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Piquancy is something I value in a fish recipe, especially when that fish is one of the oily varieties, such as tuna, herring or my favourite mackerel. It may sound a little strange but I recommend some sautéed potatoes with this.
mackerel – 3, filleted
a small onion
tarragon vinegar – 150ml
white vermouth or white wine – 50ml
juniper berries – 12, lightly crushed
mustard seeds – half a teaspoon
white peppercorns – 6
black peppercorns – 9
caster sugar – 2 tablespoons
bay leaves – 2
sautéed potatoes, to serve
Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Rinse the mackerel fillets and lay them in a shallow ovenproof dish of china, glass or stainless steel (not aluminium). Peel and thinly slice the onion and put it into a non-corrosive saucepan, together with the vinegar and vermouth or wine. Then add the juniper berries, mustard seeds, white and black peppercorns, sugar, bay leaves and a good pinch of salt. Bring to the boil, then pour the mixture over the fish. Add enough water to just cover the fish – no more.
Cover the dish lightly with aluminium foil and bake for twenty minutes. Serve the fish warm, two fillets each, with sautéed potatoes.
Enough for 3
march
An English cheese salad (#ulink_094693c0-fe62-5c2c-869c-2d38d9011f31)
A simple flatbread (#ulink_f97c95a6-6ece-52cd-8f48-b0a38fe854ad)
Taramasalata – the real thing (#ulink_d6249486-4e1c-5cb2-ab75-a80f016389ec)
Chicken stew and mash (#ulink_881c562c-b96b-57aa-ae39-abd4026798fe)
Pork burgers with lime leaves and coriander (#ulink_7d67954a-5864-52e3-8214-e5615c65e903)
A fiery way with lamb (#ulink_29d4735b-90c6-5250-8166-6798a2903098)
Chicken salad with watercress, almonds and orange (#ulink_2ee08bca-c78a-5bab-a169-26d92b6b41cd)
Smoked mackerel on toast (#litres_trial_promo)
Roast fillet of lamb with anchovy and mint (#litres_trial_promo)
Demerara lemon cake with thick yoghurt (#litres_trial_promo)
Prawn and coriander rolls (#litres_trial_promo)
Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce and ginger (#litres_trial_promo)
Chocolate almond cake (#litres_trial_promo)
Stir-fried mushrooms, spring leaves and lemon grass (#litres_trial_promo)
Chickpea and sweet potato curry (#litres_trial_promo)
Orange jelly with lemon and cardamom (#litres_trial_promo)
Chicken with mushrooms and lemon grass (#litres_trial_promo)
March 1
An English
cheese salad
It is a bit spooky the way the contents of those ‘pillow packs’ of salad from the supermarket somehow collapse and die within what seems like minutes of opening. Yet the mixed salad leaves you buy at the farmers’ market and the ones that come from the organic boxes last several days in the fridge. The bag of leaves I picked up from Marylebone farmers’ market – baby leaves of red chard, wild rocket, oak-leaf lettuce, spiky-leaved mizuna and crunchy little Cos – is still perfect three days after I brought it home. I toss the delicate leaves and their fragile stems with large shavings of young Wensleydale, toasted walnut halves, a bunch of large-leaved watercress and the merest dribble of walnut oil and lemon juice. A gentle, softly flavoured salad of unmistakable Englishness.
We follow this with a soup made from fat, old, woody carrots and vegetable bouillon, the root vegetables coarsely grated and then sweated with finely chopped onion in a very little butter. No cream, just the soup put in a blender till smooth, then chopped chives and a knob of butter stirred in at the end.
March 2
Flatbread and
a homemade
dip
Fat flakes of snow are pattering against the panes of the kitchen door, each one sticking on the glass for just a second before dissolving. It is cold enough to have frozen the water in the bucket on the back steps. If ever there was a day to bake bread, this is it. No gung-ho excitement here, just a gentle bit of bread making, the feel of warm, soft dough in the hands, the smell of a fresh loaf coming from the oven and always, always the feeling of ‘Why don’t I do this more often?’
