The Fantastic Festive 'Fieldshires' Turkey

This time just over a year ago I was sat on my sofa mulling over the past annum, broke but happy, watching the marginally better festive TV line up and peregrinating around the caverns of my mind in search of a Cash Cow to pay for my forthcoming travels.

A year later and sure as eggs is eggs I found myself back on the same sofa, in the same room, with the same emaciated cats and Labrador that’s convinced he’s a Jack Russell and subsequently climbs all over your face, still broke, and still happy. The money I’d managed to scrape together pre-vagrancy had been blown, quite literally in some cases, on everything from curries to coca leaves. I needed a nice little earner.

Cue Facebook, (which continues to supply me with paying jobs through no effort of my own and by complete accident), a message from my elder sister pinged into my inbox instructing me at once to get in touch with Charlie Pyper, the founder, owner, manager and festive farmer responsible for what can only be described as some of the best breasts on a bird I’ve sliced with my Sabatier. The next two days were spent driving round London and the South East delivering Turkeys of all shapes and sizes to places as far fetched as Ilford, where a man identical to Winston Churchill tipped me £6, and Croydon, home of Kate Moss. I even dropped a bird off in a fictional place called Epsom, which up until now I thought was a make of printer.

After two days, 20 birds, 300 and something miles and a Thermos of Heinz chicken soup, I was on the home stretch with a single lonesome Turkey left in the boot of my car. Now I have a confession to make, in my eagerness to get home I navigated a roundabout rather too aggressively and out flew the bird, thumping with biblical force into the side of the car before rolling to a rest on it’s back, I felt the car snake from the sheer force of the blow and struggled to regain control of the back end as under steer took hold. By the time I managed to pull over my load had collected a fair amount of dirt from the floor of the boot, I brushed it off and stuffed it back in its box, and like a mischievous delinquent swore I’d never tell. Alas, my conscience has got the better of me only a week after my foul faux pas, so I am using this here web to purge my guilt ridden soul.

Fortunately for me my mother can’t work her mobile phone, let alone a computer, so the chances of her reading this and uncovering the truth about our Christmas lunch are slim to none. Not that it made any difference to the meat however; Fieldshires Turkeys are reared ranging free, they have a healthy diet and plenty of sun (Essex is statistically the driest county in Britain), pound for pound they are fantastic value and I can guarantee you wont find a better tasting bird in Britain.

Check out the Fieldshires website @ www.fieldshires.com and buy your Turkey for 2012. 

Top Tip: 

Get the dog to help with the sprouts.

Broccoli, Spinach and Stilton Soup

On the 25^th of October this year, the day after my birthday, and Wayne Rooney’s, in an enclave of Leicestershire that would be of no relevance in particular should it not be for its proximity to Britain’s ‘Rural Capital of Food’ Melton Mowbray, a world record breaking lump of Stilton cheese tipped the scales at 140kg.

To make ‘The Beast’ as it has become affectionately known, The ‘Long Clawson Dairy’ used 824 litres of full fat milk, 1.8kg of salt, 190ml of vegetarian rennet (a naturally occurring substance that acts as a coagulant), and 0.0003g of dairy cultures, a form of bacteria. After 12 weeks of maturing it was ready to be sliced open and enjoyed on a massive Carr’s water biscuit.

A few years ago I was on a beach in the north east of Greece about 100km east of Thessaloniki, in a peculiar camp site not entirely unlike a run down Baltic Butlins filled with large Greek families headed by portly patriarchs and matriarchs serving up saganaki. This wasn’t that unusual; the fact that a trance festival was going on around them in the same site however certainly made for some interesting observations and conversations. It was certainly a reality check on a few occasions for wasted revellers, myself included, as we encountered holidaying families and their children playing on a beach in blissful sobriety, seemingly unaware of the goings on around them. There was a point when I got a few strange looks as I marched to the beach and began stuffing rocks into a rucksack to take them back to my campsite, in order to make a border for an elaborate network of pathways that a friend and me had created to pass the time whilst waiting for our friends to arrive from the airport.

Another thing one does at these festivals after constructing the ultimate ergonomic camping area, is experiment with mind altering substances. Never one to shy away from a new experience I recalled an article I’d read detailing the effects of ingesting excessive amounts of blue cheese on the mind, and thought I’d give it a go. 500g of cheese later and I certainly felt very different, delirious in fact, not helped by the forty degree heat, however if you can get past these initial side effects I'm sure it'll make a far nicer tipple than the so called 'Meow Meow' or even those horse tranquilisers some people seem to be snorting. In fact, I may start dealing Stilton. 

The answer then is, like many things in life, moderation. You don’t need 140kg of Long Clawson stilton, 1 will be quite enough for this recipe, and to last you and your water biscuits into the new year.

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

1 large white onion

1 large bag of spinach

1 head of broccoli

1 tablespoon plain flour

Healthy knob of butter

Salt and Pepper

2.5 litres of vegetable stock

150g stilton

Double cream to garnish

Method:

1. In a large saucepan heat the butter and cook the onions until soft but not brown, chuck in the flour and stir through. Add the vegetable stock and broccoli and bring to the boil, turn the heat down and simmer for 6 minutes. Add the spinach and stir in so it wilts, simmer for another few minutes until the broccoli is cooked.

