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.

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.

Pan Boxtie

Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty in the pan,
If you can’t make boxty,
You’ll never get a man.

Squeeze your grated potato dry in a clean cloth

It was St Patrick's Day last week - but you knew that, didn't you? Patrick, a man sainted for ridding Ireland of snakes. I was a (possibly impressionable) Australian schoolgirl when I learned that fact and I was blown away with admiration for a man who could rid a whole country of snakes. Australia after all has 140 varieties, 100 of which are poisonous though only 12 of them are likely to inflict a wound that would kill you. Wow!  I thought. Respect.

It is undoubtedly a reason to celebrate Irish food, and the more of it I sample the more I think, Wow! I had some fine smoked salmon from Burren, an award winning Irish smokehouse and fancied trying something new to go with it.

During the Famine of the 1800's in Ireland people lived pretty much on potatoes and buttermilk, and interesting ways with potatoes became a necessity. Boxty was one result, a poorhouse bread. I found this version made by Darina Allen, and fell in love with the simplicity of the language and the method. Her recipe comes from Granny Toye and you can almost hear the passing on of skill from one generation to the next.

Crisp and golden boxty

Pan Boxty

Good hot, warm or cold you could add a few chopped herbs for an untraditional variation

Serves 4

6 medium potatoes
a handful of white flour
salt
butter, for frying

Scrub the potatoes well, but don't peel. Line a bowl with a cloth. Grate the potatoes into the cloth, then squeeze out the liquid into the bowl and allow it to sit for about 20 minutes until the starch settles. Set the potatoes aside.

Drain off the water and leave the starch in the bottom of the bowl. Add the grated
potato, a handful of white flour and some salt.

Melt a nice bit of butter on a heavy iron pan and pour in the potato mixture. It should be 2–2.5cm (¾–1in) thick. Cook on a medium heat. Let it brown nicely on one side before turning over and then on the other side, about 30 minutes in all, depending on the heat.

It's much better to cook it too slowly rather than too fast. It should be crisp and golden on the outside. Cut the boxty into four farls and serve.

This made a gorgeous supper Sunday night with the smoked salmon, a handful of watercress and a generous dollop of sour cream.

We had the leftover boxty next morning with a fried egg for a fairly lush brunch!

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.

Rice Paper Wraps

I have been eating versions of these little rolls for years and I have yet to get over the delight. They are cold - this still strikes me as amazing, not sure why. The translucent wrappers make the contents mysterious and beautiful and incredibly tempting. They always appear to be filled with treasure. Wrapped tightly they don't spill anywhere but rather are perfect for dipping into little bowls of sauce. They have the most extraordinary texture - the wrappers offer a very slight resistance to being bitten and then the filling is mostly raw and so is crunchy and slippery and soft cut through with generous amounts of herbs, in this case coriander and tiny speckles of heat from finely chopped chillies. Simply gorgeous.

Rice Paper Wraps

1/2 chinese cabbage, very finely shredded
2 cups bean sprouts, rinsed and picked over to lose their stringy tails
1 red pepper, deseeded and finely sliced
4 spring onions, topped and tailed then sliced into thin ribbons
1/2 large cucumber, peeled then sliced into very thin batons
1 large ( because they are milder) red and green chillies, sliced into thin rings
Serious handful of coriander leaves
1/2 cup raw peanuts, toasted till golden then roughly pounded in a pestle and mortar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon salt
24 rice paper wrappers

Mix all the ingredients, except the wrappers, in a large bowl.

Fill a flattish bowl with hot water then soak a sheet of rice paper till it softens - a few seconds. Lay it flat on a board, put a line of filling down the centre, then fold over first one edge then the other, and finally the ends to make little parcels.

Put a piece of damp kitchen paper onto a plate and put the finished roll on top. This will stop them drying out. Keep making rolls and adding them to the plate till all are done.
Refrigerate for an hour or so then serve with your favourite dipping sauce.

Seriously summer on a plate.

