Where has all of the time gone? Work was a hectic flurry of oysters, lobsters and smoked salmon before Christmas, then a well-earned break spent catching up with family and attending a lovely wedding up north. Then there has been trying to get to grips with the exciting yet mega stressful house build project that Katie and I are currently undertaking, all punctuated by an unpleasant and hugely boring bout of cold and flu, which I’ve been trying to shake off for what feels like forever. All of those days branded ‘update blog’ on my to-do list seemed to nestle into distractions, and somehow it’s now the middle of January. How!? Anyway, finally I have managed to turn back to these pages and write another recipe. I’m really determined to not let things slip too much with this blog, and I’m really looking forward to another year of cookery exploration.
Now that Christmas is over, everyone seems to have forgotten about Brussels sprouts. Some with true relief, and others because the only place for a sprout is beside a golden, shimmering and utterly bone dry turkey. Well not me. I’m happy they still reside in constant stock at my local greengrocers. And there’s so much more to sprouts than Christmas lunch, they work a treat in this recipe.
I really hate eating salads in January. Not because I hate salads, but because it makes me feel like I’m conceding to the masses of hysterical New Year detox bullshit that’s everywhere right now. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to eat healthily, and there’s nothing wrong with dieting sensibly, but recently it all seems to have gone way out of control. Guilt has always been a massive force in food and marketing, but now you’re frowned upon unless your chocolate cake is made from some sort of weird cashew and date concoction, And don’t even think about eating it if it contains the merest mention of white flour. Ugh. It’s all so draining. Although I’ve always been happy with a balanced diet, which could involve a broth one evening and a cheese-filled hamburger the next, I worry about the confusing, dangerous signals that all of this gives to less confident eaters. It’s time that food and food writing was about celebrating ingredients again, not about banishing them from our diets.
So yes, a salad. But the focus of this salad is some very special crabmeat. There are few things in cooking greater than boiling up a whole crab, before meticulously picking every last scrap of meat from the still warm shell, ideally surrounded by piles of bread and mayonnaise. But I appreciate that some don’t have the time and space, and that it might not be appropriate for the moderately squeamish. Failing that, there are some excellent hand-picked, unpasteurised crab products available, that allow this little plateful to be prepared in a matter of moments. The bright, fresh shellfish contrasts with the bitter sprouts wonderfully, with dinky capers and fiery chilli flakes adding a welcome kick along the way.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the white crabmeat:
250g unpasteurised white crabmeat
A squeeze of lemon juice
For the brown crabmeat:
100g brown crabmeat
½ a teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1 lemon, zest and juice
4-5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
For the sprout salad:
1 handful of Brussels sprouts, trimmed and finely sliced
1 handful of sprout flowers, leaves peeled 1 large bunch of parsley
½ a small clove of garlic
1 tbsp capers
1 pinch of dried chilli flakes
1 lemon, zest and juice
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Tip the brown crabmeat into a food processor and add the mustard, lemon zest and a good pinch of seasoning. Blitz until well combined. With the engine still running, slowly pour in the olive oil, until the mixture is light and emulsified. Stir in the lemon juice and taste for seasoning.
Make the dressing for the greens by combining the lemon zest and juice, capers, grated garlic, dried chilli flakes and salt and pepper in a small bowl. Whisk in the olive oil.
Put the sliced sprouts, sprout flower leaves and roughly torn parsley into a large bowl and toss evenly with the dressing.
Squeeze the lemon juice over the white crabmeat and taste. Add salt and pepper if necessary.
Spoon a good dollop of the brown crabmeat onto each plate and arrange a pile of the white meat next to it. Scatter some of the dressed salad to the side and serve.
Late November and December sees the first of the bitter leaves emerge, with all kinds of multi-coloured radicchio, kale, chard and chicory now firmly on the menu. For me, learning to love these winter vegetables has been a struggle I’ve only recently overcome. Despite appearing beautifully sculpted and painfully photogenic, this produce requires a bit of work and balance to tease out the true delights. Eaten in a raw, undressed form they can be a trifle unpleasant. In the past I would often rustle up a chicory-heavy salad with very little else, and then sit dumbstruck as to why others considered it edible. But experience eventually taught me that tempering is the name of the game. Toss kale in an anchovy and garlic heavy Caesar dressing and it is suddenly no longer the yellowing bag of greens waiting patiently at the back of the fridge. Grill half a radicchio until singed and crispy and a hidden sweetness is released. Bake chard piled high with parmesan and be prepared to fight for the last spoonful. It felt like a new world had been opened, and now I actively look forward to the season coming around.
