Tuscan Bean Soup
This has been on our “to cook” list for some time and as soup season seems to be fully underway, tonight seemed like a good time to finally get on with it.
As ever, Delia’s instructions were pointlessly long-winded but it was worth sticking with as the final result was pretty good. The blended beans gave the soup a rich and creamy texture without the need for cream and the flavour was deep and earthy. I wasn’t overly-keen on the sweet shallots but it would be easy to leave those out. The bacon however was essential and provided a sweet contrast to the soup itself.
We halved the recipe to make just two portions but needed to add a lot more liquid than the original recipe stated, it didn’t actually produce a huge amount either so I would recommend making the full amount and freezing any leftovers – which is probably a sensible thing to do with soup anyway, since it re-heats so well.
Khmer Chicken Samla and Pomelo Salad
We had planned to cook rack of lamb tonight but we’re having lunch with Stephen’s sister tomorrow and she told us she’s planning to cook roast lamb. As much as we both love lamb, we didn’t want to eat it twice in a row so found ourselves in a bit of a quandary this morning while we were working out what to eat. I can’t quite remember how we got to this dish but I do know that as soon as Stephen suggested it, there was no other option.
We have cooked the Khmer Chicken Samla with coconut milk before and it worked out very well, but tonight’s version was even better. We only made half the sauce for the same amount of chicken and that seemed about right. It all came together perfectly and we found ourselves fighting over the leftovers and the rest of the sauce in the pan.
It isn’t a quick dish; you need to spend some time making the paste and then leaving it to simmer but it’s definitely worth it. It is rich and creamy but well balanced at the same time so it doesn’t feel heavy. Spicy but not too hot and perfectly rounded with the coconut milk mellowing a punchy lemongrass, garlic and ginger hit and the earthy notes of the roasted shrimp paste filling in the gaps.
For a starter, we had pomelo salad. For those that haven’t encountered it before, a pomelo is a large grapefruit-like fruit. It has a very thick skin and is a lot drier than a grapefruit and is not as sour. As it turned out, we had a salad in the Prince of Wales last night that included it which made us decide to try it ourselves soon, so this was a perfect opportunity.
The recipe for the pomelo salad comes from the book Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, which was also where we got the recipe for our main course. We did pick both the recipes because we liked the look of them, but as it turned out they were both Cambodian in origin, which seemed to imply that they were meant to be together and that we had to make them both.
Ingredients – the book says this serves 4 but we ate all of it between the two of us
3 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon palm sugar, or brown sugar if not available
1 pomelo
2 tablespoons dry-roasted grated coconut (we left this out as we didn’t have it)
2 tablespoons dry-roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon chopped shallots
1 cup mint leaves, chopped
2 bird chillis, finely chopped
lettuce leaves, washed and dried
Mix the fish sauce, lime juice and sugar together until the sugar has all dissolved. We ended up with chunks of undissolved palm sugar in ours, but stirred it every ten minutes over half an hour or so while we prepared everything else and eventually it was all dissolved.
Peel the pomelo and separate into segments. This took us quite a while as the skin is very thick… people who do this in restaurants must be very skilled and have a lot of patience. Then skin each segment and remove the fruit into a bowl. When ready to serve, pour out any juice that has accumulated into the bowl (we didn’t have any, our pomelo was quite dry) and then mix in the coconut (if using), the peanuts, mint, shallots and chilli. Pour the dressing over it and mix well. Adjust the seasoning if needed – we found it just right and didn’t need to do any adjustments.
This salad was really brilliant, and different to the one that we had had at the Prince of Wales because that one included crab and green papaya. This was very fresh and vibrant with a bit of chilli bite and a well balanced combination of ingredients and dressing, bringing the hot, salty, sour, and sweet together in just the right proportions. It felt like it was a palate cleanser as well as a starter and woke up the mouth ready for the main course.
Nigella’s Nuts
We make these nuts a lot and, looking back through old posts, they do feature but there isn’t an actual recipe so, this evening, we give you Nigella’s Nuts. According to the recipe, they’re from the Union Square Cafe Bar in New York. Nigella visited, loved them and asked for the recipe so that she could re-create them at home. They’re really good, quick and easy, as well as that it’s a great way of using up any half empty bags of nuts you might having lurking in your cupboard.
We always follow the recipe but it would work well with any combination of herbs and spices. Don’t be tempted to over-do the cayenne though, we like spicy food and have added extra in the past but it over powers everything and doesn’t allow the sweetness of the nuts to shine.
