We are pretty much slap bang in the middle of Vacherin season, which runs from late September to early April. This creamy, smooth, slightly nutty and super runny cows milk cheese is an Alpine speciality traditionally sold in round wooden boxes, cinched with a piece of spruce bark.

Vacherin is great eaten at room temperature with some bread, but a killer way of serving it is baked. Particularly when it’s been snowing. It’s like a fondue without the hassle and the Abigail’s Party baggage, and is great lunch for two.

Pre-heat your over to 180 – 200c, then remove all the plastic wrapping from the cheese, but leave it in it’s box. Slice a fat clove of garlic, and then using a sharp knife, pierce the Vacherin’s rind and slide in the slices. Pour over around 50ml of white wine, and then put the cheese into the oven to bake until it’s golden brown and bubbling (15minutes or so).

Serve it with whatever you like, but I like a good mix of raw veg like raddishes and carrots, some hunks of good sourdough, a few boiled potatoes (pink fir are particularly good), a pear and a bit of salad.

Then just dunk in your vehicle of choice, and get cheesy.

Like the previous recipe, this one also pairs up lamb with some heat and punchy flavours. The harissa loses some of it’s heat in the cooking, and creates a lovely tangy, spicy, sticky crust on the lamb. I got my hands on a fine leg of Yorkshire lamb from my new favourite meat source, Marky Market. It’s a great idea. Mark gets up every day to go to Smithfields and Billingsgate, you place your order the day before, and then he delivers to your door. Brilliant.

In terms of prep time, the potatoes are a bit of a faff, but the lamb is simplicity itself, so it’s swings and roundabouts. We served it with a gorgeous heritage tomato, red onion and mint salad, and a tzatziki (you can find the recipe for the latter here).

Ingredients

(for the lamb)

2.5 kg leg of lamb

90g Harissa paste

90g 0% fat Greek yoghurt

Juice and zest of one lemon

(for the potatoes)

1.7 kg of potatoes (Desiree / King Edward)

1 white onion

1 red onion

1 Bay leaf

2 sprigs of thyme

Salt & pepper

750 ml lamb stock (you can also use chicken or veg stock)

50 g butter

Method

You want the lamb to marinate in the harissa overnight, so your first job is to prep the leg. Making the marinade is easy. Just mix the yoghurt, Harissa, lemon juice and zest together.

Next, taking a sharp knife, cross-hatch the lamb, cutting into the flesh around half to a centimeter deep. Now, using a spatula, smother the lamb all over with the marinade, working it into the cuts, then pop it in a large freezer bag and leave it in the fridge overnight.

NB. You want the lamb to be at room temperature before you cook it, so make sure you take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before you put it in the oven.

The following day, set your oven to 245c and then prep the boulangère. For the best results, and to save time, slice the potatoes with a mandolin, but watch your fingers! First, peel your spuds, and then slice them with the mandolin, or as thinly as you can (around 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 sweeter 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, thyme, bay and seasoning. Repeat until you are out of potatoes and onion.

Now pour the stock over the potatoes (it should come up just below the top later of spuds) and then finish the dish with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, some sprigs of thyme, and a few  nobs of butter. Set aside and cover with a cartouche of greaseproof paper.

When your oven is up to temperature, put your lamb in a roasting tray with a rack, and then put it in the oven. You’re going to cook it at 245c for around half an hour, before turning the oven down to 200c and cooking it for a further hour and a half.

After the first half hour, and the oven has been turned down, put the potatoes in, keeping them covered with the cartouche. After 45 minutes, remove the cartouche so that the top of the boulangère can brown up nicely.

When the lamb has cooked for 2 hours, remove from the oven, set on a serving plate and cover with foil to rest for quarter of an hour. Then turn off the oven, leaving the potatoes inside to keep them hot.

Serve after the lamb has rested with the tomato salad, and a tzatziki.

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 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 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

300ml vegetable stock

100ml milk

Chopped rosemary

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 sweeter 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.