Being a city dweller, I was lucky to receive two supremely fresh ingredients this week: wild garlic from Riverford and chicken breasts from an Oxfordshire farm (thanks to my friend, who assures me the animals were running around on Friday). So I needed a quick, simple way to put these two together. With a little inspiration, I settled on grilled chicken with wild garlic pesto.

Grilled Chicken with Wild Garlic Pesto

Pesto originates from a coastal region in north-west Italy called Liguria, an area where basil is the king of herbs. It is traditionally made by crushing garlic, salt, torn basil leaves, olive oil, Pecorino (or Parmesan) and pine nuts in a mortar and pestle (hence its name). But in an insult to the purists, I cheated and used a hand blender to save time.

Now for the chicken… to keep chicken breasts moist, the consensus is to use ‘dry’ heat for a short amount of time (grilling, frying, roasting, barbecuing) or ‘moist’ heat for a longer period of time (poaching, steaming, slow cooking, microwaving). The other option, brining, wasn’t suitable as I was after a quick meal. I decided to keep it simple and grill the chicken (mainly because I wanted to try out my newly seasoned cast iron skillet!)

Here we go… (serves 4):

• Preheat the oven to 200°C. Heat the grill pan on a high heat (until smoking).
• Drizzle 4 chicken breasts with 2 tbs olive oil and season with salt.
• Place the chicken in the pan. Leave for 1 min, then turn over. Leave for another minute, then transfer the pan to the oven for 8-10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, tear 50g wild garlic shoots and chop 2 anchovy fillets. Add 1 tbs grated Parmesan and 100ml olive oil and blend until paste-like. Add a little water if it’s too thick.
• Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes, then slice thickly and drizzle with the pesto.

The chicken ended up with a smoky flavour – perhaps not planned, but it stood up well to the strong flavour of the pesto.

Cabbages are one of those vegetables that I never quite know what to do with. But being in England, I had to try bubble and squeak. Mixing cabbages with some of my favourite vegetables, then frying them – how could it not succeed?

Cheesy Bubble & Squeak

Bubble and squeak has been around since the 18th century and was originally a fry-up of meat and cabbage. The ‘Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue’ tells us that its strange name comes from ‘its bubbling up and squeaking whilst over the fire’. Around 1951, meat was dropped and replaced with potato – you can read more details here. It’s traditionally made with leftovers, but as I couldn’t face boiled cabbage, I cooked the cabbage when I needed it.

This really is like making burgers. Just mix, roll and fry. And if you’re using leftovers, it’s really quick too… (serves 4):

• Thinly slice 200g cabbage, put in a pan with salt, cover with water and boil until tender (a few minutes).
• Meanwhile, gently fry 4 shallots (or 1 onion) and 2 cloves of garlic until tender.
• Mash 500g leftover potatoes and mix with 200g cheese, 1 beaten egg, the drained cabbage and the onion and garlic. Season with salt, pepper and freshly grated nutmeg.
• Roll the mixture into 4 patties and chill in the fridge for half an hour.
• Cover the patties in flour, then fry them in oil on both sides until golden.

For a quick and easy Sunday brunch, serve it with sliced tomatoes and eggs.

I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Indian food. And I’m not the biggest fan of cauliflower. But this is one time where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Gobi (Cauliflower) Paratha

I’d asked my friend for an Indian recipe with cauliflower in it and to be honest, when I first read it I had no idea a ‘paratha’ was supposed to look like. A quick search showed that it is a round flatbread made from wholewheat flour, fried in oil and stuffed with vegetables. Apparently it makes a popular breakfast in India. I hoped it would also make a popular weekend lunch in East London.

The stuffing itself is quick and easy, but the bread… that takes time – thanks to Nadia for the recipe (serves 4):

• Fry 500g chopped cauliflower and 1/4 tsp turmeric powder in 1 tbp oil. Add a little water, cover and cook it over a low heat until the cauliflower becomes mushy. Add more water if necessary.
• Now for the bread… mix 1.5 cups plain flour, 1.5 cups wholemeal flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp melted butter and enough milk to form a dough. Knead well, then set aside for 15 minutes.
• By now the cauliflower should be falling apart. Add 1/2 tsp each of chilli powder, black pepper powder and cumin powder, stir a bit then remove from the heat. Mash the cauliflower, then stir through 2 tbs chopped coriander and 2 finely chopped (and deseeded) green chillies.
• Divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll each out into a circle. Place 1/6 of the filling in one of these circles, top with another circle (try to stick them together), then flatten the whole thing (without letting the filling seep out!) Repeat with the others, then fry in oil until crisp and slightly brown.

