Sceptical Cook

Potato ricer

2012-02-11T10:52:00.000Z

I am so dense and obtuse when it comes to practical matters - and not only them, often - that I had owned this piece of equipment a month before realising that I could rest it on the saucepan, as illustrated. This feature is helpful, enabling you to feed the ricer several times without spraying bits of mash round the kitchen.

If cooking for more than one person, you'll need to mash your potato in batches, because you get better results if you do not fill the container. Even then, I find, bits of potato seep over the top of the plunger rather than getting pushed through the mesh, and have to be scraped back.

A food mill will cope with larger quantities of potato, while also producing very smooth results. It's more of a nuisance to clean, though.

Pork, lemon, and garlic stew

2012-02-05T11:43:00.000Z

This recipe appears in my book, Don't Sweat the Aubergine, about which I may have some more to say in the coming weeks. A new, revised edition appears in April from Black Swan.

I haven't revised this recipe, but I might have done. In the book, I suggest that you brown the pork before putting it in the casserole. But, not being submerged in liquid, it may brown to a certain extent while cooking anyway. So this version (serves 2) could not be simpler.

2 slices of boneless belly pork, each cut into about four pieces, or left whole if you prefer
2 onions, roughly chopped
1 head garlic, separated into cloves but not peeled.
1 lemon, quartered
1 bay leaf
1 sprig rosemary
1/2 chicken stock cube (optional)
2tbsp olive oil
Salt (remember if you use the cube that it is salty)

Toss the ingredients together in a heavy casserole, and bake, covered. I cooked my stew slowly, at gas mark 1/140C and then at gas mark S/130C, for three and a half hours. I turned down the dial once the stew was simmering, after about an hour and a quarter.

I confess that, after two and a half hours, there was little evidence of the browning I had expected. So I uncovered the casserole. I am reluctant to follow recipes that tell you to brown meat towards the end of the cooking time, fearing that the high temperature will cause the meat to dry out. But in this case, the temperature was low, and belly pork is a particularly forgiving cut. The surfaces of the meat browned in about half an hour, after which I turned it.

The meat, onions and lemon create plenty of sauce, which has a delicious tartness to offset the rich fattiness of the pork.

Jasmine rice

2012-01-28T15:17:00.000Z

As I mentioned in the fried rice entry, jasmine rice is sticky. Don't bother hoping that you will get separate grains; indeed, stickiness is useful, enabling you to pick up a clump of rice with chopsticks.

I was a little sceptical about the instructions on my packet of Biona jasmine rice: put the rice in a pan, cover it with twice its volume of water, bring to a simmer, cover, and leave on a low heat for 20 minutes. After that length of time, I suspected, a good deal of rice would be stuck. However, I tried it, turning down the flame as soon as bubbles reached the surface of the water, and inserting a heat disperser between pan and hob. It worked. Yes, I had to work loose some of the rice, but not with a chisel.

Basmati rice takes 10 minutes to soften, in my experience. Jasmine rice takes longer.

Egg fried rice

2012-01-21T14:23:00.000Z

The dish above does not look much like egg fried rice, andit did not taste much like it, either. It was good in its way, just not theauthentic article.

I was inspired - prompted would be a better word - to makeit by Felicity Cloake's article this week in the Guardian. I agree with Cloake's reservations about pouring the egg first into the very hot wok, and I wasintrigued by her suggestion that you stir the egg and rice vigorously, so thatthe egg coats and is to a certain extent absorbed by the rice. This dish is notanalogous to spaghetti carbonara, which has a sauce of creamy curds.

I did not want to use Cloake's recommended 500g of rice,even for three people. But I did think we should have an egg each. That mayhave been my first mistake. The second was not owning a wok, and making thedish in a big Le Creuset casserole. Cloake fries her rice until she hasseparate, slightly caramelised grains. It is not possible to achieve thisresult in the Le Creuset: as you cook, more and more of the egg and sticky riceadhere to the pan. I stopped at the stage you see above.

My one disagreement with her concerns her instruction aboutwaiting until the oil smokes. Why cook with burned oil?

For the record, I used 250g of jasmine rice, cooked in theafternoon and allowed to cool - it becomes a rice cake. I heated my pan over amedium to high heat, poured in about 3tbsp of sunflower oil, and immediatelytipped in the rice, stirring and breaking it up. Then I tipped in my threebeaten eggs, stirring vigorously all the time. As I say above, I stopped when Ifelt there was a risk of getting a stodgy, stuck, burned clump. I stirred inchopped spring onions away from the heat.

Spiced chicken with rice and lentils

2012-01-14T14:48:00.001Z

This is a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe from the Guardian, with a few adaptations. I used dried apricots rather than dates (not because I prefer them, but because I had some in the cupboard), and scaled down the quantities slightly. But I deviated most in my timings and quantities.

First, I made my dish with chicken drumsticks, which I allowed to cook in the spiced stock for 30 minutes before adding the lentils and rice. I like the meat to be very tender. I don't think I used as much as 4tbsp of oil, because the chicken exudes its own fat when frying.

The dish shown in the Guardian appears to be dry, but the quantity of stock specified, 700ml, is a lot more than 150g of rice and 80g of lentils will absorb. I decided to use just enough stock to cover the ingredients. I had to be sure that they would soften under these conditions, so I pre-soaked them (separately) for a couple of hours.

I used green lentils, which - pace Fearnley-Whittingstall - take longer to cook than does rice. I cooked them for 30 minutes, just covered with stock, and checking the liquid level regularly. Then I added the rice, pouring over just enough extra liquid to submerge it. Fearing that the ingredients would stick to the bottom of the casserole if left on the hob, I put the dish in the oven at this point, for a further 20 minutes at gas mark 4/180C.

The rice and lentils absorb all the fat, so be prepared to taste it as you eat them. It's not unpleasant. I'd have liked a little heat in the dish, perhaps from some cayenne pepper.

Don't steep the coffee

2012-01-08T12:03:00.000Z

There is a widely held view that you should leave coffee in a cafetière to steep for a while before pushing the plunger. Four minutes seems to be the most widely recommended period. I am not so sure. I find that coffee prepared in this way can be bitter. Instead, I use a high concentration of coffee (2 heaped tbsp of ground coffee for each mugful of about 300ml), give it a stir, and push the plunger almost immediately.* For breakfast, I pour about 150ml of warm milk into this strong brew.

I apply the same principle to tea. Making a (smaller) mug of tea for myself, I put 2tsp of leaves into a small jug, pour in hot water (as with coffee, the water should be just below boiling point, I believe), give it a stir, and again pour it (this time through a strainer) right away.

*This idea is not mine, I admit. I got it from Victoria Moore, who explains it in a video here. I also follow her tip about warming the pot and rinsing the plunger.

Lamb with yoghurt, cardamom, and ginger

2012-01-02T11:48:00.000Z

This is a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy. I've given her version, with my comments in italics; as you can see above, my version included three pieces of neck of lamb rather than lamb shanks, with the other quantities scaled down accordingly.

In spite of my reservations about the recipe as it stands, I'd like to give it another go. The sauce has an appealing zing and fragrance, thanks to the large quantities of ginger, cardamom, and coriander.

4 medium lamb shanks
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
350ml Greek or other thick yoghurt
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
7.5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
3tbsp ground coriander
2tsp ground cumin
1/2tsp cayenne pepper
4tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
10 cardomom pods
1/2tsp black peppercorns
2 x 7.5cm cinnamon sticks
1/2tsp cloves
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced into fine half-rings

Pat the lamb shanks dry with kitchen paper. Sprinkle all over with 1/2tsp salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper. I seasoned my lamb with a little salt only; ground pepper, stewed, can become bitter.

Preheat the oven to 160C/gas mark 3. I baked my curry at this setting for 30 minutes, by which time it was simmering. At that point, I turned down the oven to gas mark S/130C.

Put 120ml of the yoghurt, the garlic and ginger into a blender, and blend until smooth. Add the coriander, cumin, cayenne pepper, one and a half tsp of salt, and the rest of the yoghurt. Blend to mix. I used whole coriander and cumin, lightly toasted in a dry saucepan and ground with a pestle and mortar.

Put the oil [this is a lot, given the fattiness of the meat; I used only a tbsp, of sunflower oil] in a casserole large enough to hold the meat, and place over a medium heat. When hot, put in the cardamom, peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves, and the shanks, and brown them on one side. Turn them over, dropping the onion slices in the spaces between them. Brown both meat and onions, moving them around the pan as you need to.

This is a tricky way to brown the meat and onion. You are likely to find, no matter how carefully you stir, that bits of onion and spice catch on the casserole and burn. I'd be inclined to coat the meat with a little oil and brown it on a grill pan, quickly, while frying the onions and spices separately in the casserole. Or, if the liquid is not going to cover the meat, to allow the browning process to take place inside the covered casserole.

Add the paste from the blender and 250ml water. I'd prefer to use stock, or even, dare I say it, a diluted, halved stock cube. Bring to a simmer. Cover the casserole, and place it in the oven for three hours, turning the shanks every 30 minutes.

The yoghurt split, of course. One way of trying to prevent the separation - but not one I can guarantee, having not tried it for a while - is to add a dstp of flour (gram or cornflour, preferably) to the yoghurt mix. Another is to add the garlic, ginger and spices to the casserole with the water or stock, while holding back the yoghurt to the end. Take the cooked dish out of the oven, let the simmering subside, add a little sauce to the yoghurt, then add some more, and then pour this yoghurt and sauce mixture into the casserole. If you want to warm the dish again, make sure you do not allow the sauce to bubble.

Christmas tips

2011-12-23T23:09:00.001Z

Here is a column I wrote for the New Statesman in 2006 (here is the original). It may be of some use, or reassurance.

The most stressful cooking experience of the year approaches. In search of inspiration and reassurance, one turns to the Christmas cookery specials in the press - and finds complex timetables of tasks stretching over several days. But this is not an end-of-year cookery exam. It is a meal, albeit a big one, for family and possibly friends. Here, with apologies to vegetarians, are a few tips about what is worth doing, and about what you can happily neglect.

The turkey: The key point is to get it off to a good start. Take it out of the fridge the previous night. Turn up the oven to full heat for half an hour, and then adjust it to gas mark 6/200°C when you put in the turkey. After half an hour, you can turn the dial to as low as gas mark 2/150°C for the remainder of the cooking time. The rule of thumb is 20 minutes for each 500g and 20 minutes extra; but, with larger birds, the time side of this ratio decreases.

How do you stop the breast meat drying out? You cannot, entirely. Ignore instructions to cover all or part of the turkey in foil: they are based on the erroneous assumption that a moist environment keeps meat moist. In fact, moisture has the opposite effect, because it cooks so efficiently. I am not convinced that turning the bird during cooking has any effect, either - so that is another job you do not have to worry about. But it is a good idea to slide butter, and perhaps a couple of rashers of bacon, between the skin and the breast.

Is the bird ready an hour early? Excellent. Loosely covered in foil, it will retain heat for that time; and, in any event, lukewarm meat is fine, provided you have hot gravy.

Gravy: You do not have to thicken it. Flour numbs flavour. So making the gravy is very simple: tip the juices from the roasting pan into a bowl; deglaze the pan with water or wine, and add these juices to the bowl; when the fat rises, get rid of most of it; thin these juices with stock, made from giblets and/or the wings of the turkey (or vegetables, if you like). You can heat up this mixture at the end.

Potatoes: Parboil them, and let them dry. You have time to roast them while the turkey rests.

Stuffing: Put this into a gratin dish, which goes into the oven (below the potatoes) when the turkey comes out. Make bread sauce* in advance, remembering that it will thicken.

So, for the climax, the only new things you have to cook are the inevitable sprouts, and perhaps some glazed carrots. Get your assistants to take through the turkey, vegetables and stuffing, and to start the carving. Meanwhile, warm the bread sauce and the gravy.

Pudding: Make a lemon mousse the day before. You've already had bread sauce and stuffing; leave the starchy Christmas pud for later.

*Bread sauce - Put 400ml of milk into a saucepan. Add an onion studded with a couple of cloves, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, and some scrapings of nutmeg or mace. Bring slowly to a simmer. Turn off the heat, cover, and leave for 30 minutes or longer.

Remove the flavourings, and throw in breadcrumbs. (You'll have to use your judgement on the quantity, bearing in mind that the sauce will thicken, and continue to thicken if you let it cool again before warming it later.) Bring to a simmer once more, adding more breadcrumbs or milk until you achieve the consistency you like. Check the seasoning; you may not need much salt, because bread is salty. Finish the sauce with a knob of butter, or some cream.

Scrambled eggs from a frying pan

2011-12-17T13:26:00.000Z

Scrambling eggs requires fine judgement. You have to catch them at the moment when they are no longer runny but before the curds set and harden. The curds should be fluffy, holding the liquid content in suspension.

It is easier to spot the arrival of this state if you cook the eggs in a (non-stick) frying pan, I have found. It is certainly a good idea to avoid using a saucepan with a small base, which will not allow you to heat the egg evenly, no matter how thoroughly you stir. Of course, you could try using a larger saucepan. But I think that the gentler stirring that the frying pan encourages (so that the egg does not slop over the side) produces a better result, because overbeating results in a less pleasing, porridgy texture. The process is rather like cooking an omelette, only continuing the first stage (stirring, and pushing the set egg around to give the rest access to the base of the pan) throughout.

I admit that I've bumped up the contrast on this picture. But these eggs, which come from Nantclyd Organics, really are very rich and yellow.

Scrambled egg recipe here.

Constance Spry's honey cake

2011-12-11T11:13:00.001Z

My guess is that the foodie in your life, unwrapping a book on Christmas day, would be moderately pleased to find the latest offering from a celebrity chef, but absolutely delighted to find The Constance Spry Cookbook, just out in a new hardback edition from Grub Street. This 1956 kitchen bible remains the most prized work of its kind in numerous kitchens. Even if your foodie already has a copy, he or she will welcome a new one, because the old one is probably showing the effects of heavy usage.

Here is Constance Spry's honey cake.

3 eggs
2tbsp caster sugar
3tbsp honey
Grated rind of half a lemon
50g cornflour
65g plain flour

Separate the eggs. Cream the yolks with the sugar, honey, and lemon rind until white and expanded. I did this with a stick blender, which is far less appropriate for the job than a hand-held electric whisk would be. In theory, the yolks will whiten, and the volume of the mixture will expand considerably. My mixture got only some of the way towards this state before I gave up.

Fold in the cornflour.

Whip the whites until they form peaks (see here). Tip in the egg mixture with the plain flour, and fold everything together gently, until well amalgamated. The mixture is quite loose.

Spry does not specify the size of the cake tin. I used a 20cm springform one. Line the bottom with greaseproof paper cut into a disc (see here), grease the sides with a little vegetable oil, and pour in the cake mixture. Put the tin on to a baking sheet, and bake in a gas mark 3/170C oven for 35-40 minutes, or until set. (As you can see, I overdid it somewhat.) Allow to cool before turning out.

The honey compensates to a certain extent for the slightly dry texture of this butter-less cake. Still, it would be a good idea to serve it with cream, or buttercream, or perhaps a fruity concoction. The lack of butter, which is an anti-staling agent, means that you need to eat the cake soon after you've baked it.

Poached egg with spiced cabbage

2011-12-04T10:19:00.001Z

Madhur Jaffrey suggests this combination (or rather, eggs with any kinds of spiced vegetables, including leftovers), in her book Curry Easy.

I used a quarter of a cabbage, finely chopped and washed; 1 clove of garlic, chopped; 1tsp mustard seed; 1tsp cumin seeds; a few pinches of ground ginger; cayenne pepper; and salt. Normally, I like to soften cabbage by boiling or steaming it, if only briefly; but here I prefer the crunchier texture and more assertive flavour that results from simply cooking the cabbage in the spiced oil. (Of course, the washed cabbage will introduce some water, which will soon evaporate.)

The earthenware dish in the picture will go on the hob. I warmed about a tbsp of sunflower oil in it over a low to medium heat, and cooked the garlic, mustard seed, and cumin for a minute. I threw in the cabbage, with the ginger, cayenne, and salt, and cooked it for a further eight minutes or so. The cabbage cooked down and became glossy with the oil and spices. I turned down the heat towards the end, as the cabbage threatened to catch.

