As in previous years, it was a a good crack, and the pig, sensational. A bit smaller than the previous year’s, and cooked over a fire fueled with only oak wood, it had a beautifully smoky flavour and moist tender meat. As usual, my favourite bit was the belly. Slammed in a bap with some coleslaw that I whipped up, and some home made apple sauce (the recipe for which is below), we were all in hog heaven.

I’m not a huge fan of shop bought apple sauce. I find it’s often too watery, too sweet, or both. So for this years Hogfest I decided to see if I could to better. The following recipe makes about 4 jam jars full, which you’re unlikely to need for a Sunday roast, so adjust the quantities accordingly. You’ll also need to adjust the quantity of sugar based on how tart your apples are. Go easy to start with, as you can always add more towards the end.

Ingredients

2kg cooking apples

20g butter

7 tablespoons Muscovado sugar

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1.5 teaspoons Chinese 5 spice

200 ml water

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Large pinch of salt

Method

First up, set your oven to 200c, then get a pan on the heat and melt the butter, vinegar, five spice, and 3 tablespoons of the Muscovado sugar together. Now peel, core and cut each apple into 8 pieces. Pop the apples into a roasting tray, and toss with the spiced butter, vinegar and sugar mixture, making sure that each apple section is coated.

Roast the apples in the pre-heated oven for around 30 minutes. This should soften and slightly caramalise the apples, intensifying their flavour. Take them out of the oven, transfer to a large saucepan, and then de-glaze the roasting tray with the water, getting all the sticky bits off the bottom, and then pour this into the pan along with the lemon juice.

Put the pan on the heat, bring up to simmering point, and cook for 5-10 minutes. Next blend the mixture with a hand mixer until smooth, and have a taste. It will need more sugar, and a pinch of salt, so add these now (4 tablespoons of Muscovado and a large pinch in this case), and then stir into the mixture.

The apple sauce is now ready. If you’re having it immediately, decant into a bowl and cool. If you’re keeping it to use at a later date, spoon into sterilised jam jars whilst still hot, and then screw the lids on tightly. This will create a vacuum that will help the apple sauce keep longer (a good 2-3 weeks if refrigerated).

I’m hungry now, but if you want to see more pics from Hogfest ‘10 you can see them here.

One of the dishes that got my mouth watering the most was the tomato risotto he cooked in Venice. There was just something beautifully simple about the risotto and the tomatoes cooked in olive oil that made me want to give it a go. I’m sure there’s an accompanying book for the series, but I haven’t bought it, so this recipe is a approximation of what I saw of the idiot box. It worked for me, so should do for you too.

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the risotto

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 large celery stalk, finely chopped

100g arborio rice

100 ml white wine

1 litre vegetable stock

Handful of grated Parmesan (about 25g)

Olive oil

Unsalted butter

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the tomatoes

15-20 mini plum / cherry tomatoes, halved

1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped

10 basil leaves, torn

50 ml olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

First up, get your stock ready. Pour it into a pan, and get it on the heat so it’s just below boiling point. Next finely chop your onion and celery and then gently sweat in a pan containing a good glug of olive oil and a small nob of butter for about 10 minutes. The veg should become translucent as opposed to brown.

Whilst the veg is cooking, halve the tomatoes and add to a small pan with the oilve oil, garlic, basil leaves, salt and pepper. Stir them together and then put on a low heat. You don’t want to fry the hell out of the tomatoes, more soften them and let all the flavours in the pan infuse and meld together.

Once you’ve done this, you should be ready to add the rice to the onions and celery. Mix it all together, coating the rice with the oil. Add the white wine to the rice, stir in and let the alcohol burn off for a minute or so. You’re now going to start adding the stock. Do this a ladle at a time, stirring all the while. Stirring is an important part of the process, as it helps make the risotto creamy as it soaks up the stock. You don’t want to beat the mixture, more of a purposeful stir.

After 15-20 minutes of repeating this process, you should have used up most of the stock. The risotto should be loose and creamy, and the rice ‘al dente’ (not overly soft like rice pudding, still with some bite). At this point take it off the heat. Stir in the grated Parmesan, a small nob of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Now cover the pan with a lid and leave the risotto to ‘relax’ for a couple of minutes.

Check your tomatoes. By now they should be nicely soft, and the olive oil should have take on a bit of their colour. Now take your tomatoes, and add them to the risotto, stirring them in gently, and then plate up.

Serve in bowls with a little drizzle of olive oil and a hunk of crusty bread.

But thanks to my introduction to banana bread in Australia, those spotty old fruits finally have a use. This recipe uses four of the buggers, and a little kick of rum for background flavour.

Ingredients

4 medium sized ripe bananas (spotty with soft flesh)

250g plain white flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

250g golden caster sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

125g unsalted butter

2 eggs

2 tablespoons dark rum

Method

First up, set your oven set to 175 c and then grease a medium sized (19 x 11 cm) loaf tin with unsalted butter.

Now peel the bananas, discarding any strips of skin, and mash them up in a large bowl until pulped. Mix the butter into the bananas, ensuring it is warm and soft before you do. Next mix in the sugar, vanilla extract, rum and two lightly beaten eggs. You’ll be left with a lumpy, slightly odd looking mixture.

Place a sieve over the bowl and sift the flour and baking powder into it. Stir in gently, being careful not to over mix it, and then pour the batter into the loaf tin.

Pop into the oven, and cook for an hour and fifteen minutes. The reason for the long cooking time is that the mixture is rather wet. This also means that when the loaf is done, the outside will be a pretty dark brown, looking almost burned. Don’t be alarmed, this is how it should be.

After the hour and fifteen, take the tin out, and run a knife into the centre of the loaf. If it comes out clean, it’s ready. If not, pop it back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

If done, leave the banana bread in the tin on one side for 10 minutes or so, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. The loaf will sink a bit during cooling, and firm up so it slices better.

The Aussies like to eat if for breakfast toasted and sliced with ricotta, but you can eat it at any time of the day really. I prefer it with just some butter, or maybe a bit of Marscapone.

The Herb Saver pretty much does what it says on the tin. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of spending above the odds for a bunch of fresh herbs at the supermarket, only to find that two or three days later that they are wilted, soggy and unusable. For those of us without a River Cottage style herb garden and limited outside space, there aren’t many alternatives but to keep buying packaged herbs and dealing with the fact that some will go to waste. Until now.

The Herb Saver gets round the wilting issue by keeping the herbs cool and hydrated. You fill the bottom reservoir with cold water,  stand your herbs upright (stalks down) in the water, close them into the ‘chamber’ and then pop into the fridge.

In our experience, the herbs will keep at least three times longer that usual, which has got to be a good thing, right? I’m sure you could achieve similar results with a jam jar, but it also looks good, and fits perfectly into our fridge door.

You can buy the Herb saver on Firebox for £13, which means after a few weeks it will have pretty much paid for itself. Recommended.

Photo: MrLerone

Highs

1.Polpo – my new favourite restaurant. Very good Italian style tapas eating.

2.Sydney Breakfasts – just the bomb. I wish i could start every day Sydney style.

3.Whole Foods Market – the big one on Ken High Street is like heaven on earth.

4.Good Coffee – being shown what real coffee should taste like by Campos and Kaffeine.

5.Stuffed Courgette Flowers – still really chuffed about making these bad boys in France.

6.Engagement Dinner at Brasserie Balzar – the perfect Parisian place to pop the question.

7.Ramond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets – for my money, the best cookery show of the past year

8.The Santa Barbara Shellfish Company – one of the standout meals from our California road trip.

9.Good Mexican Food – from Benitos Hat to La Super Rica the Mexicans have been killing it. Me gusta.

10.Birthday Dinner at Scott’s – very special, and Michael Barrymore was in the house. What more do you want?

Lows

1.Tierra Brindisa – my once favourite Soho restaurant has gone down hill. Sort it out lads!

2.Cattle class – feeling like rushed, harassed cattle by the service at The Wolseley.

3.The Delicious Miss Dahl – no idea how this got commissioned. A truly terrible, patronising, fake show.

4.Just Falafs going out of business  – really miss a decent falafel fix at lunch time. Please come back.

5.Borough Market Prices – its become a rip-off. Stuff there gets more expensive every time I go.

6.A.A Gill – Sunday Times food columnist. Self absorbed, pompous, objectionable, baboon shooting twat.

7.Sourdough skills – still not managed to make a good sourdough loaf yet. But I won’t stop till I succeed.

8.Byfords – supposedly one of the best restaurant in Holt. The deli cafe is good, but the restaurant is truly terrible.

9.Uncle Bens – this TV ad makes me want to murder people. Make it stop.

10. The Hairy Bikers – sorry fellas, but you continue to annoy the f**k out of me. How the hell did you get on TV!?!?

Photo: Insite

A year ago today, I wrote the first post on this here blog, and now 12 months later I can’t believe Hand To Mouth is one. The past year has gone by unbelievably quickly, starting a new job, getting engaged and planning a wedding may have something to do with that, but I’ve also really enjoyed writing my shizzle here.

Anyway, thanks to all you readers for all the support over the year, and a special big up goes to all the commenters, linkers, likers and the missus who’s idea this was.

Please keep coming back for seconds.

See you soon.

Ferg x

At Hand To Mouth Towers, we don’t have any outside space that allows us to grill meat over an open fire, which can be a bit frustrating during ‘barbecue season’. So when I get the chance to get busy with some hot coals, I try and make it count.

For me the undisputed kings of the grill are Côte de Bœuf or the porterhouse. Both are pretty primal cuts, with plenty of marbling, and if well hung, bags of flavour. Whilst at Forcalquier Market we picked up some amazing rib steaks to barbecue, and they made an awesome dinner.

Ingredients (serves 6)

3 x Côte de Bœuf steaks (around 700g each)

Herbs de Provence

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

You want your ribs to be at room temperature before you grill them, so get them out of the fridge before you start your barbecue. Now get your barbecue super hot. You want to sear and caremelise the outside of the meat when you put it on, so it needs to be as hot as Hades.

Before you put your steaks on the grill, season with pepper, and a generous scattering of herbs de Provence. Pat the herbs and pepper onto the meat so it sticks. There are differing schools of thought as to whether or not you should season steaks with salt before you cook them, but I like to sprinkle some on just before they hit the grill.

Stick the steaks on the barbecue, and at the same time shove a few rosemary branches directly on the coals beneath the meat. It will add additional flavour, and smells amazing. As the fat renders, the barbecue will periodically burst into flames, don’t worry too much about this, as long as the flames are under control again this will just add more flavour.

After two minutes or so, flip the meat over to sear the other side. After another two minutes, the steaks should be caremelised and glistening on both sides. At this point, douse the flames slightly with water or some beer. Keep turning the steaks every minute or so, until they are medium rare. You can tell this by pressing the meat and applying the ‘finger test’.

It’s going to be tempting to get stuck in straight away, but try and resist as it’s important to rest the meat. Pop the steaks on a plate, cover with foil, and set aside for 10-15 minutes. Don’t worry about the steaks not being piping hot when you serve, they are better eaten warm.

After resting, take each steak and slice it into strips about a centimeter thick. Serve with some Rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes, a good Dijon mustard and plenty of vin rouge.

Délicieux!

As people who read this blog will know, I’m not a huge fan of overly fussy food. 9 times out of 10 I’d rather eat a really well cooked roast chicken say, than some complex Heston-esque creation swimming in a sea of foam. There’s a certain pomposity that comes with this kind of food and the people, or so called ‘foodies’, who wax lyrical about it. But every once in a while it does one a bit of good to see how the other half live, especially if someone else is paying. In this case, my parents.

