Parsley & Anchovy Dumplings

The light and healthy eating could only last so long. Wind blowing around this corner of South East London turned my nose and ears red; snow wreaked havoc for the overland trains, rendering my journey to and from work to be an hour and a half each way to travel just over 5 miles. Sheet ice covered the pavements and I slid my way around. I kept crossing my fingers for a snow day, but alas, off to work I trudged. Hearty feeding was needed to lift the spirits and to warm you from inside out.

The first time I had dumplings with stew I was mildly repulsed. Having grown up with the notion that all dumplings were of the Chinese kind, I listened on in horror while my dad told me what suet was. I soon warmed to the idea of it as the doughy, puffy dumplings soaked up the meaty gravy in stodgy happiness.

I decided to add a twist to these dumplings. Usually when I make a beef stew I dissolve a couple of anchovies in the oil before adding anything else. This gives the stew an deeper, richer flavour with none of the fishiness. Instead, the anchovies went into the dumplings with parsley for some grassy freshness. It worked beautifully, just as I'd hoped - the anchovies had melted into the dumplings well. The tops were slightly crisp and they yielded softly under the fork. The shin of beef in red wine stew was complete.

Parsley & Anchovy Dumplings

Makes 6 - enough for 2

110gr self raising flour
50gr suet
4 anchovy fillets
A large handful of finely chopped parsley
1/2 tbsp mustard powder
Water
Pepper

Sift the flour into a large bowl with the mustard powder. Chop the anchovy fillets finely and add to the flour with the parsley and suet. Add black pepper to taste (the anchovies are salty enough to eschew salt) and a dribble of water. Work the water into the ingredients well, before adding a little more until the dough comes together and isn't too sticky. Roll into balls and place atop your finished stew, baking at 200 degrees uncovered for 20 minutes.

Thai Seafood Noodle Soup

'Detox' is a filthy word in my house. I envisage shots of wheatgrass, advertised on brightly coloured billboards outside organic 'food' outlets that litter the streets of Soho, promising health and vitality but in reality make you retch. TV ads tell us to eat sugar-laden cereal twice a day of our miserable lives for two whole weeks to drop a jean size and for our tastebuds to take mutiny. People keep smirking at me: "not resolving to give up smoking this year then?" as if it's any of their business.

I'll have to be honest though, by 2nd January I felt like I needed to do something close to a detox. I had food fatigue; usually an idea of dinner is planned as soon as lunch is out the way, but instead I found myself standing in front of the fridge, agape and unable to figure out what to put in my over-indulged face.

But there's always something. There's Tom Yum soup; a spicy, salty, sour broth that wakes you up a bit. I knew this would be the very thing to cure me.

With the addition of some slurpy noodles, some flavour-soaked Chinese lettuce & turnip and a handful of prawns and squid, a light yet hearty dinner was made and my desire to eat returned to its rightful owner.

The key to the soup base is nam prik pao, a mild, smoky chilli sauce. I made a jar of it from this recipe over a year ago - I'm only half way through the jar and it's still going strong, kept in a dark cupboard (take THAT, use-by dates!). It's well worth making your own, though you can also buy it in Asian supermarkets. The beauty of Tom Yum soup is that you can keep galangal, lemongrass, lime leaves and even chillis in the freezer. If you need an emergency fix, coriander and limes are all you need to trek to the shops for.

Thai Seafood Tom Yum Noodle Soup

Serves 1

300mls water or light fish stock
A handful of raw prawns
2 squid tubes with tentacles
1 inch of galangal, sliced
1 stick of lemongrass
2 birds eye chillis (or less, if you're sensitive)
3 lime leaves
1 clove of garlic
1/2 a lime
1 tsp palm sugar (or just regular sugar)
2 tbsp fish sauce
3 leaves of Chinese lettuce (alternatively you could use pak choi, or Chinese / tenderstem broccoli)
A few slices of daikon or turnip
1 spring onion, sliced on the diagonal
A handful of coriander, chopped
A sprig of mint, leaves removed and sliced finely
100gr rice noodles (I used fresh hor fun, but dried also work)
1 1/2 tsp nam prik pao

Set the water or stock on to simmer and add the galangal. Chop the lemongrass roughly and add with the chillis, halved, the garlic lightly bashed and 2 of the lime leaves, torn. Simmer this for 20 minutes. Cut the squid into rings.

