Eggs

If you don't have your own chocolate chicken you'll have to make your own chocolate eggs.

Fillings include: mocha  mousse, soft caramel, white chocolate and lemon truffle, white chocolate and vanilla ganache, dark chocolate truffle, kirsch soaked cherries.

Pasta pasta pasta

I’m the proud new owner of a pasta rolling machine. A long overdue purchase. Until now I’d often felt a bit embarrassed that I’d never actually made my own pasta. For someone that’s supposed to be into food it should probably be a task mastered by now. I do like pasta and eat plenty of it but usually the dried stuff which for spaghetti, tagliatelle and shapes is fine but you can’t have filled pasta like ravioli or tortellini unless you make your own.  And I'm a big fan of anything filled - pasties, pies, dumplings, etc. There's just something about food that's prepared as a parcel and where you eat the whole lot, wrapping paper and all. So I’d always known that when I did get round to buying a pasta roller it would be ravioli that would be on the menu.

I couldn’t make up my mind as to what filling to make first so I ended up making two different raviolis and a tagliatelle all in one go. A mushroom and ricotta ravioli finished with a light mushroom cream and a drizzle of truffle oil, a butternut squash and amaretti ravioli in a sage and thyme butter and a tagliatelle in a tomato sauce.

I made the pasta by hand after reading everything Giorgio Locatelli had to say on the matter (which is a lot) in his excellent book – Made in Italy Food and Stories. There's no firm rules on the proportion of egg to flour, I used 3 eggs and 4 yolks and a pinch of salt to 500g of 00 drum wheat flour, mixed well and needed for 10 mins. I still found the mix a little dry and had to wet my hands just to bring it together. After a good rest in the fridge it’s ready for rolling. Rolling takes longer than you’d think. Notching down the width of the rollers on each run through then folding the pasta back on itself and repeating, then turning the dough and putting it through width ways, again reducing the space on each pass through the machine. It ends up being beautifully silky to handle and surprisingly manageable despite its thinness.

Preparing the ravioli turned out to be one of those very satisfying jobs. Laying out a sheet of pasta, dotting it with blobs of filling and then covering with another fresh sheet, and softly fingering round the lumps to ease out any air bubbles. Its rather as if you’re tucking these little tasty morsels into a comfy bed of soft clean sheets.    

Having made the ravioli I couldn’t resist having a go at using the impressive looking tagliatelle attachment for the machine. Turning the handle and watching the long sheet being shredded into tagliatelle is another satisfying and slightly hypnotic sight. There’s a little bit of practice involved in making sure the strands don’t clump together but otherwise it’s a beautifully simple task.

Being my first attempt this all seemed to take a little while. Between making the fillings and sauces and rolling and shaping the pasta I wasn’t ready to start serving this triple course pasta dinner till after 10pm – although in retrospect this seems a very Italian like time to sit down to eat. 

Turkish eggs

Poached eggs, toast and spinach served with a spiced butter and plain yoghurt.

A great alternative to the usual breakfast combinations. Could even be classed as vaguely healthy were it not for the thick slice of butter. Add a dusting of nutmeg and a drip of lemon over the spinach and try not to overdo the eggs. For the butter -  add chilli and a pinch of saffron to softened butter, mix and season, roll in cling film, form into a log and chill.

You can get a good version of these in Bibi's if you just cant be bothered to cook it yourself.

French toast, but no ordinary French toast.

Thick slices of brioche soaked in hot sweetened milk flavoured with vanilla before being dipped in beaten egg and fried in butter till crisp. Finished off with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar. You have to be careful not to let these break up as you transfer them across from the milk to the egg and to the pan. Once cooked the outer egg coating keeps them together. They are delightfully soft and gooey on the inside, rather like a good bread pudding. A mile away from the thin slice of industrial white bread, barely glanced in egg and fried till dry that I had served up to me as French toast in a certain Ranelagh cafe recently.

One slice each of this is enough for breakfast served along side some plain toased brioche and some blood oranges to even the score.

Dinner party for five

Amuse-bouche - Mushroom jelly

I adapted this from a Heston Blumenthal dish out of his At Home with Heston book. In his recipe the jelly is just one component in a kind of layered mushroom sundae. I just went with the jelly, I know it seems a cop out to only do one bit of the dish but this is just the amuse bouche and I still had to begin preparations 4 days before the dinner party. The jelly needs a little more gelatin in order to keep its shape when turned out of a mold than it would if simply served in a glass. They ended up looking pretty cool, if a little like mini alien space crafts.