Parsley Butter

A very quick one - just wanted to share. Saturday night I'd been planning to make a steamed marinated salmon dish but when I looked more closely at the recipe - after having bought the ingredients, obviously - I realised it involved marinating the fish for 24 hours in citrus juice which would probably ruin the fish. Would certainly 'cook' it before it came anywhere near heat. So I opted for ultra simple instead. Pan fried the fish skin side down for a crisp crust, then finished it for a couple of minutes in the oven. Steamed broccoli and potatoes to go with and made a simple parsley butter to make the plate special.

The trick with this is that you really want to end up with parsley flecked with butter rather than the other way round for a really intense fresh burst of flavour.

Parsley butter

2 tablespoons roughly choppped flat leaf parsley

20g unsalted butter

Dash lemon juice

Salt and pepper

Put the parsley, butter and seasoning into a pestle bowl and grind till you have a bright green emulsion. Add about half a teaspoon of lemon juice and mix again till it is incorporated.

That's it. Brilliant with the fish would also work a treat with steak or lentils or even melted atop a plain omelette.

Boiled Chicken with leeks and aioli

Fergus Henderson is rightly famous for his long followed creed of nose to tail eating and the pared down aesthetic of St John. His guiding principle seems to be that it’s only polite if you knock an animal on the head to eat it all: tripe, heart, feet, ears, head, tail. It’s what he's renowned for, his signature dish is roasted bone marrow with parsley caper sauce, which is utterly sublime. It seems his infamy is based on the notion that he only cooks the offal bits but really he cooks the whole animal - and lots of vegetables - sublimely.

I'm lucky enough to work near enough to St John at Smithfields to have an occasional lunch in the bar but one of the stand out treats for my birthday this year was eating again in the restaurant, a much expanded experience to the small plates in the bar. Everything was simply outstandingly good from langoustines with the best mayonnaise I have ever eaten - so good I had to fight the rest of the party off 'sharing' it to a plate of madeline hot from the oven that were indeed intended for sharing.

For my main course I opted for poached chicken with leeks, juicy, tender and deeply flavoured, just wonderful. Simple, elegant and as close to perfect as poached chicken can be. So I checked my copy of Nose to Tail and found the recipe for it, which also suggested serving the finished dish with aioli. Though it needs to be done over two days, logically, so the meat can cool completely it is a very simple dish to make, good as I remembered it and quite unlike most of the food I make. British and ethereal at the same time.

Boiled Chicken and Leeks

1 free range chicken (slit the skin between the leg and breast) or I used 6 chicken legs, about 1.5kg in weight

2 carrots, unpeeled and chopped

2 leeks, chopped

1 onion, unpeeled and halved

1 whole head of garlic

2 sticks celery, chopped

2 bay leaves

a bundle of thyme, parsley and rosemary

20 or so whole peppercorns

sea salt

6 leeks, trimmed

Place the chicken and all the ingredients down to the sea salt in a large pot, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. As soon as it boils cover it with a lid, take it off the heat and leave it to cool, which takes about 6 hours.

I then left the chicken in the broth in the fridge for the day before making dinner next night.

Remove the chicken from the stock and put it into a clean pot. Strain the stock and put some of it in with the chicken, retaining enough of the broth for another pot to cook the leeks. Bring the stock to a gentle simmer and cook for 30 minutes. You will now have a moist bird - or bits - without it being toughened or falling apart from hard boiling.

In a separate pan put the trimmed leeks and the remaining stock. Bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 7 minutes till tender.

Serve the chicken and leeks with a splash of the chicken broth, a bowl of the aioli and coarse sea salt. As with any boiled unbrined meat, coarse sea salt applied just before eating is very good.

Save the rest of the stock for future cooking.

Aioli

10 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

sea salt and pepper

2 free range egg yolks

about 300ml of extra virgin olive oil

juice of 2 lemons - you may not need it all.

Put the garlic into a processer chopping bowl with a pinch of salt (to help break it up) and a good grinding of pepper. Whizz until finely pulped, this is important as you do not want garlic chippings in the aioli. Add the egg yolks, let them meet the garlic for a moment, then carefully and slowly add the oil in a gently stream, whisking all the while. The emulsion should safely hold 300ml, perhaps a little more. Now add the lemon juice, tasting as you go. Adjust the seasoning, then refrigerate.

