Spring is just around the corner. The heating is still on but the sun is starting to creep through what seems like months of dreary cloud. Wild garlic has just sprung up, and we’re within reaching distance of Jersey Royals, early asparagus and broad beans; those short-season vegetables that I yearn for every year. But it’s easy to forget about the amazing cold weather produce that we have right now. Vegetables like carrot and beetroot often get a raw deal and are labelled as dull and boring, but with a little bit of thought they can be the stars of the show.
I was inspired reading an article by Henry Dimbleby recently where he wrote that that you should avoid boiling vegetables at all costs. This reminded me of growing up, where my brother and I used to be given little side bowls of soft broccoli, carrots and beans alongside pretty much anything. We both loved vegetables when we were young and would wolf them down with our pasta, curry or chicken escalope. But it was hardly exciting stuff, just something that we ate quickly because we were told it was good for us. Dimbleby, and more prolifically Yotam Ottolenghi, have shown that you can transform and enhance the flavours of our humble groceries using other simple methods. Now I look to roast or fry wherever possible, making sure that I dress with butter, oil and flavourings once cooked.
Despite the fact that this blog is filled with meat and fish recipes, these are mostly the things that I save for special occasions. Most of the time, especially midweek, I eat a vegetable-heavy diet that includes little to no meat. I’m lucky to have a fantastic greengrocer just around the corner from me, and I pop in most days to grab super fresh, seasonal produce for my supper. I think that meat and fish are a bit of a treat, and I’d far rather spend more at a good quality butcher or fishmonger less frequently than cheaper, poorly reared stuff every day from the supermarkets. Not having meat with every meal is one of those things that particularly testosterone-heavy men get hot under the collar about, but it is so easy to knock up simple and amazing tasting dishes using veggies alone. And lord knows I’ve had some practice; both of my sisters are vegetarians and you can’t keep on serving grilled halloumi every time they come round…
It’s now fairly easy to get hold of different colours and varieties of carrots and beets, and these really help create a visual impact. Roasting and salt-baking intensifies the flavour, and there’s something a little caveman like about pulling a solid lump of salt out of the oven and smashing it with a spoon. I’ve also tried to use as much of the vegetable as I can. Just like using the less glamorous cuts of meat, we often needlessly throw away bits of perfectly good veg. In this case I’ve saved the leaves from the tops of the carrots and beetroot to add a different taste and a bit of texture to the dish.
Those little crispy quail eggs are addictive. The soft boiling and peeling process can be a little fiddly with my big clumsy hands, but it’s worth making way more as you’ll just want to eat then straight out of the fryer.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the salt-baked beetroot:
3 beetroots, washed but left unpeeled
4 egg whites
800g table salt
2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked
For the roasted carrots:
3-4 carrots, washed and peeled
5 sprigs of thyme
5 sprigs of rosemary
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 lemon, zest finely grated and juice kept
Olive oil
For the quail’s eggs:
3 quail eggs
5tbsp panko breadcrumbs
3tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten
Vegetable oil for frying, approx. 1ltr
2tbsp white wine vinegar
For the crispy carrot tops:
6 carrot top cuttings
For the sautéed sprout flowers:
A handful of sprout flowers, sliced in half lengthways if large
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
The leaves from the beetroot, washed and trimmed
1tbsp butter
6 wild garlic leaves
½ a lemon, juice only
For the olive crumb:
About 20 Kalamata or other strong black olives
Salt
For the garlic oil:
4tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
1 sprig of rosemary, leaves picked
Salt
For the whipped goat’s curd:
4tbsp fresh goat’s curd
1tbsp double cream
Pepper
For the beetroot yoghurt:
½ a red beetroot, peeled and cut into rough 1cm pieces
4tbsp natural yoghurt
Salt
A few components of this dish are better prepared the night before.
To make the beetroot yoghurt, put the beetroot chunks into a small bowl and sprinkle over a little salt. Leave for five minutes for the juices to start to leach out and then mix in the yoghurt. Cover and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours, the colour and flavour will get more vivid the longer you leave it. When ready to use, strain through a sieve and discard the beetroot.
