Clearing the freezer - we're getting there, honestly

"Baguette" more or less

Well, this is all inordinately stressful. The builders went quiet on us for a couple of weeks as the date we have to vacate this house got closer and closer and we weren't getting any answers as to when we would be able to move in to the new place. We have, finally, more or less got a plan. Not a very good one, but it may actually be workable.

charcuterie platter

And emptying the fridge/freezer/pantry carries on apace. I can't remember if I posted about the 5kg bag of chapatti flour that I bought, mistakenly thinking it was 500g. Anyway, there is still quite a lot of flour in it. I followed my usual King Arthur baguette recipe, but using a mixture of strong white, plain light brown and chapatti flour. It ended up with a tighter crumb than usual, but it was just the thing with a charcuterie plate (which also used up some potted wild boar from the freezer and pickled cherries from the pantry).

Teacakes - using up flour, dried cherries and sultanas

Basically I am refusing to cook anything at the moment that doesn't clear out a jar, packet or freezer bag.

More robust than the bought ones, still good to convey butter

Porky stew, using pork jowl, chicken stock and lentils

Thai-ish mussel stew using frozen mussels, sambal paste, coconut milk and chicken broth

Calamondin iced tea - using lots of frozen calamondins

This biryani was actually inspired by the book I am reading at the moment - Chasing the Dram. Rachel makes a pretty solid argument for drinking whisky and soda with curry meals and includes Mallika Basu's venison biryani recipe. And it just so happened that I had some venison in the freezer. Not enough, though, but I also had some goat steaks in the freezer, so mine was a mixed goat and venison biryani. Honestly, I couldn't taste any difference between the meats. It was very good - although next time I will cook the rice almost completely before I layer it. There wasn't enough liquid included to cook the rice properly, so I had to add more and the bottom bit ended up a bit mushy.

Game biryani

Trifle - using chocolate cake trimmings from the freezer and finishing a bottle of Chambord

Sort of Chinese claypot affair, using up chicken, Chinese sausage, pudding rice and chestnuts

Cherry pie

Using the final bag of frozen cherries, the remnants of the bag of dried sour cherries and a jar of cherries in brandy

Fig, bresaola and burrata

Paul's in South Africa for a couple of weeks spending time with his mother and brother while I hold the fort here. And the fort needs quite a lot of holding - Miss Urchin is not at all amused by his abandonment and for the two days he's been gone she's been extremely demanding and not very interested in letting me sleep.

I remembered that the last time he was away for a while she was similarly demanding, and didn't understand why I felt the need to cook when I got home from work, rather than dedicating my time to entertaining her. So mostly while Paul's away I am planning to eat very fast, low effort meals.

This was pretty fast and low effort, but still really rich and indulgent for a Sunday lunch. If you find burrata too rich for words, a fresh buffalo mozzarella or even a creamy young goats cheese would also be nice.

Fig, bresaola and burrata (serves 1 as a main course)

50g hazelnuts, blanched
1 small bunch basil
1 small garlic clove
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
4 slices bresaola (or proscuitto or serrano ham)
4 figs
1 x 100g burrata
extra balsamic

Roast the hazelnuts in a 160C oven until nicely browned and tip the hot nuts into a mini processor.

Turn up the heat to 180, halve the figs and put them on a baking sheet and roast for 15-20 minutes.

Add the basil, garlic, mustard, olive oil and balsamic to the mini processor and pulse to a rubble.

Arrange the bresaola and burrata on a plate, tip the hazelnut rubble onto the plate and add the hot figs. Drizzle with a little extra balsamic. A glass of fino sherry would be particularly nice with this, but I didn't happen to have one.

Unearthed Christmas

The view from The Globe

I mainly just potter along, posting what I feel like, when I feel like it and not really bothering too much about how I "grow my brand" or any of that serious blogger business. Which puts me in a position to be a bit smug when something like the tawdry #BloggerBlackmail hits social media.

But of course the week that unedifying hashtag blew up, I had a lovely invitation to do serious blogger business at a brand event. So obviously when I arrived at the Globe for the Unearthed Christmas Press Show I demanded £100 worth of macarons. They shoved a cocktail in my hand and told me to stuff my face with sausage. Fair enough. That sort of free and open communication prevents all sorts of misunderstanding.

