Calf liver is my treat for when Goon is away. It’s an automatic reaction now. If Goon is going away to work on his business or visit his parents, I head straight into Borough Market, find my way to the Ginger Pig and buy myself the nicest bit of veal liver they have. You see Goon isn’t a big liver fan. He can cope with chicken livers providing I soak them in enough cream and alcohol, but he hates lamb liver and is ambivalent about calf liver.

At £25 per kilo, ambivalent isn’t allowed!

So calf liver is reserved for the days when I have the flat to myself. My problem is I always buy the liver without knowing what to do with it. Last weekend I was after a change from the usual creamy marsala sauce but the internet was providing little inspiration. In fact, the recipe websites seem alost saturated with straightforward liver, bacon and onion recipes. That’s not quite what I wanted for my treat!

Eventually an idea came from an old BBC recipe. A liver, bacon and onion recipe by Gary Rhodes involves serving liver with melting onions with marmalade. A bit of musing led to the recipe below. Unfortunately, due to the great Islington juniper shortage that hit last weekend, I didn’t sprinkle my calf liver in finely ground juniper as intended. Instead, I dusted it with 1 juniper berry I had left, after giving it a good soak in gin.

Then I gave my own liver a good soak in gin. Happy times.   

Calf Liver with Juniper, Caramelised Apples, Maple Cure Bacon and Tangy Apple Onions

• 200g calf liver
• around 8 juniper berries, finely crushed
• 1 apple, peeled, cored and cut into 6 pieces
• around a level tablespoon of honey
• around 30g-40g butter
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• 2 rashers maple cure bacon
• half a small onion, sliced
• a tablespoon of apple sauce
• a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar and sugar to taste 
• half a glass of fruity red wine

Sprinkle the liver with finely crushed juniper berries and press them in properly (or soak it in gin!). I suggest the calf liver is  cooked to pink in the middle. For the liver you see in the picture, that involved dry frying for approimately 30 seconds on each side and resting for 5 minutes wrapped in foil.

Melt 3/4 of the butter over a low heat in a small saucepan and stir in the honey. Add the rosemary sprigs and allow to infue for a minute or two. Add the apple slices, sir to coat in the butter. Turn the heat up slighty so the apples caramelise. They should be golden brown on the outside, but firm. Discard the rosemary sprigs before serving.

The bacon was grilled until crisp. Easy

And for the onions, the only involved part of the meal, soften them in the rest of the butter until golden brown, add half a glass of red wine, allow to bubble down until almost completely evaporated then stir in a tablespoon of apple sauce. Add balsamic vinegar to taste- this will depend very much on how sweet/tart your apple sauce was. Calf liver has a delicate flavour compared to, for example, lamb liver, so you don’t want the onion to be overwhelmingly tart, just slightly tangy. I doubt you’ll need to add sugar but it is probably worth having some on hand just in case.

I served this with some simple buttered wilted spinach but spiced braised red cabbage would also be good.

This holiday it struck me how many bargain cookery books I have. There are more than two shelves full of those £3 Borders reduced paperbacks which specialise in cuisine from a certain country or continent. They look cheap, they feel cheap, heck, they ARE cheap, but I find these little books very useful.

I’d love to be able to go out and spend £25 each time I fancied trying out something new but sadly, if I did that, I probaby couldn’t afford the ingredients I needed to make good use of the books I bought.  Still, a book entitled “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” isn’t likely to fill you with confidence about its contents but, rather suprisingly, it turned out to be quite informative and inspiring. Most of the book focuses on cuisine from the Indian subcontinent but around a third of it is devoted to curries from Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Indonesia. There are several very unusual recipes in this section of the book which I’m determined to try. The first on my list was the prawn and quail egg curry.

This was a really delicious meal. The flavour of the curry is delicate but earthy, dominated by garlic, ginger and turmeric with subtle heat (which could be increased if desired) and the lemongrass coming through right at the end. The sauce is thin, almost like a broth, which made it a nuisance to carry to the table but was wonderful mixed up with the rice. It pays to go easy on the fish sauce as its pungent flavour could easily overpower the other ingredients.

A note on the use of stock here: As far as I’m aware most ‘wet’ curries don’t traditionally call for stock and instead get their flavour from the meat being braised slowly. For this reason I assume the use of chicken stock in this meal is not authentic. However, I find the right stock can be really useful in making ‘quick cook’ curries like this one. I’d use a light fresh stock that isn’t flavoured with herbs. I always make stocks like these from the carcasses from my roast dinners because they are so wonderfully versatile. 

