Gnocchi seems to divide people.  There are people that love it and there are people that hate it.  Of those that love it, they side favour with either the ricotta base or the potato base.  Don’t even bring up whether or not it may be a true pasta, that conversation can go on all night and I’m sure you all have better things to do.

I had, in a soft-hearted moment, promised Vinnie whatever he wanted for dinner this weekend.  He wanted gnocchi, he wanted three cheese gnocchi; with the ricotta base despite previously being a potato man.  I agreed with love and happiness.  Within an hour of me returning to Guildford, he ran his hand through my hair, frowned and said ‘ Oh no, there’s so much silver’.  Sometimes he just doesn’t think and it makes me momentarily hate him and shout a bit.  The subject of my first grey hairs is still a sensitive subject in many major ways.

Nevertheless, because I try to be a better person for the man I’ve agreed to marry, I made him his gnocchi.  Ricotta, parmesan and gnocchi with a little lemon zest and pepper, boiled and cooked and then smacked in the oven to colour up.  A small dressing of a basil based oil sauce was only needed sparingly for the soft and tender pasta and served with broccoli and asparagus made an otherwise heavy meal into a spring like dish.

This coming week we have school trips to Ridge View Estate and to Billingsgate.  Yes, school trips to both a vineyard and a fish market.  In that order.  It will certainly be an experience.

Serves 2-3

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 250g ricotta
• 50g tipo 00 flour
• 50g semolina flour
• 1/2 beaten egg
• 3T freshly grated parmesan
• 30g gorgonzola
• zest of 1/2 lemon

Sauce:

• 1/4 cup olive/rapeseed oil
• a handful basil leaves
• 1 sundried tomato
• lemon juice

Garnish:

• shaved parmesan
• small basil leaves

Recipe:

1. Heat up a saucepan of boiling salted water and preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Heat the oil for the sauce on a low heat with the torn up basil leaves.
3. To make the pasta, combine all the ingredients apart from the egg and season generously with ground black pepper.
4. Slowly add the egg until you have a soft, but combined dough that comes together without sticking to your hands.
5. Lightly flour the surface (not too much, avoid it if you can, or the gnocchi will get super gluey when it boils).  Roll the dough out, in two halves, to a sausage about 1 inch in diametre and slice into about 1/2 centimetre slices.
6. Boil the pieces of gnocchi until they float to the surface and leave for a further 30 seconds before scooping out and draining, place drained gnocchi on baking tray.  Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until just starting to set golden.
7. Meanwhile, whizz up the basil oil and drain out the leaves, reserving the oil.  Season the oil with lemon juice, salt and ground white pepper.  Chop up a sundried tomato and add to the oil.
8. Plate the gnocchi and drizzle over the oil and scatter over the small basil leaves and shaved parmesan.

Hottest day of the English year so far this day.  I’m not going to say what it is because my South African relatives will split their sides laughing at what I consider ‘hot’, but I’m super happy.  It’s weather to shed the heavy black winter coat and boots and get into the bright orange summer dress (that may or may not have cats on it) and sandals.  There’s quite a few more staircases to climb before I can crack out the hotpants though.  Don’t ask about bikinis – I haven’t touched a swimming costume in over a decade, you can’t fool anyone about anything in that get-up.  The fact that my corpsey skin burns in all of three seconds also makes it severely masochistic behaviour.

Hopefully it’s onwards and upwards.  The evenings are long and light, flowers are out, people are happy.  I have been cramming in the asparagus, jersey royals, samphire and watercress but a craving for mushrooms kicked off.  Vinnie doesn’t like mushrooms so I rarely cook with them at home, but up in London it’s free choice!  There are some lovely wild mushrooms available now, including the beautiful chicken-of-the-woods and a lovely pie, served warm or cold, is always a beautiful way to show them off.

My pie is made with filo pastry and I shaped it in a small, shallow springform tin – I, stupidly, didn’t glaze the inner layer of filo with butter leaving it quite pale, but that is easily rectified.  The filling can easily be made in advanced and stored away for a few days.

Serves 2-3 (halve recipe for 1)

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: Between 30-45 minutes for filling and 10-15 minutes to cook in the oven.

Ingredients:

• 300g mixed mushrooms
• 1 teaspoon fresh, chopped parsley
• 1/2 clove garlic
• 100g spinach
• 20g gorgonzola
• 5 chopped black olives
• 1 teaspoon tomato puree
• 200ml dark ale
• zest of 1/2 lemon
• 5 sheets filo pastry

Recipe:

1. Roughly chop all the mushrooms, crush the garlic.
2. Cook the mushrooms and garlic with the parsley in butter over a low heat in a saucepan until the mushrooms are very soft.  Stir in the puree and add the ale.  Cook for 15-30 minutes until the ale has reduced by half and the sauce is thickening.
3. Stir in the olives and add the spinach, stir in to wilt and take off the heat.  Crumble in the gorgonzola and zest.  Season.
4. Preheat oven to 200C.
5. In an ovenproof dish, start layering up the filo, spreading a little melted butter between each layer.  Spoon in the filling and fold the top layer of filo over, but not covering the filling and roll the rest together to make a rim.  Glaze with butter – remember to glaze the top layer or it ends up pale like mine!
6. Cook in the oven for 10-15 minutes until the pastry is golden and stable.

