Quick cassoulet

Serves 4

I think I've mentioned cassoulet before, if so there's an admission of a love affair I'm not shy about. This one is dead easy though, opening, a bit of frying and assembling kind of stuff. Just as long as you buy decent quality sausages you'll get a pretty good end result. At the end of the day this is peasant food, so let's not get all professional and try too hard - decent ingredients layered up with a bit of thoughtful timing and a bit of patience will pay dividends. Should you opt for the slower cooking of the last sector, run yourself a big bubble bath, pour the biggest glass of red you can, and sink into at least an hour's worth of anticipation...

4 plump spicy sausages

1 duck breast or thigh, cut into thick slices

1 tblsp olive oil

225g smoked bacon with plenty of fat, cut into large dice

1 large onion, roughly chopped

4 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced

1 tsp tomato purée

55ml red wine

400g chopped tomatoes

2 x 425g cans haricot or butter beans, drained

1 bay leaf

2 tblsp grain mustard

50g coarse breadcrumbs

In a heavy, flameproof casserole, cook the sausages and duck in the olive oil until their fat runs and the sausages and duck are golden on all sides. Scoop out the meat and set aside. Add the bacon pieces to the pan and cook in the remaining fat until golden, then add the onion and garlic.

Cook for 5 or 6 minutes until they have softened slightly then stir in the tomato purée. Cook for another minute or so then pour in the red wine.

Simmer for a minute then stir in the tomatoes, the cooked sausages and the duck. Bring to the boil, stir in the beans, bay leaf, mustard and a seasoning of salt and pepper and then cook over a medium heat at a good simmer for about 15 minutes, or pop into a medium oven for easily an hour if you have the time to kill.

Remove the pan from the heat. Scatter over the breadcrumbs and place under a hot grill, a good few inches from the heat, until golden. Serve very hot.

Dill pickled salmon with mustard mayonnaise

Serves 8

This recipe serves tangy marinated salmon with a rich, homemade mustard mayonnaise, a reliable yet winning combination. Although it seems a lot of ingredients, the assembly is actually very straight forward.

Pickled salmon

900g salmon fillet, skinned and boned

Pinch of salt

Pinch of sugar

Juice of half a lemon

Lemon wedges, to serve

Rye bread, to serve

Marinade

1 bunch of fresh dill, finely chopped

2-3 strips of lemon peel

5g flat leaf parsley leaves only

2 onions, thinly sliced

2 carrots thinly sliced

2 bay leaves

25g mixed peppercorns

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

400ml clear malt vinegar

400ml dry white wine

Mustard mayonnaise

2 egg yolks

1 tblsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp sugar

5 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp white wine vinegar

8 tblsp dill leaves, finely chopped

Slice the salmon fillet into 4 cm thick slices. Sprinkle with the salt, sugar and lemon juice.

Mix all the marinade ingredients, apart from the malt vinegar and white wine together in a mixing bowl and stand for 10 minutes. Add the vinegar and wine, mixing well.

Pour the marinade into a large sealable container. Add the sliced salmon, seal and refrigerate overnight. To make the mayonnaise, whisk together the yolks, mustard and sugar in a bowl. Add the oil in a steady trickle, whisking until blended thoroughly. Once the oil has been added, mix in the vinegar and the dill.

Serve the pickled salmon with lemon wedges, mustard mayonnaise and sliced rye bread.

Roast chicken with wild garlic

Serves 4

Wild garlic, sometimes found as ramsons, is starting to show up around now. It has all the silkiness of spinach leaves and a soft scent of young garlic. The leaves appear in the wild in early spring but can increasingly be found in farmers markets too. Any garlic stall will have them for the next few weeks. I think at this early stage they can be wonderfully floral without showing too much pungency as full blown garlic often can.

A good-sized chicken for roasting (about 1.5kg)
50g butter
olive oil
1 lemon
a couple of bay leaves
a glass of white wine
A good handful of wild garlic leaves per person

Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Mash the butter with a little olive oil and a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. Massage it into the skin of the chicken. Cut the lemon in half and tuck them inside the bird with a bay leaf or two.

Roast the chicken for about an hour till the skin is golden and the juices run clear. (Pierce the chicken at its thickest point, if the juices have blood in them, continue cooking. If they run clear it is ready.)

Remove the chicken to a warm place and let it rest, covered loosely with foil. Put the roasting tin over a low gas; when the roasting juices start to bubble pour in the wine and scrape at any pan-stickings so they dissolve into the juices.

Throw in the garlic leaves, stirring into the hot juices so that they start to wilt and soften. Check the seasoning then serve the juices and softened garlic with slices of the roast chicken.

Lobster salad with matcha green tea and soya

Serves 2-4

This may not look award winning on the plate, but trust me on this, the flavour combinations are just outstanding, and is simply a lovely summery way to treat lobster. Alternatively use big prawns or even chunks of steamed white fish, but the key here really is in the balancing of the key flavours.

