Things on Toast

'Things on Toast' is what I eat when I'm tired and I don't really have any energy to cook. As in 'I can't really be bothered to make anything shall we just have 'things on toast'? A hunt through the fridge usually produces a couple of options; there's often some bacon lying around or chorizo or black pudding. Pork is always a welcome addition, eggs, stray vegetables, herbs... and the resulting meal is two little slices of toast, each with a different topping... It's actually one of my favourite meals, maybe not grand enough for weekend dining or guests, but a pretty lovely treat on a Tuesday in front of the TV... It began as cheese on toast, what better place to start, and has evolved, mainly over the past year, into a whole chapter of options...

One of the first guises of 'things on toast' was Lemony Courgettes, this was a Hugh recipe originally that I read in some supplement a long time ago. It is chopped courgettes cooked in olive oil, slowly, with a chopped clove of garlic added after about 10 minutes. Continue to cook them until very soft and a bit golden, then add lemon juice to taste, salt and pepper and a big handful of chopped mint... This is one of my favourites. The oil goes all green and lemony and delicious and soaks into the toast. I've also made a yoghurt with more chopped mint in it to dollop on the top in the past. This is probably the most complicated of my toast dishes.

Others include Bacon and Broad Beans on Toast. Fry diced bacon, blanch the beans, add the beans to the bacon pan with loads of chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice. That's one of the easiest ones...

The scrambled eggs are self explanatory, but a few tips I have picked up from Elizabeth David; don't add milk, just lightly beat the eggs with a pinch of salt, they are ready before you think they are... Add the eggs to a pan and heat, I then take them on and off the heat as I'm cooking as I'm so fearful of an overdone scrambled egg. Take them off the heat finally before you think they are done, when they are creamy but still loose and a little raw, and continue to stir in the pan until they are soft and silky. Top with fried chorizo chunks.

The Chorizo, Chestnut and Thyme Toast is a new one to the list. Chestnuts fried slowly in butter for five minutes, add some diced chorizo and fresh thyme leaves and fry until the chorizo has turned a little brown but not too crispy. Add to the top of the toast with all the juices.

Wild mushrooms, fried with butter and garlic and lots of chopped parsley... I was given some lovely hedgehog mushrooms in the Autumn, they were pretty special. Sometimes it is just a bit of black pudding, especially if it is a really good one. Puréed fresh blanched broad beans and peas with mint, salt and pepper and olive oil, toast, black pudding and bacon, anyone fancy? Or just the Black Pudding with Broad Beans and Mint... I loved the Duck Hearts on Toast and have since tried duck liver as well, fried in butter with a splash of chicken stock and balsamic vinegar, it is totally delicious and not nearly as scary as it sounds! The combinations are interchangeable, the end result is always tasty... I will continue to expand my things on toast repertoire over the coming year and get back to you with more ideas...

Cassoulet

This is the first cassoulet I have ever made, and apart from the fact that it was totally delicious, it also produced meals for about three days. I love a few left overs for lunch the next day, or a meal that turns into something else, or gives you stock or fat to flavour your next meal, it feels good to reuse everything... It saves money, reduces waste and I like the idea of using every scrap possible of a duck or a piece of meat, to really put the little fellas to good purpose...

A cassoulet is a stew of sorts, a rich slow cooked French casserole, with roast or confit duck, sausages, bacon, lovely stock full of herbs and tomatoes and lots of white beans, all topped with crispy, golden baked breadcrumbs. So there was the first cassoulet evening, in all it's splendour, with rich duck and crispy breadcrumbs and a bottle of young French red wine. Then the remains travelled all the way to the Lake District to be heated through with new sausages, fresh bread for dipping and crispy green salad. Finally some came home with us again and made a lovely beany soupy lunch. A well travelled cassoulet indeed...

In the French peasant origins of the dish they used to deglaze the pot from the previous cassoulet as a base for the next one, and so on and so on, which led to stories of one original cassoulet being extended for years and years, mine just lasted a weekend... It is a dish to be made in quantity really, this will feed four or more people, just add more duck if you have more people...

I started with a pot of duck stock made from the bones of the Roast Duck with Chestnut, Chorizo and Cabbage... and with Elizabeth David... I've been carrying her book around with me lately. Sometimes to work so I can look up recipes at lunchtime, over to the Lakes to read in depth the bits I haven’t gone through before, looking for new and interesting methods and recipes. I am aware that this is not normal behaviour, constantly travelling around with recipe books... and I have had a few funny looks as people get into my car to find little book collections in the foot-well, but hey...

