Lemony Quinoa with Shiitake, Chicken & Coriander

They say that much like there’s a book in everyone, there’s a marathon in everyone. Well I’m not at all sure who ‘they’ are, but ‘they’ omit a major sub-clause: that many books and marathons should stay firmly put.

Our friend James is running the London marathon this year. The thing that most surprises us about this is the fact that it will be his first. Seriously, he is ALWAYS on a run. Another surprising development is that he has asked us for some advice – not with the running element you understand, but the nutritional one:

What to eat on marathon eve?

Of course, this required extensive expert research so I embarked on my Googling post-haste. Results? NO to anything too heavy, nothing wildly experimental, spicy or likely to make you vom (shellfish etc). It’s too late for carb-loading (exactly what it says on the tin) which you should have been doing for the last few days, so perhaps not too much of that simple starchy stuff. YES to lean protein, complex carbs and vegetables: light but filling. Presumably too, I thought from my now-expert perch, not a dish that would take an age to knock up for someone preoccupied with zenlike mental preparation, with laying out the double-layered anti-blister running socks, the lime-green Lycra number that wicks away sweat - or the novelty giant hand costume.

Gah! It all sounded so worthy and boring, I was stumped…

I turned away from the computer and sought solace in the cookbook library. After an extensive peruse I lighted upon this wonderful dish, from the gorgeous Around the World in 80 Dishes by the multitalented photographer David Loftus (How he had time to compile his own BOOK as well as everything else he manages I don’t know, but we are pleased that he did). If Phileas Fogg had eaten this well, it would have taken him a lot longer to get home.

This recipe has totally cured me of my mistrust of quinoa (something I also thought sounded worthy and boring). It is easy to put together (once you’ve done some dry toasting of sesame seeds and quinoa), it’s balanced, fresh and delicious. It hails from California and you can almost feel the golden sunshine as you eat it (plus, Californians are COOL). The BSG and I had it for a very happy supper (he was on a marathon cook-up for his recuperating sister) last week, and again this week, subbing the chicken out for crisp-skinned baked salmon.

Try it Jimbo – it should keep you light on your feet. And if you don’t manage it in under 3 hours, don’t go blaming me – it’s a silly idea anyway.

Mr Loftus’s friend Domenica Catelli, whose recipe this is, says that it feeds 6 skinny Californians.
Divide by two to sate two greedy Londoners (with some for lunch)
….or one worthy marathon runner.

Lemony Quinoa with Shiitake, Chicken & Coriander

350g quinoa
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
110g shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 organic chicken breasts cut into ¼ inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 litre vegetable stock
2 medium courgettes cut into ¼ inch pieces
Juice of 2 lemons
3 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
Small bunch fresh coriander
Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle

Toast the quinoa in a dry pan, then rinse it under running water and drain (I would also toast the seame seeds now if you need to and keep them to one side).
Heat the oil in a medium pan, then add the onions and garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the shitake mushrooms and cook for a few minutes more.
Add the quinoa and the chicken, season with salt and pepper and add the stock. Bring to the boil, cover the pan, then reduce the heat to low and cook for 15 minutes, until the ingredients are well combined and the chicken is cooked through.
Remove the lid, and add the courgettes , lemon juice, sesame seeds and three quarters if the coriander. Turn off the heat underneath the pan, replace the lid on top and leave for 2 minutes more.
Finish with the remaining coriander and a drizzle of good olive oil, and season with salt and pepper.

TIP: toasting the quinoa in a dry pan brings more depth to the flavour

Packing for the beach: sand-proof picnic

Ah, the seaside. Sweeping views, breezes, sandcastles and picnics. You sit back, the sun on your face and the wind in your hair and let the fresh air permeate. Now time for lunch, you unwrap your carefully made sandwich (make sure it’s yours though, with the special mark you made – you don’t want the dry-looking one), bite into the soft roll and get the unmistakeable grind of sand between your teeth. How the devil did that get in there? Split seconds from cling-film to mouth - unbelievable!

It may be fun for building with and burying people in, but when it comes to food, sand is an evil grain with many cunning plans. If your chosen bite falls to the ground with a thuck, you can forget it; it is irretrievable (except maybe if you’re a dog, but I know some fussy dogs). No, for a worry-free shore-side lunch, you need to come up with food that exposes as little of itself as possible to this elements, but remains as exciting and varied as picnic food can be.

