Easy Does it.

Ooh, aah - be mesmerised by the twinkly lights...

So, recently – as part of my real life, I had to spend a lot of time looking at Youtube clips of Nigella Lawson.

Firstly – I just want put it out there that my job is neither made up, nor am I using ‘job’ as a euphemism for ‘going to the loo for an uncomfortably long period of time’, which, I am quite aware, is in itself a euphemism for ‘looking at the undeniably magnificent Nigella and then touching myself’.

Now, interestingly Nigella is just one of those TV chef-type people that I’d never really watched a lot.  I’ve never bought any of her books or paid particular attention to her shows – I guess mainly just because … I dunno – I apparently don’t have a lot of time for breathless finger licking and seemingly ENDLESS midnight raids on the fridge for no apparent reason other than so that we can watch her in a nightie.  But this is TV – I understand that the woman has to work her angle, so I’m not going to hold that against her.

Bollocks, now in my head everything just sounds like a euphemism for ‘looking at the undeniably magnificent Nigella and then touching myself’.  Oh well, cracking on.

Anyway – in the process of browsing through endless clips of her cooking various things for an infinite supply of friends that seem to just hang around her house and mooch off her, I did come across one of her series that was designed around the concept of embracing short-cuts; using pre-made sauces, bottled pastes, and canned this that and the other.  It’s an idea that I like, quite frankly, because not everything has to be made from scratch, and I’m slightly suspicious of people who seemingly get off on the idea that that’s the only real way to do it.

Lets face it – no-one really cares if you made your Colombian Squid-ink Reducto-jus Infused Saffron rice from SCRATCH bitches, because it’s mainly just a wild ego-wank that proves you either have no life or are desperate to get laid by a food-groupie.  The people who’re actually eating it only really give a crap if tastes good – which is the point of cooking in the first place, so everyone just relax for a bit and put down your specialist quail egg shell-removers.

So, if anything, it was kinda empowering to be reminded that a) certain things do come pre-made – and are actually excellent when used properly, and b) finger-licking Nigella can stay.

Now if you excuse me I have to go to the loo.

Chicken Brik

 

...add a cold beer to this and you're golden.

I’d recently read about a Moroccan street meal called a ‘brik’ – essentially because of a special sheet of dough used to make a kind of pie/food parcel.  I’ve adapted something sort of similar out of  this notion, which is absolutely nothing like the real thing, but I think works really nicely.  If this was a movie, it’d totally have a title up-front that would say: Inspired by Real Events.

 Ingredients (for 4)

150g self-raising flour

200 ml warm water that had about 2 tbsp of honey dissolved into it

1 tbsp of olive oil

1 tbsp salt

half a cup of semolina

 

3 skinless chicken breasts, sliced into smallish, neat strips

a handful of fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped

3 celery stalks, finely chopped

1 red onion, chopped

juice of one lemon

 

2 generous tbsp of bottled Korma paste (whichever brand or type your prefer)

 

1 egg, beaten,

 

What to do

In a large bowl add the flour, salt and olive oil.  Make a well in the middle and add a bit of the honey water, and mix it in with either a wooden spoon (or your hands if you don’t mind them getting doughy).  Keep going by adding a bit of water, mixing it in, adding more water, mixing it in – until all the dry flour has been absorbed and you have a wettish dough (it doesn’t matter if you haven’t used up all the water).  It’s going to be incredibly sticky and clingy, so resist the temptation to dust with extra flour and try and work it with your fingers as best you can so that it’s free of lumps, then just cover the bowl with clingfilm and bung it in the fridge for about 30 minutes or so.

Get a pan on the stove, and heat a splash of olive oil, then add the chicken.  Once the chicken has started to brown nicely, add the Korma paste, half the lemon juice, and season generously with salt and pepper. Stir it all about and let it cook for another 2-3 minutes before removing from the heat.

