Sausage and Peppers

When people discuss the best food movies of all time, the same names come up time and again: Tampopo, Babette's Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman. And nothing at all wrong with any of those. But they are not my choice. For me, the best food film ever made is Dinner Rush. It really staggers me that Bob Giraldi could go from making films for Pat Benatar and Michael Jackson, construct this work of near perfection, and then fade back into making films for Pat Benatar, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie. The story is good, the performances are great and the cinematography - especially in the blackout scene where the kitchen is lit by the gas flames from the stoves - is brilliant. But the absolutely best bit is when the soux chef, Duncan, comes in to cook a simple dish of sausage and peppers for Louis Cropa (played by Danny Aiello) - the owner and current chef's father.

Now, we'd eaten many a sausage before seeing this movie, and had done a fair bit of experimenting with them in cooking. But Dinner Rush had a big impact on the way we do them. If you google "sausage and peppers" you will find countless recipes for similar dishes. It is clearly a staple of Italian American cooking - but for an Australian and a South African there was a degree of novelty.

The method we've pretty much settled on is this:
Heat a heavy-based saute pan and add quite a lot of good olive oil. Cut fresh Italian sausage (the sort flavoured with fennel and chilli) into large chunks and throw them into the hot oil. While they are browning really well, add an onion, peeled and sliced, and let it take a bit of colour. Add peppers, cut into 8ths (we usually do it with red peppers, but if we can get one of those "traffic light" packs, use that) and saute until it all begins to soften. Add quite a lot of sliced garlic. Sometimes we add a little balsamic at this stage, but most usually we go nuts with dried oregano and marjoram. Then add either a tin of chopped tomatoes, or a good slosh of passata, and simmer until thick. We'll either eat it just like this, or use it as a sauce for pasta. We think it is better if you add the drained pasta to the pan and toss it around for a few minutes, so the juices all soak in.

Gilpin Lodge III

Sunday was our actual anniversary, so at breakfast I treated myself with strawberry sorbet topped with champagne. It was just wonderful, so I think that will feature every time I entertain in the morning from now on. A very good eggs Florentine and more of the wonderful coffee sent us out into the day.

We'd decided that we wanted to get to the coast, so we chose a point due West and set off. Landing in Barrow-in-Furness, which looked horrible and industrial, so we chose again. On the road to Ravenglass, we decided to stop for tea at Muncaster Castle. How beautiful! I wouldn't bother paying to go into the castle again, but I would be very keen to go back later in the year when all the rhododendrons were out. Amazingly, there were a few out already, so you just got a taste of what it must look like in about May. Having no self-control at all, instead of having a cup of tea and a scone, we were won over by bacon and cheese Aberdeen Angus beefburgers. Brilliant - the "barbecue sauce" on the side was the most wonderful thick, spiced relish - really tasty burgers.

Back at the hotel, we had a bottle of Tattinger sent up to our room and watched the news. How very sad to see the Camden markets burn - I can't believe they will ever recapture the character they had.

In the lounge I continued with champagne - I decided it was a bad plan to mix my drinks - while my husband decided to be daring and have Lagavulin instead of Talisker. The canapes were similar to the first night - cheesy polenta squares, and a very good smoked salmon mousse.

The wheels fell off the service a bit. We were led to our table before we'd ordered, and the waitress who showed us to the table felt herself inadequate to taking the order, so there was a minor delay. Probably a good thing given the size of the burgers at lunch...

We began with Morteaux sausage wrapped in puff pastry with apple chutney. I've googled, and as far as I can tell Morteaux sausage is very groovy in gastro-pubs and restaurants with pretention to excellence but hard to find otherwise. It isn't mentioned in Jane Grigson's Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, but the American Airlines website (?!) says it is traditional in Lyon. Makes a bloody good sausage roll.

We both chose big, gutsy, red meat dishes, so it was much easier than the night before to choose the wine - a Warwick Trilogy from Cape Town. It's a classic claret blend - cab sav, cabernet franc and merlot - but much heavier and juicier than the French do it. It was very nice, and hard to believe it had only had 2 years in the bottle.