I think we may have found a solution.

 

Last Saturday was scorchio, so a secret seven hit our local beach at Brancaster. The unfathomable Brit beach-going rule that ‘the nearer the car park and toilets the better’* meant that we had a huge stretch of it pretty much to ourselves. Not ones to miss a picnic opportunity like this, we took some sandwiches - two, actually. And they were HUGE. We hadn’t so much made these as packed them: two loaf suitcases rammed with flavoursome delights, one all hunter-gatherer and the other perhaps a bit more metrosexual (well, it has more veg in it). Both were free from the mountain of cling-film hell and the guesswork that accompanies so many beach outings. In the battle against the sand invasion, these brutes are all the food you’ll need, I promise. They’re neat, they’re fun to make and a bit like cake, sharing one makes you feel you’re all at a party (there’s also something rather grown-up about bringing a chopping board to a picnic…)

The first, manlier of the two (but refined – like Tom Ford) was the Shooter’s Sandwich, which G had read about courtesy of Tim Hayward on the Guardian food blog earlier this year. Over came the link and down went the gauntlet. This comprised well-seasoned steaks cooked medium-rare, whipped straight out of the hot pan and laid into a hollowed-out long loaf, lined with mustard and/or horseradish and smothered in a savoury, duxelles-type thing. Once the mustard-slathered bread lid is replaced, the whole thing is wrapped in greaseproof paper and string, weighed down with books/saucepans of water/chopping boards and left in a cool place (you’d be amazed how much debate surrounded this particular stage at one in the morning – GCSE Physics, was it? Everyone was an expert.) After an uncomfortable night under the press, the precious package was richly squished with savoury juices and ready to be transported, carved and consumed. Minimum fuss: maximum excitement.

As we did it in a wine-fuelled frenzy in the wee hours I have no photos of the process, but here’s the ‘after’.

I more than made up for it the next morning when we started on the second sanger, based on a New Orleans invention, the Muffuletta. It is a picnic in a sandwich.

This involved a sundried tomato and olive mush made in the food processor with which we lined our hollow loaf, partnered with liberal glugs of green olive oil.

Then alternating layers of Parma ham, salami, Taleggio cheese and roasted red peppers were carefully added.

If I were to be really picky, it perhaps could have done with some more green in the form of avocados – but these would have quickly turned brown so perhaps courgettes and basil instead – I confess that I am prone to over-packing. Nevertheless, that’s the beauty of it: anything goes. To be honest, it would have benefited from the overnight torture the Shooter’s Sandwich had received, being a bit drier and less yielding (perhaps more olive oil required?) Who knows, but it was delicious, fun to build and sand-free. I am very much looking forward to experimenting with the next one.

*Two miles of wide, dune-backed beach and the 50 metres around the entrance is a labyrinth of windbreakers, killer stunt-kites** and orange Crocs.

**Having seen it with my own eyes, it is perfectly possible (probable) that such a stunt kite when badly driven is capable of grounding and swallowing a hefty teenage boy – especially when said bad driver is their dad. It is also absolutely hilarious; just ask his mother.

A Moveable Feast

We had sped across the flat countryside, the black throat of the tunnel fast receding, the drizzle we smugly thought we’d left at home catching up with us. As G had put it, this part of Northern France, arguably good for tank warfare, was perhaps less successful in terms of window-gazing. No matter, our minds were already feet-up, drinking and watching the world in a Paris bar. Somewhat prematurely, I had sung the praises of the new high-speed rail link to the BSG, telling him how astounded he’d be at the shorter journey. However, two coffees, a KitKat and several murderous glances at the chatterbox across the aisle later, after almost an hour’s delay, we were stopped a matter of 100 befuddling metres from our platform. Needless to say, we were parched.

