An additional oven

It couldn't have come too soon. The death of our microwave meant we had a hole in our units. We only ever used the microwave to cook soup or peas so I jumped at the opportunity to install a 'compact' second oven.

I like to slow cook my restaurant food. All good, apart from when you need to heat up something else. Having one oven and a piece of shin that needs six hours at 150°C is a real bind when you have some something else that can only be prepared after 10 minutes at 180°C. And it's such a relief having an oven set to low so that things can be kept snug, things that might otherwise sit on the hob, with all the attendant burning potential. 

I didn't have much choice in my choice. The aperture was set. My budget was severely limited. None of the Germans seem to make an oven only version. Bosch, Miele, Neff, Siemens etc all insist on adding a microwave function. This both doubles the cost and gives you a shoe-box size interior. So I now have a CDA SV430SS (for the stove spotters among you), an Italian brand that's new to me.

But!! I've had to book an an engineer already. The temperature light keeps flashing so the only way I know the temp of my interior is with a thermometer. (You can see it in the picture.) I do hope this isn't an evil harbinger CDA. If it is I will be blogging and Tweeting loudly.

Children in the restaurant?

"Is it OK for us to bring the children?" Asked Sarah. "Of course." I replied. And then a thought. "How old?" They were 3, 5, 5 and 7. The first minors to dine at the NRR but I hope not the last.

Yes, there were a few challenges to chef's eardrums: the not at all annoying electronic-65th-birthday-cake-singing-candle (cheers Grandfather!) being removed from a highly indignant fist, was the most memorable. But I also got to enjoy the heat of high praise. I am, apparently, THE best chef in THE world. That's not all. My raspberry pavlova is THE best thing that guest had EVER eaten. The fact he was five years old is immaterial. It was a valid opinion.

They look happy don't they? They do.

Of course choice of food is an issue with children. I detest the notion of children's menu. Yes, detest. All part of the chicken-nuggetisation of our world. Not a phrase I bet you thought you'd read today. I'm a fan of taking kids to eat out. Forget dinner, too late and too expensive and peopled with young lovers, diners who have a notoriously low threshold for the all too audible broccoli protest. Talking of which, I have found, ahem, that one way to get your kids to try a new vegetable is to present them with a Michelin starred version of it. Not an everyday option I know but the parents get to have a nice meal too and there's the possibility of getting a bit tipsy in the early afternoon. But no, do lunch. Often it's a set price and set much lower than evening fare.

OR... just to tout for business for a mo: home restaurants are an ideal way to take young children out to eat. There are no other diners to worry about. They can play away from the table, and best of all, we have our own naughty step!

The best food in the whole world! No really.

This is Sarah, wot booked the gig.

And this is her Mum. Happy Birthday.

Birfday Pavlova being lit

The Rhubarb Tumble

It's very, very hard to create a new cocktail. It's easy to mix a new drink yeah, but is it original... everywhere? Probably not. Anything that can be mixed has been mixed already, many times over. All the good ones have been claimed and written down.  Within minutes of a new spirit/liqueur/mixer arriving in the shops, cocktail people the world over will be fervently combining it. Actually, scratch that, invariably the manufacturer will have employed a PR to get a known mixologist (hate that word) to create a whole array of cocktails using said ingredient to feature in magazine puff pieces, lifestyle articles etc.

However. I've not seen this mix anywhere else. And yes, I have really searched (the internet) so I think I can put my flag in it. I like the Britishness of it. Pink rhubarb is a national treasure and it's a damn shame that the liqueur I use is French!

In 2006, I was making a D.N.A. (a gin martini style drink with apricot flavouring) when my youngest son Etien asked what would happen if I replaced the apricot with the rhubarb liqueur I'd taken delivery of that day. You may ask why a five year old is showing such a keen interest in, and knowledge of,  his father's spirits but that's how we roll in Palmers Green. I made the substitute, and a few more changes - vanilla sugar syrup and vanilla vodka - and the Rhubarb Tumble was born. Like all good cocktails it's a balance of sweet and sour with a strong base. It is a mix of sweet vanilla and sharp rhubarb.

I've not yet met anyone who didn't like it.

Before you make it, you'll need some vanilla sugar syrup. This takes about a week, so I hope you weren't thirsty. There is no substitute I'm afraid. 

