Mexican Roast Chicken with Stuffing

5 Slices White Bread
3 Tomatillos, Finely chopped (optional)
2 Tbsp Chipotle Paste
1 Spanish Onion, Diced
1 Egg
1 Handful Diced Chorizo
1 Handful Sweetcorn
1 Chicken

Remove the crusts from the bread, put it in a blender and turn it into crumbs. Fry the onion and chorizo until the onion is soft. Tip everything (except the chicken and half of the chipotle paste) into a bowl and mix well. Season to taste. Put this stuffing inside the chicken. Smear the remaining chipotle paste over the chicken and roast. Cooking time will depend on the size of the chicken, but 1 hour at 200 C is usually not too far off.

Crab Bisque

This is a simpler variation of the Prawn Bisque posted previously. It's no less delicious though.

Discarded prawn heads / shells leftover from peeling prawns in other recipes - Lots
1 bulb Fennel, cut in half
2 Carrots
1 White Onion, peeled
Small handful Tarragon, finely chopped
400gms brown and white crab meat
4 Tbsps Tomato Puree
200ml Single Cream
200ml White Wine

Put the prawn heads into a large pot with 4 pints of water. Add the fennel, carrots and onion and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for about an hour, then strain through a sieve.

Freeze half of the liquid for later use, or boil vigorously to reduce liquid by half. Add the tomato puree and the wine to the remaining liquid and return to a simmer. Season to taste, then add the crab, tarragon and cream. Stir well and serve.

Mexican Mayonnaise

2 Egg Yolks
Juice of 1 Lime
300 ml Olive Oil
Handful of Coriander Leaves, finely chopped
2 Red chillies, finely chopped
Salt

Put the egg yolks and the lime juice in a blender. Very slowly dribble in the olive oil until the mayonnaise thickens. At the end, add the coriander, chillies and salt and blend again. Delicous with fried skate wings.

Broad Beans Sichuan Style

Broad Beans
1Tbsp Sichuan Peppercorns
1 Tsp Sesame Oil
Salt

Boil the beans for a couple of minutes until just softening. Drain and rinse with cold water. Heat the peppercorns gently without accompaniment until they begin to smoke. Keep them moving to avoid burning. Put them in a spice grainder or blender and grind them to a powder. Sprinkle this over the beans along with the sesame oil and salt to taste.

Spicy Crab Cakes

1 Stalk Lemon Grass
1 Tbsp Fresh Green Peppercorns, finely chopped
4 Dried Red chillis, finely chopped
Mixed meat from 2 Medium crabs, chopped
4 Spring Onions, green parts only, finely sliced
3 Slices White Bread
2 Tbsps Mayonnaise
Salt to taste

Remove the tough outer layers from the lemon grass as well as the tough bit at the end. Thinly slice, then chop. Turn the bread into crumbs with a blender. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Season with salt. Make the mixture into patties and fry in butter for a couple of minutes on each side. Serve with garlic mayonnaise and avocado salsa.

Cranberry Margarita

A drink, for a change. This recipe serves ONE.

3 Tsps Caster Sugar
4oz Cointreau
6oz Tequila
4oz Lime Juice
4oz Fresh, unsweetened Cranberry Juice

Mix all the ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. If you want the frozen version, put the mixture in an ice cream machine (it's the only thing I ever use my ice cream machine for) and process until frozen.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Mangetout

Cherry Tomatoes
Mangetout Peas
Spring Onions, finely sliced
Basil, roughly chopped
Thyme, finely chopped
Olive Oil

Preheat an oven to 200C. Put a few tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom of a baking tray. Halve the tomatoes and put them on the baking tray. Scatter everything else over the tomatoes and season well with salt. Roast for 10 minutes or until the mangetout are the way you like them.

Thai Scallop Ceviche

12 Scallops
3 Spring Onions, finely chopped
1/2 Red Onion, thinly sliced
2 Stalks Lemon Grass
12 Cherry Tomatoes, halved
2 Red Chillis, finely chopped
Handful of basil, chopped
Handful of Coriander, chopped
Juice of 2 Limes
Fish Sauce (same quantity as lime juice)
4 Tsps Sugar

Clean the scallops, removing the coral. Slice each one across the grain to a thickness of a pound coin. Mix the lime juice and fish sauce and marinade the scallop slices in this mixture for 1 hour. Remove the scallops and stir in the sugar. Peel the outer layers from the lemon grass and remove the hard parts at the base. Slice very finely. Add everything back into the lime juice mixture and stir.

Sage and Onion Stuffing with Pancetta

1 stalk Celery, chopped
1 Onion, chopped
4oz Pancetta
1/2 loaf white bread, crusts removed
Handful of sage leaves, chopped
1 egg
Olive oil

Put the bread in a food processer and turn it into crumbs. Fry the onion, celery and pancetta in the oil until the vegetables have softened. Add the sage and fry for another minute or two. Add the stuff you've been frying to the breadcrumbs. Season and add the egg. Mix well and stuff the lot into the chicken.

Pawa (or poha)

There's not much point in reading this unless you have access to a specialty Indian food shop. Pawa (or poha as Madhur Jaffrey spells it) is flaked (flattened) rice. This is a delicious snack food, if that's the sort of thing you like. My wife loves it, and I make it once a year on her birthday:

2 good handfulls pawa
2 Tbsp corn oil
2 tsps black mustard seeds
1 onion, finely chopped
3 green chillis, chopped
1 good handfull coriander leves, chopped
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 tsp turmeric powder

Wash the pawa in a colander under cold water. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the mustard seeds. When they begin to jump about, add the onion and chilli. Allow the onion to soften a little then add all the rest of the ingredients. Warm through, and season to taste. Can be eaten warm straight away, or cold later on.

Some might add diced, boiled potato; dessicated coconut; curry leaves - or, for that matter, anything else that takes your fancy.

Sage and Onion Stuffing

Another recipe scarcely worth bothering to post. Just put in anything that happens to be in your kitchen.

1 onion, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
2 leeks, sliced
1 good handful of sage, chopped
4 slices white bread crumbled to ... crumbs
1 egg
salt pepper

Soften the onion, celery, leeks in a knob of butter. Add the sage and cook for a minute or two. Put these vegetables in a bowl and mix in with the breadcrumbs. Add the egg to bind and season to taste.

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.