Easter Weekend

We're on the last day of the blissful 4 day Easter bank holiday weekend. I love this weekend. It's spring, so there are lots of flowers blossoming and a sense of promise and excitement, but at the same time there's no real pressure to do anything.

saffron

My cooking for the weekend made respectful nods to a variety of traditions without being absolutely traditional.

Saffron, sour cherry and pistachio buns

Saffron crocuses are an autumn crocus, but at the same time crocuses are such a sign of spring that it felt right and proper to flavour some sweet buns with saffron. The dough was studded with sour cherries, then rolled around a pistachio and cinnamon filling and finished after baking with a hot, tangy lemon glaze. They didn't feel a million miles from a hot cross bun, but also reminiscent of baklava. Just the thing for the luxury of lingering over coffee on a long weekend.

I also made a savoury pie. Sort of nodding to some of the Mediterranean ones. This was filled with ricotta, feta, watercress, chard and wild garlic, with eggs cracked on top of the filling to bake under the crust. I should have blind-baked the base - the bottom was a bit soggy - but the flavours were excellent.

On Saturday we went for a walk from Latimer through the Chess Valley. About half way along there is a watercress farm (the last working watercress farm in the Chilterns), with a farm stall and honesty box. The farmer had just brought out a fresh batch of watercress so we grabbed a bag.

Watercress farm

That watercress formed the base of our salad on Saturday night (with a beautiful Galician bone-in sirloin steak). And left enough for a second salad on Sunday - with radishes and British asparagus (asparagus season, hurrah!). Which was all we needed to accompany a boned leg of suckling pig, rolled around a wild garlic and fennel paste, and barbecued for 6 hours until the meat was jelly-soft and the skin crisp as glass. The leftover pork will form our lunch in an hour or so, but I haven't quite decided how. There's plenty of time to think.

Curtis Stone's asparagus & taleggio omelette

 This week I Heart Cooking Clubs are celebrating "the most important meal of the day" with Curtis Stone recipes. I have to admit that at the moment for me breakfast is most likely to be two very large cups of coffee and possibly a banana, but I do love a really extravagant breakfast or brunch.

On the weekend we generally have two meals a day - a substantial, late breakfast and then an evening meal - and pretty much Paul's favourite thing for the substantial late breakfast is a very cheesy omelette. Curtis Stone's Lazy Asparagus Omelette is just the thing really!

I've written in the past about my favourite frying pan, and how it makes the best omelettes in the world. It really does.

Paul doesn't like a baveuse omelette, so this technique of putting the pan under the grill to finish, which leaves you with something half way between a French omelette and a frittata, is the one I tend to use anyway. My delicious new season British asparagus were really skinny, so  I just sauteed them raw in the butter before adding the eggs. I also reduced the number of eggs, because 12 is too big for that pan and way too much food, really.

The taleggio melted into delicious runny pools, the eggs were just set, and the asparagus brought its wonderful fresh flavour to the party. It's one of those really simple dishes where everything has to be just right, and the combination of butter, eggs, asparagus and cheese was just perfect.

Baked eggs with greens & dukkah

I forgot that it was Potluck Week at I Heart Cooking Clubs, but as it happens our tea last night was a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi, who was featured on IHCC in 2013. Well, I say it is one of his recipes but I did go a bit off-piste.

It started life as his braised eggs with leeks & za'atar. But as I looked at the leeks dwindling in the pan as they sauteed, I realised I needed to add more veg. I bunged in some baby courgettes and looked again at the recipe. With the liquid the courgettes was giving off, I couldn't see any reason in the world to boil it all in vegetable stock, so I left that out. I divided the vegetables between two ovenproof dishes, added a couple of eggs to each, crumbled over some feta and discovered that I had dukkah in the cupboard, not za'atar. So a tiny drizzle of oil over the yolks, a sprinkle of dukkah and into a hot oven until the eggs were set and the feta golden brown.

We had it with sourdough toast, rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with a little olive oil. Delicious, and very comforting.

Three ways with cockerel

Last Easter we bought a cockerel for the first time - we had it roasted and did a couple of things with the leftovers and it was delicious. Unfortunately they only seem to be available at Christmas and Easter, so we had a long wait for another.

