Soba noodles with grilled quail, broadbeans and radishes

On Saturday, I completed my first ever triathlon in the beautiful setting of Blenheim Palace. Although I chose the shortest distance (Super Sprint: 400m swim, 10k bike, 3k run), I was proud of the achievement because a month ago, I could hardly swim one length, let alone two, without stopping and gasping for breath. All it took was two very good lessons with a personal trainer who taught himself to swim by analysing others (ralph-hydes.com).

A few hours after completing the triathlon, I had the privilege of meeting and cooking with some of Great Britain's Olympic triathlon medal prospects, the Brownlee brothers, Alistair and Jonathan and Helen Jenkins and her husband and trainer, Marc, who himself competed in the triathlon in the Olympic Games in Athens. Helen and Marc helped me cook a Japanese noodle dish that I had come up with, while the Brownlee brothers joined fellow Yorkshireman Tom Rennolds, who is my friend and fellow finalist from MasterChef.

I wanted my dish to be quick to prepare, light and fresh with a good balance of carbohydrates, vegetables and protein.

Ingredients (serves 2-3)
2 quail
1/2 red onion
1 stick celery
1 carrot
1 orange

1 spring onion
200g broad beans, shelled
50g spinach
50g watercress
1/4 red onion, finely sliced
1 spring onion, finely sliced
5-6 French breakfast radishes, finely sliced
Handful of celery leaves

1 tbsp Sesame oil
2 tbsp Soy sauce (reduced salt, preferably)
2 tbsp Mirin 200g soba (buckwheat) noodles

Method
1. Remove any string from the quail. Slice off the breasts and reserve. You can also remove the legs if you wish, but I used them to make a quail broth. You can always grill them later, after they have been poached in the broth.
2. Place the quail carcasses into water and bring to the boil. As the water is boiling, roughly chop the red onion, carrot, spring onion and celery. Plave them in the water with the quail. I leave the skin on the onion as it helps give the broth a deep reddy-brown colour. Once the water is boiling, reduce to a low simmer - you want the flavours of the quail and vegetables to infuse into the water gently. If it boils too vigorously, the fatwand impurities will emulsify into the water, resulting in a cloudy stock. You want a fresh, light consomme.
3. Marinade the quail breasts in the sesame oil, soy sauce and mirin. It's best and easiest in a plastic freezer bag.
4. Boil the soba noodles according to the instructions on the packet. Err on the side of al dente, as you'll serve them in the hot quail broth later. Rinse and drain the noodles, then portion them into bowls. We'll reheat them later by pouring over the hot quail broth.
5. Prepare the vegetables. I like to serve them all raw, as it helps with the lightness of the dish while adding texture as some of the vegetables will wilt more than others in the broth. I prefer to shell the broadbeans - it is a little fiddly, but Marc and Heen both found it therapeutic! The beans inside have a much brighter green that looks better in the finished soup and the whitish shells are slightly bitter. Scatter the shelled broadbeans on top of the noodles, along with a handful of watercress, spinach, red onion, spring onion and radishes.
6. Once the quail broth has been brewing for 15-20 minutes, drain the stock into a new pan. You can remove the legs at this point if you wish - they will be poached and will just need to be tossed into the marinade and grilled. The stock should be a light golden colour, mainly from the carrot and red onion, but it will taste oand smell of quail. Season it with soy sauce instead of salt, to make it a richer, darker colour. Add a tablespoon of mirin for an extra bit of sweet acidity and perfume it by adding the zest of 1/2 an orange (use a peeler).
7. Remove the quail meat from the marinade and grill quickly over a high heat for 1-2 minutes on each side. Be careful not to overcook it as quail can become dry quickly.
8. Pour the quail broth over the noodles (without the orange peel), then place the grilled quail meat on top, with a large pinch of sesame seeds.

Live Below The Line Part 5

Day 3 (pronounced in a Geordie accent) of Live Below The Line. We have left: 2 chicken drumsticks, two chicken wings, 300g of split peas, 500g of pearl barley, one tin of chopped tomatoes and lots of long grain rice.