About half an hour’s drive from the villa my folks rented there’s a small village called Cruis. It’s a pretty unassuming little place, in many ways a typical French village, but we’d been told that the restaurant at the hotel in town was very good. Like the village, the Auberge De L’Abbaye didn’t look that special, plastic chairs and vinyl checked table cloths out on the veranda, so we were kind of unprepared for how good the food was.

The menu was succinct, but not limiting. Bursting with local meat, veg and seafood from slightly further afield, I could have happily eaten all of the dishes on the menu. I started with some local asparagus which was served with a qualis egg and kind of morel mushroom velouté sauce. The asparagus was firm, tender and delicious, the quails egg a nice touch, but the crowning glory was the sauce. Totally packed with the morel flavour, and with a few mushrooms scattered around the plate, it was deliciously rich. Many a mushroom soup could learn a lesson or two from that sauce.

To follow the asparagus I had ‘rabbit four ways’, which as you can see from the photo I got a bit excited about and ate half of before I remembered to take a photo. The four ways were a ‘lasagne’ of loin sandwiched between pieces of tomato , a beautifully succulent ballotine, rabbit confit served on a crispy disc of polenta, and a herb custed saddle. The dish was served with a super tasty Madeira sauce, some mange tout and pureed pumpkin.  Each element of the dish was delicious, and perfectly cooked, even the saddle which could have easily dried out. I could eat it all again now.

To end with I had the cheese plate, which featured some of the regions best cheeses, including the famous Banon goat’s cheese. It was good, but to be honest I wish I’d gone for what my parents had for dessert which was ‘La frambois dans tous ses etets’. Basically the raspberry equivalent of my rabbit dish, it comprised of lots of different mini raspberry based sweets including a crumble, ice cream and a tart. I tried a couple of the bits and they were amazing.

The food at the Auberge was definitely not simple, but neither was it fine dining. I guess it was more along the lines of classic French haute cuisine, and there wasn’t a trace of pomposity in sight. It was all very relaxed, the service was charming, and I wish I was there sitting on that terrace right now. If you’re in the area, I can highly recommend you pay Auberge De L’Abbaye a visit.

My Mac has recovered, so its back to France for a few posts.

When we visited the food market at Forcalquier, as mentioned in this post, the missus spotted some courgette flowers for sale. We both remembered seeing Jamie Oliver deep frying some ricotta stuffed flowers on one of his shows, and despite not having a cookbook or any access to the interwebs, we decided to gave it a go.

Without blowing my own trumpet, the results were great, and to be honest it was easier that I thought it would be. The following recipe serves 6 as a small starter (2 flowers each), and although I didn’t at the time (because my father ain’t fan of the spice) I’ve added some red chilli. Not very French, but there you go.

Ingredients

12 large courgette flowers

For the stuffing

250g Ricotta

50g Parmesan, grated

1 tablespoon finely chopped basil

1 tablespoon finely chopped mint

Zest of 1 lemon

1 red chilli, seeds removed, finely chopped

Salt & pepper to taste

For the batter

1 cup 250g self raising flower

1 cup of cold lager

Pinch of salt

Groundnut / rapeseed / vegetable oil for deep frying

Lemon wedges and salad leaves to serve

Method

The first thing to do is make the batter. Sift the flour into a bowl, and then add the beer and salt. The batter should be thick enough to coat your finger, but not stodgy. Now set it aside whilst you prepare the flowers. Resting the batter for this time will help make it crisp.

Now make the stuffing, which is easy enough. Just get all the ingredients listed above and mix them together. Have a taste, and then add salt and pepper if required. Now the hard-ish bit, getting the stuffing into the flowers.

The easiest way to do it is to spoon the mixture into a sandwich bag, and nip off the tip of one of the corners to make a piping bag. The fresher the flowers, the more open they’ll be, and the easier they are to fill. To fill, pick up a flower, and poke the business end of piping bag into the open end of the flower. Squeeze slowly but firmly, gently filling up the flower. The flowers will expand as you stuff them, but be careful not to overfill them or they will split. It’s not a disaster if they do, but better if they don’t. When they are almost full to the top, stop filling and then twist the top of the flower closed.

Now get a heavy bottomed pan of oil on the heat. You’re going to be deep frying the flowers, so the oil needs to be four or more inches deep. After around 5 minutes, test the temperature by dropping in a small piece of bread. If it sizzles and turns brown quickly you’re good to go. To cook, hold each flower by the stalk and dip into the batter. Let it drip off for a second or two, and they ‘lay’ into the oil away from you to prevent splashing. Cook two flowers at a time. Gently turn them in the pan with a slotted spoon. When they are golden brown, after 40 seconds or so, remove from the pan and place in a bowl with kitchen paper to absorb any excess oil.

Repeat the process, cooking the rest of flowers as quickly as you can. As soon as they’re all done, plate up with a few dressed salad leaves and a lemon wedge.

Whilst my Mac is being re-habilitated I don’t have access to my holiday pics, so I’ll have to come back to the stuff I rustled up in France at a later date. But my camera is still working, and I’ve bought my schizo old mac back from the dead, so I can do a bit of posting in the meantime.

This recipe is my take on the tapas classic Gambas al Ajillo, and It’s pretty simple and quick too. Buy the biggest, fattest prawns you can afford. Serves two as a main course.

Ingredients

8 King prawns / Tiger prawns

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 dried or fresh red chilli, chopped

20g unsalted butter

35ml extra virgin olive oil

Juice of 1/2 large lemon

Salt to taste

Handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped

Method

First up get a large frying pan on the heat and melt the butter in the olive oil. Whilst this is going on, chop the chilli and and the garlic and then add to the pan. At this point, keep the heat low. What you want to do at this point is get the oil really nicely infused with the garlic and chilli.

After a couple of minutes, crank up the heat to full. As soon as the garlic and chilli start to sizzle in the butter and oil, add a good pinch of salt, and then the prawns, fitting them sugly togehher in the pan so they all have equal contact with the bottom of it.

They cook really quickly, turning from grey to pink almost instantly, and only really need a minute on each side. Once they’ve had their minute on each side, add the lemon juice and shake the pan vigorously to mix with the butter, oil, garlic and chilli to form this awesome piquant sauce. Finally, sprinkle over the parsley.

Serve immediately with a mixed salad and a enough sourdough bread to dunk and make the most of the sauce.

Sorry for the radio silence, my Mac has given up the ghost and has had to go in for repairs, so I’m having to write this from work (don’t tell the boss).

So France was awesome as expected. We were staying in Provence at a place my folks had rented with the rest of my familly, about an hour north of Marseille, near a town called Fourcalquier. I’m sure this is going to come over like I’m a smug ponce, but it really is a lovely part of the world. The landscape is amazing. Rolling fields of poppies, lavender and crops, the climate is awesome, and you really notice how quiet it is compared to London.

Aside from spending time with my familly, eating, drinking and doing a bit of cooking, the two highlights for me were going to Forcalquier market and hanging out in a little village called Banon.

Forcalquier marché happens every Monday morning and is a peculiar mixture of food, clothing and a whole lot of baskets. The produce on display was a food lovers dream. Amazing meat, bread, cheese, tarts, and other goodies like salami, garlic, olive oil, fruit and veg, all produced in the local area.

The farmers and stall holders are obviously really proud of their produce, encouraging you to try their wares at every turn. They are also refreshingly un-prissy about how they handle their food. They poke, prod and handle it. Not in an aggressive way, but like they are connected to and care about it. None of the rubber glove wearing supermarket staff who look scared to handle a chicken breast like you get over here.

We dropped ALOT of cash, but it was well worth it.

Banon also had a market; it wasn’t really in the same league as Fourcalquier’s, but it was a lovely place. Kind of how you imagine a little French village to be. Nice bar on the square, people pootling around, a good boulangerie and an amazing boucherie where the picture of the ’salami curtain’ was taken. A great place to hang out, relax and watch the World go by.

I’ll get some more France related stuff up soon when my Mac gets fixed. Don’t hold your breath.

Image by Michael Fenichel

Hand To Mouth is very happy to say that it’s off to to the South of France for a week.

I will be mostly hanging out in Provence, drinking wine, eating bread and cheese, and checking out a food market or two.

See you en l’autre side.

À bientôt

It’s been hot, hot, hot in London town this week, and the warm weather has got me thinking about summer food. Aside maybe from a decent burger on a barbie, for me it’s the Mediterraneans that totally nail ‘al fresco’ eating. Grilled meats, crunchy veg and fresh zingy flavours.

These lamb wraps have all that and more. The taste of the spicy, charred, marinated meat and the tzatziki work really well together, and the wraps mean that the dish is still pretty light. We don’t have a garden, so our griddle pan has to do.

Ingredients (makes 3 large wraps)

For the lamb

400g lamb leg steaks

Handful of fresh oregano leaves, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes

Juice of one lemon

50ml extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

Pinch of salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the tzatziki

200g 0% fat Greek yoghurt

1/4 cucumber, sliced and diced

Handful of mint leaves, chopped

Pinch of salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

A good glug of extra virgin olive oil

For the wraps

Flatbread wraps

Salad leaves (rocket, spinach, watercress or other)

Red onion, thinly sliced

Red chilli, finely sliced

Method

A few hours before you eat, preferably overnight, marinate the lamb. Chop the oregano and garlic, and then add to a bowl with the salt, pepper, paprika, chilli, lemon juice and olive oil. Whisk together, pour over the lamb, making sure the steaks are coated, and then pop in the fridge for at least two hours.

While the lamb is marinating make the tzatziki (you can also do this the night before). Cut the quarter cucumber into half centimeter slices, and then dice. Pop into a bowl along with the chopped mint leaves, garlic, salt, pepper yoghurt and olive oil. Mix well and then set aside.

When you are ready to eat, get your barbecue or griddle pan on. When its good and hot, pop on your lamb. You want it nice and pink in the middle, so if your steaks are around a centimeter or so thick, you want to cook them for about 2 or 3 minutes each side. While the meat’s cooking, slice the red onion and chilli finely so they’re ready to go on the wraps.

When the meat’s cooked, take off the heat to rest for a few minutes. Whilst it’s resting, get a dry frying pan on the heat. When it’s hot, cook the flatbreads on the pan for 30 seconds on each side.This softens them up and makes them easier to handle.

You’re now ready to assemble the wraps. Spread a third of the tzatziki over the center of the wrap and then scatter some salad leaves on the top. Slice up the lamb steaks on the diagonal, and place on top of the leaves. Finally, sprinkle on the sliced onion and chilli, wrap up and then eat immediately.

Good times (I hope this makes sense, I was a bit drunk when I wrote it).

I love a bit of pork belly, but I don’t cook it at home that often. I’m not really sure why, but as soon as I taste that tasty, unctuous meat and get my teeth round that crackling, I vow to do it more often.

This recipe gives the belly the Eastern treatment using Szechuan pepper and Chinese five spice. Despite a lot of the fat rendering out during the cooking process, it’s definitely not the healthiest meat, but when it tastes as good as it does, who gives a toss.

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the pork

750g pork belly joint

1 tablespoon Szechuan pepper

1 teaspoon black pepper corns

1 teaspoon Chinese five spice

1 teaspoon sea salt

For the greens

200g baby pak choi

1/2 red chilli, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon Light soy sauce

2 tablespoons water

6-8 Spring onions

Sesame oil

Vegetable oil

Method

First up, score the skin of pork belly all over in a diamond formation with as sharp a knife as you’re got. You want to cut through the skin, but not down to the flesh, around 3 millimeters deep.