Meanwhile, set a pan of water on to boil. Add the turnip or daikon and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove and set to one side. Add the Chinese lettuce and rice noodles, simmer until cooked and drain and add to a deep bowl.

Drain the soup stock into another saucepan and add the turnip / daikon slices with the last remaining torn up lime leaf and the sugar. Simmer for a few minutes for the vegetable to absorb the flavour of the soup, then throw in the prawns and squid. When they're cooked, add to to the noodles and lettuce. Squeeze the lime juice over the dish, add the fish sauce (or to taste) and garnish with coriander, spring onion and mint.

A Baked Egg Brunch

Brunch in my house rarely excludes eggs. Eggs are comforting, whether they're simply scrambled, softly boiled or delicately poached. A favourite brunch of mine is Eggs Florentine, especially with foaming Hollandaise but sometimes it can be too much effort, or too heart-stoppingly buttery.

I hadn't tried baking eggs before I made this. It worked well; simple flavourings, runny yolk and a toasted English muffin to scoop up the goodness. There's no set recipe as such as I'm sure you can really add whatever you like - bacon, slow-roasted tomatoes, cooked cubed potato - but here's what I did.

Baked Eggs with Spinach

Serves 1

2 handfuls of spinach
An inch of salami or chorizo, diced
A shallot
1 large free range egg
A dribble of cream or milk
A grating of cheese
Salt & pepper
Some sort of bread product for scooping
Butter

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. In a frying pan, add the salami or chorizo and fry slowly to render the fat out. Add the shallot, sliced, and fry until soft and translucent. Add the spinach and fry on a high heat until just wilted. Drain off any water, and add to a ramekin. Make a well, crack the egg into it, top with the cream and cheese with a touch of salt and pepper and bake for 10 minutes, checking often - you want the egg whites to have just set.

Toast your bread product, butter it, scoop the egg up and eat - preferably with some yolk dribbling down your chin.

Goat & Spinach Curry

I like to keep myself busy. After having cooked most of the Christmas food for the family, I invited 10 friends round for dinner just before New Year. I decided that after all the roasted meats, potatoes and vegetables associated with Christmas, a selection of curries would be fitting to waken up those tastebuds a bit. And so, there commenced 2 days of chopping onions, mincing garlic and ginger, pestle and mortaring spices. I swear I have biceps like Madonna now after all that.

One of the favourite dishes of the night was this goat and spinach curry. I adapted it from a Rick Stein recipe and although I was suspicious of the amount of spices used, it worked a treat. I made it the day before (but didn't add the spinach puree until just before serving) for all the flavours to amalgamate overnight.

The finished result looks a bit like sludge, but is rich, gamey, and full of flavour. The meat was tender and fell off the bone. I added some cubed lamb neck fillet to bulk it out, but this isn't necessary if you have particularly meaty goat pieces.

Goat & Spinach Curry

Serves 6 (or 11 as part of a 5 dish spread)

1 kg of bone-in goat shoulder chopped in chunks
500gr lamb neck fillet (optional)
1/2 a head of garlic
50gr ginger
6 medium onions
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp tumeric
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp red chilli powder (optional)
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 can of chopped tomatoes
4 green chillis
2 large bunches of spinach
200ml water
2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander
3 tbsp oil

Slice the onions and cook in a pan with the oil slowly, until light brown for about 20 minutes. Put the tomatoes, chilli powder if using, onions, garlic and ginger in a blender and blend until smooth. Add the fried onions and blend again. Return the puree into a large saucepan and add the goat and the salt. Simmer for 40 minutes, then add all the spices except the garam masala. Split the green chillis in half, deseed them and throw them in. Simmer slowly for at least 2 hours. If you're using the lamb neck fillet, add it in at this point and simmer for another hour. If the sauce is looking too thick, add a little water. Skim any fat floating on the surface off.

Meanwhile, steam the spinach until just cooked. Blend into a puree with a little water. When the goat is cooked, stir the spinach into the curry with the garam masala, simmer for a minute and serve, sprinkling the fresh coriander on top.

I served this with this red onion and pomegranate salad, rice and cucumber raita.

The Rest

I often prefer all the food around the main event of Christmas; cold cuts, our family tradition of Gravadlax, pork pie, cheeses... this year I still loved it, though the main event was as good.

