast - soda bread is a good example, as is this corn bread. A blessing to the time-pressed, and just as good. They are often more crumbly and dense than bread that has risen slowly, better to eat with soup or as a sort of ploughman's lunch than for sandwiches. This, unfortunately, is quite dangerous - you end up breaking bits off to eat with pieces of cheese, and before you know it the whole loaf is gone. Oops. 

My only experience of corn bread until now was in New York, when as a picky 16-year old devoid of any gastronomic knowledge or curiosity, I was presented with a vast slab of it alongside a vast plate of chicken and chips. I was very confused - it looked like cake, tasted a bit like cake, and I couldn't really figure out what it was doing there. To be honest, I still can't figure it out.

But corn bread, I think, does have its place - particularly this version (which, by the way, is in no way redolent of cake). You can put whatever you like in the mixture - I used caramelised onions and cheddar, with a pinch of paprika, simply because I had onions and cheddar in the fridge, but things like chorizo, mushrooms, herbs, bacon, red onions, goats cheese, etc. would also be nice. It has a crumbly texture just right for eating with a slab of cheese or a big bowl of soup.

Recipe: mix 125g cornmeal (or polenta) with 125g plain flour, 2tsp baking powder, 1tsp salt and 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda. Make a well in the middle and add 2 eggs, 1tbsp honey or brown sugar, and 150g buttermilk or natural yoghurt. Stir until combined. Add 1/2tsp paprika, a handful of grated cheddar, and a sliced onion which you've softened in a pan with some oil (reserve a little to sprinkle on top). Mix well and put into a tin - I used a 20cm square brownie tin, but any shallow tin would work, or you could even just spoon the mixture onto a baking tray, as it's quite thick. Sprinkle some more onion and grated cheddar over the top. Bake at 220C for 20 minutes. Devour while warm with some good cheese and ham. 

Marmalade Chelsea Buns

The Chelsea bun was apparently invented in the 18th century at the Bun House in Chelsea. I have a special affection for them because I live in a town home to a bakery famed for its Chelsea buns: Fitzbillies in Cambridge. For me, they tick all the boxes required for the perfect piece of confectionary: filling enough for that late-afternoon, pre-dinner hunger gap, squishy and fluffy in the middle yet crusty on the outside, sticky and delicious, and featuring cinnamon. I particularly relish the bit where the buns have stuck together during cooking and been separated from each other; it's doughy and soft as a feather. That said, my favourite bit is the middle, where all the sugar and fruit has concentrated together: I save that bit until last. They're a bit like those cinnamon swirl danish pastries: the fruity, sticky, spicy epicentre should always be the final mouthful.

Another Dan Lepard recipe, this one. (The more I bake his recipes, the more I am thankful that I am not his wife. I am sure I would actually be breaking the record for world's fattest woman if I was). It's a triumph: the marmalade means you don't need too much sugar and stops it being overly cloying. Really easy to make as well. I'm finding it hard not to keep going back to the tin and breaking more pieces off. Must wait until teatime...

Pasta with sausage, fennel and tomato sauce

Possibly the easiest pasta dish in the world that involves some modicum of preparation (I don't count things like stirring a jar of pesto into cooked pasta). It is also profoundly delicious, and this I think is largely due to the lovely Yorkshire sausages I used - get good quality ones for this. Italian sausages would be more authentic, so if you can find some nice ones use those. Take about 500g of sausages, take the meat out of the skins and crumble into a hot, non-stick pan. Fry, stirring and breaking up the meat, for a few minutes, adding a teaspoon or so of fennel seeds (or more if you love fennel seeds, which I do). Then add 2-3 crushed garlic cloves and fry for a couple more minutes. Add a generous glug of red or white wine (white is probably more summery), a can of chopped tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato puree and some chopped rosemary or thyme. Or any herb, really - oregano might be nice too. Simmer for 10-15 minutes until you have a lovely thick sauce (you might need to add some of the drained pasta water to loosen it a bit and ensure it coats the pasta). Stir through hot pasta - I used pappardelle for this, but any pasta would work really. It would also make a lovely filling for soft pillows of ravioli, but I had no time. Sprinkle with grated parmesan, black pepper, and torn basil/oregano leaves. Delicious.

Summer in a bowl

There must be some sort of chemical reaction that accounts for the immeasurable improvement that comes when you cook fresh apricots. They go from woolly and blandly peachy to fiery, flavoursome bundles of joy. These, simmered in a splash of orange juice with some star anise, cloves and orange flower water have been my breakfast for the last week. I intend to try them out on top of a tart filled with cardamom-infused creme patisserie, or on top of a sort of sticky-toffee-pudding type cake, made with lots of dates. Because they become so sharp and zesty when cooked, they need some sort of blandly sweet accompaniment. Not that they necessarily need any accompaniment - I've found myself eating them from the bowl with a spoon. Good with ice cream, too.

