The Bluebottle Feastery

Anyone For Croquettes?

2011-11-25T18:00:00.019+01:00

One of my life long on-off affairs has been the mighty fishcake. "On" when I think about eating one - "off" when I actually taste one. Perhaps it stems from school dinners when the smell of deep fried fishcakes when entering the dining hall was so appetizing (at least compared to the stench of mushy peas and spam fritters) but the illusion was shattered when I bit through the orange breadcrumbs to see the grey inner (and then found a bone/false eyelash/fingernail jabbing into my gums). The same scenario has played itself many times after in English fish and chip shops and Spanish tapas bars alike; all looks, aromas and promises, no taste bud penetration.

A couple of attempts at making a decent fishcake/croquette have come a cropper by using leftover mashed potato. The theory is sound but in practice if you make your mash with anywhere near the amount of butter that I do then you’re doomed to end up with cakes which want to emulate a slowly moving lava flow. This is how I came to the conclusion that to make good fishcakes/croquettes one has to forsake the dairy.

What you shouldn’t underestimate tho’ is the type of spud you need. A waxy potato will end up making a dry croquake (can’t be arsed to keep writing fishcake/croquette) when not using butter. A floury type (Maris Piper, Desiree, Fianna etc) will make your little spheres of moorishness succulent and soft – even when eaten cold for breakfast.

So this is not a rigid recipe but a base one open for a multitude of adaptations containing either fish, meat and cheese. And it also gives me the excuse for doing something I’ve never attempted before – uploading a picture of the crime itself.

The basic plan is to have roughly 1 part mashed potato to 1 part filling when it comes to fish, 2 parts potato to 1 part filling when ham or cheese or whatever.

Here goes then for my Crab & Prawn (or not) Croquakes

½kg of peeled and quartered floury potatoes

2 tins of crab meat

200 grams of raw prawns (black tiger, purple goat, turquoise vole etc)

2 teaspoons of crab paste (optional)

4 cloves of garlic

Salt & pepper

2 eggs for egging

Plain flour and breadcrumbs for......

"Deep" oil

Peel your garlic cloves and bung them, with the spuds, into a saucepan. Drain the tins of crabmeat into the pan too so as not to waste any flavour (don’t forget to give each tin a good squeeze – there be a lot of cheap water in them there cans and we don’t want water in our croquettes). Fill up with tapable water, add a little salt and boil until nice and soft.

In the meantime empty your crab into a large mixing bowl. Peel your prawns, cut each one into 4 or 5 bits and throw expertly into the crab. Add the crab paste (and here is my first pic – that’s Archie posing in the background). It’s a Thai crab paste with soya bean – if you can only get normal shrimp paste then be very careful as that can go from tasteless to overpowering in a matter of nano seconds.

When the potatoes and garlic are cooked they are drained and mashed. I love my Ikea bought potato ricer which is basically a huge garlic press. If you have one of these then you can “rice” straight into the bowl of crab and prawn mix. Otherwise mash them in a separate bowl before chucking over into the crustaceans. Please never consider liquidizing or blitzing potatoes – this will release starches which will ruin everything, turning it into glue.

Mix well and season with salt & pepper. The way to form into perfect ping-pong sized balls is to keep one’s Madame Palm and her Five Beautiful Daughters moist by sporadically dipping your hand into a bowl of water so as to stop the mixture sticking. Place each ball onto a sheet of grease-proof paper.

Next one has to flour, egg and breadcrumb ones balls. Standard procedure for most of us. The oil temperature should be about 170-180 °c and fry in batches appropriate for the size of your fat receptacle until golden brown, texture like sun etc. Here, for the curious, is a picture of my balls…..

I promise to try to take better pictures in the future. But you can just about see the chunks of pink shrimp poking out. What you should have is the crisp shell, silky soft crabby potato and sweet bites of prawn. Making a homemade mayonnaise as an accompaniment would only take this beyond heaven and into the gastrosphere. Especially if you mixed salmon eggs in the mayo.....

Alternative additives to the base croquakes could be flaked hot-smoked haddock, salmon or herring (I’ve made some wicked ones using home smoked garfish), ham and/or cheese. You can also put in chopped parsley, chilli or chives. Finely chopped fried mushrooms go well with cheese if you squeeze the life out of them after frying.

Candied Samples of Voluptuosness

2011-11-24T19:38:00.014+01:00

or
Check Out The Rack

Despite liking Christmas about as much as your average professional footballer likes crosswords I do like the grub. Well, most of the grub because I’ve never really understood mince pies – maybe because they always come out when food is the last thing on your list of must-do’s. And don’t get me started on turkey…

This year I’ve made an early start on Spiritus Festivitus by trying my hand at some sweets, candied ginger and lemon slices to be precise. Mrs B initiated the sudden interest confectionary by purchasing a small (and very expensive) bag of chocolate coated candied stem ginger. Me being me thought “I must be able to do that” so, sans a bit of Googling, I bought myself a load of fresh root ginger, some cane sugar, some very nice Lindt dark chocolate and some frighteningly expensive Valrhona cocoa powder and hit the kitchen.

In terms of quantities the Chocolate Coated Candied Ginger recipe revolves around:

3 or 4 big bits of ginger, peeled and cut into sugar cube sized, erm, cubes (boiling will shrink them a little)

Roughly the same weight of sugar as the ginger

A 250 gram bar of 70% dark chocolate (quality counts here – don’t go for the cheap stuff)

Cocoa powder for dredging/powdering/dusting or whatever

The ginger is boiled for an hour or so in water until it is tender. Drain it off (keep the water for a mean ginger tea), return to the saucepan with the sugar and a two or three tablespoons of the water. Heat until the sugar is dissolved and boil gently for 1-1½ hours. Do not stir as this can cause the sugar to crystalize, just fidget the saucepan a bit now and again. It may be necessary to add a tiny bit of ginger water if the syrup gets too thick. When tender and opaque (they look like bits of amber when done) drain them off and place on grease-proof paper to cool. The syrup is fantastic with vanilla ice cream by the way.

Now you can either zap the chocolate in a microwave or melt it in a bowl over simmering water (or melt it in your specialized chocolate melter, geek). Then take a few bits of ginger, bung them in the choc, fish them out individually (a fork is a surprisingly useful utensil for this) and place them on a new sheet of grease-proof paper. When they are all coated it’s off to the fridge to set for a bit.

Now, when nice and non-sticky you have a choice. You can choose between going straight to the cocoa coating stage or do the chocolate dip a second time to give a thicker, more intense chocolate armour plating. But whether you’re a one or two dip person your sweets should be rolled in cocoa powder only when cool or else you’ll get too much cocoa sticking to them. I was mightily pleased I pushed the boat out and paid almost £7 for 250 grams of Valrhona cocoa powder as this smells and tastes so much better than the cheaper stuff and 250 grams goes a long way.

What you get is the still-quite-fiery-yet-sweet hit of ginger then the bittersweet chocolate soothing takes over and,finally, when that’s gone the ginger returns. It's magic. And, as my foodie work colleague Jacob put it, ginger is terribly good for you.

So, after the success of the ginger, I put my mind to creating something fruity. It was sort of a request from Mrs B who wanted candied orange peel. I was in our local supermarket and they had some nice (and quite cheap) organic lemons so I got a couple and another bar of Lindt’s and thought “bugger the oranges” (they were overpriced and not very ripe anyway).

My recipe is not really anything you can’t easily find on-line. The bit which makes it MY recipe is in the drying out of the candied fruit. Which isn’t really part of the recipe at all to be honest but for the sake of being thorough this is how I tackled my Chocolate Coated Candied Lemons (and one Lime):

2 organic lemons (and one organic lime found in the fruit bowl)

1 cup of non-organic potable water (we have it on tap)

2 cups of sugar

Boiling water (for blanching)

Frozen water (cubed)

Intermediate water (in a bowl) (where the ice cubes go to maketh chilly)

Ok, the on-line recipes called for thee to thinly slice thou citrus fruits on a mandolin. I’ve had a mandolin phobia ever since I lopped a large amount of epidermis from one of my teenage fingers whilst rummaging around in a kitchen drawer (so much blood) so we own nothing more than a blunt grater. And another recipe used the old two-wooden-skewers-either-side-of-the-lemon trick which is too much hard work for a slouch like me so I decided to slice the fruit thinly using a very sharp knife. Vorsprung Trotz Teknik, so to speak.

Once beautifully (if not completely uniformly) sliced and de-pipped the fruit is then blanched in the boiling water for a couple of minutes (to remove the bitterness of the pith), removed with a slotted spoon and dumped into the bowl of iced water (I honestly don't know why you have to do this - I got it off a Martha Stewart recipe. It probably has something to do with insider trading). As with the ginger recipe the boiled water should under no circumstances be thrown out as it makes a splendid cordial when chilled then topped up with the lemon syrup (we’ll get to that).

Now the 1 cup of water (by the by, I just used a normal cup of muggish size – not the proper American unit of measurement) and 2 cups of sugar are added to the saucepan and heated until the sugar is dissolved. Luzz in the lemons and lime (or kumquat, orange, or hell, even pomelo slices if you’re in the mood), bring to a gentle boil and cook for about an hour and a half. As with the ginger you should only swirl the contents of the pan now and again – do not stir. You now have ample candied samples in need of a rack. I do not own a proper rack. Well I do but it’s never completely clean and I’d imagine the brown stuff stuck to it would perhaps spoil my beautiful, translucent, yellow pieces of stained glass windows. And I definitely do not own what the American recipes called “non-stick spray” (unless they mean WD40). So I came up with something I think is better than a bog-standard rack. I call it my Candied Samples Gravity Defying Rack. To make it you take a piece of grease-proof paper half as long again as the baking tray (the one you now know you’re going to need). Then you make a harmonica, folding about a centimeter at a time. This takes quite a few minutes but is worth it. When you’re finished you now have the perfect rack. So to speak. It looks like a lot of W’s (WWWWWWWWWW – if you’re in doubt). I taped each end to the ends of the baking tray for added rigidness (a rack needs to be firm yet pliable). You now lay each slice of fruit across the peaks where it all has to dry for about 24 hours. If there are insects about a cold oven is a good place for drying. The citrus syrup must be saved for adding to soft (or preferably hard) drinks.

So, after your 24 hours, the slices are ready for dunking in your molten chocolate. If you only dip half of each slice it saves chocolate and adds visual wowness. The bare lemon can be a tad sticky so if you want to avoid this then coat the entire slice. Place on (flat) grease-proof paper and put in the fridge to set.

I will try the orange slices soon. After the 24 hour drying period I’ll slice them in two for the sake of size. The plan is to do a good sized batch each of both ginger and citrus sweets and give them as Crimbo prezzies. That’s me done and (cocoa) dusted then.