500g assorted unsalted nuts, including: peeled peanuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans and whole unpeeled almonds
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary (from 2 8cm sprigs)
Half tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp dark muscavado sugar
2 tsp Maldon salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas mark 4.
Toss the nuts in a large bowl to combine and spread them out on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven till they become light golden brown, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the rosemary, cayenne, muscavado sugar, salt and melted butter.
Thoroughly toss the toasted nuts with the spiced butter and serve warm.
Prince of Wales, Putney
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too long until our table was ready and we could get on with the real food. I started with the scallops with Jerusalem artichokes and truffle puree while Stephen had the crab and papaya salad with pomelo. I enjoyed the scallops; they were perfectly cooked and the whole dish was very well executed. It was rich and earthy though and as soon as I had tasted Stephen’s salad I realised that I would have preferred something light and fresh. There wasn’t a huge amount of crab flavour but the other ingredients were light and bright and really woke up the taste buds.
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One of our friends had the giant puffballs on toast. We were all intrigued as to just how giant the mushrooms would be and, having asked the waitress, she brought it out to show us. The picture is rather fuzzy but it does at least give an idea of the size, enormous! Although I didn’t order it, I tasted the finished dish and was very impressed, there was a strong, earthy flavour that was reminiscent of soy sauce.
Next, I opted for the hare because I haven’t had it before (I actually had it at the Bull and Last but didn’t remember until afterwards). The inclusion of “baklava of hare leg” worried me slightly but I assumed it would be a savoury version. It wasn’t though and that, paired with the rich, almost chocolatey sauce made the whole dish very sweet. The hare itself was very good, densely flavoured and melting in texture but unfortunately completely over-powered. I didn’t like the bulghur wheat accompaniment either; I assume it was included to lighten the flavours and while it probably was more appropriate than something like mashed potato, it just didn’t work with strongly flavoured hare.
Stephen had the deer, which came with some very good fries and bearnaise sauce. The portion looked very small to me but he was happy with the amount. Again, it was well cooked and both the flavour and the texture were perfect. The chips were very good too and I was happy to see proper, thin fries rather than those ridiculous, huge chips many places are still serving.
And then, on to dessert. We don’t often eat dessert but I noticed the peanut butter ice-cream as soon as we arrived and was really keen to try it. I like peanut butter but am always slightly disappointed that it’s a savoury spread. For me, this was perfect and the real highlight of the meal. A good balance between sweet and salt and the perfect way to finish off.
Stephen had the cheese plate which was also very good; a selection of four cheeses which we should have asked about, but didn’t. One was definitely stilton and the others seemed to be British (and possibly Irish) too but we didn’t identify them. They were all tasty though.
While I didn’t enjoy my main course, I was impressed with everything else I tasted and, in retrospect, I probably should have ordered something like fish and chips to give me a better idea of how good the food can be. I’m keen to go back and sample more of the menu and, given it’s much closer than the Bull and Last, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve.
Cauliflower Cheese Soup
We’re going out for dinner this evening but won’t be eating until quite late so soup for lunch seemed like a good idea, as well as keeping us full all afternoon, it was also a chance for me to redeem myself after Tuesday’s soup failure (gritty lentils and too much cream meant the whole lot went into the bin).
A friend recently made this Nigel Slater dish and said it was lovely; not wanting to risk another disaster, I stuck faithfully to the recipe and it worked out reasonably well although I think I probably used too much water as the whole thing was a bit dilute and was better after some reducing. I think I might actually prefer it without the mustard too - we have a particularly vinegary wholegrain at the moment which was a little too much against the sweetness of the cauliflower.
So, a better attempt than last time but still not perfect. I foresee a lot of soup in coming weeks until I get this right.
50 g butter
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 large or 2 small cauliflower, broken into florets
2 bay leaves
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
4 tablespoons creme fraiche
1 heaped tablespoon seed mustard
200 g punchy farmhouse cheddar, grated
2 thick slices of bread, cut into 1 cm cubes
50 g butter
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the onion and fry until soft, then add the garlic and fry another minute. Meanwhile, boil the cauliflower florets for six to eight minutes, until almost tender. Add the cauliflower and its cooking water to the onion, along with the bay leaves and potato. Bring to the boil and add salt. Simmer for fifteen minutes.
Remove from the heat, fish out the bay leaves and puree the soup. Pour back into the pan. Stir in the creme fraiche, mustard and a grinding of black pepper. Bring back to the boil. Fry the bread cubes in the butter until golden.