Iberico meat platter

Unearthed have very kindly invited me to several events over the years, but this is the first one I've been able to attend. It was lovely putting a face to the twitter account! I am, however, very familiar with many of their products, because Paul has a two-salami a day charcuterie habit and Ocado often has the Unearthed range on discount. They hit a very pleasing balance of quality and accessible pricing which I like and often have delicious and unusual products perfect for savoury snackers like us. I'm still mourning the loss of the smoked semi-dried tomatoes that they ran as a temporary line earlier this year.

Brussels sprout salad. Delicious. Really.

While I love smallgoods, the salads were particularly inspiring. I'm a huge fan of fancying up a salad by chucking on deli items, but these were on another level: feta, artichoke and brussels sprout, and freekeh, tomato and smoked cranberry. The cocktail offered in lieu of macaron was a lovely combination of Makers Mark bourbon, strawberry purée, raspberry liqueur and lime juice which packed a punch but I don't think it addled my palate. So when I tell you that the brussels sprout salad was really delicious, you can trust me. Really. But follow the links to the recipes and see for yourself.

Freekeh, roasted tomato, olives and smoked cranberry salad

As well as trying the salads, I tasted a few of the new lines that are being introduced for Christmas. They are entering into "gifting" (horrible word) for the first time, with some snazzy decorative kilner jars of olives (the citrus Nocellara with garlic were particularly good) and glass beer mugs of snacking chorizo or fuet. Fortunately Kavey recently mentioned on Facebook that she had made fuet so I was able to assume a knowledgeable air on the subject. I think it is safe to say Paul is absolutely going to love those fuets and in a couple of months I will be trying to figure out what to do with a dozen empty glass beer mugs. I might have to open a hipster cocktail pop-up. I really enjoyed the pâté, unusually topped with rhubarb, packed in a cute earthenware dish and sold in a duo with an apple-topped pâté. The apple one looked striking, and the pâté itself was delicious, but I think as a garnish the whole slice of apple would be a bit awkward and it would end up being put to one side and discarded.

They are also expanding their range of platters, which should do very well for them over the Christmas entertaining season. The Iberico meat platter looks particularly good as a more expensive treat. I'm just hoping that the snacking fuet and Iberico meat platters are available on Ocado, so I don't have to venture into actual shops with actual other people.

DISCLAIMER: I was invited to attend the Unearthed Christmas Press Show and given a goodie bag of olives and a USB stick. No other compensation was offered or requested and I was not required to post a review. All comments are my own and some may be hyperbolic for comedic effect.

Le Deux Salons

This is my thousandth published post. I can't help but think that with a bit of planning I could have published my thousandth post the other week on my eighth blogoversary. That would have been good. But that kind of strategy isn't really how I roll...

When I last went to Le Deux Salons, in 2011, I was a bit concerned that I was the last person to go and everyone else had moved on. Well, it wasn't as bad as that, but rumour has it that by the time it was sold to Prescott & Conran last year it was looking a bit wilted.

Reserve de Gassac Rosé

Then, suddenly, a couple of months ago I started to be bombarded by emails from Le Deux Salons and the other Prescott & Conran properties. I have to say things must have got pretty dire if my details from one lunchtime meal deal all those years ago were considered part of the goodwill of the business. I was on the point of getting really annoyed when one email caught my attention - a "Best of the French Riviera" menu, of a starter, bouillabaise, dessert and a half bottle of Rosé for £32. Not quite the three courses for £15.50 of my last visit but it still sounded like good value. And fortunately my lunch partner of the last visit was on her long school holidays, so we made a date for a holiday treat.

Crudités, fromage blanc

I don't remember an enormous amount about the décor from the last visit, but it's now looking just how you want a French restaurant to look. We were seated upstairs in the more formal restauranty bit where the tables are capacious and the tablecloths are crisply white. Lovely. Jude had the crudités with a herbed fromage blanc dip, which looked incredibly pretty. I had a platter of lovely jambon Noir de Bigorre, which I think is the French equivalent of Spanish pata negra. It was simply and generously served with some little cornichons. I do think the Spanish version, with the acorn sweetness of the fat is slightly better though.