Gobi Filling

These can be served with pickles, yoghurt, curries or, as W suggested, slathered in butter. But now that I’ve tried this the Indian way, I think I’ll go cross-cultural next time and wrap the filling in Malaysian-style roti canai… mmm, any excuse to eat that stuff!

Every time zucchinis turn up in my veg box (no, I will not call them courgettes), I have a craving to turn them into Creamy Zucchini Pasta. But I’ve resisted that urge and gone back to basics with an ‘Australian classic’ – at least, I don’t believe another nation has claimed this as their own…

In Australia, the word ’slice’ usually describes a dessert made in a tray and cut into square-ish pieces. Think caramel slice, vanilla slice, peppermint slice… all obviously sweet things. But it looks like our creativity in naming foods failed us and we extended this family to include savoury bite-sized snacks like this one.

This recipe is very easy. Even I might have managed it back in my uni days – grate, chop, mix and put it all in the oven. What, you need more details than that…?  (serves 4):

• Preheat the oven to 170°C, grate 375g zucchini and 1 cup of cheese, then finely slice 1 large onion and 3 rashers of bacon.  That’s the hard work done.
• Beat 5 eggs in a big bowl, then add 1 cup of sifted self-raising flour. Add everything else, plus 1/2 cup oil and stir like crazy.
• Pour it all into a greased tray, then bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes. It should be set, and it should be brown on top.

And if the weather is anything like here (I can’t believe I’m finding 12°C ‘almost warm’), take it outside and eat it in a park.

Self-saucing puddings have always fascinated me. I mean, sauces usually get poured on top of the dessert. But with these puddlings, they look just like a normal cake, but have a secret, gooey sauce underneath! Last weekend, I tried my friend’s ‘5-starred’ lemon delicious recipe. It looked so simple, I wasn’t completely convinced it would work – but thankfully (as we had guests), it did.

Lemon Delicious

Lemon delicious is another of those ‘Australian classics’ that may not have originated in Australia. It seems to have popped up in American cookbooks in the 1940’s and 1950’s, before it was seen Down Under… but hey, it tastes so good, it doesn’t matter where it’s from.

This recipe doesn’t call for the usual ‘put a dish inside a tray of water’ nonsense. Just mix, put it in the oven and wait… well, almost (serves 6):

• Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grab a big bowl and beat 1.5 cups of sugar with 2 tbs of butter. Mix in 4 tbs of self raising flour and the juice and grated rind of 2 lemons. Mix 4 egg yolks with 2 cups of milk, then beat this in too. Finally, beat 4 egg whites until stiff peaks form, and fold this in.
• Pour everything into your greased baking dish and pop it in the oven. It’ll take about 1 to 1.5 hours and should be set at the top, slightly browned, but gooey underneath.
• Serve this warm, with big scoops of vanilla ice cream.

For a bit of variety, try limes or oranges instead of lemons. Oh, and be warned… this dessert may leave you in a sugar coma.

The Silver Spoon cookbook

This week is Italian week. Maybe not anywhere else, apart from our little flat in East London, but I have made this declaration on receiving a copy of The Silver Spoon. This 1200+ page book is supposedly the ‘bible of authentic Italian cooking’ and has only been fairly recently translated into English. So far, I’m loving it. I wouldn’t suggest buying it for the pictures – they definitely went for an ‘authentic’ look, rather than an appetizing one. And maybe those who complain the ingredient amounts are off in this translation are right (I don’t cook exactly to recipes, so I couldn’t say), but it does has a wealth of ideas and information.

The book begins with an explanation of how the translation came into being, goes through those cooking terms you’ve heard of, but don’t know the exact meaning of, then highlights useful tools and equipment. Following this are the recipes, divided into: Sauces, Marinades and Flavoured Butters; Antipasti, Appetizers and Pizzas; First Courses (including soups, pastas and risottos); Eggs and Frittata; Vegetables; Fish, Crustaceans and Shellfish; Meat and Offal; Poutlry; Game; Cheese; Desserts and Baking; then ending with menus by famous chefs. The sections begin with a short description and some little, almost-out-of-place, hand-drawn pictures; the meat sections also contain pictures of the animals, contrasting the Italian and British cuts.

As you’d expect from Italian food, the recipes are relatively simple, often with few ingredients. As well as the more ‘typical’ Italian recipes, there are influences from other cuisines (Sweet-and-Sour Pork Stew), as well as more unusual varieties of standard recipes (Blueberry Risotto). The fact that this is a collection of local recipes does come through though (Aunt Maria’s Farmhouse Pie).

