Field of Breams

To quote a vintage 1980s episode of Doctor Who, it was a wet November on Earth. The day never seemed to get light due to the short daylight hours and heavy cloud with relentless rain. It's weather like this that makes the moods of many British people see-saw between elation during the long sunny summer days and sadness during the winter months. However, a wider perspective on faith, the world we live in and some good quality food can chase seasonal sadness away. 

It was the philosophy above that was taken into the making of today's recipe of Sea Bream with Greens.

The ingredients for this dish are:

1 Sea Bream, gutted and thoroughly washed.

1 bag of Spinach

8 Ounces of pre-cooked Boiled Rice.

12 Peanuts.

1 Large Parsnip, peeled, topped, tailed and cut into the shape of some batons.

Small Chunks of Fresh Cucumber

On the player was Taylor Swift's current offering "Life of a Showgirl" . Taylor's career before this album has been stellar and in her own she has been as iconic to the current generation as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson were to their own generations. The album finds her moving beyond the bittersweet songs of lost love and distrust and into a glorious technicolour of a wider lyrical range and varied arrangements. This is, perhaps, in no small part due to her finding a genuine romantic partner in her life. 

So to the method of this dish:

1. Fry the Sea Bream on a medium heat turning frequently for around 35-40 minutes. The goal is to make the skin crisp as a potato chip while ensuring the flesh inside the Bream is cooked.

2. Steam the parsnip for around twenty minutes until soft but still retaining a bit of crunchiness.

3. Fry the Spinach, Rice and Peanuts on a medium heat for around 10 minutes until the Spinach has softened and the mixture has compacted. 

4. Remove the Bream from the pan once cooked and remove the flesh from the bones and the gills . 

5. Serve and garnish with the Cucumber Cubes.

It was the first time I had made this dish and the Nuts with Spinach provided important iron while the Bream had a fresh but quite rich taste to make this a filling treat on a wet winter's night. 

Beef of the Fall

 "After hardship comes ease" a quote that was very relatable to present events just as for me the quote "after the first recipe using apples from my wise guide's garden comes the sequel to that recipe" is equally relatable. This recipe is one for a distinctly Autumnal Beef Stew. Time to delve deeper into how to make this one happen.

Heavy cloud and no rain for what seemed like days served to lower the mood and leave many seeking brightness in faraway lands. That meant some solid comfort food was needed to protect ourselves against the cooling of the weather and less than light nights. 

On the player to inspire the cooking project was the last, and perhaps the greatest, album by Roxy Music in the shape of their 1982 effort "Avalon". Slick song-writing, cold but efficient synth work, mannered vocalising and one of the best opening tracks of all time with "More Than This" make this record a winner.

Ingredients

The ingredients to this stew come like this:

600 grams of diced Beef.

5 Carrots, washed, topped and tailed- but not peeled- and sliced thinly.

6 small Cooking Apples, similar to those from my friend's garden which I used, that are around the size of Pool Balls.

3 Shallots, topped tailed, peeled and then sliced thinly. 

Half a small Swede peeled.

Fresh Thyme, an amount to suit your personal taste.

Fresh Chives, an amount to suit your personal taste.

Black Pepper to season to your personal taste.

2 teaspoons of Malt Vineger.

2 tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce. 

1 pint of Vegetable Stock.

Method

1. Melt 100 grams of Salted Butter in a Le Cresceut or other oven proof dish that has a removable lid.

2. Add the Beef, Carrots, Apples, Swede and Shallots and mix thoroughly while stewing on a medium heat for around ten to fifteen minutes to ensure the Beef is browned. 

3. Add the Chives, Thyme, Black Pepper, Vinegar and Worcestershire Sauce and stew for another five minutes. 

4. Add the Vegetable Stock and ensure it covers all things in the dish.

5. Put the lid on the dish, take off the heat of the hob and insert into a pre-heated oven.

6. Cook on Gas Mark 3 for around two hours before serving.

The result of this dish was a sweetness from the apple that was enhanced by the Vinegar and Worcestershire Sauce while the Beef and root vegetables gave plenty of savoury flavour. To give it even more of a fortifying taste of the Fall, try serving with dumplings and/or thick freshly baked bread.

Above: with enough for several meals, this dish can be blocked cooked and frozen to enjoy when you are in a rush but need a good feed.

