Sumac Salmon and Apricot Tart

Cowie and I have caught Ottolegnhi fever. It’s a rare condition where the victim exhibits symptons of boredom with normal food and a craving for exotic sounding spices like sumac and Za’atar. Other tell tale signs are a new found love of vegetables and an addiction to scorched broccoli.

So when Cowie and I planned our latest dinner party it was only natural that it took on an Ottoleghi feel. Feeling confident having followed some of his recipes carefully, we decided to branch out and use the book as inspiration rather than treating it like a copy of the ten commandments. Our menu was:

Starter: Communal watercress salad with griddled nectarine, goats cheese and mandarin oil dressing

Main: Whole sumac BBQ salmon with fregola and sumac yoghurt

Dessert: Apricot semolina tart

For the salad we simply griddled some nectaries assembled a large salad of watercress, soft goats cheese and slices of prosciutto. We then sprinkled it with a dressing made from Nudo mandarin olive oil and white balsamic and a few turns of salt and pepper. It looked stunning and was wolfed down with great enthusiasm.

Kicking off dinner parties with shared salads like this where everyone can help themselves whilst having a drink is a great way of taking some of the strain out of being a host. It saves washing up and can be prepared really easily. It allowed us to concentrate on doing justice to the salmon…

As a result of our excellent turbot, we decided to source our wild side of salmon to feed 12 from Moxons. It costs more. But when it is the star of the show, it’s worth it.

I whipped up a marinade of olive oil, sumac, salt, pepper and sumac and left it to rest for half an hour whilst we got the BBQ up to heat. The logistics of BBQing a whole side of salmon are simple. But daunting. One wrong move and the fish falls apart and everyone goes home hungry. Having collected lots of advice from various books and websites I dived straight in with Cowie almost shouting at me to play it safe and cook it in foil… Pah…

Here’s what to do:

1. Clean the grill and then oil it so it’s nice and slippy
2. If you aren’t marinating the fish, then make sure you oil the skin
3. Disperse the embers so that you aren’t cooking directly above them – it’s much better cooking on indirect heat as it avoids burning
4. Place the fish skin side down
5. Attend to your fish with unwavering concentration
6. When the time is right, use two spatulas/fish slices and use quick jabbing movements and turn he fish quickly
7. Only turn your fish once
8. The fish will only need a short amount of cooking on the flesh side
9. Remove from the heat and serve

Our salmon took around 15-20 minutes of gentle cooking before it was ready. The smell of heat on fish skin is one of my favourites.

To our delight the salmon was perfect. The skin was so crispy and fragrant that fish skin haters lapped it up with glee; the flesh teased apart and made serving it a doddle; and It was still thrillingly medium rare. Phew!

The yoghurt dressing with sumac, lemon zest, chilli and clutch of herbs from the garden offered a fresh creamy counterpoint to the vibrant fish. The exotic, lemony flavour of sumac was very subtle, but utterly delicious. It’s got us hooked!

A bowl of fregola mixed with cous cous hazlenuts, tomatoes and herbs wasn’t half bad either! Another doff of cap to Ottolenghi.

After the success of a semolina rhubarb tart earlier in the year we decided to make the most of a glut of apricots by making them into a tart. It’s very easy and tastes great. The night before simply make a semolina cream by heating 1 1/2 cups of milk spiked with vanilla and when it gets hot add 45 grams of fine semolina and 55 grams of caster sugar. Stir this as it heat and bring to the boil. Cook for a little longer and when it is smooth and thick remove from the heat. Allow it cool a little and then beat in 3 egg yolks. Set this aside in plastic bowl and cover with cling-film that hugs the cream to avoid a skin forming. Then on the night of the dinner party blind bake some dessert pastry, allow to cool and then spoon in the semolina cream. Now you can get arty. Arrange your slices of fresh apricot in geometric patterns and paint with apricot jam. Then bake until the apricots have become soft and the top has turned golden.

We served it warm with some vanilla ice cream. But it is probably better (and easier to serve) cold. The tart apricots had turned sweet with their juices combined with the smooth semolina cream. The only disappointment was that there wasn’t enough for seconds! You could do the same thing with gooseberries or raspberries…

It was one of our most fun dinner parties to date. We managed to balance cooking interesting food whilst also taking as much stress and time consuming preparation out as possible. It’s a great formula, and one we are going to repeat.

Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb is brilliant. Anything that can taste so good, yet potentially be deadly gets my vote. And then another. It’s like a fauna version of blowfish. Maybe chefs who cook with rhubarb should be trained for 20 years as well. Imagine what amazing delights we’d be served.

I’m always looking for new ways to cook rhubarb, so when I saw this sensational rhubarb tart over on Cook Almost Anything at Least Once I got very excited. Just to look at the undulating, pink and cream furrows is enough to make you want to give up everything and become a professional rhubarb chef.

So, having rolled out some dessert pastry that may or may not have been bought we followed Cook Almost Anything at Least Once’s recipe to the letter which you can see below:

“Semolina Cream:

1 1/2 cups milk
1 cinnamon stick
55 grams caster sugar
45 grams semolina
3 egg yolks

Topping:

Rhubarb stems
55 grams caster sugar

Make the Semolina Cream:

Place the milk, cinnamon stick, sugar and semolina into a saucepan over a low heat and stir while the mixture starts to thicken and boil, then stir constantly for another 2 minutes or until the mixture becomes very thick.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg-yolks, one at a time until well combined. Place the filling into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap – make sure the plastic wrap actually rests against the cream as you don’t want a skin to form. Let this cool to room temperature.

Assemble the tart:

Pour the semolina cream evenly into the tart, smoothing out the top. Lay the rhubarb evenly over the cream then sprinkle over with half of the sugar.

Cover this loosely with foil and place in a preheated 180°C oven – cook for 20 minutes before removing foil. Continue to cook for another 15-20 minutes or until the cream is set and the rhubarb is tender.

Sprinkle over with the remaining sugar and using a blow-torch, caramelise the sugar (you could do this under a grill).”

The combination of slightly grainy semolina cream with soft, tart, full flavoured rhubarb was incredible. It was well worth the effort and is a tart I’m going make every Spring. I’ve now got a rectangular pastry case so I can make my tart look extra smart. As an evolution of this tart, it would be fantastic with ginger and mint ice cream.

For anyone who has noticed the continuity errors it’s because we made several tarts in order to feed a lot of hungry friends.

Mothering Sunday Tea with Hannah & Chilli-Chocolate Brownie Disaster

Like a diligent and loving son I headed back to the ranch for Mothering Sunday, safe in the knowledge that I was in for a feast. Whenever we see Hannah we know we’re not going to go hungry – as you’ll see from the links below.

BBQ on the bales
Hannah’s epic afternoon tea
Christmas Eve with Hannah
Cowie’s Brownies for Hannah

This isn’t going to be a long post. Just a brief pictorial summary in honour of the lost art of afternoon tea. Enjoy the slide show.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The highlight of the spread wasn’t the first bite of Jane’s incredible scones with clotted cream, or Mum’s amazing violet and lemon cake. No the highlight was my disastrous foray into interfering with Cowie’s (now sacred) brownie recipe. I thought it would be a good idea to add some chilli chocolate sauce to the mix. But I failed to check the sauce I used resulting in Cowie’s, normally amazing, brownies tasting more of curry than chocolate.

On closer inspection of the jar it turned out that the sauce I had haphazardly lobbed in was actually actually a sauvory sauce for use in Mexican moles! DISASTER! I had single handedly ruined Mother’s Day. Or so Dad said. And then Hannah broke down crying and I feared the worst… but they were happy tears. None of us have eaten anything this nasty in a long time and it was hilarious. Take it from me. The brownies below may look delicious.

But because I used this stuff. They tasted gross!

Hannah. It was great to see you. I hope the Aga gets better soon!

Baked Plums

“Baked plums” I hear you sigh, “how boring”. But not when they are steeped in rum, marinated in cardamon and ginger, sprinkled with sugar, dotted with butter and then lovingly baked. Before being served with yoghurt that has been blessed with pistachios.

Enjoy the ride.