We had other plans for our big Christmas meal, and a 4kg chook isn't really the most practical thing for a family of two, so I split it into a crown, leg and thigh joints and wings, freezing the pieces separately, along with a bag containing the giblets, back and wingtips, which will eventually become stock.

The first meal we had from it was Simon Hopkinson's recipe for coq au vin. Which was, of course, as a Simon Hopkinson recipe much more involved than you would think a chicken stew needs to be, but the fiddle pays off. It was definitely the nicest coq au vin I've ever made.

A couple of days after that, we had the crown, simply roasted. It was big enough that we only ate one of the breasts (with pigs in blankets, because one of Paul's colleagues was pitying him that he hadn't had any over the Christmas period).

The leftover coq au vin and roast breast meat became a pretty amazing chicken pie, with a bit of proscuitto added for extra oomph.

I kept aside some of the coq au vin gravy to make a dish Hopkinson recommends, of poached eggs in the gravy. Which was nice but not that special and extremely unphotogenic. So let's just finish with a slice of pie.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

To all Foodycat readers and friends, 

I wish you a very merry Christmas. 

It's the two of us this year, and we are going to be doing a celebratory but non-traditional roast later today. We've decided to keep things pretty simple - I'm not even doing our usual spread of nibbly things, although we do have some blinis and caviar and whatnot.

Paul requested a Christmas cake, for nibbling with coffee, so I made my Caribbean-ish black cake (for the first time since I published the recipe, actually) using some of my boozy bottled cherries instead of bought canned ones. I only made a half quantity, which ended up as a 1lb loaf and a mini loaf. Plenty to keep us going! It's rich and gooey and incredibly boozy (the cherries have been in rum for over a year, the rest of the fruit soaked for a month).

And earlier this week I decided I wanted the sort of thing that usually gets made from Christmas leftovers, but as we aren't having a traditional meal I had to pre-empt and cook the bits from scratch. I boiled potatoes, halved Brussels sprouts and flower sprouts (cooked them separately but in the same pan without washing it out between times because there is no sense in making extra work).

Then I fried a sliced onion, several cloves of garlic and quite a lot of bacon in a shallow Le Creuset pan, and mixed those bits in with the cooked and drained vegetables along with a crumbled dried chilli. I heated a slosh of oil back in the Le Creuset (again, I didn't wash it out between times - it just had some oniony bacony juices in it and they weren't going to hurt us).

I piled everything back in the pan, pushing it all down well, and waited until I could hear the bits sizzling on the bottom of the pan, then sprinkled over a handful of cubed cheddar cheese and stuck it all in a hot oven. 15 minutes later it was browned and delicious, and calling to be topped with a fried egg.

My favourite: frying pan

Seen here awaiting washing up from breakfast omelettes

It's seen better days, and that sharp chunk broken from the handle makes it awkward to hold, but I love this frying pan. I've had it for 20+ years as far as I can remember and it's been washed so often the maker's name on the bottom is hardly legible any more. It makes the best fried eggs and omelettes in the world. They get beautifully golden and never stick. It's just perfect.

Vegetarian curries for meat-free week

... not that we have been having a meat-free week. Paul's happy with the occasional meat-free dinner, but a whole week would be pushing the friendship.

But since we've been eating so many curries recently, and India has produced some of the best meat-free dishes in the world, I thought I should make a vegetarian curry meal. Mushroom tikka masala, egg pepper fry, some naan flavoured with kalonji and some cucumber raita. All delicious.

A heavenly scented kedgeree for IHCC

We're eating a lot of Indian food at the moment. The complex fragrances and spicing are a bit addictive, and it's such a rich cuisine that as soon as I get a bit of a handle on one dish, I find out about six more that I want to try. When I saw that the theme for this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs was Heaven Scent: Diana Henry dishes that are aromatic and heavenly smelling, I had to go with something with curry spices.

