A consommation of the affair

If it seems criminal to write twice about soup, then please forgive me - for there are far greater crimes committed here than my article.

This is about the consommé. A dish that is a crime against the very substance of food. A bowl full of as little as possible. Fortunately it fell foul of fashion many years ago, and in the 21st century is considered a laughing stock. And yet, the notion has been fascinating me for some time.

All I really know about consommé came from a tin, when I was a child - many years ago now. I think it tasted like bovril, which is no surprise as bovril is meat juice. And that is what a consommé should be - the very essence of meat, distilled into a clear, sparkling liquid. Nothing but taste, passable, dismissive, taste of meat.

It's the creation - the rendering of this clarity - that presents the real mystery. Heston Blumenthal, who has about as much charisma as I have culinary talent, presented his clarification only the other day. Yet he committed a crime against truth by claiming the process requires "special equipment". This, from a man who instructs his viewers to buy dry ice. In fact the only special equipment it needs is an egg - which, I guess, is pretty special in its own way.

So a consommé is this - a rich, deeply flavoured stock (chicken, beef, game - it's your call) clarified by beating through it a mix of egg white, egg shell and assorted flavourings: meat, herbs, as you wish. This is to trap the unwanted.

I believe it's what the Deepwater Horizon repair team referred to as a 'junk shot', but chefs may call it a raft.

After some time, the raft surfaces to the head of the stock, filtering out all impurities and leaving behind nothing but sparkling, flavoured liquid. Ready to be served - with a garnish of course. For mine, I deeply fried some chunks of chicken thigh with salt and pepper (this, truly, is the best chicken recipe). However, I had a little more to add. I Having rafted the white and shell of the egg I was left with the yolk.

So I committed one final crime, a crime against logic - by deep-frying the egg in breadcrumbs. No joke!  It could be something like a minimalist scotch egg. I won't go into the details, but rest assured there was no trickery here.

So there it was - a chicken consommé. And the taste? A bit like chicken, of course.

A Cullen Skink

My father has always claimed a Scottish heritage. For some reason, he's always wanted to be a Scotsman - though  without  a shred of evidence. Every Burns Night he'll ramble, teary-eyed, about the fabled 'Alexander clan' tartan - his gaze fixed towards the Pole Star.

One day he did unearth an ancient photograph of our ancestors -  a crowd of besuited, whiskered gentlemen.  Not a single one sported a kilt or toted any bagpipes. In reality, his ancestors were itinerant tradesmen - from where, it could be anywhere.

So my cooking of a 'Cullen Skink', the legendary Scottish smoked haddock soup, had little to do with my heritage, and even less to do with Salmond's current bid for independence. It definitely had nothing to do with Burns Night.

In fact I'd never even heard of the dish until the a couple of weeks ago, when it featured as the answer to a question on University Challenge. Neither team knew the answer, and nor did I.

The soup is a simple, hearty and rather wonderful affair - primarily consisting of mashed potato, the smoked haddock and milk. I decided to create a more modern adaptation. Not because I'm a pompous southern asshole with no genuine Scots blood, but because I had none of the the right ingredients.

So I sweated off some leek and potato, to simmer in a little rich chicken stock. Meanwhile, the fish poached in a little milk, overloaded with flavours - onion, peppercorns, celery, and an excess of parsley.

I'm always suspicious of a puréed soup. Although they may taste fine, they suffer from lack of variety. The only difference between one mouthful and the next is the waning temperature. Eating a puréed is inevitably a race to defeat either boredom, or the cold. The Michelin solution to this problem is to serve soup cold, in espresso cups. Mine solution is to have lumps. To this end, I sweated off some finely diced potato and shredded leek, in butter.

For a final - rather grand and, dare I say it, English - flourish I plumped some rather wonderful oysters in their own juice, then breaded and fried them. The juice I reduced, and added to the stock for that essence of the sea.

The stock was blended along with the poaching liquor and the Oyster juice. Haddock shredded, mixed in along with the sautéed vegetable. All garnished with shredded parsley, those magnificent oysters and a little shaved parmesan (like I said, I'm not a pompous southern asshole).

A delight for anyone, regardless of their heritage.