Lamb Kebab

Pitta Bread
Lean lamb
Good handfull of mint leaves
2 Tbsps Plain yoghurt
2 Tbsps Olive Oil
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 Tomato, sliced
1 Red onion, thinly sliced
Rocket

Comboine the mint, yoghurt, oil and lemon juice in a blender in mix into a green paste. Chop the lamb into 1" cubes and impale on a skewer. Heat a griddle until very hot, then place the lamb skewers on it. Turn after a couple of minutes and cook for another two minutes. Meanwhile warm the pitta bread, put in some rocket, tomato and onion. Remove the lamb from the heat, take it off the skewers and put it in the bread. Spoon some of the sauce over it and serve.

Salmon Fishcakes

2 Salmon fillets, skin removed
2 Potatoes
1 Tbsp taragon, chopped
1 Tbsp chives, chopped
1 Onion, chopped
2 Cloves garlic
100g Butter

Peel and boil the potatoes for 10-15 minutes until soft. Mash with the butter, taragon and chives. Crush the garlic into the mixture. Fry the onion in a little oil and just beginning to soften. Mix in with the potatoes. Fry the salmon gently until cooked through. It speeds things up if you flake it as it cooks. When cooked, flake it and add to the potato mixture. Form this into patties, dust with flour and dry for a couple of miutes on each side. Serve with lemon wedges.

Prawn Bisque

If you try any of these recipes, or even if you don't, feel free to add some comments.

For this one, which is based on a crab recipe by Rick Stein, you will need to have saved the heads and shells from uncooked, unpeeled prawns used in other recipes. Put a load of these (at least a couple of dozen prawns) in with a couple of pints of water and simmer for 45 minutes. Strain out the resulting stock (which is delicious in all sorts of recipes). Heat a little butter in a pan and add one chopped onion, a couple of stalks of celery and a carrot, also chopped. Cook for 5 minutes or so, until softened. Splash in a little brandy and cook for another minute. Add a handfull of chopped taragon and the stock and simmer for 20 minutes. Give it a quick blast in a blender then strain it into another saucepan. Add salt and a small carton of double cream. Serve with a garnish of chopped chives.

Very delicate.

Mexican Stuffed Marrow

1 Marrow
1 Small onion, chopped
3 Tomatoes, chopped
200 grms Lamb mince
1 Tbsp Chipotle paste

Slice the marrow in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Mix together all the other ingredients and add salt to taste. Place the mixture in the hollowed-our marrow halves, wrap with foil and bake for 45 mins - 1 hour in an oven at 200C.

Nothing simpler.

Chicken Enchiladas with Green Salsa

Quick, simple, delicious and you can substitute pretty much anything for anything else.

2 Chicken breast fillets
3 Tomatoes, quartered
1/2 Spanish onion, sliced
1 Clove garlic, sliced
1 bunch Coriander, roughly chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
1 TbspChipotle Paste
4 Corn tortillas
Grated cheese (Cheddar)
Corn

Place the chicken in boiling water and cook for 12 minutes. Drain and leave to cool.

Put the tomatoes, onion, garlic, coriander, lemon juice and chipotle paste in a blender and blend to a coarse sludge.

Shred the chicken. Divide the chicken and green sludge between the four tortillas. Sprinkle some corn on each, then roll them and place in a baking dish. Cover with cheese and bake in an iven at 200C for 20 minutes.

How Not To Wind-Dry a Duck

One of my most frequently used cookery books is Fuchsia Dunlop's excellent Sichuan Cookery. At the moment though, I don't feel there is much point in reproducing her recipes here. Unless you live near a good Chinese supermarket, you won't be able to find many of the ingredients. Even if you do, there are two key ingredients, Sichuan peppercorns and Facing Heaven chillis, which are almost unobtainable in this country. To be fair, it is fairly easy to get hold of the former, but they are almost tasteless, and they bear as much resemblance to the real thing as tinned spagetti hoops do to handmade pasta. Facing Heaven chillis can seldom even be found in ersatz form. In theory The Spice Shop (see my links section) both items, but in practice they rarely have the chillis and more often than not sell the easily obtainable inferior peppercorns. Luckily for me my brother lives in China and brings me lethally strong peppercorns, and I have had some success growing the Facing Heaven chillis myself.

