Christmas fodder – with last year's lessons learned

Pheasant two ways, with sauce, leeks and redcurrants

Last year, Christmas Day proved to be – in culinary terms at least – something of a catalogue of errors.

Over ambition led to The Other Half spending a ludicrously long time sitting on his own at the dining table as I stressed out in the kitchen between every course, trying to produce dishes that, if not beyond my skill level, were far too ambitious in terms of planning.

And of course, needless to say, my own enjoyment of the meal – and of the day as a whole, and of the days, given my frenetic running up to the main day itself – were all affected negatively.

So how did I avoid that, without compromising on quality and taste?

The big thing to learn is planning.

This year, I started from a point of Christmas Day’s main course as being a chicken, roasted for three and a half hours, as per the River Café and as I’ve done many time previously.

Okay, I changed the stuffing from a Mediterranean-style one to pre-cooked chestnuts, masses of sage and a chopped onion, but the method was one I knew well.

The Other Half had been angling for me to try a chocolate fondant as dessert: we’ll return to that later.

For a starter – well, I wasn’t even sure about doing one, until very late in the piece (the Saturday before Christmas) when I happened on some London gin-cured duck charcuterie on Broadway Market from the London Charcutier (find out more via@LDNCharcutier on Twitter).

No, it wasn’t cheap, but it screamed an easy, high-quality starter. I already had a load of pickles in the cupboard and I could instantly envisage serving it on my oblong slates. All it would need besides was bread.

Now for me, Christmas Eve screams game. The weekend before, since they had no breasts, I’d picked up a whole pheasant from the new Broadway Market game stall (glory hallelujah!).

Now it’s a nightmare trying to roast such a bird whole because of the different cooking needs of different parts of the bird – which is why chefs do different bits separately – so I quickly came to the conclusion that I could do the breasts in butter (as I’ve done many times now) and the legs as a confit.

Bt this still left me with the interesting challenge of butchering the bird.

I swotted via the internet: most was simple, but I discovered that one of the reasons the legs can be so difficult is that the muscles in them make them tough.

You can, though, remove the muscles – and I have the Wüsthof cooking tweezers for the job. It was fiddly – yet oddly fascinating: how many of us know what muscles look like?

The upper leg bones were snipped out and they rest was salted for half an hour.

That was then brushed off and the legs were simmered in duck fat for two hours. Easy. To serve, they were simply heated in a medium oven for 20 minutes.

On the side, were leeks, a sprig of redcurrants and a red wine and redcurrant sauce.

But what I also set out to do on Christmas Eve was try fondants.

Duck charcuterie and pickles

I have recipes by Michel Roux Snr and Raymond Blanc.

The former – which demands vast amounts of eggs – gives no help on how to time it in terms of a wider meal.

Blanc, however, does precisely that, providing a method of mixing that allows you to then chill the mixture for up to 24 hours or cook within a couple.

This won out. I made the mix according to Blanc – it requires far fewer eggs, but does need arrowroot – and then divided it between four rings: two for that night and two for Christmas Day itself.

After a required chilling of at least 30 minutes, the first pair were cooked at 190˚C (fan) for five minutes and then cooled and chilled, before being cooked again for eight minutes at 170˚C (fan) when we needed them.

They collapsed slowly when the rings were lifted away after the first cook, and were not actually liquid in the middle, but they were were thoroughly tasty.

Lesson learned though: the initial cooking needed to be at a higher temperature – since there were no notes on the recipe I used (an online version of a slightly more complex one in a book on the shelf) I had assumed that the temperatures for the cooking were for an ordinary oven.

Anyway, the pheasant was good and the fondant, although floppy, was very morish.

Christmas Day itself was the easiest it’s been in years.

Christmas roast – with neatly turned carrots!

We had a proper breakfast this time – I didn’t need to occupy the entire kitchen for the entire day – and having two ovens and a separate grill was also a help.

The bird was the expected doddle. On the side we had spuds roasted in a little duck fat with a few leaves of sage to continue flavour themes.

Sprouts had been done in the morning à la Joël Robuchon: soak for two minutes in water with a glug of malt vinegar; drain and rinse, then blanch for a minute in boiling salted water.

Refresh and stop the cooking by plunging them into iced water, then cook for 20 minutes in fresh boiling, salted water, just allowing the water to bubble.

Plunge once more into iced water and then drain and gently dry. Robuchon says that this method improves the ‘digestibility’ of the sprouts, Or the fart factor, as we might less politely refer to it.

It does – but it’s also a very good cheffy trick for being able to cut down work later on. Come the time, just heat some butter and sauté the little emerald gems – as I did, with some sliced pancetta and more chopped chestnuts.

The only other thing I added was a portion of carrots, which I prepped early, actually managing to turn them, and then cooked very gently, with water to cover, a knob of butter, a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar, for 30 minutes while we ate our starter and I finished the rest of the main.

Collapsed – but still tasty. The fondant

That starter was easy: slice some bread, put some of the charcuterie on a slate with some pickled beetroot, cornichons, tiny onions and some very nice fig, apple and Balsamic chutney, and it was done.

Before doing the roast potatoes, I’d given the fondants their first cook, which then allowed them the minimum chill between sojourns in the oven.

They still collapsed when I was actually trying to serve them, but did have a liquid centre. More arrowroot may be required. We had cape gooseberries, redcurrants and a small amount of top-quality vanilla ice cream on the side.

And on Boxing Day, the usual boiled ham with a sour brown shallot sauce, which was hardly onerous, and which was served this year with plain boiled spuds and sauerkraut on the side.

