The start of the tennis grass court season and its strawberries

So the tennis has moved from clay to grass just in time for the cats and dogs that live in the sky to start falling to the ground, or is it the other way round? Anyway, whatever is going on upstairs, the tennis, the rain and this time of year is when our strawberries really start to mean something. There honestly isn't anything quite like the taste of your own berries in season that haven't been in a fridge since they were picked, that is true honest flavour. Sat in the sun with their leaves still on for a few moments before devoured is yet another sensation altogether. 

Scented flowers and sweet herbs always work awfully well with summer fruits. Again and as with everything seasonal, look at what is in our hedgerows and farmer's markets this time of year. A few blackberry leaves and a pinch of elderflower buds would be a spectacular infusion. Have a look at Ms Marmitelover's fantastic recent magical elder moment here. This stock syrup keeps forever and can be scented with other herbs and flowers such as geranium or mint. There's also a wonderful strawberry yoghurt parfait worth a look at from the brilliant talent that is spice spoon should any of your crop be deserving of a bit more of a regal work out.

Strawberries with hibiscus and basil syrup

Serves 4

150ml light stock syrup
1 tblsp lemon juice
2 rosehip and hibiscus tea bags
2 large fresh basil leaves
500g fresh strawberries, hulled
Extra basil leaves to garnish

Place the stock syrup in a medium-sized pan, bring almost to the boil, and then stir in the lemon juice, tea bags and basil. Remove from the heat and allow to infuse for 20 minutes. Strain and set aside until needed.

Ten minutes before serving, place the strawberries in four bowls. Pour over the juice and leave to macerate at room temperature.

Garnish with extra basil leaves, maybe even a tiny twist of fresh black pepper and serve. Cream, ice cream or custard isn't wholly necessary, but I'm not judging if you insist.

The safe cucumber sandwich for 2011

So. the evil that is E.coli seems yet again to be ripping the soul from our larders, and the fear mongers amongst us are perversely turning from vegetarianism to carnivores in a role reversal of the sad foot and mouth era of not so long ago. I'd say just pickle the buggers if the unnecessary paranoia is just too much to handle, and just last week while in Stockholm I did happily overdose on buckets of them with wonderful meatballs, rich mashed potatoes and glorious lingonberries.

But, and alas, the cricket season is upon us at home, and without the cucumber sandwich to refresh our delicate sportsmen, the fear of post tea slumps on local fields across the nation are a real fear not to be taken lightly. What to come up with as a replacement? Surely a second innings is nothing if fueled on scones, jam and cream alone?


Here we go then, out on a limb with the alternative to the cucumber sandwich for the summer ahead. There's a bit more work involved, but it's one of those things best made the night before anyway, saving on the day time to get out your lucky balls and get those nasty red streak marks out of your trousers.


This Provençal inspired number is pressed and stored in the fridge for at least a few hours, allowing the bread to soak up the juices from the filling — this gives a tasty, rich sarnie. Traditionally, a flat round loaf (about 6in wide) is used, but baguettes will be fine.

Pan bagnat for the cricket field

Serves 4

75ml extra virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 large baguette or round loaf
1 tin tuna, drained (preferably albacore in olive oil)
1 tin salted anchovies, drained and washed
1 heaped tblsp capers, rinsed
1 white onion, finely sliced, blanched in boiling water for 1 minute and patted dry
5 wood roasted piquillo peppers (from a jar)
3 vine ripened tomatoes, sliced
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced
Cucumber or lettuce, sliced
Large sprig fresh basil
Freshly ground black pepper
and salt

 

Heat half the olive oil over a low flame and gently fry the garlic for 5 minutes, making sure it doesn’t burn. Remove and set aside for 10 minutes, then strain the oil and combine with the remaining olive oil; discard the garlic.

Slice the baguette in half lengthways and brush the inside with the oil, pressing it firmly into the bread. In a bowl, mix together the tuna, anchovies and capers. Fill the sandwich: layer the onion, peppers, tomatoes, egg, salad and basil leaves, putting the tuna mix in the centre. Season

Put the other half of the bread on top and press down. Wrap in cling film, weight down and chill in the fridge for several hours. Serve with tea or lashings or lemonade.

The Swedes and their meatballs, köttbullar to you and I

I've done meatballs in many guises before, maybe my problem has been that I've never taken them terribly serious. Here in Stockholm, as I'm sure is the case in the whole of Sweden, the issue of meatballs are taken deadly seriously. Swedish meatballs seem to be absolutely necessary for gatherings, comfort and memories. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that along with herring, it's one of the principle necessities keeping this glorious country together.