Edit: January 2012. The next batch of chocolate coated whatevers comprised of lemons, oranges, grapefruit, coffee beans and sour cherries (bought in a jar) which I soaked in Kirsch for an hour before dunking. They were all superb. I also sugar coated some halved candied grapefruit slices (pure laziness - I was rather tired of the choco-dipping by this point) simply by chucking them into a bowl of sugar and tossing them about for a bit.

A Quick Snail Recipe

2011-01-19T20:57:00.008+01:00

You would think that if you pulled the shell off a snail it would move quicker. I tried but if anything it made it sluggish.....

Many thanks to our favourite peace artist Mr Gerald Leonardo Salvador Vincent Pablo Dinnage for that one which leads me boldly into my first post of 2011 after totally hurdling 2010 for a variety of reasons none of which were due to the lack of decent nosh which we have lobbed down our gob holes. Indeed 2010 has been the Year Of The Gadget in the Casa del B. We’ve been given a magnificent manual sausage filler by my Godfather. We bought a table top pizza oven (makes unbelievable pizzas in about four minutes), a juice maker, a new rice steamer (wore the old one out), a vacuum sealer, a bread maker and finally coughed up the heady sum of £24 in Ingerlund this Crimbo for a slow cooker.

And to boot I’ve made my own bacon as well as a parma ham, both of which turned out rather well. Next up will be home made black pudding after I bought enough dried pigs blood to make 15 kgs of finished pud.

But back to the gastropods. Seeing as Mrs B and myself “enjoy” a large lunch each day at our respective places of toil we tend to eat lightly of an evening. I suppose we do supper now, not dinner. Anyway we’d had a punnet of parsley in the fridge which needed using, there was a half a packet of butter that couldn’t have been more than a few weeks past its sell-by date and finally there was a tin of snails in the cupboard (as there often is).

And this is what I came up with, basically in an attempt to use up rather a lot of parsley.

Poor Homeless Garlic Snails With Parsley and Garlic Purée

20-24 or so snails serves 2 for a light meal or 4 as a starter

A tin of snails (always a good idea to have another tin in hand as I opened one once only to find it contained but five snails)
Half a packet of butter
A bag/punnet/big bunch of parsley (flat-leaf or curly) including the stalks
Plenty of cloves of garlic
A splash of white wine
Salt and pepper
Crusty bread or baguettes

Ok, start by draining the snails then leaving them for a few minutes to soak in cold water. If you give them a good sniff before you do this you’ll understand why I do it. They do tend to pong and the soaking in fresh water seems to loosen the flesh up a tad, making them even more tender than usual.

To make succulent, juicy garlic snails warm the butter in a saucepan on a medium-low heat with as much chopped garlic as is legally allowed. The idea is to extract as much garlicness from it without actually frying it. If you keep it gently simmering along you can set this going a good half hour or more before you need it. The garlic will eventually disintegrate which is a very good thing. Then when almost ready give it a spludge of white wine then delicately roll in the snails (or just bung them in). These need but a gentle warming through, giving them enough time to absorb the holy garlicbutteryness but without actually cooking them. Finally season with salt and pepper.

Now for the parsley purée. Wash the parsley well then bung it into salted boiling water with a fistful of chopped garlic for two or three minutes. Then, after draining, lob it in a blender/food processer, give it a blitz, season with some finely ground black pepper (and salt if required).

To serve put a couple of spoonfuls of purée on a warmed plate or, preferably, a shallow bowl and flatten it out in a circular motion leaving a couple of centimetres gap to the edge of said serving receptacle. Place some snails in the middle of the purée then pour the garlicybutteryness around the edge of it all. Serve with crusty bread. This is simply the best garlic snails I’ve ever had. The parsley purée is simply a revelation. And, funnily enough, it’s healthier than your normal escargots a la bourguignonne as you use less butter and more gweenewy. Not that I give a thlying thuck about calorie counting, mind....

If snails don’t thingy one’s dingy then one can use fungi instead. My way of cooking mushrooms is a bit different to how I understand is “the right way” where you fry them on a very high heat. I prefer to:

1) Keep my mushrooms, be they whatever type/breed/persuasion, in large bits/slices/chunks
2) Fry them in a little olive oil on a medium heat, they must not burn.
3) Just as they start to give off liquid remove from pan
4) Make the garlicbutterconcoction from above in same cooking vessel
5) Return mushrooms and reheat through

By doing them this way the mushrooms retain a nice bite and texture. I’ve used normal and brown mushrooms as well as Portobello and chanterelles. One day, one autumn, one year, I’ll get to do a bit of proper mushroom hunting coz I just know ceps would taste fantastic like this.

We’re off to Barcelona for four days of gastronomic exploration at the end of the month. This time we’ve rented a rather nice looking apartment overlooking the harbour in Barceloneta. The idea is that, on top of eating in restaurants and bars, we can buy stuff in the various markets to take home and prepare. Goose barnacles are top of our “must buy” list. Can’t-Bloody-Wait.

Peppers With Stuff In

2009-10-28T11:50:00.006+01:00

One thing I enjoy is making food out of things at hand. Luckily our cupboards are brimming with weird tins of things like giant beans, snails, olives, nori seaweed, capers and bamboo shoots. Draws full of sheets of rice paper, chickpeas, prawn crackers, lentils and more spices than a Moroccan bazaar. Our fridge, however, is more often than not some sort of cold last chance saloon for things Mrs B brings back from her lunch at work, bits of cheese which have left the “nicely ripe” stage a while back and are hurtling towards Toxic Town, vegetables which seem to be having babies, jars of chutneys and sauces where the sell-by dates go back to the last millennium and, at the back, things wrapped in tin foil which I daren’t open. Actually maybe it should be better to call it a beer fridge with alien elements. Mmm I like that.

I rather envy that bloke Nigel La Lawson who has a spotless fridge full of fresh clean looking produce, all wrapped up in straight-from-the-deli parchment. Ah well, at least I don’t have to wear a corset. One back-of-the-fridge, rather rusty tin I came across not too long ago contained a big block of sheep’s feta and the barely distinguishable sell-by date was still to become history which was a very pleasant surprise. I decided to use it for a side dish that had seeded in my mind when we found a big bag of mini red peppers at the cash & carry. This is not an Oh My God How Original dish but it turned out very well for a big buffet thingy we threw for Big Daughter’s confirmation during the summer. My pet brother-in-law Brian seems to like it, too. And if mini red peppers aren’t available (and they don’t exactly grow on trees – plants, but not trees) then normal peppers sliced into quarters lengthways do the trick.

All the other ingredients were hanging around waiting to die so I dedicate this dish to the Eleanor Rigbys of Kitchenland.

Stuffed Red Peppers

Some red peppers
Some feta cheese
Some capers
Some anchovies
Some olive oil
Some garlic
Some pepper

The observant types may well observe the lack of specific amounts and quantities in the above recipe (does it even qualify as a recipe when it’s so vague?) But this is because one can mix it to ones own particular taste depending on one's love of anchovies and capers.

Well, one takes ones peppers and one tops them. Then one removes the seeds and pith (and one quarters them if using grown-up peppers). Then one puts crumbled or cubed feta, capers, chopped anchovy filets, pepper, crushed garlic and generous splooge of olive oil into a mixing bowl and one mixes it with a wooden spoon or the like. It’s good to mash it a bit which releases the flavours of the anchovies and capers as well as breaks down the feta. Then one fills ones peppers, puts 'em into a dish, drizzles 'em with a little oil and bungs 'em in tut oven at 181.5 or so degrees shellfish (385.7 or so degrees barronknight) for twentyish minutes or until they’re nice and soft (but not nice and soft and black).

One can, if one is in one’s pernickety corner, save the tops of one’s mini peppers and replace them after filling. This, as I discovered as I attempted to fill about 60 of the buggers, is a tedious chore as one a) has to replace the right top that belongs to the right body and b) it has to be fitted correctly to, erm, fit correctly. And even then (and after securing them with a toothpick) some fell off after roasting.

Samosa Summarum

2009-01-20T17:25:00.007+01:00

Ah, the humble samosa. A deep fried/baked pastry packet of veg and/or meat and/or dried fruit from India/Turkey/North Africa/East Africa/Portugal/Persia (thank you Wikipedia). My personal experience with them comes from the (mainly Kurdish or Turkish owned) greengrocer shops of Copenhagen which often sell them from greasy trays perched on top of the counter. I prefer the veggie ones filled with a spicy potato and pea mixture as my logic gland tells me there ought to be fewer life threatening diseases in slowly deteriorating vegetables than meat. And I think they actually taste better. Win win.

After setting myself the task of creating my own version I hit my first stumbling block – pastry. Life is too short to make it. Thankfully our local Vietnamese “supermarket” has packets of wafer thin frozen spring roll pastry which I quickly deemed perfect for the job. Then it was simply a case following a meandering path between recipes gleaned from various intaweb and bookish sources and my own intuition-cum-imagination. And the result was fab. And terribly cheap. I used small waxy potatoes despite many recipes calling for floury ones and I thought they were fantastic. They retain a more robust consistency, thinks moi.

Samosas

(makes roughly twenty – any leftover filling can be used to make a mean veggie curry)

Frozen spring roll pastry – 40 sheets thawed
1 kg spuds peeled and diced pretty finely
2 large onions chopped
A few cloves of garlic chopped
250 g frozen peas thawed and drained
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon black pepper corns
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
2 teaspoons tumeric
2-4 chillis chopped
a handful of chopped fresh coriander
3 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds
salt
vegetable oil
flour & water paste
water

Start by roasting off your cumin, coriander, pepper and fenugreek seeds in a large frying or sautéing pan and bunging them into a mortar for some pestling. Then soften the onions and garlic in a little oil, add the potato, chillis, mustard seeds, tumeric, some salt and about three quarters of the spice mix as well as about half a cup of water. Mix up well, cover and cook over a medium heat for five minutes. Then remove the lid and cook until the potatoes are soft and the liquid is almost boiled away, turning over the mixture continuously to prevent burning. Taste to see if you need more salt or spices. When fully cooked add the peas and fresh coriander.

You now let the mixture cool, a fine time to fill up you now empty wine glass. Then you can make your flour and water glue.

I now have to reveal the second of my stumbling blocks – how to make my samosas geometrically correct. Which I never really did but after ten or so I managed to get them looking sort of ok. I ended up having two rather longish corners which I folded back creating something which looked a bit like a trussed chicken. After deep frying until golden brown they looked like roasted trussed chickens. So to assemble the beasts you peel off two sheets from the masses and fold them over creating a triangle. Then place a goodish dollop of mixture somewhere to one side of the middle of this, smear some flour glue along two edges and fold, pushing out as much air as poss. You then fold the edges back on themselves again and crimp.

