The trouble with Masterchef

People ask me if I fancy going on Masterchef. Well, no, I don't. It's a question of priorities. Masterchef is at the mercy of production budgets which means that the early rounds (far too many contestants) ask what can you cook in just over an hour. It's all about time and not about food or developing flavours. It means almost everything is pan fried. Nothing wrong with pan frying but it's a technique that favours expensive ingredients; and so you see them: scallops, monk fish, fillets of bass and beef, duck breasts (and some obsession with fondant potatoes, usually pronounced Fon-Dont with great zeal). OK, you can fry eggs and spam but these are rarely seen.

But really: there's no time to roast a cheap joint well or slowly stew something until it's unctuous. Four hours for a melting pork belly? Forget it. What of curries, casseroles, pies, stews, bakes, gratins, steamed puddings, roast joints? In short, all the things I love cooking are impossible on Masterchef. If you want to spanner their works, ask them to make a bread roll!

This a symptom of TV's obsession with cooking food quickly. What's next Jamie? 30 Second Meals? Where you stand in the kitchen with your mouth open and someone pours in the ingredients? We have time. Really. We do. Cook properly, eat well (around a table with your family) and just watch less telly.

It also means that contestants must be using commercial stock and pastry. You can't make decent stock in less than three hours. Hell, I take days. You need a half day to make puff pastry that's worth its name. Even pasta dough benefits from an hour in the fridge. But stock is at the heart of a good soup, sauce or gravy. Watery, cloudy, shop-bought stock is prohibitively expensive too. How can you judge a cook when some of the fundamental ingredients are provided for them? It's not so much cooking as food assembly.

And why is the commercial kitchen thrown in so soon? What does that prove? Again, they aren't really cooking anything; it's all about expensive food arranged on a plate. It's not their recipe. It's an alien kitchen. There's nothing to test their palate.

One more thing. Why the hell doesn't someone open that damn door for the contestants? Get a napkin and wedge it underneath! Why make them take two trips to serve the celebrity judges? A hostesses trolley at the very least. I'd stand there and yell at John and Greg. Has anyone dropped a plate? What would happen then? Today, Greg, I'm serving sea bass with a ginger sauce and ceramic shards.

One more, more thing. Chocolate fondant (Fon-Dont) puddings aren't that difficult any more. Everyone has a foolproof recipe now. Enough. Make bread and butter pudding instead. Oh, sorry, you can't; you're out of time.

Home cooked ham hock. Butt ugly and very slow.

Neil and Catherine's Late Night

A wonderful, long, relaxed evening. This was Neil and Catherine's second time with us and as before, it was great fun. Hope to see you all again soon.

Neil, Catherine and friends. That's the beef they're eating.

I served:

Soda treacle bread and butter. Warm spiced nuts.

Mushroom and truffle velouté.

Ham hock with celeriac remoulade and pea shoots.

Braised shin of beef and vegetables, spinach, Portobello mushrooms, roast onion purée and three mustard mash.

Iced tea ice.

Toffee Blueberries (recipe coming soon).

Sticky apple sponge, rhubarb sorbet, apple crisps, crystallised pistachios.

Orange rum truffles.

My new starter. Home cooked ham hock with celeriac remoulade with chargrilled toast and capers.
The pea shoots are dressed with a honey and mustard glaze.

Portobello mushrooms need only simple grilling to be delicious. I use them to top the beef.

A proper picture of the dessert. I'm now using a Canon 600D. 

The end of the evening.

Rhubarb Sorbet and Sticky Apple Sponges and Crystallised Pistachios (and I need a new camera)

I've been taking pics of the various elements in my new dessert: rhubarb sorbet with a sticky apple sponge, apple crisps and crystallised pistachios. However, even after a good deal of Photoshopping I can't get them to look good. These photos were taken with a Canon Ixy 1000 which is a decent point and shoot but it doesn't deal with low light well. Shadows make food look sinister but a nasty flash makes it look like road kill. I might have to buy a decent camera. I'm thinking of a Canon 600D but if anyone knows different please comment me.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the finished dessert. I swear it looked prettier on the night.

This was inspired by a recipe in James Mackenzie's book On the Menu.

I've made rhubarb sorbet many times before. It's a good way to use up that uniquely British product: forced rhubarb. Grown in the dark so it doesn't produce chlorophyll, this rhubarb is an almost embarrassingly, sometimes even metallic, cerise colour. It's one of those foods which looks man-made (I suppose it is though) like star fruit and yellow peppers.

