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Indian lamb kebabs

2009-07-14T18:50:00.003Z

These skewers of lamb are perfect for the barbecue and make a good alternative to the normal barbecue standards of burnt sausages and undercooked chicken.

They're easy to make, and cook in just a few minutes. It's better if the lamb is cooked slightly pink.

The flavourings here are most definitely Indian, a heady mix of chilli, garlic, coriander, fenugreek and mustard. The intensity of the chilli can be tempered - just add less, but these are kebabs that should have a bit of life to them, so don't go too easy.

Start with a kilo of boned out lamb shoulder or leg, diced into cubes between two and four centimetres square. Dress the meat with a tablespoon of olive oil, mixing well.

Crush or grind a couple of small, dried red chillis or a teaspoon or so of chilli flakes together with two teaspoons of coriander seeds and a teaspoon each of fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds and black peppercorns to form a fine powder. Add a teaspoon of salt.

Add the spice mix to the meat, along with three cloves of finely chopped garlic and stir it in, so that the meat is covered in oil and spices.

This can, and should, be done the night before. An extended stay in the fridge with the odd prod and stir will help the meat take on the flavour of the spices and will improve the finished kebabs no end. Two hours is the absolute minimum.

To cook, spike the meat onto pre-soaked wooden skewers and place on the barbecue. Six or seven minutes should be more than enough, turning over half way through.

The spices will have worked their way right through the meat, the kebabs charred by the heat of the grill, smoky and intense.

A good relish would be perfect on the side.

These kebabs are from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book.

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Rhubarb relish, ready for winter (already)

2009-07-09T23:30:00.003Z

Around this time of year, rhubarb tends to get tired and worn out.

The stalks, those that haven't been plundered already, are green and thick, with big umbrella-like leaves. Everything starts to look a bit Jurassic, overgrown and gnarled.

The slender pink and red elegance of the early stalks has long faded, and the taste has changed too. A bitterness is creeping in. Late July's rhubarb is not a delicate crop, and the cook needs to think up new ways of squeezing something good out of the last of the stalk.

The crown mustn't be stripped bare. A few stalks left where they are, sacrificed by the kitchen for the good of the plant, will help the plant rejuvenate and gather it's resources. A couple of shovelfuls of manure won't harm it either, especially if the manure comes from a passing horse.

There's time for one last rhubarb dish before the season ends, though, something to see you through the winter.

This relish will keep for a year. It's fantastic with cold meats, pies and the like. Use it as you would a chutney.

Make a spice bag by tying a thumb sized chunk of fresh ginger, two cinnamon sticks and half a dozen cloves up in a muslin bag. Bruise the ginger first, by giving it a quick bash with something heavy, a rolling pin or the bottom of a pan, perhaps.

Measure 500g of granulated sugar, 100ml of cider vinegar and 100ml of water in a large pan, add the spice bag and gently heat and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved. Set the pan aside to let the spices do their thing.

After half an hour, add a kg of rhubarb, chopped into inch long chunks, along with 125g of raisins or sultanas to the sugar syrup and bring the heat up until you've got a gentle bubble. Cook for twenty minutes until the rhubarb has softened but still holds its' shape.

Decant the relish into sterilised jars, screw the top on whilst still warm and leave to mature for at least two weeks before using. There should be enough here for three jars.

The finished relish has a sharp, sweet taste and a wonderful acidity. I'm saving some for Boxing Day, to go with the cold turkey.

This recipe comes from The River Cottage Handbook No. 2: Preserves by Pam Corbin, with a forward by HFW himself. A superb Father's Day present, if ever there was one. Nice one, kids.

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Leeds Loves Food at The Living Room

2009-07-06T21:38:00.001Z

The Leeds Loves Food festival happened this weekend, and we ate at The Living Room on Saturday as part of it.

The Living Room is one of those self consciously fashionable places.

You know the sort.

It has the feel and look of an upmarket bar bordering on a private member's club. It's a fashionable place, and it looks stylish and polished.

We were hungry when we arrived, having stopped off at the old Courtyard, rejuvenated and transformed from mainstream bar (read 'hell on earth') into a bohemian, shabby place called A Nation of Shopkeepers.

The change couldn't be greater.

We nearly missed our table at The Living Room because we spent too long drinking Leffe and listening to obscure old French hits from the 1940s at Shopkeepers, but that's for another time, and there will be another time, hopefully soon.

Jenny said later that she thought the contrast between Shopkeepers and The Living Room was total, one arty and beatnik, the other glossy and slick, each from a different world.

The Living Room had developed a 'taster' menu for the festival, and offered us a platter of small portions of five of their best starters and five of their best main courses.

Excellent.

A chance to eat the whole menu, something I've always aspired to, but always had the good manners not to actually do.

There was some confusion over our wine order. It seems that I ordered a bottle from the future, from a wine list that didn't come into force until August. Why I had it in my hand was slightly puzzling, but we eventually settled on a decent Viognier, after three attempts to choose something they actually had in stock. At least they knew what they did and didn't have in the cellar.

The platter of starters arrived.

I went straight for the tiger prawns, deep fried in a light and crunchy beer batter. I nudged a piece of lettuce over the prawns, to hide them a bit, and secretly hoped that Jen hadn't spotted them, but she had, and - selfishly, I thought - took her fair share.

A bowl of small honey glazed pork sausages was good, as were skewers of teriyaki chicken with sesame seeds, set on fire by a tiny spoon of bright green wasabi. There was a pot of marinated olives, and a superb humous. The texture of the humous was spot on, and unlike my many versions, wasn't overpowered with garlic.

Top marks for starters, then.

The five main dishes were introduced by the excellent waiter. Sometimes, waiting staff are never there when you need them, or they're stood over your shoulder for the whole meal. Not this time - the service was impeccable. Professional, friendly, well informed, knowledgeable and courteous.

There were a couple of safe bets on the platter of mains. I thought they'd try something like this. Pulling a platter of five separate dishes together at the same time must be a challenge for any kitchen, and it seems sensible to include a couple of big hitters, dishes guaranteed to please the crowds. I've got simple tastes when you deconstruct everything else, so I was quite pleased with a plate of pork belly, steak pie, some fish, pasta and salad.

The slow roasted pork was absolutely superb, tender, seasoned well, with perfect crackling and a bed of mustard mash. I could have eaten a whole dish of both the pork and the potato.

The steak pie was equally successful, a rich wine sauce covering well cooked lean beef hidden under a pastry lid, served in a little ramekin. How could a pie like that fail in Leeds?

We also had a couple of small pieces of sea bass, pan fried until crispy, which came with a fennel bisque. The fish was very good indeed and didn't have that combination of burnt skin and undercooked flesh I'm used to turning out from my own kitchen. Pan frying fish is still a mystery to me. Please could somebody explain how to do it, preferably the bloke who cooked that bass on Saturday?

Other dishes included a mushroom ravioli and a Caesar's salad, which left me undecided. The lettuce was very fresh and crisp, but there was too much dressing, and a little too much parmesan and pepper in the dressing. With less dressing, it would have been great.