Jambon Noir de Bigorre

I wasn't sure what to expect from the bouillabaisse. Most articles I've read about it make it sound quite rustic - Elizabeth David includes an account of an enormous cauldron boiling on a wood fire on the beach, full of a broth yellow from saffron and all the fish they could catch. What we got was not that. But was refined and delicious.

Three types of fish, fennel and potato

I do love a dish in multiple parts, so the sight of waiters coming towards us with many different dishes was very pleasing. We each got a copper dish with three types of fish (red mullet was one, not sure of the others), fennel and potato, a plate of toasted bread slices with a pot of aioli (I don't think it was red, spicy or saffrony enough to be the traditional rouille) and grated parmesan. The waiter then ladelled a couple of dainty spoonfuls of rich seafood broth over the fish and left each of us with a little tureen of the remaining broth.

Bread, aioli and parmesan

We ate the succulent, delicate fish with a little more of the broth, then I made a big delicious mess with the rest of the broth, thickening and seasoning it with the aioli and dunking in the toasted bread. Just wonderful. The white tshirt I was wearing was very much an error.

The waiter ladled on broth

For dessert we both had Brillat-Savarin cheesecake. The cheesecake I had back in 2011 was one of the finest I've ever had, and this was equally as good. The raspberries on the side weren't the best-flavoured fruit I've ever had, but they were just right to punctuate the rich, smooth cheese. All in all, it was an excellent lunch and I think well worth going back for. And it's very conveniently located right near Charing Cross station, so I might have to drag Paul in for a date night some time.

Roasted garlic soup with nduja swirl

For the last couple of months, ever since the weather started to warm up and the foody universe started to bring forth a multitude of wild garlic recipes, I have had something in mind. Another attempt at garlic soup, but this one given a springtime lift with a swirl of fresh wild garlic puree and the contrasting porky chilli kick of nduja.

Alas, it was not to be.

I had planned an assignation with a garlic pusher, but through a miscommunication didn't manage to meet up with him. Then I bought, at terrible price, a small plastic punnet of the precious leaves. When I opened the punnet to make the puree I discovered that the gastropods on board had taken full advantage of their situation - there was more slug than leaf and what leaves were there were too damaged to use.

My springtime garlic soup became an anytime garlic soup.

Aside from the nduja, the only ingredient that may be a little hard to find is the goats double cream. This is a new discovery for me, and if you are a goats cheese naysayer then you will not like it but for those of us who love that goaty tang, this cream adds a little extra savour and complexity to the mellow garlic soup.

Roasted garlic soup with nduja swirl (serves 2-4 - it's very rich)

3 large garlic bulbs
1 onion, chopped
A knob of butter
4 small potatoes, peeled and diced
250ml dry white wine
250ml chicken stock
100ml goats double cream
salt, pepper and nutmeg
50g nduja

Preheat the oven to 180C. Wrap the heads of garlic in foil and bake for 45–50 minutes, then leave to cool.


Saute the onion in the butter in a medium saucepan until translucent. Squeeze the flesh out of the garlic cloves into the pan. Add the potatoes, wine and stock, and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Once the potatoes are soft, blend the soup until smooth before adding the cream and seasoning with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Warm the nduja until it is soft and runny (I do this in the microwave). Pour the soup into bowls, add blobs of the nduja and give it a bit of a swirl.

 My soup is going to Deb for Souper (soup, salad & sammie) Sunday - she has a good year-round appreciation for soups!

Bacon, banana and chilli pizza

I may never be allowed back into Italy after this...

A great many years ago, when I was living in Brisbane, I'd sometimes get pizza from the Kookaburra Cafe. You must understand, it was the mid-90s, when "innovative" and "fusion" pizza toppings were really taking off. You could hardly move for kangaroo, Peking duck or Mexican chilli pizzas. So after looking at it sideways a few times, I eventually gave their famous (and still on their menu) bacon, banana and chilli pizza a go. It was delicious.

I'm not sure why, but that unlikely-sounding combination has come up in conversation a couple of times recently. I thought it was probably time to revisit it. I know my palate has changed on a few things in the last twenty years (rarer meat, enjoyment of whisky, greater appreciation of proper Italian pizzas) so there was a chance I wouldn't find it as enjoyable as I did then. Putting it in front of Paul was going to be the big challenge though - he's not a fan of meat with fruit. I made a bacon and mushroom pizza as well, so he couldn't whinge too much.

