Fish pie surprise

My tummy is rumbling already - the anticipation of my piping hot fish pie. It is delicious and I'm not just saying that. I'm so tired of watching chefs on TV tuck into their own food, gaze deep into the camera lens and orgasmically utter their own absolute approval of the (always) exceptional quality and perfection of their particular creation. Cooking isn't like that unless you're Heston Blumenthal or some other Michelin starred chef with a) the staff, b) the fear of losing your star studded status or c) the science/technology/time to assure that every plate reaches the necessary level of perfection. The domestic kitchen suffers the vagaries not only of the person cooking but is also subject to unforeseen issues such as misreading the recipe because you can't be bothered to find your glasses.

So this fish pie is a winner and the empty plates and satisfied slurps of your appreciative audience will be the best recognition you can get - and without a camera crew in sight!

Fish Pie

A piece of undyed smoked haddock (approx 400g)

Cooked prawns (approx 200g)

2 small leeks - thoroughly washed and finely sliced

10 chestnut mushrooms - finely sliced

Dried porcini mushrooms - soaked in boiled water for 10 minutes then roughly chopped

Potatoes for mash - 2 big ones/4 small ones

Peel, boil and mash the potatoes

Fry the leeks and mushrooms in some olive oil put into the pie dish with the soaked porcini mushrooms                                                                                                 

Poach the haddock in plain water - be careful not to overcook as the fish will go rubbery

Flake cooked fish into the pie dish - add the cooked prawns

Bechamel Sauce

250ml milk

2 bay leaves

1 small onion sliced

parsley stalks

4 peppercorns

Put all the above ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes

Strain the milk then take

25g butter

15g flour

Half a glass of dry white wine

Melt butter in the pan - add flour and cook gently for a moment then gradually stir in the milk and keep stirring until the sauce thickens. Lastly add the wine and stir in. Taste for seasoning but remember the haddock is smoked so is quite salty.

Carefully  stir the bechemal sauce through the fish and veg - do not mush up!

Cover with mash, smooth flat, then score with a fork for a nice crispy finish.

Bake in a hot oven - 200 Celsius, on a baking tray for about 20 mins until hot and bubbling, brown off under grill.

A Clarion Call…

Feeding the Eye is a clarion call to designers - recognise the impact of your work and embrace your potential. Do not simply pay lip service to the ethical, the environmental, the sustainable. Believe in the capacity of effective design to inform choice and effect change. Believe that design has a power beyond the neomania of capitalism and consumption. This is not a myopic utopian vision but a call to be proactive as opposed to reactive.

Feeding the Eye questions orthodoxy. It takes a position and maintains it. Food, politics and economics form an unholy ménage a trois – a heady and seductive cocktail of appetite, power and greed. The government peddles information with a double handedness – the nannying voice of the healthy eating mantra but all the while allowing the most economically profitable – the food manufacturing industries, with their £80 billion a year, to dictate and control our insatiable appetites. Berating the economically challenged to adopt healthy eating practices but all the while pushing the highly addictive narcotics of sugar, salt, and fat. 

It is the free market economy model that has dictated food policy, as opposed to a more integrated social, environmental, and health orientated one. With a growing global population and an inequity of resources, the imperatives of future food security are at the fore of economic, political, environmental and ethical debates. Feeding the Eye is a clarion call to a new generation of designers to challenge this orthodoxy and locate design within this polemic as a force for good, healthy, sustainable eating practices.

Twelve to one gone - mince pies

I always like the idea of mince pies but in recent years have steered away from shop bought samples. Too much pastry, too sweet, generally too much of what you don't want and not enough of what you do - a rich fruity spicy filling with melt in your mouth pastry. A reason for never making my own was a slight aversion to suet and lard - saturated animal fats in my pastries is not an altogether attractive prospect and vegetable suet is not an everyday ingredient. Thankfully my local health food shop, Coopers on Lower Marsh, had the foresight to stock up on it ready for the onslaught of seasonal culinary delights. So no more excuse.

At times like this Delia usually seems the best place to start - like asking mum. My battered copy of Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course is the 1995 version - and 36th print edition since it was first published in 1978, and who knows how many more since? But one thing is certain that there are a lot of people out there looking to Delia for advice. Her recipes are no nonsense and usually deliver - especially on the baking front. Her interview in the Guardian this weekend struck a chord. When asked: If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose? Restaurants that are run by real cooks serving real food, and not what Elizabeth David called "theatre on a plate". 

Well said. I like to think of the theatre as taking place in my mouth - food that has been so finically fingered to produce a fine dining version of a meal is a spectacle to behold not an everyday occurrence. Fashion dictates that this is the model we should all be aspiring towards unless of course you are Giorgio Locatelli trying to find a new angle for your cooking - so hey la cucina povera and Sicilian Cooking, but that's another thought.