This week I’ve been rather short of time during my days off, and with daylight hours at an absolute premium at this time of year it’s been a challenge to get anything on film. In the past I have been devastated when hours of cooking time have gone to waste due to a dimly lit room and unusable photography. These days I plan my testing days more effectively, and this recipe was more of an assembly of ingredients rather than a labour at the stove.
The winter leaf of choice for this dish is castelfranco, a beautifully marked and delicate type of radicchio. Sitting toward the lower end of the face-squirmingly bitter scale, left raw it provided the perfect balance with the rich, creamy burrata and the sweetness of the blackberries. In East London I’m luckily surrounded by a number of brilliant greengrocers, but I realise that castelfranco may be an elusive beast to get hold of. In which case, regular purple radicchio, rocket or even spinach would work as a handy substitute.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
2 balls of burrata
A few large leaves of castelfranco radicchio, washed and roughly torn
1 punnet of blackberries
1 tsp of fennel seeds
3-4 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
1 lemon, zest only
Bring a frying pan to a medium-high heat. When hot, scatter in the fennel seeds and toast for a minute or two, then pour into a bowl. Drizzle in 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil along with a good pinch of salt and pepper, the lemon zest, fresh thyme leaves and the blackberries. Use a spoon or fork to lightly crush the blackberries and toss everything together. Set aside for 15 minutes.
Break the burrata into rough pieces and arrange onto each plate with the torn castelfranco leaves. Spoon over the blackberries and flavoured oil, making sure all of the cheese and leaves receive a bit of dressing.
Following on from the last recipe on this blog, I still had a good amount of black truffle in my possession and I was determined to turn it into another tasty dish. Although I have previously preserved excess truffle in butter to stretch it out for a week or so, this time I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and no sooner had I finished scoffing my raw beef snacks I was back in the kitchen with the stove on. For this dish I wanted to keep things simple and very plain, maximising the pungent flavour of the knobbly tuber.
Truffles and eggs have long been bedfellows, and it’s amazing that if you keep eggs and truffles close together, the flavour will seep through the shells. After an overnight stay in each other’s company, the eggs had a definite truffley whiff and were ready to be beaten into a pasta dough, along with forming the base of the simple sauce. Carbonara and other rich, creamy pasta sauces have been making a fashionable comeback of late, and it doesn’t seem like you can switch on social media without spying another take on cacio e pepe. The role of eggs in this recipe is further stripped back, acting as a rich binder to transform the parmesan and truffle into a thick and glossy sauce.
Like most simple Italian recipes, success lies in careful execution. I cringe when I remember my earlier attempts at carbonara, heating the sauce together in a red hot pan that instantly turned the smooth eggs into a grainy, somewhat scrambled affair. I also knew nothing of using the very handy glutenous pasta water, which tempers the eggs and helps a great deal to thicken everything up. Constant movement of the pasta is the key; it will stop the eggs from overcooking whilst emulsifying the sauce. It may take a practice or two, but it’s a technique well worth mastering that will enable a bowlful of comforting pasta to be made in minutes.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the fresh spaghetti:
200g ‘00’ grade strong pasta flour, plus a little extra for rolling
2 medium eggs
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
For the sauce:
2 medium eggs plus one yolk
A small handful of parmesan, finely grated
1/3 of a black truffle, finely grated
To finish:
Thin slices of black truffle
Extra gratings of parmesan
First make the pasta. Pour the flour into a large bowl and combine with a very generous pinch of salt. Use a wooden spoon to make a well in the middle, and crack in the eggs, along with about a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Use a fork to beat the eggs and oil, slowly incorporating the surrounding flour until a dough starts to form. Transfer the dough to a flat surface and knead really well, for 5-10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic in texture. Wrap with cling film and put in the fridge to rest for an hour.
Remove the rested dough from the fridge, and use a pasta machine to roll thinly (to the second thinnest setting using an Imperia machine), dusting each side with a little flour every few rolls. Use a spaghetti cutter attachment to create spaghetti. Cover the fresh pasta with a tea towel while you prepare the rest of the dish.
Fill a large saucepan with water and add a generous amount of salt. Bring to the boil. Set a large frying pan over a gentle heat.
Break the eggs for the sauce into a bowl and whisk well. Stir through the grated truffle, parmesan and a pinch of seasoning.
Drop the fresh spaghetti into the boiling water and cook for 1-2 minutes.
