cookbook – Page 6

Haddock and Eggs – Cornflakes – curry oil by Glynn Purnell

For the Haddock Milk Foam
4 litres whole milk
2 fillets yellow dyed haddock
2 fillets Arbroath smokies
Trim from 6 fillets naturally smoked haddock including skin etc
(this is the trim from the home-cured smoked haddock and in the brandade mix)
54g Agar
6g Xantham Gum

1. In a large saucepan, heat all fish in the milk and slowly bring to a boil while stirring occasionally.
2. Once boiled, remove from heat and transfer to a large container and cool at room
temperature. Cover and leave to infuse in the fridge for 24 hours.
3. Pass into a clean container. Remove 3 litres of the infused milk and reserve the rest in the fridge until needed.
4. Bring 3 litres of the haddock infused milk to the boil with the Agar, whisking occasionally. Once boiling, whisk continuously for two minutes.
5. Remove from heat and pass into a clean container. Leave to set in the fridge for a minimum of 12 hours, or until fully set.
6. Once set, blend back with 900ml of the reserved haddock milk and Xantham gum.
7. Split into 450g portions and seal in vac pac bags. Reserve in the fridge until needed.
Always weigh the haddock milk to check the ratios are correct. If you have less then 3900ml, use these ratios to adjust the mix as necessary:
18g Agar Agar per litre
1.75g Xantham Gum per litre
Blend back with 300ml of haddock milk per litre

For the Smoked Eel Brandade
140g smoked eel, diced
70g cod
70g smoked haddock
120g salted butter, softened
120g warm dry mash potato
1 lemon
Milk, to cover

1. Place the smoked eel and fish into a saucepan.
2. Cover the fish in milk, bring to a simmer and cook gently.
3. Once the fish is cooked, pass off the mixture, reserving the milk and keeping it warm.
4. Mix the cooked fish mixture with the warm mash potato.
5. Put the fish and potato mixture into an electric mixer with a paddle attachment fitted. Beat in the softened butter for 30 seconds.
6. Add 20ml of the reserved milk and beat until fully incorporated. Add more if the mix is too dry.
7. Season with the zest and juice of the lemon.
8. Pipe into even ballotines on top of cling film. The ballotines should be approx. 1.5 inches in diameter and 20 inches in length. Roll the ballotine in the cling film to form a tube and twist the ends of the cling film over and over until they can’t twist any more. This should form an airtight tube and the ends of the ballotine should be sealed up due to the pressure. Tie these ends to seal and freeze the brandade mixture.
9. Set up a pane station with flour, beaten egg and a 50:50 mixture of breadcrumbs and cornflake crumbs.
10. Carefully remove all the clingfilm from the brandade ballotines and portion into 3-inch cylinders.
11. Pane the cylinders in the flour, egg and breadcrumb and cornflake mix. Reserve on a tray in the fridge until needed.

For the Curry Oil
1 litre sunflower oil
2 tablespoons mild curry powder

1. Place the oil and curry powder into a large vac pac bag and seal to remove all air.
2. Place into a water bath at 65˚c for four hours. Remove and leave in the fridge for 12 hours.
3. Hang the mixture through a muslin cloth set over a bowl but do not push through. Vac pac the passed oil into medium bags and reserve in the fridge until needed.
4. Decant the oil into squeezy bottles once it is at room temperature.

For the smoked haddock
6 haddock fillets
Coarse rock salt
Sunflower oil

1. Skin the haddock fillets.
2. Submerge in the salt for 4 minutes.
3. Removed the haddock from the salt. Thoroughly wash off the salt and dry.
4. Rub the haddock fillets in sunflower oil.
5. Set up a hot smoker with oak chips. When the smoker is ready, place the fillets on to the wire rack and smoke for 10 minutes.
6. Remove the haddock fillets from the smoker and leave to cool completely. Seal in a vac pac bag and keep in the fridge until needed.

For the Baked Cornflakes
250g Cornflakes
250g salted butter, melted
10tbsp milk powder
2tbsp caster sugar
1tsp table salt

1. Preheat oven to 140˚c.
2. Mix all the ingredients together. Spread out evenly onto a tray lined with a silpat mat. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.
3. Remove from the oven. Once cooled, place in a blender and pulse blend until a crumb-like consistency is achieved. Reserve in an airtight container until needed.
To serve one portion
1. Deep fry the brandade croquettes at 170˚c for 2-3 minutes until golden and crispy. Remove and drain.
2. Heat 40g of the smoked haddock in the oven until warm.
3. Separate an egg yolk, removing all the white, and carefully drop the yolk into a pan of water at 50-55˚c. Poach gently for no longer than two minutes. The yolk should be just sealed on the outside.
4. Place the haddock into the bottom of the serving bowl. Sprinkle with a pinch of chopped chives, a splash of curry oil and add a teaspoon of the baked cornflakes.
5. Get the ISI gun containing the haddock foam. Give it a good shake and squeeze gently to form a dome of haddock foam which should just cover the haddock in the bottom of the bowl.
6. Carefully remove the poached egg yolk from the water and place into the centre of the haddock foam. Season with sea salt and drizzle the top with curry oil. Serve with a brandade croquette on the side.