So far, I’ve made Cream and Leek risotto (more to come on this soon) and I’m trying a Beef Pot Roast tonight. I can’t pretend I’ve looked through the whole book, or even digested a quarter of it, but it is definitely one I will keep coming back to for information, ideas and tips on Italian cooking.

London is so big, that perhaps I can be forgiven for not discovering this amazing, unassuming little sausage shop earlier. It took a fellow Australian who had been in the city for less than a week to introduce me to Biggles Gourmet Sausages, ‘London’s first all-sausage emporium’ – and am I glad he did!

Sausages were invented as a method of meat preservation, hence their Latin root ’salsus’, which means salted. We all know that they are made from meat, spices and fat – hmmm, but how much ‘meat’, you ask? By law, pork sausages in the UK must contain at least 42% pork – but what constitutes pork is definitely interpreted differently by different producers. Biggles, known for their quality ingredients, put a whopping 85 – 95% meat in their sausages. And you can taste it – we tried the Italian Spicy variety, which is flavoured with garlic, paprika, white wine and fennel – they were so juicy, and had a surprising after taste, when the spices kicked in.

One big advantage of having friends stay, is that they cook for you (no, that is not the primary reason for inviting people to our house!) So, all credit for this one-pot-wonder goes to Simon (serves 4):

Monday January 26 2009 was special for two reasons: it was the first day of Year 4706 in the Chinese Calendar (Gōngxi fācái!) and it commemorates the dumping of the first convicts in Australia, aka Australia Day. As we couldn’t pick between these two cultural celebrations, we settled on dim sum, mapo tofu and green vegetables for the Chinese part – and for the Australian part, well, what are our national foods?

Pavlova

After discarding suggestions of damper, Four’n Twenty meat pies and kangaroo, we finally settled on pavlova. The ‘pav’ was created to honour the Russian ballet dancer, Ánna Pávlova, after one of her tours to the ‘The Antipodes’. But like some other ‘Australian’ icons, evidence suggests that this dessert may have actually originated in New Zealand. But hey, as we’re bigger (and better bullies), let’s just keep insisting it’s ours, shall we?

This was my first attempt to make it and fortunately, it wasn’t a disaster. I’m putting this down to my super-powerful hand blender – wouldn’t dream of making it again without it. Pavlovas are basically giant meringues – not difficult, but you’ll need time to cook it and let it cool (serves 8-12, depending on your level of sugar tolerance):

• Preheat the oven to 120°C and grease / flour a piece of baking paper. Beat 6 egg whites until soft peaks form, the gradually add 1.25 cups caster sugar, beating as you go. Add 2 tsp cornflour, 1 tsp white vinegar and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, then, you’ve guessed it, beat again.
• Scoop the mixture onto the paper and mould as best as you can into a cake-looking shape. Then bake for 1.5 hours and leave to cool in the oven with the door open.
• Because it was so much fun the first time, get out your beater again and mix 250ml cream, 30ml caster sugar and 1/2 tbs vanilla extract. Spread this on top of the cooled pav and top with strawberries and kiwifruit if you’re being healthy or grated chocolate if you’re not.

One of the best things about having friends stay is that you learn new ways to cook old things. Spaghetti alla carbonara was one of the first main meals I learnt to cook. And I was very proud that it wasn’t done in the usual Australian style, with each strand coated with gluggy, heart-attack-inducing cream. Most recipes I’d tried felt as though something was missing. And as I learnt last night, what better way to fix a dish, than to add masses of heart-attack-inducing cheese.

Pasta alla Carbonara

Spaghetti / Penne / Fettucine / Linguini alla carbonara has a disputed history. It’s name may come from woodcutters who cooked it over charcoal, from the secret Carbonari (aka charcoal burners) group, from the word ‘carbone’ (meaning charcoal) as the flecks of black pepper resemble charcoal flakes… or maybe even from it’s supposed original black colour as it may have been made with squid ink. Thankfully for us, none of that changes its great taste.

It’s usually made with spaghetti, but I can vouch that it works just as well with penne (or other pastas). And traditionally, you’d use eggs, pecorino romano (a hard, salty Italian cheese), guanciale (an unsmoked Italian bacon) and black pepper. But grab the closest you can find.

The recipe itself is quite simple and quick to cook (serves 4, so adjust to suit as this doesn’t reheat well):

• Beat 5 eggs and stir in masses of grated cheese (100-200g). As our friend suggested, the cheese is where you can get creative: try some substitutions if you have a favourite (or leftover) cheese; experiment with differing amounts, depending on whether you’re a cheese lover or cheese tolerator – 50g is the minimum though!.
• Cube and fry 8 rashers of bacon and in the meantime, cook 500g pasta until al dente.
• Then take the pasta off the heat and stir in the egg. It’s important not to mix the egg in over heat, or you’ll get scrambled eggs, rather than slickly coated pasta. Add the bacon and as much black pepper as you like. If you happen to have any cheese left, sprinkle on top and serve.