Start with a pan for the stock, you will need a larger pan for the whole cassoulet which will go in the oven, but start with the stock pan on the hob and heat a large splash of olive oil in it. Add two thinly sliced large onions and cook until they are soft, about ten minutes, then add some chopped smoked streaky bacon, about 6 slices cut into smaller pieces, and continue to cook until it is all golden and sticky.

Pour in the stock, I used about 500ml of duck stock, you can use chicken stock, add two tomatoes chopped into pieces, four crushed cloves of garlic, salt and pepper, some sprigs of parsley, thyme and a bay leaf and bring to a slow simmer. Leave it to simmer away for about 20 minutes. I think this is the tastiest stock I have ever made by the way... I kept on having sneaky spoonfuls all the way through...

Most cassoulet's use confit duck legs, but Elizabeth does say that to use fresh duck or goose if confit isn’t an option, which it wasn't, but it will need to be half roasted. So while the stock was simmering I put a whole duck in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 220°C. Then took it out to rest and cool enough to cut up.

You will need a big oven proof type pot for the cassoulet. Rub the inside of it all over with raw garlic to begin with. Then add about 6 good quality raw pork sausages cut in half, I also added about 4 teaspoons of duck fat from a previous roasting... You could substitute with lard or dripping... Then the duck, cut into pieces. My knives are really not very effective so we got as far as cutting it in half, it would be much better into quarters or sixths as it was really pretty difficult to eat a bowl of stew with half a duck sitting in it!

Pour two tins of drained haricot beans over the top of all of the meat and then pour the stock and all its contents over the top of everything. Bring this all to the boil on the hob and then sprinkle a few handfuls of white bread crumbs over the top. I used a stale sour dough wizzed up in the food processor until it was a fine crumb.

Then place the whole cassoulet in a low oven, about 160°C, for an hour. The stock will soak into the meat and the beans and a lovely golden crust will form over the top. Delicious... Just serve it as it is, it doesn’t need any help at all. It is rich and meaty with beautifully flavoured stock and beans, it is one of my favourite things I have cooked, really lovely... I am going to get to grips with some confit soon and make it again with confit duck legs...

I found a little tip in Elizabeth David's soup section that advised heating up the left over beans and stock and pounding them through a sieve, reheating this purée with a little milk and adding pieces of cooked sausage. It is just as good reheated in its stew form with new cooked sausages, or as a simple beans stew with crusty bread. It's just good all round really...

Broad Beans and Bacon on Toast

We had the Blonde and her fella over at the weekend, with Boozer too, we ate pork and broad beans; bacon and black pudding with a broad bean and pea purée, it was delicious. We ate pork and broad beans last week, and here I am cooking pork and broad beans again for supper... The theme will stop, I will tell you about other ingredients again after this I promise... Like the fact that I have ordered stuff to start making my own Homemade Salami this weekend. By 'stuff' I mean 3 spools of 38mm English hog casings to be precise, yes, intestines... I have been reading all types of different advice on how to go about making salami and I think I'm ready with a chosen method... I will keep you posted on how I get on, during construction and the end results... They will be ready in a month, I'm looking forward to it already and I haven’t even begun...

So as a result of left over bacon and my broad bean plants still rapidly producing pods I cooked up a simple supper that was pretty quick and easy to put together.

Start by podding the broad beans, about a handful per person. Blanch them in boiling water for 1-2 minutes if they are very fresh, longer if they are not. Remove and drain them and keep to one side. Chop 4 slices of unsmoked streaky bacon per person into small strips and add to a dry frying pan, it will produce its own fat so there is no need for oil. Fry until it is crispy and browning at the edges, then add the broad beans, the juice of half a lemon, some black pepper and cook for a minute longer.

Pour the beans, bacon and lemony juice over some toasted brown bread, I used an Irish wheaten loaf that I love, and finally add a large handful of chopped flat leaf parsley. I suppose you could call it beans on toast, only it is a bit tastier... The sweet soft beans with salty bacon, tart lemon and warming brown toast are delicious all together.