I found my first grey hair this past week.  It was very traumatic.

I have not received much sympathy.  My class, all being older than me, laughed at my distress and told me to suck it up or dye it out and just shut up.  My mother told me I was so funny and as I despaired to my father how my wasted and misspent youth had given up on me and was draining away now on a downhill slope to death he rolled his eyes and asked if he was due to hear melodramatic updates every day now?

Vinnie tried to make me believe I was deluded and these grey hairs I saw simply didn’t exist.  It was kind of him to try.  He deserved a nice dinner for that.

We’ve covered the further butchery required for ballotines/galantines in the past couple of weeks and knowing that I had a guinea fowl sitting pretty in the freezer, I wanted to get ahead on practice.  I have yet to make the perfect round in the middle, but I’m still happy with the results.  I suppose one could ask the butcher to bone out their entire bird, I haven’t dared ask personally simply because I know this is something that requires attention and is probably not the first thing a busy butcher wants to take a break from a queue of customers to do.

I  stuffed this ballotine with the dark meat and prunes, processed and sieved to make it finer, and a small addition of a few dried herbs and breadcrumbs.  It was then poached and the skin crisped in the pan for dinner.

Serves 3

Preparation Time: Anything from 10 minutes to 45 minutes to bone the bird depending on your experience, another 15 minutes to assemble and make the filling.

Cooking Time: 20 minutes poaching, ten minutes in a pan.

Ingredients:

• 1 guinea fowl
• 25g bread crumbs
• 20g prunes
• 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
• 1 beaten egg

Recipe:

1. Using a boning knife, bone out the guinea fowl.  I would not recommend doing this unless you do have a decent, sharp, appropriate knife.  Because I’m awful at giving this kind of direction in words, I’ve found a video to help you.  This video shows a chicken being boned, a guinea fowl is much the same process but be prepared for a longer, blade-like breastbone.  You can keep the carcass and the wing pinions for a stock and add port to the reduction for a lovely sauce.
2. Gently peel the meat off the skin, seperating the white and the dark meat.  Place the skin, seasoned and stretched into a rectangle on a piece of clingfilm.
3. Bash the breasts between greaseproof paper with a rolling pin until about 1/2 cm thick.  Lay them out to form a rectangle on the skin.  You can cut pieces off and place them elsewhere – the breasts do not need to stay intact but a firm rectangle must be made.
4. To make the stuffing, remove obvious sinews from the dark meat and place in the food processor with the prunes.  Whiz up, adding the beaten egg slowly.  Do not draw this process out – once the meat warms up in the machine it starts to release proteins which makes it all very sticky.  Ideally keep the bowl and blade of the processor in the fridge beforehand.
5. Place a fine sieve over a bowl and, one tablespoon at a time, push the mixture through it to make it as smooth as possible, discard anything that isn’t going through.  Mix the breadcrumbs and the herbs into the sieved mixture.  Spread or pipe this down the centre of the rectangle of white meat.  Season.
6. Using the cling film to guide, roll up the guine fowl tightly.  Trim any great overlap – any overlap will not cook at the same rate as the rest of the ballotine.  Wrap the clingfilmed bird in foil and secure with string.  Heat up some simmering salted water and poach the bird for 20 minutes.
7. You can leave to cool at this stage to heat through when ready to serve or leave to cool for about fifteen minutes and remove the cling film and foil, secure the balloting with string and heat up butter and oil in a pan.  Fry the ballotine to crisp up the skin and warm through.  It will not need a long rest afterwards seeing as it is already cooked, but do let sit for 5 minutes before slicing.

This advanced term got ‘advanced’ really quickly.  To think in the first week of the first term the primary subject to cover was ‘eggs’ and in just the first two weeks of the third term we’ve been covering clearing, puff pastry, yeasted pastry, confit and sous vide and a day full of further butchery.  It really is mind-baffling to think not only just how much can be taught in one year, but to think of how long it might have taken me to get to grips with all these techniques outside of here on my own.  It might never have happened.

Spring is here now, the large blossom tree outside the school sends small leaves whirling in patterned breezes, socks are having to be carried for the kitched since sandals became standard street footwear and we have bemoaned more than once about the lack of barbecue lessons.  Seriously, how ace would that be?

These little meat-free sausages were inspired by my dinner at Mildreds.  Like I mentioned in that previous post, vegetarian sausages are an entirely different thing – they don’t have the texture and juiciness of a meaty sausage and must be enjoyed as something entirely different and not as something similar.  One must be gentle with them, but they can still hold their shape and place on a plate.

I missed my stovetop smoker so used it to smoke the beans over apple wood to add that summerlike-scent and depth.  I used butter beans but there’s no reason not to use a different kind.  If you don’t have a stovetop smoker or are unsure about assembling one from a roasting tin and tin foil, you do not have to smoke it.  I’ve seen Amrican bloggers mention ‘liquid smoke’ – something I suppose is like smoke flavouring.  I haven’t seen it here on the shelves but I have no doubt it exists online.

The smoked beans were mixed with sundried tomatoes, oregano and goats cheese with some rye breadcrumbs thrown in as texture.  I served it with crushed new potatoes and artichokes along with some pan cooked British asparagus.