The Sorbet

I make the sorbet by adding lots of rhubarb with just a splash of water and lots of caster sugar into a big pan, sticking the lid on and steaming the whole lot (low heat - I use a diffuser) until it's gloopy. At this stage you can add more sugar to taste and maybe mess about with ginger or rosewater or orange juice. On this occasion I went neat. I puree the whole lot in a blender and then churn in my ice-cream maker. It does have a slightly unusual texture this way... but in a good, interesting way.

The Apple Crisps

Using a mandolin on a setting that results in thin but whole slices... slice a whole apple. Brush the slices with sugar syrup (I used my home-made vanilla sugar syrup) and stick on some Silpat. Don't use baking paper! The slices will stick like shit to a blanket. Dry these out in an oven at 50°C for around 12 hours - maybe more. A long time yes. Just go to bed. They are startlingly delicious though.

This was taken with a nasty flash. See how they look like recently murdered apple slices?

Sponges

This recipe makes six muffin size sponges.

This was taken in proper daylight. Much nicer but much of my cooking is at night.

Cream 125g caster sugar with 125g of unsalted butter. Mix in two eggs, a big pinch of cinnamon powder and 50ml of apple liqueur (I use this one which isn't readily available but worth an internet buy as it has the most wonderful aroma) or apple juice. Fold in 125g of self-raising flour. Bake in the middle shelf at 180°C for between 23 and 26 minutes. Why not just say 25 mins? This sounds pedantic but you'll need to experiment (what a hardship) with your oven to get the sponges just baked. The softer, the better. If they are just slightly still batter-y then that's fine with me.

Poke lots of holes in the still warm cakes and pour on...

Sticky Apple

Reduce 1 litre of apple juice (pressed juice, none of your concentrate nonsense which is about as close to juice as Pot Noodle is to... something edible) with 200g of sugar. Reduce to half then add two diced apples (skin on). Reduce to a sticky consistency. 

Something remarkable (the chemistry eludes me) happens to the apple chunks. They turn into translucent little edible garnets; soft but still with structure.

Reduced apple juice is a revelation to me. It's both sweet and tart; a really interesting flavour. Does make me wonder about reducing other juices.

I take a little of the syrup and reduce it even further to make a jammy thing. I use this to stick the nuts and the apple crisp to the plate, thus avoiding any ugly transit slippage between kitchen and table.

Crystallised Pistachios

You can use any nut here but I like the colour and flavour combination. You'll need a sugar thermometer. This is taken from Heston Blumenthal at Home.

Roast 200g nuts in a 170°C oven for 12 minutes. Meanwhile... dissolve 200g of caster sugar in 150ml of water. Bring to the boil slowly then increase the heat until the syrup gets to 135°C. Add the nuts and whisk (Yes, use a balloon whisk) like fury until the sugar has crystallised (the exact thing you usually try to avoid when making caramel). Pour the nuts onto silicon or parchment and allow to cool. Be quick pouring the nuts or that instruction will read: laboriously chip out of the nutty concrete from the bottom of your pan. Either way it's edible but pouring is far less work.

Chocolate Caramels

Start here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/14/caramel-recipe-dan-lepard

I wanted to make some chocolate toffees. Not chocolate covered toffees but something more akin to the middle of a Reisen. Can't find a recipe, bizarrely. And Google search keeps returning toffees covered in chocolate. Now, any damn fool can dunk a toffee in chocolate. I was going to use some of my new silicon moulds.

First I tried making a basic caramel and then adding chocolate. Yeah, on that: it probably wasn't such a good idea to experiment with my best Valrhona... but I did. Stupid!

Of course, if you add chocolate to freshly made caramel. Read: caramel at 138°C, then the chocolate almost immediately splits into oil and solids. This is what it looks like.

It's a nasty, crumbly mess. Looks a bit like volcanic fudge. Which is probably why my family still ate it all.

The solution is to wait until your caramel has cooled but is still viscous and then add IT to melted chocolate (I added equal weights of chocolate caramel) and Whisk like fury as you add. Even then there was some splittage but it seemed to whisk itself better. The result was a fabulously (I overuse that word) dark, glossy, delicious, dental-work-worrying chocolate toffee. I then covered these in more dark Valrhona.

This is the toffee... in the nude.

Bacon toffee and corn bread!

