Aubergine, lemon and basil risotto

My blossom is out and it's been really warm and lovely for the past week or so, a bit cold again this week but no complaints. I'm having a bit of trouble at the allotment... Someone has been pecking at the broad beans and the lupins, so I have had to construct emergency netted structures and bean houses, otherwise known as plastic bottles. I didn't have the allotment this time last year so am still learning as I go, but have broad beans, peas, sweet peas, poppies, rhubarb and sunflowers in so far. Fingers crossed that I will beat the invaders...

This is a really springy risotto that I came across, I wouldn’t usually think to put lemon and basil and aubergine together with creamy rice but it was lovely. I free styled a bit with the amounts of things and didn’t get it quite right, I think it needed more cheese and more aubergine... and perhaps less lemon. That will teach me to start changing things the first time I make them. I will tell you what I should have done and I think you will end up fine.

You need two aubergines, each prepared in a different way. These amounts make enough for four people. I made it for two so just cut the aubergine in half. Char the first aubergine on your hob. Place it directly on the flame and keep moving it and turning it for about 15 minutes until the whole thing is charred and smoky and the inside is soft. Scoop out the insides when it is cooled and chop them roughly. The smell of this smoky charred aubergine is one of my favourite things. I make a side dish for bbq's where you char it on the bbq in the same way then scoop out the middle and mix it with yoghurt and lemon juice...

Dice the other aubergine into cubes and fry it in 80ml of olive oil until golden and soft, make sure it is cooked right through. Then place it in a colander to drain and sprinkle salt over it.

Then you need to make the risotto. Dice an onion and crush 2 cloves of garlic and soften them slowly in 50ml of olive oil until translucent. Turn up the heat and add 300g of risotto rice and fry it for 2 or 3 minutes. Add 150ml of white wine, it will hiss and bubble, stir until it is absorbed into the rice. Now you need to start adding 800ml of vegetable stock a little at a time, stirring all the time, adding more as each ladle full is absorbed.

When all the stock is absorbed add the zest of half a lemon, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, the grilled aubergine flesh, 20g of butter, 50g of parmesan and a good pinch of salt. Leave it to sit for 5 minutes. Finally taste and add more salt and pepper if you need to, stir through the diced aubergine and 10g of shredded basil. Sprinkle the top with a little more parmesan and lemon zest.

This is an Ottolenghi recipe, from the book Plenty, and really delicious. The smoky aubergine with lemon and cheese and perfumed basil is lovely when you get the right balance. I need to make it again and add a bit more aubergine and cheese next time to correct my mistakes...

Salmis of pheasant with truffle

I think my neighbours and postman might think I'm slightly strange over autumn when the porch is often decorated with hanging duck, pheasant, partridge and on one occasion a brace of woodcock. I am lucky enough to be given occasional game over the shooting season. It needs to hang for a week or so depending on the temperature, and also needs plucking, which I am getting better at. It is time consuming and messy, but it is lovely to have interesting, local food that you definitely couldn’t pick up in the supermarket.

This was the last pheasant in the freezer and so it deserved a fitting end I felt. The Little Idiot gave me a book called 'The French Menu' for Christmas. It was written in 1970 by Richard Olney from his little house in the hills of Provence. It is divided into menus according to the seasons, menus that have eight courses in some instances, and are really interesting. This is from the section called 'Two Formal Autumn Dinners'. It is not Autumn nor a formal dinner, but never mind that there was still a pheasant to eat...

It is a pretty serious recipe, serious cooking... but I like a challenge and so decided to give it a go. A Salmis, by definition, is a French dish most often game, roasted, sliced then reheated in sauce. For interest if I had cooked the whole menu that Olney advises we would have been having Sorrel Soup, followed by Fritto Misto, then the Salmis of Pheasant, a Wild Mushroom a la Bordelaise, a Rocket Salad with Nasturtium Flowers, Cheeses and finally Orange Jelly. I honestly think that would take about three days of solid cooking, but it sounds amazing...

Start with the veloute, a traditional French sauce. Melt 1 tbsp of salted butter in a heavy saucepan. Be warned at this stage you will use every pan in the house for this, and more... Add 1 tbsp of plain flour to the melted butter and cook it gently, stirring regularly. Take it off the heat and start to add 480ml of stock very slowly. I used the stock I'd poached the chicken in for the Chicken, bacon and caper pie, which is quite organised for me, it was even labelled in the freezer...

Stir the whole time as you slowly add the stock, to stop it from lumping. Then simmer it over a low heat for about half an hour. Skim the top of it now and again if it starts to form an oily top. At the same time boil 240ml of dry white wine with a tablespoon of chopped shallots and five crushed white peppercorns. Boil it down on a high heat until there are only a few spoonfuls of liquid left.

At this point you need a truffle. They are generally expensive and difficult to get in your average supermarket. I had brought one home for TLI as a present from a holiday in Mallorca. It didn't cost a lot and I got it in the airport. I should have perhaps put two and two together at that point... We have been looking forward to it since then but hadn’t had a recipe worthy of it until now.

Open the truffle and add its preserving juice to the veloute. It was at this point that I realised that our truffle tasted of absolutely nothing... I'm not sure if it was left for too long or if it never tasted of anything in the first place, or if it indeed was actually a truffle? Nothing to do but carry on however. I improvised by slicing up the non truffle and dousing it in truffle oil until it was needed...

Sprinkle the pheasant with salt inside and out, wrap it in streaky bacon and tie it up with string to keep it all together. Roast it in a very hot oven for 25 minutes in a pan that is a snug fit. When you take it out keep all the juices in the pan for the next stage. Cut away the bacon and discard, you will see that it has kept the pheasant nice and juicy inside.

