I spent the weekend just passed on a whistle-stop visit to Brighton to celebrate my mum’s 68th birthday. And as is now tradition, I arrived clutching a bag of provisions to make lunch on the Sunday. Wherever they have lived, the kitchen has always been the central point of the house, and it was a total pleasure preparing food and catching up as they sat around the table with a glass of wine. As usual, I wanted to keep things simple and quick, just a few seasonal and tested ingredients together on a plate.
In the morning mum and I had driven to their lovely allotment on the hills overlooking the city, shrouded in the morning mist and spitting rain. There we collected beautiful courgette flowers, herbs, salad leaves and bulbs of garlic. They are always so humble about it, but I know how hard they work planning, digging, planting and watering, and I’m always blown away by the produce that flourishes in the neat beds and winds around geometric canes. It was exciting to collect food knowing that it would be on the plate within a few small hours.
First course out of my bag was a paper-wrapped package bulging with squid. Dad gasped. The man loves his squid, and some of my fondest childhood memories involve visits to fishmongers with him. Without fail, dad would always be drawn to squid, and we would rush home to fry them in a thin, crispy batter. On this occasion they were seared quick and fast, until charring at the edges, before being drenched in lemon juice.
I can’t get enough of samphire at the moment, so a few handfuls were also thrown into the mix. Combined with the incredibly tender young courgettes and a tangy dressing, they sat perfectly alongside the squid. This whole dish took about 15 minutes to casually put together, perfect for maximising time sat down eating together.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
4 medium squid, cleaned
4 small handfuls of samphire
4-6 baby courgettes, with flowers if possible
2 sprigs of marjoram
1 lemon
1 clove of garlic
1 good pinch of dried chilli flakes
Extra virgin olive oil
Fill a saucepan with water, and bring to the boil. Fill a large bowl with cold water and add a good handful of ice cubes. When the water in the pan is hot, tip in the samphire and blanche for 20 seconds. Drain and transfer straight into the iced water to cool quickly. When cold, drain and shake dry, then add to a large bowl.
Tear up the courgette flowers (discarding the stamen). Slice the courgettes into long, thin batons. Add both to the samphire, along with the chilli flakes, the lemon zest and half of the juice, the marjoram leaves and the finely grated garlic. Pour in 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and a good pinch of seasoning and toss to combine.
Using a sharp knife, open up the cleaned squid bodies to create a flat sheet. Carefully score one side in a crisscross, and repeat with the wings. Slice the tentacles into a few pieces.
Bring a large, heavy frying pan to a high heat and add 2 tbsp of olive oil. When smoking hot, add the squid and a pinch of seasoning. Cook the squid, in batches if necessary, for one minute on each side, or until golden brown and caramelised.
To serve, layer the squid and the samphire and courgette salad onto each plate. Finish with an extra squeeze of lemon juice and a crack of black pepper.
Fish are as seasonal in our waters as the distinct harvesting seasons for vegetables, and the traditional shooting seasons for game. Temperature and weather conditions play a big part, and the variation in catches reflects this. Late spring and summer sees wild sea trout and salmon migrating back down their spawning rivers from sea, and it is the beginning of turbot season proper. Christmastime sees peak molluscs; juicy, heavy mussels and sweet clams. The autumn is bountiful, and almost everything is in great condition as the waters finally start to cool after months of heat. The most visual sign of this is the tide of beautiful red mullet that start appearing, scale perfect and ridged as darts. In the shops we sell two different sizes of these fine fish; the small ‘fritture’, perfect for frying whole as a wonderful evening snack with a glass of dry wine. But the larger ones are worth seeking out, for crispy-skinned fillets and the soft, part-oily flesh that yields that unique shellfish flavour.
In the year and a half that I have been a fishmonger, this is the first time that I’ve managed to take advantage of this wonderful produce. My colleagues swoon as soon as they start appearing on the ice slabs, for many they are an outright favourite. Such special fish deserve a special dish, and this time around I made sure I was prepared.
A good fish stew recipe is worth its weight in gold. It can be quickly rustled up in order to create a special and crowd-pleasing meal when suddenly faced with many mouths. It is perfect when the chills start and the nights creep in, providing a deep satisfaction, and a radiator-like effect on the body. My version takes the last of the summer tomato harvest combined with soft borlotti beans and roasted radicchio leaves. I heard recently that we are losing our taste for bitter leaves and was saddened. They are an acquired taste for sure, but tempered with clever cooking and flavour pairings they are delightful.