Yup. We've been busy here in the NRR development kitchen. Spurred by an idea in an earlier blog I thought bacon in a maple toffee might not be a bad idea. Think of American pancakes with maple syrup and streaky. I'm thinking of an interesting, though none too light, amuse-bouche.

I found a recipe for corn bread in a Waitrose magazine which I thought would be an appropriate accompaniment. I bought some maple flavouring too for the bacon caramel. The corn bread was delicious. I made the corn bread in mini-muffin tins. Good size. I added tiny chunks of cheddar and jalapeño too. I need to work on the density though; these are too heavy for the restaurant.

Cornbread with added cheese and jalapeños

We're just at proof of concept stage here. It's all a bit ugly and ungainly. I have made a much finer version with very thin, very salty pancetta and glass like maple caramel... but I forgot to take a photo. Usual story. I think I'm going to have to invest in a decent camera.

Plastic? Do you take... bacon?

Bloody, bloody, bloody cups! A rant.

Dear God it's infuriating. You're trawling for recipes on the web and at least half of them are on American sites. Nothing at all wrong with that. Well, yes there usually is. The US still uses a volumetric measuring system. Cups. I hate cups. I loathe volumetric measuring systems. What's wrong with weight? I have a scales and a container, why introduce another system of measurement?

Utterly ghastly

Cups brings to mind some 1950s American housewife in with apron and rolling pin, fixin' dinner. No money for new fangled scales, let's just do with a scoop of this and and half scoop of that, which is probably fine if you're making a stew but not if you're baking. We need precision in baking, more so in sugar work and confectionary. What if your flour has settled... or not? What if it's grade OO and much finer? And it gets worse: calls for a 'stick' of butter. You know why? Because measuring a cup of butter (or peanut butter or lard) is a right arse of a job. And then there's nuts and chocolate and sticky stuff like honey, maple syrup and molasses, which means you have to wash your bloody cups out and inevitably loose some substance. What next - pecks and bushels? A what!? Just tell me what it weighs. Oh, it sucks. At the very least, couldn't hokey US websites acknowledge the rest of the world and display metric too? At least with metric and imperial you only need one conversion table, with cups you need a different table for EVERY SINGLE ingredient. Apparently it was completely unregulated, with talk of walnut size pieces of this and that, before someone called Fanny Farmer came about and rocked their world with her devil-talk of level, regulated cups. Fanny Farmer! Jeez-a-loo.

And just for balance, I don't like teaspoons or tablespoons either... nor fluid oz or litres. It's too imprecise. Just tell me the weight. I don't want to have to be getting jugs out and squinting at the side. And I certainly don't want to be banging cups.

Fennel and Beets

This started as a main course for our first 'proper' vegetarian dinner. Now I've reworked it as a starter. I forgot to take a photo first time out so here it is, naked, before I dress it with a circle of puff pastry. This is simply four fennel bulbs quartered lengthways, roasted for 20 mins at 180°C with some olive oil and balsamic. After making a caramel I also add some seasoning: parmesan, coriander seed, thyme and bake for 30 mins until  the pastry's well risen.

You can use a frying pan or a proper tart tatin tin (so much fun to say that). I have both but I find the frying pan easier to manipulate.

I serve this with beetroot puree. Roast a bunch of beets for an hour at 180°C. Put the warm bulbs in a plastic bag and seal. This helps with the peeling. Peeling beetroot really sucks. You end up looking like a serial killer but it's worth it for the colour. Purée the peeled beets in a blender then pass it through a tamis (or any other sieve but a tamis makes the job much easier). Finally I add some butter (OK, lots), pepper, salt, lime juice and ground coriander.

This is after the blender but before the tamis.

For meat eaters, I garnish the dish with very crisp, very thin pancetta. For vegetarians I use deep fried basil leaves, something I should use more.

Crackers (and bread)

I have a problem with crackers: most are far too thick. Who wants a face-full of oaty doorstep or wheaty brick? I also don't want an explosion of saliva sapping shards as I bite into yet another golden briquette. So what do I want? I want a sublime 'cheese delivery system', for this is what crackers are. I want thin, fine but damn tasty. So I made my own and discovered a neat trick along the way.

Dove Farm Rye Flour and Dove Farm Malthouse Flour. (That's brioche proving in the background).
You'll notice how the iPhone cunningly focuses on the stuff in the background and not the actual subject, bringing the attractive roll of kitchen towel into perfect relief. It's probably all part of Apple's Think Different policy.

Stupid Thin Rye Crackers.