Next you need to joint the pheasant into pieces. Cut off each of the legs with a sharp knife, remove any skin and keep it separately, also keep any scraps of meat or bone. Cut the body of the pheasant into two pieces down the middle of the breast bone. Take the breast bone out, and cut each half into two length ways, remove all skin. Tidy up all of the pheasant pieces and put them into a serving dish that can go into a low oven to keep warm. Before you put them in slice the truffle over the top and grind some black pepper over. Also sprinkle over a tablespoon of cognac that you have set on fire to get rid of the alcohol. Cover this all with foil and put it into the warm oven.

Next you need to finish the sauce. Pour the fat off the top of the juices from the roasted pheasant dish. Put what is left on a high heat and add a couple of tablespoons of white white, stir it and scrape up all the bits from the pan. Chop up all the skin and scraps from the jointed pheasant and pound any bits of bone in a pestle and mortar. Add this and the roasting juices to the veloute and boil everything for 8 to 10 minutes. Pass it all through a sieve, pressing the meat and bone firmly to get all the juices through. Bring the sieved sauce back to a boil and simmer for another ten minutes with the heat on one side of the saucepan, it needs to reduce by about one third. This is much more serious cooking than I usually take on, I found the sauce quite daunting.

Finally pass through a fine sieve again, reheat, check for seasoning and swirl in 2 tbsp of unsalted butter cut into small pieces. Pour the sauce over the warm pheasant and serve straight away.

I served it with some black pudding, made by Stewart and co. in Jesmond, that was cooked in a frying pan for 5 minutes, removed and some spring cabbage wilted in the same pan. Add the black pudding back in and pour over a whisked dressing of Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, olive oil, crème fraiche and parsley...

It is quite time consuming and a bit exhausting but extremely tasty. I'd love to try it with a real truffle one day but will probably have to wait until next autumn and when I win the lottery...

Marinated mozzarella salad and Roast pepper, watercress and Manchego salad

Mothering Sunday, or 'Mam's day' as Clinton Cards referred to it in their Newcastle stores, is a nice excuse to cook something for my mum who cooks for everyone else all of the rest of the time. It was a tough brief; healthy, but not too little food for the father, quick to prepare, the sister had to go to work, but tasty and impressive... I decided on a free range roast corn fed chicken with some loose crushed garlic thrown inside, some new potatoes, and two lovely salads from the Ottolenghi book that I hadn't made before. It was a lovely sunny day, with occasional torrential rain, otherwise I think it could have been nice enough to sit outside.

I forgot my mother's day card too, so was off to a good start...

The first of the salads was a marinated pepper, watercress and manchego salad.

Start by chopping 2 yellow and 2 red peppers into quarters, remove the seeds and stalks and put them in a baking tray. Splash a bit of olive oil and salt over them and put them in the oven for half an hour at 190°C. Give them a shake around once or twice and take them out when they are softened and a bit browning. Set them aside in a bowl covered with cling film, this will help their skins come off.

While they are cooking make the dressing. Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a bowl, add 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon of water, the leaves of 3 sprigs of thyme, a thinly sliced clove of garlic and a teaspoon of muscovado sugar. Whisk it all up together.

When the peppers have cooled a bit peel away their skins and put them all in the dressing and leave to marinate. Leave them for at least an hour, or overnight if you can. I was a bit short on time so didn’t leave them quite long enough, it was still very tasty but I knew it could have been even better.

Scatter a bag of watercress into a big salad bowl. Chop a big handful of basil and a big handful of parsley and mix it through the watercress. Then finely slice some manchego or pecorino cheese in amongst the leaves. Scatter over a load of tiny capers and then place your peppers over the top, mixing them into the leaves a little. Finally pour over some of the dressing.

To go alongside this I made a marinated mozzarella salad with tomatoes.

Tear a ball of mozzarella into small pieces and put it in another big salad bowl. Shred a big handful of basil into thin slices, along with a small amount of sliced oregano and add to the bowl with the grated zest of one lemon. At the same time toast a teaspoon of fennel seeds in a dry pan for a few minutes until they start to brown, when they are done crush them in a pestle and mortar, and add to the mozzarella. Crush a small clove of garlic and chop it very finely and add this with a big glug of olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix everything up and let the mozzarella sit for about 20 minutes.

Finally add some torn up cherry tomatoes, make sure you get ones that are as tasty as possible, if they smell of nothing they are likely to taste of nothing, so start sniffing them in the supermarket...

Seedlings, seeds and sowing

Planting time has begun. It's been good weather too, sunny and warm, but lots of rain too. I currently have some Mixed Boquet and some Matucana sweet peas growing on the upstairs window cill. I might have to plant a few more as about a third of them haven’t appeared. They need transplanting to the allotment in a week or so, when this wind goes away, and will grow up a trelis that we've put in along the front of the allotment, into a wall of flowers.

I've also got some sunflowers growing on the downstairs window cill... After that I think everything is going to have to go straight into the ground at the allotment, as I don't have enough window cill space...

So far at the allotment I've put in some broad beans and some Ambassador peas. I've built two little wigwam cane structures for them to grow up. I'm really looking forward to the peas as they are one of my favourite vegetables, people underrate them I think... Next to go in will be the parsnips. Now that it's light later into the evenings it will be a little easier to get things done. I'm really looking forward to the first crop, it's very satisfying to have grown your own lunch or supper when all you really did was pop a tiny seed in the ground.

The leeks should be ready in the next couple of weeks, I'm just leaving them to get a bit more of this lovely sunshine. The onions are being very shy to appear though, I have possibly done something wrong there, but not quite sure what...