The boy done food

Totally tropical

2010-04-25T16:20:00.004+01:00

I love things like this. Filthy, boozy things.

You've probably heard of a Cheeky Vimto - a most evil brew made with ruby port and blue WKD; this is a slightly classier version: the Dirty Lilt.

Mix equal measures pineapple juice and lager in a glass. Drop in a shot of cointreau and neck. I'm ashamed as I'm writing this.

Nothing like getting classy trashed on a Saturday night.

The Little Black Book and a few of my favourite things

2010-04-15T16:25:00.006+01:00

I've got mine.

It's full of scribbles, recipes, ideas, food thoughts, musings, rants, rambles, my pathetic attempts at drawing, things that are supposed to be plating ideas but really look like a collection of badly drawn geometric shapes piled into...well, piles. That are supposed to be food.

I love it. It's a moleskine - a yearly gift from Father Christmas (Mum) along with a clementine, an apple, a walnut and a jar of her homemade piccallili or marmalade.

This year's one is full and thus I had to buy a new book; to celebrate this pivotal moment I thought I might share some of the mystical secrets contained within the retiring volume - a few of my favourite things to eat around London. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

Samosas at Kastoori, Tooting
Every forlorn looking samosa that lurks behind glass in tiny Tube station newsagents alongside other nondescript, terrifying objects aspires to be one of these when it grows up. Fresh, spicy and packed with a point vegetables, this is the ultimate in Indian snacking.

Katsu sandwich, Tsuru, Bishopsgate or Southwark
One of the high rollers of the deep fried world, the katsu at Tsuru is a thing of great beauty. Either free range chicken or pork is deep fried in Panko breadcrumbs and served in between slices of fluffy white bread with tonkatsu sauce, Japanese mayo and shredded pointed cabbage. Food of the gods.

Paneer, Tayaabs, Whitechapel
Everyone knows Tayaabs, the Pakistani grill restaurant in Whitechapel, notorious for its lamb chops, its 'dry meat', its queues and ahem 'VIP' area. The oft-o'erlooked paneer they serve is a thing of great beauty; I always feel rather glad that while others fight to the death over the last bit of little mister lamby I can spirit away every chunk of tandoor-cooked cheese.

Hamburger, Goodman's, Maddox Street
Forget every high street joint, every new wave burger spot and every up market place doing a 'wagyu' version, the burger at Goodman's is the ultimate in meat-in-a-bun action. Made using steak offcuts from USDA beef, this glorious example is then cooked on their Jospa grill using three different types of charcoal and served in a brioche bun with proper chips. Proper.

Laotian crispy fish salad, Thai Kitchen 101, Hammersmith
So it's Laotian food. In a Thai restaurant. But when it's this good, does it matter? It's deep fried fish with great swathes of coriander, assorted other bits and bobs including lemongrass and toasted ground rice and plenty of chilli. It is vibrant, fiery, crunchy, crispy, fragrant and aromatic. Eat it with sticky rice.

Sausage roll, Mrs King's, Borough Market
Most London foodies are aware of Mrs King's famous pork pie which is no surprise given the spankingly delicious piggy pies they. You're missing a trick, however, if you haven't sampled the greatness of the warm sausage roll they sell. The pastry alone is worth the trip - buttery and flaky beyond compare.

Just fo' yo' info

2009-08-13T01:02:00.001+01:00

I managed to sharpen my knife to such a degree of acuteness I cut myself. FML.

Staying sharp

2009-08-01T13:58:00.005+01:00

The art of sharpening a knife is no easy skill to master. In fact, what tends to happen most of the time is an initial period of utterly destroying knives, dulling them, scraping up their sides and generally ruining them before, in one glorious moment, one actually manages to to get something that represents a cutting edge.

As with all things kitchen-related, it's practice. I just chose a okay knife from my collection and decided that it was going to get sharpened whether it liked it or not. And at first it didn't, getting blunter and blunter as I cack-handedly tried to get the action right and get the correct angle. But this, it transpires, is actually part of the process. It's changing the angle of the blade to suit your sharpening which means it gets worse before it gets better.

As time passes and the weeks have ticked by, I'm just about there. Not with the speed - that I'm still working on, but I'm hitting that 30 degree angle every time and ending up with something sharper than when I started. And it's rather rewarding.