Halve the plums and marinate in a good slug of Cruzan golden rum, a squeeze of lime, a finger of grated ginger, and crucially some cardamon. I cracked the pods in two and was transported straight back to the market in Munnar where we bought our collection of spices.

Line a baking dish with foil and place the halved plums flesh side up before sprinkling with sugar and anointing with unsalted butter. Adjust the amount of sugar you use to how sour you imagine the plums are. If in doubt add more. And preferably use brown sugar rather than the white stuff I used. Pour the excess marinate around the plums.

Bake for half an hour or so until the flesh has turned an Oscar golden hue. Spoon the now crimson juice back over the plums to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the juicy flavours.

Given that this was a pretty random composition, inspired by nothing more than a cheap bag of plums and a vague recollection of how Cowie’s Mum poaches her pears, it came out brilliantly. We loved the unique flavour that cardamon brings to the party coupled with the sweet boozy taste of rum. The yoghurt balanced the fruitiness without resorting to weighing it down with cream whilst the pistachios added some much needed texture.

I’m definitely cooking this again. I’ve got a funny feeling this might become one of Cowie’s favourites! She’ll be very upset she missed out on its debut outing. This would make a great base to a crumble or cobbler. I’m even toying with the idea of plum and cardamon jam! Roll on the Autumn!

At the Chapel (non review)

“It’s like a cross between Babington House and a lovely gastro-pub”

Bruton, Cowie’s home town in Somerset, has sadly lost Bruton House. Gone to restaurant heaven whilst the owners go on a well earned holiday. In the Cowie household it was much revered as the smartest place in the area. But I never got a chance to give it a bash. I was invited for dinner with Cowie’s granny once but it clashed savagely with the Rugby World Cup final. Cowie raved about it to the extent that I feel terrible to have missed out. Regrets.

But, sleepy old Bruton has been blessed with a surprisingly sexy alternative. At The Chapel is a charming, slick, contemporary beacon in the countryside. It has the look and feel of St John, with the pared down, very minimal black text on white approach. It’s owned by Catherine Butler and Ahmed Sidki, who are residents of Bruton. In fact it seems the 17th century Methodist Chapel that the restaurant is housed in used to be their home! Catherine used to own Cafe Med and is backed up in the kitchen by Nick Brodie, who has come from, double Michelin starred, Bath Spa.

The set up includes a bakery and pizza oven, winestore, bar, cafe and restaurant. But it is the enormous oven that sets the rhythm of the venture. The architects, MacKenzie Wheeler, have brilliantly used the vast oven to create a warm, living, heart for the restaurant. Every night from 11pm till 4am their baker (who has been dubbed “French hip-hop baker Tito”), works his magic to produce some fantastic bread, most of it from sourdough starter. And then the oven is handed over to the pastry chef and then when it becomes day time the pizza guys take over. The nutty sourdough loaf we took home for lunch was sensational. It had that crusty outside and elastically fluffy centre that top class bread exudes. As well as a warm, natural smell.

Our chocolate brownie was so good that I ate all of it without giving Cowie a morsel. This didn’t go down too well. And the only way out of the disaster was to tell Cowie that it wasn’t as good as the brownies that she makes! Sorry Tito.

I also gave their winestore a bit of a test drive. I was after something pretty special to go with a fine piece of steak we had bought from Kimber’s fantastic farm shop. Their wine chap (who I think was Matthew Hooberman – formerly of Soho House) gave me some very shrewd advice. He walked me through some classic French options but could sense that I wanted to be a bit more adventurous. He then presented me with a bottle of Italian red that’s made from 5 grape varieties from Calabria. He mentioned that it is so unusual that he makes a point of talking to anyone who orders it in the restaurant. This had me hook line and sinker. And rightly so… it was the perfect match for our steak.

At The Chapel is such a find. Cowie and I are looking forward to trying it out properly. If their bread, brownies and red wine are anything to go for, we are in for a treat. I’m really surprised that there haven’t been any national reviews yet. All in good time.

For more information read Fiona Sims article from Caterer and Hotel Keeper.

Sauza Agave Recipe Challenge: Blueberry Pie

We found an awesome book about cooking with agave nectar at work on Slashfood and have decided that a different member of our team will cook a different recipe each month from it.