This kedgeree is a fancier variation on the Anglo-Indian classic, with a crisp fried onion garnish and smoked salmon and cream for a bit of luxury and richness. I didn't have any smoked salmon or cream, but I did have a tub of 50/50 crab meat (half white meat and half brown) so I stirred that in right at the end to do the same job of adding richness. We had it for dinner, not brunch, but I think it would be good at any time of the day.

Lucia's Breakfast - vegetarian with cocktails

I'd heard people talk about the Mapp and Lucia books with the sort of veneration offered to Nancy Mitford's books, or Cold Comfort Farm, but without any real idea of what they were about. Then I saw that the BBC had done a dramatisation of them featuring Duckface and Queenie. If two such talented actors were involved, the source material had to be worth a look.

The books are interesting. Definitely readable and enjoyable, but the characters are all so nasty and petty. In Lucia in London, a group of people who are entertained by Lucia's social-climbing antics forms, calling itself the Luciaphils. I got the impression that E.F Benson was very much a Luciaphil, seeing right through and being amused by his own creation.

Anyway, as part of her climbing, Lucia befriends Mrs Allingsby "tall, weird and intense, dressed rather like a bird-of-paradise that had been out in a high gale, but very well connected". Mrs Allingsby invites her to meet a painter, Sigismund: "Breakfast about half past twelve. Vegetarian with cocktails". Benson is using the invitation to mock Mrs Allingsby's Bohemian affectations, but what could be nicer than breakfast about half past twelve? Especially with cocktails.

So, I made broccoli sformati and a jug of bloody mary. Lucia, when not in a position to be challenged, claims to speak Italian, but I think she may have referred to my sformato as a souffle.

Duck hash

I read this post of Danny's, on the duck hash he'd had at Clerkenwell Kitchen, and it struck me as an astonishingly good idea.

I think, in its most perfect form, it would have consisted mostly of leftovers. And indeed, I am hoping to have some leftover goose after Christmas to make it again. But for this one, I roasted a couple of duck breasts.

Then the rest was quick and easy. I sauteed onion and garlic in the fat that had rendered out of the duck breasts while they roasted. I added shredded spring greens, the chopped duck, and some par-boiled potatoes. I seasoned with shreds of spiced pickled oranges, and a good splash of Worcestershire sauce, and a lot of black pepper. I pressed down on it with a spatula to encourage it to meld together and form a bit of a crust on the bottom. And then, because this sort of dish is always better with an egg, I topped each portion with a fried egg and some sliced spring onions.

Le Grand Aioli for I heart cooking clubs

This week's I Heart Cooking Clubs theme is particularly dear to my heart - "Sweet cloves and liquid gold"; the heaven of garlic and olive oil. We eat a lot of garlic. It is extremely unusual for us to cook a meal without garlic featuring and we are both mystified by religions that limit the eating of garlic.

Aioli - egg yolks, garlic and good olive oil. I haven't tweaked the colour. 

I immediately knew what I wanted to make. Aioli. What could be a more perfect expression of the theme? AND it is noteworthy because about 10 years ago I made an aioli which we declared inedibly garlicky - the only time that has ever been said in our house.

Fat cod fillets curing in salt

In Salt Sugar Smoke, Diana Henry gives a recipe for the traditional Provençal Grand Aioli to accompany her home-salted cod. Le Grand Aioli is a funny dish, a simple collation of salt cod, eggs and steamed vegetables lifted from extreme austerity by lavish quantities of the garlicky sauce.

Because I was only making it for two people, I reduced the number and variety of vegetables, using just cauliflower and tenderstem broccoli with the potatoes and fish. I also added some quail eggs for something a little more luxurious. Unfortunately I forgot to take the fish out of the salt and put it to soak far enough in advance, so it was a bit too salty, but the luscious garlicky-but-not-too-garlicky mayonnaise was divine with the vegetables and quail eggs.

Oddly, though, the court bouillon I poached the fish in was not overly salty, so I strained it and used it the following day to cook lamb shanks in, which worked extremely well. And the rest of the aioli itself made a wonderful lunch, smeared thickly on toasted rye sourdough and served with broccoli, simply dressed with balsamic vinegar and capers.

