Nice Artichokes!

We had a couple of friends round for dinner on Sunday, nothing fancy, just a short notice thing, loosely arranged only the day before.  I had thought something fishy, maybe squid, but by the time I got away from work and to the fishmongers on Saturday afternoon it was after four, and there really wasn’t much left on their slab that appealed.  I picked up a whole smoked mackerel, and figured on doing a version of the smoked mackerel, beetroot and potato salad that I’ve featured here before (except with seasonal asparagus, rather than beans).  Which is delicious, and very pretty, but seemed a little insubstantial to form the feature item of a dinner you have friends round for, no matter how unfancy.  Lunch, yes; dinner, not really.  So I wondered what I might be able to do for a starter that might take up the slack.

And then I saw these artichokes.

They were in Whole Food, the upmarket organic supermarket on Stoke Newington’s Church Street that used to be Fresh & Wild, and which I normally never shop in on principle – several principles in fact:

1.  It’s stupidly expensive.

2.  It promotes the idea of the organic movement being an affluent middle class lifestyle choice, rather than something that the food industry as a whole should be taking notice of (not necessarily, in my opinion, adopting wholesale, mind, absolutism, in this instance, as in any other that springs readily to mind, being counter productive) and making available to all, even if that always will be at something of a premium.

3.  It bundles organic food up with all sorts of hippy/new age mumbo jumbo as part of that lifestyle, which just plain makes me mad.  I would have serious issues with supporting any business that promotes homeopathy or crystal healing, and to be fair, I’m not 100% sure that Whole Food do sell specifically homeopathic or crystal based remedies, but they do undoubtedly associate organic food with just that sort of fuzzy, touchy feely bollocks.  Stop it!  People, there is no connection between an unwaxed lemon and aromatherapy.  Unwaxed lemon, good.  Aromatherapy, crystal healing and homeopathy – particularly homeopathy – bad.  Bad and wrong.

But these artichokes were amazing.  Beautiful, perfectly round, and huge.  And just inside the door so I noticed them from the street.  And, at 2 for £3, they were even something of a bargain.  And they would make a perfect starter, two of them being plenty enough for four of us, without being too filling, and having, in their sheer size and beauty, enough drama about them to make the whole meal seem a bit more of an event, without really going to any special trouble.

Anyway, I picked up two artichokes, along with a bottle of Picpoul, from Whole Food’s small, but actually surprisingly reasonable range of wines (maybe they’re not as evil as all that…) which I thought would be just about the perfect wine to go with them.  Turns out I wasn’t alone in that thought, because the French girl at the checkout – from Lyon, no less, so she should know – complimented me on my selection, and when she asked how I intended to serve the artichokes, and I told her probably just boiled and with a vinaigrette dressing, she smiled, nodded sagely and said, “Yes.  The best way.” So, somewhat annoyingly, I have to say, the experience of shopping at Whole Food turned out to be really rather gratifying.  Damn them, or the French girl at the check out, anyway…

Cooking artichokes is very easy, although there is the problem when they’re this size of having a pot big enough for the two of them.  Fortunately I have a range of stockpots going right up to catering size, but if you’ve got a good, big, deep pasta pan that should be OK.  Or you might need to cook them one at a time, which is do-able, if a lot of faff.  And faff, I have to admit, is what generally puts me off artichokes – not so much in the cooking, though, as the eating.  It’s always seemed a lot of picking off of leaves and dipping in dressing, for not very much actual eating, to me, but I’m prepared to make an exception.  Either for the reasons stated above in this case, or for the deep fried artichokes Becca and I had at Da Giggetto, in Rome, (which I’ve mentioned before, as the inspiration for the Oxtail stew I’ve posted a recipe for here).  These crisp, golden things of rare beauty are a speciality of the house, and the Roman Jewish ghetto in general, and remain among the most memorable dishes I’ve ever had in a restaurant.

Anyway, back to my own artichokes: having found a big enough pan, I filled it with water, into which I dropped a handful of salt, a few black peppercorns, three or four unpeeled, but lightly crushed, cloves of garlic, a few sprigs of time and one of rosemary.  I halved a lemon and squeezed in the juice, then dropped the squeezed out husks into the water too.  Then I brought the pan to the boil, and when it was merrily bubbling away, I dropped in the artichokes, poured a generous slug of olive oil over them, put the lid on the pan and turned the heat down to let it all simmer away gently until a knife slid easily in to the base of the choke - about 45 minutes in the case of artichokes of this size.  Then I fished out the artichokes and stood them upside down in a bowl to drain (make sure you have your bowl to hand or your colander ready in the sink before you fish out your first artichoke, the last thing you want to do is be running round the kitchen with a steaming hot artichoke shedding near boiling cooking liquid all over your floor, let alone your hand).  Or, if you have time, cook them for just about half an hour and then turn off the heat and leave them to cool in the liquor – they should end up perfectly cooked and easier to handle when it comes to fishing them out.