I use dried yeast rather than fresh, simply because I can buy it in the local health-food shop. The flour is organic white from a small mill. Rather than a loaf, today I make slipper-shaped flatbreads to eat warm with taramasalata and hummus. I have never made hummus better than the stuff you can buy at the Green Valley, just off the Edgware Road. White-coated counter staff serve it by the big spoonful straight into a shallow plastic tray, then drizzle the parchment-coloured cream with emerald-green olive oil. But proper tarama is almost impossible to find, and shoppers seem to have accepted the bubblegum-pink stuff sold in tubs at the deli as the real thing. It isn’t. It’s crap. As commercially made food (mayonnaise, tomato soup, pesto) goes, it is the furthest from the real thing. Not even the merest shadow. So I draw a deep breath and pay a small fortune for real smoked cod’s roe from the fishmonger’s, a purple-veined, rusty-pink lobe of roe to beat into olive oil, a clove of garlic and perhaps a little bread to eke it out.
A simple flatbread
strong white flour – 500g
sea salt – half a teaspoon
dried yeast – a 7g sachet
warm water – 350ml
olive oil – 2 tablespoons
Put the flour into the bowl of a food mixer (you will need the beater attachment), then add the salt. If you are using a coarse salt, crumble it first between your finger and thumb. Empty the yeast into a small glass, pour on enough water to make a thin paste, then stir in the rest of the warm water. (This isn’t strictly necessary, you can put the dry yeast straight into the flour, but I prefer to do it this way.) Pour the water on to the flour and turn the mixer on slow. Introduce the olive oil, mixing till you have a stiffish dough. Tip the dough out on to a floured board and knead it with your hands, pushing and folding the dough until it feels springy and elastic to the touch. Set aside in a bowl covered with a clean tea towel and leave to rise for an hour or so. A warm place out of any draughts is ideal.
If you want to make the dough by hand, add the yeast and water to the flour and salt, mixing the two together with your hands or a wooden spoon. Mix in the olive oil – a pleasant, if squelchy, thing to do with your bare hands – then turn the lot on to a lightly floured work surface. Knead for a good nine or ten minutes, folding the far edge of the dough towards you and pushing it back into the dough. It should feel soft, springy and alive. Cover the dough with a clean tea towel as before and leave to rise.
Get the oven hot to 240°C/Gas 9. When your dough is about four times the size it was, break it into six pieces and push each one into a rough slipper shape. Dust them with flour and lie them flat on a baking sheet. Bake for five minutes, then turn the oven down to 220°C/Gas 7 and continue baking for a further five minutes or so, until the underside of the bread sounds hollow when you tap it.
Makes 6 small flatbreads
Taramasalata – the real thing
smoked cod’s roe – a 100g piece
white bread – 2 thick slices
garlic – a plump clove
olive oil – 200–300ml
the juice of a lemon
Peel the skin from the roe, or scoop the eggs out of the skin with a teaspoon. Soak the bread in water, then wring it out. Mash the bread into the roe with a pestle and mortar or in a food mixer. Add the clove of garlic, finely chopped, then the olive oil, pouring it in gradually as if you are making mayonnaise. When the mixture is a thick cream, stir in the lemon juice. Serve lightly chilled, with the warm flatbreads and some black olives.
Enough for 4
March 3
In my smug haze of good housekeeping from yesterday’s baking session, not to mention my arch disdain for factory-produced foods, I fail to notice there is bugger all to eat in the house. At seven-thirty I dash to the corner shop, returning with a tin of baked beans, a bag of oven chips and some beers.
March 4
Snow and a
chicken
stew
Snow has fallen as I slept. I fold back the shutters and stare out at the garden without moving for a full ten minutes. Snow brings a hush, a softness, to the city that is all too brief. You have to make time for it. The gravel path, the spindly trees, the little hedges that frame the vegetable and fruit beds are white over. The kitchen itself is icy this morning, its light muffled by the snow that has built up on the skylights. Breakfast is porridge, made with water. No sugar, no treacle, no hot milk. Just rolled oats and water.
Shopping is usually slipped into other jobs and journeys: a dash into the greengrocer’s whilst I am on my way to a meeting; a trip to the fishmonger’s on my way home. But today’s shopping is thought out, with a list and a big bag. There are four of us for supper and it is still snowing. I am not going to get away with a salad and a slice of tart.
One of the advantages of my butcher’s free-range birds is that their bones are heavy and strong, as you would expect from something that has had the opportunity to exercise. The availability of these big birds and their fat, sauce-enriching bones makes it seriously worth thinking about chicken stew – a bird cooked slowly, with stock, herbs and aromatics. The results are mild but meaty, which is just what you want when the wind is cold enough to make your eyes water.