A biscuit is worth a thousand words

It was our Schools Dinner a week or so ago. That is, a lovely free dinner provided by college in the handsome surroundings of the SCR, and a chance to say goodbye to the tutors who have put up with us for the last three years. Obviously, it seemed appropriate to give some kind of gift. My gifts are always food-based, and I figured some nice biscuits would not go amiss - who doesn't like biscuits? I always think a home-made present is much nicer and has more soul than something from a shop, especially if it's taken some amount of effort to produce. I thought it might be nice to combine my twin passions, literature and food, in present form.

I turned to Ottolenghi's first cookbook for baking inspiration, as it is full of mouthwatering delights, and the only thing I have baked from there - a chocolate fudge cake - was absolutely divine. Fortuitously, I already had all the ingredients to bake both a batch of cranberry, oat and white chocolate cookies, and a batch of pistachio, orange and ginger biscotti. The cookies were straightforward, and the biscotti quite fun because I'd never made them before. Biscotti literally means "twice-baked" in Italian (just as biscuit means "twice-baked" in French) - you make the dough, roll it into a sausage, bake it for a short amount of time until just set, allow to cool, slice widthways into finger shapes and bake again until crunchy. I nibbled some of the remnants just to check the quality - delicious. I might make these again to have with my tea. It's always nice to have some form of biscuit to dip into tea.

I wrapped them in cellophane and tied it with red ribbon, and put a different label on each - all four labels had quotes from literature relating to food, so my Medieval tutor had something from Chaucer, my Shakespeare tutor something from The Winter's Tale, my tutor who has written a book on Virginia Woolf had, naturally, Ms Woolf, and my tutor who taught me the 17th and 18th century had a quotation from Richardson's Pamela. I thought they looked quite lovely and hopefully tasted good too. 

In praise of porridge

We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast. 
~ Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

He is right. I have always felt breakfast to be the best meal of the day, or at least I have since I discovered porridge. Although, really, it is odd that I even like porridge. Given that I hate milk and yoghurt and anything with a sort of unchewable consistency, porridge should really be something that I loathe and detest. However, it is something I would happily eat at every meal and look forward to every morning.
Admittedly, the idea of plain porridge with no adornment does make me feel a bit sad. My approach is to cram it full of lovely sugary (but in a good way) things so you end up with a bowl of something that feels more like a dessert than breakfast, but is still infinitely better for you than eating hideous processed cereal. I make it with half water and half milk, mainly because I can never be bothered to buy milk often enough to use entirely milk, and because it's less like having a lead brick in your stomach that way. I don't really measure anything, just sort of guess, and if it still looks a bit grainy add some more milk. There's something rather therapeutic about standing at the hob absent-mindedly stirring a steaming bowl of porridge, especially on a grey rainy day like today. It's the same calmness you get from stirring a risotto. I still eat it in the height of summer - it's filling, delicious and means you're not hungry until lunchtime.

So, some good porridge recipes. Firstly, pear and nutmeg. Grate massive amounts of nutmeg into the oats when you add the milk/water. Add a handful of sultanas. Cook the porridge, then cover with chopped ripe pear and lots of honey, and maybe some flaked almonds if you can be bothered.

Or, get some plums. This is a good one for underripe plums that you have a sneaking suspicion will never ripen enough to be nice to eat. Halve the plums and put in a baking dish. Sprinkle with rosewater, honey and a little bit of water (and maybe some brown sugar), cover with foil and bake at 170C for half an hour or so. You should have lots of crimson, rose-scented juice left in the dish to drizzle over the porridge. Another good plum recipe is to make a compote by quartering plums, putting in a pan with some orange juice and zest, a star anise, some cloves and a cinnamon stick. Simmer for 15 mins or so until the plums are soft, juicy and fragrant. Delicious.

Poached rhubarb: bake sticks of rhubarb in the oven with the juice of an orange, some orange zest and some sugar, until soft. This goes well with porridge into which you've stirred cinnamon and dried cranberries.

Banana and blueberry: good for using up overripe bananas. Cook the porridge with some cinnamon and maybe some chopped dried apricots. When it is nearly cooked, add a sliced banana. In a separate pan, heat a handful of blueberries with a drop of water until they burst and turn all juicy. Pour over the porridge.