In my limited meatball career, I've never been a fan of store-bought meatballs , so I've long insisted on making my own, and actually think I made some killer black pudding balls in a tomato and apple sauce for Simon's birthday party just before flying onto Sweden. Home made has never ever been a hassle for me, and I think in the main it's because of the cooking process. No frying. At all. Oven baked. The only way to go.


Generally I don't measure my seasonings and spices, just add quite a bit of the white pepper, and just a dash of everything else. You can serve these with anything - creamed potatoes and gravy with lingonberries and pickled cucumber tend to go down a storm, but in a tomato sauce, wrapped in a pita with garlic mayonnaise, ketchup and chips. The possibilities are endless.

Perfect Swedish köttbullar, oven-baked

900g ground meat
1 yellow onion, very finely chopped
1-2 small cloves of garlic, minced
1 egg
salt
white pepper
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of ground ginger
pinch of cardamom
pinch of allspice

Mix everything to an even batter, and form small, round balls. Put in a large roasting pan, and bake for about 15 minutes or so at 175°C. Shake the pan a few times to ensure an even surface on your meatballs.


Jag är Verkligen Hungrig.

Förhandsgranska - Salmon with dill and lime

Stockholm these past couple of days has brought with it an alarming little display of food stuffs I have easily been forced to admit I have never tasted the like of before. From the subtle bleak caviar heaped onto crispy buttered toast, to the rightly acquired taste of surströmming. An extremely heavily fermented herring, quite a flavour I'm still working out how to describe. Next dish planned is the blodpudding, which quite clearly doesn't need an awful lot of translation, but the charm of it being traditionally eaten with lingonberry jam, potatoes and grated carrots has the better of me already.

At this time of year, and in particular back home, pâtés and terrines are particularly useful for what is going to prove to be a summer of many lunches, requiring no last-minute preparation beyond making a few rounds of that buttery toast. Strictly speaking, this dish isn't a terrine in the classic sense, but I serve it as such: the coarse, textured salmon in a china dish together with crisp Swedish inspired rye toast and paper-thin slices of pickled cucumber. It is the perfect light lunch with maybe some salad and cheese to follow. Or, in a more formal meal it would do as a refreshing first course before you move onto the beast that is fermented fish!


Salmon marinaded with dill and lime

500g wild salmon
4 tblsp mild olive oil
2 tblsp dill leaves
2 large ripe limes
1 tblsp capers

To serve - hot rye toast

Remove the skin from the salmon and, using a large, heavy knife, chop the flesh finely. You want it to be fine enough to stick together, but by no means a purée. Scoop it into a bowl. Mix in the olive oil, the chopped dill, the lime juice and the capers. Season carefully with salt and black pepper and pack the mixture into a terrine or china dish and leave overnight. Eat the next day with hot rye toast and pickled cucumber.

Pickled cucumber

Half a large cucumber
4 tblsp white wine vinegar
2 tblsp chopped coriander leaves
caster sugar

Peel the cucumber and slice it very thinly - you should be able to see through each slice. Put the slices in a colander and sprinkle with sea salt, then leave for a good half hour.

Rinse and pat dry with kitchen roll, put in a bowl with about 4 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, a couple of teaspoons of sugar and the chopped coriander leaves. Season with black pepper and toss gently. Set aside for a couple of hours, or overnight.

Sardines for breakfast?

The poor man’s fish has never been more fashionable. I've seen it most recently gracing some of our very 'best' restaurants, and is as popular as it rightly should be. In mainland europe, the freshest, locally caught sardines have always been treated as a delicacy, and more often than not are at their best simply grilled or barbecued.


This said, the oily strength of the fresh sardine can cope with an abundance of amazing flavours. They can be fantastic marinated and can stand up to strong spices. They can also happily take sour and acidity which counters the oiliness of the sardines.


I was involved in a decent conversations with one of my closest ever friends a couple of days ago regarding his new menus for a restaurant opening he is in the final stages of. We were poring over his breakfast menus and racking our brains for something a little different but a bit of fun too.


We started talking about tinned pilchards in tomato sauce on toast, which evidently is a comfort snack to more than you'd imagine, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with tinned sardines on toast for a quick lunch on the hop. But I think we're going to look into putting freshly roasted sardines and slow roasted tomatoes with a hint of thyme and rosemary on top of griddled slices of ciabatta, and see where this takes us.

Something along these lines...which should be enough for 4

Breakfast sardines and tomatoes on ciabatta with parsley, thyme and rosemary

8 sardines, scaled and gutted
250g ripe tomatoes, cut into small wedges
Rock salt and freshly ground black pepper
A fist of flat parsley, ripped

3 sprigs thyme, leaves ripped off
1 sprig of rosemary, needles picked
Olive oil, for drizzling and brushing
4 thick or 8 thin slices of ciabatta
A handful of fresh greens such as peashoots


Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Lay the sardines and tomatoes in a roasting tray; season with rock salt and freshly ground pepper. Scatter the parsley, thyme and rosemary over the sardines and tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil, toss to coat, then roast for 10 minutes or until the sardines are just cooked.


