Cookbook of the week - Week In Week Out by Simon Hopkinson

This is a work in progress
On Monday, we will do Mushrooms Armenienes and Lamb's Kidneys and Tiramesu

Cookbook of the week - Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros

Okay, this is the cook book of the week-before-last because I failed to write it up at the time.

We made:
Chick pea, feta and coriander salad, accompanied by marinated grilled chicken
Pineapple, cinamon & allspice cake
Deep-fried salt cod with Skordalia
Red-pepper soup with olives and lemon rind
Pork fillet in pastry with wild mushrooms (heavily adapted)

The chick pea salad was well worth doing again, and really quite low hassle. I made it in a bit too much of a hurry, with chickpeas which were a year or three out of date, so they were still a little crunchy, but it wasn't the recipe's fault. As she suggests, I marinated some chicken (thighs) in vast amounts of cumin with yoghurt, and then grilled them. If you cooked the chickpeas the night before, this would be a doddle.

Hungerpang made the Pineapple cake, which was a triumph. I will try to see if he took a photo. The only problem with it was that it was so beautifully moist that we should have kept it in the fridge, and we had to throw the last half of it away. The mould culture on the top was too much even for us.

Deep-fried salt cod
Ages ago, I bought some dried salt ling from the Argentinian stall at Borough Market. I'm always looking for Bacalhao (Portuguese dried salt cod) and thought it would make an appropriate substitute. As instructed in the recipe, I soaked it for 2 whole days, changing the water regularly, but it didn't seem to re-hydrate much. I couldn't extract any of the pin-bones from it, for instance. After deep-frying, it puffed up nicely, much more fish-like, but still very chewy. We ate it with the fantastic Skordalia

Skordalia
This recipe really appealed because she says you need to be "in the mood for garlic". It involves boiling potatoes in vegetable stock, then mashing them with pureed garlic, salt, olive oil and lemon juice. It's really really lovely stuff.

Red pepper soup looks gorgeous, but the end result wasn't nearly as intense as the lovely one we ruined by turning it into a jelly. I would use the recipe from A Celebration of Soup next time instead.

Pork "Wellington"
This was very strange. Can Tessa Kiros really get pastry to work with equal quantities of butter and flour? I wasn't willing to risk it, and made a normal shortcrust. Then the deviations really started. I hadn't really read the recipe before I bought all the ingredients, and I couldn't face turning nearly 10-quid's worth of wild mushrooms from Booth's into a couple of tablespoons of cream sauce. I'd assumed it would be like other meat-in-pastry recipes, with the mushrooms, herbs inside the pastry. So that's what I did, with a bit of homemade chicken liver pate added in for good measure. It was very successful, but the book was only really inspiration.

The best scotch egg?

There's a small shop between Heal's and Habitat on Tottenham Court Road, called Peyton and Byrne. It sold us a scotch egg for £1.50 (surely cheaper than the Ginger Pig, if not than anywhere else) which was nigh on perfect. Not too much meat, but of top quality and seasoning, and very cripsly fried. A man walking down the street approached, and asked us if it was hot, its star quality apparent from several feet away. He was later seen clutching one himself.

10th Wedding Anniversary Dinner - the menu

Ceri & Thomas, Ben & Kathryn, Annabel and Allyn, this is what we ate, and drank, on Saturday night
Gruyere choux puffs (adapted from Gougere in Delia's Cookery Course 3)
Champagne Pannier brut

Parsley soup (Skye Gyngell), granary rolls
Soave Monte Fiorentino Ca'Rugate 2007

Peppers Piedmontese (Skye Gyngell)

Rotolo Ripieno (Truly Madly Pasta - Ursula Ferrigno) - This is the thing I had to make the fresh pasta for.
Dolcetto d'Alba Ca'Viola Vilot 2005

Red Mullet Salad with Lime and Ginger (Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries)
Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Kabinett Dr R Thanisch 2004

Indian Carrot Salad with crispy lamb (Jamie at Home)

Summer berry sorbet (Nigel Slater's Real Food) and Tuiles Amandines (Sainbury's Biscuits and Bakes)
Silverlake late harvest Sauvignon Blanc, Washington State 2005

A first attempt at making fresh egg pasta

New silicone rolling pin in hand, I have been trying to make my own fresh pasta. Following Ursula Ferrigno's recipe in Truly Madly Pasta, I had first to find somewhere to sell me some semolina flour. This appeared to be only available in a 5kg sack, the shopkeeper assuring me it was completely unnecessary to use it and that his mother never bothered with it.
Then, my brain didn't kick into warning mode at the instruction to make a well in the centre of the flour and put 7 eggs in it. By the time the 7th egg went in the structure was leaking all over, and the mixing became a made dash to stop raw egg from escaping over the edge of the board. Proper mud pies, and nothing like the delicate one-handed operation shown in the pictures!