My husband had squab with choucroute and wild mushrooms - the squab was lovely. Really well rested and perfectly tender. I had Jerusalem artichoke soup with autumn truffles. I was very pleased to see that they didn't take the easy way out - the truffle flavour was just in the shavings of truffle on the surface, hadn't been taken the whole way through with heavy-handed application of truffle oil.

For main, my husband had roasted loin of local venison with curly kale, chestnut foam and swede fondant. Surprisingly, he said the foam was really good, but he felt the chef should be banned from the demi-glace pot, because all of the sauces had the same texture. I had best end of Herdwick lamb with fondant potato, confit vegetables, shallot puree and rosemary jus. The Herdwick sheep is a weird looking beast for those of us who are used to cute, rotund Suffolks but the hard life on the Cumbrian hills makes for some delicious meat.

The pre-dessert wasn't very successful - Consomme of winter fruits with Stilton biscuits sounded promising but the consomme was too sweet and the garnish of pineapple salpicon wasn't really seasonal.

I decided that I had to take advantage of the kitchen's expertise with a souffle and have the prune and armagnac with its own icecream. Again it was of extraordinary lightness, but the chocolate that the dish was brushed with got in the way of the flavour somehow, instead of melding unctuously with the prunes the way it usually does. The icecream was magnificent, and I would happily have foregone the souffle for a couple more scoops of that.

My husband came out of left-field and ordered a dessert. I almost died of shock. He had Szechuan pepper rum baba with roasted pineapple and buttermilk icecream. Unfortunately the bite he gave me had the only peppercorn in it - so I got a wonderful explosion of flavours and he just got sweet, plain syrup. He said the pineapple could have been turnip for all he knew - it clearly wasn't ripe enough. I thought it was a very nice dessert. He would have been happier with a glass of armagnac.

Gilpin Lodge II

After a ruddy awful night's sleep (lovely comfy bed, new silk nightie, FAR too hot) we staggered downstairs to breakfast, where I regretted that I had not brushed my hair. A cafetiere of the best coffee I've ever had in a hotel made me feel a bit better, and then a compote of winter fruits (or, in fact, plumped up dried apricots, figs and prunes) with lovely thick yoghurt improved things further. A main course of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs (a 2 course breakfast! Oh my!) made me want to crawl back into bed to sleep it all off, but we had work to do.

First, a fruitless expedition into Bowness to buy a frock since I was desperately underdressed in the restaurant (I think that they should clarify on the website that "casual but smart" means no jeans). Then we hired a boat at Esthwaite Water Trout Fishery for my husband to have a bit of a throw. He's fished there many times with no success but it is just so stunning that we keep going back. If I am to be bored by fishing it is going to be with a book in my hand and a lovely view.

When the light started to go, we headed back to Gilpin Lodge to dress for dinner. I put lipgloss on.

The previous night I'd seen a couple served with "bellini's" which were completely clear. I decided to have a go with one for my pre-dinner drink and it was lovely. The peach flavour must have been from a peach schnapps or similar liqueur, because it was very strong and more alcoholic than your average glass of bubbly. Paul succeeded in getting his Talisker served with 1 cube of ice. The canapes were tiny chicken samosas with raita, more olives and a lovely gazpacho with basil oil.

Our introductory taste at the dinner table was a pumpkin veloute with roasted pumpkin seeds. The soup was perfectly smooth and creamy and so on, but it had really lost the pumpkin character and natural velvetiness that makes it such a winner. The pumpkin seeds were wonderful though, and provided a much-needed textural contrast.

The restaurant has a pretty wide selection of half-bottles of wine - a good thing, because there was no way we were going to be able to share a bottle. My husband had chablis with his red mullet with peppers, courgettes, goats' cheese tortellini and red wine jus. I ordered some Chorey-les-Baume to go with my hare faggot wrapped in Savoy cabbage with beetroot puree and baby turnips, but I got to do an interesting comparison when the 1/3 bottle of zinfandel that we'd left the night before was brought out.

The faggot was very good - rich and livery, with the mineral flavour of the Savoy cabbage wrapping really cutting through nicely. I couldn't say which wine was better with it, they were equally good but very different, but as a wine I preferred the Chorey-les-Baumes.