Ladle the soup into deep warm bowls, stir in the cheese, taste – add salt, pepper or mustard as you wish – and scatter with croutons.
And the Winner Is…
The winner of the Little Break to Lille competition courtesy of Eurostar is Sarah for her hairy duck story (we asked the PR company to decide on the winner). Congratulations Sarah and thank you to everyone who shared their amusing and, at time, horrifying stories! We’ll leave you with Sarah’s tale:
The worst ever food experience I’ve had whilst travelling was when I was in Hong Kong with my family…
Me and my family absolutely LOVE chinese food and so going to to Hong Kong we were really excited about enjoying a good ol’ slap up meal in the country of origin, the home to chinese food – surely it’s going to be amazing right!? Or so we thought…
We went out to dinner and ordered a 5 course extravaganza. None of the dishes they made were like anything you’d order back in England so we just gambled and hoped for the best! A few courses came out and we couldn’t really eat much if it as they tasted odd, but we didnt mind so much as we thought “at least we’ll have enough room for the duck and pancakes!†Our favourite! They started to bring out all the trimmings – cucumber, spring onion, plum sauce, pancakes. At this point we’re starving and very excited. They brought out the duck, put it down on the table and literally our jaws all dropped. We looked at eachother, confused and quite horrifed. We were all looking at a plate full of pieces of skin, cut neatly into 2″ squares. There was no meat – just the skin, and each piece had duck hair sticking out of it. As you can imagine, we didn’t fancy wrapping pieces of hairy duck skin into our pancakes so we left and headed straight to McDonalds! In fact, the whole 5 days we were there, we sneaked McDonalds into our hotel room every night as we couldn’t bare the food!
Cheese Masterclass at Le Bouchon Breton
It’s taken me a while to get round to making this post as I suffered from quite a severe cheese hangover the day after attending the class at Le Bouchon Breton. I should point out that this had absolutely nothing to do with the fabulous cheese I ate during the class but everything to do with the fact that I’m very fond of cheese and find it very difficult to know when to stop eating the stuff.
Much like the oyster masterclass I attended, the cheese class began with a glass of Champagne and a chat with the Fromellier Jean Claude Ali Cherif. He explained that the cheese served in the restaurant changes every week depending on what is in season and focuses on a specific region each time. This week, we would be looking at cheese from the Champagne region which is at it’s best from July-October; my visit at the end of September was therefore very good timing.
Traditionally, cheese was always served with red wine. The thinking on this has however been changing for some time and Jean Claude, like many others, believes that most (85%, to be precise) cheese is best served with white wine. Rose can also work particularly with herbed cheese. Consequently, most of the wine we drank was white which suited me as although I’m learning to like red wine, I prefer white and agree that it’s a better match with cheese.
Officially, there are 450 French cheeses but according to Jean Claude, it’s generally accepted that the real figure is closer to 1000. We had a selection of 12 to taste that evening starting with a Jean de Brie that was matched with a sparkling rose Champagne. This was probably my favourite and was a great wine match too. The cheese was incredibly ripe and had a smooth, creamy texture not unlike goats cheese but without the dry, chalky finish that I dislike. Jean Claude explained that in order to taste the match at it’s best, you should sip your wine, taste your cheese and then sip your wine again and, having done this, I noticed a real hit of grassiness in the cheese that was only faintly apparent before tasting the wine.
The second cheese of the evening was a L’Ervy Fermier au Lait cru which was served with a Petit Chablis. This was another really good match, I loved both the cheese and the wine and together they were very much a winning combination. The cheese was very ripe, almost running in the centre and had a fairly sharp top-note to it. This was backed up by a vegetal and almost meaty flavour with a peppery note around the edges and a very pleasing mouth feel.
We kept the same wine and moved on to a Le Bouchon d’Armance. I enjoyed the cheese but the wine match didn’t sit so comfortably for me, I felt it was slightly too acidic for the sweet, nutty cheese.
Same wine again but this time a cow’s cheese: Le St Jacque. This was beautifully presented and looked like something from a chocolate box. More subtle in flavour with just a hint of nuttiness and vaguely reminiscent of cauliflower, it worked well the Petit Chablis and reminded me of a stronger, more fully-flavoured Camembert.
Next up was a Le Paillou affine au Chablis – the affine translates as washed so: washed with Chablis. This was served with a non-vintage Champagne and had a strong, smoky aroma and flavour that was balanced very well by the slight sweetness of the wine. I’ve written ‘bacon’ in my notes which regular readers will know is a flavour I love so it’s clear that I enjoyed this cheese immensely.