Stax Diner brunch

Another dance rehearsal, another excuse for a bite to eat in central London. This time we thought a quick brunchy bite was in order (as theoretically I was on my way to a workshop, however a combination of lateness and eggs made me miss it).

My initial thought had been The Diner - I haven't heard much about it but I know they do all-day breakfast - but the queue out the door was off-putting. Getting out of the very crowded main bit of Carnaby Street seemed desirable, so we ducked into Kingly Court and up to Stax Diner.

Of course, I'd been to Stax during the soft launch, but I'd either forgotten or never knew that they have a weekend brunch menu.

I ordered poached eggs with hollandaise, and a side of the house cured beef bacon. Sharon had Half and Half - a short stack of buttermilk pancakes and a poached egg with hollandaise. As she realised after she'd ordered that she was going to Milli's afternoon tea supper club later on, that was possibly a bigger meal than she really wanted...

My eggs were lovely - beautifully runny yolks and no stinting on the well-seasoned hollandaise. The muffin was a bit on the heavy and chewy side so the lavish application of the sauce was very welcome. There were both the classic and jalapeno Tabasco sauces on the table, too, which was a nice touch. The beef bacon was sweet, sticky and beefy, but not quite as crisp as I like bacon to be. Didn't stop me from eating it all though!

The time I absolutely needed to leave Oxford Circus station in order to get to the workshop on time came and went as I finished my orange juice. A queue was forming outside Stax, so we paid up (£12ish each) and vacated the table.

Sharon headed off to her afternoon tea; I wandered about Soho before meeting a friend at the National Portrait Gallery. It's not often that I feel like I've really made the most of London, so this was a really successful day out.

Meat Free Monday: eggs baked with cream and asparagus

This simple but rich and gorgeous dish is just a take on oeufs en cocotte, born out of the need to use up a bit of double cream and the existence of British autumn asparagus.

The asparagus spears were very skinny, so I washed them, cut them into 1" pieces and microwaved them with a small nut of butter and the water still clinging to them for a minute. Then I broke on two eggs and the cream - a bit more cream than I'd thought was left, actually, about 1/4 cup. Then I baked it until the eggs looked set. By which time, of course, they were a bit overdone. But delicious.

A mezze platter

After the bread at Ember Yard almost left me weeping at its beauty, Paul challenged me to up my game with mine. But actually, I really like my normal flatbread, so my big lesson from that meal was a reminder of how much I love a meal of snacky nibbly things. Yum cha, tapas, meze or zakuski, I just love a spread of highly-flavoured bites.

Of course, the style of flatbreads I like to make do lend themselves to being dunked in Mediterranean/Middle Eastern-style dips, so my platter drifted sort of Greece-wards and around North Africa. The breads, sprinkled with dukkah. Some home made taramasalata (with no added food colouring, so it was a delicate coral pink). Some Greek-style yoghurt, flavoured with garlic, parsley and dill. Figs, cherry tomatoes and some spicy little lamb merguez sausages. A thick omelette of courgettes, feta and herbs.

Choosing something thematically appropriate to drink with it was a bit of a challenge. We did discover that Marks & Spencer are stocking some Greek wines and had quite a pleasant white, the name of which I failed to write down. What I wanted, though, was something a bit more fragrant and evocative. While not being in any way ouzo. I settled on rose lemonade, spiked with Hendricks gin. Hendricks has rose among its botanicals, so it works well. Iced mint tea would be good too, if you didn't want booze.

One of the things I like the most about this way of eating, is that the leftovers are a pleasure to find in the fridge (although actually, the taramasalata is now an exercise in whether it freezes - it was a very large quantity). You can add more bits to feed more people - some olives, some dolmades or other stuffed vegetables, maybe some lamb kebabs or pickles. Flexible and lovely.

Courgette, Herb and Feta Omelette (serves... many?)

1tbs pinenuts
1tbs butter
1 shallot, finely sliced
2 large courgettes, coarsely grated, excess moisture squeezed out
5 eggs
handful parsley, finely chopped
handful dill, finely chopped
bundle of chives, finely snipped
black pepper
nutmeg
200g feta

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Toast the pinenuts and reserve.