I have come around to the idea of egg in curry. As a child, there was nothing more I hated than finding half an egg in an overpoweringly hot and salty Sri Lankan dish but the quail eggs suit the delicacy of flavours here. This is definitely a meal I will make again, especially since it is quick enough for a schoolnight dinner!

Indonesian Style Prawn and Quail Egg Curry

(Adapted from “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” by Mridula Baljekar, published by Hermes House)

Ingredients (for two people with big appetites) 

• 400-450g shelled  and cleaned king prawns
• 9 quail eggs, hard boiled, peeled and halved
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 3 fat cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 cubic inches of ginger, chopped finely and crushed
• 2 red chillies, finely chopped
• half a level tablespoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon sugar (I assume palm sugar is authentic- I had to use demerera)
• one half inch cube of shrimp paste or up to 1 tablespoon fish sauce  
• 1 small stalk lemongrass, tough outer layer removed, trimmed and shredded.
• 300ml thin coconut milk (pass 350ml normal coconut milk through a sieve)
• 200ml unherbed chicken stock
• 110g pak choi, or similar leaf, roughly shredded
• shredded spring onion green part only) to garnish
• plain boiled basmati rice to serve

Method

1. Sweat the onions, garlic and ginger together gently until the onions are soft but not coloured.
2. Add the chilies, shrimp paste/fish sauce and lemongrass. Fry for a minute so they release their favours.
3. Add the strained coconut milk, stock and sugar and stir well. Bring the mixture to a gentle bubble. Let the mixture reduce by about 40%.
4. Stir in the prawns and leaves and turn the heat down so the curry is at a simmer. 
5. Stir gently until the prawns have just turned pink all the way through. This should ony take a few minutes and the leaves should also wilt in this time.
6. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning
7. Stir in the quail eggs. Turn the curry out into a serving bowl and sprinkle over the shredded spring onion.
8. Serve immediately with plain boiled basmati rice. 

My food blog has had an unintended side effect since I started work as a teacher. It wasn’t all that suprising that my year 12s found their way to my blog from the maths pages I wrote for them but, how the year 9s discovered this place so quickly, I’ll never know.

I guess that’s the power of Google for you!

My newly acquired year 13 class have also become aware of the site and on occasion will use it as an excuse for avoiding practising statistics questions. The following conversation happened three quarters of the way into a practice lesson at the end of last term.

“So this food site of yours, what’s that about?”

This comment came from a student I’ll refer to as J. He is a confident lad who, on occasion, has succesfully confused me by switching places with his identical twin brother and who isn’t easily persuaded to get down to work. However, the Highgate maths department handbook had taught me the exact  phrase to use in this situation. Pity it never works.

“I don’t think my blog has anything to do with Binomial Hypothesis Testing.” 

As expected, J ignored my attempt to redirect him back to his work. “Are we ever going to try your cooking?”

“No, the school hasn’t got a kitchen. Otherwise I’d be running ‘Cooking at Univeristy’ courses for you lot.”
“You could bring us a cake?”
” I don’t do cake!”
“Or a casserole?”
“Get on with the worksheet, J!”
“But I can do all these questions, Miss.”
“J, you’re in Set 6*. The only reason you aren’t in Set 7 is beause we don’t have enough staff free to teach seven year 13 groups now. You need all the practice you can get.” At this, J started writing again. Around 30 seconds later, he’d given up.
“What’s your favourite restaurant?”

As I considered reaching for my book of detention slips, another student piped up.

“Is it Claridges?”
“Pah, Claridges!” said J.  ”It’s OK, but I’ve been to better places.”
I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow to this. With my political ideologies quite firmly rooted in the right, I’d never believed in the term ‘overpriveledged’ before. However, as someone whose most distinguished treat as a child was a trip to the local Harvester, some of the boys at school were making me wonder.

“What’s your cooking speciality, Miss?”

This question came from the hard working member of this small group. At this point I conceded that no more work was going to get done that lesson and gave in. But what to answer?

“Well…. I suppose…. game …probably. ”

” Game, what’s that?”

Poor boy. What a thing to ask. When I was 18 in my own maths class, this would have been a perfectly reasonable question. However it seems that at Highgate, if you haven’t eaten game, you haven’t lived. The young lad was subject to a short torrent of abuse and a projectile pen.

Oddy enough though, the other five in the class couldn’t quite define game themselves other than to say “It’s like pheasant and stuff.” I would have said game is any wild animal that is eaten as food, but the definition is slightly wider.

