The sheer mettle of nettles. They are taking over the garden: cropping up in the vegetable patch, dominating the borders and creating no-go zones in the middle of the lawn.
But revenge comes in many forms – all of them tasty.
Nettle soup is a well-worn classic: virtuous and brilliantly evocative of Spring but hardly exciting and there are a thousand and one recipes for it washing around the Internet. In short, it needed re-mastering…
If it’s comfort food you are after, there are few better options than gnocchi.
These little pillows of deliciousness deliver satisfaction in ways that a mound of pasta could only dream of. They have a dense chewiness and a slightly sticky texture that holds onto whatever sauce they are coated in making each one a ferocious nugget of flavour.
They almost invite you into the bowl like tiny carbohydrate Sirens, their sweet song beckoning you further and further to the bottom of the pile until you inevitably collapse in a misty fug as the last one makes its way down your throat.
Cue belly rubbing, sighs of satisfaction and the inability to move as 90% of your body’s blood rushes to your stomach as it begins fighting its way through the wheat/potato onslaught that has just descended.
The only option is to sit very still, sip the final inch of red wine that was sitting innocently in the bottle – a chianti would suit nicely – and fall into a merry doze on the sofa as mindless brain candy plays its way across your television screen. Happiness descends. Winter isn’t that bad after all.
Potato Gnocchi with tomato, chilli and oregano
Like bread baking, the secret to successful gnocchi is instinctive. Play around with the dough and I guarantee you will just ‘know’ when it’s ready. Not too sticky, not too dense and easy to roll. Make the sauce whilst the gnocchi are resting in the fridge.
Precise measurements rarely work for this type of cooking, it’s better to think in terms of ratios and various flours and potatoes behave very differently. As such there is no recipe here, merely a rough method.
Bake a large potato for an hour or so until the insides are light, steaming and fluffier than Paris Hilton’s bedspread. Scoop out the innards and let it cool in a bowl.
Weigh out how much potato you have and add 20% by weight of plain flour (example, for the dunces, if you have 200g potato, use 40g plain flour). Keep some aside for dusting and rolling.
Add an egg (roughly one egg per two potatoes)) and some salt. Mix well with your hands and knead into a pliable dough. If it’s too sticky just work more flour into it but go easy.
For rolling out the gnocchi, I find the easiest way is to divide the dough in two and roll until it becomes unmanageably long. Divide again and continue rolling, repeating the process until your dough sausage is about as thick as a plumber’s forefinger. Split into half inch sized pieces and place on a floured tray. Cover with a damp towel and refrigerate.
For the sauce, heat a generous sluice of olive oil in a frying pan, add a clove of garlic, gently biffed with the side of a knife (leave it whole so you can fish it out later) and a finely chopped chilli, heat dependent on your preference. Allow the two to flavour the oil then pour in some passata. Season with salt, pepper and oregano and allow to bubble away for 15 minutes.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and drop in the gnocchi. Rather helpfully they will rise to the surface when cooked so you can easily fish them out with a slotted spoon straight into the waiting sauce. Stir, serve, eat and sleep.
Oh, and keep those potato skins…(recipe to follow).
Everyone loves leftovers.
From a rare beef sandwich that brings memories of yesterday’s roast flooding back to a slice of cold pizza, picked out of the box amidst the empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays, leftovers can be a culinary experience worth savouring. Not to mention a winning hangover cure.
As a result, most nights I try and cook a little too much for dinner. Lunch often consists of a bowl of reheated pasta, liberally dosed with ketchup and extra cheese or a steaming plate of freshly microwaved noodles.
But, for me, it is potatoes that top the leftover tree. That hit of carbohydrate is just what I need as a late, second, breakfast or early lunch. Boil, roast or mash a few extra and your midday meal the following day is sorted: sautéed with a fried egg, dipped into pungent aioli or even squashed into cakes and fried, they are darn near perfect.
The absolute best way to use up leftover spuds, however, is to make a speedy tartiflette. Potatoes, bacon and cheese? That’s three boxes ticked and a guarantor of a very happy lunchtime indeed.
Dice a few rashers of bacon and fry in a little oil. Meanwhile, finely chop a couple of shallots or a small onion. Once the bacon has started to crisp up, turn down the heat and add the onion. Fry a few more minutes until it’s softened.
Add a handful of cooked potatoes to the pan and allow to heat through. If you get a few crisp edges then all the better. Top with a generous amount of soft cheese – camembert, brie, reblochon – and grill until the top of the cheese starts to bubble and the underneath has melted into a gooey sauce, slathering the bacon and potatoes in its cheesy goodness.
Eat immediately. And feel no shame if you squirt some ketchup on the side, it’s not like anyone’s looking.
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With the intro out of the way, we can crack on. Let’s begin with air. Or maybe foam. Anyone know when an air becomes a foam? Answers below please.
For the uninitiated, and those without access to liquid nitrogen, vacuum packaging devices, Large Hydron Colliders and other assorted machinery, airs and foams seem to be an excellent point of entry into the seemingly murky (and achingly complex) world of molecular gastronomy.