Lunch on Wednesday
Soup was always going to be one of our lunch options and I hoped there'd be enough left in the fridge in case we got hungry. I was going to make two types, but for simplicity, I decided to make one and make it as good as I could manage. I took the chicken stock, discarded the bones, set aside the vegetables and passed it through a fine sieve. I set aside 1 litre for cooking and used the remaining 2 litres or so for making soup.

Curried soup with chicken and split peas (about 5-6 portions)
2 litres of chicken stock
200g of yellow split peas
1/2 tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp curry powder
Pinch of salt

1. Rinse the split peas and bring them to the boil in the chicken stock.
2. Add the chopped tomatoes and a large teaspoon of curry powder and simmer for 30-40 minutes until the split peas are cooked.
3. Blitz in a jug blender. This is a good time to season the soup, with salt and cayenne pepper for more heat, if desired.
4. Pass through a sieve, if you want a smoother texture. Personally I'm happy with it being coarse this weeks - it makes it feel a bit more substantial! You could even add some cooked pearl barley to the soup before serving.

Supper on Wednesday
So far we've had chicken risotto and 'jerk chicken' (it wasn't really but we served it with rice and peas!) for suppers. On Wednesday, we had a mulligatawny style pearl barley stew. I love pearl barley. It's partly a nostalgia thing - my mum made lovely Scotch broth - but also because I love the bitey texture. It's very satisfying (and equally distressing if you overcook it into a gelatinous mush, as I did on one occasion). This recipe uses a British ingredient, cooked using the same technique as risotto, with Asian flavours. I did, however, overlook that pearl barley takes a while to cook - probably twice as long as  rice, so it's not great if you want to rustle something up in ten minutes. I served it with the chicken legs, which I boned, partly to help them cook quicker, partly for presentation. Don't get me wrong, drumsticks have their place, but with something like barley, I think it's nicer for the diner to be able to eat everything on the plate, instead of having a forkful of barley then gnawing away at a bone!

Chicken legs with curried pearl barley (serves 2)
2 chicken legs (preferably boned)
Veg oil
Salt
Cayenne pepper
100g pearl barley
200g chicken stock
Large pinch of salt
1 tsp curry powder
Water from the kettle

1. Preheat the oven to 190c and boil a kettle.
2. Coat the chicken legs in veg oil, sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. Use the grill at the end, if necessary to get the skin to crisp up.
3. Bring the barley, chicken stock, salt and curry powder to the boil then reduce to a lively simmer.
4. Add water from the kettle when required and cook for at least 40 minutes.

Day 4, here we come. What's left with two more days to go? The chicken wings, half a tin of chopped tomatoes, 100g of split peas, 400g of pearl barley and lots of long grain rice. Although, Live Below The Line is a tough challenge and exactly why it's such a good awareness raising campaign, it's the kind of challenge I like from a cooking perspective. The tough thing about Invention Tests on MasterChef was being spoilt for choice and having to narrow your choices. For me, a true invention test is when the cupboard is bare and you have to create something out of very little.

Sunday Chicken Part 1

Last week, I recalled the childhood story of Stone Soup, which MiMi remembers as Nail Soup. I have since discovered that it is also known as Axe Soup in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe. This week, childhood nostalgia also took me to Eastern Europe. Chicken Kiev, may have originated in Moscow in the early 1900s but takes its name from the capital city of Ukraine. It was popularised in Britain in the late 1970s by Marks and Spencer as what they called a 'recipe dish', or a 'ready meal' in other words. By the 1980s, it was a dinner party favourite.