Put a kettle on to boil, place your belly joint on a wire rack in your sink, and when it’s boiled, pour the water all over the pork’s skin. The skin will contract a bit making the scoring more prominent. Now pat the joint dry and set aside.

Pop a dry frying pan on the heat, and toast off the Szechuan and black pepper corns. When you can smell them, pour them in a pestle and mortar and grind into a powder. Now add the five spice and salt to the mortar and give it another grind to mix everything together.

Flip the belly joint over so it’s skin side down, and then rub the spice mix all over the pork meat. Set aside to marinate somewhere cool for at least 2 hours. You can leave it overnight in a fridge, but make sure the joint is at room temperature and check the skin is still dry before you cook it.

After a couple of hours, set your oven to 200 c and get your pork out. Some moisture will have leeched out of the meat, soaking into the spice rub. This is totally normal, and will help the rub stick. Now get a roasting tray which you can place a wire rack over and place the joint on the rack skin side up. Some of the rub will fall off, don’t worry about that. Now boil a kettle, pour the boiled water into the tray (avoiding getting the meat wet) until it is half full, and then put it in the oven.

Cook the joint for 20 minutes before turning the oven down to 180 and cook for another hour. Whilst the pork is cooking, cut the pack choi lengthways, slice the garlic and chop the clillies.

After an hour, take the pork out of the oven and remove from the rack. Turn the oven up as high as it will go, and then get your frying pan on the heat with a small amount of vegetable oil in it. When it’s good and hot, pop in the joint skin side up. You’re doing this to seal on the remaining spice rub to the bottom of the joint. After a minute, pop the joint back in the oven in the pan for 15 minutes.

Now cook your greens. Get a wok on the heat, add a few drops of sesame oil, a glug of vegetable oil and then fry the garlic and chilli. Before they brown, drop in the greens and stir fry for a couple of minutes, coating the veg with the oil. Then add the light soy sauce, water and cook for another couple of minutes.

You’re now ready to eat. Take the pork out of the oven, pop the greens in a bowl, cut the joint into chunks and serve straight away with steamed white rice.

Double happiness.

The Asparagus season in the UK (apparently) runs from 24th April to 21st June, and its a time of year that I love because I can’t get enough of the stuff. I often think the best way to eat it is to keep it simple with a bit of melted butter and seasoning, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to mix it up a bit.

This ‘recipe’ gives the Asparagus a tasty Italian twist, and is as quick as a very fast thing to put together.

Ingredients (serves 2)

20 spears of Asparagus

Juice of half a lemon (30ml)

70ml Extra virgin olive oil

20g grated parmesan

Freshly ground black pepper

2 slices of bread (sourdough)

Method

First up, put a pan of lightly salted water on the heat, and then prepare the asparagus. The ends of the spears will be quite woody, so snap them off. The spear will break naturally at the right point when bent between your fingers.

Next prepare the dressing. Juice the lemon, pour into a bowl, and add the olive oil and Parmesan. Whisk together vigorously to form a creamy dressing.

The water should be simmering by now, so drop in the spears. They’re going to cook for around 5 minutes until tender. Whilst they’re simmering away, cut and toast two slices of sourdough.

When ready, drain the asparagus and plate up. Place the toast on the plate, and rest the asparagus tips on it. Give the dressing one final whisk, and then spoon over the tips.

Serve immediately. Eat the asparagus and then the delicious dressing soaked toast.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been looking at new features to add to Hand To Mouth. My friend Dazzler suggested I try re-creating recipes from weird and wonderful books, which I thought was a great idea. This first ‘Tried & Tested’ post fits more into the latter category, as it comes from a rather lovely new cookery book called ‘Great British Food‘.

Put together by the guys behind the brilliant Canteen mini chain of restaurants, this Lancashire Hot Pot stays true to their ethos of cooking gutsy, tasty, good quality, British grub. The recipe calls for leg mutton, which I couldn’t get hold of at the time of cooking, so instead I used shoulder of lamb.

The recipe takes a bit of prep, but once you get going it’s pretty easy, and it tastes reet good.

Ingredients (serves 6)

50g butter

250g onions, sliced

1kg boned leg of mutton, 3-4cm dice

150g carrots, sliced

10g fresh thyme, leaves picked

3 bay leaves

700g floury potatoes (Maris Piper), peeled ad thinly sliced

500ml meat stock

100ml meat stock

Salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 135 degrees, and then heat up half the butter in a saucepan. Add the onions and sweat over a low heat for around 15 minutes or until soft and translucent, but not browned.

Next place the meat in an oven proof dish and add the onions, carrots, thyme and bay leaves. Season well with salt and pepper, and then mix together.

Arrange the potato slices on top of the meat and vegetable mix, overlapping the slices slightly, and then pour the stock and ale into the dish.

Now melt the remaining butter and brush over the potatoes, season with salt, cover with a lid and then pop in the oven to cook for 2 hours.

After two hours, remove the lid from the dish, increase the oven temperature to 150 degrees and continue cooking for a further 30-45 minutes until the potatoes are nicely browned.

Serve in big bowls, making sure you get a good mix of the meat, vegetables and the tasty stock.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I’ve learned quite a lot from my mother in cooking terms over the years. For the most part its been a case of me picking up stuff by watching her at work, but every now and then I’ll steal a recipe or two off her too.

This cake is one of those firm family favourites, and it even gets the royal seal of approval from my very sweet, but ever so fussy niece, Ksenia. It’s a bit tangier than most lemon drizzle cakes because of there’s more lemon juice in the glaze, and that’s how we like it.

Ingredients

For the cake

125g unsalted butter

175g self-raising flour

175g caster sugar

2 large eggs

Zest of 2 lemons

4 tablespoons of milk

A pinch of salt

Butter for greasing your loaf tin

For the ‘drizzle’

The juice of 2 lemons (about 6 tablespoons)

Zest of 1 lemon

100g icing sugar

Method

You’re going to bake this cake in a loaf tin, so first up, prepare and line it. Use a half kilo tin, smear it with butter, and then line with greaseproof paper. Now set your oven to 180 c to get it up to cooking temp.

Now cream together the butter and the sugar in a large mixing bowl; it makes life a whole lot easier, and the process faster if your butter is at room temperature. Creaming basically means beating the butter and the sugar together until it attains a ‘creamy’ texture. You can do this with a wooden spoon, but a hand whisk will save your arms.

Next add the two eggs and the lemon zest and beat them well into the butter and sugar mixture. Now fold in the flour and the salt. You want to mix in all the flour, but you don’t want to beat the hell out of the mixture, so do it gently with a spatula or something similar. Finally mix in the milk, which loosens the mixture a tad.

Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, shake from side to side so it levels out, and then pop onto the middle shelf of the oven. The cake is going to cook for around 45 minutes. When ready it will have risen, and the outside will be a dark golden brown.

When the cake is almost ready, make the drizzle. Put the lemon juice, icing sugar and zest into a small saucepan and heat until the sugar has dissolved. The syrup shouldn’t boil, but will be hot.

When you think the cake is ready, slide a sharp knife into the centre. If it comes out clean, it’s ready to come out, if not put it back in for another 4 or 5 minutes. As soon as you’ve taken the cake out of the oven, perforate it’s surface all over with a toothpick by sticking it in about half way. You’re doing this to help the syrup sink into the sponge whilst it’s still warm, and it’s well worth taking the time to make sure the top is properly peppered with holes.

Now pour the drizzle all over the top, trying to make sure it is absorbed evenly. The cake will have risen more at the centre so the syrup will naturally run towards the edges, so make sure you keep spooning it over the middle.

Now the hard bit, you have to wait until the cake is completely cooled before cutting it or it will crumble. When it is finally ready to eat, serve with a nice cuppa, or as a pudding with some Greek yoghurt ever so slightly sweetened with maple syrup or honey.

One of the other dishes I was thinking about for the previous post was this omelette for two. I thought it could work quite well in that it combines seaside ingredients with the romantic nature of Lou and Liam’s retreat. However, fish for brekkie isn’t to everyone’s tastes, so this is the kind of dish you can enjoy at any time of the day.

There’s only one mackerel fillet in the mix so the flavour isn’t too strong, and  I use a bit of zero fat Greek yoghurt in the eggs to help keep the omelette moist in the middle. The little bit of  sharpness the yoghurt gives also works well with the oily fish.

Ingredients

4 large free range eggs

2 tablespoons 0% fat Greek yoghurt

1 mackerel fillet (around 70g)

1/2 medium onion, chopped

2 tablespoons chopped chives

2 tablespoons chopped flat leaf parsley

Handful of grated Parmesan

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil and butter for frying.

Method

First up, get your grill on full and then put a frying pan on the heat. When it’s really good and hot, pop in your mackerel. Fry it for about a minute or so on each side. This gets some of the oil out of the fish, but also brings out it’s flavour and makes it easy to flake. I also like the tasty brown caremelised crust it makes on the outside.

When done, set aside the mackerel, wipe down the pan with some kitchen paper to get rid of the excess fish oil. Then turn down the heat, add a little olive oil and then gently fry off the onion. You want it translucent as opposed to brown, and when it is, set aside with the mackerel.

Next crack your eggs into a bowl, season with a small pinch of salt, and a good few grindings of black pepper. Mix in the yoghurt to the eggs, and whisk thoroughly getting rid of the lumps. Now add the Parmesan, onion, chopped chives and parsley to the eggs. Flake the mackerel fillet in too, and then mix together.

Get 20 cm diameter  frying pan on the heat (a different one to the one you fried your fish in preferably). When it’s nice and hot, add a nob of butter, coat the inside of the pan and then add the egg mixture. Leave for a minute or so, and then go around the outside of the pan with a spatula to make sure it’s not sticking.

You want the base of the omelette to be golden brown before transferring to the oven to brown the top, keep checking by turning up the edge with the spatula. When ready, slide into the oven.

As the top of the omelette is cooking, it will puff up as it browns. This will happen at the edges first, and then work it’s way into the centre of the pan. You want the omelette to be moist, so pretty much as soon at the centre is brown, whip it out of the oven and turn it out onto a plate.

Serve with a peppery salad of rocket, chard and thinly sliced radishes with a lemon, dijon mustard and olive oil dressing.

Give it a try.

As mentioned in the previous post, my friends who run a lovely boutique B&B in Margate have asked me to contribute a dish for their breakfast menu, and this is it.

Lou and Liam opened the doors of The Reading Rooms last year after restoring the amazing grade II Georgian Town House where it’s situated and appearing on Ruth Watson’s Hotel Rescue on Channel 4. It’s a really relaxing and luxurious place. Insanely comfortable beds, stylish decor, beautiful bathrooms and they cook a mean breakfast too. And that’s where I come in.

As well as the full English and pastries on the menu, they’re going to offer this alternative to a warming winter porridge. The oats absorb most of the liquid, becoming lovely and plump, and the apple juice’s natural sugar means no need to add anything extra, unless you’ve got a sweet tooth. I like to serve it with chopped summer berries.

Ingredients (serves 2 / 3)

120g jumbo porridge oats

250ml apple juice

250g low fat natural yoghurt

2 apples, peeled and grated (I like granny smiths, but anything juicy with a bit of tang is good)

Seasonal fruit and honey to serve

Method

Mix together the oats, apple juice and yoghurt together in a bowl or Tupperware container with a lid. Next peel the apples, coarsely grate them and add to the oats. Mix well in, making sure as much of the the grated apple as possible is below the surface of the mixture , this will stop it from going brown. And thats kind of it. Super easy.