For the olive crumb, remove the stones from the black olives by pushing and rolling on a chopping board. Scatter onto a greaseproof-lined baking tray and cook in a low oven (about 80⁰C) overnight, or until fully dried out. Transfer to a small food processor and blend to a fine powder.
The garlic oil is also best made a little in advance. Combine the sliced garlic and rosemary leaves in a bowl with a little salt. Leave for a couple of minutes and then pour over the extra virgin olive oil. Cover and allow to steep for at least a couple of hours.
Fill a small saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Add the quail eggs and boil for 2 minutes, then quickly remove to a bowl of iced water mixed with the vinegar. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then roll very gently against the bottom of the bowl to crack the shell before carefully peeling. Dry with kitchen roll. Put the panko, flour and beaten egg into two plates and a bowl respectively and season all elements well. Roll the soft-boiled eggs in the flour, then dip in the egg before finally coating in the breadcrumbs. Put on a plate and refrigerate until needed.
On the day of serving the dish, preheat the oven to 190⁰C.
Make the salt paste by combining the table salt, rosemary and egg whites in a large bowl. You may need a little more salt depending on the size of the eggs. Wrap the beetroot with the salt mixture and bake in the oven for about an hour.
Put the carrots, garlic, thyme, rosemary, lemon zest and seasoning into a separate baking dish and toss with a little olive oil. Roast in the same oven as the beetroot for 30-45mins, shaking the tray occasionally. When cooked, remove from the oven and squeeze over the lemon juice.
Spoon the goat’s curd into a bowl and add the cream and a good twist of pepper. Stir well with a fork until combined and smooth.
When the vegetables are nearly cooked, heat the frying oil in a heavy saucepan until it reaches 165⁰C. Fry the carrot tops very quickly for about 30 seconds, then remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Keep the oil hot for the eggs later on.
When tender, remove the root vegetables from the oven. Crack the salt crusts from around the beetroot and peel away the skin. Cut the beets into wedges and slice the carrots lengthways into halves or quarters. Keep warm while you finish the rest of the dish.
To cook the greens, heat the butter with a little oil in a large frying pan. Soften the garlic over a medium heat and then add the sprout flowers and cook for a couple of minutes until al-dente. Season and stir through the wild garlic and beetroot tops. Fry for a further minute, then squeeze over the lemon juice and remove from the heat.
Fry the coated quail eggs for a minute or so in the hot oil or until light golden brown. Slice in half then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
To plate up, spoon a bit of the beetroot yoghurt on one side of the plate and place a quenelle of the goat’s curd in the middle. Arrange the carrots, beets, greens and three egg halves on the other half of the plate. Place on a couple of the crispy carrot tops. Spoon over some of the garlic oil and finally sprinkle on some of the olive crumb.
I cook with mackerel quite a lot, and regular readers will know that I have covered it in various guises in this blog before. However it has been a fair while since its last appearance, so it’s about time that this amazing fish is top of the page again. Every week that I write, in fact every time I cook, I learn something new, and I am constantly looking back on how to improve things that I have made before. My mind is always whirring away trying to work out flavour combinations or complete a long list of initial ideas that just require one or two things to tie them together. So I guess that this is an update on a mackerel and beetroot recipe that I posted last January, but slightly more refined and a damn sight prettier.
We are now nearing the end of the mackerel season as they group up to spawn in the spring, but soon it’ll be summer again when there’s nothing better than flashing it on the barbeque with capers, lemon and parsley. Though the beauty is in its versatility, and as the year moves into Autumn it is just as comfortable with crunchy raw root vegetables or spicy broths, then back around to now where the season happily coincides with those new shoots of vibrant red rhubarb from the Yorkshire triangle. I am always so shocked at how bad the supermarkets are in reacting to British seasonality, and this vegetable is a fine example. Despite proper forced rhubarb only being around for a short few of months, I was saddened to still see thin and bendy imports lining the shelves. As usual, my local greengrocers knew better and I was soon walking home with a happy bunch poking out the top of my bag. Rhubarb is good for more than crumble alone (although buy extra for that too) and finely compliments savoury things like oily fish and pork. The key is in the balance, you want to keep the tartness or your main will think it’s a dessert.