So, that was the Christmas food: lessons learned, ambitions tempered – and results just as good (if not better) and certainly more enjoyable for all.

It can be done!

Festive food lessons

Channelling Michel; Roux Jr.

A few days before Christmas, BBC online ran a magazine article with a headline that described sprouts as a “controversial vegetable”.

Now I’m well aware that not everybody actively likes sprouts, but in what possible way are they “controversial”?

I mean, gay marriage is ‘controversial’, but is someone really standing up and saying that sprouts (or a lack thereof) would mean the end of civilisation as we know it?

Personally, I love ’em.

The Other Half was not enamoured – until, in fact, late last year, when I discovered Joël Robuchon’s way to cook them, in a book, coincidentally, that had been a Christmas present from The Other Half himself a year previously.

Prep your sprouts as usual – although there’s no need to do a cross cut on the end of the stalk: it makes no difference – and then soak them in cold water, with a glug of vinegar, for two minutes. Drain and rinse, and blanch for a minute in boiling, salted water.

Stop the cooking process by plunging them in iced water, and then cook in fresh boiling, salted water for 20 minutes, gently, so that the water is just bubbling, but not harshly enough to break up the little “cabbages”, as the great chef himself describes them.

Now you have a choice: you can either drain and serve straight away, or you can decant them into a new bowl of iced water to be dried carefully later, and then finished in butter.

Bread rolls, straight from the oven.

Robuchon says that this process is good for the digestion – well, it certainly seems to reduce the fart factor – but you can see why it would be useful in a restaurant situation too, allowing most prep to be done, with only a tiny amount of cooking to finish.

And of course you can add chestnuts at the same time.

It’s worth noting that the timings are prefect: you end up with sprouts that are lusciously green and properly cooked, but still with texture: none of that ludicrous British idea that al dente means as good as raw.

Well, that was about as organised as I got on Christmas Day.

The night before, I’d started making bread and got it to the first proofing stage before covering it gently with cling film and popping it in the fridge. Remarkably, given how we associate yeast and warmth, this doesn’t stop the proofing process, but merely slows it down.

The next morning, it came out, was thumped around a bit and then left to proof once more.

And here was the biggest mistake of the day: not making breakfast before taking over the kitchen for the main event.

Anyway, the dough was divided into rolls and baked – and came out very well.

Consommé, big on flavour and as clear as it should be.

At the same time, I juiced four oranges, sieved the liquid and then reduced it, adding a touch of salt and very generous amount of pepper on the way, before sieving again and decanting to one of my tiny copper pans to be reheatedlater.

The sprouts were done, as above, and left in iced water.

Now, because I’m not a trained cook, timing is the sort of area where I come unstuck.

We hadn’t risen early – there was no need. But before I knew where I was, we were well into the afternoon.

I gently heated the beef consommé that had been prepared over a number of days previously, and gave it a final, careful pass with folded kitchen paper to remove any remaining dots of fat on the top.

It was good, I must say.

While The Other Half was sipping his in front of the telly, I was sipping mine while bashing on with the next course.

Home-cured salmon.

I’d cured some salmon fillet with roasted fennel seeds, salt, sugar, lemon zest and Noilly Prat – a Bruno Loubet recipe, except that the vermouth replaced Pernod.

Further adjustments saw pickled beetroot diced finely and set on top of thin layers of the fish, with pickled nasturtium seeds from the garden.

There was a salad/garnish of segmented orange and tiny endive leaves, with a simple dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and grainy mustard, plus a ‘snow’ of grated, frozen horseradish – and served with the fresh bread.

Now this was also very pleasingly good.

Sending The Other Half out of the kitchen, it was on with the main course.

I’d had some thick parsnip slices cooking gently in butter while we ate the salmon, so simply added the remains of the consommé (in lieu of stock) and let them continue to simmer away.

Then for the duck – at The Other Half’s request, breasts from the south of France, where they breed their ducks big and with a fantastic layer of fat (a foie duck, in other words).

Stephane and Arno at La Bouche had been wonderful in getting them for me – The Other Half is becoming a choosy foodie himself, it seems.

There were two, but they were huge (one remains in the freezer), so I took just one, cross-hatched the skin, salted it and then placed it skin-side down in a searingly hot pan, before draining off the melted fat into my duck fat pot.

It had seven minutes on the skin side, followed by seven further minutes on a lower heat on the flesh side. Then a rest of five minutes, during which I sautéed the sprouts with chopped chestnuts, and prepared the plates.

Now here I was, clearly channelling Michel Roux Jr, with a very nice arc of Balsamico dots in different sizes.

I mean, it looks the business, doesn’t it?

The orange sauce, reheated, was served in individual sauce pots.

The trouble was, by the time we sat down, I was knackered and we had both had the edge taken off our appetites by both the wait for food and the absence of it in the morning.

Dessert – painted chocolate and all.

The food itself was okay – albeit the sauce was a little too peppery and the parsnips, somehow, were a tad undercooked in the centre.

But the biggest disappointment was dessert. In many ways, it was an achievement. I’d managed – at the second attempt – a passable pear bavarois (pear purée mixed into a custard, then into Italian meringue and whipped cream) from Michel Roux’s Desserts.

It tasted good, but next time I need to remember that sieving the purée, no matter how pointless it appears, does make a difference.

My ambition had rather overreached itself, though, as I’d tried a ‘pear three ways’ dish.

What we missed: one of The Other Half's breakfasts.

The jellies of pear liqueur had way too much liqueur – although I was delighted at getting a good set, and getting tiny pieces of fruit ‘floating’ in the jelly.