We skipped dessert and finished with a coffee.

On the strength of the dishes we ate, I'd try The Living Room again. The food was very well cooked, and offering people the sort of food they actually like to eat never did any restaurant any harm. The taster menu was a huge success.

When we left, the downstairs bar had filled out and the music had been cranked up. Closing time was a long way off.

There's a little postscript to Saturday evening.

We caught the train back to Saltaire. It was quiet, with only a few people in the carriage. At Shipley, a gentleman who appeared to be, shall we say, a little tired and emotional jerked awake and asked if he was in Keighley.

A young woman sat across the aisle told him that he was in Shipley, and had to go through Saltaire and Bingley before getting to Keighley.

"You know a lot about trains."

"I catch this one every day, twice a day."

"Is it a long journey."

"Yes, but I read."

"What are you reading now?"

"Graham Greene."

"I like To Kill a Mockingbird, me."

"It's a good book."

...and we left this unlikely pair engaged in a drunken conversation (him, definitely not her) about the merits of Harper Lee's brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning novel, and how being made to read it for GCSE English Lit had shaped and changed both their opinions of it.

Literary criticism on a train, at night, in the Aire Valley.

*Full disclosure - Leeds Love Food footed a huge chunk of our bill, as part of the festival, which was very decent of them indeed. Thanks very much.

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Quintessential Americana - the burger

2009-06-29T18:37:00.010Z

Every year I look forward to the Glastonbury Festival.

This year we marvelled at the shortness of Lady Gaga's dress (really, how did she not expose herself), wondered why people listen to Kasabian and decided to do something tenuously food related in honour of Bruce Springsteen*.

Something quintessentially American. Something straightforward and honest, no nonsense, down to earth, but possessing a certain style and timeless appeal.

So, I made burgers.

Great, big, massive burgers. Nothing fancy, nothing elaborate, just a burger, in a bun with salad and a spicy relish. A huge piece of Americana on a plate.

Many people claim to have invented the burger, but Charlie Nagreen of Wisconsin has the most plausible hold on that title. At the local fair in the town of Seymour in 1885, Nagreen had a stall selling meatballs. Business was slow, so he decided to shake things up a bit. He realised that people couldn't really eat his meatballs and walk around the fair at the same time, so he squashed a couple of meatballs between two slices of bread, making his snacks portable and the hamburger was born.

The 'ham' part comes from the original provenance of a ground beef patty as the 'Hamburg steak', a German idea dating from the eighteenth century.

The hamburger gradually gained in popularity through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, becoming a diner staple, before receiving a huge kick start with the founding of McDonald's.

McDonald's revolutionised the way in which hamburgers were produced, making the process slicker, more cost effective, and above all else, fast.

Fast food, for better or for worse, was here to stay.

These burgers aren't fast food at all. They'll take you at least three hours to make, if you do things properly.

To start, the bread. A burger bun needs to be large, flat, floury and soft. A hard roll, or anything with a crust is no good here, neither is anything too sophisticated, like a ciabatta. A simple bread roll is what's needed.

Making a burger bun is easy. Start by weighing and sifting 450g of strong white bread flour. Add a generous tablespoon of olive oil or melted butter, two teaspoons of salt and a sachet of fast acting dried yeast.

Add two teaspoons of sugar to 275ml of warm water and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Make a well in the flour and tip the warm water into it. Use a knife to gradually cut the flour into the water, until you get to the stage where a dough starts to form, then use your hands to form and knead the dough for a good five minutes, until it's smooth and elastic.

Cover and set aside for an hour or so until the dough has doubled in size.

After the dough has risen, knock it back and knead it again for a minute, before dividing it into four equal pieces. Shape each piece into a round and place on an oiled baking sheet. Cover, and let the dough rise again for about half an hour.

Bake in a hot oven (200c) for about twenty minutes.

Next, the relish. A burger needs a little bit of fire, something to set it alight and lift it, something to make it tasty. A relish needs some heat, some chilli.

The relish is easy. Cheat by opening a can of good quality chopped tomatoes, pour into a pan and add two finely chopped cloves of garlic, half a teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cumin and coriander, a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of tomato puree, four or five chopped spring onions and a small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped. Season with black pepper and let the sauce simmer, uncovered for half an hour. Add a handful of chopped parsley, or better still, coriander towards the end.

The sauce is good hot or cold and will sit quite happily in the fridge for a few days.

To the burger. I like my burgers to be substantial, to be a proper meal. 250g of the best beef I can find goes into each burger. They're half pounders. Anything less is cheating, and it isn't a proper burger.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's advice on burger making is simple and true - use the best quality beef you can, don't add anything else, season just before cooking and just after, cook until still pink in the middle. Use a frying pan, not a griddle, and cook on a medium heat. That's all there is to it.

The exact composition and assembly of a burger is very much down to personal taste. I like mine to prompt comparisons to a Scooby snack. Add things like sliced tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, wholegrain mustard, dill pickles, chutney, caramelised onions, etc. as the mood takes you.

Serve with salad, chips, beer and The Boss.

*For the record, I'm a latecomer to Springsteen, having grown up on a diet of indie, some grunge and a bit of hip-hop. I discovered Springsteen through The Killers, and now I'm hooked. Devils & Dust shows Springsteen at his poetic, political and enraged best, but my kids like The Seeger Sessions the best.

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Mussels, chips and mayonnaise

2009-06-27T18:22:00.009Z

A few years ago, we had a long weekend in the vastly under-rated Belgian capital of Brussels, famous for beer, waffles, a statue of a little boy having a wee and mussels.

I ate mussels three nights out of four, and on the other night I had a lobster, which came with a starter of mussels anyway, so really four nights out of four.

Aside from the statue and the waffles (both over-rated), we had an excellent weekend. Brussels is a surprisingly vibrant place, with some great cafes and bars. Everything they say about Belgian beer is true, and it's magnificence is only amplified by drinking it outside on a warm night, watching people go by.

Back to the food. Mussels. Tricky little devils. Delicious, but could cause you untold harm if handled improperly. Mistreat a mussel and it'll mistreat you.

Here are the rules:

make sure the mussels are fresh. Ask the fishmonger how fresh they are, and look carefully for any nervous twitches or obvious signs of lying when he replies
tip the mussels into the sink and throw out any that have broken shells (they'll kill you) any that don't shut tightly after a sharp tap or when plunged into water (they'll kill you) and any that look a bit lacklustre or under the weather (they might be OK, but if in any doubt at all, treat them as if they'll kill you)
Wash in several changes of water and scrape the barnacles away with a knife
Each mussel has a 'beard', a little tuft that once attached it to a rock, or more likely, a rope especially set up by a mussel farmer. You don't want to eat this, so remove it with a sharp tug

Cleaning mussels might be tedious, but they're cheap and the cooking is quick and easy.

Start by frying a finely chopped onion in olive oil in a very large pan. Add a diced carrot and a couple of stalks of diced celery. A few cloves of roughly chopped garlic add a depth of flavour too. Season well.