Heat a griddle pan until almost smoking. Brush the ciabatta lightly with olive oil then season with salt and pepper. Griddle on both sides until toasted and slightly charred.


Divide the ciabatta between plates; place the roasted tomatoes on top. Slice the heads off the sardines; serve whole or filleted on top of the tomatoes. Spoon over the pan juices and sprinkle a pinch of greenery and serve immediately. A good cup of tea and the morning's papers essential.

Cockles, leeks and many spices

I recently had some okayish mussels, in a quite predictable setting with a rather pedestrian style but this time with an unexpected finale. Well, I guess if you're going to have them without an R in the month, a bit of time spent on the toilet is what you deserve.

This hasn't put me off. Foolishly we're now experimenting with cockles out of season, and I can assure that this number has been tried and tested in a few guises, thus far without the bathroom being a part of the recipe.. I recall first making a version of this as the soupy bit for a steamed turbot dish, but was so happy with the flavours that I thought it deserved its own moment of glory. 

Cockles are one of our more underused native shellfish, and it is a shame that they are more recognisable all crinkled up in the pain of a vinegar pickling by the seaside. Do try with cockles as I'm telling you to, but don't stop there with what our craggy shores offer. Maybe just wait till September or there abouts to throw all caution to the sea wind.

Cockles leeks and many spices
Serves about 6

800g leeks (you can use baby ones if you've got some)
2 tblsp olive oil

3 large red chillis, chopped

2 small green chillis, sliced into rounds

Pinch each of cardamom, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne and caraway seeds

1 lemon grass stalk sliced

1 thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced
500g fresh cockles (in the shell)
2 glasses white wine
300ml fish stock
100ml double cream
20g parsley (rough-chop the leaves, and discard the stalks)
20g thyme, chopped
70g butter (unsalted and at room temperature)
black pepper

Boil a pan of salted water. Trim the leeks, and blanch for 6-8 minutes until al dente. Run them immediately under cold water until they reach room temperature (they should feel neither hot nor cold), then cut into thick rounds, or if using baby leeks, into halves or thirds. In a deep frying pan heat the olive oil until nearly smoking. Chuck in all of the spices and aromats apart from half of the red chilli, and toss quickly for half a minute.

Throw in the cockles, then a minute later the white wine, and put the lid on. Cook for 3 minutes. Add the fish stock, toss in the leeks, and reduce the liquid by half. Lower the heat, stir in the double cream, rough-chopped parsley leaves and chopped thyme. Whisk in the butter in knobs and season with black pepper (it should not need any salt). Serve in shallow bowls, discarding any cockles that are not open. Sprinkle the remainder of the chilli and prop the bathroom window open to enjoy properly...

Nasi return Goreng

Traveling is simply the one thing I need to do to survive. If I don't have a trip on the horizon, I get the fidgets. If I haven't got an e-ticket number, or a booking reference to refer to, I'm anxious.


It's times like these, right now anyway, where I return to a place of familiarity and am reminded why I move around so much, why I do what I do and what kicks me on and off those planes. In a nutshell, this destination has a fabulous Nasi Goreng written all over it.


The ironic part of where I've hit landfall, is in that it isn't some beautiful corner of Indonesia where the humble nasi is as part of the fabric as shortbread is to my youth in Scotland, but rathe where I think 'we' perfected this dish.
It's been a year since I was here, and let the boys loose. But I haven't returned to be disappointed. Delighted more like.


Here's pretty much what we're working off - give or take a splash here and there, and a chicken skewer or two.


Serves 4


2½ tblsp vegetable oil
6 small shallots, finely sliced
250g long grain rice, freshly cooked and cooled
A handful each of stir-friable greens, such as asparagus, mangetout, sugar snaps, beansprouts 
Salt and pepper
Handful of prawn crackers, deep fried in vegetable oil
4 fried eggs

Paste

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tsp shrimp paste, toasted

2 mild red chillies, chopped

1 tblsp kecap manis or dark soy sauce

½ tblsp sweet chilli sauce

For the dressing, in a mortar, pound together the garlic, shrimp paste and chillies, then mix in the kecap manis and chilli sauce.

Or just chop and crush everything. Heat 2 tblsp oil in a wok and large frying pan and fry the shrimp paste mixture for 2 minutes.

Add the shallots and stir-fry for about half a minute, then add the rice and stir-fry together for about 3 minutes.

Divide between serving bowls or plates. Stir-fry the beansprouts and greens in ½ tblsp oil with salt and pepper for about 1 minute and pile on to the nasi goreng.

Add rice crackers, fried egg, and serve.