2. Take the saucepan off the heat and blend the contents either in a processor or with a hand held blender, the latter is far easier. Add a slug of double cream and stir it through, crumble up lumps of stilton into the soup and stir so they melt, season, serve.

Brazilian Seafood Vatapa

I do love a Brazilian; well kept, directive, hygienic, hard working, great sense of humour, a love of psy trance, and now thanks to untapped natural resources and all the above it's a pretty good place to be drilling for the crude.

In 2007 I found myself upon Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro buying the country’s flagship tipple the Caipirinha, for 4 Brazilian reais, which at the time equated to just under a pound for a fairly healthy slug of rum that would get you whistling. Four years came to pass and once again I was lying, suggestively perhaps, on the very same beach sipping from the same Brazilian cup, staring out at the same iconic view surrounded by the same humbling physiques, but something had changed. After a short period of mulling it hit me right in the groin; inflation.

Whilst the rest of the world has been nose diving into the worst recession in decades, Brazil has been steadily growing into one of the world’s fastest developing economies, a brick state in an otherwise faltering fiscal environment. Great for the Brazilians but not for the discerning/tight fisted and frugal traveller hoping for a cheap ride; my 2011 Caipirinha came in at almost double the cost of the previous one that I’d ingested only four years earlier.

I’m not here to moan about money, lord know there’s enough of that going on at the moment without me adding to the mix, and although the prices over there are rising they still don’t hold a candle to the cost of a pint in London at the moment (maybe a little moan). I walked into the Earl of Lonsdale last week, a Sam Smiths pub and subsequently the cheapest option in town for beers, to be met with the new price of £3.05, up from the £2.45 I’d paid there a couple of weeks earlier. An outrage, it would almost be cheaper to get pissed on Petrol, although from experience I can tell you that’s not a good idea; not a ‘Withnail and I’ moment I hasten to add, I simply misjudged the ferocity with which to suck on the hosepipe whilst attempting to siphon fuel from my Dad’s tank in order to get to a party a few years ago. Desperate times.

I would like to suggest then, that if you find yourself bent over your flower bed regurgitating any form of distilled fossil fuel after a last ditch attempt to get to a party to drown your sorrows, don’t go. Save the fuel, sell it, along with whatever belongings and dignity you have left, and make for Brazil, the promised land, where you will find beaches paved with sand and bodies paved with gold, more petrol than you could dream of swallowing and an economy booming like a bass bin. Live vicariously, if only for a week or two, I guarantee it’ll put a smile back on your face.

To this and that end, check out my first officially published article in the next edition of ‘Eat Me Magazine’, a city experience of Rio de Janeiro, available in selected W H Smith stores, a number of points of transit, and the big wide web. 

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

20 uncooked king prawns, shells still on

10 Madagascan crevettes, shells still on

500g mussels, de-bearded

110ml coconut milk

70ml coconut cream

440ml fresh fish stock

Chilli oil

1 large white cooking onion, roughly chopped

2 large tomatoes, roughly chopped

30g fresh root ginger, grated

3 large red chillies, seeded and roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon palm sugar

50ml palm oil

Juice of 1 lime

70g roasted peanuts, grinded into powder

60g cashew nuts, grinded into powder

140g fresh white breadcrumbs

Rice for ya plates

Freshly chopped coriander to garnish

Method:

1. Mix the coconut milk and breadcrumbs together in a bowl, set aside and allow to soak for 20 minutes to half an hour before blending it into a smooth paste.

2. Whilst the breadcrumbs are soaking shell the prawns and crevettes and boil the shells in the fish stock, along with the tomatoes, turn the heat down to low and simmer for half an hour. When this is done grab a sieve and strain the liquid into another bowl taking care to push out as much juice from the tomatoes and shells, chuck them away and keep the fishy tomato broth.

3. In a large pan add an inch of water and bring to the boil, throw in the mussels and cover, steam them for a few minutes until they open up, make sure to throw away any that haven’t and put the pan of mussels to one side.

4. In a skillet boil the chopped onion in an inch or so of water till it softens, drain it and chuck it in a food processor along with the chopped chilli. In the same skillet heat a slug of chilli oil and add the blended mixture back into the pan with the palm oil, turn the heat down low and cook for 5 minutes before slamming in the ginger and garlic and cooking for another 3 minutes. Now stir in the finely ground peanuts and cashews and cook for another minute or so.

5. Add the breadcrumb/coconut mix along with the fishy broth and stir well, bringing it to the boil before turning the heat down once more and reducing the liquid to a thick smooth consistency, a bit like your morning oats. Now chuck in the prawns, coconut cream and lime juice and cook for another few minutes till they change from grey to pink, when this happens add the mussels as well. Some in the their shells and others out to give it a nice look whilst avoiding being to shell heavy and frankly annoying to eat.

6. Rice on a plate, bit of coriander, and you’ve got a very tasty supper.

Obviously this one contains nuts and shellfish so be warned. 

Whisky Seared Scallops

We don’t eat nearly enough of our own shellfish in the British Isles, which is a crying shame as we have some of the best in world. Instead it gets shipped twenty miles south to the French who turn it into the sublime, whilst we on home shores make do with cod, haddock, plaice or sole. These are all great fish in their own right, don’t get me wrong, however our general ignorance and frequent stubbornness as a nation of consumers has, over time, channelled us into a rather unadventurous set of fishy doldrums, humoured occasionally by squalls of ‘smoked salmon’ masquerading as faux-swanky-canapés during the small talking foretaste to a dinner party.