For the eggs: I broke two eggs into separate cups, and slipped them into a saucepan of boiling water (with no salt, or vinegar - see this entry and the note it refers to). When the water was on the point of returning to a simmer, I turned off the heat, covered the pan, and left it for five minutes. I lifted the eggs one-by-one from the pan with a slotted spoon, shaking them gently to get rid of excess water, and placed them on the cabbage.

Spaghetti with aubergine and harissa

2011-11-26T13:47:00.001Z

The single portion in the picture contains a whole onion and a whole aubergine (a medium one). As you can see, the quantity is not excessive once the vegetables have cooked down.

I prepared the aubergines according to my newly discovered, saucepan method. The anchovy is there to add some depth of flavour, not to provide fishiness.

2tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
1 anchovy, drained
1 medium aubergine
Salt
1tsp harissa
125g spaghetti
Parmesan cheese, grated

Warm the oil in a heavy saucepan over a gentle heat. Throw in the garlic, and let it sizzle gently for 30 seconds or so. Add the onions, and cook for five minutes, or until they start to soften. Stir in the anchovy, and mash it up.

While the onion is cooking, cut the aubergine into small cubes. Tip them into the pan containing the onions, add the salt (to taste) and harissa, give everything a good stir, and put on the lid. Continue to cook, over a gentle heat and with the lid on the pan, stirring regularly. There should be enough liquid and steam from the onions to prevent the vegetables from sticking. The aubergines will be thoroughly soft in 15 to 20 minutes.

Cook the spaghetti according to the packet instructions. Drain, and toss with the vegetables. Serve with the cheese to sprinkle on top.

You could use dried, whizzed chillis instead of the harissa. Or some cayenne pepper. If you don't like hot things, you may need some other ingredient instead - a dstsp of tomato paste, say.

Chocolate cake, refined

2011-11-19T17:41:00.001Z

I have learned a little bit more about how cakes work from revising and expanding my cookbook, Don't Sweat the Aubergine, for a new edition to be published by Black Swan in the spring. It made me think again about Elizabeth David's simple and delicious chocolate cake, which is often somewhat compacted after a day or so. If the egg foam cannot sustain an airy texture for very long, would the cake not benefit if one creamed the butter and sugar as well? Indeed it would. I have added a note to the original recipe.

Faster beetroot

2011-11-13T14:00:00.001Z

The other day, I cooked a very large beetroot. I gave it a quick wash, put it in a pan half filled with boiling, salted water, and part-boiled, part-steamed it with the lid on. It took the best part of two hours.

On Thursday, I read this recipe by Angela Hartnett in the Guardian. You wash the beetroot, cut it in quarters, and cook it in olive oil, thyme, vinegar and water. Hartnett suggests that quarters of a medium beetroot will cook in about 15 minutes.

The quicker you cook vegetables, the better, is the usual rule - certainly as far as nutritional value is concerned. My doubt here is the juice that leaks into the water through the cut surface of the beetroot. But perhaps plenty of juice leaks out during the longer cooking period anyway. (Baking beetroot wrapped in foil does not produce a notably juicier result, in my experience.)

I tried the Hartnett method. But my quartered beetroot was nowhere near cooked after 15 minutes; nor after 30 minutes. It occurred to me that the vinegar was the problem: acidity is a highly effective delayer of the softening process.

Eventually, I ran out of patience, and drained the beetroots while they were still quite firm. Angela Hartnett makes no mention of peeling, but I did peel mine, once they were cool.

The result was good. I'll certainly try this quartering method again, leaving out the vinegar, in the hope that the flavour did not depend on it.

Squash and tahini paste

2011-11-06T14:37:00.001Z

This is an adaptation of a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe in the Guardian. I spiced it with cumin rather than cinnamon; because we were eating it at lunchtime, I left out the garlic; and I didn't garnish it with sesame seeds, date syrup, and coriander. It was still delicious and, as Ottolenghi says, moreish.

Also, I didn't cut up the squash before baking it, figuring that I would waste less of the flesh if I were able to scoop it, softened, out of the shells. But it took a long time to cook. I gave it half an hour at gas mark 6/200C, with the roasting tin covered in foil; then I uncovered the tin, but turned down the oven to gas mark 3/160, and waited another 30 minutes; discovering that the flesh was still not tender, I covered the tin again, turned up the oven back to 200C, and waited for a further 30 minutes. That did it.

The two halves of squash in the picture are anointed with about a dstsp of olive oil, half a tsp of cumin seeds, and salt and pepper. I scooped the flesh into a small vegetable mill, and whizzed it. I added a tbsp of yoghurt, and whizzed again. I added a tbsp of tahini paste (it is easier to merge this thick paste with a substance that is already blended), and whizzed for a final time.

Coconut chicken curry

2011-10-29T14:24:00.004+01:00

This is a one-pot meal, to be served in bowls and eaten with a spoon. What surprised me was that the potatoes took a while to soften - I had thought that the coconut milk would tenderise them, but perhaps I acidified the liquid with the other ingredients. (If you want crunchy potatoes, try cooking them in tomato sauce.) Nevertheless, I think that new potatoes, which hold their shape, are the kind to go for here.

Serves 2, generously.

Spices

1tsp cumin seeds
1/2tsp mustard seeds
6 cardamom pods
1tsp turmeric
1/6tsp asafoetida
1/4tsp dried ginger, or (better) fresh
Cayenne pepper to taste

Sunflower oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 tin coconut milk
150ml chicken stock (I confess I used half a cube and 150ml water)
2 sweet peppers, deseeded and cut into fork-sized pieces
8 new potatoes, cut into fork-sized pieces
1 tin chickpeas, drained
Salt
1 large chicken supreme, cut into fork-sized pieces
3 spring onions, chopped
Chillis, chopped
1tbsp lime juice

Warm the cumin and mustard seeds in a saucepan over a gentle heat, until toasted. Grind them, with the cardamom, in a mortar.

In a large saucepan or casserole, warm about 2 tbsps of sunflower oil over a gentle heat, throw in the garlic, and then the onion. Cook gently, stirring, and adding a bit more oil if it threatens to catch. When the onion is soft, tip in the cumin, mustard seeds and cardamom, and cook gently, again stirring, for about three minutes.

Pour in the coconut milk and stock. Add the peppers, potatoes, and chickpeas, as well as the remaining spices. Bring to a simmer, and add salt cautiously (the chick peas will have been canned in salty water, and the stock cube, if you used one, is salty too). Cover, and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add the chicken and spring onions, and simmer for a further 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender and the chicken is cooked through.

Turn off the heat. Stir through the chillis (as many as you like), and the lime juice. Coriander would be nice, too.

Aubergines in the pan

2011-10-22T14:35:00.002+01:00

I find frying cubes of aubergines unsatisfactory. As everyone who has cooked them knows, aubergines absorb a great deal of oil; then they stick to the pan. It is not an efficient way of softening them. My usual method - in this recipe, for example - is to toss them in oil and to bake them.

However, it occured to me the other day that I could cook them in a pan if the pan offered a moist environment, such as that created by softened onions. The pan in the picture contains two red onions, softened in olive oil with some garlic. I threw in the aubergines, tossed them in the oily onions, and covered the pan, cooking them over a low flame. I stirred them from time to time. In 15 to 20 minutes they were soft, and with a more melting texture than you get when you bake them.

Lentil stew with morcilla

2011-10-08T14:14:00.001+01:00

Morcilla is a Spanish black pudding. The stuff I bought came in balls tied with string.
Puy lentils take longer to cook than is stated on the packets and in most recipes, in my experience. Soaking speeds the process of tenderising them. It also ensures that they absorb less liquid while cooking: you can barely cover them, and be reasonably confident that they will soften. If your water is hard, you may get better results if you use filtered water.

Serves two.

Olive oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
150g Puy lentils, soaked for two hours or longer
Chicken stock
150g morcilla
Salt
Pepper
Handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Warm about 2tbsps of olive oil in a heavy pan, throw in the garlic, let it sizzle gently for a minute, and throw in the onion. Cook over a low heat until the onion starts to soften - five to 10 minutes. If the onion threatens to catch, add more oil.

Drain and rinse the lentils. Tip them into the pan, and pour in just enough stock to cover. Bring to a simmer, put a lid on the pan, and simmer gently until the lentils soften. It may take 20 to 30 minutes. Add more stock if the top layer of lentils becomes exposed.

Once the lentils are soft or nearly there, you may want to uncover the pan and turn up the heat slightly, to get a less soupy consistency. You'll need to stir the lentils regularly, because they'll catch as the liquid evaporates and the stew thickens.

Add salt to taste. (But I must admit that I've never properly tested the theory that salt added at an earlier stage compromises the texture of lentils, as it does dried beans.)

Cut the morcilla into fork-sized pieces, submerge them in the lentils, and give them five minutes to warm through. Stir in the chopped parsley. The stew would benefit from plenty of pepper; I stirred harissa into mine.

Flipping an omelette

2011-10-01T14:05:00.000+01:00

My usual method for preparing a slow-cooked omelette such as a frittata is to put it on the lowest flame on the hob until the underside is set, and to finish it under the grill. But recently I was at a party for which someone had prepared the most delicious tortilla; and he told me - as if anyone who performed the task differently was guilty of a bizarre solecism - that he always flipped the tortilla, with the help of a plate. So I tried it with the above frittata, consisting simply of eggs and Gruyere.

You place the plate over the pan, and flip pan and plate rapidly. The omelette is slippery at this stage, and can slide off the plate altogether. It is runny too: runny egg remains on the plate when you return the omelette to the pan, and has to be scraped off, back over the omelette.

Is this omelette more tender than the grilled version? It will be if you tend to grill it too fiercely. Otherwise, I'm not sure.

Pork and marinade

2011-09-24T14:30:00.001+01:00

If you barbecue a thick or tough cut of meat, you may well need to cook it first, before marinating it and subjecting it to the fiercely hot coals. But what if you are cooking it indoors? Do you still need a two-stage process, when you can get decent results by simply putting the marinated meat in a low to medium oven?

I often buy spare rib chops, cut them into pieces, coat them in a marinade, and cook them in a low oven. But this cut gives off quite a bit of liquid, which you have to allow to evaporate before the meat browns and the marinade turns sticky. You don't know how long that will take, and you may have to fiddle with the oven temperature to speed the process. The pork can become tough.

I poached four chops (in a pot with a chicken carcass - they contributed to the resultant stock) for about 50 minutes. Then I cut them up and marinated them. Later I cooked them under the grill until browned and warmed through, first on a high heat, then on a lower one.

It works better than the one-stage method, I think. The meat is more tender, and the marinade penetrates it more efficiently.

Marinade recipes here and here.

Stuffed courgette

2011-09-17T14:53:00.001+01:00

We received this yellow courgette, the size of a small marrow, in our vegetable box. It would be useless for sautéing in the normal way, because it is too watery. But it is fine for stuffing. You can scoop out the flesh much more easily than you would that of, say, an aubergine.

My stuffing consisted of the flesh and ingredients I happened to have in the house: olive oil, 1 red onion, 1 chopped clove of garlic, 75g rice, 60g diced Gruyere, a tbsp of cream cheese (I'm not sure that this was a good idea, but I thought the bit left in the tub needed using), salt, cayenne pepper. Extra or substitutional ingredients might have been pre-soaked raisins, toasted pine nuts, a few anchovies, and herbs such as flat-leaf parsley, tarragon, or thyme.

Cook the rice in the normal way. (There's plenty of advice, only some of it inconsistent, on this blog.) Meanwhile, finely chop the onion, and gently cook it with the garlic in a tbsp or two of olive oil. Chop up the courgette flesh, throw it into the pan, and gradually turn up the heat as it exudes water. Cook it on a high heat until the water evaporates. Stir in the rice, cheese, and seasoning.

Put the courgette halves in a baking dish or roasting tin, and stuff them with the mixture. Pour boiling water into the dish to a depth of between 50mm and 1cm. Bake at gas mark 6/200C for about 25 minutes, or until the courgette is soft and the stuffing is slightly browned on top.

Greengage sponge

2011-09-10T14:17:00.000+01:00

Figuring that a sponge pudding is simply a sponge cake, steamed rather than baked, I made this slightly raggedy but deliciously gungy effort according to the classic sponge recipe: in imperial measurements, four ounces each of butter, sugar, and flour, and two eggs. What worried me was the liquid from the greengages. But my batter was pretty stiff, and the greengages imparted the stickiness that you want in a pudding of this kind.

I realise that greengages are over now. You could use other kinds of plums, such as Victorias or damsons.

Serves 4.

115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 eggs
115g self-raising flour
1tsp vanilla essence
12 greengages (mine were small), halved and stoned

Cream the butter and sugar. I do this in a food processor: the mixture turns pale, then coheres into a ball, and then smears itself on the sides of the bowl. I stop at this point, and scrape it into a mixing bowl.

I cleaned the food processor bowl, fixed the whisk attachment, and whisked the eggs for about five minutes, until they had doubled in volume and were airy. Whether this effort to introduce more air to the sponge was worthwhile, I do not know. It is possible that the air bubbles collapse as soon as you stir the eggs with the other ingredients.

Pour the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar, tip in the flour, add the vanilla, and stir until you have a thick batter with no lumps. Gently stir in the greengage halves.

Grease a 1 pint pudding bowl with a little sunflower oil. Pour in the batter. Wrap the bowl in greaseproof paper, and then in three layers of foil.

Put the bowl into a saucepan. Pour in boiling water to come half way up the sides. Cover the pan, and simmer over a gentle heat for one hour.

Carbonnade Nimoise

2011-09-03T16:33:00.000+01:00

My final Elizabeth David recipe (which I forgot to photograph) from our holiday was a stew, though not one cooked in beer as the name may suggest. It originates from Nimes, home also of brandade of salt cod (as featured here last week), and involves, in David's book, lamb or mutton from the leg. I used chops from the middle neck. The garlic and rosemary are also my adaptations. You must use new, waxy, potatoes, which can hold up even after stewing for three hours, at the end of which they are deliciously imbued with fat and meat juice. For 4.

4 middle neck lamb chops
1 packet lardons or pancetta; or better, 100g of pancetta chopped into cubes
1 head garlic, separated into cloves
Potatoes for 4, peeled (or scraped) and cut into cubes
2 sprigs rosemary
2tbsp olive oil
Salt, pepper if you like (I usually add pepper on my plate)

This is a wonderfully simple dish. You toss everything in the oil, lay it out in a layer in a large baking dish, and brown the meat by starting it off at gas mark 8/230C for 20 minutes. Then you cover the dish with foil (or with a lid if it has one), and continue to cook at the lowest possible heat (my oven will simmer a stew at its lowest setting, gas mark S) for about three hours. That's it.

You might include other vegetables. My advice is to avoid carrots, which go dull if cooked for too long.

Brandade of salt cod

2011-08-27T14:47:00.000+01:00

Elizabeth David, whose French Provincial Cooking was my principal guide in France, is discouraging on the subject of brandade of salt cod. "This is not really a dish to be made at home," she writes; amalgamating the fish, oil, and milk requires "great patience and considerable energy".

It is true that my first effort at brandade was a disaster. Then, I followed the advice of Richard Olney, who tells you to beat the flaked cod with olive oil over a high heat. I ended up with rubbery flakes of fried fish. The more common advice is to use a low heat.

This version worked better. The lemon juice and nutmeg come a recipe by Keith Floyd; but his quantities of olive oil and milk are excessive to the tune of about 300%.

400g salt cod (the salt cod I bought from my local shop came in a packet, which advised that the fish needed only four hours' soaking, in several changes of water)
2 cloves garlic, chopped and then crushed with the help of a tiny bit of salt
Olive oil - about 3tbsp
Milk - about 3tbsp
Juice of 1 lemon
Nutmeg
Pepper

Drain the pre-soaked cod, put it into a saucepan, cover with cold water, bring to a simmer over a medium heat, and turn the heat right down as soon as bubbles start to rise. Test the cod, which may tenderise rapidly. Remove it from the water as soon as it yields to the point of a knife. When it is cool enough to handle, pull it apart into flakes, removing any small bones.

