Exploring the area, one pub at a time

We've been in the new house for about six weeks now. Things are gradually coming together. There are still a lot of boxes about the place, but we are slowly buying furniture to unpack into. We still say, almost daily, "Do you know where that thing is?" but with increasing frequency we're able to say "Yes, I unpacked it and put it here". The last day of the move was more than a bit fraught, so we're realising some of the things that didn't come with us and with fading optimism expecting to find other possessions.

We went out for dinner the first night - The Three Tuns

As we're completely new to the area, we're having to learn our way around. Bless google maps. And pretty much every time we set foot outside the house it's uncharted territory for us. We've figured out where the supermarkets and Majestic are. I have found a hairdresser. We've started what will be the work of years, investigating the local pubs.

The first night we were in the house, we went out for dinner. We were sleeping on a mattress on the floor, the cat was sulking, we didn't have a fridge and hadn't unpacked any of the kitchen stuff, so cooking really wasn't an option. It's a bit strange, moving from a place where there were about a dozen places (of varying quality...) to eat within a 10 minute walk, to a place where you could walk to a restaurant, if you were really feeling motivated and had half an hour to spare. The Three Tuns is the closest to us, about a 5 minute drive away. We'd been told that it's almost perennially under new management but that the food was generally pretty good. It was. A bit overwrought - every dish we tried had one element too many - but reasonably priced and served with the kindness we needed in our equally overwrought post-move state. I had a potato and goats cheese rouladey thing, which very nice, and a massively filling but slightly undercooked fish pie served with an utterly sublime hollandaise.

Halloumi fries - The Falcon

Paul's gone from an almost 4 hour daily commute on motorways to a 50 minute daily commute on pleasant country roads. He seems to spend most of that commute now identifying pubs he wants to try. The Falcon was one of those - it's on a bend in the river, which always adds tone to a pub. To be honest, I can't remember what I had to eat and I certainly didn't take a picture of it. Ham, egg & chips, maybe? But the big thing were the absolutely delicious halloumi fries we shared to start. They did them so well we're pretty keen to go back for a Sunday lunch.

Arancini at The Horse & Jockey

Our first (and so far only) crack at a Sunday pub lunch was one of our misguided ones where we only decided at about 11am that we wanted a pub lunch. So we made a list of about 5 places and called down it until we could get a reservation. We ended up at The Horse & Jockey and weren't sorry for it. Being offered delicious little chicken and lemon thyme arancini before our meals arrived was an unexpected but lovely refinement. The food was very good, although the shell-on prawn garnishing the prawn cocktail was watery and flabby, and I don't think the oil was quite hot enough to fry my fish and chips. Paul's roast beef looked excellent though, with proper attention to the veg.

Old school prawn cocktail at The Horse & Jockey

It was my birthday last week, so we had a good excuse to give another pub a go. The Plough came recommended by Sharon and the menu looked good so we made reservations. The food was excellent - I had a lovely fig, blue cheese and hazelnut salad to start, followed by grilled plaice with herb butter, chips and a beautiful sprouting broccoli dish. Unfortunately the service let them down a bit - our waiter seemed very nervous and untrained - and the people at the table next to us were loud and a bit abrasive. You'd think they'd never seen people taking photos of their tea before.

Fig, blue cheese and hazelnuts at The Plough

Grilled fillet of plaice

On Saturday, we made yet another trip to IKEA. Even more hellish than usual, as we realised we couldn't actually fit the stuff we wanted to buy in the car. It was 2.45pm by the time we got to Ye Three Fyshes and the kitchen was closing at 3, so we quickly ordered beers and sandwiches. The fish finger sandwich was very good, but I think they cut corners with the sausage one - it seemed very rusky and the skins were flabby. And they hadn't washed the salad for the garnish, so it was gritty. But the rest of the menu looks quite good, so we may get back there for another go at some point. When we've worked through a few more places.

Massive sandwiches at Ye Three Fyshes

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.

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.

Start as you mean to continue - The Hourglass

Yesterday I had my first meal outside my home of the new year. And I have to say it set a pretty high standard for restaurants for the rest of 2016.