As you’ll see, the mixture is pretty loose at this stage, but this will change. Put a lid on your Tupperware or cover your bowl with cling film, and then pop in the fridge for a good few hours or preferably over night. In the morning, the oats will have absorbed a lot of the liquid and puffed up making a much thicker consistency.

Divide the the mixture accross two bowls, and the serve with chopped seasonal fruit, and if required a bit of honey to sweeten.

Healthy, delicious and best eaten overlooking Hawley Square towards the sea.

Things have been a bit quiet at Hand To Mouth towers over the past couple of weeks. The day job has been kind of getting in the way of my other life, but as should be clear by now I was born to eat, so normal service will be resumed soon.

In the down time I’ve been doing a bit of research finding out what people think of the blog, and what they’d like to see more or less of. I got some really good feedback, and there are a few things that I’m going to try and make happen over the next few months.

One is incorporating a bit of video into the site to give a bit more of an impression of techniques, textures and consistencies. A word of warning, I’m not in any way trained, so I  may well lead you astray.

Another was an idea my mate Darren had. He’s suggested I tackle a few recipes from some weird and wonderful cookery books. I’ve got quite a few oddities knocking about at home like Len Deighton’s ‘Action Cook Book‘, so expect to see some throwback grub here soon.

Finally, my friends Lou and Liam who run the lovely Reading Rooms B&B in Margate, have asked me to contribute an item to their already cracking breakfast menu. I’ve got something in mind, it just needs a bit of tweaking, so more on this soon.

Any other comments or suggestions are welcome, so if you’ve got an opinion, please drop me a line.

See you round like a rissole.

(I can’t remember where I found the above image, so I’m sorry to whoever created it. Let me know and I will amend with credit where credit’s due).

As I may or may not have mentioned before, my other half’s family are a real mixed bag in terms of nationalities. Chinese, Indian, and South African to name but three. A veritable melting pot compared to my comparatively mundane ancestry.

As a result, my future mother in law, Connie, seems to be able to cook anything. From insane curries and whole fried Chinese fish, to cream horns and South African doughnuts. And the speed she does it at is mind blowing. Turn your back for 10 seconds and when you look back there’s a plate of food in front of you. Brilliant.

This recipe is for her quick lamb curry that I tried whilst over in Oz and she kindly wrote the recipe down for me. It’s very tasty, and also very easy. If you can get your lamb on the bone, so much the better as it’ll give your curry more flavour.

Ingredients

750g stewing lamb, diced

1 large onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, pounded

1 thumb sized piece of ginger, pounded

1/4 teaspoon tumeric

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon garam masala

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 cinnamon stick

1 chilli, chopped

1/2 can tomatoes

1 can green lentils, drained

1 tablespoon chopped coriander

1 pinch of sugar

Salt to taste

Method

Get a thick bottomed pan on the heat and add a good couple of glugs of vegetable, rape seed or groundnut oil. When it’s good and hot, pop in all the dried spices and fry them off to release the aromatics. After a minute or so, add the chopped onion and fry off.

Whilst this is going on, roughly chop the onion and ginger, and pound in a pestle and mortar with a little salt until pasted. Add this to the onions and continue to fry. Next, chop the chilli and add it to the mix seeds and all, along with the cinnamon stick and curry leaves. Give a good stir and continue to fry.

Now wash the lamb in cold water, drain and then add to the pot. Lightly fry the outside of the meat, and when light brown add the half can of tomatoes, a pinch of sugar and the chopped coriander. Don’t worry about the curry going dry, the ingredients will give off enough moisture to keep the curry moist. Now stick a lid on it and simmer gently until the lamb is falling off the bone and tender, which should be around 45 minutes.

Take off the lid, add the drained green lentils to the curry, and bring up to the boil. And that’s pretty much it. Serve the curry with boiled Basmati rice and a simple raita made with yoghurt, cucumber, fresh mint and coriander.

Let’s just hope I did the recipe justice.

There are few meals as satisfying as a roast chicken. Even if you’re having a REALLY shit day, a roastie can turn tings around. What’s more, there are always leftovers, which means there’s always another meal or two to be eeked out of the carcass.

We roasted a particularly big bird last weekend, so I decided to do the leftover chicken justice by making a few pies. It’s a pretty easy recipe, especially if you buy ready rolled puff pastry from the supermarket. The below will make 4 small pies or one biggun. Here’s how it’s done.

Ingredients

250g roast chicken – mixture of white and brown meat

1 large leek, finely chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

1 large clove garlic, chopped

2 rashers smoked bacon, chopped

70g chestnut mushrooms

300ml chicken stock

1ooml single cream

100ml white wine

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon plain flour

1 pack ready rolled puff pastry (around 350g)

1 egg, beaten

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method

Wash the leek and then chop finely. Add olive oil to a heavy bottom pan, turn on the heat and then add the leeks. Peel the carrot, chop and add to the pan along with the chopped bacon and garlic. Fry until soft and then add the mushrooms to the pot.

Once the mushrooms have cooked down a bit, add the flour and stir in. The flour will coat the veggies, and the mixture will become a bit pasty. Now add the wine, stir in and burn off the alcohol, before adding the chicken stock and the roast chicken. Stir all together, and then season with salt and pepper to taste.

You should have the makings of a fairly decent gravy by now. Reduce the liquid by about a quarter, and then add the tarragon. Stir in and then add the cream. Have a taste. If you’re happy, turn off the head and set aside to cool. If not, adjust the seasoning until you are.

Once the mixture is room temperature-ish, turn on your oven to 200 C, and start assembling your pies. Decant the mixture into whichever pie dish or dishes you’re going to use. Next, crack and beat an egg and get your ready rolled pastry out of the fridge. Using a pastry brush, paint the lip of your pie dish with the egg wash. Now cut a piece of the pastry sheet bigger than your dish, and lay it over the top of  it.

Press the pastry down around the egged lip to seal the pie. Using a sharp knife, cut of the excess off the side, and then ‘crimp’ the edge with a fork. Finally, make a little ‘chimney’ hole in the centre of the lid with a tooth pick and brush it all over with the egg wash.

The pies are now ready to cook. If you’ve made small pies they’ll take around 15 to 20 minutes, a bigger one more like half an hour. Either way, the pastry lid should be dark golden brown and puffed up when they’re done.

Eat immediately with new potatoes, steamed broccoli or a green salad with a mustardy vinaigrette.

Pretty good, although maybe not as good as the missus’ chicken pie, but thats another story.

Been crazy busy since we got back from Oz, so have got a bit behind on the writing stuff. But back to the land down under for a quick coffee related post.

As mentioned previously, there’s been a bit of an Australian coffee shop invasion in London over the past year or so. Places like  Lantana, Flat White, Milk Bar and Kaffeine have their own style and atmosphere, but all have one thing in common. Great coffee. As I understand it, ‘coffee culture’ hit Australia and New Zealand about the same sort of time as it did in the UK in the early 90s, but interestingly instead of succumbing to the big brands pumping out the brown liquid passing itself off as coffee sold the length and breadth of our high streets, our Antipodean cousins adopted a more artisan based approach. In fact, such is their devotion and knowledge of good coffee that even the mighty tentacles of Starbucks have failed to gain a foothold in Australia. As my friend Mutber put it, “…you can’t sell a bad product to an educated audience.”

Melbourne is probably better known for starting this Australian coffee revolution, but Campos in Newtown has been leading the charge in Sydney since 2002. Like Harry’s in the previous post, it’s a pretty unassuming looking place on a side street off the busy Kings Street, but once you’re inside you know you’re in a temple to coffee. When we visited, it was packed with people queuing diligently for their daily dose. There were around 5 baristas behind the bar, and interestingly that’s exactly what Campos feels like. A bar. There’s a real buzz about the place. It’s loud, full of people catching up with friends, standing, sitting, hanging out, chatting with the staff, reading the papers, and so on.

We ordered flat whites, which is apparently a bit of a cliche these days. I’m sure the real connoisseurs only drink espressos, and I’m sure they also let you know all about it too. Anyway, each to their own. When our coffees arrived, not only did they look beautiful with the trademark flat white foam ‘art’ but they tasted amazing too. Really rich and creamy, but also smooth. It sounds odd, but you know you’re actually drinking a cup of coffee. I guess my pallet has become too accustomed to coffee flavoured hot milk. You also get much less in a cup than you do at most places in the UK. Probably a good thing as a Campo’s coffee packs a pretty heavy caffeinated punch.

Sufficiently impressed, we wanted to take a bit of Campos home with us so went back later that day to get some ground coffee to smuggle back. We opted for the Obama Blend, which like the man himself is a mix of African and American, and promises a cup with, “Great depth of character”. We’ve not sampled it yet, but it ounds like the kind of change all coffee lovers can believe in.

Just about recovered from my trip down under, so lets talk crabs, specifically Singaporean style critters.

Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab is a bit of a Sydney institution that the Missus and her family have been going to for years, and they very kindly introduced me to whilst we were over there.

It’s an unassuming place above a slightly grotty looking pub in the Surrey Hills area of the city, but that doesn’t seem to stop people coming in their droves. Opened in 1982 by the eponymous Harry (Lau), the place doesn’t feel like it’s changed much since, and from what understand the menu hasn’t either. And whilst there is plenty on offer to eat, it all feels like a bit of a formality, as the main event is definitely the chilli crab that gives the restaurant it’s name.

After ordering, you are invited to go up and chose your victims from a selection of healthy looking Queensland mud crabs at the front of the restaurant. They are big, muscular beasts, and it almost felt a bit daunting plucking them out of their bucket to await their fate. But we soldiered and kept the wolf from the door by having a couple of portions of salt and pepper squid whilst we waited for the stars of the show. The squid was super fresh, tasty, not at all chewy and served with a poky chilli soy sauce. A fitting start for what was to come.

Then the crabs arrived. Ay carrumba. Already partially dismembered and laid out on large platters, they came smothered in a deep red rust coloured chilli sauce, and served with Chinese greens, rice and delicious roti bread. Like the squid, the crab was very fresh. The meat sweet and clean tasting, and surprisingly not overpowered by the sauce. And what a sauce. Amazing. It had this really deep and intense flavour, and was flecked with what was either crab meat or egg. We quizzed our waiter on the ingredients, but he would only give us the obvious onion, garlic, ginger and chili. The rest, he told us, was a secret. I can’t blame him, the stuff is like liquid gold.

The charismatic Harry himself made an appearance during the meal to see if we were enjoying his signature dish, as did several large bowls of water to rinse ourselves down with. Both the bowls and complimentary aprons are testament to the fact that this is not refined and polite dining, and that was one of the great things about the meal. It was a very communal experience. You really have to get in there and get dirty, and was all the more enjoyable for it.

Had we been stranded in Sydney due to Eyjafjallajokull’s eruptions, I would certainly made a strong case for a return visit to Harry’s, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until the next time we’re in the area.

Just got back from a whistlestop trip to Oz to meet the future in-laws. Sydney is definitely a town that loves to eat, and we munched our way through the city from North to South, East to West.

Highlights included discovering toasted banana bread (where have you been all my life), fish and chips on the beach in Balmoral, some fine Roka style Japanese nosh at Toko, a dirty pie at Harry’s Cafe De Wheels, amazing Lebanese at Emma’s On Liberty in New Town, a cracking roast chicken sandwich from Chargrill Charlies, great coffee from Campos, and a couple of delicious breakfasts at Pure Bronte Pistachio on Bronte Beach. A very fine way to start the day.