Winter fruit compote: good for when there's not very much fresh fruit around. Put some halved dried apricots, prunes and figs in a pan with some sultanas, orange juice and zest, a star anise and a clove or two. Simmer for half an hour to an hour until the fruit is soft - you may have to keep adding more liquid as you want some nice syrupy juice left over to pour onto the porridge. This is even better if you add an orange, cut into segments. It's good in winter when the blood oranges start appearing.

Finally, my favourite at the moment: apricots (see the first photo of the post). A real treat when fresh apricots come into season round about now. I find them quite bland when eaten raw - sort of like poor impostors for peaches - but when cooked in this way they become something a little bit magical. Halve them, put in a baking dish and sprinkle with honey and orange flower water. Add some water, cover with foil and bake for 30-40 mins at 170C until soft and you have some nice syrup in the dish. Alternatively, halve and put in a pan with some water, orange flower water and honey and simmer until soft - this takes less time. Serve with porridge into which you've put sultanas, chopped dates and lots of cinnamon. Truly delicious. 

Cranberry and oat loaf

Baked from a recipe by Dan Lepard, baking guru extraordinaire, in the Guardian magazine a couple of weeks ago. I love baking bread, though it is usually something I decide to do once pre-lunch hunger approaches, and seeing as it usually takes a good few hours to sort out all the kneading, proving and baking, I invariably have to wait until tomorrow's lunchtime to enjoy it. In future I resolve to become more organised and start baking first thing in the morning. I have a feeling this is not likely to happen anytime soon, however. Still, there are few things more satisfying than taking a home-baked loaf out of the oven. I've been eating this one with some Sussex Gold blue cheese that I bought at the Real Food Festival, some slices of Cox Orange Pippin apple, and today with some leftover venison carpaccio and Fortnum & Mason game relish. It would also be nice toasted and buttered for breakfast. Next endeavour will probably be rye bread, to eat with smoked salmon.

A monumental Masterchef menu

Finally the time had come to cook something from the Masterchef cookbook. Three things, in fact. After a leisurely hour spent poring over the truly delicious delights within its hallowed pages, I settled on three courses from the cookbook of champions. And it was a tough decision - starters like tian of crab with coriander oil, Dorset apple soup with walnut scones, goats cheese fritters with apple salsa, smoked mozzarella ravioli with tomato cream, Roquefort cheesecake with roasted tomatoes...kept vying for my attention, as did multiple main courses and a plethora of inviting desserts. 

Eventually I decided on a venison carpaccio for a starter, because it is pretty easy to do, and because I had never tried fillet of venison before and imagined it would be beautiful. I love rare, or even raw, meat: somehow I feel like you are closer to obtaining the natural flavour of the animal, and therefore it can only be better than cooked meat. The texture is also much nicer; silky smooth and less chewy and grainy than cooked meat. There is also something truly beautiful about slices of rare fillet, whether it's beef, veal or venison: that seared crust on the outside with beautiful red softness in the middle is stunning. I asked for the fillet at the butchers, expected to be answered with a no, and instead they brought one out from the freezer (I have learned of late that it is always worth asking at the butchers, as they have so much frozen or behind the counter that isn't on display). It was a beautiful piece of meat. I rubbed it with dried thyme, salt, pepper and olive oil and seared it for about a minute in a very hot pan, then wrapped it up in the fridge. It was sliced thinly, went on a plate with some watercress, and a raspberry vinaigrette. This was just raspberries, pureed and sieved to remove the pips, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. It went incredibly well with the meat, and the watercress was peppery enough to stop it being over sweet. One of the most delicious things I have eaten in a while. And the best part is, there is a lot of meat left over. I will be eating venison sandwiches with Fortnums game relish for the next few days. As your typical student does, obviously.

For the main course we had sea bass. I obtained these beautiful specimens from the fishmonger a couple of weeks ago: they were four for £10, which is incredibly good value, considering their sheer beauty. They are quite large specimens and wonderfully fresh. The only downside being that I assumed they had been gutted, scaled and cleaned already. Oh, how wrong I was. I spent this morning scaling, gutting and filleting these lovely creatures. Gutting is not a pleasant process but at least it's fairly straightforward; scaling is stupidly messy, and I ended up covered in fish scales; and filleting was a definite learning curve, given that I had never done it before and did not own the appropriate knife. However, given all these factors, I think I did a pretty good job and I felt very proud afterwards. A bit like the time I inadvertently bought uncleaned squid, and had to do that myself too (the messiest thing I think I have ever done. My chopping board still bears vestiges of black ink). 