I’m still amazed by how easy it is to hot smoke things at home. I was initially worried that my flat would be filled with clouds of black smoke, but even the crumbly old extraction and a few open windows miraculously contained everything in my tiny kitchen. So far I’ve only really tried it with fish that cook quickly using bungled smoke combinations of rice, herbs and zest, but the results really are great. The fish ends up meltingly moist with just the right amount of smokiness. Oh how I yearn to have a garden to expand on these projects…
There are quite a few processes in this recipe but as with most things loads can be done in advance. It’s really up to you how far you take it, and the flavourings still work perfectly if you were to cook all of the mackerel just the one way. Likewise, I have perhaps been a little fancy in just using the loins of the fish here, but in no way were the trimmings wasted. Quickly grilled and crammed between soft white bread with tartar sauce they were delightful. But the whole fillets can also be used throughout this recipe too, especially if you wanted to bulk it out a bit.
Serves 2 for a starter or light lunch.
Ingredients:
For the pan-fried mackerel:
2 mackerel fillets, top loin only, pin boned
Olive oil
½ a lemon, juice only
For the smoked mackerel:
2 mackerel fillets, top loin only, pin boned
Olive oil
1 handful of rice
1 lemon, zest only
½ a bunch of thyme
1tsp black peppercorns
1tsp brown sugar
For the cured mackerel:
2 mackerel fillets, top loin only, pin boned
100g salt
50g caster sugar
1 lemon, zest only
2tbsp fresh thyme leaves
For the rhubarb puree:
1 large stick of rhubarb
½ a lemon, juice only
2 tbsp caster sugar, plus more to taste
For the watercress oil:
50g watercress
100ml extra virgin olive oil
For the beetroot crisps:
1 golden beetroot
Vegetable oil for frying, approx. 1ltr
For the smoked beetroot salt:
3tbsp smoked sea salt
¼ of a beetroot, roughly chopped
To finish:
3tbsp cress, washed
To cure the mackerel, mix together the salt, sugar, lemon zest and thyme. Pour a quarter of this mixture onto the bottom of a small dish or tray and top with the two mackerel loins. Cover with the rest of the salt mix until fully covered. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for two hours.
While the mackerel is curing make the other elements of the dish.
To make the smoked beetroot salt, pour the salt into a small bowl and add the chopped raw beetroot. Mix well and set aside, stirring occasionally. The longer it is left the more the salt will take on colour.
For the rhubarb puree, chop the rhubarb into inch-sized pieces and tip into a small saucepan. Add the lemon juice and sugar and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for a couple of minutes until cooked through. Drain and transfer to a food processor and blitz well. Taste and add more sugar or lemon if needed, you want it to be quite tart still. Pass through a fine sieve into a bowl and set aside.
Heat the deep frying oil in a heavy saucepan until it reaches 160⁰C. Peel the golden beetroot and carefully slice very thinly with a mandolin. When the oil has come to temperature, fry in small batches until lightly golden and crispy. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with salt.
For the watercress oil, put the watercress, extra virgin olive oil and a little salt into a food processor and blitz until the leaves are finely chopped and the oil has taken on a vivid green colour. Pass through a fine sieve and transfer to a bottle.
When the mackerel has had its curing time, remove from the fridge and lift the fillets out of the salt. Rinse well and pat dry. Carefully slice the skin off and then set aside to come to room temperature.