We've got a really good Italian restaurant just near us, and we nearly always order the sole meuniere. So seeing a main course of poached and roasted lemon sole with confit shallots, capers, flat-leaf parsley and roast chicken jus, my husband decided he had to see how a properly posh place does sole. And he announced that poaching and then roasting and adding a sticky jus was a waste of a good fish. He even went so far as to say it lost the soul of sole, but I wish he hadn't.

I was tempted by the pot-roasted pig's head, because I just couldn't imagine how they would present it, but I went for an easy option and chose assiette of veal with wild mushrooms and Madeira sauce. The 3 cuts were poached fillet, slow-cooked shoulder and tongue. I've never had tongue before, but it was delicious. The meat was served with some of the most magnificent mash, quite heavily infused with rosemary. It was interesting having the mash provide seasoning to the dish, instead of being a bland, filling cop-out. I did think that having 3 cuts all cooked quite slowly with moisture didn't really show the versatility or different characters of the meat very well. I think a little piece of saltimbocca or a grilled cutlet would have been a better option than poached fillet.

The pre-dessert was lemon cream with a compote of forced rhubarb, which was gorgeous. The delicate, pale pink rhubarb was hidden under a blanket of cream speckled with candied lemon zest. I suspect there may have been some limoncello in there too.

I still had quite a lot of my red wines left, so I decided to have the cheese platter. There were 7 cheeses, which I think is too many. Bigger portions of 4 would have been less confusing to the palate. None of them really floated my boat. Even the Stichelton, which was the it cheese at Christmas, wasn't what I want in a stilton-style cheese.

Gilpin Lodge

It was our anniversary this weekend, and we decided to have a FTE (f*** the expense) weekend up in the Lake District. We got a booking at Gilpin Lodge - a country house hotel and restaurant near Lake Windermere. We didn't really want to eat at the same place every night, but for some reason Dinner, Bed & Breakfast came in £200 cheaper than B&B for 2 nights and DB&B for 1 night.
Gilpin Lodge has just lost a Michelin star, but we still had high hopes for excellent meals based on the sample menus on their website.

On arrival we had a bottle of Taltarni brut & tache bubbles brought to the room. One of my friends once pronounced it "the perfect brunch bubbly" but I see no reason to limit it like that. It is fine at any hour of the day! Much drier than many pink champagnes and sparkling wines, it was very nice to relax with after a long drive, but we probably didn't think our timing through properly - I was half cut and the bottle was still half full at the time we had said we'd go to the lounge for pre-dinner drinks.

In the lounge I ordered a glass of sherry - I was offered dry, medium or sweet, and I asked for medium because I always worry that I will be given a bone-dry fino, which I really don't like. As it happens I was brought something slightly drier than Harveys Bristol cream, so I should probably have just had a G&T. My husband asked for a glass of Talisker with 1 icecube. It came well and truly "on the rocks" so he had to drink fast before it was too diluted but it had just the right aroma of smoke and cold weather that he'd been hoping for as soon as we got out of the car and smelled the coal fires.

While we explored the menu, we were brought canapes - little crisp cubes of tender cheesy polenta, with a little mustard mayonnaise, some marinated olives and shotglasses of a crab cocktail, disconcertingly topped with whipped cream. The canapes were a very good size, not too big or too numerous.

At just the right time we were led to our table.

Our waiter won't win any awards for charm or affability, unlike the rest of the staff at Gilpin Lodge, but he was efficient enough as he offered bread and brought little shot glasses of celeriac veloute with truffle. I'm not - I am truly not - a butter snob, but I do feel that if you are going to serve unsalted butter with bread, it needs to be one of the European-style ones with a strong lactic character. The celeriac veloute was very good. It still tasted of celeriac and the truffles added very good things to it. I think next time I am planning to make the truffled rice salad, I will save a few truffles and add them to a celeriac mash the next night.

As a first course, I had ravioli of lobster with wilted spinach and a lemongrass and lobster veloute. The single, fat raviolo was wonderfully light, but the mousseline didn't taste distinctively of lobster, just generically seafood-y. And I couldn't find any lemongrass flavour in the veloute. Oh look, there it is, in my husband's sausage of river pike with watercress and freshwater crayfish. I think someone got confused by the saucepans and switched the pale coral sauces on our dishes. The pike sausage - a take on the Lyonnaise pike quenelle with crayfish sauce - was gorgeous; more of the divinely ethereal mousseline, with chunks of crayfish through it.