Scone Alone

 Last Tuesday in town, on an evening after another day of energy and excitement at work, some scones of a new kind were born. It was recipe making its debut on the blog and in the kitchen. It contained one of the delicious apples my wise mentor had provided me and some home grown herbs. Let's find out how to make this recipe below.

Earlier in the summer, a trip had been taken to Devon to the home of sweet scones, Jam and clotted cream. Indeed, this recipe-called a cream tea- is one the classic foods many think of when asked to name English Cuisine. Another sweet scone I once sampled, in another life, was lavender scones. However, I decided to put a twist on the traditional sweet scone recipe by making something sweet and savoury. 

On the player was the Kinks' 1967 masterpiece "Something Else by the Kinks" that opens with the schoolboy drama of "David Watts" and closes with the timeless masterpiece "Waterloo Sunset". In between; the wistful music hall revival "The End of the Season" that could have been sung by Bud Flanagan in the summer of 1939 and the ode to cigarettes of "Harry Rag" are two of many highlights. 

The ingredients for the scones went like this:

Eight Ounces of Self-Raising Flour.

Two Ounces of Salted Butter, softened at room temperature. 

Tablespoon of Chives from my garden that are chopped finely.

Tablespoon of Tarragon leaves from my garden that are chopped finely. 

A pinch of Mustard Powder.

An apple from the bag given to me by mentor, de cored and then cubed but not peeled. 

Four Ounces of grated Cheddar Cheese.

Milk to bind the mixture together, around 100 millilitres should do it.

These scones are made like this:

1. Knead the Self-Raising Flour and Butter until it resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Stir in the Chives, Tarragon, Cheese, Mustard and Apples. 

3. Gradually add the Milk, stirring it in steadily until the mixture resembles a ball of dough that is pliable. 

4. Grease a baking tray and split the mixture into around nine equal balls. 

5. Bake on Gas Mark Six for around twenty minutes until they are golden brown. 

6. Turn onto a plate and leave to cool. 

The scones followed me to work later that week, there the flavoursome taste containing sweet Apple and a genuine savoury nature from the Cheese and Herbs proved a winner with colleagues. 

Dales' Cake

On the blog today, a recipe that was born out of inspiration from the cakes of the Yorkshire Dales and filled with an exotic Jam that was made in the Derbyshire Dales. Let me fill you in on this stirring recipe. 

Change is all round us. As inevitable as taxes and the way the longer days give way to shorter ones, different weather and the plants producing crops that reflect the change in the seasons each year. This recipe was inspired by that process as it contained ingredients that are more commonly found in the Fall Season and serve as comfort food during those days when colder weather and darker evenings become commonplace. 

As always, there was music on the player. Today we were going quite old school but in some ways looking to the future too with the latest release by seminal Manchester Band The Chameleons. Their music could properly be classed as the missing link between the bleak, beautiful post-punk gravity of Joy Division and the bright guitar pop with dark and sardonic lyrics of the Smiths.

The Chameleons' last album was released in 2001 and before that they produced records in 1983, 1985 and 1986 with the odd EP and live record thrown in. The new release, Arctic Moon, which was preceded by an EP earlier in the year, features the classic Chameleon traits of attention to sonic detail in the guitar department, considered lyrics and new musical experiments. In other words it is outwardly something fresh and new but beneath the surface it is in every way the band we all know and love. The same could be said for my life; apparent changes on the face of things don't take away from the fact that, for those who choose to understand, underneath that is same the person they have always known and is now hoping to be a better version of what came before.

So the ingredients for today's recipe, which is a cake. They are as follows:

For the sponge

3 beaten Eggs that are medium sized. 

3 tablespoons of treacle. 

4 ounces of Caster Sugar

2 ounces of Ground Ginger.

8 ounces of Self-Raising Flour.

8 ounces part melted, Salted Butter. A good trick is to put the butter near a warm window for a short time to soften it up to the consistency of margarine. 

For the filling

Quince Jam. 