Cook more from this book
Monkfish masala with red lentils
Lemon meringue pie

Buy this book
A Purnell’s Journey
£85, A Way With Media
Also available at Amazon: There And Back Again: A Purnell’s Journey

Read the review

Smoked Cod Cakes by Maura O’Connell Foley

These cod cakes can be made in advance and frozen for up to one month, making them ideal to be served at any time of day, be that breakfast, lunch or a light supper with Tartare sauce and a green salad. The cakes can also be deep-fried for a crispier result in a canape or starter size. To do so, shape the mixture into small balls (golf ball size) and deep fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Ingredients

Makes around 15-20 small cakes
450g undyed smoked cod
285ml cold milk, for poaching
285ml water, for poaching
45g butter
45g plain white flour
285ml whole milk
Sea salt and cracked
black pepper
2 eggs, lightly beaten
55g freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano or
mature Coolea gouda cheese
115g fresh soft white breadcrumbs
Oil and clarified butter to shallow fry, or oil for deep fat frying

Method

Place the cod in a medium saucepan and cover with the milk and water. Bring to a boil over a medium heat, then reduce to a low heat to gently poach for 5 minutes or until the cod flakes easily. Remove the cod from the poaching liquid and flake into chunky pieces, removing any bones, sinew or skin.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over a low heat. Add the flour and cook for a further 2 minutes, continuing to stir with a whisk. Turn up to a medium heat and gradually pour in the milk, continuing to stir and cook for at least 6 minutes until the sauce is a very thick consistency (like choux pastry). Season to taste. Turn down to a low heat and add the eggs slowly, stirring vigorously to blend and ensure a smooth consistency. Stir in the cheese. Remove from the heat.

Gently mix in the fish, being careful to keep the fish in generous chunks. With the breadcrumbs in a bowl nearby, take heaped tablespoons of the cod mixture and gently coat in the breadcrumbs, not pressing or handling too much. If shallow frying, make small little cakes. If deep fat frying, shape into small round balls (golf ball size).

Place on a tray and chill for 30 minutes in the fridge before frying, not covering to avoid soggy breadcrumbs.

Heat enough clarified butter and oil in a wide frying pan to cover the base, then shallow fry for 3 minutes either side until golden brown. Repeat in batches until all the cakes are cooked. Alternatively, deep fry in batches until golden brown.

Tartare Sauce
Tartare sauce is a classic sauce for deep fried fish or any fried fish in general. The key to this sauce is its piquancy. I serve it with crab cakes and smoked cod cakes. Capers grow wild in a bush in the Mediterranean and should be much more expensive given that they must be handpicked, only when ripe and at a specific time of day. They are also cultivated, but even then, they cannot be picked by machine. If using salted capers, ensure you rinse off the salt. Large capers can be chopped; if using small capers, do not chop.

Ingredients
Makes 250ml

2 egg yolks, room temperature
15g English mustard
215ml sunflower oil
1 ½ tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp chopped chives
2 tbsp chopped parsley leaves, flat leaf or curly
3 tbsp capers, rinsed and chopped if large or whole if small
Sea salt and cracked
black pepper

Method

Beginning with the base of a mayonnaise, place the egg yolks and mustard in a food processor and start the machine running. Very slowly, trickle in the oil through the funnel, being careful to avoid splitting the mayonnaise. Once the mixture starts to thicken, the oil can be added more confidently and quickly. Add the vinegar, adding more mustard if desired. Tip into a bowl and finish by mixing through the chives, parsley and capers. Season to taste.

Buy this book
€35 Order from mywildatlantickitchen.com

(The book is also available from Amazon
My Wild Atlantic Kitchen: Recipes and Recollections
£35, Maura O’Connell Foley)

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Coming soon

Ekstedt by Niklas Ekstedt

What’s the USP? The subtitle for Ekstedt is ‘The Nordic art of analogue cooking’, which makes the book sound like one of those lifestyle books that seek to teach us all the true meaning of a nation’s idealised characteristic by expanding on a single word with complex meaning, be that ‘hygge’, ‘ikigai’ or ‘nunchi’.

‘Ekstedt’ is not a Swedish word for analogue cooking, but rather the surname of the Michelin-starred chef who has become almost synonymous with the practice. This massive coffee-table cookbook seeks to reconcile home chefs with the revived Nordic traditions of cooking over an open flame. That’s what ‘analogue cooking’ means – cooking without the use of gas or fire. So don’t expect any dishes that can be reheated in the microwave later.