I was expecting pretty good things. After all, Fay Maschler rated The Hourglass in South Kensington as one of her favourite restaurants of 2015. Of course, being so convenient to the museums and because Fay said such good things I wasn't expecting to be able to get a table, and indeed the online booking said there were none. But tweeting them got me a booking (and there were several free tables so maybe the online system isn't working?).

After a fantastic couple of hours at the V&A (The Fabric of India, closing this weekend, is amazing if you are remotely interested in textiles, and Bejewelled Treasures, for all the magpies) I was well and truly ready for food.

It's one of those menus where you could close your eyes and point and be completely happy with your choices, but I went for fish and chips. Which wasn't perfect. The batter was a bit thick and hard, and the fish inside a bit overdone. But the chips were so delicious (I know some people get arsey when the chips are too big, and one of these was about 1/4 of a large spud) and the tartare sauce so perfect I didn't mind.

Sharon's venison suet pie with red cabbage sent her off into plans for learning to make suet pies and bringing her husband next time they are in the area (which is pretty often; they are very good about galleries and museums). It definitely had a lovely savoury aroma, but it wasn't really the sort of dish I could ask for a taste of without making a hell of a mess with the gravy.

I'd valiantly passed by the crab on toast (one of my favourite things) on the starters menu to save myself for pudding. We both had the buttermilk pudding with butterscotch pear (Sharon's very sound reasoning was that she was too full for sticky toffee and she likes her own apple crumble), although the salted caramel chocolate almost won me over. I do love it when there is a small, sweet option. The buttermilk pudding was a very good choice though. Really light, wonderfully tangy with a proper wobble. And I always love a poached pear.

It was a very good start to a year of eating out and very much to be recommended if, like me, you tend to feel a bit overwhelmed by the prosperity of South Kensington and just want nice friendly people to bring you nice food at a fair price.

Diana Henry's cheddar, onion and spinach tart

It's Potluck week again at I Heart Cooking Clubs - where you simply have to cook a dish from any of the previous featured cooks and food writers. 

The dish I've made is one of the best savoury tarts I have ever made, even though I thoroughly bollocksed up the pastry.

It's Diana Henry's cheddar, onion and spinach tart - slowly cooked onions and minerally spinach, topped with a rich savoury cheesy custard.  Utterly delectable.

Unfortunately, when I was completely committed to making this, I realised that I didn't have nearly enough plain flour for the pastry. So I ended up having to use 175g of wholemeal self-raising flour to make up the quantity. Bad Idea. It ended up expanding so much that the filling overflowed and stuck to the tin and made a considerable mess.

That aside, the only change I made to the recipe was adding a good grating of nutmeg, because I am constitutionally incapable of making something cheesy and spinachy without adding nutmeg. And even with the lovely sharp cheese and strong mustard, the nutmeg flavour did carry through. And it was good.

Duckherd's Pie - duck and celeriac shepherds pie

Duck scratchings

I am pretty sure "duckherd" isn't a word. And I am reasonably certain the Goosegirls of Grimm's Fairy Tales don't exist as a profession any more - if they ever cared for ducks as well as geese. But if a shepherd looks after sheep and a shepherd's pie is made of lamb, I decided that a duck pie, topped with celeriac mash, had to be a duckherd's pie.

Skinned duck breasts

It has lovely autumnal flavours and all the comfort you want from a mash-topped pie, but a bit of luxury from the duck.

This is a fiddle, because you have to render the duck skin into scratchings and mince the duck breasts, but you can do it in advance to take away the memory of the pain and it ends up tasting delicious. And we have extra pies in the freezer for another day.

Duckherd's Pie (serves 4)

4 duck breasts
2 leeks
2 stalks of celery
2 carrots
1tsp green peppercorns in brine
2 bay leaves
sprig thyme
1/2 cup vermouth or white wine
salt
1 small celeriac
2 medium potatoes
2 cloves of garlic
butter

Skin the duck breasts. This is pretty easy - basically just grip the edge of the skin and pull it back, using a sharp knife to coax any membrane away, so you end up with a clean, lean piece of meat and a thick piece of skin with a nice fatty layer.