Let the pan cool, then mix in the raw celery, onion, coriander and the rest of the lemon juice then set aside (give your pan a wipe-down at this point, you’re going to be using it again).

Get the dough out of the fridge, and on a large chopping board or clean work surface, scatter a good amount of the semolina. Break off a small burger-patty sized piece of the dough and, using your hands, press it into a roughish disc. Then flop it onto the semolina so that it gets a good coating on both sides, and start to gently roll it out with a rolling pin. Keep making sure it’s got a semolina covering so that it doesn’t stick, and roll it until it’s about 2mm thick and roughly circular.  At this point you should have a lovely crust of semolina on your fake brik dough.

Spoon some of the chicken onto one side of the dough circle (about 3-4 tablespoon’s worth), keeping about an inch away from the edge.  Using a kitchen brush, paint that side with the egg, and then fold the dough over and bind it – so that it looks like a cornish pastie.

Heat some vegetable oil in a pan, then gently lift the brik into it, and gently fry on both sides until golden brown.  Drain on some paper towel and serve.

Just a note – you won’t end up using all the dough, but it’ll keep, if covered in the fridge, for about 3 days.

Big Eating in Little…um, Parktown.

A table reserved for 20? No problem.

“Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” is what people started to say about … well, some Englishmen, after they’d gone out in the midday sun a lot and then bitten someone instead of sucking down tea and saying thing’s like ‘Good God, Bertie’s gone and jammed the walpole something bafters, eh what?”

So basically, as everyone who lives in a place that’s hot knows: don’t go out in it – because it’s uncomfortable and likely to make you a bit squiffy in the face and pants. Other Hot Places include: kitchens, and…well, because this story is about kitchens, that’s all I can really think of at the moment. So, yes. Kitchens. According to that logic you shouldn’t go in those either, something about staying out of them if you don’t like sweating. I am alas extraordinarily bad at both staying out of kitchens and listening to what other people say – which is why I host dinners for large amounts of people and then practically set myself on fire cooking for all of them. The most recent one being last weekend.

At this point I wish I had happy photographs of people laughing and having a good time, eating things and cracking open the 12th bottle of red wine in about 14 minutes, but alas I was too busy grappling with a minor grease fire (which always looks scarier than it actually is) and 2kgs of bad ostrich. Not bad ostrich like Nicholas Cage popping meth and caps in people’s asses in a Werner Hertzog movie, just ostrich that should never have been put in shrink-wrap and sold to me to feed to people. Bad Pick ‘n Pay Hyde Park. Bad.

The Day After.

Warning. Jono Trying To Make Some Sort Of Profound Statement Alert.

It feels like there’s a fair amount of negative feeling starting to build at the moment towards the supposedly over-saturation of ‘celebrity chef culture’ and foodie obsessives (present), organic this and the next thing, Come Dine With Me subcultures, Masterchef/Iron Chef/Top Chef, Gordon Ramsey shouting at people, and hero-worshipped ‘only spoken of in hushed tones’ super god restauranteurs (Ferran and Heston, sitting in a tree…). Well, I say bollocks to that. Because at the heart of all that crap – and yes, most of it is crap, but at the heart of it – is really just the simple notion that people are starting to get interested in being able to cook, both for themselves and, more importantly… for each other.  And surely that can’t be a bad thing?  At the end of the day it all boils down to more and more people having a reason to get mopes like us together with plates of things to eat so that we can talk about whatever happened to the guy who provided the voice for the original Kit in Knight Rider and/or psychic dolphins.  And that’s kinda what the “20-odd people in my house for dinner thing once every two months or so” thing is all about, and who cares about the occasional minor grease fire?

For my reward, I choose.... pasta!

Okay, so that’s done. Someone make a joke about people who shouldn’t be allowed to wear spandex.

Spicy lentils with mushrooms and mascarpone. 

It’s sometimes odd how a dish can live in your brain, whispering “I’m not quite ready yet”, and “Why haven’t you gone to gym this week?”