The first thing you will need to do for this dish is make a compound butter. "Beurre composé," by its French culinary term in Larousse, is just butter with other ingredients mixed through it; garlic, lemon and parsley in this case, but you can make Asian compound butters with chilli and spices. You might as well take a whole pack of butter, since you can freeze it and use it for other dishes. Soften the butter in a bowl. You can use a microwave on a low setting but don't melt it as the ingredients will sink to the bottom if it is not still semi-solid. Peel 3 or 4 garlic cloves and mince them finely with a knife or use a garlic press. Fold the garlic into the softened butter, along with the zest of a lemon and a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley (or coriander, if you prefer). Spoon the compound butter back into the packet or onto some foil and roll it into a log. Put it in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Garlic compound butter

1x 250g pack of salted butter

4 cloves of garlic

Zest of 1 lemon

Large handful of flat leaf parsley (2 tbsp once chopped)

Once the compound butter has set hard, preheat the oven to 180 Celsius and start making the Chicken Kiev. Take 2 chicken breasts and trim off the mini-fillets and any rough edges. Set these aside to make chicken burgers for the children. There are two approaches to filling the chicken breast with the compound butter. I went for the incision approach. Take a sharp, but narrow bladed knife and insert it into the middle of the chicken breast. Swivel it a little to form a pocket but be careful not to go through the fillet. Slice the frozen compound butter into shards and stuff them into the pocket. When you make the incisions, try and make them so that they face upwards when you place the chicken fillet on a baking tray. This way, when the garlic butter melts, it will have a more difficult job leaking out.

Make an incision but go in from a higher angle than this

The alternative method is to butterfly the chicken breast first and flatten it. The advantage of this method is that the finished cutlet will cook more evenly. The disadvantage is that it is a little more work and breading it may be more fiddly. Furthermore, if you don't have a meat mallet, you may have to use a saucepan.

Jay using his initiative. If you don't have a meat mallet, improvise.

If you go for the flattened approach, you will have to fold the chicken breast carefully around the frozen butter. Next, set up a pané station (pané is French for breaded).

Breadcrumbs, seasoned flour, egg

Chicken Kiev ingredients

1 chicken breast per portion

Garlic compound butter, above

1 egg, beaten

3 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper

4 tbsp of breadcrumbs (make your own in a food processor or buy ready made) 

Dip the chicken in the flour first, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs. If you want  thicker crust, repeat the "egg-flour" stage. The chicken breast on the right has an unfortunate bald patch - this is where I was holding it with my thumb.

Shallow fry the chicken breast in vegetable oil on both sides, then transfer to a baking tray. Use one with sides, in case the butter melts and makes a mess in the oven. Bake in the oven at 180 Celsius for about 15 minutes. By then the butter will be molten, but basting the chicken from the inside to keep it from being dry. Personally, to complete the nostalgia effect, I would serve it with fries; potato wants to soak up the garlicky juices but retains its crispness. However, on this occasion, I served it with lentils and cabbage, both of which I wanted to use up. I simmered the lentils in chicken stock for about 15 minutes, while the Kiev was in the oven, then added shredded cabbage for the last couple of minutes.

Clear gazpacho

Jemma and I took Hector on his first trip abroad to Mallorca, to attend the wedding of Laura and Ralph, in the picturesque town of Deia. It was a busy half time flight and Hector behaved well. Sadly, although we were lucky enough to stay in the Nock family's beautiful Finca in the neighbouring village of Fornalutz, it was the worst night's sleep either of us have had since Hector was born. He struggled to cope with the heat and was up through the night, too uncomfortable to sleep.

We perked up in the morning with freshly squeezed local oranges, black coffee and ensaimadas - a Mallorcan breakfast pastry. A few hours later, we were enjoying fresh lemonade (large, local lemons with thick, fragrant and unwaxed skins), gazpacho and Spanish cured meats. Jemma isn't a big fan of chilled soups, but has come round to gazpacho, with the rich umami of ripe tomatoes, the sweetness of red peppers, refreshing cucumbers and the spiciness of raw garlic.

