April 2009 Archives

That I can't promise I'm afraid. They certainly will have been picked by someone, whether or not it was by gamboling nymphs I can't say. But take one look at the dish pictured (from Fulham Road  rstaurant Feng Sushi) and you probably wouldn't mind if they'd been picked by a 30 stone IBS sufferer on the way out of a sauna, so long as they'd been washed.

Spring is the a great time for edible flowers: show diners what they've been missing the past six months, lift them out their SAD and keep the manic depressives on the good side of breakdown with the old plastering-over-the-cracks technique of bright colours and nice smells.

For a full list of edible flowers visit this very useful site.

Also I'd better mention this "Don't Press Hot Iron to Face"-style disclaimer: don't go picking flowers that might have had pesticides used on them, unless you fancy a date with Mr Stomach Pump.

Soft-boiled gull's egg with flaked wild salmon belly, Jersey royals and asparagus, by Philip Howard
 
There are four components to this dish: the salmon, the gulls' eggs, the asparagus and the Jersey Royals. Each is cooked separately, the Jerseys requiring two different preparations (a foam and an écrasé). They come together to make a soft, sensuous, delicious seasonal starter.

Ingredients

Serves 4

1/2 white onion
175g butter
Salt and pepper
500g Jersey Royal potatoes (for foam)
750ml milk
2 sprigs mint
200g Jersey Royal potatoes (for écrasé)
1tbs crème fraîche
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 sprig dill
8 spears extra select English asparagus
4 gulls' eggs
275g wild salmon belly
2tbs lemon olive oil
1 lemon wedge
Pinch celery salt
Caviar (optional)

Method

Get the two potato preparations going and, while they cook, carry on with the remaining components.

 
Jersey Royal foam: sweat onion in butter with pinch of salt until softened. Add 500g of potatoes. Sweat for a further two minutes. Cover with milk and cook until tender. Remove from the heat, add some mint, allow to cool slightly, then blend in a Thermomix-type blender until completely smooth. Season, put into a gas gun, charge, test and set aside in a warm place.

Jersey Royal écrasé: place 200g of potatoes in a small pan, cover with water and season. Bring to boil and cook gently until potatoes are tender. Remove from heat, add some mint and allow to cool in the cooking water. Drain potatoes, reserving the cooking liquor, crush gently with a fork and bind with the crème fraîche, adding enough cooking water to give an unctuous, creamy texture. Finish with spring onions and a pinch of chopped dill. Season. Reserve warm.

Peel asparagus with a fine-gauge peeler. Cut coarse ends from asparagus. Plunge asparagus into a large pan of heavily salted boiling water. Cook until al dente. Refresh briefly in iced water and place on a kitchen cloth on a tray to drain. Reserve at room temperature.

Cook gulls' eggs in boiling water for four minutes. Peel and reserve in fresh water at room temperature.

Place the salmon on a tray, season with salt and pepper. Coat generously in lemon olive oil. Cook on a plancha or non-stick pan until each side is lightly caramelised. Should fish require further cooking, finish under a gentle grill. The salmon must be cooked "pink". Once cooked, transfer to a fresh tray to prevent further cooking, season with a squeeze of lemon juice and leave to rest.

All components of the dish need to be served warm. Pass asparagus and eggs briefly through some hot, seasoned water. Check temperature of the other ingredients. Gently tease salmon belly into soft, succulent flakes.

Place a pool of écrasé in the centre of each bowl. Dress the gull's egg - cut in half and seasoned with celery salt - on top. Place asparagus tips alongside and finish with flakes of salmon belly. Complete dish with a generous squirt of Jersey Royal foam. A dollop of caviar would be a fine addition to the dish.

Was the venerable MJ singing about sea beet? Probably not. Has he heard of sea beet? Probably not. Have you? Hopefully.

For those who enjoy beeting it - in the cleanest possible sense - there's good new: grisly bearded foragers in souwesters and waxed hats are harvesting the coastal plant as we speak. For professional chefs, it's available from Chef Direct (01275 474707) for £8/kg.

The coastal weed is the wild ancestor of common vegetables such as beetroot, sugar beet, and Swiss chard and a tasty. It's around from April to October and it's best to use the smaller top leaves in salad and the bottom leaves as a vegetable, boiling then buttering.

Mark Hix has got a cheeky recipe for sea beet and wild fennel soup with crab here.

Artichoke heart filled with smoked salmon and soft-poached gulls' eggs - by Michel Roux Jnr of Le Gavroche

Ingredients
Serves 4

4 globe artichokes, preferably Breton
Juice of 1/2 lemon
6tbs white wine vinegar
8 gulls' eggs
4 medium slices smoked salmon
4tbs mayonnaise
1tbs tomato ketchup
1tsp Cognac
Salt and pepper
4tbs caviar (optional)

Method

Snap off stems and trim leaves of artichokes until only neatly shaped hearts are left. Squeeze over some lemon juice and cook in boiling, salted water with half the white wine vinegar for 15 minutes or until tender. Leave to cool in the cooking liquid. Bring a shallow pan of water to the boil with the remaining white wine vinegar and poach the eggs. Lift out with a slotted spoon and place in very cold water. Trim the ragged edges from the white and place the eggs on a tea towel. Use a plain 8cm cutter to cut a neat circle from each slice of smoked salmon.
 
Dice the trimmings and keep in a bowl. For the garnish, stir together the ketchup, mayonnaise and Cognac and season to taste. Add the diced smoked salmon. To serve, divide the garnish between the four artichoke heart bottoms, place an egg on each one and top with the circles of smoked salmon. If you are feeling extravagant, caviar marries well with gulls' eggs. A generous spoon of sevruga on top of the egg is sheer bliss.

