Leftovers don’t get better than this…

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Question – What’s the best thing about cooking for friends?

Catching up on all their news, hearing about their work and their kids? Being gently tickled by their dazzling repartee? Sharing memories and nostalgia of years gone by? Perhaps just enjoying the presence of people who you care about? Or (more likely) getting a little kick out of the fact that you cook better than they do?

No, no, no, no and no.

The fact of the matter is that the best thing about cooking for friends, by far, is the chance to cook too much food and eat it all over again the next night (or the next two nights if you’re really lucky. or single).

And here I am with what are, without a shadow of a doubt, the best leftovers you could ever, ever eat:

Dauphinoise potatoes – infinitely better the day after you cooked them
Red cabbage – barely getting going until day two, let’s be honest
Confit of duck leg – not even worth eating until at least a month after it was so lovingly poached in its own fat

That’s it – put the three together and you have heaven on a plate. Stick a glass of bordeaux next to it and you may as well just kill yourself there and then, because it’s never going to get any better. Try it. And then try telling me I’m wrong (if you’re still alive that is…)

Confit of duck, red cabbage and dauphinoise potatoes

The confit is easy – have a look here to see how it’s done.

For the red cabbage, take a whole small red cabbage, cut it finely and put it in a large pan with a small jar of redcurrant jelly (or something similar), and couple of peeled and chopped apples, a finely sliced onion, a large knob of butter and plenty of seasoning. Add 100ml of water, put the lid on and cook it on a low low heat for an hour or two, stirring every 10 mins or so.

For the spuds, get out the mandoline and finely slice a couple of handfuls of waxy potatoes and put them into a shallow over proof dish (preferably standing on edge – you’ll get more in and they will cook so much better) with half a pint of cream mixed with a quarter of a pint of milk (enough to ensure the spuds are almost completely submerged, and few cloves of finely chopped garlic, plenty of little knobs of butter and season it well. Cook it in a low oven (150-160c) for about an hour.

Now, get your friends over for dinner (preferably ones who don’t like eating too much), serve them a tiny portion of your feast, have a quick chat, get rid of them as quickly as you can and then wait…with all the patience you can muster…

Writers block and smoking

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It happens too often. I think I’m on a roll and then it all grinds to a halt. This time for over six months. One problem is lack of discipline – rather annoyingly, discipline is something I had plenty of when I was 14 and when it wasn’t cool to have it. Now I have none it seems.

And as I think about it, the problem isn’t entirely about my laziness, in fact it’s not even my fault –  it’s the shorts – they are the ones to blame. And the reason is very simple – that despite their unequalled faculty for adventure and imagination in so many aspects of their lives (monsters under the bed, imaginary friends, sticks=guns, etc), they seem to have absolutely none when it comes to food.

And so it is that week after week I’m commanded to trot out the same old dishes that I wrote about over two years ago in this very journal. And they won’t let me try anything new. I’ve tried believe me. Every week I beg them to let me feed them something new. Something simple and tasty. Something that’s not Friday Night Pasta. And it’s not like I’m presenting them with a blowfish or pig’s trotters. I’m talking really basic stuff here – Am I expecting too much?

What adds to the frustration is the fact that they are not born this way – The smallest of the shorts is the most adventurous (he’s a big fish-eater is William) but I see him descending into a bisto gravy of food apathy just like the other two, slowly but surely, week by week. Any day now he’s going to refuse to eat mushrooms and all will be lost. I dread the moment…

I know I shouldn’t fret. I’m confident that in just a few years my kids’ culinary promiscuity will take a slow but definite U-turn back towards the light – I’m just not sure I can wait that long before I put another recipe on here…

Anyway – the good news is that the one thing that I can still cook for William (not the others sadly) is smoked mackerel. And I found out the other the day that the best way to get smoked mackerel is to do it yourself. It’s really really good, and not at all difficult. All you need is a saw, a random bit of wood (preferably from a tree, not an old Ikea table), a large old pan with a lid and a vegetable steamer. And a couple of very fresh mackerel.

