Ragu of hare with red wine and cocoa

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand? ~ Macbeth


I had only come across hare in a culinary context once before I attempted this classic Italian dish. My housemate last year fancied trying his hand at jugged hare (which, if you are unaware, means cooking the hare in its own blood). Fortunately, he asked the butcher to do all the cutting and jointing for him. So when I entered our communal kitchen to find blood spattered everywhere (we later found some inside the kettle), I was more than a little confused, and was told that apparently the butcher hadn't cut it into enough pieces. He stood there, gore-stained knife in hand, hacking away at a deep red carcass and looking decidedly sheepish. To this day I am unsure if perhaps the hare story was a clever ruse to cover for some sort of kitchen-based murder.



In 2006, a UKTV Food survey of 2021 people found that 70% of people stated that they would refused to eat jugged hare if it were served at the house of a friend or relative. Although the idea doesn't bother me in the slightest (seriously, people, man up - it's basically the same as eating a rare steak), I settled on a slightly less gory way of cooking this wonderful animal, in case my four dinner guests comprised those people who object to the idea - braising the joints in a mixture of red wine, cocoa, bacon, vegetables and aromatics (juniper, bay, thyme), and serving it with pasta. This hare ragu is served throughout Italy with pappardelle; thick, wide strips of pasta that hold the rich sauce perfectly. 


I'd never tried hare before; I knew it was very different to rabbit, and much more like venison both in its appearance and flavour. I didn't realise quite how much larger than rabbit it is; the hare and its braising liquid could barely fit in my Le Creuset (and that, avid readers, is perhaps the most middle-class sentence you will ever find within this blog). Nor was I prepared for the sheer amount of blood that the meat seems to shed, even when it has already been jointed. I felt a little bit like Lady Macbeth, frantically scrubbing bright red blood from under my fingernails. 


That said, it's a magnificent animal. The meat has a fresh, glistening look about it, and a startling red colour that will satisfy any carnivore. The saddle of the hare is good roasted, which I'd quite like to try. However, the legs are best braised; because the hare is such a muscular animal with hardly any fat on it, roasting the leg joints would probably result in dry, tough meat.

This is a very straightforward dish, and one that doesn't require much attention. Marinate the hare joints overnight with crushed juniper berries, a bay leaf, thyme, a chopped onion, chopped carrots, leeks and celery, and olive oil. Then brown the joints in a casserole, remove and fry some streaky bacon until crisp, then add the vegetables and cook until softened. Pour in some red wine, a teaspoon of cocoa, and some tomato pureé, leave to bubble for a bit, then return the hare joints to the pan. Cover with water, put on a lid, and simmer for at least two hours. The cocoa is an interesting addition: the pairing of chocolate and venison is not that unusual, so I suppose it makes sense: it adds a depth to the sauce.


It depends on the age and toughness of your hare as to how long you'll need to cook it, but mine was perfect after just two hours. The meat fell off the bone in beautifully thick, deep russet strands, which I stirred back into the cooking liquid to make the ragu. It's hard to describe the taste of the meat, but it's incredibly strongly flavoured. In fact, the smell of it is almost unpleasantly strong, though the taste is excellent. If you like venison and don't object to gameyness, you'd probably like it. The sauce needs lots of grated parmesan to cut through the meaty richness, but what you'll end up with is an immensely satisfying - and unusual - bowl of pasta. I'd quite like to try cooking hare with some form of fruit; I think it needs sweetness to complement its dark, iron-rich meat. Watch this space.


Hare ragu (serves 6-8) (taken from Game: A Cookbook)

Place a hare, jointed, in a large bowl with a shredded bay leaf, the leaves from a sprig of thyme, 6 crushed juniper berries, 4 crushed cloves of garlic, a finely diced onion, 2 finely diced carrots, leeks and stalks of celery, and 2tbsp olive oil. Mix together and leave in the fridge to marinate overnight.

Heat some oil in a large casserole and brown the hare pieces all over. Remove to a plate and fry 100g smoked streaky bacon until it becomes crispy. Add the vegetables and any marinade juices. Add 500ml red wine and allow to evaporate partially, then add 1tbsp tomato pureé and 1tsp cocoa powder. Return the hare to the pan and cover with water. Season and bring to the boil; cover and simmer gently for at least two hours, or until the hare falls off the bone.

Remove the hare from the pot and let cool until you can handle it. Shred the meat from the bones and be careful not to snap off the ribs and put them in the sauce too (ouch). Mix the shredded meat back into the cooking liquid - you may need to add more water to loosen it, or arrowroot or cornflour to thicken it. Serve over cooked pasta with lots of grated parmesan.


For more wonderful game recipes, I'd strongly urge you to buy this recipe book. It's very rare that you find such an enticing selection of recipes in one place, and if you're a big game fan (that is, a big fan of game, not a fan of big game like rhino), you'll know that finding nice recipes can be a struggle, because the meat is so underrated in this country. Click the link...you know you want to.

Lychee sorbet


Lychees are everywhere at the moment. I always associate this wonderful little fruit with Christmas, I think because when I was younger they were always included in the obligatory fruit salad my mum made to follow Christmas dinner. They still have that hint of the exotic about them, perhaps because unlike a lot of other fruit, you can only get them at a certain time of the year. How perfect, that they start appearing just as your palate is bored of hearty winter stews and comforting flavours. Their sharp juiciness and hint of sweet perfume is just what you need on a gloomy January day, and, along with rhubarb, their colour can't help but cheer you up a little bit. Their texture is also immensely satisfying; despite them often being used for children in Halloween games to replicate eyeballs, I still love the smooth, slippery flesh with its translucent and sometimes slightly pink hue. The other day I spied a two-kilo box of lychees at the greengrocers' for £4. I can't resist fruit in a box; I think it's the sense of abundance and plenty that it carries with it. Perhaps that's why I love alphonso mangoes so much. There's something very satisfying about carting home a whole box of fruit, knowing that your vitamin supply is well and truly secured for the next week or so. Needless to say, I bought the box without hesitating.

 

However, even I - fruit addict that I am - cannot eat that many lychees without help. The problem with lychees is that they tend to go off quite quickly, and once one turns mouldy, the entire batch swiftly follows (as I found out to my dismay a few weeks ago). I did a quick google for lychee recipes, but there are surprisingly few, perhaps because it is a fruit that is pretty perfect raw and unadulterated. Also, those fiddly stones make cooking with them a bit of a faff. 


I remember eating a delicious lychee sorbet at G&Ds ice cream café a couple of summers ago, and decided to replicate it. I wanted something that would capture the delicate perfume of the fruit without confusing it; a sorbet consisting of just water, lychees, sugar and a squeeze of lime juice seemed a good solution. However, I reckon an ice cream made with lychees and coconut milk would be amazing too - lychees have an affinity with both lime and coconut, probably because they grow in similar regions. I might have to try that at some point...perhaps I will go and get another box tomorrow.

Lychee sorbet recipe:

Peel 600g lychees and put them in a pan with 300ml water and 100g white sugar. Bring to the boil until the sugar has dissolved, and then turn off the heat and allow to cool. When cool, de-stone the lychees, add 2tbsp lime juice (or more, or less, to taste), and blitz the whole lot in a blender. Then just churn in an ice-cream maker to set, place in the freezer to firm up, and garnish with desiccated coconut and lime zest when ready to serve - and perhaps a few fresh lychees, if (like me) you're desperate to use them up.

Where to eat in Oxford

[Note: this page was created in 2011. While I can verify, after recent trips to Oxford, that many of the recommendations still stand, it's always worth checking current reviews and menus before you visit these places!]