In a food processor, add 60g softened butter to 250g rye flour and a big pinch of salt. Breadcrumb this. Then add enough very cold water to bring the mix together to a lump of dough.

Roll this flat and wrap in cling film. Chill in the fridge (or somewhere else that's chilled) for about an hour.

Roll out into a long oblong and then run this through a PASTA MACHINE. Yes, that's the trick to these. The dough is surprisingly well behaved. I took mine to the penultimate stop on the rollers (if you make pasta, that will make sense). This results in a wonderfully thin and even length of dough. Cut this ultra thin dough into strips... or not. I also made some wonderful, extra large crackers. You can also, just scrunch the dough like paper and make... um... crunchy scrunchies. A well organised blogger would surely have photographed these more interesting shapes. Yeah.

These were the last few of the run, so are a bit ragged.

The earlier ones looked better (honest).

Also: the crackers don't move when photographed. That was me.

Very thin!

These should be baked at the top of the over for about 8-12 minutes depending on how soft/baked you want them.

Sunflower Seed Malted Crackers

In a bowl, mix 250g of Malted, multi-grain flour with 90ml of oil and at least 70ml of water, salt to taste. You want a fairly sloppy, loose dough. Place in cling film and chill overnight until stiff enough to roll out.

Roll between layers of baking parchment to about 3mm thick. Cut out into desired shapes and sprinkle with sunflower seeds (or... poppy seeds... walnut pieces... toenail clippings - they'll never know) and bake for 15 mins @180°C until just golden brown. They will crisp up when cool.

Focaccia

I use Paul Hollywood's recipe. BUT, I only use one sachet of yeast per half kilo of flour, not his two. I like this recipe because he adds a lot of water. Be wary of drier doughs, you just won't get the lovely airy structure that probably drove you to make your own focaccia in the first place. Just give the dough plenty of time on the second rise. There is NOTHING finer to eat than slices of char-grilled focaccia. I don't dress mine with herbs, just oil and salt.

Just out of the oven and not yet 'seasoned' with lashings of olive oil and Maldon.

Our first fully veggie. Plants galore.

The very fabulous Roisin and Nick booked a party of eight (including the good people from @damagedgoodsrec and soon-to-be-superstar-writer @VickieDonoghue) but this time 'vegetarian' meant exactly that; so no fish. They also wanted an extra cheese course after dessert. I was happy to oblige. I love cheese, especially when it's a selection of Britain's finest from Neal's Yard. The UK now makes more types of artisan cheese than France. It is often fantastically expensive though; sometimes in excess of £45 a kilo.

I think veggies often get a bad deal in restaurants; so often an afterthought. The 'option' is invariably something unmentionable baked with cheese with the consistency of a dog-slobbered-slipper. I didn't want to do that. My starters are frequently vegetarian so no problem there. I wanted something unusual but not outlandish for the main course. I decided on a fennel and white onion tarte tatin. This was (another) Roux recipe (see below). I served the tart with something bitter: honey roast chicory and something very savoury: Jerusalem artichoke purée (not from Jerusalem and not an artichoke - great name).

The cheese was served with English quince jam, grapes, apples and a selection of my crackers and bread. See the post 'Crackers' for details and recipes.

Fennel and White Onion Tarte Tatin (serves 8)

Slice four onions thickly. Cut four fennel into four. Place in a roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil and balsamic. Roast for around 25 mins @ 180°C until just tender and beginning to brown.

In a large frying pan heat 120g of caster sugar with around 100ml of water, adding more water if things get too sticky later. Over a low heat, bring the mix to a caramel. Remove from the heat.

Place the fennel slice in a pattern and in-fill with the soft onion. Over the veg sprinkle some thyme leaves, salt, pepper and a few teaspoons of freshly crushed coriander seeds (don't use powder). Over all this: a sparse grating of parmesan. I know - cheese and caramel, who'd have thunk it.

Cut a round of all butter puff pastry that's slightly larger than the pan. Place this over the veg, carefully pushing down the sides to seal in the goodness. A quick egg wash and then a few fork pricks to allow the steam to escape. Bake for about 30 mins @ 200°C so the pastry is golden and risen.

On a board or a large plate invert the tart. It's quite a pretty thing, so long as you like brown.

Did I take a picture? No. Bugger! Sigh.

Soft, fruity, spicy, squashy, salty and brittle. My Favourite New Dessert

I've developed a 'new' dessert. I’m sure it’ll be very similar to some other (probably French or Italian peasant) dish but for the moment I’m going to bask. I’m very proud of this dish. I know there's nothing actually new in cooking, outside of the molecular gig.