Slice the fat into 1-2cm wide strips, put in a small saucepan with some cold water and bring to a boil on a medium heat. This will look very unappealing for quite some time as the strips go grey and wrinkled. But then the fat will start to render out and the water will evaporate (it's just there to stop things from sticking while you get going) and eventually you will be left with a pot of clean duck fat and a treasure trove of crisp brown duck scratchings. Drain, reserving the fat. Tip the scratchings onto a paper towel-lined plate and don't eat all of them because you need some for the garnish.

Cut the duck breasts, leeks, celery and carrots into chunks your mincer can manage. I try to keep the pieces a bit separated so I can do the duck first, followed by the veg, because I think it makes the mincer easier to clean.

Ready for mincing

Run the duck, green peppercorns and veg through the mincer on a coarse blade. Some of the peppercorns will stay whole, some will be minced, but I like that. If you don't like the peppery shock of biting into a whole peppercorn, chop or crush the peppercorns first.

Minced and ready to cook

Add a couple of tablespoons of the rendered duck fat to a heavy bottomed sauté pan and brown the minced duck and vegetable mixture. Add bay leaves, thyme and vermouth or white wine, put the lid on and let it simmer for about an hour until thick and rich. The minced vegetables give off a lot of liquid so you shouldn't need extra, but if it is looking too dry add a bit of chicken stock or some more wine. Season with salt.

The remaining duck fat can go in a ramekin covered with cling film for a couple of weeks of good roast potatoes, or into the freezer for the Christmas spuds.

Divide the mixture between four ovenproof bowls, removing the bay leaves and woody thyme sprig if you come across them. Or make just one large one if you don't have to worry about portion control or there are more than two of you at dinner. I made two to eat that night and two in foil containers for later.

Peel and chop the celeriac and potatoes into even-sized chunks and boil until tender, giving the celeriac a 10 minute head start. Add the peeled garlic cloves in with the potatoes. Drain the veg and mash thoroughly with a good knob of butter.

Spread the mash over the duck ragu. I don't go in for piping that sort of thing but you could if you wanted to. I did try to pretty it up a little bit though. Allow another little nut of butter to melt over the surface of each one, and garnish with a couple of duck scratchings.

Allow the ones you are freezing to cool completely, cover and freeze. The ones you want to eat sooner rather than later will need a 180C oven for 35-40 minutes until the top is well-browned and the filling is bubbling up around the edges. Serve with a simple green vegetable.

Square Pie's Pie World Cup

From time to time people (usually people who don't know us well) ask us how we co-habit, as an Australian and a South African. How do we manage about sport? Doesn't it get fraught? Are there hostile silences  and cross words about cricket? It's actually pretty easy - neither of us is particularly nationalistic and neither of us pays much attention to the sort of sports that people get nationalistic about. I knew the Rugby World Cup was coming but, well, it's not Quidditch is it?

So I haven't been getting too excited at the prospect of dozens of burly men running around in tight shorts. I mean obviously it's crossed my mind, but let's not get carried away. It takes a good food gimmick to get me really worked up.

Square Pie have come up with just that gimmick in their Pie World Cup. They've developed a pie for each of the countries competing in the Rugby World Cup, and on the days each team plays, they'll put the pies up against each other in their stores. They'll be tallying the sales and putting them in a league table for a chance to progress to the next round. So tomorrow, to coincide with the tournament opener, England's steak and ale will be up against Fiji's goat curry.

The Australian Pie

I've had the steak and ale - it's their classic that they sell through Ocado as wee canapies as well as full-sized pies. It's very good, and as a bit of a sweetener, Square Pie has partnered with the Dallaglio Foundation. 10p from the sale price of every Dallaglio Foundation steak and ale pie will go towards their work with disadvantaged young people.

At the launch of the Pie World Cup I was hoping that they'd have canapie-sized pies so I could try a good range, but sadly they were full-sized. With the best will in the world I can't eat more than two pies, and I was on my way to my dance class and the prospect of two hours of spotting spins on a full stomach inhibited me further. But I had to try the Australian pie - as I said, I'm not hugely nationalistic, but the combination of kangaroo, mushroom and shiraz sounded like a winner. The pastry was nice and flaky: it wouldn't pass the old Australian footy pie test of eating it out of hand, but as long as you have access to a plate and fork it's the perfect texture. The filling was richly meaty - I wouldn't swear to being able to tell the difference between kangaroo, venison and beef in a blind tasting but it definitely tasted good. Maybe a little too sweet from carrots, but that's a minor quibble. I didn't even reach for the ketchup which is my default when faced with a pie.