Fry the vegetables until they start to take on colour, then add a few bay leaves and all of the mussels, quickly followed by a generous glass of dry white wine. Put a lid on the pan and bring to the boil as quickly as possible, then turn the heat down a little and let the mussels steam in the wine for about five minutes.

The mussels will have opened up like flowers, each shell revealing a golden nugget of flesh. Some won't have opened. Don't eat them (they'll kill you).

Stir in a couple of tablespoons of cream or creme fraich to finish the sauce, add a very large handful of chopped flat leaved parsley, then serve straight away.

There are other ways. Steaming in beer is excellent, as is using a tomato based sauce, but for me, moules mariniere is the best way.

The only appropriate accompaniment for mussels are chips and mayonnaise. Maybe a baguette, but nothing else.

Eating mussels is always a messy business. The best way to eat mussels is to use an empty shell as a makeshift pincer to pinch the flesh out.

It's easier than using a fork, and makes you look like an expert.

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Leeds Loves Food

2009-06-25T19:36:00.009Z

The Leeds Loves Food festival kicks off this Thursday in Millennium Square, Leeds.

The festival covers the whole weekend with a range of foodie events across the city. Leeds' best restaurants are involved, showcasing throughout the event.

There's plenty on, including:

Salvo's have a six course dinner in conjunction with Crag House Farm in Cookridge, focusing on caring for livestock, caring for life
Toast are cooking with the best of the day's catch from the magnificent fish stalls in the market
Org Organics are holding an organic tasting session
Harvey Nichols are running a whole programme of events, from a celebration of decadent desserts, right through to a summer fete with some of their best suppliers. Not to be missed.
Tequila at the unsurpassed Mojo's

Plenty of restaurants have pitched special offers as part of the festival - there's an offer for everybody.

The festival is also holding a competition for the best micro restaurant posted to Twitter during the event. Just set your phone up in Twitter and text your 140 character review to +447624801423 with the tag #LLF. Be as complimentary, witty or cutting as you like.

Leeds Loves Food is shaping up to be a huge event, and it's a great way to celebrate Leeds' rich food scene.

Make no mistake, Leeds is a superb place to eat.

Leeds Loves Food 2nd -5th July, 2009.

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Little Valley Brewery's Hebden's Wheat

2009-06-23T21:17:00.002Z

Hebden's Wheat is a light and lively wheat beer from the Little Valley Brewery in Hebden Bridge.

The beer is bottle conditioned, with a distinct lemon taste, tinged with coriander. It goes perfectly with a curry or other spicy food.

Little Valley's beers are organic, certified by the Soil Association and overseen by the brewery's owner, Wim van der Spek, a Dutch born, Bavarian trained master brewer.

Little Valley's range covers an IPA, bitter, stout, blonde as well as this quite superb wheat beer.

More soon, but a great start.

Little Valley Brewery

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Grozet - Scottish gooseberry beer

2009-06-19T05:07:00.003Z

Grozet is a gooseberry flavoured beer from William Bros. Brewing Company, a Scottish brewer based in Alloa who specialise in the historic or slightly esoteric end of the market.

William Bros. brew a range of unusual beers, Grozet being the prime example. It's a heritage beer, based on a 16th century beer brewed at harvest time for the labourers, who wanted something refreshing after working the fields. A beer cut through with the sharp citrus taste of the Scottish 'hairy grape' - cheap and plentiful in the summer - fitted the bill perfectly.

This is a modern interpretation, closer to a continental beer than a 16th century Scottish ale. Grozet is light and has a clear citrus kick, a little like a Belgian fruit beer. The gooseberries make the beer distinctive and tangy, with a fresh taste and the flavour of wheat.

Very good indeed.

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Bhuna Gosht, or lamb bhuna

2009-06-15T11:35:00.006Z

'Bhuna' is a particular Asian cooking style where a sauce is reduced and reduced until it is so thick that it just clings to the meat, making the meat appear 'browned'.

Dishes cooked in the bhuna style are rich and pungent, the flavour of the spice mix concentrated down by the fierce reduction of the sauce. Bhunas tend to be hot for the same reason.

This recipe is from Madhur Jaffrey. Her recipes are outstanding.

To make a lamb bhuna, start by gently browning a heady mix of spices.

Add two teaspoons of cumin seeds, four teaspoons of coriander seeds, two teaspoons of mustard seeds, two or three dried chillis, and finally two teaspoons each of fennel and fenugreek seeds to a large, dry, medium hot frying pan. Keep the spices moving for a minute or two until they brown slightly. Empty the pan into a bowl and let the spices cool slightly before grinding them to a fine powder in a coffee grinder of with a pestle and mortar.

Next, finely chop three large shallots, a four centimetre chunk of ginger and five or six garlic cloves in oil in a large pan until they turn golden brown. This will take maybe four or five minutes.

Add a couple of medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped to the pan, along with about fifteen curry leaves. Feel free to use canned tomatoes instead of fresh. Cook until the sauce thickens.

Add the roasted spice mix to the pan and stir well. The dry spice powder will cause the sauce to seize and thicken. Cook for a minute or two, taking care not to let the sauce catch on the bottom of the pan. If it does, add a splash of water and quickly stir.

Now add a kilo of boneless lamb or mutton shoulder, cut into large chunks, and a teaspoon and a half of salt. Stir and cook for five minutes, making sure that the meat is fully covered in the thick sauce.

Let the curry down with 250ml of water, bring to a gentle simmer, put a lid on the pan and cook on a very gentle heat for about an hour and a half.

After this time, check that the meat is tender. If it isn't leave it for a while longer. When the meat is ready, remove the lid from the pan and turn up the heat to reduce the sauce until it almost disappears. The aim is to create a dry dish, where the highly concentrated remains of the sauce cling tightly to the tender meat.

Finish with a sprinkle of garam masala and a handful of chopped fresh coriander.

Serve with naan bread, rice and cold beer. This is no place for wine. Beer only, please, something light and very, very cold.

More curries and Indian food:

Gosht Achar
Rogan josh, a king amongst curries
Naan bread
Aagrah, Shipley
Lamb curry with onions and raisins

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How to make a pork pie

2009-06-11T05:12:00.007Z

I feel like I've mastered a mysterious, secret art.

I made a pork pie, and it was easy. More than that, it tasted astounding.

Here's how.

Start with the pastry. The pastry is unusual as it's made with hot water. It seems to go against everything you know about making pastry, but it does work.

Gently melt 100g of butter and 100g of lard together in a pan, with 200ml of water. While the fats are melting, mix 550g of plain flour and one and a half teaspoons of salt together in a large bowl, then break two eggs into the bowl. Using a knife to start with, cut the eggs into the flour a little and slowly pour in the fat and water, mixing all the time.

The dough will come together. You may need to add more flour or water. Briefly knead the dough, then wrap it in clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or so.

Now the filling. The filling of a pork pie is basically a course pate, and it's not more difficult than making a meatloaf or a decent burger.

Cut 1kg of pork shoulder into small cubes, about half a centimetre across, and place it in a large mixing bowl. A very sharp knife is vital here, as well as patience - it takes a while.