Put the flaked cod into a small saucepan over the lowest flame. Add a little oil and milk, along with the crushed garlic, and mash it with a potato masher. Keep mashing and adding oil and milk, along with the lemon juice, until you have a substance with the consistency of mashed potato. Season it with nutmeg and plenty of black pepper.

I prepared my brandade, and warmed it later in a bain-marie before serving it with toast. It was delicious; but the fine strands of cod, perhaps as a result of having been warmed three times, were tough. I think that whizzing the flaked cod in a food processor rather than mashing it might work better.

Normandy apple tart

2011-08-19T18:21:00.000+01:00

175g apples (sweet apples with a tart quality, such as Cox's, are good; but even the dreaded Golden Delicious, provided their textures are not too mealy, would be fine)
Juice of 1 lemon
60g butter
4tbsps caster sugar

120g flour
60g butter
1dstsp caster sugar
Cold water

While in France, I cooked a good deal from Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking; but I sometimes had to adapt the recipes and techniques. For instance, she suggests that to cook apples in butter, you might put 2lbs (about 900g) of apples, sliced, into a large frying pan with 2oz (57g) of butter and three or four tbsps of caster sugar. This would be quite difficult to manage, because the apples would form several layers and would need to be stirred, under which treatment they might well break up. Though disliking fiddly operations, I cooked them in two batches.

Peel and slice the apples, and as you work toss them in the lemon juice in a bowl, to prevent discolouration. Melt 15g of the butter in a large frying pan over a gentle heat, and pack in a layer of apples. Scatter a tbsp of sugar over them. Cook them for about five minutes, turning once. They should be tender to the point of a knife, but not too soft to hold their shape. Repeat the process.

If, like me in France, you do not have a food processor, or if you prefer not to use one, grate the butter into the flour. Rub it in. Stir in the sugar. Add a tbsp of water, and bring the mixture together; gradually add more water until you have just enough to enable the dough to cohere.

Now, as David recommends, spread the dough by hand in your tart tin - mine was 28cms, and lightly oiled. At first, you may think you do not have enough, but you should find that it spreads out satisfactorily. Patch up any holes as you go.

Place a baking sheet in the oven, and pre-heat it to gas mark 6/200C.

You do not blind bake this pastry. Working outwards from the centre, arrange the apple slices in overlapping rings in the tart case. Place the tin on the baking sheet, and cook for about 30 minutes.

Melt the remaining 30g of butter in the frying pan, and pour it over the apples. Scatter the remaining sugar on top. Return the tart to the oven for about 3 minutes, or until golden.

Potatoes a la barigoule

2011-08-15T14:26:00.000+01:00

This is from Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. She calls it "a typically southern method of cooking potatoes".

The potatoes, though David does not say so, must fit into the pan in a single layer - otherwise, the bottom layer will collapse before the large volume of water evaporates. Maincrop potatoes such as King Edwards would disintegrate under this treatment in any event.

David tells you that the olive oil should come half way up the contents of the pan. What a lot of oil that would be.

So: scrape or peel new potatoes, put them into a heavy saucepan with as much olive oil as you think would be palatable when divided by the number of people at the table, and pour in just enough water to cover. Bring the contents of the pan to a rolling boil, and continue to cook until the water has evaporated. Turn the potatoes gently in the fat. David says that you cook them until they turn "a rich golden brown". Mine did not colour in this way, perhaps because I used less oil than she recommends.

Salt in the water would speed the softening of the potatoes. You may think that they do not need this assistance, and prefer to salt at the end.

Fruit tarts

2011-08-10T15:15:00.001+01:00

I made three of these tarts, in 10cm tins. Obviously, the ingredients may be expanded proportionately to make any number of individual tarts, or a larger one. However, this is what I did, with the quantities I had.

100g flour
50g butter
1dstsp caster sugar
Cold water
1 medium apple
2 Victoria plums
Caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
75ml creme fraiche
75ml milk
1tsp vanilla essence

Grate the butter into the flour, as rapidly as possible, so that it does not go squidgy in your hand. You should now be able to rub it in - or blend it in a food processor - in no time at all. Stir in the sugar. Add a little water, and bring the mixture together; keep adding water sparingly until you are able to form a dough. (I added too much to mine, with the result that the pastry was slightly stodgier - more glutenous - than it should have been.)

If you gently bring the dough together, it may fall apart when you try to roll it. If you knead it for a minute or two, it will be more coherent, but may be tougher as a result of the gluten that has developed. I didn't roll my pastry, because I tend to make a mess of the procedure, but got out the grater again and grated the dough into the tins. Then I spread it over the bases and up the sides with my fingers. (Experts recommend that before rolling you chill the dough, wrapped in cling film, for 30 minutes or longer.)

Put the pastry-lined tins on a baking sheet (which helps the bases to firm up) and bake for about 20 minutes, or until dry and golden. You might cover the dough with foil, weighed down with an ingredient such as rice or dried beans, for 15 of the 20 minutes, to stop it from buckling as the water content evaporates.

Peel the apple, quarter and core it, and slice it thinly. Quickly, before it discolours, transfer it to a heavy pan in which a small knob of butter is starting to sizzle over a gentle heat. Turn the slices to coat them in butter, and cook them gently until tender. Place the slices in one of the pastry-lined tins.

Halve the plums, stone them, and slice them. Put them into the two other pastry cases. Scatter a little sugar over the fruit.

Mix together the egg, creme fraiche, milk, and vanilla essence until smooth. (Use double cream if you can find only factory-made creme fraiche, which always splits, in my experience.) Spoon the custard mixture over the fruit in the tins. I didn't need all of it.

Bake the tarts, again on the baking sheet, at gas mark 3/160C for 20-30 minutes, or until the custard is set.

Salt cod, potatoes and onions

2011-08-06T10:00:00.000+01:00

Salt cod (morue) is widely available in supermarkets here in Normandy. I should guess that it is even more prevalent in the south. The kind I bought carried the claim that you could desalinate it in four hours; it remained salty after that time, but pleasantly so.

This is a Keith Floyd recipe. I ignored his recommendation that one cook the fish in a court bouillon, which seemed unlikely to be very influential during such a short procedure. Also, Floyd tells you to fry the potatoes in a covered pan. There are eight medium-sized potatoes in his recipe - how large a pan does he have in mind? A much larger one than I can lay my hands on at present, in any event. I roasted them instead.

Serves two.

400g salt cod, soaked according to the packet instructions
Butter and olive oil
4 medium potatoes, sliced
2 onions, sliced
Pepper

Drain the salt cod, cover it again in cold water in a saucepan, and bring to a simmer over a medium heat. As soon as the water starts to bubble, turn the heat right down, to avoid overcooking the fish and toughening it. It may be tender in just a few minutes. (Floyd gives a timing of 15 minutes, which is surely too long for even the thickest cut of fish.) Remove the cod to a plate, allow it to cool, and flake it.

Put a generous layer of olive oil into a roasting tin - one with a non-stick surface you can trust. Put the tin into a gas mark 6/200C oven for five minutes. Take it out, and tip in the potatoes, turning them to cover in hot oil. Roast them for 30 minutes, or until tender. Remove them to a plate, and mash them roughly with a fork.

In a heavy frying pan (one with a lid) or casserole dish (I used a Le Creuset), gently fry the onions in just enough oil and butter to prevent their sticking. Give them about 15 minutes, until they're golden.

Tip in the potatoes, and spread them out so that you're frying a potato and onion cake. Spread out the flaked cod on top, season with plenty of pepper, cover, and cook for 10 minutes, or until the base of the mix is crispy.

Courgette and aubergine stew

2011-08-03T14:41:00.001+01:00

This would have been a ratatouille - albeit a cheat's one - with the addition of peppers, which I had forgotten to buy. Normally, I roast and skin them, and add them at the end. But I'm feeling a bit lazy during these early days of my holiday, so probably I would have cut them up and added them with the onions, before the courgettes.

The key is not to stew the dish for too long, allowing the ingredients to turn mushy. So you reduce the tomatoes before adding them. Authenticists might sauté each ingredient separately, before merging them for a brief simmer.

Serves two as a main course, or four as a side dish.

1 medium to large aubergine, cubed
2 plump tomatoes, or 1 tin tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 onions, roughly chopped
2 courgettes, sliced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Aubergine is difficult to tenderise by frying, I think. Instead, put the cubes into an oven dish, toss them with just enough oil to coat them, as well as with salt and pepper, and bake at gas mark 6/200C, turning once. French ones, which have meltingly soft flesh, are ready in about 20 minutes. The aubergines I buy in England take longer.

Put the fresh tomatoes, if using, into boiling water for about 20 seconds. Allow them to cool, and peel off their skins. Remove their cores, and chop them roughly. Simmer them in a small saucepan over a gentle heat until thick and mushy. (Another method is to chop up the unpeeled tomatoes, cook them, and push them through a sieve or through a food mill.) Or: pour the tinned tomatoes into a saucepan, and simmer until thick.

Warm a couple of tbsps of olive oil in a heavy pan over a gentle heat, and throw in the garlic and onions. Fry, adding more oil if the vegetables are in danger of sticking, until the onions soften - about 10 minutes. Turn up the heat to medium, throw in the courgettes with a little salt, and continue to cook, stirring almost continuously. The courgettes are soft when their rings of seeds show vividly.

Tip in the aubergines and tomato sauce, and continue to cook very gently for 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Check the seasoning.

I prefer to cover the pan, leave it, and eat the stew at room temperature.

Greengage and blackberry fool

2011-07-24T12:01:00.000+01:00

A very simple pudding. You use roughly the same quantity of cream as of fruit compote. The amount of sugar you need will vary according to the kind of fruit (or, in the case of rhubarb, vegetable). This fool includes about 20 greengages, two small punnets of blackberries, 2tbsps of caster sugar, 400ml of double cream, and 1tsp of vanilla essence.

Put about 50ml of water into a heavy saucepan, and throw in the greengages and blackberries with the sugar. Cover, bring to a simmer, and cook gently, stirring from time to time, until the fruit is very soft - no more than 15 minutes, probably. Force the compote through a sieve into another saucepan, pushing and stirring the fruit with a spoon.

Bring the sieved compote to a simmer again, and cook until it is lava-like in consistency, with big bubbles breaking the surface. Test for sweetness. Pour the compote into a bowl, and allow to cool. (It will thin the cream if it is hot.)

Whip the cream, with the vanilla if using, and stop as soon as it stiffens. (If you keep beating, it will become almost solid, and grainy too.)

Blend the cream and the compote, and chill for a couple of hours.

Lamb leg steaks

2011-07-17T11:44:00.000+01:00

These are steaks, which you would fry or grill, but from the leg, which you would roast. So how to cook them? I chose a compromise.

The marinade includes a garlic clove, crushed with salt; the juice of half a lemon; and about three tbsps of olive oil. The steaks sat in it for only half an hour.

I got a ridged grill pan very hot, scraped excess marinade off the steaks, and seared them (one at a time) for only a minute each side, just long enough to give them a griddled appearance. I returned them to the marinade in the oven dish, and roasted them for 30 minutes at gas mark 6/200C. Those who prefer their lamb to be less well done could allow at least 10 minutes fewer.

As you can see, they produced a fair amount of sauce.

Chocolate cheesecake

2011-07-09T14:25:00.002+01:00

150g digestive biscuits
75g butter
3tsp gelatine*
500g ricotta or cottage cheese (drain the cottage cheese)
1 397g tin condensed milk (about 300ml)
200ml double cream, whipped until slightly thickened
100g dark chocolate

Rub a tiny bit of oil over a 20cm flan dish, or line and grease a 20cm springform cake tin (see here).

I whizzed the biscuits in a food processor, cut the butter into pieces, threw them in, and whizzed again until all the crumbs were buttery. But this base did not have the crunchiness I like. So my advice is to melt the butter in a saucepan over a very gentle heat, remove the pan from the heat, tip in the biscuit crumbs, and mix thoroughly with a spoon. Tip the crumbs into the dish or tin, and compact them with the back of a spoon. Put the dish or tin into the freezer to firm up.

Put about 4tbsp of cold water into a small saucepan. Sprinkle over the gelatine, and swirl the water about until the powder is thoroughly soaked. Set aside.

In a bowl, stir together the ricotta, condensed milk, and cream until thoroughly blended. (You may prefer to use 500ml cream alone, without the condensed milk. In which case, throw in 60g caster sugar too.)

Place a bowl in a saucepan of gently simmering water so that the base of the bowl does not touch the water. Break up the chocolate, throw it in, and stir until melted. Remove from the heat.

Add a few spoonfuls of the cheese and cream mixture to the chocolate - stirring them together will help to release the chocolate from the side of the bowl. Tip this mixture into the bowl of cheese and cream, and blend.

Put the saucepan with the gelatine on to the lowest possible flame, and stir. As soon as the powder dissolves and the mixture clarifies, remove it from the heat. (Boiling gelatine disables its setting qualities.) Keep stirring until thoroughly dissolved. Pour the gelatine into the cheese mixture, and blend thoroughly.

Remove the biscuit base from the freezer, and pour over the cheese mixture, levelling it with a knife. Cover the dish or tin with foil (create a tent above the filling if you're using a flan dish), and refrigerate for at least three hours.

This cheesecake is based loosely on one in CLASSIC CHEESE COOKERY by Peter Graham (Grub Street). Graham also includes 3 limes, creme de menthe, and mint leaves; his cheesecake contains a hefty 280g of chocolate. The disadvantage of my quantity is that the pale brown of the filling is not particularly attractive. But 280g would be a bit much, I think. You could leave out the chocolate altogether, and just have lime juice (and zest), or lemon, or a combination of the two. Three fruit in total, I think.

*Graham's recipe has 20g of gelatine, which is far more than I used, or needed, or would have needed even had I included the lime juice. Different gelatines (and particularly different leaf gelatines) have different strengths. Check the recommended quantities on the packet. If you use leaf gelatine (three leaves may be the equivalent of 3tsp), you can prepare it in the same way: soaking, and then warming very gently.

Chorizo and chick pea stew

2011-07-03T12:02:00.001+01:00

New potatoes for 2
Olive oil
4 chorizos (the kind you cook, not the salami-type), skinned and cut into pieces
1 clove garlic, chopped
1tsp cumin seeds
2 medium red onions, sliced
2 red peppers, deseeded and cut into fork-sized pieces
1 tin chick peas, drained and rinsed
1tsp harissa, or cayenne pepper to taste

Scrape the potatoes. Cut them into even-sized chunks, put them into a pan of cold, salted water, bring to the boil, and simmer gently until tender.

While the potatoes are cooking, put a splash of oil into a heavy pan, and fry the chorizos over a gentle heat, until they release their own, paprika-hued oil. Throw in the garlic and cumin, and fry for a minute; throw in the onion, and cook for about five minutes, until slightly softened. (Add more oil if the slices threaten to catch. But you may not need it.) Tip in the peppers and chick peas, stir in the harissa or cayenne, cover, and cook gently.

When you have drained the potatoes, stir them into the stew. Continue to cook until the onions and peppers are soft.

This dish might also include tinned or whole, chopped tomatoes (to skin them, drop them into boiling water for 20 seconds, cool them under cold water, and peel off the skins), added with the peppers and chick peas. You may want to cook the stew uncovered, to thicken the tomato sauce.

You might also poach a couple of eggs with the stew - a common recipe in Middle Eastern cooking. I crack the eggs into a cup before tipping them, very gently, on to the surface of the simmering ingredients. They will cook in an uncovered pan, but I usually cover it, and give them about five minutes.

P.s. I've decided to switch to the verdana typeface. It is spacier than arial, and more readable, in my view.

A non-Victorian sponge

2011-06-25T14:18:00.000+01:00

Most Victoria sponge recipes (this one, for example) instruct you to cream butter and sugar, mix in the eggs, and fold in the flour. An alternative way of making sponge cake is to blend the butter, sugar, and flour first, before almagamating the eggs. You give the flour more of a going over, developing more gluten, which helps to give the cake a coherent texture as it rises. In theory, a Victoria sponge will be lighter, because the flour is merely folded in to the other ingredients. But this version was not stodgy at all. I'm afraid that my effort collapsed slightly in the middle, in spite of the bizarre attempt I made to stabilise it (see below), probably because I took it out of the oven too soon.