What on earth would possess someone to get up at 4:45am on a Saturday morning? The answer is cheap, fresh fish – particularly tempting if you live in land-locked London. Sleepy-eyed and with a new partner in crime (the boy slept through the whole episode), I caught a bus to Billingsgate Market armed with garbage bags and plastic bags.

Billingsgate Market has been around since Roman times, but not in its current form. In 1699, an Act of Parliament turned it from a general market into a fish market. In 1850 it moved indoors, then was rebuilt in 1873. Outgrowing this too, Billingsgate was finally moved in 1982 to its current home 10 minutes from me in east London. Proclaiming itself ‘the largest inland UK fish market’, it has a mixture of products (of which a large percentage is flown in): chilled seafood (from as far as New Zealand they say!), imported frozen fish, farmed varieties and fish products – no freshly cooked seafood for breakfast though. It’s not quite Sydney Fish Market, but it’s pretty good all the same.

Now Billingsgate is not one for the polite or the overly hygiene-concious. You’ll need to loudly demand and point to the fish you want or you’ll never get served and if you’re lucky like me, your change will be dropped in the boxes of fish… twice. Some stalls provide plastic bags, but it’s safer to bring your own.

It doesn’t take long to wander down the 4 or 5 aisles, jumping out of the way as trolleys are pushed past you. And to my untrained eyes, the price and quality seemed fairly similar between stalls. This being my second expedition, I was determined to bring home at least some salmon and prawns (no frozen tilapia this time!). We came away with 3kg of prawns (which go up in price according to size), 5 x pomfret, a whole salmon (filleting it was another story), 6 x trout (at a bargain price) and 6 x delicious red snapper… thankfully, I had a good friend to help peel / clean / cook them!

Happy with our purchases, we then spent the next couple of hours shelling prawns and packaging fish into meal-sized portions for the freezer. (Note to self: buy salmon fillets next time – not sure the effort of scaling and filleting paid off, as the fillets we bought last time tasted better!) All up, it was £60 for a few months’ worth of fish and even though we were sleepy the rest of the day, it was worth it!

The Making of Chicken Stock

Even though we’re not quite in Winter yet, it certainly feels like it. This is one of my favourite times of the year for food – hearty dishes of stews, pies, roasts, and of course, soups. So finding myself with an afternoon to spare, I decided it was time to ditch the powdered version and make my own stock.

Stock is, at it’s simplest, flavoured liquid. It’s used as a base for soups and sauces and comes in several self-explanatory varieties – chicken, beef, fish, vegetable. The hardest thing about making stock is finding the time – the actual cooking part is very simple.

In addition to water, you’ll need three basic ingredients for stock:

1. Bones: in this case, chicken. To make white chicken stock, use raw bones and to make dark chicken stock, the bones can be roasted for an hour first. Unless you have a particular joy of skimming, make sure you cut off any fat first.
2. Mirepoix: classically 2 parts onions, 1 part carrot and 1 part celery (aka the aromatics). But you can go crazy and include other vegetables, such as leeks, parsnips (if you want to make a very clear, white stock), garlic, etc.
3. Herbs and spices: classically a bouquet garni of thyme, bay leaf and parsley. You can also throw in black peppercorns and other spices. If using a bay leaf, pull the stalk out or tear the leaves a little to release the flavour.

The first step is to cook the bones. Place them in a stockpot, cover with approximately double the amount of cold water and bring it to the boil. And yes, ‘cold’ water was intentional, as it will draw out impurities. The scum or fat will rise to the top and you can skim it off, replacing any lost liquid with cold water.

The next step is to add the mirepoix, herbs and spices. Wash, peel and chop the vegetables – you can throw in carrot ends and the other parts of vegetables you usually fling on the compost. And then, it’s just a waiting game. We’re talking 4-6 hours of simmering the stock uncovered – don’t let it boil, as I’m prone to do, or you’ll get a cloudy stock. And make sure you pop back now and then to skim and refill the water.

After that, skim (one more time!), strain and reduce the stock to the strength required. You can even get it down to a handy ice cube size – much more freezer-friendly!

Before I go off to make my soup, just one more comment… don’t add salt to the stock or it may become too salty. This is not just me being super-sensitive to salt (although I admit I am) – you’ll usually be reducing it to make a sauce or soup, so play it safe now and and add as much salt as you want later.