Coincidentally, the night before we departed for Mallorca, we hosted a dinner party, at which we served a type of clear gazpacho. It came from a Raymond Blanc recipe for tomato essence, which he uses to make a colourless tomato risotto. I wasn't sure what I was going to make with it, but I'd also seen it served with pickled cucumbers and sea trout tartare at Medlar restaurant. I loved the tomato taste without the coarse texture of the tomato pulp and decided to serve it on its own as a chilled, clear tomato soup.

The secret to getting just the clear tomato juice is to let it hang in a muslin - I made the mistake of squeezing the pulp through the bag. This yielded more liquor, but also the cloudiness and colour of the tomatoes. I was able to salvage it by letting the heavier red pulp sink and skim off the colourless liquid with a turkey baster. I kept the red liquid, added some more tabasco and heated it with a couple of leaves of gelatine to make a tomato jelly. I cut this into cubes and served it in the soup, along with diced, de-seeded cucumber, shredded basil leaves, chive oil and purple chive flowers.

Ingredients - serves 4
1 kg cherry tomatoes
1 stick celery, chopped
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, sliced
1/2 sprig thyme leaves
5 basil leaves
1 teaspoon salt
3 drops tabasco or large pinch of cayenne pepper

Method
1. Halve or quarter the tomatoes straight into a food processor or smoothie jug.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse three times, for 2 seconds.
3. Leave the ingredients to infuse in the refrigerator for up to 3 hours.
4. Place the tomato mix in a sieve lined with muslin or cheese cloth.
5. Leave over a pan for several hours to collect the tomato water. Do not squeeze!
6. The water collected should be clear.
7. If you squeeze rthe muslin bag, you can use the red juice to make a tomato jelly.
8. Simmer the pulp with some water and sieve it to make a passata by removing the skins and seeds.
9. You can also turn the passata into a tomato soup by adding red lentils and chicken stock.

Lentils, leeks, goats cheese and hazelnuts

Lentils with leeks, goats cheese and hazelnuts

As you may know I have given up meat for Lent. Most people are skeptical when I tell them I don't have to observe this on Sundays. Lent lasts for forty days because, according to the Gospels, Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert. But there are forty six days between Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday so most Christians don't count the six Sundays of Lent.

On the fifth Sunday of Lent, I roasted a fore rib of beef (for about twenty minutes too long, if I'm honest). We served it with saffron roast potatoes, parsnip gratin, eight hour braised carrots and shredded spring greens stir fried with garlic, chilli and crushed peanuts. I couldn't find fresh horseradish anywhere, but I found some freshly grated in a jar at a stall in Chapel Market. Horseradish is a member of the mustard family and unlike chilli, which burns the mouth, it irritates the sinuses. This one, like a strong wasabi, cleared the nose and made the eyes water with just a sniff.

After Sunday, it was back to vegetarian dinners. On Tuesday, we had fresh pasta with parsley pesto. I had the most enormous bunch of parsley from the North End Road market and blitzed it with garlic, chilli, parmesan, and almonds (instead of pine nuts). I used olive oil and the juice of half a lemon to loosen the pesto.

Jemma and I are going through a chilli phase. Perhaps it is because it imparts interest to meals that lack the flavour of meat, perhaps it is just because we enjoy the self-inflicted heat on our palate. This evening, I had half a chilli left in the fridge. I could have left it out entirely, but it added some colour to the dish and I figured that goats cheese is delicious with tomato chilli jam.

Goats cheese also pairs well with caramelised onions. Goats cheese and onion tarts are a ubiquitous gastropub vegetarian option, because the acidity of the sweet and juicy onions cuts through the dry, crumbly tartness of the cheese. I had leeks in the fridge, so substituted them for onions and used up some hazelnuts, for texture. There is protein in the goats cheese, but I served it with protein-rich Puy lentils dressed in vinegar and honey, with chopped tomatoes, thyme, mint and parsley, for freshness.

