We’re now bang in the middle of game season, which means it’s time to branch out from the usual beef, chicken, pork and lamb and have a go at something different. I’m usually terrible at taking advantage of this glut of alternative meat, but this year I’ve really made an effort and have already cooked with pheasant, grouse and wild rabbit. Although the often stronger, livery flavour puts a lot of people off, I personally love a bit of game and will always jump at the chance to buy it from a butcher or order it when eating out. The flavours work so well with other autumnal ingredients, be it sweeter squashes, beets and sweetcorn or bitter cabbage leaves and earthy mushrooms.
This dish, like many of my better ones, happened by chance. It certainly wasn’t the result of a long-conceived and adjusted recipe; it all came together very quickly. I was strolling through Marylebone on the way home from town, and being a rare visitor to the area I thought I would take advantage and have a quick snoop around. Moxon Street was like my foodie heaven, with the delightful smell of cheese wafting out of La Fromagerie and the impressive glass-lined hanging room in The Ginger Pig, lined with blackened aged-foreribs and porterhouses. It was whilst in the butchers that I spied the mallard, and not often seeing them around I just had to take it. Back in London Fields and a quick trip to the local E5 Bakehouse for a huge slab of ciabatta and the local greengrocers saw me ready to go.
Ever since I had the chicken roasted on bread at Rotorino in Dalston I’ve wanted to have a go at something similar. It was such a fantastic dish, and the fact that I still have it at the front of my mind months after eating it is tribute alone. The end result is something similar to posh fried bread, all laden with the roasting juices and olive oil. To accompany the bird and the bread, I made a very savoury, earthy and thick stew out of the beans, the braised leg meat and the livers. Combined with the fairly sweet sauce it really brings depth to the dish.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the mallards:
2 plump mallards, legs removed and crowns trimmed
2 long thin slices of fresh ciabatta
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
8 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked
2 tbsp butter
For the braised mallard legs and sauce:
The legs and trimmings from the mallard
4 shallots, finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 carrot, diced
1 leek, sliced
5 sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
A good splash of brandy
1ltr chicken stock
For the smashed borlotti beans:
6 tbsp cooked borlotti beans including the cooking liquid
2 cloves of garlic, grated
4 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked
½ a shallot, finely chopped
4 chicken livers, cleaned and diced
The picked braised leg meat from the mallards
¼ lemon, juice only
Extra virgin olive oil
A few gratings of black truffle
For the roasted shallots:
2 shallots, quartered lengthways
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
5 sprigs of thyme
For the cavolo nero:
4 large cavolo nero leaves, thick stems removed
1 tbsp butter
To finish:
A few gratings of black truffle
Extra virgin olive oil
First braise the legs of the mallard. Heat a heavy saucepan to a medium-high temperature and add a little olive oil. Fry the mallard legs quickly to brown well on all sides, then transfer to a plate. Repeat with all of the trimmings from the bird until well coloured. Turn the temperature down slightly and tip in the shallots, garlic, thyme and sugar and fry for about 15 minutes, or until softened and golden. Add the other vegetables and herbs and continue to cook for another few minutes. Turn the heat back up and add the brandy, burning off the alcohol and de-glazing the pan. Top up with the stock and return the mallard legs and trimmings to the pan. Bring to a simmer, then cook very gently for about 2 hours, or until the leg meat is tender. Remove the legs from the stock and shred the meat off the bones. Set aside until needed later.
Strain the rest of the stock and discard the carcass and vegetables. Pour the liquid into a smaller pan and set to a high temperature. Reduce until only a small amount of thick sauce remains, about 150ml. Cover and keep warm until needed.
Pre-heat the oven to 160⁰C.
Put the quartered shallots into a small baking dish and toss in the olive oil, seasoning and thyme. Dot the butter around and bake in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until really soft and slightly charred at the edges. Peel the shallot layers into individual petals and set aside.
For the borlotti beans, add a little olive oil to a saucepan and set to a medium-high temperature. Season the chicken livers and then fry quickly for about two minutes or until golden brown on the outside and still pink in the middle. Transfer to a side plate. Lower the heat, add the shallot, garlic and thyme and soften for a few minutes. Add the borlotti beans and liquid along with the braised leg meat, season well and gently cook for about 15 minutes. Return the livers to the pan and roughly smash the contents against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon. Finish with the lemon juice, a tablespoon of the reduced sauce, two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a few gratings of the black truffle. Keep warm until needed.
Raise the oven temperature to 200⁰C.
While the borlotti beans are cooking roast the mallards. Pour some oil into a non-stick frying pan and set to a medium-high heat. Season the inside and outside of the birds and sear quickly on each breast for 1-2 minutes, then add the butter to the pan, turn the birds breast-side up and baste really well. Lay the ciabatta slices onto the bottom of an oven dish and top with a little extra-virgin olive oil, the slices of garlic, seasoning and the thyme leaves. Place the browned mallards on top of the bread, pour over the pan juices and roast for 10-12 minutes, basting every few minutes. When cooked, transfer the mallards to a chopping board to rest for 10 minutes. Pick the garlic off the ciabatta and return the bread to the oven for a few minutes to crisp up slightly.
Re-heat the pan used to sear the mallards and add the butter for the cavolo nero. When melted, add the leaves, a bit of seasoning and a splash of water and fry for a couple of minutes until slightly softened.
While the mallard is resting also reheat the other elements of the dish if necessary.
To serve up, spoon a good amount of the smashed beans onto each piece of ciabatta and place one on each plate. Top with some of the cavolo nero leaves. Carve the mallards and arrange the breasts around the bread. Finish with some of the slow-roasted shallot, a generous spoonful of the sauce, some extra virgin olive oil and more grated truffle.