The aioli is delicate and pungent simultaneously and really brings the finished dish together. I served it with hot boiled new potatoes to make a delicately pale plate. I mixed the leftover potatoes and leeks into some aioli as a salad to go with the remaining chicken next day for lunch.

This was one of the nicest meals I've cooked in a while amidst pretty stiff competition. As Fergus Henderson says, making this dish is emphatically worth it.

Crushed Chickpea Salad

One (of the many) new things I have discovered since the beginning of Borough is the delights of smoked paprika. I read somewhere a while ago that there is no savoury dish that doesn't benefit from the addition of at least a smidgin of this lovely brick coloured stuff. It is deep and intense and is flavoured with sunshine and burnt oak. The paprika I love is from pimentón of Extremadura, “Pimentón de La Vera” where the peppers, to qualify for the coveted Denominación de Origen status first granted in 1993, must be dried slowly over an oak-burning fire for several weeks before being ground to produce the famous paprika. Amazing rich, postively decadent flavour results. It is undoubtedly the secret ingredient of Moorish cuisine and is the essence of chorizo.

With all this über winter we're having in London I seem to have an endless desire for pulses to bolster me against the cold. Something about thinking of their dense creaminess comforts me when menu planning, their cheapness certainly delights my budget planning. And they're available - if you believe the press hype supermarkets are being stripped bare by maurading hordes of panicked shoppers terrified at the prospect of being snowed in and, presumably, starving to death. Fortunately my local shops remain fairly unmauraded and have a good supply of lentils and things.

I had some spiced lamb mince in the freezer that I wanted to use and I fancied chickpeas to go with some little fried balls. Having got that far then I wanted them stuffed into hot pitta with cucumber raita as a garnish. Seriously good winter food. The man loved the idea because it could, with little imagination stretching, be considered a sandwich which will always tick the box for him. I had been thinking of making hummus but fancied a bit of a change so decided a roughly crushed warm salad would work better - more texture and somehow more interesting. Played about a bit and was rewarded with this utterly sublime dish - the first mouthful was just Wow! Feeling very pleased with myself.

Crushed Chickpea Salad

1 cup of dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in cold water

Bouquet garni of whatever you have - I used celery leaves, roasemary, thyme, bay and a chilli

3 tbspns olive oil

1 medium onion, finly sliced into threads not dice

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1/2 tspn hot smoked paprika

1 tbspn chopped flat leaf parsley

Salt and ground black pepper

Drain the soaked chickpeas, put them into a pan with the bouquet garni and cover with water. Bring to the boil, skim the scum, then simmer for 40-50 minutes till the chickpeas are tender.

Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a heavy pan and fry the onion over a very gentle heat till it is golden and caremalised. This takes about half an hour. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more till it too is fragrant.

Drain the cooked chickpeas, discarding the herbs and put the chickpeas into a bowl. Mash roughly with the remaining tablespoon of oil to a fairly rough consistency. Add the cooked onions, garlic and their cooking oil and the paprika and stir through the mashed peas. Taste and season then add the chopped parsley.

Serve warm. Or hot. Or cold.

I can see us eating a lot of this...

Creamed Winter Veg

Winter Veg in Cream

Along with the roast pork we had on Sunday I wanted winter veg - it being winter with the weather to match. I had a parsnip in the fridge and I bought carrots and a lovely fat swede. I also bought a tub of cream - it being winter with the weather to match and so a little indulgence is allowed.

The process could not be simpler. Peel and cube each of the vegetables into dice about one centimetre square - half an inch in old money. Cook each one separately in boiling salted water till just al dente. This doesn't need to create vast amounts of washing up - do them one after the other in the same pan, preferably one that is big enough to hold all the vegetables together. When all are just cooked and drained warm a small tub of cream with a sprig of thyme and a single clove of peeled garlic - in the same pan - till the cream comes to a simmer. Take off the heat and leave to steep for ten minutes.

Remove the garlic and thyme, add the vegetables to the cream and gently warm through.

