Claudia's Lemon Posset

People say that the harder you work the greater the rewards, I beg to differ, Lemon Posset could be made by a dead person it’s that easy. Having said that my little sister did go a little overboard with her first attempt and added the juice of 6 lemons as opposed to 3, rendering the pudding terrifyingly wince inducing. This, her second attempt, was absolutely delicious.

It is delicious with shortbread which is very easy to make, I’ll do that another time, I was in a rush so I scooped it out of the ramakin and dumped a few strawberries on it. Boom.

Ingredients: (Serves whoever gets there first)

800ml double cream

175g caster sugar

Juice of 3 lemons


Strawberries

Method:

1. Pour the sugar and cream into a saucepan and bring to the boil, simmer for a minute or so and take off the heat before stirring in the lemon juice. Pour into ramekins and leave to cool to room temperature, slide them into the fridge to set for at least 3 hours or overnight. It’ll keep for a couple of days so you can make it for yourself and have it for pudding after at least five of the most important meals of the day.

Roasted Duck Red Thai Curry (Gaeng Phed Ped Yang)

In the summer of 2006 during the first of several periods of extended vagrancy, I found myself (as most of us travlaars do), sitting on a beach in the Gulf of Thailand staring out at a ludicrously beautiful seascape, which wasn’t at all tainted by the hoards of bucket wielding, same same but different sporting, “oh my god! It’s such a small world”ing gappers, intent on getting utterly mind-fucked.

You may detect an air of sarcasm, but you’d be wrong, I was one of them.

It didn’t matter whether the moon was full, as long as my bucket was, and if it wasn’t you can bet it was affixed to my belt as a triumphant accessory, next to the glow stick/s, by my man-bag.

(Incidentally it’s not a small world you morons! If we bumped into each other in Magadan maybe that turn of phrase would apply, or Reykjavik perhaps, but not Thailand. It’s like Uni, but with Magic Mushrooms and Ladyboys).

Me and my partner in crime and best friend Ed, who still retains the mantle to this day in fact, needed to line our stomachs with food before drinking Thailand’s taurine filled answer to Red Bull (which actually has bits of bovine bollock floating in it), and although Ed romanticised about experimenting with the weird and wonderful flavours of South East Asia, the furthest he ever got was a chicken schnitzel. I on the other hand dived straight in and tried all I could get my hands on, the real favourite for me were the curries, and in particular the Thai Red Curry.

It came to pass that a year later I found myself back in Thailand, a little bit older and just as stupid, still armed with my glow sticks and man-bag, but with a newly developed affinity for cooking.

I arrived in Chiang Mai in the North West of the country and set about searching for a cooking school that would teach me how to create my beloved curry – ‘The Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School’ came highly recommended so I signed up for 5 days of lessons in all things Thai. On the final day we were bussed out to the house of the school’s owner, TV celebrity chef Sompon Nabnian, where he showed us his step by step recipe for the best Roasted Duck Red Curry in the world.

I have added and subtracted a few things here and there, some I couldn’t get like the fresh kaffir lime, and others I don’t like such as the green peppercorns. The taste however is sweet, rich, spicy and divine.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

If you want to make the paste from scratch then do so, you can store the surplus for a good few weeks in the fridge.

Paste:

10 Large red chillies, deseeded, finely chopped

10 Red bird eye chillies

1 tspn coriander seeds, dry roasted for a few minutes

2 cardamom pods, dry roasted for a few minutes

½ tspn salt

½ tspb black peppercorns

2cm fresh root ginger, peeled and chopped

1 tspn fresh coriander root, chopped

3 cm of lemongrass, the lower end of the root

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

3 shallots, finely chopped

1 tspn shrimp paste

Curry:

3 duck breasts

100g red curry paste

350ml coconut milk

200ml coconut cream

4 kaffir lime leaves

1 small dark aubergine, cut into thin wedges

8 cherry tomatoes

8 white grapes
2 sticks of lemon grass, topped and tailed and cut into 3cm lengths

Small handful of sweet basil leaves

1 wheel of fresh pineapple, cut into small segments

2 large red chillies, thinly sliced into wheels

1 tablespoon fish sauce (Nam Pla)

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

1 tspn palm sugar

1 tspn white sugar

Rice for serving, this is necessary as the curry is extremely rich and really needs the cool blandness of the grain to soak up the flavours of the sauce.

Method:

Paste:

1. You can make the mix by pounding everything in a pestle and mortar - start with the coriander seeds, cardamom pods and black peppercorns, then add the rest of the ingredients and grind into a smooth paste. Alternatively you can put everything in a blender and whizz it that way, you may have to add a little water to the mix.