Ingredients (serves 2)
100g Puy lentils
2 tablespoons of vinegar (I used cider vinegar)
2 tablespoons of oil (I used olive oil and walnut oil)
1 tablespoon of runny honey

1 tomato, finely chopped

1 large handful of chopped herbs (I used parsley, mint and thyme)

2 washed leeks
2-3 slices of goats cheese

50g whole hazelnuts
1 dried chilli
1 tablespoon honey

1. Rinse the lentils and simmer for 15 minutes in plenty of water.
2. Cut the leeks into lengths of 7-8 cm and steam over the simmering lentils.
3. Put the oven on at a low heat (120c) and cut the hazelnuts in half.
4. Crush the dried chilli and mix with the honey and a little salt.
5. When the leeks have softened, slice them lengthwise and caramelise them over a low heat in some butter.

5. Blanche or steam the leeks before caramelising to soften them.

6. Coat the hazelnuts in the chilli, honey sauce and toast for 10 minutes in the oven.
7. Drain the lentils and dress them while they are still warm with the vinegar, oil and honey.
8. Mix in the tomatoes, herbs and add salt and pepper to taste.
9. Assemble the lentils with the caramelised leeks, sliced goats cheese and sticky, toasted hazelnuts.
10. The hazelnuts should be quite fiery, but if you can handle some extra heat, add some shredded red chilli for colour.

Asian arancini

On Saturday, Rosie Nock told me that 'pictures of white bread' are no good to her. I hope this post will please her more.

I first tried arancini, a type of Italian street food, in 2001. A ball of rice is used to envelope a filling of ragu, peas, mushrooms or mozarella. It is then coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried until golden. They are called arancini because they resemble 'little oranges' (arancia means orange). They make very convenient portable snacks: the Italian version of Cornish pasties, samosas or onigiri (Japanese rice balls).

They probably originated from left over risotto and I too had some rice in the fridge. Unfortunately, it was pilau basmati rice, which posed two issues to address: flavour and texture.

Starting with pilau rice, I pursued South Asian flavours by crushing fenugreek, cumin and fennel seeds with a pestle and mortar. I then added fresh coriander leaves and a red chilli.

Basmati rice is not as sticky as risotto rice or Japanese rice, so it is difficult to make it into balls. To make it stickier, I added some tomato passata, an egg yolk and some gram flour. Gram flour is made from chickpeas and is the flour used for onion bhaji.

Ingredients:
Cooked rice (about 1-2 portions)
1 tsp fenugreek
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 red chilli (de-seeded and finely chopped to produce about 1 tbsp).
1 large handful of coriander leaves, finely chopped
3 tbsp of tomato passata
1 egg yolk
Gram flour
Panko breadcrumbs

Method:

1. Mix the herbs, spices and chilli into the rice.
2. Add the tomato and egg yolk and mix through.
3. Add gram flour gradually until you get a sticky consistency.
4. Form balls no bigger than a golf ball.
5. Coat the balls in breadcrumbs.
6. Deep fry in hot oil or flatten the balls into patties to shallow fry.
7. Fry in batches, drain excess oil with kitchen paper and keep in a warm oven.
8. Serve with chilli sauce or lime and coriander mayonnaise.

Although these originated as convenient street food, they make nice amuse bouche, with a cold beer or a glass of wine, if you make them small enough. We noticed that you could taste the fennel much better once they had cooled down to just above room temperature.

I wonder if there's any left over rice at Soushi, to turn into onigiri-arancini.

White bread

Is it just me or are there a lot of chefs on TV? Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets, Heston's Mission Impossible, Michel Roux Jnr on The Great British Food Revival. Even Jamie's Dream School. In years gone by, I would be lapping it up, but I am left a bit disillusioned by it all. Are the margins in top end catering really so poor that these talented chefs have to be making TV programmes of such dubious quality?

I like Raymond Blanc. He is genuine, funny and conveys his enthusiasm for food. But I don't get the point of the programme. He is hardly revealing Kitchen Secrets and the recipes he demonstrates are just too complicated to tempt many viewers to try them.