These proportions are slightly different from those in the Victoria sponge recipe. But I did not use all the egg. If I had been making a sponge sandwich, I would have doubled the ingredients, dividing the batter between two tins.

100g self-raising flour (or plain flour, plus 1tsp baking powder)
100g caster sugar
100g softened butter
1tsp vanilla essence (optional)
2 eggs, beaten

Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 4/180C. Put in a baking sheet.

Place a 20cm springform cake tin on a piece of greaseproof paper, draw round it, and cut along the pencil mark. Smear a very small piece of butter on the base of the tin, stick the round piece of paper on top, and smear a little oil on the surface of the paper and round the sides of the tin.

In a food processor, blend the flour, sugar, and butter, in short pulses, until you have a stodgy mass. Tip the mixture into a bowl, and stir in the vanilla (if using) and a portion of the egg. Keep adding egg until you have a gloopy batter; it should drop off a spoon, but reluctantly. If you've used up all the egg before you get to this stage, add a little milk too.

Tip the batter into the cake tin, spread it out and level the surface, and put the tin on top of the baking sheet in the oven. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until an inserted skewer emerges clean.

Now the bizarre trick, recommended by Peter Barham in The Science of Cooking: drop the cake tin from a height of about 30cms on to a hard surface (I hope the spring is secure). The theory is this: as a cake cools, the air bubbles in it deflate, like collapsing balloons. Dropping the cake allows some of the bubbles to break, letting in air, which sustains the structure. It didn't work for me - but I'm pretty sure my mistake was complacently to neglect the skewer check.

Crackling perfection

2011-06-18T14:33:00.000+01:00

A feature of this blog has been its obsessive revisiting of certain dishes - crackling, rice, cheesecakes - in a largely futile search for perfection. As the last crackling I made was perfect, I won't apologise for writing about it.

Frying was the answer. In my previous blog on the subject, I recommended grilling. But frying enables you to control the heat more easily, particularly because of the layer of fat in the pan.

I had braised slices of belly pork, for an hour and a half, in a broth flavoured with onion, juniper berries, and peppercorns. (The pork went into a salad.) At the end, I sliced off the rind, and let it dry.

I warmed just enough sunflower oil to give a thin layer in a heavy frying pan. On the lowest flame, I fried the pieces of rind, turning them frequently to prevent their burning. Until the water had vaporised, they crackled and bucked alarmingly. After about 15 minutes, they were crisp and golden; they shattered in the mouth like honeycomb.

Pasta with ricotta and spinach

2011-06-11T14:40:00.001+01:00

A sauce made with ricotta left over from the cheesecake recipe. For 2.

250g spinach
1 clove garlic, crushed with a little salt
Small knob of butter
200g ricotta
150g double cream
200-250g pasta (depending on your appetite) - we had spirals
Salt

Wash the spinach, and discard any tough stalks. Lift it from the water, cram it into a saucepan, and cover. Put the saucepan over a high heat for a minute. Lift the lid; if the spinach is starting to wilt, stir it so that the leaves at the top hit the boiling liquid at the bottom of the pan. As soon as all the spinach is wilted, drain it. Either leave the spinach to cool and squeeze it dry with your hands, or do your best to push out the liquid with a wooden spoon. Chop up the leaves.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil, throw in a generous portion of salt, throw in the pasta, stir, and simmer at a generous bubble until al dente - just on the firm side of tenderness.

While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat, add the garlic, and allow it to cook gently for a minute. Throw in the spinach, ricotta, and cream, stirring and mashing to blend the ingredients. Add salt to taste. Keep stirring over a low heat until warmed through.

Drain the pasta, and toss with the spinach and ricotta. The sauce is quite bland, even with the garlic: you may like to add a little cayenne, or quite a lot of black pepper. It occurs to me now that the sauce would have been enhanced by the grated rind of half a lemon.

Lemon mousse

2011-06-04T16:29:00.002+01:00

This mousse is gorgeous. It has a delicious balance of citric acidity and sweetness, as well as a lovely, foamy texture. The trick - not one about which recipes are very helpful - is to blend the gelatinous mixture and the egg white at the right moment. Do it too soon, and the mixture separates and sinks; too late, and the mixture is too well set to be blended.

It is another recipe, following last week's cheesecake, from Reader's Digest's CLASSIC FAVOURITES. The RD version has an extra 125ml of cream, which you're supposed to pipe on top, as well as flaked almonds.

2tsp gelatine
2tbsp water
3 eggs, separated
150g caster sugar
2 lemons, juice and grated rind
125ml double cream

Put the gelatine and water into a small saucepan, and leave to soak for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl, and beat them with a wooden spoon until they turn pale yellow. Beat in the lemon juice and rind.

Put the saucepan on to a ring on the hob at its lowest setting. The gelatine mixture may seem thick, but will quickly turn watery. Stir it until all the gelatine has dissolved, and do not allow the mixture to boil - overheating disables its thickening qualities. Add it to the egg and lemon mixture, stirring gently but thoroughly.

You leave this mixture until it starts to set. How long is this? RD does not say. I put mine in the fridge; after just over an hour, it still swirled around as I shifted the bowl, but was no longer runny. I decided that this was the moment. I turned out to be lucky.

Whisk the cream until it thickens, but stop before it becomes stiff – the transition is rapid, so take care. In a separate bowl, and with a separate – or at least clean – whisk, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks (advice here).). Fold in to the whites the cream and the egg yolk mixture, which should have the consistency of a collapsing jelly. Again, perform the action gently, but do so until the mousse is thoroughly blended.

Spoon the mousse into a bowl, cover with cling film, and refrigerate for at least six hours.

New York cheesecake

2011-05-28T16:21:00.001+01:00

I have an amazingly useful Reader's Digest book called CLASSIC FAVOURITES. I say "amazingly" because the book is where I go for every classic recipe, yet appears to be only a slim hardback, at 200 pages.

Finding the recipe and having the ingredients to hand are different matters. So I had to substitute certain ingredients in this New York cheesecake (which the book calls "American cheesecake"). I've marked the heretical ingredients with asterisks, and commented on the RD version below. My method is slightly different, too.

Crust
150g digestive biscuits
50g butter*

Filling
300g ricotta
200g cream cheese**
125g caster sugar
2 eggs, separated
125ml double cream***
2tbsp flour
1tsp vanilla essence
1tsp grated lemon rind (the rind from 1 lemon, roughly)

Blitz the biscuits in a food processor. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a very low heat, and mix in the digestive crumbs.

Spread a little butter on the base of a 24cm cake tin, and place a circle of greaseproof paper on top. (Draw a ring on the paper round the base, and cut along it.) Tip in the crumbs, spread them out, and compact them with the back of a spoon. Put the tin in the fridge for a couple of hours, RD says; I put mine in the freezer.

Blend the cheeses. Beat in the sugar and egg yolks. Stir in the cream (I whipped mine first, until it had started to thicken), flour, vanilla essence and lemon rind. Beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth. Whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry (advice here), and fold them gently into the mixture. Pour the mixture on to the crust in the cake tin. Spread smooth.

Put the tin on to a baking sheet (an aid to even heat transmission, some books say), and bake in the centre of a gas mark 4/180C oven for one hour. My cheesecake took an hour and 10 minutes, by which time it was only very slightly wobbly in the centre.

Allow the cake to cool (the picture shows it still in its tin). Then chill it in the fridge. When it's properly chilled, release it from the tin.

The RD cheesecake has a very sweet topping, made from black cherries in syrup, cornflour, lemon juice, and caster sugar. Not my thing.

* RD suggests 200g digestives, so you have enough crumb to spread up the sides of the tin. I'd be likely to make a mess of that job. I've left out the 2tbsp of caster sugar that the book includes in the crumb mix. It suggests 100g butter; but I've come to think that a ratio of 1/3 butter to digestives works fine.

** The recipe has 250g cottage cheese and 250g cream cheese; or 500g cream cheese. Cottage cheese might give a lighter filling.

*** I was disappointed not to have sour cream. I would definitely use that (or creme fraiche) next time.

Victoria sponge

2011-05-21T17:59:00.001+01:00

Geraldene Holt's CAKES, from Tom Jaine's Prospect Books, is a lovely book, its loveliness uncompromised by a lack of pictures. Many glossily produced works will fall into disuse while this handsome, authoritative, wide-ranging paperback endures as a kitchen bible.

Here is Holt's recipe for Victoria sponge.

175g butter, at room temperature
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
1/4tsp vanilla essence
175g self-raising flour

Cream the butter and sugar until the mixture is soft and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating them in well. Mix in the vanilla essence. Gradually fold in the flour, sifted. Divide the mixture between two 20cm cake tins, and smooth level.

Put the tins on to a baking sheet, and bake in a pre-heated oven at gas mark 4/180C for 30 minutes, or until the cakes are golden brown and just starting to shrink from the tins. Cool in the tins for 2 minutes; turn out to cool on a wire rack. Spread the filling of your choice on to one of the cakes, and make a sandwich.

Holt advises that you use the base of the tins to draw circles on greaseproof paper. You cut out the discs, butter the bases of the tins, and put the paper on top. You grease the sides of the tins with clarified butter - the solids in unclarified butter, she says, can cause cakes to stick. Not being bothered to prepare clarified butter, I used sunflower oil, spreading it on the tins with a paper towel.

I had one springform tin, and one receptacle made of some rubbery substance, and borrowed from a neighbour. The rubbery version worked fine.

I had no vanilla essence, being able to find only inferior vanilla flavouring (one bottle was sneakily labelled "vanilla flavouring essence") in the shops. I flavoured my sponge with the zest of a whole lemon.

I do not have an electric hand beater, which is supposed to ease the creaming process. I started off by crushing the ingredients with a spoon, and then had a go at them with an electric stick blender. It immediately got clogged, of course. But I think that it did help me to produce a lighter mixture.

Is it necessary to add the eggs gradually to the creamed butter and sugar? You're trying to prevent curdelling. But the flour will do that. I simply chucked in the eggs and the flour all at once. I got a sticky batter. Nigella Lawson (whose version in HOW TO EAT has 225g of butter, sugar and flour (of each of them, that is), with four eggs) says that you want a pouring consistency, and suggests that you add a little milk. But my cakes were spongy enough, I thought.

Lamb stew with aubergines and turnips

2011-05-15T11:21:00.001+01:00

Ideally, one should add vegetables to a stew to give them just enough time in which to cook. Incorporating them at the start is a bad idea, because they will be overcooked before the meat is ready. But you cannot be confident of the optimum timing with the aubergines and turnips in this dish. One hour worked for me; but I needed to fiddle around with temperature settings, and to give the stew regular stirs, to ensure that the pot continued simmering and that the vegetables softened evenly.

(I know that carrots are a standard ingredient of many stews, but I don't like using them in this way. Overcooked, as they usually are, they lose all flavour. The exceptions are baby carrots cooked whole in a dish such as poule au pot or bollito misto.)

For 4

750g stewing lamb (I used pieces of middle neck)
Sunflower oil
Salt
2 red onions, roughly chopped
1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
1 bay leaf
200ml chicken stock
1 large aubergine, cubed
4 small turnips, peeled and sliced, or cut into chunks if you prefer

Coat the lamb in a little sunflower oil, salt it, and brown it quickly on a ridged grill pan (or in a heavy frying pan) over a high heat. Remove to a plate.

Put 2tbsps sunflower oil over a low to medium heat, and soften the onion for 10 minutes or so. Throw in the garlic cloves and bay leaf, and pour in the stock. Put the lamb pieces into the stew. You'll find that the liquid comes about half way up the meat; but after the pot has been in the oven for an hour or so, the meat will probably be submerged. Add more salt, if you like.

I put this dish into the oven for three and a half hours at gas mark S/130C. That setting will cause a stew in my Le Creuset pot to simmer gently. But your oven, and pot, may behave differently.

Stir in the aubergine and turnips with about an hour to go, and bring the stew to a simmering point before returning it to the oven. Turn up the dial temporarily to gas mark 6/200C, until the stew is simmering again - you may be surprised to find, if you have a heavy pot, that even at this setting the stew make take 20 minutes or longer to return to simmering point. Return to gas mark S. Check the ingredients at intervals, stirring them.

I served the stew, with its generous quantity of sauce, in bowls with couscous. So I might have spiced it (along the lines of this version), had there not been objectors to spicy food at the table. For myself, I mixed some of the sauce with harissa.

Chicken salad with yoghurt and pesto

2011-05-08T11:23:00.000+01:00

I am not keen on the flavour of bottled pesto, finding it assertively sharp, with the dusty quality of dried herbs. But used in moderation, with other ingredients, it can offer some zing. New potatoes tossed with mayonnaise and no more than a tsp (for four people) of pesto are very nice. Or there's this simple chicken salad, a change from coronation chicken and much quicker to make.

For four people, I poached eight chicken thighs in water in a covered pan for 75 minutes. (I put onion and peppercorns in the poaching water, and kept it for stock.) I shredded the chicken, and allowed it to cool.

I mixed 1 heaped tbsp of Greek yoghurt, 1 heaped tbsp of (bottled) mayonnaise, 1 tsp of pesto, a clove of crushed garlic, some salt, and a squirt of lemon juice. I tossed the chicken in this mixture.

Split mayonnaise

2011-04-30T14:44:00.000+01:00

The more experienced I become at making mayonnaise, the more often I mess it up. Complacency is fatal. You really do have to add the oil very gradually, and to make sure that it is properly amalgamated before adding the next drops, until you have used at least half of it. On my first attempts, I was so nervous about separating the mixture that I dripped in the oil with huge restraint and care. Now, I am tempted to think I can get away with splashing it in, and as soon as I do the stiffened mixture in the bowl collapses and turns runny.

These blunders can be repaired, however. Pour the runny mixture into a second bowl. Put another egg yolk into your original bowl, which can have some of the botched mayonnaise adhering to it. Now amalgamate the botched mayonnaise, bit by bit, with the yolk; then start adding oil again. My method is to continue the process until the mayonnaise is too thick to stir, thin it with a little lemon juice or vinegar, and resume pouring in the oil, allowing 150g of oil (mostly sunflower, with about 25g of extra virgin olive) for each yolk.

Mayonnaise recipe

Remarks on the Guardian's recipe

Almond cake

2011-04-23T14:28:00.001+01:00

This is a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe from the Guardian (here - scroll down).

My springform cake tin leaks, so I used an ordinary one; it is 22cms, rather than the 25cms Fearnley-Whittingstall asks for. The cake came loose very easily. But what you see here is upside down.

Two observations. Whisking the sugar and egg mixture is quite hard work: the mixture is stiff. Perhaps in part because I used a more narrow tin but also because cakes always seem to take longer than recipes suggest they should, this cake took about 55 minutes to set.

It was good, and stayed moist for several days. I think that it would have been even nicer had I used the zest from 2 lemons.

Sausage casserole with new potatoes and onions

2011-04-16T14:35:00.000+01:00

This dish was not entirely successful. I had intended it to be a version of a dish I make with new potatoes, onions, garlic, pancetta, and olive oil: I just mix them all up in a heavy casserole, and cook them at gas mark 6/200C for 30 minutes, and at 4/180C for a further 30 (stirring them up every so often). The onions keep the dish moist; the oil and the fat give it an unctuous quality.

I cooked the substantial quantity in the photo just for myself, with 4 new potatoes (medium-sized), 1 clove of chopped garlic, 2 roughly chopped onions, some salt, 2tbsps of olive oil, and the 3 sausages.

The challenge, I thought, was to brown the sausages without splitting them. I put them on a medium heat with the oil, and kept them moving all the time. They browned quickly. Then I tipped in the other ingredients, stirred everything around, and put the dish in the oven. As you can see, the sausages split anyway, while they were baking. But they didn't impart any flavour to the potatoes and onions. I might as well have fried them separately.

Basic mackerel pate

2011-04-03T13:14:00.000+01:00

Not a gourmet recipe, but perfectly nice as a quick lunch.

