insisting on canapés before dinner, dead posh

Canapés before dinner? Why of course, its not dinner without opening the affair with a nibble as things come together. It might just be me or the weather, or there just seems to be an abundance of avocados in perfect condition knocking around right now, but one of these in ripeness excellence on a bit of slightly chewy sourdough to snack on to start the evening is simply the thing to do.

It is hardly the toughest stretch in the kitchen, but why don't we do this more often? I reckon it has to be associated with never getting our avos at the right point where they'll mash to the touch of a fork while still yielding they're freshness and vivid colour. Pepped up with a bit of dried chilli and a few slices of tart tomatoes, and I wonder whether roasting that chicken was worth the extra effort at all.

Avocado on toast

Serves up to 4

2 avocados

2-3 tblsp extra virgin olive oil

Juice of 1 lime

4 slices of sour dough/rye bread

Salt and pepper

A small dried red chilli, finely chopped

Handful of sweet cherry tomatoes, sliced

Mash the avocado with a fork to a rough puree, adding the olive oil and lime juice as you go. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Toast the bread, drizzle a little olive oil over each piece then spread over the avocados. Sprinkle with chilli and the sliced tomatoes.

carpaccio and happiness, at home, where it should be

This is at its very best served really informally at home with the right person, with homemade mayonnaise - which is a traditional carpaccio accompaniment, and properly delicious with chips too. 

The quality of your meat is everything. It needs to come from an animal that has been fed correctly and well hung to ensure it is tender. I prefer the flavour and texture of a pure Angus breed, but there are plenty other good breeds too.

It is pretty much all about the setting and the company. If the food is a bit more than half decent, the full package has pretty much been achieved. That's where something like this comes in. Buy a great piece of meat, do precious little to it, savour the occasion - perfection achieved.

Beef carpaccio/Parmesan/rocket/radishes

Serves just the 2, 4 at a push

500g trimmed fillet of beef
freshly ground black pepper and good quality salt
40g fresh rocket

80g shaved Parmesan

60g fresh very cold red radishes, shaved

40ml extra virgin olive oil

20ml lemon juice

Season the beef well with the pepper and roll up firmly in a large piece of cling film or foil. Roll the film back and forth to make the meat even and nicely rounded. Chill for 30 minutes.

With a very sharp knife, slice the meat as thinly as possible and arrange on a serving platter. Garnish with the rocket, drizzle with the oil and a splash of lemon juice and finally the radishes and Parmesan, and a sprinkle of salt.

Homemade mayonnaise

I more often than not add water or sometimes crème fraîche to my mayonnaise, both to whiten it and to make it lighter on the palate, so that it doesn't overpower the beef.

2 free range egg yolks
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp English or Dijon mustard
150ml groundnut oil
150ml olive oil
2 tblsp cold water

Place the egg yolks, vinegar and mustard in a bowl and whisk together with a balloon whisk. Gradually incorporate the oil, whisking continuously until you have a thick emulsion. Add the water and season. Transfer to a clean jar. The mayonnaise will keep for five days in the fridge.

hong kong bumps into moscow

In a city I'd never made it to before a couple of weeks ago, Moscow; there are some utterly brilliant people, the most amazing sights and some of the most wonderful magical ingredients still to be properly discovered outside the region. Among the fantastically shaped bottles, jars and sachets which I'm now lucky to have at home, is a great big bottle of tkemali. 

Tkemali is the name of the wild sour plum which gives the sauce its name, and I'm to believe is Georgian in origin. It's a ketchup like condiment, and has everything going on from pungently tangy to tart, sweet and sour, but above all else, its insanely addictive now I've opened my bottle.