This is it: pan fried brioche with winter fruit poached in a spiced syrup. Served with vanilla crème fraiche and salted hazelnut brittle.

Not enough apricots in this picture. Damn it!

Make a brioche in a loaf tin (I use M. Roux’s recipe), Yes, you can buy a brioche loaf but that’s not how I roll. I mean, you can buy sex but I’d rather make love!

The actual loaf wasn't this fuzzy.

Make the brittle.

This isn’t complicated but it can be fiddly (and burny – watch those forearms). Heat 200g of castor sugar in a wide pan. Go for maximum surface area; a frying pan is fine as long as it’s VERY clean. Bacon has no place here (although, if it was a maple flavoured brittle… OK, that’s one in the development book). Over a very low heat, melt the sugar and allow it to caramelise. You’re looking for a deep gold colour. The trick with making caramel is to LEAVE IT ALONE. If you stir it too soon, it will seize, the dreaded crystallisation. When it has caramelised, quickly pour this out onto a sheet of Silpat (or some silicon baking sheets. It's much trickier with baking parchment) and place another over the top. Working smoothly and quickly, roll the toffee between the sheets. You might have to pop the sheets into a warm over more than once to properly finish the job. You want a very thin sheet of toffee. No more than 2mm thick or it’ll be a jaw-breaker. Scatter about 100g of roasted hazelnuts over this and press in with the roller. Crumble some Maldon over this. You just want a hint of salt. Don’t use table salt. The crunchy sea crystals are important here. Again, while the toffee is warm (maybe another trip to the oven) score the surface with a long knife into thin shards.

Once cool, you can snap the shards off. The longer the better the more dramatic. If some break (they will) you can weld them together with a brief visit to a hot flame. This will make at least 20 shards.

Careful. You could take someone's eye out!

Make the syrup.

Add 300ml of water to 300g of sugar and heat gently to dissolve. To the mix add the peel of one orange, three cloves, a few peppercorns, two supermarket lengths of cinnamon and a cardamom. Bring to the boil, then back off. This is enough syrup for 6-8 people.

Prepare the fruit.

You want one plum, one apricot and six cherries per person. Stone the cherries and halve. Segment the plums and apricots into six pieces.

Fab colours that are preserved by the syrup

Make the crème fraiche.

You need a big tablespoon per person. Whip this with some vanilla seeds until firm. No one will complain if you add a dab of mascarpone or double cream, but not too much. You want to preserve the sour, zing of the crème fraiche.

To assemble.

Cut thick slices of brioche and pan fry in butter until golden. About three mins. Keep the slices in a warm over to crisp up.

Bring the syrup to the boil then back off a little (the syrup heat, not you; you need to stay close to the hob). Add the apricots and simmer for about three minutes, maybe less, depending on the ripeness of the fruit. It should yield easily with a spoon. Then add the plums and cherries. Cook for no more than two minutes.

Spoon fruit and syrup onto the brioche toasts, pipe or spoon the crème fraiche and add a shard of brittle at a jaunty, restaurant angle.

Hello 2013

I thought January was going to be a dud but we’ve had bookings every weekend. Some great parties. Some very late evenings. The braised lamb shank dish I do is proving popular, with guests and with me. It’s good to have an oven dish you can leave, happy in the knowledge that it will only improve if guests are late. It does need a good lamb stock. I make two litres and reduce the whole lot down for one boat of gravy. I served this with potato rostï, spinach, roast shallot and roast carrot and orange purée.

Fennel Fritters

These came out of the snow. Not literally… but because of the 3mm, er... blizzard, we experienced in early January, deliveries of essential foodstuff were kyboshed. I was after some samphire; something with texture to serve with fish. But I’m so glad I made these instead. A revelation. Maybe it’s because you don’t normally find that aniseedy tang inside anything deep fried but, whatever the reason, these are delicious.

Make a thin batter with 60g flour, an egg, dash of veg oil, 75ml of milk. Add to this some smashed fennel seeds. Let this stand for a bit. It helps the batter develop (apparently).

Thin slice some fennel. This is one occasion where a mandolin is all but essential. Dip the fennel in the batter and deep fry at 180°C for only a minute or two.

They look a bit weird here. Taste good though.

‘Give Me Butter! Always Butter!’

A quote from the great chef Fernand Point. I read about him here. Couldn't agree more! Butter, lemons, onions and vanilla: life would be wizened without.

