Godless, but unafraid of the vampires

On a glorious evening, I let myself into the flat last night to find that usual junk mail included an eight-page leaflet that told me, in no uncertain terms, that this could not be a happy home.

A ‘happy home’, apparently, requires the hand of God in bringing a couple together in the first place (not lust or transitory pleasure: shucks); marriage is de rigueur, together with commitment to God (and actually being Christians), submission by the woman to the man, submission by the children to the parents …

Those who do not fulfil these criteria are, I’m afraid, doomed to the misery of the ‘unhappy home’.

You get the gist. This delightful little item had no return address on it, although it had been produced by some group in the US.

I think the very anonymity of whomsoever had paid to have it delivered (it can’t have been part of a mail drop paid for from the US, surely?) was what made me feel infintely more offended by it than I usually am by religious tracts, which simply go straight into the recycling crate, unread, along with the glossy fliers for pizza deliveries.

Someone wants to condemn others for what they perceive as immoral behaviour, leading – they conclude with utter certainty – to an unhappy condition, yet they lack the courage of their own convictions and do not say who they are.

So in a spirit of obvious misery, I donned my chef’s apron, put some music on and set about preparing a meal to lay before my non-spousal Other Half, in the hope that it might win me the odd brownie point with the Flying Spaghetti Monster (that’s the one dancing around on the other side of the sun with a giant chocolate teapot – not The Other Half).

After he had arrived back on Wednesday evening from a working sojourn in Liverpool, I’d come up with a dinner of pan-fried pigeon breasts, a mix of sautéed diced potato and croutons, some cannellini beans, artichoke hearts and a sort of jus of the meat juices and some raspberry vinegar.

Now it was tasty enough and, thinking about it, there was a reasonably decent variety of textures. But something about it left me dissatisfied.

Only yesterday did it dawn on me what the source of that was. The dark meat aside, everything was actually pretty colourless to look at, while it all looked a bit messy on the plate.

Now since I had guessed (correctly) that The Other Half would not have eaten fish while away – much less some oily fish – salmon was on yesterday's menu.

But what to do with it?

Last weekend, I’d seen some fresh garlic for sale on Broadway Market and, in a fit of excitement, bough two bulbs. Never having actually used the stuff before, they went into the fridge to wait until I had a clue.

Browsing around the food section of the Guardian’s website, I’d come across a recipe for ‘wet and wild garlic risotto’.

Now, I didn’t follow this exactly, but used my own usual method, simply starting off with a couple of chopped shallots, two cloves of dried garlic (the stuff we’re primarily familiar with) and most of a bulb of the fresh variety.

Then, with less rice than usual for a main course, it was routine. After about 20 minutes, I lidded the pan, turned down the heat and left it, while the fish part poached-part steamed.

But while I was doing my original preparation, I had peeled another four cloves of garlic. Two were chopped finely and went into a gremolata, together with a good handful of chopped parsley and some lemon zest.

The other two went through the crusher, to be mixed into a paste with a little salt and then whisked with an egg yolk before virgin oil was drizzled in to make aïoli. I have to confess that quite a lot of this was eaten straight after being mixed – such a fabulous taste.

I made both of these up before I started on the risotto, and since all the basic ingredients for that had been prepped at the same time and were in a dish, waiting, it suggested a rare level of kitchen organisation.

As the fish neared readiness, it was the matter of a moment to add a spoon of crème fraîche to the rice and let that warm back up.

But so to the presentation bit. Now that I’ve got chef’s rings, it makes doing rice really easy. You can, however, quite easily use a buttered cup: pack the rice in and then carefully turn it onto the plate and tap the bottom of the cup.

I made a thick line of gremolata on each plate, put the fish at an angle across that and then drizzled the beautiful, yellowy-green aïoli over that.

Now it’s easy when you do something like this to start to realise just what an art form in its own right is plating up – it wasn't perfect, but it looked so much better than the previous night’s dish.

And the taste was up there too. The garlic risotto was beautifully delicate and fragrant. The fish was quite mild (it was farmed), but the sauces gave fabulous bursts of very different flavours to the whole, and with garlic as a theme running throughout.

God might not be impressed to realise that I don’t think I’m unhappy – indeed, that cooking and eating that meal gave me real pleasure – but I suspect I need not fear any vampires for a couple of days at least.

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!

More drizzle than Jack the Dripper

It’s 2.17pm on Boxing Day. Coffee-flavoured custards in caramel-lined ramekins are in the oven and the sauce espagnole has just started its journey.

A week of feeling under the weather as a cold meandered its way to and fro in my system hadn’t left me feeling particularly inspired on the food front. All I wanted to do was curl up in a chair with a book.

But I’d motivated myself to make the beef stock early in the week and on Thursday, headed to Borough Market.

After the final trip to Broadway Market to collect various orders and pick up a few basics, Christmas Eve saw something close to a frenzy in the kitchen, with a turkey leg roasted – in a fit of nostalgia, I decided that, if I didn’t want a roast turkey dinner, I still wanted the dark meat to wedge, well seasoned, between slices of factory bread in the evening as I sat in front of the telly.

Two pears were poached in spiced red wine and the remaining liquid bubbled away to almost a syrup.

And, if not quite as expected after all my reading up, the consommé was clarifying. I’d thawed and deposited the two tubs of game stock from some weeks ago into a large saucepan, together with a big handful of dried mushrooms. And then, as per the clarifying instructions, stirred an egg white into the mix before heating very, very gently – it must barely simmer.