The Paris we arrived in was humid and grey, the closeness of the impending storm mirroring our excitement at the weekend ahead. We were here for the wedding of a very elegant and sophisticated friend of ours, so of course I had vastly over-packed with outfits for every eventuality. Luckily, we were staying in Rosie’s sister Kate’s beautiful apartment only a stones’ throw from the Gare du Nord, and it was high time for an aperitif, so we got to her local bar and ordered some drinks, just in time to miss the opening of the heavens. Kate wasn’t so lucky, but still managed to turn up for her pre-ordered Viognier looking the kind of rainswept chic only a Paris-dweller can carry off.Then on to supper at Chez l’Ami Jean, a bastion of Basque cuisine in the heart of the 7^th arrondissement. Sparkly new sister-in-law Rosie had told of the wonders produced within, so we were excited (un grand understatement) at the prospect. Charging through the downpour from taxi to door we were met by a flood of welcoming light and noise, kissed by the maître’d, and presented with boards invisible under delicate petals of saucisson sec and chorizo – now that’s what I call a welcome. There was only one thing for it: a generous glass of buttery champagne to kick off the weekend.

Furnished with these goodies, it was an absolute pleasure to wait at the tiny wooden bar, the place was rammed but nonetheless ran with clockwork precision. From the tiny and fully exposed kitchen, surrounded by copper pans of all shapes and sizes (not a microwave in sight), the chef Stephane Jego skipped about in his headband, quick on his toes like a prize fighter, insisting upon and attaining perfection in every dish that left the kitchen. There were some re-calls and reprimands for dishes that had eluded his eagle eye, and boy, did you hear them – the temper was as fiery as the busy stovetops.

The menu read like an inventory of the autumn countryside: game birds of every kind, chestnuts, mushrooms, root vegetables, and beautiful creatures plucked from the sea. Keen to try as much as possible, the seven of us opted for the tasting menu, a palette predominantly of burnt siennas and umbers, punctuated with the odd shot of electric green, not in leafy vegetal form (you don’t see many of those on Paris plates), but in the surprising yet hugely flavoursome granny smith sorbet served with our hare stew. A lifelong Marmite lover, I was in heaven, the stocks employed were rich and intense reductions, the jelly lacing my delicate pork and foie gras terrine the essence of the purest mushroom, the soup we started with transported me straight to the forest floor. Like a contented truffle pig foraging amongst the leaf-litter, I am sure my nose didn’t come out of the bowl, though I would like to hope I lent a touch more elegance to the process…

The atmosphere in this tiny buzzing place was one of camaraderie, everyone eager to see what others had chosen, and to hear it being vociferously enjoyed. It was the perfect place for a group of friends to be, just like having supper at a friend’s house, the eponymous Jean, for example. The pudding was in fact a trio of puddings, which followed the cheese course; yup - there was cheese too. This was Act 5, the denouement , and we weren’t sure we had anything left to give. That changed, however, when we tried the riz au lait. Yes, the minty chocolate thing and the pear tatin were all very well (read absolutely delicious), but there was something about this rice pudding that made you want to eat it for the rest of your life, even though you were already full. The rice was plump and silky, enrobed in unctuous cream swirled with constellations of tiny vanilla seeds. It was so enticing that I took one look at the wooden serving spoon and wondered if anyone would mind if I used that instead of my rather mean-looking spoon. As we all fell silent at this miraculous finale of cream and rice, our French friends on the table behind became more and more animated, excited at the prospect that we rosbifs were sharing in their adulation of this humble-sounding yet utterly celestial pudding. I will be back for many reasons, but mostly to taste this again. Joyous.

The following morning, after a breakfast (what fast, exactly?) of boiled eggs fresh from a farm in Emmanuel’s parents’ village, with copious amounts of torn baguette and yellow Normandy butter (ok, a bit of pain au chocolat too – this was France), we headed out for an amble up the hill towards Montmartre, to breathe in a bit of this wonderful city. It seemed that everyone was out, it was the most beautiful shimmering October day, the leaves on the chestnut trees had burned bronze but not yet dropped. I found myself wishing that we had an extra day to wander. But it’s Paris; we’ll be back.

The wedding was perfect, and the beautiful bride, being a foodie herself, had made sure that we were fed and watered to the highest standard. She was exposed as a fellow bedtime-cookbook-reader by her new husband. “At least we know that there are other food nerds around”, the BSG had delightedly whispered. There are some things that you remember being good, and there are others so good that you remember the taste of them. The canapés played out like French hits; tiny tartes à l’oignon and croque-monsieurs amongst the favourites we munched on at the reception between sips of champagne, the top of the Eiffel Tower twinkling above the trees. For the main course, fillet of beef, flawlessly cooked, yielding like warm butter under the slightest touch of the knife – tremendous. The BSG is still talking about the late-night cheese board, adamant that we will go some way to a reverent nod at it for our wedding next May….on a vraiment jeté le gant.