While the artichokes were cooking I made the dressing.  You could do a basic vinaigrette, although I would suggest making it a bit more mustardy than usual (unless you always make it very mustardy, in which case, just as usual), for a bit of extra piquancy, to contrast with the smooth, strong but mellow flavour of the artichoke.  On this occasion, I decided to add piquancy by the addition of anchovy and capers to the dressing.  Chopping one of my big fat, salted anchovies, with a dessert spoon or so of large capers, and crushing them together with a bit of extra salt, a grind of pepper and a clove or two of garlic with my pestle and mortar before adding the juice of half a lemon, a similar volume of sherry vinegar and enough good flavoured extra virgin olive oil to make a two one acid to oil ratio.  I shook the dressing vigorously in a sealed jar to emulsify it, and served it in little individual dishes (actually ‘cuncas’, traditional Galician wine cups) on peoples plates for dipping the artichoke leaves into as you pulled them off and ate them.

This really was as delicious, and satisfying, as it was dramatically beautiful.

Even the remains were beautiful:

Mutton dressed as mutton - because why would you dress it as anything else?

Mutton has had a couple of mentions on this blog before, but only in reviews of meals eaten out, and although I’ve long meant to do some at home I’d never quite got round to it, until last weekend.  Which is something of a fashion faux pas on my behalf, because mutton is currently so achingly hip that you are much more likely, these days, to come across lamb dressed as mutton than the other way around.  Except perhaps in your neighbourhood curry house, although even there, if it’s half way decent, I’d assume that when they say lamb they mean lamb, and when they mean mutton they say ‘meat’.  And generally of course mutton would be not only more ‘authentic’ (don’t worry, I’m not going off on that topic today…) but entirely more appropriate than lamb for most ‘Indian’* cooking, far better suited to the heavy spicing and long slow cooking that would normally entail.

Anyway, we were 6 for dinner, on a Sunday, so it seemed a perfect opportunity to roast a leg of mutton and get on board with the ‘mutton renaissance’ (and just because Prince Charles supports a thing it doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad idea – although I can’t help but fear it must cast some doubt on my own earlier claim of trendiness.  There again, taking into account the sheer quantity of tweed being worn by Dalston hipsters these days, maybe I’m the one out of step here, and Charlie boy’s bang on trend).

1 leg of mutton (2.5kg)

2 big fat salted anchovies (and their salt)

2 big fat garlic cloves

1 inch of fresh red chilli

A dessert spoon of capers

Plenty of black pepper

Plenty of olive oil

1 stalk of rosemary, a handful of thyme leaves

On Saturday evening, I pounded the ingredients for the marinade – apart from the herbs - into a paste with pestle and mortar and rubbed that paste into the lightly scored surface of the joint, along with the rosemary and thyme leaves. Then I put the leg back into the bag it came home from the butchers in and returned it to the fridge overnight.

On Sunday afternoon I took the leg out of the fridge in plenty of time to get up to room temperature before starting to cook it. Then I preheated the oven to about 250 - with the roasting tray inside to get hot enough that when the leg was placed in it you heard it sizzling furiously - and then I turned it down to 230 when the meat went in, left it for 30 minutes, then turned it down again, to 150 for another hour.  Then I took the joint out and let it rest for a good 30-40 minutes before carving, more into thick chunks than slices.

I made a simple gravy by just deglazing the roasting tray with sherry (about 150ml), and a punchy mint sauce by roughly chopping a good bunch of mint leaves then pounding them together (pestle and mortar again) with a couple of garlic cloves, a sprinkling of dried chilli flakes, flaky sea salt, pepper, a good slug of extra virgin olive oil until I had a good thick paste, then thinned that out with sherry vinegar – about an espresso cup’s worth (which is what I served it in).

Served up with the gravy, the sauce, some home made medlar jelly and sides of roasted Jersey Royals and asparagus, and wilted spring greens, this was arguably the best Sunday roast I’ve ever done (I couldn’t possibly be conceited enough to suggest ever had – could I?).  Much richer and more densely flavoured than lamb, and certainly no less tender, despite commonly held pre/misconceptions.  And fond as I am of roast beef - and I am very fond of roast beef - I would suggest that mutton is more interestingly flavoured, with just a hint of gaminess.

Also, like beef, but unlike lamb, it was just as good cold, and made wonderful sandwiches over the following couple of days, with a layer of that medlar jelly, a good smear of mustard, some finely sliced rings of red onion, and cucumber (pickled for me, fresh for Becca).

And that’s not to mention the shepherds pie, made with diced meat and some of the delicious stock made from the bone.  Or the spicy mutton, chorizo and butter bean stew that Becca had waiting for me one evening on my return from work.

It was also, it has to be said, something of a bargain - markedly cheaper than lamb or beef would have been - with the whole 2.5 kg coming in at under twenty quid from those fine chaps at Theobalds.  And from that we not only had our dinner party for six, but as you see from the above, pretty much fed ourselves for the rest of the week.

* Here I am using ‘Indian’ as a catch all term for what might perhaps most accurately be described as British curry house cuisine – except that sounds inescapably derisive.  I am fully aware of the fact that as many if not more of those curry houses might be Bangladeshi or Pakistani, and that there are many great and distinct cuisines of the South Asian sub continent – Bengali, Punjabi, Keralan etc – and that more and more restaurants these days are devoting themselves to, and advertising themselves as, serving up purer, more authentic expressions of those cuisines, and a very good thing too.  I can, though, easily imagine a future in which ‘authenticity’ is claimed for indigenous British Asian cooking, and restaurants serving lipstick crimson tandoori chicken, and hi-viz orange tikka masala become ragingly fashionable.

