Plum Crazy

 

Last week my good friend Lindsay sent a plea for help.  The plum tree in her back garden was so overladen with fruit that it represented a danger to itself and others, and was in need of a radical plum-ectomy.  Of course I was happy to help out.  We spent a thoroughly entertaining couple of hours teetering on precariously propped ladders, poking at out of reach branches with long sticks, and showering small children with plums of every stage of development from rock hard to mouldering mush.  At the end of the morning I came home with three large bags, filled with plums of all stages of development save the last.

The contents of the three bags had been sorted, into thoroughly unripe, not quite ripe, and ripe and ready to eat.  The latter went straight into the fruit bowl, of course; the others, of each of which there was a far greater quantity, demanded rather more thought.  Not that it really took a huge amount of either effort or intelligence to come up with the following thoughts:  chutney; jam; tart and sauce. 

And once I’d come up with plum sauce, it was scarcely an intuitive leap of genius to get to roast duck, either, and as luck would have it they happen to have duck breasts at half price in Sainsburys at the moment.  Which was, as the man from The Fast Show would say, nice.

Roast duck breasts, with or without a plum sauce is one of those things that I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t written up here already – to the extent that I did several searches through my blog history, before being entirely convinced.  Mainly because a roast duck breast is one of those things – not unlike a pork tenderloin fillet, and for similar reasons – that is so quick and easy to do you can knock it together on a weekday evening after getting home from work, and yet produces a meal that is not only delicious, but feels like a rather luxurious treat.  And when the duck breasts themselves are half price – which they do quite often seem to be, at our local Sainsburys at least - it’s not too pricey either.  Not cheap, but, I think, worth it in a way that buying individual chicken breasts, never, ever is.  Not least because individual chicken breasts are, frankly, pretty uninspiring slabs of meat, so much less tasty, or versatile, than the same chicken’s own very much cheaper legs, while a duck breast, with its luscious layer of fat and crispable skin, really is a prime cut.

Another advantage of the roast duck breast - and, again something it shares with the pork tenderloin – although not relevant on this particular occasion, is that it’s something that’s very easily scale-able.  It really is one of those few things that’s as do-able for two as it is for twenty – and it’s scarcely more work for a larger number, it’s just a matter of the size of your pan/s.

Here and now though, it was just a dinner for two.  Which obviously meant that the sauce for it wasn’t going to make much of a dent in our current glut of plums, but never mind.  Perhaps in acknowledgement of that fact, I ended up making not one, but two plum sauces to go with my duck, thereby getting through twice the number of plums.  I say perhaps, but that’s a lie – the truth is that I just wasn’t happy with the first sauce.  Not that there was anything wrong with it, as a sauce, it just wasn’t right for the dish I had in mind, being too intense and concentrated.  It would have smothered the duck.  So I made a lighter, looser sauce – basically a compote - to go over the duck, and served the first sauce on the side like a ketchup.

Spicy plum ketchup:

6-8 plums

1 small onion (or shallot)

chilli

garlic

pomegranate molasses

good red wine or sherry vinegar

1/2 star anise

Salt, pepper

I finely chopped the onion, a clove of garlic and about a little fingernail’s worth of fresh chilli and put them, with a good slug of olive oil, in a small saucepan over a lowish heat.  Using a pestle and mortar a crushed a handful of black peppercorns, the star anise and a pinch of rock salt into powder and sprinkled it in with the onion.  While the onion was softening, I took a handful of plums – choosing a pretty random mix of ripenesses - halved and stoned them before adding to the pan once the onion was soft and translucent.  I allowed them to cook for about 10-15 minutes, till softening but still holding their shape, then added a good dash of the pomegranate and vinegar – probably about a dessertspoon of each.  Then I allowed the pan to simmer gently, for about another 15 minutes or so, till the liquid was reduced by maybe as much as a third, and the vinegar had lost its sting.

Then I checked for seasoning.  It had plenty, along with the tang of the vinegar, the sweetness of plums and pomegranate and a distinct hit of chilli heat.  That was the point that I decided that my original plan, to coat the duck breasts in this sauce, might need to be rethought.  This sauce was good, but it was not the right sauce - there was just a bit too much going on.

Fortunately, I’d been making the sauce in advance, so it was no problem just to set the pan aside for the sauce to cool, before blitzing it down to ketchup consistency - about 200ml worth, and a lovely, purpley/chocolatey colour - for a dipping sauce, leaving plenty of time to make up another sauce to pour over the duck.  A very quick, easy and tasty sauce, but nevertheless, one that wouldn’t overwhelm the duck.