I then tried to follow Marcella Hazan's instructions on how to roll and stretch your own pasta. This is tremendously complex, requiring a different sort of rolling pin and a large table, neither of which I had. It goes through 3 different stages of rolling and stretching. I thought I'd done quite well, until we tried cooking it. Everything became much thicker, and only the paper-thin-about-to-tear parts came out seeming normal. It took much longer to cook than I expected, and didn't show any signs of over-cooking after 8 minutes in the water.

It was quite pleasant eating, but still definitely in the "experimental" category, rather than the successful one.

Bacon, Chicory and blue cheese risotto with Fiano d'Avellino

Tried a standard risotto of mine last night, with the addition of some chopped chicory just before the rice. It came out beautifully. We then matched with a (white) Fiano d'Avellino dei Feudi Di SanGregorio, which stood up to the powerful flavours very well. Much more full-bodied than we expected, but very well balanced, fruity and delicious.

Armenian Beorijch

Cooked this black-eyed bean and tomato stew, with lots of mixed nuts in. Nice, but missing something. Like meat or fish.

Magdalen

It's been a while, but we haven't stopped eating. Had a good meal recently at the much-lauded Magdalen, near Tower Bridge. It was perhaps a bit too poncey for our friends: why do restaurants make it so unpleasant for people who like their meat well done? There were a few service niggles, but, when reported, these were handled with superb professionalism. The starters were apetising - just the thing to make you want to more. Rupert and I shared a large suet-crusted veal and leek pie, served with carrots. It was marvellous. The veal was described as rose, in this case meaning just short of red, rather than a delicate pink. Of the desserts, all good, I was most impressed with my peach melba. Not radical, but very unusual to get this made with fresh peaches and other top quality ingredients. We'll be back.

Royal China Canary Riverside, again

This is a very usual place for us to stop and eat supper on the way home. Earlier this week, it was beautifully sunny, even for the end of April. We sat outside and had duck pancakes, green veg with oyster sauce, slow-cooked pork belly with perserved veg, and noodles and beansprouts. Nothing special. A bottle of house wine at £20 (yikes) which was okay. Still a lovely place to eat and a special experience. What a view!

Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham

We have a policy of monitoring excellent restaurants which have been there a while, and where there is a risk of retirement or boredom on the part of their owners. We failed to get to the Walnut Tree before Franco Taruschio retired, and so have been trying harder since. With this in mind, we went to Croque-en-Bouche twice in the 3 years before it closed, and managed to return to the Merchant House in the week before Shaun Hill hung up his apron. The Altnaharrie Inn closed shortly after we went there, but hopefully the two are not connected!
We therefore thought it prudent to return to the Champignon Sauvage, having only once visited it over 5 years ago. It had been the location for our "highest bill ever" at the time, long now since exceeded by Gordon Ramsey's Royal Hospital Road joint. This time, cars were involved, so it would be harder to achieve such a bill, and we were trying not to frighten our friend resident in the town who had agreed to accompany us.
It was a super meal, far too lengthy to list here, but some highlights were the amuse bouche cheese puffs, the veloute of white asparagus in a shot glass, kid canneloni with curd cheese and land cress, scallops with crispy pork belly; roasted cinderford lamb, lamb sweetbreads, crushed parsnips with hazelnuts; chicory cheesecake with chicory ripple ice cream; lemon and pine kernel parfait, lemon curd, fromage frais and pepper sorbet. The petit fours were exquisite - a selection of 10 different ones that we had to fight over.
We accompanied it with the most expensive Beaujolais on the menu at £24, and a supplementary glass of house white burgundy.
Lunch for the 3 of us was considerably less than it had been for the two people 5 years ago, and very decent value at that.