Who wrote it? Niklas Ekstedt is something of an icon in the Nordic food world. Over the last twenty years or so, Ekstedt has run four fine-dining restaurants across Sweden, and has grown increasingly interested in traditional Nordic cooking techniques. His latest eponymous restaurant cooks entirely over open flames – and it’s this approach to food that he espouses in his second book. Actually, it’s also the same approach he took to his first book. But this one’s out now, ready for Christmas, looking all monolithic and filled with worthy prose and grounded, earthy photographs of fishermen and very beautiful (but very small) dishes.

Is it good bedtime reading? There’s certainly reading, though how good it is will depend on how much you like fantasy writing. That is, the fantasy that you’ll ever actually cook anything from this book.

There’s an introduction in which Ekstedt speaks of the self-evaluation he had to do when his third fine-dining restaurant didn’t do quite as well as his first two. There’s a chapter on the techniques you’ll use throughout the book, from using your wood oven (you have a wood oven, right?) to cooking over embers, or ‘hay-flaming’ a dish. That’s where you get your hay (you have hay, right?), bosh it into a pan, set it on fire, and chuck some scallops or something on top. Actually, that’s not fair. It’s more complicated than that. Which is exactly what you were hoping for, isn’t it? Oh, and don’t forget flambadou, where you baste a dish with burning fat that you’ve melted in your red-hot cast-iron cone on a stick (you have a red-hot cast-iron cone on a stick, right?)

Elsewhere, there’s well-meaning Radio 4 documentaries essays on reindeer herding with the Sami and fishing off of Lofoten, Instagram’s favourite Norwegian archipelago. Ekstedt also offers short introductions to each of his recipes – though these frequently amount to little more than a sentence.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? HA! Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahahahaha. Haha. Ha.

No.

No, I’m sure you’ll be fine. Why would you even ask that? It’s not like the first recipe in the book is for smoked moose heart. Oh, can’t get your hands on a moose heart? Ekstedt doesn’t actually offer any advice for substituting it for another ingredient, but later on does offer a completely different heart recipe: this time it needs a reindeer’s.

Other fun ingredients to ask the guy restocking the shelves in Sainsbury’s about: ättika vinegar, cloudberries, meadowsweet, birch wood, reindeer blood, chickweed, nasturtium leaves, redfish collars, ‘a branch of juniper, fresh and green’, dried reindeer, vendace roe, and bladderwrack seaweed.

I guess you could try B&Q for the birch wood, and maybe you can juice that reindeer heart from earlier to get the 250ml of blood you’ll need. When you see the words ‘veal sweetbreads’ and consider them one of the more accessible ingredients you’ve seen recently, you know you’re in trouble.

My favourite, for what it’s worth, is the casual request for 400ml of fresh bovine colostrum, which the glossary at the back of the book helpfully defines as ‘the milk a cow produces during the first days after calving’. Expect a rush on your local dairy farm come spring, then.

What’s the faff factor? Do you even need to ask? Look, one of the joys I have when I sit down with a new cookbook is this: I take some little multi-coloured index stickers and mark out all of the recipes I’m keen to try. On most cookbooks, I manage to find at least eight to ten really tempting dishes that I can’t wait to get to work on. In a really great cookbook, like Claire Thomson’s recent Home Cookery Year, I find myself marking off every other page. In reading through Ekstedt, I didn’t reach for my bookmarks even once.

This isn’t to say that the book isn’t filled with things I’d love to eat. In fact, I’d be more than happy to stick a fork into almost every recipe in here. Maybe not the butternut squash, fermented salsify and vegetable foam – but even then that’s only because I’m not sure what the best utensil is when reckoning with foam. It’s got to be a spoon, right?

The problem is just that everything in here is so damned impractical. If – and it really is a huge, wobbly ‘if’ – you manage to source all the ingredients for a given dish, you’ve still got to cook the bastard. And that’s not easy in a book that champions ‘analogue cooking’. Ekstedt has made no noticeable concessions for the home chef, except that he lets you flambadou your beef fat in a pan. A typical recipe might ask you to ‘hot smoke the parsley root for 10 hours every day for 1-2 weeks until it is dried out’. Who does he think I am? I think Niklas Ekstedt has mistaken me for his sous chef.

As a final kicker, the end result of all your hard work will be an authentic Michelin-star level dish. Which sounds fantastic, until you remember how big a dish is in a Michelin-starred restaurant. The semi-raw hay-flamed sea bass, sorrel & Swedish ponzu takes longer to announce than it does to eat. Three slices of the sea bass per person, with three (three!) sorrel leaves as accompaniment. Ekstedt says his recipe serves 4 as a middle course, but he doesn’t tell us how many middle courses he’s expecting us to have in what is now apparently a tasting menu that we’re expected to put together from this self-indulgent collection of impossible wonders.

