Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper for Cook The Books

It's been ages since I cooked along with Cook The Books Club - even when there's been a book scheduled that I was really keen to read or already loved, time has got away from me and I've missed it.

I thought this was a good time to come back though. Deb, from Kahakai Kitchen chose Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, which I have been wanting to read for a while. Fuchsia is a bit of a national treasure: she gets trotted out whenever people want to talk to an English-speaking person about Chinese food, or authenticity, or the migration of food culture. The broad strokes of her career (first Western person to train as a chef at the culinary school in Sichuan) are very well known but I was interested in the detail.

And the detail was very interesting. A snapshot of China in the early 90s, when things were starting to open up a bit. The experience that white people seldom have of being completely other. The deep, rich history of Chinese cuisine. The desire to break off the treadmill of being a clever woman on a predictable academic and career path.

Unfortunately, I found much of the actual food descriptions stomach-churning. While her desire to immerse herself in the cuisine and to learn to appreciate the foreign textures and flavours is admirable (it reminds me a bit of Anthony Bourdain "you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you"), I found it very hard to deal with the things she found herself eating. The almost blasé approach to animal cruelty and eating endangered species (although she did say she may end up vegetarian and gives quite an interesting explanation for the animal cruelty) was a kind of cultural relativism that didn't sit well with me.

As it happens, the dish I personally most associate with Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan is 成都豆腐花 - Chengdu street tofu with soy chilli, peanuts and preserved vegetables as served at A Wong. Which is vegan. And Andrew Wong has shared the recipe.

Chengdu street tofu - not as pretty as Andrew Wong's.

The fish-fragrant aubergine that initially captured Fuchsia's imagination can also be vegan if you use vegetable stock, so I made that as our main course (following Diana Henry's recipe for Fragrant Sichuan Aubergine in Simple), along with some marinated mushrooms (which I reheated to serve). And then I let the vegan side down by serving it on egg fried rice. But it was delicious. And no endangered species died.

Urchin kept bumping my elbow - didn't get one single focussed picture)

Happy New Year! And festive feasting

New Year's Eve fondue

Happy New Year, all! Hope you've been able to muster some cautious optimism for the year to come.

Bit of an unusual festive season for us. We entertained! And we mostly didn't eat meat!

My aunt came to stay with us for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year. She's been a vegetarian for almost 40 years, and I couldn't face the idea of making two different meals for three people, so we resolved to cook vegetarian at home while she was with us.

In the end there were loads of things I planned to make that I never got around to (the gado gado, cheesy polenta with roast shallots and figs, sage and walnut lasagne and the white bean puree with roast radicchio can all wait until her next visit) but what I did cook went pretty well, I thought.

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's savoury carrot and feta cake

Felicity Cloake's perfect panforte

Nigella's take on pizzocheri - pasta with potato, brussels sprouts and cheese - for Christmas Eve dinner

I started planning what to cook for Christmas Day a couple of months ago. We aren't wedded to any particular traditional Christmas meal, so we weren't trying to fit vegetarian food into a pre-existing format, but we wanted something a bit sumptuous and celebratory. I originally thought that a stuffed pumpkin would be good, but decided that there isn't enough room inside a pumpkin to have a decent amount of stuffing, so I reimagined it as a baked, layered dish.

Sour cherry couronne

We started Christmas day, however, with couronne. It's mostly Paul Hollywood's recipe, but substituting sour cherries for apricots (I didn't bother soaking them) and lovely Italian crystallised citrus peel for the raisins. Instead of plain marzipan I used a new-to-me brandy marzipan, which packed quite a wallop.

Mezze plate

For lunch we just had mezze - bought hummus, felafel, artichoke hearts, olives, dolmades and stuffed peppadews, with some leftover carrot and feta cake, and a few bits of pickled carrot and mooli. Then the layered baked squash for dinner.

November's trial run on the Christmas squash

In my practice runs I had used delica pumpkin, which sliced into neat crescents which cooked evenly and looked like a pretty sunburst.

Unfortunately Ocado let me down on the day and delivered a butternut - good flavour but not as pretty!

The layers of squash were interspersed with sauteed onion, loads of rosemary and sage, crumbled sourdough bread, toasted hazelnuts, crumbled Stilton cheese and garlic. Then I poured cream and white wine over the lot and let it bake slowly.

We had a persimmon and chicory salad with it (Diana Henry's recipe, although for obvious reasons I left out the cheese and nuts). Delicious, if not in any way photogenic.

Final version of baked layered squash

There was no need at all for dessert after all that! Later in the week I made a quince and clementine trifle, but we really didn't go in much for pudding at home.

Quince and clementine trifle

On New Year's Eve we had a fondue for lunch, and then friends came over for tea and cake. I'd been looking for an excuse to make Ottolenghi's walnut and halva cake, and this seemed like just the time. It's a very good cake.

