Kedgeree (and other breakfasts.)

I never tire of food-related fantasy games. Forget 'I Spy', how about ‘your last meal on earth’, or ‘if you had to eat one meal every meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?’ Well, that second one’s easy: breakfast.
I suppose I might’ve mentioned my inability to make a decision – or perhaps I haven’t. It drives the BSG round the bend; he is decision incarnate. But this one is easy. Breakfast is a meal where anything goes, thereby removing the choice conundrum from the proceedings. Thus, breakfast is perfect for someone like me.
As well as blurry boundaries between foodstuffs - do I plump for yoghurt, fruit or Bircher muesli, croissants or the full English? - start and end times are also a grey area, meaning that it’s quite possible to graze from waking until lunchtime. Some of my happiest and most enduring university memories are from mornings whiled away in my friend Caz’s room in halls, drinking tea and eating toast and boiled eggs, more with Marmite and perhaps just one more piece - with marmalade - until lunchtime. We may have even missed a lecture (once), waiting for the perfect runny consistency to the yolk. Nothing cements firm friendship like sharing rounds of hot-buttered toast and pots of tea.
Of course, due to obvious time constraints, weekday breakfasts are more confined to the bounds of convenience; toast and its infinite possibilities, your favourite cereal, some porridge and stewed fruit once autumn takes its crisp hold. Eggs and bacon are reserved for the week’s end - a Friday treat of a bacon and marmalade sandwich, perhaps. The BSG and I rejoice in the advent of most weekends with a proper, frothy latte from our coffee machine – smileworthy, even on the dankest of days.
Breakfast is a parade of wonders, where friends’ wacky combinations are frequently exposed; Caz, for example, likes marmalade and Marmite on her toast… My Belgian great-grandmother loved nothing more than to dip toast and Gouda into her morning coffee (white and strong, if you’re interested). I am ever so pleased she passed me this habit. Try it - delicious. My grandpa, the king of the avant-garde food combo, always ate his sausages with marmalade, the Tabasco and Gentleman’s Relish never far out of his reach.
Then you have breakfasts that are ideal for certain situations. This year has been full of weddings, and I don’t think that there’s a better way to start a wedding Saturday than with kedgeree. Protein- and carb- rich, it stops the gap that the skipped proper lunch will leave, lines the stomach for the inevitable afternoon drinking and wakes up the taste buds with hints of spice, lemon and parsley – just make sure you check your teeth for green bits before you leave. Definitely worth prepping in advance, it can sit and wait, warming through under foil in the oven whilst you get on with things. Deal with any fishy/oniony bits before washing and dressing in your finery – no one likes eau-de-cuisine.
You don’t need a wedding as an excuse to whip this up. I reckon it’d steel you for any big (or small) day. It might take the edge off a marathon spring clean, a looming hulk of admin or a trip to a blue-and-yellow hångår to buy silly-named flat-pack furniture, a Venus flytrap and other stuff you never knew you needed.
Kedgeree
Serves 4
4 eggs, almost hard boiled (prob 6 minutes will do) and peeled
680g smoked haddock fillets (or a mixture of smoked and unsmoked fish works too. Try mackerel.)
2 bay leaves
250g basmati rice
115g butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2.5 teaspoonfuls mild curry powder
Juice of half a lemon (and the other half in wedges for squeezing over)
2 good handfuls of chopped flat-leaf parsley or coriander
In a large shallow pan, heat some water (or milk) - deep enough to submerge the fish - with the bay leaves. Add the fillets, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 5-7 minutes, until the fish is cooked. Remove the fish from the pan and, when cool enough to handle, remove the skin, flake into chunks and set aside.
Cook the rice in boiling water according to pack instructions – it should be on the al-dente side. Drain the rice, refreshing briefly under a stream of hot water from the kettle. Return the steaming rice to the saucepan, covering it with a clean tea-towel and then the lid to stand for a few minutes. This is a top-quality tip from my step-mum and it ensures the fluffiest rice imaginable.
Whilst the rice is cooking, melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, then add the onions and soften them gently without colouring for five minutes or so. Add the curry powder and cook for another couple of minutes, until the kitchen is filled with aromas. Add the rice to the pan and heat gently through, carefully folding in the flaked fish and adding the lemon juice to taste. This can now stand in a pan or dish, waiting warm under foil in a low oven until you are ready to eat.
Just before serving, add the parsley or coriander, seasoning to taste with salt and pepper. Top with the eggs cut into quarters. Serve with the lemon wedges.
Twist: For some extra texture, crispy fried onion bits are often sprinkled on the top.