How often will I cook from the book? Never. You will never cook from this book. It will sit on your shelves, untouched and forgotten except for the occasions when you reach for something adjacent to it – something useful, with primary ingredients like chicken, or pork – and pick it out for a moment, open it to a random page – let’s say ‘Langoustine, charcoal cream and cold-smoked parsnip’, allow yourself a few good minutes to stop laughing at the idea you would ever find it within your energy limits to ‘place the langoustines on an untreated wood plank and sear each tail for 8-10 seconds with burning beef fat from the flambadou’, and then place it straight back onto the shelf until the next time you need decent laugh.

Should I buy it? Only if Niklas Ekstedt is coming round your house for tea, and you want to make him like you by shelling out forty(!) pounds(!) on pretty pictures of things you will never eat.

Cuisine: Nordic
Suitable for: Professional chefs with access to Scandinavian deer hearts
Cookbook Review Rating: One star

Buy this book
Ekstedt: The Nordic Art of Analogue Cooking

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Brighton-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas.

Persian Lamb Neck Soup by Matty Matheson

Serves 6
PREP TIME: 4 HOURS, PLUS 2 HOURS INACTIVE TIME

I have only had this soup at a restaurant once in my life, and I loved it so much but have not gone back to where I had it because we had to sit on the floor pretty much, and if you know me, the big dog eating some interactive soup on the floor isn’t the greatest. So, make this in your home, and yes, it’s a lot of work, and some recipes are easy and some are hard, and now let’s get to work and build out a beautiful soup that’s gonna make your tongue explode in joy!

3 pounds (1.3 kg) lamb necks
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
300 g diced white onions
60 ml tomato paste
2 quarts (2 L) lamb stock, or water
4 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
150 g canned chickpeas, drained
150 g canned white beans, drained
60 ml lemon juice, plus more as needed
50 g garlic, thinly sliced
60 ml white vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
6 flatbreads
180 ml plain Greek yogurt
40 g mint leaves
60 g tarragon leaves

Place the lamb necks in a shallow container and season with the turmeric, salt, and pepper. Keep in the refrigerator for 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Place the lamb necks on a baking sheet fitted with a wire rack. Brown them in the oven for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and transfer them to large Dutch oven, reserving the rendered lamb fat from the bottom of the baking sheet. Add the onions, tomato paste, and lamb stock. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to dissolve the tomato paste. Cover the pot, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 2 hours.

Add the potatoes, chickpeas, white beans, and lemon juice; simmer until the meat and potatoes are fork-tender, about 1 hour. Taste for seasoning; the broth should be tangy and bright. Remove from heat and let rest for 10 minutes.

Put the garlic in a small bowl. In a small saucepan, combine the vinegar, 60 ml water, and sugar and bring to a boil; pour over the garlic. Cool and reserve for the soup.

Use a slotted spoon to remove meat, beans, and potatoes from the broth and transfer them to a large bowl. Use a fork to pull the meat off the bones; discard the bones. With a potato masher, mash the meat, beans, and potatoes into a soft uniform paste. If it’s a little dry, add broth and continue mashing until fully broken down and emulsified.

Strain the stock through a fine chinois or strainer and heat it back up in the pan. Season with salt and lemon juice. This is a two-part meal: the broth and the meat paste. Serve the broth in soup bowls drizzled with rendered lamb fat and sprinkled with the pickled garlic. Put the meat paste in a serving bowl, spread it on the roti, dollop yogurt over it, and top with the herbs. Eat the little meat breads with your hands.

Cook more from this book
Green Curry Beef Ribs
Molasses Bread in an Apple Juice Can

Read the review

Buy this book
Matty Matheson: Home Style Cookery
£25, Abrams

Green Curry Beef Ribs by Matty Matheson

Serves 4-6

PREP TIME: 3 HOURS

Meat and rice is the new meat and potatoes. And braised beef ribs in spicy green curry is great for any meal— breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Real flavor-building, real spice, real tasty meals for the whole family. Building your skills and your palates are very important to keep things exciting in your home life. And guess what, the day after, shred this beef and make little rotis; add some cheese, even. Fuck this shit up.