2 cooked mackerel fillets, skinned and cut into pieces
2tbsp cream cheese
Juice of half a lemon
Cayenne pepper to taste

Whizz the ingredients in a food processor. For quantities such as these, I use the Moulinex in the picture rather than a full-size machine.

Rhubarb sponge

2011-03-26T14:00:00.000Z

The forced rhubarb that you can still get at the moment is good for crumbles and sponges, because it is tender enough not to require pre-cooking. As you can see, it gives off quite a bit of liquid - but not too much.

The recipe is based on one in a kitchen favourite of mine (and of many others), Margaret Costa's Four Seasons Cookery Book.

450g rhubarb, washed and cut into pieces
55g soft brown sugar
55g butter
55g caster sugar
Rind of 1 orange
1 egg, beaten
85g plain flour

Place the rhubarb in an oven dish, and scatter the sugar on top.

Cream the butter with the caster sugar until soft and pale. Stir in the egg and the flour. (I used gluten-free flour, which gets particularly thick and sticky: I added the best part of a further egg.)

Spread the sponge mixture over the rhubarb. Bake at gas mark 5/190C for about 40 minutes, until the sponge has risen and browned.

Quick stir-fry

2011-03-19T17:47:00.000Z

A Ripple Farm "stir-fry bag" came in my vegetable box this week. It contained broccoli, a few very thin leaks, and various leafy vegetables I could not identify.

Recipes tell you to heat the oil for stir-fries until it is smoking. Don't, unless you want to consume burnt oil. I put a Le Creuset casserole (I don't own a wok) on a medium heat for a few minutes, before pouring in a couple of tbsps sunflower oil. Immediately, I threw in the washed and drained greenery, and turned up the heat, stirring everything around rapidly until it wilted - no more than a couple of minutes. I stirred in a few shakes of soy sauce, divided the contents of the pan between two plates, and laid sliced goat's cheese on top. That was it.

Oven-baked stews

2011-03-13T11:18:00.000Z

Certain stews, as I have mentioned before, require very little preparation. You do not need to start by browning the meat, or softening the onions, because the cooking process will perform those functions anyway.

The dish above has three chopped red onions, two red peppers deseeded and chopped into fork-size pieces, and two cloves of finely chopped garlic - all tossed in the dish with two tbsps of olive oil and some salt. The chicken thighs are coated in a little oil and placed on top. I baked the dish for 30 mins at gas mark 6/200C, after which I stirred the onions and peppers, turned the chicken, and lowered the heat to 4/180C. I gave the dish 90 minutes in total, stirring and turning once more after an hour.

Meat will also brown in a covered casserole, if it is not submerged in liquid. Yesterday, I cooked a couple of lamb shanks: three roughly chopped onions, a whole head of garlic separated into cloves, rosemary, bay, and salt, all tossed in a couple of tbsps of oil (sunflower this time). I coated the shanks in oil and laid them on top, with half a chicken stock cube. Gentle cooking: gas mark 2/150C for 90 minutes, until the stew was bubbling, then gas mark S/130C for another 120 minutes - again, I stirred the ingredients and turned the meat from time to time.

'Perfect' rice from the Guardian

2011-03-06T12:07:00.000Z

I may as well just face it, and admit that I'll never come up with a 100% satisfactory and fool-proof method of cooking rice. Such a method may not exist: the 153 comments below Felicity Cloake's Guardian article on How to cook perfect long grain rice, many of them claiming also to be perfect but giving widely differing instructions, suggest its elusiveness. What of Cloake's "perfect" advice?

She suggests 450g basmati rice for four people. Wash it in a sieve under running water; soak it for 30 minutes; put it in a pan with 585ml water, and salt, on a medium heat; bring to a simmer, cover, and cook on a very low heat for 25 minutes. Place the pan on a wet tea towel, leave for a further five minutes, fluff up the rice, and serve.

I had three reservations about this recipe. The first is that the measurements are unhelpful, unless you want to cook precisely 450g of rice. What you need are proportions, or general guidelines, that work for various quantities. It turns out that 585ml of water is about 1.2 times the volume of the rice; perhaps the more important point is that it covers the rice in the pan with just a mm or two to spare. If you had not pre-soaked and softened the rice, you would need more water than this to cook it.

My second doubt concerns the cooking time. Twenty-five minutes? As many of the comments on the Guardian piece point out, the rice will be cooked in 10 at most. Are the extra 15 minutes required to separate the grains by steaming?

I followed the recipe to the letter. The rice was a little clumpy, but not nearly as clumpy as I had feared; and the grains separated nicely with the addition of sauce. But I think the result would have been better had I switched off the heat after 10 minutes.

Do you need - this is my third doubt - to soak the rice at all? The practice originates in places where rice is not as clean or as carefully sifted as the stuff we buy. Yes, soaking softens the grains; it also leeches nutrients. The only occasions on which I think it is necessary is when you cook the rice with other ingredients, in a pilau, for example. Then, you want to ensure that the rice will cook with just enough water to cover it. Otherwise, the bulk of the ingredients forces you to use too much water in order to ensure that the grains are submerged.

The closest I came to perfection recently was when I reheated rice. Every grain was separate. It explains why Indian restaurants' rice - reheated, for sure - is usually good. So maybe the ideal recipe involves cooking rice in your normal way, tipping it into a foil-lined colander above steaming water, wrapping up the foil, putting a lid on top, and allowing it to steam until you need it. But who can be bothered to do that?

Polenta cake revisited

2011-02-27T11:41:00.004Z

My last polenta cake was a bit heavy on the polenta. Without cream or ice cream as an accompaniment, it was dry in the mouth. This one was gooier, and more readily digestible. Its shortcoming was that, once upended from the tin, it fell to bits. My mistake, I think, was failing to allow it properly to cool first.

225g butter
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g ground almonds
125g quick-cook polenta
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla essence
2 lemons - zest and juice

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs. Recipes often tell you to add them one at a time; but you're unlikely to get a smooth mixture whatever you do, and the dry ingredients will stabilise it anyway.

Stir in the almonds, polenta, baking powder, vanilla, and lemon.

Pour the batter into a 20cm cake tin (a springform one if you like), and cook it at gas mark 3/160C for about 40 minutes. That timing comes from a majority of recipes rather than from my own experience, which suggests that the cake may take up to an hour to set.

Key lime pie 2

2011-02-19T18:17:00.001Z

A return to a favourite theme of this blog: the creamy pie with a biscuit base. (See here, here, and here.) This one is adapted from a recipe in Nigella Lawson's KITCHEN. Hers has twice as many (ordinary) digestives, with 50g chocolate chips. You'd be able to use a better class of chocolate that way than you'd get from my chocolate digestives.

Nigella uses only 50g of butter to 300g of biscuits, while I have always believed that a higher ratio of butter gives you a firmer base. And she whizzes up the butter with the biscuits and chocolate: I had never thought of doing that, always stirring the crumbs into butter melted in a pan. The drawback of her method is that the mixture resolves itself into a ball in the food processor, rather as flour and fat do when you add a little water. It is a bit of an effort to spread it out in the dish.

150g chocolate digestives (I used gluten-free)
1tsp cocoa powder
75g unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 397g can condensed milk
3 limes, juiced and zested
284ml double cream

Whizz the biscuits with the cocoa powder and butter in a food processor.

Grease a 20cm flan dish or a springform tin. Tip in the biscuit mixture, spread it out, compact it with the back of a spoon, and put the dish or tin into the freezer for 30 minutes, to firm up the crumbs.

Pour the condensed milk into a bowl. Stir in the lime juice and zest, and pour in the cream. Whisk. With a hand whisk, this is quite hard work. The mixture does not go stiff, but it does, eventually, thicken. Pour this filling on top of the biscuit base.

Cover the dish with foil, tented at the top so that it does not stick to the filling, and refrigerate for at least three hours, or overnight.

This pie has an ideal combination of crunchy base and creamy, but light and tangy, filling.

A kind of hash

2011-02-11T17:45:00.000Z

An ideal hash would contain plenty of crusted bits. You need a good pan, though, or else the mixture will stick and burn. I played it safe with this version, gently warming through the bacon, cabbage and potatoes. It was still good, though, thanks particularly to the bacon fat.

Serves 3 (obviously, the contents are adjustable).

3 large potatoes
1 cabbage, tough outer leaves removed, quartered, core removed, chopped (you may think you have a lot of cabbage, but you'll find that it cooks down)
9 slices streaky bacon (I used unsmoked), chopped into fork-sized pieces
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 red onions, chopped

Peel the potatoes, and cut them into pieces. (I usually cut a large potato into three crossways, and cut each of these sections into three or four pieces.) Put them into a pan of lightly salted water, bring to the boil, and simmer gently until soft. Drain.

Cram the cabbage into a saucepan with a little water. Cover, put the pan over a medium heat, and cook for about five minutes, or until the leaves are wilted, stirring from time to time. Drain.

In a heavy casserole or frying pan, fry the bacon pieces gently in a little olive or sunflower oil (they will exude their own fat) until they brown and crisp. (If you use cheap bacon, it will throw off a lot of water. Turn up the heat until this liquid evaporates.) Throw in the garlic and let it fry and soften for 20 seconds or so; now throw in the onions, and fry for five to 10 minutes, by which time they should be soft.

Throw in the potatoes and cabbage, with salt and pepper to taste. Stir everything around as it warms through - there's no harm in breaking up the potatoes. If you're confident in your pan, you could turn up the heat slightly, allow the base of the mixture to brown, and then stir everything up and repeat the process, until you have a kind of green and purple-flecked, crispy mash.

Grilled bacon

2011-02-05T17:51:00.000Z

This is how I've come to prefer to cook bacon: in the bottom of a grill pan lined with foil. Pour in about a dstsp of oil (I use sunflower, mostly), and smear the bacon in it - the oil is both a conductor of heat and a protector from the flame. Set the grill to low, and turn the bacon when you start to hear it sizzling. Thereafter, and particularly if your grill is as hot as mine is, you need to turn the rashers with increasing frequency, because otherwise the rinds will burn. I usually cook them until they're crispy.

Baked chicken curry

2011-01-29T15:29:00.000Z

Another recipe adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's CURRY EASY. The chief difference from her version is that I did not marinate the chicken overnight.

4 chicken thighs
Salt, pepper
2tbsp lime juice (you can see the lime hulls in the dish, above)
1tsp coriander seeds
1tsp cumin seeds
3 heaped tbsp thick yoghurt
1tsp finely grated ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2tsp ground turmeric
1/4tsp cayenne pepper (or more, according to taste)
4 cardamom pods
1 onion, finely chopped
1tbsp sunflower or olive oil

In an oven dish, toss the chicken pieces in the salt, pepper and lime juice.

Heat the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan over a gentle heat until toasted. Crush in a mortar, or whizz them in a grinder. Mix them with the yoghurt, ginger, garlic, turmeric, cayenne and cardamom. Toss the chicken in this mixture. Scatter the onions on top, and sprinkle the dish with oil.

Bake at gas mark 6/200C, checking that the onions do not burn, for 30 minutes. Turn over the chicken pieces, and return the dish to the oven for a further 40 minutes, basting from time to time, and turning down the heat if the sauce is bubbling too vigorously. The splitting of the yoghurt does not matter, because the sauce evaporates and thickens.

Stewed belly pork - and crackling

2011-01-22T17:31:00.000Z

Poaching or stewing belly pork does not mean that you cannot crackle the skin. On the contrary, it may help, because it will break down the collagen, which is what causes rubberiness. The crackling above comes from slices of belly pork, simmered in a stew with beans.

About 30 minutes from the end of cooking, lift the pork from the stew, and slice off the rind. Return the pork to the pot.

Line a grill pan with foil, and pour on to it about a tbsp of oil. Pat dry the pork rinds (which will be sticky). Toss them in the oil in the pan, and arrange skin-side up. Grill them at full setting at first, but turn down the heat as soon as they start to make crackling noises. The danger is, if you keep them too close to a high flame, that they will burn before turning crisp. I move the pan down to the floor of the grill.

The process will probably take about 15 to 20 minutes.

Spiced rice, reheated

2011-01-15T16:08:00.001Z

The cooked rice above is sitting in foil in a colander. I parcelled up the foil, rested the colander on the lips of a pan above vigorously simmering water, and put a lid on top. I gave it 10 minutes. (Inadequately reheated rice can be dangerous.)

The yellow rice is another recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's terrific CURRY EASY. Adaptation, for 4, below.

300g basmati rice
2tbsp olive or sunflower oil
1 whole dried red chilli (I think she means ones of normal size. Mine, which are fiery, are minuscule. I used a couple)
1tsp skinned urad dal or yellow split peas (I used red lentils. But I'm not sure what the point of them is - perhaps it's to add colour, along with the turmeric)
1tsp mustard seeds
1tbsp sesame seeds
1/2tsp turmeric
1tsp salt (optional)

Put the rice in a bowl. Cover with cold water and stir gently. Pour out the dirty water. (I do so carefully and slowly, in an effort to leave all the rice behind. Draining the rice in a sieve, then trying to return it to the bowl when a good deal of it sticks to the mesh, is a pain.) Repeat the process four or five times. Leave to soak for 30 minutes. Drain.

(What is it that turns the rice water so murky? Starch? Or less pleasant stuff?)

Warm the oil, in a heavy pan, over a medium heat. Throw in the chilli, dal (if using), mustard seeds, and sesame seeds. When you hear the mustard seeds popping, add the drained rice, turmeric, and salt (again, if using).

Pour over enough water to cover the rice by about 0.5cms. Bring to the boil, and simmer until the water level sinks beneath the surface of the rice. Cover, and turn the heat right down. (I put a heat disperser under the pan.) Give the rice 10 minutes' cooking time in total. After you've turned off the heat, you can leave the rice to rest until you need it.

Madhur Jaffrey tells you to steam the rice for 25 minutes. Lots of cookbooks give similar timings, but in my experience most brands of basmati rice are ready much more quickly than that. I suppose that the extra steaming might help to separate the grains, but I find that long cooking simply causes them to clump together.

Spiced black bean soup

2011-01-09T11:16:00.001Z

Madhur Jaffrey's CURRY EASY was worthy of the Sunday Times' Cookery Book of the Year accolade (though the claims of Niki Segnit's THE FLAVOUR THESAURUS were strong). I find, as I browse most cookery books, that I come across at most half a dozen recipes I might cook; I want to try just about everything in Jaffrey's, even if, as here, I adapt them.

2tbsp sunflower or vegetable (or olive, Jaffrey says) oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
Generous pinch ground asafoetida
1/4tsp cumin seeds
2 red onions
1/4tsp cayenne pepper
1/4tsp turmeric
1 can organic black beans
Lemon juice

Warm the oil over a medium heat, and throw in the garlic, asafeotida, and cumin. When they're sizzling, add the onions, and stir until soft, lowering the heat if they threaten to catch. Add the cayenne and turmeric, and pour in the beans with their liquid. (If the beans are not organic, you may prefer to throw away the salty, slimy water in which they have been sitting, and to use fresh water instead.) Add more water to come to the top of the beans and to create a soup of the consistency you like. Here, I must admit that I added half a chicken stock cube too.

Bring to a simmer, lower the heat, cover the pan, and simmer for 10 minutes. Blend. (I use a stick blender.) Squirt in a little lemon juice. If you have not used a cube, you may want some salt.

Chocolate mousse, without graininess

2011-01-01T16:00:00.002Z

This was the best chocolate mousse I have ever made: richly frothy in texture, and without the graininess that has marred my efforts in the past. I think the key was that the chocolate mixture was properly cool before I added the egg yolks.

The ingredients produced enough mousse to fill seven ramekins.

150g dark chocolate (I used Green & Black's cook's chocolate)
25g butter, cut into small cubes
6 eggs, separated

Break the chocolate into its squares, and melt it in a bowl held above a pan of simmering water. (I have a Pyrex bowl that rests on the edges of a saucepan.) Stir the chocolate to encourage melting, and remove it from the heat as soon as, or slightly before, all the lumps have disappeared. Drop in the butter.