Add 250g of finely chopped salt pork, streaky bacon or, if you're feeling extravagant and want a continental twist, pancetta to the bowl, along with 250g of minced belly pork. Your butcher will be able to mince a few slices of belly pork for you.

The balance of meats is important. The chunky shoulder adds texture, the bacon or salt pork adds flavour and the minced belly provides fat, to keep the pie moist.

Now to season the filling. Finely chop a dozen sage leaves and the leaves from two large sprigs of thyme and add them to the meat, along with a generous teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper, a teaspoon of ground white pepper, half a teaspoon of ground mace and a good pinch of cayenne pepper. Mix everything together well.

Next, cut off about a third of the pastry and put it to one side for the lid, then roll out the rest into a 30cm round. Slide the pastry into a 20cm cake tin with a loose base and press it down so that the pastry reaches about three quarters of the way up the side of the tin. Using a spring form tin with a clip on the side will make the 'getting the pie out' operation much simpler.

Fill the pastry case with the meat, and push a single bay leaf into the very centre of the pie.

Roll out a suitably sized pastry lid and crimp it into place, using a little beaten egg to glue the joint together. Cut a small hole in the top of the pastry.

Bake at 180c for thirty minutes, then reduce the heat to 160c and continue to cook for a further hour and a quarter.

After this time, take the pie out of it's tin and brush the top and sides with beaten egg, returning it to the oven for another quarter of an hour to brown.

When the pie has finally finished cooking, let it stand for half an hour or so to cool, then heat up 250ml of pork stock that will set to a jelly in a pan. Making pork stock with a couple of trotters will guarantee that the stock will set, but if you're unsure, add some gelatin as well.

Using a turkey baster, squirt the hot stock into the hole at the top of the pie. The meat will have shrunk during cooking, and there'll be a gap between it and the crust, which you want to fill with jelly. This could take some time - let the stock sink into the pie before adding more - but try to get as much stock in as possible.

Leave the pie to cool completely, then refrigerate overnight to allow the jelly to set.

Serve huge wedges with a simple salad and some chutney for an easy, but substantial lunch.

The pie will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge. It's enormous - you'll need a lot of people to eat it in one go. This is proper food.

This recipe is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's unsurpassed The River Cottage Meat Book. All carnivores should own a copy.

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Abel & Cole's organic fruit and veg box

2009-06-09T21:11:00.008Z

There's been something of a backlash against the organic food movement in recent months, brought on by a new found frugality in the face of the deepening economic crisis. People see organic food as just too expensive, a luxury they simply can't afford.

The taste and quality argument is easy to win - organically grown food does taste better - but the cost argument is more difficult. If people are feeling stretched, they'll push the food budget as far as it'll go, and an obvious target is to cut back on things that look like luxuries.

I decided to cost out a typical fruit and veg box from Abel & Cole, one of the clear market leaders in the box scheme business. The box I received* was a Mixed Organic Fruit & Veg box, which retails at £15.95 and should provide enough fruit and veg for two or three people for about a week.

I decided to look at the box from three angles - cost, quality and convenience.

Cost
£15.95 seems pricey for a box of fruit and vegetables, but is it?

This is what was in the box:

	Weight	Quantity
Nectarines	0.448 kg	5
Apples	0.578 kg	5
Watermelon - small	1.085 kg	1
Lettuce - Little Gem	0.578 kg	1
Courgettes	0.527 kg	5
Cabbage	0.467 kg	1
Red pepper	0.166 kg	1
Carrots	0.548 kg	12
Onions	0.501 kg	8
Potatoes	1.21. kg	14

I sourced comparable products from Sainsbury's online store, both organic and non-organic options, and worked out the cost from Sainsbury's of the same amount of produce as supplied by Abel & Cole Where Sainsbury's didn't have an organic option, I've included the non-organic pricing):

	Unit price (non-organic)	Unit price (organic)	Total cost (non-organic)	Total cost (organic)
Nectarines	£0.50 each	n/a	£2.50	£2.50
Apples	£1.88 / kg	£2.49 for five	£1.09	£2.49
Watermelon	£3.49 (large) each	n/a	£1.75*	£1.75*
Lettuce	£0.44 each	£1.34 each	£0.44	£1.34
Courgettes	£1.98 / kg	£1.98 for three **	£1.04	£1.98
Cabbage	£0.99 each	£1.49 each	£0.99	£1.49
Red pepper	£0.50 each	£0.83 each	£0.50	£0.83
Carrots	£0.87 / kg	£1.32 / kg	£0.48	£0.72
Onions	£0.84 / kg	£1.29 for three large	£0.42	£1.29**
Potatoes	£0.86 / kg	£1.00 / kg	£1.04	£1.21
Total			£10.25	£15.60

* Sainsbury's watermelons were huge, Abel & Cole's were small. Halving the cost seemed fair.
** A pack of three larger courgettes seemed about the same size as those in the Abel & Cole box.
*** Abel & Cole's onions were small - three large onions from Sainsbury's is about comparable.

So, £15.95 from Abel & Cole, £15.60 from Sainsbury's.

Slightly cheaper from the supermarket, but Sainsbury's didn't have an organic alternative to two of the items in Abel & Cole's box.

The premium for organic produce over normal is about a fiver.

I'd call that a draw.

Quality
Abel & Cole really shone on quality.

Let's start with the box. Cleverly designed, the box has an internal divider that separates fruit and salad from dirtier root vegetables. The box was small enough to look nicely packed and full up.

The produce itself was first rate. Nothing was bruised, broken or showed any signs of mishandling. The nectarines were rock hard an tasty, the carrots crisp and not at all 'bendy'. The red pepper was wrinkle free. Only the lettuce showed signs of wear, having sat on my doorstep for a while. Even then, the heart of the lettuce was crisp.

A couple of potatoes had had a slight altercation with a slug or two at some point, but keeping organic potatoes pest free is virtually impossible. My home grown spuds normally come out of the ground with significantly more damage.

Organic food costs more, there is a premium involved, but the extra cost brings extra taste and quality.

Convenience
Having a box of fruit and vegetables regularly delivered to your doorstep is obviously convenient, but the big problem with most box schemes is that you get what you're given, whether you like it or not. Sometimes that means cauliflower after cauliflower, week after week, with no end in sight except maybe a change in the season.

I like to be challenged by the contents of a veg box. I like peering inside and having one of those 'what the hell am I going to do with that?' moments. Sometimes I have 'what the hell IS that?' moments. You have to be inventive. You have to look things up, search out a recipe, come up with an idea. It's part of the fun, but if there's something I just don't like, I won't use it, and it'll go to waste.

Abel & Cole's answer to this is the Internet, and a neatly designed website that allows you to tweak the contents of your box, marking the things you like and the things you don't. You could avoid cauliflower for ever, if you wanted, and I definitely do.

Conclusion
Abel & Cole's produce is excellent, the contents of the boxes are varied, with the odd unpredictable or unusual item in there to keep things interesting. The price is about right for organic, and the box I tried felt like good value for money.