It’s a piece of culinary wizardry, as the egg white attracts fat and impurities in the broth to it, forming a sort of cloudy ‘raft’ on the top that can, after a couple of hours of the most gentle reduction imaginable, be skimmed away.

That made a difference to the clarity, but there was still some way to go. Eventually, I hauled out a square of muslin, lined a sieve and carefully poured the broth through. Which pretty much sorted it – although I still ended up convinced that it was a little cloudy at the bottom and, when I decanted it back to a pan the following day, it was with great care, attempting to avoid even that little cloudiness.

Yet even after a day of such kitchen delights, I still needed a metaphorical kick up the backside yesterday to actually get up and get going.

No decision had been taken about exactly when I was aiming to have dinner started on Christmas Day itself – that, of course, is one of the joys of not being tied down by the timings of anyone else.

But as we sat comfortably in front of the TV, The Other Half raised the issue of food – was I planning a Christmas lunch or something later? Because if it was going to be the latter, then he’d need to get himself something in the interim.

I took that as a cue and, after a sluggish beginning, got myself properly going.

The reality is that it was far from a difficult cook, because for once I’d really got the preparation and planning pretty much nailed on.

First things first: final prep. Four plum tomatoes, skinned, halved, de-seeded and then diced.

The steak: allowed to come to room temperature, trimmed and then well seasoned with crushed black pepper.

The consommé went on to come up to a merry old heat, while I clarified some butter.

One of the things I learnt about consommé is that you need to make plenty. Not as much as you would usually expect to be enough, but much more.

There was nowhere near enough to bother hauling out soup bowls, so I decanted it into cups. But if that didn’t allow me to revel in the clarity – and yes, I really did feel like preening over that – it detracted nothing from the taste, and that was really strong and not remotely salty.

It was a success.

Next up, the tomato concasse had been gently warmed with a little dried chili, a little olive oil and a drizzle of dipping Balsamic.

That was portioned out into neat circles (I have two rings for such things) as the scallops were pan fried. Pretty good.

Then the clarified butter was heated and the steak fried. Basmati rice was bubbling away in another pan, allowing me to heat the brandy over it in a ladle before setting it aflame and pouring it on the meat.

I’ve done it before, but there’s still something about seeing the flames that gives me an adrenalin surge. Once the alcohol has all burnt off, the meat is deposited onto a warm plate, covered with foil and popped into a just-warm oven. The sauce is reduced slightly, meaty bits scraped off the pan, and double cream added. Take the meat back out, drip any juices that have been released as it relaxes into the sauce and then serve.

Plate up by buttering a cup and using it as a mould for the rice, popping steak next to that and then dripping sauce around the plate in pale imitation of true cheffy drizzling.

After that, dessert was a doddle. Pop a pear in the centre of a small plate, drizzle the sauce around it, feel posy and drizzle a little raspberry vinegar on the plate too and then finish with a drizzlette of double cream. It might have looked quite good on a canvas in the Pompidou – it certainly tasted alright.

The only thing that had not worked had been the rhubarb sorbet, which I’d abandoned after seeing that it had become simply a mound of pink ice crystals that we barely capable of sticking together.

But you only learn by trial and error – and in general, I had plenty to be thrilled about.

Individually, everything was fine, but the consommé was way beyond my expectations.

The meal worked as a whole – not just on a practical level, but feeling balanced too.

And so to Boxing Day, invigorated and ready to spend more quality time in the kitchen.

Culinary aims for the weeks ahead

Having worked through last weekend – this is beginning to feel like a very long stretch now – I’m looking forward to a nicely extended weekend, starting on Friday.

And the obvious first thing to do on Friday is to get myself down to Borough Market, which then raises the very pleasant question of just what culinary projects to set myself for the weekend.

Something that’s been tempting me for quite a while if foie gras – not the paté, but the fresh stuff. And at Borough, there’s a stall that sell it. It’s not cheap, of course, but I am wondering whether to get some, eat a little myself for Friday lunch and then make the rest into a paté. We’ll see.

This weekend really does have to see a test run of consommé – I think I’m going to try a mushroom one, as it’ll be much cheaper than trying game. The main thing is the clarification, anyway.

I also need to tie down ideas for the big eating days – and then make sure that all my favourite suppliers are going to be at Broadway Market on Christmas Eve. I’m away the previous weekend and it’s getting dangerously near to needing to place orders and check such details.

But another project I now have in mind is completing the classic ‘French mother sauces’.

This is one of those fascinating pieces of information that I discovered when looking up something else – in this case, hollandaise, as a result of Friday’s risotto.

Apparently, these sauces are the foundation of classical sauce making. They are:

Velouté – done this via a couple of Gordon Ramsay pasta recipes;

Bechamel – done this too;

Tomato – pretty obvious;

Espagnole – done this too, for the sour brown shallot sauce that I serve with our Boxing day ham every year;

Hollandaise – not done this yet.

So, actually not very far to go on completing the ‘set’. Interestingly, I saw a definition online for a “more contemporary definition of mother sauces”, which was vinagrette, demi glace, beurre blanc, aioli/mayonnaise and sauce a la crème.

Now I’ve only ever tackled one of those – the aioli – so that leaves me with a whole new set of challenges in future.

But one of the reasons I want to learn hollandaise in particular is that it’s considered the key to béarnaise, which I’ve once with steak and would love to be able to make.

So, that gives me a series of things to think about – and if one thing’s certain, Borough will give me plenty more to think about.