‘The Big Fish Fight’ has attempted with some success, to bring back our home grown produce to the tables of Britain, however there is still a long way to go before we are regularly eating mussels for instance. The coast of Britain harvest some of the best in the world yet you’re lucky to find a single bag in Tesco, and if you do they’re more than likely frozen, or worse still ready cooked in a plastic pot. Then there’s the lonesome Cornish clam, Waitrose is the only super market I’ve found that stocks them and even then you quite often have to pre-order.

“But they’re expensive and a hassle”, I hear people say.

Wrong on both counts in fact; you can quite happily feed a family of four with a huge bag of mussels for under a fiver and they cook in five minutes. Cream, leeks, butter, crusty bread, boom. Next question?

There is really no excuse for being selfish to the shellfish, the furthest geographical point away from the sea in the UK is Church Flats Farm near Coton in the Elms, Derbyshire, and that’s only 70 miles from the bountiful Norfolk Wash. So with the planned raise of the national speed limit from 70 to 80mph, you could stay with Henry and Joyce Blackwell in the evening and try some of their home grown lamb, and the following day scream down to Skeggy for a spot of fishing. Perhaps even stay at Butlins, if that’s your vibe?

I conclude then; when Hugh Grant spoke of Britain being “A great country, a country of Shakespeare, Churchill, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, David Beckham’s right foot, David Beckham’s left foot come to that”, he should have spared a word or two for our mussels, our cockles, our clams and our scallops.

Rule Britannia.

 Ingredients: (Serves 4)

20 British scallops, coral on or off, your choice, I like it

3 British shallots, finely sliced

A slug or two of Scottish whisky

Healthy knob of English butter

Olive oil, European but from one of the colonies

Handful of curly British parsley, finely chopped

Method:

1. Using a sharp knife graze some shallow cross hatching into one side of the scallops. Heat a little oil and butter in a frying pan over a medium high heat and sear the scallops for a minute or so on either side. Throw in a wee drab of whisky and using a match, light the pan, it will flambé instantly and rather vigorously so take care not to set light to yourself. Let it burn for a few seconds, actually 3, then blow it out and take the scallops out of the pan and onto a plate.

2. Return the pan to the heat and add a little more butter and oil, when it’s sizzling chuck in the shallots and fry them till soft. Chuck another wee drab of whisky in and set alight to it, again let it burn off for a few seconds. Now add the cream and mix it in thoroughly whilst still cooking. It’ll make a beautiful golden sauce. After another minute chuck in the parsley, stir it around, take it of the heat, plate up the scallops and pour the sauce on top. I actually returned the scallops to the pan when doing my second lot and tossed them in the sauce before serving. It gave them a real good coating.

Pork Wrapped in Bacon with Super Smash and a Vermouth and Mushroom Sauce

A pig isn’t just for Christmas, you can eat it on Boxing Day too. Sentiments I shared up until a couple of years ago when I found myself driving through Somerset in my 1986 Mercedes 608D, complete with mock oak flooring, tiger print upholstery, 2 hob cooker, Roman tiling, bespoke spice rack, carpeted walls, and of course 1500 watt super sound system. To those of you don’t know what I’m talking about the snub nose 608 is the holy grail of campervans, six and a half tonnes of pure unadulterated metal, a labour of love, and now part of the family. In fact there are so many comparisons between me and my Mercules it is rather uncanny: we were both born in 1986 for starters, and were extremely painful to deliver. We’ve both got a lot of things going on inside, some of questionable taste and none screwed down. Then of course we are a huge drain on resources; in fact having committed to my beloved van I now have a heightened appreciation of my parents and what they did for me in the first 20 years of my life, what they still do for me. The fact is no matter how much care and attention he needs, no matter how much money I have to throw at him to get him around Eastern Europe again so I have a comfy bed to retire to after 24 hours standing in a glorified ditch, listening to the strangely therapeutic roll of a Psychedelic bass line. I will continue to do so, because I love him, and that is the greatest curse a man can be blessed with.

So, as I was saying, me and my Mercules (and my little sister Claudia) were driving through the beautiful rolling hills of Somerset on our way to pick up the latest addition to the ever growing hoard of livestock; a pair of eight week old pedigree Kune Kune piglets. Cute doesn’t even come into it, these two reduced me do a swooning wreck of peculiar noises immediately, and it was all I could do to pay the breeder and sign the ownership papers without joining them both in the mud to see what all the fuss was about.

On the way home the newly named ‘Bangers’ and ‘Mashed’ were good as gold in their box in the back of Mercules, that was until after nearly four hours driving and only a few miles from home they both escaped with a squeal and a snort and joined us up front. It conspires that contrary to popular belief pigs are rather clean and well mannered creatures, of course they appreciate a good wallow, but when it comes to defecation they refuse point blank to pass stool in their sleeping quarters. Poor little Bangers and Mashed were so desperate they simply couldn’t hold on any longer and had staged a daring escape from the confines of their box, in order to crap all over the mock oak floor of my van.

Many a happy hour was spent playing with the two new family members as they ran through the kitchen squealing, chewing the tails of our confused dogs, and repeatedly falling into the neighbouring duck pond prompting a full scale rescue operation. The stories are true, pigs cannot swim.