Take equal weights of water and sugar and slowly bring to the boil until the sugar has dissolved. Once cool, decant this into a bottle with a screwcap/cork. Now push in at least six vanilla pods. You can also use the deseeded pods from cooking. Leave this for at least a week in the fridge, shaking occasionally. The resulting syrup will be deep with flavour. It's a handy thing to have anyway. I have six home-made syrups in the fridge... but that's for another post.

You'll also need rhubarb liqueur and the ONLY ONE worth bothering with is Rhubarbe by Giffard. You'll probably have to web buy it. I've not seen it in the shops. All the other commercially available rhubarbs are bobbins (yes, I love that word). Trust me, I've tried them.

To my palate, Stolichnaya make the best tasting vanilla vodka. Get it if you can but the Absolut isn't at all bad and is in most supermarkets.

I'll give you the ratios here. 1 measure would normally equal 25ml, that's one bar shot.

1 of lemon juice,
1 of vodka, 
1 of vanilla vodka,
.75 of Rhubarbe and
.25 of vanilla sugar syrup. 

You can add a hint of a dash of grenadine for colour; it depends how gay you want it to look. Shake or stir with plenty of ice, strain and serve in a small martini glass or champagne saucer.

Contains about 2.5 shots of alcohol, about the same as a pint of strong lager... so be careful. Or not.

Orange almond tuile (baskets)

One I made earlier

I think that's so fetching, like edible lace. Why would you want to eat lace? No idea. 

I've been experimenting with ways to serve my poached peach with the tuiles. I've balanced the tuile on top but that looked like a bloody baseball hat. I've made C-shapes that the peach anchors at the bottom (no, anchors at the top! Duh) but that was prone to droopage, especially in our new heatwave (30°C). So finally I settle (until I change my mind) on the old basket.

The tuile here is a version of the Escoffier paste tuile - something like a brandy snap. Crispy, buttery, the perfect foil to soft fruit. This is Michel Roux Snr's recipe  one I've used for many years. This are quick and they are easy PROVIDED you have certain bits of kit. Let me spell these out:

1. A good, flat baking tray. One that won't warp. If it does, the tuile mix will tilt and pool and be all obnoxious.

2. Silpat. No matter how good your nonstick, a warm tuile will still stick to it like (insert pithy epithet here)... like sticky stuff to stuff that shouldn't stick, but does.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Mix 125g caster sugar, 40g plain flour, 65g flaked almonds and 50g soft butter with the grated zest of an orange. Add to this 50ml of strained orange juice. Spoon (or pipe) blobs onto the Silpat covered baking trays. Either circles or lengths. Leave lots of room for expansion. Now leave some more. Press down with the back of a fork to ensure an even thickness.

Now... Mr Roux Snr is a very great chef but his printed timing for this recipe is bobbins! He says 4 - 5 minutes. After this long at that temp, you will have pale, insipid tuiles and that won't do. I've found it needs between 8 and 10. They have to be a proper deep golden brown when they come out or they will never crisp when cool. Do one or two single tuiles to see what works in your oven. Stand on oven guard for those last few seconds else a bitter mouth party awaits.

When the tuiles are at the right colour, remove from the oven. Then remove the silpat from the hot baking tray. Then, leave them alone for at least three minutes. If you try and slide a palette knife under them now they will snag and pull into some unsightly sculpture (and still be delicious and very edible, but one for the family maybe and not paying guests). 

They should be this colour. Any lighter and they won't crisp properly.

After the mentioned minutes, test an edge, it should now be firm(ish). Slide the palette knife under and waggle it. The flexible tuile will lift. You can mould it on a rolling pin for that traditional shape or, in this case, over the top of a pudding mould for a basket. You can also twist, tear and stretch them into some abstract obscenity if you so choose. Whatever, they will take some abuse while still warm. It's only when they've cooled that you have to be VERY careful. Remove them from the mould when the shape is set... a matter of minutes. They are very buttery so this isn't usually difficult.

Keeren's School Outing

I know I've used this shot format many times before  but unless I ask my guests to move and pose I think I'm stuck with only a few angles. I definitely need a deeper depth of field. Keeren's there at the end and she's barely in focus. What a way to treat my host.

This was the first group ever that didn't seem to like my nuts. I must find out why. 

