One of my favourite cookbooks, Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells, has come up trumps again with this super easy pastry recipe. I tried it mostly because I was intrigued by its simplicity, dubious about how it could work and, irritatingly, I was short of butter. The recipe also happens to be vegan.
Yep you heard right. These look like eels (without the scary faces and sharp teeth) but are made from shiitake mushrooms and are entirely vegan. They have that lovely dense chewy texture of rehydrated mushrooms and a crunchy golden potato starch coating. Continue reading “Vegan ‘eels’”
I have a couple of lime trees in my garden and they’re groaning with fruit. Yesterday I took a bag and picked 8.5 kilos of the suckers up off the ground and the trees are still chockers. I’ve been forcing them on everyone who walks through my door, squeezing them into cooking instead of lemon juice, and stripping the enamel off my teeth as I ram about 60mls of the straight juice into my gin and tonic. But they’re still piling up.
I’m a bit of a nut freak and I really like roasting and flavouring my own. I’ve dicked around with all kinds of additions – various spices, sauces, etcetera – but have hit on the ultimate formula Continue reading “This is nuts”
When it comes to sweets, the raw vegan business leaves me cold. You can keep your bliss balls and your carob cups and pass the cheesecake made with actual cheese please. But then something weird happened. Continue reading “What the fudge?”
A few weeks ago the latest book by chef Luke Mangan landed on my doorstep and I was pretty excited. I like Luke’s cooking and admire his firm grasp of cuisines worldwide. Alas I also hoped he’d lifted his writing game. Continue reading “Spare me the banalities”
One of the things I love about Malaysian food is its patchwork of influences from migrants and neighbours. This recipe, with its soy sauce and mushrooms, flags the strong Chinese hand played in the food here, particularly on the west side of the peninsula. Get your butcher to chop the duck into small or ‘curry’ pieces. It’s an easy wintery dinner but one I’d eat all year round.
1 duck (about 1.8k) cut into about 24 pieces
40ml light soy sauce
40ml dark soy sauce
12 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in warm water for minimum 30 mins
75g ginger, peeled and thinly sliced (about 0.3cm)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 green onions (scallions), cut into 4cm lengths
30g soy bean sauce (tow cheong)
4 cups water
3g salt
5g sugar
10g sesame oil
black pepper to taste
cooking oil
10g tapioca flour blended with 20ml water
20ml rice wine
Place duck pieces in a large bowl and toss with 20mls of each soy sauce, reserving the rest for seasoning later.
Cut the mushroom stems out with a small knife and cut the caps into bite sized pieces. Small ones can be left whole. Slice the ginger into 0.3cm slices, chop the garlic finely and cut the green onions into 4cm lengths.
Now make the braising liquid: add the salt, sugar, sesame oil, pepper and remaining soy sauces to the water and stir well.
Heat the cooking oil in a wok and fry the duck pieces in small batches until brown. It’s vital not to overcrowd the wok because everything will just steam and you’ll never get the colour you’re after. Discard any remaining oil which will be pretty murky and rinse the wok.
Heat another tablespoon of oil in the wok and cook the garlic and ginger til golden then stir the soy bean paste through, frying that for a minute. Add the duck, mushrooms and braising liquid. Cover the wok and simmer for 30 minutes to an hour until the duck is tender.
If there’s still lots of liquid by the time the duck is cooked, boil quickly to reduce. When you’re happy with the sauce quantity, thicken it with the tapioca flour and water mixture. Ensure you keep stirring as you add the slurry to keep the sauce smooth and cook for about a minute until you can no longer taste the flour. Check for seasoning, adding a splash more light soy if necessary then finally add the rice wine and the green onions.
Remember that first cookbook, Where the Heart Is, by Karen Martini? It might have had a bit of a lame title but god it was good. I wanted to cook almost everything in it and pretty much have since it was published in 2006. The recipes are gutsy with the savoury ones invariably concealing a magical salt bomb. We’re talking feta, anchovies, olives or capers all over the joint. We’re talking love. Continue reading “Sardine sausages”
Any recipe that has the grace to accommodate my often loose approach to throwing a dish together is a friend for life. This one I’ve been cooking forever and I never look at the original recipe by Hilaire Walden anymore. Apparently it’s from the Algarve and she calls it Peas with Chouriço and Eggs. I made it for lunch today but it’s also an easy dinner or a side to roast chicken if you omit the egg. Continue reading “Winging it with Portuguese peas”
So I was never going to make actual Easter eggs, what with all that tempering and moulding and such. But chocolate is definitely in order and there’s nothing like getting covered in it on a Good Friday morning, enrobing honeycomb.
This latest book, Sharing Plates, from Luke Mangan landed last week and I’ll write more about it in May when it’s published and the embargo’s lifted.
He suggests sprinkling the chocolate with sea salt but I had some of that Olsson’s smoked salt which I used instead (when too much smoke is never enough etc). I love that these will store happily in the freezer and can be served straight from there with a shattering crunch.
cooking oil or spray for greasing
125g liquid glucose
360g caster sugar
3 tablesp honey
15g carb soda
250g dark chocolate
sea salt for sprinkling
Line a heatproof tray with baking paper and lightly oil it
Place the glucose, sugar, honey and 75ml water in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then cook until the mixture turns a deep caramel colour.
Remove from the heat and leave to stand for 2 minutes before whisking in the carb soda. Whisk just enough to incorporate it into the caramel, ensuring not to overdo it or the honeycomb will collapse.
Pour onto the prepared tray and leave at room temperature for about 1 hour to cool.
Once the honeycomb has set, break it into bite sized pieces and set them on a wire rack over a tray. (Mine are only bite sized if you have a massive gob)
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Remover from the heat, dip the honeycomb pieces into the melted chocolate and place on the rack.
Sprinkle with sea salt and allow the chocolate to set. Store in the freezer until required.
Hot Sour Salty Sweet 