I only had room for a couple of bites of a second flavour of pie, and which pie to choose was a real dilemma. I would have liked to try the Fiji goat curry, or Georgian chicken, mushroom and sour cream, but I opted for Canadian moose. Now, I was expecting moose to be similar in flavour to kangaroo or venison, but it was much more delicate. More like veal than beef. The Canada pie is very peppery and, dare I say it? much more to my taste than the Australian pie.

The Pie World Cup is only running in store, so I am going to have to print out the fixtures card and plan some trips into Old Spitalfields Market to taste some of the others. I think the pie draw is more evenly matched than the rugby teams - but may the best pie win.

O Canada!

Mutton samosas and lamb burgers. Tasty Easy Fun

When I posted about the launch of the Lamb. Tasty Easy Fun campaign last week I mentioned that I had the recipe for the lamb burgers that Cyrus Todiwala had developed for the campaign, so I am going to share that with you today. I also have a recipe of my own to share, which is really delicious and I hope you will enjoy it.

Spiced lamb burgers stuffed with spiced blue cheese by Cyrus Todiwala for www.tastyeasylamb.co.uk

Blue cheese stuffed lamb burger (makes 6 burgers)

Burger ingredients
675g lamb mince
1 finely chopped medium onion
2-3 cloves minced garlic
1 x 2" piece minced fresh ginger
1 slender-type minced green chilli (seeds included)
1tbs ground cumin powder
1 1/2tbs ground coriander powder
2tbs tomato puree
3 heaped tbs finely chopped fresh coriander
1tsp garam masala powder
1-2tsp salt
1tsp crushed black pepper

Stuffing ingredients
150g blue cheese, crumbled
2 finely chopped green chillies
1tbs finely chopped fresh coriander
2 finely chopped cloves of garlic

Rolls or bread, to serve

In a large bowl gently mix all the burger ingredients together. Divide into 6 evenly-sized burgers.

In a small bowl blend the stuffing ingredients together and shape into equal-sized balls to stuff the burgers.

Make an indentation in the centre of each burger with your thumb and fill with a ball of the cheese. Make sure the cheese is completely encased when you form the burger.

Cook on a prepared grill or barbecue for 6-8 minutes on each side or until any meat juices run clear.

Serve with your favourite bread or rolls with some sliced tomato, onion and lettuce and some relish.

Mutton keema

At the campaign launch Cyrus spoke so knowledgeably about the different breeds of sheep and the contribution sheep farming makes in communities with marginal agricultural land. You can raise sheep where no crops will grow, like the sturdy Herdwick sheep in the Lake District, and one job in farming stimulates something like seven jobs in the local community - all very worthwhile.

So I was feeling a bit inspired to make something from British mutton (as I mentioned before, we don't tend to eat lamb early in the season) with some of the spices Cyrus talked about, and Paul has been begging me to have another crack at samosas for him. I placed an order for some mutton shoulder with Turner & George, knowing that you get a card telling you what breed your meat is and where it was raised. And it turned out to be Herdwick, which was pretty perfect really.

Waiting for frying

The keema on its own is excellent, so if you can't be arsed folding and frying, just make that and have it with some rice or naan. You could bake them too, if you didn't feel like frying. And you can definitely use readily available minced lamb instead of mutton - don't be deterred!

Mutton samosas (makes about 18)

For the keema
600g minced mutton or lamb
1 small onion
3 cloves garlic
1" piece of fresh ginger
1-2 chillies (I used 3 red chillies with hardly any heat at all - you know your palate)
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 - 1 tsp sea salt flakes (to taste)
1 handful frozen peas
1 tsp garam masala powder

For the samosas
Filo pastry
Melted butter
2 eggwhites, lightly beaten
oil for shallow frying

Roughly chop the onion, garlic, ginger and chillies. In a food processor, blend them to a paste with the vegetable oil (and a slosh of water if it needs loosening). If you don't have a food processor just chop them as finely as you can (I think it is nicer to have a fine texture in a little parcel, but if you are just eating the keema on its own, you can have everything a bit coarser).