I would imagine a healthier option would be to bake your samosas, maybe brush them with a little oil or butter to make ‘em shiny. But I wanted the artery clogging version so into a pan of 180 degrees c groundnut oil they were plopped, one at a time (only had a small amount of oil) until the roast chicken appearance was obtained. They were then drained on a rack.

If not eaten immediately these go a bit soft, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My idea was to freeze most of my batch but they were so popular among the B’s (Mr, Mrs & Miss) that they disappeared quicker than a botty burp in a wind tunnel.

Mulled Whine

2008-11-11T14:54:00.004+01:00

My dad recently called me a Grumpy Young Man. It was due to my opinion that trick or treating is nothing short of mugging. If I went knocking on people’s doors demanding sweets or money (or a flat screen tv or the family silver) or they run the risk of getting their tyres slashed or dog shit put through their letter boxes I would, quite rightly, get my shoulder felt. I read a piece in the Guardian about parents following their offspring around as they terrorized old aged pensioners, not to make sure the little tykes were safe from sleezy men in gaping dressing gowns but to ensure they didn’t cause malicious criminal damage. We weren’t home this Halloween, and our garden is in such a state we can’t see if anything has been vandalised, but I must admit I spent a few evenings beforehand dreaming about fitting a Tazer to the doorbell.

I guess that qualifies me as grumpy.

Autumn has always been my favourite season. The deep colours, the blustery-yet-mellow winds, the migrating birds, the excuse for unearthing your favourite woolly jumper and, not least, the dark evenings calling for comfort food and drink. Here in Denmark a favourite run-up-to-Christmas tipple is gløgg; hot, sweet red wine with raisins and chopped almonds. Naturally most people either buy it pre-fabricated or “make” it themselves by combining red wine, a bottle of “gløgg mix” and a bag of raisins and stale, chopped almonds. It is almost always too sweet and sickly for my buds, and the bloated warm raisins are vomit material, so the only thing to do was to experiment. I tried using a fruit juice base (plum, grape, redcurrants etc) but found it too “busy” so I’ve ended up using red wine. I go for an ultra cheap fruity wine (as opposed to an oaky one) for both the spiced base and the mulled wine proper. The aroma this makes as it boils away is quite fantastic, filling the kitchen with the sort of spicy smells which make even grumpy young men feel good about the world.

Mulled Wine

For the base

1 litre or a bottle of fruity red wine
15 cardamom pods
3 2inch pieces of cinnamon (or 2 3inch pieces even)
10 cloves
5 allspice berries
20 coriander seeds
small piece of ginger
3 star anise things
2 pieces of mace or half a nutmeg clove chopped/crushed
cup of raisins
1 unwaxed orange sliced
1 unwaxed lemon sliced
100g sugar

The specific measurements are not necessarily to be followed to the seed/pod/inch or berry. My personal way of doing things is more “a few of them, a shake of them, a good pinch or more of them etc”. And, other than the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and orange, things can be left out or replaced with alternatives. I didn’t have any lemons this morning when making a batch but I did have some kafir lime leaves in the freezer so I used them instead. I only add the sugar at this point because otherwise tasting can become a rather puckering experience.

Anyway, bring everything up to a rolling boil and simmer for an hour or two. Strain (through muslin or a coffee filter if you want) into your receptacle of choice. A batch will suffice for two to four litres of mulled wine depending on how spicy you want it. And it will keep for yonks in the fridge.

The Wine (Mulled)

I bottle of red wine
½ - ¼ batch of base
sugar
stout (optional)
vodka

Gently warm the wine, stout (about half a bottle pr bottle of wine – it adds a nice depth) and base in a heavy pan. It is imperative you do not let your wine get anywhere near to boiling point. Alcohol boils at 78.3 degrees celcius and begins evaporating long before then. I keep a (glass) lid on the pan so that any condensation (ie alcohol) can be returned lovingly to the wine. Add sugar as and if required, stirring to dissolve. When nice and (not too) warm pour into mugs or glasses. If you pre-heat your glasses with boiling water the mulled wine won’t cool down too quickly. To give it that extra smack-the-chops effect float a teaspoon or two of vodka into each glass on top of the mulled wine.

And whilst on the subject of Christmassy beverages I’m making a rather splendidly smelling Spiced Vodka. Into a very large jar goes an unwaxed orange (prick it to death with a chopstick), some cardamom pods, star anise, coriander seeds, cinnamon sticks and a handful of raisins. Pour in a bottle of vodka and leave for a couple of weeks. Well, you don’t leave it – you give it a good shake everyday not forgetting to have a sniff at the same time, marvelling at the wonderful aroma. This will be a fine aperitif Christmas morning, one hand up the jacksy of the turkey the other coddling a snifter of this stuff. Can’t wait.

Fire In The Hole!

2008-10-29T10:22:00.008+01:00

A while back I watched a totally inane programme called A Taste Of My Life in which Nigella Slater interviews a so-called celebrity about their dull lives through the food memories they have. At the end of it the celeb had to hold an imaginary dinner for a handful of people of their choice. A bit like Desert Island Discs. Or Dessert Island Dicks, even. The guests chosen were usually rather predictable – Nelson Mandela, JFK, Sigmund Freud, John Lennon etc. This lead me to muse on who I’d like to invite to dinner. After scrapping a couple of ideas (Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Rafa Benitez would be great – “So Bill, what do you think of these fellas’ handling of your legacy?” “Aye, they’ve all done good, save that money shaggin’ fool who used to have that mole on his top lip”). I’d also invite John Peel along coz he’d appreciate that. And I could thank him for pulling a few heaven strings at half time on a certain night in May, 2005 (always knew it was you, John). But yesterday I found the right combo. Mike Tyson, Bruce Lee, Josef Menegele, Attila The Hun, Sweeny Todd and David Caruso. I would proceed to announce to the first five that dinner will only be served once they had beaten up, tortured and mutilated the ginger twunt. I would then sit back and enjoy the spectacle. Any doubts to whether this guy deserves it should watch this snippet from YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWS7c21jOnI

So, to carry on the theme of things which make one’s sphincter turn inside out this is my take on a humdinger of a chilli sauce. After years, nay, decades of shop-bought disappointments where the fire-breathing, devil-summoning condiment turns out to be a sour, meek, food-wrecking bottle of nothingness I decided to see if I could do any better. And lo and behold the first experiment was fantastic. By using a liquid preservative (in Denmark it’s a sodium benzoate called Atamon) the sauce will keep for over a month after the jar is opened. The strength of the chilli sauce obviously depends on the type of chillis used. I find Thai birds eye chillis are my preferred type, roughly a 7 on the Sphincter Scale. Habaneras are only for ass-assinating people.

Smaug’s Revenge Chilli Sauce

100g chillis (rinsed in cold water)
1 small tin of tomato purée
Vegetable oil (anything neutral – olive oil isn’t good as it goes cloudy in the fridge)
Salt, pepper & sugar
2 or so cloves of garlic
sodium benzoate (optional)

So you peel your garlic, top the chillis and wop them into a food processor together with the tomato purée, preservative, a pinch of sugar, salt and pepper and about 50 ml of the oil. Blitz and taste. Add more seasoning if required. If you want a more loose sauce add more oil. Pour/scoop into sterilized jars and keep in the fridge.

Ginger Nutty Butt Squash Arse Cream

2008-06-14T02:12:00.005+02:00

My father-in-law’s a proud, cricket loving Yorkshireman. And as everybody knows Yorkshirefolk can’t say “ice cream”, they say “arse cream.” Just thought I’d mention that. I have to admit I’ve never been a huge ice cream fan, preferring the clean tasting freshness of sorbets to the sickly ice creams you can buy. And my first forays into ice cream making were deffo not a huge success – Very Mature Goat’s Cheese Ice Cream is an acquired taste to say the least and my attempt to make a Tom Ka Ice Cream using coconut milk nearly caused our machine to burn itself out. And I really should have known that using a Nigel Slater recipe for Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream was a bad idea as almost everything he makes is a gagging great 10 on the Rich-ter scale. It called for 8 egg yolks for the “custard”. “Ooo” said Mrs B, “it tastes like custard – I love it!” “Ergh” I said, “it tastes like custard – I DON’T love it!” (I hate custard by the way, probably due to the stuff they poisoned me with at school.) So it was with little faith that I embarked on a James Martin recipe for Ginger and Butternut Squash Ice Cream. But it was brilliant, quite bold – it goes nicely with things like melon, strawbs and, especially, pineapple, rather than on its own. And the reason it’s now my recipe and not Mr Martin’s is a slight technicality. I leave the bits of ginger and squash in the ice cream whilst he pulps them through a sieve. In my (obviously far superior) version the ginger and squash become chewy, almost as if you’d used stem ginger.

Ginger and Butternut Ice Cream

4 egg yolks (the more organic the better)
500 ml double or whipping cream
125 g sugar
125 g or thereabouts of butternut squash, cut into cubes
an inch of fresh ginger peeled and chopped fine-ishly (note my rebellious use of both metric and imperial)

Start by roasting the squash in a medium oven (150 degrees celsius) for twenty or so minutes or until it’s tender. Don’t let it brown. When it’s done bung it on a chopping board and cut to smithereens. Well, into very small pieces. Put the ginger into the cream, bring to the boil, remove from the stove and leave it to infuse for 30 minutes whilst you make a nice cup of tea. (This bit is important – tea is good.) Now whisk the sugar into the egg yolks good’n hard (you will be feeling strong and refreshed after that cuppa). Bring the cream back up to simmering point, whisk a little of it into the egg mix then stir it all back into the cream. This back and forth stuff is to stop the eggs from scrambling. Wallop in the squash and simmer very gently for a few minutes, stirring constantly until it thickens slightly. Then leave to cool and it’s ready to either pour into an ice cream maker machine thing or put into a tub and then in the freezer (taking out and forking up every hour or so).

Being a great fan of waste-not-want-not I have been using the leftover egg whites to make chewy merengues. They’re dead easy. Important tip numero uno is your whisking bowl must be spotless, the mere hint of grease or whatever will ruin everything (and the world will end). You need 115 grams of sugar per egg white. Whisk the whites till they form soft peeks then gradually whisk in the sugar. Keep whisking away for three or four minutes and your merengue mix should be shiny, silky, smoothy white. Plop or dollop spoonfuls onto greaseproof paper and bake for 35 or so minutes in a preheated 150 degree c oven or until they’re everso slightly golden brownish. Too long and they won’t be chewy – too little and they’ll be raw in the middle. Many thanks to Gwen, my mother-in-law, for this recipe. (She’s not from Yorkshire and can pronounce ice cream, by the way) Her merengues are world famous in our family and it was her that told me the need for potassium hydrogen tartrate, 5% acetic acid, sodium chloride and god-knows-what which other recipes call for is a total waste of time. And as some long-forgotten bard once wrote; “I’d give you my forever but I do not have the time”. Speaking a which it’s time to bugger off….