But probably the best meals we had were at a cute little Italian place called A Tavola in Darlinghurst. A seriously good veal ragu pasta and a nice bottle of Sicilian red. I could eat it again now. And feasting on the famous chilli crab at Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab. Insanely good.

Oh, and I also picked up some great recipes from my future mother in law, Connie.

I’ll be reporting back on my findings in more detail once I’ve recovered from the jetlag.

Until then…

Photo: Neets & Dre

Hand To Mouth is off to Australia for a couple of weeks to meet and greet the future outlaws and extended family.

As well as (hopefully) lapping up a bit of much needed sunshine, I’ll be getting my teeth into Sydney’s cafe culture, fresh seafood, and if I get my way, a few meat pies from Harry’s Cafe de Wheels.

Have a cracking Easter.

I Tweeted about these bad boys a few weeks ago when I discovered that they’d been re-stocked by my lovely Scandinavian friends down the road from work, but such is my love for the Peanott Kubbe that I thought they deserved a post all of their own.

I rarely get evangelical or geeky about chocolate bars, but having discovered the Peanott Kubbe last year I can make an exception. Hailing from Norway, and roughly translated as ‘Peanut Log’, it’s a chocolate, peanut and toffee bar with a difference.

Like a Bounty, the bar comes in two halves. The outer is made of a milk chocolate layer studded with roasted peanut chunks that surrounds a second layer made of dark chocolate, which in turn surrounds the smooth toffee centre. The toffee core has smooth nougatey texture with an almost burnt caramel taste, which contrasts with the bite and flavour of the peanuts and chocolate. Thats right. Toffee, peanut and two types of chocolate. Whats not to love?

I’m going to shut up now, but I can’t recommend them enough. You can find the Scandinavian Kitchen (which is a very fine cafe if you haven’t been) and Peanott Kubbe here.

Veal had a bit of a bad rep in the 80s, but that didn’t stop the veal escalope becoming one of my favourite things to eat when I was growing up. There used to be this great Italian restaurant called La Baita up the road from my folk’s place in North London that we’d to go to on a pretty regular basis. I pretty much always ordered the veal escalope, which was served with sauteed potatoes and deep fried courgette. Not exactly healthy, but very tasty.

This is a bit of a remix of that childhood favourite. The prep is a bit fiddly, but well worth it.

Ingredients

For the Veal

2 veal escalopes

Seasoned plain flour

Thyme, finely chopped

Breadcrumbs (enough to coat both escalopes – 250 ish g)

1 egg, beaten

For the Courgette & Potato Cake

1 large potato, grated

3 courgettes, grated

1 medium onion, finely sliced

1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped

1 chilli

Handful of grated Parmesan cheese

Grated nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

2 medium eggs

Olive oil

Method

Start by preparing the the cake. Grate the potato and courgette, and then finely slice the onion (in a food processor if you have one). Turn out onto a clean tea towel, bunch up and squeeze the excess moisture out of the grated veggies. Place in a bowl and add the chopped chilli, finely chopped garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and a few grates of nutmeg. Mix together, crack in the two eggs, mix again thoroughly and then set aside.

Now prep the veal. Scatter plain flour on a large plate and season with salt and pepper, then take another plate and scatter on the breadcrumbs. Chop the thyme, and then mix into the crumbs. Finally beat an egg in a flat bottomed bowl. Take each escalope, pat dry with kitchen towel, and then coat with the seasoned flour. Pat off the excess and then dip in the egg, covering the surface of the meat. Then coat with the breadcrumbs, patting down to make sure the escalope is covered, and then set aside.

Get a large frying pan on the heat, and coat with olive oil. Decant the courgette and potato mixture into the pan and flatten with the back of a spatula to form an even cake about an inch thick, and then turn on your grill to maximum. Cook on the hob for around 5 minutes. Turn up the side of the cake with the spatula, once it’s a dark golden brown, pop it under the grill for another five mintes.

Whilst the courgette and potato cake is in the oven, get another frying pan on the heat. Add some rapeseed or groundnut oil to the pan, and when it’s good and hot, pop in the breaded veal escalopes. Fry on each side for around one minute, or until golden brown. Remove from the pan, rest on kitchen towel to remove excess oil, and you’re ready to eat.

Serve with a slice of the courgette and potato cake, a parsley, red onion and cucumber salad dressed with a nice mustardy vinaigrette, and a wedge of lemon. Buon appetito!

A tweet from Warp Records got me a bit hot under the collar yesterday. The reason? A few posthumous new tracks from the donut obsessed J Dilla. Released on Stones Throw Records, you know this is going to be one of those occasions where style and substance go hand in hand. Just check out the packaging and donut slip mats. Tasty!!!

For those that don’t know, J Dilla was an incredible Hip Hop producer who sadly passed away in 2006. He was prolific, and insanely talented, producing for the likes of Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest and even Janet Jackson (possibly a low point there).

In collaboration with Madlib, he made one of my favourite Hip Hop albums of the noughties, the awesome ‘Champion Sound’. Just check ‘The Heist’ and the title track if you want any evidence. Mad and Dilla were supposed to make a follow up. I’m not sure whether they got started or not, or whether any tracks will ever see the light of day, but we live in hope.

His music has had a lasting impact on hip hop and beyond, and many consider him to be the father of the so called ‘wonky’ sound being championed by artists like Flying Lotus.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with one of the tracks off Donut Shop, Dilla’s rather acidic take on Men With Hat’s 80’s folky synth-pop tune ‘Safety Dance‘. Enjoy.

For more info on Dilla, check out the fantastic three part Stussy Produced mini documentary on the man himself.

RIP.

As mentioned in a previous post, avocado on toast is one of our favourite breakfasts over here at Hand To mouth Towers. Recently we’ve been remixing it by adding a fried egg. A small change, but a significant one. Give it a go.

Anyway, a bit unremarkable in itself, but this morning I cracked my first ever double yolker and it’s pretty much made my day.

Thats is all.

Happy Sunday.

There’s an old adage about doing one thing well as opposed to doing a few things averagely, which would have been very apt for this post, but despite trawling the whole interwebs I can’t find it. Oh well.

So last night our fiends Charlotte and Mark introduced to us this restaurant called Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte. It seems it’s a bit of an institution, but somehow never made it onto my radar. It’s on Marylebone Lane, right opposite the awesome Golden Hind fish and chip shop (which deserves a post all of its own – all in good time), and is a great example of the benefits of  the ‘do one thing well’ mantra.

At L’Entrecôte there’s basically no menu. You sit down (after a lengthy queue if you arrive at peak times) and get served a lettuce and walnut salad with a lovely mustardy vinaigrette, followed by steak frites. The steak comes served thinly sliced, covered in the restaurants own special sauce, the recipe of which is closely guarded. And that’s it. Kind of.

The story of the sauce, and the restaurant itself is quite an interesting one. In 1959, a guy called Paul Gineste de Saurs bought an old Italian restaurant in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. He decided that he was going to serve a very simple menu, which remains unchanged to this day, and instead of serving his steaks with the traditional herb butter, he created his own sauce. Everyone went mad for the sauce, and the restaurant was a hit. There are rumours of a family fallout between Monsieur de Saur’s kids, but one of his daughters now runs the restaurant, and is responsible for opening other locations in London, New York, Barcelona and bizarrely Bahrain. She is also the guardian of the secret sauce recipe. The waitress told us that it is still made in France and shipped over as a paste, where it is finished in house with butter, parsley and shallots.

The venue is a bit Disney does bistro, but the quality of the food more than made up for it. The salad was very simple but tasty, and the steak tender, flavoursome and cooked to perfection, the frites excellent, and that sauce. WOW. It tastes a bit like a pesto remixed with extra Parmesan, butter anchovy and no pine nuts. You can understand why those Parisians went so crazy for it all those years ago.

The portions aren’t huge, but they do come round with seconds, which is a nice touch. The house wine was also pretty decent, and there is a menu for cheese and dessert, both of which were also good. But to be honest, what you’re really here for is the steak and sauce, and I for one will be going back for more soon.

Apologies for the quality of the photos. I only had my iPhone on me.

I’m going to be away for Easter in Australia visiting the future in-laws, so am going to miss out on the traditional treats that I’d be indulging in with the family down in Cornwall.

Food wise, the main thing I’m going to miss is the Hot Cross Buns. I love them. Toasted, slathered in melting butter and a good dollop of course bitter sweet orange marmalade. Anyway, I told myself that I wasn’t going to miss out, so decided to make my own for the first time. This recipe is lifted pretty much lock, stock and barrel from here on the BBC Food website, and the results went down a storm.

Ingredients

625g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground mixed spice

45g unsalted butter, cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing

85g sugar

1 lemon, zest only

1½ tsp fast-action yeast

1 free-range egg

275ml tepid milk

125g mixed dried fruit

For the topping

2 tbsp plain flour

vegetable oil, for greasing

1 tbsp golden syrup, gently heated, for glazing

Method

For the buns, sieve the flour, salt and ground mixed spice into a large mixing bowl, then rub in the butter using your fingertips creating a breadcrumb like mixture. Make a well in the centre of the mixture, then add the sugar and lemon zest and yeast.

Now beat the egg, add to the flour with the tepid milk and mix together to a form a soft, pliable dough and then turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Carefully work the mixed dried fruit into the dough until well combined. Knead lightly for at least 5 minutes.

Grease a large mixing bowl with butter. Shape the dough into a ball and place it into the prepared bowl, then cover with a cling film and set aside in a warm place for one hour to prove. Turn out the proved dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knock back the dough. Shape it into a ball again and return it to the bowl, cover again and set aside for a further 30 minutes to rise.

After half an hour, turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, then flatten slightly into a bun shape using the palms of your hands. Cover the buns with the tea towel and set aside to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Grease a baking tray with butter and transfer the buns to the tray. Wrap the tray with the buns on it loosely in greaseproof paper, then place inside a large polythene bag. Tie the end of the bag so that no air can get in and set aside in a warm place for a further 40 minutes to rise.

While this is going on, Preheat the oven to 240 C, then prepare the cross topping by mixing the plain flour to a smooth paste with 2 tablespoons of cold water. When the buns have risen, remove the bag and the greaseproof paper. Spoon the flour mixture into a small plastic bag, nip off the tip of one of the corners to create a piping bag, and pipe a cross across each bun.

Now, transfer the buns to the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. As soon as you remove the buns from the oven, brush them with the hot golden syrup, then set aside to cool on a wire rack.

The buns will be very sticky to start with, but the golden syrup will sink in over time. Eat as suggested, toasted with butter and orange marmalade, or however you like them.

So to much hype and fanfare, Marmite has launched a new limited edition product, Marmite XO. Billed as the only choice for true Marmite connoisseurs, XO (Extra Old) purports to have a deeper, richer, more complex flavour, like a fine wine.

Now off the bat, I should probably admit that I’m a Marmite fan. I love the stuff. Always have done, probably always will. But I’ve got to admit that there’s something about Marmite’s recent behaviour thats beginning to piss me off a bit. I was quite into the Guinness variant that came out a couple of years ago, and then the champagne one that came out around Valentine’s Day. Neither tasted as good as the original, but they felt a bit special. No song and dance, just a nice little treat for Marmite fans.

But now with the whole XO marketing campaign, premium price tag, ’spoof’ website and Facebook blah blah blah, it all feels a bit of a cynical money making operation. It stinks of Unilever’s clumsy brand police and ad agencies trying to be ever so clever.