Okay, not the second one, but still. One of the very first completely original recipes I ever started to work on was this lentil thing, and I’ve never quite stopped tinkering with it – until now it seems.  After about five years of fiddling with it, I think it might actually be finished, which is I gave it to everyone who came to my house for the Big Eating dinner as a starter.

When I found my own island nation of superbeings, this will be on the flag.

Ingredients (for 4)

3 cups of brown lentils

1 red onion (chopped)

1 400g tin of whole peeled tomatoes

2 dried red chillis (finely chopped)

2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)

2 bay leaves

2 heaped tbspns of Curry Powder

100 mls of vegetable or meat stock

2 tspn brown sugar

200 mls of red wine

olive oil

1 generous handful of brown or portebellini mushrooms

1 handful of rosa tomatoes

a healthy splash of brandy

2 tbspns of black mustard seeds

A couple of tbpsns of Mascarpone cheese

fresh rocket

salt

pepper

What to do

Pour the lentils into a pot and cover generously with water and a pinch of salt. Bring it to the boil cover with a lid, and let them boil for about an hour, topping up with water from time to time if it looks like they’re drying out.

In a pan, heat a splash of olive oil, then add the chilli, garlic and onions.  Once they’ve softened and are starting to take on a bit of colour, add the tomatoes, stock, bay leaves, curry powder and sugar. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and let it simmer until you’ve got a rich, red spicy sauce.

After the lentils have had their hour-long boiling session, stir in the sauce from the pan, and reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. After everything’s been stirred in, add the 200mls of red wine. You should have a somewhat soupy consistency about now. If it feels too thick, just add a bit of water, and don’t worry if it feels too runny, because you’re going to simmer it all down anyway. Let this all bubble away for another 45 minutes.

While this happening, slice up the mushrooms and tomatoes and bung them in a hot pan (you can use the same one you used to make the sauce – just give it a wipe with paper towel) with some olive oil, and once they’re starting to brown, add your brandy. Boil away most of the alcohol so that you’ve got lovely moist, browned up mushrooms and tomatoes left in the pan.

Toast the mustard seeds in a dry pot or pan and set aside.

So, after the lentils have had their extra 45 minutes, you’ll need to check the seasoning (add salt and pepper to taste at this point) and if the lentils have softened nicely. If they haven’t, just add a touch more liquid and let them carry on for a couple of minutes.

Scoop a ladle of lentils (this so should be the collective noun for lentils) into a bowl or onto a plate, add a dollop of mascarpone cheese and some of the brandy mushrooms and tomatoes, sprinkle with the mustard seeds and top with the fresh rocket.

Now, how about those psychic dolphins?

Biting off more than you can chew.

Everyone loves a comeback. Unless it’s Cliff Richard or one of the boy bands that wasn’t N’Sync. Actually scratch that, the only comeback I want to see from a boy band is in an X-box game called “Shoot All Boy Bands.”

You see, I’ve been going through a particularly horrendous cooking patch. Nothing particularly fun, nothing particularly inventive – it was all rather beginning to feel like the third season of one of those shows that originally started off full of bright promise and pretty starlets and punchy dialogue, but by the third year it’s all getting tired and flabby and the writers couldn’t really be bothered, which is why most episodes are 85% montage sequences cut to stoopid pop music and 15% excuses for product placement. I call it Josh Schwartzitis (come back to us Gossip Girl, just one good episode and all will be forgiven).

Then this happened.

This honestly should come with some type of orchestral fanfare.

And it felt like the moment when someone finally musters the energy to lift themselves out from under the mountain of salt ‘n vinegar chip packets, wade through the empty tubs of ‘mucho mexicano monster dip’, lift their fringe off their face long enough to see where they’re going and switch the VH1 ‘So 80s!’ marathon off.