And the candied pear slices were not crisp enough, because I’d opted to dunk them in icing sugar rather than a coarser type, leading them to become rather most, even after hours in the oven.

Fortunately, the Yule log that I’d made a couple of days earlier was fine.

Still, the point – in part at least – is to learn. Although you don't really want such lessons to be ones handed down over Christmas.

But still, there was nothing ‘controversial’ – and most certainly not the sprouts!

Learning with the two Rs

One of the things that materialised in my Christmas stocking last year was a copy of Michel Roux’s new volume, Desserts.

With Sauces, Eggs and Pastry having already more than proved their worth in the kitchen, this was a most welcome addition – and it didn’t take long before it was being put to practical use.

The first experiment hardly seemed particularly challenging – individual, cardamon-scented rice puddings with caramel.

Rice pudding has been on my to-do list for some time. I only have vague memories of it from childhood and, to be honest, can’t really remember whether those are of maternal efforts or of school dinners.

So there was an unopened bag of pudding rice in the cupboard, together with all the other necessary ingredients.

Suffice it to say that it was a disaster. Well, the caramel worked well enough – much easier now I have a proper thermometer so I can see what’s going on in the pan in terms of temperature (a boon too when I made chips a day or so later).

But when I went to decant them, the rice had sunk to the bottom, with the milk above, with only a thinnish skin on top.

The key problem, I think, was in mis-interpreting an instruction to cook the rice and milk gently as too gently.

But there you go: you learn by your mistakes.

The following day, I tried something different. This time, a pear and chestnut ‘minestrone’. Now I have no idea why M Roux called it that, but that's what it it is called.

The dish involved puréed pear with cinnamon, topped with diced, poached pear and caremalised chestnut pieces. The nut was perhaps overdone, but the pear was lovely.

So for my next experiment, I moved onto jelly. Very grown-up jelly, it’s worth noting: it’s made from Sauternes, but with tiny pieces of citrus fruit ‘floating’ in it.

You soften the gelatine leaves in cold water and then, having squeezed them, add them to a small amount of your wine, which has been carefully warmed.

Give it 10 minutes and then add that to the rest of the wine and sit the bowl in a bigger bowl of iced water. Stir every two or three minutes and wait for it to start thickening.

In the meantime, you’ve segmented a pink grapefruit and a lemon, then cut the segments into smaller pieces and popped them into the fridge to chill.

The glasses I was using were already chilling in the freezer.

Commeth the moment when the wine has started becoming syrupy, it’s time to decant it into the glasses and start poking bits of the well-drained fruit into each glass with a knife or skewer.

I had a test glass ready too, so after the first attempt saw the fruit float back to the surface, I knew to leave it a little longer. When it’s ready, then getting the fruit where you want it is quite easy – and it looks lovely.

This was the starting point for the New Year's Day dessert. To go with it, I made another chocolate mousse - the same basic Roux recipe I'd used for Christmas Day.

Then it was simply a case of using more of the mandarin dust and the candied citrus peel, with a cape gooseberry to garnish and a few careful dots of double cream. Hey presto!

The jelly was very lightly set and had a sweet freshness, which contrasted well ith the bitter richness of the mousse.

But I also realised that learning from one great R was not enough – and decided that it was also time to start learning from another one: Joël Robuchon.

The Complete Robuchon has been on the shelf since last Christmas, but I haven’t invested the time needed to start really benefiting from it. It’s not, after all, a book with a single illustration in.

This holiday, I’ve spent a little time reading it. And the thing you start to realise quite early is that it’s not just haute cuisine. Indeed, far from it.

I tried a potato dish. Take your spuds, peel and then slice thinly – no thicker than 0.5cm. Rinse and dry them. For this one, you don’t want the starch.

Melt some lard in a pan – around 50g, so not just a tiny amount. Then you cook the potato in the lard, with lardons and a sprig of rosemary. Works very well.

But his recipies for vegetables intrigued me the most. After all, this is a man with a record 26 Michelin stars, so if he suggests an apparently complex way of poking sprouts, there's probably a reason.

The first thing I tried wasa rack of lamb for New Year's Day - but I should have either added a further 10 minutes to compensate for my oven or even switched it to grill or a final blast.

I don't like my meat overdone, but this was going to the other extreme, even though I'd followed the instructions of medium rare.

Mind, experience tells me it'll have been the oven - I just don't know how and what to factor in for any given dish: doing a créme caramel today, I had to give them an extra 15 minutes - but in that circumstance, you don't have other things waiting.

We saved half the lamb for today and I stuck it under a hot grill for five minutes, turning once, as the flesh cooked through properly and the fat crisped up from the rather jelly-like texture it had had. Indeed, it was utterly gorgeous - I don't know whether it had actually benefitted from being cooked in two stages over 24 hours or whether it was just a stunning good piece of meat. It was the first lamb I've bought from The Ginger Pig at Borough Market.

On the side, I sautéed some left-over potatoes - and then decided to concentrate some attention on Robuchon's sprouts.

After the usual prep, they spend about two minutes in a bowl of cold water with malt vinegar - two tablespoons to a litre of water. Then they go into boiling salted water for one minute.

Decant into cold water resting in a bowl of ice. Bring a fresh pan of salted water to the boil. Give them 20 minutes at a very gentle simmer.

Stop the cooking again by popping them carefully into icy water, then rinsing, draining and patting dry very gently in kitchen paper, before finishing off for five minutes in melted butter, with a couple of pinches of salt and one pinch of pepper - yes, the seasoning is that specific too.