Chou Farci or Stuffed Cabbage

Inspired by TLI's little jaunt to Paris last week we began to flick through Elizabeth David at the weekend. He has been making me jealous with tales of dauphinoise potatoes, veal, red wine in the Marais, little lunchtime back street restaurants where they only serve a few dishes but everything is delicious... One such dish was a Chou Farci, a French stuffed cabbage dish. Be warned it isn't that pretty... Before we cooked it it looked like an alien's brain, or a weird dishevelled cabbage chicken... But once sliced up it was a bit more rustic looking and incredibly tasty. I imagine a bowl of it in the countryside with some crusty bread to mop up the delicious juice and a glass of good red wine. Rustic is definitely the word for it. Next time I will try and make smaller individual parcels per person that may look prettier than a large cabbage brain.

So we set off for the Grainger Market and returned with spring peas and baby turnips and lots of bits of pig. Mince, chops and a trotter to be precise, and some chicken livers just to up the meat quota a bit more...

This recipe is loosely based around Elizabeth's Chou Farci a la Mode de Grasse, a speciality of the town of Grasse in south east France, she actually has a whole chapter of stuffed cabbage recipes, this borrows a little from the others as well. These amounts could easily serve 6, we will be eating it all week... The concept is to separate the cabbage leaves out and then layer them back up with the meat mixture between each to reform a cabbage shape, tie it up and cook...

Firstly I set about shelling the huge bag of peas, you will need about 225g. At the same time blanch a white cabbage in a pan of boiling water for 5 minutes to loosen its leaves, drain and leave to cool when the time is up. When it is cool enough to handle peel away the leaves individually and leave to dry. I only got about half way into the cabbage before it was no longer blanched enough to continue, it was not a problem as there was too much food as it was... Put the peas in a large bowl, add a finely chopped leek, the finely chopped heart of a lettuce and 30g of uncooked white rice.

Now for the meat. Add the meat of 4 pork sausages, 4 slices of bacon finely chopped, one pork chop finely chopped and 3 or 4 chicken livers also chopped. Mix all of the meat with the pea mixture, add an egg yolk, and season with salt, pepper, mace, nutmeg, a crushed clove of garlic and some chopped rosemary and thyme. Then spread a layer onto each of the cabbage leaves.

Now you need to layer up the leaves one on top of the other, until they are all used up, finally rolling them round to reform a cabbage shaped ball... I freaked out a bit at this stage and am not at all sure I did it correctly. I will definitely make smaller individual parcels next time, I think it will be much easier, less stressful and prettier. Then you need to tie the whole thing up with string. Voila...

Line the bottom of a large casserole dish with squares of bacon and add 3 or 4 chopped baby turnips and 3 chopped carrots, the pigs trotter and a herb bundle of thyme, parsley, rosemary and a bay leaf. Put the cabbage into the centre of the pan and pour over a tumbler of chicken stock and a glass of white wine. Cook in a low oven, about 160°C for 2 to 3 hours.

It may be an ugly little rustic dish but it is definitely full of flavour. Serve in a bowl, with a big ladle of the gravy and the turnips and carrots. I will definitely be continuing my exploration of the Chou Farci, especially into autumn as I have already book marked a version with chestnuts, smoked sausage and partridge...

Spring Chicken Terrine

The Terrine is becoming a bit of a signature dish, every time I invite large numbers of people to dine I usually unveil a terrine. The Little Idiot is the master of them, but I am a fast learner. In autumn and winter we made them with rabbit and pheasant, heavy with garlic and juniper. This one was for picnicking in the Lakes and as it is spring and sunny we decided on a lighter chicken version.

To start you need to poach a good free range chicken, I went for a corn fed one that was lovely and yellow. The poaching is a tip learnt from the St. John recipe books. I always used to roast whichever meat I had chosen, but after poaching the chicken for the Chicken, bacon and caper pie I haven’t looked back... The meat is so much more juicy and tender and tasty.

Fill a large pan with water, an onion peeled and halved, a chopped carrot, a chopped stick of celery, some pepper corns, a pinch of salt and a bundle of herbs such as thyme, parsley and bay leaves. Put the chicken into the pot, it doesn’t need to be entirely covered, you can turn it half way through. Bring it to the boil and then let it simmer for 45 minutes with the lid on, turning the chicken over half way through. When it is done take it out of the water and allow it to cool. You then need to strip all of the meat into bite size pieces from the chicken, discarding any skin and bones.

