A romantic chicken salad, not forgetting the vinaigrette

The next big date flagged up with a huge red star on the calendar (apart from Superbowl weekend of course, which is marked in blue and yellow highlighters by the way) clearly has to be Valentine's Day. An occasion to have yourself legally robbed, both of cash and guilt, and put each and every one of us under the pressure we rarely would give to an enemy of the state while persuading them to reveal where they've hidden the big bombs.

Why cook at home and go to all that effort and mess rather than take the bother out to your favourite restaurant (which will be mercillesly jacking their prices up for the joy of the occasion)? Where is the fun in actually cooking at home, creating something to be proud of, watch it eaten (hopefully) and reaping the benefits of that warm fuzzy feeling of acomplishment. Who actually does this sort of nonsense anymore? There can be precious few of us left who really, trully and honestly want to cook for a loved one, making them happy through nourishment... Well stop right there daddy'o, we all should...Each and every one of us can make a wee difference in our kitchens, and trust me here, even if stuffed up, the effort goes a long long way at home.

The first time a girl cooked for me on, ironically it had to be on Valentine’s day, was when I was 16. Her parents were out of town, well I think that's what she told me. She dressed up a set of foot stools in her living room and built a fire in the fireplace.

For dinner, she made us each an enormous salad—a bowl piled high with spinach leaves, grilled chicken, walnuts, either dried cranberries or raisins I think and a cheese of one form or another, hopefully it was a goat's.

I do recall she wasn’t much of a cook, and was incredibly nervous about making everything perfect. So nervous, in fact, that she forgot to put any description of a dressing on our salads. It was close to awful; each mouthful was a chore to swallow, each bite crackled like the log fire, and every time I dug in for another forkful, the poor thing had to be accompanied by a coy smile or acknowledgment towards her efforts.

If I was you, I'd be thinking along the lines of something as straight forward as this (don't forget the dressing) for your love this Valentine's, well that or book your favourite over-priced restaurant as soon as you possibly can.

Jerusalem artichokes provide carbohydrates and starch in this all-in-one salad. I think it is ideal for a light lunch and it leaves you with just enough room for a quick dessert. If you’re short of time, of course you can leave out the hassle of the deep-fried onion rings, but they do give a nice bit of crunch to the salad.

This will serve 4 as a starter, or a cosy generous 2 on its' own.

400g Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed and washed
2 tblsp olive oil
4 free-range chicken breasts, with skin on
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A few knobs of butter
150g baby spinach leaves, washed

For the vinaigrette
2 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
50ml sherry vinegar
150ml olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of caster sugar


For the onion rings
1 medium onion, peeled, cut horizontally and separated into rings
125g plain flour, plus 1 tblsp extra for dusting
30g corn flour
½ tsp fine sea salt
300ml light beer (or soda water)
Groundnut oil, for deep-frying

First, cook the Jerusalem artichokes. Boil them with their skin on in a pan of salted water until tender when pierced with a sharp knife, after about 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the vinaigrette. Mix the chopped shallot, vinegar and oil together in a small bowl and season to taste with the salt, pepper and sugar. Set aside and allow the flavours to infuse.

When tender, drain the Jerusalem artichokes and leave to cool slightly. Heat a frying pan with the oil until hot. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and fry, skin-side down, for 3-4 minutes until the skin is golden brown and crisp. Turn over the breasts to cook the other side for another 3-4 minutes. Add a few knobs of butter and as it begins to foam, spoon over the butter to baste the chicken breasts. The thickest part of the breasts should feel firm when cooked through. Remove from the pan and leave to rest.

Cut the Jerusalem artichokes into thick slices. In the same pan that you cooked the chicken, melt a few more knobs of butter and add the artichoke slices. Fry for a few minutes each side until golden brown at the sides. Remove from the pan and keep warm.

To make the onion rings, sift the flour, corn flour and salt into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Using a balloon whisk, mix in the beer or soda until the batter is just smooth.

Heat a deep-fat fryer or a heavy-based saucepan with about 15cm of groundnut oil until hot. (A small piece of bread dropped into it should sizzle immediately and float to the surface.) Deep-fry the onion rings a few at a time. Dust them lightly with flour then lightly coat in the batter. Gently drop the rings into the hot oil and fry until golden brown on both sides. Drain on kitchen paper and repeat with the remaining onion rings.