Use tongs to transfer the cooked spaghetti to the frying pan, adding a good ladle of the cooking water. Pour over the egg mixture and toss with the pasta really well. Cook for a minute or so over the low heat, stirring/tossing the pan continuously until the sauce thickens and coats the pasta. Taste and season if necessary.
To serve, pile the spaghetti onto each plate and top with extra shavings of truffle and grated parmesan.
For many, buying a blowtorch to use in a domestic kitchen might seem like a gimmicky item to show off, or something destined to gather dust in the back of a shelf after many months of no use. I certainly don’t drag it out for most things that I cook, especially not quick, simple midweek meals. Yet I find it so genuinely useful in many circumstances, able to create a different element of flavour that is difficult to achieve with any other appliance. For a long time I have found myself semi-obsessed with charred or borderline burnt food; not great when totally dominating dishes, but a tiny bit of bitter smokiness can really make a decent dish special. From toasting delicate tips of an Italian meringue to blackening sweetcorn and charring winter leaves, there are endless uses. Some recipes call for a hot grill, but the control of vicious heat that you get from a blowtorch is far superior.
It is undoubtedly still a faff though. Especially in this case, where my recipe calls for you to melt 300g of butter purely for the poaching of a few langoustine tails. Then to drag them out and blowtorch them seems like a lot of work. But I totally guarantee that it is worth it. Wild local langoustines are bloody expensive, and as such should be treated with delicate respect to maximise their beautiful sweet flavour. Although I have previously grilled and traditionally poached langoustines with enjoyable results, the gentle poaching in butter yields the ultimate soft texture. With the speedy exposure to a high flame afterwards, the tails take on a wonderful subtle caramelisation, without further internal cooking.
To accompany the langoustines I only required a few subtle sidekicks. As is often the way, ingredients that share the same seasons also sit happily on the same plate. Autumn is all about wild mushrooms for me, and I was lucky enough to find girolles, trompettes and fresh porcini mushrooms in my brilliant local fruit and veg shop in Stoke Newington. They also had a pile of beautiful Italian violet artichokes, and I couldn’t resist popping a couple into my basket.
Although a lot of butter is used to cook the langoustines, save the leftovers for frying potatoes, or to melt through pasta with plenty of sage and garlic…
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the langoustines:
6 large live langoustines, killed humanely and tails shelled. Heads and claws reserved.
300g salted butter
For the artichokes:
6 small violet artichokes, peeled, trimmed and halved
The heads and claws from the langoustines
1 smoked garlic clove, crushed
1 shallot, quartered
1 bay leaf
1 large glass of white wine
1 knob of butter
For the wild mushrooms:
1 handful of small girolle mushrooms, trimmed and cleaned
1 handful of trompette mushrooms, cleaned
1 or 2 fresh porcini mushrooms, cleaned
For the smoked garlic mayonnaise:
1 clove of smoked garlic
2 egg yolks
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 lemon, juice and zest
250ml light olive oil
To finish:
½ a lemon, juice only
Bring a large saucepan or high-sided frying pan to a medium heat. Pour in a generous glug of olive oil and add the claws and heads from the langoustines. Fry for 3-4 minutes, until lightly caramelised on all sides. Add the trimmed artichokes, shallot, garlic and bay leaf and continue to cook for a further couple of minutes. Pour in the wine and bring to the boil, then cover the pan and reduce the heat. Gently simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the artichokes are tender. Add the knob of butter and adjust the seasoning if needed.
To make the mayonnaise, grate the smoked garlic into a small food processor and add the mustard, lemon zest and juice, egg yolks and a good pinch of seasoning. Blend well to combine. With the engine still running, slowly pour in the oil, until fully emulsified into a mayonnaise. Thin down with a little water if necessary, and taste and add more seasoning. Spoon into a plastic bottle.
Heat a pan to a high heat and add a good glug of oil. When hot, sauté the girolle and trompette mushrooms for a couple of minutes, until tender and caramelised. Keep warm.
Halve the fresh raw porcini mushrooms and slice thinly.
Melt the butter for the langoustines in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and carefully drop in the langoustine tails. Poach gently for 3 minutes, then transfer onto a metal tray. Use a blowtorch to quickly caramelise the outsides.
To plate up, dot the mayonnaise onto each plate and arrange the langoustines and artichokes around. Top with the cooked wild mushrooms and raw porcini slices, and finish with a little of the buttery artichoke cooking liquid.