Anyway, a year or so went by and contrary to what the breeder told us Bangers and Mashed continued to grow at a rather alarming rate. We weren’t after a micro swine plagued with inbred health conditions to carry around in a handbag, however our kitchen garden was fast resembling the Somme and the chance of the vegetable patch surviving were slim to none. It had got to the point where had Bangers decided to go for an impromptu dip it would’ve taken more than one of us to hoist him to safety. After two years it appeared we would have to part ways after all.

I know what you’re thinking, the recipe is a piggy one, but don’t worry, we didn’t send them off to the abattoir to be strung up. What we actually did was to find a piggy sanctuary not too far away from home where the two of them could live happily ever after, and we could visit them whenever we wanted. Alas Bangers died from a heart attack shortly after he arrived (perhaps his naming pre-ordained his fate), Mashed however lives on happily, burrowing around, snuffling, and doing general piggy things.

This recipe is a celebration of our 45 million year old friends, the wonderful, lovable, and not so dirty pig. 

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

1 pork filet (loin)

16 rashers streaky bacon (2 packs)

Wholegrain mustard

8 large potatoes, Desiree or Maris Piper will do

1 head of brocolli, pulled into medium florettes 

1 leek, chopped finely

2 shallots, chopped finely

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of runny honey

2 tspns English mustard

200g chestnut mushrooms, finely sliced

100g butter

1 tablespoon plain flour

400ml vegetable stock 

150ml dry vermouth

Olive Oil

1 egg

50ml double cream

Salt and Pepper

Asparagus to garnish (in season in spring, mine tasted bland)

Method: 

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees centigrade.

1. Lay out the streaky bacon on the work surface slightly overlapping each piece, pat the pork filet dry on kitchen towel and position it in the middle of the bacon. Smother it in wholegrain mustard then wrap the bacon around the filet, place it on a baking tray and put it at the bottom of the oven, cook for 40 minutes. The pork can turn dry if you over cook it so be careful not to overdo it, you want the bacon to be going a little bit crispy on top.

2. Whilst the pork is cooking peel and chop the potatoes into halves, put in a large saucepan with cold water and a pinch of salt. Bring to the boil and cook for 15 minutes until soft, drain in a colander.

3. At the same time as the potatoes are boiling boil the brocolli till soft, strain and set aside. 

4. In a frying pan add a little butter and oil and fry off the leeks until they are soft but not browning, then add a small slug of red wine vinegar and cook it off, take off the heat and set aside. 

5. Mash the potatoes with the double cream, 50g of butter, the egg and lots of seasoning. The heat from the potatoes will cook the raw egg and it will give the mash a great taste and colour.

Now add the leeks, honey, brocolli and English mustard and stir thoroughly until it's all mixed through, this will give you the super smash you want and need.

6. For the sauce melt 50g of butter in a saucepan and add the flour to it, this will become instantly thick and lumpy. Add the stock to it a bit at a time a stir it in, as it absorbs it and becomes thick again you want to continue adding until you reach the right consistency; like double cream. When this happens add the vermouth, mushrooms and shallots, add a little seasoning and simmer until the pork is done. About 20/25 minutes, this will ensure the shrooms and shallots are soft and flavoursome. 

7. When it's all ready dish up the super smash, dump the pork wrapped in bacon on top, surround it  with a pool of the sauce and sling on a couple of steamed asparagus tips (when in season), and you're ready to go. 

Bread Making and Baking

“Give us this day, our daily bread” – A line we are all familiar with I imagine, perhaps because we had to recite it in assembly every morning for the first ten years of our education, and then in the school chapel thereafter for those of you who attended an institution where either nuns were in charge, or the figures in loco parentis dictated you had to spend the first hour of your day murmuring betwixt the buttresses.

Of course we cannot forget Sir Cliff Richard’s uplifting rendition of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, which as it was a couple of thousand years out of copyright he decided to rename ‘The Millennium Prayer’ and sang, no, wafted out on Top of the Pops, twice, over a score of predictable orchestral monotony backed up by a gospel choir almost as ethnically diverse as the “save the world” video montage projected behind.

I’m not a cynic; I just don’t like the song and don’t trust someone that doesn’t age at the regular rate. When I was fifteen my mother bought me a Cliff calendar for Christmas, within were various photos of the knight himself be-straddling Harley Davidson motorbikes draped in the Stars and Stripes, most probably taken in his garden in Surrey for a generation of over 70s to swoon over. All credit to the guy, over five decades in the business means his original songs are falling out of copyright, he needs to get his royalties somewhere and if that means shooting a faux-American Gregorian time keeper on his driveway then so be it. Fortunately for me however it has not become an annual tradition in my house, I will hold onto it though, who knows, when Cliff finally pops his clogs in 2090 it may be worth something.

SO, our daily bread, and it is daily. Take sandwiches for instance, far too often we focus on the filling and forget the walls when really they are what locks everything together. A bowl of soup is just baby food without a crusty buttered roll; and toast, what would toast be without bread? Air, that’s what.