Anthony Webb came to dinner

Palmers Green's premier estate agents benefitted from a recently modernised pea bavarois, an original roast pork loin with tomatoes and black eyed peas and a newly developed poached peach dessert. There was ample parking and easy access to local amenities (the bathroom). Irrigation opportunities were excellent.

This was taken while they were all still sober. For details of what happened after that, please ask them.

Small Potatoes

Well, I'll be scaling back the plans for self sufficiency, to be sure. That's it! Four potatoes from one plant. That's exactly half of Farmer Jason's potato harvest 2013. But picked fresh from the ground, gently scrubbed clean, barely boiled and rolled in Lescure butter and Maldon sea salt... were they delicious? No. They were bloody awful; very floury.

However, all is not lost (yet). Take a look at the rest of the raised bed. 

It does look messy. I can't pretend this is what I wanted. But then, I am very much the neglectful grower; hoping that if I leave it, it will grow... and grow beautifully. That turned out to be bollox. Didn't notice any pests though. I expect they're all underground, getting it all nice and homely.

The weather, of course, has been bizarre this year. We seemed to bypass spring completely, then a largely grey May and June was followed by heatwave July. It's been 32°C here in Palmers Green. Maybe this is bad weather for potatoes? During the non-spring, at least one fox gained access and dug at the roots for some reason, so I lost at least one plant; can't remember what it was. My peas shrivelled and died. I mean, they didn't even try.

However, the tomatoes are there, still green and the courgettes are flowering. But, best of all, success with strawberries. I put in at least six varieties to see a. which would be most fecund(!) and b. to ensure a longer fruiting season (that's what the man with the flat cap and the gillet in the shop said). They are fruiting and the fruit is sweet. The wild strawberries in particular are wonderful. Although tiny and clustered with seed, they taste almost perfumed.

Pea bavarois and mint sauce. The perfect summer starter?

Perfect? I think so. This is summery and sweet and savoury. Essentially a chilled mousse, this is, of course, posh mushy peas and vinegar. Like all fine food, the roots are in the soil. Bavarois is a pain in the arse to pronounce. The French just slur the whole word, of course. But, as I am in possession of a slightly soft 'r', mine comes out something like 'bumble-waz'. However, this is one of those cooking words for which there is no english equivalent. Mousse it isn't. Bavarois (meaning Bavarian in French) is a puree of fruit or veg, folded with whipped cream and set, in the fridge with gelatine (or some modern chemical that doesn't involve the 'murder' of the innocent - ahem).

This is a joy for dinner parties as you only have to turn them out from the moulds and make pretty, in my case with pea shoots, bacon, Jersey Royal potatoes, a mint sauce and a garnish of onion crisps...

Ah yes... onion crisps. One of my first posts ever was about my difficulty making crisp, delicate, desiccated onion slice. In fact, I didn't ever finish the post, probably because I had to admit defeat then. I suppose it shows that I have learned something these past nine months that I forgot that I didn't know how to make them and just got on with it. But first the Bavarois recipe.

This is enough for eight starter servings (of the size in the pic above). Finely chop 1 large or two small shallots. Gently fry this in 25g of unsalted butter until soft and translucent. To the pan add 300ml of milk and bring to a simmer. Add 500g of frozen petit pois. Don't use garden peas as they are not as sweet. Simmer the peas for two minutes until just tender. Now blend well and pass through a fine sieve. Soak two leaves of gelatine (four small ones) and mix in with the warm puree. Vegies can use about four teaspoons of agar agar powder (boiled in water as per instructions). This will change the texture though, giving a firmer set.

Whip 150ml of double cream to soft peaks. You know they say 'don't over-whip, invariably without qualifying what over-whipping looks like? This is one occasion when it's important. Over-whipped cream is when it stops being cream and starts being butter: it gets claggy. I can't say 'whipped' any more without thinking of Stewie and Brian in Family Guy. Anyway, mix the pea puree with the cream. Taste and season. It will need salt and maybe some white pepper.

Oil some dariole moulds or small pudding moulds with a thin coating of something neutral tasting, like grape-seed oil. Fill the moulds with the pea mix and chill for at least two hours. No harm will become if you leave them for a couple of days in the fridge. 

To release, dip the moulds in hot water for a few seconds and then bring the mould down sharply on the plate. They will ease out. Serve soon afterwards; a warm room will bring about their collapse.

