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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

If you fancy something different try this avocado on toast. My missus introduced me to it, and now I love it too. No rocket science. It’s really quick and easy, and is also pretty healthy.

Ingredients

1/2 a ripe avocado

1 or 2 slices granary bread

Olive oil

Tobasco

Salt

Method

Pop the bread in the toaster. Take the half avocado and slice it length-ways into around half centimetre slices. As soon as the toast is out of the toaster, drizzle with olive oil and then arrange the avocado slices on it.

Use the back of a fork to mash the avocado down onto the toast, sprinkle with salt and a few drops of tobasco, then get it down your neck.