Toss the baby spinach and Jerusalem artichokes with some vinaigrette, then divide on to individual plates. Thickly slice the chicken breasts and place on top of the leaves. Scatter over the onion rings and drizzle more vinaigrette. Serve at once.

Crab mayonnaise finger sandwiches

At any time of year, a quick snack dipped in a tiny bit of luxury to help in the perk me up process really ought to involve a bit of shellfish, and crab - so accessible and not really all that expensive fits the bill. I'd love to be in a position where I could romanticise up daily lingering lunches like this; glass of champagne, copy of The Telegraph and Radio 3 plinking away in the background of my fantasy Thursday lunchtimes. The stark reality, well midweek anyways, is that there are precious weekends right now where this shoe fits, so midweek? Ha! Stick it in a sandwich and grab it when you can...

Thankfully all is not entirely lost, the crab mayonnaise filling is very versatile – fantastic wrapped in lettuce leaves, in mini pastry shells as canapés and on bruschetta, or as I've done with a soft boiled egg and a few salad leaves this time round. Use fresh crabmeat and if you can, and homemade mayonnaise if you will for the best result and flavour.

Serves 4-6

300g white crabmeat
1 shallot, peeled and very finely chopped
½ crisp green apple (e.g., Granny Smith), peeled and finely diced
Small handful of coriander leaves, chopped
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
6-7 tblsp mayonnaise
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Squeeze of lime juice
8 medium slices of brown bread

Place the crabmeat in a bowl and pick out any bits of shell. Stir in the shallot, apple and coriander, and then add the mustard and enough mayonnaise to bind the mixture together.

Season with salt, pepper and lime juice. Chill for 20 minutes to allow the mixture to firm up a little.

Spread a thick layer of the crab mixture on to four slices of bread. Sandwich with the remaining pieces of bread. Cut off the crusts and slice each sandwich into three “fingers”. Serve immediately.

Spicy seafood soup

...and continuing the theme of spice and broth, yesterdays freezing rain just sealed the deal when deciding what to conjure up for lunch. Feeling a bit low with the world always has me turning to soup, as many will testify, it must simply be the 'Mothers warmth factor' in soup that makes most things seem better all of a sudden. Funnily enough I called my Mum after lunch and endured a tortuous but hilarious thirty minute walk through of receiving and replying to an email I'd just sent her! There will be a time, in the not too distant future when I'll be exasperating my own kids over some new fangled technology.

I don't have a blender at home, so more often than not, my soups tend to be chunky anyway, this seafood number is a good example of bunging it all in, getting your timing right, and serving straight from the pot. The recipe below is tried and tested, but really should only act as a starting point. 

Serves 2

2 large shrimp (prawn)

2 boneless fillets from a sea eel

2 pen shell clams

2 ounces (60g) prepared squid

2 large mussels

2 asari clams

2 large clams

½ young corn cob

¼ chingensai (bok choy or pak choi)

15 fluid ounces (440ml) dashi

1 sea bass fillet, cut into chunks

2 tbsp light soy sauce

¼ teaspoon sea salt

2 tbsp sake

1 teaspoon chilli garlic sauce

Coriander leaves

Prepare the main soup ingredients: insert a knife into the back of the shrimp and de-vein. Pour boiling water over it to change partially the surface colour. Plunge the eel into boiling water, immediately drain and plunge into iced water. Extract the pen shell clam from its shell and cut it and the squid into thin slices, about ¹/₁₆ in (3 mm) thick. Rinse well the mussel, the asari clams and the clam. Briefly blanch the young corn and the chingensai.

Pour the dashi into a cooking pot, add the main soup ingredients (including the sea bass) and bring to a boil. When the shells open, add the soy sauce, sea salt and sake to taste, and then add the chilli garlic sauce.

Transfer to a soup dish and sprinkle with coriander. I have this little jar of bonito, seaweed and sesame at home which I scattered over too - remarkable flavours.

Make sure that the fish, young corn and chingensai are all cooked and ready to eat at the same time. The shellfish are ready to eat as soon as the shells open.

Korean rice

비빔밥

Bibimbop literally means "mixed rice" or "mixed meal" in Korean. It's a popular meal consisting of a bowl of steamed white rice topped with vegetables, beef, a whole egg, and kochujang (Korean chili pepper paste). If you know what you're really doing, then the Kochujang is normally served separately to control its spiciness of this rice dish, failure to do this will result in mouth fire as experiences of late will testify.