And it doesn’t stop here, there was a ‘pop up shop’ on Regents Street at Christmas selling all sorts of branded rubbish like cook books, toys, T shirts, and then there’s the current brand campaign. The whole we’re so ‘crazy’ that we’ve made a Marmite cereal bar!! Have we gone to far?! Did I mention that we’re kkeerrraazzee??!! Replete with the now ubiquitous ’social media’ elements, again the whole thing feels so try hard, and to be frank, predictable.

Anyway, rant over. I tried the XO earlier and it’s nice. Beefier and maybe a little fuller flavoured than the original, but not really any better. And definitely really not worth all the bother, or the £3.99 price tag. In my mind its time these big companies and conglomerates stopped screwing with the brands that people love and just kept it simple. More noise doesn’t make better products.

Verdict: All mouth and no trousers.

It’s been around for a while, but I first read about Jim Lahey’s ‘no knead bread‘ in a Saveur magazine when I was in New York last year. I’d already got the bread baking bug, and the idea of a loaf that required no kneading seemed a bit odd, even a bit sacrilegious. I did a bit of research on line, and found out that everyone raves about the loaf, and it basically put Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery on the map.

Anyway, it definitely got me interested. How could a loaf requiring so little work be so good? Life just isn’t like that. So I gave it a go. The loaf is cooked in a cast iron pot, a bit like an Australian damper, so you’ll need a Le Creuset or something similar for it to work.

Ingredients

3 cups (430g) flour
1½ cups (345g or 12oz) water
¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast
1¼ teaspoon (8g) salt
Olive oil
Rye flour (for dusting)

Method

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together for a minute or so to form a ’shaggy’ dough. Transfer the dough to a larger bowl oiled with some olive oil. NB. the dough will expand to around 4 times the size, so make sure your bowl is big enough. Cover with clingfilm and let the dough develop for 12-18 hours at room temperature.

After this time the dough will be aerated. Remove it from the bowl and fold on itself once or twice. The dough is stickier than with regular bread, a bit like when making a sourdough, so be prepared to get a bit messy. Using dough scrapers is a good idea. Let the dough rest 15 minutes in the bowl or on the work surface, then try and shape into a ball. Generously coat a tea towel with rye flour, place the dough on the left hand side, scatter the dough with more flour, and then fold the towel over the top to cover it. Let rise for around 2 hours at room temperature, until more than doubled in size.

Preheat your oven to 230°C. Place a cast iron pot in it at least 30 minutes prior to baking to preheat. Once the dough has more than doubled in volume, remove the pot from the oven and put the dough in it. Shake from side to side so it fills the base. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes or so uncovered, until the loaf is nicely browned. Take the loaf out and place on a wire rack to cool. I know this is going to sound a bit sad, but the loaf’s crust crackles as it cools, which is pretty exciting.

When you cut into the loaf, you won’t be disappointed. The crust is crisp, crunchy and satisfying, and the dough inside a cross between really good French bread and a Ciabatta. Honestly, its great. And for so little work. There is such a thing as a free lunch.

Two final notes. I cooked mine in an oval 27 cm pot, but think it would have worked better in the round 24 cm version. Secondly, I tried this recipe again at the weekend substituting the strong white flour with a ‘Farine Bise‘ that I bought in Paris, but it was much less successful. The crust was less impressive, and the dough much heavier. I guess it rises better with the plain white.

UPDATE: Tried the loaf again at the weekend in a smaller pot, with great results. Check out photos on my Flickr page here.

The final course of our valentines meal was a lemon posset with heart shaped shortbread biscuits (forgive the cheese).

The Posset is pretty much as old school as it gets with roots in 12th century England where it was drunk for it’s medicinal properties. I’m not sure this recipe could ever be described as good for you, cream and sugar tend to be frowned upon these days, but it is delicious, and very easy to make.

Ingredients

For the Posset

300ml double cream

75g caster sugar

1 lemon zested and juiced

For the shortbread

45g icing sugar

90g plain flour

30g cornflour

15g ground almonds

125g butter

Lemon zest

Golden caster sugar

Method

First up, put the cream and sugar in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 3 minutes, making sure it doesn’t boil over, and then take off the heat. Allow to cool to room temperature, add the lemon juice and then whisk. Divide the mixture by pouring into two glasses and then put in the fridge to set.

Now make the shortbread biscuits. Sift the flour, cornflour and icing sugar into a food processor and then add the ground almonds. Cut the butter into cubes, add to the processor bowl, and then pulse until the butter has been blitzed, leaving you with a breadcrumb like mixture.

Tip the mixture out onto lightly floured surface, and bring it all together to form a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm, put in the fridge and set your oven to 180 degrees C.

When the oven is up to temperature, remove the dough, and using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll it out to around half a centimetre thick. Using a pastry cutter, cut out the dough and place on grease proof paper on a flat baking tray. Grate a little lemon zest and sprinkle each biscuit with a little golden caster sugar before popping in the oven for around 10 minutes.

The biscuits are ready when they are a pale yellow in colour and golden brown around the edges. Remove from the baking tray and cool on a rack. The biscuits will be soft and brittle, so be careful.

Remove the posset from the fridge to warm it up a little, and then serve with a couple of the cooled shortbread biscuits.A class act.

So, catching up, the second course of our valentine’s dinner was baked cod and baby leeks straight from the pages of Jamie at home, which if you don’t have it is a brilliant book (IMHO). The cod is marinaded in a lemon and herb mix before cooking. We had ours served with garlic mash.

Ingredients

10 baby leeks, trimmed

2 x 200g fillets of cod (with skin and sustainable if possible)

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Juice of 1/2 a small lemon

Olive oil

1 large clove garlic finely chopped

2 sprigs rosemary

2 sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

Salt & pepper

For the mash

400g potatoes

1 large clove garlic

Butter, milk salt & pepper to taste

Method

First, make the marinade for the fish. Bash up the thyme, rosemary and bay in a pestle and mortar with a good pinch of sea salt. Add a couple of glugs of olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper and the lemon juice. Chop a large clove of garlic finely, then add to the herby mixture and stir. Pour the marinade over the cod fillets in a bowl, rubbing it in and making sure it’s well coated.

Bring a pan of mildly salted water to the boil and then parboil the leeks for 3 minutes, pull out and then pat dry. Add them to the bowl the fish is marinading in, and toss.

Now put on your oven to 200 degrees C with a baking dish inside. At the same time, add your spuds to the same pan you cooked the leeks in with a clove of garlic and simmer gently. After 15 minutes, your oven should be up to temperature. Remove the dish, and remove the two cod fillets from the marinade and place them skin side down in the pre-heated dish, you should hear a nice sizzle. Then pour in the leeks and the remaining marinade. Finally place the rashers of bacon on top of the fillets before placing the dish back in the oven; it’s going to cook for 15 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the potatoes should be cooked, remove from the heat, drain, mash and add butter, milk, salt and pepper to taste. Beat with a spoon until nice and smooth.

The fish should now be ready. Remove from the oven and serve with the leeks and some of the marinade and cooking juices, and a good dollop of mash. Quite a tough dish to make look really attractive, but very tasty. Thanks Mr Oliver.

It was Valentines Day at the weekend, and as Hand To Mouth got engaged at New Years, I thought I’d better make a bit of an effort. Not being a fan of going to restaurants on VDay (always disappointing) I whipped up a three course feast fit for the future Mrs HTM. The menu:

Salt & Pepper Squid

Baked Cod & Leeks

Lemon Posset with Lemon & Almond Shortbread

I’m going to do a post per course as I don’t have the time to do them all at once, so first up our starter, Salt & Pepper Squid. If you can’t get hold of Szechuan peppercorns, just use 3/4 of a tablespoon of black peppercorns instead.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns, ground

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

1 tablespoon sea salt flakes

4 tablespoons plain flour

4 tablespoon corn flour

2 squid cleaned

1 large red chilli

2 spring onions

Rapeseed oil for deep-frying

Salad leaves and lemon wedges to serve

Method

First up, prep the squid. If you’re a bit squeamish you might want to get your fish monger to do it for you, but it’s not hard. Rip off the head and set aside, then pull off the fin that’s towards the end of the body or ‘hood’. When you remove it, you’ll see some clear film come away with it. Try and get the rest of this off the hood. Now turn the hood inside out. You do this by poking the pointy end in on itself. As you do this the squid’s ‘backbone’ should pop out of the top. It looks like a clear bit of plastic, grab it and pull it out, and then clean out the inside of the hood with running water.

Next slice down each the side of the hood, cutting it in half. You should end up with two roughly triangular pieces per squid. Lightly score the surface of each piece on the diagonal creating a diamond pattern, then cut bite sized strips of the squid. Now grab the head and cut it just below where the tentacles join together. Discard the rest of the head, and remove the ‘beak’. This is the hard part in the center.

Set the squid aside, and get the coating ready. Grind the Szechuan peppercorns with a pestle and mortar, and then add the chilli flakes and salt and grind again. You’ll end up with a fine-ish red powder. Put the flour and cornflour in a bowl, add the pepper mix and stir together.

Ad this point, put a wok or pan on the heat with enough oil in it for deep frying. Use something low on flavour like rapeseed or groundnut. Whilst this is heating up, coat the pieces of squid in the chilli flour, and shake off the excess. Then chop the spring onion into centimeter batons, cut up and de-seed the chilli, and coat these too.

Now test the oil is hot enough by dropping in one piece of squid. If it curls up and turns a golden brown after 30 seconds or so it’s ready. Fry the squid, spring onion and chilli in batches, being careful not to over cook them (the squid will go rubbery if overcooked) and drain on a few sheets of kitchen towel.

As soon as everything is cooked and drained, eat immediately served on a bed of peppery salad leaves (rocket and watercress is good) with a wedge of lemon.

Love at first bite.

Photo by Cafe Darclee

It’s Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake day. Traditionally a time to get rid of sugar, fat and eggs before fasting for Lent, it’s now a bit of a treat in the culinary calendar.

Pancakes are ridiculously easy and quick to prepare, and once you’ve got them made, you can stick pretty much anything you fancy in them.

This recipe employs the five 1s formula.

Ingredients

1 egg, preferably free-range or organic

1 cup of self-raising flour

1 cup of milk

1 pinch of salt

1 nob of butter (melted, around 20g)

Method

Whisk together the egg, flour and milk in a bowl, melt the butter in a pan and then beat into the mix removing any lumps.

Some people say its good to set aside the batter for half an hour or so before you attempt making any pancakes, I’m not sure if makes that much difference, but it doesn’t do any harm, so why not give it a go.

Heat up your frying pan and using a piece of kitchen towel with a nob of butter on it lightly coat the pan. When it’s good and hot, ladle in enough batter to thinly coat the pan’s base. Pick up the pan and tip from side to side to ensure it’s coated evenly. Once one side is just turning golden brown, either toss it or flip it over with a fish slice to cook the other side.

At this point you can add some fillings. We had our savoury pancakes this year with Emmental cheese and smoked ham. Place thin slices of Emmental on half of the pancake’s base, top with the sliced ham and then fold in half. Serve with a mixed salad with a Dijon mustard dressing.

For the sweet ones we had the classic lemon and sugar, still a favourite, and also tried a more American style filling of banana, crunchy peanut butter and maple syrup, which I’ve got to say was super tasty.

Roll on next year.

The video write up says it all:

“John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it)”.

