Feasting On Scraps

Ambassador!…

Making chocolate truffles is so bloody easy that even the Queen could do it blindfolded and drunk (at least one of which, if not both, she may well be at some point this weekend). I only say this as I presume the Queen has never had to make her own truffles in her life and wehehehell, why should she?

Anyway, once you’ve got the standard recipe down, adapt it as thou wilt. Those pictured above were rolled and coated in three different things - cocoa, chopped nuts and crushed amaretti biscuits.

What’s more, everyone’s going to go mental for them and think you’re some kind of heroic “master chocolatier”, or “ganache wizard”, and beg you to live with them on a tropical island forever or have your babies or something. This situation may be capitalised on by NEVER REVEALING that all you did was melt some stuff together and then let it cool down in a different shape. Yes, it’s THAT SIMPLE.

So here’s the recipe, adapted from Ottolenghi (makes about 24):

Chocolate truffles

• 150g dark chocolate (70%)
• 20g unsalted butter
• 100ml double cream
• 4tsp glucose syrup (or caster sugar will do OK - the syrup is just better at not crystallising, apparently)
• 4tsp brandy
• Cocoa powder, chopped nuts, crushed amaretti, etc, to coat

Chop up the chocolate and butter into small pieces and place into a heatproof bowl. Put the cream and glucose (or sugar) into a small saucepan and bring to the boil, watching carefully. As soon as they boil, pour them over the chocolate and butter and then stir gently with a rubber spatula until you get a smooth, shiny mix. Stir in the brandy untli well-blended. Allow to cool, then put it in the fridge for a bit, maybe an hour or two, or until it has set.

Place your chosen coating for the truffles in a bowl, or a few different ones in several bowls if you’re doing a variety. Next, spoon out walnut-sized pieces of the ganache and rub them into spheres with your hands (this will get messy), before dropping them in the coating(s) and rolling them about. That’s it.

Moreish

Melt-in-the-mouth lamb tagine is always going to be a sure-fire hit. Here the toasted almonds work so well with the rich, spiced sweetness of the dish, as does a side-helping of an Ottolenghi favourite, his cucumber and poppy-seed salad. Using a mixture of couscous and wholegrain quinoa makes a good change also. The whole thing’s finally topped off with a few pomegranate seeds because they make it look pretty and also taste rad. Get tagine-in’!:

LAMB TAGINE

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 500g lamb neck fillet, cut into large chunks
• 500ml lamb stock
• 50ml olive oil
• 100g dried apricots (prunes will do just as well)
• 40g whole almonds, toasted
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1tsp ground cumin
• 2tsp ground coriander
• 1tsp ground cinnamon
• 1tsp paprika
• 1tbsp honey
• a handful of pitted black olives (optional)
• 1tbsp coriander, finely chopped, plus extra for garnish
• Pomegranate seeds, for garnish
• salt
• pepper

For the couscous

• 200g couscous (or any “fancy” grains you like - a mixture of couscous and wholegrain quinoa worked very well for me)
• 450ml chicken stock, hot

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C.

Heat half of the olive oil in a large casserole dish (or a even tagine if you’ve got one) over a moderate heat. Season then sear the lamb pieces until golden brown in colour all over - and it’s very important not to overcrowd the pan, so do it in batches if you have to. Remove from the dish, then add the onion and sweat for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the spices at this point and a little salt, stirring well to combine.

Add the lamb back to the dish along with the apricots and cover with the stock. Bring to the boil, then cover and transfer to the oven. Cook for at least 40-50 minutes until the lamb is tender and the apricots (or prunes) are soft. In fact, as with all stews, the longer and lower you cook this for, the better. Once it’s there, remove from the oven and stir in the honey, almonds and chopped coriander. If you want to add some pitted black olives to the mix, now is the time.

Adjust the seasoning as necessary, then leave to one side as you prepare the couscous (and the cucumber salad - see below). If you’re using other grains, such as the quinoa, cook them now, according to the packet instructions. Place the couscous in a large heatproof bowl. Bring the stock to a boil in a saucepan over a medium-high heat. Pour the stock over the couscous then cover the bowl with clingfilm. Allow to sit for 5-6 minutes until the stock has been absorbed.

Remove the clingfilm, stir in the rest of the olive oil, and fluff the grains with fork, and add the other grains if using. Serve with the tagine piled on top, or make little mounds of couscous with a mini pudding-mould (again, of you’re feeling “fancy”). Put a bit of cucumber salad on the side, and garnish with a sprig of coriander leaves and a scattering of pomegranate seeds. Serve immediately.

CUCUMBER AND POPPY SEED SALAD

Ingredients

• 6 small cucumbers, or 2 regular-sized
• 2 mild red chillies, thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons roughly chopped coriander
• 60 ml white wine vinegar or rice vinegar
• 125 ml sunflower oil
• 2 tablespoons poppy seeds
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• salt and black pepper.