Little Lamby-kins. A Revelation.

Cooked lamb for the first time... ever. Eh? Yeah, I don't like lamb but I realise that lots of people do (especially my wife).

My aversion stems from the cuts I was served as a child. With hindsight, it was probably breast or scrag end. (Scrag end? Who named that cut? Not someone from meat marketing, that's for certain.) I remember childhood lamb as being both stringy and oleaginous - a neat trick - and clumped with flabby yellow fat. I would cut all the fat off, laving tiny postage stamp pieces of meat. My father would invariably reach over to hoof up the trimmings, while complaining that I was too fussy.

Anyway... I braised ten lamb shanks, individually tin foiled, and served them with a reduction of red wine, port and the roasting juices. It was an interesting process making the gravy, having to put aside my own dislike of the flavour and try and be cheffy about it. In the end it comes down to balance and seasoning and depth of flavour so I believe and hope the final product was great. Certainly our guests sent back clean-picked bones.
The shanks were wrapped in foil on a bed of carrot, onion and rosemary with a whack of seasoned and herbed butter shoved in a pocket between the bone and the body of the flesh. Cooked for two and a half hours at 200°C then rested for 30 mins - under foil and a blanket!

The lamb was plated with wilted winter greens, parsnip purée (that I passed through a sieve four times and it still wasn't as smooth as I'd like) and meltingly soft and onion-y Boulanger potatoes. A pleasing winter combo.

The good news is it's just possible that with all the supping and tasting I may have started an inoculation process. By the end of the evening, I could even enjoy the meatiness of the roasting juices. Lamb has a sweetness like no other meat that I maybe beginning to appreciate.

This is a really useful recipe; a bistro classic and one I'll return to again I'm sure. No photos I'm afraid. With a party of ten there's no time for cameras.

The busy weekend... including a man who broke into Buckingham Palace... and a secret to life.

A school fayre, Emma's birthday party of ten, Rachel's party (catering) of 60 and Leslie's group of eight.
That was intense. I feel like I've been standing and cooking for four days. A confluence of requests lead to our most busy period.
Sarah rang me to see if we could stage a special birthday dinner for her friend, the rather glamorous and fabulous woman-about-town Emma Rigby (http://www.loveyourdoorstep.co.uk). I'm really glad we agreed. It was an excellent, boisterous evening. On the menu was onion soup, chicken braised in sherry and cream and cheesecake (proving very popular that one) with blackberries, which is actually my favourite fruit pairing so far, both for flavours and visuals. One of the guests told us of the drunken night he climbed into Buck House, only to be arrested at gunpoint. Wild stuff.

Emma's birthday. Louder than they look here!

I'd also agreed to do the catering for a party of 70 in Hertford the same day so Thursday night was largely spent making little polenta cakes, anchovy palmiers, szechuan chicken and slow roasting a whole pork belly. The palmiers are a bit love/hate. Some of my friends adore them and can scoff bowlfuls but others back off in horror, pastry pieces being spluttered from the mouth with indignation!

Anchovy palmiers. Not for everyone.
TIP: once you've rolled the pastry and filling, put in the freezer for 20 mins.
It makes them much easier to cut neatly. 

The night before, I been up making MANY choux buns, honeycomb, chocolate meringues and blueberry friands for my sons' school fayre. 

Saturday was Leslie's party of eight, eating polenta and mushrooms, salmon and my new sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce and home made vanilla ice cream, just perfect for winter.

The secret behind a good onion soup is, ironically, a good beef stock. I have no idea what to do if vegetarians ask for it.

My best beef stock (so far). A round of applause please.

The secret to beef stock, and all stocks, is a pressure cooker. I urge you to invest in one. Also, clarifying stock is a doddle. Whisk in a couple of egg whites and their shells and slowly, slowly, slowly bring to the boil. It is immensely satisfying to push back the white crust after an hour or so to reveal the exquisite clear liquid, effortlessly de-murked. It seems to be one of those not-difficult-at-alls along with choux pastry, soufflés, mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce.

The other secret, to stock, to so many dishes, maybe to life itself (along with lemons, vanilla and good Italian butter) is slow roasted onions. Roasted to a singularity; like the primordial soup! Take the time to reduce a kilo of onions down to a sticky, chocolate-like mass in a heavily set pan and you will be rewarded with the ultimate umami base (Ooooh Mammy!) for so many dishes.

Was once a kilo of onions.