Game Pie

In Mark Hix's column yesterday, there was a remarkably easy -looking recipe for a cold game pie. The thing I really liked about it was the way he used redcurrant jelly to pour in at the end instead of messing about making jellied stock from scratch, which is usually the thing that puts me off cold pies.

I didn't follow the recipe to the letter - I had a pack of game casserole mix that I'd bought from a farm shop last weekend, so I diced that into smaller pieces rather than boning rabbits and pheasants. And I used sherry instead of port. And I used half wholemeal, half white flour for the pastry and I had a jar of apple, chilli and lime jelly in the fridge, so I used that instead of redcurrant.

It's a qualified success. And I made so many changes that I can't blame the recipe at all! Using the casserole mix I ended up with a much higher proportion of lean meat to fat, so it's a little dry and the meat isn't nicely glued together. For some reason the meat didn't separate from the pastry around the hole in the top, so I couldn't get any jelly into the spaces either, which adds to the dryness a bit. But the flavour is fantastic and it really was so little effort that I can keep practicing!

Leftover Scallops

So, I bought too many scallops for the chicchi salad. And being what they are, I really needed to use them the following day. I'd been craving cauliflower soup (it's been soup weather for a couple of weeks now!) so I decided to combine the two.

Some of the best meals I have ever had involved cauliflower and seafood: my New Years' Eve dinner of a few years ago where I served cauliflower puree with toast and Yarra Valley salmon roe; the birthday cocktails of the year before that where Chinese soup spoons of cauliflower skordalia were topped with scallops and pink grapefruit; lunch at le Manoir in September. So I know it is a combination that works.

I sauteed a diced onion, chucked in a cauliflower, broken into florets, added water to not quite cover with a slurp of Touch of Taste veg stock and put a lid on it. About 10 minutes later, I crumbled in some fairly basic stilton cheese, attacked the pot with a stick blender and added some cream. The scallops went into a hot pan and there it was. And it looked horrible. The soup had turned a pale green from the stilton and the whole thing was pale and unappetising. It was too dark out to get parsley, so I added a spoonful of lumpfish caviar, just to add some visual appeal. I think it worked.

Chicchi

In September, during Judy Witt's fabulous cooking class, we made Chicchi - an amazing warm, truffled salad. It was the thing I most wanted to come home and cook for my husband because the truffle flavour was so amazing and just so sexy.

It has also been the hardest thing to shop for in ages! The firm I found that sell the black rice we used are "in a period of transition" and, while happy to take my money, have been unable to provide me with the goods or a refund. Then I couldn't find the sliced truffles.

So it took until last week to get the bits (or an approximation - I've used Camargue red rice instead of venere nero black rice) in order to make it. At the cooking class we made it as a starter (gluten free and vegan - always useful to have a few recipes like that) but my mum said that when she made it, she put seared scallops on top, and I thought that was a good idea!

Huge success! The nutty rice with the earthy, creamy chickpeas and the little sweet acid hits of cherry tomato, overlaid with the indescribable aroma of truffles and then topped off with salty sweet scallops. Sensory overload. I've even been told I can make it again.

Sainsburys Pheasant

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness etc etc etc; the exciting thing about a European autumn for me is getting to try all this game that I've heard about. My partridge effort last month was pretty good, and left me wanting more. Our not-very-local supermarket is a Sainsbury, who quite often have some of your more interesting meat, more free range, more organic than the actual local supermarket. So the other week we grabbed pigeon breasts, bambi burgers (one of our regular meals) and a "stuffed easy-carve pheasant".

The pigeon has been stowed in the freezer, because we ended up having quite a disrupted sort of fortnight, but there was no space for the pheasant, which we ended up cooking last night. It was a couple of days past the best-before, but it smelled OK and it looked fine, so thought it was worth risking. Gave it a fairly hard roast at 200C for about 40 minutes. I figured that with a pork-based stuffing (the stuffing was prune, port, liver and mushroom, I think) it needed to be really thoroughly cooked through. Deglazed the pan with a splash of white wine, served it with roast baby carrots, celeriac and caper mash and steamed cabbage with nutmeg and butter.

Yum! The skin was beautifully crispy, the meat moist and flavoursome, and the stuffing meant that one bird was a really good meal for 2 people. Hope they've got more of them in this week!

The Mango Tree

My brief was relatively simple: a restaurant a short walk from Victoria station. I don't know the area at all so I asked around and got some slightly depressing suggestions - ASK or Pizza Express right over the road from the station. I have nothing against ASK or Pizza Express, I just wanted something a little, well, better.