Christmas Eve dinner of foie gras with duck breast, plum and star anise sauce. Yes, that was one portion...

Christmas morning - scrambled eggs with truffles on toast

Christmas day lunch - home-cured gravadlax with sweet mustard sauce

My home-made pork pie

Spaghetti with mushrooms and truffles

Boxing Day ham

Bubble & squeak

I hope you had an enjoyable holiday eating to your heart's content. A happy new year to you all!

Full Flickr set of Christmas indulgence is here.

No Turkeys Here

We don't have turkey for Christmas; haven't done for years now. It's not a bird we enjoy eating, so we did away with it. In the past we had duck, goose and venison so this year we decided to do a classic; Beef Wellington.

I used the recipe on this blog, a Gordon Ramsey one which I tested for Olive. The mushroom mixture was studded with raw duck foie gras, for some festive cheer. Considering I cooked it alone with only gin for company, it worked out really well - perfectly rare and ridiculously rich. No dry turkey meat to struggle through in sight.

Making the rough puff pastry. It's a faff, but worth making your own

Mushroom mixture with duck foie gras

Herb crepes

Beef fillet, seared and brushed with mustard

Assembly - crepes, then Parma ham

Mushroom mixture added

Some skillful rolling

Out of the oven

Served with a rather scarily vibrant red wine sauce

A Pork Pie (or Three)

This year for Christmas, instead of presents, my family set the task of buying a food present worth the value of £10 that we could all enjoy (which rules out cheese and booze - my sister and mum are strange beings). I racked my brains for a while, and then came up with the perfect solution. Pork. Pies. There is no such thing as Christmas without them.

I'd first seen Josh's entry for these over a year ago and had book marked them to try, but of course never got round to it. With a combination of his and Just Cook It's recipe, I devised my own. A day was booked off work - this is a lengthy process and the weekend was too far away - and I set to work.

First thing's first, the jelly that surrounds the meat and the pastry needed to be made. Two pigs trotters, cleaved in half, went into a litre of chicken stock with bay leaves, black peppercorns, carrots, onion and celery. You want to simmer this for three hours, then strain it, and reduce it to 300mls.

The Pastry:

100gr lard
100gr butter
550gr plain flour
150mls water
1.5 tsp salt
2 eggs, plus one for glazing

Melt the lard and the butter in a saucepan but don't boil it. Add the salt to the flour, then break the eggs in and mix the water and fat. Mix until you have a smooth ball, wrap in cling film and chill for an hour.

The Meat:

375gr pork shoulder
375gr belly pork
2 rashers of smoked back bacon
1 tsp sage
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Salt

Chop the meat into small chunks. I couldn't be bothered to chop it any more finely, so I had quite coarse meat which I liked. In a mixing bowl, add the nutmeg, chopped sage, thyme, peppers and some salt. Mix together well, and take a teaspoonful and fry it, to check the seasoning. Food can taste a bit more bland when cold so be generous with the salt.

To make the pastry, pat into a rectagular shape and then cut in half. Then cut a third off each half to reserve for the lids. Using a well floured jar, shape the pies around the outside of the jar (I used a Branston Pickle jar). Ease the jar out and then fill with the meat mixture. Roll the lid out to fit the top of the pie and cut a hole out of the centre. Crimp the lid onto the pie.

I wanted to make a mini pie as well which is why I have three, but this amount should make two large pies. Glaze the pies with the remaining egg, and place in a preheated oven on 180 degrees for 30 minutes, then turn it down to 160 for 20 minutes.

Take the pies out and leave to cool a little. Stick a small funnel in the hole of the top and pour (VERY carefully) the trotter stock into the pie. Be slow about it as it takes some time to get in there. Leave to cool, and refridgerate overnight before eating with copious pickles and mustard.

There's a few things I learnt from this pie adventure. Firstly - make absolutely sure you've crimped your lids on properly. After a warning from someone on Twitter, I thought I had made sure the lids were well sealed. Not so. As such, I had to make up a water / flour solution to plug the seams with to stop the jelly stock from dribbling out, and then pick the seam off. It worked, but it was a faff. Also, don't try and roll the lid too thinly, or it will crack right down the middle (but still taste good). Otherwise, these were perfect.