More Asparagus. And Meat (black pudding, chorizo and steak).

One of the problems of the short, if not as short as it used to be, asparagus season, as with the whole seasonality movement (if that’s what we’re calling it) is that, while you can, you feel compelled to come home with a bunch every time you go shopping.  And after a while, even the delights of asparagus can begin to pall, and thinking up something new to do with it can even begin to feel like a chore, when it should be a joy.

Don’t give up!  On seasonality or asparagus.  Ok, don’t feel obliged – never feel obliged – to pick up the British Asparagus just because it’s there.  Maybe take a bunch every second trip.  As for different things to do with it, maybe I can help, in my own small way.

We’ve covered poached eggs, and char-grilling, and salads with Jersey Royals, and you can always have it on it’s own, with hollandaise sauce, or vinaigrette, or just dressed in butter (not if Becca’s around, obviously) or olive oil (even if she is).  But as well as asparagus goes with all those things, there are plenty of perhaps less obvious things it pairs up with too. 

Black pudding for instance, or chorizo, or both together.  Throw them all together with those jersey Royals (again, or other varieties of new potato are always, of course, available, and will do fine) in a stew, with a splash of white wine and light stock, or even just stirred together in the pan with just olive oil and cooking juices.  If you’re doing that, be sure to cook the ingredients separately (I steam my asparagus over the potatoes), and just bring them together in the frying pan (or a wok is good for this kind of cooking, which after all, is pretty much a stir fry).  It makes a quick, easy and delicious supper, pretty much a hot salad, which is perfect for these warm spring days with their just slightly nippy evenings.

I did a variation of the stew version a couple of weeks ago, on one of the rare days we’ve had recently that didn’t actually think it was high summer rather than what was then still earlyish spring.  It was a day I didn’t have any chorizo in the house either, but I did have bacon and broad beans so I chucked those in too.  Again, even though it’s a stew, it’s a quick, light one, and you want everything to retain it’s freshness and bite, so don’t cook it all together in the stewpot, throw the ingredients together when they’re pretty much done.  It really isn’t much extra work, or washing up.  First thing I did was bring the potatoes to the boil in the base of my steamer pan, then steamed the asparagus and the broad beans together over them (I put the asparagus in first, gave it two minutes then added the beans for a further two) before refreshing them in cold water till I was ready to add them to the stew.  I drained off the potatoes after just ten minutes on the boil so they were still just par-boiled.  Meanwhile I’d fried up my bacon, cut into roughly 1cm pieces, and my black pudding, diced into big chunks (or just sliced, depending on the size of your sausage) then added a small red onion (or half a big one), cut into wedges.  Once the onion was softening, I added the potatoes and half a glass of wine, and just enough stock to cover the base of the pan to a depth of no more than a centimetre.  I let that cook covered, at a gentle simmer, for about ten minutes, until the potatoes were just cooked through, then I strained the asparagus and beans of their refreshing water and stirred them into the stew, which I finished with a good handful of parsley and a sprinkling of paprika.

For a simple, and very beautiful lunch dish just dice up a small cooking chorizo and fry it lightly in a little olive oil, take it off the heat and add a generous slug of extra virgin olive oil and let that infuse both the flavour and colour of pork and paprika. Meanwhile steam or boil your asparagus (3-5 minutes depending on the thickness of the stems).  Spoon the olive oil and chorizo over the asparagus on the plate, either on toast or, as I did here, just with pitta bread (or any good bread) on the side to mop up that delicious oil. 

Or fry up some mushrooms and diced black pudding, and make a bed of them for your steamed, boiled or chargrilled asparagus.  This would definitely benefit from being served on toast, or as I’ve been doing recently, on good white bread lightly fried in olive oil and, for reasons I can’t quite explain, with the crusts cut off.  It just feels right (and tastes good).

For a more substantial lunch there’s always the asparagus and jersey royal salad we’ve discussed before, and you can turn that into a substantial dinner by the simple addition of sliced rare steak, making it, obviously, an asparagus, Jersey Royal and steak salad.  It’s essentially a seasonal variation on the potato, beetroot and bean salad with steak that I’ve posted previously, and I believe it may just be possible that this dish, in at least one of its variations, is something that I could make a claim to having invented, for what that’s worth*.  As I recall, I came up with it (this version, with asparagus) off the top of my head in a Ready Steady Cook scenario of suddenly having to stretch two small steaks into a properly satisfying meal for three, and have no recollection of having come across any version of it before, or since for that matter.  I can’t think why, because it is really good, in all its variations, but this one, with asparagus and Jersey Royals, is probably best of all.  It is also perfect for those cheaper but no less tasty cuts of steak – flank, feather or skirt; onglet or hanger – which are ideally suited to searing rare and slicing thin.  Which makes it even better in my book.  Better still, because you’re serving the steak sliced thin, a little goes a long way - one small steak will be ample for two good appetites, or half a big one, Becca and I have healthy appetites as regular readers will be aware, but half of a 410g Aberdeen Angus Feather steak from Waitrose, costing all of £3.48 (for the whole) did us fine, with a 250g bunch of asparagus and 500g of Jerseys.