To make a DIY hot smoker, tip the rice, sugar, thyme, peppercorns and lemon zest into the bottom of a small deep metal oven tray that has been lined with foil. Start the smoking process off by singing everything with a blow torch. Place an oiled metal cooling rack or other grill on top and then seal with more foil. Put the tray over a medium heat until lots of smoke and heat is generated inside. Season the mackerel fillets and rub with oil. Peel back the foil and place the fillets skin-down onto the hot rack, then seal again quickly. Smoke for 4-5 minutes, or until just cooked through. Keep warm.
Heat a non-stick frying pan with a little olive oil. Season the remaining mackerel fillets well. When a medium-hot temperature, add the fish skin-side down, holding them for a few seconds to stop any shrinkage. Fry for 2 minutes to crisp up the skin, then turn over and remove the pan from the heat and allow to residual heat to finish the cooking off. Squeeze over the lemon juice.
To plate up, lay one of each of the mackerel fillets onto heated plates. Dot the puree and the oil around the fish and scatter over the beetroot crisps and the cress. Finally sprinkle over some of the smoked salt.
This week my blog will take a slightly different spin. Instead of cooking something that I have had planned for a while, this time I have been asked to create a pie recipe by Le Creuset to celebrate British Pie Week. Although all of the recipes that I post on here are my own, and the focus on the food, I am always game for a recipe writing challenge. And anyway, I barely need much of an excuse to make a pie! I am also more than happy to collaborate with Le Creuset in this post. Their cookwares are long ingrained in my childhood memories; I have forgotten the amount of things that I have cooked in my parent’s lovely orange cast-iron saucepans that are probably older than me.
The main challenge with this post was coming up with the recipe itself. The brief was simple; make a pie, any pie. Sweet or savoury. The PR lady chuckled as she stated the only stipulation, that human parts could not be included. But this openness caused a problem, as although my mind was flooded with different things to include, my indecisiveness made it difficult to pinpoint. Should I make use of the lovely forced rhubarb and make something seasonally focussed? Should I go off-piste with a wacky bone marrow creation? I was very tempted to make something along the lines of that wonderfully Scottish invention, the macaroni pie. But part of recipe writing is to try and inspire and give people recipes that they actually want to cook, so in the end I decided on a pie that is just a joy to eat.
My favourite pie is without doubt chicken, leek and tarragon. A combination well and truly made for each other, able to balance fresh tanginess and unctuous comfort. This recipe is my spin on the classic. Guinea fowl is such an underused and underrated bird, and just gives that stronger chicken-y flavour. Now farmed and widely available we should be eating them loads more, and they’re dead easy to cook too. Cooking the legs separately in the cider takes a little longer than just throwing everything together and baking, but the result is a lovely rich sauce that makes the pie all the better when you finally tuck in.
Instead of opting for the traditional puff pastry topping here I’ve gone for something suet based. This is also another happy result of my indecisiveness, as it creates the balance of a lovely crunchy top and an almost dumpling-like underside; all the best bits from a stew and a pie. Normally a hard cheese such as parmesan would be first choice for flavouring, but being British Pie Week I wanted to choose something a little more local. I had never used Lincolnshire Poacher in cooking before and found that the strong, fruity flavour worked really well. As Katie commented, the edges were like cheese straws and the middle like a scone. And that can’t be a bad thing!
As with all slow cooked baked things, this recipe benefits with making in advance and only gets better with age. That’s if you have the self-restraint to not gobble it all up straight away…
Makes enough to fill a 28cm oval pie dish.
Ingredients:
1 whole guinea fowl, jointed with the carcass kept
For the guinea fowl legs and sauce:
Olive oil
The legs, wings and chopped carcass of the guinea fowl
1 carrot, roughly chopped
2 leeks, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 bay leaves
10 sprigs of thyme
500ml good dry cider
Approx. 1lt chicken or ham stock, or enough to cover
For the filling:
The breasts of the guinea fowl, skinned and cut into chunks
200g smoked and roasted ham, torn into generous pieces
2 large leeks, thickly sliced
2 shallots, thickly sliced
200g chestnut mushrooms, thickly sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1tsp wholegrain mustard
100ml double cream
30g butter
50g flour
Olive oil
1 bunch fresh tarragon,leaves picked
50g Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, finely grated
For the pastry:
500g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
125g suet
75g cold butter, cut into small cubes
1.5tsp English mustard powder
50g Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, finely grated
2tsp fresh thyme leaves
Cold milk
4 egg yolks
1 egg for glazing, beaten
To make the pastry, put the flour, suet, cheese, mustard powder, thyme leaves, baking powder and a good amount of seasoning into a large bowl. Toss in the butter until evenly dispersed. Create a well in the middle of the flour and add the egg yolks and a good splash of milk. Fold the mixture together with your hands or a wooden spoon, adding a little more milk if needed to form a dough. Wrap with cling film and put in the fridge to rest for a couple of hours.
