Rocket Salad, Poached Egg, Toasted Pearled Barley, Grilled Seville Orange and Bacon

So

I saw a recipe online for spinach salad, feta, toasted farro, grilled onions and calabrian chillies and I wanted it. Even with a title as long and ridiculous as that, I thought it sounded seriously edible and properly substantial even for a wet night in February. I think it was the idea of toasting the farro presumably to make it rich in flavour and to give some overall warmth to balance the slightly bitter metallic flavour of the spinach. And, you know I don't use feta enough and I am totally thoroughly in love with blackened onions, hot or cold but best of all just below warm.

But

I didn't have any farro, and the lovely posh Italian shop at Mercato Metropolitano only had it as a mix for soup. Didn't have feta either or, for that matter, any spinach. The salad bowl was looking potentially bleak.

However

I did have some pearled barley, and half a bag of wild rocket that needed using, eggs because I always have eggs and an airtight tub of toasted pumpkin seeds. Plus there were a couple of pointy peppers that might add a sweet note and a fab flash of colour. To counterbalance the peppers I decided to grill slices of seville orange for a bitter caramel note. And I  thought of bacon - because everything tastes better with bacon.

And

Of course I had no onions but the shop round the corner had bright bunches of spring onions. It was far too cold/dark/bleak/generallyFebruary to cook outside so I dragged the ridged cast iron pan from the bottom of the drawer and thereby set about making an entirely different dinner.

Barley, Rocket and Grilled Orange Salad

Serves 2 for dinner with enough over for lunches next day

250g pearled barley
1 bay leaf
2 pointy red peppers
1 Seville orange
6 spring onions
3 rashers of bacon
A couple of generous handfuls of rocket
A tablespoon of toasted pumpkin seeds
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
2 eggs

Spread the barley out across a flat oven tray and toast in the oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4 for about ten minutes till the grain colours lightly and smells a bit toasty. I have to say I'm not convinced it had any noticeable contribution to the flavour of the barley so feel free to skip this step if it seems like a faff.

Tip the (toasted or not) barley into a saucepan, add water to cover by a couple of inches, drop in the bayleaf and cook over a medium heat until it comes to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the barely until fairly tender but still with a bit of resistance. This will take about 30 minutes - add a generous teaspoon of salt halfway through. Drain and set aside.

While the barley cooks, roast the peppers whole in the oven at 200C/400F/Gas 5 for 20 minutes or so, turning occasionally, until the skins are blackened and blistered. Put them into a small bowl and cover tightly with clingfilm. The steam will loosen the skins further making them easy to peel. When they are cool enough to handle, strip the skin away and discard it along with the seeds. Cut the flesh into finger sized strips and tip into a large salad bowl.

Heat the grill pan over a high flame. Cut slices across the orange, about the thickness of a thick pound coin, including the skin saving as much of the juice as you can in a small bowl. Discard the many seeds. Brush each slice with olive oil and lay them out in the hot pan to sear, turning them after a couple of minutes to caramelise the other side. Put the cooked slices into the salad bowl till they're cool enough to handle, then cut them into 1 centimetre squares and return to the bowl with the peppers.

Cut the base and scraggy tops off the spring onions and cut each one in half from top to bottom, brush the cut sides with olive oil and put them into the hot pan. Griddle till they start to blacken, turn

them over and cook the other side. Drop them into the bowl with  the peppers and orange.

Next cook the bacon rashers in the hot griddle pan till they crisp as much as you like. Leave them to cool in the salad bowl, then cut into 1 centimetre strips and return to the bowl.

Add the cooked, drained barley and the rocket to the salad bowl. Whisk the olive oil and sherry vinegar into the orange juice you saved earlier (you did remember that, didn't you 😌) and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Toss the salad with the dressing - taste and adjust the

seasoning if necessary.

Poach the eggs till the whites are just set and the yolk remains runny. Serve the salad into 2 bowls and top each with a poached egg and a sprinkle of toasted pumpkin seeds.

Dinner is done.

If you go for leftovers for lunch next day - and I would recommend it - it's very good topped with a sliced boiled egg.

Roasted Blood Orange, Fennel and Shallot Salad

The weather is slowly meandering towards spring, some days at least, but the new season produce is sadly still quite some way behind. I am definitely hankering for brighter, sharper, lighter than slow cooked casseroles ladled onto clouds of mash, rich soups thickened with cream or pasta swimming contentedly in pools of cheesy sauce - and like as not a glistening tranche of garlic bread on the side. Apart from anything else I seem to be growing an arse the size of the world. I'm calling it my end of season look.