Finally my work foody friend came to the rescue with the suggestion of The Mango Tree. She has a friend who married a Thai girl and that is where they celebrated their marriage. I got there a bit early, so settled in with the menu and the best gosh darn prawn crackers I have ever tried. And some fizzy water, because I have a cold and thought too much booze was a bad idea. The decor is interesting - it's your standard big light room with wood panelled feature walls etc, but they seem to have gone gung-ho for Halloween and the lovely strelitzia and lily flower arrangements were draped with cobwebs, there were axes and spiders on all the walls and a row of jack o'lanterns twinkled with tealights in the window.

I'd already been horrified by the prices and made a partial recovery by the time my friends arrived. I think putting all of the expensive wines at the front is a novel way to go - I suspect many people order the first half-way reasonable one they clock, rather than combing through to the back for the house wines. Fortunately they were happy to let me order for the table, because I had already spotted several things I wanted to eat, and I wasn't much bothered by their tastes.

We started with Thai fishcakes. They had the pleasing bouncy texture I like, but I felt they were a little bland, or there was something missing in the flavouring. Could have been because of my cold though. A starter from the specials menu I thought was more successful - a chicken liver salad. The dressing was vibrant, the livers were flavoursome, it was a very good dish.

For mains, we shared a red duck curry - which was delicious and allowed me to show off a bit explaining that the little round green things are in fact a type of aubergine. The belly pork with Chinese broccoli and oyster sauce could have been more succulent, but was very well-flavoured, and the seafood with black bean sauce was just wonderful. So many big, fat scallops and prawns! Complemented but not padded out by fish and calamari. The glutinous rice was much stickier than I have had it before - plain steamed would have been a better choice.

We braved pudding. Some very interesting icecream flavours, but my friends both had a layered banana and coconut pudding, and I had lemongrass infused custard. Independent verification agreed with me that my custard had not the slightest hint of lemongrass flavour, but the vanilla in it was nice and the texture was lovely.

Fortunately when I completed the online booking form I ticked the "yes please" special offers box, which gave a 50% discount on the food bill. A very good thing, as with the discount (and a few bottles of fizzy water, 2 glasses of wine and a couple of coffees, service included) the bill cleared 70 quid. Definitely worth going back - but only on a mealdeal!

New discovery!

I'm not a huge chocolate fan. I like it OK, but I don't eat it very often - maybe a couple of times a month - and I very seldom crave it. I think chocolate has very little place in a dessert course, because it is too rich and heavy after almost anything. The best place for chocolate is as a little treat at teatime. Maybe a piece of chocolate tart. Maybe a chocolate roulade filled with mascarpone and berries. Maybe a square of millionaire shortbread. Maybe just a chocolate digestive.

But I have to say, I made an impulsive purchase at the supermarket yesterday, and I think I have embarked on a whole new life-stage of chocolate binging. Marks and Spencer organic fairtrade milk chocolate with nutmeg, cinnamon and coriander. Heaven! Like a chocolatey chai. It set me to fantasising about using it to make chocolate mousse, and hot chocolate, and infusing those flavours in dark chocolate to make truffles for Christmas. I fear it is a limited edition line, so I will have to stock up before they take it away from me!

The Gate

We're house hunting at the moment. Not fun "We've saved for our dream home and we can do up the bathroom" house hunting but "They are selling our rental with 22 months to run on the lease" house hunting. Very tedious, as rental prices seem to have doubled in the last 14 months. Anyway, tonight after work we shot out to drive past a house that looks very promising. It's in a village a few miles away from here and seems very remote, although it is only 2 stations down the line.

So, it was 7.30 and I was hungry and getting whingey, so we stopped at The Gate; a pub we've been meaning to go to for ages. I had a margarita pizza; it is one of my tests. We used to go to a pizza place in Sydney called Napoli in Bocca, which made the most divine margarita (they called it something else, but it was tomato, mozzarella and basil) which has become my benchmark for pizza. This margarita was a journeyman's effort. Perfectly serviceable, and without doubt the best pizza I have had in England, but still not what I mean when I say pizza. I want a thin, perfectly cooked but still pliable, base, with wood-ash clinging to it. I want a smear of the most flavoursome tomato sauce. I want fior de latte mozzarella oozing milk as much as it melts. I want basil giving up its own essential oils to the mozzarella. I want a last minute anointing with peppery olice oil.

What I got was nice, thin and reasonably flavoursome, but without amazing ingredients and genius of production. And honestly, I didn't expect it. My husband had skate and salad, which he enjoyed. All in all, it was reasonable food made memorable by the worst menu spelling mistake I have seen in years. The roast cod on the specials menu was served with grilled aborigines.