Organic food is more expensive, but it's better for both you and the environment, and it tastes good. Worth the premium.

Good food, good quality, good price, good value.

Abel and Cole

* Abel & Cole sent me this box free of charge, for the purposes of this review. Thanks very much indeed.

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Doom Bar and Eden Pure Ale from Sharp's Brewery, Cornwall

2009-06-05T11:10:00.005Z

Year's ago, in the seas around the Cornish town of Padstow, there lived a mermaid. As mermaids do, she fell in love with a local fisherman, and tried to lure him beneath the waves, into her realm. The fisherman, in terror, and fearing for his life, shot her to escape.

In her dying moments, the mermaid cast a curse of retribution on Padstow, to render the town's waters unnavigable. She summoned a great storm that created a sandbank in the nearby Camel Estuary that has since claimed over six hundred ships. The Doom Bar.

In the days of sail, shipwrecks were regular, inevitable events. Ships would round a corner and lose their wind, drifting straight onto the bank, their anchors unable to grip the loose sand of the seabed.

Today, wrecks are much less frequent, but the mermaid's curse still remains, ready to trap the unwary or cavalier.

A perfect name for a beer, then, loaded with history, fable and more than a little bit of mystery.

Sharp's Brewery in Rock has been brewing since 1994, producing a range of modern beers, with Doom Bar their flagship brew. Doom Bar is spicy and a little bit sweet, with a mellow and rounded taste. There is an edge of the sea to it. It's great bottled, but even better on tap.

Sharp's also produce a completely organic beer in partnership with the magnificent Eden Project, a huge biosphere nested on the site of an old Cornish mine. The great spheres house a collection of exotic plants in a carefully controlled environment, with the aim of understanding and protecting our environment.

It's scale is awesome, and as an experience, it's second to none, worth the long trip to the South West alone.

Eden Pure Ale takes the philosophy of the Eden Project and applies it to a beer, made with entirely organic ingredients, to prove that a beer made in harmony with nature can work and can taste great.

It does, and it's a huge success, light and easy to drink.

Sharp's Brewery

Other beer posts:

Three Lakeland Beers
A stout, a porter and a blonde
St. Peter's beer
Saltaire Brewery's Hazelnut Coffee Porter
Saltaire Brewery

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Tricked and deceived by a German wine

2009-06-03T06:00:00.004Z

I was the subject of a hideous experiment the other day.

I was given a glass of white wine by my wine connoisseur* brother-in-law, and asked to try it. It was very nice indeed, off dry, a little sweeter than I usually choose but perfectly good. It wasn't the best wine I've ever tasted, but it was far from the worst. Some of the Co-Op's Fair Trade selections win that particular award hands down.

It was a Liebfraumilch.

Along with most people, I harbour deeply ingrained opinions about Liebfraumilch, and none of them are good. The associations with seventies dinner parties, poor food and a general unsophistication about wine are just too strong, and cause me to pass swiftly on to something more modern, dependable, reliable. Maybe yet another bottle of Australian Chardonnay?

I like my wine to be made by the French, Australians, Italians, some form of South American, etc, but never by a German.

Never.

This all leaves me in a confused and mildly agitated state.

My built-in prejudices and quickly blossoming wine snobbery tell me loud and clear that Liebfraumilch shouldn't be touched with a barge pole, somebody else's barge pole at that. Yet here I am, enjoying a lovely glass of smooth and interesting German white wine on a warm early summer evening.

To top it all, at £3.22, it was an absolute bargain.

Something is definitely not right.

Peter Meyer Liebfraumilch 2007 Rheinhessen, Germany.

*I'm not using this description lightly. He really is a professional wine merchant of many years standing and currently runs the wine website for a high-street-brand-you-will-have-heard-of.

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Salt's Diner, Saltaire

2009-05-31T08:54:00.007Z

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution gave birth to Blake's "dark, Satanic mills", huge cathedrals of commerce producing cotton, wool, alpaca. Conditions in the mills were harsh - the workers started young and the hours were long, the work dangerous. The mills of the North were places to be feared, where spirits were broken and the hopelessness of Victorian poverty was everywhere.

The mills are still there, but the industry has gone long ago, mainly to the Far East where wages are cheaper and regulation not as tight, to places where you can run a factory just like you used to in 1875.

Of the mills that are left, many have been converted into apartments with high ceilings and big windows, others have been renovated in other ways. Salt's Mill in Saltaire was one of the lucky ones, bought for peanuts in the eighties by a local entrepreneur who had two simple ideas, one sensible, one a little off the wall. Jonathan Silver would bring commerce back to the empty hull of Sir Titus Salt's colossal mill. He would rent space to technology firms, who would use it to produce sophisticated electronics.

New industry in an old industrial setting.

He would also open an art gallery in the same building, pulling in favours from old friend and fellow Bradfordian, David Hockney. An art gallery in a Victorian mill. Ridiculous idea, doomed from the start.

What Silver saw was that business and the arts could and should work together, that the same space, both practical and beautiful could serve both purposes. Pace electronics provided the commercial backbone of Salt's Mill, the galleries attracted the people.

The single gallery, large and airy, painted in warm reds and greens, hung with some of Hockney's best work was a huge success and was soon followed by a bookshop, more galleries, a shop selling high end homeware where parents still hold their children's hands very tightly for fear of breakages that would surely result in bankruptcy, and a restaurant.

Salt's Diner is one of three cafes and restaurants on the site today. As with everything at Salt's Mill, it's a large open space, hung with Hockney's holiday photos, with an open plan kitchen, round wooden tables and Arne Jacobsen chairs in bold colours.

The menu is a winning balance of British favourites (sausages from Lishman's in Ilkley, mash, red wine gravy...really, who could resist that?) and Mediterranean dishes. Flavours are in keeping with the setting - big, and bold, but certainly not brash.

I had a salad nicoise of lettuce, tuna, tomatoes, perfectly boiled eggs, potato, garnished with fresh anchovy fillets. You'd have to go to France to get a better version.

The kids had a pizza and spaghetti with meatballs, smaller portions of standard dishes. Well, not that much smaller, which gave me the opportunity to try more than my fair share of the spaghetti, which came in a rich tomato sauce with herby meatballs made from ground beef from the Bolton Abbey estate in the Yorkshire Dales, extremely high quality meat cooked beautifully.

The pizza disappeared completely before I could sneak a slice. It was thin, the base crisp and scorched, cooked in an inferno of an oven. Superb.

Other dishes included a delicious smoked salmon pate on rye bread and a triumphant burger, a staple of the menu from day one, a substantial patty of chargrilled, seasoned ground beef in a bun, served with everything you'd expect a burger to come with.

For dessert, I had a large slice of apple and almond cake, stodgy and tasty, crunchy on the top, pleasingly soggy at the bottom. The chocolate brownie came in slices about the same size as a house brick, bitter chocolate with a smooth coffee ice cream and a hazelnut sauce.

The food is great, but the service has always let Salt's Diner down a little.