Just cook your asparagus and potatoes and make a salad of them, by dressing the potatoes, while still freshly hot, with the zest and juice of half a lemon, salt, pepper and a good slug of olive oil, then (and by all means do this while the potatoes are still hot, or leave them to go cold – personally I think it’s best when they are just no longer hot enough to wilt the asparagus, perhaps fifteen minutes after they’ve been drained) adding the refreshed asparagus spears and some finely sliced red onion.  Meanwhile get your frying pan smoking hot , salt, pepper and oil your steak, then cook it, for just about a minute, minute and a half on either side, really just searing it, then leave to rest for at least ten minutes before slicing it thin and laying it over the salad. Finally, in order to stop them wilting, add some spiky (in a flavour sense) leaves, rocket or maybe watercress, dressed generously in a mustard heavy vinaigrette.

* Which is not much. It’s a salad. Any claim to have ‘invented’ any particular variant of the infinite number of ways in which a near infinite number of things can be mixed together and be called a salad, is pretty tenuous and almost entirely meaningless.

More Asparagus. And Meat (black pudding, chorizo and steak).

One of the problems of the short, if not as short as it used to be, asparagus season, as with the whole seasonality movement (if that’s what we’re calling it) is that, while you can, you feel compelled to come home with a bunch every time you go shopping.  And after a while, even the delights of asparagus can begin to pall, and thinking up something new to do with it can even begin to feel like a chore, when it should be a joy.

Don’t give up!  On seasonality or asparagus.  Ok, don’t feel obliged – never feel obliged – to pick up the British Asparagus just because it’s there.  Maybe take a bunch every second trip.  As for different things to do with it, maybe I can help, in my own small way.

We’ve covered poached eggs, and char-grilling, and salads with Jersey Royals, and you can always have it on it’s own, with hollandaise sauce, or vinaigrette, or just dressed in butter (not if Becca’s around, obviously) or olive oil (even if she is).  But as well as asparagus goes with all those things, there are plenty of perhaps less obvious things it pairs up with too. 

Black pudding for instance, or chorizo, or both together.  Throw them all together with those jersey Royals (again, or other varieties of new potato are always, of course, available, and will do fine) in a stew, with a splash of white wine and light stock, or even just stirred together in the pan with just olive oil and cooking juices.  If you’re doing that, be sure to cook the ingredients separately (I steam my asparagus over the potatoes), and just bring them together in the frying pan (or a wok is good for this kind of cooking, which after all, is pretty much a stir fry).  It makes a quick, easy and delicious supper, pretty much a hot salad, which is perfect for these warm spring days with their just slightly nippy evenings.

I did a variation of the stew version a couple of weeks ago, on one of the rare days we’ve had recently that didn’t actually think it was high summer rather than what was then still earlyish spring.  It was a day I didn’t have any chorizo in the house either, but I did have bacon and broad beans so I chucked those in too.  Again, even though it’s a stew, it’s a quick, light one, and you want everything to retain it’s freshness and bite, so don’t cook it all together in the stewpot, throw the ingredients together when they’re pretty much done.  It really isn’t much extra work, or washing up.  First thing I did was bring the potatoes to the boil in the base of my steamer pan, then steamed the asparagus and the broad beans together over them (I put the asparagus in first, gave it two minutes then added the beans for a further two) before refreshing them in cold water till I was ready to add them to the stew.  I drained off the potatoes after just ten minutes on the boil so they were still just par-boiled.  Meanwhile I’d fried up my bacon, cut into roughly 1cm pieces, and my black pudding, diced into big chunks (or just sliced, depending on the size of your sausage) then added a small red onion (or half a big one), cut into wedges.  Once the onion was softening, I added the potatoes and half a glass of wine, and just enough stock to cover the base of the pan to a depth of no more than a centimetre.  I let that cook covered, at a gentle simmer, for about ten minutes, until the potatoes were just cooked through, then I strained the asparagus and beans of their refreshing water and stirred them into the stew, which I finished with a good handful of parsley and a sprinkling of paprika.

For a simple, and very beautiful lunch dish just dice up a small cooking chorizo and fry it lightly in a little olive oil, take it off the heat and add a generous slug of extra virgin olive oil and let that infuse both the flavour and colour of pork and paprika. Meanwhile steam or boil your asparagus (3-5 minutes depending on the thickness of the stems).  Spoon the olive oil and chorizo over the asparagus on the plate, either on toast or, as I did here, just with pitta bread (or any good bread) on the side to mop up that delicious oil. 

Or fry up some mushrooms and diced black pudding, and make a bed of them for your steamed, boiled or chargrilled asparagus.  This would definitely benefit from being served on toast, or as I’ve been doing recently, on good white bread lightly fried in olive oil and, for reasons I can’t quite explain, with the crusts cut off.  It just feels right (and tastes good).