FOR THE BEEF SHORT RIBS:
4½ pounds (2 kg) beef short ribs, meat removed from the bone and cut into 1½-inch (4 cm) cubes
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
200 g diced onion
100 g diced celery
2 tablespoons sliced garlic
75 g seeded and diced jalapeño chile
100 g diced leek, white and green parts only
2 stalks lemongrass, cut in half and smashed with the side of a knife
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 tablespoon green curry paste
1 tablespoon ground Thai spice (equal parts toasted ground cardamom and toasted ground cumin)
880 ml beef and bone marrow stock
240 ml canned unsweetened coconut milk
2 tablespoons lime juice

FOR THE PICKLED GARLIC:
4 garlic cloves, sliced paper-thin
2 bird’s eye chiles, sliced
2 tablespoons white vinegar

FOR SERVING:
30 g sliced scallions
60 g cilantro leaves, stems diced
steamed jasmine rice, or naan bread

Make the short beef ribs: Season the short ribs with the salt and pepper. Heat the vegetable oil in a medium Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in 2 batches, brown the short ribs on all sides, about 8 minutes per batch. Transfer the short ribs to a plate and pour out about 70 percent of the fat from the pot.

Add the onion, celery, garlic, jalapeño, leek, and lemongrass to the pot; cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion starts to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the ginger, curry paste, and toasted spice mix and stir to coat the vegetables. Add the short ribs and any juices from the resting plate. Add beef stock to barely cover the top of the short ribs. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat to low; simmer until the short ribs are tender, 2 to 2½ hours. Remove the lemongrass and whisk in the coconut milk. Taste the broth for seasoning. Add the lime juice and salt as needed.

While the beef is cooking, make the pickled garlic: In a small nonreactive bowl, combine the garlic and chiles. Heat the vinegar in a small skillet until bubbling. Pour the hot vinegar over the garlic and chiles and let sit for 1 hour.

To serve: Generously divide the curry into serving bowls. Garnish the bowls with little spoonfuls of pickled garlic and lots of chopped scallion and cilantro leaves. Enjoy with jasmine rice or a big piece of grilled naan.

Cook more from this book
Persian Lamb Neck Soup
Molasses Bread in an Apple Juice Can

Read the review

Buy this book
Matty Matheson: Home Style Cookery
£25, Abrams

The ultimate sausage roll by Calum Franklin

In an attempt to find the perfect example, we have tested different flavours and textures for the filling of our sausage rolls at The Pie Room. It always comes back to one thing: simplicity. The filling should be tasty but not overcrowded with too many flavours and textures. The addition of a little chopped bacon and a few thyme leaves
to Cumberland sausagemeat are the only changes we make, but the devil is in the detail. For me, the key to the Ultimate Sausage Roll actually lies in the ratio of meat to pastry. When the meat takes longer to cook, the crisper the pastry will be.

Serves 4

400g rough puff pastry (see book for recipe or use classic puff pastry or shop-bought puff pastry)
2 egg yolks beaten with 2 teaspoons water, for brushing
pinch of black sesame seeds
pinch of white sesame seeds
Plum and Star Anise Chutney, to serve (see page 248)

For the filling
700g Cumberland sausages, skins removed
150g streaky bacon, finely chopped
25g thyme, leaves picked
⅓ teaspoon table salt
large pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Equipment
large plastic piping bag
(optional)

Line a large baking tray with parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface, roll the pastry out to 5mm thick in a 40cm x 25cm rectangle. Slide the rolled-out pastry onto the lined tray and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the sausagemeat, bacon, thyme, salt and pepper into a bowl and mix well with your hands. Fill a large plastic piping bag with the sausagemeat filling. If you don’t have a piping bag, shape the filling into a 6cm wide sausage and wrap tightly in clingfilm, firmly twisting the ends. Chill the filling in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

Remove the rolled-out pastry from the refrigerator and dust off any excess flour from the surface. Leave the pastry on the parchment paper. Using kitchen scissors, snip the tip of the piping bag to make a 5cm wide opening. Working from one end of the pastry rectangle, slowly pipe the sausagemeat filling down the length of the pastry 6cm inside one edge.

Alternatively, remove the clingfilm from the sausagemeat, unwrapping it over
the pastry rectangle, and place the filling 6cm inside one edge of the pastry. Lightly brush the larger exposed area of pastry all over with egg wash, leaving the narrow 6cm border clear. Fold the egg-washed pastry over the filling to meet the narrow border, align the pastry edges and press firmly together. Lightly dust the tines of a fork with flour and tap off any excess. Working down the length of the seam, firmly press the ends of the fork into the pastry to leave an impression of the tines. Whenever necessary, dust the fork with more flour to stop it sticking to the pastry.

Lightly brush the sausage roll all over with egg wash and return to the refrigerator for 10 minutes to allow the egg wash to dry. Brush a second layer of egg wash over the sausage roll and then, using a sharp knife, lightly score the top of the pastry with diagonal lines all the way down its length. (This gives the pastry a little stretching room and stops it from tearing open at the seam.) Return the sausage roll to the refrigerator to chill for a further 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190°C fan/210°C/gas mark 6½.