The Spanish Deglutition (part uno)

2008-04-22T18:37:00.004+02:00

Mrs B and myself have been in traveling mode; last autumn we were in Barcelona to eat. Which we did packing in twelve meals into two and a half days. Then we were in Devon, at the in-laws, for Christmas. That seemed to be a non-stop food session too. And lastly we’ve invaded Andalusia where we stayed with my folks for a few days in Nerja before doing a four day tour of the surrounding mountains, hills, villages, towns and cities. So, instead of the usual recipes, I thought I’d write down the food we experienced in Barca and southern Spain.

Barthalona

Sunday - Despite living only a few kilometers from Copenhagen Airport Mrs B had bought these ever so cheap Ryan Air tickets out of Malmø which meant getting the bus into town then taking an hour long coach trip into the depths of rural southern Sweden. And because it was Ryan Air we didn’t fly into Barcelona Airport but Girona which means another hour long coach trip into Barca. There was apparently only one taxi on duty and he was ignoring every one of the twenty or thirty souls in the taxi queue so we decided to hike into town from the bus station. Luckily it didn’t take very long so after half an hour or so we arrived at our hotel, Hotel Ingels, situated twenty meters off the Ramblas in the Gothic part of town, at midnight. Everything bar a seven-eleven type place seemed to be shut so we grabbed a few beers (and some water), said goodnight to the myriads of professional ladies on the street and went back to the hotel to crash.

Monday – we’d opted not to go for the hotel breakfast on offer on the grounds that there was no point in filling ourselves up with croissants and rolls and the like when there was a city awaiting to dazzle us with it’s wares. So we buggered across the Ramblas to La Boqueria, the infamous food market. Here it dawned on us that, like in many countries, Monday is a no-no for fish lovers as all the fish stalls bar the ones selling salted cod (bacalao) were shut. Nevermind, we ambled around, avoiding the very popular food bar place (the name escapes me) and it’s very famous and perpetually grinning owner and ended up at a food bar right at the back. Here we waited for a couple of seats to empty after which we could order. Despite the guy next to us necking back a bottle of Cava we opted for coffee (fantastic) and freshly squeezed orange juice to go with our….

Pulpo (octopus) – they had a huge tentacle, all white and purple behind the bar. When cut up into bite sized chunks it was served dressed only in extra virtuous olive oil and a sprinkling of paprika. It was lovely.

Razor clams – I’d been dreaming of eating these ever since we’d booked the plane tickets so the simple fact all the fish places were closed didn’t deter me. So my razor clams weren’t fresh but frozen. But still pretty good, done in oil, garlic and parsley.

Next we meandered off towards another, mucho less famous market where there were more clothes stalls and the like (like = tat). Here we found a food place selling more meaty fare. After much dribbling we decided to share a bowl of the house speciality….

Stew – well there was definitely tripe in it. And probably cheek, knuckle, tail and all of those sort of things. It was very scrummy, a deep, deep flavour seasoned with garlic and paprika. And all the better for being washed down with a couple of San Migs.

Pretty stuffed now we went and did the lazy tourist thing, ie got on one of those sight-seeing buses. Thoroughly recommend it – saw one helluva lot without having to get off our arses. Went past the Olympic stadium and a few other tall buildingy things. It was t-shirt weather so we sat upstairs in the no roof bit and froze our nipples off.

We saw roughly half of the route, the bit from 12 o’clock running backwards to 6 o’clock, saving the rest for the morrow (which we didn’t do). Alighting down near the harbour we zig-zagged around until we found a place I’d read about in a wine magazine; The Cava Bar. Actually called something completely different (El Xampanyet- that must be Catalan humour) it’s a bar renowned for selling cheap cava and cheap buns. And it was PACKED. Full of natives doing what the Catalans (and Spanish as we later learned) do best – eat, drink and scream at each other. We fought our way to the bar, eventually catching the eye of one of the many serving blokes and then ordered…

A plate of cheese and a plate of Serrano ham – nice if not terribly stunning

A bottle of red cava – well EVERYBODY seemed to be drinking it. It was really a tad sweet for us but down it went. Very quickly. Whilst we were standing there enjoying the ambience Mrs B decided she wanted to try one of the baps which were being sold at the speed of light. She went for one with 3 types of pig; lever patê, Serrano ham and hot roast pork. It was very tasty. It came in a thin paper wrapping and when finished you dropped this on the floor.

Feeling ever so slightly affected by the cava we walked back up the Ramblas, taking in all the human statues and lovely flower stalls they have. What isn’t so lovely are the stalls selling live birds. All types of exotic and domestic birds sit in their tiny cages. It was bizarre to see a free pigeon sitting a top a cage containing another pigeon. And it was not nice seeing a cage full of hedgehogs.

There was a bar next to our hotel so we decided to grab a quick beer before having a siesta. We should have seen the omen hovering above us when it turned out all they served was Heineken. Not a single Spanish or Catalan brew did they have. And why oh why did we let ourselves be tempted by the tapas they proudly displayed? Our pre-siesta snack comprised of…..

Grilled cuttlefish – it was rubbish. And smelled funny. And wasn’t freshly grilled. Wasn’t freshly anything. The only redeeming quality it possessed was that it wasn’t quite as bad as the…..

Carpet clams – or whatever they were as they were bigger than the normal, tiny clams I know. And they were foul. The only way to bugger up something as simple as clams done in oil & garlic is if the clams aren’t fresh. We drank up and didn’t leave a tip, hoping we hadn’t just poisoned ourselves.

“Fuck the siesta” I thought “I’m not going to sleep after an experience like that. I might have night (or evening) mares. I might not actually wake up, ever, if the shellfish was as dodgy as I feared”. So we found somewhere else for a bite. Well, actually we didn’t. First we popped into a small bar for a real drink. This place was the terrier’s testicles. A local beer for me and a glass of local red for Mrs B. Strip lights for illumination and a telly showing footie. And an owner who neither spoke nor understood a word of English. I like that. THEN we went looking for solid stuff. Not too easy at six pm as nigh on all local eateries are closed until dinner (8-9 pm). What we found was a rather touristy tapas restaurant (“tapas” & “restaurant” isn’t a natural marriage) where we sat up at the counter and ordered…..

Fried green pimientos – stunningly simple, stunningly moreish. These green chilis are a classic tapas, quite mild apart from the one-out-of-four(or ten depending on the batch) which gets you snorting like a bull (nice Spanishy metaphor, that)

Fried Anchovies – whitebait (or “blanchebait” as the Taverstock Arms in Devon quizzically calls their identical version). Again, simple yet very, very good.

I think I had beer & Mrs B a glass of red with this.

Right, back to the hotel to die for an hour or so before going out for dinner. The restaurant we found at 8pm didn’t of course open til nine so we buggered back to our little drinking hole where the owner’s eyes literally lit up when he saw us. Maybe he couldn’t believe that a couple of tourists would come back for more. It’s rather reassuring to find a bar you can call home. Nicely bevvied we returned to the restaurant at the stroke of a few minutes after nine to find the place packed to the rafters. We must have got the last two seats available. But sit we did, and from my vantage point I could watch the kitchen at work. Mrs B had the honour of being able to watch me. We ordered a lovely bottle of red and then…..

Black Pudding with Rice - Which woz wot it woz. Very rustic and tasty. The B’s do love their black pud.

Smoked Ducks Breast - Thinly sliced and pretty mild.

Two types of liver – One probably goose and the other duck. And very good they were too.

Stuffed to the point of explosion we made our way back to our new “regular” for a digestive. Or few. Mrs B introduced me to carajillo which is simply strong, black coffee laced with loads of brandy. Being inquisitive types we managed to ask our new favourite bar bloke which was the best of the two brands of brandy he had. His reply was to gift us a bucketful of each so we could make up our own minds. Needless to say we were steaming when we left…..

Tuesday - Felt rough, very rough. But at least the copious amounts of wine, beer and local fire water had rendered any smellfish assassins harmless. For breakfast we headed deeper into the Gothic quarter, and after a good look around yet another food market, found a deli-cum-café where we ordered juice, coffee and a couple of baguettes. One contained bacon (hangover cure numero uno) and the other anchovies (hangover cure numero dos) with roquefort.

We slowly made our way down to the seafront, passing en route a huge queue for the Picasso museum. I felt rather pleased I’m such a cultural pleb as the thought of standing in line for a couple of hours only to enter a museum crammed with people jostling for a good view really doesn’t appeal to me. There are loads of restaurants along the seafront, some really expensive ones and some really tacky ones. The tacky ones all seem to use the same, annoying ploy to get bums on seats. A waiter type bloke/twat will come darting out from the outside-table-area and try to drag you into his lair. Like some hideous funnel-web spider the second you pause to look at their menu they’re out “you come, you sit, I speaka da Inglish, come now, good food cheap cheap”. “You speaka da Inglish? Then fuck off chum and leave us alone”

Well, lunchtime arrived as lunchtimes have a habit of doing so over a quick ale in a strange little bar we consulted our Rough Guide as to where to eat next. It transpired that a highly recommended seafood restaurant (Can Ramonet) was but a short walk away so short walk we did. A couple of beers and a bottle of cava (dry and white this time, a wise choice) accompanied the rather swash buckling selections of dishes we, with difficulty, restricted ourselves to……

Oysters - Just half a dozen. These were very good. We must remember to bring a small bottle of Lea & Perrins with us on holiday next time. A drop or two is our preferred accompaniment rather than the classic lemon. It might sound odd but it brings out the nuttiness. I like to think L&P and HP (RIP) hark back to an era when the British knew a thing or two about taste.

Deep fried small fish - Actually we thought we’d ordered whitebait but were rather startled to see the arrival of a plate of, erm, not-so-small fish. This is a local speciality and consists, I guess, of all the fish that can’t be filleted. A couple of them were eel-like, about 20 cm long and sporting huge fangs. The rest were an assortment of largish small fish or smallish large fish. All with piranha dentures. I suppose you’re supposed to eat the whole beast but I didn’t fancy the heads on most of them. I guess I was concerned about getting my throat chewed through from the inside. The taste was nothing near as good as the whitebait we’d had the previous day.

Snails - The Spanish/Catalans love their snails and these came in a rich, tomato and bacon sauce. They were quite earthy. In a good way.

Sea Cucumber - “Got to try that” said we. It was served thinly sliced & cold with salad and a lemony dressing. It’s pretty rubbery, didn’t taste of much and, novelty value aside, not worth the dizzy price. This dish cost almost the same as the rest of the meal together, including drinks. We’ll have to give it another go when we return to the Philippines, where it’ll no doubt be cheaper at least… (Mrs B would like me to say she thought the sea cucumber had the consistency of knicker elastic. I haven’t mustered up the courage to ask her why she’s ever eaten knicker elastic. Or in which situation it happened….)

