The first bite yields tender and tasty meat with undertones of warm spice and fresh orange. It’s redolent of dusty streets and bright fruits, secret blue tiled courtyards and bustling souks. This is a Sunday roast that’s holidayed in exotic locations.
Chicken is rarely better than when it’s roasted. And that usually calls for lemon and thyme, onions and black pepper. But sometimes, just sometimes you crave something a little different. Continue reading
You just know a dish has got something going for it when it had to undergo name changes and “political rehabilitation” in Communist China. Named for a 19th century Qing dynasty governor of Sichuan, it’s one of the spicy provinces best known culinary creations.
Packed full of signature Sichuan staples like dried chillies and the eponymous lip-tingling, head-spinning peppercorns, it’s a fast, fragrant and exciting dish to make. And surprisingly not too tongue numbingly hot, considering the chillies are in the double digits. Continue reading
Drugs, medicine, alcohol, all those things that soothe and relax the body when you’re feeling aches and pains, they’re really complicated. It’s not as if you can rustle up a bottle of sauvignon from scratch at a moments notice. The same goes for a paracetamol, a pint of decent beer or valium.
Thank goodness for chicken soup. It’s at least as effective as a glass of wine if you’re feeling shitty. The savoury aroma of fresh broth bubbling on the hob is as effective a relaxant for me as hearing a cork being pulled from a wine bottle (is that tragic? probably). Continue reading
Hello there! It’s me, Catty! While Aaron’s busy honeymooning around Japan (me? jealous? NEVER!), we’ve hi-jacked his blog so that you don’t go hungry, and we’ll continue to post on his behalf, keeping them gastronomous eyes of yours well fed!
I thought I’d share with you all something a little special to Aaron and I. I went to The Little Bay Restaurant back in March this year. I hadn’t even met Aaron at the time and when he saw I’d tweeted that I was going, he responded and said I absolutely had to, HAD TO, have the pig’s cheek. And much to the disgust of my near-vegetarian colleague, I did have the pig’s cheek and boy was it awesome.
Continue reading
My mum came round for dinner last week. Those of you who learned their love of food at mother’s apron strings will be familiar with the leap of excitement and dread those words can summon. Because if there’s someone you want to impress, it’s your mum.
And so there was much scratching of head and leafing through books. Italian was out, my mum loves Italian, and she’s much better at it than me. Time to look to my own strengths and influences. In this case the Eastern Med. Continue reading
I first discovered tagines on a short trip to Marrakech and I was immediately entranced by their full frontal flavours and the combination of sticky sweet dried fruit and slow cooked tender meat. It was a revelation – fruit and meat? It was like having pudding and a main course all at once, and you can’t go wrong with that. Continue reading
The thing about cooking curries, tagines and other big pot dishes, particularly if there are only one or two people eating, is that there is a minimum amount that you can realistically make. So I often – with varying degrees of success – have to find other uses for those bits and bobs. This is particularly true of Thai curry pastes. They act as a kind of counterbalance to the law of diminishing returns, in that past a certain point, the less you make, the more effort you have to put in to get good results. Continue reading
Having dined on Thai for lunch I had a hankering for more fresh and spicy SE Asian flavours. Also, as part of an ongoing January clear out, I wanted to use up some of the bits and pieces sitting unnoticed at the back of the cupboard. You know, those things that looked like a great idea in the shop, but then somehow just never got used.
Delving into the fridge netted me a pack of raw prawns, some poached chicken and a couple of slightly tired stalks of lemongrass (left over from Wednesday’s cleansing chicken soup), basil, mint, half a cabbage and a lime. The store cupboard meanwhile served up a pack of dried rice spring-roll wrappers. Add to that some Indonesian chilli and ginger sauce I got for Xmas, peanut paste, sweet chilli and crusty old bottle of fish sauce and I had the beginnings of a mini-feast. Continue reading
Essentially, this is a chicken poached gently in water with added bits and bobs. The chicken and its meaty juices are the base upon which you can build all sorts of exciting concoctions. If you want a real savoury hit then add an onion, celery, parsley, carrot, tomato, peppercorns and a bay lef or two, just like a stock. You’ll end up with a lovely meaty clear soup.
But tonight, I wanted something different, more cleansing than heavily flavoured. I’ve been working hard these last couple of days and i needed something as a pick-me-up. A soup with a bit of zing, a bit of excitement, but one that also left me with the same relaxed feeling you get after a particularly long walk in the crisp air. Continue reading
Having read Fernandez & Leluu’s mouth watering recipe for roast chicken, I was determined to recreate it for last night’s dinner. Accordingly I assembled all the ingredients and fished out of the freezer some drumsticks and wings left over from various fowl dismemberings, and two quail that were lurking at the back.
The only thing missing was Teppanyaki marinade. So I improvised. Adding a dash of this and glug of that, tasting and adjusting is one of the most fun things about cooking. It feels like alchemy – turning seemingly unrelated ingredients into a coherent and tasty whole. Continue reading