Jamie Oliver's Dan Dan Noodles

I remember seeing Jamie Oliver’s third book at a friend’s house, shortly after it came out. It must have been around 2002, and it was still titled something about The Naked Chef. I thought ‘God, hasn’t he had his 15 minutes yet? How many books is he going to squeeze out?’.

Well! Here we are 10 years on with ‘Jamie’s America’. After Fifteen, and School Dinners, and the Ministry and that disastrous-sounding trip to the States to sort out their school food. He’s been backlashed, and resurgent, so many times he must wake up wondering whether he’s a national treasure, or an exposure seeking busybody with a hero complex today.

This is his tenth book in about a decade (and he’s probably put out another one since then) and they all sell a shitload, and they make him a load of money, and why not put one out every year in that case? And I’d be extremely cynical about it if this book wasn’t bloody brilliant. Seriously, it’s not going back. I’ve made the Dan Dan Noodles twice, and the Stuffed Courgette Flowers, and the Date Shake, and the Broccoli Salad, and the Best Baked Beans, and I will be making the Veal Parmigiana (Veal Parm!) and the Chicken Mole, and the Chili, and quite a few more.  

I might even attempt the somewhat tricky looking Sher Ping Pancakes – mainly because they, like the noodles, contain the incredibly alluring Szechuan pepper. This stuff is a joy for even the most jaded chili-loving palate. I’ve heard it described as ‘hot and numbing’, and the second adjective is crucial. Even if you use too much it won’t send you rushing for the water tap. You’ll just sit there, staring into space, you lips and tongue seeming to literally jangle, for as long as you’ve got. A a bonus, it has a distinct and delicious flavour: a bit lemony, a bit floral, a bit…icey? No, that’s probably just the numbingness. It’s like eating dry ice.

I don’t think I did the noodles justice either time I made them, because my chili oil was seriously underpowered – even with the Szechuan pepper, and raw garlic, a bit more heat would have made it (for me – the husband would probably demur). I will rectify this store cupboard oversight as  this is a great midweek meal, and a good way to eat a lot of green veg. I made it with pork and beef, and both were good.

Serves 2

A chicken stock cube
250-350g minced beef or pork
1 tbsp runny honey
100-150g wheat noodles
2 mega handfuls of dark green veg – kale, broccoli, Chinese stuff, spinach
2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp Szechuan pepper
2-3 tbsp chili oil
1 spring onion, finely sliced
Lime juice

Dry fry the meat in a large frying pan until they are crispy and golden brown – this takes a good ten minutes, and you need to keep moving it around, though not constantly. When it done, pour away any excess fat, and add the honey. Coat the meat, and cook for about 30 seconds. Then put it aside.

Boil a pan of water, and dissolve the stock cube in it. When it’s boiling, add the noodles, and cook for as long as they need. When they’ve only got a minute left, throw in the veg too. Then drain and return to the hot pan – don’t shake them dry, put them back in with lots of water still clinging.

Immediately throw in the sliced garlic, chili oil, soy sauce, and Szechuan pepper. Mix mix mix and then divide between bowls. Scatter the sticky crispy mince on top, and add the sliced sping onion, and a bit of lime juice. 

Tessa Kiros's Mozzarella in Carozza

My Dad has about five books by Tessa Kiros. Even by the standards of today’s food publishing, they’re beautiful: this one has a black velvet ribbon pagemarker. They are books for home cooks, and she relies heavily on her heritage – Greek and Finnish – and her home – Tuscany – for inspiration. She writes about the feelings of food, and its connection to place, as much as the food itself. Remind you of anyone? Yup, I can’t help feeling that Tessa would be Nigella, if Nige wasn’t (even) better looking, and better connected. 

Which isn’t to say this book is as good as How to Eat.  Like her other books, it’s OK, and definitely in the tradition of genuinely readable cookbooks. But the ‘must make’ percentage is low, and they’re mainly easy family meals. They’re totally in my wheelhouse, just not that tempting. Venezia: Food & Dreams contains lots of charming wiffle-waffle about the city (see also: the ‘Venetian Feast’ section of Nigella’s Feast for more) and lots of recipes which, truly, crop up in every book about Venice. Bigoli with anchovy sauce, risi e bisi, beef carpaccio, Bellinis. The monkfish lasagne sounded a right faff, as did the many pasta with seafood dishes. I’d make pasta e vongole every week, if there was an accessible, sustainable, reliable source of clams near me. But there isn’t, so I really wish it didn’t feature in EVERY vaguely Italianate recipe book.