On the menu

2009-07-12T23:14:00.002+01:00

Quite a good feeling after the previous week's hell-shift to have a fairly straightforward and pleasurable one on Friday. No shouting, no panic, no carnage - just a well-oiled machine running smoothly.

Another little bonus is the addition of one of my creations on the menu - which leaves me rather chuffed. A part of a pud, using one of my absolute fave fruits, the gooseberry. The swollen green buds with their light green go faster stripes and almost-there wirey down are around for such a short time they should be celebrated - tomorrow I'll be making gooseberry turnovers and gooseberry mess (what's the point in going to the gym if you can't ruin it all afterwards?). And now I'm thinking gooseberry donuts. Yum.

For the menu we were looking for part of a pud - so I sweetened some greek yogurt with icing sugar, flavoured it with vanilla seeds and rippled it with the goosegog compote. A fraction away from what a fool should be (the genuine article is, reportedly, made with custard), but far more up my street.

Given complete free reign I'd probably have added a crushed amaretti biscuit for a bit of texture, or even some honeycomb - a bit on the dark side for some adult caramel notes - but that is a plan for another day.

In a gooseberry pickle

2009-07-07T11:22:00.002+01:00

Lovely folks over at Coach and Horses have finally let me steal their gooseberry chutney recipe. It's yum. Also their pickled grape recipe which is on it's way. Enjoy!

New post...at last

2009-06-25T08:51:00.003+01:00

Just finished a few days break in Valencia during which I may have eaten rather a lot. Read about my experiences tracing the origins of paella here and about me eating my way round here. Gazpacho recipe will be on my Hello column tomorrow and although it veers somewhat from the classic (no sherry vinegar, no bread, eek!) it is a delicious and light version. Perfect for those of us on a healthy eating kick...

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't

2009-05-18T11:30:00.003+01:00

The kitchen: walk in mid-service and you would think you had stepped into a mad house. Flames flare, oil sizzles and spits, extractor fans roar, plates and spoons clatter, pans hiss as they are plunged into cold water, the warning cries of 'backs!', 'hot pan' and 'coming through' fill the air as chefs flit about, avoiding each other in what seems like a suicidal ballet performed by men with extremely large knives.

In truth, this is organised chaos - deeply practiced, rehearesed and well-led, the whirring parts all come together in a beautiful fluidity stunted by the occasional yelp as someone burns themselves.

There is method in the preparation too - a rhythm that builds up as the day progresses. This rhythm runs through every part of life in the kitchen and is a most useful friend, particularly when the pressure builds. It filters down to the most menial of tasks, the peeling and chopping of apples for example - all are peeled, then all are cored and finally all are diced. This method allows you to work quickly and more effectively - and is also worth remembering for the homecook.

Finding the rhythm, it seems, is key.

On the line of fire

2009-05-07T10:30:00.004+01:00

I've just started work in a professional kitchen at The Victoria pub in Sheen under Paul Merrett. It's frantic, frenetic but most of all - fun. It was actually quite a tough decision to make - that whole thing about over-doing something you love; in truth, though, it hasn't been that way at all.

It's a separate world from the home kitchen, an utterly different experience. Far more, well, clinical I suppose. It's about practice, technique, preparation, organisation with far less of the fluid, relaxed, casual nature of home-cooking. Professional cooking is discplined, with rules.

It's working together towards a single goal without the chest-thumping caveman competition that seemed to take over food tv for a while. A perfect plate of food is a combination of any number of elements that come together in perfect unison.

Coming in at the lower levels of the kitchen you do end up with some of the more menial tasks - the poaching of fifty eggs, or the peeling of great mounds of potatoes - but this is, in essence, no different from fish prep, meat prep or any other station. It might seem a bit less rock'n'roll but essentially it comes down to cogs in a machine - and every chef in the kitchen is one of those cogs.

You have to see the bigger picture, to step back from the task in hand and realise that at some point these recipes, methods and techniques will all become second nature.

I'm learning, and that's why I'm there.

Banh Mi recipe. Ooh look it rhymes.

2009-04-16T14:56:00.002+01:00

As promised here is the banh mi recipe which, even though I do say it myself, is fantastic. You need to be doing this at your summer barbecue. Hell - you could even use burgers in place of the meat.