These benefit hugely from a little minty acidity. I add crispy bacon and onion crisps for crunchy contrast and small potatoes for carbo-bulk.

So... onion crisps. Fine slice some onion with a mandolin  On Silpat lined trays, bake at 80°C for two hours. Remove. Raise the oven to 120°C. Brush the onion carefully with a little oil, sprinkle a little Maldon from a height (a couple of feet, no need for the ladders) and return to the oven for a few minutes. Don't wander off! Stay with the oven and watch these mothers. You want a tasty gold. In unwatched seconds they will go a bitter brown or a binnable black and then you've wasted all that effort.

Francesca's Four

We don't get many bookings of four any more; it's mainly eights and tens. While the larger parties can be very entertaining, these smaller groups allow me to spend a bit more time plating up; working with the presentation; getting it 'just so'. Well, that was the plan.

Tonight, with Francesca, was unusual also, because I served four new dishes. Normally I only include one innovation per evening and even that has me waking early in the morning muttering... 'chicken... must check the...'. Last night I dreamed of raspberries! The difference tonight was all the dishes were prepared on the hob once guests had arrived. There was no slow cooking and therefore no issues of timings. Also, these were all variations on family favourites so I've cooked versions of them many times before.

What was annoying tonight:  I was partially robbed of my sense of taste. Bloody, bloody, bloody hay fever. This could become a real issue. What do pro chefs do? Without smell I'm left only with bitter, sweet, salty, sour and umami. You've all done the taste test right? Pinch your nose hard and while holding try and see if you can differentiate between apple and a potato, or tea and coffee. Many people have no idea that most of what we think of as flavour is stuff that happens in your nose. Your tongue really has only the most rudimentary detectors. Taste is in the mouth but flavour is in the nostrils!

I normally serve a mushroom and truffle velouté as an amuse bouche but because Fransceca had plumped for a truffled starter I needed something new. Also, what is essentially posh cream of mushroom soup wasn't what was needed on a warm summer evening. OK, so it was clammy and overcast and not warm at all, but still...

The dreadful spring has blighted our fruit and veg too. Although I hear we're in a for a tremendous strawberry harvest. It's always difficult to buy properly ripe, rich, deep red tomatoes but the simple lack of UK sunshine exacerbates matters.

So I took tomatoes and concentrated the flavour by drying them in the oven. Tomato crisps. You do lose a lot of mass. There are three large tomatoes in the picture below. I served them here with a basil oil dip. They are very delicate but most agreeably flavoursome (...Mr Darcy).

I was hoping the oil would look like an emerald sea, a limpid pool... rather than a village pond. Ho hum.

The starter I had done before, sort of. It was based on a veggie main. Truffled polenta with mushrooms. Here I served it with onion crisps, a port and beef stock reduction and thyme flowers from the garden. I'm not quite sure what this picture reminds me of. I'm not even sure I like it. Maybe it's a wood pile on a massive omelette? Maybe it's too kitsch; you expect Heidi to appear with a hop and a skip and a goat.

How do you make tomato or onion crisps? Same as apple: fine slice the veg and brush with a little oil then bake for two hours (maybe less for the toms) at 80°C.

Who ordered the omelette?

Mains was pan fried sea bass with crash pots, green beans, roast toms and roasting juices. The picture looks a little dry here but it wasn't. In the shop (wonderfully miserable Pat at Green Lanes Fisheries) the bass looked exceptionally fresh: vivid gills, bright, clear eyes and absolutely no smell. I'm not keen on messing around too much with good fish. You really don't need fancy-schmancy sauces and I even think strong flavours like capers or lime detract from the subtlety of the flesh. Yes you need some acidity but that's where the tomatoes come in. Pan fried bass in (lashings of) butter to get that crispy, golden fringe around soft, flaking flesh; there are few things I like more.

Crash potatoes are new pots, Charlottes or something fairly waxy, parboiled and crushed then roasted at 220°C with olive oil, Maldon salt, black pepper and crushed fennel seeds for around half an hour. It's a forgiving dish, another ten minutes just means a crisper finish. The fennel worked well here with the lemon juice and basil oil that I added to the buttery frying pan juices.

I went for a rustic presentation. Sod it. it's honest.

The potatoes are meant to look that like. Honestly, they're delicious.