Last week I watched the ‘Great British Food Revival’ with Michel Roux Jr, as he implored us to stop buying processed supermarket bread and have a go at baking our own. I was implored, along with my mother, so we went to the local bakers and ordered some fresh yeast having already experimented with the ‘dried active yeast’ they sell at Tesco, which is crap incidentally. It turns out that you need very little yeast to make a loaf of bread, but can only order relatively large amounts from the bakers. Hence a large proportion of yesterday and this week was and will be spent kneading, folding, crumbling, dusting and of course eating - the result pictured is my attempt at Michel’s ‘sweet sandwich loaf’ flavoured with Golden Syrup. A few weeks ago I was loitering around the offices of Eat Me Magazine in east London and was lucky enough to shake hands with the man himself post interview, I’d like to think some of his magic has passed onto me, like Voldemort and Harry, without all the evilness and parcel tongue.

The bread tasted fantastic still warm and smeared in a healthy dollop of salted English butter, give the recipe a go at -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sandwich_bread_loaf_93879

Butter Chicken

I was saddened yet unsurprised to hear that a friend of mine came face to fist this weekend past, as a group of heathen youths stripped him of his mobile phone whilst he entered a night club in Brixton. “Unsurprised” not because he is an easy target or an arsehole, he has his moments, but after watching Britain’s finest making off through the window of ‘Hatworld’ this August carrying, well, hats; I’d say he got off relatively lightly compared to some of the people affected by the mass rioting. Who knows, if he’s lucky his unsavoury assailants may upload a poorly planned viral and lead the fuzz straight to their door. But I doubt it.

My weekend didn’t pass without incident either you’ll be pleased to hear. As I sat on the central line from Ealing Broadway in my very own carriage, a drunken Indian man boarded at North Acton and sat opposite me, at once engaging me in slurred and uninvited conversation which I tried my very hardest to deflect. The solitude which I had walked so far down the platform for had come back to bite me in the behind, hypothetically speaking of course. Or so I thought.

Having originally sat opposite me for his first few questions, the answers to which were: “No, I’m not married”, “Yes, I do have a girlfriend”, and “No, I do not want a sip of your beer”, he moved over and sat beside me, placed his hand on the small of my back and asked for “just one kiss”. As you can imagine my answer was a resounding “NO”, at least, it would have been had I not first jumped up and threatened to knock his fucking lights out if he didn’t get off at the next stop. The portly fellow who had since boarded at the other end of the carriage remained silent, a few more stops down the line and I moved to the next carriage feeling dirty and used, the ambience had been affected.

By the time I reached Old Street I was in reasonable spirits and ready to divulge my experience to my friends, I left the station with the spring back in my step and came across ‘young professional’ who was giving his phone a whack on the metal railing outside. I misread his facial expression and made a jovial remark in passing and was met with at least four fingers and a barrage of abuse laced with pure hatred.

They say that bad things happen in threes, so far I had been both sexually and verbally abused, my guard was up.

Strike three came at around 1am when after disembarking the tube with a friend I had bumped into to go to a party that didn’t exist, Natwest decided once again to cancel my card, something I wasn’t banking on. The tubes were shut and I had not a penny to my name, the ensuing phone call to my to my sleeping girlfriend and her piggy bank were received surprisingly well and I managed to make it home for £30 of her money.

I would like to dedicate this dish to Lachie, who took one on the chin for the rest of us. To my girlfriend, for having cash and patience. To the people at ‘Hatworld’, just because. And finally, to myself, for being felt up and talking about it.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

5 chicken breasts cut into 2” chunks

1 large red onion, very finely sliced

2 cans chopped tomatoes

2 large cloves garlic, crushed into paste

2cm fresh root ginger, crushed into paste

½ cup of water

40g salted butter

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tspn cumin seeds

1 tspn medium chilli powder

1 tspn cinnamon powder

1 tspn turmeric powder

1 tspn dried fenugreek leaves

1 tspn of curry leaves

2 tspns garam masala

4 green cardamoms, crushed

2 black cardamoms, crushed

1 bay leaf

Salt

Rice to serve

Method:

1. Poach the chicken for 10 minutes in boiling water, or until cooked through, strain and set aside.

2. In a thick-bottomed frying pan/skillet heat the vegetable oil and fry the cumin seeds and curry leaves till brown and aromatic, add the ginger and garlic, the turmeric, chilli powder, ½ cup of water, pinch of salt and garam masala, stir over a high heat. After a minute throw in the cardamoms, cinnamon, fenugreek leaves, bay leaf and butter, melt it in and stir continuously, throw in the onions and toss to coat.

3. After a couple more minutes of stirring you should have a thick brown and seriously smelly sauce, in a good way. Now pour in the chopped tomatoes and stir thoroughly, turn down the heat and simmer for another 5 minutes so all the flavours get right into the tomato. Finally put the cooked chicken in and cover it in tastiness, simmer for another 5 minutes and serve piping hot with rice.

The Big Apple Crumble

For years I have fantasised about following the puritans, Italians, and hungry Irish over the North Atlantic in search of liberty, large portions, and more currently Amber Heard and medicinal marijuana to cure my lust and toothache respectively. So it was with gusto and anticipation that I barged onto the plane at Heathrow last week to embark on my first notable journey to the US of A (Disney World and Minneapolis don’t count in my mind, although Epcot was pretty informative and ‘The Mall of America’ is surely something to behold).

We arrived at Newark airport around lunchtime and after explaining my reasons for entering the land of opportunity to the surprisingly amiable customs official, we were on our way.

