Beeten

If someone was to suggest cooking a risotto with ale,

you could be forgiven for calling them an avant-garde prick. Still, with half a bottle of ale remaining from a lunchtime spent snacking on Welsh Rabbit*, I was curious. The Rabbit, incidentally, was sublime, but I'll spill any beans on that one another day.

So, to the risotto. There I was with a bunch of beetroots from the local veg stall. Other than in pickle, beetroots are something of a mystery to me - I find it hard to imagine what a dish will taste like, because I don't really know how they taste. I had to pick them up, though, as they are very much the vegetable of the moment (largely, I think, thanks to Channel 4's 'nouveau croute' Hugh F-W). So. I had to grab them.

Cooking with beetroot, I have realised, is largely about avoiding staining things. So the best is to shred them quickly and have it in a pot before your hands, clothes, and surfaces are a bright pink. Hence the risotto. I didn't want to put wine in it, I imagined something too harsh there - so spotting the ale, in it went.

Beetroot risotto in all its purple glory.



... And with a quick-tossed fry of chicken, autumnal funghi, livers and, of course, beet stems.



Was it worth it? Beetroot risotto is odd, as the texture of the root is near identical to that of the rice. The aley tang wildly between great and overpoweringly bitter. I still don't know. In small quantities, perhaps - ideally in an avant-garde restaurant.



* Originally so-called because the Welsh, according to legend, were so poverty-stricken they couldn't afford genuine rabbits. The modern name, Rarebit, is considered less offensive to the Welsh.

Anecdotal evidence

I was dining in a restaurant the other evening,

I ordered a steak, and I ordered it rare. Any more than rare is a travesty. Sadly it can be rare to find a restaurant which really appreciates this - I once had the manager of a Chez Gerrard proudly present, after a somewhat charred slab of meat, his ring-binder of approved cooking times, where a medium-rare was listed at 12 minutes on the grill. Far too long, if you ask me. A steak should be fried for as long as that sentence, and no more. Where was I? Oh yes, in the restaurant. The steak arrived, and it was magnificent. Cooked to perfection. Such a delight that when the waiter leant over and asked "how is your steak?", I couldn't help but reply "it is very well done, sir". At that he left, somewhat bemused.

While on the subject, I found this photograph of something slightly more rare, a salad of seared fillet and leaves. With some pine kernels and that.

Pumpkin partners (part II)

I confess, I have been lax.

You've all no doubt been on tenterhooks to find out what I did with the other half. Of the pumpkin, that is, this isn't a murder enquiry. Yet. I have to confess the rest of the pumpkin was scooped and gobbled some time ago, by I. I did little except to use its magnificent shell to house a rich, meaty venison stew, in the manner of an edible bowl.

The Czechs have been known to serve garlic soup in edible bowls hewn out of bread loaves, which is not entirely dissimilar. But I digress.


So how might you fashion a venison stew? Simply fry off a few shallots, celery, mushrooms, some recently reconstituted porcini slices, with some lardons, brown the meat, and put the lot together. Add some sieved tomato, the porcini juice, and a good handful of woody herbs - bay, rosemary, and so on, plucked from the garden. If you have thyme on your hands, this is the time to use it. Let it simmer a while, and throw in a handful of chicken livers. Chicken livers? Indeed, there's no better than a bit of offal to set off some game.

You can see the result for yourself.

Had I paid the meat more heed, I might have steeped the venison in a bowl of herbs for some time, and then packed the stew with wild mushrooms, hefty chunks of bacon, and a rich red wine. These heavy herbs should normally be used delicately, but in a place like this there is no harm in going wild.

Juniper, of course, has always been prone to venison, so that's a more sophisticated option. My father has cooked venison with juniper berries and prunes, in a pie, and there's a lot to be said for that. I, on the other hand, in a fit of pique once threw a handful of juniper berries into a blisteringly hot chilli con carne, with an oddly ginny outcome which was, quite frankly, wrong on every level.

Pumpkin partners (première partie)

So I picked this beast up at the organic place,


and wondered what to do with it.

It never ceases to baffle me that the organic produce here is expected to be lumpen, scarred, and stuck with clods of earth. Perhaps it's just fashion - or more likely some stoic/puritan aspect to the English nature that requires us to not only grow food without fertiliser, but to soil it before selling. So far from the cornucopia that is a continental farmer's market, where the produce is preened, polished and piled to perfection by their proud, small-time growers. But that's by the by.

So, what to do with a pumpkin? Soups, chutneys, jams*, all sprang to mind, but I was hungry for that, so I roasted a load of it up. And what better to serve it with than pumpkin seeds? Tossed into a semi-autumnal stir fry of mushrooms, courgettes, and that most underrated portion of a chicken, the thigh.

The thigh, you ask? Indeed. There is little better than a chicken thigh, sliced into strips (with the skin intact, obviously), soused with salt and pepper and fried in sesame oil at a high heat, until it is a moist, soft-slash-crunchy, spicy delight. A little akin to a poor man's pork scratching (if such a thing could exist).



Admittedly, the pumpkin seeds formed only a small part of the accompaniment, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it. The leeks were merely an extra - and I have no idea what leeks are doing at this time of year - they were cooked in the style of Mr Rhodes, by sautéing in butter.

Stay tuned for part two!

* find me some crab apples and I shall make you the most famous crab apple jelly pumpkin jam - a recipe that currently exists only in my head.

King Slaw

Like coleslaw? Love King-Slaw.

The traditional shredded root and leaf salad is always good, but every now and then you need something that hits a little harder, leaves a kick on the tongue. It works like this.

A handful of currants, dunked into a spoon of good vinegar. Why currants? Because the cupboard was bare of sultanas, of course. Finely grated carrot. Cabbage, shredded as finely as is humanly possible. White cabbage, of course, or green if like me it's what you have sitting in the fridge. And then the Kingdom:

• A spoon of mustard. Colemans, if you can. If not, anything yellow.
  