Very mildly spicy plum compote:

6-8 plums

Star anise

Citrus zest (Satsuma and lemon in this case, or orange)

Splash of gin

Pinch of mixed spice

Again, I picked a handful of plums of varying degrees of ripeness and halved and stoned them.  I put them in a pan with just a smear of olive oil in the bottom to discourage sticking and gently started to cook them.  Meanwhile I used a veg peeler to shave a couple of good strips of zest each from a lemon and a Satsuma and threw those into the pan, along with the juice squeezed from half the lemon.  I sprinkled the plums with just a pinch of the spice mix I’d prepared for making  the plum chutney I’ll write up in my next post, but which consisted of salt, pepper and toasted fennel, coriander, cumin and mustard seeds, all crushed to a fine powder with pestle and mortar – allspice, cloves and cinnamon could go in there too, if you want, or indeed instead, but the key thing, rather than the specific spices used in this instance, was to keep the spicing light.  Then I added a good slug of gin and let everything cook together gently until the plums were soft but still plum shaped, and the gin and juices had reduced to a nice light syrup – literally no more than 10-15 minutes.  And that was that.  All ready to be spooned over the duck.

Roast duck breasts

Duck Breasts

Salt, pepper, star anise

Score the skin of the duck breasts, trying not to  slice right through the fat to the flesh below (but it’s not a disaster if the odd score does go all the way through.  Using a pestle and mortar, pound together a good pinch of rocksalt, a couple of dozen or so peppercorns and a star anise, and rub the resulting powder into the scored skin side of the breasts, rubbing any excess into the flesh side for good measure.

Get a metal handled (or otherwise oven proof) frying pan good and hot and sear the breasts, skin side down until crusted a dark golden brown.  Then turn the breasts in the pan and transer, skin side now up, to the oven, preheated to 180-200.  Roast for 10-12 minutes depending on the thickness of the breasts and the rareness you like.  Maybe as much as 15 minutes if you or your guests are squeamish about pink running juices.  Neither Becca nor I are (squeamish that is), you probably won’t be surprised to hear, but, unlike many alleged experts, I wouldn’t presume to sneer at anyone who preferred their duck, lamb or steak well done.  Different strokes and all that.  I was at a restaurant once with a work colleague who sent her lamb chops back three times to get it cooked beyond pink – and while I happen to share the chef’s opinion on the optimum degree of doneness for a lamb cutlet, I couldn’t understand his (or her – but I bet it was a him) dogged refusal to cook it any discernable degree further to suit the tastes of a paying customer.  That’s just arrogant and rude.

After taking the duck breasts out of the oven leave to rest for a good ten to fifteen minutes (you could even make the second plum sauce while the meat relaxes) before serving.  I like to slice them before plating up, but by all means serve them whole if you prefer (different strokes etc).  I spooned the compote over the sliced breasts and then I’m afraid I drizzled the spicy plum ketchup over and around the meat.  Given my time again I’d just spoon a single big blob onto the side of the plate like proper ketchup.

As the oven was on anyway I roasted up some potato, celery carrots and four giant cloves of garlic, with a handful of spring onions thrown into the roasting dish when I opened the oven to remove the duck.

The rest of the spicy plum ketchup - that which did not get drizzled (sorry) - is in a pot in the fridge.  It's already made an excellent dipping sauce for a delicious Vietnamese style pork belly stir fry that Becca made.

There was also a plum tart for dessert, but I’ll write that up in a separate post.

That Much Heralded (If Not Particularly Weather Appropriate) Chicken Liver Stew

Summer seems to have arrived at last, at least it has here in London – just in time for the Olympics - and I find myself committed to writing up a recipe for stew.  Bleedin’ typical.  Still, as stews go, it’s pretty light and summery, and with it’s combination of paprika dusted chicken livers and butter beans it has a distinct hint of Spain about it too, which works for me any time of year, but summer and Spain do go together in my mind (even if the best times to actually go there are undoubtedly spring and autumn).

In my previous post on chicken livers I’d described dusting the trimmed livers in flour seasoned with salt, pepper and plenty of paprika (hot or sweet, the choice is yours, personally I switch randomly entirely dependent on mood or mere whim), and frying them till crisp and just starting to char at the edges on the outside, still delicately pink and tender on the inside, then using half the batch in a salad, and setting half aside in a bowl in the fridge to use in a stew for the next day.  Overlooking the fact that that I posted that over a week ago, imagine that it is now that ‘next day’, and time for chicken liver stew.  Which really couldn’t be quicker, easier, or much more delicious.