In an age of faceless corporations and consumerism, its a joy to see a guy who’s so committed to his particular niche, his suppliers, and his customers. I hope the Galcos Soda Pop Stop weathers all the financial storms and fashions that come it’s way, and gets passed down to the next generation of soda obsessives. And apologies for the bad Star Wars pun in the title.

I seem to be on bit of a Italian tip at the moment, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This recipe is kind of inspired by that bit in Goodfellas where the coked up Henry Hill is running all over town convinced he’s being trailed by a helicopter, whilst also preparing a homecoming feast for his sick brother. He’s there making the meatballs (or polpette), a vat of tomato sauce, aubergines and so on, and despite his paranoid state, all the food looks really tasty. I think Henry’s polpette were made with beef;  these are a mix of veal and pork mince, but whaddaya gonna do?

Ingredients (Serves 4)

For the meatballs

400g veal mince

400g pork mince

2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano

1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage

A good grating of nutmeg

Salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste

Plain flour for ‘dredging’

1 large egg

For the sauce

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 large stick of celery, finely chopped

1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped

1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

50g tomato puree

3 tins chopped tomatoes

200ml white wine

Salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste

Method

To make the meatballs, put all the dry ingredients in a bowl, grate in the nutmeg, add the salt and pepper, and mix with a spoon before cracking the egg in. Now get your hands in there and combine all the ingredients really well. You’re now ready to make the balls. In terms of size, you’re looking for something between a radish and a squash ball, and it really helps if you have wet hands to stop the mixture sticking. Take a dollop of the mixture, compact it in your hands, and then roll into a ball. Simple.

Depending on size, you should end up with between 20 and 30 balls. Once all the mixture has been used, scatter some plain flour on a plate, and then roll the balls through it. Roll the balls from hand to hand to shake off the excess flour before setting aside. Now pop a thick bottomed pan or casserole dish on the heat and add a few glugs of olive oil. You’re now going to brown the balls in the hot oil; you’ll probably have to do this in batches. As soon as they are coloured all over, remove and set aside.

Using the same pan and oil, you’re now going to make the tomato sauce. Add the onion, celery, carrot and garlic and sweat off until tender. Add the chilli, rosemary and seasoning. Fry for another minute before adding the tomato puree. After another minute or so, add the white wine and de-glaze the pan. Next add the 3 tins of chopped tomatoes and bring up to simmering point. Pop on a lid and cook for a good 30-40 minutes.

Now take off the lid, and pop in the balls and simmer for another 20 minutes with the lid off. This is going to make sure the balls are cooked through, and also reduces the sauce a bit. Now get your pasta on, spaghetti or linguini is perfect. Cook until al dente, drain, divide across 4 plates, and then spoon over the meatball and tomato sauce.

Eat whilst piping hot with a good sprinkling of Parmesan and a glass of Chianti, and then go get your f**kin’ shoeshine box.

It’s no understatement to say that that I’m a BIG fan of pizza.There’s something genius in it’s simplicity. Bread. Good. Tomato sauce. Good. Cheese. Good. Some kind of meaty topping. Goooooood. And when I’m talking about the kind of pizza that I love, I’m talking about the traditional Italian kind, not the whole farmyard on a base that you get delivered at 3am after a session on the wife beater.

I’ve been lucky enough to work around Soho, central London, for most of my career, and that also happens to be the location of what must be one of the best pizza joints in the UK. Situated in a little side road between Berwick and Wardour Streets, Malletti has been knocking out  amazing pizza to a small army of adoring and loyal fans for at least as long as I’ve working in the area. The queue that snakes out of the door most lunchtimes is testament to this.

The first time I tried what Malletti has to offer was when I was working on a pitch. My then boss, who was to be frank an arse, proved that he could get something right by heading out and bringing back a load of Malletti’s pizza for his hard working troops. I can remember sinking my teeth into my first slice of spicy salami (which is still my favourite) and being blown away. The thin almost pastry like base, deep tomato flavour from the sauce, and just the right amount of mozzarella, piquant salami and chilli. It’s making me hungry just thinking about it.

It’s only a small shop, but is dominated by the glass counter on the right that displays the wide range of tasty stuff on offer. As well as traditional pizza, they do focaccias, panni style sandwiches, really great pasta specials each day (the wild boar ragu is insane)  and some sweet stuff too. There’s a small bar on the left where you can stand up and eat, but it’s a bit tight in there so most people take away. The only trouble you’re really going to have at Malletti’s is working out what to have, although you will get an earful if you’re on your mobile when you try and order. They don’t like that, and fair play to them. There’s a sign on the way in to warn you.

Malletti is a great example of somewhere that’s perennially popular because it’s always been good at what it does, and not because it’s tried to move with the times. It’s staffed by the same people who have always been behind the counter, and you get the impression that it’s a family business.

Malletti doesn’t have a website, in fact there’s surprisingly little written about it on-line full stop, but if you’re interested in getting a slice of the good life (sorry) you can find them at 26 Noel Street, London, W1F 8GT.

This is a really fast and easy mid week dinner. The dried porcini and their soaking liquid really beefs up the mushroomy flavour of the finished sauce, without them the dish can taste a bit insipid.

Ingredients (serves 2)

2 large shallots, peeled and finely sliced

1 large clove of garlic

20g dried porcini mushrooms soaked in 150ml boiling water

250g chestnut mushrooms

100ml white wine

70ml half fat crème fraîche

Chopped parsley

Grated parmesan

Salt and pepper

Linguine

Method

First up, soak the dried Porcini in boiling water and let them rehydrate. Next clean the chestnut mushrooms, chop off the ends of their stalks, cut them in half and then slice. Now fry the shallots and garlic in a little olive oil and butter until soft before adding the mushrooms. Season with a pinch of salt and some fresh ground black pepper.

As the mushrooms cook they’ll give up some liquid, when this has all but evaporated deglaze the pan with a couple of glugs of white wine.  Next add the revived Porcini. Take them out with a slotted spoon gently, and then add the soaking water. The soaking water should be brown and have loads mushroom flavour, but don’t add the last bit as the mushrooms often leave behind some grit, which you don’t want in the finished dish.

Gently reduce the slightly watery mushroom mixture, and at the same time put your pasta on. When it’s reduced by about a third, add the  crème fraîche, stir in and turn the heat right down. When the pasta is ready, drain, dress with a little olive oil and then divide into two bowls. Spoon over the mushroom mixture, sprinkle with a good quantity of grated Parmesan, and some chopped flat leaf parsley.

Eat as soon as it’s served with a glass of crisp white wine.

It’s called Selleck Waterfall Sandwich and does exactly what it says on the tin. It features pictures of actor Tom Selleck and sandwiches badly photoshopped onto waterfall scenes. My favourite is the little animation of Magnum blowing away a ham bagel with a shotgun.

This is what the internet was invented for

Not surprisingly, I’m still a way off nailing a good imitation, but this bread is pretty tasty, even if I do say so myself, and has a great crust.  The recipe uses an 80 to 20 mix of grey flour and rye flour to add a bit more flavour and texture. If you can’t get grey flour, strong white would do just fine.

Ingredients

400g grey flour

100g rye flour

5g yeast

7g salt

300ml water

1 x teaspoon honey

1 x tablespoon olive oil

Method

First up measure of 300ml of tepid water and mix in the yeast and honey. This should activate it before you add it to the dry ingredients. Next weigh out the flours and mix together with the salt in a big bowl. Now add the water and yeast mixture , the olive oil and mix together. As you mix, the mixture should come together to to form a dough. You’ll have to get your hands in there to combine everything.

Once you’ve done this, turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead for at least 10 minutes. Everyone has their own technique, but this video should get you started. Why do you need to knead? The short answer is that it develops gluten, which makes the mixture ’stronger’ so that it can trap the carbon dioxide that the yeast creates and makes the bread rise. If you don’t knead enough, or your yeast is inactive, you’ll end up with a very dense, heavy loaf.

After kneading for 10 minutes, form the dough into a round ball. See my previous focaccia recipe for the technique for doing this. Once prepared, either place the dough in a proving basket in a lightly floured tea towel, or in a bowl inside a plastic bag  and allow it to rise. This will take about an hour during which time the dough should have doubled in size. When you’ve got to this stage, turn out the dough, ‘knock it back’ (again see the focaccia recipe), form into a round again and repeat the rising process.

When the dough is twice the size again, turn it out and knock it back again. This time roll the dough into a cigar shape, and then flatten it. This should leave you with a strip a little over a foot long. Now fold this strip over end on end, so it becomes a third of the length and flatten down. Tuck the longer sides under with the edge of your palms to create a cylinder tapered at either end. Transfer this onto a floured board or peel, cover with a tea towel and leave to ‘prove’ for about an hour.

Now turn on your oven as hot as it will go, and place a baking tray at the bottom. Just like with the focaccia, you’re going to fill this with boiling water when you bake the loaf. When the oven is up to temperature, the loaf should have swelled to double it’s size again. Slash the surface of it (which will help the bread rise), and then slide it into the oven after putting the water in the baking tray. Don’t hang about.

Bake at full temperature for 10 minutes, at which point the bread will have risen as much as it’s is going to as the crust will have ’set’ and should be golden brown. Turn the oven down to around 170 / 180 and bake for a further 20 – 25 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is.

After the full 35 minutes, remove the bread and place on a baking tray. Resist the temptation to cut into it now. The bread is still cooking, and if you cut it open you’ll release heat and steam, and the bread won’t finish cooking properly. And that’s it. When it’s cooled, slice and eat with whatever you fancy.

The 25th of January means that it’s Burns Night chez Hand To Mouth. Despite my name I’m not Scottish, and neither of us are huge poetry fans, but we both love a bit of haggis so we celebrate Scotland’s favourite son with a bit of haggis and a drop or two of whiskey.

People get a bit squeamish about haggis as it’s made with sheep offal (lungs, liver and heart) and (traditionally) cooked in a sheep’s stomach. These days most haggises are sold in artificial casings, and there’s really nothing to worry about as all the contents are mashed up and mixed with onion, oatmeal, beef fat, spices and salt.

When it’s liberated from the casing the haggis it warm, sticky, hearty and really tasty. We have ours with neeps (mashed swede – still no idea why it’s called neeps), greens, and and intense onion and whiskey gravy.

Tradition dictates that you welcome the haggis to your table with one of Burn’s most famous poems ‘Address To A Haggis’. It’s pretty tricky to read, but it’s a bit of fun.

Ingredients

Serves 2

1 small haggis

1 medium swede

1/2 a large onion

300 ml chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon marmite

1 heaped teaspoon plain flour

25 ml whiskey

150g spring greens

Butter

Olive oil

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Method

First up, release the haggis from it’s plastic casing then wrap up in tin foil. Put a pan of water on the heat, and when it’s up to boiling point, pop in the armour clad haggis and cover with a lid. You’re going to simmer it for around 45 minutes.

Next prepare the gravy. Chop and slice half an onion, and then brown in a pan with a little olive oil and butter. When the onions are nice and soft, add marmite. Next add the flour and stir in to the onions, forming a paste. Cook this off for a minute or so before adding the whiskey. Burn off the alcohol, and then add the stock, season with a good few grinds of black pepper, and simmer until the liquid has reduced by about a third.

When the haggis is about 25 minutes from being ready, peel and chop your swede and add to boiling water. Cook the swede for around 20 minutes, then drain and mash with some butter, salt and pepper. Whilst you’re doing this boil up the spring greens for about 3-4 minutes until tender, and then drain and also season with butter, salt and pepper.