The next cheese was my least favourite of the evening: a L’Exploratuer. It was very sweet and tasted faintly of roses but had a harsh, bitter edge to it too. The texture reminded me of cheap butter: oily and overly rich in it’s mouth feel. I enjoyed the Domaine de la Chalotterie though, a very good rose.
The Le Bleu Cendre au Lait de Chevre was described by Jean Claude as a mild Roquefort, the rest of the guests described it as “evil looking”. My notes are short on this, probably because I’m not a huge fan of blue cheese but I did note that it had a good acidity and a long finish. I’m pretty sure I was talking about the cheese here and not the wine (matched with the rose I mentioned above) but you’d be forgiven for being confused by my use of wine terminology: it was getting late by this point and I was running out of adjectives!
At this point we moved on to red wine, a Marsannay paired with a St Simeon cheese. This was a pasteurised cheese and was incredibly ripe, overly-so in Jean Claude’s opinion although I enjoyed it. This cheese had really complex flavour levels with an oaky, woody centre and a slight bitterness on the rind and was a good match for the medium bodied red wine.
We moved back to the rose Champagne at this point and tasted a Le Langre. This had a definite note of sulphur to it and was described by Jean Claude as both “aggressive” and “sharp”. It was very drying on the palate and was the first of a series of quite challenging cheeses.
We followed this with a Soumaintrain that was matched with a Banyuls red wine. Described as smelling of wet caves, there was a definite mouldy aroma to this cheee which dissipated slightly as it warmed up and developed into something nutty and complex.
The penultimate cheese was a Cendre de Champagne matched with a port. This was a difficult one to categorise as it seemed to go back and forth between salty and sweet with a hint of ash. There was a definite note of ammonia on the nose that lingered for a long time and came through in the taste, a difficult aroma and flavour to process and not a favourite of all the cheeses.
Lastly, a Veritable Fontainebleau served with a Muscat. The cheese had an unusual texture, reminiscent of cottage cheese which actually worked well with the sweet Muscat but was a little too unusual for me to enjoy at the end of the evening, especially when compared to some of the others that I had really enjoyed.
Looking back through my notes, it’s obvious that the last four or five cheeses were more unusual than most of us had tasted before and required a little work to understand and enjoy. For me, this was one of the real highlights of the class and it was a great opportunity to taste something specialist that I’m unlikely to find in my local supermarket or even speciality cheese shop.
Jean Claude is incredibly knowledgeable on the subject of cheese and the informal approach adopted at Le Bouchon Breton is one that works well: nobody felt uncomfortable saying they didn’t like a particular variety and we were encouraged to talk about the flavours we could taste without feeling we were being judged or tested. It was also interesting to talk to some new people with a shared interest, there was a real mix of attendees ranging from couples to a small group on an office night out. With the festive season fast approaching, it would make for a really different and enjoyable alternative to the traditional Christmas party.
My advice however would be to try and exercise some restraint when it comes to how much you eat! Both Jean Claude and Joann (who ran the oyster class and accompanied Jean Claude on the cheese class) are incredibly passionate about what they do and generous with their measures. They will keeping adding cheese to your plate and filling up your glass which is no bad thing as you certainly don’t leave feeling hungry or thirsty but, if your self-control is as lacking as mine, you may find yourself with a bit of a headache and a cheese mouth the next morning!
The classes fall on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of the month and run throughout 2009 and 2010 with a break in December 2009 for the Christmas holidays. The classes will start at 6pm and cost £50 per person.
Jean Claude is also hosting a Fromellier dinner, which is to be held on the evening of the 23rd of December 2009 from 7.30pm. Dinner will cost £100 per head and include four courses with a glass of wine paired with each course and a glass of Champagne on arrival.
To book, contact reservations at Le Bouchon Breton on 08000 191 704.
Le Bouchon Breton
8 Horner Square,
Old Spitalfields Market,
London E1 6EW
You can see the full set of pictures here.
Bacon, Lentil and Cabbage Soup
After not having much luck with soup yesterday, we decided to try again today. As we are both going out relatively early this evening, we had the soup for lunch. It worked out a lot better this time, despite being a made up recipe. In fact I’m going to add the recipe to the post in case we want to make it again.