There are plenty of great curry pastes in the supermarket if you don’t have the time to make your own, Waitrose has a particularly good ‘Foods of the World’ section where you can find almost all of the ingredients you’ll need.

Curry:

1. Slice a few slits across the skin of the duck breasts and season them, fry them skin side down in a pan with a little oil for a few minutes so they get a little crispy, put them on a baking tray in the oven at 200°C for 15 minutes. When the time is up take the duck out and cut it into thin slices, it may be pink in the middle but this is alright as it can be eaten rare and will continue to cook in the curry later on. Set aside.

2. In a measuring jug pour 100ml of coconut milk and 150ml of coconut cream, mix together thoroughly. Pour it into a wok and simmer for 5 minutes whilst constantly stirring, the coconut oil will begin to separate out on top, this isn’t massively noticeable but it does enhance the flavour a lot. I can’t explain why, it just does.

3. Add the curry paste and stir it through, simmer for a further 2 minutes and add the remaining 250ml of coconut milk and mix it in. When it bubbles roughly tear up the kaffir lime leaves and chuck them in along with the aubergine, pineapple and cherry tomatoes, cook for 3 minutes. Now add the grapes, half of the sweet basil leaves, half of the chopped chilli wheels, the chopper lemon grass, the palm sugar, white sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce and the sliced duck. Mix it up and cook for another 4 minutes.

4. Plate up with some rice, garnish with the remaining basil leaves, chilli wheels and a drizzle of the leftover coconut cream. There are so many flavours in this curry but they all love each other, it’s a very happy dish.

Insalata Caprese

I was sat in my girlfriends kitchen flipping through the Daily Mail, the back up paper I hasten to add, and sure enough on page two there was a picture accompanying the important news that four baby red squirrels had been rescued after being blown from a tree in high winds. One of the youngens was snapped giving its sibling a peck on the cheek, precious, I thought.

There was something about global economic meltdown in a column on page 40, but sod that, the squirrels are safe!

A knock fell on the door and in came two of the neighbours, a delightful Polish couple called Alex and Ursula who had just returned from a trip to their motherland, bearing a bag of tomatoes so bulbous and ripe that they looked positively cryogenic.

“These are from my brother’s garden” Alex exclaimed, “and they are the best tasting tomatoes you will ever have”.

A serious claim, and obviously one that had to be tested and tasted. (It turns out he was right).

If yesterday’s steak has cured your haemophilia then this salad will surely purge your soul.

Ingredients: (Serves whoever gets there first)

2 large, red, delicious Polish tomatoes from Alex’s brother’s garden, roughly chopped

1 red onion, chopped into half moons

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Handful of fresh basil, chopped

1 ball of fresh buffalo mozzarella, torn into smallish chunks

Balsamic Vinegar

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Pepper

Method:

1. Mix together the tomatoes, onion and mozzarella in a serving plate. Grind a couple of turns of black pepper over the mix, sprinkle the basil over, slug around two thirds extra virgin olive oil to one third balsamic vinegar. Use quite a lot so you end up with a good centimetre or two of juice at the bottom when you’ve eaten the salad, enable this with some crusty baguette.

2. Eat it. This salad takes about two minutes to make and is one of the more deliciously fresh things on earth, more so than Vanilla Ice in his heyday.

Rump Steak with a Twin Cheese White Wine Mushroom Sauce

“Did you ever see the customers in health-food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They’re dying, of course, but they look terrific.”

The wise words of Mr Bill Cosby (still touring) and the 8oz rump sat in my cooler were invitation enough to go rich or go home, no half way point, no celebration of culinary mediocrity, the whole hog, or cow for that matter. I think that’s the great thing about eating a steak; there’s something intrinsically masculine, nay (moo) empowering about using a specially provided knife to cut into a great slab of meat, and watching the blood, that only days earlier was coursing through a methane machine somewhere in the home counties, ooze out and meander across your plate. “I am a man!” I think to myself, “And I shall eat this beast.”

Not only does red meat massively increase your libido, pulling power and general masculinity, it is also a source of zinc that is important for your immune system, iron, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and selenium, all of which produce a squeaky pop, and it has been shown that a diet based on lean red meat can aid in weight loss. So for those of you Mr Cosby is talking about, why not try, at least once a week (or perhaps on a rare occasion), to tuck into a sumptuous sirloin, a tender T-bone, a revelatory rib eye or even the phenomenal filet mignon. In terms of health, the steaks really aren’t that high.