First take the bowl of chicken livers out of the fridge, along with a few rashers of streaky bacon (or pancetta) – a couple per person.  You’ll also need onions, mushrooms and a tin of beans – butter beans are my preference, for size, flavour, consistency, and a properly Spanish feel, but cannellini are a perfectly good substitute.  Or chickpeas work well too, and bring a different, perhaps more Moorish character to the dish.  If you want to throw in red pepper, fennel, or celery, as well as the onion, then go ahead – but the combination of liver bacon and onions is so good, and so classic, I tend to keep it pretty simple.  A little garlic and a bit of fresh chilli, a splash or two of wine and/or stock, seasoning and herbs, and that’s it.

Just start by frying your bacon, chopped to roughly postage stamp sized pieces, then add the onions with fine sliced garlic and fresh chilli (entirely optional and variable on whether you dusted in hot or sweet paprika) and hard herbs – thyme, and ideally a few sage leaves (sage goes wonderfully with all forms of liver), cook till softening, then add the mushrooms.  Cook a couple of minutes more, till the mushrooms are just coloured, then tip in your beans.  Add a glass of wine and a ladle or two of chicken stock (or all wine if you have no stock to hand, or vice versa – although that seems less likely, somehow…), cover the pan and simmer it all together gently till the onions are fully soft and the beans have just a little bite left in them.  Then add your chicken livers and basically just warm them through.  Scatter with fresh parsley.  It’s all done in about 20 minutes.

Serve just with good bread and a salad on a summery day, or with mash, or maybe colcannon if the weather calls for more hearty, comforty sort of eating.

Good Foie Gras (who knew?); Bad Asparagus. And How Good/Bad Distinctions Are Seldom That Simple...

Me, communing with ducks.  A bit like Eduardo Sousa (but rest assured none of the ducks in this picture were subsequently killed for their livers)

When I was searching out items to link to on my last post I came across a couple of things that got me thinking.  Thinking among other things that the issues they raised merited rather more than just being hidden away behind embedded links, that might or might not be clicked on.  So, rather than just posting the links and passing on, and at the risk of going back over ground that you may well have covered yourself having clicked on my previous post, here are a few of my thoughts prompted by two of those linked items:

The first was this one, which I came across while searching for articles on the ethics of foie gras production, that would illuminate the issue without being too revolting – after all, I was seeking to turn people on to the delights of chicken livers, not put them off eating all together.   What I hadn’t been expecting to come across was something that made me think again about foie gras, and make me really want to try some – of admittedly a very rare and no doubt terrifyingly expensive kind (there is no indication of how and where you might be able to purchase it on the Pateria de Sousa website, let alone a pricelist).  Even if you are – not unreasonably - unwilling to have your views on foie gras modified by the example of a product you have next to no chance of ever sampling, I would still urge you to click on the link and check out Dan Barber’s “foie gras parable” – because not only is it an extraordinary and intriguing tale, entertainingly told, I have to admit that by the end I also found it genuinely moving and, although it’s a word I’m not generally wont to use, actually inspiring.  And not just in the sense that it inspired me to think again about foie gras in particular, but for what it has to say more generally about animal welfare in farming, and even food production as a whole. 

If, of all things, foie gras can be produced with such respect for the welfare of – even love for – the geese involved, and for the environment in which they, and the farmer, live, then surely there is hope for us all.  And I’m not just talking about those who hanker for guilt free foie gras, or even just about those of us who do genuinely care about the ethics of food production, but ultimately, actually, everyone, because we all depend on the farming industry to produce our food.  Even those very few people among us who don’t directly, who manage to be 100% self sufficient, do still rely on an environment profoundly affected by the farming industry. 

Further, the fact that the foie gras produced in this way is so good, not in spite of the focus of attention being on the welfare of the goose and it’s environment, but as a direct result of it, is a truly beautiful thing.  An inspiring thing.  And, I think, the thing that turns the story into a parable.

Now I’m not so naïve to believe that Eduardo Sousa’s methods can be applied across world farming; that every livestock farmer will ever have either the time or the inclination to lie down with his flocks and whisper sweet nothings in their ears; that the lives of all domesticated animals reared for meat can be made so attractive that wild members of their species voluntarily come and join them.  Nor am I likely to be convinced that foie gras, or any other part of the goose for that matter, produced by his methods is ever going to be anything other than a prohibitively expensive luxury, available only to a very few.  But still, there are wider reaching lessons to be drawn from Dan Barber’s parable, lessons that apply to all animal husbandry, to all farming. 

There’s even a lesson that applies more generally than that: a lesson about ethics generally, or perhaps more particularly about how we view the world.  Too many people, too much of the time tend to reduce all issues to black/white; right/wrong.  The real world is more complex than that, and if an issue as apparently black and white as the ethics of foie gras production (foie gras: clearly bad, on animal welfare grounds) can turn out to have such a massive grey area (some foie gras, it turns out: not just good, but the highest welfare meat product you’re ever likely to encounter…) then what does that tell us about all the other, more obviously fuzzy, areas of ethical debate, that people still tend to polarise?  Don’t polarise, that’s what – think, and think again.  Just like the veal issue.