Ingredients:
1 medium to large onion
1 stick celery
1 medium carrot
1 large clove garlic
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
1 tin tomatoes (400g) or equivalent amount of passata
1 litre vegetable stock
125g puy lentils / lentilles vertes (very rough estimate as I just poured in what I thought looked right)
8 rashers of bacon (we used a “black” sweet cure bacon for this and it worked very well indeed)
5 or 6 cabbage leaves
olive oil
salt and pepper
Finely chop the onion, celery and carrot. Add a little oil to a large saucepan, heat it up to a medium heat and then add the onion, celery and carrot, letting them fry for a few minutes. Crush or finely chop the garlic and add that too, then add the bay leaf and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Give it all a good stir, then turn down the heat and put the lid onto the saucepan to allow it all to sweat for about ten minutes.
When the vegetables are softened but not colouring, add the lentils, tomatoes and vegetable stock. I pureed the tomatoes before adding them, but if you don’t want to do that then you can break them up with a spoon once they are in the pot, or just use passata. Let this simmer until the lentils are cooked, adding some more water or stock if the liquid level drops too far.
While the soup is simmering, cut the bacon into strips. Fry these in a frying pan. When they are done to your favourite level of crispiness / burntness, put them onto a plate on a piece of kitchen paper for the oil to drain off. Press another piece of kitchen paper onto the top of them to blot off more oil.
When the lentils are done, de-stalk the cabbage leaves and finely shred them, then add them to the soup. You might need to add a little water if there isn’t enough liquid to cover the cabbage leaves. Add most of the fried bacon too, just reserving a little for decoration. Put the lid back onto the saucepan and simmer for about 5 minutes until the cabbage is cooked but still nice and green.
Serve, sprinkled with the reserved bacon pieces, and eat with some buttered toast. Delicious.
As I mentioned above, the bacon that we used was a sweet cure bacon, which worked very well in this recipe. We used it because it was what we had, but it was brilliant; the sweetness combined well with the tomatoes and the earthiness of the lentils. This could be made more wintry by adding a dash of wine to it and a few other adjustments. It could also be made vegetarian by adding fried mushrooms instead of bacon.
Pasta with Anchovy Sauce
Tonight’s dinner was supposed to be Spicy Lentil Soup with Savoy Cabbage and Bacon but it went wrong, so wrong that when I tried to rescue it, I just made things worse and it had to go in the bin.
There wasn’t a Plan B until I remembered this Nigella recipe (originally by Anna del Conte) that’s been on my To Cook list for ages and I was reminded about recently by Lizzie.
We didn’t have any white onions left though (they went into the failed soup) so made do with red which worked OK but I suspect made quite a difference to the finished dish. We left out the sugar too and added a squeeze of lemon juice instead, we also used eight anchovies for the two of us. I’d like to try this again with white onion because this version was pretty good. As for the soup, it has potential so I may attempt it again next week.
Slightly amended recipe below.
Pasta with Anchovies and Onions
1 large onion
1 clove garlic
Olive oil, for frying
8 anchovy fillets
15g butter
Tiniest pinch ground cloves
1 tablespoon water
50ml full-fat milk
Pasta
Flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Squeeze of lemon juice
Finely chop the onions and garlic.
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and cook the very finely chopped onion and garlic over a low heat until soft – about 10 minutes.
Chop the anchovies finely. Add them to the onions, stirring until they begin to ‘melt’, then stir in the butter and the pinch of ground cloves, followed by a tablespoonful of water and when all is combined, gradually stir in the milk. When this has come together as a purée, take the pan off the heat.
Cook the pasta and mix with the sauce, add the parsley and a squeeze of lemon.
Bubble and Squeak
After last night’s roast pork, we found ourselves with various left overs, including roast potatoes, cabbage, runner beans and some of the pork itself. Kerri was rather excited at the prospect of making bubble and squeak which is a favourite of hers, so we kept all the leftovers and set about making it this evening. We steamed an extra potato and some more cabbage because it didn’t look like we had quite enough.
Kerri started by chopping up the leftover roast potatoes into little bits, then adding the new steamed potato, giving them a bit of a rough mash with a fork and then added the chopped up cabbage and beans. This all went into a frying pan and was fried, turning now and then, until it was nicely browned and a little crispy. It didn’t turn out quite as crispy as Kerri wanted, probably because we had added the steamed potato, but it definitely tasted good.
Kerri ate hers with cold roast pork and I ate mine with some reheated roast pork and some left over gravy, which I was assured by Kerri was not done when eating bubble and squeak, but I enjoyed it.