Anyway, back to that duck: Sichuanese Roast Duck to be precise. This calls for some advance planning, not normally a feature of my cooking. Having bought the duck a day in advance, you stuff it and leave it to marinate overnight. The next day you pour some boiling water over it, dry it off, brush it with a glaze mixture and "hang it up in a cool place to wind-dry (I hang mine outside a north-facing window)... ...Leave the duck to dry for at least 6 hours until the skin feels papery". Our house doesn't have a north-facing window, but it does have some east-facing guttering. I hung my duck from this with a meathook, worrying about what the neighbours might think. The day was overcast and without wind, but at least it was dry. However, six hours later the duck was no more dry than when I had hung it up, although it had attracted a few flies. I then decided that wind was the missing component and brought the duck in to the conservatory. Here there is an electric fan heater. I hung the duck from a mop resting on two chairs and placed the fan heater nearby. When I returned an hour later to check on progress, I found a pool of fat under the duck. The fan heater was too hot and was gently cooking the duck. At this stage I gave up and proceeded with the rest of the recipe, ie put it in the oven. Happily it turned out quite well, so maybe all that wind-drying is unnecessary.

Chicken with Preserved Lemons

An easy and delicious Aga recipe.

2 chicken breast portions with bone and wing
2 pints good chicken stock
1 Spanish onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
Generous pinch of Saffron
1 Glass white wine
1 preserved lemon (I'll post a recipe for these some other time, or you can buy them from good delis). Slice the lemon and removed the insides.
A few pieces of dried orange peel, soaked in hot water and thinly sliced
A handful of green olives, seeds removed.

Heat some olive oil in an ovenproof casserole. Add the chicken and brown on all sides. Remove and set aside. Put in the onions and cooked until softened. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Deglaze with the wine, then add the stock, saffron, orange and the chicken. Put in the hot oven of an Aga for 1/2 an hour (or a normal oven pre-heated to 200C). Remove from the oven and add the lemon and olives. Cook in the oven for a further half hour then serve on couscous.

This is very popular with both of the children,

Thai Prawns with Basil

K has been away for the last few days in New York, leaving me with the children. I can't usually be bothered to cook just for myself, hence the silence. She returned yetserday and described this as "very, very nice":

Uncooked prawns, peeled and de-veined
1 large handful of basil, roughly chopped (preferably Thai holy basil)
2 stalks lemon grass, finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
6 red chillies (or to taste), chopped
1 small white onion, sliced vertically
2 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
3 Tbsp chicken stock or water
2 Tbsp cooking oil

Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan. Add the onion. Cook for a minute or two, then add the garlic, lemon grass and chilles. Cook for a further minute, then add the remaining ingredients. Cook until the prawns have cooked through and server over rice.

Langoustines with Garlic Butter

We've just come up to our house in Scotland for a week. The house has an Aga, which is nice for warming ones bottom on, but takes some getting used to as a cooker. I'm still at the early stages of the learning process. The house is on the edge of Loch Fyne, so you might have thought that a wide variety of excellent seafood would be available. Not so, alas. However one of the few exceptions is that we can usually get fresh langoustines. They're expensive, but we usually treat ourselves the first evening we're here. This is another "recipe" which it's scarecly worth writing down, but here it is anyway.

Spread the langoustines (1.5kg for 2 people) on a baking tray. Bake in a hot oven for 10 minutes. In the meantime, warm 200g butter over a low heat. Peel 6 cloves of garlic and crush into the butter. Allow to cook for a couple of minutes. Stack the langoustines on a bed of boiled rice, then pour the garlic butter over them. Serve with finger bowls and lots of paper towels as this is messy to eat.

Save the langoutine heads and shells. These can be used to make an excellent stock.

Spicy Tangerine Chicken

This one is loosely based on a recipe from "Chinese Food" by Kenneth Lo.