The other link that got me thinking was this one, about the impact of asparagus farming for overseas markets in Peru.  It seems our taste for out of season asparagus is, literally, draining Peru dry.  Which just goes to illustrate that the current trend for seasonality and local produce is based on more than foodie faddism (which is not to claim that all its proponents are more than mere foodie faddists).  Although, in light of my comments in the paragraph above, one does also have to take into account the benefits of $450 million annual export revenue for a country as poor as Peru, and the 10,000 jobs the asparagus industry has created in one of the very poorest parts of that poor country.  See, it can be tricky, living in the grey areas - so I’ll leave it entirely up to you whether or not to purchase Peruvian asparagus from your local mega mart.  On balance, personally, I won’t be.

I did say I’d be writing up more things to do with chicken liver on my next post – that’ll have to wait.  In the mean time, here’s a picture to keep you going…

I am a chicken liver lover

A month and more has passed since last I posted, making June 2012 the first month since I started this blog to come and go without a single word from me.  There’s no obvious excuse: yes, I’ve been busy, but I’ve been busy before, and I’m sure many others out there in the ‘sphere have been busier and still managed to blog regularly.  I think the problem has been, as much as a lack of time, a lack of inspiration – I do try to keep my posts seasonal, and the past month has been so depressingly unseasonal it’s been hard to come up with anything appropriate, either to write about, or for dinner for that matter.

Nevertheless, I must try – and do – better.  And will promise to at least make an effort not to go on too tediously about the bloody weather.  Apologies in advance for my inevitable failure on that particular score.  Bloody weather, blah, blah…

My last post featured the barbeque, and I’m somewhat torn between picking up where I left off in a - dare I say characteristically British? - spirit of bugger the weather, and not wishing to do anything that’s only going to further rub in the absence of suitable barbequing conditions - given that chances are that as you read this it’ll be all grey, gloomy and distinctly soggy outside, as indeed it is as I write.  This dilemma though is neatly resolved by a scan through my recently accumulated food pics which reveals that the few times this year I’ve had the means, motive and opportunity to throw together something explicitly summery, either on the barbeque or not, it has inevitably featured asparagus.  And as we are at best, in the dying if not already dead days of this year’s asparagus season (I’m talking British asparagus here, obviously – it seems to be Peruvian asparagus season all year round – how? – but that doesn’t count) then any write ups of those meals will have to wait till next spring.  In the mean time, I guess I’ll stick to things that are sort of a bit summery, but also quite hearty and warming.

Like a warm chicken liver salad, for instance.

Now I love chicken livers.  Properly, seriously, love them.  To the extent that it is an enduring mystery to me how come they’ve not featured more heavily on this blog – or indeed (hardly, having been mentioned only in passing) at all.  Maybe it’s because whenever we do have them I’m always in too much of a hurry to eat them to take any decent pictures – which might or might not explain the quality of the pictures accompanying this particular post (or my blog in general, come to mention it…). 

Anyway, finally, let’s talk about chicken livers: not only are they utterly delicious, they are cheap, versatile, and both quick and very simple to prepare.  What’s not to like?  When considering poultry livers considered to be delicacies, most people’s minds will turn automatically to foie gras, but without even considering the ethics of its production, for me the fabulous richness that is the basis of foie gras’ appeal, is also its limiting factor, both in terms of its moreishness (perhaps just as well considering its exorbitant price) and perhaps more significantly its versatility.  And for those reasons alone – again without factoring in ethics, or cost – if forced to choose, I’d take chicken livers over foie gras, without any real sense of a dilemma.  You wouldn’t actually have to force me.  Add ethics to the equation, not to mention relative costs, and you’d have pretty much the dictionary definition of a ‘no brainer’ (although if I were ever to be offered any of the foie gras Dan Barber talks about rather marvellously here it might just change my mind…).