I created this list when I lived in Oxford as a response to the constant stream of people who would always ask me, "Oh, so where is good to eat in Oxford, then?" Now, it's not that I could ever get bored of discussing food, but rattling off the same litany of restaurants time and time again did get a little bit tedious, particularly as I knew they would forget all the names and locations straight away, and carry on eating at Pizza Express for the rest of their student days. So I decided to just direct them here. These are, in my opinion, some of the best places to eat in Oxford. I've attempted to vaguely group them by cuisine.

La Cucina - 39-40 St Clements Street. Probably my favourite Italian since Dante. The interior is relaxed and cosy, the staff are great and the food is excellent. It's not particularly expensive - no more so than your average chain Italian - but the dishes are better and more inventive. They do a lovely pasta with duck sauce (as well as classics like bolognaise and carbonara), great pizza (the goat's cheese and roasted vegetable is really good, as is the parmesan and parma ham with rocket), and a really good range of starters - the goat's cheese salad with roast pepper and balsamic is delicious, and the baked mushrooms stuffed with smoked cheese are sublime. There are also a good range of antipasti and breads to choose from (the foccaccia is really good). My favourite thing about the restaurant is that, if you sit in the back room, you can watch them making pizza in the open kitchen. It really does feel like a family-run trattoria in the heart of Italy.

Marios - 103 Cowley Road. A bit of an Oxford institution. If you haven't been, you haven't enjoyed probably the best pizza outside Italy. It's a cosy little place, run by Italians, with a proper pizza oven, and you can tell. What I particularly love about Marios pizzas is how generous they are with their toppings. I was once outraged when, upon ordering a leek, roasted vegetable and blue cheese pizza in an Italian chain restaurant, I was presented with a small piece of dough topped with a thin layer of tomato sauce, three blobs of cheese, and three pieces of dried up leek. The mark up on pizza in these restaurants is about 800%, and it's not as if leeks are going to break the bank. It's similar with a lot of chain restaurants - they're just so stingy with their toppings. Not so with Marios. When you order, for example, the 'Pizza Mario', ten minutes later a gigantic flying saucer of cheese and tomato will appear in front of you, groaning under the weight of spicy sausage, ham, artichokes, olives and anchovies. You're given proper pizza knives to eat it with, and it's probably about five times the size of your head. This is how pizza should be. Another absolute gem is the pizza topped with bresaola (cured beef) and gorgonzola. Sounds a bit of an odd combination, but it is incredible. Mind you, they're all good, and you can make your own topping if you don't fancy a combination on the (extensive) menu. As well as that, they do very good pasta (spaghetti with clams is delicious) and selections of cheese and meat antipasti. But to be honest, you won't need them - it's all about the pizza. They also do takeaway.

Jamie's Italian - George Street. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of chain Italian restaurants (see above rant about stingy pizza toppings). But if you're going to go to one in Oxford, you could do a lot worse than Jamie's. It's big and bustling with a decent atmosphere helped by the open kitchen (which happened to have just produced a plate of luscious lemon meringue cheesecake as I walked in - a very effective advert for their dessert menu...see below...) and partitioned dining room, upstairs and down. The menu features some interesting dishes that you wouldn't find in your standard chain Italian: mushroom arancini appetisers, for example, or prosciutto with melon (a classic in Italy and one that I love, but that doesn't seem to make it over here much). I tried the lovely crab and fennel bruschetta, which is a far nicer idea than your average watery tomato version, featuring substantial chunks of sweet crab meat with crunchy wafer-thin fennel and a hint of chilli on rustic, flavoursome bread. They also offer big sharing boards or 'planks'  with a variety of breads, meats, cheeses and pickles, though I find the serving of them balanced on top of big tomato tins a bit gimmicky. Mains offer a good range of protein - fish stew, steak, Italian burgers, lobster, turkey Milanese - and salads with an Italian twist (the 'Superfood Salad' is served with a fennel blossom Sicilian harissa, for example). Points for featuring calves liver, a classic Venetian dish but one that you don't often find on chain menus here (are we too squeamish?) The pasta menu does offer a couple of interesting dishes - I enjoyed my rotolo of spinach, squash and ricotta with toasted breadcrumbs, which wasn't too dense or flabby as that sort of thing can sometimes be - but the rest aren't hugely exciting, mostly just your standard bolognese, carbonara, tomato sauce and seafood spaghetti. I was hoping for some ravioli, which I always order in restaurants because it's such a faff to make at home. I did, however, really enjoy the sausage pappardelle, which is a little bit different and reminded me of some incredible sausage pasta I enjoyed once in Bergamo; again, it's not something you find in most chain Italian restaurants here, despite being really delicious. I found it a bit strange that the osso bucco (pork not veal or beef, for some reason) came with no accompaniment: it was literally just two huge slabs of braised meat in a bowl, and definitely needed something to break the - albeit tasty - monotony. Often the downfall of really good Italian restaurants, even in Italy (especially if, like me, you don't like tiramisu or panna cotta), the dessert menu has a good bit of variety - lighter dishes like macerated pineapple or chocolate and pear pavlova sit alongside heavier classics like the chocolate brownie (I do wish they wouldn't refer to it as 'Epic', though), and they offer a nice range of ice cream flavours. One of my pet hates in restaurants is when dessert menus offer 'a selection of flavours; ask your server' and the flavours always seem to be strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. We had a choice of salted caramel, honeycomb and coffee, to name a few, which came with a selection of toppings. I really enjoyed the lemon meringue cheesecake, although I question the need for the meringue on top; it looks pretty, but doesn't really add anything to the dish apart from a rather blandly sweet foaminess. The lemon curd and blackcurrant accompaniments, though, were delicious and the perfect tart foil for the creamy cheesecake. Although it does offer several dishes that you'd find on any chain Italian restaurant menu, Jamie's is a good introduction to some of the other less well-known flavours of the country, simply and rustically presented, and provides a fun, bustling atmosphere in which to enjoy them.

Olives - 42 High Street. The only place worth going for a brilliant baguette. Olives is a tiny independent sandwich bar run by Frenchman Christophe, and will satisfy any gourmet or hungry student with its array of delicious sandwich fillings. The Olives 'favourite' baguette is a combination of buffalo mozzarella, sun dried tomatoes and parma ham with rocket. It's not cheap at a fiver, but neither is it your everyday baguette - this is something special. The focus of the shop is its deli counter, home to all sorts of enticing charcuterie, breads, pates (they once had a lobster terrine on offer) and cheeses. You can have a sandwich made up for you incorporating any combination of these, though there are pre-existing combinations on the blackboard on the wall behind the counter. A personal favourite is the goat's cheese with roasted vegetables, onion marmalade, and rocket. When you choose a filling, you can choose (for free) from three of the following: onion marmalade, rocket, cucumber, tomatoes, roasted veg, chutney, and a few other things that I've forgotten. Baguettes are fairly good value, too, ranging from about £2.50 to the £5 extravaganza that is the aforementioned Olives 'Favourite'. Olives if not a one-trick pony, though: it also sells excellent real Italian ice cream in the summer, very good coffee, pastries, a range of panini and soup, and the Olives 'baguette of the week', which has included the amazing combination of roasted pork, thyme-roasted onions, brie and plum chutney, or roast beef with horseradish and blue cheese. There's a small selection of deli-style items on sale as well, like jars of duck confit, a chocolate absinthe cake (delicious), various chutneys and sauces, and pasta and bread. Oh, and as you'd expect, they also sell olives.