Waiters are friendly and responsive, but disorganised and slow to clear tables and take orders. It's all just a little too relaxed and there doesn't seem to be a 'system' in use.

The waiter took our dessert order only after we'd gone to fetch him, as the kids became ever more tired of waiting for long-promised ice cream. He took the order before our table had been cleared down. It's a relaxed place, and I didn't really mind, but still, things should happen in a certain order.

The food and surroundings more than balance any minor service related shortcomings. The Diner has excellent food, cooked well by a disciplined and consistent kitchen, and a dramatic and beautiful dining room, busy and bustling with life.

It's relaxed, welcoming and just the right place for a quick coffee or a long and lazy lunch.

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Sorry, no bacon...Roots & Fruits vegetarian cafe, Leeds

2009-05-27T00:01:00.007Z

We had breakfast at the eclectic Roots & Fruits the other day.

Sat in the window on mis-matched chairs looking out onto the quiet Grand Arcade, we ordered a standard English breakfast of eggs, toast, mushrooms, beans, hash browns. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary, but well cooked and served with early Stevie Wonder in the background.

The food was good, and the coffee excellent and plentiful - three refills is more than enough. We shamefully made weak and predictable jokes about the lack of bacon, etc, but that's a little (OK, a lot) unfair given that Roots & Fruits is very obviously a vegetarian place.

The rest of the menu was full of quiches, sandwiches with mushroom pate or hummus, chickpea fritters, roasted red peppers, falafel. You get the idea. If the main menu is as good as the breakfast, it'll be worth trying again.

www.rootsandfruits.net

Roots & Fruits

10-11 Grand Arcade
Leeds

0113 242 8313

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Extreme cheese rolling

2009-05-25T20:30:00.003Z

I don't understand this.

Let me try to explain anyway. It's a bank holiday tradition.

People wait at the top of a very steep hill somewhere in the Cotswalds until somebody throws a whole Double Gloucester down it, then they race for it, tumbling down the hill, head over heels, some straight into the back of an ambulance.

Somebody reaches the cheese first and gets to keep it. The others get seen by the paramedics.

The film is from last year, but the only real variation from year to year is the number of casualties.

Last year, there were nineteen, this year's tally still to be confirmed.

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A little corner of France in a basement in Leeds, La Grillade

2009-05-23T15:04:00.006Z

La Grillade is a typical French restaurant, just like the places you'd find in any sizable French town.

Except it's in Leeds. That makes it special.

The restaurant is housed in the basement of a Victorian terrace, and looks uninspiring from the outside. Down the stairs, it's a different world, a series of small dining rooms housed in vaulted cellar rooms, tiles on the floor, stylish white cloths on the tables, white rustic walls, naturally.

The other thing that makes La Grillade special is the food. The short menu is packed with traditional French dishes, steaks and mussels, boudin noir and fish dishes from the South. Each dish is simple, straightforward, classic.

I had rillettes de porc to start with, three large spoonfuls of gloriously chunky pate, the pork cooked for a very long time and shredded coarsely before being allowed to set in it's own fat. Tony Bourdain writes in his superb Les Halles Cookbook that rillettes get "to the heart of what's good: pork, pork fat, salt and pepper". He'd love this example.

For a main course, we had a rib eye steak, a huge, thick slab of mature beef cooked to medium rare perfection on a sizzling hot grill, with frites, thin and crisp in the French style, and confit de canard, a duck leg cooked for hours in it's own fat, served on flagelot beans braised in a rich tomato and wine sauce. The beans were earthy and deeply flavoured, the duck magnificent. I'm a huge fan of confit duck - the practice of cooking meat entirely in duck or goose fat produces some of the most densely flavoured and delicious meat you could ever hope for. It's worth trying at home, but if you don't have the patience, this is exactly how it should taste.

Dessert was a large chocolate mousse and a tart aux pommes, crisp puff pastry at the edges, soggy in the middle, apples tender and sweet, vanilla ice cream on the side. Simple and delicious.

La Grillade's kitchen is open plan and in plain view of the dining room. This is good for two reasons - there's nowhere for the chefs to hide, so they have to run a clean and efficient kitchen, and it also lets lucky diners have a peek into the mysterious and endlessly fascinating world of a professional kitchen. I could watch dishes flying over a kitchen pass all evening.

French cuisine is the heavyweight of the culinary world. Others may pretend, and many have improved over the years, but a simple menu of French classics has the weight of centuries of food history behind it. The menu at La Grillade demonstrates just this - these are simple dishes, cooked with quality ingredients by a skilled brigade who know that the simple things are the best.

La Grillade
Wellington Street
Leeds

0113 245 9707

www.lagrillade.co.uk

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Rhubarb ice cream

2009-05-17T19:34:00.006Z

It's the middle of May, and the weather is quite nice, a bit wet, but warmer. I think it's time to make ice cream, to get the freezer stocked up for summer.

Of course, this is Britain, and the North of Britain at that. This may be summer.

This ice cream is based on a standard custard, flavoured with rhubarb and a small amount of cinnamon. The rhubarb is sharp and cutting, and the cinnamon adds a twinge of spice. It's a very good ice cream, but possibly not to everybody's taste.

Heat 300ml each of fresh whole milk and double cream in a pan with half a teaspoon of cinnamon until it just boils. Remove from the heat and set to one side to let the cinnamon flavour the milk and cream.

Cube 500g of rhubarb and heat gently with about 80g of golden caster sugar. After a time, about ten minutes, the rhubarb will have collapsed on itself and turned into a compote of sorts.

Whisk four egg yolks and 100g of golden caster sugar together until light and pale. Meanwhile, heat the milk and cream again until it's almost, but not quite, boiling.

Now the tricky part. Get this wrong and you've got some really odd scrambled eggs, get it right and you've got a custard.

Very slowly, pour the hot milk and cream over the egg mixture, whisking all the time. An electric whisk is invaluable here, as is a willing helper. Keep beating. Beat like your life depends on it.

When everything is thoroughly mixed and smooth, tip the mix into a pan and gently heat, stirring constantly until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of your spoon. This will take at least ten minutes.

Add the rhubarb compote and stir well before leaving the ice cream mix to cool thoroughly. It should spend a little time in the fridge before freezing. There's no point trying to freeze a warm mix. It'll just get...frustrating.

Churn in an ice cream maker if you're lucky enough to have one. Otherwise, crank up the freezer to it's highest setting and pour the mix into a large, shallow plastic box. Place the box in the freezer for an hour or so, then beat the slushy mix with a whisk to distribute the frozen bits around. Don't be gentle here.

Repeat this a couple more times over the next few hours, then let the ice cream freeze solid overnight.

From an easy and simple recipe on Serial Cooking. The basic custard part is a magic base, to which almost anything fruit* based can be added.

*I know, I know, rhubarb isn't a fruit, but it is for the purposes of this post. A mere technicality.

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Gosht Achar, or lamb curry

2009-05-10T20:38:00.003Z

India and Pakistan are home to some of the world's best pickles, all types of fruit and vegetables preserved in a fiery mix of spices, citrus juices and oils. The best are little more than sliced chillis with lime, oil, mustard and turmeric.