For main we had roasted Goosnargh duck coated in honey and cracked black pepper with red cabbage, baby turnips and cassis sauce for two people. Only the breasts were served carved thickly from the carcass, so I was sort of expecting to see something with a duck jus or duck stock turn up on the menu later, but there was nothing obvious. The waste in a kitchen at this level must be astonishing. The duck was very good, perfectly pink and tender, but I do love the contrast of a crisp skin with tender duck meat and the honey coating lost that contrast. The duck was just perfect with the zinfandel we'd ordered, although the wine was too heavy and almost syrupy to have alone once we'd finished eating.

A pre-dessert of passionfruit jelly with cardamom and gin was magnificent: couldn't taste any cardamom or gin, but the passionfruit was so powerful any more delicate flavours didn't stand a chance. The jelly could possibly have been less firmly set, if I must quibble.

On our wedding day, I had ordered a passionfruit souffle for pudding - only to be told that the oven was broken and I couldn't have it. Two years later - almost to the day - I got my passionfruit souffle. And no offence to the Bayswater Brasserie where we had dinner after our wedding, but I am convinced that they couldn't have produced a souffle of such perfection. So light, so strongly perfumed with passionfruit, so perfect with the glass of Hungarian tokaji I had with it. The chocolate icecream that was served with it was exquisite, but I really don't think chocolate goes very well with passionfruit. We eavesdropped on the couple next to us, who asked how to achieve such a perfect souffle, and they were told that the key is to brush the ramekin with melted chocolate, and to use upwards strokes of the brush. That way the mixture climbs the ramekin. Amazing, but I will leave that sort of thing to the experts, I think.

Really big steak

Yesterday afternoon I received an email from my husband telling me that he bought steak and a bottle of bubbles for our Friday night supper. Since he has spent quite a bit of time bonding with our butcher, I know that whatever he comes home with is going to be absolutely delicious. I just wasn't expecting the steak to be quite so large. Reminiscent of the Flintstone's brontosaurus rib, our rib steak (for 2 people, mind) clocked in at 2kgs of magnificent, dark-red, dry-hung beef.

If it was a little warmer, we'd have barbecued it. A piece of meat like that cries out for a nice, slow charcoal fire, with the lid on to catch the smokey goodness. But it is February and snow has been forecast (optimistically, I must say) so we decided to roast it - much too thick to fry or grill. In the past I have had reasonable success with Patricia Wells' method of cooking a thick steak on a bed of salt, but we don't have a big bag of rocksalt in the house at the moment, so it just went into a 220C oven, sprinkled with salt, pepper and a couple of crushed juniper berries for 35 minutes. It came out rare, tender and juicy, with a lovely belt of crisp brown fat. Carved into thick pieces and served with a pile of roast mediterranean veg it was quite perfect. And there is enough left over for about 4 doorstop sandwiches - especially if I can find that piece of horseradish that I tucked into the freezer!

Great Chieftain o' the puddin-race!

Happy Birthday to Rabbie Burns!

Today I have realised what a nightmare it must be to be an Australian of Scots heritage. I cannot imagine the hangover caused by a proper Burns supper (Jan 25th) followed by an Australia Day BBQ (Jan 26th). Thank god this year there is Sunday to recover. I do not have Scots heritage in the recent family history (although my mother has married a Douglas, so I can buy into it that way) but I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a go at haggis.

The local had a Burns supper last night, but I was out with a non-haggis eating friend, so I decided that I'd have to sacrifice the ritual and ceremony and just eat the damn haggis. I took advice and everyone said that Macsween of Edinburgh is the only way to go. In fact, a colleague who is running a Burns supper for the residents of a sheltered housing scheme is fearing a riot because she didn't know to get a Macsween haggis. I was told that Waitrose always has Macsween haggis, so a quick trip in got me sorted. I looked at the vegetarian haggis and decided that if I was going to do it, I'd do it right.