Dessert was poached peaches with an orange tuile, raspberries in raspberry coulis, little meringues and Chantilly cream. I've been developing this dish over the past few weeks. I love fruity desserts, almost always choosing a lemon tart over chocolate say.

The tuiles are a doddle, not nearly as fiddly as they look (and I do hope they look fiddly). I took some photos to illustrate the recipe. I'll post that when I get back on Monday. I've shut the restaurant this Saturday because I'm going to see one of the finest bands in the world: Sigur Ros playing at the Eden Project.

I want to improve the presentation. I know I said I like 'honest' but desserts are the exception; they should look... a bit... contrived. I want to make a tall, curving tuile that the weight of the peach keeps in place. I'm fairly sure I can achieve that. This classic shape looks too much like a baseball cap. I'm very pleased with the colours though.

The peaches address each other: 'yo blud'.

Maybe not

A good week(end)

Just look at that! Isn't it the prettiest, most perfect plate of food you've ever seen? Unfortunately (for me), it isn't one of mine. This is the Summer Salad currently being served at Arbutus restaurant - the creation of chef-patron Anthony Demetre. I also must flag co-owner Will Smith for his commitment and professionalism. This is a man who knows how to keep his customers coming back again and again. Cheers Will.

Below is the Arbutus pannacotta and strawberry dessert. Both dishes were as delicious as they looked. I didn't even take the photographs though. These are the work of Kerstin Rodgers, the hugely entertaining and fabulously ebullient food blogger and grande dame of the UK's home restaurant movement.

We met for lunch in the week. Finally! She's a very busy woman. This was my fourth attempt to pin her down as she'd kept being flown on food junkets to: Mexico, Denmark and then the Shetland Isles.

Kerstin, Mrs Marmite Lover to her Twitterati, was naturally a wealth of information and hilarious stories of cooking, blogging and uppity celebs. She has 15,000 Twitter followers and her blog receives 100,000 hits a month. Puts my efforts in the shade. But she did point out that the majority of blogs fold after three months so I seem to be past the first hurdle.

So onto the weekend. Two parties of ten. The photo below is of Nicole and her friends and husband who came to celebrate her birthday on Saturday. One of the friendliest, happiest and certainly the loudest (they won't mind me saying) groups I've entertained.

I knew they were determined to enjoy themselves when husband Maurice turned up with a magnum of Champagne, the largest wine box I've ever seen - at least 20 litres of Chinon, some Courvoisier brandy and a mysterious, unlabelled bottle containing what looked like olive oil but was, it transpired, a rural and rather fine 'eau de vie', obtained from a farm on a recent trip in the Loire.

Being largely of Trinidadian heritage, the women asked for (and got) an evening of Soca music. Did they dance? Of course they did.

Dinner was the French gnocchi with lardons and broad beans for starter; mains of lemon and basil barley risotto (featuring my new Basil oil) and dessert of vanilla cheesecake and raspberries. I maintain my cheesecake is a world beater. It's actually an Anthony Demetre recipe.

One of their guests didn't do cheese however, so I improvised a dessert by poaching a peach; serving it with raspberries and crystallised pistachios. This reminded me of a dish I keep planning to do using poached peaches (the M. Roux Snr technique using a rosemary sugar syrup) and an architectural orange tuile. Architectural? Photos soon I hope.

Nicole, Maurice and friends

The chicken and barley they ate. Not nearly as pretty as the pics above. I know. Sigh.

Herb Oils

I used to wonder why restaurants served purees instead of the whole vegetable. Now I know: it's about the flavour concentration. Oven roast a parsnip or a carrot and you remove much of the water content. But a withered vegetable can look a tad unattractive. So you stick it in the blender. Add butter, or cream for texture, salt and pepper and maybe herbs and spices. A touch of coriander with the carrot perhaps. You can also combine flavours. That sweet parsnip gets all windswept and interesting if you add a little bramble apple acidity.

The same is true of herb oils. You take the essence and add it to a neutral oil. Just like when making granita, you first blanch the leaf for ten seconds and then refresh in ice water. Squeeze out the excess and blend. Sieve through double muslin and you have a hugely aromatic, very concentrated and often very vivid oil.

Now you can drizzle it on meat or fish, or veg. Hell, it's oil. You know what to do with oil right? Here I use it to brighten up my barley risotto.