“Game is any animal hunted for food or not normally domesticated (such as venison). Game animals are also hunted for sport.” (Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge)

So, for the young man in question, this is some game.

Here is some game that I’m going to cook.

Here it is after preparation for cooking.

here is what you can make with it….

and here is how you do it. 

Rabbit Braised with Red Wine, Tomatoes and Olives 

Ingrdients 

• 1 wild rabbit, cleaned and jointed
• 400g chopped tomatoes
• half a bottle good quality red wine
• 20 black pitted olives, chopped in half
• 1 large onon, ffinely diced
• a handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly torn
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 level tablespoon fresh chopped oregano
• 2 tablespoons tomato puree
• salt and freshly ground black pepper 

Rough Method

1. Preheat your oven to gas mark 2-3. 
2. Brown the rabbit pieces on all sides. Place in a casserole dish that fits them snugly.
3. Sweat the onions and garlic with the oregano in the olive oil until soft.
4. Add the tomatoes, red wine, puree and olives. Stir well and bring to a gentle boil.
5. One the mixture has reduced to a thick sauce, stir in  half the basil.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Pour the sauce over the rabbit pieces and place in the oven.
8. After three hours the rabbit should be tender. Pour the sauce off into a wide saucepan and bring it to a bubble to reduce it. At this stage you can adjust the ingredients to taste as much a you like.
9. Stir in the remaining basil.
10. Taste, adjust seasoning and serve the rabbit with the sauce poured over it with some soft polenta with parmesan or, if you’d run out like me, with some penne tossed in parmesan and parsley.

* We set by ability with 1 being the highest.

I think this might be called ‘having too much time on your hands’.

After 12 weeks of school canteen meals, scrounging processed cheese sandwiches from the kids’ lunch time maths clubs and, at worst but most frequently, skipping lunch altogether, I’m ready for some good home-cooked food at lunchtime. I may have gone a little over the top this time, but can you blame me? This is the first time since the Christmas break that I’ve had time to spend in the kitchen.

The dish pictured above is a tuna nicoise. Like most contemporary restaurants, I have foregone the traditional use of flaked tuna and replaced this with a seared tuna steak. I’ve also replaced the boiled hen’s egg with three soft (in theory) boiled quails’ eggs. Everthing else remains the same apart from a little (in theory) drizzle of balsamic reduction to dip the cherry tomatoes in. Yes, I know there is too much reduction and two of the quails’ eggs are overcooked. I’d like to see you make this perfectly first time around. :p

I first encountered a tuna nicoise made like this in a lovely little tapas bar in Leamington Spa. The dish didn’t stay on the menu for long but the memory lingered with me and I’ve never found a nicoise as good since then. So, what better to do on the first of my 21 days off work than recreate it as closely as possible in my own kitchen while Goon and our new pet looked at me as if I was crazy. 

Goon accused me of over-cooking the tuna.

Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen. I might forget to cook it at all one day, but overcook it? Never!

Have a nice day at work, everybody!

Mini Tuna Nicoise  (enough for a starter or a midday meal for someone who’s not particularly used to eating lunch)

• 1 small tuna steak (100g or so), griddled to rare (or practially raw if, like myself, you’re that way inclined)
• a small handful frisee lettuce
• 5 or 6 green beans, steamed until just cooked and cut in half)
• Around 10 black pitted olives, halved
• 2 or 3 baby new potatoes, cooked and halved
• 3 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 3 soft boiled quails’ eggs, peeled and halved
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinaigrette
• 2 extra tablespoons balsamic vinegar, reduced to a thick syrup.

Toss the lettuce, beans, olives and potatoes in the vinigrette dressing. Pile into the center of a large, flat serving plate. Balance the tuna teak on top. Arrange the tomatoes and quail egg pieces around the main salad and drizzle the balsamic reduction around it.

At least, they have around here. I apologise to all of you that have attempted to e-mail me and contact me via comments during the last six months. I must have appeared very rude. 

It’s mostly my fault really. What kind of plonker starts a job before they’ve taken their PhD exam? Generally the kind of plonker who doesn’t understand that their job will take up 70 hours per week during term time. I possibly would have thought twice about it if I had known. I certainly would have delayed the start of my career if I knew I was going to write a grand total of 9 sets of reports during my first term and that my commute would total 2.5 hours a day. 