Getting back to mince pies. Delia's recipe makes 2.75kg of mincemeat - I thought this was a lot until I started eating them and now can see another batch being made before the festive season even begins! I think the real secret is rolling your pastry really, really thin and putting as much mincemeat as you can without them overspilling! So with Delia's recipe as the start point this is my version and its called Twelve to one Mince Pies because literally as soon as you make them they all get gobbled up - this little fellow only survived as he was requisitioned for modelling duties!

Mincemeat

I like my mincemeat - well minced really, so that means a little more work and chopping up all the dried fruit. I also like almonds so I've added extra but as with all recipes adapt to your own taste.

225g vegetable suet

350g raisins - rinsed and chopped

225g sultanas - rinsed and chopped

225g currants - rinsed and chopped

225g mixed candid peel chopped

350g muscavado sugar

2 unwaxed oranges zest and juice

2 unwaxed lemons zest and juice

125g toasted almond flakes

4 teaspoons ground mixed spice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 whole nutmeg grated

450g Bramley apples - peeled, cored and finely chopped

6 tablespoons brandy - Calvados if you have it

So all you have to do is mix up very well all the ingredients - excluding the brandy, in a large bowl. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave for 12 hours for all the flavours to meld in together. Then transfer to a large baking tin, cover loosely with foil and place in the oven at 120 Celsius for 3 hours. As Delia says 'this process slowly melts the suet which coats the other ingredients, and prevents fermentation taking place if too much juice seeps from the apples during storage.' Allow to cool, then stir in the brandy and spoon into sterilised jars and seal.

Mince pies

This makes enough pastry for 36 mince pies but you can divide it in 3 and keep in the fridge then just make up as and when you like/need/fancy!

Shortcrust pastry
350g plain flour

150g unsalted fridge cold butter, diced into small cubes

pinch of salt

cold water to mix

Homemade mincemeat

Milk/water

Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Easy in a food processor but if doing by hand just make sure that you don't over work the pastry - minimal rubbing in - so it looks like large breadcrumbs. Then add cold water a little at a time - just enough to bring the pastry together - I pour the mixture onto a length of cling film and draw it altogether into a tight ball, that way avoiding manhandling the pastry too much and then pop it in the fridge for minimum half an hour.

For 12 mince pies roll out a third of the pastry as thin as possible and cut 24 rounds - pastry cutters are good or a glass the right size is fine also. Lightly grease a baking tray - line with pastry, fill with as much mincemeat as you dare. Dampen the circumference of the remaining rounds and press firmly to seal the edges. Brush with milk and make 3 snips with a pair of scissors in each pie.

Cook near top of oven for 18 minutes or until they are golden brown. Cool on a wire tray and then dust with icing sugar.

Twelve to one - all gone!

Guardian Q&A with Delia Smith
Coopers

Autumnal abundance

Membrillo and the overlooked Quince

Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, Juán Sanchez Cotán circa 1600, Oil on canvas 69.2 x 85.1 cm. San Diego Museum of Art.

''Koehler's Medicinal-Plants'' 1887

The quince is a fabled and ancient fruit playing a host of different roles; from original sin in the Garden of Eden - theological interpretations of ancient texts suggest it could have been the quince that tempted Eve as opposed to its much maligned cousin, to its multifarious medicinal properties as a cure for numerous conditions - from pneumonia and lung disease, to colds and coughs.   


Before giving up his studio to become a Carthusian monk, the Spanish Baroque artist, Juán Sanchez Cotán,  painted, amongst other things, still life. His compositions were ascetic and minimal and so rendered his chosen objects with spectacular detail. The relation proposed by Cotán between the viewer and the foodstuffs, so meticulously displayed might be described as anorexic, taking the word in its literal and Greek sense as meaning 'without desire'. Fruit and vegetables are suspended in space, framed by the black void, devoid of human contact and divorced from any notion of appetite or consumption - their value goes beyond that of mere nourishment.


By imbuing the ordinary and the overlooked with such exacting detail, by imbibing foodstuffs with the care and expertise of his craftsmanship, (that at that time was usually only afforded to the megalographic subjects of the court and the divine) Cotán's version of the hyper-real can be seen to 'persuade vision to shed its worldly education'- that is to question what society deems spectacular and consequently what the eye has been trained to ignore and pay attention to the otherwise overlooked.


The quince has now become a relative stranger to the British eye and palate but the subtlety of its delicate flavour once cooked to a rosy amber hue, to produce quince cheese or membrillo, is a perfect foil for strong cheese and cooked meats.  