The trick to sliding gracefully into spring in early March is to look for new and better salad combinations using the last of the winter veg and supplementing it with some of the tasty produce of nearby sunnier climes. Citrus, particularly Italian, is a lovely thing at this time of  year and much of the best of it comes from Sicily which has the optimum  winter temperature range of around 13-29 C, perfect for growing blood oranges. Now blood oranges are a strange fruit, not one I knew at all as a kid and a complete surprise the first time I came across one. They are much the same size as a usual orange, with the same lightly pitted skin. Although it is orange in colour is also has a delicate reddish tinge, like raw sunburn on fair skin. But this is still indisputably an orange. Then when you cut it open, particularly late in the season, the flesh is red - anything from a few traces running through the segments to fully deeply carmine as though the heart of the fruit has suffered unbelievable trauma and bled all the way out to the skin. They are a thing of extraordinary beauty with a sweet taste with a faintly bitter edge and, apparently, three times as much vitamin C as ordinary oranges, at least if you believe what I read on the internet.

This has become my current favourite salad for lots of reasons - it is easy, it is quick, it smells lovely, it tastes amazing, is pretty as a picture, it's not expensive, it's great warm or cold and is a treat in lunch boxes for a day or two. It has contrasting flavours and textures which makes every mouthful different. The first time I made it I served it with a Persian herbed omelette and another salad of aubergine, yoghurt and walnuts and the next time with crisp skinned rare fleshed duck breast and soy and citrus dressed noodles. Both meals were definite highlights of the week.

Roasted Blood Orange, Fennel and Shallot Salad

Serves 4 as a side dish

1 large, nicely rounded fennel bulb or 2 smaller ones
6 banana shallots
2 blood oranges - or ordinary navel oranges if you can't find any
2 tablespoons olive oil

Line a heavy baking sheet with parchment. Cut the base and the 'fingers' away from the fennel then cut the bulb in half from top to bottom. Cut out the core, then cut each half in two again from top to bottom. Turn the pieces onto their side and slice thinly into pieces about half a centimetre thick. Scatter on the tray.

Peel the banana shallots and cut them into half centimetre rings and add to the baking tray.

Cut the oranges in half, reserving one half for later, then cut a very thin slice off the bottom of the three remaining halves. Put one half flesh side down onto the chopping board and cut into quarters then cut each quarter, flesh and skin, into half centimetre slices and add to the baking tray. Repeat with the remaining two halves.

Drizzle with olive oil, season lightly with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and toss everything together. Put into the oven at 200C/400F and roast for about  40-50 minutes, stirring the mixture every 15 minutes or so, until the edges are nicely caramelised.

Remove the tray from the oven and squeeze over about half the juice from the reserved  orange. Tip it all into a pretty bowl, mix gently and taste. Add more orange juice, salt and pepper till you have your perfect balance. Serve while still warm  or at room temperature.

Salmon and Fennel Salade Composé

Only just March but a blog about salad? Seriously not madness.

I've been away for a few weeks, in part to celebrate my delightful nieces' 21st birthday in Australia, and have loved the sunshine and abundance of light in the other hemisphere. February days of 28 degrees and blue skies is the definition of bliss after a January of 10 degrees and drizzle. The man was busy busy at work and unable to join me, so I left the freezer full of lovely things in handy tubs and flew out late one Saturday night. I came back this week to a much depleted freezer and a man offering salad as the number one suggestion for what he'd most like to eat. So happy to oblige.

In every cafe and every brasserie in every village and every town in France the menu includes a  -usually a list of - salade composé. Best known is probably salade nicoise, the lovely laying out of crisp lettuce leaves to be topped with a spoonful of tuna in the centre surrounded by tomato slices, a tangle of limpid green beans, delicate slices of hard boiled egg and a scattering of salty black olives, all of it generously drizzled with vinaigrette. Add a chunk of crusty bread and you have a really fine meal, a fabulous array of colours, flavours and textures that are a thing of beauty. The sum greater than its individual parts - a really satisfying dinner any time of year, simple, healthy and filling (but not fattening). I am a fan.

There are many variations of this lovely dish, to some extent limited only by imagination and available ingredients. The defining characteristic is that the salad is composed - assembled from a variety of mini salads for the diners delectation rather than all tossed together making every bite uniform. With salade composé every bite is different as the various tasty elements come together in each mouthful making it a joy to eat. Try bitter chicory with sharp and creamy blue cheese and sweet slices of pear or oak leaf topped with beetroot and rare slices of pigeon breast and a scattering of toasted walnuts. One of my French café favourites is salade chèvre chaud - light greens topped with oozing warm goat's cheese, raisins and a light honey dressing. Add a hunk of crusty bread to achieve perfection.

My salad of choice this week was ready in ten minutes. After minimal peeling and chopping, no cooking at all and just the one tin to open, I presented a delightful assembly of baby gem topped with crisp fennel, cucumber and mixed sprouts, a burst of colour from crunchy slices of red pepper finished with a generous portion of tinned salmon and a drizzle of classic vinaigrette - seasoned olive oil and lemon juice mixed 3:1. Don't forget the bread!

Blackened Corn Salad

Picture this - a day in September, sunshine, blue skies, balmy breeze - where are you? I have all that and I'm still in London - and definitely surprised. Have decided to send it off with a bang, this glorious summer, in the hope it will come again to spread delight. The forecast is for summer at least till the end of the week so I am having barbecue daily - and that's not something you hear said much in Blighty. Tonight there will be an experiment - a vegetarian version of the usual meat fest. I'm planning skewers of halloumi, cherry tomatoes, half moons of courgette and a chunk of red onion. To go with there will be home grown cucumber with yoghurt and my new favourite blackened corn salad.