• A half spoon of hot curry powder. Or less. Enough for a zing and no more - don't break the slaw!
• A small spoon of runny honey. Greek, if you please.
• Salt, pepper (freshly ground), and
  
• big spoons of mayonnaise. Enough to juice it up.
  

Add to that a handful of pine kernels, mash it all together, and leave to relax. A good slaw has sat for some time - overnight may be better, if you're in no rush.

And that's it. Take a plate and lay down the slaw. Sprinkle with paprika and curry powder, and drizzle with anything fancy-looking (oil works). There it is - King Slaw, fit for the proverbial.

Sunday's best

There is no such thing as the right breakfast. Eggs Benedict may rule the roost, but sometimes a good fry-up is the only recourse for a growling belly. Or a Frühstück, if you're in a Germanic frame and umlauts are rolling off your buds.

I was idling through the paper, while trying to decide what variant I was angling for, when I saw a picture of some cheese and honey. Cheese and honey? Then I remembered the slab of Taleggio in the fridge. Salty and magnificent on its own, drippy and fascinating in an omelette, and - right then and there - perfect toasted with honey. Even better with the remains of my fridge.

And there it was. Boiled eggs, hard as bullets, decent bacon, and good crusty Italian loaf toasted with the taleggio cheese, and the whole lot drizzled artfully with honey. Of course, the obligatory pickled piquillo on the side (until they run out), a Sunday Supplement and a mug of builder's tea.


OK, so I may have gone overboard with the eggs, two would have been enough, but the hangover was enough for three.

Motor-oil sauce

If you can't stand the heat...

Finding myself with a surfeit of leery red bird-eye chillis, I was minded to replenish my supply of hot sauce. I still had half a bottle in the fridge, which by now was at least three years vintage and over time had lost in heat and gained in sweetness. The sauce, in short, had had its chips.

I'm very particular about my hot sauce - as are most sauce afficionadoes. A friend keeps one cupboard stocked end-to-end with his favourite brand - that sauce being so hard to source. For me, the heat has to be countered by sweetness, sharpness and a richness of texture. Excessive fire is optional (but a good option indeed). So. To business.

A couple of finely chopped shallots are sweated off in a dash of light oil. Garlic is added - three or four cloves to a bottle - and ginger, equally chopped. Fried lightly, and then the chillis are thrown in, chopped up and all. Salt, and pepper, lots of that.

If you want more flavour and less heat, de-seed fifty percent of the peppers and use more of them. If you want more heat, add a scotch bonnet or two - that'll add a bit of a kick. If you're a freak, use those big peppers which aren't so hot, but, really, if you're doing that what are you doing making hot sauce?

This whole lot is loosened up with some vinegar, and then blended to a saucy consistency. Here's where things went strange - I discovered that Billy, my trusty hand blender, was leaking a strange smelling liquid. Whether it leaked into the sauce or not I couldn't tell - the heat masked any unwarranted scents.

Having done that, slip in enough sugar to make it all sharp-yet-sweet, and simmer until it thickens up nicely. Shove it into an unlabelled bottle, and there you go. Motor-oil sauce - hot sauce flavoured with the juice of a blender's engine.




A little maturity always helps - you may want to shelve it for a month or two before uncorking.


I have been thinking also of hot sauces made with green chillis - I was inspired by the notion of flavouring a green chilli sauce with freshly distilled wormwood. Thujone and Capsaicin are potentially a marriage made in heaven. Sadly I didn't have the time to fabricate a still; I'm not sure if my Wormwood will still have any leaves by the time I engineer something suitable.

The Bros. Cray

Swinging through Borough Market at lunchtime,

I just couldn't resist buying a handful of these little critters - mostly because the fishmonger had let one of them loose, and it was ambling amiably across his mackerel. I did ask what to do (as a crayfish novice), but the advice was ill-forthcoming and monosyllabic:

"What are they?"

Crayfish.

"How do I keep them?"

Fridge.

"How do I cook them?"

Boil'em.

"Just like that?"

Yep.

So I fridged them, took them home in my backpack, and then decided what to do next. I'd only ever eaten crayfish in Pret sandwiches before, and they were just tails, so it was quite the novelty to have these lively buggers running about in my kitchen.

I was minded to make a hot aioli type affair with some mindblowing pickled piquillo peppers I'd also picked up that day (I realised that after 'tasting' them at the stall religiously for three months, perhaps I ought to oblige and buy some), but the first attempt failed at the oil hurdle. Organic sunflower oil is disgusting.

And a little simple salad of shredded endive (chickory, if you wish), spring onions (scallions, if you wish), and coriander (cilantro, if you wish). Sweet. Dash of sesame oil, squeeze of lemon, and there you go. And then to the crayfish.

Ohh-Crayyy... What next
Well, I caught them (difficult - they are masters of the reverse gear and had scooted backwards into all sorts of crannies) and despite idly musing about engineering a little 'death slide' which would chute them directly into the pot, I dispatched them as humanely as humanly possible and, as the 'monger suggested, boiled'em.




Boiled'em, halved'em, cleaned'em*, and ate'em. The strange thing was that having had them so recently running about the worktop, even when cooked I was expecting them to wriggle about.




And how were they? Well, one thing I forgot was that shellfish are generally eaten with specialist tools. I had to fish in my toolbox for a pair of pliers, and set to with those and a few bamboo skewers. Messy business. Messy - but well worth it. Not much meat on them though, good thing I also stuffed some aubergines with a mix of rice, tomato and spiced meat, and racked those up for after.

* I'm too novice to know if the gloopy bits are good-to-eat or good-to-kill.