Fried rice pops up at home an awful lot, and every time it comes out just that little bit differently, I guess the nature of what's at home and kicking about in the fridge will always dictate as such. This time of the year it has to be glutinous rice though, makes the whole thing more sticky and warming, perfect as winter begins to take shape (21°c and blue skies here today)

fried rice, bbq pork, tkemali

For the glutinous fried rice

Serves 4

500g glutinous rice, soaked overnight

50g dried shrimps, soaked and cleaned

50g shredded dried cuttlefish, cleaned

3 Chinese dried sausages, sliced

8 large mushrooms cut into cubes

1 bunch of spring onions, chopped

4 tblsp garlic oil

2 egg omelette, shredded

25g fried peanuts

Seasoning

1tbsp dark soya sauce

1tbsp oyster sauce

2tsp salt

Clean and drain the soaked glutinous rice and steam for about 35-45 minutes. Sprinkle water into the steamed rice every 15 mins and continue steaming. Fluff up the rice after 25 minutes and continue sprinkling water till the rice is soft. You can pinch some rice and try if it's soft enough, if not, just continue to steam.

Remove from steamer and set aside. In a wok, pour in the garlic oil, then put in the dried shrimps and dried cuttlefish and fry them till aromatic, add the mushrooms, Chinese sausages and sauté for several minutes on a medium heat.

Now add in the steamed glutinous rice and seasonings and keep frying till everything is well mixed with the seasonings.

Taste and add more salt if necessary. Toss in the chopped spring onions, shredded omelette and fried peanuts to finish.

Serve with the barbecued pork, and a heavy handed hit of tkemali and your work for the night is now complete.

daal in the lanka

Every time I attempt to make this incredibly simple and fragrant Sri Lankan dish, I make it ever so slightly differently. Not because I'm in the pursuit of fancy, it just happens like that. Every time Nalaka makes it, it's exactly the same, which is brilliant. Sometimes I put ground chilli in, sometimes green and red chillies. Occasionally some crispy fried garlic shavings, maybe some mint and coriander too. Great with rice, great as a replacement to rice, great on its own, better the way he does it.

Daal, the way Nalaka makes it, I think

Serves 2

200g yellow split peas
1 small onion
6 garlic cloves
2 small, hot green chillies

2 tsp cinnamon bits
1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp curry powder
salt and black pepper

12 curry leaves

1 rampa leaf (pandan)

200ml thin coconut milk

200ml thick coconut milk

 

Rinse the split peas in cold water. Peel and finely slice the onion. Peel and cut the garlic in half, chop the chillies into little strips.

Put the peas, onion, chilli, garlic, cinnamon, turmeric, curry powder, leaves, salt and black pepper in with the peas and cover with the thin coconut milk. Bring to the boil, cover with a lid then simmer for 15-20 minutes until the pulses are softening.

 

To finish, add the thicker coconut milk and bring back to a faster simmer with the lid off, cooking until all the milk has absorbed.

 

You can always peel and finely slice more garlic, cook till golden and lightly crisp in a shallow pan with oil, then stir into the daal with a handful of chopped coriander leaves. Nalaka doesn't, so there we have it.

 

all I want is yakitori tonight

I'm absolutely sure there's no-one who has come anywhere close to working out a more beautiful relationship, and I for one, am yet to imagine any possible food that goes better with a really cold beer.

 

 

Any perfectly grilled skewer of bite-sized anything with a bit of a kick and a chilled beer has some beating, and the discovery of a place where these are the only two things on offer is like stumbling upon Nirvana. Truly, when a really popular restaurant has but the one offering, you have to assume they are absolute perfectionist in their field.

 

 

It tends to be the charcoal gives yakitori its unique and irresistible scent and I guess the taste is developed on from the grill through the exact seasoning generally offered. 'Shio' which simply means that it's served with salt, or 'Tare' a salty-sweet sauce, which is basically made from soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Whatever is on offer, the whole idea of cook to serve without the need to plate up with accompaniments and frills has always appealed in a big way.

 

 

In the event of not being heading to Yurakucho, Shimbashi or Shinjuku tonight, having some of those incredible pickled bamboo shoots with my first beer before the first skewers come off the grill, I now know what I'm having for dinner at home later, whatever happens...

just some lamb chops

Grilled lamb with tzasiki

 

Serves 4

 

A cool cucumber and yoghurt dip is a refreshing accompaniment for grilled chops. Sometimes I add a clove of garlic to it, sometimes not. Sometimes nothing at all is needed but juicy fatty meat. Chips with chops, that might be the ticket.