Have eaten the corn salad a few times over the summer. For the longest time I only ever ate corn on the cob boiled till tender then slathered in butter. Loved it. But all other corn requirements were met by tins or bags from the freezer. I had always assumed that to get the niblets off the core required some sort of special skill and that doing it myself would definitely result in disaster, or mush. No idea where that came from. Then recently I had some corn in my weekly veg bag and, as bbq was on the agenda, had a sudden urge to see what would happen if I cooked them first then cut the corn off. OMG it was so easy and so fabulous and I have been kicking myself - hard - for not trying it years ago. Better late than never, I guess.

Blackened Corn Salad

Serves 4 as a side dish

2 or 3 cobs of corn, fresh as you like
2 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of a lime
1 finely chopped chilli, deseeded first if you don't want it too spicy
2 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

While your bbq heats shuck the corn, discarding the leaves and all the silky threads then brush the bare cobs with a little bit of olive oil. Put the corn over the flames and let them blacken a bit then turn to blacken the next bit till it's cooked all around. This only takes a few minutes.

Take the corn back inside and stand the pointy bit into a salad bowl while holding the stalk end - you'll probably need an oven glove - and use a sharp knife to cut all the niblets off. While the corn is still warm add the rest of the olive oil, the lime juice, chilli and coriander and mix well. Taste and add seasoning if it needs it.

Gorgeous with zesty chicken and barbecued pork chops too.

Tomorrow it's Friday so there will be steak, medium rare, with sides of roasted onion & green bean salad and beetroot with walnuts and radish tops. Saturday always seems a better day to do a little faffing, so I'm planning to simmer some belly pork strips with ginger and garlic then skewer cubes of the meat to cook again over fire to serve Viet style with bun noodles, salad, crushed peanuts and that favourite sauce of a sauce loving people, nuoc cham.

Chard Bacon & Mushroom Salad

Click to  make full screen and see how easily this salad goes together

Have developed a real passion for chard but I must admit I don't actually know how to pronounce  the word. Is it chard like a splinter of glass or chard like a bit burnt round the edges? What's even weirder  is which ever way I say it it sounds wrong, so I try the other version and - same problem.

What I am certain of is that it is a great veg shredded and cooked down with lashings of butter for a side dish, stirred into lentils and stews for lots of added minerals and the fibre that gives it its wonderful texture, stirred into noodle soups and stir fries or eaten raw in salads like this one. The lovely Gwynnie and the clean eating brigade like it juiced - and I concur, it's a great addiction in small quantities.

Chard is also a town in Somerset with its own museum, but remains unrelated to the leafy vegetable.

I had a bag of it from my veg delivery last week - another thing in its favour is it lives happily in the fridge for a week without turning to slime - and knew salad was the way to go as joy oh joy the sun was shining. Proper balmy days. I had some mushrooms too, as well as radish I bought mostly to add a kick to my morning juice. No beetroot but this is a template, you really can use what you have so long as there's something that can be sliced and cooked and added hot to wilt the leaves a little. The hot stuff I went at with enthusiasm, because bacon is great with mushrooms and with eggs and a poached egg makes it a more substantial meal. Add crusty bread and that's dinner.

Chard Mushroom & Bacon Salad

This is such an easy recipe to adapt, use chorizo instead of bacon or leave out the  bacon altogether and cook the mushrooms in oil, use different nuts and salad vegetables, turn the bread into garlic croutons, it all works.

For 2

200g chard leaves
1 tablespoon basil oil or olive oil
100g smoked bacon, cut into small cubes
150g mushrooms, wiped  clean and sliced
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Handful of radish, washed and quartered
Handful of walnuts, roughly broken into largish pieces
2 eggs
Bread and butter to serve

Tear the soft leaves from the thick stems of chard and wash thoroughly. Shred the leaves and put them into a large salad bowl then add the oil and a large pinch of salt and massage that into the leaves. Leave it for 20 minutes or so and the leaves will soften slightly.

In a dry pan fry the bacon over a gentle heat till the fat rends and turns crisply gold. Add the sliced mushrooms and stir to coat in the bacon fat then cover with a lid and cook for 5 minutes or so until the mushrooms have softened and given up some of their juice. Tip the hot bacon and mushrooms into the chard, keeping back as much of the liquid as possible and put the pan back on the heat. Deglaze with the balsamic vinegar and tip the hot mixture over the salad. Toss well then add the raw radish and walnuts and toss again.

Heat a small pan of water and poach the eggs till the whites are set and the yolk still runny.

Divide the salad between two bowls, top each with a poached egg and have crusty bread on the side.

Enjoy!

Here Comes Summer!

Possibly a tad keen on my part but it was such a gloriously sunny weekend after all the rain, can't hurt  - much - to hope. Planning days out and dinners dominated by, if not delicacy, then certainly a lightness of touch seems marginally less ridiculous than usual. This positivity was enforced by an email from Sopexa enquiring whether I'd care to sample a couple of bottles of Chablis -  bien sur!