The sea bass fillets were pan fried and served with a rice pilau made with ras-el-hanout (Moroccan spice mixture that I love), raisins and almonds, with a tahini sauce (tahini paste, water, lemon juice, garlic, salt and parsley) and a carrot and onion salad (grated carrot, lemon juice, caramelized onion, Nigella seeds and mustard seeds). The whole combination sounds odd, but was one of the best things I have eaten in a while. I will definitely be making this one again. It's such a great mixture of unusual flavours and textures: the fish and rice are quite soft, but the carrot and almonds lovely and crunchy, and then the tahini and garlic is very rich, but the raisin cuts through it nicely. A genius of a recipe. I was also pleased with the way the fillets came out: I managed to get them perfectly cooked with a nice crispy skin, and once cooked they didn't look quite so mangled...

Beautiful, I think. The colours are wonderful.

Dessert is probably less worthy of a photo. In theory, it should have been wonderful. I made a rhubarb millefeuille, which consisted of layers of filo pastry, pastry cream, and poached rhubarb. I was very organised and made the creme patisserie this morning. I had never made it before, and it was quite therapeutic standing there stirring eggs, milk, vanilla and sugar over simmering water until it magically thickened to become that lovely creamy stuff that you get in the middle of French fruit tartlets. (On a tangent, I had an idea to use it in the future to fill tartlets made of filo pastry, but to flavour the creme first with cardamom, and put poached apricots and chopped pistachios on top. Will definitely be doing this soon, now apricots are in season). The rhubarb was poached and ready. I bought filo pastry from the Moroccan deli, and was ready to go. Unfortunately, when I unfurled it, it turned out not to be filo, but something slightly thicker, that didn't stick together like sheets of filo should, and didn't have that lovely melt-in-the-mouth texture. To be fair, the packaging was all in Arabic, so how was I to know?! Instead, it crisped up like a poppadum. So instead, my dessert looked like layers of poppadum, pastry cream and rhubarb. It tasted lovely, but I couldn't help thinking if I had had proper filo, the whole thing would have been elegant and beautiful. Oh well - another time perhaps. 

All in all, not a bad attempt at Masterchef goodness. I can't wait to try some more of the recipes.

The joys of summer

Nothing that will set the world on fire, but I thought the colours in this salad just looked too lovely not to photograph. I figured that forcing myself to eat the aforementioned garlicky carrot salad for several days in a row, despite not enjoying it at all, was not a very nice prospect and something that Epicurus would have been ashamed of (not to mention that the sheer power of the garlic in it was positively antisocial). So I am sad to say I threw it out (unusual, as I try never to throw any food away, and am normally successful), and made this instead. A good idea. It's just red, yellow and orange peppers roasted until black and skinned, then sliced and mixed with chickpeas, couscous, fresh basil and a handful of pumpkin seeds, and then some feta. Simple, but one of the most delicious things I have had in a while, and also nicely summery. 

I forget how much I love fresh basil until I buy a plant of it. I am normally more of a coriander person, but the smell of a fresh basil plant is enough to make me change my mind. It works really well with the peppers and feta. I think fresh oregano would work well too, which is lucky because we have ridiculous amounts of it growing in our herb garden at home. This summer I intend to make large quantities of home-made pesto...to go with my home-made pasta. I am already planning my herb collection for my room at university next year.

Well, my Finals are over...I need something trivial to think about. 

Not that fresh herbs are trivial, of course.

Some other recent gastronomic endeavours

I've had a couple more Ottolenghi moments recently. The above was a starter from his new book, Plenty. It consists of slices of butternut squash, covered with olive oil, cardamom and allspice and roasted until soft, and then sprinkled with lime juice, lime slices, and a lime, tahini and yoghurt dressing. Sounds a bizarre combination, but it does work, and is indeed a very refreshing way to start a meal, as Yotam himself remarks.

Another effort was the following Moroccan carrot salad:

To be honest, I wasn't a fan, but this is more down to my own silly mistakes - I undercooked the carrots, used an entire teaspoon of ground cloves when the recipe stated an eighth (I accidentally tipped the box and it all fell out into the pan), which gave it a horribly medicinal taste, and although I only used two crushed garlic cloves where he suggests three, the whole thing tasted horribly of overpowering, bitter, raw garlic. I don't like raw garlic in dishes...should probably have remembered this and cooked it first. It was OK, though, with some coriander and feta cheese...but I am glad I made it just for myself and not for guests! To be fair, I was trying to juggle this and baking two different types of biscuit at the same time, which probably meant I didn't give it the loving care it deserved.