The High Table - 71-3 High Street. I want to call this a hidden gem, but it's not exactly hidden, being smack bang in the middle of Oxford's busy High Street. For some reason, I hardly ever see it more than half-full. This is a shame, because the entire dining experience really is excellent. The interior is beautifully decorated and feels a lot more luxurious and expensive than the menu would suggest. Upon ordering, you're given a basket of wonderful bread (several varieties - the walnut one is particularly good) along with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. This alone makes it worth a visit. However, even better is their amazing value set lunch and dinner menu (12-7pm). You can have two courses for £10.95, usually with three options to choose from for each course. You don't get given small portions or inadequate food for that price, either. I've had an amazing beef burger with thick cut chips, a beautiful roast rump of lamb, some exquisite haddock, sausages and mash, and a very good pea and mint risotto. The food is always stunning, like something you'd find in a Michelin-starred restaurant. They do an interesting array of ice cream flavours for dessert, too (basil and strawberry, rum and sultana, apricot, white chocolate, pineapple, lychee...) along with delicious classics like lemon tart or spiced poached pears. The a la carte is a bit more expensive, but again is good value for money - there are a range of soups, pastas, salads, and grills. Prices range from £4-6 for starters, £9-16 for mains, and desserts for around a fiver. Again, I can't understand why this place isn't always full - the food is beautiful and the service excellent. You feel like you're in a posh London restaurant, but for a fraction of the price, and it's a great place to take parents or friends for special occasions (I went there on the day I finished my finals, which is perhaps why I have such fond memories of it). It deserves more custom. Maybe I'll regret publicising it on here one day...

Door 74 - 74 Cowley Road. I don’t know whether it’s the name, the small and cosy interior, or the splendid cooking, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that while eating at Door 74 I was sitting in somebody’s living room, somebody who would disappear back to the kitchen every now and then and return bearing delicious dishes they had prepared earlier. Perhaps it was the lovely rustic presentation of the food, the generous portions and the comforting nature of it all. This felt like good, old-fashioned home cooking, rather than pretentious restaurant food with ludicrous garnishes and tiny servings. The interior is on the small side, but nicely decorated. Everything exudes calm and relaxation, from the single waiter who managed to pay attentive care to all the tables, the fairy lights on the dark purple walls, to the small menu that suggests carefully chosen ingredients and flavour combinations. The starters are just big enough to whet the appetite without making you doubt your capacity for dessert: aubergine and lamb wraps; asparagus with egg mimosa; sardines on toast. Main courses are a feast for both the eyes and the tastebuds: the marinated chicken with panzanella salad was zesty and tender, but it was the accompanying salad that really made the dish: big chunks of toasted ciabatta, ripe tomatoes, cucumber, caperberries, olives and red onion in a lovely tangy dressing that soaked into the bread. It was colourful, full of flavour and a superb lively accompaniment to the chicken. The potato cake filled with mushrooms, pine nuts and halloumi cheese was an excellent meat-free option. Desserts range from the classic (meltingly delicious chocolate pudding with ice cream) to the more exotic - lemon meringue ice cream served with fresh mango, or a white chocolate and mango cheesecake. I've also found myself wanting two desserts on several occasions, especially when they listed a banana bread on the menu. Definitely a winner in terms of both food and atmosphere, Door 74 guarantees a thoroughly enjoyable dining experience. 

Fishers - 36-7 St Clements Street. A seafood restaurant, as you'd expect from the name, Fishers' menu changes daily depending on what the restaurant receives directly from fishermen and markets throughout the country. A particular highlight is the seafood platter (hot or cold versions available), placed ceremoniously in the table and accompanied by a bizarre array of silver implements for extracting the various bits of seafood from their exoskeletons. When I went, I had prawns, langoustines, clams and smoked salmon, garnished with parsley and lemon and a pot of tangy mayonnaise. The bucket of bread to go with it is wonderful - dark and nutty, it's a perfect match for the sweet seafood. It's a good conversation starter, as well, if you're there on a date that's going a bit awkwardly - nothing like snapping the heads of defenceless crustacea to get the romance going. The main courses share a common theme: fish as the centrepiece, minimally adorned to let its quality shine. I've had a very good turbot, with mash and mushroom cream sauce, and a lovely lobster thermidor. For dessert they offer gastropub-style classics like sticky toffee pudding, and a nod to the classic fish and chip shop dessert, banana fritters with toffee ice cream. Decor is fun and nautically themed, and service is friendly but can be on the slow side as it's often busy. Seafood of this standard, however, is something to enjoy lingering over. It's on the expensive side (£10-18 for mains), but they do several cheaper set menus, and it's definitely a place to come to treat yourself or a fellow seafood-lover.

Moya - 97 St Clements Street. This is normally the first place I mention when asked where to eat in Oxford. It's brilliant. Definitely a hidden gem, it's not that noticeable when you first walk past. It's half restaurant, half cocktail bar (try the 'brain haemorrhage' or the 'choc-chip mint cookie'), and the dining area is quite small. The food more than makes up for that though, both in flavour and in portion size. It's Eastern European, which is interesting in itself because you don't find much of that around. I was definitely a convert after my first visit there, and can't stop going back. Traditional dishes such as goulash and dumplings are on offer, as well as a selection of tempting options for the piscatorially inclined such as trout, black prawns, sea bass, fishcakes, and – once – a special of cod cheeks. The specials board changes regularly, but the à la carte is so packed with inviting options that this may only complicate matters of decision-making. The “devil’s toast” starter has become one of Moya’s specialities; they also serve it as a bar snack. A crisp slice of sourdough toast topped with smoked sausage, onion, tomatoes, peppers, chillies and grilled goat’s cheese, it is a truly delightful combination of smoky and tangy flavours. Other options include vegetarian dumplings and a Slovak potato salad. Prices are around £5 for starters, and although they may seem small, once the sizeable main courses materialise all will become clear. The segedin, a creamy pork and sauerkraut (pickled cabbage) goulash, is lightly spiced with nutmeg, paprika and caraway. The acid cabbage provides an unusual foil to the rich, spiced meat, and the dish is served with knedla – steam cooked bread dumplings, which mop up every drop of the delicious juices. The traditional goulash – tender beef in a spicy tomato and pepper sauce, fragrant with paprika – is also delightful, the meat so tender you could eat it with a spoon. Although the mains may pose a challenge for some appetites, ensure you leave room for dessert. You can choose from an unusual selection of ice creams and sorbet – think cappuccino, almond and amaretto, dark cherry or apricot – as well as traditional offerings: a Slovak fruit dumpling, Tatras apple cake, or Bublanina (bubble cake), a light sponge studded with seasonal fresh berries. The dumpling haunts my dreams to this day. It's light and filled with apricot, a tart contrast to the dough, and covered in a sublime poppy seed and butter sauce that adds a little crunch. Seriously, you must try it - it sounds bizarre, but it's incredible. The apple cake utilises that unbeatable combination of apple, sultanas, walnut and cinnamon to great effect, encased in a flaky pastry and served with a rich vanilla ice cream. After dinner coffee is accompanied by little sugared biscuits, a nice touch, though perhaps geared more towards the eye than the appetite – after three courses at Moya, you won’t be hungry again for a long time. I can't stress enough how great this place is.

Manos - 105 Walton Street. Deli and cafe by day, restaurant by night, Manos is first and foremost concerned with producing excellent Greek food. You are at liberty to order from the counter as and when something takes your fancy, or wait for table service. The tables upstairs in the deli provide a casual cafe feel even in the evening, where proceedings are less about formal service and more about great food and company. There is no set format for dining: you can point at something in the deli counter that takes your fancy, or order from the menu. The food is often simple but bursting with fresh flavours; lemon, oregano, garlic, tomato. The best way to try as many of the mouthwatering starters as possible is to order a mezze platter. Choose from a selection of dips such as tzatziki, hummous and taramasalata, or Greek classics like dolmathes (stuffed vine leaves), marinated red peppers stuffed with feta cheese and chickpea salad with parsley and lemon. There is also a selection of olives including feta-stuffed, kalamata, and lemon and dill. A far cry from the tiny olives you can buy in jars, these are enormous, glossy, and delicious. Ensure you leave room for Manos’s hearty main courses, all of which are served with a (sometimes unnecessary, considering their size) side of hummous, Greek salad or olives. There is a good range of vegetarian options, including a spinach and feta filo pastry pie, a delicious combination of crispy pastry and tangy, creamy filling, and gigantes plaki, butter beans baked in a tomato and herb sauce. Also available are classics such as imam bayeldi (baked aubergine), Moussaka, and arni me kritharaki, spiced lamb so tender you could eat it with a spoon, served with kritharaki pasta. One of the stars of the menu is the chicken souvlaki, a gigantic flatbread filled with moist marinated chicken (or falafel for vegetarians), hummous, tzatziki and Greek salad. At £5.95 it is perhaps the cheapest route to a full stomach in Oxford. Most main courses are available as smaller portions, enabling you to try a couple. The display of desserts in the deli counter is a smart move; having eyed them covetously on your way in, you will make a point of leaving room for at least one syrup-drenched pastry. Traditional baklava is available in flavours such as almond or pistachio, as well as apple strudel and a variety of home baked cakes that are guaranteed to make you hungry all over again. 

