Roast chicken with Ed, George, Vince & Alistair

Dinner with Ed and the three possible chancellors. Roast chicken with lemon & thyme (Hopkinson, of course), braised fennel and carrots, the latter with garlic and Marsala. Great.

(Fyi: Ed, Vince and Alistair were delightful, intelligent company; Osborne, the smarmy sod, was way out of his depth.)

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Roast chicken with braised fennel & carrots

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There’s only one way to do roast chicken, and this is it. You will need:

One free range chicken, 1.8kg

110g butter at room temp

A lemon

Some sprigs of  thyme

A garlic clove

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Heat the oven to 230 degrees. Smear the butter over the chicken (there’s so much it’ll be like a little golden jacket). Season – a lot. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the bird, then stuff the husks inside it, alongside the thyme sprigs and the garlic clove, crushed. Blast at 230 for 15 mins, then baste and turn down to 190. Cook for a further 45 mins, basting occasionally. Turn the oven off, and rest with the door ajar for 15 mins before serving.

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Wine, meat. More wine.

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Anchor & Hope

36 The Cut, Waterloo, SE1 8LP

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In my smug and worthless opinion, worse than going to a bad restaurant is going to a good restaurant with someone who won’t have any wine tonight – because goodness! they’ve drunk so much lately, and it’s a work night! – and who, gosh! couldn’t possibly manage a dessert.

Tonight though, I am tipsy and stuffed and delighted to say I had dinner with someone as greedy and profligate as I am. Andrew, bless you. We went to the Anchor & Hope in Waterloo, a gastropub institution my aspirations would have me as a regular at, but in actual life this was my first visit.

We’ve gathered that I like wine (and particularly wine served in tumblers, as here), but I also like meat. If there’s weird animal or weird bits of animal or weird bits of weird animal on the menu, all the better, and the A&H is excellently uninterested in the fact some people don’t eat animal at all. Sadly, after the 45-minute wait for a table – though in a bar so life-affirmingly jolly it prompted merry exchanges with three total strangers – the deep fried pig’s head was sold out and I had to make do with new season garlic soup with snails and almonds. Silky and mellow though this was, it is a good thing Andrew and I are just friends.

Pork fillet with Puy lentils, salsa verde & roast baby fennel

Went all out tonight for me and posh housemate P – and with a combo of my own, natch. Fillet of pork (browned all over in my new frying pan, oven for eight mins, a bit of a rest) with salsa verde, Puy lentils, and baby fennel – adorable, spotted in Waitrose on my lunch break – which I goldenised in a pan before roasting. I think he’d agree it was a rather good effort. Well done me.

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Salsa Verde

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In a blender: a fat garlic clove, crushed; a large man’s handful each of mint, basil and flat leaf parsley leaves; one tbsp Dijon; two tbsp capers; 100ml olive oil; six anchovy fillets. Blitz to a slush.

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Lentils

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Peel a carrot and a stick of celery, and chop those, plus an onion, into little, even chunks. Sweat in 15g of butter for 7ish mins until the onion is translucent. Stir in 150g Puy lentils, and pour on enough water to cover + 2.5cm above the surface. Add salt. Cook till lentils are tender – half an hour or so.

River Cafe

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The giveaway of the fancy tableware aside, it is obvious I had nothing whatsoever to do with the making of the brilliant seafood stew above. My only claim over it is that I ate it. And then wiped the dish spotless with amazing, chewy, sour bread. Having started things off with gloriously light pasta stuffed with spinach, ricotta, porcini, sage and parmesan, washed it all down with a couple of glasses of the third white down on a frighteningly unfamiliar list, and rounded everything off with a shared slice of perfect pear and almond tart. (That’s sharing partner Sam’s sea bream in the background btw.) My paltry salary would no way usually cover a trip to the River Cafe, but they have a winter set lunch deal that’s running only for another week or so: two courses for £18, three for £24. That’s how much one main course alone usually costs! So go book! (Right here!)

Cherry, blueberry & hazelnut flapjacks

Made these as a Friday copy deadline day treat for the office…

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… but then after I took this picture I tried one and it nearly dislocated my jaw, so I left them at home.

Moroccan filo pie with butternut squash & courgette

I feel similarly about the canteen at Murdoch Towers to how the big man does about the BBC: life would be  just so much nicer if I could get rid of that subsidised shit and run things myself. But somehow that’s not enough to make me get up earlier and make my own lunch in the mornings. However, come 1pm tomorrow, instead of wandering round and round the salad bar hoping for something nice to magically appear between the cheese rubber and flaccid lettuce, I shall be enjoying a leftover slice of this bundle of joy:

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Allegra McEvedy’s Moroccan filo pie

(courtesy of the Guardian)

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Serves four

1 packet filo pastry
2 medium sized courgettes
1 white onion
1 small butternut squash
Big handful of coriander
Half a pat of butter
Squeeze of lemon
Handful of ground almonds
Handful of pinenuts
Handful of sultanas / raisins / dried chopped dates
Little bit of honey
Few cumin seeds
Few coriander seeds
Salt and pepper

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Peel and roughly dice the squash – around inch-ish chunks. Preheat the oven to 190. Whilst your oven is preheating put the handful of pinenuts onto a baking tray into the oven to gently toast as it comes up to temperature.