While the chicken is poaching you can prepare the terrine tin. You need a long deep terrine type tin, or something a bit loaf shaped. Grease the inside of it with butter and lay a few bay leaves on the base for decoration when it is turned out. Line the whole tin with streaky unsmoked bacon, allowing it to flap over the edges so there is enough to turn over the top of the terrine when it is full.

Next prepare the sausage meat, you can get it from the butchers, or in large packets in the supermarket, or take it out of some actual sausages, but make sure they are plain ones as you will add your own flavour. The amount will depend on the size of your tin, I think I used about 750g. Empty it into a big bowl so you can begin to season it. Add a teaspoon of chopped lemon thyme, a teaspoon of normal thyme leaves, some salt and pepper and a splash of brandy. As we were going for springy and fresh we added the zest of half a lemon, 4 or 5 crushed juniper berries and a clove of garlic finely chopped. Finally I toasted some blanched almonds, chopped them up and added to the mix. It is not an exact science and has been different every time so far, but always good. If you can get hold of some chicken livers, chop about a handful and add to the mix.

Mix everything together with your hands and spread a layer of the sausage mix over the base of your tin, on top of the bacon, about 1cm deep. Then add a layer of chicken meat about the same depth. Continue adding alternate layers until the tin is full to the brim and turn the bacon over and in to seal everything up.

Next you need to cook the terrine. Cover the tin with buttered grease proof paper and tie it with string tightly around the top to seal it as best you can. Place the terrine into a large baking tray and pour in boiling water to just over half the height of the terrine tin, to create a bain-marie. Put it in a low oven at 150°C for about an hour and a half. Check it after an hour however, it is ready when the terrine has shrunk a bit and come away from the sides of the tin.

Take it out and let it cool on the side, grease proof paper still in place, with a weight on top to press it. Finding the right sized weight has always been a problem for me, a wine box with books and pans balanced on top this time round... A brick would probably be the ideal shape. This weighting makes sure the terrine has the correct pressed firm texture. Don't put a good book straight on it however as a little juice and jelly might ooze out.

Leave it to cool and press overnight as a minimum, after this it will happily sit in the fridge for a few days before you need it, the flavours only improve... When you are ready to serve, run a knife around the edge of the tin and tap it out onto a board. Slice up and serve with a good chutney...

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...

Slow venison stew

There was some nice dark red tasty looking venison for sale in Stewart and Co. on Saturday afternoon which we took home and looked for something interesting to make with it. The idea of a daube came from 'Elizabeth David Classic's', one of my favourite cookery books...

This recipe is a type of daube with venison. A daube is a classic French stew made with beef, that is slow cooked with wine and vegetables and is often flavoured with duck fat, vinegar, brandy, lavender, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, juniper berries, or orange peel. They used to be left cooking on the hearth for the whole day and are often better made the day before. This is my venison version.

The venison should be in stew sized type pieces, about 500g for 2 people. Toss the venison in some flour seasoned with a pinch of salt and pepper. Then brown it off in a hot pan with some olive oil, you might have to do it a few bits at a time. If you add too many it will start to stew in the juices of the meat rather than brown nicely. When it is browned all over put it into a large casserole dish.

Chop about 100g of smoked bacon, about 4 slices into small pieces and fry these off in the venison pan until brown. Add them to your venison in the casserole dish. Finally slice an onion into thin rounds, or a couple of tiny onions, which is what I used. Fry these in the same pan again, you might have to add a bit more oil, until it is soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Transfer it to the casserole also when it is done.

Keep the pan on high that you have been cooking everything in and add about a glass of red white to de glaze it. You want to scrape up all of the flavour and bits that have stuck to the pan and mix them up into the wine as it bubbles away furiously. Pour this into the casserole after a few minutes.

Put the casserole dish onto a low heat and mix up the venison, bacon, onions and wine, and add more wine again, I think I ended up putting over half a bottle in, you can use anything you have left over. I collect anything that doesn’t get drank, or has been left a little bit too long to enjoy...

Add to this a sliced carrot, some thyme, a bay leaf, some juniper berries, a sliced clove of garlic and a large piece of orange peel. Leave it to simmer, with a lid on, for a couple of hours, longer if you can. Keep it on low and give it a stir every now and again.

When it is done the flavours are really lovely, the carrots tasted so much of orange, with rich red wine gravy that still tastes of delicate herbs, the venison was soft and falling apart with smoky bacon and soft onions. I served some creamy mashed potato on the side to mix into the rich sauce. It's not very photogenic but tastes delicious...