Beat the egg whites, just on their own and with no salt or acid (see this post), until they form soft peaks. Take about a quarter of the white and beat it into the chocolate and butter. The mixture should retain the texture and consistency of thick chocolate sauce. Now stir in the yolks.

Pour the chocolate mixture over the egg whites. Fold it in, using a lifting and turning motion with the spoon until amalgamated. Transfer to a dish, or to individual ramekins, and refrigerate for at least three hours.

Bolognese, lentils, and rice

2010-12-19T11:56:00.001Z

What to cook when you're going out for Christmas drinks with neighbours, and will be back after 8pm, with several glasses of mulled wine inside you and with no enthusiasm for work in the kitchen? A one-pot meal, which you can leave in the oven on a low heat.

The dish above (for 2) consists of a Bolognese sauce (made with 150g of beef mince and 150g of pork mince), Puy-type lentils, and arborio rice. I boiled the lentils (100g) for 10 minutes, then threw in the rice (175g) and allowed the pan to boil for a further 10 minutes. The idea was to leave the lentils and rice slightly undercooked.

I drained them, stirred them into the Bolognese in the casserole, and covered the mixture tightly with kitchen paper (to enhance the effect of the steam in the pot) before putting on the lid. I put the dish in a low oven - I won't give a setting, because my thermostat is not working properly - as we went out; we ate it when we arrived home, two hours later.

(The Bolognese sauce was similar to the mince stew in this cottage pie, only with tomato puree instead of the ketchup.)

Red cabbage, beans, and cream cheese

2010-12-12T11:26:00.000Z

I prefer to eat red cabbage raw than cooked. To my taste buds, it - like all brassicas - goes past its best when boiled or steamed for longer than about five minutes. However, the raw cabbage needs partners with contrasting textures, or it simply offers mouthful after mouthful of dull chewiness.

1dstp white wine vinegar
Salt, peppper
1/3tsp honey
1/3tsp Dijon mustard
2dstsp sunflower oil
1dstsp olive oil
150g cream cheese
1 tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 of a large red cabbage, shredded

Put the vinegar in a large bowl, add the salt (to taste), pepper (ditto), honey and mustard, and stir until the salt, honey and mustard dissolve. Whisk in the oils. Mash in the cheese, so that it softens.

Stir in the beans and cabbage until the lumps of cheese break up and coat everything.

Oven settings

2010-12-05T12:19:00.000Z

My oven thermostat is on the blink. When I set the dial to gas mark 6 (200C), a thermometer told me that the temperature was in fact 150C. So I cooked this chicken (a 2kg, free range one from Sutton Hoo) at full blast, for 30 minutes, before turning down the dial to 6, and cooking for a further 90 minutes.

It made me think that I usually set the dial according to received advice rather than to how the cooking process is developing. Better to cook the chicken this way, by monitoring its progress and adjusting the dial accordingly. Still, I'd prefer to have a properly working oven.

The wing tips are missing because I cut them off to use, with the neck, in a stock for gravy.

Potato, cheese, and red onions

2010-11-29T16:11:00.000Z

Aligot, or cheesy potato, or whatever you want to call it, can be more interesting with the addition of onion. I add one red onion per person, sliced finely, to the ingredients in this recipe. I sweat the onion in the butter, on a low heat and in a covered pan. To prevent it from catching, I sometimes use a little oil as well, and I check it quite often, because covering the pan can cause the onion to cook too furiously. Once it has softened and turned glossy, I usually remove the lid, allowing about 20 minutes cooking time in total.

Otherwise, I follow the previous recipe, stirring the buttery onions into the mash with the cheese.

Risotto balls

2010-11-20T16:05:00.000Z

These fried balls are made with left-over risotto. I rolled the risotto (squash, kale and onion) into balls in my palms; then I dipped the balls in egg, and rolled them in flour. I fried them gently in sunflower oil for about 10 minutes, turning once.

They were delicious, with the crisp surfaces complementing that sticky, rich interiors.

Gluten-free batter

2010-11-07T11:57:00.000Z

I am not sure whether one can make a satisfactory batter with gluten-free flour. The batter in the picture consists of 150g of Doves self-raising gluten free flour, 400ml milk and water combined (half and half), and two eggs. As you can see, it is disconcertingly pale. It is also, like the pancakes I once made to the same recipe, rather doughy in texture - not unpleasant, but not quite what one aims for.

The Yorkshire pudding recipe on the Doves website includes, as well as the gluten-free flour, cornflour and xanthan gum (a stabiliser and emulsifier). I imagine that it would produce a still more doughy result - but I won't know until I try.

Gluten-free cresponlini

Lighter batter

Orange polenta cake

2010-10-31T15:17:00.000Z

I have been meaning for some time to try making a gluten-free cake for my gluten-intolerant wife. This is a slight adaptation of a recipe I found on the Cake Baker website - which, unusually these days, gives measurements in ounces.

200g butter
200g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g ground almonds
200g instant polenta
1 orange, zest and juice

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs. Fold in the almonds, polenta, and lemon juice. You should have a stiff batter.

I cannot give very helpful advice about oven temperatures. The recipe advises you use an eight-inch (20cm) cake tin, whereas the one in the picture has a base of 15.5cms. That was one reason why my cake took a lot longer to set than the 20-25 minutes specified; another may be that my oven is behaving a bit strangely, often failing to reach the temperature on the dial.

I started cooking the cake at gas mark 5/190C (but at what may have been a good deal cooler than that). After half an hour, the centre was runny. I turned up the dial to 6/200C. Fifteen minutes later, I moved the cake to a higher shelf. It took an hour in total.

You need cream or ice cream as an accompaniment, to offset the dry graininess of the polenta.

Or perhaps this Telegraph version, with less polenta but more ground almonds, is worth trying. Like many polenta cake recipes, it includes baking powder - which usually contains gluten. I don't think my cake suffered from the lack of it.

Floury potato cakes

2010-10-17T16:12:00.000+01:00

A potato cake is a kind of pancake with mashed potato as an extra ingredient. A floury taste is fine in pancakes or batters; but I'm not sure it's welcome here, when your taste buds, registering the potato, miss the buttery smoothness of true mash. (I wrote about flourless potato cakes here.)

Still, I may get used to them.

450g mashed potato
4tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten
Sunflower oil, for frying

Mix the potato, flour and egg, and form into small patties. They will be very squidgy. You will have to handle them gently, and plop them on to a plate, or half of each will stick to your hands. But you do not need to worry about the consistency, because they will firm up and form a crust when fried.

Warm a thin layer of oil in a heavy pan, over a low heat. Drop in the cakes, and fry them gently, turning once. They brown quite readily, in my experience, so keep an eye on them.

Plum crumble

2010-10-10T14:21:00.001+01:00

You do not need to pre-cook the plums in a plum crumble. Sprinkling them with sugar about an hour before you add the topping will help to soften them; and you could cook them in the oven for longer, at a lower heat, than you would a crumble with pre-cooked fruit. The plums I used were similar to Victorias, but larger.

Two of us ate the crumble in the picture. It would have served three.

12 plums, halved and stoned (not a job that you can carry out with precision - I used a small knife to work round the stone and prise it out)
2tsp caster sugar
75g plain flour
40g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1tbsp brown sugar

Lay the plums snugly in an oven dish, cut sides up. Sprinkle them with sugar, and set aside for a while.

Work the butter into the flour with your finger tips. (It's not worth getting out a food processor for this job. You can do it very quickly by hand, because you don't have to keep rubbing until every bit of butter has disappeared.) Stir in the sugar.

Tip the crumble mixture over the plums, and bake at gas mark 4/180C for about 40 minutes.

Guinea fowl stew, with shallots and pancetta

2010-10-03T16:28:00.002+01:00

This guinea fowl may not have been free range, I am afraid. The price - £7.20 for a bird of about 1.6kg - does not suggest luxurious rearing conditions. But it was flavoursome.

As is the case with chickens, you should cook the breasts for only 30 minutes or so, to keep them tender.

1 guinea fowl, in four pieces
Salt
Knob of butter, tbsp of sunflower oil
450g shallots, peeled
4 cloves garlic - 2 chopped, 2 left whole
80g smoked pancetta, cubed
50ml balsamic vinegar
80ml chicken stock

Warm the butter and oil in a heavy casserole, and gently fry the guinea fowl pieces, salted. You may need to do this in two batches of two. Keep the heat low; you don't want the fat to burn. When browned, transfer to a plate.

Throw in the shallots, garlic, and pancetta. Cook for a minute or so to allow the garlic to soften. Pour in the vinegar, and let it bubble and reduce for a minute. Pour in the stock. Return the guinea fowl legs, but not the breasts, to the casserole, cover, and transfer to an oven. (I might have added some bay, or perhaps thyme or rosemary.)

The oven setting will depend on the heaviness of your casserole. The Le Creuset pictured above will simmer stews quite gently on gas mark 4/180C, whereas my smaller, round Le Creuset, once heated up, will perform efficiently at gas mark S/130C.

I like to cook forgiving cuts of meat until the meat is falling off the bone. I gave the legs 90 minutes before adding the breasts, and giving them another 30 minutes.

There was plenty of sauce. But stews can dry out in certain dishes or atmospheric conditions. Add more stock or water if necessary.

Egg whites

2010-09-26T18:03:00.000+01:00

I added a tiny bit of vinegar and some salt to these egg whites before I beat them, as the books advise (or you could use lemon juice, they suggest). But it occurred to me, as I beat away to no great effect, that my discovery about the influence of salt and vinegar on poached eggs (see entry and comments here) - that they soften the whites - holds good in this case too. As you can see, I managed to raise some soft peaks eventually; but the foam was not as firm as it would have been without any additions.

As you can see below, the souffle worked anyway. (Well, maybe it was a little toasted on top.) I've commented before that I seem to have luck with souffles; and this was another that worked in spite of the imprecision of my measurements.

Here is a previous recipe. This one consisted of four separated eggs and a bechamel made with: enough butter to form a sandy roux with a heaped tbsp of (gluten-free) flour; a third of a pint of milk; about 80g of Grana cheese; a few scrapings of nutmeg; and a third of a tsp of Dijon mustard. Thirty minutes at gas mark 6/200C. Enough for two greedy people; might have served three.

A sort of panzanella

2010-09-20T17:02:00.000+01:00

In a restaurant review at the weekend, John Lanchester mentioned that panzanella was a dish he liked more in theory than when he actually ate it. The problem is that soggy bread is not appealing; and if you try not to drench bread such as the stale baguette I used above, you might get a salad with very chewy, dry lumps.

This is of course a cobbled-together dish, the infinite variations on which might have only the bread and the vinaigrette as common ingredients.

Hunk of baguette, torn into pieces
Half a pack of feta, cubed
2 tomatoes, cut into fork-sized pieces
1dstsp black olive paste
1dstsp wine vinegar
1/6tsp honey
1/3tsp Dijon mustard
Salt, pepper
2dstsp sunflower oil
1dstsp olive oil

Sprinkle the bread with water, and allow the pieces to soak while you make the vinaigrette and cut up the tomatoes and feta.

Stir the honey, mustard, salt and pepper in the vinegar until dissolved. Add the oils, and whisk until you get an emulsion. Gently fold in the bread and other ingredients, and leave to stand for 20 to 30 minutes, to allow the sauce properly to infuse the bread.

Lamb chops with garlic and lemon, and roast potatoes

2010-09-12T12:10:00.000+01:00

These lamb chops were the most delicious I have tasted in a while, with a gamey depth of flavour that they do not have in the spring.

My favourite method is to marinate them, brown them for a minute or less on each side on a pre-heated grill pan on a high flame, and roast them for 10 to 15 minutes. The oven heats them through without charring their surfaces; and it offers the second advantage of enabling you to cook the chops in their marinade.

These are new potatoes, peeled, sliced about the thickness of pound coins, put into cold water, rinsed, and patted dry. I have discovered that salting them as you toss them in oil in the roasting tin helps them to crisp (because the salt sucks the moisture out of them) and therefore causes them to be less sticky. Even so, I line the roasting tin with foil.

Prepare the potatoes as above, and toss them thoroughly in a roasting tin in a good glug or two of oil (I used sunflower) and enough salt to be distributed among them all. Roast them for 60 minutes at gas mark 6/200C, turning them half way through. If you have an efficient non-stick surface, turning them will be straightforward, though fiddly; if, like me, you do not, you may need gently to prise them loose.

For three chops, I crushed a clove of garlic with a little salt, and stirred in the juice of half a lemon and a tbsp of olive oil. I poured this marinade over the chops, turned them in it a few times, and left them, covered, for a couple of hours. I heated the grill pan for five minutes, browned them quickly (with the marinade scraped off) as outlined above, and put them into the roasting tin with the potatoes, pouring the marinade over the top.

Beetroot in foil

2010-09-04T16:22:00.000+01:00

I have written (here) that beetroot baked in a bath of water and covered seems to be moister and sweeter than when it is cooked dry, in foil. But I read again recently that the latter method produces the sweetest results of any. So I tried both again, with beetroot from the same source.

The beetroot above was cooked for an hour, at gas mark 6/200C. My impression was that it was slightly drier than the beetroot I cooked in a little water the day before, but that there was no discernible difference in sweetness. As the foil method is easy and involves no washing up, I may switch to it.

Omelette in a small pan

2010-08-30T16:38:00.001+01:00

When writers state the utensils we need for a recipe, we use whatever we have that most closely follows the specification. But it is an obvious point that the equipment will have a big influence on the quality of the dish.

Take this six-egg cheese omelette - a frittata I suppose you'd call it, because of its size, and the slow cooking. I made it in a 20cm pan. That seems much too small. But I liked the cake-like texture; and, strangely, the base of the omelette was not overcooked, despite the lengthier cooking time that the small pan required.

It helps if the pan has an effective non-stick surface. You can stir the eggs for a while, rather as if you're scrambling them, before allowing the omelette to set.

I used 80g of Cheddar cheese, grated.

Lightly beat the eggs. Add salt.

Melt a knob (large walnut-sized) of butter in the frying pan, over a low heat. Pour in the eggs. Stir them around from time to time, until they are starting to set properly.

When about two thirds of the egg is set, but the omelette is still runny on the surface, scatter over the cheese. Place the pan on the rack below your overhead grill, set at its lowest. Remove as soon as the omelette starts to look solid - the fierce heat of the grill can easily overcook it.

Mayonnaise with cold eggs

2010-08-21T16:00:00.000+01:00

I've just got back from France, where I had only limited internet access. It was refreshing.

One thing I learned was that I could get away with breaking an apparently important rule when making mayonnaise (previous entries here and here). All the ingredients for the sauce, Harold McGee says, should be at room temperature. But a batch of my mayonnaise went wrong; and I had to make do with a couple of eggs from the fridge. They did the job fine.

The problem, when I mess up mayonnaise, is not that I split the sauce, but that I produce a runny yellow liquid. I amalgamate the oil with the egg yolk, but don't allow it to thicken too before adding the next drops. Once you've made that mistake, you cannot get the mixture to thicken no matter how vigorously you beat it.

Lamb and aubergine stew

2010-07-24T18:01:00.000+01:00

The latest in Grub Street's hardback reissues of Elizabeth David's works - as long as you don't mind weights in pounds and ounces, they are lovely editions to have - is Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen. The following is based on one of David's recipes. Of course, to insist that cumin isn't English is a bit like claiming that tomatoes aren't Italian.

Serves 4

750g stewing lamb (I used pieces of middle neck)
Sunflower oil
Salt
2 medium aubergines, cut into largish cubes
2 onions, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2tsp cumin, toasted gently in a small saucepan, then crushed in a mortar
2 lemon husks (optional)
1/2 stock cube (optional)
2tbsp olive oil

Coat the lamb in a little sunflower oil, salt it, and brown it quickly on a ridged grill pan over a high heat. Remove to a plate.

Put the aubergines, onions, garlic, cumin, and lemon and stock cube if wanted, in a heavy casserole. (I had used the juice of the lemon to make some hummus at lunchtime; and I think that stock cubes, though often frowned upon, add savouriness to dishes.) Toss everything in the olive oil.

The onions and aubergines will stew, and don't need frying first, unless you think that this dish will benefit from the flavour of browned onions.