I have reason to believe that things will be very different next academic year. I really hope I’m right. As for now, I’ve just started a four week holiday and, now that all my thesis corrections are done, I’m properly free for the first time in nearly five years. So now I’ll try and catch up with everyone who I managed to ignore over the last two terms. 

And now that I won’t be spending at least 3 hours a day writing worksheets* and/or reports, hopefully my brain won’t have turned to mush by 8pm and I’ll be capable of creating some posts for this blog.

My cooking didn’t cease completely this term but time pressure meant that I couldn’t spend hours experimenting in the kitchen. I resorted to reasonably quick meals and, to my suprise some of them turned out to be quite good despite the lack of preparation. The reipe below was one of my favourite school-night suppers. It’s comforting, yet very healthy and doesn’t take much time to make. Plus there’s the added bonus that all the ingredients can be found in our depleted local Sainsbury’s or, more often, in the small Turkish stores across the road.

Salmon with Spiced Lentils and Minted Yoghurt

Ingredients

• two large piees of salmon fillet, skin on
• Enough seasoned cornflour to dust the salmon skin (I think any flour will work here)
• 3 handfuls puy lentils, rinsed
• fresh, unherbed vegetable stock (two to three times the volume of your lentils)
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons fresh, finely chopped coriander, plus some extra oursley chopped leves to garnish
• 8 heaped tablespoons of plain natural yoghurt you might want to scale this down- Goon REALLY liked the yoghurt)
• around 30g mint leaves, very finely chopped

Method

1. Fry the onion gently in olive oil with the cumin and ground coriander until the onion is soft. 
2. Add the garlic and continue to fry for another few minutes until the garlic is cooked.
3. Add the vegetable stock and lentils, stir well and bring to a gentle bubble
4. While the lentils are cooking, mix the mint and yoghurt and set aside 
5. Grill the salmon skin side down over a medium grill for three minutes.
6. Dust the seasoned flour over a plate and then turn up the grill to medium/high  
7. Lift the salmon of the grill, press the skin into the seasoned flour then return the salmon to the grill, skin side up, and grill until the skin turns a crisp golden brown.
8. Remove the salmon from the grill.
9. One they are cooked, drain the lentils. Stir in the fresh coriander.
10. Spoon the lentils onto a serving plate and top with dollops of minted yoghurt. Place the salmon fillet, skin side up, on top and sprinkle over chopped coriander.
11. While this meal was sufficient for me, if you are serving a carb fiend, you may want to have some basmati rice on hand to keep them satisfied. 

*I imagine that any teacher reading this is thinking ‘Why are you spending so much time writing worksheets?!’. In response, my school’s maths department has an unusual policy of not teaching through textbooks so all our resources are created by hand specifically for each lesson. This has a lot of advantages and I’m in favour of it 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time, I just want to sleep.

Early last term, I had come home from school late. Goon was away visiting his family in Leeds and so, due to the fact that I live in a slightly rough area, I was cautious entering the house and double locked the door behind me before taking off my bag and shoes.

Suddenly, from the direction of the living room came a flash of movement and before I knew what was happening, I saw an intruder coming towards me. The shock sent me running backwards. I fell over my rucksack, smacked my head against the letterbox and, in my attempt to steady myself, ripped the electric doorbell off the door. My assailant stopped two feet away from me, considered me with her head tilted at an angle for a second and then sat down and started licking her right paw.

“Wh-what the hell…? ” I whispered. The intruder looked at me, then affectionately rubbed her head up against my arm. “How the hell did you get in here? We’re on the third floor! There’s nothing outside that window but a 20 foot drop!” I got up, rubbed the new bump on the back of my head and tried to salvage the squashed shopping inside my rucksack. The trespassing cat wandered around the living room then started nibbling our rosemary plant. “Stop it, stupid cat! That’s mine!” I said indignantly. I tried to shoo it away from my herbs but the cat just looked at me, then licked my shin. I could sense this would be a difficult guest to get rid of.

I was right. The problem is this cat is unbearably cute. It’s pretty, friendly and charmingly gormless. No wonder Goon loves it. they’re a match made in heaven. The first time I introduced them it was a matter of seconds before our feline friend had charmed Goon into lying on the stairs while tickling its tummy.

This cat fills a place in Goon’s life no woman could ever hope to. Never before has anyone sat patiently for hours, listening to Goon’s descriptions of his latest tactics in the on line role playing game of the moment or the relative benefits of various brands of computer hardware. never before has Goon had a head resting on his knee with which to share his favourite episodes of Stargate Atlantis.