Chablis is the steely white wine produced in the Burgundy region of France. It has a slightly austere quality that is very refreshing on a warm day and means it pairs well with seafood and simple poultry dishes. Salad had pole position on the menu plan for the weekend - the verdant flavours of fresh leaves and cucumbers and, especially, asparagus have been seducing me these last few weeks. It is very definitely spring when the fat bundles of asparagus are piled up early at the market.

Loved the idea of warm roast chicken for Saturday night special, even more so with a bottle of Domaine Vocoret & Fils Premier Cru chilling in the fridge. Aiming for elegance and simplicity I planned no more than a beautiful green salad on the side, dressed with a tarragon cream sauce. I associate tarragon mostly with Italy, where it is known as dragoncello, a name that conjures for me all manner of excitements and fire. I love the mix of aniseed and light vanilla notes that judicious use confers on all manner of dishes and try and grow it in the summer, sometimes successfully.

Dragoncello Dressing

This makes enough for a generous bowl of your favourite mix of salad leaves spiked with thin slices of cucumber and chopped chives

1 medium egg, hard boiled and cooled
A pinch of smoked paprika
70ml double cream
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon chopped tarragon leaves
Salt and pepper

When the boiled egg is cold, peel and cut in half then scoop the yolk out into a small bowl. You can discard the white or, like me, add a twist of salt and claim it as cook's treat. Mash the yolk very thoroughly with a fork and season with a little paprika. Add a teaspoon of cold water and mix well then add the cream, vinegar and tarragon. Taste and season then add to your salad and toss gently to combine and serve immediately.

This makes such a great dressing I couldn't resist making another batch Sunday to dress still warm new potatoes for a fine dinner of cold roast chicken with basil dressed asparagus and peas for green. A cool glass of Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis 2012 rounded out the first weekend of *summer* delightfully.

Thanks to the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB) for supplying the wine!

Blackeye Bean Salsa

Blackeye beans, sometimes called peas, indeed sometimes called cow peas, also known as frijoles castilla in Spain, haricot cornille in France, find them as schwarze-augen-bohnen in Germany, zwartoogbonen in Holland while the Italians call them fagioli con l'occhio nero. They are a fabby little dried bean, very cheap to buy, and they have the most wonderful smell of fresh peas when you open the packet. They need to be soaked overnight before cooking but they don't disappoint. They swell to about twice their size and, once cooked, still have a lovely taste of fresh peas and a lighter texture than their more popular shelf mates like chick peas and cannelini beans. Yet, in the UK at least, they are not much loved or used.

A little while before Christmas my sister came to visit after spending a week at a cookery school in Portugal. Eager to share some of the lovely dishes she had learnt she offered to cook dinner one night - that idea got a big yes from me.

She created an amazing feast including, memorably, marinated pork fillet with migas and chorizo topped with fresh oranges and lemon, a gorgeous soup with spinach and fresh cheese and a sublime salad of tuna with blackeye beans. My small contribution - it was the man that had to clear up the bombsite that was the kitchen post supper ! - was to soak and cook some dried blackeye beans. Unsure how much would be needed I did a serious quantity and found there were many left. Popped them in the freezer for another day.

And now I am on a mission to clear the freezer - in part because it needs defrosting and in part because it is the frozen version of the cupboard under the stairs. Stuff goes in and never comes out! I have been good - see last week - but it is something I found remarkably difficult to do. My preference is always to start with a plan and then shop from there, and this requires me to see what's there and then make a plan. Challenging! I also have pork chops in the freezer - still ^o^ - and had been thinking the beans would make a good salad to go with them for a quick midweek meal. Just not really sure what kind of salad.

I googled idly and rejected most things I found till  simply recipes came up - a really interesting food blog I'd not come across. Elise made a salsa using beans which sounded most fine. I didn't have cooked green chillies or roasted poblanos, it's true but I was much taken with the principle of mixing different types of chillies / peppers as a base of many textures and variegating the flavour with coriander and onion. What I did have was a lovely bunch of dried oregano that my sister had brought from Portugal and it was the inclusion of a teaspoon in the dressing that really sold me on this recipe. I used (some of) the varieties of peppers I had to hand and was seriously delighted with the result. Great with sausages and roasted onion and green bean salad as wll as in lunchboxes, this was a proper winter treat but I imagine too it would make a great salad with barbecue. Bring on the sunshine!