BSG anniversary

It’s been a year since the partnership between the BSG and his beloved Magimix was formally validated by the church of John Lewis. To celebrate this, we headed back to the scene of the festivities, to Norfolk for a long weekend. After the prolonged spell of warm dry weather the place seemed a whole season ahead of a usual May (and perhaps two ahead of what was last year’s May 8^th – 9 degrees and horizontal drizzle). The hedgerows were festooned with lacy swathes of cow parsley, gigantic fishbone leaves hung from the horse chestnuts and a sweet smell pervaded the warm breeze. True, the ground looked parched and in desperate need of rain, but I was glad to miss it this time.



To celebrate this first anniversary, our first thoughts – naturally - concerned food. This is how we express, spoil, console and refresh ourselves and the prospect of concocting a feasting menu was terrifically indulgent and exciting. Yes, even more so than a roll-top bath and hot and cold running room-service in a sandy-bricked village in the Cotswolds…

Given the weather, how could we not visit Cookie’s Crab Shop? It was packed full of happy seasiders in their pack-a-macs. (NB: if you are shellfish-averse, tell someone before ordering the Royal Salad – the BSG spent half his lunch carefully halving his lunch, ending up with a mountain of smoked mackerel and rollmops opposite my crab and crayfish monolith.)

Impossible as it was to imagine ever eating again after such a feast, we managed an Italian beef stew, melting over some polenta laced with Fontina (thank you Antonio Carluccio), followed by something rather exciting we’d stumbled across in an abandoned Olive magazine (thank you Rosie’s mum): Pimm’s jelly. This one’s definitely for grown-ups, and will prove a winner for pudding at any barbeque. Furthermore, as if this wasn’t fun enough – it was still fizzy.

Pimm’s, lemon and mint jelly

(It doesn’t matter if you use sachets or leaves in this recipe – the below is leaves but I used a sachet of powder – whichever you can find. If it makes a pint rather than a litre, split the ratios accordingly, 7 lemonade: 2 Pimm’s: 1 water.)

10 gelatine leaves
Small bunch mint leaves
200ml Pimm's
700ml sparkling lemonade
Chopped cucumber , strawberries, orange and lemon slices, to serve

Soak the gelatine in a bowl of cold water. Heat 100ml water in a pan, drop in the mint leaves and leave to infuse for 5 minutes. Take out the leaves, reheat, then stir in the gelatine until dissolved. Add the Pimm's and lemonade and cool. Skim off any remaining foam. Pour into a 1-litre jelly mould and chill overnight until set.

Turn out onto a plate and surround the jelly with the traditional Pimm's garnish.

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.

Wilkommens and wursts

On the website it says that the food is the main draw at the Tiroler Hut, suggesting a veritable showcase of the best of Austrian fare. I’ll not be knocking the food AA Gill-style, but I would beg to differ – we all know why we’re here and the nosh ain’t it. For the best Austrian fare in the big smoke, I have heard that Kipferl does a mean bratwurst, and that Kurz & Lang is the only Austrian deli in London. If they are as much fun as the Tiroler Hut this city will be an ever-so-slightly happier place.