For a more substantial lunch there’s always the asparagus and jersey royal salad we’ve discussed before, and you can turn that into a substantial dinner by the simple addition of sliced rare steak, making it, obviously, an asparagus, Jersey Royal and steak salad.  It’s essentially a seasonal variation on the potato, beetroot and bean salad with steak that I’ve posted previously, and I believe it may just be possible that this dish, in at least one of its variations, is something that I could make a claim to having invented, for what that’s worth*.  As I recall, I came up with it (this version, with asparagus) off the top of my head in a Ready Steady Cook scenario of suddenly having to stretch two small steaks into a properly satisfying meal for three, and have no recollection of having come across any version of it before, or since for that matter.  I can’t think why, because it is really good, in all its variations, but this one, with asparagus and Jersey Royals, is probably best of all.  It is also perfect for those cheaper but no less tasty cuts of steak – flank, feather or skirt; onglet or hanger – which are ideally suited to searing rare and slicing thin.  Which makes it even better in my book.  Better still, because you’re serving the steak sliced thin, a little goes a long way - one small steak will be ample for two good appetites, or half a big one, Becca and I have healthy appetites as regular readers will be aware, but half of a 410g Aberdeen Angus Feather steak from Waitrose, costing all of £3.48 (for the whole) did us fine, with a 250g bunch of asparagus and 500g of Jerseys.

Just cook your asparagus and potatoes and make a salad of them, by dressing the potatoes, while still freshly hot, with the zest and juice of half a lemon, salt, pepper and a good slug of olive oil, then (and by all means do this while the potatoes are still hot, or leave them to go cold – personally I think it’s best when they are just no longer hot enough to wilt the asparagus, perhaps fifteen minutes after they’ve been drained) adding the refreshed asparagus spears and some finely sliced red onion.  Meanwhile get your frying pan smoking hot , salt, pepper and oil your steak, then cook it, for just about a minute, minute and a half on either side, really just searing it, then leave to rest for at least ten minutes before slicing it thin and laying it over the salad. Finally, in order to stop them wilting, add some spiky (in a flavour sense) leaves, rocket or maybe watercress, dressed generously in a mustard heavy vinaigrette.

* Which is not much. It’s a salad. Any claim to have ‘invented’ any particular variant of the infinite number of ways in which a near infinite number of things can be mixed together and be called a salad, is pretty tenuous and almost entirely meaningless.

Mind your cheek (sorry!): Pig cheeks, ox cheeks and pho

 A few weeks ago Becca and I were at the Rivington, with her friend Francesca and we had deep fried crispy battered cod cheeks as a bar snack, which were delicious, and got us talking about cheeks in general, and more specifically about eating them.  Cod’s cheeks, pigs’ cheeks, ox cheeks – all kinds of cheeks.  We decided we must do a cheek themed meal.  The idea was reinforced on our trip down to Dorset and the fantastic meal we ate - courtesy of the man himself, thanks again, Mark – at Hix Fish & Chop House which included, for me, a starter of breadcrumbed Monkfish cheeks – again deep fried and crispy and delicious, but considerably more substantial than cod cheeks.

Several weeks passed but last week we finally got round to it, and Francesca and her partner Kes joined us for a celebration of all things cheeky.  Unfortunately, my good friends at The Fishery, were unable to supply either cod or monkfish cheeks at the short notice I gave them (and to be fair, I’m sure they would have been able to if the extra bank holiday for the bloody royal bloody wedding hadn’t got in the way.  There’ll be fish cheeks for all, come the Republic, you mark my words…), but not to worry. This would simply have to be a celebration of all things cheeky and meaty, rather than cheeky and fishy.  We can save that for another time.

Waitrose supplied us with cheeks of both Ox and Pig, for a starter salad lifted from my days at the Rivington, and the pig cheeks in sherry I’ve described here before for the main.  One of the several great things about this dinner was that most of the cooking involved was not only simple, but could (indeed in part it had to) and did, take place days in advance, so it was dead easy to throw together on the day, even after coming home from work.

Salted Ox Cheek and green bean salad.

As I say, this was lifted from my days at the Rivington, where the cut of beef we used was brisket.  I thought that using Ox cheek therefore was my own innovation, for which I was fully prepared to take all the credit, only to be reminded that Mark Hix’s original inspiration came from eating a similar (although rather more hardcore carnivore) dish at a Parisian bistro, where they also used cheek, damn them.  The salting recipe came from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and his indispensable Meat book.

I have said before, I know, that I generally dismiss out of hand any recipe that starts ‘three days beforehand…’, but in this case it really is just a case of throwing a bunch of stuff together in a pot, and leaving it, so the only tricky part lies in remembering to do it far enough in advance.  In fact, the recipe calls for a full five days soaking in brine, with a further day, or even two soaking in fresh water to desalinate (I know: why go to so much trouble to salt your beef, to then just go to more effort to UNsalt it?  That may seem like a good question, but I’m sure the answer’s better…).  As it was, I’d left myself rather short of time, but as the recipe was for salting a 3kg slab of beef, and my two ox cheeks weighed about 375g each, I figured that I could drastically reduce my brining time to the time I actually had, which amounted to 36 hours to salt my cheeks, then 12 to de-salt.  As I would only need one cheek for my starter salad I took the opportunity of experimenting: I would salt one cheek, and simply cook the other uncured, just to see what a difference the cure made.