Whelks - Much more ornate than the English variety, beautiful black and white shells with squiggly bits all over them. Unfortunately they’d blown all their money on their looks coz they didn’t taste anywhere near as good as their pig-ugly cousins from the Albion.

Toast - Done in the local style where you rub tomato and garlic into an olive oil drizzled slice of golden toasted Spanish bread. I must admit I find this even better than bruschetta.

Just around the corner from our hotel we found a booze’n’tin shop. Tinned shellfish is exceedingly popular in Spain. The variety is really impressive compared to what we’re used to (mussels, squid and, erm, well that’s it) in Denmark. Loads of types of clams in different sizes and in different sauces. We picked up a selection as well as a couple of bottles of local cider. Wicked stuff that, quite scrumpy-ish. Makes your insides shudder.

Our pre-siesta meal took place at the tapas restaurant we visited yesterday. Not our best nor most adventurous decision nor was our choice of tapas fully successful but we were knackered and all the nice places were shut. So we ordered a jug of Sangria and…..

Potatas Bravas - Chips by any other name. And good chips too, with a nice mojo sauce as well as some aioli.

Deep Fried Artichoke Tips - Why oh why did I order these? Dull and greasy.

Pickled Anchovies on a skewer with chillis and caper berries - Should have ordered more just to cut through all the grease from the artery-chokes

Jamon Serrano - Noone apparently does dried ham like the Spanish. It’s amazing. And no frills, just a big plate of the stuff.

After a siesta and a half it was time to think food again. By this time we definitely weren’t driven by hunger. In between stuffing ourselves I suppose we’ve been quite good really because, due to our inability to decide on where to eat and the variety of options on offer, we didn’t half peg around a lot. For our last “dinner” of the trip we opted for a restaurant due to one dish on its menu; baby goat. I was a little apprehensive about the establishment as it seemed a bit touristy (menu in various languages) but I was proven very wrong. So with our excellent bottle of Rioja we ordered….

Another plate of green pimientos – My name is Mr B and I’m an addict. They’re my version of crack cocaine. One hit and you’re hooked.

Baby goat ribs - I wish they’d called them Ribs of Kids. If they had I think I would have stolen one of their menus. These were tiny, succulent chops, roasted in garlic and on a bed of fried potatoes cut into match sticks. The portion was huge and it was some of the nicest meat I’ve ever had.

Grilled baby squid - Very simply done, just garlic and olive oil. And they were superb. Served with some strange green stuff. Oh yeah, SALAD! The first fresh veg-like food to enter our systems for over 48 hours (apart from chillis, garlic, parsley and wine of course).

After a night cap at our local (our last visit of the trip so it was very emotional) it was waddle-off-to-bed time.

Wednesday - Breakfast at La Boqueria, same food bar as our first meal. I plumped for a standard breakfast fare; Carpet clams. In olive oil, garlic and parsley. Wow oh wow. So tasty I was gobsmacked. The clams were sweet, the sauce perfect.

Mrs B went for the white pudding, or hogs pudding as it’s sometimes known. A sausage some might even say. In a rich, tomato sauce it was meaty and excellent. Note to myself: remember to omit the bread when I next make sausages. If you’re ever in Barcelona you should eat at this place. They had loads more stuff we wanted to try. Oh well, we’ll be back…..

After a visit to the local Carrefour supermarket to stock up on sausages, cheese, serrano, green chillis, paprika, tins and god-knows-what we made back to our hotel to pack, pay and piss-off. Amazingly we could cram everything into our hand luggage. And equally amazingly we could just about lift it off the floor.

Like sherpas carrying the kitchen sink et al up Everest we dragged our abused organisms off in the direction of the coach station. We bought a tub of mango and melon from a market stall which may have been the first “sensible” purchase of the trip. It was as if every molecule in our bodies cried “thank you” as we ate it.

Our last meal of our tour-de-excess was taken in a café not far from the coach station. The people running it looked Asian but the menu was very Spanish and pretty vast. As we admired the one-armed bandits and illuminated pictures of baguettes we ordered….

Potatas bravas - Again. But I suppose being English you’re genetically programmed to order chips in a transport “caff”.

Pigs Ears - Another one of our “never-had-that-before-got-to-try-it moments”. We tried it….. and we left it. The ears were so fatty and tasteless they had simply nothing going for them. Shame they were served in half a liter of oil. Maybe a good, strongly flavoured sauce would have made them palatable. Naaa, don’t think so.

Baby Octopi. Or octopusses. Or octopussies. Or maybe just octopus - These were pretty good tho’. You often get vinegar as well as olive oil as table condiments so a little drizzle of the acidic one did wonders for these small critters. It was also fitting as we’d managed to eat all the cephalopods in 2 ½ days (squid, cuttlefish, large and tiny octopus).

Boquerones en vinagre– these are pickled anchovy filets drizzled with olive oil. They are seriously good. Having to choose between these and the fried green chilis would be like having to chose between a Chateau Debbie Harry ’78 and a Chateau Billie Holliday ’39.

Well, that was that. We spent a while at the coach station hunting for a ticket machine or office before it suddenly dawned on me that we’d purchased return tickets when we’d arrived. That’s what 60 hours of food, booze and more food does to you. All in all it had been a fantastic trip. We’d had some dodgy meals and we’d hit the jackpot more than a few times. We’d tried market stalls, cafeterias, bars and restaurants. We will be back. Hopefully for a bit longer so we don’t have to cram SO many meals into each day. Actually the meals in themselves were generally tiny; a portion of clams looks impressive but I doubt the meat content was more than a small handful. The kids ribs were mostly bone, snails & whelks are fiddly (and fun) and so on and so on. I think next time we’ll have to eat more fruit and veg. Or we might not survive…..

Pigs.....In......Sauce......

2008-02-23T13:12:00.005+01:00

Dinner last night was such an unmitigated success that I just had to write it down before yet another tumbler full of brain cells get washed out to sea. It all started two days ago. I was sofabound, rendered a zombie by some weird viral force whilst Mrs B was out doing what Mrs B does best – partying. The telly was absolute tripe; I seemed to have the choice between reality “shows”, cross country skiing (why would anyone want to ski uphill?), Danish 1950’s films, Danish 1940’s films, loads of films with Wesley Snipes and a myriad of mind numbing series (doctors, nurses, hospitals, paramedics, hairdressers etc). Honestly, where is Taggart when you need him? Anyway, I was too inert to turn the fecker off so I snuggled up to BBC Food (after making sure Ainsley was nowhere in sight). Along came Gordon Ramsey with his F Word offering. I find this programme very contrived, his restaurant ghastly, his mingling with and sucking up to minor celebs painfully embarrassing (especially when he “subtly” tries to take the piss out of them) and Gordon, MATE, stop rubbing your fucking face all the time. You’re a chef in a kitchen on telly for godssake. No wonder your face looks like Gandi’s arse. And anyway, it’s not hygienic. And whilst I’m ranting Giorgio Locatelli GET A BLEEDING HAIRCUT. I cringe when I see him touching food, which someone will soon eat, whilst all the time trying to get that annoying, greasy hair to stay behind his ear. There’s a reason why people who work in food processing have to wear hairnets. I’ve seen Jammy Wallyver touch his nose (the nostril end like he was pinching off a snot drop) way too many times and Nigel Lawson In Drag is forever sucking her/his fingers. It’s foul. Yours truly, Angry of Mayfair….

But I digress, Gordon Ramsey has a couple of things going for him. Out of the restaurant he can be genuinely funny and THE MAN CAN COOK. He is quite brilliant, God knows how good his programme would be if he spent it just cooking. As it was I waded through the pond of poo and emerged with a golden nugget in my welly in the form of Mr Ramsey’s recipe for puréed cauliflower. Ta Gord….

Next bit of the dish came about at work. I’d dragged myself out of bed feeling better for lots of sleep (and sampling a few of the more exotic bottles in our drinks cupboard). During my lunch break (Heinz tomato soup with chunks of mature cheddar gently melting in it – mmmmm) I was reading one of those freebie newspapers and stumbled across a recipe by a well known Danish chef called Bo Bech. In Dansk this dish calls for pigs’ jaws although I think the Ingerlish would call them cheeks. In fact they’re jaw muscles. Jowls I suppose. Yes, jowls they shall be know as. In fish they’re a favourite of mine, a salmon or seatrout has penny sized ones, soft and succulent like tiny oysters. In mammals they require long, slow cooking. Hr Bech did his jaws with beer and parsley. I used English cider (scrumpy), onions and sage. But the basic recipe is deffo his so “tak”.

The final part of this tale happened in our local supermarket whilst looking for something “nice and easy” for dinner. A steak maybe or some calves liver. But fate would have it that I found a packet of pigs’ jaws. Jowls, sorry. Unless you read the package you’d never guess what they were as they look like large cubes of pork. I’ve never seen them before but I suppose I would have expected some bone and a few teeth. So into my basket they went, I came home and cooked ‘em. And this here be the recipe for…

Pork Jowls In Cider with Cauliflower Purée

Makes 2 main courses or 6 starters

Cauliflower Purée

½ a cauliflower in florets
Olive oil
1 glug of milk
1 splurge of cream
Salt and pepper

Soften the cauliflower gently in the oil. It doesn’t want to take on any colour. Add the milk and simmer until they’re just cooked. If the milk catches a little don’t worry, just don’t scrape the bottom of the pan. Luzz in some cream, chuck into a blender and blitz. This, as Gordon so correctly pointed out, has to be done whilst everything is piping hot otherwise you won’t get that silky smooth finish. And, which Gord didn’t say, remember to leave an escape route for the steam (this is why most blenders have that odd shaped bit on the lid that doesn’t quite cover the jug spout) otherwise you risk a little boiling hot explosion. I hold the lid on with a tea towel just to be on the safe side. Once whizzed season with salt and pepper. Beware: this stuff is seriously moreish and can be used in an endless variety of dishes.