Despite the fact the cat has an irritating tendency to get under my feet and walk on my keyboard when I’m trying to work, I like it being around. It makes Goon happy and that keeps him quiet. The only thing that bothered me about the cat was the fact it appeared to be a vegetarian. How is that natural!? A vegetarian cat?! It, in its first two months of its visits the cat refused anything I gave to it. It only seemed interested in the rosemary bush. Then, a few weeks ago, we found its weakness.

Due to Goon spending all his time finishing his degree and not doing any work as he used to, we’re a little short on cash. However I occasionally treat us and, with it being half term, I’d decided to go to Borough where I picked up a wild mallard amongst other things. I was intending that, during the short break from school, I would learn at least one new cooking technique, so the mallard would be roasted and served on a potato rosti with a beetroot, thyme and orange sauce and some wilted chard.

All was well and good. That was until I’d just served up and, having taken pictures of the meal for the blog, I came into the living toom to find Goon and that bloody cat on the sofa with Goon feeding it chunks of, not entirely cheap, mallard 

The cat ended up outside.  Goon ended up wearing half a pan of beetroot and orange  jus.  

Roasted Wild Mallard on Potato Rosti with Wilted Chard and a Beetroot and Orange Jus

Serves two (no cats allowed)

• 1 large wild mallard
• butter ( about 2 tablespoons)
• 1 medium beetroot, peeled and cut into  very small cubes
• 1 small glass fruity red wine
• the zest and juice of half an orange
• four or five thyme sprigs
• four or five rosemary sprigs
• 10 shallots, peeled and halved
• two handfuls of rainbow chard 
• the ingredients for potato rosti as descried in the link below

1. Potato rosti can be made as described here.
2. Wash and pat dry the mallard. rub softened butter over its skin and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put half a small onion inside its cavity and some rosemary sprigs.
3. Roast the mallard on gas mark 7 for 35 minutes. Rest for at least fifteen minutes before serving.
4. In the mean time, use a food processor to puree the beetroot. Strain the juice into a saucepan
5. Add the thyme  and a few chunks of orange zest and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
6. Remove the thyme sprigs and zest and add the shallots. Turn up the heat to a gentle bubble, add the wine and cook until the shallots are tender and the sauce has thickened to a yrupy consistency. Add a squeeze of orange juice. Taste and adjust seasoning.
7. Wash the chard thoroughly then wilt it in hot water for a couple of minutes. Drain and toss in butter.
8. Serve slices of mallard breast on top of the rosti. Arrange the now very purple shallots around the duck and drizzle over the sauce. Garnish thyme and serve the wilted chard on the side.

 …quick, easy, weeknight food. It’s just not like me is it? What happened to the days of the lemon and rose glazed lamb leg and the duck, pomegranate and blueberry salad  or the three hour marathon cooking sessions that resulted in these chilli tortillas. I miss those days.

In fact, I think two things happened……

Firstly, I left the foodie heaven that was West London. You might think it strange that I say this but, given that I have no car, the resources for food experiments were so much better in Hammersmith than they are here in Hackney. I remember the days when I felt aggrieved at not finding fennel on my way home on a Sunday afternoon and moaned about not having access to decent raspbery liqueur*. Now,even on a weeknight, I’m stuck with whatever the near empty shelves Holloway Waitrose can provide at 8pm and it has to be something I can cook quickly so I can get a reasonable amount of sleep before my 6am start the next day .   

And, speaking of the early starts, I knew there’d be dry posting periods during termtime but I wasn’t quite anticipating the extended periods of blogging silence that have occurred since I started at Highgate. But then, when you’ve got to the stage where you arrive home so tired you can’t even eat, let alone cook, the idea of maintaining a food blog seems downright insane.

The problem is that things went a little bit wrong for the maths department this term. A colleague left us, which we were expecting. What we weren’t expecting was the sudden resignation of his replacement shortly before the return to school. Needless to say, this has left us all a little stretched.

In theory, compared to some of my colleagues, I got a fairly good deal. I picked up one new class: the brightest of the GCSE year with some really lovely kids**. That meant only four hours extra teaching per week ( read that as approximately 7 hours work per week). However the timetable also had to change, cramming 80% my fortnight’s teaching into 4 days. Precisely two weeks ago, I was in the middle of that 4 day stint AND trying to write reports for all of my four sixth form classes.