Smoking Mackerel

So, take your wood (I use an old branch from a tree in the garden – fruit trees are especially good) and saw off very thin slices, making sure you capture all the saw dust for the pan (I put the pan under the saw and it just drops straight in). Once you have enough wood chips and sawdust to lightly cover the bottom of the pan, you’re done. Now put the steamer in the pan and place the mackerel, gutted and with heads and tails removed if they don’t fit neatly in the pan. Put the pan on the hob under a high heat with the lid off until the wood starts smoking, then lower the heat and put the lid on. Leave it like this on the heat for about 20 minutes and then turn off the hob. After another few minutes, you can take them out and they are ready to use. And they are lovely – sweet and very lightly smoked with just a hint of colour – nothing like the radioactive jobs they sell in the supermarket. I’d recommend two ways of eating them. For both, I start by removing the fillets from the bones with your fingers. They should pull away with very little effort (if they don’t you may not have cooked them for long enough). The simplest route now is to gently fry the fillets in butter and eat them with buttered toast and a cup of Earl Grey (no milk). Alternatively, use my smoked mackerel pate recipe.

chat-en-oeuf

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Terrible name, but a lovely tasting wine. You know how wine always seems to taste better when you associate it with a particularly happy event (usually downing a glass or two under the sun in the South of France while the sea gently laps at your feet)? Well I’m in Enfield, not the South of France, and it’s pissing down with rain but I’m watching the six nations, Italy just beat France, Wales are beating Ireland and this wine tastes beautiful…

Anyway – it’s on sale now at Waitrose at an uncharacteristically reasonable price – go and grab a bottle..

P.S. Is it just me or does that look more like a cat with a huge arse than a cat on an egg?

Another postscript – don’t try the red or white – they are awful..

Vitello tonnato

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This is a lovely dish even if it looks reminiscent of something you may have deposited in a back street after a big night on the town. Besides, there are plenty of things in life that look awful but taste great and I urge you to give this a go – it really is beautiful, and it is (at least in its original form) an Italian classic.

Vitello Tonnato (DATW style)

The classic recipe requires you to used veal poached in a herby broth as the basis for this dish, but I used seared beef carpaccio instead which I think works really well.

To make the sauce, you need to put the following in a blender and give it a good whizz – a tin of really good tuna in oil and a tin of anchovies in oil (after having drained the oil), two hard boiled egg yolks, a tablespoon of capers, the juice of a lemon and a good glug of good olive oil. Once blended, season with black pepper and salt (carefully – you don’t need much salt).

For the beef, use my carpaccio recipe – take a piece of really good beef fillet and roll it in a dry rub of herbs and spices that you’ve pounded with a pestle and mortar. My favourites are finely chopped thyme and rosemary with cumin and corainder seeds and lots of maldon sea salt and black pepper (Note – whenever I refer to salt in here, just assume it’s maldon sea salt…). Then sear the beef all over in a very hot frying pan with a little oil and leave it rest for ten minutes. If there are any lovely juices at this point, add them to the sauce.

Now take the beef and slice it thinly onto a plate, covering the surface (and again adding any juices to the sauce). Spoon over the tuna sauce and sprinkle over a little chopped parsley and capers. As always, serve with really good bread and a bottle of crisp white wine or a bottle of Bandol rose if the sun is shining…

Cakes in a pan

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pancakes

I was just on the phone to the shorts who unexpectedly wished me happy pancake day, reminding me about a post that I have been meaning to do for some time. So now I’m madly rushing to get this published in order to to help you lot in your quest to provide something appropriate for your kids to eat on what Unilever would like us to believe is Jif lemon day.

It’s ridiculously easy and probably a little patronising to be including this here, but I’m going to include it anyway, if for no other reason than to honour Saint Shrove…

Pancakes

Take a mixing bowl and into it sieve some flour – I have no idea of the weight, but probably enough to fill a mug, followed by milk and a couple of eggs. The amount you put in is completely up to you – you can have lovely thin pancakes for which you will want a runny batter, or big fat ones which will require something a little thicker. Mix it all together well with a whisk and leave it in the fridge to settle for about half an hour (this bit is important).

To cook the pancakes, take a small frying pan (a good condition non-stick one please) and get it very hot. Add a smidge of oil and then ladle in some of the batter and cook your first. Flip it over (a silicone fish slice tends to work well), cook until golden brown. then chuck it. Or eat it yourself, but whatever you do, don’t serve it to anyone – it will not be good.

Then just start churning them out, thick, thin, small, wide (with a little oil from time to time)… and as you finish them, pop them in a warm oven on a plate, stacking them on top of each other little by little until you have a small mountain of pancakes.

Once you’ve finished the batter, serve the pancakes with whatever you like. The shorts prefer either lemon and caster sugar (like the old days) or sliced banana and chocolate spread (I put the pot of spread in the warm oven to loosen it up a bit and turn it into a sauce – seems to work well). Oh – and maple syrup for the Canadians…

Enjoy.