So, recently, a large bundle of us hit the ‘Hut’. This kitsch, faux chalet-cum-basement is nestled into a mountainside in West London (ok, not quite a mountain – does the barely distinguishable undulation that is Notting Hill count?) Inside, you are greeted by the owner Joseph and his family-based team, clad in lederhosen and dirndls, barely showing the strain of chafing aforementioned leather shorts, bearing trays heaving with gargantuan steins of beer, bottles of Grüner Veltliner and Schnapps. You and they are complicit in one fact, knowing looks are exchanged: it is the party, the virtual après-ski that is the main event here, their chief draw and the main breadwinner - the food is surely secondary. The food is a punctuation mark, a driver’s airbag keeping this friendly establishment just this side of being a messy drinking hole, sponging up the alcohol intake of its clientele.

More bread, madam?

Anyhoo, this said, the menu is not too bad in places but it is a bit of a crevasse field, if we are going to continue with alpine analogies. We lost G at the first turn, at Champignons Tiroler Hut; just because the description says they’re served warm doesn’t mean they’ve been cooked, apparently. My avocado vinaigrette consisted of a whole pear, sliced and splayed roadkill-fashion on an iceberg lettuce, grey and bruised rather like it had been up and down a mountain or two (getting warm in someone’s backpack) before reaching my plate. Serves me right for ordering it suppose – there’s always a touch of Fawlty Towers about it.

Meat, however, is something they do really rather well: the Mir ist alles Wurst on PJ’s plate were salty and delicious – sizzling bits of sausages and gherkins – the thinking person’s approach to a starter and luckily for me, a pickle-fiend, he was happy for me to assist. You can, however, have too much of a good thing and to finish his main course would have required an appetite generated by several hard days on the slopes – a handbag-sized entrecote piled high with crisp golden onions was lowered into position before him. PJ put his head down and set to work, very quietly – this was going to take all his time and attention.

 

Further down the table, through the towers of beer I saw that the BSG and James, his companion in most manly ‘eat-offs’, had chosen the platter of ‘lots of meat, etc…’to share between them. I am not even sure if the word ‘etc’ bothered either, let alone what it referred to but it certainly hadn’t appealed to me, displaying a distinct lack of knowledge – or interest – on the part of the kitchen as to what they included. However, it didn’t touch the sides or cause any problems.

I confess to being a creature of habit in this place (yes, we’ve really been here more than once) and am awfully fond of the crisp, salty schnitzel. It appeared that this particular night so was everyone else as ours has been cut in half, presumably to ensure they stretched as far as possible, an odd approach which made us feel more than a bit affronted, especially as they’d only done this to the girls - presumably because ladies eat less. El wrongo.

Our trip to the real mountains in Austria seems a long time ago now, but it was nice for us all to get together again – though this time we did refrain from dancing to EuroPop in ski-boots on the tables (it’s just what they do in St Anton – it’s almost rude not to…) The same hospitable display was extended to us everywhere we visited during our week there. Unlike ski-resort restaurants in France and Switzerland, those in Austria have successfully retained their culinary and cultural identity. Of course, on every menu there’s the ubiquitous spag bol but this is barely visible amongst offerings of wurst, pretzels, sauerkraut, schnitzel, spätzle and strudel – comforting and perfect for refuelling after a morning of more strenuous exercise than is taken the rest of the year. These dishes are delicious; little wonder the Austrians have safeguarded them against the invasion of the chip.

Speaking of delicious, our blue-eyed chalet man-host Ed was an absolute dab hand in the tiny kitchen he had at his disposal – we are just sorry we’d had to stop and sample the Austrian-style après ski on the way home each afternoon; I’m not sure we took full advantage of the tea and cake window. Every night he would turn out a few courses to a large, slightly-too-merry group all too fond of dancing on the furniture. Sorry Ed, we do remember your broccoli and bacon soup (strangely good), your amazing roast pork and the raspberry clafoutis amongst all the other lovely things you produced for us. Most of all, we remember swimming in those eyes…

Back in London, the views in this subterranean chalet are not quite as spectacular - unless you like a badly-painted alpine idyll behind a red gingham curtain - and we’d gladly have had the EuroPop (sadly the cowbell cabaret didn’t happen this visit as Joseph was absent, but Ricardo the singer was there) but my goodness we all had fun. Come to think of it, thank goodness there were no glazed windows; they would have shattered on the final, wobbly high-note of Ricardo’s rendition of ‘Delilah’. PJ, still soldiering away at the paving stone of meat before him, would have barely noticed.