September and October saw birthday season in full swing, and as per usual this meant some good eating. After a summer largely spent cooking at home, it was time to make some bookings and try out places that we had long had on our lists. We had a random, yet delicious Masterchef dinner at their Southbank pop-up, experienced true pea-souper London amidst the skyscrapers (so we’re told) at Duck and Waffle and perched in sardine-tin Jose in Bermondsey to relive our Spanish explorings from earlier in the year. I often make note to slip a camera into my pocket for such visits, but on many of our recent ventures my forgetfulness got the better of me. All for the better though, as I do cringe at the blunt pauses caused by clicking away as soon as the bottom of the plate meets the table. The only recent time that the trusty camera got its calling was for a highly-anticipated visit to Rotorino in Dalston.
This is the sort of restaurant that attracts me like a bee to honey, and ever since it opened earlier this year I’d been yearning to make a booking. The fantastic Trullo is on my doorstep, but like that Highbury institution, Rotorino appeared to have it nailed with a multi-course menu that instantly generated a smile to read. The photos had me salivating. It all looked and sounded proper. It’s no massive secret that I am shamefully obsessed with Italian cooking, so there was certainly room enough for another good restaurant in the area. I just love the food culture; what could be better than endless plates accompanied by good wine. Real celebration food. Total gorging food. Something on bread, something with cheese, something tossed in pasta, something charred and grilled, something sweet and finally something to perk you back up from the mountain of consumption. Heaven.
It was three days after my birthday at the time of our arrival. The standard hangover had passed, and the glorious September warmth still clung on. Beer gardens thronged as everyone desperately tried to bask in what could be the last hour of summer. The evening haziness still hung in the air. It was almost like a holiday. It’s been over four years since those trains took us through weeks of Tuscan sunsets and I miss it dearly. Any opportunity to release those old memories and I’m there.
Rotorino shone like a jewel on the otherwise nondescript strip between Dalston and Haggerston. Quite literally. The new jazzy sign lit red what had been quite a subtle, almost secretive entrance. Inside it was all dim lighting, and a smart collage of wood, glass and tile. At our table we sipped a delicious Chianti and picked on bread. It was early and we were almost an island in the middle of a patchily acquainted seating area, but it still felt comfortable and in no way isolating; something difficult to pull off. A note on the bread; although hardly a revolutionary concept, it does surprise me how infrequently it is offered these days. It always seems to work wonders at taking the edge off those potentially awkward early moments, giving the diner something to occupy themselves with while they wait to be served, and the waiting staff a couple of extra precious minutes. And in this case, those old chalky dinner rolls had been swept aside for something a little more interesting that were almost another course in their own right.
We ordered big, loosened a few belt buckles and awaited a feast. That point in a meal is always glorious. You have waited and anticipated for your booking, laboured over the menu, contemplated time-over if it would be acceptable to order two main courses before finally commiting, and then you are just sat there knowing that you are just a touching distance away.
The joy of Italian cookery is the emphasis on good quality ingredients, often very simply combined and presented. The plate of plump buffalo mozzarella, juicy figs, chilli and good olive oil was a real case of why didn’t I think of that. This is a dish that just wouldn’t really work if the cheese was bouncy, the figs were tough and the oil cheap, but here the procurement shone through and everything balanced beautifully. Likewise, the gnudi that Katie was served for the following course was something that she described as one of the best things she had eaten in a long time. The melt-in-the-mouth ricotta combined with a blanket of cheesy, buttery mushroom was just stunning. Ricotta also starred in my main, niftily tucked under the skin of a chicken and then roasted on bread. I never order chicken when eating out but this was a game changer. Truly inspired.
The problem was that with the brilliance of these dishes, you wanted it repeated across everything else, which sadly it wasn’t. The beef in both tartar and hanger steak form managed to taste of very little, something probably easily rectified with a bit of seasoning in the kitchen or had it been available on the table. Similarly the pasta that read so well, all anchovy and breadcrumb, was severely lacking on both parts when it arrived on the table. It was like a few blobs of this sauce had been added as an afterthought, barely touching most of the long naked rigatoni stretched across the bowl.
I love a simple ice cream to finish a big meal, but the scoops of mascarpone and lemon balanced awkwardly in the sad citrus shell and in taste. It just didn’t seem quite right. Katie was equally disappointed with her tart, which seemed to have been made a long time ago and left to go dry and crusty. It came with some sort of cream that had been pebbledashed alongside and left a clay-like feeling in the mouth. We were hoping for some respite with a coffee but it came seriously burnt.
It’s funny how the end of the meal is often the most memorable, that time when you feel the warmth of full-stomached satisfaction or when you start to get irritated by the time lapse in the bill arriving. Despite some brilliant plates of food, we left slightly deflated. Compared to other similarly-ranged ventures such as the aforementioned Trullo or Polpetto in town, where each dish had us scraping the porcelain for that last morsel, at Rotorino some of the things we ate seemed lacking in care. Fundamentally I’m a greedy eater and I never leave food on a plate, but here great chunks remained. For the fairly serious money it totted up to, I don’t think it’s enough for just one in every two or three dishes to be up to it. Had I sat there another time and just ordered the mozzarella, the gnudi, the chicken and finished there this review would be the total opposite, a winner. There is clearly good food being made, and most of what we ordered could have been great on another day. So I am cautious with my conclusion at this point, and I look forward to returning. If not just for another bite of that chicken-soaked bread.
