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.