I was exhausted. I had an impossible workload to complete before the next day. I left work at just past 8pm*** having arrived at 8am and with a 75 minute commute each way. I was promised dinner when I got home and, unsuprisingly, Goon found an excuse as to why he had forgotten to make it by the time I arrived. So, barely awake, and in an extremely bad mood, I rushed to the small Tesco Metro, picked up the best steak I could find and invented something suprisingly good given the limit on the lack of marinating time and ingredients. If I’d had the foresight**** to keep a marinating steak prepared in the fridge, this would have been absolutely perfect.

*****

Spice Marinated Sirloin Steaks with Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges and Coriander Pesto

Serves Two

For The Steak Marinade

• 100ml chilli oil
• a tablespoon finely chopped coriander
• 2 large cloves crushed garlic
• 1 cubic inch ginger, peeled and crushed
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground coriander
• 1 green chilli, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons cayenne

You’ll Also Need

• Two hefty sirloin steaks
• two medium sized sweet potatoes
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 50g coriander
• 50-100ml of chilli infused olive oil
• 1 green chilli
• 3 minced cloves of garlic

Mix together all the marinade ingredients. Score the steaks in a criss-cross pattern. Brush all the marinade over the steaks and leave to marinate  (I fell asleep for two hours at this point which seemed to be just long enough. Overnight woud be better)

Peel the two sweet potatoes and cut into wedges. Coat with the olive oil mixed with the paprika and roast at gas mark 7 for 20 minutes or until tender.

Put 50g of finely chopped coriander in a blender jug with 50 ml of chilli infused oil, with the chilli and garlic. Blend until smooth, adding more oil if necessary.  Heat through in a small saucepan for around 5 minutes. Serve the steaks and wedges with the coriander pesto.

*****

* Yes, yes, I was spoilt. 

** and a few nuisances who make life difficult for me and the rest of the class, but such is life.

*** This is partially my fault. I started talking to one of the brightest year 11s about various maths-philosophy type things for an hour. But then, he’s one of those, intelligent personable students that genuinely makes teaching worthwhile, even if he is too polite to tell you that you’ve held the entire conversation with a streak of board pen across your face.

**** well, psychic ability I suppose

Is it me, or has this been one of the coldest and most miserable winters ever? Perhaps it was the lack of a decent summer that did it, or perhaps it is the daily 75 minute trek beginning at 7am that I now have to endure,  but this winter has definitely made me more grumpy than I’ve been in a long time.* Within ten minutes of leaving the house I find I lose all feeling in my hands, feet and face and this really irritates me. I find it even more irritating that, despite the near arctic temperatures, I still end up breaking a sweat from the effort of climbing Highgate Mountain. Someone needs to build a chairlift  for that hill. 

The one advantage of working at the highest point in London is that it provides some fairly pretty views. On a clear day, from the top floor of our science block, you can see all the way to Kent and,looking out from the top of the maths block after it gets dark, the glittering lights of Central London look quite stunning. However, this is poor compensation for the hypothermia induced by standing on top of an extremely windy hill in sub zero temperatures at midnight, trying to hail a taxi home.

I know that there are some good things about winter (pheasant springs to mind, and venison casserole) but this week I just wanted to put myself in a state of total denial and pretend it was mid July. It was time to make something packed with mediterranean flavours to remind me of the sunshine we’ve all been missing so much. 

Orange and Rosemary Roasted Chicken with Saffron Rice and Smoky Red Pepper Sauce

For The Chicken 

• 1 free range medium sized chicken
• 2 oranges
• 8 sprigs rosemary
• 100g butter

1. At least 12 hours before you’re ready to cook, take the chicken and use your fingers to loosen the skin from the breast meat by pushing your fingers under the skin at the neck end. Make a nick at the bottom of each leg and loosen the skin from the legs too.
2. Peel one of the oranges. Slice the flesh as thinly as you can and push it under the skin of the chicken so the breasts and legs are completely covered. Push down on the chicken skin gently so the juice from the orange is releaed onto the meat.
3. Push the rosemary sprigs under the skin of the chicken so that they are in direct contact with the meat.
4. Cover the chicken and leave it to marinate in the fridge for at least 12 hours.
5. In the meantime, make some orange infused butter by zesting the second orange, and mixing the grated zest with 100g of melted butter. Leave this to infuse for a few minutes, then transfer the butter to a container and refrigerate until ready to use.
6. Ten minutes before you’re ready to cook your chicken, preheat your oven to gas mark 7.
7. Remove the orange pieces from under the chicken skin but leave the rosemary as it is.
8. Push a chunk of the orange infused butter between each side of the chicken breast and the covering skin. Do the same to the chicken thighs.
9. Roast the chicken for ten minutes at gas mark 7, then turn the heat down and roast for a further hour at gas mark 5, or until the juices run clear when the thickest part of the chicken thigh is pierced with a skewer.
10. Remove the chicken from the oven, cover it with foil and let it rest for 20 minutes before serving. 