Tarts

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And so it was with nothing but a handful of red peppers, some goats cheese and a couple of eggs I had to whip something up when a friend of mine popped over for a bite to eat and a goss…hold on, what on earth am I talking about? I’m not bloody Nigella and I am not going to get drawn into fabricating scenarios within which to pose a few plates of food. I really don’t understand why she gets this bizarre sex symbol/nation’s sweetheart thing from people up and down the country – she’s very nice and all, but she’s not sexy, she just likes eating. A lot. And why every programme has to end with her, sitting across from a broken-hearted friend and consoling her about her latest aborted love tryst, while simultaneously stuffing her face with massive handfuls of cream cake/pie/chocolate torte or whatever is beyond me.

To be honest – I just wanted to try making a little goats cheese tart, so I went out and bought some stuff, came home and cooked it. So here it is…

Roasted red pepper and goats cheese tart (makes two)

Take a couple of long sweet red peppers, cut them lengthways in half or thirds and lay on a roasting tin, sprinkle with salt and olive oil and put into a hot oven for about half an hour. Keep an eye on them so that they don’t badly burn (a little charring is good though). When you’re done, take them out, let them cool and then peel the flesh from the skin. Chop the flesh roughly and pop in a mixing bowl, making sure you get as much of the lovely salty oil from the roasting tin in there too.

Now take a small tub of mild goats cheese (are they 100g?), add about half (or as much as you want) to the red pepper and mix well with some chopped herbs – parsley actually works pretty well with this – and season well.

Ok – rewind a second – while the peppers are cooking prepare a small batch of shortcrust pastry – you can look it up in any recipe book – just don’t make the sweet variety. Once it’s made pop it in the fridge for half an hour or so…

So now you have you red pepper and goats cheese mix and your pastry has nicely chilled…

Get the pastry from the fridge, roll it out and pop it into a tart mould (I have these cool little stainless steel jobs with loose bottoms and sharp edges – they work a treat). Leave a little lip of pastry over the top of the mould and blind bake (with baking beans or rice to stop it rising) for about 15 mins. Then, before they cool too much, trim off the excess pastry with a very sharp knife so you have a good straight edge.

Now you’re pretty much done and you can leave the tart cases and mixture as long as you like, until you are about 20 mins from serving…

…at which point you fill the pastry cases with the mixture and pop back into a hot oven for about 20 mins, take them out and serve with a rocket salad dressed with a little good olive oil and balsamic vinegar (no drizzling please). I don’t advocate the overuse of balsamic vinegar, but it really does work well with rocket and goats cheese, so it’s allowed here..

I know the pic is poor (as ever) but believe me it tastes very good…

Fish and twitter

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I’m in a twitter dilemma.

I’m having trouble deciding what I should and shouldn’t be saying through the new age loudhailer. There are schools of thought (@micycle) that insist twitter should be used solely as a professional tool and if you’ve got something to say of a personal nature, keep it to facebook (or to yourself if you’re a normal person who can allow an emotion to pass through your brain without a primal urge to share it with as many people as you can). There are others though – columnists, for example – who spend much of their day sharing personal thoughts and experiences with massive armies of loyal followers who they don’t know from Adam. I suppose that’s their job though, so they’re allowed to do that, right?

The thing is, however much I’d like to be, I am not a columnist. And I wouldn’t dare to suggest that my life holds any interest for anyone apart from the odd stalker (I know you’re out there) and my mother (I’m sure you’re out there, but you’re not reading this anymore it seems). My friends certainly don’t give a shit – in fact even the more progressive of them take every opportunity to take the piss out of me for “being a gay and writing a big gay food blog”. Perhaps new friends are in order…

The thing is, I was given very specific advice when I first kicked off this blog to not, under any circumstances, talk about myself. People are simply not interested. But surely I’m allowed to share my opinion about things that affect us all (like children, flying on Virgin, doing nothing untoward in Las Vegas, writing blogs, being recursive) even if that opinion is articulated in a roundabout, meandering sort of way, and never really gets to a substantive conclusion.

So, I think I’m going to bumble along on under the assumption that one or two people may just have a vague interest in my musings (you can comment on here if you think I’m deluded) and get down with @caitlynmoran and @alaindebotton (now there’s a guy who’s got something to say that’s worth reading). Sorry @micycle.