Makes 6 sausages

Preparation Time: 10-15 minutes smoking, at least 1 hour chilling

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 400g butter beans
• 6 sundried tomatoes
• About 50g goats cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped oregano
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs

Recipe:

1. Place beans in an open foil pouch and smoke over apple wood until warm, turn off the heat and leave for 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile make the breadcrumbs and roughly chop the sundried tomato and add to the breadcrumbs with the oregano, a decent grind of pepper and salt.
3. Put all ingredients, including beans, in the food processor and mix to a dense paste.  Taste and season.
4. Take about 1/6 of the mixture, shape on clingfilm and wrap tightly.  Repeat with the rest of the mixture.  Put in the fridge for at least an hour.
5. For service, heat the oven to 180C and cook for 10 minutes.

Picture from mildreds.co.uk.

I have some catching up to do.  My year at Leiths finishes in only a couple of months and, with it, my year of London living.  When I moved (for the week days at least) to the capital last September, I made those well-meant promises to London based friends that of course we would meet up because we’re so much closer now.  One would think I had previously lived in Scotland, not a mere 35 minutes away, but I digress.  The last term has rolled in and is rolling through with speed and I have been negligent of my Londoner friends that I made those promises to, so I have been trying my utmost to make Mates Dates before I move even further out and away to Somerset.

One of these friends is Philippa.  I met Phil nearly a decade ago on a holiday in Costa Rica when I was still a very sulky and impatient sixteen year old and she was pretty much the same (with less of the melodrama).  Originally from Devon, she now works as a publishing assistant and lives in Tooting.  She is also a vegetarian.  Those words aren’t quite as dirty to me now that I’ve grown up a bit and am not quite as much a bully as I was.  When I’m back home in Guildford, I maybe cook meat only three times a week for dinner, fish on one other and vegtable based dishes for the last three.  I would rather have less meat of a happier and higher quality and there’s nothing unlikeable about decent dashes of colourful greens and plump beans with a world of herbs and spices at ones disposal.

I had offered the option to her that we go out to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner one night, she responded with a list of The Evening Standard’s 10 Best Vegetarian Restaurants and asked me to pick one.  I admit, my choice was made primarily by affordability and secondly by how easy it was to get to and whether I would know where it is (I have infamously become lost walking in a straight line before).  Mildreds was based in Soho, not far from Hix Soho where I had done work experience over Christmas.  I roughly knew where it would be, the prices seemed reasonable, why not?  As for the ‘No Booking Policy’, something that usually makes me roll my eyes and declare that there is no point in even going; a naive little thought in my head said ‘how busy is an all vegetarian restaurant going to be on a Wednesday night?’

I‘ll warn you, it was busy.  I hadn’t realised fully at the time but Mildred’s has been a vegetarian institution for as long as I have been on this Earth, opening in 1988 with a bright facade (whose colour has changed a few times over the years) with happy wonky lettering announcing itself and a fresh and honest menu.  There is something that is incredibly hip about it.  Maybe it’s a natural progression for a long-standing establishment catering to a specific audience. I don’t think I’ve ever been hip. I was an Industrial Goth more than a decade too late for the real Industrial Goths.  In this hipness, there’s something quite off-putting to me and it remains off-putting to me.  Not a place becoming popular, but a certain insincere pandering to a particular crowd.  Whilst an establishment can’t really ultimately predict who they’re clientele might be and it makes sense to adapt to whoever the masses are that turns up, it doesn’t really do a lot to quell this stereotype of a vegetarian lifestyle as a political action taken by those that prefer to think of themselves as different, those tofu-squeezing, lentil quaffing, hemp clad types of numerous outdated cartoons.  Of course the irony is that I will place bets that the majority of people in the bustling and busy premises that night were, like me, omnivorous and I think this says a lot about how far vegetarian food has come; it is now cool, not strange or faddy or picky or dirty to enjoy vegetarian food.

I hear tales that the primary inner dining space is large,albeit a bit on the cramped side, with a large glass skylight spreading outside light through until sunset.  I would not know.  Like I say, it was busy, we waited an hour squeezed by the small bar for table, eventually nabbing a few barstools with our beverages that looked back over the main street.  When our turn came to be seated, the waiter recommended that we stayed where we were rather than edge into the more crowded main dining area.  I was perfectly happy to; the people-watcher in me could not have been more delighted to be having a seat right up against a street facing window with a warm Spring air breeze drifting in.

The menu is short and appears to change fairly often.   It isn’t a menu that makes a statement and, more and more, I’m enjoying an ‘honesty’ in food.  I hear friends return from Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner waxing lyrical about the appearance of the food, not how it tasted – that became secondary, but how the legendary meatfruit looked.  A Leiths acquaintance spent their holiday peeling peas as work experience, not shelling peas you understand, peeling peas.  Things like this are not the reason I got into food; I’m not here to show people how clever I am or how pretty food can be, the amount of unnecessary waste from the idea of peeling peas makes me extremely uneasy.  I know this approach will mean I will never have a Michelin star, but that is completely fine with me.  I enjoy an honesty in food, I enjoy food that is not wasteful, I enjoy food that isn’t trying to be something other than it is or pretend it is greater that it is and the simplicity of Mildred’s menu was unexpected in a place full of bright young things in thick-rimmed hipster glasses drinking organic wine.  It gives a lot of variety in a few short options.  Their constantly changing burgers have seen plenty of acclaim, other online reviews fall over themselves trying to do justice to the mushroom and ale pie, sweet potato and cashew curry and the almost obligatory risotto and ravioli options are also there.  In the end I opted for a flatbread and babaganoush starter and a black bean burrito for main whilst Phil preferred crispy polenta and a dinner of smoked tofu and apple sausages with kale and garlic mash.  You can see from these options that these aren’t complicated or fiddly dishes, but there’s a good choice and it’s a choice that let the ingredient quality show through (or not in a less discerning establishments).