I think I still like Heston Blumenthal. His devotion and idiosyncrasy are unique and inspiring but he is the wrong person to be attempting to improve catering standards in the UK. He is too whacky to revive institutions such as the NHS and British Airways. In his previous series, he came across well only by contrast to the odious Ian Pegler, the Managing Director of Little Chef. In this current series, he is even more pie in the sky and I can't tell whether its the producers egging him on. Either way, the social agenda and demonisation of a bureaucratic antihero is hackneyed, patronising and irritating.

And yet another programme called "The Great British Something". I support TV programmes that educate consumers and promote sustainable food resources, but I felt last week's episode was clumsily done. For a start, it paired Michel Roux (on artisan bread) with the Hairy Bikers (on cauliflower). For me, Michel Roux's message was confusing. On the one hand, he was arguing that artisan bread has very few ingredients and is simple to make. On the other, he presented a loaf that contained flour, milk, butter, golden syrup and yeast and told us that there were "no short cuts".

The good news is that bread really is simple to make. What surprises many people is that no kneading is required and no bread machine either. Bread machines definitely fall into the category of impulse purchase that will take up space first on your countertop and later in your cupboard as the novelty wears off. All you need is a mixing bowl and a saucepan with a lid. I learned all of this from my friends Jon and Helen, who first introduced me to "No knead bread" in the New York Times. They have evolved their own recipe and process.

Making your own bread isn't going to save you a lot of money (before you even fire up the oven, a 1.5kg bag of flour is pushing £2). And although the method is very straightforward it does need several hours to rise so you can't really make it on the spur of the moment. But it is satisfying and a nice thing to do at the weekends. Left to rise for too long, the dough will smell boozy and taste yeasty - so don't leave it any more than 12 hours. I try to make the dough last thing on a Friday night, leave it to rise overnight, allow it to prove first thing in the morning and bake it for breakfast or brunch.

Ingredients:

500g of Strong White Flour (plain flour just won't work as well)

1 teaspoon of dried yeast (about 7g)

1 teaspoon of salt

375g of luke warm water (use 75% water to flour as a rule of thumb).

Method:

1. Mix all of the ingredients using a silicone spatula for about a minute until you have a ball of dough.

2. Cover with cling film or a damp cloth and leave to rise for a minimum of 4 hours.

3. When the dough has doubled in size, fold it over a few times. Dust it in flour, cover and leave for a further 20-30 minutes.

4. Put the saucepan in the oven and heat it up to 220 Celsius.

5. Make sure the dough ball is coated in flour and put it into the saucepan. Put the lid on and bake for 15 minutes.

6. After 15 minutes, take the lid off. The dough should have risen but will still be white. Bake for a further 20 minutes to allow the crust to brown and caramelise slightly.

7. Leave to cool on a cooling rack.

Give it a go, take a photo and let me know how it goes. Make sure your saucepan is oven-proof. I melted the handles on one pot that was meant only for use on the stove! A cast iron Le Creuset pot is ideal!

More crumble, please

The photo below of Hector sleeping with his arms in the air was taken at our friend Neil's house. He cooked a fantastic roast lamb, followed by crumble. As you may have realised, I love crumble.

There is a great recipe for pear and chocolate crumble on the Waitrose website. I have made it for several dinner parties and even Jemma, who generally doesn't like the combination of chocolate and fruit, likes this one. The chopped hazelnuts that go into the crumble mix complement both the pears and the chocolate. I cheat and use a ready made crumble mix. Lurpak would ask me whether I have any pride but it is convenient, especially for a weeknight dinner party when you have limited preparation time. You can peel and chop the pears the night before and leave them mascerating in the fridge overnight.

In my opinion, the only option is to serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Jemma doesn't like the combination of hot and cold, so prefers it with cream. Some people think that crumbles should be served with custard. Which do you prefer? Ice cream, cream, or custard? You can vote on the poll to the right.