A risotto: I haven't made one for a long time, and was having a bit of a craving at the weekend, so decided to make one for Jon, who - shockingly - has never had risotto. Clearly the pressure was on to make it a good one. He balked at the price of dried porcini mushrooms, though I insisted that they make the final dish so much better and I swear by them, so instead I just used normal mushrooms, sauteed until their watery juices had evaporated, with lots of fresh thyme. I then put in onion and garlic, sauteed it until soft, added the rice, some butter, a splash of wine, and the stock (chicken) a bit at a time. I stirred in some creme fraiche at the end, which I don't normally do, but it brought the whole thing together and was lovely. I fried some chopped bacon until crispy, and stirred it in right at the end so it retained its crunch. Finally, lots more fresh thyme and some black pepper went in, along with some dried parsley. Truly delicious, though normally I would soak some porcini in hot water, chop them up and add them halfway through cooking, using the soaking water as well as stock. Not that this needed improving - it had a really wonderful depth of flavour. I normally use fresh parsley, but fresh thyme was definitely a better idea.

Les petits coquelets

I suppose it could be considered slightly morbid to think of these little poussins as cute. There is something rather sweet about the French name, "coquelet". I have been wanting to cook with them for a while now, but have only ever seen a couple on display at the organic butchers in the Covered Market, and I have usually needed at least four. However, when I enquired yesterday it turns out they have a lot frozen, and I ended up with five little baby chickens in a bag. I intended to cook something meaty for dinner, but it was far too summery for beef or lamb (despite my recent yearning to make a tagine). Poussin seemed just right - summery like chicken, but not as overwhelming as a huge roast chicken.  I always think it is much nicer to present people with a whole animal on a plate: that's why I love cooking pigeon, partridge, whole fish with the heads left on. It looks more impressive and feels much more generous, somehow. Plus there is the fun of picking your own little carcass, if you are a manic carnivore like some of my friends. 

Some friends and I are in the process of planning a trip to the Middle East this summer. In the spirit of this, I decided to do a Middle-Eastern themed poussin dish. I adapted a recipe from Claudia Roden's Arabesque, my Middle Eastern cookery Bible. So, I made some couscous, stirred in some orange blossom water (sounds odd, but gives a wonderfully alluring fragrance to the dish), raisins, pistachios, chopped almonds, cinnamon and olive oil, and stuffed the poussins with some of it. I covered them with a mixture of olive oil, cinnamon, ginger, lemon and honey and put them in the oven at 200C for an hour or so, breast side down at first, turning them up for the last half hour. They came out of the oven beautifully burnished and golden, and the roasting juices were deliciously lemony drizzled over the rest of the couscous, which went on the side with some watercress - I figured the pepperiness of watercress would be a good match for the couscous, which was quite sweet.

Now I think about it, this whole meal was a medley of my food-related whims yesterday. I wanted to make pasta, having not made it for weeks - not since before the Finals panic set in. A little tip: making pasta in hot weather is tricky. Roll it out thinly and it turns sticky and is impossible to stuff, and even more impossible to prise off whatever you lay it on before you put it into the cooking pot. The result was that my ravioli was slightly thicker than usual. I have to say, though, that I think it was my favourite yet. I found three beautiful red peppers at the market yesterday for a pound. They went under the grill until black, and I then peeled off the skin and cut them into little pieces with scissors, holding them over a bowl so as not to lose any of the beautiful sweet and sharp juice. I then crumbled in some goats' cheese and stirred it all together so that the cheese melted into the hot peppers and formed a paste. Some black pepper, and this went into the middle of the ravioli. The garnish was a very rustic home-made pesto: a basil plant in the blender with a trickle of olive oil, some grated parmesan and some pine nuts. 

It looks somewhat anaemic in that photo for some reason, but I was very impressed with the way it tasted, and will definitely be making it again. Just after I had blitzed the pasta dough in the blender it occurred to me that putting some basil leaves in first would have been a nice idea, to turn the pasta green and make it taste even more basilly. Next time, I think.

Pancakes and a caponata

Two old bananas in the fruit bowl, looking sadly at me and urging me to turn them into something wonderful. I suppose it is good that I view overripe bananas as something to get excited about because of their potential, rather than simply something else to go in the bin. Having feasted on banana cake for as long as I can remember since I got back to Oxford, I couldn't face another just yet (especially as I am still gobbling the brownies that Mother McCausland sent me, with gusto). So out came my other recipe for past-edible bananas: pancakes. 