Trim a little off the fluted seam of the pastry to neaten it into a straight edge, then brush a final layer of egg wash all over the sausage roll. Sprinkle the black and white sesame seeds along the top of the roll. Pop the tray into the preheated oven and bake the sausage roll for 25 minutes. Check the internal temperature of the filling with a digital probe thermometer – you are looking for 75°C or above. If necessary, return the sausage roll to the oven and check the temperature again every 5 minutes until it reaches 75°C. Alternatively, insert a metal skewer into the centre of the sausage roll and then press it against your hand – it should be very hot to the touch.

Remove the tray from the oven and transfer the sausage roll to a wire cooling
rack. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before cutting the sausage roll with a serrated
knife into eight equal slices. Serve warm with spoonfuls of chutney

Cook more from this book
Hot pork pie
Glazed Apple Tart
Classic puff pastry

Read the review

Buy the book
The Pie Room: 80 achievable and show-stopping pies and sides for pie lovers everywhere
£26, Bloomsbury Absolute

The Pie Room by Calum Franklin

What’s the USP? ‘The book for pie lovers the world over’, The Pie Room is intended to be your first port of call for pie (and pie-adjacent) recipes.

Who wrote it? Calum Franklin, the executive head chef of Holborn Dining Room – a sort of eat-in altar to pies tucked in the Rosewood London Hotel. Since opening in 2014, Franklin’s pies have been winning plaudits from all corners, from food critics to Instagram, where over 100,000 users watch in awe as he shares his intricate, luxurious creations.

It’s through Instagram, in fact, that I first became aware of Franklin’s cooking. Though I am not a particularly big fan of the pie myself, there’s something irresistible about his posts. These are pies as sustenance, as delicacy, and as art – all at once.

Sorry. We skipped over something important there. Sorry?

You don’t like pies? Ah.

What’s wrong with you? Look, look, I get it. Pies are one of the few quintessentially British food traditions that remain a part of our day to day lives, sold over the deli counter at Morrisons, or awash with gravy at the football. They’re also, frequently, not particularly interesting. We rest on our pie laurels, as a nation. Where elsewhere we innovate and reinvent our food to move with the times, pies often remain more or less the same as they always have – heavy on the stodge, uninventive in their flavours and…

They called you ‘Pie Muncher’ at school, didn’t they? Well, yes, that might come into it a little too. But here’s the thing – who better, then, to take this book on and see how functional it is as a manual to all things pie? After all, Franklin’s book takes in all sorts of pie forms, includes extensive information on pastry-making, and aims to show off the dish at its very best.

So how does the book fare when preaching to the unconverted? Pretty damn well. Franklin knows his audience, so has plenty of time to spare for all the big names in pastry. If you’re looking for a recipe for a massive bloody sausage roll, a suet pudding, or a classic gala pie, you won’t be disappointed. But Franklin also makes room for more unusual ideas – a Keema-Spice Cottage Pie with a cumulonimbus potato topping, or a Moroccan Chickpea & Feta Pie, hidden beneath filo pastry that has been scrunched up like torn wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

What’s the faff factor? Not nearly as bad as it could be. Franklin acknowledges the effort involved in making your own pastry from scratch, and is happy to accept that his dishes will work just as well with a shop-bought pastry. In fact, he doesn’t even give a recipe for filo pastry, claiming that ‘I don’t see a big enough difference in handmade and shop-bought filo that justifies the time needed to make it’.

I’ve taken on a couple of the recipes from the book so far – ‘Nduja Stuffed Brioche, and the Hot and Sour Curried Cod Pie. The former definitely took some time – I was making a brioche dough from scratch, and leaving it overnight to prove. The process itself was simple enough, though, and yielded beautiful results (as well as enough leftover dough for a brioche loaf the following morning).

The Hot & Sour Curried Cod Pie was a much quicker process. If, like me, you opt to use ready made puff pastry, it could just about work as a midweek dinner. Again, the end result was a delight – the tamarind, tomatoes and chillies all playing off one another perfectly. It’s likely to find its way back into my kitchen a few times this winter.

How often will I cook from the book? The nature of pie-making (and the potential mess you’ll need to clear up) might be enough to keep this book on the shelf much of the time. But for weekend treats and impressive dinner party dishes, this will be worth at least a few visits a year.

Killer recipes: Both the dishes I tried out proved to be worth more than the price of admission, to be honest – but there’s also the Red Onion, Carrot & Hazelnut Tatin, a ridiculously over-indulgent Mac ‘n’ Cheese Pie, a Honey & Five-Spiced Glazed Ham that looks set to liven up any Christmas lunch, and a Panettone & Gianduja Pudding that I suppose I could leave a little room for after, too. And, of course, the Beef Wellington recipe you’d expect.

Should I buy it? This isn’t going to be a cookbook everyone is going to find useful – but it’s a lot more accessible than I expected it to be, and has definitely converted this pie-skeptic. For those among us who really do aspire to eat all the pies, this is essential. For everyone else, it’s still a pretty excellent book.