Anyway, Tessa leaves me feeling melancholic. Perhaps she doesn’t want to be a big name slebby TV cook? But her glossy books, and lifestyle-pimping, make me think she does. And so I feel sad for her. Still, if Nigella ever goes full recluse, we’ve got her replacement good to go.

So, I made Mozzarella in Carozza (another extremely familiar recipe, which I once made, disastrously, as part of an ‘Italian Feast’ in Home Economics, to be served to teachers. I mainly remember that a small part of the ice cream maker fell off and got frozen into the ice cream, and we couldn’t find it). Surprisingly, Tessa doesn’t point out that this translates as ‘mozzarella in a carriage’. The ‘carriage’ is a deep fried white bread sandwich, made even more Elvisian by béchamel sauce, and an egg dip. My husband and I had one each and were utterly stuffed by them – both exhausted and exhilarated by the hundreds (thousands?) of extra calories ricocheting around our bedtime bodies. I recommend these only if you’ve just rotivated a garden by hand, built a wall, or birthed a baby. Actually, it would be a nice thing to make an invalid you were trying to build up. But this isn’t the 1800s, and I don’t know any invalids. Eat it with a salad, but don’t go thinking it will help.

Makes 2

For the béchamel:

2 tbsp butter
4 tbsp plain flour
125ml milk
nutmeg

1 large egg, beaten in a shallow bowl.
large handful of dried breadcrumbs (I make these by ‘blending’ a few slices of bread, then spreading them on a tray and sticking them in the oven at around 150 degrees for half an hour)

4 slices of whitebread
1 ball of mozzarella (cheap is better), sliced finely
a few shreds of ham (optional)

lots of mild olive oil, or veg oil

Make the béchamel – you know how, or you can look it up. I’m not your mum. Helpfully, you can do this well in advance, and use it cold.

Pour the oil in a large frying pan – I am too wussy to really deep fry on the hob, but the more you dare use the better, I’m sure.

Spread béchamel on all four slices of bread, right to the crustless corners.

Make two mozzarella and ham sandwiches, and pinch the edges closed.

Dunk them in the beaten egg, and then in the breadcrumbs – coating as thoroughly as you can.

Fry them in the oil, turning when golden brown. If you're lucky the face of a beautiful woman will appear in the crispy carapace (see pic below, right). Eat immediately, and then do a thousand star jumps, cackling.

Sri Owen’s Balinese Pork Satay

And now for something completely different. One of the great things about being all grown up and stuff, is that, without even really trying, you amass a proper selection of spices, bottles, and things, like tamarind paste. Suddenly, those Asian recipes, with their intimidatingly long list of ingredients require a trip to the cupboard, and not a bus ride to a nicer part of town that you can afford to live in, and a visit to Waitrose. The upside is that now I regularly cook delicious Indian food, and sometimes Chinese too. The downside is that I’ve become incredibly fussy about takeaways. On balance, it’s definitely more good than bad.

The Indonesian recipes in this book are long, and with much ingredient crossover with Indian and Thai food. I’m pleased to say the only things I had to buy for this pork satay was the meat (bog standard mystery mince, though, not tenderloin as Sri Owen specified) and the onion. Everything else was to hand. And it was flipping gorgeous.

I hadn’t really heard of Sri Owen, but the book convincingly sells her as a semi-doyenne of food writing in the UK. She writes interestingly about her experiences as a child (and eater) in pre-war Indonesia, as an ambitious young woman, and then young wife of an English academic, and then as an evangelist for Indonesian food in the UK and Italy from the 60s until today. And she presents an extensive selection of recipes for all occasions, including the famous rendangs and satays.

Much of it looked tricky – I don’t know where to get banana leaves, I don’t buy giant raw prawns on the grounds of sustainability, and the reliance on candlenuts (to be substituted with macademia nuts here) and peanuts ruled out many recipes in this nut-allergic house. But this pork satay jumped out at me on the grounds of mince! (frugal), tamarind! (got a massive pot), ginger! (so yum), and all kinds of ingredients  that I knew were going to be good together. Plus, pork doesn’t feature much in many Asian cuisines, so the change was tempting. Needless to say, pork doesn’t appear in much Indonesian food: this recipe is specifically Balinese. I am pitifully poorly travelled, so my food has to do it for me - how could I resist bringing the flavours of that luscious sounding island into a wet Wednesday evening in Streatham?

