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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

So, you get back from work. You’re tired, you’re hungry, but you can’t really be arsed to cook. If this sounds like you, then your prayers are about to be answered. This recipe for hot smoked mackeral and a piquant (yeah that’s right, I said piquant)  salad is fast, tasty, and with oily fish, bulgar wheat, and raw veg it’s also super healthy.

Ingredients

Serves 2-3

4 Hot smoked mackerel fillets

150g bulgar wheat

1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 small red onion, finely chopped

1/4 of a large cucumber, diced

10-15 baby plum / cherry tomatoes, diced

Handful of flat leaf parsley and fresh mint, finely chopped

1 large red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped

1 teaspoon Maras Biberi

The juice of half a lemon, and the same quantity of olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

The bulgar wheat salad is the only time consuming part of this dish, so get cracking with it first. Get a pan of water on the go, and when it’s boiling add the bulgar wheat. Simmer the wheat for 7-8 minutes, then drain with a sieve. At this point the bulgar will be almost cooked. Place the now full sieve back over the pan and put a lid on top of it. This allows the bulgar to drain thoroughly and also steam a bit so it’s cooked to perfection and a bit more ‘fluffy’ by the time you put the salad together.

Chop all the veggies and the herbs and place in a shallow bowl. Then make a sharp dressing by mixing the olive oil, lemon juice and Maras Biberi. Add the now fluffy and slightly cooled bulgar wheat and combine. Then add the olive oil and lemon dressing and mix.

Next get a dry frying pan on. Once it’s nice and hot, put the mackeral fillets it skin side down. Cook for about two minutes before flipping them over for another two.

Serve immediately with a big pile of the salad, and start feeling good.

This recipe makes one large rectangular pizza with a thin, crispy, tasty base, that is a million miles away from the flabby crud that the likes of Planet Pizza churn out. I would recommend that you make a bigger batch of the dough and freeze half of it to use at a later date. Just double the quantity of the mix (below), and once risen, wrap half in cling film and pop in the freezer.

For the tomato sauce, you can pretty much use the same sort of thing that you’d usually put on pasta. I use a simple sauce made from a tin of tomatoes, garlic, herbs and seasoning. If I can be bothered, I’ll blend it so it’s smooth like passata, but you don’t have to. A bit of tomato texture isn’t a deal breaker.

Obviously, once you’ve made your dough and tomato sauce, you can put anything on your pizza you like. This recipe is for a pizza of two halves. On one side a classic prosciutto themed number, and on the other anchovy and veggies.

Ingredients

For the base:

250g white ‘Tipo 00′ flour

3g powdered dried yeast

4g ground sea salt

1g sugar

150ml warm water

Topping:

Tomato sauce

250g Good quality mozzarella

5 slices of prosciutto ham

1 red chilli, finely chopped

8-10 anchovy fillets

Strips of red onion

Courgette, cut into ribbons with a peeler

Olive oil, rocket and basil to garnish

Method

Making the dough part of the pizza is very similar to the method used for making the earlier focaccia recipe. Mix the water, sugar and yeast together and set aside. Measure out the flour and salt into a bowl and then mix together. Add the yeast mixture to the flour and combine. The ingredients should come together and make a dough. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and then knead for around 10 minutes. Coat the dough with a little olive oil, place it in an oiled bowl, cover with a plastic bag or damp tea towel, and then put in a warm place for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size. Now’s a good time to turn on your oven as you’ll want to get it as hot as it will go (preferably 250c +).

Once the dough has risen, turn it out of the bowl and knock it back. Now you’re ready to get busy constructing your masterpiece.  This is going to sound a bit retarded, but remember that you’re going to have to transfer your pizza from wherever you’re making it into an oven. This is obviously trickier with a larger pizza, so make sure you’ve got a plan. I make my pizzas on the baking trays that came with my oven. I flour one up, make my pizza on it and then use it to slide the pizza onto the other tray that’s been heating up in the oven. More on this shortly.

Roll / stretch your dough out into whatever shape you like. The base should only be few milimeters thick; once you’ve got the right shape and size, pinch and roll the edge to form a small crust. If you’re making a pizza with two different flavours as here, you can use some of the trimmings to create a dividing ridge. Once you’re done, set the base aside to 10 or 15 minutes to prove whilst you prep your toppings.

After you’re prepped, spoon a thin layer of the tomato sauce all over your pizza base, and then place on your toppings. On one side tear over the mozzarella, basil and chilli, on the other more mozzarella, shards of red onion, anchovies and ribbons of courgette.

You’re now ready to cook your pizza. Ideally you want to slide it onto a hot surface to try and replicate the conditions of a pizza oven.  I don’t have a stone, so I cook mine on a baking tray that’s been heating up in the oven. As the oven is bloody hot, the pizza should only take around 10 minutes or so to cook.

Once the edge of base is nicely browned and the cheese is bubbling, take it out. On the mozzarella and chili side take the proscuitto, tear it into strips and drape it over the base, then sprinkle with rocket leaves and drizzle with olive oil. On the anchovy side, add basil leaves and also drizzle with oil.

Serve as soon as possible. Molto bene!