Ottolenghi's walnut & halva cake

The other main home-cooking highlights of the festive period were a rather triumphant take on megadarra (I used siyez bulgar instead of rice, topped it with pomegranate arils and goats curd and served it with runner beans stewed in tomatoes) and pairing Ottolenghi's bulgar with mushrooms, feta and dill with Gizzi Erskine's brussels sprout, pomegranate and pistachio salad. Which end up looking quite similar, so fortunately we didn't have them back to back.

Megadarra and runner beans

Ottolenghi's bulgar and Gizzi Erskine's sprouts

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.

Courgette and herb slice

I know it looks like we eat a lot of meat. We do. Especially at this time of year when clear, warm evenings make cooking outdoors appealing. But we also eat a lot of vegetables - sometimes without a piece of meat in sight.

One of my former flatmates used to make the most delicious zucchini fritters - heady with herbs, given an added punch with crumbled feta. This slice, which is almost like a less-eggy frittata, is inspired by those but without the labour of making little individual fritters. And as I live in a country that calls zucchini courgette, that is what I will call them. You can call them baby marrows if that's what floats your boat.

I start this on the stovetop and finish it in the oven - I feel like that prevents any danger of soggy bottoms and makes it easier to slice and serve.

Courgette and herb slice (serves 2-4)
3 eggs
100g self raising flour
500g courgettes (i.e zucchini), grated
75g fresh herbs (I used 25g each of mint, flat leaf parsley and coriander), roughly chopped
200g kefalotyri cheese, grated
Freshly ground black pepper
2tbs olive oil

Mix the flour into the eggs and mix in the other ingredients, except the oil. It will feel very dry initially. Allow to stand for half an hour - the liquid will draw out of the courgettes and loosen the batter nicely.

Preheat oven to 180C

Warm a suitable vessel (i.e a skillet or something that can go on the hob and in the oven) on a medium heat on the stove and add the olive oil. When it starts to sizzle, add the courgette batter and smooth down. When the edges start to crisp a little, put it in the oven and bake for about half an hour, until well-browned. It won't rise much, the self-raising flour gives just enough lift to stop it from being stodgy.

Allow to stand for at least 10 minutes before slicing and serving with salad. It's good warm or cold.

Meat-free Monday: Veg platter

This is really just an excuse to show off my new plates. We really wanted something not-white (partly because of over-exposing food pics) and I've been looking for the right thing. These are Mikasa, really cheap on ebay. And very pretty!

I wasn't planning a meat-free meal this evening, but as I walked home the weather was so nice that it seemed like a shame not to light the grill, and my mental inventory of the fridge contained barbecuable veg but not meat. Lovely.

The aubergine I scored, drizzled in the cracks with olive oil and seasoned with salt & pepper, the asparagus I just washed and cut off the woody ends. I made a little tomato salad, with garlic and sherry vinegar, and toasted a few pine nuts. I also mixed a spoonful of fat free Greek yoghurt with some minced garlic and the rind of a preserved lemon.

When the aubergine and asparagus were cooked, a put a splodge of the yoghurt on each plate, put the aubergine on that with the asparagus alongside, and added the tomato salad, some crumbled feta and the toasted pine nuts. Very pretty, very tasty. I really like my new plates!  

Apricot, ginger and coconut energy balls

I wouldn't usually be suggesting "energy" balls over Easter. Most of us have enough chocolate, hot cross buns and other sugary treats to keep us bouncing off the walls long after the bank holidays have passed. Tomorrow, however, I have 4 hours of dance workshops, and on Easter Monday we're going to Havergate Island to take pictures of birds and hares, so portable, sustaining snacks are on the agenda for this Easter.

These couldn't be simpler - and they let me use the mincer attachment for my stand mixer, which always makes me happy. If you have a robust food processor you could use that instead. The ginger is quite subtle. Add more if you want more heat.

Minced apricots and ginger

I used that American sweetened, moist shredded coconut, so everything clings together with its own tackiness. If you don't have access to that or are horrified (with reason) by the E-numbers in it, just use desiccated but you might need to add a bit of honey or something as glue.

Apricot, ginger and coconut energy balls (makes about 25)

300g soft dried apricots
20g crystallised ginger
100g sweetened shredded coconut
Desiccated coconut for coating

Mince together the apricots and ginger. Stir through the coconut. Roll into walnut-sized balls and toss through the desiccated coconut.

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.

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.

Gorgonzola and kale tortelloni bake

It's got a bit chilly this week! The temperature yesterday hovered around 5 or 6C. Definitely melted cheese weather.

This tortelloni bake isn't pretty and is mind-bogglingly calorific. Perfect when a walk to the post office means you can't feel your face.

Gorgonzola and kale tortelloni bake (serves 2)

500g good quality fresh spinach and ricotta tortelloni or ravioli (I bought some from The Fresh Pasta Company with walnuts in, which were particularly good, but not cheap)
60g baby kale leaves, washed (which is a lot more than it sounds)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
170ml cream
200g gorgonzola, crumbled

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Cook the tortelloni according to packet instructions and drain.