Membrillo


1.5kg Quinces 
750g Granulated sugar
 
Core and quarter the quinces – there’s no need to peel them. 
Put them in a large saucepan with just enough water to cover. 
Simmer gently until the flesh is really soft and collapsing. 
Pour the fruit into a blender and puree.
Push the mixture through a sieve with the back of a wooden spoon.
Measure the purée – there should be just under 1 litre. 
Put the purée back in the pan with 450g sugar for every 600ml of purée. 
Heat gently, stirring from time to time to help the sugar dissolve, then bring to the boil and cook gently for 30–40 minutes or until the mixture is so thick that if you scrape a wooden spoon through it, the purée parts and leaves a clean line at the bottom of the pan.
Spread the mixture into lightly oiled dishes or moulds, or pot in clean, sterilised jars. 
The membrillo will set firm as it cools and will keep for up to 6 months in the fridge.
 
References:
Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting, (London, Reaktion, 1990)

Chicken soup casserole - souperole or cassoup?

Perfection is a myth perpetuated to paralyse. Impossible expectations of symmetry. A signified sense of beauty. All this results in, is a self-loathing and an over critical expectation of a perceived beauty and we're not just talking vegetables here!

I'm still filled with the same sense of incredulity and indignation when I think of my first visit to New York and the high temple of food culture that is, Dean and Deluca. Carefully, precariously, sculpturally stacked fruit. Shiny, glossy, rosy, rosy red apples. Remember Snow White, and the poisoned one? Impossibly red and like the fairytale, so inviting. But the shock was maybe just as great - not coma inducing but a total non taste sensation. Tough, indigestible skin. Furry, fluffy flesh. No sign of crunch or juice dripping from your chin with this fellow.

These are the apples of interior designers - plenty of style but little soul. We are free to create our own sense of enchantment with the printed image - intoxicated by an imagined ideal. Truly feeding the eye is important but not at the expense of taste or flavour. Images are there to seduce us but buying fruit and veg is a multi sensorial practice not limited to the visual alone. 

Organic fruit and veg in the supermarket has suffered the same fate as all the others, homogeneity being the prerequisite of any self-respecting (i.e. clueless) buyer. There's a classic story my father tells of a chance encounter with such a person from the UK's biggest supermarket and a crate of oranges.

Being Sicilian and coming from a town know as paese delle aranci, land of oranges, and having connections in the airline industry he organised for a crate of his own oranges, fresh from the grove, to be air freighted over. The meeting with the supermarket was set up. The crate was carefully prized open and the delicious fruit revealed in all its individual glory. The buyer recoiled - "Why are these not individually wrapped? Why have they not been graded by size?" My father snatched away the crate and gave the man a withering stare "Are you not even going to taste them? Go to hell, I would rather let these oranges rot in the ground than do business with you." And with that he left.

We all fantasise about the fruit and veg we eat whilst away on holiday and bemoan the flavourless offerings that the supermarket has to offer. But if you have time on your hands you can source delicious highly individual specimens, like the ones photographed above. They were the base for a comforting and deeply satisfying chicken soup/casserole - is that a souperole or a cassoup?

Chicken soup is a panacea and maybe the most popular home remedy ever. Folklore and The Reader's Digest suggest that chicken soup can help prevent white blood cells from triggering inflammation and congestion in the upper airways. Rich steamy broth also helps loosen up congestion and garlic and onion have mild antiviral properties.

The whole veg make it a hearty meal as do some Cornish new potatoes on the side. Adding brandy towards the end of cooking gives the soup a clean, rich flavour.

Chicken soupy casserole

(Enough for 3)

2 whole organic chicken legs (drumstick and thigh)

2 shallots chopped roughly

1 large clove of garlic

300 grams button mushrooms cut in half

6 sage leaves

2 bay leaves
glass of white wine

2 leeks roughly chopped and washed

lots of carrots scrubbed

1 litre chicken stock
splosh of brandy

Season some plain flour and lightly coat the chicken with it.

Brown the chicken in 2tbl spoons of olive oil in casserole dish.

Remove chicken, add shallots and mushrooms and gently brown.

Deglaze the pan with the wine.

Add the bay and sage.

Add the carrots and leeks, best left in big chunks so they don't cook too quickly and still have some bite at the end.

Pour over enough stock to cover the chicken and vegetables.

Simmer with lid on for approx 40 mins or until chicken is cooked through.

Remove the chicken and most of the veg with a slotted spoon to a dish.

Turn up heat and reduce stock down by about a third.
Check the seasoning, add the brandy and cook for a few minutes.
Meanwhile discard the skin from the chicken and remove the meat from the bones and flake it bite size pieces.
Put all meat and veg back in the soup and heat through.

Autumn lunch

Picnicking in the park in October is a rare and treasured experience. The slightly obtuse contradiction of crunchy leaves underfoot and warm, warm sun. Sensorial delights are further offset by melt in the mouth shortcrust pastry filled with mushrooms, sage and lardons and yet more earthy tones from a beetroot and radish salad.