Pork Scratchings

I haven't been to Wahaca in ages. My usual partner in crime has moved on to bigger and better things, so I no longer have someone at work who appreciates the finer things in life. Like pork scratchings.

It takes a strong woman to say "The best bar snack in the known universe is a (sometimes hairy) piece of fried pig skin" but that is what I am here to do. And the scratchings at Wahaca are the best you will find in a wide area.

Made in-house apparently, much lighter and fluffier than your average scratching, as well as being 3 times the size. While they are lacking the occasional bits of pig flesh clinging to the underside that we expect and love, they are dusted with fennel-salt and come with some really excellent guacamole as a dip. The perfect accompaniment to a Wahaca Mule (tequila, lime & ginger ale).

The Hairy Bar Snack boys may not approve. These scratchings do not have the intense, salty, MSG porkiness of a traditional scratching. But they are mighty fine. I wish the HBS t-shirts came in girl sizes.

Spatchcocked guinea fowl

So - you take a guineafowl. Which for some reason has a reputation for being dry and tough: the farmed stuff is tender, succulent and really quite fatty. You figure that it will kick arse on the BBQ.

You look at Norm Shoen's blog and say "Spatchcock seems a good idea".

Then you google and find a couple of youtube clips showing burly men going snip, snip, rip, whack and there you have a spatchcock. So how hard can it be?
The answer is really quite hard. I think I must have little girly hands. Or blunt shears. Because it took a lot of swearing to get the spine and breast bone out of my guineafowl!

But once it was done, rubbed liberally with salt and pepper and slowly roasted in the Weber, we were rewarded with juicy, delicious meat (that you could probably serve to a wimp who says they don't like game) and deeply golden (and in some cases charcoal black) crisp skin. Leftover veg from Friday night made this a pretty low-effort Sunday supper (given that I spatchcocked the bird a week ago and it's been in the freezer since so I'd almost forgotten the pain).

I bet if I get some new shears I'll be able to smack out a spatchcock in seconds the next time. And there will be a next time...

Royal Foodie Joust - Sesame Scallops

Peter from Kalofagas won last month's Royal Foodie Joust with a magnificent Apricot and Pistachio Cake, and for this month nominated seafood, sesame and coriander as his challenge ingredients.

That said "Thai" to me, so I worked on a vaguely Thai-inspired warm salad. I wanted lots of fresh flavours and contrasting textures to show the ingredients to their full advantage. And it worked out pretty well.

So I am proud to present as my entry to this month's Foodie Joust:

Sesame scallops, 3-pea salad, coriander chilli dressing
For the Scallops
300g large scallops, roe-off
1 eggwhite, lightly beaten
sesame seeds
oil for frying

For the salad
1 bag of pea shoots
1 bag of mangetout (topped and tailed)
1 bag of sugar snap peas (topped and tailed)
1/2 package of coriander leaves (stalks removed and reserved)

For the dressing
Reserved coriander stalks
1/2 tsp chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp sugar
1 small red chilli
1 tbs light soy sauce
2 tbs cold water
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
4-5 drops toasted sesame oil

Dip half of the scallops into the eggwhite, press into the sesame seeds and chill for half an hour (I decided not to do all the scallops because I didn't want the sesame flavour to be too dominant).

Blend the dressing ingredients - not too thoroughly, some chunky bits are nice.

Blanch the sugar snaps and mange tout and combine with the pea shoots and coriander leaves.

Sear the scallops in a little oil until nicely coloured, turning once.

Toss the salad with half the dressing, divide into 2 big bowls, top with the scallops and drizzle with the remaining dressing.

Serves 2 as a substantial dinner.

Roast venison

We had some friends over for dinner on Friday. A problem that I have noticed in our friendship group is that pretty much all the couples come with one fussy eater. So it takes some serious consideration as to what will suit. This pair are pretty easy, all things considered. She eats most things (prefers her meat well-done), but he only eats a limited number of vegetables - and not really the ones we mostly eat.

At the market the other week I'd bought a beautiful boned haunch of roe venison. In the hope that it would be bbq weather, I took inspiration from Heather and did a dry rub for the meat. Mine was toasted cumin and coriander (a nod to the South African origins of 3 of the people at my table), juniper, salt, white pepper and some brown sugar. Unfortunately the weather didn't play along, so it had to be roasted.

I did a sort of potatoes dauphinoise thing - layers of potato and celeriac, with a persillade and some grated cheese between the layers, covered with a mixture of milk and cream and baked really slowly for almost 2 hours. And peas and spinach braised with spring onions and white wine.

Very happy with how that all went. The meat was tender and juicy and very well-flavoured, the veg were the perfect thing.