I deviated slightly from the recipe in terms of quantity and method (the only ingredient I didn’t have was galangal) – I didn’t use skewers because the mixture looked dangerously wet. I suppose next time (and there will be a next time) I should reduce the amount of spice paste, or up the meat. But this turned out seriously juicy, and I’m not sure I’d want to jeopardise that.

Serves two, generously, with rice. The amount of paste would definitely stretch to 500g, maybe even 750g of meat.

350 g minced pork
A small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ tsp chili powder (I don’t think more would hurt)
Knobble of ginger (you know how much you like)
1 lemongrass stalk
1 tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
2 green cardamom pods
A shard of cassia bark or half a cinnamon stick
pinch of grated nutmeg
1 tsp of tamarind paste with 2tsp of water
1 tsp salt
½ tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp of low flavour oil (I used rapeseed)

Using a food processor, or stick blender, whizz all the ingredients other than the pork, into a paste.

Add the meat and stir to combine. Let the meat marinate in the fridge for as long as you’ve got.

About an hour before you want to cook, take the meat out of the fridge. If you’re going to use sticks you can either form meatballs and thread them on or mould the meat onto the sticks like proper satay (I bet this is trickier than it looks). Because my mixture looks a little wet and loose (I’m sorry) I decided not to risk them falling off the sticks – so they were just unthreaded meatballs.

Grill the meatballs for around 10 minutes, turning them, and brushing them with oil as necessary. Serve with rice, and an Asiany salad – I made a dressing of sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice, and sugar. It wasn’t quite right, but it was in the ballpark.

Jose Pizarro - Seasonal Spanish Food

It’s not a good time for Spain at the moment. A quarter of the population are unemployed, continued membership of the Euro looks distinctly aspirational, and growth is a distant memory. Anyone who has been to Spain beyond the Islands and Costas will know what a fantastic and alluring country it is, and how dramatic the change for tourists has been, from a beach-only backwater to a country of distinct regions, cities, and cultures. My favourite memory comes from a village called Cazalla de la Sierra, in the scarily dry hills of Andalucia – while walking, we watched dozens of small black pigs fighting over the acorns we threw to them through a fence. It is the acorns that apparently give Jamon Iberico de Bellota, Spain’s finest ham, its beyond-Parma taste.

Despite recent troubles, Spanish food remains high on the foodie-consciousness. Restaurants like Brindisa and Moro established its cuisine in this country as distinct from the other great Mediterranean traditions – saffron, paprika, thyme, oranges, raisins…and lots and lots of lovely pork. Talking of Brindisa, this book is by its founding chef, Jose Pizarro, from the dry central Extramadura region in the heart of Spain. Tierra de Brindisa is one of my very favourite restaurants: if I have to choose somewhere to eat in Soho, I find myself going back there time after time (the fact you can book doesn’t hurt). So I couldn’t resist the recipe for one of my favourite dishes – Spinach with Raisins and Pine Nuts. This is how I did it for two:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Half a small onion
A small handful of pine nuts
Ditto of raisins
Two massive giant hands of baby spinach

Fry the finely diced onion in olive oil until golden but not too crispy.
Add in the nuts and raisins and fry til the nuts are also golden and the raisins swell up.
Right at the end throw in the spinach and toss thoroughly to coat, but barely barely wilt (I overdid it as you can see – at Brindisa the spinach is warm but not cooked). Season and eat as a tapa, or a side. It’s properly healthy but tastes indulgent and treaty.

