Easter 2018

Happy Easter, to those who celebrate!

Paul's had a break between contracts, so the Easter weekend this year is the conclusion to a pretty restful few weeks. We had a chance to go to see friends, to see a movie, to get away for a few days to the Lake District, to sleep in and do some DIY. Nice.

And on Saturday we had friends over to lunch. Paul's volunteered us to cook at an event in the summer, and we're tentatively planning to do barbecued shoulder of lamb, so we thought this would be a good excuse to do a test run. Unfortunately the weather didn't play along at all. So I slathered the shoulder of lamb with wild garlic salsa verde, poured in some vegetable stock and wrapped it tightly in foil before baking it at 100C overnight. After about 13 hours I opened the foil and put it back in the oven to get a little colour before shredding it with a couple of forks, mixing it through the copious juices.

With it we had one of my new favourite things - the spinach and preserved lemon freekeh from On the Side, although I used a bunch of wild garlic leaves instead of cloves of garlic to add a seasonal twist. And to really amp up the fresh, herbal quality of the meal I also served Diana Henry's wonderful tomato and pomegranate salad with feta and soft herbs.

It was one of the best meals I have cooked in ages. And all doable ahead which made it very low effort. Low effort is definitely what you want for a low-key weekend.

Clearing the freezer and pastures new

It has a roof now

There were definitely times when I wondered if it would ever happen, but we've finally, after 11 years of marriage and several ups and downs, bought a house. We've bought off the plan in a new development in a very pretty town a bit north of London, and in the next month to six weeks we will be moving.

I bloody hate moving.

We've lived in this house for 9 years, which is about as long as I have lived anywhere, and have accumulated all the possessions that you would imagine a pair of packrats would accumulate over that time.  So the process of sorting through our stuff and figuring out what actually needs to come with us is underway. Part of that process is, of course, clearing out the freezer and pantry.

Flapjacks, waiting for another layer of oat mixture

My cooking is likely to become increasingly eccentric over the next few weeks as I try to run down stocks of things. But this weekend it is relatively sensible. Barbecued pork ribs (with a glaze incorporating a couple of sad apples and the remnants of a jar of jelly), flapjacks (reducing stock of various baking bits) and soup (using up all the odds and ends of poultry wings and giblets in the freezer).

Flapjacks ready to eat

My flapjacks are based on this recipe from Sue from Mainly Baking. I kept the amount of butter, sugar and golden syrup the same but used 130g unsweetened dried sour cherries, 200g oats and 40g desiccated coconut. I pressed half the mixture into the tin, scattered with a few chunks of leftover dark chocolate Easter egg and then added the rest of the mixture. Very successful.

We've tried barbecuing pork ribs before, but I think these are the most successful so far. I made up a rub of salt, pepper, fennel seeds and smoked paprika and let them sit in that for a couple of hours, then we slowly smoked them for 3 hours before adding the apple puree mixture.

While they cooked for another couple of hours the apple dried down to a thick, rich glaze without burning. The racks unfortunately were not the same size - the smaller rack was perfect but the larger could have done with another hour. Of course, they were so good that Paul now wants a rematch, which will necessitate buying more of the ingredients I was trying to see the back of.

The leftovers, pulled off the bone and chopped, are providing me with very nice lunches.

When I started ferreting in the freezer for poultry bits for making stock, I had no idea quite how much there was. Chicken, cockerel and duck giblets, chicken wing tips, cockerel backs. Loads of stuff. It made a very good broth. And tonight I flavoured some of the broth with lime juice and fish sauce and cooked pork meatballs and some veg in it, then added coriander leaves, chopped chillies, slices onions and more lime juice.