Al-Shami - 25 Walton Crescent. Located at the end of a residential street off Walton Street, this taste of Lebanon in Oxford is easy to miss. Don't. If you've never had Lebanese food before, you're in for a treat. I went there because Lebanese food is very similar to Syrian food, and I was craving some of the wonderful taste sensations I experienced there last August. It didn't disappoint - I could locate pretty much all of them on the menu, and they were just as good as I recalled. They serve an extensive menu of mezze (small dishes to share), plus lots of main courses (mainly grilled meat or fish). I'd recommend going in a group and ordering whatever takes your fancy, then diving in when it arrives, splendid looking and beautifully presented, at your table. Some highlights are the moutabel (smoked aubergine purée, an incredibly moreish and wonderful dip), the mohammara (red pepper, walnut and pomegranate dip - vibrant red and equally vibrant in mysterious flavours), the foul (a mixed bean dip with lots of garlic and olive oil - very Mediterranean-tasting), fatayer (spinach pasties with pine nuts), falafel (deep-fried spiced chickpea patties - crunchy and wonderful), kellage halloum (essentially a halloumi cheese toasty - salty and creamy on the inside, crunchy on the outside), kibbeh maqlia (lemon-shaped deep fried patties of ground lamb, bulgur wheat and nuts), and the kafta kebab (ground lamb shaped into sticks and grilled). Most dishes are served with a big basket of delicious flatbread, perfect for scooping up morsels of dip and sauce, and it's a great place to go to try something a little bit different. The baklava they serve for dessert is also amazing, but baklava normally is.

Edamame - 15 Holywell Street. I'm not sure this needs any publicity from me, as it's in most travel guides to Oxford and has a queue several yards out of the door most nights, but Edamame is as good as Japanese food (in England) gets. Often full of Japanese people (always a good sign) it's family run and absolutely tiny, hence the queues. However, they move quickly and the food is worth waiting for. You share tables with total strangers, which isn't as weird as it sounds, and the food is speedy and satisfying. The lunch menu features complete dishes, like marinated salmon, noodle soup, stir-fried noodles or chicken katsu curry (which all come with delicious and satisfying miso soup), whereas the dinner menu is more about choosing a variety of meat, veg or fish dishes and some sort of carbohydrate to go alongside. The marinated pork is very good, as is the stir-fried squid. At lunchtime, I love the chicken yakisoba noodles, or the ramen soups. The eponymous edamame beans are also a must - order them to nibble on while your food arrives, popping them out of their green pods. It's not a place to linger over dinner, as you can often see a queue of hungry diners out of the window waiting for you to vacate your table, but for a taste sensation it's excellent. The sushi on Thursday nights is also exquisite, and great value for money, and they usually offer a range of specials written on the walls.

Feel free to comment if you have any more recommendations, or disagree with me...

Orange and ricotta pancakes with poached rhubarb


I believe January rhubarb is nature's way of cheering us up. Christmas is over; consequently, we're all in debt, and far too fat. The skies are grey, the nights draw in early, and it's cold. I believe the best form of medication for such a state is admitted via the mouth, and nature seems to agree with me. She has provided us with this delightful ingredient (technically a vegetable, but treated like a fruit), guaranteed to awaken you both orally and visually from your January torpor. Those almost neon-pink stems can't help but cheer one up.

Even more so when paired with another lively ingredient: the orange. These pancakes combine the two in a marriage that is both comforting and invigorating. The pancakes are seared and smooth on the outside, but fluffy and almost creamy in the middle, lifted with the addition of grated orange zest. The batter is made by combining ricotta cheese, sugar, egg yolks, flour, and the zest. The whites of the eggs are beaten to stiff peaks and folded into the mixture in order to raise the pancakes. Some of the pancakes cook through in the frying pan; others, accidentally left on for not enough time, are still creamy in the middle - delicious. The recipe is an adaptation of a Nigel Slater favourite of mine: click here and scroll down.



For the poached rhubarb, just slice some rhubarb stems, sprinkle over the juice of an orange, some sugar, and some ground ginger, and bake at 170C for about 20 minutes, depending on how thin the stems are. The beauty of early forced (or 'champagne') rhubarb is that it is much sweeter than the tough, green specimens you'll find later in the year; I used a mixture of both because I had some in the freezer.


Just cook the pancake mixture in dollops in a frying pan containing a little melted butter. They're quite soft and fragile, so flip them recklessly - if you faff about, they'll probably break up and splatter all over the pan. It doesn't matter if they're not particularly evenly shaped, anyway. You can have the oven on a low heat to keep the pancakes warm while you make them all.



Drizzle the piled pancakes with some of the rhubarb's cooking juices, place a little pile of poached rhubarb alongside, and devour greedily.



Chocolate crêpes with caramel pears and praline


Pancakes, to me, normally mean brunch. I tend to make thick, pillow-like cakes that you can pile high and adorn with gleaming drizzles of maple syrup or honey. As you sit down to eat them, there's always that brief pause where you have to decide whether to try and cut down through all the pancakes, and eat a mouthful containing multiple layers, or eat them one by one. However, a recent skiing holiday in the Alps put me in mind of the famous French crêpe, wafer thin and designed to provide an envelope for all sorts of delights: the simplicity of lemon and sugar is hard to beat, but you can go all out and opt for fillings guaranteed to replenish those calories lost through skiing: chocolate and banana, chestnut purée, chantilly cream. I thought pears, caramelised in butter and demerara sugar, would be a perfect filling, and chocolate also leapt to mind as an ingredient possessing a perfect affinity with the sweet, grainy fruit.


Originally, I intended to make a normal crêpe, fill it with the pears, and drizzle over some melted chocolate. However, while making the batter, I found myself reaching for the cocoa tub. The contrast of the chocolatey-coloured pancake against the bright pears is rather nice, and a bit unusual. To make the batter, just mix flour and cocoa, make a well in the centre, and crack in an egg. Using an electric beater, beat the egg gradually into the flour, adding milk until you have a fairly runny batter - about the consistency of custard. I don't tend to measure anything when I make pancakes, but you can look up a recipe for batter online and just add cocoa (Delia has a good one). Get a small frying pan very hot, add a knob of butter, and pour in enough mixture  to cover the base of the pan in a very thin layer. Cook for a minute or so, then flip (either by tossing the pan, if you're feeling daring, or with a spatula or palette knife) and cook for about half a minute. Keep warm in the oven while you make the pear filling.


To do this, just heat some butter in the hot pan, add sliced pears (one small pear per person), and cook on a medium heat until slightly coloured. Sprinkle in some cinnamon and demerara sugar, and cook until caramelised and soft. This shouldn't take long, though it depends on how ripe your pears are. Take the pancakes out of the oven. Put a few pear segments on top, then fold in half. Put the rest of the pear on one side of the semicircle-shaped crêpe, then fold over again to make a triangle.