Method

1. Cream the Butter and Sugar together until you get a fluffy mixture that looks like the Butter has grown hair. 

2. Add the Eggs and Treacle and stir them into the mixture. 

3. Add the Flour and the Ginger and mix until a thick paste is created. 

4. Grease two cake tins and put half the mixture in each. 

5. Cook in the oven on Gas Mark 4 for 30 minutes or until putting a skewer into the cake brings it out clean. 

6. Put the two pieces of cake out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

7. Spread a large amount of the Quince Jam onto one side of the cake and put the other on the top to create a sandwich.

The cake tasted of something different but with a familiar sweetness. The Quince Jelly gave it the sweet and savoury taste of traditional Fall recipes as did the addition of the Treacle and Ginger also. The cake proved a real hit with an old friend I was blessed to reunite with after some years and workmates who have a warmth that matters. 

The Sunday Afternoon Seafood Project Part Two: Prawn Curry

One of the best things about the far east's cuisine is the amount of curry recipes over there. They can usually be divided into two categories, Thai Red Curry and Thai Green Curry. The Green flavour tends to be mellower while the Red carries fire and spice in its ingredients. It was the former I chose to make. 

These curries tend to rely on either Beef, Chicken, Pork-a bit Haram that- and Seafood for their protein. Inspired by the seafood of the Pacific Rim, I went for an option that involved utilising Prawns as the protein.

There was music on the player. This time round it was Jerry Goldsmith's excellent soundtrack to the first Star Trek Movie. The music bristles with tension, epic moments, feelings of salvation and elation, as well as articulating through the music the chemistry the original crew of the Enterprise displayed to allow them to survive their missions. 

So to the ingredients, which are as follows:

300 grams of pre-cooked and peeled Prawns. 

4 medium sized Sweet Peppers, de-cored, topped, tailed and sliced finely. 

1 Red Onion, peeled, topped, tailed and diced.

1 tablespoon of Ground Ginger. 

140 grams of Thai Red Curry Paste. 

1 can of Coconut Milk 

An amount of Rice to suit your needs to boil until it is sticky and then serve as a side dish. 

The way this one is put together is as follows:

1. Fry the onions on a medium heat for around ten minutes until they are translucent, stirring them regularly to avoid them burning. 

2. Add the Sweet Peppers and stir in before adding the Ground Ginger and cooking for another five minutes.

3. Add the Prawns and then fry for a further ten minutes on a low heat. 

4. Add the Coconut Milk taking care to remove the water from the can leaving only the pure milk to ensure the curry mix is rich and creamy. 

5. Simmer gently for another five minutes. 

6. Serve with the Rice and garnish with some Spring Onion leaves.

There was a certain saltiness to this recipe that contrasted nicely with the sweetness of the Coconut flavours and the curry paste had a fire to stop the recipe from being too rich. Certainly a recipe to have as a "go to" for block cooking for the working week ahead or a delicious Saturday Night Treat. 

Mean Tegine in the Homeland

 A trip to Morocco in late April and new-found knowledge of peninsula thousands of miles to the east helped inspire a recipe that was very much made in England. 

The sun shone. The leaves on the trees in the park were fading to gold while others had been shed by their owners to lighten the toll taken on them by the long drought of the summer. Fall had officially begun and it was a time to reflect. It had been a summer of holidays, exciting firsts on the cricket field and positive growth. 

The third Sunday in September came at the end of a weekend of laughter, badminton, hiking and nature walks with a spot of housework thrown in. I thought back to the delicious Tegine recipes found on the holiday in Morocco and with the righteous angst of the Smiths' 1985 number one album "Meat is Murder" on the player, I embarked on making an Aubergine and Prawn Tegine. The use of Prawns was inspired by my knowledge of the seafood found in that peninsula far away in the East. 

The ingredients were as follows:

For the Tegine

Two Aubergines, topped, tailed and sliced thinly. 

One Red Onion, topped, tailed and sliced finely. 

Two diced Sweet Peppers with their seeds and tops removed. 

One tablespoon each of ground Cumin, ground Cloves, ground Coriander, Harissa Flakes and pieces of Saffron.

The juice of one Lemon. 

Two tablespoons of Honey. 

Sixteen shelled Prawns that are pre-cooked and ready to eat. 

0.1 litres of boiling water.

100 grams of Red Lentils. 

For the Loaded Rice

150 grams of dried Rice.

0.5 litres of boiled water.

1 tin of Kidney Beans.

The method of this recipe is as follows and very simple:

1. Add all the ingredients ,except the water, to an ovenproof dish, such as a Le Cresceut, with a lid on it. Put the lid on and shake the dish to combine the ingredients and leave them for about an hour to marinate. 