New York city is a phenomenal place, far more exciting than Old York that’s for sure, not that the Shambles are without charm and York Minster an eye sore, but ‘le grand pomme’ is truly a city that never sleeps. As ethnically diverse as London but all crammed into the relatively small Manhattan Island, the city has an energy which is truly unlike anywhere on earth, and because of its aquatic limits in the Hudson and East River’s the only way is up, and up they went. I spent a great deal of the week bumping into people as I craned my neck in a vain attempt to take everything in; The Rockefeller Centre, The Empire State, The Flatiron, the replacement building adjacent to the incredibly moving and tasteful World Trade memorial. We walked for days around the various districts, taking in NoLita, the Lower East Side, Midtown, the super trendy Meatpacking district (see Standard Hotel for ping pong and bratwurst), visited Lady Liberty and Ellis Island, and even managed to squeeze in the Flight of the Concords walking tour. New York is all you could possibly imagine and much, much more.

Now to the real reason I was there, dressed in tweed and being very English: the wedding of my girlfriends’ cousin Emmy to her fiancé David. I have only had the pleasure of attending one wedding before so have very little to compare my experience to, however I fear henceforth and forthwith I may be let down by every one I ever go to. The bar has well and truly been raised, nay, hoisted into the stratosphere by the incredible food, venue, scotch, music, people, family, wine, scotch, cocktails, setting, angels on horseback, church, scotch. I could go on, but instead I shall merely close by saying thank you very much for having me to the wonderful Maynes family, cheers Uncle Rich for the spread, and I wish all the very best to Mr and Mrs David Wardrop for the future.

U S A . U S A . U S A . U S A . U S A

P.s. I’ll see you in Cali Andy, gotta come get my meds.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

150g caster sugar

150g salted butter, room temperature, small cubes

150g plain flour

4 large cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges

1 tablespoon Demerara sugar

2 tspns ground cinnamon

Crème fraiche to serve.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 220ºC.

1. In a blender whiz the butter, flour and caster sugar so it takes on the appearance of breadcrumbs.

2. Place the apple wedges in an ovenproof pie dish, sprinkle with the Demerara sugar and cinnamon evenly. Pour the blended mixture over the top and put in the over for 35 / 40 minutes until lightly browned, serve with crème fraiche.

Crab, Cockle and Mussel Bruschetta with Grilled Mangalica Sausage, Roasted Sweet Soy Tomatoes and a Watercress and Samphire Salad

There were very few lessons that I actually looked forward to at school, being forced to sit through Latin for instance was torturous, whilst surviving a Deutsch double was an achievement paramount to completing a marathon, or swimming the channel. Getting through a Chemistry lesson without event was almost unthinkable, and to that end it rarely actually happened; I recall our teacher (a goth by weekend who re-enacted medieval battles) shouting at my neighbour and close friend Tom. Tom’s answer was to simply stand on his chair and shout back incoherently to cancel out the original directive. Another popular party trick was that of my friend Sam, a Ghanaian of descent and endowed accordingly, who would wait for a quiet moment and thwack the aptly named “Mr Stretchy” against the desk to emanate the sound of a door knocking. Sure enough teach would open the portal to supposed learning to find an empty corridor in front of him and a class of sniggering juveniles behind.

Yours truly wasn’t entirely exempt from the cantankery, and I can assure you that sitting in the second master’s office trying to explain why you mounted a desk, brushed aside a Bunsen and began making vigorous pumping movements with a giant glass gas syringe, is no mean feat. In hindsight I feel rather sorry for the weekly ordeal we inflicted on our professor, trying to explain that to a room of baying fourteen year olds however would be null and void.

I digress. The point which I am trying to make is that the reason we covered so many subjects, which I know now, is so that we are able to home in on things that firstly we are good at, and secondly, and more importantly in my opinion, that we enjoy. Eleven years later and I am still trying to throw myself into new experiences to perhaps find something I will excel at, and if not then just another thing I can tick of my life list.

So it was with intrepidation that I attended the first addition of ‘Supper in a Pear Tree’ hosted by the Partridge sisters; Annabel and Charlotte, in the beautiful studio they work from in Lavender Hill. The evening began with an hour’s lesson in life drawing taught by Charlotte, a fantastic artist and sculptor, followed by a delicious meal cooked by Annabel, who works as sous chef at the Michelin starred ‘Petersham Nurseries’ where I was lucky enough to do a week’s intense work experience. The food was delicious; veal and pork meatballs on polenta in a tomato sauce, along with some delicious fine beans tossed in the signature lemon, olive oil and Tipico cheese that is the staple of the Petersham kitchen.

The evening on the whole was a great success and I imagine will go from strength to strength with the next two months fully booked already, it conspires however that I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, I just about managed to get the gender of my figure right after an hour of scribbling and covering myself in charcoal. Hey ho, another vocation expunged from my depleting list of career opportunities.

To vaguely bring it back to the meal below, this is a not too distant variant on a recipe I made at Petersham that involved Dorset Crab, chorizo and radicchio.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

Small pot of cooked mussel meat from the deli counter, 20 mussels approx.

Small pot of cooked cockle meat from the deli counter, 20 cockles approx.

Crab meat from 2 small crabs

2 Hungarian Mangalica sausages

3 tablespoons of mayonnaise

Juice of ½ a lemon

Zest of ½ a lemon, leave a little for garnishing

Small handful of fresh chives, finely chopped, save some for garnishing

Chilli oil

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and Pepper

1 pack fresh samphire

1 pack watercress salad

1 clove garlic, crushed and finely chopped

Small knob of salted butter

12 cherry tomatoes

2 tspns of white sugar

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

4 slices of fresh brown bread, buy an unsliced Vienna shaped loaf

You’ll need a griddle pan and a frying pan for this one.