I started with a bought base. I smeared it with slightly too much chipotle paste, then topped it with smoked streaky bacon, slices of quite firm banana and mozzarella. I added a sprinkle of grated parmesan and put it in a hot oven for 10 minutes.

Other than it being a little too hot from the chilli (next time I'd mix the chilli with a little olive oil) it was just as good as I remembered. The salty, smoky bacon, sweet banana and creamy cheese are just delicious with the bite of the chilli. Paul, however, declared that it "was a bit odd", and was grateful for the bacon and mushroom pizza that followed. Maybe it is a taste best developed in your twenties? This one is definitely going to be kept as a private pleasure.

Proscuitto and melon salad

This was one of those random, chuck-the-bits-together sort of dishes that ended up tasting much better than I thought it was going to. Not the most photogenic though, it has to be said.

I'd bought a beautiful, ripe melon and some proscuitto with the notion of making an old-school starter for our dinner one night. But then we ended up going straight to the main course. So I decided to turn it into a salad for lunch the following day. I crushed a clove of garlic and whisked it up with a little olive oil and a splash of balsamic. Then I crumbled in some feta, torn proscuitto and shredded mint leaves before adding the melon.

Recently I was rummaging in the drawer for a cherry-pitter - which it turns out I do not have - and was reminded that I own two melon-ballers. It was fate! I had to go a bit kitsch on the presentation. But if it wasn't just for us, I'd cut the melon into cubes like a normal person.

Beef fillet - pho and salad

When Paul and I eat steak, it isn't generally fillet. Fillet is tender, of course, but that tenderness comes at the expense of good flavour. We'll choose something a little chewier, but with a beefier flavour, like onglet, rump or ribeye every time.

But Paul is working away from home again, so I am back to making the most special and delicious meals I can come up with on the weekends to make up for the fast-food dross he is mostly consuming during the week. Last week, I decided to welcome him home with a big bowl of pho, that fragrant, warming Vietnamese soup that I was quite sure he hadn't been able to get in Aberdeen.

In Sydney, we used to be able to buy very thinly sliced beef for making pho bo. You can probably get it here too, but I've never seen it. I decided that buying some beef fillet and slicing it myself was the way forward.

Of course, the other reason why we wouldn't buy fillet very often even if it was our favourite is that it is bloody expensive. That meat was going to have to work really hard for me.

Two beautiful 250g fillet steaks.

I equipped myself with two 250g fillet steaks. Because the beef for pho is cut so thinly I knew that one steak would feed both of us generously. I decided to cure the other steak and serve it like carpaccio, making it stretch for two people as well.

In the cure

Cured Beef

250g fillet steak
2 tbs coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 knife-tip ground cloves
1/2 tbsp freshly ground black peppercorns
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp brown sugar

Mix the spices together and press into all sides of the beef. Place in a non-reactive container, and refrigerate for 3-4 days, pouring off the liquid that collects daily. To serve, wipe off the spices and slice thinly. Serve with salad - will serve 2-4 people.

Sliced beef piled on top of the other ingredients, waiting for the hot broth

The most important thing about pho is starting with a good broth. I had a rich beef stock left from braising some short ribs, which I then reduced further with chunks of ginger, spring onions, star anise and cinnamon.

I put the piece of beef in the freezer for an hour to make it easier to slice thinly.

In each bowl I piled rice noodles, bean shoots, mint, coriander and basil, topping it off with slices of chilli, spring onions, the sliced beef and wedges of lime.

Just before serving I corrected the seasoning of the broth with fish sauce, lime juice and a bit of sugar and brought it back to a rapid boil, then divided it between the bowls. Then, as we swished the pieces of meat in the broth, we added chilli sauce and hoisin to our bowls to taste.

Delicious, fresh and comforting.

The meat starting to cook in the broth

On Monday (i.e when the meat had been in the cure for 3 days) I decided to serve it. Only problem being that it was very, very cold on Monday and I didn't want an entirely cold salad for lunch. So, after wiping the curing spices off the meat I seared it in a very hot frying pan (with the windows open, the extractor fan on and the kitchen door shut) for about a minute on each side, then sliced it and piled it onto dressed leaves. Absolutely divine. The cure did its work, so the meat didn't taste raw (I prefer my steak cooked medium, so believe me when I say this!) and it was insanely tender. I don't like the phrase "melt in the mouth" but this really was. With some bread and butter or some boiled potatoes this could have served four of us instead of just two. Although it was too delicious to share.