A small packet of bottarga accompanied me back from Rome, and I’ve been grating little bits of it here and there whenever possible. I love it simply with braised greens, lemon and olive oil a la The River Café, but it also really makes clams, shellfish and in this case, red mullet really sing. It acts as a fantastic enhancer, boosting other ingredients whist imparting its own subtle and delicious flavour.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1 red mullet, about 400g in weight. Filleted and pin-boned.
1 medium squid, cleaned, scored and cut into strips
For the stew base:
The bones from the red mullet
3 shallots, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 fennel bulb, finely chopped
1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp dried oregano
1 star anise
1 tsp dried chilli
1 good pinch of saffron
4-6 ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 glass of dry white wine
750ml good chicken stock
400g tinned or fresh borlotti beans, drained and rinsed if using the former
For the roasted radicchio:
1 small radicchio, trimmed and quartered
To finish:
A handful of basil leaves
A good glug of extra virgin olive oil
A generous grating of bottarga
First start off by making the stew. Heat a good glug of olive oil in a large, high-sided skillet or frying pan. When a medium temperature, add the mullet bones and fry until golden on all sides. Tip in the shallot, garlic and fennel along with a good pinch of seasoning, and continue to cook for 10-15 minutes, until the vegetables have softened. Stir in the dried chilli, fennel seeds, paprika, oregano, star anise and saffron and continue to fry for a further 5 minutes, until the flavours have been released. Add the tomatoes and combine well with a wooden spoon. Cook until soft and starting to dissolve and create a sauce, another 10 minutes or so. Raise the heat and pour in the wine, allowing it to boil and reduce by half. Finally pour in the chicken stock. Bring the broth to a boil, then simmer gently for about 45 minutes, until the liquid has reduced and thickened a little. Strain into a smaller saucepan, and discard the now spent flavourings.
Bring the strained stew base back to a simmer and pour in the borlotti beans. Cook until the beans have softened and absorbed some of the flavour, about 10-15 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200⁰C.
Arrange the radicchio quarters onto a baking tray and coat with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in the hot oven for 10 minutes, or until the edges start to turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and slice the leaves into small, rough pieces.
Pour a generous amount of oil into a large, non-stick frying pan and bring to a high heat. When really hot, add the squid and a good pinch of seasoning. Fry quickly for 1-2 minutes on each side, until golden and crispy. Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain. Keep warm.
Give the frying pan a quick wipe clean and replace the oil. Bring back to a medium-high heat. Season the mullet fillets well and place skin-side down in the pan. Fry for 3 minutes, and use a tablespoon to baste the flesh-sides with hot oil at the same time.
To serve, spoon a good amount of the stew and beans into shallow bowls. Scatter the radicchio and squid over the top, and pop a fillet of red mullet in the middle. Arrange basil leaves around the sides and drizzle over some good olive oil. Finish by grating over the bottarga and serve.
Finally we come to the end of the pigs head project, and to be perfectly honest I’ll be happy to start writing about new things again. But that said, I have thoroughly enjoyed tackling a piece of meat that was new to me and being able to create three very different meals out of it. It’s certainly inspired me to try out more of the undervalued cuts; they are so cheap to buy and can be made into really lovely dishes with a bit of thought and time. I was amazed at how far the head went, and once you stopped thinking about the anatomical side of things you were left with a lot of really decent meat. Although these cuts are not commonly found in the supermarket, it’s well worth getting to know your local independent butcher who can advise you on these cuts and can usually order them for you within a day or two.
Even this week there has been loads of coverage on the news about how supermarkets are developing new schemes to deliver food not to people’s houses, but to convenient points such as tube stations to be collected. I found this quite depressing. This is another measure that is going to damage our high streets. Luckily where I live in Stoke Newington we have a high street that is 90% small independent businesses, and this diversity is such a refreshing change to the corporation dominance of other parts of town. Don’t get me wrong, of course I shop at supermarkets, but when it comes to food, the quality shines through in these small shops. I always find pork chops the most striking example of this, where the scrawny ones sold at the supermarkets are dwarfed by the cave-man style specimens from a butcher. And don’t get me started about the way that some of the big brands treat the farmers. It’s more than embarrassing. I digress, but my point is that without these specialist butchers, fishmongers, delicatessens, finding those great quality or less popular ingredients would be near impossible.