A cooking mishap

On Friday afternoon, I received a very welcome phone call. My friends Tom and Tash had booked themselves a butchery class at The Ginger Pig. Unfortunately, Tash couldn't make it because of work and Tom asked if I would like to go with him. I had long earmarked butchery skills as something I would like to learn, so I jumped at the opportunity. In the days before Hector, I might have had plans for Friday night, but as all I had planned was trying to figure what to make with some pork tenderloin and a couple of leeks, I set off towards Marylebone on a Boris bike.

It was every bit as good as its reputation. For the first half of the evening, the two butchers, Perry and Borut, taught eleven of us about beef by demonstration and hands on experience, where we learned about dry ageing, different cuts and how to cook them. For the second half, we used saws and knives to prepare our own fore rib roast. We learned how to chine a rib roast so that you can carve it easily, how to tie it with string so that it doesn't fall apart and how to French trim the rib bones so that they don't burn. We left with vastly improved knowledge of beef, a fore rib roast that will easily feed six and a belly full of roast beef and merlot.

On Sunday, the pork tenderloin and leeks were still in the fridge approaching their use by date. I decided to use cling film and a rolling pin to flatten the loin so that I could stuff it and practise my tying technique. I gently fried some sliced leeks in a little butter. Once they were softened, I took them off the heat and added half a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a couple of tablespoons of Philadelphia and some grated cheddar cheese. I rolled the stuffing inside the pork loin with the help of some cling film and tried to remember how to tie the knots. The technique is difficult enough to teach in person, let alone describe in words. You place a ball of string in your pocket and tease the other end through a series of over and under manoeuvres to produce a slip knot that you can tighten around the meat. After a couple of attempts, I remembered the sequence and grinned with smug satisfaction as the first string tightened around the pork.

At this point, Jemma called me to see something Hector was doing but as I left the kitchen, I heard the rustling of carrier bags. Thinking it was a mouse, I stopped in my tracks and tried to pinpoint the noise. Each time I inched forward, the rustling continued, as though the mouse were daring me to find him. Jemma called out again so I decided to leave the mouse to his rummaging. About half way to the sitting room, I heard a thwack and ran back to try and catch him in the act. I returned to find my carefully rolled pork loin on the kitchen tiles, cheese and leek stuffing oozing through the seams. My "mouse" was attached to the pork at one end by a carefully tied slip knot. He left a trail running across the kitchen floor, behind the bin, down the corridor and into the ball of string in my pocket. If only I'd pinpointed the rustling sound, I would have seen the pork in its cling film, inching its way from the countertop to the floor, as I crept around the kitchen in search of the mouse. Next time I'll cut the string as soon as I've tied the knot.

Strumble

Macerating the strawberries and rhubarb

With the remaining over-ripe bananas, I made a banana, honey and walnut loaf. It was okay, but I preferred the Banana and Chocolate loaf below and in any case you can find versions of both recipes elsewhere on the internet.

This dessert recipe, on the other hand, is one that I claim as my own. I couldn't find any recipe resembling it on the internet, nor had anyone come up with the name. A "strumble" is a cross between strudel and crumble.

Strudel consists of filo pastry layers with a sweet or savoury filling, most commonly apple, cinnamon and raisins. It is popular in Austria but filo goes back to the Byzantine Empire and is found in Middle Eastern pastries such as baklava.

Crumble is endeared by many Britons. It is a hearty and warming pudding to end a pub lunch, after a long walk in November or December, as autumn hands over to winter. Crumble exemplifies necessity as the mother of invention. During the war, when rationing meant that shortcrust pastry was out of the question, people improvised by rubbing a little margarine through flour and sugar to make a crumble topping. Unfortunately, I'm sure many of you will have had a stodgy crumble, probably at school, where the water in the fruit has mixed with the flour.

The inspiration for strumble came from a cooking lesson, where I learnt to cook the fruit and crumble separately. You pan fry the fruit and toast the crumble in the oven and only combine the two on the plate, moments before serving. The advantage is that it will never be stodgy: the fruit remains 'al dente' and the crumble remains light and crunchy. The smell of the flour and sugar gently caramelising will remind your guests of digestive biscuits.