I love the combination of banana and blueberries, particularly when it involves sliced banana stirred into hot porridge and covered in burst blueberries. It works very well in pancake form too: just add mashed bananas to a mixture of plain flour, a teaspoon baking powder, enough milk to get the desired consistency, an egg, a spoonful or two of melted butter, a pinch (or more in my case, as I love it) cinnamon and the zest of an orange, a handful of blueberries, and whisk it all with an electric whisk (my hand whisk has broken...must remember to get a new one). Meanwhile, put some more blueberries in a pan with a splash of water and heat until burst and juicy and a sauce-like consistency - you may have to let some of the water boil off. Cook the pancakes in batches in lots of melted butter and put into the oven to keep warm, then stack up, pour over the blueberry sauce and relish. Some toasted flaked almonds would be nice on top for some texture, but by that point I wanted to eat. I love fluffy American-style pancakes as opposed to papery French crepes, especially in the morning, and the banana makes them just the right texture. Delicious.

I have also been living off this for the past week during my Finals:

I made it last week and luckily it's one of those recipes that improves in the fridge: a Sicilian caponata. I used Nigel Slater's recipe from his latest book, Tender (a great book if you're a vegetable fan), and it's better than the recipe I usually use. Caponata is an Italian aubergine stew with an intriguing sweet and sour flavour, made by stewing chopped aubergine, tomatoes, red wine vinegar, capers, olives, raisins, onions and red pepper (not traditional I don't think, but Nigel uses it, so who am I to argue?). It is truly delicious, one of those recipes that sounds a bit weird but when you try it, all is revealed. Lovely with M&S green olive ciabatta rolls (which have red chilli in, and give the whole thing a nice kick) or couscous (again, unorthodox, but it soaks up the lovely sauce nicely). I urge you all to make it.

A curiously coincidental delivery - and chocolate heaven

Do you remember (avid readers that you all are, no doubt) my mention in my Real Food Festival post about the best brownies in the world? They come from this lovely little business, Gower Cottage Brownies. I gather that it is run by a very cheery looking lady called Kate who set up a catering business, and whose brownies proved so popular that she started doing mail order. They indeed have had rave reviews from all the serious names in the food media world, and I was very impressed when I sampled a bite at the festival. My mum was also impressed by the fact that they do courier service so the fresh brownies arrive the next day, and I remember her picking up a leaflet for future reference. Clearly the "future" was not so future, as a box arrived in my pigeon hole this morning. 

Nothing like some chocolatey goodness to do away with exam stress - apparently I will need the calories, according to mum. Anyway, I had two today with a cup of tea and they truly are wonderful - I like brownies to be slightly crisp on the outside and squidgy in the middle, and these are perfect. How she achieves it with only about six ingredients I do not know, but points for the fact that they are preservative-free - I hate buying shop-made cakes because of all the rubbish that goes into them and makes them slightly hard and synthetic. Even the Fortnum and Mason morello cherry and valrhona chocolate cake I had yesterday (from the hamper that, again, mum got me - I sound so spoilt now...) was not as good as these brownies, and I think it's all down to the brownies being almost just-baked and not soullessly shrink-wrapped. They were just so good. I would highly recommend ordering a box - I think they're about £16 and that might include courier service, I'm not sure. More expensive than making your own, but the packaging is lovely and they'd make a nice gift to surprise someone.

I am salivating a bit now.

And the odd thing is, this morning I spent my exam writing an essay about John Gower, the medieval poet who wrote the Confessio Amantis. Two Gowers in one day. I definitely preferred the chocolate version.

Delights from the Real Food Festival

So, as mentioned previously, last weekend I went to the Real Food Festival at Earl's Court in London. I'd been last year too and enjoyed it so much that I was determined to go back, despite being mid-Finals panic. My mum and I last year ended up struggling back with about fifty bags packed full of everything you could possibly imagine, from granola to chorizo to rhubarb cordial to mozzarella. This time, we came prepared: I took a suitcase on wheels. And a good job, too - several kilos of veal is not easy to lug back through London to Oxford. 

We were greeted, upon entry, by a pen of sleeping piglets. I would be lying if I admitted that the adorable baby animals weren't part of my reason for wanting to go back to the Festival. There was also a Jersey cow and its calf (above), a sheep show, some chickens and some lambs (which were being fed when I walked past, and so surrounded by children that it was impossible to get a proper look at them). Some might argue that it is odd cooing over animals at a food festival, when you are then going to go off and eat things made from them, but I think the opposite is true: too many people in this country are totally out of touch with where their meat comes from. If you buy it in a vacuum pack in the supermarket, you have no idea where the animal was from, or even which bit of the animal the meat is from, sometimes. It might sound odd, but I quite like seeing the deer hanging up outside the covered market in Oxford, or buying a chicken from the butcher and getting him to joint it for me: if an animal has died to be on your plate, the least you can do is pay it the respect it deserves and make sure it came from somewhere with high standards of welfare. People who shove a packet of skinless, boneless chicken breasts into their supermarket trolley (and I am not criticising, because that is me sometimes when out of time/the market is shut, and not everyone is lucky enough to have access to a butcher) probably don't think about where it came from or what it took to get it there, and I think that is important. I also think we eat far too much meat, as a nation, with the result that we are driven to battery farm and cut welfare corners in order to supply the demand...but that is another post's worth.