The ingredients for the brine, and the method, were pretty much as described here - by rather freakish coincidence, in last weekend’s Guardian - for brining ox tongue, but as I was just doing one little cheek I divided the quantities by five – so about 100g of sugar and 300g of salt in one litre of water, and a couple of cloves and bay leaves (one of each just seemed meagre).  I also used a star anise rather than juniper berries (as per HFW’s book) and chucked in a handful of mustard seeds and a stub of cinnamon stick (that was me, freestyling).  That lot was boiled together to dissolve the salt and sugar, left to cool overnight and then used to cover the ox cheek in a plastic bowl and put into the fridge and forgotten about for the next day and a half.

The night before the day of our dinner, I took the cheek out of the brine and put it in a large pan of fresh water to soak, overnight, and changed the soaking water the following morning before going to work.  I was working a short day, so got home about three, at which point I changed the water again, threw in a carrot, stick of celery and an onion – all coarsely chopped, and basically the same selection (and quantities) of herbs and spices as were in the brining solution (minus the salt and sugar).  Then I added my unbrined ox cheek and put the pan on a low heat and let it simmer away gently for about two hours, before turning off the heat and leaving the meat to cool in the stock.

When cool enough to handle, but still warm, I removed the cheeks from the cooling stock, and the first thing I did was a comparative tasting.  The conclusion was clear: curing in brine, even for just 18 hours, does make a difference.  Without tasting obviously saltier, the cured cheek was richer and sweeter in flavour, and noticeably more tender than it’s uncured twin.  It also came out much pinker - interestingly since my brine recipe did not include saltpeter or Prague powder, the nitrates in which I had been led to believe are responsible for the bright pinkness of salt beef and pastrami.  I guess ordinary old sodium chloride does much the same job.

Anyway – I set aside the uncured cheek (don’t worry, it didn’t go to waste) and set about shredding the salted one.  Another difference between the two was what the brining had done to the bands of fat and connective tissue running through the meat.  Although in both cheeks these were quite tender enough to eat without trimming out, in the cured cheek they had been reduced in consistency to a gooey, sticky gum.  Which, I know, sounds unpleasant, but believe me, wasn’t at all.  Quite the opposite.  It was sweet and luxuriant like a savoury sticky toffee.  Made of meat.  Mmmm.

While the cheeks had been cooling in their stock I had steamed 400g of trimmed green beans till cooked but still crunchy (about four or five minutes), then refreshed them in cold water to keep them crisp and bright green.  Then I finely chopped two small round shallots (a single bigger, ‘banana’ shallot would probably have been enough, or half a smallish red onion), and made a spiky dressing with plenty of English mustard.  When you’re ready to eat it’s just a question of mixing the shredded ox cheek, beans and shallots in the salad bowl and stirring through the dressing and a handful of freshly chopped flat leaf parsley.

Pig cheeks in sherry

I’ve written this up before, but it really is such a simple recipe that it hardly saves me any time not to run through it again rather than just add the link to that previous post.  Simply allow three to four cheeks per person, and half a good sized onion.  Gently brown the cheeks in a little olive oil in a casserole (do in batches if there are too many to fit in well spaced on the base of the pan in one go), then add the onions and a little garlic and chilli (about a thumbnail’s worth of chilli, and a couple of cloves of garlic in this case) both finely sliced.  When the onion’s just softening (add the cheeks back to the pan at this point if you’d done them in batches and held them aside) pour over enough sherry to just half cover, bring to a gentle boil then transfer to the oven, to cook, with the lid on, for pretty much as long as you can, at as low as your oven will go (within reason).  Two and a half to three hours at about 130, or a couple at 150 should be about right.  Allow longer the larger the quantity you’re cooking.  As with any stew, it’s even better cooked a day (or even two) before eating, and slowly reheated when you need it, which also means you can, if it’s more convenient, split a really long cooking time over two sessions.

On the previous occasion I wrote this up the sherry I used was a pale, bone dry manzanilla; this time I used a dry oloroso, which produced a sauce that was perhaps richer and sweeter, and definitely darker.  Which would be better would be entirely a matter of personal preference.  Perhaps, in a case of doing as I say, not as I do (in terms of the timing of my blog posts at least), you might be better using a darker sweeter sherry (part of me really wants to try this with a full on PX, the almost black, treacly, dessert sherry, but most of me thinks that might be just a bit too much) in the winter months, and saving the lighter, crisper manzanilla for doing the dish in the summertime.  It doesn’t really matter though: any time, any sherry as far as I’m concerned.

Pho

Those of you who were worried about what would become of the unsalted ox cheek can prepare to breath a sigh of relief.  Not only did it make some perfectly good open sandwiches (particularly with a generous dollop of piccalilli), although not as good, it had to be said as the couple of slices of the salted cheek I held over from the salad, but it would prove absolutely perfect, and in this instance better than the salted would have done, for making use of at least part of the large quantity of densely flavoured beef stock that is a welcome by product of it’s cooking, in the form of a big Vietnamese style noodle soup.  This beefy soup, called a pho is pretty much the national dish of Vietnam.  How exactly ‘pho’ is pronounced is a matter for debate.  A few years ago, when I first came across it in the many Vietnamese cafes and restaurants that line the Kingsland Road leading up from Shoreditch towards Dalston, where I live, it was commonplace to insist, with a greater or lesser degree of sniggering that the correct pronunciation was in fact ‘poo’.  These days, according to Google, at least, the consensus appears to be shifting towards ‘foo’.  I think, when it comes to pronouncing Vietnamese words, we in the west are only likely ever to get very approximately close to an authentic Vietnamese sound anyway, so call it what you will.  ‘Poo’ if that entertains you, ‘foo’, or ‘fo’ or ‘po’ for that matter, if it doesn’t.  Whatever you call it, as long as you have a large quantity of ready made beef stock, and a small bit of left over ox cheek (or some other piece of beef), it could hardly be easier to make.