Also, and sorry to mention it again, but they’re just the thing for this dubiously summery and thoroughly unpredictable weather we’ve been having, being the perfect basis of a main course salad, either hot or cold, or a light and quick stew.  Or of course you could use them to make a pate (which given the soft, buttery texture they start off with could really hardly be easier, being, at its simplest just a question of mashing them with a fork) which would be ideal for taking on a picnic – if anyone’s been on one of those this year…

Pretty much whatever I’m going to end up doing with them, I start off by preparing them in the same way, which I have to admit is another appealing thing about them.  This is the method I devised (if that’s not too grand a word) to recreate at home the meze dish served at the Real Greek years ago (and I daresay to this day, but since it became a chain, no doubt not to the same delicious effect).  This is simply to dust the livers in flour seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika (use the sweet, or smoked/hot entirely depending on personal taste, or mood – I generally favour sweet so as not to overpower the delicate flavour of the livers, but sometimes feel in the mood for a little more spice) and fry quickly till the outsides have gained a lightly crunchy crust and the insides are still just pink.  The only trick to any of this is trimming the livers of any stringy bits of sinew, and, above all, to make sure you’ve properly drained them of any of the blood and general gloop they come packed with.  You want them dusted in flour before frying, not coated in a gluey paste.  The whole process takes about ten minutes including no more than a couple of minutes a side frying time, and will have prepared enough livers for a couple of main meals for the two of us, so normally when I take the livers out of the pan I’ll set half aside to cool before being put in the fridge for tomorrow, half to be used for tonight.

And normally the first night’s dish is a salad.  The simplest thing to do of course is just throw the livers together with a few leaves – chicory has a particular affinity, something to do with the contrast of the bitterness and crunch of the leaves with the sweet softness of the livers, I guess – but I usually include a couple of other things that just go so well with the livers it seems a criminal waste not to: pretty much always shredded bacon, because I always have bacon on hand (and why wouldn’t you?); very often avocado, depending on whether we have one that’s anything remotely like ripe; occasionally some black pudding or morcilla.

Usually I’ll mix the warm livers (and bacon) with cold leaves, dress with a sweetish sherry vinegar vinaigrette, and serve with sautéed potatoes on the side, but if the evening’s a particularly bleak disappointment – or you’re doing this at another time of year when chilly evenings are more seasonal – then you can obviously make the whole thing a hot salad by sautéing your leaves too – another thing chicory has a particular affinity for, although gem hearts are good too, just split lengthways and cooked in a lightly olive oiled pan with the cut surfaces down till they start to caramelise.  If it’s a hot salad, I’ll generally just toss it all together, potatoes and all.

 The following night I’ll generally turn the remaining livers into a stew: I’ll write that up in more detail in my next post.

Rabbit (redux) Pie (whatever 'redux' means...)

As I said in my last post, the excess wild rabbit and chicken thighs that I’d bought for but been unable to cram into the pan for Becca’s mum’s birthday paella kept us going the whole of the following week.  I’d covered the paella itself, a rabbit stew/ragu and chicken thighs roasted with red peppers, which took us to the middle of the week, and again as I said, next up would be rabbit and chicken pie.

I do, I have to say, like a pie.  I like a pie in pretty much any form a pie comes, from pork to shepherd’s, via fish and even, arguably (although I do have my doubts) pizza pie.  Actually, if I’m honest, not even arguably.   While pizza and pie may be etymologically related, a pizza is plainly not a pie in any sense that matters.  The English word ‘pie’ (and I’m making a linguistic distinction here, not a culinary one), while clearly loosely defined, surely has to denote a dish in which the feature item is covered, whether that be by pastry (most commonly), potato or meringue (not that I mean to imply that potato and meringue should ever be interchangeable as pie covers…).  A pizza just doesn’t fit that definition, notwithstanding calzone, which does admittedly, superficially at least, have a lot in common with a pasty.  But is a pasty a pie?  I suppose (for some reason I can’t readily explain, somewhat grudgingly) so, although it really doesn’t feel like a pie to me, whereas, oddly, an empanada does – which just goes to show that it’s all quite arbitrary.  Which I guess, in turn, would indicate that if other people want to talk about pizza pies, than I should just shrug and let them get on with it.  Even if they are wrong.

Where was I?  Oh yes, pies.  One of the things I love most about a pie, is the transformative effect a pastry lid has on a stew.  Not in the sense of making something good out of something not, of turning base metal into gold, no, not at all.  I love a stew too, as even halfway regular readers of this blog will know.  Transformative in the sense of turning one good thing into another, entirely different and equally good thing.  And perhaps the most miraculous effect of this transformation is that it makes it not only OK, but almost obligatory to have chips with your stew.  Pie and mash is all very well, and of course, properly traditional in this part of the world (East London).  But it’s not pie and chips, is it?  And sorry, your pearly highnesses, pie and chips wins every time.