Set a large saucepan onto a medium-high temperature. Season the legs and wings of the guinea fowl and fry in a little oil until browned all over then remove to a plate. Repeat the colouring process with the chopped up carcass, then add the chopped vegetables and herbs and continue to fry for a couple of minutes. Pour in the cider and bring to the boil. Return the wings and legs to the pan and top up with the stock to cover. Bring back to the boil, then reduce and simmer for about 45 minutes. When the meat is cooked, allow to cool slightly then strain the stock into a clean saucepan. Heat over a high temperature and reduce until about 400ml of liquid remains. Shred the leg and wing meat into chunky pieces and set aside to add to the filling later.
To make the filling, add the olive oil to a large frying pan or skillet on a medium heat. Dust the guinea fowl breast pieces in the flour and fry quickly to seal, then transfer to a plate. Melt the butter in the same pan and gently cook the leeks, garlic and shallots until softened. Season well. Add the mushrooms and continue to fry for another couple of minutes before stirring in the ham and the leg and wing meat. Add the cream, reduced stock, cheese and mustard and bring to the boil. Reduce the liquid slightly to thicken and then finally stir in the breast meat and tarragon. Transfer the filling mixture into the pie dish and allow to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180⁰C.
When the filling has cooled, roll out the pastry on a well-floured surface until about 1cm thick. Place the pie bird standing upright in the middle of the filling. Brush the beaten egg around the rim of the dish then lay the pastry over the top, cutting a hole to allow the bird’s head to poke through and let the steam out. Crimp the edges so that they are sealed to the dish. Brush more of the egg over the top of the pastry and decorate with leaves made from the pastry scraps. Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until the crust is crispy and golden-brown. Serve with buttered greens and creamy mash.
There are two things about food that I tend to get ridiculed for the most. While the first is the way that I eat pizza, a story for another time, the second is that my favourite thing to eat is fish and chips. Despite all of the cooking that I do, I just can’t get enough of it. It’s that comforting smell that cuts through the cold on a wintery evening. The ‘fuffing’ that results from not letting the chips cool down. The soothingly greasy crunch of the batter and the melting, delicate fish. I harp on about memories and how they connect with food, and to me fish and chips is sitting next to dad in the car on the way back from the football with the plastic bag burning my thighs and the steam getting in the windows. Or sitting at my grandparents picking what seemed like the millionth bone out of the cod. It’s something so familiar but never gets old, and always the menu choice in otherwise unreliable eateries.
But going down the chippy has never been fancy. It was just the thing when faced with an empty fridge or unexpected crowd. That shop light that you wished would still be lit when all others had closed. To me it’s just as much about the situation in which it is being consumed, improved tenfold if I happen to be anywhere coastal. While storms were battering Mull over New Year we were sat on the front wrapped up in the warmth of stodgy vinegary chips. And my trips to Devon and Cornwall are never without a harbour-side fish supper. It is perhaps in Padstow where Stein set my current benchmark. I had never sampled deep-fried monkfish before, but in the still afternoon sun watching the mullet ease around the moored boats it was perfect. True, monkfish might be more fancy than the norm, yet it was still housed in a cardboard box and we were still offered a cup of tea to accompany (something that despite my love of the food, I have never understood). In reality the consistency is really the thing. You can get some pretty awful cases of thick, flabby batter and spongy fish from time to time, but mostly you get just what you expect. I’m not that fussy. Even to the point where normally I’m a stickler for a crisp, fluffy chip, yet find love for the thick mulchy sog when the potatoes have been patiently wrapped that bit too long.