Method:

1. Put some tin foil on a baking tray, pierce the cherry tomatoes with a knife to get their juices flowing, sprinkle with the sugar and soy and roast in the top half of the oven for 10 minutes.

2. Pull the skin of the sausages and cut them down the middle lengthways.

3. In a bowl mix the mayonnaise with the lemon juice, zest, chives, a small slug of extra virgin olive oil and the chives, mix together thoroughly with a little seasoning. Add the crab, cockles and mussels to the bowl and stir in well. Set aside. (You can cook the mussels, cockles and crab from scratch, I didn’t because I hadn’t the time).

4. Heat the griddle pan over a medium / high heat and grill the sausages on either side, don’t worry about putting any oil in as the sausages will release their own when they begin to cook. When they are grilled on both sides take them off and keep warm. In the same pan pour in a slug of olive oil and grill the bread on both sides until slightly browned.

5. Whilst the sausages and bread are cooking melt the butter in a frying pan, add the garlic and samphire and fry for 3 minutes over a medium heat. Take off and toss into the watercress with a little more olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice.

6. To plate up whack a piece of bruschetta on the plate and drizzle a little chilli oil on it, add a spoon or two of the seafood mix and sprinkle a little lemon zest and chives on top. Dump a handful of the salad on the plate and half a grilled sausage, a few tomatoes around and about and you’re ready to go.

Spicy Chapatti Flour Chicken Goujons with Sweet Potato Pakora in an Indian Red Pepper Salsa

It was a scary weekend for several reasons; on Saturday I endured a full seven hours of relentless children’s games in the kids chain of Ralph Lauren on New Bond Street, I hasten to add that I am gainfully employed by a legitimate company to do so and wasn’t simply hanging around. Usually the parties only last two hours and leave you bordering delirium through onset of fatigue, so you can imagine that keeping a hoard of six year olds on a sugar rush engaged and enthused from midday to soirée was somewhat draining. I left at 7pm half the man I was earlier on in the day, my head battered and bruised from a game of “catch the big smelly rat” (me) that turned violent, my wrist nigh on fractured having executed an imperfect “worm”, and my face painted like an evil skeleton for the second time that day having lost the first coat in a round of unsuccessful apple bobbing. I needed a drink.

Picking up a bottle of Vodka en route to a friends I became hot and flustered, this meant disrobing on the tube to a point of public acceptability whilst preventing my face paint from sweating off, I managed this with some dignity and made it to my destination visage intact. That particular bit wasn’t scary, just a contextual precursor as to the geography of the developing yarn, what happened next though was frankly spine chilling. My girlfriend came over to talk to me as I was sifting through music on itunes and completely by accident knocked a glass of the host’s lethal and sticky “Booger” punch all over the host’s laptop, and we’re not talking a £300 colourful little Dell, oh no, it was a brand spanking new 17” Macbook Pro specced up to the nines worth in excess of £2000. It turned itself off. Gulp.

I did some online trouble shooting and learnt that spillages are not covered by the Apple warranty, and not only that but there is no way you can feign ignorance or bend the truth of circumstance, as of 2008 Macpro laptops are all fitted with liquid strips below the keyboard that change colour as soon as they come into contact with said substances. Financially this could quite possibly be disaster falling halfway between Greece and Enron, fingers crossed.

The 305^th day of the Gregorian calendar chilled the marrow in my bones further still, as I embarked on a journey to darkest Gloucestershire to conduct another two hour stint of juvenile revelry at the back end of beyond. The party was actually a huge success, the bulk of which I owe to my valiant cohort Tamara and her un-quashable enthusiasm. It was the following trip to Cirencester’s Royal Agricultural College to visit my fresher little sister (see lemon posset and pana cotta) that really sealed the weekends infamy with a big, sloppy, sambuca flavoured kiss. Tunnel vision.

You may fail to see where I am going with this, and to be quite honest so am I, my only logic then is to say that I have been hanging out of my arse all day and desperately needed some comfort food after the two and a half hour journey home. This is what conspired.

Ingredients: (Serves 2)

For the chicken:

2 chicken breasts, cut into strips lengthways

1 bowl breadcrumbs

6 heaped tablespoons of chapatti flour

Semi skimmed milk

3 tspns hot chilli powder

Salt and pepper

1 litre of rapeseed oil for deep frying

For the red pepper salsa:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon chilli oil

1 large red pepper, chopped

1 large onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, crushed

3 tomatoes, chopped

2cm root ginger, peeled and chopped

2 tablespoons of tomato purée

6 curry leaves

1 tspn ground mace

3 tspns medium chilli powder

1 litre of water

For the sweet potato pakora:

1 sweet potato, peeled and grated

1 flat tablespoon of corn flour

1 flat tablespoon of plain flour

3 tspns garam masala powder

A slug of semi skimmed milk

Enough rapeseed oil for shallow frying

Chopped spring onions and cherry tomatoes for garnishing

Handful freshly chopped coriander leaves

Method:

1. Start with the red pepper salsa – heat the olive and chilli oil in a pan and add the onion, pepper and tomato and fry for 5 minutes until softened but not browned. Add the garlic, ginger and tomato purée and stir through for a couple of minutes. Now add the mace, chilli powder and curry leaves, along with the water. Simmer uncovered for 15 – 20 minutes over a low/medium heat, stirring occasionally. Take it off the heat and blend it into a smooth salsa, season to taste and keep warm.