As for the praline, I can't take any credit for its genius, because it came about as the result of a culinary accident. I melted a bar of hazelnut milk chocolate to drizzle over the crêpes. By the time it came to serve them, the chocolate wasn't quite runny enough to drizzle. For some reason, I thought adding boiling water would loosen it (normally I'd use cream, but I didn't have any). Of course, the hot water only 'cooked' the chocolate, turning it into a nutella-like paste, but not as runny. Vigorous stirring on the part of my friend Helen in an attempt to make it runny again had the result of turning it into a series of hazelnutty, chocolate pellets, that looked a bit like tiny cocoa pops.


As it turns out, these made a spectacular garnish for the crêpes. They added a nutty crunchiness that contrasted well with the soft, grainy pears and the smooth surface of the pancakes. The cocoa in the batter isn't overly chocolatey, and would be fine without any extra chocolate, but if you're going for sheer indulgence, definitely add the praline. In fact, the paste that resulted from pouring the hot water onto the chocolate is also very good spread over the inside of the crêpe before you tuck the pears into their little envelope. A dusting of icing sugar, and you have a very easy, but wonderful, dessert. Bon appetit.


Wild mushroom tortellini with prosciutto crisps


While cooking something from scratch is always satisfying, I think there is no food group that is as satisfying to produce yourself as the humble carbohydrate. It is perhaps because carbohydrates are so cheap and abundant in the shops that no one really bothers with the effort of making them anymore; you can buy pretty decent artisan loaves, fresh pasta, biscuits and muffins almost anywhere these days. However, it is amazing how something so simple and easy to make can be elevated to something so sublime when made yourself. Take stuffed pasta, for instance. This is one thing that is never as good in the shops. Supermarket ravioli, to me, tastes the same no matter what flavour it purports to conceal within its envelope of dough. Cut a supermarket raviolo open, and you are faced with an unidentifiable, greyish mush that appears the same whether the pasta supposedly contained four cheeses, meat filling, or spinach and ricotta. Which brings me on to another point: the fillings of supermarket ravioli bore me to tears. The advantages of making your own pasta are many, but the chief benefit is freedom for the imagination to roam wild. So wild, in fact, that mine stumbled across some wild mushrooms.



After a pretty meat-heavy week, I fancied a dinner containing a fair amount of starch, and a lot of flavour, but without resorting to meat. I did, however, conjure up in my head an amazing recipe for venison ravioli with redcurrant jus, which I intend to test on a few willing victims as soon as any volunteer (or are coerced). Watch this space.


It's easy to resort to cheese for flavour in vegetarian cooking, but I didn't fancy much of that either. So I turned to that umami-rich favourite, the mushroom. Not just any mushrooms, however, but a mixture of fresh oyster, shiitake, chestnut and closed cup mushrooms, with a few dried porcini thrown in as well. Sauteéd with lots of garlic and thyme until the water had evaporated and they were dark, sticky and deeply flavoured, they went in the blender to make a coarse puree that resembled the mushroom duxelles I imagine one would use in a beef wellington. I added some lemon zest too; it might sound odd to marry something so sunny and zesty with something so dark and earthy, but lemon and mushrooms partner each other extremely well; the lemon cuts through the richness of the mushrooms while somehow enhancing their flavour. I also threw in lots of chopped parsley and some walnuts for a bit of crunch.


I mixed in some rye breadcrumbs, lots of grated parmesan (I say I didn't fancy cheese, but parmesan and mushrooms is a winning combination) and a tiny amount of stilton, just enough to add a sharpness to the mushrooms. The result was a deeply flavoursome, perfectly balanced pasta stuffing. The walnuts are a really good addition; they prevent everything from being too mushy (no pun intended).


Then, onto the laborious task of rolling out and filling the tortellini. Except I secretly rather enjoy this, and have got it down to a bit of a fine art now - I can get the pasta to a thickness (though that should be thinness, really) of seven on the machine (it goes from one to nine, nine being the thinnest). I finally achieved the consistency I have been coveting ever since I read Marcella Hazan's advice on pasta-making (for those of you who don't know, she is basically the Nigella of Italian cookery): I could see through my pasta sheets. You can even see the process in action right here. Note the large glass of rosé next to the pasta machine: this is essential when embarking on the task of making stuffed pasta at home.


I decided to try something different; normally I make ravioli (simple squares made by sandwiching two squares of pasta around the filling) or crescent-shaped ravioli (there must be a correct Italian term for this shape, but I'm not sure what it is), but this time I thought I'd try tortellini. Basically you put the filling in the middle of a square of pasta, fold it over to make a triangle, and then pull the ends of the triangle around the middle to make a sort of hat shape. They're rather sweet-looking, and less likely to stick to the baking sheet they're kept on than ravioli.





The easiest way to hang on to them while you're using up all the dough is to make sure you shape the pasta on a chopping board that is well-floured. Then transfer the shapes to a sheet of non-stick baking parchment. The pasta shapes will dry out slightly in the air, and hopefully not stick to the baking sheet. If they do, they will split and the filling will seep out in the cooking water. Another tip is to make the tortellini as small as possible; they hold their shape better and have less chance of splitting.


I finished off the cooked pasta with a white wine cream sauce, some sauteéd wild mushrooms, and prosciutto crisps. The former was made by frying some finely-chopped shallots and garlic, adding a few glugs of white wine, letting it reduce a bit then adding some of the reserved water from soaking the dried porcini; this is one of the most flavoursome stocks you can find. Then I thickened the sauce with créme fraiche, and added lots of parsley and black pepper.


The prosciutto crisps are just slices of parma ham, dry-fried in a non-stick pan until crispy and solid. They provide an essential saltiness that cuts through the richness of the mushrooms and the cream sauce.


All you really need to complete the dish is a drizzle of truffle oil (elevates the whole thing to a level of deliciousness that is rather astounding), a scattering of crumbled walnuts, and a grating of parmesan. The combination of crunchy, crispy, doughy, earthy, salty and citrus results in a really wonderful dish.

Spiced orange and walnut cake


This is a recipe from the beautiful cookbook, Saraban: A Chef's Journey Through Persia, which I received for Christmas. Written by Greg and Lucy Malouf, it's a detailed account of the chefs' journey through Iran, and an exploration of Persian cuisine. With its marrying of fruit, vegetables, meat and spices, this has to be one of the world's most exotic and wonderful cuisines, and the book does it justice: it's illustrated throughout with beautiful pictures and interspersed with accounts of the chefs' travels. Almost a coffee table tome, if it weren't for the fact that the recipes are so mouthwatering. I came across this orange and walnut cake when I was trying to find a dessert recipe to make last night. 

I scanned the ingredients list (oranges, walnuts, cardamom, fennel, baking powder, eggs) but my face fell when I read that the recipe required candied clementines, which apparently you can buy in good Middle Eastern grocers. Now, Oxford has some pretty good Asian grocers, but I've never seen a candied clementine in any of them. About to give up on the recipe, I suddenly realised that I have a huge box of candied fruit that I bought in Syria this summer. I'm not a fan of candied fruit, but I bought it primarily because it was the equivalent of £2.50, and I remember a holiday in Nice a couple of years ago where I went to a candied fruit factory and found they were charging 12 euros for a measly box of four candied oranges. I think it was just the principal of it being cheap that made me buy it. That and the fruit looked so beautiful, each sugary nugget nestled in its little paper case, all gleaming and twinkling like jewels in their box.


I gave it to my family as a gift; it remained untouched throughout September, October, November, December, and finally they returned it to me, figuring I'd be more likely to enjoy it than them. Lucky, that I was now in possession of the sweetmeats exactly when a recipe called for them.