Foxlow Soho

Anchovy and goats butter on rye crisps

Hawksmoor - either Air St or Seven Dials - is one of my happy places. The food is always good, the staff are always friendly and competent and the atmosphere inviting. You step through the door and take a deep breath because, for a couple of hours, nothing bad can happen. Unfortunately, Hawksmoor is priced to make that particular happy place quite a rare treat. Once a year, if I am lucky. A few years ago, presumably recognising that people want good food, nice staff and a welcoming atmosphere more often than that, the people behind Hawksmoor opened Foxlow, pitched as a "neighbourhood restaurant". The neighbourhoods they started in were Stoke Newington, Clerkenwell and Balham though, none of which are convenient for me to drop in on or particularly enticing as a destination in themselves. The new Soho branch, however, is very convenient for getting home from.

Shaky Pete's Ginger Brew - the head is deliberate

The soft launch was this week, with a very appealing 50% off food, and I managed to be quick enough on the booking button to get a table for last night. I started with one of Hawksmoor's most famous drinks, Shaky Pete's ginger brew - a fabulous take on a shandy and the best possible use for London Pride. Paul had a beer, but he was very impressed when I gave him a sip of my drink.

Five pepper squid

I knew I wanted fried chicken as a main course - I've been having a craving lately - so chose the lightest possible option for my starter. It was 3 little (almost certainly Peter's Yard) rye crispbreads, topped with whipped goats butter, plump curled anchovies and rings of crunchy red onion. Perfect appetite-whetting mouthfuls, with enough salt to make the ginger brew sing. Paul had five pepper squid. Which was nicely crisp but slightly underpowered for something claiming five peppers. The devilled mayo could have had a little more tang as well. But it's always nice to see tentacles on the plate as well as calamari rings.

We'd ordered a bottle of pinot noir (the wine list is very reasonably priced) to go with our mains. They didn't have it, and in what may be a world first for wine waiters, they suggested an alternative that was actually cheaper than our original selection. I was a little surprised by the assertion that the flavours in the suggested Chilean carmenere were similar, because the carmeneres I have had in the past were pretty big, fruity wines with a bit of smoke, whereas the pinot noir we were anticipating was a lighter, more refined affair. As it happened, the recommendation was absolutely on the money: a much lighter bodied and very drinkable wine.

Rib eye with green salad

Ever since he first had a kimchi burger at Hawksmoor Seven Dials, years and years ago, Paul's been devoted to them, so I was slightly surprised that he pulled himself away from the Foxlow burger, with an optional kimchi topping, opting for a rib eye steak with peppercorn sauce and a green salad. The steak was excellent. Perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned and a very nice piece of meat (as you'd expect from them, really). Also, as you'd expect from the team that brought you the best salad in the world, the green salad wasn't just a garnish, but a properly dressed assembly of leaves. The boy a couple of tables down wasn't having such a positive experience, holding forth loudly about how the flat iron he'd ordered wasn't a flat iron. Not that he said anything to the waitress when she checked on him.

Fried chicken

My longed-for fried chicken absolutely nailed the craving. I had a slight language barrier with the waitress though - they offer 2 or 4 piece portions, and I'd asked if a piece was a joint like a drumstick or if it was divided into smaller pieces. She said "Oh no, smaller!" and indicated a size with her hands that led me to believe I wanted the 4 piece. Fortunately Paul helped me with the last piece. But it was SO good - really crisp, well-seasoned and the flesh had that melting quality that certain famous chicken chains achieve with a pressure cooker. The accompanying habanero vinegar, apple and fennel slaw was just the right tangy, acid counterpoint to the richness. Although I couldn't actually detect any habanero heat in it.

For dessert Paul had whiskey and I had gorgeous pococello. And a couple of scoops of lime and mascarpone icecream from Poco Gelato. The icecream had almost the chewy texture you get with Middle Eastern mastic-based icecreams, which I like, but not quite enough lime. So I poured half my pococello over it and that was absolutely perfect.

It was the soft launch, of course, so you don't expect everything to be absolutely right and there was very little wrong. Except the seats. I'm not the tallest woman you are likely to meet, but at 5'6" I'm not really short enough to have my feet swinging 3" off the ground. And I noticed that most of the other diners on the similar seats were swapping places half way through the meal. If I sat right forward at the edge of the seat my toes touched the ground and took some of the pressure off. But they really might like to offer footstools.