Risotto of spring vegetables with wild garlic leaves

It's the time of year that, in Vienna at least, menus are stuffed with wild garlic leaves from soup to cheese course.
Having received a surfeit of wild garlic leaves from generous friends with a garden, I begin to see why. We had to work out what to do with them. Chez Bruce was advertising a risotto with new vegetables, wild garlic leaves and parmesan. Sounds straightforward: I can make risotto. The only problem being how to find fresh vegetables on Fleet St at 6.30 in the evening. Marks & Spencer Simply Food on Ludgate Hill came up with asparagus tips (from Kent), carrots (from Northumbria) and sliced runner beans and shelled peas (from Kenya).
I wouldn't normally buy anything that had flown that far, nor have I ever bought sliced runners before. They looked very dried up, but the "protective atmosphere" must have had some very rejuvinating qualities - they were crisp, sweet and tasty.
I sliced the carrots "o"-style and cooked a good while with chopped onion before adding the rice, a glass of vermouth and the chicken stock. The wild garlic leaves were shredded, with some added at the beginning and most at the end. Peas went in 4 mins before end, with blanched asparagus and runners shortly after. Final adds were the parmesan (bowlful), some chopped parsley, and about 2/3 oz of frozen diced unsalted butter.
The arbiter of risottos pronounced his approval, but I thought it looked a bit of a mess, lacked a certain something (lemon juice, perhaps?) and am very curious to know how Bruce would have done it instead.

Hot cross bun-and-butter pudding

At last, a use for supermarket hot cross buns. The hot cross buns at Borough market are a revelation; rich, dense, moist, fruit and spicy. Even 4 days later, there's no need to heat them up; they're just lovely buttered cold.
Unfortunately, I'd already bought some from waitrose, and couldn't bear to throw them away.
Recipe books are full of variations on the bread-and-butter pudding theme: brioche, pain-au-chocolat, crab sandwiches even. No-one seemed to have covered hot cross buns before, so I had to wing it as regards quantities.
The remains of a beaten egg (from pastry brushing), some top-of-bottle, a few pointless sultanas and demerara sugar were all that I added to two hot cross buns cut-and-buttered vertically in several slices.
Miracle! It worked. Normally Hungerpang experiments, and I work from recipe books. In his absence, I had to take on his role, and learnt that you get lucky quite often.

Pied a terre

We've discovered that snow is a good thing. Or any other cause of "transport chaos" which leads to lots of people working from home unexpectedly. Unable to go to Chez Bruce due to a friend's illness, we still wanted to go out, and started to ring around. Pied a terre could fit us in, and so began the most expensive evening of my life.
Something comes over Hungerpang around his birthday (for it was this meal, and I was paying). Something competitive, something "let's see just how high a bill can go"-ish. To be fair, on this occasion we were in need of cheering ourselves up, and we decided to blow economy. We ordered 3 separate half-bottles - champagne, mas de domas gassac white, red burgundy, and some glasses of dessert wine, turning down the recommended PX as we've got exactly that bottle lying around the kitchen.
Choosing from the a la carte menu, we swapped plates as usual. This was cooking at its most high-falutin. The amuse-bouches came on a very fancy presentation stand - one multilayered cube, one shot of carrot foam, one wafer, one baby american muffin (cheesey). If I put a whole paragraph into describing them, I might be able to convey the complexity on display here. Equally, there aren't enough hours to describe all the aspects of the full dishes. My scallops etc. etc. were beautifully matched. Hungerpang's trout and crab ravioli came with an exciting fennel emulsion, which he wasn't much enamoured with. Emulsions, foams and purees were much in evidence. They are undoubtedly very clever, but not very satisfying.
Can't remember main courses, except that Hungerpang went for pig lots of ways. There was head, belly, maybe black pudding. Something in there he rated "best ever morsel".
Then we had cheese. Then desserts. Then coffee and petit-fours.
But still, £325 was a lot of money for a mid-week dinner for two.......
Funny, isn't it. Probably the most exciting meal we'll have this year, but very difficult to remember 2 months later what the fuss was about.

Tapas in Melbourne - Movida

Hidden in a scruffy alleyway very near Melbourne's Flinders Street station is this gem of modern spanish food.

It's the sort of place you come in to, and know immediately you're going to enjoy it all. Modern but friendly decor, knowledgeable staff, a very happy buzz in the air.

We came in mid-afternoon, a little too early in the day to settle into drinking ourselves into oblivion, so we had to be restrained.