They'll blow you away. Literally.

In Hindi, 'achar' means pickle, and gosht achar is a cousin of the pickle-making process, a lamb curry that uses many of the spices typical to pickling.

This recipe came to me in an unusual way. We had a takeaway the other night, and tiring of the usual place round the corner, ordered from the Aagrah group's mothership restaurant in Shipley. The Aagrah is a superb restaurant, a small chain with branches across Yorkshire and a first class and well-deserved reputation to match. The difference in quality between our usual takeaway, itself no slouch, and the Aagrah's was immense.

There was a bonus.

The paper bag the food came in bore the Aagrah's recipe for Gosht Achar on the side. I knew straight away what was going to happen. I was going to cook this, and it was going to be bloody marvellous.

This recipe looks long, but it isn't complicated. It's just a matter of being organised, having everything ready and putting things together in the right order. Curries are quite easy, but don't tell anybody.

Start by browning a kilo of cubed lamb in small batches, in hot oil in a large pan. There will be a lot of smoke and spitting. Lamb on the bone will have more flavour.

When the lamb is done, nudge the heat down a little and add a medium chopped onion to the pan, frying until it turns a golden brown colour. Scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon as you go, to lift any burnt on lamb into the onions.

Add a dessert spoon each of finely chopped or minced garlic and ginger, fry for a couple of minutes before adding three or four cardamom pods, half a dessert spoon each of fennel, fenugreek, onion and mustard seeds, and six bay leaves.

Stir for a few minutes until the seeds are nicely toasted, then add a generous half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, a dessert spoon of ground coriander, half a dessert spoon of ground cumin seeds, a teaspoon of salt, a couple of sliced green chillis and red chilli powder to taste. Start with half a teaspoon, but remember that there are green chillis in there too. Fry for a couple of minutes.

Add a can of chopped tomatoes, two or three tablespoons of plain yoghurt and a scant dessert spoon of white wine vinegar.

You've now got a masala. It should bubble away for a minute or two, filling the kitchen with exotic smells.

Return the browned lamb and it's juices to the pan and turn the heat down to a gentle bubble. The lamb will take about an hour and a half to cook through and tenderise. Remove the lid for the last half an hour to let the liquid steam away and the sauce thicken.

Just before serving, add a good handful of chopped coriander and stir in half a dessert spoon of garam masala. The garam masala is important - it gives the curry a fresh and spicy taste.

Serve with plain boiled rice or a naan bread.

Other Indian food:

Rogan Josh, a king amongst curries
Naan bread
North Indian curry

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Three Lakeland beers

2009-05-08T05:00:00.007Z

The English Lake District is one of the most beautiful and spectacular parts of the British Isles. Mountains tower over lush valleys and deep lakes. There's a long and proud brewing tradition in these parts, and some excellent pubs.

Hawkshead Brewery supplied me with a couple of excellent pints - Lakeland Gold and Red. Red was on tap, a deep amber colour, bitter, sweet and very good indeed. Lakeland Gold, bottled, was extremely bitter and fruity. Lakeland Gold amassed a wealth of awards and nominations over the last couple of years, all justified.

Both Red and Lakeland Gold were extremely successful beers, especially when drunk in the garden of a tiny pub in Borrowdale valley on a sunny afternoon in the shadow of the mountains.

Hesket Newmarket Brewery's High Pike was another gem - bottle conditioned, a bitter and complex beer with a nutty taste and a lingering slightly chocolaty aftertaste, which comes from a mix of three different hops.

Hesket Newmarket Brewery is a remarkable story in itself. A co-operative, owned by the villagers of Hesket Newmarket (bus service - once a week), the brewery has breathed life into the village and produces some superb beers, gaining the approval of Prince Charles along the way.

More beers:

A stout, a porter and a blonde
St Peter's beer
North Bar, Leeds
The Fox & Newt, Leeds
Saltaire Brewery's Hazelnut Coffee Porter
Saltaire Brewery

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Possibly the best fish and chips in the North?...The Old Keswickian, Keswick, Cumbria

2009-05-05T20:56:00.009Z

Some fish and chip shops are really very bad indeed. Some are just mediocre, and fail because of their mediocrity. Some are quite sensational. Others are part of a tradition or a routine, and are important because of that.

The Old Keswickian fits into both of the last two categories. A visit to The Old Keswickian is as much a part of a trip to the Lakes as throwing stones into Derwentwater is for the kids. To visit Keswick without visiting The Old Keswickian just wouldn't do, and there's good reason for this.

The fish and chips are extraordinarily good. The fish in particular is first rate - thick fillets of haddock fried in a substantial batter, the fish moist, the batter crisp and crunchy. The chips are fresh and hot, crisp on the outside, fluffy in the middle, which is all I need from a chip.

Everything is prepared with a confident and expert air. The fish fryer sweeps salt and vinegar across each portion with a neat and quick figure of eight motion, a smooth and practised movement that's almost hypnotic.

This isn't a cheap fish and chip shop. The price of fish and chips nudges a fiver, but this doesn't matter when the food is this good.

You get what you pay for.

More good chip shops:
Webster's fish and chips, Baildon
Harry Ramsden's

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The Troubadour, Earl's Court, London

2009-05-01T10:50:00.005Z

Eating breakfast in a hotel is a tedious, expensive and predictable business, to be avoided whenever possible.

I discovered The Troubadour about a decade ago whilst wandering round trying to avoid just this problem, and I've been back there every now and again ever since.

Opened in 1954, The Troubadour is the last remaining of Earl's Court's Fifties coffee houses, the 'second wave' of London cafes, the first being the old Seventeenth century dives, the third being the Starbucks led American invasion.

The Troubadour doesn't seem to have changed a lot since 1954, if at all. It has a wonderful shabby look to it, and a very real and hard-won Bohemian edge. There is a feeling that weighty matters of life and philosophy have been discussed between those walls.

There was a moment when I thought that I'd run out of luck. When I arrived, the kitchen wasn't ready, a deep clean not quite finished. This is excellent - I can't fault a restaurant for taking time and care over cleaning - and I have no problem waiting under such circumstances, especially on a sunny Spring morning with a cup of great coffee and some Blues.

I had an excellent breakfast of smoked salmon and poached eggs on a toasted muffin, with a cup of very, very good filter coffee - dark, smokey and rich.

The food was superb. Simple, straightforward, but executed with skill and attention to detail. I must admit I ordered a poached egg because they're so darn tricky to get right. I use them as a little private test of a cook's skill. These were absolutely perfect - very fresh, compact, the white set, the yolk runny.

I ate breakfast with The Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo gazed down from portraits mounted high on the wall, a nod to The Troubadour's other function as a venue that has played host to many of the best musicians and performers from the Fifties to this day. This is where Jimi Hendrix played his first British gig, where Led Zeppelin retired to after gigs at Earl's Court.

My favourite place to have breakfast in London.

I've given up looking for anywhere better.