Bank holiday barbecue

 

It's a bank holiday weekend, and unfortunately it has played into the British bank holiday stereotype of shit weather. We haven't had much in the way of rain for weeks, but it's been threatening all weekend and just been unpleasant to be outside in.

Pulled harissa lamb

We could've made plans to do something indoors, but we haven't, despite actually getting as far as looking at cinema screentimes. So I have been reading and Paul's been whacking aliens on the computer and the cat has been patrolling the lawn in between lengthy naps.

On Saturday, though, we did a nice, long, low & slow barbecue. A shoulder of British lamb, seasoned with salt, pepper and cumin, smoked gently for 5 hours, then wrapped in harissa paste and vegetable broth and cooked for another 2 hours before resting for an hour. We had it piled onto bread flavoured with dukkah, hummus laden with wild garlic leaves and grilled courgettes in a preserved lemon and coriander dressing. It tasted perfectly springlike even if the weather felt very much like late winter.

Temper, London

Temper. Fuck yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Barbecued short ribs

Shortribs rubbed with salt and pepper

The weather yesterday was pretty crumby. Which would normally be counter-intuitive for wanting to barbecue, but was actually perfect for what we had in mind. A long, slow cook, indirect and covered, with lots of smoke. Periods of rain are no barrier to that sort of barbecuing.

Two hours into the smoking

Paul had spotted some cheap but very meaty beef short ribs at the supermarket, and bought every pack on the shelf (there were only three), so I simply rubbed them with salt and pepper before we put them in the barbecue on indirect heat. We added smoking chips every half hour for 4 hours.

Then we wrapped them. We couldn't decide what seasonings to add, so we ended up doing each one individually. One we basted heavily in some Germantown Commissary Barbecue Sauce that a friend had brought over when she visited from Memphis. One we just added a bit of chicken stock to (would have used beef stock if I'd had any). The last had a good slug of red wine and several whole cloves of garlic. Then they went back in the barbecue for another 2 1/2 hours before resting for half an hour.

L-R Memphis BBQ, chicken stock, red wine and garlic

The meat had a deep bark and was beautifully succulent, slipping straight off the bone. The one with the chicken stock was the most moist, while the one in barbecue sauce had the best flavour. I was anticipating that the barbecue sauce would be a bit sweet, but it was deliciously piquant. The red wine and garlic one suffered a bit, because we managed to poke a hole in the foil, so it didn't retain moisture the way it should. It was still excellent, but the ratio of bark to tender meat was a bit off.

I think the next time we do short ribs, we'll add a bit of stock AND baste in the barbecue sauce. And make sure someone goes to Memphis to get us some more.

It's very rich meat - you really only need a green salad with it and maybe some pickles.

Forty Dean Street

Prosecco

Very much to my surprise my ninth blogoversary has come and gone without acknowledgment. And two months have slipped by since I last posted. I just haven't been feeling it. I have spent much of the last couple of months raging over the Brexit referendum and ensuing economic uncertainty and rise of racial and religious-based hate crimes and, well, none of that has added up to me wanting to cook much or write about food. Food is joy and love and caring and inclusion, which all feels a bit pre-Brexit.

Prawns with cherry tomatoes and crostini, and antipasto platter

Which means that this meal, at Forty Dean Street has felt like a wondrous time gone by. It was utterly joy-filled as well as being completely unexpected.

There can be a certain predictability about blogger dinners. They are on a Tuesday, of the 15-20 people there I maybe know a couple and PRs are scattered through to keep everyone happy. Everyone's on their best behaviour, determined to enjoy themselves and the networking-inclined hand out business cards. Very pleasant they tend to be, if not always memorable.

Linguine with seafood, spaghetti with fresh lobster

Dinner at Forty Dean Street was on a Thursday. There were only six of us - three PRs, three bloggers. And it ended up being less a dinner than a dance party with food. The description of the restaurant - affordable, family-run, seventeen years in business - had me anticipating something a bit staid, while "favourite with our regulars, the media crowd and tourists alike" didn't make me feel particularly confident. So maybe my utter pleasure in the food and atmosphere was born of low expectations, but I do think it was genuinely good.

