Something for the weekend – or midweek

A classic veal blanquette (not mine)

Veal is making a long overdue comeback, now that people realise that it’s not all raised in crates and that, if you use dairy, then it is an inevitable byproduct of farming that would otherwise be wasted – and the calf have no life at all.

So it’s the perfect opportunity to explore ways of cooking this delicate but tasty meat – and in ways other than as a wiener schnitzel.

Perfectly fitted for such a culinary experiment is the veal blanquette, a classic French ‘white stew’, where neither the meat nor the butter that it is sealed in are browned.

“Because this is a classic ‘white stew’ there is a prejudice to serving it with any items that would add color (ie carrots or peas),” claims Wikipedia.

Which is somewhat erroneous, given the recipes that exist by some exceptional chefs who presumably know.

In French Country Cooking, for instance, those culinary slouches, the Roux brothers, include quite a lot of vegetables. As does Joël Robuchon in The Complete Robuchon. And so too does Bruno Loubet, in the recently-published Mange Tout.

For Loubet in particular, there are carrots and lots of celery, together with the green part of a leek or two, plus chervil.

So even if you say that the traditional onion and button mushrooms are entirely in keeping with the whiteness, there’s still colour to be seen, and to be seen rather clearly.

It was Bruno’s book that inspired me to finally try a blanquette and indeed, this is not a fine dining restaurant dish for him, but something that his grandmother used to cook, while for the Rouxs, it’s packed with memories of their grandmother.

Not that it won’t have been served in some rarified culinary environs: Escoffier, somewhat predictably, provides more than a single recipe, while a look at Larousse Gastronomique reveals that there are several other blanquettes, including lamb and monkfish.

I used Bruno’s recipe to guide me, but I’m not going to detail that here, beyond saying that he uses lots of celery, because his grandmother did, and that if you can’t find chervil, flat-leaf parsley makes an entirely acceptable substitute.

I’ll say it now – if you’re looking to buy a cookbook for Christmas, I really do recommend Bruno’s book.

The monkfish version is much quicker, but as I’m not a believer in undercooking vegetables, this really means that you need to do it in two parts.

So, for my version of a monkfish blanquette …

Heat some butter gently in a pan, and add chopped carrot, onion, garlic and celery, and let it all cook gently until the vegetables are softened, but without colouring.

Sprinkle a little plain flour over and stir to cook for about a minute, before starting to add chicken, fish or vegetable stock, little by little, until the sauce has stopped thickening quickly.

Pop a lid on and leave to gently cook for about 20 minutes or so, until the carrot is starting to get tender.

In the meantime, heat some more butter in another pan and seal your monkfish, which has been cut into pieces, but remembering not to colour.

When the carrot is starting to get tender, add the fish and some button mushrooms, pop the lid back on and give it around 12-15 minutes.

Check the fish is cooked. Check the seasoning and adjust if you need to.

Take it off the heat and stir in some really thick cream. Pop it back on the heat and allow everything to warm through thoroughly, before giving a squeeze of fresh lemon juice to just add a little edge.

Serve with plain or basmati rice to keep the white theme going – and to mop up the juices – and a garnish of chopped parsley if it takes your fancy.

And there you have it – a very simple blanquette that could also be done with any meaty piece of white fish, and which makes a hearty and healthy midweek dinner.

It's all in the game

Autumnal Hackney sunset

The weather has been so all over the place for the second year running that, according to some reports, English apples are only now appearing on supermarket shelves – a full three weeks later than normal.

But while the temperature may yet be clinging to levels that are unusual for October – and even producing an unwelcome mugginess – the days have shortened and, in London at any rate, a certain greyness has been the dominant theme of the last fortnight.

In the carpark at the back of Voluptuous Villas, the slender silver birches are yellowing fast, while leaves are starting to fall steadily.

That it is autumn then, can no longer be in doubt.

If apples and pears are now arriving – actually, I’ll let you into a little secret: English apples have been available on Broadway Market on a Saturday since early September – and if parsnips are but a frost away from adding their sweetness to our plates, then another thing is sure: the game season is upon us.