The cake is based around a similar principle to Nigella Lawson's clementine cake, which I've made before (and it was delicious). You boil whole oranges in their skins for an hour or so until they're completely soft (which makes your kitchen smell absolutely incredible), then blitz in a blender, stir in ground nuts (Nigella uses almonds, but Saraban suggests walnuts, which add a nice crunch and a more nutty flavour), baking powder, seasoning (cardamom, ground fennel, and I added a pinch of cinnamon), and then eggs. I think Nigella has you stir in the yolks and then whisk the whites until thick and use them to raise the cake, but the eggs just go in whole and beaten with sugar in the Saraban recipe. It also requires you to add two candied clementines to the blitzed orange mixture. Unfortunately, what I thought were clementines in the box turned out to be apricots. However, there was some candied orange peel, so I used that instead. It also made a rather nice decoration for the cake.


The cake went in the oven at 130C for about 40 minutes - the book suggests using a very large cake tin so you end up with a shallow layer, but I didn't have one, so it took a bit longer than the authors suggested. However, the result was superb. It's a very moist, sticky, tangy cake, with the occasional crunch from the walnuts. I decorated it with sliced candied orange peel and pomegranate seeds. I think mine was slightly undercooked (I needed to turn the oven up to cook some pheasant, so the cake had to come out or risk a scorching), but in my opinion that made it even nicer - it was lovely and juicy in the middle.



I imagine it would be lovely with vanilla ice cream, Greek yoghurt or creme fraiche. Possessing none of these things, I had a little bit of my cranberry and clementine sorbet alongside. A lot of orange in one dessert, but a very good palate cleanser.




Ham braised in apple juice


Traditionally, we have a ham at Christmas. Usually cooked on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day, it furnishes us with lots of lovely cold sliced meat to accompany the myriad pickles and preserves we receive over the festive period. I am no exception: this Christmas I have personally received five different chutneys. Last Christmas I received seven different chutneys. Needless to say, there is a lot of chutney in my fridge demanding my consumption. A large ham is a good thing to have. We normally roast the ham - last year we did it with a lovely marmalade and five-spice glaze - but this year I thought I'd try braising it, to see if it resulted in a more moist, juicy ham. It did - it was a pleasure to eat all on its own, though even better with leftover braised red cabbage from the Christmas roast and - needless to say - chutney.



Braising the ham in apple juice leaves it lovely and moist. Pork and apple are a classic combination, and work just as well here; the appley flavour infuses the meat but not too strongly. Plus, you end up with a lovely sauce for the ham which you can pour over any leftovers so that they don't languish and dry out in the fridge, but stay wonderfully moist with a hint of sweetness from the juice.

The recipe is simple: put the ham in a pan with some roughly chopped celery, carrots and leeks (two of each). Add a cinnamon stick, a bunch of parsley stalks, ten black peppercorns, and ten juniper berries, crushed with a knife. Add a couple of bay leaves, then pour in enough apple juice to cover the ham (or top up with water if the juice doesn't quite cover it). Bring to the boil and simmer, partially covered, for a couple of hours (this was for a 1.5kg ham). 


Then remove the ham to a chopping board, use a slotted spoon to take all the solid bits out of the pan (the leftover veg, etc) and put a bit of the sauce in a separate saucepan. Discard the rest. Vigorously boil the sauce until it has reduced. Use some arrowroot or cornflour to thicken it, and you should have a lovely, flavoursome apple gravy to accompany the ham. Drizzle it over, and tuck in. Good accompaniments are red cabbage, leftover stuffing (though this is perhaps a rather pork-heavy combination for Boxing Day), pickles, baby jacket potatoes, mashed potato, apple sauce, or parsnip puree. Or just eat it on its own, in all its glory.

Lobster risotto


The perfect Christmas Eve dinner. Champagne, candles, and a lobster risotto. Luxurious, yet not too heavy considering the epic feast awaiting the next day. In fact, not even that luxurious, given that the lobster cost a fiver. Who'd have thought you could find a whole cooked lobster, frozen in a bag of saltwater, in the supermarket? Admittedly, this was Lidl, a treasure-trove of the weird and wonderful; I picked up a tin of something called "musky octopus" from there once. Anticipating that a single lobster probably would not suffice on its own to feed my entire family, I decided risotto would be a good way to stretch it out a bit, without overpowering its delicate flavour (which, for those of you who haven't tried lobster, is wonderful - meaty yet sweet and delicate, a bit like crab but more substantial).

I could never bring myself to cook live lobster. Though the texture is better, and obviously it's fresher if you cook your own, the thought of plunging a living creature into boiling water is more than I can bear. I know that oysters and mussels are technically alive, but they seem less so, somehow. A lobster actually wiggles its claws around and moves. I'm happy to eat lobster, as long as I don't have to see this awful cooking process. Someone somewhere has invented a humane machine to kill lobsters with an electric shock - I remember reading about it in the news - and I like to hope that it caught on and that most restaurants use it, instead of a vat of boiling water. Unfortunately I suspect this is me being highly naive. 


Even in death, the lobster puts up a pretty good fight. I sustained several lacerations to my fingers whilst trying to prise the meat out of its shell. Not only is the shell very sharp when broken, it is also covered in little spines which are likely to scratch you horribly as you try and pull it apart. It took about half an hour to yield a very small quantity of lobster meat, a quantity somewhat depleted by my tasting several pieces of it. 


The risotto is fairly simple. A base of garlic, onion and celery, sauteed until soft but not coloured. A knob of butter added, rice turned over in it, a splash of white wine, and then the stock. I used fish stock from a cube, but boiled it up with a large pinch of saffron, a bay leaf, and the lobster shells, for extra flavour.


To the almost-cooked risotto, I added the zest and juice of a lemon, finely chopped curly parsley, crushed fennel seeds, the lobster meat (reserving the sliced tail meat for a garnish) and lots of salt and pepper. I also threw in some prawns and garnished it with strips of smoked salmon, because there really wasn't much lobster meat and it needed something else to make it a bit more substantial. The result: a delicious, rich-flavoured, lemony risotto with delicate, sweet pieces of lobster meat and juicy prawns. Perhaps not traditional Christmas fare, but I thought it was just right.




Cranberry stollen


I've tried baking my own stollen for the last couple of years, and it's never come close to the bought stuff. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way - the recipe I use is more of a bread than a cake, a bit like a giant hot cross bun with marzipan in the middle (which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is no bad thing). It's nice toasted once it's gone a bit stale, and it's not as sickly as some bought versions. My mum actually prefers it to the version made by Betty's of Harrogate, which is quite an accolade. However, in an attempt to get mine closer to the delicious cakeyness of some versions (in particular, the one made by a German chef I used to work for), I decided to try a new recipe. Clearly there is no one better to turn to than my favourite baker, Dan Lepard, and I have a feeling he may have proved himself yet again.



The added bonus of this recipe is that it requires no kneading, proving or rising. Normally when I make stollen it takes an entire day of various bread-tending activities; it needs supervising like a naughty child and often disappoints you like one, rising strangely and never looking as neat as it did when you rolled it up into a lovely tidy shape on the baking tray. This recipe involves stirring some things together in a bowl, rolling the dough out, adding the marzipan and baking. Done in under an hour - excellent. I used dried cranberries instead of the sour cherries Lepard suggests, for a more festive touch.


An even better part of this recipe is it involves brushing the stollen, while warm, with copious amounts of rum and melted butter before "dredging" it in icing sugar. Surely this can only be an improvement - alcohol, saturated fat, and sugar? It's practically Christmas in cake form. I'm pretty pleased with the way it looks, too - it's less sprawling than my normal bread-dough stollen. Lepard suggests I wrap it up tightly and let it mature for a week. No chance - I'm going to leave it until Christmas Eve Eve, and then my willpower, I can quite clearly predict, will shatter. 