Next remove the haggis from the water, take off the foil and then slice the casing open with a sharp knife. A word of warning, the contents of the haggis expand during cooking, so they can spill out pretty fast when you make you’re incision. Scrape out the good stuff, discard the skin and serve with the neeps, greens and a generous helping of the onion gravy.

Eat with a little dram of your favourite whiskey, and toast Robbie Burns.

To take some of the strain off last year’s Christmas shopping, my brother and I both decided that we’d buy each other an evening butchery class at the Ginger Pig in Marylebone as our Christmas presents. I’d been looking forward to it since we made the booking in November, and Last Friday was the day of reckoning. They do four different classes at the shop, pork, lamb, sausage making, and our class of choice, beef.

On arriving at the shop we were cheerily welcomed by Borut and Perry who were to be our guides on planet beef for the evening. After they’d kitted us all out in butchers whites, our hosts started off by explaining about the type of cattle that they rear on their farm in North Yorkshire (Longhorns), the difference between free range and organic, and how they actually go about preparing the beef for consumption once it’s slaughtered.

It was good to learn a bit more about the ageing process, and the rather underhand tactics that supermarkets employ when talking about their aged beef. The Ginger Pig, and most other quality butchers, dry age their beef. This means hanging the carcasses in cool ventilated rooms so that blood and moisture can leave the meat, thereby intensifying the flavour (the meat can be hung for up to 100 days, but the guys at the shop reckoned around the 35-40 day mark was perfect).

The only problem with ageing is that it leads to some wastage, as the extremities of the meat tend to go off and have to be removed and discarded. But what the supermarkets do is vacuum pack the meat before they ‘age’ it. Vac packing the meat means that none of the moisture can escape from the meat, so the flavour doesn’t develop, but importantly for them there is no wastage. So supermarkets can legitimately claim that their beef is aged and offer it at a cheaper price, but they are supplying a greatly inferior product. I guess t wasn’t a great surprise to find out yet another way in which consumers are being screwed by the big chains, but it never fails to amaze me the lengths that they will go to make money.

We then moved over to the chopping blocks to get a bit more hands on with the Longhorns. We were talked through all the different cuts and joints that the animals are broken down into, mainly focusing on the middle section of the carcass where the rump, sirloin, fillet, porterhouse, T-bone, wing rib and fore rib are all found. It was all a bit baffling at first, but it wasn’t long before we started to be able to identify our wellington from our cote de boeuf and our skirt from our strip.

It’s not really a course for the squeamish, as an important part of the action is getting up close and personal with the carcass and handling the meat. Not only feeling the different textures, density and marbling, but also cutting it up. We each had a go at sawing and jointing up a different section of the middle, aside from one of the group who was a vegetarian who came along with her partner – all rather odd.

The final practical part of the course was to prepare our own cote de boeuf joint to take home. This involved removing a section of the back bone (the joint had already been chined for us ), taking off the cap (the layer of tougher meat that sits over the rib eye meat), trimming it, French trimming the ends of the rib bones for presentation, before tying the cap back on with the most bloody complicated butchers knot known to man. Despite having all been total novices a few hours earlier, there were no real disasters, and to our untrained eyes our joints all looked pretty professional.

After all that graft, it was time for a few glasses of red wine and dinner. Whilst we’d been ‘working away’, Borut had been in the kitchen preparing an awesome roast fore rib for us. He showed us how to carve the joint properly, separating out the ribs, cap and the rib eye section of the joint. I’ve got to say, it was cooked to perfection. The rib eye was pink and moist, the cap a bit tougher but richer in flavour, and the meat around the ribs sticky and sweet. They served it with amazing dauphinoise potatoes, roast potatoes cooked in beef fat, and some green stuff. The meal was rounded off with a few more glasses of wine and a bread and butter pudding made with brioche.

I think we were all a bit high on meat when we left the shop at around 11.30, but we all agreed that it had been a really good fun and interesting evening. I came away with a fair bit more knowledge than I had before, and the confidence to know what I want to buy from now on. My local butcher is going to hate me.

The course costs £125 per person, and you can find out more about them here, and see some more photos from the evening here.

The long and short of it is that Starbucks is going to pick a few select outlets and un-brand them in order to create coffee shops with a more old fashioned and local feel. If this test is successful, they will then roll it out to other sites. Some people have described this move as a demonstration of a business being mindful of what their consumers want, but in my mind is proves what a cynical and aggressive brand Starbucks has become, and to be frank it pisses me off.

How Starbucks started as a business is a million miles away from where they are now. Originally a one off shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market that sold artisan coffees and equipment, it didn’t become the phenomenon that it is today until it was sold to an entrepreneur called Howard Schultz in 1987. Famously in the 90s, Starbucks opened a new store every working weekday, and this pace was maintained well into the noughties.

As a result, for many Starbucks has become the ugly face of globalisation, and the site of protesters camped outside whenever they roll out yet another identical, anodyne store, a familiar one. This, along with the proliferation of all the other high street coffee chains all vying for our business, seems to have kick started a healthy trend for more traditional, independent coffee shops.

Unlike their chain gang counterparts, these shops place the emphasis on quality and ambiance over quantity and branding. A couple of great examples of the sort of place I’m talking about are The Scandinavian Kitchen and the recently opened Kaffiene that are down the road from where I work. These cafes are different, have a personality all of their own, and are a nice place to spend time. You don’t feel like you’re having a ‘vision’ thrust down your throat when you’re in there, and shock horror, they also serve up a decent cup of coffee. Not a hazelnut syrup or ’squirty’ cream canister in site.

Not surprisingly, disillusioned people have begun to migrate from the chains to seek refuge and good coffee in these independent shops. After all, if you’ve got half a brain and some taste buds why wouldn’t you? This has obviously been noted by the business bods and money grubbing analysts over at Starbucks, and they now want to get a slice of the ’slow coffee’ action. Their plan? To open ’stealth stores’ that imitate the increasingly popular indie coffee shops that have been set up as an antidote and alternative to their own brand.

With the buying power, financial backing and clout of a company like Starbucks, these fucks (I’m sorry, but in my opinion they are) will be able to open a raft of these imitation indies much faster than any start up business, either by turning existing stores or buying up prime real estate. They will no doubt clumsily flood the market with their interpretation, and in the process fool thousands of consumers into believeing that they’re having an experience that they’re not.

So how long before the idea of an indie coffee shop becomes as ubiquitous as your friendly neigbourhood Starbucks and the real indies are forced out of the marketplace? Who knows. And you never know, maybe consumers will smell the fat corporate rat and vote with their feet. I certainly hope so.

Rant over.

I was in Paris with the missus for a few days over the New Year period. The weather wasn’t great, but it’s still one of the greatest cities in the World (IMHO). As you might expect the food has a great deal to do with this, and I’m a huge fan of the traditional French bistro.

I love the simple, tasty food, the still tobacco stained walls, the atmosphere and the tradition of it all. Maybe it’s because we don’t have many good examples of this type of place in London, but I’d honestly prefer to sit down at a chequered tablecloth in a back street bistro to a plate of oeufs cocotte and an entrecote, than some foam drenched nonsense from an Alain Ducasse restaurant. No offense Al.

One such place, that we’ve now been to a few times, is Bistro De La Grille in St Germain des Pres. We stumbled across it a couple of years ago whilst in Paris and had an outstanding late lunch there, and it’s had a soft spot in our hearts ever since.

Outside you’re greeted by the site of the fresh shellfish man (no idea what the oficial term for these fellas is) shucking oysters and prepping his wares, before stepping foot inside where you’re greeted by the French Bistro checklist. Zinc topped bar, tick. Wood panneling, tick. Faded photographs, tick. Smartly dressed waiters bustling around, tick.

We ordered a carafe of red wine, 12 snails and garlic butter to share, then I chose the Morteau and lentil casserole as my main. The snails were delicious. If I’m honest, for me a big part of the draw is the garlic and parsley butter mopped up with a few slices of fresh baguette. None too healthy, but worth it. The casserole came in a satisfying iron pot with generous slices of the dense, smokey Morteau sausage. The lentils cooked with stock, onions, carotts and potato. It’s a hearty lunch, and was a joy to eat.

We finished the meal by sharing a tarte tatin which was sweet, sticky and tart in equal measure. Great pastry too.

Bistrot De la Grille isn’t going to win a Michelin star any time soon, but I don’t think thats what its setting out to achieve. It’s sticking to its guns and doing what its probably done since it opened, cooking and serving up traditional, good quality food, and if you’re in Paris I can’t recommend it enough.

As mentioned in the previous post, I was down in Cornwall for Christmas. My mum always puts on a great spread while we’re down there, but with seven mouths to feed she has her work cut out, and seems to spend too much time in the kitchen. That being the case, for the last few years I’ve given her the night off and cooked a meal for the family.

This year I cooked a slow cooked shoulder of lamb with Cornish style boulangère potatoes and spring greens. The lamb is cooked in a tangy herb, lemon and anchovy marinade (I have to leave out the garlic as my dad can’t stand it, but have included it in this recipe), and the classicly French boulangère are given a South West twist with the adition of Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese.

Ingredients

For the lamb:

2.5 kilo shoulder of lamb

2 lemons (juice and zest)

10 -15 tinned anchovy fillets

Bunch of rosemary

5 large cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

For the potatoes:

1.5 kilos of potatoes

2 onions

200g Cornish cruncher or other mature cheddar

Fresh ground black pepper

200ml vegetable stock

100ml milk

Chopped rosmary

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Butter

For the greens:

5 heads of spring greens

Butter

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Method

First of all, get your oven as hot as it will go, then prepare the marinade for the lamb. Finely chop the garlic, rosmary and anchovy fillets, zest and juice the two lemons, add a good couple of glugs of olive oil, then season with black pepper and mix well. Next, score the lamb all over on the upper side in a diamond formation about 1/2 a centimeter deep, and place in a roasting tray resting on slices of the zested and juiced lemons. Then spoon over the marinade, making sure you work it into the slashes on the shoulder.

When the oven is good an hot, slam in the lamb. You’re going to cook it fiercely for around 30 minutes to form a kind of marinated crust on the skin, and they you’re going to turn the oven down to around 180°C and cover the roasting tray tightly with tin foil and cook for a further 3 hours.

Now prepare the potatoes. Peel then slice the spuds as thinly as you can. I used a mandolin, but if you don’t have one, try to get them about a 3mm thick. When you’ve done this, plunge them into cold water and rinse to get some of the starch out, then turn  out onto a tea towel, and pat dry with another.

Next chop and slice the two onions, and fry them until they are golden brown. This will make the finished dish sweeted and richer. Now butter a large baking dish and start putting it all together. Start with a couple of layers of potatoes, then scatter over some of the onion, cheese and rosemary. Season with salt and pepper and then repeat until you are out of potatoes. Make sure you have some cheese and rosemary left over, but don’t scatter it over the top yet. Mix the stock and milk together, and pour over the top. The liquid should come around 3/4 of the way up the dish. Next cover the potatoes with a sheet of grease proof paper.

When the lamb has about an hour and a half to go, put in the potatoes and cook for an hour with the paper on, then remove from the oven. Take off the paper, scatter the remaining cheese and rosemary on top, season generously with black pepper then and put back into the oven for the last half hour until bubbling and golden brown.

Prepare the greens by slicing into fat strips and discarding the fat ends of the stalk. Boil in salted water until tender, drain, add a good nob of butter and season with salt and pepper.

Serve with the lamb and potatoes. Praaaper jaaaab.