 

4 lamb steaks or large chops

2 tblsp olive oil

1 tblsp fresh oregano

 

For the tzasiki

Half a cucumber

250ml thick, natural yogurt

2 spring onions

1 handful mint leaves

 

Grate the cucumber into a sieve or colander, sprinkle lightly with sea salt and sit it in the sink for half an hour. This will rid the cucumber of much of its water.

 

Tip the yoghurt into a mixing bowl. Finely chop the spring onions and stir them into the yoghurt along with the mint leaves, roughly chopped. Squeeze any excess moisture out of the cucumber with your hands then stir it into the yoghurt.

 

Don't be tempted to season the yoghurt; it should be just fine as it is.

 

Keep the tzasiki cool until you need it. Get the grill hot. In a small bowl mix the olive oil with the oregano and a seasoning of salt and black pepper then rub or brush it over the meat. Cook the lamb over a hot grill or in a griddle pan. Ideally the outside should be dark brown and sizzling, the fat crisp and the inside of the meat a deep, juicy rose pink.

 

Serve the lamb with the tzasiki. Or chips.

 

lobster roll, decadent and frivolous but who cares

New Year, New You? No actually, New Year, Let's eat WELL.

 

This sounds properly luxurious, but was - and in some places still is - a casual (and often surprisingly cheap) snack to be eaten on the beach where lobster is in decent supply. Perfect for when the weather is exactly as it is right now (well it is here anyway)

 

A good lobster roll

 

Serves 1

 

1 x 500g lobster, cooked and shelled, and meat chopped into 3cm pieces

3 sticks celery, finely chopped

10g horseradish mixed with 20g mayonnaise

Juice from ½ lemon

A quarter of an avocado

salt and pepper

15g butter lettuce leaves

1 brioche hot dog style bun

 

The method is very straightforward. Make some lobster salad by mixing cold cooked lobster in bite-sized chunks (with as much of the sweeter meat from the claws as possible) with some finely chopped celery, horseradish flavoured mayonnaise, a little lemon juice, diced avocado and salt and pepper.

 

Lay some lettuce leaves inside the toasted buttered hot dog bun and tumble in the lobster salad.

 

This dish is best accompanied by a decent packet of crisps. And better still, a sandy beach.
 

borek, manti and some stuffed vine leaves

Istanbul is brilliant, by the way.

 

I can't get enough of the energy and sheer enthusiasm the city radiates so effortlessly. It is where I eat like a King and sleep like an insomniac while generally just be with truly great people. 

 

Now, I am a bit of a dumpling fan, and the Turkish manti being a delightful version which are also served up in Armenia do resemble my more familiar friends from my part of the world. They are quite closely related to the east Asian mantou, baozi, and mandu and the Nepali momo, and are just as delicious.

 

As far as I can see, in Istanbul manti are typically served topped with a pungent garlic yoghurt which is again splashed with some dried chilli flakes that have been woken up in hot oil. There will always be a few pots on the side with some sumac, extra chilli and maybe some dried minto too for you to play around with.

 

Traditional Manti

 

Serves 4

 

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

about 1/2 teaspoon water

2 onions, chopped finely

250g minced beef

salt and pepper to taste

3 tblsp vegetable oil

1 tblsp red pepper flakes

1 tblsp chopped garlic

250g plain yogurt

 

Combine the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the eggs and water, mixing well with your hands. Add more water, if needed, to form a soft dough. Cover and set aside for at least 30 minutes. Shred the onions and place them in a colander or sieve set over a bowl; drain the juice and discard. Combine the onion, ground beef, salt, and pepper; mix the meat well with a spoon until mashed.

 

Divide the dough into two portions and lightly flour a work surface. Keep one piece of dough covered while you roll out the second portion into a rectangle, rolling the dough as thin as you can. Cut the rectangle into 2-inch squares with a knife or pastry wheel.