In fact, I've already nibbled a bit off the end. I could argue that this was for aesthetic purposes, so that my photos show a glimpse of the delicious, fruit-flecked interior with its gorgeous marzipan artery...but in fact, I was just eager to sample my hard work. It does indeed have a denser, more cakey texture, and the cardamom comes through quite strongly. I can't wait to eat it once it has "matured". 

Pumpkin bread


Fresh from the oven, this bread has the perfect texture. Slightly crisp on the outside, the inside is soft and fluffy, more like a cake than a loaf of bread. In fact, it is somewhere on the dough spectrum between scone and cake (the "dough spectrum", categorising baked goods in terms of softness, running as follows: rye bread - soda bread - sourdough - ciabatta - ordinary loaf - scone - muffin - cake. I have just invented this - perhaps the most useful thing I have done all day). The incorporation of mashed, cooked pumpkin and a nice lot of butter into the dough keeps it deliciously soft and moist in the middle, with an intriguing deep autumnal flavour from the addition of winter herbs.

It's simple to make - steam peeled pumpkin or butternut squash until tender. Mash with milk and a beaten egg. Add lots (LOTS!) of black pepper, dried thyme, dried sage and rosemary. OK, so I am a little addicted to dried winter herbs, so add less if you're not a herb fiend. Fresh herbs would of course be preferable, especially fresh thyme and sage. Rosemary, I find, doesn't alter much in flavour whether it's dried or fresh, but fresh thyme has a nice sharpness about it lacking in the dried stuff. You could even add chopped cooked pancetta or bacon. Or grated cheese. Though I save these to eat with the finished product.

Rub butter into flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs (as you would for a crumble or pastry, or scones for that matter). Add the mashed pumpkin mixture and mix together into a loose dough. Shape the dough into a sort of round.


Now preheat the oven to 180C and heat some butter in an oven-proof frying pan - one with a fairly small diameter. You just want enough to cover the base of the pan. Use a mixture of butter and olive oil if you want to be sure it won't burn. When the pan is hot, place in the circle of dough and pat it out to fill the pan. It should sizzle nicely and start to smell of baked goodness. Cook for about five minutes, until the underside is toasted. Then - the tricky part - flip it over. You can do this by lightly oiling a plate and placing it over the top of the pan, then turning the pan over so the bread falls out onto the plate. However, it's a nightmare to get off the plate again as it sticks. Probably better to use a couple of fish slices/spatulas, and just try and lift it out and flip it as you would a pancake.


Cook the other side for a few minutes until lightly toasted, then put the pan in the oven for five minutes or so to cook the inside.


The result: a glorious cake-bread with endless uses. Because it's slightly sweet from the pumpkin, it's good eaten with things that are a bit salty: bacon, parma ham, very sharp cheddar. It's also very good dunked into soup - I made some broccoli and bacon soup to go alongside. That said, it's also delicious on its own, or with a bit of butter - a sort of savoury treat for afternoon tea.



Venison with redcurrants


Similar to the venison with blueberries I cooked a while back, but possibly even better. The redcurrants have a sourness that blueberries lack, and when you bite into a whole one that hasn't collapsed in the heat of the pan, its sweet-sour juice against the iron gameyness of the venison is beautiful. Redcurrants seem to me rather festive right now, even though they're not in season - I picked this lot up at the farmer's market in October and froze them for an occasion such as this. Perhaps it's because the currants look like holly berries with a dusting of ice (courtesy of the freezer), but this to me seems a quintessential pre-Christmas dish. 




It's also very simple, using the same method as the duck with figs I cooked a while ago: sear the meat in a pan on each side, remove and leave to rest, pour some red wine into the pan and allow to bubble, stir in a teaspoon of redcurrant jelly, some seasoning, thyme, and fresh redcurrants, and wait for the sauce to reduce and become syrupy before pouring it over the meat. Simple mashed potato is a good accompaniment, though I think celeriac, parsnip, sweet potato or butternut squash mash would be very good too. If you happen to have a jar of Fortnum & Mason game relish in the fridge (as of course your average student does), it works brilliantly on the side.



A study in cranberry


It was actually an accident that both courses of last night's meal ended up containing cranberries. A realisation over the weekend that I still haven't eaten any pheasant this season, combined with the freezing cold weather and a need for something warming and substantial resulted in a trip to the butchers and a brace of pheasant in the shopping bag. I normally pot-roast pheasant with bacon, cider and apples, but thought I'd try a recipe involving red wine and sour cherries. Unable to find any dried sour cherries, I used dried cranberries instead. Dessert, a clementine and cranberry sorbet, arose for more practical reasons: fresh cranberries are half price in the supermarkets at the moment. You can't really get more festive than a sorbet combining two of Christmas's signature ingredients.

To accompany the pheasant, I made a sort of butternut squash crumble. Steamed pieces of squash, baked under a blanket of breadcrumbs toasted in olive oil with garlic, rosemary and orange zest. The colours are beautiful, and it tastes great too: the crunchy crumbs provide a nice contrast in texture to the soft, sweet squash. 


The pheasant is easy: brown the bird in butter in a casserole dish, remove and saute onions and garlic in the pan. Put the bird back in, pour in some red wine and stock, add the dried fruit, a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf and some fresh thyme, season, put the lid on and cook in the oven for about 40 minutes. You end up with a wonderfully aromatic sauce, and a truly beautiful tangle of soft, sweet onions with a sharpness from the wine they have steeped in. The combination of dense, gamey meat and sweet onions is superb, and the squash works with it better than I had anticipated. Its sweetness is a good foil for the acidity of the wine, and the crumbs on top give a nice crunch. Even better when the dark sauce from the casserole has soaked into the crumbs and made everything rich and delicious.



The sorbet recipe is from this food blog, Pastry Studio. It is the reason my degree is suffering at the moment; I am obsessed with the recipes and the photography is absolutely beautiful. It's more of a sherbet than a sorbet, really, because it includes milk. Orange zest and sugar are blitzed in a blender before you mix them with orange juice (I used clementine juice), milk, vanilla and a bit of lemon juice. The cranberry compote is just fresh cranberries stewed with lemon juice, brown sugar and water. I churned the sherbet in the ice cream maker and then layered it with the compote before putting it in the freezer. The colours are lovely, though it does look rather like someone has just mixed jam and custard in an ice cream tub! I'd quite like to serve this alongside something warm and sticky, like a Christmas pudding. I think the contrast in flavour and temperature would be rather nice.

Jordans porridge: a review


I was recently given some Jordans porridge to sample. This, to me, was possibly more exciting than being given a bag of white truffles to sample. I am obsessed with porridge; I would happily eat it for every meal if it was considered socially acceptable. I remember trekking around Edinburgh at the Fringe festival two years ago, feeling a 4pm peckishness coming on and desperately craving porridge. Surely, I thought, everywhere must sell porridge all day long around here, it being Scotland and all. I was sadly wrong; the one place I managed to find (after walking for at least two miles in the rain) stopped serving it at 11am. Sure, they had sandwiches and baked potatoes...but there is a certain type of craving that only porridge can sate. I feel that everything is all right in the world when I sit down to my (enormous) morning bowl of steaming porridge, topped with whatever variety of fruit compote I have been organised enough to make in advance, or, if the organisation deserts me, whatever fruit needs eating. I've already posted about some of my favourites, so won't go into it again...though I should mention that chopped pear and blackberries make a wonderful porridge topping (I'm still using up the ones I picked in Yorkshire three months ago).

I usually just buy the cheapest oats that the supermarket sells. Oats are oats, I figure; you can't really do much to them to make them worth a more expensive price tag. However, these Jordans oats have actually changed my mind. I tried two types: the finer cut oats that cook in three minutes ('Quick & creamy porridge') and the whole rolled oats ('Chunky traditional porridge'). They both have their merits: the former is good if you're in a hurry, though to be honest I found they only took about a minute less time to cook than the other type. The finer cut oats do make a creamier porridge though, so if that's how you like the texture of your breakfast, I'd recommend those.