So not too much pressure for somewhere seemingly trying to add a bit of posh to all this. It made me a bit nervous to be honest, like when I encounter the word ‘gourmet’ in a restaurant name. I am a man of simple needs; all I wanted was crispy batter and freshness, not for my fish to appear in a tuxedo. I worried that the simplicity of it all might be muddied by an injection of class. But what The Fish and Chip Shop did really well on was changing the experience. Unfortunately not every chippy finds itself in Port Isaac or Oban, and in reality a lot of the ones that aren’t are a pretty sad affair. The only time that you would even consider eating-in in these places was if a hurricane was forcing the door shut. Or if you were in Brighton, and you fancied adorning some bunny ears and joining a hen do. And when these occasions force you to, the sticky table covers and bleach white lighting never make you hang about for long. But on Upper Street, the dim light glittered off the cut glass and a happy bustle thronged. Like everyone had bought their takeaways to the same place to have their family gatherings.
Despite these early plus points I was most concerned about the food. The menu read confidently, betraying the simplicity of just serving out of the fryer. Scallops, langoustines, woodland mushrooms and a curry sat alongside the battered options. It all sounded rather nice. We began with a small platter of tiny sweet queenies posing daintily in their shells. They had been treated properly and paired with the usual suspects and were devoured swiftly, like a witty compère before the main show. Really I was only there for one thing, here performing in locally-brewed ale. My main anxiety was the trendiness, and the declining scale this usually inflicts. There’s no room for small portions when it comes to food like this. It needs to warm your bones and fill your stomach. No smears or quenelles here, please.
This was of course quashed as our table became a tetris game to accommodate each of the different dishes. I am always thrown when fish or steak are served all alone on a plate, looking like the last person in the school team selection. If this was attempted elegance then it was quickly smothered with a scattering of chips and a dollop of tartare. That was better. And to my relief, delicious. The surroundings and fancy sides such as cabbage and bacon may have implied one thing, but when it came to the fish they didn’t faff around; they just did it well. My tummy was happy and my head saturated by glorious nostalgia. A mug of greying tea was replaced with fruity ale and we even had battered pickles. These onions and cucumbers read like the ultimate bar snack, and despite not quite matching the hype were still moreishly consumed. Mushy peas are a contentious issue, and here they diplomatically offered both crushed or marrowfat. I yearned for a bowl simply seasoned and buttered but that’s just me.
All deeply satisfying stuff. Our only complaint was the layout, which could have its own seafood simile. With tables tightly packed in we suffered the occasional bum hovering perilously close to our eagerly awaited fish as our neighbours squeezed to and fro. But it was a small price to pay for the bustle that it helped create. We left with that wry glow that a lovely evening had been had. At last a bright star in the largely swathing mediocrity of Upper Street. Who would of thought that humble old fish and chips would be the cause of all that.
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.
I was really happy with my first attempt at creating something out of the pig’s head in the last post. Before starting the project I was fairy anxious as to how it would turn out and taste, as apart from the Hannibal Lecters among us who really likes the thought of eating the face and ears of something? But it just goes to show that you should always give these squeamish things a try, and in this case it was totally delicious. I love the increased popularity of nose to tail cooking, both for the great food it throws up and the minimised wastage from using more of the animal. Farmers do an amazing job to bring us such fantastic well reared produce, so it takes the piss a bit to throw loads of it straight in the bin. It’s mostly just the psychological barrier that needs to be broken down, especially in this country. We have a lot to learn from other countries and cultures, where all of the unglamorous stuff is often a delicacy.