Serve.

I think the reason I like this so much is that each vegetable retains its individual flavour and because they are cooked in water they are very light, almost delicate. The cream wraps around them rather than soaking in - just lovely. Interestingly they are really nice cold next day in lunchboxes.

Seriously recommend.

Total cost about £3 - good cream ain't cheap.

Padrón Peppers

Had lunch with my brother and the man a few weeks ago at the new Brindisa in Soho and the man, being an adventurous sort, ordered a plate of padrón peppers as one of the starter nibbles to go with a chilled glass of fino. I was expecting them to be roasted red piquillo but what turned up was a plate of little sweet chilli size green things, flecked with gold from a hot pan and dusted with flakes of salt. And they were amazing.

Horned shaped and about the size of a habanero pepper they are an heirloom pepper of Galicia in Spain and are very relished there as a tapas plate. Intending to go the tapas route for xmas eve supper I sought them out. Brindisa in Exmouth Market had sold out and - worse - were not expecting any till the New Year. I rushed back to the office and called Brindisa at Borough where a nice woman told me she had four packs left. She kindly put one of them aside for me and so I sent the man to collect them that very afternoon.

They were yummy - like a slightly sour sweet pepper, juicy and well matched with the salt. One in every ten peppers will be hot - not sure why - but it makes for a fun kind of culinary roulette. That first time in the restaurant we had nearly finished that shiny pile before I bit into one that was spectacularly hot. Wah! So far we've eaten about 20 of the xmas ones without incident. I'm thinking that means at least three of the last 10 are bound to be scorchers!

If you can find some do try this quick and easy treat - with a lightly chilled fino should you be so lucky.

Padrón Peppers

A dozen or so fresh padrón peppers

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt crystals

Wash the peppers and dry them on kitchen paper but otherwise leave them whole, stems attached.

In a heavy pan heat the oil over a medium heat - too hot and the flesh of the peppers will scorch. Add the peppers in a single layer and cook for a couple of minutes till very lightly blistered on one side then turn them over and do the other side.

Scoop them out onto a serving plate and sprinkle with salt.

Done!

Carrot and Parsnip Mousse(s)

Here is the last element of my Cuisine Cup dinner - individual puddings of carrot and parsnip, studded with spring onions. Made in little ramekins, they are beautiful - a bright orange splodge on the plate and a gentle mouthful of delicate sweetness when you try them. They are also really easy to make, and not particularly temperamental so your timings can be out by five or ten minutes and these will not spoil.

Carrot & Parsnip Mousse

3 large carrots

3 large parsnips

3 spring onions

1 egg

1 tablespoon butter + a bit extra for greasing the ramekins

Freshly ground black pepper

Peel and chop the carrots and parsnips into rings about a centimetre thick. They need to be cooked separately - so if time is more pressing than the amount of washing up you create, simmer them in two pans of salted water till they are tender. Fifteen minutes for the parsnips, twenty for the carrots. Or cook them one after the other in the same pan if you have started a little early.

Meanwhile clean and chop the spring onions - whites and the first centimetre or so of the green - into rings about a quarter of a centimetre thick. Grease the inside of four small ramekins with butter.

Drain the vegetables and put into one pan. Add the egg and the buttter and a generous amount of black pepper and process with a stick blender till you have a smooth purée. If you don't have a stick blender you can use a blender or food processor.

Stir the sliced spring onions into the vegetables.

Spoon the mix into the ramekins then put the ramekins into a baking pan. Half fill the pan with boiling water then put it into the oven on a middle shelf at Gas 4/180C for 20 minutes. If you are making them to go with the rack of lamb they cook quite happily on a lower shelf at Gas 6.

Cabbage & Coconut

There's a fabulous little chain of restaurants in Bangkok called Cabbages & Condoms which serves amazing food and then hands out condoms instead of mints at the end of the meal. The thinking is that cabbages are a common food in Northeast Thailand, in fact they are a staple part of the diet, they are grown in every village and everybody eats them. If condoms could be as common and used as often, then some of the population and health problems facing Thailand could be overcome. Seems like a great idea to me.