Take a quarter of the butter and put in a wide pan. When the butter has melted put in the squash chunks and gently fry them. Once they have had a good roll in the butter put some salt on, give it a good stir, add about a cupful of water (200ml), keep it on top heat and put a lid on.

Wash and grate the courgettes on the big holes. Spread them out onto a wide plate and sprinkle on 3/4 of a tablespoon of salt.

Dry fry the coriander seeds and cumin seeds for a minute until they start to pop. Add them to the squash, which by now should be soft. Mash, roughly. Season.

Second-day stew

Home after a few large glasses of red at the pub to a leftover portion of yesterday’s chickpea and chorizo stew.  Even better today. Or maybe that’s the wine.

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Chickpea & chorizo stew

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Oh sod the typing out. Find it here.

Mastering the art of French sauces

I know they’re not seasonal, but I didn’t buy them. And that’s mustard sauce, by the way – which I spent 15 minutes whisking by hand. Next step: mayonnaise. Final goal: Hollandaise.

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Julie & Julia, Mum & Me

I am writing this more than a little pissed, because my mother insisted on cracking open the Prosecco at half 4 this afternoon  (it being Mother’s Day, I could hardly protest). It is now half 7, I have a shoulder of lamb in the oven, a ratatouille ready to be reheated, and a fourth glass of bubbly at my side. Okay, only half a fourth glass.

Tonight we are going Julia Child. My mother loved the film – she’s in her 40s, it had Meryl Streep in – so my dad got her Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas. This is adorable, except my mother hates cooking. HATES it.  On the occasions she made dinner when we were young, dad would inevitably compliment her on how delicious it was and how brilliantly she’d pierced the film. Cooking from scratch, you see, makes my mother ANGRY.

So I am stealing the book. But before I do, I will feed my family a proper French meal, via Hollywood.

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Julia Child’s roast shoulder of lamb with garlic and parsley stuffing

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For the stuffing: mix two finely chopped shallots, one crushed garlic glove, 8 tbsp chopped parsley, 2 tbsp chopped rosemary, 1/8tsp ground ginger, 1tsp salt, 1/4tsp black pepper. Spread the stuffing over a boned, butterflied shoulder of lamb, roll up and tie tightly with butcher’s string.

To roast the lamb (1.6kg): Heat oven to 230 . Make sure lamb fat is dry, then coat with olive oil, season, and put in oven. After 15mins – by which time the fat hopefully will have coloured – turn the temperature down to 180. Leave for an hour and a half, basting every 20 mins or so (Julia says not to bother, but I reckon  extra juice is always welcome). Rest for half an hour before serving.

French toast with maple syrup, berries, and a side of bacon

Every summer my parents go on holiday to the most beautiful New England village by the sea, with pale blue clapboard mansions called things like Ocean View Nook, where everyone you pass in the street says hello, and is white. Most mornings, at one of the cosily shabby diners, among the off-duty CEOs and their  families in chinos and Crocs, my little Jewish dad will order a fry up and my little Jewish mum will have french toast with maple syrup and a side of bacon. The idea of meat with sugar sauce, first thing in the morning, could only ever be an American one, but god bless them it works.  I made it this morning for the whole family, as it is Mother’s Day, and I am home.

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Mum’s American breakfast

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Serves four

200g each of blueberries and strawberries + sprinkling caster sugar

Butter and vegetable  groundnut oil, for frying

4 eggs

2tbsp milk

1tbsp caster sugar

4 slices white bread (slightly stale, or dried out in a warm oven for a few mins)

4 rashers streaky unsmoked bacon

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Quarter the strawberries, put in a bowl, sprinkle a tbsp or so of sugar over them, mix gently, set aside. Beat together the eggs, milk and the tbsp of sugar. Lay the bread in a dish and pour the egg mixture on top. Leave for 10-30 mins, until the egg is absorbed, turning the bread over a few times to help soak it all up. Meanwhile, put the blueberries in a saucepan with a splash of water, shake over some sugar, and leave to  heat gently until the first few have popped. Heat a frying pan until it is just about smoking and add the bacon. For the authentic American diner look, cook until properly crisp, flattening with a spatula/spoon as you go. Move to kitchen paper when done to remove excess fat and keep crisp. To cook the French toast, heat butter and oil in a large frying pan until foamy, add the soggy bread and cook over a medium heat for 2-3mins on each side, till golden and puffed up. When everything is cooked and assembled, drizzle generously with maple syrup.