Amazingly, given the cooking time, the sprouts were cooked but still with bite, as well as being very tasty.

Robuchon's says that some vegetables benefit from the blanching because it aids digestion. Well, I can only say that there has been no evidence of the notorious side effect of sprouts since dinner. So perhaps this approach has a serious point.

One thing's for certain - I'll be cooking with both the Rs again. And it won't be long before I do so either.

Just enough time to look back

It’s the time of the year when, according to tradition, a look back over the preceding 12 months is in order.

And who am I to buck such a trend?

Sometimes this is a general review, but it can be specific to a subject too.

So here – but in no particular order – are a few of my favourite food-based memories from the last 360-odd days.

Meal of the year

It has to be that charity dinner in the spring at The Zetter, with Raymond Blanc and Bruno Loubet cooking, for pretty much obvious reasons.

Memorable it most certainly was – perhaps particularly because we could spot, easily, who was behind which course. And because it was clear that Blanc had brought with him produce from his kitchens at Le Manoir – the baby vegetables that somehow managed to be jam-packed with flavour and the air-dried duck that he’d been demonstrating on the television only a week earlier.

Single course of the year

The marrowbone at 7e Vin in Paris. Utter fabulousness.

I called it food for the soul then – I’m sticking with that now. My first experience of marrowbone in Carcassonne in July was good: this managed to be even better.

Restaurant of the year

Bistrot Bruno Loubet. No longer a discovery for us, but now a firm favourite – consistently wonderful food.

But also a mention for Au Casot in Collioure – not least because it’s wonderful to eat such simple but fresh and first-rate seafood right next to a beach, overlooking such an incredible scene.

Restaurant discovery of the year

Three really.

L'Amphitryon in Collioure. Finally, a genuinely memorable ‘posh’ eatery in our favourite place.

The cod with aïoli (pictured left) was quite superb, while the cassis sorbet re-introduced me to blackcurrants – I could happily have eaten it by the bucket.

Never mind Ribena: this was something very grown up.

Then there was Two Fat Ladies at the Buttery in Glasgow, which came up a really excellent – and stunningly good value – Sunday lunch, and Michael Caines @Abode in Manchester, where I enjoyed an excellent tasting menu.

Best fast food of the year

Fish and chips, done properly, in dripping and with proper mushy peas, in a small cafe on the dock side at Scarborough. It took 10 minutes to cook from the start – so that's 'fast' in my book.

And it was gorgeous.

Book of the year (recipes)

This might be about to be Michel Roux’s Desserts, but otherwise, Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets.

Book of the year

Raymond Blanc’s A Taste of My Life, for the reasons explained here.

But special mentions also for Matthew Fort’s Eating Up Italy, Nigel Slater’s Toast and the very, very important Shopped: The shocking power of Britain’s supermarkets by Joanna Blythman, which also made me take stock and adjust my life.

Personal achievement of the year

Christmas Day – lunch and dinner, not least for the presentation, but also for managing to plan it effectively enough to stop it being a trial.

And realising that I can now cook a few dishes without constant recourse to a recipe. That felt like a sort of culinary coming of age.

Gadget of the year

The mandolin and the mincer attachment for my mixer are good, but it has to be my potato ricer, which is just fabulous because it makes really fabulous potato purée.

Investment of the year

After umming and erring about it for some time, I finally shelled out for some Le Creuset – and realised instantly why it was worth it.

And after mentioning it here, a number of readers told me that they wouldn’t be without it.

Quality pays off.

Ingredient discovery of the year

Lard. Simple as. After Oliver Thring’s article on the subject in the Guardian early this year, I started exploring the issue – not just of lard, but of natural fats.

And I started cooking with them too, with great results. Lard and dripping are cheaper than the over-promoted artificial, so-called ‘healthy’ fats too. Any connection, one wonders?

But honorable mentions also go to the Bath Soft Cheese Co for Bath Soft and Wyfe of Bath, plus pigeon breasts, which are an all-year pleasure, and frogs’ legs, which were a very pleasant surprise.

And I can't forget blackcurrants – but that was less a discovery and more a re-discovery, as mentioned above.

Favourite ingredient of the year

Rhubarb still rates highly. One of these days I'll manage to create something really special with it, but in the meantime, I edged closer with a number of experiments – some more successful than others – in the early part of the year

Non-eating culinary moment of the year

Meeting Raymond Blanc. Charming and passionate. I’m afraid I was close to being rendered speechless.

Not quite – but it was a close-run thing.

Food TV of the year

Masterchef: The Professionals and Service, both of which saw Michel Roux Jnr soaring in my estimation.

Thank goodness we’ve left the era of chefs having to be shouty bullies. He treated people with respect and understood the difference between objective and subjective criticism.

Both programmes were not just competitions, but were also about giving people real opportunities to develop. And his demonstrations of classic dishes on the former programme were just an education.

The former too was about real people with real talent and skill – something sadly lacking in so much so-called 'reality TV' these days.

But let’s not forget Kitchen Secrets with Raymond Blanc – educational and enormously entertaining.

Cultural surprise of the year

It came late in the year – Christmas Day – but the Disney/Pixar animated feature Ratatouille is a delight – and a big surprise, not least because it champions food as pleasure over food as fuel, and it also links memory and food.

And it’s funny and gloriously animated. The kitchen scenes are extraordinary, full stop. But the realisation of food in an animation is nothing short of astonishing.

I've been fond of animation since I was child – this brilliantly brought this together with food. A wonderful combination!

The eyes can feast too

Occasionally, a colleague and fellow foodie asks, in a manner that one knows (and is intended to know) is not really serious, whether I have ever considered applying for Masterchef.