The jelly is a fortified mushroom stock that gets clarified through ice filtration before setting. It starts with a lot of mushrooms for a small amount of end product.

Start the stock (a few days in advance of serving) by frying 750g button mushrooms in 100g butter till all the liquid evaporates and the mushrooms have browned, deglaze with madeira, reduce to a syrup, add a litre of water and simmer for an hour. Strain through muslin and discard the mushrooms. Meanwhile, finely chop a shallot and simmer in madeira till syrupy. Strain and discard the onion. Add the madeira syrup to the stock and add a tea spoon of mushroom ketchup. Bloom 3 sheets of gelatin and whisk into the stock.

The stock is dark and cloudy at this stage but through a simple process of ice filtration you end up with a perfectly clear and luminous liquid. To do this, chill and then freeze the stock then turn it out into a sieve lined with a double layer of wet muslin, sit over a bowl, wrap the whole thing in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for 2 days to defrost and filter through the muslin. You end up with a small amount of clarified stock. Set with more gelatin and pour into molds – I used egg cups – and chill for at least 4 hours.

I served the turned out jellies on little thin circles of set polenta, fried till crisp, cooled to room temperature and brushed with truffle oil. The jellies were a little tricky to get out but after a brief dunking in hot water a little bit of poking round the edges I managed to coax them out. They're finished off with little enoki mushrooms. If I was doing this again I think I would sit the polenta on a short fat stem of some sort so as the whole thing looked like a mushroom.

Starter - Smoked haddock, spinach and saffron rice rolls, quails egg yolk rolled in dried dillsk powder, samphire and a smoked fish milk foam.


















My idea was that this would be a bit like a kedgeree. A real flavour of the sea, not so much in a fresh fish way, more in a warm breezy evening walk around a harbour kind of way. There's the leathery salty smell of the dillisk, the oily perfume of the saffron and smoked fish and a spray of sea water from the crunchy samphire.

I didn't get a photo of it here but the special thing about this is the discovery of the quails egg yolk, which sits disguised in a coating of powdered dillisk. You poke at this dusty dark purple ball with your knife and it suddenly bursts and the bright yellow yolk oozes out over the haddock and into the yellow of the saffron rice.

For the egg and dillisk powder - put the dillisk in a food processor and blitz, spread out on a baking tray and dry in a low oven for a couple of hours then grind to a powder in a pestle and mortar and pass through a fine sieve. For the eggs, separate and using a slotted spoon immerse the yolks one by one into barely simmering water for 30 seconds then remove to a bowl of cold water to finish later.

For the spinach and saffron rice rolls - cook the rice in saffron and set aside to cool. Remove and tough stalks from the spinach, blanch for a minute in well-salted water, drain and refresh in cold water. Spread out the leaves over a clean tea towel, cover with paper towels then roll the whole lot up and twist the ends in opposite directions to wring dry. Lay an even layer of spinach leaves out shiny side down over a sushi mat. Spoon out a line of rice over the spinach, role up tightly and chill.

For the foam, skin the haddock (from Woodcock Smokey in west Cork) place in a pan and cover with milk. Add a bay leaf, a few pepper corns and a slice of onion. Bring slowly to the boil and reduce heat to a low simmer for 10 mins. Strain through a sieve and keep warm.

To finish – slice the smoked haddock, cover with milk, bring slowly to the boil an and set aside. Blanch the samphire and season with lemon. Slice the rice rolls into rounds and heat through in the microwave. Dunk the egg yolks back in boiling water for 20 seconds then roll in the dillisk powder, they should be completely covered. Reheat the milk with a little cream and blitz with a hand blender to create a foam. Top the rice roll with the fish and and an egg, decorate with the samphire and spoon round the milk foam.

Main - Pressed pork belly, marinated pork fillet, onion puree, glazed carrots and beetroot.

Here we have soft, unctuous pork belly with a crispy skin alongside tender pork fillet. The onion puree has a really deep earthy flavour.  

The pressed pork is a Gorden Ramsey recipe with the addition of crushed coriander seeds rubbed into the meat and skin on the first cooking. The fillet is simply marinated in red wine, bay and thyme and then briefly roasted (til it reaches 71C). The sauce is a combination of the pan juices of the pork belly and the marinade all reduced right down. The onion puree is a Heston Blumenthal recipe – leaves you with a very steamy kitchen but well worth the effort. 