As I only used the cheeks and the ears in the last recipe, I still had tons of meat left that I was determined to use. This mostly comprised of the large slabs of jowl, which have a great fat content and almost resemble a piece of pork belly. Traditionally these would be used to make brawn or rillettes, but I had other ideas. For a while now I had been wanting to make doughnuts, but instead of your traditional cream or jam filled varieties I thought about giving them a little twist. Not having a mega sweet tooth, I often ate them and craved something savoury and salty to cut through all of the sugar. So why not combine the two? I guess the inspiration was probably born from eating things like Asian steamed pork buns, apart from this would be much dirtier and more deep fried.
With the doughnut idea, I originally intended the meat to be shredded confit duck, combined with something like cherry. But recently I had an apple filling, and the pork idea lit up. Although normally you would pipe the jam into the cooked buns, the coarseness of the cooked pork mixture meant that I stuffed the dough after the first proving process. I was sceptical about this at first and thought that this might upset the raising process, but once cooked the filling stayed inside and the dough was light and fluffy. I was really pleased with the taste too, that had just the right balance of sweetness, richness and saltiness. It has also opened up my eyes to all of the other filling possibilities out there.
They went down a treat with everyone who I gave them too. After a few nervous looks at the prospect of a pig head doughnut they were wolfed down.
Makes about 8 large doughnuts.
Ingredients:
For the dough:
550g strong white flour, plus more for dusting
14g instant yeast
60g caster sugar
40g salted butter, softened
2 eggs
150ml milk
125ml water
Salt
Vegetable oil for deep frying, about 2ltrs.
For the filling:
1 x pork jowl, about 600/700g
1 carrot, halved vertically
1 leek, halved vertically
1 onion, sliced thickly
3 cloves of garlic
1 star anise
1 bay leaf
A few sprigs of thyme
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 glass of white wine
1 braeburn apple, peeled and cut into large chunks
30g butter
1 tbsp caster sugar, or to taste
Salt and pepper
For the sugar coating:
4 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp fennel seeds
A good pinch of salt
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, adding the apples underneath the meat for the last hour. 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. Reserve the roasted apple chunks. Cut the crackling into strips and sprinkle with salt.
To make the doughnut dough, get a large bowl and add the flour, sugar, a good pinch of salt and butter. Form a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the eggs and water. Warm the milk to a lukewarm temperature and stir in the yeast. Add this mixture to the other wet ingredients and combine them into the dry ingredients using a spoon until it comes together. Tip the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead really well for about 7-8 minutes, or until smooth and slightly elasticky. Put the dough into a clean bowl and cover with a layer of clingfilm. Leave in a warm area for about an hour to prove.
While the dough is proving make the filling. Chop up the roasted apple chunks and add to the shredded pork meat. Heat up the butter in a saucepan on a medium temperature. Add the meat and the apple along with the sugar and some seasoning. Stir together, cover the saucepan and cook gently for about ten minutes. Mash the filling roughly so that everything is combined yet still a little chunky, then taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. Tip out onto a plate and allow to cool.
When the dough has had its first prove, tip out and divide into 8 pieces, depending on how many and what size you require. Knead each piece a couple of times to get rid of some of the air and then flatten a little to create a thick disk. Spoon a tablespoon of the cold filling mixture into the middle and then carefully seal around it, making sure there are no gaps. Roll the doughnuts to create a round bun shape and then transfer to a well-floured surface, seal side down. Cover loosely with a layer of cling film and allow to prove for another hour.
To make the sugar coating, put the sugar, cinnamon, fennel seeds and salt into a pestle and mortar and crush together really well.
When the doughnuts have nearly finished their proving time, start heating the frying oil in a large, wide saucepan to 160⁰C.
To cook the doughnuts, carefully lower them into the hot oil using a large greased spoon. Cook in small batches depending on the size of your saucepan, but do not overcrowd. Fry slowly for about 4-5 minutes on each side to ensure that the middles are cooked through. Scatter a good amount of the sugar coating onto a plate or board. As soon as each doughnut is cooked, transfer straight over and roll well so that every bit of the surface is covered. Eat whilst still warm, with a bit of the crackling on the side.