There were some wonderful meat products at the Festival - I tried some amazing venison sausages, some excellent chorizo, the aforementioned veal, and saw several stalls proffering inviting displays of charcuterie. I ended up with the veal and some cooking chorizo, which was better than a lot of chorizo I have tasted, and I look forward to making something with it. 

Other than that, there were stalls offering everything under the sun. The problem was finding enough stomach room to try it all: it's a bit weird going from one stall and eating a piece of cheese to another and eating a cupcake or some ice cream. Highlights include some excellent Sussex blue cheese, wonderful Italian blood orange sorbet, Caribbean spice cake, duck and pear sausages, white pomegranate tea, pistachio chocolate, sloe gin, several glittering cupcakes, the best chocolate brownies in the world ever, perhaps...the list goes on. I ended up with this:

Sussex blue cheese, veal, chorizo, honey, tea, and these funny fruit snack bars which are like cereal bars, but with no cereal: they just contain dried fruit and nuts that have been squashed into a bar. They're delicious and come in three flavours: apple and cinnamon, lemon and lime, and coconut and pineapple. They're called "pack tunch" and I think you can get them online. I don't normally eat cereal bars because they're mostly about 80% sugar and not at all healthy, but these were delicious and good for you too. The tea I had tried at last year's festival, and was a big fan of the White Pear flavour, so much so that I bought a whole box, plus sample boxes of five others, including sweet peach and ginger, lavendar Earl Grey, and Bombay Chai. 

In all honesty, I'm not sure why I didn't buy more. It is a bit of an overwhelming experience though: hundreds of stalls all offering you delightful things to try, plus other stalls selling proper cooked food (we had a nice Moroccan harissa chicken flatbread, which was MUCH spicier than last year when we ate the same thing, and had our noses and eyes watering - luckily with our VIP tickets we were entitled to a free glass of COLD cider!), cookery demonstrations, taste tests...we were there for four hours, but I could easily have stayed for another two at least. I would love to go back, and can't wait for next year. There is so much wonderful produce out there that you would never ever discover if it weren't for the festival, and most of it is so much better than you'll ever find in the shops. I am just going to savour my veal, chorizo and cheese (not all together) for as long as possible, until next May...

Tonight's dinner was a salad of couscous, spring onion, prawns, coriander, sweet chilli sauce, lime juice and diced Alphonso mango - I have some that are overripe now and need eating more quickly than I can manage (shocking, I know). I know sweet chilli and lime are not really very orthodox with couscous (it was an experiment I carried out when making couscous for a barbecue), but the whole thing was incredibly delicious and I am amazed with my culinary skill (because obviously it took a lot of skill to fry some prawns, and stir the other ingredients into the couscous...). Will be making this one again. Maybe tomorrow, as I still have 3 mangoes to eat. Then I'm going to Cowley to buy another box of 12...

Veal casserole and grilled pineapple

I went to the Real Food Festival at Earl's Court last weekend (more on that in a later post), and was quickly enticed by a stall proffering pretty much every cut of veal you can imagine. It was run by Bocaddon Farm Veal, who sell welfare-friendly veal from a farm in South-East Cornwall. They had an offer on whereby if you spent £20 you got some free veal sausages, and I was drawn in. I have never seen so much veal before - I think my butchers do sell a variety of cuts, but I haven't seen them on display. It looked so fresh and colourful that I thought it would be a good investment. I did get some osso bucco (veal shin) from the organic butchers a while back, when it was on offer, and cooked it Italian-style with a saffron risotto. It was one of the best things I have ever cooked, rich and melting and incredibly satisfying, with that lovely bone marrow saved until the end. That was my first introduction to rose veal, and remembering it inspired me to end up with two packs of veal casserole, some Sicilian-style veal sausages, some veal mince and some veal and wild garlic burgers. When rose veal tastes so lovely, I don't understand why you'd want the hideously anaemic stuff from the continent. I once ate white veal in a brasserie in Paris before I fully understood how they get it so white, and I still feel guilty about it today. It makes me very glad that there are people out there determined to prove that welfare-friendly veal can be just as good - perhaps even better, because I always think a guilty conscience leaves a bad taste in your mouth (asparagus from Peru, anyone? Oh no, that bad taste might just be because I don't like asparagus...I'd forgotten already).  