With the braised cheek and doughnut dishes the pork was definitely the star of the show, whereas in this case it’s more a balance of three good ingredients that combine really well together. Squid and chorizo are classic partners and one I love, and this is kind of my attempt to replicate that. Although my method of making these sausages is totally makeshift and involves cooking the meat in the spices beforehand, I was amazed that it worked. I found that another fairly gruesome-yet-handy piece of pork, caul fat, acted perfectly as the casing and formed a crisp shell around the filling when fried. Aside from the initial slow roasting of the pork that you can do a day or two in advance, this is a really quick meal to knock together.
Purple sprouting broccoli is bang in season and gives the finished dish another texture and an earthy, irony taste. Like the squid it also loves strong spicy flavours and marries really well with the paprika in the sausages. But don’t cook it too much; it just needs steaming or boiling for a couple of minutes.
I also wanted to include the squid ink in this recipe. It’s commonly used in risottos and pasta dishes but tends to dominate everything else and make it all look a bit, well, inky. I wanted things to be a bit more subtle here, so have used it in the vinegar and lemon reduction. Although very sharp, it cuts through the rich oiliness of the cooking juices used to make the rest of the sauce.
Serves 2 for a light lunch.
Ingredients:
For the squid:
1 large squid, cleaned and gutted then cut into large triangular pieces
½ a lemon, juice only
Olive oil
For the pork:
1 pork jowl, approx. 600/700g
1 carrot, halved vertically
1 leek, halved vertically
1 onion, sliced thickly
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 star anise
1 bay leaf
A few sprigs of thyme
1 cinnamon stick
1 glass of white wine
1 tbsp fennel seeds
For the sausage mixture:
25g butter
1 shallot, very finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, very finely chopped
1 lemon, zest only
1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp dried chilli flakes (or to taste)
½ tsp oregano
An approx. A4-sized sheet of caul fat
For the purple sprouting broccoli:
10 florets of purple sprouting broccoli, trimmed
Olive oil
For the squid ink dressing:
4 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 lemon, juice only
1 bay leaf
½ a small sachet of squid ink
Pre-heat the oven to 160⁰C.
First roast the pork jowl. Use the sliced leek, onion, carrot and garlic as a trivet in the bottom of a roasting dish. Top with the star anise, cinnamon, fennel seeds, thyme, seasoning, white wine and about 150ml of water. Score ½ cm marks into the pork skin and rub in a generous amount of salt. Place the meat on top of the trivet and cover with foil. Bake for 3 hours, or until the meat is really tender. Raise the temperature of the oven to 220⁰C and continue to roast until the crackling is crunchy. Strip the soft meat from the crackling, it should fall away with little pressure, and shred well.
Heat a saucepan up to a medium temperature and add the butter for the sausage mixture and a little olive oil. Fry the shallots, garlic, paprika, oregano, chilli flakes and lemon zest until very tender. Add the shredded pork meat and a good amount of seasoning and combine well. Reduce the heat slightly, cover the saucepan and allow to cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste for seasoning then mash the ingredients together well. Spread the filling mixture out onto a plate to cool down quickly.
To construct the sausages, lay the sheet of caul fat onto a flat surface. Make a long sausage out of the filling mixture and lay on top. Very carefully wrap with the caul fat, overlapping a little and making sure that the filling is held in tightly. Twist and cut into a few separate sausages, then put in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
Make the dressing by putting the vinegar, lemon juice, bay leaf and seasoning into a small saucepan. Reduce over a medium heat until only about 2 tablespoons of liquid remains. Remove the bay leaf and squeeze in the squid ink. Mix well and taste; it should be quite sharp. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Lightly score one side of the squid pieces in a crisscross and allow to come to room temperature on a plate.
Fill a saucepan with well-salted water and bring to the boil. Also heat a non-stick pan to a medium temperature.
When the pan is hot, fry the sausages in a little oil for a couple of minutes on each side until crisp on the outside. Be careful when turning them to reduce the risk of the caul fat breaking apart.
Boil the broccoli for a couple of minutes until cooked but still retaining a bit of bite. Drain from the pan, season well and toss in the olive oil.
While the other elements are cooking, heat up a heavy pan or griddle to a high temperature. When smoking, coat the squid pieces in olive oil and seasoning then sear quickly for about a minute on each side. Squeeze over the lemon juice right at the end.
To serve, put some of the broccoli and sliced sausage pieces onto a plate and top with some of the squid. Spoon some of the cooking juices from the sausage around the stacks and dot over some of the dressing.