Spread half the kale leaves in the base of a 9" square casserole dish, sprinkle with half of the garlic and 1/3 of the gorgonzola. Add half of the cooked tortelloni, spread out in a single layer. Top with the rest of the kale leaves and garlic, half of the remaining gorgonzola and half of the cream. Arrange the rest of the tortelloni on top, the rest of the gorgonzola and sprinkle on the remaining cream, making sure each piece of pasta gets a trickle.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

Bulgur & Spinach Pilaf

It's Potluck week again at I Heart Cooking Clubs, and it just so happens that last night I cooked a Diana Henry recipe, so I can join in. It's a bulgur and spinach pilaf, (from her first book, Crazy Water Pickled Lemons) layered up with lovely garlicky labneh, sweet and spicy roast tomatoes and cinnamon-scented frizzled onions. Which you must admit sounds like the most appetising thing in the world.

I confess, I took a few liberties. For one thing, I told Paul I was doing an Ottolenghi. Using Tim Hayward's phrase, we love to Ottoleng. It has become shorthand in our house for very pretty dishes that look beautiful piled up on platters and have lovely contrasting colours, flavours and textural elements. All of which this pilaf fulfils abundantly. But as we were having this conversation via facebook message it was just easier to use the shorthand rather than explain properly.

I committed a few more substantial crimes against the dish too. I was trying to use up a few things before today's grocery delivery, so I used frozen spinach, thawed and drained, instead of fresh. I used crumbled feta instead of making my own labneh. I used halved cherry tomatoes instead of plum. I used frozen chopped mint. So, despite the several processes involved in making it, it ended up coming together as a very useful little meal of pantry and freezer staples. It'd be lovely as a main meat-free dish, but the weather was nice last night so we sat outside drinking red wine while a boned shoulder of lamb, marinated in garlic, oregano and lemon, grilled over charcoal. Very Ottolenghi. Very Diana. Very delicious.

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.

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.

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.

New Year's Indulgence: white truffle

That's what 10g white truffles looks like

After our experiment last year with summer truffles, we were pretty keen to have a go with the much-more-expensive delicacy. As Christmas/New Year provides a good opportunity to be extravagant, we decided to forego our traditional New Year's Eve fondue and eat truffles instead.

A 10g chunk of white gold was duly delivered on the 30th and tucked into a sealed jar of arborio rice over night.

I made a simple white risotto, using some of the poultry broth from our Christmas goose, white wine and a couple of baby leeks. As the final enrichment I beat in some beautiful taleggio cheese. Then I grated a generous pile of truffle shavings over each portion. The aroma was utterly gorgeous. A very delicious and indulgent way to say good bye to the old year.

Of course, grated like that, a little piece of truffle goes a very long way, so there was a bit left over for lunch the following day. We welcomed the new year with a pizza, covered with more taleggio, buffalo mozzarella and finely sliced garlic, and when it was a beautiful bubbly golden brown, the rest of the truffle was grated on top.  

Fondue pasta bake

This week we've had a couple of house guests: a pair of Australian girls wrapping up a three-month European tour. The brief I had been given on their tastes in food was omnivorous and not fussy but fairly conservative. I also happened to know that one of these young ladies absolutely loves my mother's cheese fondue.

Unfortunately I don't have a fondue pot big enough for four. And Paul's ETA was an unknown, so I needed to make something that could sit around and wait. So I made a simple pasta bake using fondue as the sauce. It was delicious - and a bit fancier than a macaroni cheese.

Fondue Pasta Bake (serves 3-4)

300ml dry white wine
2 cloves of garlic, cut into slivers
125g grated gruyere
125g grated emmenthal
500g filled pasta (I used spinach and ricotta ravioli)
Handful grated parmesan
Freshly grated nutmeg

In a medium-sized pan, bring the wine and garlic to the boil. Turn off the heat and allow to infuse for 10 minutes. Return to the heat and when the wine comes just back to a simmer, add the grated cheese and stir until melted. Pour half the cheese mixture into a baking dish (I used a pyrex lasagne dish).

Cook the pasta for a minute less than the packet instructions. Drain, but not too thoroughly (a bit of extra cooking water clinging to it helps it all along) and spread on the base of cheese mixture. Pour the rest of the cheese evenly over the pasta. Sprinkle the parmesan over the top and grate on a little nutmeg.

Bake in a preheated 180C oven for 25-30 minutes until browned on top and bubbling at the edges.

I served it with a simple green salad, because I had a suspicion that the girls haven't been eating much veg in their travels. Which turned out to be accurate.

Meat-free Monday: Greek-ish cheese & sweet potato pie

Ready to bake

 This is a hybrid of two other dishes - Lisa the Cookwitch's aubergine & halloumi bake and Jess's sweet potato crusted quiche.

I used Lisa's filling recipe almost as written, although I found a lone and tired spring onion in the veg drawer, so I chopped that up and added it, and I didn't use as much cheddar because I eye-balled it and thought I had enough filling. And I used 3 large-ish sweet potatoes for the crust.

The very interesting thing about the filling, I thought, was that the grated halloumi sort of re-formed after melting and recaptured the squeaky quality that is so appealing. And it tasted lovely - the sweetness of the crust worked beautifully against the little bursts of sultana and the salty cheese.