And for desert – Rosewater panna cotta, warm blackcurrant and liquorice coulis, lemon ice-cream and lemon sherbet.

Ive made various versions of this before. Its all based on 2 types of sweets that were a regular part of my childhood - sherbet lemons and those liquoirce and blackcurrant boiled sweets that have a chewy centre.

The liquoruce flavour comes from one of those hard black resinous sticks of liquorice that you buy in health food shops – left to dissolve in water overnight before blending with the fruit coulis. The panna cottas are set in ice cube bags which makes them look like little soft pillows. The lemon ice cream involves infusing milk with lemon peel and then adding the lemon juice at the very end before churning. Making sherbet is a doddle – its just icing sugar with a spoon of bicarbonate of soda and one of citric acid, add finely grated lemon zest and pass through a fine sieve.

And to finish - chocolates.

These truffles are rich and very alcoholic. Think as them as chocolate liqueurs. The outer chocolate coating on these adds a wonderful crisp contrast to the softer buttery chocolate within. Melt 200g of dark chocolate (64%) with 60g milk chocolate. Stir in 100g of butter cut into small pieces till completely incorporated. Then stir in the alcohol 40ml of brandy and 60ml of port. With the high volume of liquid there's a danger of this splitting – which it did on me, if so you can bring it all back together with a hand blender. Pour the chocolate mix into a shallow tray lined with clingfilm and freeze. When set cut into squares with a knife dipped in hot water and wiped clean between each cut. Separate out the squares on the tray and freeze again. Using cocktail sticks, quickly dip the frozen squares in melted chocolate and then roll in a good quality coco powder – the chocolate trading company does a good Valrhona coco powder that’s a wonderful deep dark almost purple colour.

Dinner party for four

Lemon sole fillets with crushed new potatoes

Cook new potatoes, till just done but still firm. Drain, peel, put in a bowl and season. Add a few good slugs of olive oil to a pan and gently heat then pour over the potatoes. Lightly crush the potatoes with a fork – they want to be chunky rather than smooth. Then stir through some very finely diced and lightly fried onion, some de-seeded and finely diced tomato, some basil, coriander, tarragon and lemon juice.

The sauce/dressing is just a little light vegetable stock blended with some olive oil, finely diced tomato, basil and a little red wine vinegar all brought up to the boil. And then set aside.

To finish - stack the potato (which should still be just warm) in ring moulds. Cut the sole into triangles, season and quickly fry in butter and olive oil in a hot pan – it should take no more than a minute on either side. Pile the fish pieces up on top of the potato and spoon the dressing out round the plate.    

Pork in milk

The main isn’t the most attractive dish but the meat is really tender and moist and the milk really help to impart all the flavour of the herbs and lemon and garlic into the meat.

I got the pork recipe from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. I used goats milk here but cow flavour milk is fine too. Just be sure to use whole milk.

The seasoned pork loin, with the rind removed is browned all over in a hot pan first, then set aside. Turn the heat down and add about 10 peeled garlic gloves and cook slowly till they start to just brown, then whip them out with a slotted spoon. Add sage, bay, thyme, rosemary and the peel pared from a lemon, let them infuse in the oil for a moment then add the the meat back to the pan and then add the goats milk – about a litre but enough to at least half cover. Bring to the boil and simmer slowly for about any hour and a half. The milk will have reduced right down and will have separated out leaving a gloopy sauce full of curds.

To accompany this I served baby beetroots, baby carrots and steamed rainbow chard. The carrots are cooked in the juice of half an orange, a chunk of butter and a little bit of cinnamon bark. Squeeze out a wt piece of grease proof paper and tuck it tightly down over the carrots, put the lid on the pan and let them steam in their own juice for half and hour. I always cook carrots like this they end up sweet and very carroty. The beets are scrubbed and baked whole in foil for an hour first with a good sprinkling of salt. Then tossed in a pan with butter and a splash of balsamic till glazed and syrupy. 


Treacle tart, pears poached in ginger wine and peated whiskey ice cream  

The desert is autumn on the plate. The treacle tart is soft, intensely sweet and warming, the pears are just slightly peppery from being poached in the ginger wine but what really sets this apart is the smokey, peated whiskey ice cream. I used Laphroaig whiskey. They make it by drying malted barley over turf fires. It has this pungent earthy and very smokey aroma in fact its almost tastes like someone left a cigarette butt in you glass of whiskey.