You will need

100g daikon
1 medium carrot
100ml rice wine vinegar
3 tbs sugar
Pinch of salt
A handful of shredded meat
A few slices of liver sausage or around 50-75g liver pate
¼ of a cucumber
2 tbs mayonnaise
4 spring onions
A small bunch of mint
A small bunch of coriander
bird's eye chilli, according to taste
Half a baguette

Make the pickle. Shred or grate the daikon and carrot. Sprinkle with salt in a colander. Leave for a bit, then squeeze out water. About half an hour. Warm vinegar and sugar until sugar dissolves. Cool and pour over carrot and daikon mixture. Store in a jar - it'll last a few months. Leave at least for a few hours.

Deseed and slice cucumber into long strips. Cut spring onion into long strips. Chop mint and coriander. Finely slice chilli.

Warm baguette in oven and cut in two, then halve and toast lightly. Spoon on the mayo. ALayer the ingredients - pate, meat, slices of cucumber, spring o, some pickled vegetables, herbs and chilli.

Season with a splash of soy and fish sauce, wrap in greaseproof paper & serve with sweet chilli sauce to dunk.

Cream of the crop

2009-04-09T21:52:00.006+01:00

After a mad week helping Paul A Young out in his Royal Exchange shop (and selling out of everything) I felt the odd urge to get into the kitchen. After days spent 'sampling' chocolates (gotta know what you're selling...) and then counteracting the sugar rushes with savoury fixes (lumps of cheese, salt and vinegar crisps) cogs were ticking.

Paul makes a mind-numbing sea salt caramel - one customer ate five whilst waiting for a box of 18. Munchie food, he said, while munching. I love caramel, butterscotch and it's many incarnations, straight sugar, sugar and water, sugar and tea (see next month's Source mag in your local Waitrose), sugar and cream. Sugar and vinegar make a fantastic sauce for duck with mint - which if memory serves is a Mrs Beeton.

The latest love-child of my sugar fetish was a caramel panna cotta which, while I wait for it to stop wobbling, should be pretty decadent. Just a little wary of it's richness - which might get cut with a coffee syrup of sorts, but I'm sure a decision will be made at breakfast time tomorrow - the traditional cream and sugar sampling time in my house. Maybe a little extra sugar, some shards of it, near burnt, solid and crunchy.

I double whammy when doing panna cottas - two separate batches with different flavourings - more often than not one a relative success and t'other destined for accidentally falling in the bin as I walk past.

I took some inspiration from Senor Davey's travels and made a malted milk panna cotta while I was at it. Found the Horlicks in a pound shop and couldn't resist. I don't make a habit of frequenting pound shops (OK, so I do) but it was opposite a Lidl (no i don't) which I was scouring for this Lobster for a fiver thing. I digress - malted milk is charming, with that rather grown-up hoppy, yeasty smell and a scattering of smashed up Maltesers for extra malty goodness plus a little welcome crunch.

As for the caramel, well...only breakfast will tell.

Getting my decorate on...and other manly tales

2009-03-30T14:29:00.004+01:00

As you can see from my shiny new background and this whopper image on the left, I've finally started to get my new place sorted. It always takes me a while of shifting bits around, getting comfortable with the way the furniture is before I get my collected oddities and put them up and around the place.

The kitchen is the first thing I get straight - the hub of my home. Everything else falls into place after this, but more slowly than I'd imagine most do it. Eventually things just start to feel right where they are, you get used to the various bits and bobs, the oddities, marks, scuffs and crannies that make each house or flat totally unique.

A cake always helps to make home sweet home too. This Sunday it was Nigel Slater's marmalade cake which was made with a bitter orange variety - leaving the cake fragrant but with enough depth to be a little grown up.

I've had my fill of Western food for a bit, so I'll be going off the reservation again, South-East Asian style starting tonight - crispy duck and lychee salad and beef with holy basil. Sticky rice on the side will calm the searing heat of the aromatic tiny bird's eyes.

Service with a smile

2009-03-23T11:38:00.003Z

It's all moving and shaking at the moment. In between the usual work, writing, cooking and all that jazz, there's been the new work in a hot kitchen (lots of fun, but more on that when it's official) with Paul Merrett, alongside trying to cook my own stuff for Hello!.

