It's been all change recently, a few weeks running around here, there and everywhere. At the end of February, my wife and I spent a lovely couple of weeks visiting my sister and her partner in Sydney, Australia. As you might expect, it was largely filled with food and drink. The food system in Australia is fantastic, with lots of emphasis on local, seasonal produce. Even basic supermarkets put ours to shame; piled high with superb quality vegetables, mostly untrimmed and unpackaged. One morning we visited the vast fish market (or course), and had some memorable sushi for breakfast. It was really interesting noting the huge difference in fish varieties available in the Southern Hemisphere. I thought that I was an expert, but this was all new to me. The highlight of the trip for me was a few days spent in the Hunter Valley, a couple of hours north of the capital. I'm rather naive when it comes to wine, so it was brilliant to visit the numerous wineries and learn more about the Shiraz and Semillon that the area specialises in. All in 37 degree heat, as kangaroos weaved between the wines just feet away. Magical.
In other news, I have just started a new job as Recipe Developer at Abel and Cole. I'm only a couple of weeks in and still a little green behind the gills, but I'm really enjoying everything so far and I look forward to the challenges ahead. I'm sad to be leaving all things fishy though, and I've had a wonderful three years working with astounding produce and wonderful people.
Now things are a little settled, it's high time that I kick started things on this blog. Surrounded by food every day, I've hardly been short of inspiration! Somehow spring has crept in and wild garlic season is now in full swing, and I also spied a lonely bunch of monk's beard in the corner of my local greengrocer. I quickly rustled up this dish on sunny afternoon, some simply dressed barley topped with the seasonal greens and a fried piece of local fish. Sometimes it's nice to spend the day cooking and constructing an intricate, complicated meal. But often a few ingredients treated in an unfussy manner is just the thing.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the monkfish:
4 monkfish steaks, about 100-120g each. Membrane removed.
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp capers
A pinch of chilli flakes
For the barley:
1 mug of pearl barley
1 garlic clove, crushed
A few sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
1 lemon, zest and juice
To finish:
2 large handfuls of monks beard, roots trimmed and washed
A handful of wild garlic leaves
Fill up the kettle and switch on. Pour the barley into a saucepan and add the crushed garlic clove, thyme sprigs and bay leaf. Cover with the boiling water by about 2cm. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover with a lid and cook for 20-25 minutes. When the grains have absorbed the water and are al dente, dress with a good glug of olive oil, the lemon zest and juice and a pinch of seasoning.
While the barley is cooking, fill a separate saucepan with well salted boiling water. Fill a large bowl with cold water. Blanch the monk's beard for a minute, then quickly transfer to the cold water to stop the cooking. Once cool, drain well and set aside until later.
Pour 2 tbsp of olive oil into a small bowl and add the drained capers, dried chilli flakes and a little seasoning.
Heat a non-stick frying pan until it is smoking hot. Pour in a good glug of olive oil. Season the monkfish steaks all over and lay them into the hot pan. Fry for 2 minutes, then turn the steaks over and add the butter. Cook for a further 2 minutes, basting the monkfish continuously with the hot butter. Transfer the monkfish to a plate to rest briefly, and reduce the heat of the pan to medium.
Toss the blanched monk's beard and wild garlic leaves into the pan and fry for 30 seconds, until warmed through.
To plate up, spoon a generous amount of the lemony barley onto each plate. Top with the monkfish steaks and the greens. Finish with a good spoonful of the caper and chilli dressing.
This is a true late spring dish that these warm, sunny evenings have been screaming out for. After many months of waiting, I was excited to see the first of the newly picked samphire arrive at the shop, but I certainly wasn’t the only one. This marsh grass has a crazy effect on people, and soon I was scraping the bottom of the box, desperate to salvage just one last handful. Samphire, samphierre, sampher, salicorne, seaweed, that green stuff, the names are endless, and I hear new ones every summer. But call it what you will, it does magical things when cooked with fish. And lamb for that matter.
Following the seasons makes dreaming up new ideas a total doddle, and this recipe is a prime example. In the same few weeks that the samphire emerged, we also started receiving the first of the wild black bream that visit Cornwall and the south coast every spring. These deep, darkly-scaled fish are true beauties, with flesh firm with freshness flashing blue and silver in the light. Closely related to seabass, they cook in a similar way, and are best filleted and pan-fried until crisp, or roasted whole in a hot oven. Even if you do decide to go with fillets, make sure that you take the bones as well. It’s always nice to use the whole of an ingredient, and the carcass of the bream will provide a lovely stock.