2. Add the water and cook the ingredients in the dish on the hob for ten minutes on a low heat. 

Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 5 and once it has warmed up, put the dish in the oven and cook for one hour. 

3. Meanwhile, boil the Rice until it is sticky and has absorbed the water. Add the Kidney Beans and stir them together with a pinch of Harissa. 

4. When everything is cooked serve it. 

The combination of sweet and sour together with the protein of the Kidney Beans to bolster the rice makes this dish irresistible and it tastes even better when kept overnight and eaten the next day. Such much good British Cuisine is based on sweet and sour flavours from other countries but adopted and appropriated to create dishes inspired from abroad but made in this country. Much like British cuisine, our country would not be half as successful without all those things that have come from other places to enrich and enhance. 

Power to the Pontack

It was early, too early really, in the morning at the start of the working week when I picked up a package of some value that was created in the mid-nineteen eighties and had been delivered to the local corner shop. It was a shop adjoining a housing estate containing memories of sports entertainment, made by many long gone, from the 1980s and  early1990s and a certain kind of edge and danger that raised itself at the end of the noughties. 

However, opposite the shop was a park where daffodils with flowerheads the colour of bright turmeric bloomed and butterflies with tangerine wing-tips flitted effortlessly in late April to mark the arrival of a new summer. The park led to a building that had a slanted roof and a construction that was akin to the design of houses made of Lego that first went on sale nearly forty years ago. It was there, just four clear days later, where I joined a holy host of others for some much needed calmness over a continental breakfast. 

The day in question was the first Saturday in September, a date where historically a physical and mental re-set after the end of summer normally takes place. This first Saturday was no exception after what was, from a career, sporting, social and emotional point of view, a successful summer. However, due to changes in people far and near old and new, it all felt different this time. Such feelings however were tempered by a familiar chat, with one of my oldest friends, about foraging and the multitude of exciting and wonderful recipes that can be found in the wild, wild woods at this time of year. 

One such recipe is to make a savoury sauce out of elderberries. Elderberries are at their best at the end of August and the start of September. As I have done on many occasions since 1988, the same year I met my friend, I found myself wandering towards the woods near my childhood home. It was not long before I stumbled into a field soaked in mist at the edge of which hung a clump of Elderberries that glistened like wet leather and hung from iridescent red stems. I grabbed them gratefully and headed home to get away from the claustrophobic fog. 

Inspired by my good friend's recommendation, I settled upon a recipe that Henry VIII used to put on his venison meals. Pontack sauce, which is made with elderberries and can include shallots. In the days before tomatoes reached our shores, this sauce was the aristocrat's choice to go to in flavouring their meals. 

It is often made by baking the ingredients in the oven for a number of hours. However my recipe was a shortcut that  reduced my carbon footprint considerably. As I commenced cooking; on the player was some music of apparent blackness, that in fact hid in plain sight swathes of sardonic humour and life affirming goodness. The music was Leonard Cohen's set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Walking out onto the stage in the small hours to a tired and increasingly hostile crowd; Cohen's dry authority and impeccable timing in his introduction to the setlist blunted their anger and his set, brought to life by a sparse backing band and Cohen's unmistakeable baritone, had the audience eating from the palm of his hand as they clapped and sang along like they were his best friends hanging out with him down the pub. 

Against this backdrop, the recipe was as follows:   

200 grams of the fresh Elderberries I had foraged earlier that day.

2 tablespoons of Onion Salt. 

Quarter of a pint of White Wine Vinegar.

A teaspoon of ground Black Pepper.

The first job was to remove the stems from the Elderberries. They are neon red for a reason, to advertise their toxicity and eating more than a couple of them will give you an upset stomach. Having removed the stems, I washed the berries thoroughly and placed them in a saucepan with all the other ingredients and mixed them together. 

The next job was to place the pan on the hob and bring the mixture to boil. Once this had happened, I simmered the mixture for twenty minutes. The next task was to set the Pontack to one side and let it cool. Once it had cooled I placed it in a sterilised jar; but not before sniffing it to realise that it had a rich smell that leant itself to being enjoyed with an indulgent joint of meat, such as venison or rump steak, as comfort food on a gloomy Autumn Sunday.