Pots en Pap

This is one of my oldest recipies. I took it from the Greens' Cookery book at least twenty years ago but it still seems to surprise people.

You know how irritating it is when the host says, of something that clearly required weeks of work, 'oh, it's really simple'? Well, these are. Even if you can't boil an egg - you can make these. Not that I'm encouraging you to cook if you can't manage an egg. Certainly, you shouldn't be handling knives. And if you can't boil an egg, what on earth will you eat with these potatoes? It'll be a terrible waste. You do need to know how to fold paper though.

I don't have a picture of the potatoes but they are simple to prepare. These are great for large (tardy) parties because 5 mins of extra cooking only improves the flavour. I tend to remove the pots after 30 mins and then do the final 15 mins when everyone's assembled and behaving themselves. Again, this will serve six people.

So... oven to 220°C. Take a half kilo of small potatoes - Jersey Royals would be dandy. place them on a length of baking paper/parchment; at least two feet. Oil the spuds well, and season with salt and pepper. Add one garlic glove per person and your herbs of choice. Woody ones seem to work best but then, so does tarragon. Make a bag of the paper, overlapping the edges and twisting the final corner. The bag needs to be sealed.



Cook the pots on a baking tray for 40 mins at 220°C. If you're cooking something else, like meat, that's fine just cook for ten minutes more. This is a forgiving dish. In any case itthe timing will be slightly more or less depending of the size of your veg and your taste. You can test the pots through the bag. When you press one, it should just squish.

Open the bags at the table. This is great foodie theatre. It smells wonderful too. They will be crispy in part and chewy as they are part steamed, part roasted.

You might want to squeeze the cooled garlic cloves onto bread too. It's quite mild as it's been baked whole and not finely chopped.

Pork and potatoes... and party people

Lots of people came to eat and drink and dance and sing this weekend. We did Thurs-Fri-Sat; by very special request. There were birthdays, engagements and fathers' day celebrations.

A big thank you to my son Fabian who worked on Saturday, the night of his 17th birthday.

I didn't ask them to pose. Clearly all my guests are naturally photogenic.

This is David and Theresa and family (from The Only Place for Pictures in Palmers Green). They're eating my chicken with cream and sherry casserole with braised baby gem and pots en pap (potatoes cooked in a paper bag).

Sam and Gill have a special reason to be smiling... but it's not mine to divulge.

Chicken and sherry casserole with braised little gem

That's the pots en pap in the foreground, next to Rob's elbow. Theresa *may* be posing a little here. 

Becs dancing (with her brother Sam).

One of the things we served this weekend was slow roast pork belly (again with potatoes en papillote). I was asked for the pork recipe. I'm very pleased with the dish because it is my own*. The asterix is there because, in cooking, nothing is *new*. We all build on the experience of others.

Pork belly with savoy cabbage, rosemary gravy and parsnip & apple purée.

Slow roast pork belly - serves about ten.

Buy a 3kg pork belly. This will necessitate a trip to your local butchers, hopefully not for the first time. Don't bother with the supermarket; you'll be needing a butcher not just someone who unwraps meat. Hey, while you're there, see if they have any beef shin, or ham hock. Maybe some oxtail and marrow bones for stock? They're not in this recipe but you'll thank me when you get home. If you're used to those prissy little plastic supermarket packs, the size may shock you. Worry not. We can do this. Ask the butcher to leave the belly on the bones (ribs) but maybe loosen them a little.Preheat the oven to 230°C.

You need a baking tray large enough to lay out the belly but that will also fit in your oven. Put this on the hob. Fill with boiling water to a depth of a centimetre. Place the belly SKIN SIDE DOWN in the water and boil for 15 mins.This will soften the skin without cooking the meat. Remove the belly from the tray and place skin side up on a clean J–cloth or towel. You should now be able to score the skin finely. You'll still need a sharp knife. Dry the skin off completely. Now rub in some neutral tasting oil - grapeseed or groundnut is good. Grind just less than a tablespoon of fennel seeds with the same amount of sea salt and rub this into the skin. You can rub in other stuff too: sugar, honey, allspice, cinnamon but I prefer to let the pork sing solo.