The strudel bit takes a bit of preparation. Take 3 sheets of filo pastry and glue them together with a pastry brush and some melted butter. Cut the sheets into discs that are about the size of your palm. If you don't have a pastry cutter, use a knife to make squares. Take one of the discs and put a mixture of chopped or powdered nuts in the middle (such as almonds, hazelnuts, pistachio or walnuts). Brush the outside of the disc with butter and sandwich the filling with another filo disc. Make the sandwiches into little baskets using a cupped hand, or even better, a muffin tray. Bake in the oven for 5-10 minutes until they are crispy and golden brown. Don't worry if the layers come apart - it will keep the dessert light. Set  the baskets or discs aside and warm them later when you toast the crumble.

In a pan, melt some butter and sugar until it begins to caramelise. Add some chopped fruit. My favourite combination is apples and strawberries but remember that the apples will need a little longer than the strawberries. If you like to add some drama to your dinner parties, throw in some kirsch at the end and flambé the fruit just before serving. Spoon the fruit into the strudel baskets, and sprinkle the toasted crumble on top.

Normally, I would advocate serving crumble with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream because I like the combination of hot and cold. But in this case, I think a dollop of thick double cream, or clotted cream, works best.

Banana and chocolate loaf

Banana and chocolate loaf

For various reasons, mostly Hector-related, we didn't make it to the supermarket this week. So by the weekend, I faced a Shrove Sunday situation. I had some over-ripe bananas, some flour and some eggs which our friend Chompo had brought us from his hens at home, so I decided to make a chocolate and banana loaf. It took about 10 minutes to prepare and 45 minutes to bake.

Over-ripe bananas

1. Preheat the oven to 180 celsius.

2. In one bowl, mix the following dry ingredients together:

300g flour, sieved
75g caster sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

3. In the other bowl, mix the wet ingredients together:

3-4 ripe bananas, mashed with a potato masher
2 eggs
50g butter melted in the microwave
50g melted white chocolate

The wet ingredients

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine thoroughly. It should remain pourable, like cake mix, rather than stiff like dough.

5. Butter the inside of a smallish (15-20cm) loaf tin and fill it about 2 cm deep with the mixture.

6. Divide the rest of the mixture between the two bowls. Add 50g of melted dark chocolate to one of them and combine well. You should now have one 'white' mixture and one 'brown' mixture.

7. Add the 'brown' mixture on top of the base layer in the loaf tin and throw in some chocolate chunks which will reset as nuggets once the loaf has cooled. Next, use the remaining 'white' mix to sandwich the dark chocolate layer in the middle. Don't fill the loaf tin right to the top, as it will need room to rise.

Leave some room at the top because it will rise.

8. Put it in the oven. Take it out after 30 minutes and test it by putting a skewer into the centre. If it comes out with mix still on, bake for a further 5-10 minutes.

9.  If the skewer comes out clean, remove the loaf from the tin and put it on a cooling rack.

10. Enjoy a slice at breakfast, with afternoon tea, or at 3am while feeding the baby. 

I didn't leave enough mix for the top sandwich layer!

Beetroot bhaji and flat champagne

It can be quite surreal becoming a father for the first time, especially if you have to leave your wife and new child on the maternity ward later that night. When I got home, I didn't know whether to cry with joy or put the telly on. So I ate a celebratory meal of beetroot bhaji and flat champagne.

We had a glass of champagne each before we went to Cafe 209 on Friday. I tried to save the rest of the bottle by using a vacuvin, but I must have vacuumed the bubbles out because when I came home on Sunday night, the champagne was almost flat. I ate it with beetroot bhaji. I gently fried small cubes of beetroot in cumin and mustard seeds and added it to a batter flavoured with garam masala. The beetroot's rich burgundy looked nice against the yellow of the turmeric but by the time I got home on Sunday, the beetroot had fully infused its regal colour into the batter.

Flat champagne and beetroot bhaji. Surreal.