For the Red Pepper Sauce

• 2 red peppers, cored, deseeded and cut in half vertically
• 2 fat cloves smoked garlic (or ordinary garlic)
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 100ml chicken stock   

1. Place the peppers and garlic cloves on a baking tray under a medium grill until the pepper skins are blistering and charred. Remove them from the grill and leave until cool enough to handle.
2. Peel the peppers, roughly chop the flesh and place in a blender. Squeeze the garlic cloves from their skin and add to the pepper along with the paprika and chicken stock. Blend until smooth.
3. Transfer to a small saucepan and bring to a gentle bubble. After around 5 minutes the sauce should be a good consistency.

For the Saffron Rice (essentially a simple vegetarian paella)

• 4 handfuls paella rice 
• 1 small onion, very finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small courgette, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
• large pinch saffron dissolved in 100ml chicken tock
• Additional chicken stock (up to 400ml) 
• olive oil

1. Soften the onion over a low heat in about a tablespoon of olive oil. When soft, add the garlic and courgettes and fry for another two minutes.
2. Add the rice and stir to coat with the oil. Fry gently for another couple of minutes.
3. Add the chicken stock witht he saffron, turn up the heat to medium and stir continuously until the  stock is absorbed
4. Add a ladleful of the remaining stock and stir until absorbed
5. Repeat step 4 until the rice is cooked, then stir in the parsley. Taste and season.

Carve the caicken and serve on the saffron rice surrounded by the pepper sauce. Garnish with more parsley and rosemary.

******

*and if you remember how grumpy I was last year, you’ll know that’s saying something.

and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…

except me. I was more than stirring. I was waving my arms about and shouting.

“What do you mean a STIR-FRY!?”

The instigators of my wrath watched me in confused silence for a moment. Then Dad said,
“Well, a vegetable stir fry.”
“It’s going to be Christmas Day! You’re having GUESTS,  and you’re going to serve them a VEGETABLE STIR-FRY?!”
“What’s wrong with that?”

For a second I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Having been brought up in Britain, the association of Christmas and good quality food was almost innate.

“You’re supposed to make an effort for Christmas Day. That’s the point, isn’t it? To overindulge in GOOD food. Not a ten minute job with reduced mange-tout!”
“Well there’s that reduced chicken we found and the salmon. We thought we’d give them to you to take home but we can use them if you think the stir fry-won’t be enough.”
“You know how to cook a chicken?”

My parents are occasional fish eaters but are mostly vegetarian. It had probably been a while since they’d attepted to cook an animal of any reaonable size.

“We can cook a curry. That works with anything. I will cut the chicken and Mum can curry it.” 

As I’ve described before, my parents’ curries are nothing like the excellent dishes you’d find on the websites of Sig or Mamta.  They involve throwing at least a tablespoon of every spice in the house (and there are a lot of ten year old, unlabelled, powdered spices there) into a pot with the chicken and a heck of a lot of salt and boiling the mixture for several hours until solid.

I took a look in the fridge. There in front of me was a small but fairly good looking, free range, corn fed bird. It certainly was not something I’d want to be a victim of my parents’ currying. I was also fairly sure that Dad’s vegetable stir fry would be seasoned with at least half a bottle of soy sauce. Things were not looking good for this meal.

“So you have invited guests to your house for Christmas Day, and you’re suggesting you  serve them a vegetable stir-fry and chicken curry?! And you want to butcher it yourself? Do you actually have a meat cleaver?”
“No, why would I need one?” he replied.  At this point I completely lost my rag.
“WELL, WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO USE TO CUT UP THE CHICKEN? A PAIR OF SCISSORS?!”
“I have a bread knife.” 

I cupped my head in my hands. Half an hour later, I’d convinced them to give me control of the chicken. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but ANYTHING would be better than what had been previously planned for it and we really needed an alternative to the inevitable soy-sauce fest that would be produced by my father.

But there was a problem. My parents don’t own many ingredients. There were no herbs, no butter and no winter vegetables. In fact there was nothing but the chicken, a lot of ancient unidentifiable spice and some mange tout. Christmas Eve at 11pm is not the best time to discover you need a trolley load of groceries. I also had the additional problem that the small chicken in the fridge was supposed to feed six people.