It was unexpected and, amazingly, there were witnesses. My viciously talented friend Dale captured the whole evening here in between eating the hell out of it

So, hallelujah, this was possibly the most delicious and aesthetically pleasing thing I’ve ever made, and I was totally poised to write some fairly self-congratulatory stuff about it. Which means it was entirely possible that most of the people who somehow still read this blog would immediately consign me to a box in their heads marked “insufferable cocksmoker”. This would have been okay by me because none of those people had managed to make a Madagascan curry prawn starter on sweet potato roti with minted yoghurt. So there.

But then something else happened, something that made a pretty little seafood dish seem totally insignificant (when it rains, it clearly pours).

Quite nervously, over a dinner of sushi and red wine (not Technically Correct I know, but screw it, it’s getting colder down this neck of the woods and white wine is getting less fun by the day), some dear friends of mine asked me to cater their wedding for them.

Happy people in the road.

Now let me explain something here.  I have fairly large balls when it comes to Impossible Ventures That Are Certain To End In Failure (Trevor and Justine don’t read this bit, I’m sure your wedding will turn out just fine). What I mean to say is that I’m too stupid to know when to say no. Plus, I really like these two and cooking for 80 people on Their Special Day seems like more fun than having to make making small talk with Auntie Merle in the queue for the champagne cocktails (“No I’m not gay. Yes I’m sure. Well I can’t explain why no girls want to talk to me. I understand it was different in your day. I’m sure your niece is a lovely girl, but maybe now isn’t the best time. Okay fine. Here’s my number. Tell her she can call any time.”) Which are all factors that contributed towards me saying “yes!!!” before even pausing for a moment to run through a list of the things I should have been thinking about when considering their request.

Like:

a)    80 people is a lot. It’s more people that can fit my apartment. It’s more people than I’m likely to sleep with in my life. It’s more people than know the actual answer to the question, “What is the proof to Fermat’s Last Theorem?”

b)   80 people is a lot. It’s more people than I can buy pizza for. It’s like inviting Jacob Zuma and his extended family for lunch.

c)    80 people is a lot.

So. For the next little bit I’m going to be using this blog as a virtual pillow in which to scream into. Whenever the idea of what I’ve taken on board here gets too much, I will turn to the Great Big Nothingness of the internet for either reassurance, or people telling me I’m a nutjob and what the hell was I thinking.

So. By my reckoning there are approximately 212 (ish) days left until their wedding.  I have, in this time, got to figure out a 3-course menu that I can conceivably put together for the money they have, in the time they have, and for the amount of people they’ve invited. I’m thinking of calling it: Help Me To Not Fuck Up Trevor And Justine’s Wedding.

Catchy.

And (sort of) the process has already begun. A recent cold and rainy day saw me invite the happily engaged couple for Sunday Lunch – mostly as an excuse to spend a day drinking wine, but also because I wanted to start feeling them out as to what they were eager to eat on the day they look each other in the eye and say ‘I do’.

So as an opening salvo for a starter, I offer:

My balls on the block. As it were.

Crispy-fried Risotto Balls with Rocket and Plum Chutney.

This is very simple.

Follow the risotto recipe previously offered on this site, which is here (or alternately any risotto recipe you fancy).

Then, put the finished risotto in a sealable container and place in the freezer for about 45 minutes – you need this to get quite solid.

After that, use your hands to shape the risotto into golf-ball sized balls, then roll them in flour.

Meanwhile, get a pot of sunflower oil (about four fingers deep – enough to totally cover your risotto) nice and hot. You can test it by dropping a crumb of bread into the oil, if it starts to bubble and spit, it’s hot enough.

Carefully drop the risotto balls into the oil and fry until golden brown. Remove them with a slotted spoon and pat dry with some paper towel.

Serve with fresh rocket leaves and plum chutney (I did not make mine from scratch, I sourced this amazing chutney).

So? Good enough for a wedding?

As a footnote. If anyone’s interested in what I’m actually doing during the long gaps between posts on this blog, all that’s needed is to click here and go to Jono Hall on the left hand side.