It's been a great week for two friends of mine, Henrietta at the Rare Tea Company and David Hall, freelance writer and Food Saint if there were such at thing. Both of them won Observer Food Monthly Awards and both thoroughly deserve the prize. Henrietta's tea is mind-blowingly good (check out this month's Source mag for some recipes) and Dave's commitment to food is, frankly, scary. Check out his recipe here which I shall be cooking soon.

Other than that I've eaten a complete mish mash of things which ranged from the unapologetic fish fingers, chips and peas to the spider treviso and goat's cheese (forgotten the name, Neal's Yard and Neil Davey will remember, he's good with his cheeses, him) risotto with sourdough crumbs you can see pictured here. Recipes for this and a glorious ice cream sandwich will be up on Hello! magazine soon.

Proper

2009-03-12T20:43:00.005Z

On the matter of chips, I decided I would start to work out how they might best be made at home.

Tonight, for the purposes of research alone, I set about making some proper chips. In the interest of speed and having no thermometer I went for the par-boil then shallow fry method.

This resulted in crispy chips which weren't very oily. All in all a resounding success. Not quite the pinnacle of the potato though, but delicious sprinkled with lots of sea salt and dunked in egg yolk and ketchup (not in that order though).

Par-boiling is pretty much the same as the first stage of deep-frying at a low temperature - you just end up with soft, squidgy chips, ready to be crisped up at high temperature.

A large potato was peeled, cut into centimetre thick squares the length of said potato. They were blanched for 7-8 minutes before being drained - thoroughly. They were then fried for approximately 5-6 minutes in a centimetre of very hot vegetable oil, drained on kitchen paper and salted with flakes.

For good measure I ate the chips with sausages. It seemed cruel not to. While the fat was still hot from the chips I fried a couple of eggs in it, the Asian way of doing it, so you end up with wide, voluminous eggs with crispy edges. Yum.

Banh Mi: The business

2009-03-10T21:12:00.005Z

I love an Asian salad - crisp, crunchy, chewy, fragrant, hot, spicy, sweet, sour. Too many boxes being ticked - and a flavour explosion in the mouth. I can't get enough lemongrass at the moment - it tastes like refreshers on steroids, smacking of citrus and heady freshness. It features heavily in my cooking - Friday's duck salad was dressed with a lime juice, soy sauce and fish sauce mix, laced with chilli flakes and tiny rings of the pink and green stuff. Perfect eaten by hand with some sticky rice (which I'm now wondering how I ever lived without) - a few extra slivers of bird's eye dropped in the mix added a little Russian roulette to the handfuls and left us sniffing at the end of the meal, but exhilarated.

The Vietnamese do a version of the Thai Som Tam which has fresh prawns, not dried shrimp and is slightly milder but, well, fruitier - dressed with a sort of nuoc cham style dressing. Unreal - I could eat it by the barrel. It's laced with crispy garlic - so avoid on a date night, or both tuck in. It comes with shrimp crackers to scoop for an added texture - the key to so much Asian food.

These staples of Asian cooking, the cornerstones, the textures and balance are featuring more and more in Western cooking. Fusion, as a rule, is bad. But what of something that has existed for some time - a cultural mish-mash, where styles of food and techniques have come crashing together?

Enter banh mi.

The perfect mix of East meets West, seemingly logical and crazy at the same time. In essence an Asian salad slapped inside a baguette - a remnant of France left behind in Vietnam. But what a worthwhile impression to have left.

The premise is simple - a baguette, warmed, halved; a smear of pate, a few slices of grilled meat, some pickled carrot and daikon, fresh mint and coriander, long slices of spring onion and cucumber, slivers of pink shallot, a splash of soy and fish sauce, a squeeze of lime, topped off with a liberal smattering of impossibly red, fiery Thai chillies and a generous hand with the mayo. Wrapped, sensibly, in greaseproof to hold the lot in, this is the ultimate in hand-held food.

This is my summer staple. Barbecued chicken thighs? Fillets of mackerel and flakes of sardine? Even a sausage doesn't seem too far fetched. Watch this space.

Recipe coming soon on my Hello! blog...

Devil's Pie

2009-03-06T13:32:00.002Z

No pies, even though it's National Pie Week (or was).

Fridays are always a little quiet on the email front - I've never quite worked out why. It might be possible the entire foodie world heads pubwards come lunchtime. A sensible choice.