Back in June, when all anyone cared about was summer, given that spring had gone missing in inaction, a new book landed on my doormat.

Bruno Loubet’s Mange Tout offered a selection of recipes that perfectly fitted the long days and the rising temperatures.

As I mentioned here, the confited salmon with asparagus and green gazpacho is a delight and will be done again when the English asparagus pops its head above the soil next year.

But amid all the excitement over summer food, an autumn dish stood out for me from that early browsing: pigeon with cauliflower done two ways, and a blackberry sauce.

One of the delights with Bruno’s cooking is that, even when you haven’t heard of a dish or a food combination before, they always sound so completely natural.

It’s classic and modern all at once.

And so I’ve been waiting to try this one since we returned from France.

The first problem, however, was that Andy and Wild Game Co have disappeared from Broadway Market.

Not, I should say, of his own volition, but with various summer festivals offering him better seasonal business opportunities, it seems that the market managers said that he couldn’t take a break and then return in the autumn.

All of which is slightly annoying – not least since much game is seasonal. The pheasant season, for instance, only opened on 1 October.

Thankfully, Andy has been incredibly helpful, and we organised a way to get me a couple of bags of game. Most has gone in the freezer, although it won’t be staying there very long.

In many ways, last year was the breakthrough one when I finally learned how to cook some game decently, and I have no desire for that to be halted any time soon.

Anyway, the first dish was venison fillet, seared and served with roast veggies and some of the Balsamico drizzle that I swear by both for taste and making a dish look a bit more artful.

The veg in question were swede, carrot and sweet potato, roasted for 35-40 minutes at 200˚C (fan) with a few (drained and dried) tinned spuds thrown in late; all tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and dried thyme – a wonderfully earthy background to the meat.

The second dish was pigeon.

Now Andy supplies me with pigeon breast – to be honest, my butchery skills are not that good that I’d particularly like to attack a bird myself: the breasts are small enough that you don’t want to risk losing any.

However, Bruno’s recipe calls for whole birds, the breasts of which are cut off, while the carcass is used to make a sauce.

Bruno also starts his sauce with a shallot and a parsnip, and since we haven’t yet had the first frost, I am avoiding parsnips until they’re really worth eating.

So I didn’t follow the instructions to the letter, in other words, but started with a mirepoix lite of shallot instead of onion, carrot and celery.

You soften those gently - the first opportunity to do this in one of the Le Creuset saucepans, and what a difference that makes – and then add booze.

Bruno's chicken – before cooking

Now Bruno recommends port and brandy. Again, you can improvise a little – a small bottle of red wine isn’t going to cost as much as port and it won’t insult the final dish. And a miniature of brandy is more than enough.

Reduce, reduce, reduce – and then add stock and reduce again. It’s pretty classic sauce stuff. Strain and add the blackberries to cook briefly before serving.

In the meantime, you bring some milk to a simmer, letting it infuse with a few caraway seeds, before cooking cauliflower florets until tender, then draining and blitzing. Add a drop or two of the milk if you need to for a smooth purée. This has the advantage that it can be made early and then warmed gently before serving.

Mash up some juniper berries with salt and pepper, coat the pigeon breasts and leave them to absorb the flavours. The smell of doing all of this, incidentally, is wonderful.

Near the time, you reheat the purée, then slice the remaining florets as thinly as you can and dress.

Again, improvisation, since I didn’t have walnut oil. I used olive oil and, instead of red wine vinegar, some of my thicker raspberry vinegar, plus salt and red pepper.

To cook the pigeon is simple and a brief matter: just a couple of minutes a side in a hot pan with a drop of olive oil.

Now I have to point out, at this stage, that the picture in the book cannot be the real dish: the raw cauli, once dressed, is NOT going to appear as immaculately white. Hey ho – food porn is as generous with reality as the other sort.

But in taste terms there is nothing false.

This dish packs a wonderful punch. It is a superb combination of flavours and textures and, even if I couldn’t manage quite the studied informality of presentation as that photo suggested, it doesn’t look bad either.

Next up was Bruno’s roast chicken with a parsley, garlic butter stuffing.