Beautiful beef. You can see how the curing intensified the colour

Reuben Sandwich

I'd been feeling that I hadn't done any cured meat in a while. I wanted to make some sausage or bacon or something. And then I hit upon the perfect thing. Pastrami.

I did some googling, and decided that this recipe from Emeril Lagasse seemed like the most workable for the home cook. I also liked the sound of the seasonings in the brine - I thought it was likely to make delicious pastrami. I used a smaller piece of brisket, so I only left it in the brine for two weeks, not three.

I smoked it on oak dust for 3 hours (it was a very cold day, and I think the ambient temperature kept the smoker cooler than usual) until it reached an internal temperature of 70C. During the smoking, the connective tissue melted out a bit and the brisket separated into two slabs.

The only other thing that I did differently was to press the pastrami under some fairly heavy weights (a plate, a wooden board and 3 cans of tomatoes) over night in order to make it easier to slice into neat serving slices. I left one half intact, wrapped it tightly and put it in the freezer, the other stayed out for eating!

So there was my pastrami. But how to eat it? Well, it had to be a Reuben sandwich! Although apparently it is only a reuben if it is made with salt beef. The same sandwich made with pastrami is a Rachel.

So I needed to make some good rye bread, to match my lovely pastrami.

We've been watching the Hairy Bikers on BBC iplayer, and I really liked their Classic Brown Loaf. It used a technique I haven't tried before, of making a ferment with flour, water and yeast and leaving it overnight before adding it to the rest of the flour.

I was very, very dubious when I put the ferment together - it looked very dry - but as the yeast started to work the bubbles worked through all the flour and made a very light sponge.

Because I wanted the rye flavour to come through more, I subbed rye flour for all of the wholemeal flour in the main bread recipe. I also used the last of my whey from cheesemaking instead of the water, to give it an extra tang.

I was a bit scared when I left the bread to prove - at one point I thought it was going to overflow all over the kitchen, so it only got 1 1/2 hours before it went into the oven. It did need the full 30 minutes to bake though.

It's a lovely bread! I gave it about 20 minutes to cool before I cut it, but I should have been a wee bit more patient, because it sliced much better when it was properly cooled.

The rye tang was still very subtle, but it had a lovely chewy texture and robust flavour. And I think the crust is the best I have ever produced; just the right balance between crisp and chewy. The very thing for my sandwich.

So then it was really just a matter of assembly. A good slice of bread, thickly smeared with mustard (we used Dijon), topped with overlapping thin slices of the pastrami, then forkfuls of well-drained sauerkraut and slices of gruyere cheese.

That went under the grill until the cheese melted and the sauerkraut and pastrami was hot through.

Topped with a second slice of bread and served with tall glasses of German beer, this was pretty much the perfect sandwich experience, and made a really delicious lunch. Genuinely worth the effort! This sandwich is going to Deb for her Souper (soup, salad and sammie) Sunday event!

Borough Market

I do have friends who aren't foodies - I truly do - but there is something so satisfying about sharing food experiences with people who are on the same wavelength.

We had a friend from Australia staying recently and I knew that she was someone to whom I could say "Let's go to Borough Market; we won't have dinner tonight, we'll just put together a platter".

We wandered around, taking full advantage of the free tasters on offer, and bought as much as we could carry. Then we came home, opened a bottle of wine and ate it all. Brilliant!

So what did we buy? Well. A loaf of lovely French walnut and honey bread. I sliced it thinly and toasted it. With some foie gras pate that we had in the pantry waiting for a worthy occasion, it was just heavenly. We had fresh purple figs, some lovely British raspberries, an absolutely gorgeous vegetarian mushroom pate, a slice of rabbit and mushroom terrine and several French cheeses. The piece de resistance was some exquisite Spanish ham. Jamón ibérico de bellota is amazing stuff - sure, a good Italian proscuitto is delicious, but it cannot hold a candle to the rich, sweet nutty ibérico. It's bloody expensive but worth it for special occasions!

We piled all these treats on a platter along with some spiced, pickled tangerines and more of the toasted walnut bread. A glorious meal with a foody friend.