 

Ps: We dined at the old Arsenal Stadium on Thursday – a shrine for the BSG and many other nutcases devoted to the game of two halves, now converted into some very sleek flats. It was really rather impressive, but the Spanish-themed banquet that awaited us eclipsed even this wrapping; a lovingly made tortilla with asparagus, padron peppers (I got 3 hot ones in a row – a tastebud-searing record,) chorizo and manchego were just a few of the wonders on offer. I think it’s got to be Barcelona next for the BSG….

A time to gather

I know this blog primarily centres on taste but, in terms of memories and associations, smells are equally evocative, if not more so. How appropriate that wood smoke, a breath of it lacing the evening mist as we arrived in Norfolk on Friday, is for me a comforting scent of home. It transports me to countless afternoons spent clearing (ragging about in) woods as children, building huge bonfires with Dad and Grandpa and watching them crackle. Then if we were very lucky we’d wave a marshmallow on a stick at the embers until the doughy white skin blistered brown and started to ooze. This was usually the stage at which we lost them to the fire, making the eating all the more pleasurable.

Despite recent Indian Summer-like days, those damp mushroomy notes of autumn have returned to the countryside; the perfect accompaniment to the spike of smoke, pricking our nostrils and calling to our olfactory gear just as the springtime called Mr. Mole out of his burrow in The Wind in the Willows. It makes you want to wrap up and get outside for walks, to light the fire and be cosy. On Friday we ate at our warm and welcoming local pub, The Dabbling Duck, which was celebrating British Food Fortnight with some very British dishes, steak and kidney puddings and crumble with custard among them. The BSG’s Lancashire Hotpot didn’t touch the sides. I plumped for fish in a golden batter, with enormous chips and minted mushy peas – it was Friday after all!

Each season brings its own welcome scents; one of the roses in the garden smells so sweet, like the most delicate cup of tea imaginable, its petal-packed heads flower twice a year. At the height of summer, the swathes of lavender under the windows exude a heady fragrance, as they heave with bees (which incidentally have a very keen sense of smell – honeybees have been trained to detect landmines), clamouring for their hit, and as the heads are warmed by the sun, by the evening it is intoxicating. However there is a power to autumn’s earthy aromas, when evidence of nature’s industry is in such abundance, and something deeper, winter, waits beneath the surface. The hedgerows heave with berries, fruits and seedpods, furnishing their occupants with storable riches before they close down for the year.

Thoughts drift to mushroom-hunting excursions amongst the leaf litter - until you realise that Nature being Nature doesn’t make any one thing that looks like the photo in the fungi book, but rather several of them. Which is it; the ‘slow agonising death on ingestion’ one or the ‘very nice with toast’? The ensuing 45 minutes is spent flicking though the book several times to make absolutely sure, then abandon the mission in favour of the more hazardous in appearance but far lower fatal-seizure-risk chestnut (nut allergy sufferers excepted). As I write this I am lunching on a velvety mushroom soup: I am sure that the very nice person who picked these enjoys the fact that their patch isn’t full of idiots keeling over every half hour, so I’d say its definitely something best left to people who know, save perhaps a couple of flat field mushrooms from a damp pasture – and you know what they grow out of…

Feeling guilty at the drifts of apples littering the garden, uneaten and neglected, the BSG and I decided to bring them back and make them into a chutney or 20. And we didn’t stop there – at his Mum’s house we took pity on some unripe green peaches and he ploughed through the cookery books until he found a pickle to include them. Our kitchen has become a job-centre for unemployed fruit. Thank goodness we take in homeless jars, too. While we were at it, why not pickle some red cabbage too? Speaking of smells, the eye-watering sting of malt vinegar is not something I miss once it’s gone…

I am not averse to the odd present, and when the BSG returned from a recent work trip he gave me a pot of gold. Wow. A proper giant’s jar of French moutarde, in a rustic-looking (read more expensive) ceramic pot - which I’ll hang on to for storing salt - it has a very pleasing sulphur colour and a sharp tang. Even luckier for me then, that the BSG served up a perfect rare steak, served on sliced beetroot slicked in horseradish and a crisp green salad to celebrate its first outing. I hear you say that horseradish AND mustard is a belt and braces approach to a steak, but I couldn’t resist.