Not a stuffing in the usual way, but one that is gently pushed between skin and flesh, meaning that the bird, in effect, self bastes. That was about as far as I stuck with that recipe, but again, wonderful tastes and aromas.

It’s a recipe that can also be used for a guinea fowl, apparently.

Which point keeps the game theme going.

It'’s not easy if you don’t have a specialist supplier or a local butcher that does it, but game is a wonderful meat. Well, lots of wonderful meats, to be rather more accurate.

If you’re worried about fat, then game is lean – and still absolutely bursting with flavour.

Indeed, a couple of weeks ago, we tried kangaroo for the first time: bought from the Exotic Meat Company (Gamston Wood Ostrich Farm) at Borough Market a few months ago, it was the result of a cull in Australia and had been frozen at source.

It was fillet and, as suggested above, as lean as anything. All I did was to bring it to room temperature and dry it off, and then sear it in a little olive oil, and serve with pretty standard veg on the side. Game really can be so easy and so quick.

And when flavour is so good and so strong, you don’t have to do a lot with it. It becomes a brilliant midweek meal.

There’s a moral to all this.

If you can, get hold of game in season and learn to cook and enjoy it. It’s plentiful on these islands, and there’s also plenty of variety.

And in spite of the UK’s history of deforestation and enclosure by the ruling elite – or maybe even also because of it – let’s not get caught up in a belief that game is only for them and not us.

As it is in France and many other places game should be for all of us. It’s great food – but not ‘posh’ food.

And before I forget to suggest it – get Bruno’s book.

Cook – there's a caterpillar in my salad!

Chicken salad with orange and tarragon

This weather is glorious and, after a poor summer last year and a lengthy, demoralising winter that pretty much consumed the spring, nobody should be grumbling.

But, unaccustomed as we are to such soaring temperatures, it can make eating a little more difficult. After all, this is hardly meat-and-two-veg weather.

In which case, it seems the perfect opportunity to look toward the Mediterranean – not simply for holidays to come, but for culinary ideas for the here and now.

Wondering what to start the day with on Sunday, having seen The Other Half off to sunny Castleford for the Rugby League, I came up with a bit of an experiment: feta and strawberries. And it works.

It doesn’t need anything with it – the saltiness of the cheese gives seasoning. The textures are a nice contrast and the sweetness of good strawberries is always a joy.

What I’ve mentioned in the last week about vegetables and simplicity could hardly have been more timely.

For lunch on Sunday, some fine beans and late-season English asparagus, served with a piece of smoked mackerel and gooseberry terrine (Waitrose), and a drizzle of thick Balsamico – I opted for this over virgin oil, as it cuts through the natural sweetness of most of the other ingredients.

Dinner was back to Bruno Loubet terrain and his new book.

This time, a chance to try the grilled mackerel with salted, pressed watermelon and a lime mayonnaise.

I probably over-salted the watermelon, but the dish as a whole was light and fresh – perfect for this weather.

Mind, nothing in this weather, can lay a hand to a fresh gazpacho. There must be plenty of variations – every cook will have their own tweak – but the result is refreshing, nutritious, tasty and, well, simply perfect.

I was introduced to it one summer some years ago, when I was whinging about not knowing what to eat, by m’friend George, whose wife is Spanish. So it’s the real McCoy.

He wouldn’t give people the recipe unless decent tomatoes were available. In those days, I wondered why. Now, I have no doubts. It is a dish that needs good incidents – and a dish that is designed for exactly when they will be available.

It is, in other words, an icon of seasonal eating.

Smoked mackerel terrine and seasonal vegetables

You need properly ripe tomatoes – even better if you are growing your own and can pick them just as you need them. But otherwise, stick some on a plate and under the sun for a short while. That’ll help.

Take six or seven really ripe ones and blitz them. Follow that with a small cucumber – preferably one of those with a rough skin, which you peel first. This is also where using organic, if you can get it, is worth it too.

Next into the blender goes a handful of breadcrumbs.

Then a small onion – or as yesterday, a large shallot – followed by a clove of garlic (or two).