We ate there the night we arrived in Bangkok - I remember being relieved to find the room was coolly airconditioned. We were decidedly jet lagged and as yet unused to the grasping heat having come from London in November. Dinner was good, on the way out we bought some postcards decorated with condoms, then as we walked back to our hotel in the sweaty night air we had to share the pavement with an elephant. Also, presumably, on its way home. It is an indelible memory.

This recipe has nothing to do with Thailand or elephants. Or condoms. But as I typed the title at the top of this post I was suddenly transported to that night in that city of delight.

Last night I made a few Indian dishes with rice for dinner and enjoyed them all but liked this one the best. It is quick and easy and richly scented. I made little kashmiri lamb burgers and dry spiced beans as well. The whole meal worked really well but you could as well have this just with rice or naan and perhaps some crispy fritters. It comes from Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook.

Spicy Fried Cabbage

half a large cabbage

4 tbspns sunflower oil

1 large onion, finely sliced

2 or 3 fresh red chilies, seeded and finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1 tbspn fresh ginger, grated

1 tspn ground turmeric

1 tspn salt, or to taste

2 tbspns dessicated coconut

Shred the cabbage coarsely. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the onion and chillies until soft. Add garlic and ginger and fry, stirring, until golden. Add turmeric and cabbage, toss the cabbage thoroughly in the spicy oil, then cover and cook over a low heat for 10-15 minutes until the cabbage is just tender.

Sprinkle with salt and mix well, then add coconut and stir to mix thoroughly. If there is any liquid in the bottom of the pan, leave the lid off and stir over a medium heat till all the liquid is absorbed.

Serve as an accompaniment to rice and curries.

It would also be good with some cucumber raita.

Aubergine Purée

By Thursday I had a bunch of coriander unused in the fridge from the weekend and I simply did not want to throw it away. Hate waste. There was also an aubergine I'd bought with the idea of making a chinese salad dish and some sweet cherry tomatoes leftover from lunchboxes. So a Chinese type meal was still a possibility, but we'd had homestyle tofu Wednesday night and I'd been thinking fried rice for Thursday but didn't have enough left over. Had a hankering for dahl for a week or so now, and in the end that seemed like a good use for at least half the coriander. Most often with aubergine I make my favourite curry with chick peas but that seemed like a pulse too far.

Like I've done for the last twenty years or more I went to Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook for inspiration and found this recipe for an aubergine and tomato stew, thickened through long cooking. When it first went into the pan it tasted decidedly iffy, actually pretty unpleasant. Not a fan of undercooked aubergine. But I put the lid on and hoped for the best - and that was what I was rewarded with.

Aubergine Purée

1 large eggplant

300 tomatoes - large or small but must be ripe and sweet

2 tbspns ghee or oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 tbspn grated ginger

1/2 tspn ground turmeric

1/2 tspn chilli powder

2 tspns salt

1 tspn garam masala

Dice the aubergine and tomatoes to about the same size - 2 cm ish. It is not necessary to peel either. Heat ghee in a heavy based saucepan and gently fry onion and ginger until they are soft and stqrt to brown. Add turmeric, chilli powder, salt and garam masala and mix thoroughly. Add the diced vegetables, stir well and add about half a cup of hot water to moisten. Cover the pan, reduce heat to low, cook until the vegetables are soft, stirring occasionally to prevent the bits sticking and burning. After about 20 minutes half skew the lid to let the steam escape and continue stirring and cooking till the liquid evaporates and the purée is thick and dry enough to scoop up with naan bread. Serve hot or cold.

Dinner was a really well matched mix of cold steamed rice, warm coriander dahl and hot aubergine. Both the dahl and the aubergine made really generous quantities - enough for the man for lunch Friday and to have as a side dish in the evening. I have some celery, spring onions and cucumber to use up so it will be spicy corn fritters and cucumber raita with the last of the coriander. Looking forward to it.