There was something about the hipster vibe I did enjoy and that was that with it came the importance of provenance   The casually-dressed waiter with tattooed sleeves was perfectly clued up on where the ingredients came from and the specifics of what went into each dish.  When the starters came, my two dips (one smoked babaganoush and one babaganoush with the addition of red pepper) had been sprinkled with a few crunchy sweet pomegranate seeds and a visible but not overpowering drizzle of chilli oil.  A generous starter portion, they hadn’t been stingy and when their menu suggests that these starters could also be smaller or lighter meals, it is a fair suggestion.  Phil’s polenta came with pesto, cherry tomatoes, olives and a lemon mascarpone.  It was decadent and beautiful with some lovely flavours and texture balance.  Texture balance may sound like a silly thing to comment on, but it so often seems to go amiss in vegetarian food or options and it is, most certainly, an important part of a dish.

I didn’t notice if service was slow to be honest, we were happy in our people-watching corner catching up on each other’s lives and in those situations, one is almost grateful for a little extra time.  It certainly never occurred to me that we had waited too long for one part of the meal or for a drink but now I realise we spent an hour and a half at the table for two courses.  The waiters didn’t seem overwhelmed and were happy to talk and joke and reassure despite the thorng of people waiting for seats even nearing ten in the evening.

I wish I could just give you a mistruth here, I wish I could say ‘the burrito was nice, but it would have been better if there was some meat in it’.  Honestly?  That burrito was one of the best burritos I’ve ever had.  It shouldn’t have been at all – I’m a heat fiend and it’s heat was only moderate as best but the balance of flavour in the bean filling was extraordinary.  The wrap was soft and light and unlike other Mexican style foods I have had, it wasn’t served under a mountain of cheese, just a gentle and adequate layer.  It wasn’t presented overly fancy, the burrito lay next to its lettuce, sour cream and guacamole counterparts in a perfectly ordinary manner but everything about that dish, even though it goes against all of my preferences, was perfect.  It was really, really lovely and far greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Phil’s sausages came with roast garlic mash and kale.  Vegetarian sausages are never going to have the texture and juiciness of a meat sausage, they are an entirely different thing.  Here these were intact, well coloured and well seasoned.  The supposed smokiness of the tofu didn’t really come through, but the apple cut a necessary sweetness in it.  Presentation is not one of Mildred’s qualities.  I’m not going to dwell on it – there are only so many ways you can present a stir-fry or a sausage or a pie – but the initial appearance of the plates was not one to take the breath away, it was on the eating that the enjoyment was found and that, for me, is exactly as it should be.

We did not bend to have dessert.  Not that either of us were averse to the idea of sticky toffee pudding or fruit crumble, but we were full.  Completely full.  Happily full.  Not weighed down with food babies, but that contented fullness after just enough nice food.  The bill was perfectly reasonable – we had  filled ourselves on a large starter and a good main as well as a glass of the house white for just over twenty pounds each.

This is not somewhere to have a business meeting and the frustrating lack of booking reservations makes it entirely inappropriate for first date material.  Your dad might have something to say about how casual the waiters look and a large group of you might have to book out their function room rather than cram into the dining area.  But if you want perfectly decent food at a perfectly reasonable price that either gives you choice as a vegetarian or shows you how good it can be as an omnivore, if you want to catch up with a friend in a happy atmosphere and you can ignore a smudge of pretension, I would completely recommend it.  A lot of their menu is also gluten/wheat free and the majority is vegan.

I hope Phil and I are still friends in another nine years and I wish Mildred’s well that it may still be open then.  I would also hope to have won the lottery by then and have bought my own island and twelve cats but, I understand, the former sentence is a lot more likely and I’m perfectly happy with that.

Mildreds

45 Lexington Street

London

W1F 9AN

So, Week one of Term 3 is over with and while I would love to admit it was tiring, and it was, that sounds like a weak statement when Monday was spent drinking Muscat and making a roulade in the name of education.  Monday aside, we have had some pounding, heavy demonstrations already and next week are going to be forlornly attempting clearing.  They say it’s a kind of magic, honestly it looks like an lot of work and keen observations to be called anything as comparatively easy as ‘magic’.

An external lecturer came in to do a demonstration on Spanish Food.  Hurrah!  We thought!  Lots of chorizo and tapas!  No, she said she was fully confident that we all knew what chorizo tasted like so we were to expect other things.  Among the number of dishes she talked us through was a hake dish with softened morcillo and chickpeas.  When I think of chickpeas, I think of something incredibly non-offensive that I use to bulk up dishes on the cheap or roast in spices for a snack.  I think of them as something happily affordable, but, I confess, an ingredient with little to offer on their own.  Small, tawny-beige balls to stretch out a meal.  This lady; whatever God or Spaghetti-Monster there may be please bless her soul, brought me to a whole new level of chickpeas.  She displayed a glass container full of large, fat pearly-gold baubles, substantial and fortuitous. We tasted them with the hake dish – delicately milky with a nutty punch, they can stand up on their own. I cannot tell you how amazing these chickpeas were.  I have just written nearly a paragraph on the merits of these chickpeas – is that not enough proof?