And turning a stew into a pie is so easy, it’s one of those things that every time I do it, I wonder why I don’t more often.  You can of course make your own pastry, and good on you if you do, but I don’t.  As I explained way back in the early days of writing this blog, making pastry was one of the tasks I came away from restaurant cheffing with no inclination to ever do again – or rather a positive inclination to never do again.  Much as I understand that there are people out there who find it positively therapeutic.  And much as I’m sure that the best of the pastry made by those people who make it for therapy (or just because they are more diligent cooks than me) is way better than the stuff I can buy in the shops is, I’ve also eaten enough bad home made pastry in my life to know that it’s by no means guaranteed.  And particularly when it comes to puff pastry, which is tricky as well as (very) laborious to make, the shop bought stuff is easily good enough for the benefit in saved time and effort to more than outweigh the loss of brownie points.  Even the cheaper, non butter version that Becca’s allergies insist I use.

Anyway, by all means, make your pastry, or buy it ready made.  I’ll be content just making my stew, as described briefly but in I’m sure enough detail here (if you feel the need of a more detailed stew making break down, then basically pretty much every stew will be a variation on the one described here).  Ideally, make the stew a day or two, or three as on this occasion, in advance and leave to sit in the fridge, miraculously accumulating and condensing flavour the way a stew does given time.  Over the course of the three days since I’d made it I’d also added the meat from the two roasted chicken thighs left over from dinner on one of those days, and finally a handful of batons of carrot, just blanched in rabbit stock, allowed to cool in that stock, and added to the stew stock and all.  When you’re nearly ready to put your pie together bring the stew out of the fridge in time to come back to something like room temperature in its pie dish.  Put the oven on and let it get up to temperature, around 200.  While the oven’s heating roll out your pastry (this should be done straight out of the fridge) and lay it over the stew in the pie dish.  If you like, use the pastry off cuts to make decorative chickens and bunny rabbits to stick on your pie crust, but there’s no real need.  If nobody’s allergic, brush your pastry with a glaze of beaten egg yolk, to give it colour and shine, I rub a little extra virgin olive oil into mine instead.

Bake your pie for about 40 minutes, or until the pastry’s thoroughly risen and appears to be cooked through (you can always raise it to peek underneath – an advantage of a lid only pie as opposed to a full case pie.

While the pie’s in the oven, do your chips.  I favour par-boiling, first, then frying – as described in more detail here – partly on account of not owning a deep fat fryer and having to cook them in batches, in my wok, in relatively shallow (sunflower) oil, but also on account of how the finished chips taste.  More effort, I know, but I really do think the finished result is worth it – even if you do have a deep fat fryer.

Pie and chips.  Did I mention I like a pie?  And chips?  And it was every bit as satisfying both as I’d been looking forward to, and as only something really simple can be.

And not only that, there was still enough of the stew left over at the end for one last pasta sauce the next day.  With the addition of a sliced chorizo (again left over from the weekend), some cherry tomatoes, halved, and a fistful of green olives, halved and pitted, and served with linguine it made a quite distinctively different and possibly even more delicious dinner than the rabbit ragu and penne of earlier in the week.  A fine way to bid farewell to our rabbit.

Run rabbit (and chicken) run, run, run...

As I said in my last post, when shopping for Becca’s Mum’s birthday paella, I rather over bought.  I didn’t over spend, I hasten to reiterate, everything was a bargain, and most of it just plain cheap – I just bought more than we needed, or indeed could come close to fitting in the pan.  Actually pretty easily done on a trip to Theobalds…  Not to worry though, nothing whatsoever went to waste, it just meant I didn’t need to do any proper shopping for a week.  And that week we ate fantastically well.

Apart from the leftover paella itself, which was enough for a light lunch for two or a hearty dinner for one (as it became for Becca on one of the evenings I was working in the week), we had the best part of a whole rabbit, jointed and already browned, six fat chicken thighs and plenty of cooking chorizo.

A tub of rabbit meat, a bowl of rabbit bones

The first thing to be done was make something of the rabbit.  Or rather two inter-related things, a stew of the meat and a stock of the bones.  So the day after the birthday feast I pulled all I could of the rabbit meat from the rabbit bones, put the bones in a stockpot of water with the regular veg, herbs and spices to simmer into a rich gamey stock, while making a basic stew of the meat with some shredded bacon, coarsely chopped onion, fennel and celery, a good splash of white wine and (added later in the whole process) the first few ladlefuls of stock from the pan.

Dinner that night was a simple pasta dish with a sauce made with cherry tomatoes, fried till soft, then a couple of ladles of the rabbit stew and a bit of extra stock added to the pan, tossed together with some penne.  A ribbony pasta, like pappardelle or broad tagliatelle - which one might argue to be something of a tautology - would undoubtedly have been more traditional, and perhaps more appropriate, but the principle culinary object of the day was throwing together something easy out of what we had to hand and that was penne.  And you know what?  It was perfectly good.