I've worked on a few nice recipes this week, which pleasantly have been a resounding success.

Lady-like dainty cakes started the trend - a mother's day madeleine recipe that is both aromatic and delicate - a tea-time treat if ever there was one.

I fell deeply in love with the silky sweet and punchy Thai ice coffee while touring Siam back in the day. It comes in tins from the likes of Nescafe, or if you're lucky as a slush-puppy style effort sold in a plastic bag with a straw poking out the top. Now that's fast food, South-East Asian style. This week, it found form as an ice cream - black as night coffee that would keep you up for days coupled with achingly sweet condensed milk. A buzzy concoction that was more-ish and soft straight from the freezer. I should be a chemist.

A Friday night special of Thai duck salad, crunchy from lots of yummy bits with perhaps a touch of my new fave thing - duck crackling and a lip-searingly hot dressing.

Saturday night's treat will be this, from one of my fave bloggers, and one of the nicest people I've met along this strange foodie journey. A paste made with 50 chillies - now we're cooking.

Recipes to be published over the next little while on the good ol' Hello blog.

And if you haven't checked out David BooktheCook Hall's new site - head over now for a load of fantastic recipes, including one my own - it must be worth a visit. Sign up to his newsletter for loads of fab food talk, prizes and some of his Northern natter.

Am thinking about doing one of those Underground stylee restaurants down here in South West London. Any takers?

Chips, gravy and a few good suppers

2009-03-02T08:04:00.007Z

It's been a fast and eventful week. I moved last weekend, which always takes a toll on me, both physical and mental. It's the sort of upheaval that leaves me unsettled - I always need a few days to relax and get into things before the work starts to flow easily again. Maybe it's the boxes all over the place, the lack of order. But we're just about there now and I have a great big balcony upon which I will be barbecuing and growing all summer.

Two fab meals out this week - the first of which was Dine with Dos Hermanos. The brothers Majumdar hosted a fantastic evening at Vinoteca - a group of bloggers, food-writers, eaters and other wasters all gathered in their private dining room complete with adjacent open kitchen for a pull-out-all-the-stops meal. I will be phoning them today to try and swipe a couple of recipes, as their squid with dukka was out of this world, and pickled damsons are now my new fave thing. This is to be a year of pickling and preserving for me. I still can't quite get the hang of it, but with a few trips to the Pick Your Own I hope I'll be able to turn out something half-decent. My rhubarb jam is just a weensy bit runny, but that's more my fault for not measuring things. Oops.

Back to the meal, as all us bloggers swore to post all the minutiae about it. Starters were sharing plates of squid, a salad of tea smoked duck, a blood orange and pomegranate salad and a plate of very good cured meats. I would happily have eaten any as a solo dish. Petra from Chocstar looked about ready to kill someone when she was last getting her crispy squid.

Mains were own-chosen - crispy pork belly, a (for me) surprisingly delicious mutton pie or a piece of pollack. Obviously I didn't have to do much in the way of thinking, the word 'pork' flashing like neon from the page.

A pre-dessert of parfait with an oolong tea from the Rare Tea Company had Henrietta was dashing to and from the kitchen for quite some time but was worth it in the end.

Vinoteca laid on a cheese course in between - a fantastic Mayfield with some home-made charmingly mis-shapen oat cakes.

Puds were a choice of brownie ice cream, rice pud baked in vin santo or buttermilk sponge with rhubarb. Being a sucker for rhubarb I opted for his but stole most of my neighbours ice cream when she wasn't looking.

Wines were provided by Casa Leal and lots of other companies provided great stuff for all the goodie bags - take a trip over to the DH site (links left) to check out the rest of the suppliers.

I was going to blog a little about Friday night and Thai Kitchen 101, which is, in my mind, the finest Thai restaurant in London, but time is pushing on and work beckons.

Stand out for me was their crispy fish salad, which almost had me driving back the next day for more. Am headed that way with Hermano number two fairly soon so will report back then.

And the chips and gravy of the title refers to sunday night's meal - it's one of these quite British (in my mind) things, that when the gravy is dark and meaty and home-made and the chips are right, with just a bit of squish so they soak it all up, everything seems right with the world. The chicken was delicious, although rather playing second fiddle to the mound of crispy deep fried things and big pot of gravy. Two actually - I wasn't going to share mine...