I had never casseroled veal before, nor does it seem to be a particular popular thing to do - I quickly had a look on the internet for inspiration, but there are very few veal casserole recipes around. So I decided to make up my own, using my osso bucco recipe as a basic idea. 

I browned the veal (about 800g, I think), added two carrots, two celery sticks, an onion and some garlic, finely chopped, sauteed it for a few minutes, poured in a glass of white wine and some chopped tomatoes (one tin), added a sprig of rosemary and two bay leaves, and poured over enough vegetable stock to cover the meat (I suppose in a restaurant you'd use veal stock, but it is ridiculously fiddly to make, and I thought chicken might overpower it a bit - I really wanted it to taste more of veal than anything else). It then cooked for two and a half hours, and I took the lid off the pan for the last half hour. It reduced perfectly - I didn't even have to boil the sauce. I served it on sliced firm polenta with a sprinkling of gremolata. My reasoning was that gremolata (chopped parsley, garlic and lemon zest) is the perfect finishing touch to osso bucco, so why not to a casserole with the same elements as osso bucco? It was perfect - the sauce was rich and full of flavour, the veal was perfectly tender and the gremolata gave it a nice freshness.

For dessert we had grilled pineapple with a caramel, lime and vanilla syrup. The syrup was water, dark brown sugar, lime zest and a vanilla pod, boiled until thick, and poured over slices of pineapple that had been sprinkled with brown sugar and put under the grill. I figured we'd want something fruit-based after a casserole. With vanilla ice cream and some sprinkled desiccated coconut, it was a good idea.

Banana, coconut and cardamom cake

This is GOOD. I think the banana and blueberry one was maybe a bit better just because it has blueberries in it, but I put some desiccated coconut and some crushed cardamom seeds in the mixture yesterday and ended up with this. And it is very very nice. 

Recipe:

Mix 100g self-raising flour with 75g wholemeal self-raising flour and a teaspoon baking powder. Rub in 40g butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs (I just put it all in a blender). Add 50g dark brown sugar, about 6 (or more if you like) cardamom pods (remove the black seeds and crush them using a pestle and mortar - discard the husks), and a sprinkling of desiccated coconut (I didn't measure it, just threw some in). Mash 2-3 very ripe bananas (mine were almost black) with about 60ml milk, and stir into the dry mixture - add more milk if it looks too dry. Put into a loaf tin, sprinkle more coconut on top, and bake at 180C for 40 minutes.

And then DEVOUR with a cup of tea. Life will seem a lot happier.

A sacrilegious revelation

Tonight for dinner I had scrambled duck eggs on toast with new season English asparagus. And I realised something that I have suspected for quite a while now but not really dared to conclude...I don't actually like asparagus. Which is a bit of a revelation, seeing as I take pride in liking most seasonal English food (rhubarb, for example, and quinces,  and gooseberries) and getting very excited when it comes into season. There is always such a huge fuss made over the start of the English asparagus season by chefs and food writers everywhere - all the papers are full of recipes for new asparagus at the moment, going on about how delicious our home-grown specimens are in comparison to those flown over from Peru. So naturally I got excited too, and went and bought some.

And realised I don't like it. Now I come to think of it, I also really do not like purple sprouting broccoli, another seasonal English food that people make such a fuss over. Both asparagus and purple sprouting taste horribly bitter to me and actually put me off my food. I don't mind asparagus with parma ham or cheese, because the saltiness and the flavour of the ham detracts from the bitterness. But I have never actually eaten purple sprouting and enjoyed it - in fact, I often end up throwing it away and feeling sick. I know this is probably a shocking revelation coming from someone who is obsessed with food and will eat anything, and loves seasonal food crazes (Alphonso mangoes, for example)...

Maybe there's some sort of chemical in them that I don't like? Apparently coriander has something in that means people either love it or really hate it because it tastes bitter to them. Perhaps it's the same with me and asparagus...

I feel better now that I have reached this conclusion...and will no longer be forcing myself to buy gluts of asparagus only to shove it down my throat without chewing and then eat some chocolate to get rid of the taste. My duck eggs were very nice on their own...I don't think I'll be tainting them with those green spears any more. Despite duck eggs and asparagus being a classic Great British Menu combination.