Cornbread

Corn is cheaper than wheat. This is true now and has generally been true for a long time. It therefore follows that flour or meal made from corn makes a more economical bread than one using wheat flour. Native Americans were using cornmeal to make cornbread before European explorers arrived in the New World. There has been a continuous history of cornbread there ever since. I associate it particularly with the south but in fact it is common throughout the States, though in the north it may be a little sweeter and is more likely to be fried in the south. But wherever it is made it is a combination of milled corn, buttermilk and an egg with a vast range of possibilities of what else to add to make a new version.

I had cooked a ham for Sunday and really fancied thick slices of it with a fried egg on top of a chunk of cornbread with a pile of spiced dressed salad on the side Monday night. Once I'd made the bread and salad I could sit back while the man actually produced dinner - a process I love.

The basic recipe I used came from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's column in the Guardian with a few tweaks.

Cornbread

135g plain flour
125g cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
½-1 tsp fine sea salt (depending on how salty your cheese is)
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
A few grinds black pepper
150g tin corn kernels
100g strong cheddar, grated
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1/2 tspn chilli flakes
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tbsp runny honey (or caster sugar)
140ml buttermilk
140ml whole milk
30g unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/ gas mark 7. Put the butter into a 23cm x 23cm x 4cm baking tin.

In a bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, bicarb and pepper. Stir in the sweetcorn, cheddar, onions and chilli flakes.

Pour the eggs into a jug with the honey, buttermilk and milk and whisk together.

Put the pan with the butter into the oven for a few minutes till the butter is melted. Take the pan out and make sure the butter covers all the surfaces.

Pour the egg/milks mix into the dry ingredients, stirring, until everything is just combined. Don't overmix - a few lumps in the batter is fine. Pour the batter into the prepared pan straight away, and bake until the top is golden and the edges have slightly pulled away from the sides, about 20-25 minutes.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool for a few minutes before cutting into squares. Serve warm.

This makes a good sized pan of well flavoured crumbly bread that was equally enjoyable next day cold for a mid morning snack.

And the day after that I sliced the last of the tipan and split the cornbread and made ham sandwiches.

And they were very good indeed.

Slow Haricots

This one is easy peasy and lovely in lunchboxes. Slow cooking the beans with herbs and chilli imbues them with a delicate flavour all the way through. I don't mind using tinned beans so long as they are good quality and not sugared or brined. They wash off quite well and are great for a quick standby salad but they will never be as good as cooking from scratch. For the moment it takes to add water to dried beans to soak them overnight you definitely get rewarded with a much more interesting texture once they've been cooked.

Haricot beans have a lot going for them - they are cheap, nutritious - rich in iron, magnesium and zinc - and absorb the flavours that surround them as they cook. They start out as pencil-thin, green pods, hand-picked when just the right size. When dried, haricots become small, white, oval-shaped and can be found in traditional dishes from the Middle East to Italy, France, Greece, and North America, particulary as the main ingredient in Boston Baked Beans. In french, all beans are haricots. In english it's just the little dried white ones.

Slow Haricots

250g/9oz dried haricot beans

3-4 garlic cloves, unpeeled and crushed

Sprig of fresh sage and fresh rosemary

1 bay leaf

2 dried red chilli

Olive oil

Soak the beans overnight then drain and rinse. Put them into an ovenproof dish with all the other ingredients except the oil tucked around then add water to cover by about 1cm/1/2". Bring to the boil on top of the stove, skim any froth from the top then glug some olive oil over the dish. Put the dish into a very low oven - gas 1 - for about two hours till the beans are tender. Add salt towards the end - salt added earlier will toughen the beans irredemiably.

When the beans are done, drain and discard the aromatics. Put into a fresh bowl. Dress with 2 tablespoons of fresh olive oil and some fresh ripped basil while still hot, then serve at room temperature.

Eat lots and be full of beans!

Sesame Noodles as told to me by Vicki

I am a fan of most things sesame from the tiny tear shape flecks on the crust of a bun, through anything made with tahini to the sweet toasted version set in honey. I just love them. Reading a little about them I discover many things, most basically perhaps that they are the seeds from the sesame plant - not surprising I guess but when I started to think about writing this post I realised I had no idea where they came from.