After that, it’s four tablespoons of wine vinegar. Actually, when making this yesterday, I realised that at the back of my great vinegar collection, I had a small bottle of raspberry champagne vinegar, with just about exactly the right amount left, so I used that.

Next, in goes a cup of olive oil and then salt to taste.

Chill. To serve, dilute to taste with either iced water or ice cubes.

And so thanks again to George for Gazpacho Doña Luisa.

It says everything about last summer that I never reached a point of wanting gazpacho: in the last few days, it’s been one of the things that was automatically on my mind.

I’d love to be able to make it in Collioure next month, given the divine tomatoes I can get there, but I don’t know whether there’ll be a blitzing facility. Fingers crossed.

What there will be, however, is a pan and a knife – and that’s all I’ll need for a ratatouille to make the most of local produce that I can find at the village market.

But back to the here and now.

On Sunday, I also roasted a chicken – my preferred River Café method; three and a half hours.

Set the oven to 80˚C (fan).

Stuff your bird – I can’t recall what the book says, as I just use what’s available. In this case, one and a half lemons and half a dozen cloves of garlic, crushed.

Pop the bird the usual way up in the tightest-fitting dish you’ve got. Pour in around 100ml of water and give it an hour. Then turn it over and give it another hour. Then turn it back to how it started – and give it a third hour.

There a caterpillar in here somewhere

Take it out and ratchet the heat up to 170˚C (fan). Message butter into the bird and season. At this point, you can add 200ml of vermouth, but it’s not essential. More water will do. And so give it a final half hour’s cooking.

The flesh will be tender and moist, and the skin will be crisp and brown.

It’s not really roast dinner weather, though, so the bird was then allowed to cool.

Yesterday’s first task was to strip the meat off it and make stock – easy enough, but rather hot for the weather!

The bulk of the stock has gone into the freezer, but a small jar was then further reduced, with the addition of the juice of half an orange and some tarragon leaves.

Strain and allow to cool, and then add some white wine vinegar, some olive oil and seasoning to taste.

Serve as a dressing over cold chicken, on a bed of leaves and garnished (if you feel so inclined) with an odd slice or segment of orange, and some fresh tarragon leaves.

The leaves on my plate were a combination of watercress and young lettuce leaves – the latter, the first crop from the potager.

Lesson one, though: rinse thoroughly before putting them in the salad spinner. That way, you’ll be able to rinse off any insect life that is too large to fall through the basket when you’re spinning it.

Mind, that small green caterpillar must have been dizzy.

The lettuce was a delight and the chicken was spot on.

Light dining that’s just perfect for these wonderful, hot days.

Pots and pans and Bruno's cocotte

It is presumably a sign of increasing age when one be ones excited by new pans. By which logic, I have already reached an advanced stage of decrepitude.

I have new pans - and not just any old pans, but a mix of Le Creuset and Mauviel. The former are wonderful - the latter makes me feel incredibly cheffy.

The old ones were dying. We'd had them for close to 18 years - not quite the 25 years of the guarantee, but not bad service. And particularly not given my early lack of any culinary expertise.

They were from an advert in a Sunday supplement and were paid for in three instalments. Before that, we'd already been through several pans, because we'd gone as cheap as possible.

We'd bought - and had to replace - more than a few basic pans; all from street markets and as cheaply as possible because that was what we could afford at the time.

Which brings me to a particular observation.

In the UK, good kitchen tool are more expensive than across the Channel. We first noticed this about five years ago, when we headed to Collioure for our second holiday - and our first self catering.

I was concerned that there wouldn't be any really decent knives. On the first two trips down there, we traveled via Perpignan, spending a night there before making the last, brief leg of the journey.

On the Saturday morning, we slipped into Galleries Lafayette and went to look for a basic cook's knife. And both of us remarked just how affordable good knives were.

It seems that, in France at least, a serious knife is not considered a luxury, to only be available at a luxury price.

That said, it's a philosophy that transfers to the UK market - at least a bit. My first set of knives, bought about 12 years ago were cheap and not of particularly good quality. Oh, they did okay for a few years, but they were very limited. And as my culinary skills improved, I felt a need for better tools.