My cooking has always been a little hit and miss. W says it is because I don’t like to cook the same thing twice, butＩbelieve it is also due to a lack of understanding of the basics. So to even out my cooking skills and boost my confidence, I researched the major amateur cookery schools in England and booked myself a place on Ashburton Cookery School’s 5-day Intermediate course.

The school, with its cosy B&B across the road, is in an idyllic setting in the Devon countryside. Classes are held in a small, T-shaped kitchen (fully equipped, even with a ceiling-mounted demonstration mirror), while theory and meals are taken in a detached, glass-doored (and thankfully, heated) room, overlooking a vegetable and herb garden and vividly green hills. I cannot comment much on the town of Ashburton itself, as being November, I have only seen it in the dark – the Exeter Inn is quite good for a nightcap though.

With seasonal recipes devised around a list of core skills, the course provided a mix of structured theory and techniques, ‘dems’, hands-on cooking, ’secret’ chefs’ tips and of course, the most important part, good food. It was extremely well organised – the days ran smoothly and to timetable (despite our incessant questions); all 10 participants were food enthusiasts around the same level; the chefs were knowledgeable, clearly experienced in teaching and generously gave a little extra – like providing us with a second ‘chocolate tasting’ and straying from the recipe to demonstrate crispy pork crackling. It was certainly an advantage having a range of chefs teaching us, as each had a slightly different focus and background. To save time, Ingredients were measured out for us, just like on TV, and one of the best parts was that we wasted no time washing up.

Each day we worked towards lunch, then a 2 or 3 course dinner. Quite often, recipes involved ingredients prepared a day or two in advance, and there was a focus on preparing food in advance to reduce the stress of dinner parties. Even with my involvement, the food was amazing. It’s hard to tell how much of the taste can be attributed to our newly-developed skills and how much must be attributed to the fresh, organic ingredients we used. There was no pressure to continue this at home though, and we were encouraged to simply purchase the best ingredients we could afford.

With an obvious focus on taste, the course was lacking a little in the healthy eating department – not a day passed where we didn’t use double cream and there was very little for vegetarians. But as you can see, the extra kilos gained were well worth it…

The first day covered basic knife skills, stocks, smoking, risottos, infused oils, griddling, chicken butchery, chocolate and presentation.

Home Smoked Salmon, Saffron and Dill Risotto

Griddled Chicken Breast served with Paysanne Vegetables, Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Garlic and Basil Oil

Dark Chocolate Pot with Amaretti Biscuits

The second day we tackled bread, more stock, soups and sauces, mushrooms, lamb butchery, pralines, vegetable blanching and refreshing and the now not-so-elusive poached eggs. That night, we had my favourite meal of the week.

Vichyssoise Soup with White Bread Rolls

Roasted Best End of Lamb with Madeira Sauce and Wild Mushrooms, Dauphinoise Potato and Green Vegetables

Seasonal Fruit with Grand Marnier and Orange Sabayon topped with Praline

Wednesday saw us tackle the pig – pork tenderloins (in a bag), ham and belly pork. We also looked at pastries, sorbets and decoration for desserts.

Baked Smoked Haddock on a Bed of Buttered Spinach with Poached Egg, Melting Gruyere Cheese and Curry Oil

Pork Tenderloin En Papilotte with Shaved Fennel, Apples, Cider and Thyme served with Apple Mash and Roasted Honey Glazed Purple Carrots and Celeriac

Coconut Milk and Lemongrass Sorbet with Tuille Biscuits

After that on the fourth day, we moved onto cows, pasta, dressings, flavoured butters, deep frying, blowtorching and ‘luxury tarts’ (aka quiches renamed to be acceptable for males). Thursday was wine night – something we had been craving all week.

Local Ham and Mature Cheddar Tart served with Mixed Dressed Leaves

Goats Cheese and Red Pepper Tortelli with Fresh Pesto Sauce

Pan Fried Fillet Steak with Stilton Butter, Twice Roasted Chips, Balsamic Roasted Tomato and Stuffed Mushroom

Creme Brulee with Praline Biscuit

And our final day was dominated by seafood – round and flat fish filleting and scallops, incorporating ingredients we’d prepared earlier.

Plaice Sandwich Stuffed with Roasted Red Peppers and Sauted Scallop served with a Saffron and Shallot Sauce

Pan Fried Mackerel Fillet with Cannellini Bean and Tomato Stew, Crispy Belly Pork and Grain Mustard Sauce

Glazed Lemon Tart

I’ll be posting more details on these skills, as I attempt to replicate this at home…

Currently at Ashburton Cookery School… posts to come soon!