A variation of this dish, dolsot bibimbop ("dolsot" meaning "stone pot") is served in a heated stone bowl, in which a raw egg is cooked against the sides of the bowl. Before the rice is placed in the bowl, the bottom of the bowl is coated with sesame oil; consequently, the portion of the rice touching the bowl becomes golden brown and crispy.

Vegetables commonly used in bibimbop include cucumber, courgettes, carrot, white radish, mushrooms, bellflower root, and laver, as well as spinach, soybean sprouts, and bracken fern stems. Tofu, either plain or sauteed, may also be included in the dish. Within both types of bibimbops, all ingredients are typically stirred together thoroughly before eating.

This recipe is a mouthful in both senses, but honestly, properly cooked rice topped with anything from the Korean market will be a very close call towards a good thing indeed. If you feel inclined to make your own kimchi then there's another awesome addition, otherwise buy it in, just as good.

1/4 lb of chopped beef (ground beef is acceptable)

100g bellflower roots (doraji)

50g bean sprouts

1 lettuce leaf

3 shiitake mushrooms

1 sheet of vegetable jelly

1/3 carrot

1 cucumber

1 egg

3 cups sticky rice, steamed

4 tbsp kochujang

1 tblsp sugar

1 tblsp sesame seeds

sesame oil

Wash 3 cups of rice, soak for 30 minutes and drain. Put the rice in a heavy saucepan with a tight fitting lid and add 3 1/3 cups of water, then bring them to a boil. After 10-15 minutes boiling, reduce the heat and simmer with the lid on for 5 minutes. Do not lift the lid while cooking.

Season beef and stir-fry lightly until cooked. Cut cucumbers, carrots and shitake mushrooms into match stick size and shred bellflower roots (doraji) and lettuce leaf. Squeeze out excess water and sprinkle them with salt (not including lettuce leaf).

Add 1 tsp of sesame oil to hot frying pan and stir-fry the cucumber quickly so the colour stays vivid. Spread them on a big plate to cool. Add more sesame oil, then stir-fry bellflower roots, carrots, and mushrooms consecutively.

Place cooked rice in a deep dish and add the prepared ingredients on top of the rice (*For hot stone dolsot bibimbop, heat the stone pot until hot enough to burn the fingers and coat 2 tsp of sesame oil. Place the rice sizzling right into the hot stone pot).

Fry an egg sunny-side-up in a frying pan and place it on top of the dish (*For hot stone dolsot bibimbop, place the raw egg on the side of the hot pot so it can slightly cook).

To make seasoned kochujang paste, combine 4 tablespoons of kochujang, 1 tbsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of sesame seeds and 2 tsp of sesame oil.  Mix all ingredients well.

Add seasoned kochujang to taste and mixes it thoroughly with the rice and vegetables before beginning.


For homemade kimchi, have a look here 

Onion and coconut flatbreads

Thinking of the tragic deluge currently destroying huge swathes of Queensland makes me think of a couple of truly fantastic friends over there, who thankfully are not in any immediate danger but still suffering all the same, takes me oddly to Sri Lanka with Michelle (from the beautiful Yeppoon; you see, it makes sense eventually) and one of the best foreign sorties I think I've ever had.

The food over there is so remarkable in its simplicity, and I struggle to remember where I have ever had dishes with such impact through less fuss. In Sri Lanka, there is naturally a heavy use of coconut oil in their cooking and I am pretty sure there is a tendancy to throw some of the oil into their flatbreads too. You can often find coconut oil in health food stores or in good ethnic groceries. If not, you can substitute it with coconut cream instead. One thing which has always fascinated me is that even the most primitive of kitchens there have some sort of a food processor - this is needed for this recipe to get the right blend of onions, no lumps needed!

Here's me doing mine the other night in a chilly Washington, and below is the master at work last time I was in Sri Lanka.

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
200ml water
400g strong flour, plus extra for dusting
2 tsp fine sea salt
50ml coconut oil (or coconut cream)
Vegetable oil, for frying

Place the onion and water in a blender and purée.