Sabatier, I discovered, were actually a much better price alongside a range of much mor designery knifes - including the very costly Japanese ones that have been popularised by some celebrity chefs. It's not difficult to see a link in that.

A year or so later, I picked up a proper, heavy, copper omelette pan in Paris. It wasn't cheap, but if I harboured any doubts about the value, it was illustrated the first time that I used it - and it produced the best omelette I'd made. It makes jolly good pancakes too.

When I eventually - after a very deep breath - invested in a couple of Le Creuset pieces a couple of years ago (a seriously heavy casserole and a shallow one) again the difference was instantly noticeable.

Mind, I did read the instructions first to learn about how not to over blast them with heat - or stick them straight into water after cooking.

The old pans had long lost their conductivity - my earlier uses may well not have helped - and at least one was also now starting to leak as the base gradually started splitting from the rest.

So they have now been retired.

The replacements are the Le Cresuet saucepans with lids - 20, 18 and 16cm - and a 14cm Mauviel for serious sauce making.

All come with a lifetime guarantee. A lifetime. You're not supposed to ever have to replace these, but to hand these down to the next generation.

And that is craftsmanship and an investment.

It's also in complete contradiction to the prevailing attitude of goods being manufactured with a quite deliberately limited lifespan. Invest all you want, but in many cases, the whole idea is that you will have to buy - and buy again. Such is The Market.

But a glance online, at sites in France itself, revealed that they are all cheaper over there than here. Not cheap, but cheaper.

It seems to illustrate a culture where cooking is regarded as a luxury pastime rather than something that should be within everybody's grasp, and part of the nation's culture as a whole.

So, with spangly new pans on their hooks, what is first to be cooked in them?

Well, of course life doesn't really work like that.

And what the weekend brought was the chance to use kit that was already in the house.

First up, the shallow Le Creuset was used for a cocotte of summer vegetables.

A cocotte is actually what we'd call a casserole. In this case, I had been inspired by Bruno Loubet's new book to try his seasonal version.

For some weeks now, as the potager has grown increasingly green and lush, I've been wondering just how to use the produce I'm longing to harvest.

After all, you'd have to have a pretty sizeable plot in order to be able to harvest an entire, single portion of any one vegetable at any time. And most vegetables don't grow in the sort of synchronised way that makes that easy.

So far, I've had three pods of peas - and two tiny turnips.

Bruno's cocotte, on the other hand, takes care of this, as it's a dish of - in effect - what's available on any given day from your garden.

He describes, quite delightfully, how his father would return home from his own garden with a basket of various freshly-picked vegetables, presenting them to his mother as though they were the most beautiful flowers in the world.

And the cocotte allows you to use this variety of a produce in a single dish.

This first effort had little from the potager - but some. The two available pods of broad beans that have sped away from the rest. Thyme and bay came from the patio too, and I added a few young chard leaves to wilt at the end. In coming weeks, the proportion of homegrown crop will increase.

A cocotte also answers another question: what to do with a glut.

In Bruno's version, he includes radishes. 'Radishes?' you say. 'Cooked?' you say.

Well indeed. It's as alien to us as cooking endive or lettuce, but that's the sort of dirty tricks those Continental types play in the kitchen. But after all, how many radishes can you eat over a few days in salads?

And it's equally a great way to use up odds and ends.

My radishes aren't ready yet, so I picked up a bunch from the market, plus two small turnips, asparagus - the season isn't quite over - a bunch of young carrots, two of the thinnest leeks I could spot and fine beans. And went to work.

According to the recipe, you heat olive oil and pop in the root veg. Stir into the oil, season and add a clove of garlic. Lid the pan, turn the hob to its lowest, and leave for five minutes or until the carrots are al dente.

Actually, that took rather longer, so I may well not have got the oil hot enough to start with.

Then you add further vegetables, half a glass of water, and re-lid, but with a slight gap.

A few minutes later, the rest of the veg - you get the gist. At the end, a knob of butter, a spoon of cream and a squeeze of lemon.

Okay, it took longer that the recipe suggested. I added thyme and bay to flavour and, as mentioned, a few thinned-out chard leaves at the end, plus some large spring onion bulbs at the start.