1 freshly cooked lobster, weighing 1lb/500g, with the meat removed and chopped

1 bunch of baby leeks, trimmed

A small bunch of spinach leaves

A small knob of fresh horseradish

For the dressing

Best quality olive oil
Fine powdered matcha green tea
Soy sauce

Warm the lobster gently in a saucepan with a little of the olive oil, throw the leeks in too to warm them through also. Scatter on a plate making sure to use all the pan juices as the base of the dressing, throw over a few spinach leaves at this stage. Sprinkle over a little soy sauce, dust with the matcha green tea powder and finish with a generous but very fine grating of fresh horseradish. At this point a touch of salt and pepper may be added.

Orange and white chocolate biscuits

Makes about 24 biscuits

Middle of the week, and a few baking sessions will be required to get through it. These little ones are moreish, and dead easy to make. You can prepare the mixture in advance: roll it into sausage shapes, wrap in greaseproof paper and store in the freezer. Just remove, slice into discs and bake until golden.

300g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

250g unsalted butter, softened

125g caster sugar

125g light brown soft sugar

1 large egg

Zest of 1 orange

250g white chocolate chips or white chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, use an electric whisk to cream together the butter and both types of sugar until pale and fluffy.

Add the egg and beat until well combined. Stir in thoroughly the flour mix, orange zest and white chocolate.

Place a sheet of greaseproof paper on a baking sheet and spoon on equal quantities of the biscuit dough, leaving at least 3cm between each one. Place in the centre of the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden.

Remove from the oven, leave for 2-3 minutes, then place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Vanilla shortbread

Makes 30 fingers

I know it's a day late for Burns Night, but yesterday was a wee bit busier than I expected it to be, so forget the haggis, I'm over it too, let's make some proper shortbread.  My Nana wouldn't exactly dissaprove of the vanilla addition here, but suffice to say the remainder of the recipe is all hers. Totally worth doing at any time of the year, and a hundred times better than anything out of a packet.

100g icing sugar
200g plain flour, preferably Italian OO
100g cornflour
200g very soft unsalted butter
seeds from 1 vanilla pod
vanilla or ordinary caster sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3. Put the icing sugar, plain flour and cornflour into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the double-bladed knife and give them a quick blitz (just to save you sieving, which is my most-hated job in the kitchen) before adding the butter along with the vanilla seeds you've scraped out of a pod.


Process again until the soft mixture coheres and begins to form a ball, loosely clumping around the blade. Turn this out on to a Swiss roll tin and press to form an even (or as even as you can make it) layer, using fingers or the back of a spoon, or both. Be patient, it will fit smoothly.

Using the tip of a sharp knife cut the pressed-out shortbread into fingers. I make two incisions lengthways - i.e. to form three layers - and then make 10 cuts down - so that you end up with 11 fingers per layer. Obviously, the aim should be to cut at regular intervals but don't start getting your ruler out. Just go by eye: uniformity is the province of the conveyor belt not of home cooking. Use the tines of a fork to make little holes in each marked-out biscuit: I press down about three times, diagonally, on each finger.


Now that you've pressed, incised, and punctured, slide the Swiss roll tin into the oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes, by which time the shortbread will be pale still, but not doughy. Expect a little goldenness around the edges, but shortbread should be not crisp but melting.


Remove the tin from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes or so, before removing, with a palette knife and your fingers, to a wire rack. Sprinkle with sugar and leave them to cool completely before storing in a tin.

Spicy meatballs

Serves 4

These have the distinct taste of Morocco with one of those gentle spice kicks which make them all the more moreish. I have them with either couscous or pilaf rice with a blob of yoghurt and some sharp feta cheese. But there is absolutely no shame in serving them atop pasta or with a salad. The perfect midweek supper that can be prepared in minutes and left to cook with very little attention required.

2 tblsp mild paprika

2 tsp ground cumin

¼ tsp cayenne

2 big handfuls of chopped flat-leaf parsley and 3 of chopped coriander leaves

4 big cloves of garlic, crushed

450g lamb mince

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

Salt and pepper

2 tblsp olive oil

2 x 400g tins chopped plum tomatoes

2 tsp sugar


Mix together the spices, garlic, parsley and 2 handfuls of coriander. Thoroughly mix half into the lamb with the lemon zest, season generously and squidge together with your hands.

Shape into 20 equal-sized balls. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Fry the meatballs in 2 batches until just brown on all sides — about 5 minutes for each batch. Remove and keep to one side.

Put the remaining spice, herb and garlic mix in the same pan, stir over the heat for 15-20 seconds, then add the tomatoes and sugar and season well. Simmer for 25 minutes, until thick, stirring occasionally to break up the tomatoes.


Add the meatballs, cover and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Scatter with the remaining coriander leaves