Tip in the lamb and any juice it has exuded. If you have used half a stock cube, be careful how much extra salt you add.

Cover, and put in the oven at gas mark 4/180C. If you have a heavy pan, the stew may take a good 45 minutes to get simmering. Once there is activity, you can turn down the heat - perhaps to as low as gas mark S/130C. You may want to give the stew another 90 minutes from that point. Stir it from time to time.

Cannellini bean dip

2010-07-11T17:32:00.000+01:00

This is hummus, only made with cannellini beans. You need the lemon, cayenne/harissa, and black pepper, or it will be bland and sludgy.

1 tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 clove garlic, crushed with a little salt
3dstsp tahini paste
Juice of 1 lemon
1tbsp plain yoghurt
Several pinches of cayenne pepper, or 1/4tsp harissa
Black pepper
1 1/2tbsp olive oil

Put all the ingredients except the oil in a food processor, and whizz. (You may not need more salt, because the beans have been preserved in briny liquid.)

Stir in the olive oil. In my view (as also stated in the entry on mayonnaise), the flavour of oil is damaged by the whizzing blade of a food processor.

Mayonnaise in the Guardian

2010-07-04T14:21:00.003+01:00

The latest article in Felicity Cloake's very useful “How To Make Perfect...” series in the Guardian concerns mayonnaise. Online, you get readers' comments as well.

In Cloake's own recipe, she adds oil to egg yolks and salt. I have always mixed Dijon mustard with my egg yolk(s) first. (And I have used a pestle and mortar, which have never given me as much grief as she seems to experience with them.) But yesterday I found that I had run out of mustard, so I tried her method. I ended up with a thin yellow liquid - my first ever failure.

The mustard - I generally use half a teaspoon of it with one yolk - helps to emulsify the sauce. As soon as the oil is incorporated with the yolk, the emulsification occurs. But that was not the case when I carried out my sorry experiment. The oil and yolk combined but did not thicken - perhaps I should have used a whisk. Nevertheless, I carried on, rather as if I were in a hole and persisting to use a spade.

I never use a blender. Blades damage the flavour of oil, in my view.

Here is my mayonnaise recipe. Nowadays, I use a ratio of sunflower/groundnut oil to olive oil of 125g/25g.

Toasted sandwich on a grill pan

2010-06-20T16:16:00.002+01:00

You don't have to use a sandwich maker to produce a toasted sandwich. A ridged grill pan will do.

I think packet white bread is good in this context. The sandwich above consists simply of buttered bread with slices of cheese in the middle. I buttered the bread on the inside; but I might also try buttering it on the outside, as I have to do when I use the sandwich maker. I set the flame under the pan to low/medium.

Chicken with red onions, white wine and tomatoes

2010-06-17T14:35:00.001+01:00

Various ways of cooking chicken stews have been almost as strong an obsession on this blog as has cooking rice. Here's another, enabled by the ability of the dish in the picture to sit above a flame on the hob as well as in the oven. Serves 3.

2 red onions, sliced
1 clove garlic, chopped
Oil for frying (I used sunflower)
1 bay leaf
1/2 chicken stock cube (optional - but it does add savouriness, in my opinion)
1 glass white wine
3 chicken thighs, 3 drumsticks
2 plump tomatoes, skinned and chopped

Over a gentle flame, soften the onions and garlic in a tbsp or two of oil (enough to stop them catching). Five to 10 minutes.

Pour in the wine, with the bay leaf and stock cube (if using), and bring to a simmer. Place the chicken pieces in the sauce - you don't need to brown them first, because they will brown in the oven. Put the dish in the oven at gas mark 6/200C, for about 30 to 45 minutes, or until much of the wine has evaporated. Turn down the heat if the liquid is bubbling too fast, or if the chicken is browning too quickly.

To skin the tomatoes, bring a pan of water to the boil. Turn off the heat, and drop in the tomatoes. Drain them after about 20 seconds. The skin should slip off easily. (If you need to skin them right away, cool them under the cold water tap.) Chop them up, and add them to the stew. Put the dish back into the oven for another 45 minutes, taking it out for occasional stirring.

If the sauce is too runny, strain it into a saucepan - returning the chicken to the oven meanwhile - and boil it until it arrives at the consistency you like.

Chicken, harissa, potatoes, fennel, and preserved lemon

2010-06-05T16:51:00.000+01:00

A very simple, one-pot meal for one. But, as you can see, I was a little careless in allowing the coating on the chicken to char.

The foil - without which the potatoes would stick to my pan - is Bacofoil non-stick, which works well.

2 chicken thighs
Olive oil
Harissa
2 medium potatoes, peeled, sliced, rinsed, and patted dry
Unpeeled garlic cloves (as many as you like)
Salt
Pepper
1 fennel bulb, tough and discoloured outer layers removed, sliced
1 preserved lemon, roughly chopped

Coat the chicken in a little oil (with your hands), then spread the harissa all over (with a spoon or knife). Put the pieces in a non-stick roasting tin, or in an ordinary tin lined with non-stick foil. Put in the potatoes and garlic too, and toss them in oil. Season everything, and bake at gas mark 6/200C.

After about 40 minutes, toss the fennel slices with the potatoes and garlic. Cook for another 30 minutes or so, until the potatoes and fennel are tender. About 10 minutes from the end, toss the preserved lemon pieces with the potato, garlic and fennel mixture.

Belly pork, new potato and asparagus salad

2010-05-23T16:26:00.000+01:00

This salad consists of belly pork, new potatoes, asparagus, rocket, spring onions, and olives. I won't give the quantities - any ratios would work. Instead, I'll offer a few comments about cooking the pork, and preparing the vinaigrette.

Pork
I had three slices of belly pork, but of course a whole piece would have been just as good, if not better. The two questions I asked myself about poaching it were: should I cover the pan, and should I salt the broth? Both might have cooked the meat more vigorously and therefore toughened it: the covered pan because it causes an agitated simmer, whereas an uncovered pan can be kept at below boiling point; and the salt because it raises the boiling point of the liquid. On the other hand, salt has a tenderising effect. Another point to consider, if I wanted to use the cooking liquid again as a stock, is that I'd have to be careful about the seasoning of anything made with it.

I covered the pork with water, and threw in a peeled onion, a couple of sticks of celery, some peppercorns, and some juniper berries; and added salt. I covered the pan, brought the contents to a simmer, put a heat disperser underneath, and put on the lid. I cooked the pork for two and a half hours, allowing it to cool in its broth before shredding it by hand. It was beautifully moist and tender.

Vinaigrette
I like this recipe, from the Guardian's "How to make the perfect..." series. My vinaigrette differed in two respects: I simmered an unpeeled clove with the potatoes, and mashed the flesh into the vinegar; and I used a 2/1 oil/vinegar ratio. Combined with the pork and the potatoes, the sauce does not taste too sharp.

Spiced cheese crumpets

2010-05-16T16:23:00.000+01:00

I got the idea for crumpets with a savoury topping from a magazine recipe. The harissa reflects my perverse taste for chilli with everything, and is obviously optional - though a pinch or two of cayenne pepper would be a nice, less controversial alternative.

The egg causes the mixture to puff up appealingly. If you were using twice as much cheese, you might mix it with a whole beaten egg rather than with two yolks.

Makes three crumpets

80g grated cheese, such as Cheddar or Gruyere
1 egg yolk
1tsp harissa
1tsp mustard
(Also possible, instead of the harissa: Worcester sauce, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne)

Toast the crumpets. Mash up the cheese and other ingredients with a fork.

Spread the mixture on the crumpets, and grill (I use the lowest setting) until puffed up and browned.

Rhubarb, orange and cinnamon

2010-05-09T15:00:00.000+01:00

Unless you want to make a compote or a fool, you may prefer to bake rhubarb rather than to stew it on the hob - the pieces will not break down and turn to mush. Serves 2.

4 sticks rhubarb
1 orange
Cinnamon stick, or sprinkling of ground cinnamon
2 heaped dstsp dark brown sugar

Cut the rhubarb into spoon-sized chunks. Give them a wash, and put them in an oven dish. Squeeze over the juice of the orange, and throw in the orange husks. Add the cinnamon. Bake at gas mark 8/230C for about 10 minutes.

Now stir in the sugar, which might have caught and burned if you had added it before the rhubarb threw off any liquid.

Bake for a further 20-30 minutes, until the rhubarb is very soft.

There will be too much liquid. Spoon it into a small saucepan, and boil it until syrupy. Pour it back over the rhubarb. Serve hot or warm (but cold would be fine too), with cream or yoghurt.

Rice - yet another way

2010-04-26T08:13:00.000+01:00

I got this method (for Basmati) from the back of a packet. It's my new favourite. The advantage over this one is that the rice doesn't clump together if you hold it in the covered pan.

Measure the volume of rice. (In weight, about 75g is a good single portion.)
Put twice that volume of water in a pan, with a little salt.
Wash the rice, and add it to the pan.
Bring to a simmer.
On a medium heat, simmer the rice until the water level drops below the surface, which shows bubbles.
Turn down the flame to the minimum, put a heat disperser under the pan, and cover the pan.
Cook for a further five minutes.

It's probably ready now: I usually leave it, covered, for a few minutes longer.

Grilled (and baked) lamb cutlets

2010-04-18T21:48:00.001+01:00

It's certainly not worth firing up the barbecue for the number of lamb cutlets in this picture? So how otherwise to get that summery, grilled flavour? A ridged grill pan over a high heat will do it - the risk being that you will burn the surfaces of the meat before cooking the interiors. A mix of grill pan and the oven is the answer.

Crush a couple of garlic cloves to a paste with a little salt, and smear the paste on the meat. Turn the meat in a tbsp or two of olive oil, and squirt over the juice of half a lemon. Leave to marinate for an hour or more.

Put a grill pan over a high heat for at least five minutes. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 8/230C. Scrape the marinade off the cutlets, and grill for about a minute each side - that should be enough to get them well browned. Transfer to an oven dish, pour over the marinade, throw in the lemon husk if you like, and put into the oven for five to 10 minutes, according to taste.

Tortilla in the oven

2010-04-12T08:44:00.001+01:00

The thickness of tortilla or frittatas presents a challenge to the cook, because it necessitates a long cooking time, which can produce eggs with the consistency of Styrofoam. If, like me, you don't fancy tipping the half-cooked tortilla on to a plate and returning it to the pan the other way up, you may have to set the top under the fierce heat of the grill, further increasing the risk of toughening the eggs.

An alternative is to use the oven. It worked pretty well for me.

Serves 3 to 4.

6 medium-sized new potatoes
1 large, Spanish onion, sliced
Olive oil
6 eggs
Large knob of butter
80g hard cheese, such as Manchego or Pecorino (but the cheese on the omelette above is Cheddar), grated

Scrape the potatoes, cut them into slices roughly the thickness of 2 £1 coins, put them in a saucepan of lightly salted water, bring to a simmer, and cook until tender. Drain.

In a heavy pan - the one above is 20cms, and has, as you can see, a detachable handle - and in a tbsp or two of oil, gently fry the onions, lightly salted, until golden. It will take 10 to 20 minutes.

Lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Lift the onions from the pan with a slotted spoon, and stir them into the eggs, along with the potatoes. Add a little more salt, if you like.

Over a low heat, melt the butter in the pan. Tip in the egg mixture. My inauthentic addition - a regular theme of this blog - is the grated cheese on top.

Put the pan into a gas mark 4/180C oven for about 20 minutes, or until the egg is set.

Inauthentic moussaka

2010-04-06T09:05:00.000+01:00

Elements of this recipe (for 4) repeat my earlier recipe for moussaka. But this one is even less authentic. Moussaka should contain lamb, I believe; and I don't suppose that Greek cooks add Worcester sauce to it, or use Cheddar in their bechamels. I included potatoes - waxy ones would have worked better than the maincrop ones I used - because I didn't have enough aubergine.

Since writing the earlier entry, I've discovered a new favourite method of stewing mince.

2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Olive oil
200g pork mince
200g beef mince
1 bay leaf
Chicken stock
1/2 chicken stock cube
1tbsp tomato puree
Few splashes Worcester sauce
Salt
1 large aubergine, cut into rounds the thickness of 2 £1 coins
3 medium potatoes, cut into rounds the thickness of 2 £1 coins
3dstsp plain flour
35g butter, or enough to make a roux with the flour
300ml milk
1 egg, beaten
3 tbsp Cheddar
A few scrapings of nutmeg

Over a gentle heat and in a heavy-bottomed pan, soften the onions and garlic with a little salt in a tbsp or two of olive oil. After about five minutes, add the mince, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it starts to cook. Continue to cook the contents of the pan gently, stirring from time to time. After about 25 minutes, and once the liquid from the meat has evaporated, the mince will start to brown. (I used to worry that the onions would burn before the mince browned - but for some reason they do not.) When it is browned, add about 100ml of chicken stock, or just enough to produce a stew that is moist but not runny. Stir in the stock cube (which is not necessary, but does add extra savouriness), puree, and the Worcester sauce if you like, and add the bay leaf. Allow to bubble for a few minutes. Test the seasoning - the cube and the Worcester sauce are salty, and you may not need more salt.

Meanwhile, pour some olive oil into a saucer. Dip in a fork, and brush the aubergine rounds with the back of it. Place them in a roasting tin or on a baking sheet. Season with salt, and with pepper if you like. Bake at gas mark 6/200C for 20 to 30 minutes, until soft. (This is a far easier method of cooking aubergines than frying.)

Put the potatoes into lightly salted cold water, bring to the boil, and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain.

Make a thick bechamel. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a gentle heat. Add the flour, and stir it in. The roux should have the consistency of wet sand. Cook it for a minute. Pour in the milk gradually, stirring to incorporate each portion before adding the next. Let the sauce bubble for a minute or two, stirring constantly, then turn off the heat. You want a thick, almost pasty consistency. When the sauce has cooled a little, stir in the egg. (After baking, the sauce should puff up.) You could season the bechamel with nutmeg as well as salt.

Assemble the "moussaka". I spread a little of the bechamel on the bottom and sides of the oven dish. Then I built up the layers: potato; stew; potatoes and aubergines; stew; aubergines; bechamel.

Bake in a gas mark 6/200C oven for 30 minutes, or until the top is brown and everything is bubbling.

Moussaka is particularly delicious warm, rather than piping hot. We ate ours after it had been sitting in the turned-off oven for 45 minutes.

Cheese souffle

2010-03-29T08:44:00.001+01:00

Some dishes are bogey dishes, while others seem to come right every time. My mother, a very good cook, was hopeless at making chips. I, as I've recorded on this blog, have a hit-and-miss record with crackling. But my record with souffle - a dish with a scary reputation - is good.

Yesterday, I pushed my luck by cooking a souffle without referring to any recipes, and guessing on the quantities. It worked.

For 2

About 30g butter
2dstsp plain flour
About 175ml milk
100g Cheddar (or Gruyere, or similar), grated
A few scrapings of nutmeg
Ground black pepper, or cayenne (optional)
3 eggs, separated

Melt the butter above a low heat in a small saucepan. Stir in the flour. Adjust the butter/flour ratio if necessary to get a roux of the consistency of wet sand. Allow the roux to cook for a minute, without browning. Turn up the heat, and add the milk in stages, beating it into the mixture before pouring in more. Keep adding milk until you have a very thick, pasty sauce. Allow the sauce to bubble for a minute, stirring all the while. Turn off the heat. Stir in the cheese, and add your preferred seasonings. (Remember, if adding salt, that the cheese is salty.)

Beat the egg yolks. When you're sure the sauce is cool enough not to curdle them, stir them in.

A drop or two of vinegar or lemon juice in the egg whites will help them to set. Whisk them (I always do it by hand) until, when you lift the whisk from the egg, it forms soft peaks.

Pour the cheese mixture into the egg white, and fold it in without beating (which would drive out the air). I use a turning and lifting motion, until the mixture is amalgamated.

Tip the mixture into an oven dish. In my experience, the shape of the dish does not matter. Bake at gas mark 5/190C for about 30 minutes, until set. (The dish in the photo is not particular efficient at conducting heat. After 25 minutes, my souffle was not making much progress, so I turned up the dial to 7/220C for a further 10 minutes.)