Prepare the cucumbers by removing the ends then slice cucumbers at an angle. Pieces should be 1 cm thick and 3-4 cms long. I always remove the watery core also.
Mix together all the ingredients in a large bowl. Use your hands to to massage the flavours gently into the cucumbers.
Taste and adjust the amount of sugar and salt.   The taste should be sharp and sweet, almost like a pickle.
If not serving immediately you may need to drain of some liquid off later. Adjust seasonings again if needed.

Pea’n’am Veteran

So I get home to my folks’ place, and they have a free newspaper pullout of some Heston Blumenthal recipes. The very first is his recipe for pea and ham soup, with mint oil to drizzle on top, and it looked like something too far up my street for me to ignore.

That ker-azee Heston, he’s always doing fancy stuff you can’t possibly do at home, right? Wrong. His latest batch of recipes are relatively simple in execution, and this soup is, seemingly, one of the simplest of the bunch.

Nonetheless, the above link will take you to a shortened version - the one I did requires you to start by making a lovely meaty ham stock, which means slow-cooking a bit of gammon (only some of which is used in the soup, the rest is saved for later) in water with some vegetables, in a very low oven (85˚C) for 5 hours.

Otherwise, the key characteristic of this recipe is the amount of laying things out to dry/defrost it demands. Here’s some frozen peas defrosting:

And here’s some blanched mint getting dry on a tea towel:

After these things are done, the rest of it’s pretty simple. A bacon-shallot base is topped up with the stock, then the defrosted peas are simply chucked in and it’s liquidised. I have to say, I didn’t bother with pushing it through a seive because, well, life seemed too short, and I was hungry. But I’m sure it would have yielded wonderfully smooth, flavoursome results.

As it is, the taste is simply incredible. Frozen peas are, Heston reminds us, always going to be fresher than any fresh pea you can buy. And that pea flavour really stands up to the ham flavours, rather than sort of hiding behind it as you would normally expect from a pea and ham soup.

What’s more, the mint oil adds a brilliant overtone to the whole business. Peas and mint are one of those classic combos innit.

A thoroughly rewarding soup, give it a go.

Chocolate tartlets with pistachios and creme fraiche

These tartlets are an adaptation of the ‘Fifteen’ chocolate tart from Cook with Jamie. They are very very rich and chocolatey which is just fine by me. I made the full-size version for a party last weekend, serving it with some sea salt on top and a scoop of pistachio ice-cream (chocolate and pistachio is one of my all-time favourite flavour combinations. I have to work really hard whenever I’m in a gelato place not to order both every time), but as it turns out, the recipe leaves you with quite a bit of leftover mixture. Which is also fine by me.

The only thing to do in this situation, therefore, is make a load of small ones.

The recipe goes something like this:

Ingredients

For the pastry:

• 325g unsalted butter
• 225g caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• 565g plain flour
• (optional: zest of one orange)
• 3 large eggs
• 65g cocoa powder

For the filling:

• 200ml whole milk
• 565ml double cream
• 65g caster sugar
• 350g dark chocolate (70%), broken into bits
  
• 2 large eggs

This is quite possibly enough for 2 standard-size tarts, or up to 15 10cm tartlets (even then there’s a bit of extra pastry!), but see how you go.

Grease the tart(let) tin(s) with a little butter, and then leave them somewhere cool. For the pastry, cream together the butter, sugar and salt, then fold in the rest of the ingredients until you have the mixture looking like coarse breadcrumbs. Without working it too much, bring it together gently into a ball (or two, owing to the massive amount of pastry you will now have), wrap it up in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. Then roll it out to about the thickness of a pound coin and line your tart tin(s) with it. If making tartlets, roll it out a bit thinner and cut it into rounds to line the tins with. This will, most likely, mean you’ll take up the excess pastry and roll it out again once or twice, but as long as you haven’t overworked it previously, it will still bake into a nice short pastry.

Preheat the oven to 180˚C/350˚F and bake the pastry case blind for about 12-15 minutes (10-12 minutes for tartlets) or until it’s firm and almost biscuit-like. With such a rich pastry, I’ve found baking beans aren’t really necessary here. Remove from the oven and turn ot down to 170˚C/325˚F.

Now for the filling.

Slowly bring the milk, cream and sugar to a boil, stirring gently. Take it off the heat and add the chocolate bits, whisking until smooth. Add the eggs and whisk again. Transfer the filling to a jug and pour it into the pastry case(s), then bake the tart(s) for 15 minutes, or 10-12 minutes if you’re doing tartlets. It (or they) will still be slightly wobbly on coming out of the oven, but worry not, the filling firms up as it cools.

There you have it. Whether with pistachio, sour cream, sea salt, ice cream, or just as they are, this tart, or these tartlets, add up to a brilliant and decadent treat.

Rice Again

A simple fennel risotto lives again - and dare I say it’s even better than before - as fried risotto cakes (rosti?). All you need to do is form your leftover risotto, thick and stodgy with starch, into balls, flatten them into patties and cover them with some seasoned breadcrumbs. They will fry in a little oil on a medium heat, moving around as little as possible, into the most delicious and crispy comfort-food you can imagine.

Perfect to serve with some lettuce leaves garnished with green salsa. And frankly it would be rude not to top it with a poached egg.

Simple, warming, delicious.