Braised Shoulder of Venison with Damsons and Juniper

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It is autumn.

YESSSS.

I love cooking in the summer (although I must admit I love it a wee bit less now that I don’t have a grill or a garden) but I REALLY love autumn food. In London, meat purveyors start selling game at prices I can afford and the weather is cool enough so that braised meats are exactly what you want for dinner. Last weekend I took my dad to the Marylebone Farmer’s Market where, as usual, I indulged my addiction to Guernsey cream (more about how I used that in another post), bought some beautiful ripe damsons, and got a gorgeous venison shoulder. Venison in general is a very lean meat, and venison shoulder is a chunk of muscle that gets worked a lot. The best thing to do with a piece of meat like this is braise the hell out of it. Continue reading →

Rustic Raspberry Tart

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Sometimes I cook things because they are perfect vehicles for other foods I want to eat. Witness this “rustic” (read, freeform) raspberry tart. On Sunday I was at the Marylebone Farmer’s Market. It is impossible for me to go to the Marylebone Farmer’s Market without buying Guernsey cream. (Admittedly, I haven’t tried very hard not to buy it. But why should I deny myself?) Having bought the cream, well, clearly a tart had to be made. Continue reading →

Mark’s bar at Hix

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There are few things better than going to a really good bar where you know the bartender. That cozy feeling of communion as the drinks crafted ESPECIALLY FOR YOU are placed before you is an experience on a par, I’d say, with going on a really sexy first date. (The two, of course, are not mutually exclusive.) One thing that gives this most singular of pleasures a run for its money is going to a good bar where you don’t know the bartender but ARE TREATED AS IF YOU DO. Continue reading →

Parsnip, Fennel and Shallot Velouté

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To those of you who know me, it will come as no surprise that before writing this post I spent a considerable amount of time pondering whether I could call this soup a velouté. In classical French cooking, a velouté sauce is a combination of a blond roux (equal parts butter and flour) and a white stock (i.e., a stock made from bones that have not been roasted), and finished with cream. A velouté soup, at least back when the French were doctrinaire about such things Continue reading →

Raspberry Mousse with Port Chocolate Sauce

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There are certain dishes that always and forever will remind me of my mother. My mother is an early disciple of Julia Child and Craig Claiborne, and a fantastic classical French cook. One such dish is berry mousse, which my mother makes with egg whites, whipped cream, and a bit of gelatin (and no yolks), so it is airy and delicate. I had spare egg whites from making pasta, and the British raspberries in the supermarkets have been singing a siren song to me. And perhaps I was feeling a little nostalgic for my mother’s mousse. Continue reading →

Sweety’s Plantains in Spicy Coconut Sauce

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There are certain foods I don’t want to stop eating, no matter how full I am. Plantains are one of those foods.

Plantains are the übermensch of the banana family. Although they can’t be eaten raw (who wants an ingredient that gives everything up on the first date anyway?) plantains are delectable when cooked. Rich, savoury, sweet, and complex, plantains stand up to strong seasonings Continue reading →

Meat me at Hawksmoor for Brunch

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I am meat-drunk. I feel like I have been larded with drippings and slathered on toast. You see, I had brunch at Hawksmoor Spitalfields today.

This is not brunch for the fainthearted or weak-willed. There is no heart-healthy option. Nor is this brunch for vegetarians. No. This is brunch for meat-eaters and boozers, and I love it. Continue reading →

My Fresh Pasta

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When I googled “fresh pasta recipe” just now, I came up with over four million hits. Even assuming some of those hits are for recipes with fresh pasta you buy at the store and porn sites (you know how devious those porny spammers are), I would conservatively estimate that hundreds of thousands of them, if not over a million, are recipes for making fresh pasta.

Everybody’s doing it. It’s a rite of cheffy passage. By the late 90’s, you couldn’t go to a cocktail party without overhearing a foodie ‘casually’ mention the fresh pasta they’d made the other night. Continue reading →

Lemon Crème Fraiche Pound Cake

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As my lovely friend and pastry chef extraordinaire Kathleen says, and as all good home bakers know, all sweets are formulas. Desserts are pure food science, which is what makes them so fun and so maddening.

One of my favourite formulas is the pound cake. In its purest form, a pound cake is a pound of eggs, a pound of butter, a pound of flour and a pound of sugar. I’ve never actually made a classic pound cake, although I love its OCD wacky precision. But a bastardised version of a pound cake is my go-to recipe Continue reading →