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the onion and the coconut oil. Stir the mixture with a butter knife until the dough comes together. (Add a little extra water, a tablespoon at a time, if the mixture seems too dry.)

Place the dough on to a floured board and knead for 5-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rest for 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into eight 50g pieces and shape into round balls. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into thin circles and cover with a sheet of baking parchment.

Heat a non stick frying pan over medium heat. One at a time, fry the dough for 3-4 minutes on each side until golden brown at the edges. Drain on kitchen paper and cover immediately with a clean towel. Repeat, cooking the rest of the dough. Serve warm, preferably with a fragrant chicken curry with plenty chilli bite.

Blackened salmon with orange yoghurt sauce

Dinner the other night was just this simple; a piece of salmon purposely blackened to within an inch of its poor mistaken life, yoghurt and lemon rice. A plate of sliced cured sausage, and a piece of brie split in half with a bit of truffle and mascarpone stuffed inside. A couple of home made pickles chucked in for good measure, and eating at home has never been quite so rewarding indeed.

Our poor salmon is much maligned, and doesn't really deserve the negativity it gets, but will reward you with a bit of work and creative effort. It was not so long ago really when poaching was the only method we turned to for this fish, but the delicate flavour of salmon really comes through when it is charred brutaly on the outside, all the while protecting the centre to cook effectively with its own steam.

This recipe serves 4 as part of a selection of tapas or 2 as a main course

300g salmon fillet, skinned and boned
2 tblsp vegetable oil
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp Spanish sweet smoked paprika
½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds, lightly toasted
1 tsp fine salt

For the citrus yoghurt
300ml Greek yoghurt
zest and juice of one orange
60ml extra virgin olive oil

Cut the prepared salmon fillet into 2.5cm cubes. Coat the salmon in one tablespoon of the vegetable oil and then set aside in a large dish.

Combine the thyme, rosemary, oregano, paprika, cayenne, garlic, cumin seeds and salt in a small bowl. Generously coat the salmon cubes in the spice mixture and leave to sit while you prepare the citrus yoghurt.

Put the yoghurt, orange zest and juice and the olive oil in a bowl and, using a small whisk, combine, then set aside. Heat the remaining vegetable oil in a large, non-stick frying pan and cook the salmon for 3-4 minutes, turning frequently until it's golden all over.

Serve warm with cocktail sticks and the yoghurt sauce for dipping as a canape.

Turkey sandwich

The Boxing Day sandwich was a triumph. But now we're back on an even keel, and the New Year well under way, the sandwich we only ever associate with leftovers is making a stand in his own right.

Slices of slightly dry turkey, a crumble of stuffing, a couple of bacon wrapped chipolatas if you're lucky and possibly a sliced cold roast potato or two; all evened out by the token healthy crisp of some salad leaves and a smear of mayonnaise and you no better a sandwich you'll construct all year.

It's all about the moment though isn't it really? I mean, a killer Pimms served on a polo field in Gloucestershire at the height of Summer is not the same beast as the one served up in a smoky bar on Kazinczy Street in Budapest in January. As is the fragrance of a tongue numbing green papaya salad with an attack of lime, fish sauce and chilli utterly enveloping your mouth on the streets of Chiang Mai in blistering July, simply not the same at the Golden Sawadee in Bognor on a rainy Tuesday in November.

As it is, I'm not sure there's a terribly wrong time for an honest sandwich, and have to admit to roasting off a decent sized crown of turkey for just this. Far rather take this approach than anything on offer in the deli section at any time of the year. my favourite sandwich moment of the year, executed in January without leftover stuffing etc. shall be constructed from the below array of bits and pieces. All or some will go in this time round, saving the other options for next time. And believe you me, there will be many of those before the 26th December this year...

Turkey, sliced anywhere up to the thickness of your pinkie, still just warm from roasting.
Soft sourdough bread, cold but fresh - dipped lightly in the turkey roasting juices
Crisp grilled bacon –  streaky and smoked preferred
A chutney of some sort - experiment with what takes your fancy, but picalilli gets the nod today
A pickle too - I pickled a gallon of baby onions before Christmas; they're in
Mayonnaise

Salad leaves; crisp green and bitter preferably

Avocado slices have a time and a place on occasion

As does a thin shredding of raw celeriac

A cold beer on the side, and French fries in lieu of the leftover roast spuds

Jingle bells all the way!