Unlike the samphire and the black bream, the mussel season only has a few weeks remaining. As the weather and seas warm for the summer, their quality really does decline, and it’s best to hold on until September before you plan your next mariniere. But if you’re quick, you will still be able to sneak a bowl or two before this exodus. Although clams tend to get all of the glory with their pretty shells and classy spaghetti alle vongole, I adore the rich flavour of the humble, cheap mussel. In this dish they are cooked and then blitzed into a silky, buttery sauce, that really brings the fish and greens and potatoes together as one. But made in a larger quantity, the same method would make a fantastic soup. Just add a wedge of bread.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1 black bream, approx. 1kg in weight. Scaled, filleted and pin-boned
1 large knob of butter
For the fish stock:
The cleaned bones from the black bream
1 carrot, roughly chopped
2 shallots, halved with the skins left on
The trimmings from the fennel bulb
1 clove of garlic, crushed
A handful of fresh parsley
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
For the mussel sauce:
500g mussels, cleaned and de-bearded
1 fennel bulb, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, grated
½ tsp chilli flakes
1 large glass of white wine
A squeeze of lemon juice
The reduced fish stock
1 large knob of butter
For the Jersey Royals:
6-8 small Jersey Royal potatoes, washed
To finish:
6 stems of purple sprouting broccoli
A generous handful of samphire
To begin with make the stock. Place all of the ingredients and a good pinch of seasoning into a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the liquid through a sieve into a smaller saucepan, then set on a high heat and return to the boil. Reduce the liquid by three quarters.
Put the washed Jersey Royals into a small saucepan and cover with well-salted, cold water. Bring to the boil, then simmer until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and rinse well with cold water to halt the cooking process. Using a butter knife, scrape off the skins and discard. Set the potatoes aside to reheat later.
Fill a saucepan with water and stir in a good pinch of salt. Bring to the boil, then blanch the trimmed broccoli stems for 2-3 minutes, or until just tender. While the broccoli is cooking, fill a large bowl up with very cold water. Transfer the al-dente broccoli to the cold water to shock. Repeat this process with the samphire, boiling for 30 seconds to soften slightly.
Bring a large saucepan to a medium-low heat. Add a good glug of olive oil and add the fennel, garlic and chilli flakes, and sweat until soft. Turn the heat of the pan up and tip in the mussels and the wine. Cover with a lid and allow the mussels to steamfor 3-4 minutes, or until all of the mussels have opened. Allow to cool slightly, the remove the meat from the shells with a spoon, discarding the shells. Reserve 6-8 mussels aside to decorate the dish when plating. Transfer the remaining mussels and vegetables to a food processor and blend well. While the motor is still running, pour in enough of the stock reduction to loosen into a smooth sauce. Squeeze in the lemon juice and season to taste. Strain the sauce through a sieve into a small saucepan.
Set a non-stick frying pan to a high heat. Pour in a generous amount of olive oil and season the bream fillets all over with salt and pepper. When the pan is hot, place them skin-side down into the pan and fry for 3 minutes. As the fish is cooking, carefully use a spoon to baste the flesh side of the fish with the hot oil. Add a knob of butter to the pan fry for a further minute, continuing the basting process. Remove the fish from the pan to a warm side plate.
Turn the heat of the pan down slightly and add the potatoes, samphire, broccoli and reserved mussels. Cook for 1-2 minutes to warm through, adding seasoning to taste.
Reheat the mussel sauce, then finish by beating in the knob of butter until fully emulsified.
Lay half of the sprouting broccoli onto each plate and top with a piece of fish. Arrange the potatoes, samphire and mussels around the sides. Finish with a generous amount of the mussel sauce.