Many of the specific brands she would tell us sadly that they were more tricky and expensive to source here and gave names of a handful of eye-wateringly expensive shops.  I thought I would never see these chickpeas again, I thought when I recreated this dish I would have to go back, drag myself back, to the 69p tins that I had thought were the be all and end all.  But on visiting the Budgens ten minutes walk from where I stay with parents to obtain the morcillo, I saw them sitting there, happy and fat and milky and grail like on a shelf at a reasonable price.  I could have squealed with excitement, except that it was 7.30 in the morning and the subject was chickpeas.

If you have not been made greedy and tainted from trying upper-crust legumes, the normal tinned chickpeas, I assure you, will suffice.  The morcillo, unlike British black pudding, melts easily to form a dark sauce with only a sprinkle of paprika, wilted spinach is folded in and hake fillets just quietly cooked on top.  Hake is my favourite fish and it is stoic and robust enough to stand up to the punch of morcillo and the milky crunch of chickpeas.  It can take on the iron of spinach and be compatible.  It’s a good fish.  This is a very nice dish.  Have fun with it.

Recipe from Jenny Chandlar

Serves 2

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 hake fillets
• 300g fresh spinach, trimmed and rinsed
• 2 white onions
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 100g morcillo, skinned
• a pinch of paprika
• 250g chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sultanas
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Recipe:

1. Thinly slice the onions.  In a heavy based pan, soften them until sweet and golden and add the garlic, paprika, sultanas and parsley and cook for a further minute.
2. Break in the skinned morcillo, breaking up with a wooden spoon and when completely soft and saucy, add the chickeas.
3. Stir in the vinegar and then place on the washed spinach.  Cover the pan and allow to wilt for a brief time, stir it all up and season.
4. Season the hake fillets and place on top of the mixture.  Cover and allow to quietly cook for about 7-10 minutes.  You can also pan fry them and serve them on top afterwards.

I return to Leiths for the final term on Monday.  It’s often a true observation that one does not realise how much they have learned, what they have absorbed or the relevance of it until dust settles.  There were a few moans towards the end of the second term that we had not, perhaps, been taught as much as in the first term and, at the time, I would have perhaps agreed.  The break of the holidays however, the space and time of being back to making my own food, showed me just how much we had learned.  An unexpected fascination with the science of sauces has pervaded the last couple of weeks, I’ve found a pastry that loves me in the form of pate sucree, hand raising a pie is not a daunting challenge and nor is forming aspic (I’ll hold my breath on that one actually – we have aspic in the first week back!), my guesses at oven temperatures and shelf placement are no longer guesses, just automatic assertions, I can turn a damn carrot but perhaps I still can’t chop an onion, filo pastry remains my kryptonite and my presentation is still on par with a four years old’s art skills.

I became so much more absorbed in the wine and spirits lectures than I thought I will be.  Vinnie was hideously embarrassed when I criticised the wine/food pairings our chosen wedding venue were suggesting.  Retrospectively, I am too, but when that psuedo-sommelier mindset of someone that knows a little bit about something so feels entitled to give advice pushes through, it makes an awful impression.  I’ve done a lot of butchery before, as far as a four day course up in Ipswich with M.E.A.T inc, so whilst I may not have learnt anything on the day the happy, jovial, informative and old-school Butchers came in to demonstrate, it was still a much needed recap.  This past term we’ve had the most wonderful demonstrations from gluten free to cheese via offal and pasta.  We’ve been given more free reign in the kitchen, often told to simply create our own versions from ingredients available, and trusted with the most beautiful and more costly ingredients.  We have learnt so much and experienced so much this term that it’s hard to think that only a couple of months ago we were stressing over the shrinkage of shortcrust pastry and the consistency of creme anglais because we can do those things in our sleep now.

A wave of fear comes down when thinking about the final term.  Not so much when faced with the certainty of tackling puff and danish pastry in the approaching summer sun or the clearing of consommes, but more the thought that it will all be over so soon. In three months, this will be over and we’re going to have to face the real world.  It’s been about ten years since I was anywhere near the real world and whilst I am open to going wherever the wind and chance may guide me, I’m afraid because I don’t know yet where that might be or how I go from the safety of a teaching kitchen to a professional post.  Ultimately, I can only stay with saying ‘I’m seeing what happens’ – there are so many different paths to go down, so many, that I don’t just want to look down one and ignore the others.

So on Sunday, I pack up my bags again to head back into London leaving Vinnie and the cats behind again.  It’s OK – they survive without me (Vinnie on store-bought kievs and the cats get second suppers from the neighbours), but here’s to the final stretch!