Blackeye Bean Salsa

Best made an hour or so before eating it keeps really well for a few days in the fridge

About 4 cups of cooked blackeye beans/peas or 2 400g tins, drained and well rinsed
4 or 5 small hot pickled peppers, I used some I brought back from Hungary that are pretty to look at and HOT to eat
4 or 5 roasted peppers - I used some from a jar of roasted piquillo peppersbut you could as well roast your own from fresh
1 large fresh red pepper or a dozen or so tiny ones
1 bunch of spring onions
1 bunch of coriander, thoroughly washed

Dressing
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Large pinch of ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the beans into a large bowl. Chop the pickled hot peppers very finely and add to the bowl. Deseed and chop the roasted peppers into 2cm squares and add to the bowl. Deseed the fresh pepper/s and chop to roughly the size of the beans and add to the bowl. Cut the spring onions into thinnish rings, white and green parts, and - you guessed it - add to the bowl. Strip the leaves from the coriander stalks but do keep the fine stalks. Chop roughly and add to the bowl. Put all the ingredients for the dressing into a screwtop jar and shake vigourously till emulsified. Tip over the bowl of bits and toss well.

Leave for an hour or so to develop the flavours.

Celebration Wines and A Very Quick Cucumber Pickle

Happy Christmas! It really is that time again - how does that happen? It's a good time of year for the sociable and the greedy in equal measure, definitely something to be celebrated. I am an endless fan of the shiny and the sparkly bits of the world especially at this time of  year when most of the light and warmth has leaked from the northern world, seemingly never to return. Delightful company, luscious food and good wines are a proper riposte to winter.

I had some wines from the Loire to sample, all whites in this case though due to its enormous reach the river winds through a multiplicity of landscapes offering such diverse conditions for the cultivation of grapes that every possible style of wine can be produced.We had people we like coming for lunch Saturday to catch up before Christmas so a perfect chance to treat ourselves and share nicely at the same time.

First up was this lovely sparkly Monmousseau, not as dry as some champagnes instead with a subtle richness, was perfect with an elegant plate of smoked salmon and soda bread. I made a quick pickle of cucumber with ginger that brought all the elements together to be even greater than the sum of their - very considerable - parts.

We had a Japanese influenced duck and clementine dish with noodles as the main, which I paired with a red from Douro - different river, good wine!

Then there was my favourite wine of the day - La Noé, the name of the grape not the producer - a very fine Muscadet from Eric Chevalier. It was fresh and rich and deliciously creamy. Its subtle delicacy has won the heart of Jancis Robinson, she notes that the effect of a slow fermentation using ambient yeasts and then seven months ageing on the yeast lees has given La Noë a marked and delicious creamy texture that beautifully complements the freshness and high tension delivered by crisp acidity. Subtle, refreshing, satifying and long.

I normally serve Muscadet with fish or a light chicken dish - it always seems to work - but M Chevalier suggests too that it has the depth to pair with cheeses so we drank it with a fine stilton - it's not Christmas if there's no stilton! - and it was a very good match.

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We finished - much later - with sweet white Raisins Nobles, Jasnières 2009, gorgeous with warm mince pies but it would work too as a decadent aperitif with goose rillettes or foie gras and a garnish of pruneaux.

Most of lunch was a simple put together of bits and pieces and very little cooking involved. Mostly just the cucumber pickle, I shall add the recipe here if you are looking for something to go with smoked salmon or indeed cold pork or poultry. It only takes minutes to prepare.

Quick Cucumber Ginger Pickle

1 long cucumber
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup white wine or rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon  very finely grated ginger

Peel, halve lengthways and deseed the cucumber then slice very thinly. Put the slices into a colander, mix with the salt and leave to drain for about 15 minutes. Rinse briefly under cold water and pat dry with kitchen paper.

In a pretty bowl whisk together the rest of the ingredients then add the cucumber and give it a stir. Cover with clingfilm and fridge it for an hour or so before serving. If there's any left it will keep happily in the fridge for a few days.

Here's to a great Christmas and a happy 2014. Cheers!

A Tale of Two Chicken Dinners

Sometimes it is necessary to have dinner on the table sooner rather than later. Sometimes if the day has been a busy one that seems like an inordinate challenge. Wanting to eat NOW sometimes gets in the way of good food, from scratch looks way too slow/difficult/ridiculous when you can stick something in the microwave for however long. No chopping for that. Not much pleasure either. Definitely no certainty about what exactly it was you just ate.

Not really talking horsemeat here - though the extent to which no one has been - or apparently ever will be - accountable for that is really depressing. I'm talking about the 5,000 plus additives that go into processed food. The front of the package for a Tesco Classic Chicken dinner offers Succulent chicken in a savoury gravy with roast potatoes, baby carrots, peas and a pork stuffing ball - and really, who wouldn't be tempted?

Flip the box over though and I had to wonder what precisely is being stabilised with disodium diphosphate? Indeed what is - precisely or even vaguely - disodium diphosphate? The list in full reads  Cooked Chicken Breast (25%),Roast Potatoes (24%) ,Water ,Carrot ,Peas ,Pork Stuffing Ball ,Cornflour ,Chicken Stock ,Butter ,Yeast Extract ,Wheat Flour ,Sugar ,Salt ,Caramelised Sugar ,Sage ,Thyme ,White Pepper ,Cooked Chicken Breast contains: Chicken Breast ,Corn Starch ,Roast Potatoes contains: Potato ,Sunflower Oil ,Dextrose ,Pork Stuffing Ball contains: Pork ,Wheat Flour ,Onion ,Pork Fat ,Vegetable Oil ,Potato Starch ,Herbs ,Salt ,Pork Bouillon ,Pork Rind ,Onion Powder ,White Pepper ,Black Pepper ,Stabiliser (Disodium Diphosphate) ,Yeast ,Chicken Stock contains: Water ,Natural (Flavouring) ,Chicken Fat ,Salt ,Cornflour ,Sugar ,Pork Bouillon contains: Salt ,Milk Sugar ,Maltodextrin ,Vegetable Oil ,Yeast Extract ,Sugar ,Onion Powder ,Celery Extract ,Sage Extract ,Pepper Extract ,Turmeric Extract - for one chicken dinner? Cheap though.