My favourite was the chunky traditional porridge - I'm not a fan of anything overly creamy, and these make a porridge that is still lovely and soft but has a bit more bite and texture to it. They take hardly any time to cook, really very little more than the supposedly quicker variety. I tried them mixed with grated apple and sultanas, and topped with golden plums that I'd baked in honey, brown sugar and vanilla. You can actually see from the picture how the porridge is still quite oaty. It really is good, and somehow tastes of more than your basic supermarket oats; it has a warm, almost spicy aroma even before you add any cinnamon or anything. Delicious.


Another rather seasonal idea, and one that incorporates one of my favourite ingredients: the quince. Make a compote with chopped quince, sugar, water and a sliced apple. Use it to top porridge into which you've stirred sultanas and chopped dates or apricots. The caramel stickiness of the dates goes really well with the astringent sharpness of the quince. I tried this, again, with the chunky porridge. 

  

Plums again: this time, dark ones that soften into a blood-red compote. Raw plums are often disappointing, but I cooked these in orange juice with star anise, cloves and sultanas, and the results are spectacular. They make a wonderful contrast to the blanket of creamy oats (for this I used the 'quick & creamy' porridge), both in colour and in texture and flavour. I think this might be my favourite breakfast at the moment; it's certainly one that keeps me buying big baskets of plums at the Wednesday market every week.


Lastly, a rather less seasonal topping, but one I love nonetheless. Poached apricots (cook them in orange juice, again with star anise and cloves), and fresh blueberries. Both plums and apricots are, I think, the perfect partner for porridge: they are sweet, but also sharp enough to temper the soft creaminess of the oats. 


All in all, I'd recommend both types of oats - they're more substantial and have more flavour than the cheaper varieties (and are still just oats, so you won't exactly be breaking the bank). Plus, I like Jordans as a brand: they have a good ethical philosophy, are nice to nature, and, on a more superficial level, make my favourite muesli (it's just called Jordans Fruit & Nut, if anyone is interested...).

Teriyaki chicken, Nigella-style


Whilst I love Nigella Lawson's cookery books, I'm not sure I can say the same for her TV shows. Or at least, not her current one, Nigella Kitchen. Whilst I am definitely someone who revels in the beauty of food, I find Nigella's mini odes to whatever ingredients she is using rather tedious. It's an avocado, Nigella, not an array of "jade cubes". We can all see it's a lovely-looking trifle, but do we really need our attention called to "how beautiful these juicy beaded blackberries look glinting darkly out of that pale billowing duvet of cream"? Every single ingredient is preceded with a comment beginning "I love..." - it might be the "peppery heat of ginger", or the crunch of pine nuts, or the sound of a chicken's backbone breaking (I found the manic smile of satisfaction on her face as she crushed the poor bird before braising rather disturbing), but cooking for Nigella is not just cooking: it's an excuse for waxing rhapsodical about every ingredient under the sun, with a lustful enthusiasm that makes me feel slightly ill.

I also find her recipes fairly uninspiring - apart from a couple of strokes of genius (the pork knuckles and the Venetian carrot cake have gone on my "to-make" list), her entire repertoire seems to consist of dishes in which one can "indulge", and which require very little skill or imagination, but at least four forms of saturated fat (I am thinking in particular of the 'Grasshopper Pie' - butter, cream, chocolate, Oreo cookies, milk, creme de menthe...). Whilst I'm sure her linguine from the last episode would have tasted great, to me, mixing double cream, truffle oil, an egg and huge handfuls of grated parmesan into a mound of slippery pasta is neither cooking nor nutrition.

Meat comes out of the oven, and it's a "carnal unveiling". Which leads me onto my next point, and that is, the reason why I continue to watch Nigella Kitchen. Its plethora of food-related innuendoes is highly entertaining. Whether it's a gratuitous shot of Mrs Lawson's cleavage as she discusses her "glistening lemon cream", her constant remarks that she loves to "use her hands", or the way she comes downstairs in a negligee to make a bowl of "slut's spaghetti" and take it back with her to bed (the bowl, I might add, containing enough carbohydrate to feed a family of nine), or the remark, "I can't tell you how good it is squidging things out of that bag" (referring, of course, to using a piping bag to make churros doughnuts), I never fail to be amused by the way she can turn even the most innocent foodstuff into something filthy. 

So there I was, now on episode eight of Nigella Kitchen (I just can't stay away...it feels so wrong it's almost right), and the buxom lady herself started to whip up a teriyaki chicken with rice noodles and sugar snap peas. Fairly simple and not particularly life-changing, admittedly, but it did look rather good. 48 hours later and I found myself emulating the domestic goddess: marinating chicken thighs in a mixture of mirin, sake, soy sauce, brown sugar, grated ginger and sesame oil, before stir-frying them and their marinade with sugar snap peas and baby corn.


Now, I am no Nigella. For one thing, my cleavage does not have a life of its own. Nor do I decorate my kitchen with fairy lights. I don't feel the need to include double cream in nearly every meal, and the idea of eating in bed disgusts me. But I'm pretty sure my teriyaki chicken tasted every bit as good as hers. 




Thanks to Jon for the photos.





Two ways with pumpkin and squash


I found something wonderful at the farmers' market a couple of weeks ago. A big wooden table groaning under the weight of about ten different types of pumpkin. There were big, blue-grey crown princes, the aptly named Turk's Turban (I'd never seen one before, but it does actually look like a turban - it's the most amazing-looking vegetable - google it), some Halloween-esque large golden varieties, and then several baby squashes. Given that I have never strayed beyond butternut squash in any recipe calling for pumpkin, I thought it would be a good time to give them a go.



I bought these two little ones, hoping they wouldn't consist of nothing but string once I got past their lovely, rustic-looking skins. This was a challenge, as the skins were quite thick. I wasn't sure whether to peel them or not, so I took a gamble and just roasted them, skin on and chopped up, as I would with butternut. I put some butternut and red peppers in there as well just to bulk it up a bit, and covered the lot in a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and honey. The whole tray of roasted pumpkin smelled amazing when it came out of the oven; the pieces had turned soft and sweet in the middle with lovely burnished corners where they the oil and honey had caramelised. The skins of the pumpkins hadn't been too thick: they had softened nicely and were perfectly edible.

One of my favourite things to do with roasted squash or pumpkin is a salad with goat's cheese. I normally use couscous, but I had some watercress and rocket in the fridge so used that instead. Pumpkin, roasted peppers, a few cherry tomatoes, chunks of goat's cheese, pumpkin seeds for something crunchy, and some roasted chestnuts that I had lying around. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and you have a lovely substantial salad. I think squash needs something salty to cut through its sweetness; goat's cheese works well, as does bacon.


And it is bacon that I used in my next recipe: soup. It's very easy to make and tastes wonderful, especially on a freezing cold misty day like today. Fry some chopped bacon, add a diced red onion and some cubes of fresh squash and cook for a few minutes until the onion is soft. Pour over enough chicken stock to cover, add a bay leaf and some thyme sprigs and dried sage, cover and simmer until the squash is soft (20-30 minutes). I then added the remained of the roast squash from the day before and left it to simmer for another ten minutes, but you can just stick with fresh squash if you can't be bothered to roast any first (though I find it is more flavoursome). Use a stick blender to liquidise the whole lot. I then added some more water to make it quite runny, and then put in a handful or so of pearl barley - I like soups with things to chew on in them, and it makes it go further. Simmer again for about half an hour or 40 minutes, until the barley is tender but still a bit al dente. Check the seasoning, add a bit more dried sage, and it's ready. I like to serve it with grated Gruyere cheese on top, but that is just because I have a weakness for soup with melted cheese on. I don't know why really.