It wasn't perfect - but it was the sort of first effort that means it won't be long before it's tried again.

It's funny that France has such a bad reputation for vegetarian eating, when it's also a country that arguably understand and appreciates veg far better than we do. This dish is an illustration of that.

To follow, we had filleted Dover sole, simply grilled and served with lemon. Fruit for dessert - with cheese, for me.

Good food doesn't have to be complex. But good tools most certainly make it easier to prepare - and they help increase the pleasure of cooking too.

And perhaps at least one of the new pans will get a run out tomorrow.

Easy options on the food front

Bacon and new spuds and asparagus

One of the most surprising things about the last week has been that, after arriving home from Liverpool last Friday, I didn’t leap straight into a Pot Noodle phase.

Utterly knackered, it was tempting. But when I'd crawled up the platform at Euston, I opted instead for the easiest ‘quality’ option: M&S.

I had been contemplating lamb chops, but since the only available ones were from New Zealand, I opted for something a little more local – British bacon.

And to go with that, new potatoes and asparagus.

It was a simple matter to boil the spuds and the asparagus (20 and three minutes respectively) and then pop the bacon into a hot pan and let it sizzle gently for a while, curling and browning; moved around occasionally with tongs.

Frankly, I didn’t even feel like arranging it on a plate, but tossed it all together, added butter, seasoning and the bacon juices.

Even after a week that had seen a couple of decent restaurant meals, there was something heavenly about the result. And it had all been ridiculously easy top cook.

The cats were delighted to see me home, but an absence means that one is told in no uncertain terms, that they are owed.

In Otti’s case, she was determined that, despite never having eaten it before, she was going to try bacon. Allowed to have a little piece (after I’d finished – I do try to teach them some patience) she then decided that it was very nice indeed and why hadn’t I shared more with her?

Saturday allowed a return to Broadway Market and the great what-shall-we-eat-for-the-coming-week challenge.

In this case, I started from a fishy perspective – sea bass, filleted.

Potatoes were par boiled and then slightly crushed before being drizzled with olive oil, seasoned and then popped into the oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

The bass – slashed carefully on the skin, seasoned and lightly oiled – were placed on top and given a further 15 minutes.

Bass with potatoes and seasonal veg.

This was served with fine beans and asparagus, a drizzle or two of my balsamic glaze and a wedge of lemon. And jolly nice it was too.

An experiment with tuna didn’t quite go as planned, though.

Unusually, Vicki had a big slab, so I decided to buy a slice (it’s enough for the two of us).

It was intended for Monday – Vicki said it should be okay for that, but to watch out for the ‘rainbow’ effect in case it did start to go.

To be on the safe side, I decided to try something a bit different, and salt it. The Spanish – mojama – and although I couldn’t find a specific recipe, how hard could it be?

I used a mix of ordinary salt together with some fleur de sel that The Other Half had picked up for me on his recent trip to Perpignan: one that was infused with banyuls, the sweet wine from that area.

On Sunday evening, I rinsed it off and left it to soak ion fresh water. That was changed again on Monday morning and one last time when I got home that afternoon.

Pods growing fat

The plan was then to use Bruno Loubet’s guidelines and confit it – approximately 30 minutes in olive oil heated to approximately 50-55˚C.

All that went okay, but unfortunately it still came out as incredibly salty.

Still, failures are part of the process of learning.

In the meantime, the potager is going a bit bonkers after struggling to show real signs of life for so long.

I will shortly have peas – and the broad bean pods are just appearing. One of the runner beans is already taller than me – okay, I know this doesn’t mean much.

There will be a small crop of blackcurrants – but this is year one.

The salad leaves are doing well, as are the radishes, the spring onions and the gem lettuces, while the chard is coming on decently, as are the carrots and turnips.

The vine is growing well, the lemon has produced a plethora of buds, the nasturtiums are finally producing leaves in something approaching abundance and the four tomato plants that we were given by a friend look to have settled in comfortably.

Who knows – the weather might even allow for cropping a few leaves this weekend. But it’s enormously exciting to see crops developing in such a way.