My favourite bit though is the cooking instructions - For best results cook from frozen. Remove outer packaging and pierce film lid several times. Remove stuffing ball and potatoes. Then it's 12 minutes in the microwave - returning halfway through to replace the previously removed stuffing ball and potatoes or 50 minutes in the oven. So even with a frozen ready meal you're looking at 50 minutes for conventional cooking. Imagine what the peas are like...

So, the other night I wanted fast and fabulous and definitely not much faff. I had some nice little pieces of chicken - thighs and drumsticks, bone in, skin on - thinking a salad would be good. But this spring is not yet sprung and it was bloody freezing out. Didn't have enough veg in to make a proper roast dinner but I did have some main crop potatoes and plenty of garlic, as always. I warmed a little olive oil in a roasting pan and crisped the chicken skin over a high heat till it was lovely and golden then added the peeled diced potatoes and some whole crushed cloves of garlic and put the pan into the oven at about 200C.

Thirty minutes later, after simply basting a couple of times, the chicken and potatoes were cooked through and wafting lovely smells into the kitchen.

While it cooked I simply washed some lettuce and made a simple salad with chopped red pepper and sliced cucumber. Didn't need dressing. I served the hot chicken and potatoes alongside and sat down to a very fine supper indeed - 35 minutes after I started. Only used the one pan, too, so cleaning up was very quick.

The whole experience was just so conducive to feeling better - well fed and cared for, rather than harrassed and guilty. Would recommend...

DISCLAIMER I didn't buy or eat the tesco one

Prawn and Noodle Salad

I have been thinking of  late about what it takes to put a meal on the table. So not just the chopping and the stirring but also the planning and the shopping and assembling and then the chopping and the stirring and - finally - the washing up, the clearing away, the cleaning of hob and benches and floors and the making sure that all the dishes and pots and plates are returned to their rightful place. I'm wondering about the balance - what makes it worth it and how much that influences what I choose to make and then whether I make it again.

I have been known to remake something that didn't work the first time in the hope that I will crack it the next time, so it's not always about taste. I have been known to really like something and never make it again as it's simply too much faff, so - again - it's not just about taste. I have been known to make something that is an enormous amount of faff, tastes great, and I mentally file it away to be made for special occasions only. It does get made again, and enjoyed, and mostly I am thinking I'm glad I don't make that every week... So - once again - not only about taste.

The last category is things that I'm expecting to be relatively straightforward that turn out to be an enormous faff which taste amazing and - with knowledge aforethought - I put straight on the menu for next week because I loved eating it so much that all the effort required in the washing up and the chopping and the extra trip to find the right noodles or sauce or particular veg or whatever is as nothing to the pleasure of  this food. Which is entirely about taste! There are some dishes that bring so much pleasure, such delight in every mouthful, that whatever it takes makes it worth it.

Such meals are remarkably rare - possibly fortunately! - but are a real joy to come across. We had one such last week, a Japanese inspired prawn and noodle salad that I've been meaning to make for weeks but, for one reason or another, it wasn't coming together. Then Friday I bought some wonderfully sweet prawns from Shellseekers and was sure that dinner would be whipped up in about 20-30 minutes. Ha!

The recipe comes from a recent cookbook purchase, Citrus and Spice, by Sybil Kapoor. It's a seductively lovely book written to match each month of the year and it's very evocative of the movement of flavour with the progress of time through the year. It's one of those books where you think mmmm, that sounds good, or yum must make that about pretty much every recipe. This was the first thing I'd made - there will definitely be more - and because the prawns were already cooked and nothing else was complicated or unknown I just assumed it would be really really quick. What I should have factored in was the book has a foreword by Heston Blumenthal, whose food I adore but, in truth, everything I've ever made from his recipes has taken vast amounts of time - again almost invariably worth it but it is already in my head that this will be slow before I set out. His admiration for the book and the cook is well placed, but it is a hint of what might be involved!

Buckwheat Noodles with Nori

This is included in February but will work all the way through spring and onwards

Serves 2

Sybil Kapoor notes that the nori adds an addictive ozone note to these noodles which will ensure that you feel virtuous and healthy as you slurp them up. She's right.