Pigs’ Jowls in Cider

6 pigs’ jowls
I large onion
1 large carrot
1 parsnip
A few cloves of garlic (I used loads of course)
50 cl of dry English scrumpy (I used Weston’s Old Rosie)
A bunch of fresh sage leaves
Salt and pepper

Brown the jowls in a little oil. (I use a pot that works both on the hob and in the oven. Otherwise use a frying pan and transfer to a roasting dish, remembering to deglaze the pan.) Add the cider (it should almost cover the meat – if not add some water, or more cider…), a few sage leaves, some pepper (but no salt), cover and bung in a 150 degree celsius oven for 1 ½ hours. In the meantime finely chop your onion and soften in some oil or butter. Peel and dice your root veg. Peel the garlic cloves, leaving them whole. All these go into the pot after the 1 ½ hours for a further 30-40 minutes or until the veg is just cooked. Deffo don’t want mushy veg. Remove from the oven and let rest for half an hour or so before taking out the jowls. This resting time is rather important as the meat soaks up the juices as it relaxes. Like I do. Drain the stock from the veg, discarding the sage. The veg should be kept warm. Now, in a frying pan reduce the stock until it is thick and syrupy. It is at this point that you can season with salt (and perhaps more pepper). Add some finely chopped sage then the jowls. Turn them over so they’re covered in this rich, sticky goo and bingo – they’re ready. I fried some sage leaves as garnish which really worked. And this is a dish which, in looks alone, is worthy of a very expensive restaurant. I placed the jowls amid a puddle of the velvety cauliflower purée, scattered the veg around a bit, drizzled the last sticky drops of sauce over the meat and then lay a few sage leaves on top of it all. These things melt in your mouth yet are moist and succulent in a way which other cuts of oink can’t quite match. I will never be able to pass by a butchers or a supermarket without looking for pigs’ jowls again.

Thai Me Up & Spank Me

2007-08-27T14:49:00.000+02:00

It’s a hard life. It’s Monday morning, I’ve got a week off, I’m on my third cup of tea, the Test Match Special is on the ‘puter & I’m tucking into the leftovers of yesterday’s Thai seafood salad. T’is a very versatile dish, Thai (insert protein) salad. Once the basic noodle & dressing bit is sorted you can chuck a whole variety of veggies, meats and/or fishy things into/onto it. Some recipes for this call for a staggering amount of raw onion which is a shame really coz the dish is all about balance, each mouthful ought to offer something different depending on which morsels sneak into your gob with the noodles.

Basic Thai Glass Noodle Salad

100g glass noodles (serves 2)
Juice of 3 limes
Good glugg of fish sauce
Pinch of sugar
A couple of red bird’s eye chillies finely chopped
A cucumber cut into small inch long sticks
1 small red onion or a couple of shallots sliced into semi rings
A handful of coriander leaves

The noodles are soaked in hot water for 3 or so minutes. As soon as they’re al bundy you bung them in cold water then drain. Then you mix the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar & chillies, tasting to make sure the balance is right. Chuck everything together & now you’re ready to add your whatnots of choice……

A Choice Of Whatnots

Seafood – we had mussels, prawns & squid yesterday. I steamed the mussels, removing them as soon as they opened. We had a kilo which was rather a lot so I saved the biggest 20 for a Spanishy tapas thing (see below). The juice was then strained & added to a pint of so of water, some tamarind paste, sliced ginger & a few whole cloves of garlic. The squid & prawns were “barely” cooked in this broth, which can be used for making soup with. The garlic was added to the salad.

Cow – marinate a nice, lean steak in olive oil, black pepper & garlic. Flash fry it on all sides, leave it to rest then slice it thinly. We like our meat still mooing in the middle, it should at most be rare.

Duck's Breast – Done like the cow but should be pink not rare

Tuna – Rub olive oil into a nice, thick tuna steak. Season then flash fry it on all sides. As soon as the last bit of “flipping” has taken place pour a good slurp each of soy sauce & balsamic vinegar into the pan. It’s all-action stuff as the liquid will spit & splatter. Turn the tuna over in it before removing. Now reduce to a thick syrup which you then spooned over the fish. You can roll it in toasted sesame seeds if you want. When cool it’s sliced. Like the steak it should be raw in the middle. It’s also very impressive visually.

Minced Pork – Fry the pork “hard” to evaporate any liquid it might contain. Add minced garlic, shrimp paste, pepper, fish sauce & a pinch of sugar.

Veggies – Carrot cut into sticks, mange tout, asparagus, baby sweet corn, spring onions, bean sprouts, even halved cherry tomatoes. They’re not very “Thai” but their acidity suits the dish well.

Topping – A handful of dried shrimps get a good pestling in a mortar then fried, adding chopped ginger, shallot & garlic. When they’re all nice & crispy they’re sprinkled atop the salad. The garlic & ginger, especially, are rather essential to the dish imo. Make sure the garlic doesn’t burn.

Finally a little fresh mint can be added along with the coriander leaves for a slightly Vietnamesey twist.

You might need to tweak the dish with some more lime juice and/or fish sauce before serving.

Garlic Mussels

Terribly simple yet totally moreish. A couple of cloves of minced garlic are mixed with olive oil, pepper & finely chopped parsley. Place the barely steamed mussels (left in one of their valves) on a baking tray adding a spoonful of garlic goo to each. A sprinkling of fine bread crumbs can be added too for a toasty effect. Grill for a minute or so and serve with crusty bread.

Bangers & Cash

2007-08-23T00:00:00.001+02:00

I think sausage making rocks. Homemade sausages are generally eons better than anything you can buy. Basically because you can guarantee the quality and quantity of the meat going into them. Years back I knew a butcher who worked in a supermarket and she told me the story of how a nice piece of pork would be removed from the display fridge once it had reached its sell-by date, get sliced into chops & returned with a new date. This would repeat itself, the meat becoming cubes, then mince, then "homemade" sausage all with an extended shop-lifespan. By the time the sausage was sold or binned the original meat had been in the supermarket so long it probably had tenancy rights. This is the reason I never buy mince from a supermarket with a proper butcher's department. Or from a small butcher's for that matter unless I have reason to believe they're not up to tricks. But where was I? Ah yes, sausage making. With my old tiny manual meat grinder, bought from a second-hand shop for a pound, it’s a tad tricky making bangers as you need one hand to push the meat down the funnel, one hand to wind the handle and one hand to gently caress the sausages as they roll off the nozzle. As one does. Which leaves you decidedly short of hands, and unable to drink beer. So a year or so ago I invested in a Kenwood sausage making machine thingy but decided not to use it until the kitchen was finished, the plan being to produce lovely, home-made bangers as one of my first projects once the “playground” was completed. So I felt a bit of, no, a right royal twat when I unpacked it last month only to find it was but an attachment for a proper big mother-copulating food processor which would set me back £3-400 should I want one. Which I didn’t. So I bought a cheapo electric meat grinder instead.

Next up I needed sausage skins, which I’ve been successful in procuring from butcher’s in the past. As we’ve moved house since my last sausage adventure I paid our local purveyor of carcass a visit. “No probs” he said, “how much do you need?” I thought 5 to 10 meters would suffice to which he informed me it would cost about £2 a meter. Shocked I asked him if that included the stuff you put inside the sausages to which he replied something about them being expensive things requiring much work in preparing them etc, etc ie complete and utter bollocks, like he did all that himself. My guess is he didn’t want to sell them to me. The cock.

Acting on information given to me by my godfather Ray I then went shopping on the intaweb, www.sausagemaking.org to be precise. And brill fab, they not only had pigs intestines( sorry “casings”) but cows’ ones for salamis, sheep’s for chipolatas, collagen for veggies (they’d have to avoid the inside bit tho’) as well as curing powders and other “kit”. So I ordered a bundle and was as pleased as a nun in a cucumber patch up until I had to put in my address. Free postage & packaging in the UK, within the EU add £20! To make things even more confusing if I’d lived in what’s called The Rest Of The World it would have been free too. Now, I’d only ordered about 20 quids worth of stuff so I thought “logger that” and bugged off.

To the rescue came Mrs B who, through dubiousish means, has acquired an access card for the big cash & carry in the middle of Copenhagen. They don’t sell to private peoples y’know. Anyway, it’s like an Aladdin’s cave, especially in the meat and fish departments. I knew they had sausage skins but last time I looked you had to buy a few miles worth at a time but behold & lo if they didn’t have them in dainty little tubs of a mere 5 meters. And at pound a tub all I can say to my local butcher-cum-knobhead is “you can go and fork offal”.

So, armed to the teats with sausage making gadgetry and more intestines than you can stake a shit at, I set about fulfilling my sausage destiny. Or something like that. Here are the two best banger recipes I’ve come up with so far….

Classic Sage’n’Onion Pork Sausages

You really can’t beat the combination of pork, onion & sage when making bangers. I use very little bread & it can be totally omitted if y’like ya sausages really dense. It’s important to let the sausages rest for at least 12 hours before cooking to let the flavours party a bit. I actually think they benefit from being frozen for a while.

500 g minced pork (8-10% fat is a good amount)

2 biggish onions

2 cloves of garlic

2 slices of whitish bread blitzed into fine crumbs

A big handful of fresh sage leaves finely chopped (dried ain’t half as good)

A pinch or two of mace

A little olive oil or a modest knob of butter

Lots of crushed black pepper

Salt

About 2 meters of pig’s intestines or the equivalent collagen ones

Ok, if you’re using salted swine bowels they have to be soaked in fresh warm water for a while so start by doing that. The onions & garlic need to finely chopped then softened in the oil/butter. This is very important, raw onions will ruin yer bangers. Then simply mix everything together in a mixing bowl. Very well. To check the seasoning fry a small ball of your creation in the used frying pan (this is my first how-to-be-economical-with-the-washing-up tip). I like my sausages nice and peppery so I tend to bung in loads. Now to the kitchen erotica bit. Take the casings and thread them onto your sausage-making-funnel thingy. Then, leaving a couple of inches dangling, start feeding the meat mix into your machine. As it starts filling ease off the skin from the nozzle forming the sausage as you go. By pulling it off quickly you get a thinner sausage. Likewise, if you hold back your sausage will get fatter. I must have made a good fifty meters of sausages so far & I still can’t do this without giggling. Jesus, I'm smirking just writing it. When done the sausages are twisted into the required lengths.

When it comes to cooking your bangers remember they don’t need pricking. This will only succeed in letting the lovely pork juices run out. Because your nice, homemade beasts don’t contain excess water they won’t explode and any expanding they need doing takes place out the ends anyway. I usually brown them in a little oil then chuck them in the oven for half an hour at 200 degrees Celsius.

Thai Pork & Prawn Sausages

Where as the previous recipe was simple and classic this one is deffo more of a mad-experiment-that-went-right sort of thing. We’ve had these both fried/baked as well as steamed and I have to say the steamed ones won by a whisker. When you cut into them the prawns look like large lumps of fat which I find amusing. But then I’m easily amused.

500g minced pork

5-10 black tiger prawns shelled & chopped into smallish pieces

1 large onion chopped finely & softened

4 cloves of garlic chopped

1½ inch cube of ginger ditto ditto

2 stalks of lemon grass bashed & chopped

5 or so kaffir lime leaves de-stalked & chopped

A handful of dried Thai shrimps pounded in a mortar (with a pestle) and fried with the onions

½ teaspoon of fish paste (mixed with a bit of warm water to thin it down)

2-4 small chilies chopped finely

A big handful of chopped fresh coriander

½ teaspoon of ground dried coriander seeds

2 spring onions chopped

Fish sauce (instead of salt)

Ground white pepper

Ok, mix well together, test for seasoning (if it gets too fishy before it’s salty enough then use salt) and make as before. A teaspoon or two of red curry paste can be used too for a different effect. These are delicious with a sweet chili sauce. Happy Banging...