The Troubador
265 Old Brompton Road
SW5

020 7370 1434

www.troubadour.co.uk

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Porchetta, or slow roasted Italian loin of pork

2009-04-29T07:00:00.002Z

The loin of a pig is a magnificent cut of meat, a dense strip of heavy meat flanked by part of the belly and encased in skin destined to crackle, nested in a cradle of bones.

As a joint, this has everything.

Preparation is simple, and the most important parts happen in the butcher's shop.

Ask for a pork loin, about 3.5 to 4kg, on the bone, the skin scored. My butcher didn't have a big enough loin to hand, so he butchered a new pig for me.

I love these moments...a quick discussion, an understanding, a disappearance into the back room, much sawing, blows from the cleaver, a reappearance, full loin hefted over a shoulder, to be smacked down onto the block, all four feet of it.

"How many are you feeding?"

"Five. But..."

"You'll want some leftover then? Sandwiches?"

I left with about a quarter of the loin. Ask the butcher to take the loin off the bone, but make sure you buy the bones as well. They're very much a part of the dish.

At home, grind a couple of teaspoons of fennel seeds, a teaspoon of dried, flaked chillis and a teaspoon of salt in a pestle of mortar or an old coffee grinder. Mix in the zest of a lemon.

Sprinkle the seasoning all over the flesh side of the joint. Don't let it get onto the skin. Rub the seasoning into all the nooks and crannies.

Lay some bay leaves, four or five, onto the middle of the joint and roll the belly over as tightly as you can, tying it up with string. There are proper methods and techniques for tying a joint. i use trial and error, and I've found it useful to have an extra hand available to help get the first few knots tight.

Lay the rack of ribs in the bottom of a large roasting tin and lay the rolled joint on top. Rub a little olive oil into the skin and sprinkle with salt.

Put the joint into the oven, which should be preheated to it's absolute maximum temperature. As soon as the meat is in, turn the heat down to 180c. The initial blast of heat will set the crackling.

The joint will need at least two and a half hours, maybe a little more, with at least twenty five minutes resting time at the end.

With about an hour to go, add some roughly chopped celery, carrot, onions and whole garlic cloves to the roasting tin, along with a couple of glasses of white wine. The veg will roast quite happily alongside the meat for the final hour.

When the meat and veg are cooked, transfer everything to somewhere warm and make a thin gravy from the pan juices. Pour off most of the fat - there will be a surprising amount - and whisk in a scant tablespoon of flour. Add wine, stock, lemon, salt and pepper until you're satisfied with the results. There is no special recipe for this, just go with what looks, tastes and feels best.

The seasoning rub gives the meat a spicy kick, and helps to flavour the vegetables and gravy. The crackling is rich and crisp, the fat having rendered away during the slow roast.

Serve with some kind of flat bread, a focaccia, maybe.

Part of the point of doing something like this is for the leftovers. Please, nothing fancy - thinly sliced pork, good white bread, a dash of salt.

More pork:
Slow roasted pork belly
Chinese five spice pork belly with noodles

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Pinenut and honey tart

2009-04-26T17:50:00.007Z

This nearly didn't happen.

There were too many things that could have gone wrong, and most of them nearly did. Toasting pinenuts, blind baking a pastry case, the wrong type of honey...

To my surprise, things turned out well, and we had a delicate and delicious dessert, sweet and balanced with a deep honey flavour, a crisp, short pastry base and a subtle nuttiness.

Really quite impressive, but not without it's traumas. There was a lot of swearing and some banging and crashing along the way.

First, the base. In a food processor, cream together 115g of butter and 100g of icing sugar until light, airy and pale. Add a couple of egg yolks, then 225g of sifted plain flour and a pinch of salt. Pulse the food processor until you've got to the 'looks a bit like breadcrumbs stage', then add a splash of milk to bring the dough together into a ball.

Shape the ball into a roll, wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for an hour or more.

After the dough has rested, use it to line a 30cm tart tin, one of those with a fluted edge and removabe base. The best way to do this is to cut the dough into slices about the thickness of a pound coin, arrange them in the buttered tin and then push the pastry together with your fingers, trimming the edges with a knife.

You could roll the pastry out, but it will be traumatic and, quite probably, unsuccessful.

When the pastry case is ready, prick the base with a fork and put the whole lot into a freezer for at least an hour and preferably overnight. The idea of freezing the pastry case is that it should behave itself in the oven and shouldn't shrink too much or collapse. You won't need baking beans or any other such inconvenience with a frozen base.

After a suitable rest period, blind bake the frozen pastry case in a 180c oven for 15 minutes, or until the pastry is starting to take on a golden colour.

Whilst the pastry is baking, toast 200g of pinenuts in a dry frying pan. Do not, not even for one second, take your eye off the ball here. Disaster will strike in an instant here. Keep the pinenuts moving with a wooden spoon all the time. The nuts will turn from a lovely golden colour to cremated within a matter of seconds. Take the pan off the heat at the first hint of any one of the nuts turning too dark, and tip them straight into a bowl.

To make the filling, blend 250g of butter and 250g of golden caster sugar in a food processor until you reach the same state as earlier - light, airy and pale. Transfer the mix to a large bowl and stir in the pinenuts and three eggs, one at a time. Mix in four tablespoons of the best honey you can find and then gently fold in 115g of plain flour and a pinch of salt.

Pour the filling into the cooked pastry case and return the tart to the oven, nudging the temperature down to 170c. Leave to cook for 30 minutes, before removing it from the oven and letting it cool.

As the tart cools, it will shrink very slightly and the tin should come away easily.

Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche and maybe an artistic drizzle of honey and some artfully scattered thyme leaves.

This recipe is adapted from one of Jamie Oliver's. Jamie's technique with a pastry case is foolproof.

More cakes:
Big crumb rhubarb cake
My only successful cheesecake, ever
Elizabeth David's Chocolate and Almond Cake

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A stout, a porter and a blonde

2009-04-22T11:28:00.006Z

Historically, there is really no difference between a stout and a porter, but in modern style guidelines, a stout is differentiated by addition of roasted barley.

Both are dark, heavy, wintry drinks.

The term 'stout' evolved from the use of the other meaning of the word - 'strong'. In the eighteenth century, the strongest beer a brewery made was known as their 'stoutest'. Porter is named after the porters at London's commercial markets, who popularised the dark beer in the eighteenth century.

These names have always been used somewhat interchangeably. It hardly matters.

So, tonight, a stout and a porter, whatever that means - Ridgeway's Foreign Export Stout and The Yorkshire Dales Brewing Co.'s Garsdale Smokebox porter.

One was good, the other...not so good.

The Foreign Export Stout was very rich, with a distinct chocolate flavour and a licorice aftertaste. It was sweet and a little cloying, not bitter enough.

Garsdale Smokebox was altogether more successful. Bitter and deeply flavoured, with none of the sweetness of the stout. A cleaner and more satisfying pint.

I also had a pint of Acorn Brewery's wonderful Northdown Blonde this week. Northdown Blonde is a pale ale, so much so that I was accused of drinking lager, and is very refreshing, bitter and complex.

Excellent on a warm spring evening.

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