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons sake
2 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce
2 tablespoons mirin
6 small spring onions - I used 2 very large ones
170g Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodles
150g peeled, cooked North Atlantic prawns
1 teaspoon plus 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 medium eggs beaten
1/2 tablspoon sunflower oil
7.5g toasted nori sheets - a sheet about 12cm x 8cm

Put the ginger, sake, soy sauce and mirin into a small saucepan. Set over a low heat and slowly bring up to a simmer, then cook for 2 minutes. Leave to cool while you prepare the other ingredients.

Trim the spring onions and finely slice their pale green stems. Place in a large mixing bowl.

Bring a large pan of unsalted water to the boil. Gradually add the noodles, making sure the water doesn't stop boiling. Cook according to the packet instructions until al dente. This is usually about 5-7 minutes. Drain and rinse thoroughly under the cold tap.

Meanwhile, pat the prawns dry on the kitchen paper and mix into the spring onions. Set a non-stick frying pan over a high heat. Whisk a teaspoon of sesame oil into the eggs. Add 1/2 tablespoon of sunflower oil to the pan and, once hot, add the beaten eggs and cook as a very thin omelette. Fry for 2 minutes or until cooked through. Tip the omelette out onto a wooden board and, as soon as it is cool enough to handle, roll it up and slice it finely into long thin shreds. Mix it with the prawns and spring onion.

Hold the sheet of nori with some tongs and wave it across the gas jet on the hob or over an electric plate to just warm it through. Snip the nori into small pieces and add to the prawns with the well-drained noodles. Whisk 2 tablespoons of sesame oil into the soy dressing and mix it into the noodels.

Serve immediately and be prepared for fabulous.

How much washing up is too much washing up?

I am so very glad I did make this unknowing - if I'd thought about the time involved without eating it first I  might never have done it and my culinary repertoire would be the worst for it. What's your tipping point for making - or not - new things?

My Spring Picnic

Snow Edgware Road this week

I do love a challenge occasionally, keeps the mind attuned and the reflexes sharp. So when I got an email from Sopexa Marketing asking if I'd like to participate in a blogger challenge organised by BIVB to match Chablis with take away food I thought hmmm, could be interesting.

I pondered the characteristics of Chablis - it's steely minerality, the lack of oak making it elegantly bone dry rather than luscious, a wonderfully austere wine for our time of austerity. Made entirely of Chardonnay grapes it is grown in vineyards in the northern part of Burgundy in limestone soil formed in the Jurassic era from the fossils of small oysters. As Andrew Jefford says in The New France: "It smells of smoke and stone and winter air; it tastes as quick and fresh as a chill, pebbly stream tumbling off a dark, rain-draped mountain. Do you doubt the influence of soil on wine flavour? If you do, buy yourself a bottle of chablis."

So far so fabulous. But taking the specific brief to match to takeaway things suddenly got a little more challenging. My undoubted favourite takeaway place is Green Valley, just off the Edgware Road, a positive cornucopia of all food Middle Eastern. I worked nearby for a while, and on occasional sunny Fridays the office would decamp to Hyde Park for wonderfully decadent picnics. We'd buy takeaway tubs of hummus and tabouli, smoky aubergine moutabal, olives, warm falafel, shards of spicy lamb shawarma and plenty of flat bread. It was the first time I ate heart of palm and it was here I discovered mujadarrah - the surprisingly delicate combination of lentils, rice and fried onions. There would be wine, too, not vast amounts but a glass to enjoy as we ate and chatted. I could see how a chablis might work well with this kind of food, its warm spicing working well with the minerality of the wine. Not the lamb perhaps, but the falafels and salads seemed like a possible.

Though we are but a week from spring, the weather is far too poor to be conducive to being outside. The idea of a picnic was simply wrong - rain, cold, snow, wind, no, thrice definitely no. And yet the idea niggled at me as things went from bad to worse... somehow, I thought, I might have a picnic, surely I could have a picnic, really I must have a picnic....

Dammit I will have a picnic! I dug out the picnic rug and set off for Green Valley.

Green Valley's shop window - how seductive is that?!

Nuts and Dates, take as much as you need

This is undoubtedly one of the great food shops of London. They have a large butcher's counter, a bakery for flat breads, an enormous rotisserie cooking dozens of chickens and two slowly rotating swords - one of spiced lamb shawarma and one of chicken. They sell a vast array of wonderful ingredients and you are free to buy as much or as little as you need.

What an array!

 And then, at the back of the shop, there is this extraordinary salad counter, literally piled high with wonderful fresh food, dozens of trays of beautifully made offerings. They sell the lot by the end of each day, tomorrow will always have a new selection.

How to choose?

 I resisted the temptation to buy some of everything - but only just! I decided a vegetarian feast was needed - gorgeous crispy falafel, aubergine dip, tahini sauce, vibrantly fresh herb tabbouli to match the zing of the wine. A pile of bread of course and olives, hummus too. And baklava too, to finish, it's gorgeous nutty syrup crispness simply irresistible.

Still pretty bleak at Hyde Park Corner

 Perhaps spring was watching, as the sun did come out briefly, but not with any warmth.

Picnic!

Chablis - it was a great accompaniment

 What a lovely spread we had, who could ask for anything more?