When it comes to food, there are a couple of things that Katie and I just don’t meet eye-to-eye on. Firstly, she thinks that anchovies are the food of the devil. This is a terrible shame, as they are potentially up their as one of my favourites. I love them in salads, stuffed into legs of lamb, dressed with lemon and herbs or simply straight out of the tin (that shirt goes in the wash swiftly afterwards). She has an incredible micro-sensitivity to them, to the point that if I melted one measly fillet into a vat of sauce, to add depth rather than flavour, she could tell in a heartbeat. Instant ticket to the doghouse right there. Another food-based conflict is her insistence that all pizzas should have tomato sauce on the base. This is pure craziness. A delicately-flavoured pizza bianca, full of herbs, cheese and green vegetables is a thing of pure beauty. Thinly-sliced, crispy potatoes, thyme, garlic and parmesan would be barged out of the way by a sloppy, tangy pomodoro sauce. Surely there is room in the world for both!
Last week I had one of those dreaded days spent waiting at home for a delivery. It could arrive at any time “between 9am-9pm” they said. Thanks for nothing. Scowl face. So I decided to make pizza, or more specifically pizzetta; dinkier versions perfect for a snack, or as a first course before a hunk of meat or fish. On a day previously written-off in my head, it was a total joy sitting in a bright and sunny living room, listening to Ruth Rodgers on Desert Island Discs (if you haven’t heard this, find it. It’s lovely) with a bowl of gently rising dough in the corner.
When it came to topping the pizzettas, of course bianca was the only way. Don’t get me wrong, I like pizza in every form. But with spring ingredients, fresh orange-yolked eggs and lovely fontina cheese, a heavy sauce just wasn’t needed. But the great thing about pizza though is that you can customise exactly to your wants and needs, so don’t take the below arrangements as gospel. Add mozzarella, parmesan, wild garlic and asparagus. Even add cheese, tomato, ham and pineapple. Just be safe in the knowledge that that last one is all yours.
Makes 6-8 pizzettas
Ingredients:
For the dough:
2 tsp dried yeast
185ml warm water
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoons olive oil
A good pinch of salt
250g Italian ‘00’ grade flour
75g polenta or semolina
For 6 pizzettas with purple sprouting broccoli and broad beans:
400g fontina cheese, torn into small rough pieces
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
8 sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped
A pinch of dried chilli
18 stems of purple sprouting broccoli
12 broad beans pods, beans podded and shelle
For 6 pizzettas with porcini, garlic and egg:
400g fontina cheese, torn into small, rough pieces
3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
6 medium eggs
3 small handfuls of dried porcini mushrooms
6 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
To make the dough, pour the flour, polenta and salt into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl or large jug, stir the yeast with the water, milk and olive oil together until well combined. Make a well in the flour and pour in the liquid. Use a wooden spoon to form the mixture into a dough, then use your hands and knead for 10-15 minutes. The dough will still be relatively wet at this point, but that’s ok. Coat a separate large bowl with olive oil and transfer the dough into it. Drizzle a little more oil over the top, then cover with cling film and allow to prove in a warm place for about 2 hours, until doubled in size.
When the dough has risen, quickly knead it a few times to knock most of the air out. Replace the cling film and allow to prove again for 45 minutes.
Lightly flour a large work surface. Take a tangerine-sized piece of the dough and quickly roll it into a thin base around 20cm in diameter. Transfer carefully to a lightly floured greaseproof sheet. The pizzeta is now ready for topping with your choice of ingredients. Repeat with the rest of the dough until you have the required amount.
Pre-heat the oven as high as it will go.
To make the broccoli and broad bean pizzettas, fill a saucepan will lightly salted water and bring to the boil. When the water is ready, blanche the purple sprouting broccoli for 2 minutes, then drain and shake dry.
Get a small bowl and add the chopped rosemary, garlic and dried chilli. Season well, and pour in enough extra virgin olive oil to create a loose, spoonable sauce.
Crumble the fontina onto the base of each pizzetta, to about a centimetre from the edge. Top with the blanched broccoli and a scattering of shelled broad beans. Spoon over a little of the rosemary and garlic oil and sprinkle some additional seasoning. Slide the pizzettas, in batches if necessary, on the greaseproof paper bases, onto the top shelf of the oven. Bake for 6-8 minutes, until the dough is cooked and starting to brown around the edges.
Top the cooked pizzettas with an additional spoonful of the rosemary and garlic oil and tuck in.