Shrimp'n'save

2007-07-09T16:20:00.000+02:00

Last year a fish van came round our neighbourhood and they had proper fresh raw prawns, caught off the western coast of Denmark. They were amazing & we bought a few kilos. Every time the fish van’s been back we’ve wanted to buy more but they haven’t had them. This is a cause of great grief to me. I wish I could buy raw, frozen North Sea or Greenland prawns in fishmongers or supermarkets. But I can’t. Boiled-&-frozen-at-sea shelled & unshelled prawns are all I can get. Up until the arrival of frozen, raw black tiger prawns from the Far East a simple dish of prawns in garlic butter meant using the pre-boiled things. Even in restaurants. Straight from the freezer they’d bung them in the pan. Yuk. You don’t buy pre-boiled eggs & then re-boil them, do you? I like my seafood pretty under cooked so, until they design a machine that can reverse the cooking process, I’m stuck with the pollution causing, anti-biotic riddled black tigers. We can get fresh raw fjord shrimps in season but, whilst totally delish, are so tiny they can’t be used for much else than nibbles. After reading about it somewhere I collected a few dozen wood lice today. After giving them a quick rinse I poured boiling salted water over them. The theory is that they taste like shrimps seeing as they are not unrelated to them. Yes, they did taste shrimpish. No, they did not taste very nice. And anyway, it took me half an hour to collect no more than could be fitted into a teabag so feeding the masses is deffo out of the question. The following recipes are Mrs B's & my favourite prawn dishes….

Prawns in Garlic ButterOil

People tend to overcook their prawns. So I concocted this dish which keeps them really moist & juicy whilst not compromising on the garlic flavour. It’s dead simple and can be prepped early which is dead handy if you’re doing it for a bash. By using a combination of olive oil & garlic you get a nicer sauce. If only butter is used it tends to get too rich.

Raw black tiger prawns (with or without their heads)

Butter

Garlic

Un-waxed lemons

Parsley

Olive oil

Chilli (optional)

Crushed black pepper

In a frying pan soften the sliced garlic slowly in olive oil over a low heat. Use plenty of oil and lots & lots of garlic. You’re looking to infuse the oil so, as it softens, mash it up a bit. Dump in the black pepper and, after a while, the parsley (and the chilli if wanted). Now, whilst this warms away place your thawed & patted dry prawns in an oven dish. I use something that’s a medium sized flowerpot in shape (minus the holes in the bottom, ha ha). Bung in your garlic goo and mix well together. You really want to coat every critter with the stuff. Then cover with thinnish slices of lemon. The lemon is your lid which keeps in the juices. Put a few handsome sized knobs of butter on top of the lemon slices and your ready to chuck it in the oven (or put it in the fridge where it will marinate nicely for a few hours). Bake it for anything between 20 to 45 minutes depending on the amount of prawns and size of pot, at 180 degrees celcius. I like to take them out after 10-15 mins, remove the lemon, stir around the prawns so the inner ones take a turn on the outside, back on with the lemon slices and into the oven again. They’re done when they’re pink. Serve with crusty bread. The juices are sublime, the prawns should be soft and succulent, more like lobster than frying-pan garlic prawns.

Sack O’ Porn Prawns

This is a dish Mrs B & I had at the wonderfully named Thai restaurant Porn Sak. I guess we’ve eaten there at least half a dozen times and each time the dish had developed into something more and more bland (to pamper to delicate local palates, so the waiter said) so this is a tribute to the original hardcore experience.

Black Tiger Prawns (headless)

Limes

Bird’s-eye chillies

Fish Sauce

Sugar

Squeeze a couple of limes. Mix the juice with half a teaspoon of sugar, a few gluggs of fish sauce and some chopped chillies. Let this infuse in the fridge for an hour or so. Then peel the prawns (saving the skins for the next recipe if you’re game) then slice in two lengthways. Remove the black intestine thread-like thing and lay the prawns stripy side up on a serving dish. Just before serving pour over the lime mix. You can garnish with small wedges of lime and some fresh coriander if you’re feeling artistic. The wonderful thing about this dish is how the texture of the prawns changes throughout the meal. At the start they’ll be predictably raw and sweet then later on they’ll “cook” in the acidic lime juice becoming firmer & whiter. It’s the sort of dish you have with other dishes. It also goes well with sushi.

Crispy Prawn Shells

I take great pleasure in using as much of a beast as poss so this is one of my babies. It relies on the prawn shells not being too thick, the steroid taking, fast grown black tiger shells are perfect. Lobster shells less so.

Prawn shells

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

The prawn shells are simply fried in olive oil until they are nice and golden. As the moisture in them is cooked off they’ll fry quieter. The secret is getting them crisp but not burnt. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with sea salt. You can also add dried chilli and/or fried minced garlic. Perfect with beer, wine, g&t's, bloody mary's.....

Seconds up - round 2.....

2007-06-30T18:11:00.000+02:00

I tend not to be very impressed with my own food when I sit down to eat it immediately after preparing it. I think it’s due to all the smells and tasting during cooking, I simply feel full up. This was very apparent the other day when I made two separate dishes which I really didn’t think much of but today, served cold for lunch, they were really tasty. But I suppose if you make food and subsequently don’t eat it you’re not gonna get too fat. If you don't drink lots of beer. Like me....

Here are the dishes;

Mushroom Lasagna

Made this using an alternative, Jammy O’ Liver “inspired,” cheats béchamel sauce which Mrs B liked but I found a tad watery. It was a 500ml tub of crème fraiche mixed with a couple of fistfuls of grated cheddar & parmesan. The trouble was it kinda split and, despite Mrs B kindly saying she liked the “clean consistency” I felt it lacked the creaminess a real béchamel gives. It might work with other ingredients tho’, something less likely to release so much water like meat or tampons. The mushrooms were amazing tho’.
500g normal white mushrooms

250g abnormal mushrooms (something with taste & a bit of bite like chantarelles)

garlic

dried chilli

fresh thyme

loads of freshly grated parmesan and cheddar

milk, four, butter & nutmeg to make the béchamel

lasagna

truffle oil

Right, clean all the mushrooms using kitchen paper. I always try not to use water as they’ll absorb it making frying nigh on imposs. Roughly chop all the white mushrooms and fry them in batches in olive oil until some of them take on colour. You don’t want them too done but the pan has to be fecking hot so as to evaporate as much liquid as poss. As each batch is done bung them in a blender with 2-4-6-8 cloves of garlic and a couple of dried chillis. Let this cool down a bit whilst you fry the posh mushrooms. When these are done put them to one side. Meanwhile blitz the white mushrooms which will not be white anymore – they’ll look like something the dog threw up. Season with the fresh thyme, salt and pepper.

Now for the béchamel. In a non-stick saucepan melt a big knob of butter and bung in a couple of tablespoons of plain flour. Stir it around for a bit. It’ll form into a paste after which you keep stirring to “cook the flourness out of the flour”. This takes a minute or so, you don’t want it to colour, then you pour in half a liter or so of milk. For gawd’s sake keep stirring as you bring it up to a simmer or else it will burn and there ain’t much fouler than the taste/smell of burnt milk. When the sauce has thickened grate in some nutmeg, season and chuck in a handful of grated cheddar. Remove from the heat.

I used a bread tin for this as it’s a good size. Firstly you put in a layer of the mushroom goo followed by a layer of the posh mushrooms, then some béchamel, then a layer of lasagna. Repeat. Finish off with whatever goo and/or mushrooms are left, a layer of béchamel and the grated parmesan. If there isn’t enough béchamel then it’s back to the cooker… Bake at 200 degrees celcius for 20-30 minutes, remove when golden brown, texture like sun and druzzle with triffle oil.

Chicken Stuffed Aubergines

Got this idea from Mike Robinson on Heaven’s Kitchen Cookbook. He did it as a vegetarian dish stuffed only with cheese, pine nuts and breadcrumbs. I can’t remember what he topped it with. What did you do Mr Robinson? Cheese was in the draw, but I don't know. I was going to make it with guinea pig after I saw a food programme on Ecuadorian gastronomy but they’re dead expensive down our local pet shop so I opted for chicken instead.

2 aubergines washed, top’n’tailed & sliced lengthways into ½ cm thick slices

olive oil

500g chicken breasts chopped into sugar cubed sized pieces

handful of freshly made bread crumbs

100g pine nuts, gently roasted in a frying pan

chopped garlic

2 good handfuls of baby spinach or rocket, washed’n’dried

A few fresh sage leaves

2 equally good handfuls of grated cheese of your preferred creed.

Some tomatoes – sliced

More cheese (goats might be good)

Brush the aubergines on each side with olive oil and grill or fry until golden (both sides of course). Remove, brush again with oil (important as it keeps ‘em supple) and set aside. In a bowl luzz in yer chicken, bread crumbs, cheese, pine nuts, garlic and greenery and mix together. Season well. Then you take a slice of aubergine into which you place a blob of meat mix. Roll the aubergine around it so it looks like a bad kebab and place it, seam side down, in a lightly greased baking dish. Repeat with the rest. Cover with tomatoes and cheese and bake at 200 celcius for about half an hour or until the chicken is cooked through. You’re likely to have some aubergine slices left over. I bung them in the oven with the main stuff, removing them after 10-15 mins. Then I chop ‘em up into pulp, mix with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and bingo, an aubergine dip.

The Kitchen Project

For those in the know we at Chez B have been busy toiling away on our new kitchen. We are now one shelf and 6 1/2 meters of oak beading away from completion. Our two week project has taken over half a year which isn't bad by my standards. As soon as I aquire the necessary skills I'll take some pics of it for uploading. But the coolest thing about it is the amount of work space we now have. Acres of it. And, apart from the joining of two pieces of oak work top and some electrics, I've built the whole lot myself which makes me rather chuffed. Viva Ikea! And Mrs B keeps buying me beer so she must be proud of me too.....

And On The Thirst Day...

2007-06-04T00:35:00.000+02:00

.... He created Beer. And hallaluja for that.

Erm, before I start I'd like to say "sorry". Right, that was that and now for the run down. This is my blog and it isn't about me. Hopefully. It's about the nosh Mrs B and myself eat to keep ourselves alive. It's about the thoughts I have on food and the making of. It's the cataloguing of recipes I've basically pilfered from books, food programmes and dining-out experiences and then beaten up abit so even their mothers can't recognize them. Well they would but it sounded tough. Coz food is like the blues, baby. It's a linear progression from eating dirt. It's like when Mrs B isn't satisfied with eating plain old Marmite on toast. No, she has to take it one step further and put sliced cucumber on it. I will cite original recipes and/or sources of inspiration wherever and whenever I can remember where the feck I got them. And now I shall start with a chicken.....