Lamb chops

Mention had been made of the owner coming to tell us about the restaurant and talk us through the food, but he was far too busy joyously DJing an impeccably selected soundtrack for a 40th birthday in the corner, and dancing with anyone who would stand up with him.  The food didn't need any introduction though. More than two months later I am thinking about how richly flavoured the spaghetti with lobster was and how perfectly tender the lamb chops with mustard crushed potatoes were. Beautifully prepared and utterly delicious.

The selection of desserts wasn't quite as good as the savoury dishes - the tiramisu was almost as good as mine, the pannacotta wobbled delectably and the cheesecake was a fair example but... I dunno. I think I'd just eaten enough and was enjoying dancing at the table because none of it wowed me particularly.

The bottom line is that it isn't somewhere I would take a first date, or have a work lunch where I was discussing redundancies, but for very nice food at an extremely reasonable price with a jolly party atmosphere... it's just what you want. And god knows the more support we give the independents in Soho the better, otherwise soon it'll be acceptable but dull franchises as far as the eye can see. Which would be such a shame.

A barbecue or two

It turns out that this week's festival-for-raising-awareness-of-things-we-already-knew-about is National Barbecue Week. It's the 20th anniversary of it, in fact.

Apparently the average British family now barbecues nine times a summer. Since we barbecue about three times a week from April to October, that doesn't leave a lot of barbecuing for anyone else, but there you go. Of course, most of our barbecues are simple, after work affairs, grilling some sausages or some veg and minimising the amount of washing up that will need to be done. But on a weekend if the weather forecast is OK, we'll plan something that takes a bit more effort and is a bit more extravagant.

Brisket point

Project Brisket was such a success, and we still had the point half in the freezer, so we decided to have another go. With the added complication that we weren't going to eat it at our house. So we rubbed and we smoked, then wrapped it tightly in foil and towels and took it over to friends, where it finished cooking in their barbecue.

It wasn't as successful as the first one. I think we didn't give it long enough in the second half of the cook. It was delicious, but not as meltingly tender. You actually needed a butter knife to cut it. Paul was disappointed in himself.

Good bark, nice smoke ring

But honestly, if you hadn't tried the previous attempt you wouldn't have felt there was anything lacking.

We took a good portion of leftovers home, which made a fantastic salad (cold salad vegetables, warmed-through meat, tangy Thai-ish chilli and fish sauce dressing), with some sweet potato wedges.

Having scratched his brisket itch, Paul decided that ribs were to be the next target. According to Neil Rankin's excellent book Low and Slow: How to Cook Meat, American pork ribs have a lot more meat left on them, whereas pork belly is so profitable for butchers here that they trim really close to the bone. He does talk about the conversation you need to have with your butcher to get really meaty ribs, but that wasn't something I felt up for, so I just bought a couple of scrawny racks from the supermarket.

We rubbed them with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika and smoked the living daylights out of them in a cool, humid barbecue, then poured on a tamarind glaze, wrapped them in foil and finished the cooking. Then, while they rested, I deep fried some okra and made a salad. The ribs were perfection. Just meaty enough, with excellent flavour, and tender enough to slip easily off the bones.

Jalapeno & cheddar cornbread to go with pulled pork

Having conquered brisket and ribs, Paul decided that pork butt was his next ambition. I removed the rind (it was going to cook too long, slow and humid for crackling) and put it in the freezer for some day in the future when I fancy making chicharrón. I scored the fat and rubbed the whole thing with a mixture of salt, pepper, fennel seeds and garlic powder (5g each salt, fennel and garlic, 10g peppercorns - made more rub than I needed).

Then the usual routine of long, slow smoking (apple wood, this time), then wrapping for the rest of the cooking time.