2 Boneless chicken breasts
Shaoxing wine
Cornflour
6 Dried Thai red chillies (or to taste)
1 Tbsp dried tangerine peel broken into small bits
Sugar
Black vinegar
Light soy sauce
Groundnut oil
Sesame Oil
1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and cut into 1cm chunks.

Chop the chicken breasts into small pieces not much larger than the spring onion bits. Marinade the chicken in 2 tbsps wine, 1 tbsp soy sauce and 1 tsp cornflour. Chop the chillies into 0.5cm lengths.

I expect you can buy dried tangerine peel in Chinese supermarkets, but it's easiest to make your own by leaving your tangerine peels on a windowsill untill they dry out.

Mix 2 tsps sugar, 2 tsps vinegar, 2 tsps soy sauce and 1 tsp sesame oil. Set this sauce aside.

Heat 3 tbsps groundnut oil over a high heat in a wok. Add the chillies. Stir until they are dark brown. Add the tangerine and stir for another 15 seconds. Add the chicken and spring onions. Cook until the chicken is cooked through (not very long). Add the sauce, stir and serve with rice.

K's comment was that it was too delicate for her tastes and that it lacked sauce. It's meant to be a dry dish, so the latter comment is unfair. As for delicate, hardly.

Seared Tuna with Pommes Dauphinoise

And not a chilli in sight. I saw Rick Stein make this (the potatoes) on TV a few days ago. It's not the healthiest way of eating potatoes, and I remember disliking the dish as a child, but I've changed my mind on that.

Peel the potatoes and slice quite thin. Grease a casserole dish with butter then crush some garlic and smear onto the base of the dish. Add a single layer of potatoes then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat this until all the potato slices are used up. Mix 100ml of double cream with 100ml milk and pour over the potatoes. The liquid should not cover the potatoes, but should come close to doing so. If necessary add more milk. Bake at 170C for an hour or so, then sear your tuna on a hot griddle.

K away in Japan until the end of the week, and I'm too lazy to cook anything interesting for myself, so I'll post nothing more until Saturday.

Thai Mussels

Another very simple dish:

Juice of 3 lemons
Fish Sauce or light soy sauce
3 Tbsp sugar
1 Onion peeled and sliced vertically
6 Red chillies, chopped
Handfull of basil, shredded
One stalk lemongrass, finely sliced
2Kg mussels

Mix together the lemon juice, an equal quantity of fish sauce and the sugar. Bring to boil in a small saucepan and remove from the heat. Put the mussels in casserole dish or large saucepan. Sprinkle the rest of the ingredients on top. Pour the lemon juice mixture over the mussels, then cover and boil until the mussels open.

Trifle

Andrew and Jo for dinner tonight. Lamb stew from last week (because it's easy) to start, followed by a trifle from Gordon Ramsay's Just Desserts, possibly the first time I've used the book. It was splendid but over fussy in his detail. It's just: crushed Amaretti biscuits soaked in Framboise covered in a layer of sliced peach (he would have you skin them, but life is surely too short), then a layer of raspberries. Top with Creme Anglais and a dollop of thick double cream.

Harissa Chicken with Leeks and Garlic Mash

So straightforward is the chicken that if I were writing a cookbook I would be embarassed to include this as a recipe. That said, the recipe comes from Moro by Sam & Sam Clark (a book I do recommend):

Smear harissa on a chicken. Put it in a roasting tray, sprinkle with olive oil and roast it. An hour at 200C should put you in the ballpark. Baste with a little more oil after half an hour.

The leeks are my own invention:

Cut the leeks into 1cm clices. Melt some butter in a frying pan and add the leeks. Add 2 tsp harissa. Splash in 2 tbsp sherry vinegar and a little salt. Cook until the leeks are just beginning to soften.

The garlic mash doesn't deserve instructions. It's obvious.

Use the oil / juice from the bottom of the roasting pan as gravy for the chicken and potatoes.

No Dinner

A very late lunch of heated-up pre-cooked nibbles from M&S, so couldn't get up enough enthusiasm for dinner.

I should mention that yesterday's recipe for chipotle paste is derived from a recipe in Mexican Kitchen by Rick Bayless. It's not a book I could recommend wholeheartedly. I find it terrifically overcomplicated.