Of course, I have a more fundamental problem, which makes much the above musing somewhat moot. When I said one or two people, it wasn’t simply a figure of speech. It is my sad reality that I have a grand total of bugger-all followers on twitter. Anyone who knows me or who is interested in what I’ve got to say is already on facebook getting all my tweets in the form of status updates hot off the press thanks to the wonders of modern technology, so there’s no reason for them to inflate my rather miserable followership (should that be fellowship? I don’t think so – sounds a bit religious).

So how do I persuade complete strangers to come and find me and follow me? Why do I even care? Well, at the onset of the new year, and at the deranged direction of my sister, I set out a goal to try to get over 500 views on this blog in a single day before the year is out (along with write a book, a song, conquer everest, become chief exec of NewsCorp…), and I’m not going to do that with 32 followers. Not even I’m that deluded. So if you’re reading this and you’re one of the lucky ones with the twitter equivalent of a big nob (in case it’s unclear, that means you have lots of followers. and no it’s not sexist), then go on – do me a favour and retweet…

All that said, I think I’m ignoring the elephant in the room here – what has all this got to do with fish? Feck all as it appears…

So – to business – this is a brilliant starter – I do it all the time and now my pa seems to love it too (that’s father, not assistant by the way…)

Potted salmon

Take a couple of really good salmon fillets and place them in a saucepan submerged in olive oil. Heat the pan very carefully so that the fillets slowly poach (but don’t fry) in the oil. This will take less than 10 minutes, and you may want to turn them over during the process. After about ten minutes take the pan off the heat and set aside to cool down.

Now chop, fairly roughly a small pack of good, mildly smoked salmon – nothing too smokey.

Once the poached salmon has cooled a little, carefully peel off the skin with your fingers along with the unsightly brown flesh, and falke the good stuff into a bowl, along with the smoked salmon.

Now add the following to the bowl: two tablespoons of capers a couple of spring onions and a handful of cornichons all chopped finely, the juice of a lemon, two or three large tablespoons of soured cream, a large teaspoon of dijon mustard, a little finely chopped and seeded chilli (for warmth) a handful of chopped coriander and salt and pepper to taste. Mix it all and serve at room temperature in ramekins with melba toast or crusty bread. And it freezes really well if you make too much (which I recommend you do..)

And here’s a really good variation using mackerel (although I still prefer the salmon one):

Smoked Mackerel Pate

Take a whole smoked mackerel (or fillets if you must) and gently fry in butter, without letting it colour. Once cooked, flake it into a bowl with your fingers, making sure you remove all the bones and dark brown flesh. Add another knob of butter and a teaspoon of mustard along with a little finely chopped parsley and a couple of tablesspoons of soured cream and the juice of half a lemon. Then add either finely chopped spring oninions or chives, mix together, season carefully and serve in ramekins again with crusty bread.

Vegas and carbonara

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(or strippers and pasta)

The two are entirely unrelated except for the fact that the day I got back from Las Vegas earlier this week, all I had the energy to cook was a carbonara – and that’s really the point – it’s a perfect quick and simple, yet amazingly tasty meal.

So what to say about Vegas? Not everything, is the first thought that springs to mind. Each of us who goes there experiences at least one incident (from a simple indiscreet glance, to a chemical-fuelled, alcohol-enhanced Romanesque orgy) that we are unable to bring home with us except in the form of a fond, guilty or terrifying memory, depending on situation and disposition.

As it turns out, I was there to work and as such, didn’t even register a blip on the hedonist’s wallchart of excess, but it was a blast nonetheless. There’s no denying that it is an ultimately shallow, plastic, materialistic and boob-crazed environment, but that’s probably why we love it.

Remember those old mechanical slot machines that would play out a little scene every time you shoved in a coin? Well that pretty much perfectly sums up Las Vegas. Pop in a coin and it dances for you. Once the money has run out, there’s nothing left.

And if you do go, just be careful who you buy breakfast for…

Carbonara

Fill a saucepan with boiling water, a dash of salt and a little oil. Pop in as much spaghetti or linguine as you feel you can handle.

Next, finely chop an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, a little red chilli if you fancy and four or five strips of streaky smoked bacon. Start by frying the bacon in a little olive oil – I like to get some colour in there – and then add the onion, garlic and chilli and fry gently – you don’t want to burn the onion…

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add the mixture from the frying pan. Every little bit of it. Now crack an egg into the pasta and stir vigorously allowing the egg to cook slightly from the residual heat of the pasta. Season to taste and serve with generous sprinklings of parmesan.

As ever, make sure you have some good bread and wine to go with it…