Frying high

2009-02-24T08:02:00.003Z

It's been some time now since I started paying slightly too much attention to the chip. It's caused a few disagreements, a few raised eyebrows and no end of disappointment. Like many an item cooked in England, they seem to divide opinion and almost always fail to live up to standard. I know that's a little harsh, but it's these simple things we fail at so often - the bacon sandwich, the pork pie, the fry-up. These aren't exactly challenging, so when it comes to proper chips, this distinct lack of the real thing causes just a little upset.

It started in Bentleys a few weeks back when I went with Neil for a review and while those around us sat and discussed the ins and outs of producing the next series of X-Factor we had a rather heated discussion on the subject of the perfect chip. Their chips were the large type I really can't stand; they lack the proper crunch to squidge ratio (TM) and almost always end up powdery and slightly under in the middle.

A triple cooked version at the Hand and Flowers wasn't too clever - cooked at the wrong temperature, the potato had been carved into a cylinder (whoever heard of such a thing), had been over-zealously salted (as most of the food was, except an undercooked souffle) and now just about resembled the classic frozen croquette.

Last night's effort at the Victoria were the best of the bunch, served with a good bearnaise on the side (although, Philistine that I am, I always prefer ketchup - chips just cry out for something sharp). Quite fat, definitely crispy, with those interesting craggy bits at the end that crunch perfectly, while soft and fluffy inside.

I think the time has come to add a 'chipometer' to the blog, so let's see how that pans out...

Eat, drink. Lots

2009-02-16T22:17:00.006Z

So a fair few days since my last post but my excuse is a good one - as with most busy periods now it has become customary that I help out sir Paul A Young at one of his fine chocolate shops while trying to eat my own body weight in chocolate. The weirdest thing about my last session there was that I became addicted to Marmite truffles. Yuck you shout in your droves - but judge not. Now, I understand why people come into the shop and buy boxes and boxes of them - and them only. There is something deeply satisfying about the unique savoury tang of Marmite coupled with a dark chocolate ganache, sweetened with just a touch of sugar. Paul is truly a master of his craft. His Woodford Reserve is a must, while a new Tonka Bean truffle is soft and luxurious.

Many a punter has turned their nose up at the Marmite truffle - only to be converted with a single bite. And once bitten...

Congratulations to Paul on a fair few wins in the old choccie awards too.

(Photograph copyright - www.tom-moggach.com)

Lunch

2009-02-05T16:14:00.004Z

Just a piccie. Lunch - tabbouleh, rice salad, chorizo, my bread toasted with Mehmet's olive oil and sea salt. Spot on.

The evolution will not be televised

2009-02-02T22:04:00.008Z

The evolution of a dish is a strange and wondrous . A lot of bleughs, yucks and oopses happen while something goes through it's various stages of development. Inspiration comes from the most unlikely of places, from memories of meals gone by and fleeting glimpses of one too many cookbooks. It filters down equally from Michelin-starred dining as from a simple lunch of bread and cheese, a conversation with a friend or a flick through a menu. A recipe is sometimes just a coupling of two or more ingredients and at others a series of misfires and successes - and further, sometimes just a series of successes, with each one happily besting the last.

Sometimes they go nowhere, and what might have been good falls by the wayside, either through admitting defeat or a some common sense driven desire to move on to the next more exciting, more interesting, more pleasurable project.

Sometimes, of course, a dish needs no evolution, no more changes, nothing that might gild the lilly, and that is a satisfying sometimes.

Sometimes evolution follows no natural path, no clear logic, like a conversation between two people who know each other very well - it jumps from one spot to another seemingly unconnected one, defying the laws and logic of cooking. Maybe this is a result of what could best be termed edible thoughts - the taste in the mind of a certain pairing of flavours, what feels best with what.

And that is how I started with my heart set on a white chocolate mousse and ended with something utterly different. The mousse never really came together - a perfect pudding on paper: white chocolate top, passionfruit bottom and a sprinkling of crumbled bright green pistachios. I tried different things, but it never quite worked. My mind wandered and somehow ended up at a winter rhubarb mess - the meringues made with muscavado for a deeper, more unusual flavour.

Somehow it seemed perfectly suited to today's white blanket with its bright flashes of pink against the cool white cream and chunks of soft sepia meringue.