In a sauté pan or deep skillet, fry the onion paste, stirring to stop it from catching, for a few minutes or until it starts to brown. Add the cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves and pepper and fry for just a minute until the powders are fragrant, then add the minced mutton. Brown the meat, breaking it up with a spoon. Add a little water if it starts to dry out too much. Add the peas and season with salt to taste. Cook for another 5-10 minutes until it is cooked through and fairly dry. Sprinkle with the garam masala. If you are going to make the samosas, allow to cool completely.

Filo has a slightly unfair reputation for being tricky. You can't take it too slowly but it honestly isn't that temperamental. To fold the samosas, take a sheet of filo and cover the rest of the pack with a slightly damp tea towel. With a sharp knife, cut the sheet into 3 long strips. I was a bit paranoid about getting them to seal properly, so I put a little eggwhite at each end of the strip, with some melted butter along the length for lusciousness and flake. Put about a heaped tablespoon of the cold keema at one end of a strip, fold the corner of the filo over it and then just fold and tuck to the end of the sheet. Repeat until you've used all the keema or all of the filo, whichever comes first. I had leftover filo so I made a little cherry strudel as well, because it doesn't store well.

Either shallow fry or bake the samosas immediately, or keep in the fridge until you are ready. If you need to keep them in the fridge, put a layer of baking parchment between each layer of samosas on your tray to stop them from sticking to each other. If you are baking them, brush the tops with a little extra melted butter before they go in the oven (I think 10-15 minutes at 200C should do it).

I served them with Mr Todiwala's minted mango and ginger relish and a sort of chaat-y salad of layers of boiled potato, yoghurt, fresh coriander chutney, chickpeas and other such deliciousness.

Pared-down pizza rustica

As well as my Scandinavian-inspired breakfast buns, I decided to make a savoury pie for snacking on over the Easter weekend. Most of the Italian-American pizza rustica recipes I found have at least an inch-thick layer of cold meats, which I decided was a bit over the top. So I made a slightly more restrained version.

Mine was a shortcrust pastry case, with a bottom layer of spinach and mozzarella, bound with an egg. Then layers of mortadella, proscuitto and soppressata. Then a layer of ricotta and smoked semi-dried tomatoes, bound with another egg and seasoned with nutmeg.

It compressed as it cooled, which was good for slicing but left a big gap between the filling and the top of the pastry. But it tasted good.

Chicken, stilton and leek pie

This was more of an exercise in clearing the fridge than an actual recipe, but it was delicious so I'm keeping it.

It's British Pie Week, so social media has been full of luscious-looking pie recipes, but I wanted something a little bit lighter. No creamy sauce, no stodgy gravy, just a lot of flavour. And a high filling-to-pastry ratio.

I browned some skinless chicken thigh fillets in a little olive oil and butter with a couple of branches of fresh thyme. And I mean browned, not just until they went white - they had a proper golden tan. Then I added a couple of leeks, washed and cut into chunks, and cooked them until they were soft. I added 2tbs of gin and 1tsp of grainy mustard (it's a home made one and is very yellow from turmeric) and let it cool.

Then I took a sheet of shortcrust pastry (bought, but a good all-butter one) and lined a small loaf tin with it, letting the excess hang over the edge. I packed in the chicken filling and topped it with 50g stilton cheese, then tucked the pastry in all around to seal. A bit of egg wash and a nice long stint in a 180C oven and there it was - a tasty pie for two. Warm bean and tomato salad with lots of lovely garlic was all it needed on the side.

Mushroom marsala tart for IHCC

Diana Henry's mushroom and marsala tart is a luxurious response to the "meat-free" theme this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs. Thin, crisp pastry (I used bought butter shortcrust) and a creamy, eggy custard spiked with fortified wine and loads of lovely bosky mushrooms.

Completely delicious warm (not piping hot - it needs time to cool and set a little) or cold, this made a lovely dinner and very good leftovers for lunch the next day. It just needs a simple salad on the side.