Serves 3-4

Preparation Time: Overnight marinade

Cooking Time: 2.5 hours

Ingredients:

• 500g pork belly with fat unattached
• 3 star anise
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1T cinnamon or 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1/2T fennel seeds
• 1/2T szechuan pepper
• 1 litre ginger ale

Recipe:

1. The night before, grind all the spices together either in a pestle and mortar or a spice/coffee grinder until fine.
2. With a sharp knife, carefully remove the top layer of fat and skin if it is not already seperated and place to the side.
3. Rub the spice mixture all over the meat on all sides.
4. Score the fat, through the skin but not piercing through the fat itself. Sprinkle over a generous amount of salt and oil and rub into the scores.  Place on top of the meat in a roasting tray and leave, uncovered, in the fridge overnight.  Leaving it uncovered will help the skin dry out for better crackling.
5. The next day, when ready to cook, bring the meat out to get to room temperature and get the oven up to 230C and put the pork in for 20-25 minutes until the crackling is starting to crisp and bubble.
6. Pour in the ginger ale until it reaches halfway up the side of the pork and turn the heat down to 170C.  Cook for 1 hour.
7. Turn down to 160C for a further hour.
8. If the crackling is still undercooked, return to a 230 oven while the pork rests for 15-20 minutes.
9. The liquid can be strained and reduced to make a sauce, thicken with a buerre manie (equal parts flour and butter) if a thicker consistency is wanted.

A friend of ours bought a cottage about a year ago.  He knew this cottage was a little bit ‘tired’ and saw it as a little fixer-upper. Something he could live in whilst he pottered around renovating individual rooms one by one – a project certainly, but no great invasion to his single life and no great weight upon his finances.  He had a few surveyors in prior to the purchase, they indicated that his plans seemed reasonable (caveat, caveat, caveat) and he went ahead and bought the darling little building at a steal.

The first time he drilled into a wall, however, he realised that this may not have been a wall.  It may have just been a structure made of mud.  He called back a surveyor and was informed that, actually, yes, this ‘cottage’ was simply built of mud, was entirely structurally unsound and required total demolition.  Somehow the previous elderly owner had lived in this rather precarious home for many decades, bombarded by wet, Welsh winters.

So our friend’s little fixer-upper has now become a full rebuild.  The sweet little building he bought, he has had to knock down, draw up new plans and live in a caravan that is so cold that his jam freezes.  Since his initial plans entailed him approaching the project by himself, he is having to soldier on and do the rebuild himself.  It turns out that the previous owner (and a few owners before that) was something of a ‘collector’ and everytime he thinks he must have taken the last box of crap from the crumbling ruins of the walls or the now collapsed cellar or from being stuck up the chimney, another appears.  He has found everything from a box of 1850s medicine vials to a neolithic axe, to a scythe to a suitcase of, what he hopes is, pig bones.

The strangest thing about his story is not boxes of bones or a house to be found made of mud, but the fact that the man in question remains the happiest man in the world.  He is re-building a cottage from scratch by himself, living in a caravan so cold that canned baked beans freeze and rattle like pennies in a jar and, in the process of having a caravan on the site of a home, having to pay two lots of council tax and yet the man is so merry about everything.  He is never wearied, he is never overwhelmed, he is just excited and keen to see what the next day brings.

People like my friend amaze me.  I’m, I must admit, a tad of a stress head.  If plans fall apart then I flounder.  If something seems long and endless then I cry.  If I was told my precious new home was an unstable heap of mud, I might have gone out shooting surveyors.  I am in the process of planning a wedding and I have deliberately chosen three bridesmaids that I know, from past experience, can control my level of dramatic reaction (generally by saying ‘Juls, you’re being a tit.  Have a drink and then we’ll sort this.’)  Vinnie thinks, however, I have myself wrong here.  He says that, yes, the tears, the shouting, possibly the shooting might occur but whilst that goes on, I am apparently already dealing with the issue.

He claims I have moaned about the lack of a ledge in our kitchen since moving in because a lack of a ledge means I cannot clip a pasta machine onto anything and have to roll pasta by hand.  I have now complained about this for three years.  In those three years, he points out, I have still made the pasta, albeit by hand, and become more successful with it than I was before.

I do not know about the increasing success being true, but I have been elbow greasing the pasta dough for three years now.  I have possibly forgotten how to work the pasta machine.

So, for those who want to make their own pasta, but feel the absence of a machine inhibits them, do not let that put you off.  As long as the mixture is good to begin with, rolling it out by hand may take more time but is not difficult.  You are looking for a supple and elastic, but not tacky or sticky dough.  It will, and it should, spring back slightly as it is rolled out, but keep turning the dough on a well floured surface and you will get there eventually.

The great thing about ravioli is that is can be filled with anything.  Here is just a pinch of crab with some light seasoning.  Being in the middle of our short asparagus season, some grilled asparagus adorn the plate and a few spoonfuls of buerre noisette add a biscuity depth.

Serves 2-3 (about 24 pieces of ravioli)

Preparation Time: 40 minutes (including 30 minutes resting)

Assembly and Cooking Time: 20 minutes preparation, 10-15 minutes cooking

Ingredients:

For the pasta:

• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• 100g tipo 00 flour
• 50g semolina flour
• black pepper
• 1.5T olive oil

For the filling:

• 50g cooked white crab meat
• 50g cooked brown crab meat
• 1/2t-1t lemon juice
• 1/2t dried chilli flakes
• 1T olive oil
• black pepper

For the garnish:

• 60g butter
• 5 asparagus spears
• a few sage leaves

Recipe:

1. To make the pasta, make a well in the sifted flour (and generous grind of black pepper) and beat the egg, yolk and oil in the centre, bringing in the flour locally until a supple, elastic but not tacky dough is formed.  Wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
2. For the filling, bring a pan to heat and toast the chilli- do not let it burn – and then take off the heat.  In the hot pan, add the crab meat, a squeeze of lemon, the olive oil and a generous amount of black pepper.  Season to taste and put to the side.
3. Roll out the pasta dough to 1mm thick using a pasta machine or good old fashioned elbow grease.  Place 1/2 teaspoonfuls of the filling equidistant from each other and dab around these blobs with a little water.  Place over another strip of pasta, press around each covered filling part to seal, cut and put to the side on a tray dusted with semolina.
4. To cook, heat up the grill (broiler?), break the asparagus at it’s natural point and split in half lengthwise.  Put under the grill for 3-5 minutes until cooked.  Meanwhile place the butter in a pan and put to a medium heat, letting it melt and darken until the solids turn toffee brown and rise – at this point at the sage leaves.  Heat up salted water to cook the pasta.
5. Cook the ravioli in the boiling, salted water for about 2 minutes each – when they float to the surface, take out after a minute (they are then cooked).
6. Serve with the pasta on the base with the asparagus on top and drizzle the buerre noisette on top.  Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and serve.

Oh the humble burger, staple of every gastropub lunch, summer barbecue and inebriated midnight snack.  The versatility and range stretching from Burger King to Kobe Beef.  You can mix burgers out of anything – beef, chicken, venison, beans, lentils, halloumi, horse… there is nothing one can do with a burger that hasn’t been done before but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy yourself.  Here we have a burger from ox heart – a lean and meaty offal cut – minced with Merguez sausage, rosemary, thyme and served on homemade buns with local cheese (local to me, which is probably not local to you seeing as most of my readership lives in North America).

Ox heart can’t really be cooked on it’s own as a burger – it doesn’t have nearly enough fat and needs something else to give it that protection.  Some people use a ratio of about 2:3 with normal beef mince or you can use a ratio of 4:1 with pork back fat.  Here, in this recipe however, I used Merguez sausagemeat (gives a sunny kick and a confident fat percentage) with a ratio of 3:2 (300g ox heart, 200g sausagemeat).  If you have any other variations do say.

Preparation and Chilling Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Makes 4-5 burgers

Ingredients:

• 300g ox heart (minced or very finely sliced – not chunky in any way or it’s harder to cook evenly)
• 200g merguez sausagemeat (remove from skins)
• 1 egg yolk
• 3T course breadcrumbs
• 2T good tomato sauce (preferably homemade but ketchup can be used)
• 1/2t chopped rosemary
• 1/2t chopped thyme
• Semolina flour for dusting

Recipe:

1. Mince the heart slices.  Your butcher can do this for you or, if you’re lucky enough to have a mincer at home, you can do it yourself.  Otherwise I’m afraid one has to stand around and cut it into very small and equal pieces (don’t attempt to ‘mince’ any meat in a food processor – it releases all the protein and becomes very sticky and strange)
2. Mix the finely minced ox heart with the sausagemeat, egg yolk and tomato sauce and then add the rosemary, thyme, breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper.
3. Dust a tray with semolina and shape the mix into 4 or so patties, place them on the tray, dust more semolina over the top and put in the fridge for 20 minutes.
4. When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180C and heat up a frying pan with a knob of butter and a little oil.  Fry to colour each side of the burgers for about 2-3 minutes on each side, then place on the tray and put in the oven for 20 minutes.
5. These really do need to be cooked through to at least medium – pieces of uncooked heart and sausagemeat aren’t very nice.  Do check.  If you are really worried about them cooking properly, you can treat them like meatballs and place them in a crockpot at 160 heat with a little stock for an hour before service.

I asked a very personal thing of Zoe from Dare to Eat a Peach.

Zoe is a young, food-loving blogger from the San Francisco Bay area that explores all from cakes through to condiments on her blog with an eclectic mix of Chinese forays, Italian influences and Jewish heritage foods.  However, whilst it isn’t the primary focus of her blog, her relationship and use of food has been ruled by her affliction with PCOS and insulin resistance, a diagnosis made in her teens.  It has been a long and difficult journey for her, trying to balance, and sometimes sacrificing, foods that she loves with her health and having to eat healthily and properly to keep herself as well as she can be.

Anyone afflicted with any sort of chronic illness, even one not related to food, can instantly verify the almost immediate effects in relation to that illness of eating what your body truly needs or choosing, through stress, confusion, anger or tiredness, to wrongly nourish oneself.

I asked Zoe to write a post for Pepper and Sherry about how her illness and her relationship and understanding of food affected each other and I was very grateful that she agreed to it.

Words and Photos from Zoe

When Juls asked me to do a guest post on food and chronic illness, I said yes without hesitation. And then I stepped back and thought, what the hell am I doing? This is such a massive and personal topic that I had no idea where to begin. But I have a story to tell, and a recipe to share, so I’ll give it a try.

I’ve loved food pretty much all my life. It’s the greatest source of joy I have day-to-day. I live for herbs and spices and fresh produce and the crackle of good crusty bread. But for most of my life, I’ve had a tense relationship with food.