Cuisine: British
Suitable for: Confident home cooks/Professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars

Buy the book
The Pie Room: 80 achievable and show-stopping pies and sides for pie lovers everywhere
£26, Bloomsbury Absolute

Cook from this book
Hot Pork Pie
The Ultimate Sausage Roll
Glazed Apple Tart
Classic Puff Pastry

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Brighton-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas.

Japanese Cooking for the Soul

What’s the USP? A collection of 70 Japanese dishes ‘inspired by’ chefs from the Hana Group (the name behind 14 Asian food concepts that’ll you’ll find in supermarkets and other retailers around the globe including Sushi Gourmet, Wok St and Poke-Lele) that celebrate the Itadakimasu ritual of gratitude and reflection.

So, spirituality meets global commerce? Sounds grim. Yeah, probably best to ignore the veneer of mindfulness that’s been applied to the faceless, corporate behemoth that’s behind Japanese Cooking for the Soul to try and make it look more human (spoiler altert: they failed) and stick to the meat of the book which is the rather good recipes.

They’re authentic then? I think we’ve all agreed authenticity is a problematic and nebulous concept when applied to food in the modern global age haven’t we? Or maybe we’re about to roll all of that back and enter a new age of puritanism. In any event, some may raise an eyebrow when they discover that the recipes have been written by former Good Housekeeping Cookery Editor Emma Marsden. If you insist on your Japanese recipes being written by a chef or food writer from Japan or of Japanese heritage, then this book is not for you. If however you’re in the market for an approachable selection of dishes that include sushi and maki; teppanyaki and noodles; poke and Japanese salads; gyoza and dim sum; robata, ramen and tempura, as well as some desserts, then you can’t go far wrong.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? You will need to find a fishmonger who deals in sushi-grade fish if you want to tackle salmon and tuna sushi or cristal salmon rolls, but you’ll find most, if not all of what you need at the supermarket. Online stores like Sous Chef will be able to fill in any gaps.

What’s the faff factor? By their very nature, things like sushi or shumai dumplings will take a bit of care and attention and the assembly of various elements, but there are plenty of straightforward dishes like grilled salmon in balsamic onion glaze and stir fried rice with chicken that you can knock up on a work night without too much sweat.

How often will I cook from the book? It’s easy to imagine the book becoming well thumbed and food splattered in no time at all. It’s full of delicious and achievable dishes suitable for quick mid-week diners, and for when you want to spend a bit of hobby-time (is that a thing? Lets assume it is) in the kitchen and prepare a feast.

Killer dishes: Pork and cabbage gyoza; yakitori chicken skewers; beef ramen; prawn tempura with spring onions; teppanyaki duck and many more.

Should I buy the book? If you don’t have any other Japanese cookbooks in your collection, this will serve as a fine introduction to the subject. If you want to delve much further into the cuisine, try Japan:The Cookbook. But at fifteen quid, or less if you click on the link below, this is something of a bargain and a purchase you won’t regret.

Cuisine: Japanese
Suitable for: Beginners and confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Three stars

Buy this book
Japanese Cooking for the Soul: Healthy. Mindful. Delicious.
£14.99, Ebury Press

Jikoni by Ravinder Bhogal

What’s the USP? A ‘proudly inauthentic’ cookbook, that mashes together flavours from across the globe – with particularly heavy influences from South Asian and African cuisines and a whole lot of love for tamarind.

Who wrote it? Jikoni is the passion project of Ravinder Bhogal, the chef and restaurateur behind the Marylebone joint of the same name. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Bhogal grew up in Britain, and has clearly learnt a joyful irreverence towards the strict cultural boundaries we impose upon food. This, as someone who regularly makes katsu curry schnitzel with spätzle, is an idea worth getting behind. You get the sense that Bhogal would have no qualms adding chorizo to a paella, if she thought the dish called for it.

Is it good bedtime reading? There’s plenty to be getting on with here, with short essays to open each chapter, occasional treatises on ingredients or dishes, and vivid descriptions to introduce each recipe. Bhogal’s writing is locked into the language of the contemporary cookbook, which is to say that the heady nostalgia and wide-eyed admiration of the food she grew up with doesn’t necessarily feel new or exciting to read, but will have you salivating over the very concept of a samosa nonetheless.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? The short answer is yes, probably. Whilst the majority of ingredients are easy enough to find, many recipes have at least one addition that will stump your local supermarket. Often these are optional, though, allowing you to choose an inauthentic recreation of Bhogal’s inauthentic dishes.

As an added bonus, most elements of the dishes are created from scratch, meaning the number of ingredients frequently tumbles deep into double figures. The Duck and Pistachio Pierogi with Hot Yoghurt Sauce and Pul Biber Butter requires around 30 individual ingredients, including multiple varieties of some: dried and fresh mint, ground allspice, and allspice berries. Stocking up for even two or three of these dishes will be enough to topple most spice racks.