We ate it, somewhat bizarrely, with Jose’s Pea and Mint soup. Both recipes came from the ‘Spring’ section of the book, and we ate them during a particularly dark and wet week in April. The soup had the twin advantages of tasting supremely springy, and including the comforting stodge of fried bread and Serrano Ham. A brilliant cupboard and freezer standby – even if you don’t have mint on your window sill.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
400g frozen peas
Chicken stock
Big sprig of mint
2 slices of nice white bread (I used Waitrose’s Rye and Wheat Quarter)
4 slices of Serrano ham – or Iberico de Bellota if you’re feeling ritzy

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil, until they are soft and translucent.
Add the peas, and stir to take the frost off, and soak up some flavour. Throw in some white wine or Noilly Prat if you have it.
Add enough stock to cover and let simmer for a few minutes. Pop the mint sprig in.
Meanwhile, heat some more oil in a frying pan, and when its hot, add the bread. Fry on both sides until golden. Then add the ham and let it frizzle up.
Blend the soup, and serve with the ham-topped bread.

I love this book – it’s a description of, and homage to, the traditional rural life of Jose’s parents, as well as a collection of very achievable dishes. It’s divided into seasons – great, except that the Summer section relies on amazing Mediterranean produce, which would be hard to find British grown in our summer. But still, I may be re-smuggling this one soon.

Sally Clarke's Book - Rocket & Herb Focaccia

This is a lovely book, although not one that I can see myself using often (anyway, it has to be smuggled back to the mother lode next week). Sally Clarke is the chef-proprietor of the Clarke’s restaurant/bakery/shop in Kensington, and this book presents the restaurant’s lunch, supper, and dinner (yeah, I don’t know what the difference is either) menus way back in 1999. I checked the website, and menus today are the same – lots of delicate vegetables, colourful salads, just a hint of lentilly worthiness - but slightly updated: more red meat, basically (no one’s scared of BSE anymore).

Anyway, this book: at first, it’s off-puttingly cheffy. If people still exist who serve four course dinner parties, and plan the hardest menu they could conceivably pull off, this might appeal. But, otherwise, people are not going to attempt, at home, Roasted Gem Squash with Ceps and White Truffle. Or Grilled Turbot with Potato-Chive Pancake. And not just because buying white truffle and turbot requires a call to Payday Loans (note: never call Payday Loans). It seems that the ultimate result of the decline of this kind of book is Nigella publishing a recipe for Spaghetti with Marmite. Which…sadface. But books like How To Eat (published in 1998), and the Slaters and Olivers which followed, were a brilliant corrective to collections of recipes designed to be made only in gorgeous, expensive restaurants in West London.

But Sally Clarke's Book won me over – it describes how Sally has been pursuing local, seasonal, special ingredients around the UK since 1984, back when that was still unusual. She offered a no-choice menu, back when you’d normally be handed a great long list of set in stone ‘classics’. Simply cooked (by Michelin standards, anyway) food, British cheeses, fruit puddings. All the things we love now she was doing first. So hooray – Sally Clarke’s Book is of no practical use to me at all, but to read it is like hearing someone accurately describe the present from the past. Unusual and charming.

I made a Rocket and Herb Focaccia, because Clarke’s are famous for their baking, and supply half the nicest cafes in London with pastries and sweets. Me and yeasted products do not go way back – I’ve tried breads and buns a few times but they are always a bit hard and unyielding. So I was determined to knead knead knead this one, and I swear I did! The three year old helped and we probably put in 15 minutes between the two of us. But it  was more like a flatbread than a focaccia, albeit one tasty enough to be polished off for lunch between three of us. I saw focaccia being made on the Great British Bake Off last year and the crucial thing was the addition of ludicrous amounts of water to make an almost unworkable dough. Paul Hollywood was very clear that this what was made it focaccia-like. Sally only mentions adding enough water to bring the dough together and, well, here we are.

Rocket and Herb Focaccia

200g strong plain flour
pinch of salt
10g fresh yeast/5g dried yeast (I used one of those 7g sachets)
50 ml olive oil
warm water
1 tsp chopped thyme (or rosemary, dill, sage etc)
1 small bunch of rocket
Maldon salt

Mix the flour and salt together. Blend yeast with a bit of warm water until smooth and add to flour. Add the olive oil, and enough warm water (hmm - add lots) to make a soft dough. Add the thyme.

Knead for hours and hours. Until smooth. 

Put the dough back in the bowl with some oil and cover with clingfilm. Leave for at least 45 minutes (but it will sit for a long time if convenient) until doubled in size.

Remove from bowl and knead again until it’s ‘silky-smooth’ 'again'.  Shape into a bowl and then roll out to 1 cm thickness. Drizzle with olive oil and cover with film. Lave again to rise for 15-20 minutes.