Ingredients: (Serves 2)

2 x 8oz rump steaks

1 small glass dry white wine

8 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

150g cup mushroom, destalked, finely sliced

Handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

Sprig of thyme

150ml double cream

50g Swiss Gruyere cheese, finely grated

50g Saint Agur blue cheese, broken into bits

Butter

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. In a thick bottomed pan/skillet heat a splash of olive oil with a tspn of butter over a medium to high heat until it begins to sizzle, add the shallots and garlic and fry for a minute, then add the mushrooms and toss to coat. Pour in the wine and burn off the alcohol, the liquid should reduce by over half as the flavour is absorbed by the shallots and mushrooms, this will take a few minutes.

2. Pour in the cream and stir it through, then add the sprig of thyme and simmer for a few minutes taking care to continue stirring. The aroma from the herb will waft rather deliciously up at you. Add the cheeses and melt into the mix, the flavours will be getting pretty orgasmic by now. Mix the chopped parsley in and remove from the heat.

3. Whilst you are making the sauce prepare you beef, season both sides thoroughly with salt and pepper, depending on how you like your meat cooked you will have to make allowances for timing. I like mine rare so a minute on each side, you may want more. In a griddle pan heat a couple of slugs of olive oil over a high heat, put the steaks in and add a small knob of butter around them (doing this when they are already in stops the butter from burning), fry them to how you like them. If they spring back at you when you touch them then the meat is getting to well done, if they are still relatively soft then towards rare.

4. Plate up the steaks and cover with the sauce. Garnish with a wee sprig of un-chopped parsley and prepare to grow chest hair (careful ladies). 

Kashmiri Baingan Tikka

 I had a couple of aubergines to use up today and went in search of a recipe, first I had a quick look on the web, I found a website entirely dedicated to the ‘Solanum Melongena’ (Wikipedia) named http://www.aubergines.org/ that has “3116 recipes and counting”. Many of the recipes are questionable, some are quite good, and others are frankly disgusting, although before long I was side tract reading the heated comment wars going on about the MSG content in the ‘Aubergine in Garlic Sauce’ recipe, and in particular the sweeping and ill educated opinions of a pillock named JJ from Hoboken. Inspiration would have to be found elsewhere.

I recalled then looking through the instruction manual of a 1980s blender whilst staying with my adopted Indian mother a few months ago, there were a selection of poorly edited recipes at the back of the book which I copied down into my notepad with the hope of recreating them on my return home. One of them included the Ouef Plant as its focal point, and although I have had to change a few of the ingredients through necessity, the basic format remains integral. (I added the tamarind which may well make it less Kasmiri and more Punjabi).

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

2 large black aubergines

1 large white onion, finely chopped

1 cup green peas, fresh or frozen

1 carrot, chopped

1 bird eye chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

2 potatoes

2 medium tomatoes

Handful coriander leaves, finely chopped

Handful mint leaves, chopped

4 cloves garlic

2cm ginger, chopped

100g tamarind soaked in 100ml of warm water

Juice of 1 lime

½ tspn cumin powder

½ tspn coriander powder

½ tspn turmeric powder

1 tspn garam masala

Oil/ghee for frying

Salt and pepper

8 spring onions, finely shredded

Vegetable oil for deep-frying

Yoghurt for garnishing

1 dry red chilli

Method:

1. Soak the tamarind in enough warm water to cover for 1 hour, squeeze out juices and strain into another bowl through a sieve.

2. While the tamarind is soaking peel and the boil the potatoes, drain and mash them with a little butter.

3. Put the ginger, garlic, coriander leaves, mint leaves, tamarind juice, lime juice and salt in a blender and whizz into a paste, set aside.

4. Cut the aubergines in half lengthways and brush with olive oil before grilling them in the oven until they are soft, around 20 minutes should do it. Scoop out the flesh with a spoon and add it to the potato, mash it together and save the aubergine skins, keeping them warm.

5. Cut the hard stem section from the tomatoes, cover them with water and boil for 5 minutes over a high heat, remove, strain, and run under cold water before removing their skins.

6. In a pan heat a little oil and add the onions and carrots, fry until browning and add the paste, after a few minutes the oil will separate, add the potato and aubergine pulp and the tomatoes and stir through thoroughly, making sure the tomatoes break up in the mix. Add the peas and stir.

Then sprinkle over the cumin, turmeric, coriander and garam masala powders and mix them in. Cook for a few more minutes, set aside and keep warm.

7. In a small pan pour in a couple of inches of vegetable oil and bring it up to extra hot, drop the shredded spring onion in and deep-fry for a few minutes, drain on kitchen towl.