What’s the faff factor? Max faff. All the faff. Here’s the thing: everything in Jikoni looks, and no doubt tastes, absolutely delicious. But my god, is it a lot of effort. Take the Prawn Toast Scotch Eggs with Banana Ketchup. That is, without a doubt, one of the top five most appetising recipe names I’ve ever seen in a cookbook. Prawn toast scotch eggs. Jesus Christ. Even at a conservative estimate, I reckon I could devour six of those right now – and that’s before we even consider that the recipe calls for quail eggs. Did I say six? Let’s double that, easily.

But now take a moment to ruminate on that title. Scotch eggs are a faff at the best of times. But we’re replacing the sausagemeat with raw tiger prawns that need peeling, deveining and processing into a suitable substitute? And then we’re making our banana ketchup from scratch? Don’t get me wrong – it’s all very do-able. But this is not a weeknight dinner cookbook. This isn’t even a weekend treat cookbook, for the most part. This is a dinner party host seeking redemption for all their past sins cookbook.

Killer recipes: Bhogal’s recipes are frequently a little overwhelming at first glance, but when they tempt you, boy do they tempt you. The inspired Duck Rendang looks as tasty as anything I’ve seen this year, and I’m sure I’d have made it multiple times already if I only had an easy source of fresh turmeric and galangal (and dried bird’s eye chillies, and shrimp paste). In fact, the curries are frequently attention grabbing, from Goose Leg Qorma to the Massaman Pork and Peanut Curry with Pineapple Relish. The Oyster Pani Puris, too, look incredible – but also seems like the most complex and stressful dish in the whole book, despite a very reasonable seven ingredients.

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Brighton-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas.

Cuisine: Global
Suitable for: Confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Three stars

Buy this book
Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen
£26, Bloomsbury Publishing

Cook from this book
Lamb and Aubergine Fatteh
Lemongrass Poussin with Green Mango and Peanut Salad
Banana Cake with Miso Butterscotch and Ovaltine Kulfi

Sicilian Couscous Salad by Skye McAlpine

siciliancouscous-1106

If you were being pedantic, you would cook couscous in a couscoussière,
a Moroccan clay pot in which you slowly steam the grains over a bubbling stew. The way I do it is rather less romantic and utterly inauthentic, but it is quick and convenient without compromising either on the flavour or the delightful fluffy texture of the cooked grains.

You could of course serve couscous plain, dressed with a little oil and lemon juice, even a smattering of aromatic spice – cinnamon, nutmeg and so forth – to go with pretty much anything. But, inspired by the way they cook it in Sicily, I throw in salty caper berries, a good tin of oily, almost meaty tuna and sweet aniseedy fennel.This makes for a vibrant centrepiece more than substantial enough to serve on its own.

H A N D S O N T I M E
15 minutes

H A N D S O F F T I M E
15 minutes, for the couscous to swell

F O R 6
300g couscous
1 vegetable stock cube 400ml boiling water
70ml extra virgin olive oil
20g flaked almonds 10–12 caper berries, halved
1 small fennel bulb, finely sliced
400g tinned tuna, drained
A handful of rocket juice of 1 lemon
Sea salt flakes
Freshly ground black pepper

Pour the couscous into a large heatproof bowl. Dissolve the stock cube
in the measured boiling water, then pour the boiling stock over the grains, cover and set aside for 10–15 minutes to swell up. When all the liquid has been absorbed, use a fork to fluff up the grains, then douse generously with one-third of the oil.

Now add the almonds, caper berries and fennel and toss everything together well. Add the tuna, breaking it up with a fork and mixing it through the salad. This will happily keep for a day in the fridge. Lastly throw in the rocket (if it sits in the dressing, it will wilt). Squeeze in the juice of the lemon and dress with what is left of the oil. Toss again and add salt and pepper to taste.

SERVE WITH…

This is perfect picnic food alongside some good hard cheese, cold ham or salami and a loaf of bread; I favour DAMPER BREAD (see book for recipe), wrapped neatly in a clean tea towel and served with lots of salty butter. I don’t think you’d want for much more.

AND FOR PUDDING…

Strawberries with a pot of clotted cream and a good solid picnic cake such as PISTACHIO BUTTER CAKE WITH MARZIPAN ICING (see book for recipe)… but on this occasion leave it uniced; instead, just dust it with icing sugar.

Cook more from this book
Spaghetti with creamy lemon sauce
Berry Cloud Cake

Buy the book

A Table for Friends by Skye McAlpine

A Table for Friends: The Art of Cooking for Two or Twenty
£26, Bloomsbury Publishing

Read the review
Coming soon