The answer is simple: no. Not likely. And as for Come Dine With Me, that’s freak show telly to gawp at when trapped in a hotel room at night during a business stop over.

Personally, the ultra-competitive re-invention of Masterchef has never appealed to me. Even in my own pre-foodie days, I used to quite enjoy the previous incarnation with Lloyd Grossman.

It was a gentler TV, where – officially at least – the amateur cooks competing on it had no ambition to move into the professional ranks. It was, in other words, a celebration of what amateur means at its best.

Masterchef: The Professionals is a different beast altogether – but let’s leave that one for another day.

But that’s not to say that I’m not hugely competitive – albeit mostly against myself. Indeed, in my pool playing days (five or six nights a week), I was, I like to think, gracious in both victory and defeat – but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be found muttering at myself when I failed to meet the standards I’d set for myself.

And I noticed it recently in the kitchen. Maybe ‘competitive’ is too strong a word, but I enjoy testing myself, and probably set myself challenges that might seem downright bonkers to some. Come to that, I sometimes find myself wondering if they’re not downright bonkers too.

Christmas has been a case in point.

In recent months, while I’ve been practising pies and crumbles and sausages, I’ve also been trying to improve my presentation.

Now how a dish looks isn’t everything, but a feast for the eyes can add to the pleasure of a meal.

I had ideas – but was singularly failing to achieve anything that I really liked. Part of that was because drizzling isn’t as easy as you’d think, but part of it was also the crockery.

There’s a reason restaurants use big, white plates and dishes.

Our set (Argos, two-for-one for £16, if memory serves me) has been a good servant. With its colourful rims, it’s ideal for day-to-day use.

So recently, I picked up a few bits of plain, white stuff – including rectangular dishes.

In my mind’s eye were pictures. On Christmas Day, I got to see if I could recreate them.

Before I’d decided on what we would be eating in the evening, I’d planned lunch.

A little smoked salmon and smoked eel, with some horseradish and crème fraiche, salted cucumber and some good bread.

Nearer the day, that started getting embroidered a little. I didn’t sit down and think: ‘what else can I do with this?’ I simply found something would pop into my head. Like adding some pickled beetroot.

It was the same with the idea to present the fish by weaving it into a checkerboard effect. That was done the night before, before being carefully wrapped in cling film and laid in the fridge with a small weight on it.

Dozing on Christmas morning, the idea of cubing the cucumber occurred. The beetroot followed naturally – after all, this would continue a geometric theme.

Rooting in a cupboard later, I found cornichons and added one to each plate, sliced carefully and spread out concertina fashion.

There were chives in a salad drawer – a perfect garnish. A tiny dollop of caviar added some depth – as well as a further level of fishiness. Lemon – obviously – and then the horseradish-crème fraiche was kept to a minimum.

I was pleased with the flavours and the textures and the colours. But perhaps most of all, I was pleased with how it looked.

Dinner offered more opportunities.

While the consommé was served in rather downmarket style, in cups – a big hit of beefiness, though – deep, plain bowls displayed the linguine to good effect.

I couldn’t manage one single twirl each of the pasta – how do they do that? – but did manage two small ones per bowl, before adding a little virgin olive oil, some shaved white truffle and, to complete things, a garnish/seasoning of truffle fleur de sel.

The venison steaks looked simple but dramatic on plain white, with a rather cack-handed drizzle of the chocolate sauce (drizzling is another art form to work at), with the puréed sprouts (with chopped parsley) adding another touch of drama to the finished plate.

Then there was dessert. As with lunch, I’d been adding components in my mind for some time.

The three layers of a triple chocolate mousse – all based on a recipe from Michel Roux – had been prepared in advance. And thank goodness for seeing someone on Masterchef: The Professionals use a blow torch to un-ring something similar only a few days before!

You can use cling film to make a drum-tight base to a ring.

The candied citrus peel was easy enough – 10 minutes simmering in stock sugar before drying in the lowest oven for an hour or so.

I’d thought that using mandarin dust would add something too, and a search online had produced the specifics of what I supposed would be the basic approach.

That was almost a disaster, because in classic not-reading-the-instructions-properly mode, I’d managed to misread farenheit for centigrade – and then not bother to think that 200 would be far, far too hot.

I got it though – at the third time of asking.

The thinly sliced, dried fruit was then blitzed in my mini processor, with the addition of a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt, then sieved and packed away.

On the day itself, I had another idea. Well, two actually.

All ants-in-me-pants to be in the kitchen, I made up a small amount of paté sable in the afternoon, rolled it out and cut little biscuits. At the first time of asking, I burnt them. It was second time lucky on this occasion.

When it came to serving, mandarin segments were prepared to add a touch of freshness.

Chocolate swirls were something else I’d never tried. Melted dark chocolate is spread as thin as possible on a baking tray and then, once it’s set enough that the gloss has faded to matte, you gently ease curls up and away with a spatula or palette knife. Done in advance, they could go in the fridge too.

The final part of the equation was intended to be a bravura bit of drizzling with a mix of seriously thick double cream and a coffee liqueur I’d picked up in Paris.

Fortunately, I tried it out in the afternoon. The lines I wanted just weren’t going to be possible – a combination of my erratic technique with the bottle and the sauce itself not being anywhere thick enough to stop it spreading.

In the event, I settled for some almost-but-not-quite-random dots on the plate.

I’d sent The Other Half out of the room between courses: plating up took a while.

His face when he was called back in was a treat. Amazingly, it did just about all come together (the mousses were also dusted with cocoa powder). We sat and looked at them for a moment or so, barely wanting to start attacking the arrangement.