Unless otherwise attibuted, the recipes which I describe are my own, or are as far as I can remember. They are also for two people unless otherwise mentioned.

Chipotle Potatoes

Last night we went to Texas Lone Star in Chelsea with my sister's family to say goodbye to her daughter who is leaving for university tomorrow. The food was unexceptional, but the Margaritas were awful - sickly sweet with hardly any lime juice.

Anyway, as promised yesterday, with no recipe from last night I return to Chipotle Potatoes.

First you need to make the chipotle paste. This is a staple in my kitchen and keeps forever in the fridge provided that there is a layer of oil on top.

Heat half a pint of water and stir in 3 Tbsps soft brown sugar. In the meantime heat some (groundnut) oil in a frying pan. When hot, drop in 3 batches of 10 chipotles. When the chipotles have puffed up and softened (about a minute) transfer them with a slotted spoon to the sugar water. Once you have cooked all the chipotles transfer them, along with the sugar water into a blender and blend into a smooth paste. Return the paste to a high sided frying pan or saucepan. Add 500ml of groundnut oil and cook very gently for 20 minutes. Set aside to cool then drain off as much of the oil as you can into a separate container. You've now got some delicious chipotle oil as well as a container of chipotle paste. Pour enough fresh groundnut oil over the chipotle paste to cover completely then store in the refrigerator.

Now peel some potatoes and boil for ten minutes. Remove, drain and slice them about 5mm thick. Pour some chipotle oil onto a baking tray and add a Tsp of the chipotle paste. Lay all of the potato slices in the oil, not overlapping. Sprinkle salt over them. Bake in the oven at 200C for about 7 minutes. Remove and flip over the slices. Sprinkle with salt again and put them back in the oven for another 7 minutes.

The result should be crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and with a delicious chipotle flavour. They aren't as spicy as you might think.

Skate Wings with Hot Sauce and Chipotle Potatoes

More appropriate for the time of year than yesterday's dinner, this was a success except that the hot sauce was too hot for any normal human being. It might have been a better idea to have seeded the chilies or to have used only one.

1 Skate wing chopped in half
2 Tomatoes
Juice of 3 Limes
1 Tbsp sugar
2 red Habanero chilies (these are lethal. Be careful!)
1 clove garlic
1" of garlic, peeled and sliced

Put everything (except of course the skate) in a blender and blend until smooth. Transfer to a saucepan and warm over a low heat.

Dust the skate with flour. Heat some oil in a frying pan and fry the skate, turning once. How long this will take will obviously depend on the thickness of the fish. Probably in the region of three minutes on each side. Serve with the hot sauce.

Delicious and simple. Skate is relatively inexpensive too. We had chipotle potatoes (K's favourite) as an accompaniment, but I'll leave the recipe for those until another day. Also a salad of rocket, spring onions and roasted cherry tomatoes - no dressing needed. The roasted cherry tomatoes came from Borough market (in London). At £3.50 a tub they are ludicrously expensive, but they are unspeakably delicious. Today is market day, so I'll be back for more.

Lamb Stew

The idea was 'Coq au Vin' with lamb and it worked pretty well.

400gms of lamb neck fillet cut into bite size chunks
Shallots, peeled
Portobello mushrooms
Small carrots
Red wine (I used a quite drinkable Australian Shiraz, for what it's worth)
1/2 Ltr Chicken stock
1 clove of garlic, finely sliced
2 red chillies, finely sliced (these will be a recurring theme)
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
salt to taste

I heated up some olive oil in a casserole dish and put in the shallots. The garlic occurred to me at this stage and I sliced a clove while stirring the shallots. When they were beginning to turn brown, I added the lamb and the garlic. Once the lamb was browned, in went about a third of a bottle of the wine then everything else except about half of the chicken stock. I covered the dish and put it in a pre-heated oven at 170C.

After about an hour an a half I checked on progress and found that the liquid level was getting a bit low, so added the rest of the stock. Then it went back in for another hour.

K and I ate it without accompaniment. Delicious comfort food, perhaps better suited to a winter evening. Some good bread to mop up the sauce would have been nice, but a spoon worked fine.