(more…)

On Thursday evening I was a little bored. I’d spent the day avoiding correcting my thesis and starting, but somehow not finishing, several posts for this blog. For the first time in weeks, I decided to surf around the other blogs and, as usual, my first port of call was Trig Brooks’ site. After a few minutes of reading the posts my eye was caught by the seasonal food item of the week, towards the bottom of the side bar.

Fifteen minutes later I realised I was still staring and drooling.

There is definitely something about rare venison that makes it impossible to resist. it’s more than just the fantastic flavour. I think it’s the association with the cold winter months and the inevitable comfort that game dinners bring. Plus rare venison has such a beautiful colour and the slices of meat topped with a few sprigs of rosemary look delicious.

These thoughts all coincided with the arrival of a message from Goon over the internet saying something along the lines of “PLEASE SAVE ME! I NEED MEAT!”  Goon had gone to visit his parents for Christmas and apparently they don’t eat as much meat as we do*. He was missing the 250g steaks that I regularly cook for him. I had little sympathy as I’d just spent Christmas with my vegetarian and practically teetotal parents (more on that soon) but I thought Goon’s imminent return to London was an even better excuse to go get us a big chunk of deer meat.

Luckily for me, despite it being that awkward time between Christmas and New Year, the Borough Website informed me that the market would be open that Friday. And so I went down there to fetch my venison. I also got a couple of duck breasts, a haggis and a rather nice black pudding. During the walk home from Borough, my mind was boggling with potential ways of cooking my deer. Eventually it settled on this rather neat idea which uses something that can ALWAYS be found in the ‘Living To Eat’ household: good quality gin.

*****

Loin of Venison with a Fruity Gin Sauce, Blackberries and Apple and Celeriac Mash 

Ingredients (for two people who like their meat)

• 500g venison loin
• 2 teaspoons rosemary leaves, very finely chopped
• 8-10 juniper berries, finely ground
• 2 teaspoons coarsley ground black pepper
• 3 medium/large mashing potatoes ( I used Vivaldi), peeled and cut into small cubes
• the same volume of celeriac peeled and cut into small cubes
• 1 large bramley cooking apple, peeled and cut into small cubes
• 1 heaped tablepoon finely chopped parsley
• A splash of single cream ( around 50ml)
• 100ml game stock (chicken stock would do)
• large splash gin (about 75ml)
• splash of cassis (50ml)
• a sprig of rosemary plus extra to garnish
• 1 teapoons raspberry or red wine vinegar
• 10 blackberries, cut in half plus a few whole ones to garnish

Method

1. Preheat your oven to gas mark 6. 
2. Coat the venison sparsely with the ground pepper, juniper and chopped rosemary. Get a frying pan very hot and sear the meat on all sides, reserving any liquid that comes off for the sauce.
3. Transfer the venison to a roasting tin and place in the oven for 10-12 minutes for rare meat.
4. Once the venison is cooked, remove from the oven, wrap in foil and rest for 15 minutes or until ready to serve. Again, any pan juices will enrich the sauce, so keep hold of them.
5. While the venison is in the oven, take the cubes of apple, celeriac and potato and place in a pan. Cover with water and bring to the boil.
6. Once the vegetables are tender (after around 15 minutes) drain thoroughly and then mash with the cream and the chopped parsley, making sure you get the vegetables evenly mixed.
7. In a small saucepan, bring the stock to a bubble, then add the gin, cassis, sprig of rosemary and the blackberries. Pour in the pan juices from the venison and allow the mixture to reduce to a thick syrup. Stir in the vinegar, taste, adjust seasoning, then strain off the solids.
8. To serve, slice the venison on the diagonal and arrange around a mound of mash. Drizzle the sauce over the meat and decorate with blackberries and sprigs of rosemary

*****

I was very impresed by this meal. The flavours were great and the venison was perfectly done. I think some lightly cooked savoy cabbage would have been a better accopaniment than the asparagus that we decided to have, but apparently Goon had been fed more cabbage than he thought was possible over the previous week and really couldn’t bear to have any more.

The only problem with the meal was a few woody bits of celeriac in the mash. Since I have only cooked celeriac once before I’m not sure if this was because I didn’t peel it adequately or because that is how celeriac always turns out. So, if anyone can give me advice on how to improve my mashed celeriac, I’d appreciate it.

*This isn’t saying much. We both eat far too much meat.