Starch is an essential accompaniment to stew – polenta, mashed roots, potatoes slipped into the pot. This time my stew has beans in it. There is quite a lot of juice, which, despite the beans, screams out to be poured over some mashed parsnip or potato, perhaps with some parsley and a dollop of mustard stirred in. Something for the coldest days of the year.
Chicken stew and mash
dried cannellini beans – 150g
a large chicken, jointed
olive oil – 50ml, plus more for frying
balsamic vinegar – 50ml
garlic – 4 plump cloves, peeled
bay leaves – 3 or 4
dried herbes de Provence – 1–2 teaspoons
the pared rind of a small orange
leeks – 3 medium, thickly sliced
mash, to serve
Soak the beans in cold water for three or four hours, though overnight will not hurt (the older your beans, the longer they will need). Bring them to the boil in unsalted water and boil them for forty minutes.
Put the chicken joints in a glass, china or steel dish. Pour over the olive oil and a couple of tablespoons of the balsamic vinegar, then tuck in the peeled garlic cloves and the bay leaves. Scatter over the herbes de Provence, a good grinding of pepper and salt and the strips of pared orange. Leave in a cool place, overnight if possible or at least for four or five hours.
Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a shallow pan (don’t be tempted to fry the chicken in the oil from the marinade; it will spit and pop because of the vinegar). Add the chicken pieces, shaking the marinade from each as you go, and let them fry till they are golden brown on each side. You may find it easier to do this in two batches. Transfer the browned meat to a deep casserole – one for which you have a lid. Drain the boiled beans and add them to the pot.
In the same oil, fry the leeks over a low heat, so that they soften rather than colour. Allowing a leek to brown will send it bitter. Now add the garlic from the marinade, then pour in the remaining marinade, the rest of the balsamic vinegar and about a litre of water. Don’t be tempted to use stock instead; it will make the dish too rich. Bring to the boil, season generously with salt, then pour this mixture over the chicken. Tuck in the bay leaves and orange from the marinade, then cover the casserole and put it in the preheated oven for two hours. Half way through cooking, check that the chicken is still submerged. Check for seasoning: it may need salt, it will need black pepper and you may feel it needs a little more balsamic vinegar. Serve steaming hot, with mash, letting the thick juices from the stew form pools in the mash.
March 5
If there is a recurrent theme to my cooking at the moment, it is the clean bite of lime leaves and chillies. I appreciate them for the freshness and vitality they bring with them. I have no luck at the greengrocer’s with the lime leaves today, nor at the major supermarket that stands, red brick and sprawling, less than thirty minutes’ walk from home. I end up catching the bus to the crush of Chinese shops that line Gerrard Street, which have more lime leaves than you could shake a chopstick at. They freeze at a push, and for once I remember to take a second packet home with that in mind.
I have had this problem before, usually when the leaves’ inclusion is crucial (Thai fish cakes, perhaps). People say you can use lime zest instead. I agree to an extent, but there is something missing. There is more than just the well-known flavour of lime in those finely shredded leaves. They carry a bite, a spritz, to them that is missing in the skin of the fruit. If lime leaves remain elusive, I would rather add a stalk of lemon grass instead.
While I’m in Chinatown, I pick up a couple of papayas. Unusually, they are perfectly ripe, a deep custard yellow. Tender as a kitten, they get carried home on top of everything else. One of them still gets bruised. After the pork, I slice each fruit and scoop out the black seeds – they look like caviar – then squeeze over a little lime juice. It means there is too much lime in the meal but it has brightened up a wet day.
Pork burgers with lime leaves and coriander
At first glance, this may seem like a lot of work. It isn’t. The whole thing should take about half an hour, plus a little time for the meatballs to chill. I like this with a salad of crisp, white lettuce, chopped mint and coriander leaves, dressed with lime juice and salt. If you need something to fill, then some plain steamed white rice would fit the bill, or some soft buns between which to sandwich the hot pork patties.
spring onions – 4
hot red chillies and their seeds – 4
garlic – 4 medium-sized cloves
the stalks and leaves from a small bunch of coriander
ginger – a thumb-sized lump
lime leaves – 6
smoked pancetta or fatty bacon – 100g