Melt the butter in a flame-proof shallow casserole (or skillet with oven-proof handle) and gently soften the shallot and courgettes in it.

Beat the eggs lightly with a fork, stir in the herbs and season with black pepper and nutmeg. While the pan is still on the heat, pour the eggs gently over the courgettes. Crumble the feta on top and sprinkle over the reserved pinenuts.

Place the dish in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until set, puffy and golden. Serve just-warm or at room temperature, cut into wedges.

Summer truffles

30g truffle

A few weeks back, Paul decided that he wanted a truffle. July is not the best time to have that sort of a craving, since the prized black and white truffles are out of season, but we were able to get a cheaper, fresh summer truffle to play with.

Thinly sliced, ready to be put on pizza

 This type of truffle has a slightly crisp texture and just a subtle waft of truffle aroma - a promise of how much better these dishes would be with autumn truffles.

We made pizzas, with good smoked speck, buffalo mozzarella and mushrooms. We put a couple of slices of the truffle under the cheese, and then some more on top just a minute before they came out of the Weber. The slices on top of the cheese had lost most of their aroma, but the slices underneath had imparted some of their earthiness to the mozzarella.

We also made Fonduta Piemontese - a sort of Italian answer to fondue. Cubes of taleggio are soaked in milk until most of it is absorbed, then it is melted in a double boiler with eggs until it is all thick and creamy. I cooked it all a little more than I think is authentic because of Paul's aversion to snotty eggs. Covered with truffle shavings and scooped up on toast it was divinely rich and luxurious - but definitely better kept for a day when the weather is cold and exercise has been taken.

Best ever breakfast sandwich

It occurred to me the other weekend, as I hoovered down the best breakfast sandwich in the world, that I have been making these things for three years, and only once blogged about it, in passing. I don't think there is anything else I make this regularly, with so little variation, and that is because this is simple perfection.

This sandwich is a vegan's nightmare, but strangely (for me) contains no bacon. Seriously, this is sheer perfection that needs no pork products.

The combination of toasted brioche, chilli relish, cheese and a fried egg forms a mystical union far greater than the sum of its parts. Creamy, sweet, salty, sharp, hot and pungent in perfect balance. It's so good that it is genuinely worth making the chilli relish while you have your first cup of coffee so that you can have your sandwich with the second cup.

It's British Sandwich Week (I didn't know there was such a thing, and it is more aimed at the commercial seller of sandwiches), but this is a year-round delight.
And it's another one for Deb's Souper (Soups, salads and sammies) Sunday.

Storing egg yolks - a handy hint

Egg yolk in water

Here's one for the "you learn something new every day" file - at least, I hope I am not the last person to find this out. You can store egg yolks for a couple of days in a bit of water. Did you know that?

I was making something that needed an egg white but I didn't have a reason to use up the yolk. Separated egg whites keep quite well in the fridge but the yolks dry out and go rubbery. I googled, and came across this post, which had the half-hearted suggestion "you can probably keep the yolks whole in the water if you are careful". Well, I can be careful.

I separated my egg, being careful not to break the yolk, and slipped it gently into a ramekin half full of cold water. I covered it in cling film and popped it in the fridge. A couple of days later I was having an omelette for lunch so I gently fished the yolk out of the water to add to the other beaten eggs. It was in absolutely perfect condition - not at all dried out. I have tried this a second time, using milk instead of water because I was going to be putting the yolk in a custard, and again it worked brilliantly.

So there you go - pretty nifty, huh?

Two days later

Yorkshire pudding

I'm not posting about pancakes today. I know - bad blogger! We did have pancakes over the weekend, baked with a delicious savoury four cheese and spinach filling. Unfortunately they didn't look appetising in the dish, and when served looked slightly pre-digested.

But, in the spirit of getting behind the egg-and-milk-using-up nature of Shrove Tuesday, I thought I'd show you the progress I am making with Yorkshire puddings. This is to Felicity Cloake's recipe, and is definitely an improvement on the last time I made them! I think the dripping could have been a little hotter before I started. It did sizzle when the batter hit it, but only a little bit.

There is more work to be done! But these were not bad at all.