Just reheat your stock, infusing it with some ginger and lemongrass (if you have it – I didn’t but the soup was still very fine and quite convincingly Vietnamese, at least to my ignorant European palate).  The trick here, apparently, is to scorch your ginger to release its flavour (just place your unpeeled knob of root ginger over a gas flame for a few seconds on each side before adding it to the stock).  Meanwhile slice up a few spring onions, some red chilli and garlic, and cook up some noodles according to the packet instructions.  Finely slice your beef.  The it really is simply a question of putting it all together in a bowl.

I added mushrooms, which I lightly fried in my wok, then threw in the spring onion, chilli and garlic, to soften very briefly, and a few leaves from a mystery but mizuna like plant from the veg patch – pak choi would be the obvious and more authentic alternative, before adding the noodles, sliced ox cheek, strained stock, a squeeze of lime juice and a good few tearings from a bunch of coriander. 

It was all put together in about 15 minutes, on returning from the pub.  What could be easier, or more satisfying than that?

Orwells: A Michelin star down, but certainly not out in Shiplake...*

Arty exterior. Thanks to Leo

It was Becca’s Mum’s birthday last week, directly after Easter, so we extended a holiday weekend visit by a day, to include the birthday itself, and take in a celebratory lunch.  A table was booked at Orwells in, or rather, near Shiplake, a small village just outside Henley, which can be reached from Becca’s parent’s house, on a Spring day that seems to think it’s summer, via an appetite sharpening walk that takes you up hill, down dale (‘drawback’ hill apparently, where the kids would go sledging of a snowy winter, and the principle drawback appeared to be the steep downslope terminating abruptly in a thick and very thorny looking hedge), across a golf course and through a spectacular bluebell wood.  I can think of few more pleasant ways to prepare for lunch.

Our destination was an 18^th century country pub, previously known as the White Hart and with, according to local knowledge, and the Oxford Times, a ‘chequered past’.  The new team in charge have a chequered past of their own when it comes to country pubs, having made the national press last year by walking out en masse from their previous place of work, The Goose at the improbably named Britwell Salome, just weeks after winning it a Michelin star, on account of a difference of opinion with their employer over the poncey-ness or otherwise of their food.  Now, as regular readers will be aware, I don’t generally have much sympathy with anyone producing food that might be described as poncey, nor am I much of a fan of the Michelin star system, and all that goes along with it, but on the other hand, it does seem pretty churlish to publically slag off the chef that you have employed, and whose menus you have, presumably, sanctioned, on those grounds just a week after his efforts have earned your establishment that widely coveted accolade (a covetousness you presumably share, or was it freakish chance that your two previous head chefs earned you one too?  And then also saw fit to quit.  Hmmm. I feel my sympathies being firmly steered in directions they might otherwise not naturally go…).

Anyway, this bit of background knowledge created ambivalent, not to say contradictory feelings in anticipation of my meal at Orwells, establishing a sympathetic bond with chef Ryan Simpson and his crew, while simultaneously setting off alarm bells on my internal ponce alert.  Probably just as well, in respect of the latter that I didn’t take a look at their website in advance, featuring as it does a photo, in loving close up, of foam being spooned onto a stack of ingredients, on a rectangular plate.  That’s a three bell alarm right there…

From the outside the place still looks like a regular country pub, and at first glance the interior does too – although on a second glance the layout of the tables, and the presence of just two draught beer pumps behind the bar suggest this is not somewhere you would come just for a drink.  Still, nothing poncey or uninviting about it.  The restaurant, and its menus, are divided into two, regular gastro in ‘The Pub’ at the front, and fine dining in ‘The Room’ at the back.  ‘The Room’, presumably, is where the really poncey stuff goes on, but that’s not open for a weekday lunch, so we were restricted to ‘The Pub’, which was more than fine by me

Is this really the egg of a rabbit?

We were greeted by a jovially fresh faced young man in chef's whites (who turns out to be Simpson himself, suggesting they run a relaxed, unstressful kitchen, which is a very good sign in my book), and after being seated he brings us a couple of platters of their own home baked bread.  This gets them off to a very good start on two counts: firstly the bread itself is excellent, springy, delicious, and served with home made butter; secondly, they had been advised of Becca’s allergies the day before when she’d phoned to make the booking, and she was presented, unbidden, with her own plate of dairy and egg free wild garlic foccaccia with a dipping bowl of olive oil and balsamic.  And this foccaccia did indeed appear to be subtly different from the wild garlic foccaccia on the main bread plate, so did seem to have been specially made.  This, believe me, is the kind of thing that scores a restaurant big, big brownie points.  It makes you like them.