 

Place about a teaspoon of the meat filling in the center of each square. Seal the dumplings by gathering the edges of the dough and pinching them together at the top to form a bundle. Transfer the finished manti to a floured plate, and sprinkle more flour over the manti to prevent sticking. Repeat with the second piece of dough.

 

Heat the oil and red pepper flakes in a small pan over low heat just until the pepper flakes have started to colour the oil; don't let them burn. Remove from the heat and keep warm. Stir the minced garlic into the yogurt and set aside.

 

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook the manti until the filling hot, and the dough is tender, no more than a few minutes. Drain well. Divide the manti among four plates. Spoon the yogurt sauce over the manti and drizzle each serving with the hot pepper oil.

 

afiyet olsun

mushrooming about the time of year

There isn't much you can do wrong with a mushroom. Some love them (me) some can't get past their apparent sliminess (weirdos) some just go with the flow. As their true wild season comes to a close, one last blast today is in order. Mushrooms on toast for breakfast and a slow braised beef casserole with fat handfuls of every variety I'm able to get my hands on is a fitting Sunday any which way you look at it.


Sunday breakfast has to be where the weekend makes any sense, and filling the house with the smell of sauteed mushrooms, toasted bread and fresh coffee cannot fail to get the day rolling just nicely as in Plan A. Lightly toasted focaccia just because it soaks everything up like the most delicious edible sponge. A pile of evenly sized of the harder mushrooms like pied bleu, hedgehogs and even buttons and chestnuts. Butter, a tiny splash of cream at the end. A fat pinch of really good salt and plenty chopped parsley and black pepper.

Beef will go on shortly and cook throught the day. I'm looking at a fist full of ceps to go with diced shin and a load of garlic, shallots and thyme. A decent bit of red wine in nice and early, maybe spiked with a hit of chilli, and probably farted about with a bit more still. More on all that as soon as I've snoozed off breakfast and pretended to read the Sunday papers.

Don't forget me. Love, Sir Loin

Have we fallen out of love with the once grand sirloin of beef then? I truly do hope we haven't. It's still a decent piece of meat I get great enjoyment from, and continue to be able to use it in all manner of preparations - from dicing it for burritos to the perfect steak sandwich meat. I cooked a decent piece for lunch yesterday, in the fashion below, and was really most pleasantly happy with the outcome indeed. This would be great with a lovely creamy purée of parsnips or some braised silver beets or Swiss chard, but yesterday I slow roasted some split unpeeled shallots in the beef juices, garlic and thyme, and plopped it on a cauliflower purée. 

The perfect amount left over for some cold roast beef sandwiches for lunch today. Watercress, English mustard and a scraping of mayonnaise on white bread. Leftovers are King. Sir Loin rocks.

Sirloin pot-roasted with bay, garlic and red wine vinegar

Serves 4-6

1 kg whole sirloin of beef
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tblsp olive oil, for browning
55g butter
10 fresh bay leaves
4 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
375 ml Cabernet Sauvignon vinegar

Trim the fat on the piece of beef to about 2cm thick. Using a sharp knife, cut a criss-cross pattern at 1cm intervals across the fat. Season lightly with salt, but add plenty of pepper.

Heat oil in a large heavy-based flameproof pot., add the beef and brown on all sides, leaving the fatty side until last. Reduce the heat and slowly brown the fat. Remove the beef from the pot and drain off the fat.

Melt the butter in the pot until foaming and then add the beef. Add the bay leaves, garlic and 5 tablespoons of vinegar. Moisten a piece of baking paper large enough to cover the pot.

Push the damp paper into the pot to rest on and cover the beef entirely. Simmer over a low heat until the vinegar reduces by half. Add a little more vinegar and when that reduces, add a little more.

Continue in this way until the beef is cooked to medium, for about 50-70 minutes. The sauce should never completely reduce because you are trying to create an emulsion. Add water, if necessary.

Turn off the heat and rest for 10 minutes. Slice the beef and serve. Spoon the sauce over the beef and garnish with bay leaves and garlic.

Random but pretty, this is what the soup looked like before the soup was added. If you're still with me, more on that soon...