Perhaps it had been a case of watching “too much Masterchef”. But well into Boxing Day, I was still feeling chuffed with myself.

Would it have mattered if I’d just used our day-to-day crockery? Would it have been earth-shatteringly dull if I hadn’t gone a bit mad with the garnishes?

No. But then again, food is also about engaging more than just the taste buds. The eyes – and the nose – can be titivated too. ‘We need to use all our senses’ was what Raymond Blanc had emphasised to me.

One thing is certain – don’t let anyone ever tell you that the plates themselves don’t make a big difference.

Lemon and lard: a match made in heaven?

Monday’s TOIL (time off in lieu) brought with it the opportunity for a spot of culinary endeavour.

And it started with a pleasantly lazy breakfast: fried bread and eggs – cooked experimentally for me – in lard.

Was ever there such a dirty word?

Back in February, Oliver Thring discussed that much maligned substance in his weekly Guardian column.

It was just at a time when I was starting to pick up some information surrounding the demonisation of animal fats in our diet and piece two and two together, and one of the things that hit me was just what very negative ideas I had about some fats.

Okay, not goose fat or duck fat perhaps, but that's because of the glow of Frenchness they have. But lard is so very northern; so very lumpen and unsophisticated, isn't it?

Look at the advert here and imagine that sort of an advertising campaign now.

We've been hoodwinked, you and I, into seeing lard – and other fats, including butter – as bad.

However, although I’ve barely used it since I read that article in February, there was some in the fridge.

Jennifer McLagen’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes is a book that’s well worth thumbing through. Not just for the recipes – although the salted butter caramel tart that I’ve made thus far is utterly scrummy – but perhaps particularly for what else is included on the pages.

Part history, part science, McLagen looks at the forgotten health benefits of animal fats. Personally, I had no idea, for instance, just how many nutrients such fats included, having been convinced that saturated fats as a whole contained essentially ‘empty’ calories.

She even goes on to explain the molecular differences between different fats.

Now all this might seem a bit pointless for most of us, but it makes for valuable education when you’ve grown up pretty much alongside that process of demonisation.

Setting aside the health issue and diet myths though, McLagen also makes clear the role that fats play in taste – and also the suitability of certain fats for cooking.

Lard, as it happens, is very good to cook with because it’s so stable.

My fried bread was beautifully crisp, while the eggs were lusciously smooth, cooked beautifully and tasting wonderful. A breakfast that left me very happily sated.

But I’d also been wondering what else to do on the kitchen front and, given the egg whites remaining from Saturday’s culinary exploits (lemon gelato) had decided that this would be the perfect time to make my first attempt at meringue. And in keeping with the taste theme of recent days, I was contemplating a lemon meringue pie.

An internal debate then followed over which recipe to use: go for the simplicity of Delia or the greater complexity of Michel Roux?

I decided that it would be pastry from Roux’s book – but with lard substituted for some of the butter, as per Delia.

The filling and topping would be straight from Roux, which would mean making an Italian meringue – in other words, creating a syrup (including liquid gelatin) and adding this, at a specific temperature, to the whipped egg whites. But okay – I’m not a kitchen scaredy cat any more. I can do complicated things – and I have a jam thermometer.

The pastry veered close to disaster and was a nightmare to roll, as it was so sticky. That, I suspect, was partly because I’d let the fats get too warm before mixing. Fortunately, I had enough to make a second effort to roll and line the tin – and it just about worked.

Then, being a dipstick – and slightly frazzled by this juncture – I forgot to turn the temperature of the oven down from what was required to blind bake the pastry to what was required to cook the filled tart.

I realised about 40 minutes into a 1 hour 20 minute cook, when a glance in the oven showed something that had a rather unexpectedly brown hue on top. Since it was already set to the touch, I whacked the oven off completely and left it in to cool with the oven for a further 20 minutes or so, before bringing it out and, after another spell, removing it from the flan dish.

To compound matters, I then managed to stick a finger into the filling. Still, at least that proved that it was cooked – and still edible.

So meringue will have to wait for another day – it didn’t seem worth the effort after all that. I sprinkled caster sugar on top and simply caramelised that with my blow torch.

Remarkably for something that you think must be inherently fragile, it survived and proved edible. The filling is light as a feather and very fresh. The pastry was crisp and tasty.

There are questions about much modern lard, in that most of it is hydrogenated. But then again, McLagen makes the case – and gives the instructions – for rendering your own. It's not difficult, and it does mean a greater level of control over what you are cooking with and eating. I am seriously tempted to try.

But in the meantime, who knew that lemons and lard could make such a marriage – even given the hitches at the wedding?

A right old kitchen binge

As this week draws to its close, I’ll be in the midst of four days (and nights) in Glasgow for work. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Four days and four nights of no cooking. That’s the sort of very simple stat that makes me realise just how much I enjoy my weekends in the kitchen these days.

And so it was with that at least partly in mind that I planned the weekend just gone to be a downright kitchen binge.

The first thing on the agenda was a spot of preserving. Specifically, since it’s January and the season of Seville oranges, a spot of marmalade making.

My mother used to make marmalade: when very young, I considered it quite clever to alliterate madly and describe it as ‘mummy-made marmalade’, which also flowed rather nicely. Well, as I said – I was very young.

But with it being the time of year for Seville oranges, my mind had been turning that way for some time.

It seems to be some sort of modern seasonal disorder. No, not making marmalade.

But for the last two Januaries at least, someone has been predicting the impending death of marmalade. Put it another way: some supermarket has been predicting the demise of that lovely stuff.