When I was barely into my teens, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). With those four letters, I was handed a lumpy package of symptoms–many of them related to the way I process food. Over the years, I’ve heard a cacophony of names for my condition: insulin resistance, prediabetes, metabolic syndrome. I’ve even heard it referred to as Syndrome X–something so murky and mysterious that it can’t be defined. Here’s what it boils down to: I don’t process carbohydrates well, and that puts me at enormous risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Almost overnight, my relationship with food changed completely. Instead of sustenance, it was something to be kept at bay. Every time I ate, I had to weigh what I wanted against the fear of getting sick. I would have roaring, gnawing, white-hot cravings for sugar and starch–all the things I shouldn’t eat–followed by long periods of walking around in a thick fog. Somehow, I convinced myself that this was all normal. It wasn’t that bad. If I could just control myself a little more, be a little more disciplined, lose a little weight, this would all go away.

That’s the toughest part of having a slow-burning chronic illness. You’re so close to normal that it’s easy to just make the mental leap and assume you’re already there. If this is the best it’s ever going to get, then why am I so miserable?

For me, the a-ha moment was a long time coming. After graduating from college, I started taking an antidiabetic medication to help control my blood sugar. I began emerging from the fog; for the first time in a decade, I realized that it was possible to go a whole day without a full-body sugar craving. I started to really taste my meals again, without the fear and the guilt sitting side-by-side on my shoulder. And I started teaching myself to cook, so I could feed myself the foods I loved.

It’s not been easy. The symptoms haven’t gone away, and whenever I let my guard down, they creep back in. But I’ve learned that my body will let me know what it needs. When I eat well, exercise often, and take my medication, I feel normal–even lively. I can have cloudless days.

A big part of the process is feeling out the foods I love, the ones that make me excited to eat. When I focus on the healthy things I love–like smoked fish, broccoli, lentils, dark chocolate–the world suddenly seems like a more unlimited place. I love tailoring recipes to suit my tastes, so that even the heaviest and most unhealthy meal can become something I’m proud of.

Take this tart, for instance. It’s something I dreamed up on a warm winter day: a buttery rye-accented crust, filled with a dense mix of Swiss chard and Swiss cheese. It’s got the bones of a quiche, this tart, but the ratios are flipped. There’s no cream, much less egg, a lot more greens, and a big pile of cheese. Plus, it uses the whole chard, stems and leaves and all–I love that.

This is the kind of multi-step kitchen project that’s best done on a slow weekend day, with plenty of breaks for sitting on the couch with a mug of tea and a book or a bad TV show. A slice of this tart, eaten warm from the oven or cool a few hours later, is exactly the kind of reminder I need that food can and should be joyful.

Swiss Chard and Cheese Tart (serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

For the crust (adapted from 101 Cookbooks):

• 85g / ¾ cup all-purpose (plain) flour
• 35g / scant ⅓ cup light rye flour
• 125g / 4 oz cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• ¼ tsp salt
• 40 mL / 3 tbsp ice-cold sparkling water, plus more as needed

For the filling:

• 700g / 1 1/2 lb Swiss chard (leaves and stems), washed and dried
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium leek, white and light green parts only, washed and sliced
• 1 bunch (6-8) green onions, sliced
• Salt to taste
• 1 large or 2 small garlic cloves, minced
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp dried dill OR 1 tbsp fresh chopped dill
• Pinch of ground or finely grated nutmeg
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 140g / 5 oz Gruyere, Emmentaler, or other Swiss cheese, coarsely grated

Equipment:

23cm / 9 inch pie pan or removable-bottom tart pan

Recipe:

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all-purpose flour, rye flour, and salt. Add butter and use a pastry cutter, two forks, or your fingertips to mix the butter into the flour until it’s completely incorporated and crumbly (some lima bean-sized chunks (butter beans for British readers! – J), some pea-sized chunks). Sprinkle 3 tbsp of the cold sparkling water evenly over the butter-flour mixture, and use a wooden spoon or flexible spatula to mix it in. Squeeze a handful of the dough in your palm to see if it sticks to itself; if it doesn’t, add more sparkling water, 1 tbsp at a time.

Knead the dough in the bowl a few times, just to bring it together. Form the dough into a disc and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Cut the chard leaves away from the stems. Cut the leaves in half lengthwise, then slice crosswise into thick ribbons. Trim any blemishes or rough spots from the stems, and finely dice.

In a large skillet or frying pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add chard stems, leek, green onions, and a pinch of salt, and sweat for about 5 minutes, or until the leeks start to turn translucent. Add garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for another 30 seconds to a minute. Increase the heat to medium-high and add the chard leaves, a handful at a time. Cook, stirring frequently, for another 8-10 minutes, or until the chard is wilted and tender. Remove the mixture from the heat and set aside until it’s cool enough to handle.

Preheat the oven to 375º F / 190º C, and place a rack in the middle of the oven. Transfer the chard mixture to a strainer and press or squeeze out as much liquid as possible (there’ll be a lot, so take your time). In a large mixing bowl, beat together eggs, dill, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Add chard mixture, and mix until thoroughly combined. Fold in about 3/4 of the grated cheese.

Roll out the pie crust on a well-floured surface. Transfer to a pie or tart pan, and trim away any excess. Spread the filling evenly into the crust and sprinkle the reserved cheese over the top. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the filling is firm and the crust is golden around the edges. Remove from the oven and let sit for at least 10 minutes before slicing. Serve the tart warm or at room temperature.

If you want to read more from Zoe, please meander over to Dare to Eat a Peach.