The bulk of the rabbit stew, and the stock, went into the fridge.  The next day we’d be due a change from rabbit, and it would be the turn of the chicken thighs.  My original idea had been to roast them with onions and sherry, a wonderfully simple and tasty dish, I believe of my own devising, which I have yet to post on this blog (although it has obvious things in common with the dish described here, it’s an open roast rather than a lidded casserole, and I will write it up one day, I promise).  But, disastrously (I say ‘disastrously’, but that’s speaking very relatively), the only sherry in the house was half a half bottle of 30 (thirty!) year old palo cortado which for all that it’s a ridiculous bargain even at around £18 for a half bottle – it is 30 years old after all – is not something you cook with.  Not even if it wasn’t a gift from your favourite aunt.  So in keeping with the theme for the week, I instead took a look at what we did have in the house and let my decision making be guided by that.  Which turned out to be red peppers, of the long pointy variety widely and cheaply available at the Turkish stores round here – or usually at a pound for a big bowl full in not always ropey condition on Ridley Road market.  And of which, like pretty much everything else intended for the paella, I had bought twice as much as I needed. 

The obvious thing to do with chicken thighs and red pepper perhaps was a Sicilian, Basque or maybe Provencale type stew, and very good that would have been too.  But I decided, more or less on a whim, and still with my onion and sherry dish in mind, to experiment with roasting the peppers whole in the dish with the chicken thighs, and some onion.  That may not have been a particularly wild or daring experiment, but I have to say it turned out to be a very successful one.  And again, very simple.

I simply marinated the chicken in the usual mix of crushed garlic, chilli, lemon juice and zest, olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs (sage and thyme), then browned them well in my stove proof cast iron roasting dish, lay the peppers between them, giving them a good turn in the juices, and tucked wedges of red onion, simply peeled and cut lengthways into sixths, into the remaining gaps.  ThenI transferred to the oven, at around 200, for about half an hour.

At the same time, but in another dish, I roasted some jersey royals and carrots that were slender enough to leave whole (having first been steamed over the potatoes as they were par-boiling), as much for aesthetic coherence with the whole peppers as anything, along with a few cloves of garlic.

The resulting plateful was one of the tastiest and most aesthetically pleasing roast chicken dishes I’ve ever had, while at the same time being one of the simplest.  There wasn’t even any need to think about making a gravy, the juices from the chicken and the red peppers making a thoroughly delectable sweet sauce in the roasting tray all by themselves.

Two chicken thighs apiece for Becca and me was plenty for dinner, and left two thighs over to be added to the rabbit stew for the thing I’d been most looking forward to ever since I’d realised the extent of our paella overstock.  Possibly what I’d been deliberately, but subconsciously, planning even before that, back at the point of making decisions in Theobalds.  The next step in our use-em-up program would be rabbit and chicken pie.  For which you’ll have to wait till my next post…

I've got a Paella dish and I'm gonna use it (eventually...)

 

I got a paella pan for Christmas.  A proper 40cm diameter, dimple bottomed steel dish that, I’m ashamed to say has done nothing since but hang decoratively on the kitchen wall.  At least it hadn’t, until yesterday.  At last, almost a full four months into the new year, I can hold my head up.  My burden of shame is lifted.

Actually, to be fair, there are a couple of good reasons why the paella pan hadn’t been given a run out before.  Firstly, there aren’t that many occasions in any given four month period for which a 9 raciones paella pan genuinely provides the answer to the culinary question ‘what’s the right tool for this job?’  Secondly, my small Hackney kitchen doesn’t contain one of those big, swanky range cookers with the giant central ring, so getting a proper distribution of heat under a 16 inch pan is a bit of a trick.  I had actually been waiting for an opportunity to get out on the roof terrace and light a fire in the barbecue to use as a heat source, but not having had an appropriate occasion during the March heat wave, the weather since the turn of April has been, to say the least, unconducive.

Still, sooner or later a paella pan on the wall has to be put to use, and the visit of Becca’s family on the occasion of her mother’s birthday provided the kick in the pants to make it happen.  Regardless of weather or issues of heat distribution.

Originally we’d been thinking of a seafood paella, but the distinctly unsummery aspect to the weather, combined with the happenstance of picking up a fistful of fine pork products from Garcias on Portobello Road inspired a last minute change of plan.  Along with the chorizo and morcilla from Garcia’s I decided that chicken and wild rabbit from Theobalds (my favourite, and many times previously mentioned butcher) would provide the meat of my paella.  Which, I do believe – save for the absence of snails – made it a much more ‘authentic’ (dread word!) paella valenciana than the more familiar, indeed pretty much ubiquitous, seafood version.