More than any other ingredient in my kitchen they have been around since forever - they are probably the oldest known condiment. According to Assyrian legend the gods drank wine made from sesame seeds when they met to create the world - might explain the occasional flaw in the sytstem! Native to sub-saharan Africa, sesame were probably first domesticated in India and they are now popular the world over.

One reason perhaps for their ubiquity is that they have a fat content of about 50% to create a great sensation of pleasure whenever you eat them. This high fat content makes them a good source of oil which is exceptionally resistant to turning rancid. They are a very good source of manganese and copper, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorous, vitamin B1, zinc and dietary fiber.

In addition to these important nutrients, sesame seeds contain two unique substances: sesamin and sesamolin. Both of these substances belong to a group of special beneficial fibers called lignans, and have been shown to have a cholesterol-lowering effect in humans, and to prevent high blood pressure and increase vitamin E supplies in animals. Sesamin has also been found to protect the liver from oxidative damage. Good, no?

I shall continue to scoff them in all their forms, though not as a slimming aid!

The following recipe uses both whole toasted seeds and tahini in a melange that also encompasses chilli heat and the sweetness of honey and orange juice. It comes from my friend Vicki, who has been making these noodles for many years. A woman of great discernment and that is recommendation enough for me to try them. She suggests they are best with something robust - char grilled steaks perhaps. Because we had a weekend with hot sun just like a proper summer I made them to go with a cold dish of chicken with star anise - utterly fabulous.

SESAME NOODLES

8 oz/500g fresh egg noodles
2 tbspn toasted sesame seeds

3 tbspn chopped spring onions, white and green

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil, add the noodles and let them return to the boil before draining them in a colander. Rinse briefly to stop them sticking together.

Put the chopped spring onions and toasted seeds into a bowl large enough to hold the noodles.
Dressing3 tbspn Rice vinegar
1 tbspn Sesame Paste
2 tbspn Peanut Butter
1 tbspn Honey

2 tbspn Soy Sauce

Combine the above well in a good sized screw topped jar. Then add

1 tpspn Chilli Oil
1/3 cup sesame oil
1 tbspn olive oil

Shake it all about so they don’t separate then add

Juice of 1/2 to 1 orange depending on how juicy. You want a consistency that will slide over the noodles easily.

Add the noodles to the spring onions and sesame seeds and mix through the dressing while the noodles are still warm so they soak in the liquid.

Refrigerate till about half an hour before you want to eat - best served at room temperature.
We ate them with the chicken and crisp green veg with no additional dressing for one of the nicest meals I've made in a while. Seriously recommended.

Roasted Peppers with Preserved Duck Eggs

Some things are a leap. I had invited the lovely Marie to dinner on Saturday night and wanted to cook Chinese. More specifically Hunanese from the oft used Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop. I have hugely enjoyed owning and using this book. She tells great stories ahead of the recipes giving them both context and depth. But, more interestingly for me, she has given me the skills and confidence to cook a different sort of cuisine with ingredients I have never used or, in the case of tofu for example, never used successfully. This has given me a great deal of pleasure - I love amazing food.

So, having decided that this was the plan for Saturday night I sat down with the book mid-week and started making lists of what I'd like to have. Chinese being difficult to structure into courses as such combined with the need to finish a lot of dishes off simultaneously I decided to have cold starters. Eases the pressure. Rather than my usual method of marinating and roasting them, the very first recipe in the book is for bite sized spare ribs simmered with aromatics then coated in a reduced glaze. Which sounded pretty fab. A few pages on was a very simple dish of coriander salad chopping whole stalks, again into bite sized pieces with a chilli garlic dressing. A definite.

But what caught my eye and refused to leave my imagination was the photo next to the recipe for roasted peppers with preserved duck eggs. The description of the eggs was marvellous, the presentation was beautiful with the eggs sliced into 'petals' round a tangled heart of silky peppers. I could not resist. So off I went to chinatown and bought the eggs to make this dish and didn't think till I cracked the shells that perhaps it is a little challenging to a dinner guest to serve up slices of eggs where the 'whites' are like a rich brown beef jelly surrounding yolks that are marbled green. She's only been over once before! Luckily Marie is an adventurous type, not easily fazed and they went down very well. To my delight they tasted ultra eggy rather than like a sulphorous mess from the depths of hell, as my friend Vicki was expecting when she was offered them in Singapore as a treat. But she has 'issues' with eggs.