Fried chicken with rosemary

2010-03-22T08:52:00.001Z

As you can see, I did not make a very neat or thorough job of coating my chicken pieces. The mystery is that the chicken emerged from the frying pan with what appeared to be a complete, crispy covering.

Plateful of plain flour
1tbs rosemary leaves, chopped (I used an old coffee grinder)
Salt
Pepper (black, cayenne, or both)
1 egg, beaten
6 chicken drumsticks
Sunflower oil

Mix the flour with the rosemary and seasonings. Dip the chicken pieces in the egg, and roll them in the flour. Lay them on a rack (as above) until you're ready to fry them.

Half fill a large frying pan with the oil, and place on a low to medium heat. After about five minutes, drop in a tiny piece of bread. If it sizzles readily, place the chicken pieces in the oil. Once they're frying, you can turn down the heat almost to the minimum.

Cook for 30 minutes, turning once. Remove to paper towels before serving.

Aubergine cheesecake

2010-03-15T09:01:00.001Z

An adaptation of this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe from the Guardian. Serves 2, as a main course.

2 small to medium aubergines
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tin tomatoes
100g feta
100g cream cheese
2 eggs, beaten
Nutmeg

Cut the aubergines into discs, brush them with olive oil, season them, and lay them on foil or greaseproof paper on a large baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes at gas mark 6/200C, until tender.

In a heavy saucepan, gently heat the garlic in a tbsp of olive oil. Tip in the tomatoes, bring to a simmer, and mash them with a potato masher. (You can add a little sugar, if you like.) Simmer until thick.

Beat the feta and cream cheese with the eggs, until smooth. Add a few scrapings of nutmeg, and grind in some black pepper. (The feta, and to a lesser extent the cream cheese, are salty.)

Spread the tomato sauce in a 20cm baking dish. Arrange the aubergines on top. Pour over the cheese custard.

Bake in a gas mark 2/150C oven for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the custard is set.

Haddock fishcakes

2010-03-08T08:17:00.000Z

As you can see, these fishcakes broke up a little in the pan. It's hard to avoid. Perhaps an extra egg in the mix would have helped. The ingredients for what you see above were:

3 large potatoes
300g haddock fillet
300ml milk
Bay leaf
Six peppercorns
1 egg (but perhaps 2 would be better), beaten
Salt
Butter
Sunflower oil

Peel the potatoes, cut into chunks, cover with cold water, add a little salt, bring to a simmer, and cook until soft. Drain and mash.

Put the fish in an oven dish. In a small saucepan, gently heat the milk with the bay leaf and peppercorns until simmering, pour it over the fish, cover with foil, and bake at gas mark 6/200C for 10 to 15 minutes, until tender. Lift the fish from the liquid, and flake it into the mash.

You may well want to add, as well as some salt, ingredients such as chopped spring onions, toasted and ground cumin, saffron, and cayenne pepper.

Mix the potato, fish and any other ingredients with the beaten egg. Form the mixture into six patties.

On a medium heat, melt the knob of butter and a tbsp of sunflower oil in a heavy frying pan. Carefully add the fishcakes, and fry for a few minutes until browned on the undersides. Again carefully, turn them, adding another knob of butter.

When both sides are browned, transfer the fishcakes to a piece of foil on a baking sheet, and warm them through for 10 minutes in the oven (at the same heat as above).

I used the milk, strained, to make a bechamel, into which I stirred chopped leeks, which I had steamed for five minutes.

Sausage and lentil stew

2010-03-01T09:19:00.001Z

This is an adaptation of an Allegra McEvedy recipe in the Guardian. Stewed sausages have a different texture, obviously, from fried or grilled ones; I can find them offputtingly flabby. But I didn't this time. For 2.

4 sausages, cut into fork-sized discs (you can't do this neatly - no matter)
80g smoked pancetta, cubed
2tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
150g lentils, Puy or Puy-type, rinsed
250ml (or more) chicken stock (I used half a cube, and water)
1 bay leaf
1 dried chilli
A few splashes of Worcester sauce

In a heavy pan or casserole, fry the sausage chunks and pancetta in the oil, over a low to medium heat. Don't turn up the heat too high: the oil will burn, and bits of sausage will stick to the pan and burn too. Be patient until the meat starts to brown - about 10 to 15 minutes.

I don't think you need to remove the sausage from the pan now, as McEvedy advises. Throw in the onion and garlic, and keep everything moving until the onions have softened - five to 10 minutes.

Tip in the lentils with the stock, bay leaf, chilli, and sauce (optional). You want enough liquid just to keep the lentils submerged. Bring the contents of the pan to a simmer, cover it, and continue cooking on a very low heat. Check from time to time, because the lentils will absorb some of the liquid, which you may need to top up.

The trick is to maintain the liquid at a level that will cook the lentils but that will not leave you with a very sloppy stew. They may take 45 minutes to an hour to tenderise - about twice as long as normal. When they're soft enough, remove the pan lid to allow some liquid to evaporate.

Test the seasoning. You can add salt now: if you had done so earlier, it might have toughened the lentils. If you have parsley, chop it and stir it in.

Gluten-free crespolini, with spinach and cheese

2010-02-22T08:25:00.000Z

Six days after Shrove Tuesday, a pancake recipe.

Gluten-free flour makes a passable bechamel, but is no substitute for wheat flour in pastry, in my view - even with the addition of the recommended xanthum gum. It has a dry, powdery quality. That quality affected these gluten-free pancakes as well. But it was less noticeable, partly because of the rich filling; and gluten-free pancakes are better than no pancakes.

After I had rested the batter, I discovered that flour had settled on the bottom of the bowl, and needed to be stirred into the liquid again.

Pancake batter: see recipe for Toad in the Hole; but use an extra egg.

Bechamel and spinach: recipe in this Eggs Florentine entry.

Once you've cooked the sauce, allow it to cool and thicken. Drain the spinach, and squeeze out the liquid, without being absolutely thorough. Stir the spinach into the sauce.

Heat a 20cm, non-stick pan above a medium flame. I don't have a proper pancake pan, but use a cast-iron one (a bit heavy for flipping). Swirl a little sunflower oil in it, then tip out any excess. Pour in half a ladleful of batter, spread it out, and cook for 30 to 45 seconds. Flip the pancake using your preferred method (I do it, gracelessly, with a spatula). Repeat, adding a little more oil when necessary.

I added spinach filling to each pancake, rolled it up and put it in an oven dish while the next pancake was cooking.

Cover the dish with foil, and bake the crespolini in a gas mark 6/200C oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until hot.

Roasting in paper or foil

2010-02-15T09:11:00.001Z

I have discovered the advantages, first mentioned in this post, of roasting meat alongside potatoes in a tin lined with kitchen paper or non-stick foil. (It is a good idea to use two layers.) You sacrifice the crispiness of potatoes that have been parboiled first and then roasted; but you get instead a sweet earthiness in the potato flesh that would otherwise be lost. The potatoes stick even to paper, but not as thoroughly as they do to my roasting tin.

Another advantage of this method, particular when roasting chicken, is that you get a lot more juice. Yesterday, I rubbed a chicken (2.2kg) with a little butter, salted it, and stuffed it with a quartered lemon and with the cloves from a head of garlic. I pre-heated the oven at its highest setting, then turned it down to gas mark 6/200C, and put in the chicken, with the neck part of the giblets next to it. After 30 minutes, I turned down the dial to gas mark 3/160C. After another 30 minutes, I surrounded the chicken with peeled, sliced, washed and drained potatoes.

The chicken was ready after two hours in total. I removed it to a hot plate, which I kept on the grill shelf above the oven. It left behind plenty of juice, which I spooned off into a saucepan, with the neck.

I tossed the potatoes in the tin with some olive oil, and returned them to the oven (with the shelf raised a level) at its highest setting. After 20 minutes, I tossed them again. They were browned in half an hour. The chicken was still warm.

There was enough buttery, lemony sauce, which I warmed in the pan, for four.

The lamb above is studded with slivers of garlic and rosemary, rubbed with oil, salted, and roasted with a foil covering for three hours at gas mark 2/150C. (It browns in spite of the covering.) The procedure with the potatoes was the same as above.

Aubergine with tahini and lemon

2010-02-08T09:04:00.000Z

1 large aubergine
1 clove garlic, crushed with a little salt
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2tbsp tahini paste
2tbsp olive oil
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Salt

Heat the oven to gas mark 8/230C. Prick the aubergine in various places with the point of a knife (otherwise, it might explode), put it on a baking sheet, and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until tender. Allow to cool.

Peel the aubergine. With your hands, squeeze the liquid from the flesh - up to a point. You can squeeze and squeeze, and still more liquid will come out, until you are left with a fraction of the vegetable you had before. I stop before then.

Mash the aubergine flesh with a potato masher. After each push of the masher, you'll have to scrape off the aubergine that sticks to it; when you've broken down the larger chunks of vegetable, you can switch to mashing with a fork. Stir in the garlic, lemon juice, tahini and olive oil, and season with the peppers and salt to taste.

Serve with pitta or flatbread, and alongside other salads.

Cheese on toast

2010-02-01T08:30:00.000Z

I have long been ambitious to make a Welsh rarebit-type cheese on toast without seeing the mixture ooze over the sides of the bread and congeal at the bottom of the grill pan. The answer, as it is with potato cakes, seems to be an egg.

80g Cheddar or Gruyere
1/2tsp Dijon mustard
A few splashes of Worcester sauce
Scraping of nutmeg
Pepper
1 egg, beaten
Pepper (you shouldn't need salt, because of the salty cheese and sauce)
4 slices bread

Mash together the ingredients (except for the bread).

You don't want the toast to burn before the cheese softens and bubbles, so set the grill to medium/low. Lightly toast one side of the bread. Turn over the slices, and toast just long enough to begin crisping the bread. Remove, and spread with butter and then the cheese mixture. Return to the grill until the cheese has browned on top.

Spiced eggs

2010-01-25T09:10:00.001Z

There are various recipes for spiced, scrambled eggs in Anglo-Indian cuisine. This is a very simple version (for 1), which might have benefited from some cardamom. Fresh chillis are essential, I think, because the zing nicely offsets the creaminess of the eggs. I used one red and one green torpedo-shaped chilli, and included the seeds and the pith. (The pith, not the seeds, is the hottest part.) No pic today: the browny yellow image does not do justice to the deliciousness of the dish.

1/2 onion, chopped
1tsp cumin seeds
2 chillis, finely sliced
1tbsp sunflower oil/butter
Salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten

In a small, non-stick saucepan, cook the onion, cumin and chillis, with a little salt, in a mix of sunflower oil and butter. Use a low heat, and add a little more oil - which helps to prevent the butter from catching - if necessary. Cook until the onions are golden and have shed all their moisture.

Add the eggs, and stir rapidly - they will scramble immediately. Cook until curdled and creamy.

Belly pork and bean stew

2010-01-18T09:17:00.001Z

One of my favourite things. A lot of garlic is important. The dish above was for three people, and differed from the recipe below only in the use of some leftover bacon fat, rather than olive oil, for softening the chopped garlic.

225g cannellini or other dried white beans
5 cloves garlic - 1 chopped, 4 unpeeled
3 slices belly pork
A little sunflower oil
1tbsp olive oil
1 small pack (80g) smoked pancetta
100ml chicken stock
2 bay leaves
Salt

Soak the beans in filtered water, preferably, for five hours or longer. (This process is not essential, but speeds the cooking of the beans and ensures that they soften more consistently.) Drain and rinse. Cover with fresh water (again filtered, if possible) by about 3cms, throw in the garlic cloves, bring to the boil, and simmer, with the pan partly covered, until soft. Times vary; my cannellini beans took 75 minutes. (Top up the water if necessary.) Drain, reserving the liquid in a clear jug. (Cooking dried beans)

Rub a little sunflower oil over the pork slices, and brown them quickly on a hot griddle or frying pan. (Browning meat for a stew)

In a heavy casserole, soften the chopped garlic in the olive oil for a minute or so. Pour in the chicken stock. Sludgy bean liquid will have settled at the bottom of the jug; pour off (but keep for some other purpose) the thinner stuff on top, leaving about 100ml, and pour it into the casserole. Add the pork slices.

Squeeze the softened garlic from the cloves you drained with the beans. Throw away the skins. Tip the beans and the garlic into the casserole. Add bay leaves, and salt to taste. Compress the stew slightly to submerge everything in liquid, but do not worry if the beans are not covered.

I started the stew in a gas mark 4/180C oven, turning it down after 30 minutes (when it was bubbling) to gas mark S/130C.

However, after an hour I wanted to use the oven for some roast potatoes, so I moved the casserole to the hob. There was more liquid by this time, and I simmered the stew gently, uncovered, until thick. Then I replaced the lid, and put a heat disperser under the casserole, so that it carried on cooking very gently. I cooked the stew for two and a quarter hours in total.

Pork and bean stew
Pork and bean stew 2

Beetroot, lentil, feta salad

2010-01-11T08:30:00.001Z

Serves 2

3 medium beetroot
100g green lentils, such as Puy
1 garlic clove, unpeeled
1tbsp balsamic vinegar
1tsp Dijon mustard
2tbsp olive oil
Salt, pepper
110g feta, goat's, or cream cheese

Clean the beetroot, and cut off any stalks. Put them in a bath of boiling water about 2cm deep in an oven dish, cover with foil, and bake for 60 to 90 minutes in a gas mark 4/180C oven, or until tender to the point of a knife. Remove to a board, and allow to cool.

Rinse the lentils, put them in a pan with the garlic clove, cover with cold water by about 2cm, bring to the boil and simmer, covered. They may take from 20 to 40 minutes to soften, so taste from time to time, and top up the water if necessary.

Meanwhile, make a dressing by dissolving the mustard in the vinegar with some salt and lots of black pepper, and whisking in the oil.

Drain the lentils, shaking the sieve to get rid of as much liquid as possible. Squeeze the softened garlic from the clove. Stir the lentils and garlic flesh into the dressing.

Peel the beetroot by scraping the skin with a knife. Slice, and mix with the lentils.

Distribute between two plates. Scatter portions of the cheese on top.

Beetroot - braising is best
Similar salad - rocket, beetroot, goats' cheese
Lentils

Chicken, potatoes, lemon, garlic, and fennel

2010-01-04T08:36:00.000Z

The standard method of roasting potatoes, discussed previously here (and in previous entries), is to parboil them, rough them up a bit while draining, and tip them into a roasting tin with hot fat. You get crunchy surfaces and fluffy interiors. But most of the flavour is in the crunchy bits. If you want to retain, or even enhance, the sweet earthiness of the potatoes themselves, don't parboil them first.

There are two disadvantages to roasting potatoes from raw. First, the surfaces can become leathery. Second, the surface starch, even after you give the potatoes a thorough rinsing, can cause them to stick to the roasting pan. You can see in the picture above that I've broken up the potatoes as I've tried to turn them. A good portion of them refused to come loose at the end of cooking, and had to be left behind.

The problem of the leathery surfaces in lessened if you slice the potatoes rather than cutting them into chunks. To avoid sticking, get a roasting pan with a better non-stick surface than mine possesses, or use non-stick foil or greaseproof paper.

The dish above contained:

6 chicken drumsticks (an ungenerous portion for three)
3 large potatoes, peeled, sliced (I cut them in half, and sliced the halves lengthwise), rinsed and drained
1 head of garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
1 lemon, quartered
Olive oil
Salt
2 fennel bulbs, stalks and tough outer leaves removed, sliced, tossed with a tbsp of olive oil and a little salt

Arrange the chicken, potatoes, and garlic cloves in a roasting tin, lined with foil or paper if necessary (see above). Toss with a generous portion of olive oil, and salt. Add the lemon slices. (Don't toss the lemon with the potatoes yet - the acidity might hinder their softening.)

Roast for 30 minutes at gas mark 6/200C. Now toss everything together again; the lemon juice will flavour the potatoes. Check that you've turned any potatoes that threaten to burn on their undersides. Make room for the fennel, and add it to the pan. Roast for a further 30 minutes.