Tip the water out of the baking tray and replace the belly on a rack in the tray. The rack is important. Cook in the very hot oven for 15-20 mins until the skin starts to blister. While that's happening, cut up four carrots, two sticks of celery, two leeks and two onions. The exact amounts really aren't critical. 

What's a good fistful of rosemary? This is.

Now turn the oven down to 160°C. Place the veg under the pork (it's on a rack, remember?). Pour in at least 200ml of white wine, vermouth, apple juice, stock or water or a combo of any of these. Take a care though as this will be the basis of your gravy. To the now wet veg add a good fistful of rosemary. And I really mean a good fistful.

Roast this (uncovered) for at least three hours. It could be four or even five - in which case, drop the oven down to 150°C. The meat won't really suffer because there's so much moisture in the fat. Top up the tray liquid if it starts drying out - and it will. Don't let the veg burn or your gravy will be acrid.

The meat will be very tender, the fat should have rendered off into the veg below and the skin should now be glassy and delicious.

Remove the meat and allow to rest while you sieve the veg and pork juices into a pan. Season the gravy, thicken it if you like (with cornflour or beurre manis). I whisk in some ice cold, cubed butter right just before serving - if you do this, the gravy shouldn't be boiling. You'll also probably want to sweeten the gravy too. A pinch of sugar is an obvious choice, but you could use redcurrant jelly or honey or even something like these. I use a home-made rosemary jam... but I would.

I serve the pork with parsnip and apple puree, some sort of cabbage (green or red) and some pots en pap. This is not one to dish up at the table. The crackling needs some serious endeavour and this can look ugly. Hide your industry in the kitchen.

Six very bloody, talented people... and a piece of pork.

A strange confluence of my passions when I end up cooking for a group of bloody 'creatives'. One writes for 'Stenders, one's won awards (actually, probably more than one), one's been body slammed by B.A. Baracus (true)... yadda, yadda. Not that I'm jealous of their youth and potential. I have no idea what they're all laughing at. Maybe someone said something funny? Maybe that thing was the word 'penis'? Who knows? It certainly wouldn't be me because I'm a writer so I'm much cleverererer than that. I'm sorry this photo doesn't have Tess looking into the camera but TBH it was a struggle to find one where she didn't have a drink to her lips.

And if you're thinking that the piece of pork was the one behind the camera... No, it's this fine sample of belly with the crispiest piece of crackling ever recorded in the UK. I'm very proud of it. I will probably give you the recipe after this long weekend of cooking has concluded. Trouble is, I didn't serve it to the gang above. 

No, their main course was salmon, served with roast toms, deep fried courgette, carrot, croutons and tarragon oil. Many thanks to Ms T. Booth of South London for the snap. I think fish, toms and croutons are a combo I will return to again.

Bhavna, Nita... and an accident

Great to welcome back (the VERY pregnant) Bhavna on Friday and Nita on Saturday. Largely vegetarian affairs. I served a starter of baked beetroot with curd cheese, pea shoots and some wonderful cucumber pickle from my good friend @rich_graham at the Preservation Collection. I also garnished with some delicate edible kale flowers from my garden.



Main courses were both based on my barley lemon risotto, with some having pan fried sea bass, some char grilled chicken and some fennel fritters.

There were four medical professionals in Bhavna's group and this chimed quite nicely with the news I received last week that I'm back as part of the Casualty team. I heard a few horrific stories from Ashok concerning his rotations in A&E.

Bhavna's husband, Umesh (sp?) is a photographer so he took this while trying to educate me on f-stops and ISOs. The light was VERY low. Bhavna (on the right) might not look pregnant here but I had towels and hot water on standby. No idea why. No one uses hot water during childbirth do they?

I would have loved to have taken some pictures of Nita's charming and wonderfully entertaining five-some but then, on Saturday afternoon, this happened...

It might not look like much but boy... it did smart somewhat

Ironically, it was when I was cooking for my own family not for the restaurant. I grasped a metal handle that I hadn't realised was over an adjacent flame. I heard my own fingers sear. I then did a little dance and entertained some Anglo-Saxon epithets before my wife plunged my hand into some iced water. And that's how I was for the rest of the evening: one handed and wincing. Luckily I'd done most of the restaurant prep by then but I had to direct my sons to chop and add while I did the tasting with one hand, Huge kudos to them; they were brilliant.

One more thing. Sorry Farah... this is the best I could do.