The recipe will be up next week on my blog at www.hellomagazine.com as part of my Valentine's Day work.

2009-01-26T12:14:00.005Z

Is there anything finer than cold cuts? Leftover possibilities are endless, from the simple sandwich (not this month though, unless it's rye bread) to a shepherds pie or shredded into a salad or noodle soup.

A lovely shoulder of lamb from the Ginger Pig made up Sunday's lovely lunch, along with the finest crushed, red, baby, roasted potatoes on the planet, beetroot baked with bay, balsamic vinegar and orange (recipe here) and some cavolo nero.

Today it re-emerges in a Thai-influenced salad along with a little something I am rather proud of - sticky rice. I'd tried to cook it a couple of times before and made a bit of a pig's ear of it, but this time, somehow, it all seemed to go right. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a pretty good result nonetheless. A rice cooker is my weapon of choice when cooking any type of rice - and it is possible to do the sticky variety in the cooker too, using it as a steamer. The rice is a bit of a pain and requires some planning - it needs to be soaked for several hours, preferably overnight, but is worth it. Steamed in a muslin cloth for forty minutes, it is glutinous and chewy - the perfect foil for a spicy, citrus-spiked salad.

You could use any left-over meat in this salad. Even a sausage would suffice. If you don't have any leftovers, you could make this with a steak, chicken or anything you fancied - even prawns.

Lamb, carrot and cucumber salad with chilli (Serves 2 with sticky rice)

Ingredients

1 carrot
half a cucumber
4 small pink shallots or a red onion
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbs palm sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
2 tbs crispy shallots (available in Thai supermarkets)
A small bunch of mint
A small bunch of coriander
A large pinch of chilli flakes
Cold cuts - as much as you fancy/have

For the rice
4 handfuls of glutinous sticky rice

Method
Soak the rice in water for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight. Wash the rice, swishing it around and scrunching it slightly to release the starch.
Your rice cooker needs to have a steamer basket or you'll have to cook the rice in a conventional steamer over boiling water, or a traditional Thai steaming basket. Half fill the pot of the cooker with water and bring to the boil on the 'cook' setting. Wrap the rice in a piece of muslin, spreading it quite evenly, then fold the muslin up over the rice and place in the steaming basket. Pop the lid on and cook for around 40 minutes.
For the salad mix the palm sugar with the fish sauce, lime juice and chilli. You may need to tweak the quantities a little to get exactly the right sweet/sour balance. Shred or grate the carrot and cucumber and finely slice the shallots. Mix these together, finely chop the coriander and the mint (remembering to remove the mint stalks) and combine. Tear your meat up or finely slice and add to the ingredients, then pour over the dressing. Sprinkle with crispy shallots and serve.

The irony

2009-01-24T00:58:00.001Z

is that I'm now craving chocolate again.

HELP!

Blithering wreck

2009-01-23T18:42:00.005Z

I've been reduced to someone who can hardly string a sentence together. It took me three tries to spell blithering right. It's that bad. The reason for this is that for the past four hours I have been judging the Chocolate Awards which, while it might sounds like most peoples' idea of heaven, is actually far from it. Four hours, forty-five chocolates later and I'm still in a heady state, a little bit la-la land but not of the diners and hot dogs Dos Hermanos variety. If you have ever over-indulged on good chocolate you'll know what I mean - it's a strange, not entirely unpleasant buzz, but one from which I shall be glad to come down from.

As per usual at food awards, the products ranged from the truly outstanding to the tragically dismal. Truth be told, since getting to know Paul I've become something of a chocolate snob of late - he's given me some tasting sessions with some stonkingly good chocolates - opening up a whole spectrum of different flavours I was previously unaware of. It stood me in good stead today and might have made me a slightly harsher critic than I would have been before - or possibly slightly more fair.

So although I am supposed to be working on a chocolate pud this weekend, I think it might get left somewhere by the wayside, while I sink my teeth into something slightly more savoury.

Keep an eye out on the Chocolate Week website for the awards which should be posted shortly.

South China Morning Post

2009-01-21T10:40:00.005Z

Just a quick note to mention that my article on Gourmet Glasgow is in the South China Morning Post today - for all those unable to purchase a copy, the piece can be viewed on their website here:

Entrée: Glasgow by William Leigh