There's a good selection of sherries, although we didn't think much of the one we ordered. On later reflection, we think it was probably bottled some time ago and therefore no longer marvellous.

In terms of tapas, they have the usual olives, calamari, plates of ham and so on, but much more dainty stuff too. We had one of everything, all 9 of them. The "Cantabrian artisan anchovy on crouton with smoked tomato sorbet" was exactly as described; our picture shows, I think I remember, a "crab tartare" between two layers of Melba toast, and some gorgeous spicy shrimps. The croqueta was eely good! One small lonely piece of manchego cheese came with quince paste, but that's what happens when you order only 1 of something, I suppose.

With the exchange rate so favorable, we'd have been hard-pushed to make the bill hurt. The total was AUD 112, which seems to be about £45. In London, for tapas this good, we'd have been paying at least £112.

Eating to avoid jet-lag

We're trying to do this weird diet-and-lifestyle preparation for the long-haul flight. It involves eating mainly protein for breakfast and lunch, and mainly carbohydrate for supper. Today is a "fast" day, which means trying to survive on about 800 calories: not something we are used to.
Breakfast is okay - cold meats and cheese. For lunch, I wanted to eat sashimi and salad, but failed to find it. Instead I went to the marvellous Hilliard, and bought Jambon Persille and some courgette and goat's cheese salad. I don't often eat shredded ham in aspic, with or without lots of parsley and some gherkins, and it's an even stranger thing to eat at your desk. The courgette salad made little impression on it.

Comptoir Gascon

After the magical annual carol service at St Bride's Church, we wandered in the direction of Smithfield market, looking for something to eat. There were a plethora of possibilities, but we stopped at the first one we came to: Comptoir Gascon, which used to be a fancy deli in which you could eat a bit of lunch, and is now mainly restaurant which seems still to sell a bit of food and wine.
We weren't desperately hungry, having just devoured some minced pies, brioche (why was this deemed Christmassy?) and some Rioja, all courtesy of the good Baron Reuter.
The food here is hearty, not for those of weak stomach, and not a comfy place for vegetarians.
I went with a starter portion of Salade Landaise - green beans, foie gras, confit duck, geziers. Hungerpang's chose a main course of Onglet beef (sort-of-skirt) served rare with Bordelaise sauce, and we asked for chips and a portion of lentils and bacon. The latter never came, but the portions were so large that this was not a problem. The salad had top quality ingredients, but didn't really mesh. I can't complain much about something with foie gras in. The onglet was superb - beautifully marbled, "bleu" rare, but sliceable, chewable, and served with a rich thick red wine and slow-cooked onion sauce. Chips were excellent.
The place has a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere, and the prices are not astronomical, particularly the wines. We drank a bottle of Irouleguy 2003, the grapes listed as "Tannat and Cabernets". I was worried the heat that year would have made it over-jammy, but it probably just made the Tannat come into its own.
We finished off with a Creme Catalan, although I thought that wasn't the same thing as the creme brule which arrived. I need to check, I suppose.

White truffles - mystery and revelation

When you regularly walk past boards advertising white truffles at £2000 a kilo, it is easy to wonder what all the fuss is about. Sometimes in Booth's at borough market they let us sniff the jar they keep them in. The other day, I saw a chap buying a small one for £15, and realised that it was possible to afford to try them.
When we were looking, the smallest was £25's worth, so that was what we bought. He said it would serve four. It seemed like a good idea to buy some fresh egg taglietelle to go with it.
Then we got home.
All our cook books think it is too fancy a topic to cover. There are no details on what to do with a truffle, how to store it, how to clean it, and hardly any recipes. There were a lot of little holes in the truffle, with fine sand and grit in. I tried using a toothbrush on its own, but resorted to water assistance. Straight after this, Hungerpang found an exhortation on the internet to avoid contaminating truffles with water.
I found only one recipe, which added merely butter, parmesan and grated nutmeg to the pasta, and grated the truffle over the top. This is easier said than done - it was quite brittle, and we ended up with chunks and fragments everywhere.
The result was pretty spectacular. Very pungent, a powerful gastronomic experience, but not necessarily the most pleasant in the world.
That used up only half of it. I had most of the rest for lunch today following the same recipe, discovering that a pototo peeler is an excellent tool for grating truffles with!