Me old china

A common dilemma: you’re hungry, it’s miserable weather, you want to come home and do yourself a lovely cottage pie, but there’s only one or two of you, and a dish so big it’d do for sixteen…Oh well, do it the next time you have friends round for supper…

Not any more.

An innovative solution, boys and girls, has presented itself, courtesy of the brilliant Mr JC: I give you the Cottage Jacket, or Cottato if you’re into haute cuisine. We stumbled upon this whilst thumbing through a copy of an excellent charity cookbook compiled by a friend, and of course, the BSG had to go straight out and stock up with the ingredients.

Yes, it’s what you’d expect it to be - a cottage pie (or any other pie for that matter) inside a scooped-out baked potato, with the fluffy innards mashed and laid on top, then baked for a little longer. It’ll run and run, this one - just think of all those combinations, and afterwards none of that really crusty, hard-to-shift washing up that the smiley Ainsley Harriott is so fond of. Amazing.

Do you remember that very important time of day when you were a child, somewhere between grazing a knee, plasters, applications of Germolene, and bathtime? Tea (often high tea in our house, which usually meant something involving baked beans) was part of the daily ritual when we were young, and it’s back. In fact, it’s the new black, and altogether a bit of a vamp.

They say it is the cocktail of choice in 2010, imbibed by the most fashionable and forward-thinking Londoners (By ‘they,’ I mean I and by ‘most fashionable Londoners,’ I mean our friends). Tired of hosting pub drinks for a birthday? Well then, Happy Hour has just got a bit earlier. Why not try the Vintage Patisserie and hold a tea party? That’s what our friend Mr C did, for Mrs C’s 30^th.

On a very wet Saturday afternoon, having hopped over possibly the biggest puddle London could conjure, we were led into a cosy parlour at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane, straight into the 1920s where we were met by Angel and her team and there, laid over three tables, was a teascape that’d make Bertie Wooster wince with envy and fire Jeeves for not cutting the mustard. Cakes, rockscones, a tiny white chocolate cube on each beflowered saucer bearing the birthday girl’s name; delicate mismatched china teacups, filled with a beguiling cocktail of jasmine green tea and sparkling wine, sprinkled with mixed berries. I’ll admit I lost track after the fourth cup, but it must’ve been packed with antioxidants….Of course, there was the real thing too.

If it didn’t already feel like a game of Let’s Pretend, the presence of a dressing-up box definitely brought out our roaring twenties personas. For some reason, the BSG was rather taken with a string of pearls, which he wore as well as braces and a top hat for the duration.

Crustless white sandwiches made with the softest of breads came round on dainty silver stands – I’m not sure I’ve ever had an egg sandwich that good. Others were filled with delicate slivers of smoked salmon and crisp cucumber. There were plates of chocolate-dipped strawberries and bowls of dark, decadent cherries to remind us that summer had even existed and to promise it would return. In the lucky dip of shot-sized puddings, I got the tiramisu: the BSG’s favourite. This was definitely grown-up tea, with a twist of naughtiness in it.

The sodden afternoon was forgotten in the convivial glow, the elusive January light fading into the blue evening. I half expected Gatsby to saunter in. What a lovely way to while away the hours!

If you are cold, tea will warm you.  If you are too heated, it will cool you. 

If you are depressed, it will cheer you.  If you are excited, it will calm you.

(William Gladstone)

Tea existed properly once – and was not confined to consumption with children or grandparents. We should be making more tea dates, and I don’t mean tourist-style in hotels where you pay the earth. I say, in the spirit of Gladstone, we bring back tea in all its glory, what what? Moreover, I know just the people to spearhead the campaign….