Authentic, schmauthentic, as regular readers will know to be my attitude, but one distinct advantage to returning  the paella to it’s pastoral peasant (as opposed to littoral tourist) roots, does turn out to be economic.  Clams and prawns (of the sustainable North Atlantic variety, certainly) ain’t cheap, by anyone’s standards; wild rabbits at £4.50 each and a bag of six fat free range chicken wings at a quid twenty six, I think really are.  Even the fancy Spanish goods didn’t bump the price up very far – two chorizo piccante at a quid and a bit each, and two fabulously gnarled looking smoked morcilla for about the same, kept the cost of the feature meat content for a generously proportioned and celebratory meal for six hearty appetites (with plenty leftover) to comfortably under a tenner.

As it happens, I spent rather more than that.  When the butcher showed me what looked like a pretty scrawny (and, it must be said, somewhat Bacon-esque) rabbit carcass I decided to take two, and as well as the chicken wings I took a bag of six thighs too, but when I came to put all my ingredients together it became immediately apparent that it wasn’t all going to fit in the pan, so I’m left with the best part of a rabbit and all the chicken thighs for meals to come.  In fact, what with the left over paella as well, I shouldn’t need to be doing any significant shopping this week at all.

To make my paella, first I portioned my rabbit – a simple job of smiting it into chunky bits with my cleaver (maybe a little Polanski-esque too...), then put it in a bowl to marinade, using the earthy, woody flavours of rosemary, sage, thyme and bay to complement its own gamy flavour, plus crushed garlic and chilli, a sprinkle of sumac, the juice and zest of half a lemon, plenty of salt and pepper and a good slug of olive oil.  I also marinaded the chicken wings, in a slightly lighter, zestier marinade, heavier on the lemon, lighter on the hard herbs (only thyme) and sprinkling sweet paprika instead of sumac.

While the meat was marinating, I thawed a litre of chicken stock out of the freezer, and coarsely sliced a bulb of fennel, a red pepper, a red onion, cut a courgette and a handful of mini portabella mushrooms into big chunks and thickly sliced my chorizo and morcilla. 

When ready to start cooking (about an hour or so before aiming to sit down) I started by browning first the rabbit pieces, then the chicken wings.  The meat browned and set aside I added the fennel, pepper and onion to the pan, along with a bit of finely sliced garlic and chilli and a light sprinkling of fresh thyme leaves, and cooked – effectively stir frying - till starting to soften, then I added the chorizo.  A couple of minutes later the mushrooms, courgette and morcilla went in.  A couple of minutes after that I returned the main meat to the pan and threw in a big splash (the best part of a glass) of white wine (to deglaze the pan as much as anything else).

Once the sizzle of the wine had settled and I’d given everything a good stir together, loosening any bits stuck to the base of the pan, I sprinkled the rice evenly over the pan.  The rule of thumb would be to allow about 75g per person, but to a great extent just let yourself be guided by how much space you have in the pan – I probably didn’t use much over 65g a head, and that proved to be plenty with all the other good things in the pan.

Then I added about two thirds of my stock (pre heated, of course) and a splash more wine, and stirred and turned to try and get as much of the rice as possible submerged (don’t be tempted to try and achieve that particular aim by simply flooding the pan – a paella doesn’t need to be ‘kept thirsty’ like a risotto, with the stock added almost grudgingly a ladleful at a time, but you still don’t want to swamp it).  Once that’s done, traditionally the thing to do would be simply leave it to bubble away till the rice is cooked and a golden to burnt-toasty crust formed on the base.  However, with the pan being too big for my hob, and the single ring heat source being substantially off centre as a result, I did have to keep both turning the pan and moving its contents around within it.  Not so constantly that I was unable to join the others at the table for a tapas-y first course of Jamon de Serrano, salchichon and pimientos de padron, quickly fried in just a very little olive oil and generously sprinkled in sea salt.

By the time we’d finished playing padron roulette (on this occasion only one of the peppers proved even mildly spicy, far short of the one in ten lurking heat bombs of legend – a legend Becca’s father for one views with more than a degree of scepticism), a bit over half an hour or so, and a couple of top-ups after the first addition of stock to the pan, we had ourselves a pretty damn authentic, full on Valencian peasant style paella ready to serve up.  A generous sprinkle of roughly chopped parsley over the top, a simple salad of little gem and pea shoots on the side, the cork popped on a good bottle of rioja, and we were good to go.  This was a properly rustic dinner, rich, dark and earthy, the rabbit densely gamey and, along with the chicken wings, demanding picking up and gnawing from the bone.  Not a dish for the over decorous.  Not a problem for us.

Happy birthday Becca’s Mum, and thanks again to my own and my Dad for the pan.