The makings of a fine falafel roll

Dinner - with Masterchef on the tele!

 It has to be said the man was a little surprised to find dinner served on a rug but with the heating on and the curtains closed it might have been spring outside!

Nice Pick For A Picnic!

 The Chablis worked very well with the spread of food, we particlarly enjoyed the zing it brought to the party.

Here's hoping spring arrives here soon...

In the meantime you can find Green Valley just off the Edgware Road at 36-37 Upper Berkeley St  Marylebone, London W1H 5QF

You can find Chablis at all good wine merchants.

Salmon with new potatoes, and pickled cucumber salad

I had lunch with James Martin the other day. Lovely man. Successful as both chef and television presenter he comes across as charming and very knowledgeable about good food. I particularly liked him because he is fronting a campaign for the Potato Council, promoting the British potato industry and you really do get totally fabulous potatoes here. Growing up in Oz the choice was red or white - and they were pretty much as undistinguished in flavour as that generic naming would have you believe. Big floury things mostly, occasionally a bit waxier if new season with big bitter green patches on them that, as one of the people who can taste that particular poison, I really hated. When I came to London it was something of a revelation to discover named varieties, some revered like the Jersey Royal and the King Edward, some inspiring particular love like the Maris Piper and the smooth Desiree.

I tried nutty little new potatoes just gorgeous in salads, galumphing great King Edwards baked in their skin then split and filled with all manner of wonders (my particular favourite is still sour cream and chives) and the pleasure of great clouds of delicately smooth creamy mashed potatoes, truly a food of the gods. With food like this it seemed to me that I had come to the country of the blessed. It was many moons ago however and it seems that people are losing the habit of knowing and loving their spuds. Bizarre as it seems to me, some people don't buy them at all as they are heavier to carry home than rice or pasta. I love rice and pasta - but as well as people - not instead of. Utter madness to miss out on the joys of the humble tuber.

The assembled group of bloggers and food workers sampled lots of different unadorned potatoes and it was interesting just how varied people's preferences were. My undoubted favourite was golden roasted Maris Piper, the perfect morsel on a bleak summer day.

From simple straight on to fabulous James Martin set about creating a few samples to showcase the versatility of  the potato. Chatting away while he worked he produced 3 lovely dishes in less than an hour. It all seemed so effortless. First up was an intensely green watercress and spinach soup given substance with diced new potatoes and an elegant finish with a poached egg.Anything with an egg is good in my book, especially if there's potato involved as well.

Next up was my favourite dish of the morning, pan fried salmon with new potatoes and a quick pickled salad. Crisp skinned fish was balanced with the lovely potatoes and the tartness of the veg.

 Last was pan fried pork steak with the most extraordinary mash - desiree boiled then mashed with lashings - and I mean LASHINGS - of butter and cream then, as a perfect match to the pork, grated apple was added to the potatoes. You'd think it wouldn't work but you'd be wrong.

We dug up our potatoes at the weekend in a momentary lull in the rain. The man laughs at me because I say they are free food but he agrees they are pretty amazing straight out of the ground. There is something pretty amazing about pulling up plants and finding food in the dirt. To be sure they were thoroughly special I decided to recreate the fabulous salmon dish I'd eaten earlier.

Salmon with Potato and Pickled Cucumber

A quick dinner for 2 that is on the table in less than 30 minutes

2 x 150g salmon fillets with the skin on
2 tbspn olive oil
2 tbspn butter to finish


200g of salad potatoes like charlottes or pink fir apple
1 small white turnip
1/2 cucumber
1 shallot, peeled
100g radishes
A small bunch of watercress
100ml of white wine vinegar
1 tbspn sugar
1/2 tbspn salt


Put the potatoes, halved if large, into a pan of salted water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 15 minutes till tender.


Place a sauté pan over a medium heat ad when hot, add the olive oil. Season the salmon fillets then put them, skin side down, into the hot oil. Leave to cook for about 5 minutes, you will be able to see them cook as the flesh changes colour and the skin crisps.


Thinly slice the turnip and shallot, cube the peeled cucumber and halve the radishes and put them all into a heatproof bowl. Put the white wine vinegar, sugar and salt into a pan and heat until the sugar and salt dissolve. Pour the liquid over the salad and set aside for 5 minutes, then drain off the pickling liquid.


The salmon should be nearly cooked. Flip it carefully with a fish slice to finish.


Drain the potatoes and cut into 3 then pan fry in a little olive oil to colour and crisp the edges.


Melt the butter over the skin of the fish for enhanced loveliness.


Arrange the potatoes on 2 plates, top with the salmon and a generous dollop of pickled salad on the side. Garnish with the watercress.

At this point James Martin drizzled some sweet chilli sauce artfully around the plate which looked very pretty but I'm not really  a fan of added sugar so I omitted this and didn't miss it. Your call if you fancy it.

All that really remains to say is EAT MORE POTATOES. It would be a terrible thing if the sheer variety of flavours and textures diminished or disappeared, going the way of British apples. A world of only red or white potatoes is not a good place to live.