Gulls eggs - now around

Sea beat - spotted

Sea trout

Wild garlic

Wild black bream - just started

Lemon sole - great value

Morels - the only mushroom worth touching at present

AVOID: Squid - silly prices

Golly gosh; I really did try to be cynical about this; pointless promotional inventions ("Mum, I'm scared! This drink looks like Lemonade but tastes like Coke!") being a particular bug-bear.

But biodegradable chewing gum? Even I can see the logic there. Apparently, Chicza Organic chewing gum, once gobbed onto the pavement, stuck to library desks or used to assemble old pipe-cleaners into a get-away helicopter by MacGyver, will then turn to dust within weeks. Great news for pavement cleaners and bookworms, less great news for those on MacGyver-run aerial tours.

And where can you get this chewing gum, which is made from entirely biodegradable products? Wahaca of course; Thomasina Miers's two London Mexican restaurants (the gum is made in Mexico, that's the link).

Not convinced? Check out the PR blurb:

"Chicza is not only a top quality chewing gum, but also an outstanding example of sustainability, and active conservation of rainforests. The natural gum base is obtained by boiling the latex from tall chicozapote trees in south-eastern Mexican tropical jungles. The sap harvest does not harm the tree and the trees can live and produce gum for as long as 300 years."

That's right Gringo; rather than having to cut it out (how 20th century!), you now have to wait mere weeks for the gum to disintegrate out of your hair, PLUS you're saving the rain forest. And even I can't be cynical about that.

Okay, okay - he hasn't got a Michelin star at the moment. But he is the youngest ever recipient of one, and that's enough for this blog. Plus the shaven-head Scouse owner of the Church Green in Lymm (pictured here sinisterly relaxing with a doomed sea trout) is about to make his first real foray into the world of TV on the BBC's Great British Menu. So here's a cheeky little recipe now that the first sea trout of the season are appearing, taken from his stonking cookbook Made in Great Britain, published by New Holland last year:

Sea Trout with Crab and Ginger Mousse, wrapped in Lettuce with Carrot and Lemon Grass Sauce

Serves 4
1½ chicken breasts, diced
1 egg white
250ml double cream
25 g fresh ginger, peeled
150 g picked white crabmeat
100 g chicken mousse
10 coriander leaves, finely shredded
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
2 round butterhead lettuce
4 portions of boneless, skinless wild sea trout, 120 g each
6 stalks of lemon grass
300 g new season carrots, peeled and finely sliced
75 g butter, diced
2 star anise
1 litre white chicken stock
200 ml double cream
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
coriander leaves, to garnish

For the chicken mousse, place in the diced chicken breasts in a chilled blender bowl and blend until very smooth. Add the egg white slowly, then add two-thirds of the cream while the blender is running. Add a tablespoon of salt and the remaining cream and blend until the mousse is a light consistency. Place in a bowl and reserve. Dice the ginger as finely as possible, place in a small saucepan, cover with cold salted water and bring to the boil. Drain and repeat the process about six times until the ginger is soft. Dry on kitchen paper. Place the crabmeat in a large bowl and add the chicken mousse and coriander leaves and ginger. Season with salt, pepper and lemon rind, cover with clingfilm and leave in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil, add one tablespoon of salt and plunge eight large lettuce leaves in for a few seconds. Remove and quickly place into iced water, drain when cool and place on kitchen paper to dry. On a sheet of clingfilm lay two large lettuce leaves end to end to create one large leaf. Sit a piece of fish in the centre of the leaves and spoon a quarter of the mousse-crab mix on top of the fish with the softened ginger. Fold over the lettuce to create a parcel, using the clingfilm to get a tight seal. Repeat to make four parcels and reserve in the fridge. To make the carrot purée, bruise the lemongrass with the back of a chopping knife and chop into small pieces. In a large, covered pan sweat the carrots with the butter, lemon grass and star anise for 10-15 minutes without letting them colour. When the carrots are soft add the stock, reduce by half, add the cream and again reduce by half. Transfer to a blender and blend until smooth. Pass through a fine sieve twice. Season with salt, lemon juice and sugar, if necessary. Place the fish in the steamer and cook for 6-7 minutes, then leave to sit for a further minute. To serve, reheat the carrot purée and spoon onto each plate. Cut each piece of fish in half widthways and arrange on top of the carrot purée. Dress each dish with some coriander leaves.

It's started: the cheesy, chocolately, naff Easter promotions. The Swan at West Malling in Kent is running a guess-the-weight-of-the-giant-egg competition, where diners compete to guess the weight of a giant egg (pictured here crushing a swan), made by The Swan's French pastry chef and chocolatier Marion Marceteau.

Better yet, the Ghost Inc at London's Queensbury placed have mixed Easter and Halloween by coming up with this terrifying concoction: "Poured into an edible chocolate shot glass, top mixologists from Ghost Inc have designed a shot that looks and tastes like an Easter favourite, the Cadbury's Creme Egg. Available from 9-12th April, it is sure to be at the top of every Easter bunny's list, especially at £7 a shot."

Priced at roughly £1 a shot i've made this similar recipe:

Place one Cadbury's Cream Egg (chopped) and per one shot of vodka in a glass bottle. Seal. Place in dishwasher. Turn on. Remove. Chill. Drink. Have heart attack.

Rather than get bogged down in all this chocolately nonsence, join me in ignoring Easter and instead revisit last year's Eric Chavot's rabbit masterclass here