Pudding presented a bit more of a challenge. This couple think that dessert begins and ends with chocolate. I like fruit. And there is so much fantastic summer fruit about at the moment so I decided to pervert a classic and do a chocolate cherry clafoutis. This one looked gorgeous but as soon as I saw "make two batters" I ditched that idea and just made a normal clafoutis batter, substituting some good cocoa for a bit of the flour, and breaking a bar of 85% cocoa chocolate over the cherries, so it melted into little puddles in the batter. It was OK, but not a patch on the original for my palate.

Stirfried seafood with garlic and green peppercorns

At the market the other week I got some gorgeous fresh green peppercorns. Which went straight into the freezer until I could figure out what to do with them. A jungle curry is on the agenda, but I haven't had access to most of the ingredients (krachai and galangal are not regular lines at Waitrose) so that will have to wait. In the meantime, I followed a recipe from Vatch's Thai Street Food (leaving out the crab claws and using a bag of thawed fruits de mer mix) and enjoyed a delicious dinner of seafood with garlic and green peppercorns.

Truffled chicken pie

Dismal weather today. Really, really cruddy. Our overflow waterbutt went from being 1/2 full on Friday to totally full this evening. It was grey and I actually had to hunt out a woolly cardigan.

So the plan to bbq some German sausages fell by the wayside. So did the warm salad and the stirfried seafood that had crossed my mind. In weather like this if it isn't a soup it's a stew and if it isn't a stew it is a savoury pie. It is the only way.

I had one of Jude's Thighs tucked away in the freezer and I thought the remnant of jellied, savoury juices and tender, flavourful meat were a good beginning on a chicken pie. In consultation with the other person eating the pie, it was decided on double crust, puff pastry, leeks and mushrooms. It was also decided that a bit of sliced white truffle would not be a flavour too far and would make it worthy of the wine that we wanted to drink.

Plans came a little unstuck when we discovered that the packet of pastry we bought was insufficient for a double crust... So I present to you:

Truffled chicken lattice pie

Sweat 2 finely chopped washed leeks in butter very very slowly with 6 whole cloves of garlic. Add a handful of mushrooms, sliced, and sweat further. When all the liquid has disappeared, deglaze with a slosh of dry sherry and allow to cool.

In a bowl combine the shredded meat and skin from a leftover cooked chicken thigh, the darkly jellied juices, a small tub of reduced-fat creme fraiche, a teaspoon of dijon mustard, a packet of smoked bacon lardons, half a jar of sliced truffles, 3/4 of a beaten egg and 6 chicken thigh fillets (raw), chopped. Add the cooled leeks and mushrooms and season well with pepper (doesn't need salt).

Pack into a pie dish lined with puff pastry and top with strips of pastry in a lattice. Glaze with the remaining 1/4 beaten egg (this is why you read a recipe the whole way through before you start cooking, people) and bake at 180C for about 45-50 minutes until the pastry is well browned and the filling is cooked through. Give it another 10 minutes if you are super-paranoid about the hint of pink on chicken.

Serves 4 if you do side veg, or 2 with a very tasty lunch for a lucky person...

Very truffley, but the other flavours aren't completely lost. This is a big, butch savoury pie and this is no time to muck around with a delicate little white wine - the 1999 Pauillac bordeaux was really good with it.

Samphire and seafood pasta

The big question, after a trip to the markets, is "What do I do with this?" The most perishable of the things I bought yesterday was this samphire, so it had to feature in tonight's meal. And because it was freaking expensive it deserved a bit of TLC.

I googled. It turned up ideas from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and from Rick Stein. Now, both of these men know what they are doing in the kitchen, so I could have very easily picked one of those recipes and relaxed and let them take care of things. But you know, that really isn't my way. So I took Hugh's pasta and Rick's salad and combined them into an extremely speedy dish of my own.

Samphire & Seafood Pasta

Put the water on for the pasta and wash a big double handful of samphire. Slowly soften 2 fat cloves of garlic in butter in a large saute pan. Add prawns. When they begin to turn pink, add your fresh linguine to the pasta pot, then add the leftover crab ravioli filling (that you've taken out of the freezer and thawed) to the prawns and add the juice of half a lemon. A minute before the pasta is ready, add the samphire to the pasta pot. Cook for that last minute, drain and add to the prawn and crab with the juice of another half lemon and the finely grated zest of the lemon. Divide between 2 big bowls and enjoy. Needs some pepper but certainly no salt.

I was really happy with how this turned out. The samphire was crunchy and fresh and salty, the prawns plump, the crab sweet and the lemon the perfect counterpoint. Pasta with tuna, lemon zest, parsley and capers was the first dish I ever cooked for Paul and although the ingredients in tonight's meal were much posher, the bright flavours and comforting pasta were the same. Ah memories. I can't remember what we drank with that tuna pasta way back then, but I am sure tonight's Dr Loosen riesling was better.