Through various searches, I found Dan Lepard’s 2010 Guardian article on the subject, in which he rather adroitly responds to this annual hysteria – and then offers up a recipe for Seville oranges.

But then my eye was caught by his footnote about other flavours. I have long liked lemon marmalade – even though, as far as I can recall, my sole experience of it has been the mass-produced stuff. My mind started moving in that direction.

So, on Saturday morning, off I went to Broadway Market – a visit that included a lovely chat with Andy at the game stall about Scottish food in general and Glasgow restaurants specifically; a passionate exchange with Richard at Wild Dartmoor Beef about proposed mass factory dairy farms; a conversation with Vicki about the prospect of David Beckham actually playing for Tottenham, and a gab with Max at La Bouche about … well, about all sorts of things.

At the organic stall, the lemons had some pale green splotches, so I asked the man whose stall it is (I’m afraid I don’t know his name, even though we’ve chatted many times and he's been enormously helpful), whether they’d be good for marmalade.

With a stony face, he informed me that they would be wonderful for lemon curd but that if I wanted to make marmalade, then the Seville oranges were there (pointing). Suitably chastised, I bought 540g of the oranges and a large lemon, and made my way home.

It takes little time to peel all the fruit using one of those y-shaped potato peelers. Then the fruit is roughly chopped and bunged in a large pot with a litre of water. Simmer gently for two hours, then pop a colander on top of a bowl, line with muslin and tip all your fruit and liquid into it.

The recipe says to leave for an hour – and not to squeeze. I didn’t squeeze, but I did leave it overnight. Tasting the liquid the following morning – I don’t think I’d realised just how bitter Seville oranges are.

First thing on Sunday (by “first thing”, I do mean when I eventually got up and after I’d had coffee – this was Sunday, after all) I measured the liquid and topped it up to 750ml. I weighed out 800g ordinary granulated sugar, popped this and the liquid into a big pan and brought to the boil.

As per the instructions, I watched for a temperature of 104˚ – oh, the joys of finally having a jam thermometer! – and gave it five minutes. Then, while I was waiting to see if a splodge set on a chilled saucer, it got another five minutes and, using the same method, another five as I tested a second dollop.

It was beginning to wrinkle, so the hob was switched off. You leave the pan for 20 minutes and then decant into sterilised jars. This really isn’t difficult stuff.

By the evening, it had cooled completely and set softly. I spread a bit of bread with some butter and tried a bit. Absolutely scrummy.

But man cannot lived by marmalade-making alone. So on Saturday afternoon, continuing my heavy-duty kitchen weekend theme, I made petits pots de crème. One of that vast range of French set custards, I flavoured this with chocolate.

For our main course in the evening, I’d bought some cod and grilled that: a good 10cm from a hot element and brushed with butter (that had been melted in one of those miniature copper pans – so there, Other Half: they have a use) and given about 10 minutes.

By that time, I’d taken three anchovies from a pack, dried and then blitzed them in my little Cuisinart, then added softened butter, mixed it all together and rolled it in foil to go back in the fridge to chill.

Grilled cod with anchovy butter: sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet the idea was from The Complete Escoffier, which makes it sounds considerably posier! Sticking with Escoffier, I served it with plain boiled potatoes, and then added some sautéed/steamed leeks on the side.

After I’d set the marmalade cooking on Sunday, it was back to desserts. This time, to celebrate the year's first forced rhubarb from Yorkshire’s ‘Rhubarb Triangle’, three sticks were cut into thumb-length pieces and gently cooked in orange juice, with star anise and cardamom pods until soft but still holding together.

These were popped into glasses and the remaining liquid boiled to a syrup, which was poured over. Leave to chill.

Later, some double cream was whipped with caster sugar and a glug of the remaining Banyuls until stiff, then popped on top of the rhubarb mix and put back into the fridge. This is a Sarah Raven recipe from her Garden Cookbook (apart from the Banyuls, fairly obviously), and I’m rather fond of it.

Our main course was shoulder of lamb, roasted with olive oil, garlic and lashings of thyme. When the meat is resting, decant a drained and dried tin of new potatoes (it’s a cheat, I admit – when the real new potatoes are out, I’d use them, par-boiling first), a tin of cannellini beans and four halved artichoke hearts into the oil, lamb fat, garlic and thyme. Pop back into the oven, turn the temperature up a tad and then leave until the meat is rested and carved.

Phew! But before that, there’d been lunch.

Ever since I’d got that batch of Michel Roux books over the festive season, I’d been building myself up to trying one of his pastry dishes. More to the point – trying some of his pastry.

Roux gives details for a flan pastry – but also for a pâte brisée, which he describes as more delicate and slightly harder to use than the other form of shortcrust. But I wanted to give this a go, since it sounded wonderful and was a new challenge: something slightly beyond what I’d done before in the pastry realm.

It was easy enough to mix with the Kenwood (which really is already coming into its own – thanks, Other Half). Plain flour, diced and lightly softened butter, an egg, a little fine salt and a pinch of sugar are creamed, before a very little milk is added to bring it together.

Once that's happened, you use your palms to push it forward just four or five times to smooth it. Then either use – or wrap in cling film and pop in the fridge or freezer. It'll keep for a week in the former and three months in the latter.

I rolled it carefully, nice and thin, and lined my tart dish, carefully pushing the pastry into each indentation on the side. That was then lined with scrunched parchment paper and filled with baking beans, before chilling in the freezer while the oven heated.

Blind baking done, the beads and paper are removed and it’s returned to the oven for a few minutes more for the base to dry out and cook.