Wrapped in foil and simmered in water for 45 minutes, with carrot and parsnip mash and buttered greens on the side it was absolutely delicious! It's a Friday night and I am tired, so I wasn't interested in buying and preparing neeps and tatties from scratch, so I went with a couple of microwaveable veg dishes. The haggis wasn't nearly as dry as I had been led to believe it might be. It was quite succulent, with a nice even texture and good seasoning.

Apparently pepper, coriander, mace and nutmeg go into it, which I find interesting. Clearly, a small amount of offal with onions and oatmeal has to be la cucina povera, so to speak. When you haven't got much of anything you mix it together and call it a delicacy. But the large amount of spice in it lifts it away from being peasant food. Where an 18th century Highlander would have obtained mace and coriander is baffling to me. However it came about, it is delicious, and I would like to raise a toast to the immortal memory of Robert Burns - and to haggis, which deserves eating more than once a year.

Game Pie Redux

This week I discovered the joys of Waitrose RTC (reduced to clear): 2 packs of game casserole mix (partridge, pigeon, pheasant and mallard) reduced from £4.69 to 99p each. So I decided it was time to have another go at a raised game pie. I made quite a few variations to the Mark Hix recipe - added a finely diced leek, some smoked bacon lardons and some diced lamb kidney (because I had one from a meat box and neither of us are rapt with kidney). Unfortunately I realised at the bitter end that we were out of eggs, so I had to glaze with milk, which doesn't give nearly such a golden, appetising finish.

Still, it is out of the oven now and it smells nice. The filling again hasn't shrunk much, so I am not sure that I will be able to get any jelly into the crust, but I've run a knife around under the crust now while it is still warm and pliable, so I have hopes.

If, once cooled and jellied and sliced, it tastes good, I will post the recipe...

... and it tastes very good, so here is the recipe

Cold game pie

Serves 8-10 (or, in fact, 2 when snacked on for a week)

2tsp crushed juniper berries
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 medium leek, very finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
A good knob of butter
500g minced pork
200g diced smoked bacon
200g finely diced kidney (optional)
700g diced game meat (mixture of venison, rabbit, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and duck)
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
Freshly grated nutmeg
50ml dry sherry
3-4tbsp jelly (crabapple, wine or apple and chilli)
3tbs beef stock

For the hot-water crust

225ml water
200g lard
450g plain white flour
110g plain wholemeal flour
¾ tsp salt
1 small egg, beaten to glaze

Gently cook the onion, leek, garlic and juniper in the butter with a lid on for 2-3 minutes until soft.

Mix the diced meats with the pork (and kidney if using) and onion mixture, season to taste with salt, freshly ground white pepper and grated nutmeg and mix in the sherry.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Mix the flours and salt in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Bring the water and lard to the boil in a saucepan, then stir it into the flour with a wooden spoon to form a smooth dough. Leave the dough covered for about 15 minutes until it is cooler, less sticky and easier to handle.

Grease an 18-20cm springform cake tin, line with baking parchment and place it on a baking tray (important, it will leak juices).

Take two-thirds of the dough and on a lightly floured table roll it into a circle about 1/3cm thick and about 25-26cm across, so it is large enough to line the cake tin and overlap the edge by a centimetre or so. Making sure there are no holes in the pastry, place the dough into the cake tin, carefully press into the corners and allow it to just hang over the edge. Roll the remaining dough into a circle just large enough for the top and cut a 2cm hole in the centre.

Pack the filling into the pastry, mounding it up a bit in the middle, and fold over the overlapping edges. Brush the edges with egg, then trim the edges with a knife and pinch the base and top pastry edges together with your forefinger and thumb to make a good join. Brush the top of the pie all over with the beaten egg and cook for 45 minutes. If it is colouring too much, cover with foil and turn the oven down. Remove the sides of the tin and brush the sides and top again with egg before baking for a further 15 minutes until nicely coloured. Remove from the oven and cool; then refrigerate for a couple of hours. Melt the jelly in a small saucepan with the stock until thick and syrupy, then leave to cool a little. Pour into the pie through the hole and melt more jelly if necessary; then leave to set again in the fridge. The pie will keep for about a week in the fridge.