2. Whilst the salsa is simmering mix the grated sweet potato in a bowl with the corn flour, plain flour, garam masala powder, and enough milk to make the mixture sloppy but NOT gooey like dough. Do this by adding a little bit at first and then add more, if the mixture is too thick it will turn out like bread and if it’s too thin it wont hold. Heat 2cm of rapeseed oil in a thick bottomed frying pan till it is very hot (test with a breadcrumb), then add small patties of the mix carefully to the pan. They may feel like they’ll fall apart in your hands but as soon as they hit the oil they will hold. Fry and turn until crispy and brown, remove and drain on kitchen towel, keep warm.

3. Heat 1 litre of rapeseed oil in a deep saucepan until very hot. Whilst the oil heats up mix the flour in a bowl with enough milk to give it the consistency of double cream, then add the chilli powder and mix through. Bring the batter mix and the breadcrumbs up to the cooker and set up a production line, we’re going Henry Ford. Batter – Breadcrumbs – Oil – Draining Plate. Dunk the chicken strips in the batter, coat with breadcrumbs, carefully drop into the oil and deep fry for a few minutes until golden brown and crispy, remove and drain on the plate. When you are done take the oil off the heat, put a lid on it and leave it cool overnight, you can then pick out any bits and return it to the bottle to re-use a couple of times.

4. Mix the salsa in a bowl with the pakora and the chopped coriander and plate up, place the spicy chicken goujons on top and drop some chopped spring onions and cherry tomatoes over the top. Warm and filling.

Pearl Barley Pumpkin Risotto

Halloween isn’t one of the more popular calendar events in my house, it falls somewhere between Guy Fawkes night (5/11) and United Nations day, today, my birthday, which I unfortunately share with Manchester United’s primate striker Wayne Rooney. Who, incidentally, shouldn’t be paid quarter of a million pounds a week for kicking a ball into the back of a net, something he failed to do on Saturday during the battering that Man United took from City. This is rhetoric and not open to discussion.

Trick or treating for instance is one element that hasn’t caught on at home, not that we are scrooge like by any means, but the children who have rung our doorbell in the past demanding sweets are the same little shits that for the rest of the year deface the horse chestnut tree on our driveway and hurl eggs at the wall of our house, so for them to march up to the front door demanding Haribo in lieu of a devious trick is a little presumptuous. I would also add that these children appear to get older each year, a line needs to be drawn at some point and I suggest when Darren who works behind the bar at the Rose and Crown turns up in a wizard’s outfit to claim his Starmix, it’s probably time to draw it.

I will speak up for the Pagan date however and say that it is a wonderful excuse do dress like an idiot and get shit faced - at Uni I painted my body white before squeezing myself into a pair of horrendously tight skinny jeans, dying my hair black, donning a trilby and strapping a giant syringe to my arm to head out as the train wreck front man of the Libertines, P Dock. Only last year I visited a local pub dressed in fish net suspenders, eight inch platform boots, a tank top, a US sports jacket belonging to a Drum Major called Jill who attended Providence Rhode Island some time in the mid 80s, and a pair of Muay Thai shorts that proved less than insulating in the near freezing conditions. The night ended with me trying to carry my youngest sister to the car as she vomited all over ‘Jill’s’ white leather sleeves, which in a pair of heeled platform boots was challenging to say the least. A good night then.

Of the positives and negatives that Halloween brings, the best and most fun of all has to be carving spooky faces into pumpkins. Like chocolate eggs at Easter the pumpkin really is the highlight of my 31^st, so here is a recipe that’s a little bit different to use up your surplus flesh this weekend. Mwahahahahahaaaaaa!

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

240g pearl barley

2 large handfuls of cubed pumpkin flesh

1 handful of fine French beans, top and tailed, steamed

1 white onion, finely chopped

70 grams of parmesan, finely grated, a few shavings to garnish

1 tspn thyme leaves, four sprigs for garnishing

1 tablespoon of rosemary

2 large cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of 1 lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

Butter

1.5 litres of vegetable stock

1 glass of dry white wine

Method:

1. Put the Barley in a pyrex bowl and soak in boiling water for 10 minutes to let it soften, drain and set aside.

2. Steam the fine beans for 6 – 8 minutes, set aside.

3. In a deep thick bottomed frying pan melt the butter and a couple of slugs of olive oil, chuck in the onions, garlic and pumpkin and fry over a medium/high heat until softened but not browned. Add the pearl barley and stir through, then pour in the white wine and burn off the alcohol till the liquid reduces by more than half. Add the lemon juice and zest along with the thyme leaves and rosemary and stir. Now add the stock a bit at a time, continuously stirring over a medium heat, as the barley absorbs the stock add more.

4. It should take between 10 and 15 minutes for the barley to soak up all the stock, it will be quite sloppy by this point and would have doubled in amount. Chuck in the fine beans and stir them in, then add the finely grated parmesan and mix it through.

5. Serve in large bowls with a handful of peppered rocket, a sprig of thyme, some parmesan shavings and a drizzle of olive oil. Scarily tasty.