So I'd seriously recommend this as a dish to start a Chinese dinner. It's good to experiment sometimes outside what you already know. And with this you're bound to like the pepper salad.

Roasted Peppers with Preserved Duck Eggs

3 red peppers, or a mix

4 preserved duck eggs (1,000 year old eggs or century eggs)

2 tspn very finely chopped garlic

1 1/2 tbspn light soy sauce

2 tsp Chinkiang vinegar

salt

1/2 tspn sesame oil

Char the peppers over a flame or in the oven till blackened and wrinkled then put them into a bowl and seal with plastic wrap. Leave till the peppers are cool enough to handle, then take one pepper at a time, reserving any juices in the bowl. Rub off the skin - it should come off with little encouragement. Slice open the pepper, discard the stem and seeds and then cut it into 1cm/ 1/2inch strips. Pile these into the center of a serving plate, then repeat with the remaining peppers.

Peel the preserved duck eggs, rinse well and then cut each into 6 segments. Arrange these round the peppers like the petals of a flower.

Combine the garlic with any juices from the peppers, and then stir in the soy sauce, vinegar and salt to taste. Add the sesame oil and then pour over the peppers and eggs. Use chopsticks to mix the sauce into the peppers before eating.

Confound your expectations.

Cauliflower Cheese

I love cauliflower cheese but I haven't made it for years. My man told me once, early on in the time I have known him, that he didn't eat it so it simply dropped from my repertoire. It's not really a dish to make for one. On Saturday at Borough I bought a cauliflower with the idea of roasting it with chilli and spices to go with tandoori chicken.

The Ginger Pig have introduced a new chicken - quite big birds from a traditional French variety - and I bought one to try. Because it is new I felt that I wanted to cook it more simply than tandoori as a means of determining its flavour and texture more accurately. Stuffed with barley and herbs and roasted seemed best. And then I really wanted cauliflower cheese because to me it is one of the all time perfect accompaniments to roast chicken. Something about the slight nuttiness of the vegetable matches the luxury of cheese sauce. As a pairing with roast chicken it is close to perfect. Having spent £14 just for the bird I wanted to create a magnificent spread to surround it. So I asked the man if he was quite certain he detested cauliflower cheese. He thought for a moment then declared he'd probably like it if I made it but he loathed the stuff he was served up at school. Result.

Cauliflowers are a really attractive vegetable with their curly knitted curds poking creamily from the clasp of green leaves. They are waning in popularity which is a shame - they make great soups and curries as well as give great texture raw in salads and with dips. This recipe is quick and easy to make and a joy to eat. Especially with roast chicken.

Cauliflower Cheese

1 cauliflower, with tight creamy curls

2 tbspn butter

1 tbspn plain flour

500 -750 ml milk, whole is best but semi skimmed is also successful - I've been known to use cream but mostly in winter

150g well flavoured cheddar, grated

1/2 tspn ground cummin

1/2 tspn freshly grated nutmeg

Salt and pepper

1tbspn fresh breadcrumbs

Cut the cauliflower into evenly sized florets and cook in salted water till just tender - about 7 minutes. Drain and set aside.

For the cheese sauce, melt the butter over a gentle heat in heavy based pan and add the flour. Mix the flour smoothly with the melted butter and cook till it is a pale biscuity colour - you don't want the flour to be raw. Gradually add the milk, stirring to incorporate it with the roux. Keep adding more milk till you reach a slightly runny consistency then increase the heat and add the cheese. Stir briskly till it melts and the sauce thickens. Add the ground spices, check and add salt and pepper as needed.

Put the cauliflower into a casserole dish, pour over the cheese sauce, then sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top and dot with a little butter. Cook in a moderate oven for about 20 minutes. Serve hot.

The man is now a fan.