Other things help to make you like a place, too.  Not least the menu, obviously.  And things like a lunchtime set menu offering two courses for a tenner help a lot, particularly when the staff are totally relaxed and accommodating when it comes to adapting that set menu to allow for Becca’s allergies.  Top brownie points again.  And even more particularly when every item on that menu might itself have been the very thing you’d have taken off the main menu.  We would all have quite happily simply taken the set lunch, but more for the sake of variety than anything else we all chose to take the main (confit chicken leg) and dessert (chocolate torte – Becca was allowed a free choice of what would turn out to be many sorbets) from that, and choose a different starter, except for Becca’s brother Leo, who took the set starter of wild garlic soup, and would order a lemon tart for dessert.

Home cured salmon, pickled veg. Thanks to Jackie for the photo

We ended up with five different starters then, and I would say all were good.  Leo’s soup, off the set menu, was vividly, almost luridly green, and as brightly, freshly flavoured; Becca’s home cured salmon was lightly cured, allowing the flavour and the texture of the raw fish to express itself.  The only disappointing thing about my scotch egg was that it turned out not to be, as the menu hinted, a rabbit’s egg (which seemed specially, magically, appropriate for the Easter holiday), but a quails egg wrapped in rabbit meat, but was nevertheless deeply delicious in a slightly naughty way – very high quality food that still managed to remind you why junk food can be so compulsive.  Wicked Uncle Robert’s asparagus and poached egg (slightly oddly, to my mind, billed on the menu as Slow Poached Yattendon Hen’s Egg, with asparagus only getting a mention as an accompanying ingredient) was as good, fresh and seasonal as you’d expect, and a fine example of that pairing made in food heaven, but suffered perhaps, not by being disappointing, but exactly by being just what you’d expect – and I would also ask, respectfully, if you really need a poached egg and hollandaise with your asparagus. I’d be inclined to think that an either/or.  But never mind.  The one slight disappointment among the starters was, I fear, the birthday girl’s crab cocktail with avocado and mango, which was perfectly nice, but just a little bland (and also, it might be pointed out, distinctly the ponciest dish of the course).

Slightly poncey crab cocktail.  Also thanks to Jackie

A main course of confit chicken, on a bargain set menu, might make you think the chicken just a poor man’s duck, a budget option.  If that was indeed the case, it turned out to be money very well saved.  Not only was the sweet, rich, concentrated chickeny flavour at least as good as any confit duck I’ve ever had, it was also rather lighter, and far better suited to lunch on an unseasonably hot and sunny spring Tuesday.  It came with intriguing and unexpected hints of oriental spicing, and on a bed of bulgar wheat salad that placed the dish somewhere vaguely, but very pleasantly, in the middle east.  We drank with it a Domaine Coste 50/50 blend of Grenache and Viognier which had enough body, and just enough of a hint of floral peachiness about it to stand up to the richness and delicate spice of the chicken.  It was a memorably good main course, by any standards, for which you would happily have paid more for than the tenner of the whole set menu, and not for a moment would you wish it were duck.

Confit cotswold chicken leg. As enjoyed by all. Thanks Leo.

Come dessert, and the chocolate tortes and lemon tart looked beautiful, and tasted as good, and perhaps, like Robert’s asparagus, suffered slightly from being just exactly what you would have wanted and expected them to be.  The star here was undoubtedly Becca’s sorbets, selected from a bewilderingly long list, from which she chose sorrel, at our (young and even more fresh faced than the chef) waiter’s keen suggestion, and because it seemed so unusual, and rhubarb, possibly because it was the only other one from the list she could remember under pressure.  As it turned out it was an excellent choice, both aesthetically, the bright pink and the rather daringly drab green setting each other off very elegantly, and flavour wise, the sweet sharpness of the rhubarb contrasting nicely with the intriguing savouriness of the sorrel.

Lemon tart, chocolate sorbet. Leo again.

All in all, it was a very fine lunch, and coming in at scarcely over thirty quid each for four people splitting a five person bill, including wine, coffees, a pint of ale to start, a birthday bottle of prosecco, and the tip, it was almost too much of a bargain to be true.  Which it turned out to be: they’d accidentally left the prosecco off the bill.  There are times when you notice an item, particularly when it’s the biggest single item, has been left off the bill and you are inclined to keep schtum, particularly if you’ve had poor service (it will, after all, be your waiter who gets it in the neck), but also if you’ve been served rubbish food, or feel you’re being ripped off.  It says more about how Orwells delivered in each of those areas than it does about my honesty when I say that once I’d noticed their error it didn’t cross my mind for a moment to do anything other than point it out to them.  And even then, including the errant prosecco, the total still only just about topped thirty quid a head for all five of us.

Rhubarb & sorrel sorbets

And was it poncey?  Well maybe a little, with its variety of differently shaped plates (and a board for the salmon), it’s stacked crab cocktail and its tendency towards miniature salad leaves.  But on the whole no, not so much as it’d bother you.  I guess if you do want to be bothered by ponceyness then you could always try ‘The Room’ for dinner, but if you’re looking for lunch at a level a notch or two above good standard gastro, for a really good price, then the set menu in ‘The Pub’, will see you right any time you happen to be in the Shiplake area. Or even if you’re a walk up hill, down dale across a golf course and through a bluebell wood away…

* Apologies for the laboured pun, but I can at least plead relevance - Simpson renamed the former White Hart in honour of George, who, apparently, lived in Shiplake as a boy, where he would have been known as Eric Blair.