Butler's Wharf Chop House

I thought the only Conran restaurant worth going to was Plateau in Canary Wharf, but after last night have had to revise my ideas.
It was the service that really stood out. They managed that balance of being totally attentive and well drilled, without appearing formal or imposing. Hungerpang mentioned to one waiter that he would move to drinking red wine, and was instantly supplied with a clean glass by another waiter. The room was pleasant, perhaps a little draughty, but the view of Tower Bridge obscured by heavy scaffolding. We (eight of us) were pleased to be seated at a round table, which is much more fun for a sociable group.
The menu had a confusing layout - fairly typical Conran - so you could easily miss some of the main courses on offer. It was hearty British fare, with a special seasonal emphasis on game. The breads were excellent, and not particularly gimmicky or Italian. I chose game broth, a richly flavoured consommé with mushrooms and parsley. Others tried lambs kidneys on toast, smoked salmon, game terrine and potted shrimps. No-one tried any of the oysters on offer. For main course, the steak and kidney pudding appealed most to me. It came coated in gravy, so I couldn't tell if they'd achieved the elusive crisp crust, but not enough gravy to last me to the end. Portions are generous here, and I couldn't finish the pudding. Other things tried were fish and chips, venison shank, mushroom tartlet, pheasant with red cabbage. All were traditionally flavoured, pretty good, but no better than you could achieve at home with a little patience. Only 2 of us had space for afters, both opting for the bread-and-butter pudding, though angels on horseback attracted interest. The bread and butter pudding was huge! Fully a 5-inch cube of dense bread and custard. Hungerpang managed about 2/3rds of his (with a tablespoonful to me), but our friend could only manage a pathetic quantity. We all had coffee, which came with a few little chocolate petit fours of unimpeachable quality.
The thing I really didn't like about this place with its jolly atmosphere (a bit too loud, perhaps) was the prices of the wines. In trying to find something under £40 pound a bottle, you could look through several sections without joy. I repeatedly had to rebuff the somelier's recommendations with a "no, that's out of our price range", and really struggled to find 4 bottles to drink. We had an Argentinian Malbec called Clos de los Siete (£36), a couple of bottles of Rioja Marques de Riscal 2002 (£29.75), a Portuguese Douro wine called Quinta de la Rosa (£29.95), and a white Verdejo, Jose Pariente from Rueda in Spain for £25.75. These are almost the only wines under £30 on the list.
The bill came to £73.50 per person, which was a good effort on our part in contrast with the previous trip to Gaucho Grill, which tallied up to over £90 a head.

The Mason's Arms, Knowstone, Devon

In Devon for the bank holiday weekend, and wondering how to fit in a decent meal out that hasn't been booked solid for months. We decided to try the Mason's Arms at Knowstone, on the grounds that it might not be too well known yet, and it wasn't too hard to get to despite the heavy traffic. We'd heard they'd gained a Michelin star. The Mason's Arms is useful for anyone driving along the North Devon Link Road A361 - only 5 minutes away.
It's an olde worlde pub in a tiny village, with a dining room built on the back looking over the fields below. The dining room is unusual, with the ceiling covered in frescos.
As it was Sunday lunch, there was no a la carte, but a 3-course, 3-choice set menu. We tried the scallops and the ham hock terrine, followed by roast sirloin beef and belly pork. Puddings were a trio of strawberries and a chocolate hazelnut parfait.
Coffee was served with homemade fudge.
Throughout the presentation was first class.
We had a truly super meal, but the best thing about The Mason's Arms was that it seemed to have retained its status as a pub. The restaurant was first class, but had not taken over the pub to the exclusion of real ale, log fires, dogs and locals.

Almond Macaroons - plain and unmessed with

I've found it impossible to locate in my recipe books a version of macaroons which hasn't been tarted up with orange oil or coconut or pistachios. In my grandmother's copy of Good Simple Cookery by Elizabeth Ayrton we found the following easy-peasy recipe:
3 egg white
Pinch of salt
6 oz ground almonds
8 oz castor sugar
1 tbsp ground rice or fine semolina
18 blanched almonds

Whip egg whites and salt until stiff enough to hold a peak. Fold in the ground almonds, sugar and rice or semolina. Put in little mounds or roll into balls and then flatten on rice paper or a well-greased baking tray. Place an almond on each, bake in a slow oven at 150 degrees C, til crisp, about 30 to 40 minutes. In a fan oven, we found 30 mins worked well, giving a chewy centre and crisp shell.