At this point, I realised that it had shrunk a little and I had to patch at one point where I had clumsily managed to put my finger through into the space behind caused by the shrinkage. This needs to be remembered for future attempts. I trimmed the excess pastry from the rim of the dish at this point.

For the filling, I thinly sliced a large onion – the mandolin got another workout – and cut up some streaky bacon. These were cooked together and then spread carefully in the pastry case. A couple of eggs and some double cream were mixed up with seasoning and poured over the bacon and onion mix.

It had around 25 minutes in the oven. Tasty in general, the pastry was a dream of buttery crumbliness. Wikipedia may claim that pâte brisée is ‘just’ shortcrust pastry by another name, but on the basis of this, that’s far short of the point.

One thing that the weekend also illustrated was that it’s no wonder that I struggle with my oven at times. I’ve also got an oven thermometer after such a thing was recommended in the Roux brothers’ French Country Cooking.

It made its debut for the lamb – and I discovered that the temperature barely came actually close to what I had set it for.

I’ll keep testing – if only to make sure that I was not misreading something – but it does explain a great deal.

But that was the one ‘downside’ on a weekend that, if it didn’t quite leave me ready for my Glasgow adventure, did leave me with a very great deal of satisfaction and achievement.

A sauce of pride

It was the first Broadway Market of 2011 this year – and a real pleasure it was too, as regulars, producers and retailers alike all greeted each other for the first time since the festivities.

There was a really enjoyable sense of freshness in the air – and that wasn’t just the blustery wind and the wannabe rain that kept trying to fall.

It was also a successful trip – and the results weren’t stored away for long before the cooking began.

All that caramelisation and Maillard reaction business that I mentioned yesterday cropped up again straight away.

For various reasons, I couldn’t see myself having the opportunity to try Bruno Loubet’s recipe for daube for some weeks, and that rather peeved me.

It needs a 48-hour marinade and, because I’d always simply assumed it was a dish to cook at the weekend, that sort of complicated matters. Or put another way, it meant that I’d have to do the initial preparation on a Friday.

But that’s further complicated by the question of where and when I’d be able to get the beef.

Loubet recommends either beef cheek or blade. Now strangely enough, those are not the sort of cuts that supermarkets sell, so it would pretty much have to be either a Broadway or Borough Market purchase.

Then I had a radical idea. If I could get the meat today, then I could do the initial prep after I’d done my shopping – and cook it on Monday evening.

As luck would have it, Richard of Wild Dartmoor Beef had one piece of cheek on the stall this morning.

I’ve not cooked cheek before, but you see at a glance why chefs would like it. It was a beautifully marbled piece of meat and, at just a fiver for 500g, hardly an assault on the pocket.

The recipe I’m using, which appeared at caterersearch.com, is more like brief notes than what most of us would consider a recipe.

Having got my ingredients ready, I found myself having to start filling in the gaps.

For instance, it doesn’t give an instruction for cutting up the meat or chopping the vegetables. And when it says: “Sauté the vegetables for the daube in oil until golden brown”, it doesn’t actually tell you whether that includes the tomatoes (and whether to skin them or not) or the bouquet garni.

On the other hand, when it says to cook the vegetables until they’re “golden brown”, I now have a better clue about why and how to do precisely that.

So, opting to include the tomatoes in that instruction, I prepared the vegetables, made up a bouquet garni, cut the meat into large pieces, put everything in a large bowl and then covered it all with the white and red wines, and added the Worcestershire Sauce too. It’s now sitting in the fridge, topped with cling film.

This really was a day of early prep. I also split eggs for making macarons tomorrow – apparently the whites age over 24 hours, helping make these delicate little gems.

Which left me with the question of what to do with the yolks.

There was some salmon in the fridge that needed using. It crossed my mind that a hollandaise sauce goes rather well with fish. Here was the big moment.

I roasted garlic and did crushed, garlicky potatoes. Then, feeling that I should make the effort to use the griddle pan more often, hauled that out for the fish and some thick slices of courgette, which were pre-boiled and then dried.

For the sauce, it occurred to me to use Delia – or even John Tovey’s very quick ‘cheat’ that she also includes in the Complete Cookery Course.

But no. If you’re going to do it, then follow the instructions in that Sauces book that you bought by Michel Roux for exactly this sort of thing.

Okay, it meant playing around a little with the amounts, since I didn’t want to use four, as per the book.

After finding that the end of my bottle of white wine vinegar was full of sediment (do I really use so little?) I reduced tarragon wine vinegar and water (ration of one to four tablespoons), with some ground white pepper in it.

That went into a bowl and was allowed to cool, before the yolks were added and whisked in. Then the bowl went on a pan with just a little water simmering away in it, and was whisked until it changed into a lovely thick, velvety texture.

You take it off the heat and start adding the clarified butter. It soon became clear that I hadn’t prepared enough butter. I rapidly melted some more and gave up being too concerned at clarifying it.

Aware that everything else was about ready, I decided that, for today, it would have to be too thick to pour. I gave it a squeeze of lemon juice and served up.

You really do have to keep whisking away as it heats – which is a little dodgy when you’re on your own in a kitchen and trying to do loads of other things. Amazingly, I’d just about managed to plan stuff that didn’t require too much time away from the whisk.

It might have been thick, but it didn’t split – and it tasted lovely.

Okay, the sense of achievement isn’t perhaps quite as high as after Christmas Day’s consommé, but it’s not far off.

There. I’ve done it. I’ve just about cracked another of the French mother sauces. I am seriously chuffed. And knackered!