The book is called Baking with Agave Nectar and can be bought from Amazon.

Jenny bought the book so had the honour of cooking the first dish from the, now cherished, agave cooking book.

Rather than waffling on, I am just going to let the pictures do the talking…

If the pictures above tell you nothing else, it’s that Ed likes cream on his pie!

Jenny’s blueberry pie made with agave nectar was stunningly good. The rest of us have got our work cut out to top Jenny’s opening gambit. Another fresh and unexpected use of agave from the Beam team.

Rhubarb Souffle

This month’s “In the Bag” competition over on A Slice of Cherry Pie asks entrants to incorporate forced rhubarb, an orange and sugar into a recipe. After last month’s lamb and pear tagine we decided to create a sweet recipe rather than savoury.

Cowie has been making some very good souffles recently, so we decided to create a rhubarb and orange souffle. I bought some nice rhubarb from Waitrose and chopped it up before simmering it. The pink, fibrous stemmed rhubarb crunched like celery as we prepared it.

We simmered some rhubarb with some sugar until it became thick and syrupy.

We mixed some eggs yolks with sugar, orange zest and stem ginger.

And whisked up some eggs whites with some sugar.

Before gently folding them together.

Meanwhile we buttered and dusted some ramekins with icing sugar.

And then spooned the mixture in.

We cooked them in a pre heated oven for 12 minutes, making sure that the tops didn’t burn.

They emerged from the oven with beautiful golden tops and a wonderfully sharp smell of rhubarb. Best of all though, their tops didn’t collapse and they stayed bouyant and perky!

And they tasted even better. The rhubarb was the star of the show with the orange peel and stem ginger coming in to balance out the sharpness with some warmth and zing.

Well done Cowie for being so creative on a weeknight. After a long day of work it was so much fun to create something so light, tasty and exotic. And it was fun taking the photos too.

Roast Chicken followed by White Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding

Mum and Suz cooked a delicious roast chicken for Sunday dinner. Stuffed with lemon and thyme it was tender, moist and beautifully brown. A joy to carve and very obviously free range/organic. You could tell by the taste and also by the texture of the skin. It just seemed like a bird with more integrity. Not like the battery chickens on Hugh’s programme a week or so again.

Suz said that she has noticed a change in her local Tesco. Whereas there used to be a preference in store for cheap, battery chicken. Now people are shying away from the poor quality birds and are trading up to the free range option. This can be seen by the number of battery birds left on the shelf and the amount of space now given to free range chickens. I just hope this is the start of a movement that will be with us to stay and not just a flash in the pan.

We followed our chicken up with a similarly coloured dessert – a white chocolate brioche pudding with figs and orange which was stunning. There’s something very special about these kind of meals. It’s great to spend time as a family catching up and relaxing.

Cowie’s Famous New Year Fridge Cake

New Year is here and what better way to celebrate than to send up some fireworks and tuck into something sweet before having to make resolutions about what to do for the year ahead!

Cowie is without question the Queen of the Fridge Cake. She’s been experimenting for a while now. We’ve had bubble wrap used to create an interesting texture, white chocolate layers and this time Cadbury’s Mini Eggs… is it Easter already?

All you do is melt a scary amount of chocolate, crush up some digestives, add whatever goodies you want including raisins, Malteasers, golden syrup and then pour it all into a cling film lined dish. Pop it in the fridge and slice it up when it’s time for a major sugar rush. Be warned. It’s very rich!

Everyone loves these. Cowie is constantly being asked for the recipe and uses them as little treats for colleagues at work. They certainly seem to make her popular!

O…. and you have to dress up in your finest frock to serve them!

Brilliant Bread and Butter

I’ve got a couple of week’s off work so I pottered down to the Northcotte Road after spending all morning with the Sky Plus man to indulge in some artisnal purchases for brunch.

I got my bread, butter and pasta eggs from Breads Etcetera and some pasta flour and pancetta from the Italian deli opposite in preparation for tomorrow’s lasagne.

The bread is a delicious seeded number and was delicious simply spread with slightly salted South Downs butter.

And it was even better still with some sausages, bacon, mushrooms and a gently fried, bright orange pasta egg.