Toss the rocket in oil and press it onto dough with a bit of salt. (The frizzled rocket was DELICIOUS by the way). Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen. Remove from oven and drizzle with oil (or don’t if you’ve made a hard flatbread, it will just run off). Scoff 'cos you’re greedy. 

Aldo Zilli's Duck Ragu

So first up is Aldo Zilli’s ‘The Zilli Cookbook’ (2003). The cover features Aldo tucking into a lovely bowl of  that queen of dishes, Pasta Alla Vongole- which is a bit odd given that there is no recipe for this in the book. That is quite odd isn’t it? Did he think ‘well, it’s such a classic, I won't waste a page giving a recipe that’s in countless other books’. Probably not, because he did put in recipes for Spaghetti with Chili, Garlic and Oil (on which he inexplicably puts BASIL, what the what??) and Lasagne. I find this outrageous, though not surprising. Gordon Ramsey and Angela Hartnett have both published books and/or articles where they give recipes for Pasta with Tomato Sauce. Spread across two pages, with a photo. Definitely not value for money.

My grandmother is from Naples, and there are a lot of recipes we eat as a family that I’ve never seen in a cookbook – and I don’t think she made them up. So there isn’t an excuse for chefs/writers to fall back on the same old recipes. Lasagne might be a classic, but unless your book is badged for ‘people who only want to use one recipe book ever’ or ‘people who don’t have Google’, it’s a cop out.

I really wasn’t looking to slate Zilli – despite the fact that I don’t understand why anyone would feel the need to own this book (…Dad). Is ‘Aldo Zilli’ really a chef, or just a collection of Italian sounds used to add culinary legitimacy to Morrison’s, Alfa Romeo, Centre Parcs, and Prezzo (as listed on his website)?  All his restaurants seem to have closed, he produces a range of baby food, he gets to go on Saturday Kitchen sometimes, gives ‘masterclasses’ to the public, and appears at OK! Magazine parties. 

I chose to make duck ragu – on the grounds that ragu is always lovely, but I’ve never seen it with duck. Aldo recommend you use two breasts, skinned and cubed. Availability and price lured me into buying a crown and taking it off the bone before cooking. Honestly, these are both stupid ideas. I should have bought two legs, cooked them whole, and pulled the meat off the bone afterwards. It would have been about a hundred times tastier. Aldo even says, in a sidebar, that the dish is inspired by a restaurant in Abruzzo, which cooks a whole duck in the sauce, then serves the meat separately. Well duh! I would also start if off with a soffrito, rather than just the onion Aldo uses. It wasn’t horrible, especially with a lot of Parmesan, but the meat was a bit dry, and flavourless. So this is how I would do it:

Duck Ragu (for four – ish)

Olive Oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, ditto
1 stick of celery, ditto
2 cloves of garlic, ditto
2 duck legs, skin off
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
Teaspoon of tomato puree
Splosh of red wine (optional)

Brown the duck legs over a high heat in something which isn’t Extra Virgin Olive Oil (just for the burning issue). Remove from pan.

Gently fry the veg in Extra Virgin Olive Oil until soft and tranluscent. Put the duck legs back in, and heat it all up, before adding the tomatoes, puree, and wine. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer, with a lid, for about an hour.

Check to see if the meat is falling off the bone. If not, give it a bit longer. When it’s ready, pull all the meat off, and shred it as finely as possible. Obviously, this is easiest if you’re making in advance, and have let the sauce cool. But no biggie, and it doesn’t matter if the chunks of meat are still quite chunky.

Or! Leave the duck legs whole and serve them with veg or salad as a second course, after serving the sauce with pasta and lots of Parmesan. I really think this would be very nice indeed, and I might do it soon.

The Rules

Should there be rules? I do have a full time job, two kids under 4, and an OCD ish obsession with decluttering to keep up. But, ok, rules.

1) I will not cook from a book I already have at my own house.
2) I will not make something I have made before ('cake' doesn't count. 'Victoria sponge' does).
3) I cannot smuggle another book until I have cooked from the first.
4) Um, I will post a photo of the book, and the cooked food, on this blog.
5) That's a crap rule isn't it? OK, that's all the rules!

First book has been smuggled. Some old tut by Aldo Zilli coming soon.