8. Put the aubergine shell on a plate and add a healthy spoon load of the mix, garnish with a small dollop of yoghurt, a red chilli and a sprinkling of the fried spring onion. Vegetarian stodge.

Pear, Broccoli, Celery and Stilton Crumble

The fruit trees in the garden are seriously heavy at the moment, laden with cooking apples and berries and crab apples and pears, the latter of which we have in such abundance I’m sure we could ferment a considerable amount of our own Perry, which I will look into. But in the meantime I got to thinking, when it comes to our fruit bowls at home the humble pear takes a backseat to the more exotic orange, the phallic banana, the sour grapefruit and the frankly ostentatious pineapple.

I personally would have a ripe pear over any of the above and aforementioned, however as is often the case ‘out of sight is out of mind’, and the poor pear remains all too often and unlike its name would suggest, all alone. In fact my only run in with the fruit in recent memory was in its liquid form in the belly of a psychedelic trance festival 100km south of Lake Ballaton in Hungary, it was magic.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

1 head of celery, chopped into 3cm lengths

3 pears, cored and chopped into wedges

200g sprouting broccoli, the long stemmed stuff

150g stilton cheese, crumbled

300ml single cream

100g wholemeal breadcrumbs

Salt and Pepper

Olive oil

Method:

1. Boil the celery and broccoli for 3 minutes in two separate saucepans, drain all the water off them.

2. In a reasonably shallow pie dish lay out the pear wedges and season lightly with the salt and pepper, randomly position the celery and broccoli over the top and sprinkle the over the stilton. Pour over the cream evenly and then add the bread crumbs, finish with a small drizzle of oil on the crumbs and place in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes until the tops browns.

3. Plate up and season if needs be. It is possible to thicken the sauce by using double cream, mine was a vague attempt at lowering the calories.   

Tandoori Chicken Mini Pittas

I got into a discussion with an obliging Indian lady whilst exploring the dusty yet charming mountain city of Leh, the capital of the Ladakh region in the North East of the country, about the reason for the vivid red colour of tandoori chicken masala. As it turns out it is the addition of red food colouring and not any of the ten or more ingredients that compose the marinade, therefore making it entirely possible to turn your chicken green and justify your kebab on Saint Paddy’s day for instance, or perhaps even multi coloured on United Nations day, the 24^th of October, my birthday.

As for the mini pittas, it’s always more fun eating food in miniature.

 It is possible to buy the masala powder ready made in most shops, especially useful if you are in a rush, I am not however, and once you make the powder you can store it like most other spices for at least 6 months in a cool dry place ready for your next spicy outing. Also I have found the shop bought stuff tastes near enough makes no difference like mild curry powder, it’s worth taking a little time to reap the flavours.

I like a lot of spice so you may need to adjust your version accordingly.

The chicken needs to be marinated for at least 6 hours, preferably over night.

Ingredients: (Makes 9 mini pittas)

3 chicken breasts, cut into strips

9 mini pittas

1 red pepper, sliced thinly

½ red onion, sliced into thin half moons

1 little gem lettuce, shredded

6 cloves of garlic

2 shallots, roughly chopped

2 green chillies, bird eye, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons yoghurt

4 tspns vegetable oil

Sweet chilli sauce

Salt

For the Mayo:

300ml mayonnaise

Zest of half a lime

Juice of half a lime

1cm of freshly grated ginger

1 clove garlic, crushed

For the Masala:

6 cloves

4 black cardomam pods

8 large red chillies

Method:

1. Brush the red chillies with oil and roast in the oven until dark and crispy.

2. Crush the black cardomams and dry roast along with the cloves in a frying pan for 10 minutes. When done grind down in a pestle and mortar with the roasted red chillies into a fine dry masala powder, set aside.

3. Blend the shallots, garlic and green chillies into a fine paste (wet masala).

4. In a bowl marinate the chicken in the oil, dry masala, wet masala and yoghurt, toss to coat and leave in the fridge for at least 6 hours (use food colouring here to change to whatever shade of the rainbow you feel like).

5. For the mayonnaise mix the lime zest, lime juice, garlic and ginger together in a bowl with the mayo and set aside ready for use.

6. In a griddle pan or on the BBQ if weather permits, grill the chicken until brown and charred and get ready to load up.

7. On a baking tray heat the pittas so they puff up but don’t crisp, about 3 minutes, take them out and cut them down the middle. Line the pitta with the mayo, a piece of chicken, the lettuce, peppers and onions, a dollop more mayo and a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce. Tasty and fast provided the pre-prep is done.