I couldn't be bothered making a sauce for it, so after we broke it up into chunks we just sprinkled it with a little Tabasco. We had it with cornbread, and an olive and orange salad. Some of the leftovers went into a sort of Chinese chilli sauce with aubergine and made a very satisfying meal the following day. I think we've held our end up for British barbecue.

Project Brisket

Paul's had a bee in his bonnet lately. For over a month now, any time you walk into our study you will find him glued to youtube watching (mostly) big, (mostly) white, (mostly) men talking about pecan, mesquite, Kansas-style, Texas-style, Carolina-style. He's become obsessed with American barbecue. Specifically barbecued brisket.

We've barbecued a brisket years ago, not at all successfully. With our little Weber we weren't able to control the temperature and it ran too hot, too fast leaving dry, tough meat. Then we tried a hybrid approach, smoking the meat in the barbecue for flavour and finishing with a long slow cook in the oven. That worked very well, but it's been two years and we haven't repeated it.

But I think you've probably noticed that Paul takes his role as Chief Wielder of Fire and Knives quite seriously, and his ability to cook anything on a fire is one of the cornerstones of his identity. Without my even noticing, the brisket had become his white whale.

We ordered a whole packer cut brisket and he took a day off work (although the day off work was mostly planned because of the late finish of the Captain America marathon).

Whole brisket

Brisket point

Brisket flat

Now, a 6kg brisket is actually too big for the hot air to circulate properly in our Weber, and vastly too much food for two people, so Paul trimmed it and cut it in half. As delicious as beef dripping chips are, we're trying not to eat very much of that sort of thing at the moment, so most of the lovely clean white fat is going to go out for the birds. The brisket point is in the freezer and we just cooked the flat.

Since Paul was so invested in his research, I figured I should probably be a useful and supportive partner and do a bit myself. Which consisted of opening Hog and reading the page on live-fire cooking. That gave the inspiration for moderating the heat with pans of water for the indirect cooking. Paul's been worshipping at the altar of Aaron Franklin, where he got the tip that keeping the humidity up is important, and the pans of water helped with that too.

Indirect cooking set-up

A pan of water under the meat, and more directly over the coals (we didn't have a smaller foil pan, so an empty artichoke heart can got washed out and put into service).

A good bit of seasoning rubbed on the meat (although as it turned out, not enough and not massaged in enough)  and away we went.

We'd realised that a really important part of moderating your temperature to keep it low and slow is to actually know what the temperature is. So a thermometer went in as well. And despite all the talk about hickory, pecan and mesquite, we decided that excellent British meat cooked in Britain needed a typically British smoking wood, so we used cherry.

Of course, being a British barbecue we also had to deal with some challenging climatic conditions. Pretty much as soon as we got the lid on the heavens opened, with rain and hail. Still, it was better than Tuesday, when it snowed.  And one of the things that seldom gets mentioned when talking about barbecue is how much impact the ambient temperature has. We can and do barbecue in mid winter, but when it's really cold outside it'd hard to keep the temperature up for the fire to cook anything bigger than a steak. But when you want a long slow cook, a bit of colder air around the kettle isn't a bad thing, and helped us keep the fire between 120C - 150C for the duration of the cook.

After a few hours, when the internal temperature of the meat was 78C, just through the plateau, we wrapped it in foil and kept cooking for another couple of hours. Then it rested until we couldn't bear it any more.

Not bad

Pretty good really

It's actually a tribute to Paul's knife sharpening skills that he was able to cut it into tidy slices, because it was soft as jelly and could have been cut up with the side of a saucer.

Pretty pink smoke ring

We had it with spicy chipotle slaw, pickles, and a chunk of bread for mopping the plate. Absolutely gorgeous (but slightly underseasoned - more salt during the cooking next time).

leftovers

As tempting as it was to just nibble at the leftovers every time we walked by the fridge, I did something a bit more substantial with them. An old-school Stroganoff, with paprika, brandy, vermouth, lots of mushrooms and a little bit of crème fraiche.    

Brisket Stroganoff