For the porcini, garlic and egg pizzettas, fill up a kettle and switch on. Tip the dried porcini into a heatproof bowl and cover with the boiling water. Allow the mushrooms to soak for about 20 minutes, then drain and pat dry with kitchen paper (do not discard the soaking liquid, it is excellent used in risottos, soups and sauces).
Crumble the fontina onto each base, to about a centimetre from the edge. Carefully crack the egg and break in the centre, then scatter the porcini mushrooms all around. Top with a few slivers of garlic, a good pinch of fresh thyme leaves and seasoning. Transfer to the oven and bake for 6-8 minutes, until the dough and egg are cooked.
Hot on the heels of the scallop carpaccio ‘starter’ described in the last recipe on this blog, was a more traditional beef carpaccio ‘main’. It’s been that kind of day. When you get a deep craving for something, the best thing is to go big. Have it twice. As Gary Busey famously (!) cries in Point Break: “Give me two!”. I now feel satisfied with my carpaccio fill, and it will be a little while before it comes around again. In the meantime, I can go back to craving pasta. All of the time.
As with the last recipe, this one was inspired by the flurry of amazing springtime ingredients. Okay, so you can get a fillet of beef pretty much all year round, but as soon as I saw baby artichokes and broad beans available, I knew they would be best friends. Also served raw, both vegetables possess enough subtle flavour and crunchy texture to hold their own, whilst not clouding the all-important (and bloody expensive, thank goodness it’s only a sliver) piece of meat. Although I’m always a sucker for the dead trad carpaccio with parmesan, rocket and oil, I fancied something a touch different and thankfully it worked a treat. Anything with a pile of anchovies chucked in normally does.
Today I discovered how making carpaccio really showcases the sharpness of your knives. In my case, I could have done a better job with a teaspoon. Blimey, what a mess. I love my knives, and they’re treasured and essential in my kitchen, but my god they’ve taken a pounding over the years. Perhaps it is time to finally send them back to the wonderful I O Shen to bring them back up to shape. In my next blog post I’ll no doubt be telling you how I no longer have any fingertips.
But my inadequate kitchen equipment was saved by the good and trustworthy rolling pin. They never let you down. They have just the one job, and they always rise to it. They never need sending back to the supplier. Here’s to the rolling pin! Anyway, the rolling pin made short work of making my frankly shite slices of beef serviceable again. Despite such bodging and faffery, the texture of the beef just melted away. So in that sense, this is truly a recipe that caters for any skill level.
Serves 2
200g of excellent quality, dry-aged fillet steak. Trimmed of sinew.
2 baby artichokes
3 broad beans
1 Sicilian lemon, juice only
For the anchovy mayonnaise:
2 egg yolks
1 garlic clove, grated
½ tsp Dijon mustard
1 Sicilian lemon, juice along with zest of half
4 anchovies
200ml vegetable oil
To finish:
A few bruscandoli shoots (optional)
½ a Sicilian lemon, juice only
Extra virgin olive oil
Wrap the trimmed beef fillet tightly with a couple of layers of cling film and pop in the freezer for 1 hour to firm up.
While the beef is freezing make the mayonnaise. Put the yolks, garlic, anchovies, lemon juice and zest and mustard into a small food processor along with a good pinch of seasoning. Blitz well to combine. With the engine still running, start to slowly pour in the vegetable oil. Continue to add the oil until it has all been emulsified, and you are left with a thick mayonnaise. Taste and adjust the seasoning and lemon, then spoon into a squeezy bottle. Set aside until needed.
Make a dressing by combining the juice of half a lemon with 3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Pod and shell the broad beans and transfer to a bowl. Strip away the outside leaves from the artichokes and trim the top about 1 ½ cm down. Use a vegetable peeler to trim any hard bits away from the stem. Use a knife to thinly slice, then add to the same bowl as the broad beans. Immediately toss with the lemony dressing to stop the artichoke from discolouring.
After an hour, remove the beef from the freezer and use a very sharp, long knife to thinly slice. If you want the carpaccio to be wafer thin, put each slice between pieces of greaseproof paper and flatten with a rolling pin.
To serve, arrange the meat slices onto each plate and dot on the anchovy mayonnaise. Scatter the broad beans, artichoke slices and bruscandoli over the top. Finish with a good glug of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice and a good pinch of seasoning.