Bought a nice fresh cluck-cluck the other day and this is what became of her. In an ideal world, of course, it would have been an organic chicken but it isn't and it wasn't. It wasn't one of those obese nine week old (or is it six) chicks which are more full of fat than your average McSlurry Whooper burger (thanks to Full On Food for that one ;-) tho but I honestly can't vouch for how happy she was when she was electrically stunned, hung by her neck in a conveyor belt then dragged throat first across a razorblade before getting plucked and drawn. That was a little insight into the types of field trips we used to get taken on back at Battle Road Incomprehensive School. But this chicken was made fine use of. Firstly she went into the stock pot. Then, after half an hour of simmering away she was carefully (coz she woz hot) taken up and her luvverly breasts filleted off. Back into the pot she then titless went to be boiled away for an hour or two. Voila, gorgeous chicken stock. Up with the carcass again which was put aside to cool then plucked of all its meat. The stock was strained then reduced by half. And these are the meals we got from this one chicken (plus a load of other ingredients);

Tom Yum Soup

Chicken Terrine

Chicken Salad

Pea & Mushroom Risotto

and these are the first recipes from the Bluebottle Feastery. Take a deep breath now, Mr B...

Stock

not gonna set the world alight with a recipe for stock, I know. But homemade stock is the difference between a decent dish and an outstanding dish. Here in Denmark you can only buy bog standard cubes or concentrates and they're all crap. Salty and crap. In some thai shops you can get shiitake mushroom cubes (knorr) which are ok. But still crap. So I make my own and freeze it. Mrs B made stock from a roasted turkey which was superb in a risotto. It's a case of waste-not want-not so all bones and off-cuts can be used. So, if anybody lops of a limb in a freak chainsaw accident the address is Fortgaard Allé......

You'll need:

Carcass or bones - from chickens to wombles, you name it I'll boil it

Veg - carrots, leeks, celery, onions, garlic, mushrooms, anything but things related to cabbages

Herbs - bayleaves, parsley, thyme, sage are goodies

Peppercorns and salt

Amounts are not vital although if too many carrots are used they tend to dominate. Chuck everything into a BIG saucepan, cover with Evian Water, ok plain cold water, bring to the boil and leave on a rolling simmer for a couple of hours. Fish stocks take a shorter amount of time as they can otherwise go bitter. Don't over salt as this will kill the stock if it is reduced. Skim the surface of impurities now and again. After two or so hours drain through a sieve (or a piece of the Turin Shroud if you're Gary Rhodes). If left in the fridge over night you'll find all the fat will have solidified on the surface which makes removing it a doddle. I know alot of pros clarify their stocks using veg and stuff but I've never been arsed. What more is there to say about stocks? Lots actually but it all can be looked up other places. The long & the short of it is it's dead easy, it makes ya kitchen smell great, tastes wonderful and it utilizes as much of a piece of deceased animal as possible. Not using all the beast is like having 24 hours with Kira Knightly and only getting her to do the hoovering. Sort of..

Tom Yum Soup

you need a lightish chicken stock for this, ie easy on the herbs and carrots.

Into your simmering stock bung in some sliced ginger, a couple of stalks of lemon grass, the roots & stems from a few sprigs of fresh coriander (if poss, otherwise don't) & a few kafir lime leaves. After 10 or 20 mins remove. Then any of the following can be added, thai auborgines (or cubes of courgette which are a good alternative), button mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, more lime leaves, chopped birdseye chillis, well anything you fancy really. Then a few black tiger prawns or small cubes of chicken breast which poach for minute or two. Take the pot off the heat, squeeze in some lime juice, add fish sauce, a pinch of sugar just to balance it up and serve just before lugging in a small handful of coriander leaves. Bingo

note - Coriander. Sod that light green forced potted stuff they sell in supermarkets. It's tasteless. If you can't get the washed roots'n'all dark leaved bags of it then don't bother.

Chicken Terrine

I love making terrines. There's something about them that brings out the potterer in me. Made my first one after seeing Huge Firmly-Witheringsmall do one on his River Cottage programmes. I've dropped using bacon to line the tin with as I think it overpowers everything much in the same way it does on those beef tornados things we can buy in supermarkets over here. And omitting the bacon is also dead healthy, so to speak, aswell as making the lovely jelly less cloyey.

Forcemeat:

500g lean minced pork (or chicken or turkey)

1 onion finely chopped & softened in olive oil

Chopped garlic (I always use loads)

couple of handfuls of fresh bread crumbs

a table spoon of fresh sage leaves, chopped

1 egg

1 good glugg each of red wine & brandy. & the same again for the forcemeat....

salt & pepper (and chilli powder if y'like)

Mix together in a bowl & preferably let stand in the fridge for a while to let all the flavours get to know each other. To make the terrine (sans bacon) lightly oil a bread tin then cover the bottom with a layer of forcemeat. Then put in your cooked meat, I used the meat I plucked from the stock chicken but anything can be used, another layer of forcemeat, more chicken then a last layer of f-m, you get the sodding picture. Cover the tin with foil, place in a deep baking tray, fill with hot water half way up the bread tin then cook in the over at 200c for an hour or so. It's ready when you pierce it with a knife or skewer which you then burn your lips with. When done it has to be pressed. I use an identical bread tin with a brick in it. All hi-tec but if you can't afford a brick steal one. Once cool the terrine should be refrigerated overnight. Mmmm. Have plans of doing a snail and truffle terrine soon. Will have to have a think about the herbs for that one too. That's the great thing about them, the forcemeat's like your pizza base and it's up to you to dream up a topping. Or filling. WhatEver.....

Chicken Salad

actually we had salads two days running. The first was with the chicken breasts I'd taken off the berrrd and the second accompanied slices of the terrine. So, one at a time....

Got some luvverly romaine salad leaves, rocket (from the garden), good toms, cucumber & a thinly sliced spring onion. Sliced up cold chicken breasts and slices of good chorizo. Nicoise olives. Made a very Dijon mustardy garlic mayonaise by dolloping in 2 big tablespoons of mustard into a bowl with an egg yolk, a splash of white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, a crushed clove of garlic & a pinch of cayenne. Whisked steadily whilst adding 3 parts rapeseed oil to 1 part olive. I didn't make it too thick coz it had to drizzle nicely. I arranged it on the plates rather than in a salad bowl for the wow effect. It really did look grand. And the flavours were amazing.

Day two and the green ingredients were the same minus the spring onion. Because we didn't have one. This time I took a tin of snails, drained them then marinated them in crushed garlic and olive oil, season with s&p. I then fried some "lardons" of bacon, letting them drain on a piece of kitchen paper whilst I warmed through the snails. Then they were all arranged willy-nillyly ontop of the green stuffs and finished off with a few potatoe peelings of parmesan. The dressing for this salad was a bog standard herb vinaigrette ie red wine vineagar, olive oil, garlic, 1/2 a teaspoon of mustard, salt, pepper & some finely chopped marjoram from the garden.

note - Snails. Just love 'em. Apparently you can eat any snail you find in your garden/wardrobe but for some reason you can't eat slugs. A couple of years back I collected a few dozen large escargot snails whilst out fishing (as one does). Brought them home then fed them on lettuce leaves for a few days to clean them out. Like a health farm for invertibrates it was. I'd given a few of them names and, in a moment of madness, gave one of them the name of my mother-in-law. Honest, m'lud it was without malice. Sorry Gwen. One day they had a break-out. Mrs B discovered them slithering around the spare bedroom. We put out a general alarm, sent in the dobermen and rounded the blighters up. They were then duly dumped into boiling water for their efforts.

Pea & Mushroom Risotto

making risotto is therapy. There's something so focused about it. First you get everything prepped, not just the food but also enough to drink and the right music on the hifi, then, as you get started, you're on. No going back. No interuptions. Total concentration. It's as close as I'm ever gonna get to being graceful. I've lifted my basic risotto recipe from the late, great Jamie Oliver. He's not dead? Nevermind.

Arborio rice (or one of the other types) 500g will do for 4-6 people

1 onion

5-10 cloves of garlic

1 stick of celery

a litre or so of stock (if it isn't enough you just add boiling water at the end)

a glass or three of white wine or n'Oily Prat/vermouth

a few sprigs of fresh thyme

frozen peas - a cup or two

loads of mushrooms - any variety

dried chilis

olive oil

knob of butter

parmesan

Ok, to prep; heat up the stock. It has to be on hot when you add it to the rice. Chop up the onion, garlic & celery relatively finely. Clean the mushrooms, preferably without using water as they'll absorb it. Chop up as y'like. Fry them off in a bit of oil, towards the end add a bit of the garlic and a crushed dried chili or two. Now the fun begins. Fry the onions in a good slug of olive oil until the go translucent then add the celery and the garlic. I like the onions just to catch a little as this gives a slight sweetness to the dish. I discovered this by mistake, by the way, when I didn't prep properly & had to go off to find a new cd. Came back and the onion had "browned".

Then chuck in the rice. Get it all nice and covered in the oil & stuff. When the edges of the rice go slightly glassy it's time to whack in the booze. Don't be shy on the wine or vermouth. It really gives and amazing depth to the dish and if you keep your head over the pan you'll get all the fumes aswell. As the liquid is absorbed into the rice you start ladling in the stock, one spoonful at a time, stirring continuously to make sure every rice grain gets a even cooking experience. As the mixture thickens up give it a ladleful more. Mr Oliver recommends salting a little every time you add stock which makes sense. A lot of the recipe books I've read say a risotto is ready when the rice is still slightly chalky. I've tried to eat chalk and it wasn't an illuminating experience. So my risotti are probably a tad over done but it stops Mrs B complaining. Anyway from the first ladle of stock til the rice is cooked takes about 30-40 minutes. The rule of thumb heatwise is if the pan is too cool the rice will go stodgey and if you cook it too hard the rice won't be properly done. When you think it's perfect chuck in the peas, mushrooms and thyme to heat through. Season. Then stir in your knob of butter and finish with a good handful of parmesan. Or pecorino or whatever. Finito.

I had an idea whilst making this last risotto. The plan is to make a Japanese style risotto using dashi broth as stock (dashi being a bonito and seaweed soup) and saki instead of wine. Somehow I have to incorporate the taste of the sushi vineagar aswell. When the "lisotto" is cooked I'm thinking along the lines of serving it with sushimi, marinated shiitake or straw mushrooms, homemade pickled ginger (gari) & other veggies. Not in it but on top. We'll see.

Right, this is the end of my first posting. Time for dinner.