They are also relatively easy to create and apparently hard to fuck up (although, as expected, I did manage. You shan’t be seeing my ‘poached egg with paprika foam and roasted chickpeas’ because it looked like something from low budget Korean horror movie, circa 1983).
Airs and foams have come in for a bit of stick recently with some chefs apparently desperate to adorn all their dishes with a garnish that looks like gargled frog spawn. This is a bad thing.
But they do have their uses. They are light, delicate and carry flavours in a completely unexpected way. They’re also tremendous fun.
If you think you’ve never experienced such a level of gastronomy, think again. Unless, of course, you’ve never had a cappuccino – foam at its most famous. Or Foamous. *Sigh*
Using milk is one way to create the effect. Another is to use a chemical derived from soya beans or egg yolks called lecithin.
Although predominantly used in food production as an emulsifier (a go-between that helps the combining of fats and water – as in a béarnaise sauce), lecithin can also be added to virtually any liquid then whizzed up to create delicate bubbles of flavour.
Not wanting to ruin another perfectly good egg (see above), I thought about other possibilities and came round to the idea of using an air to flavour homemade crisps – something I first encountered at Midsummer House in Cambridge where we had crisps with a sweet balsamic foam as a pre-lunch nibble.
It was a neat twist on olive oil and balsamic vinegar, so often a satisfying starter when served with crusty bread. Time to get experimental.
With this in mind, instead of deep-frying the thin slices of potato, they were brushed on both sides with extra virgin olive oil and put into a hot oven.
Meanwhile, I mixed 75g of balsamic vinegar (not the good stuff) with the same amount of water, added 0.5g of lecithin and let it dissolve into the liquid.
Using a ‘wide mouthed container’, as recommended by another blogger, I then applied a hand blender to the surface of the liquid in an effort to create the small, stable, bubbles that form the ‘air.’
Oops.
There are still dots of balsamic vinegar on the ceiling, the fridge, the kettle and, probably, my hair.
Panicking, I plunged the blender deeper into the dark liquid.
Oops. Again.
The blade managed to cut cleanly through a small raised nipple in the base of the plastic tub and all I could do was watch as foamy (hooray!) vinegar and water slowly leached out onto the surface and down onto my socks.
Sometimes all you can do is watch as the horror unfolds. So that’s what I did.
Two towels later I remembered the potatoes, now a slightly darker shade of brown than I’d anticipated.
Oops thrice. Time for coffee.
Composure and cool regained I forgot everything that had gone before and started again.
Peel potato. Slice thinly on mandolin (carefully avoiding the cutting off of fingertips). Brush lightly with EVOO and bake in a slightly cooler oven for about four minutes on either side. Salt with Malden sea salt on emergence and leave to cool on something slightly absorbent. Like David Guest’s face. Or some kitchen paper. I tend to use the latter.
Meanwhile: mix vinegar and water with weird yellow powder and blitz carefully with a hand mixer. Leave for five minutes then collect the resultant bubbles into a small receptacle. A shot glass or small espresso cup will suffice.
Phew.
Dip each crisp into the foam and then shove it into your expectant mouth. Prepare yourself for a flavour explosion and a melding of textures so wondrous you’ll want to streak naked through the streets. Or at least have another. And then keep going until they are all gone.
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If there are two words more, well, comforting than ‘comfort’ and ‘food’ then I am yet to hear them (although ‘Obama’ and ‘landslide’ do come a very close second). Even the simple act of saying those two little words can cause smiles and quivers of anticipation and an insatiable desire for a large plate of something warming and stodgy.
Comfort food is more than sustenance. It is food for the soul as well as the belly, a meal that warms the heart and the head in equal measure and leaves you in a faint fug of tiredness with a look of happy exhaustion playing across your face and a desire to fall asleep on the sofa while episodes of favourite comedies play themselves out on the television.
It is a concept that means different things to different people. One of the most interesting occurrences to come out of the ‘Desert Island Food’ game was the stark difference in what is considered to be comforting. For those raised on a western European diet, potatoes and bread feature heavily whilst those of Asian extraction showed a bias for rice. I dare say that, broadly, the pattern would be repeated in other parts of the world and I look forward to reading more ‘Desert Island Food’ lists.
With the mornings and evenings getting increasingly cooler, we’ve finally had to succumb to the wonders of central heating. We’ve also had our chimneys swept so that we can enjoy a real log fire instead of merely flicking the switch to turn on the radiators – far more appropriate, and satisfying, for life in the countryside.
There are few meals more apt for eating in front of a crackling fire than sausages and mashed potato, complete with decadent amounts of onion gravy, naturally. Add to that a bottle of rib-stickingly thick red wine and a few episodes of The Wire and you have a recipe for the ultimate comfort scenario. So, that’s exactly what we did.
Sadly no photos – by the time it was all ready the light had gone and we were left with an un-photograph-able plate of deliciousness – but for lunch I turned the leftover mash (pepped up with some fiery English mustard) into potato cakes, fried in a little olive oil and goose fat.
This is the best use of leftovers ever. Ever. Ever. I challenge you to think of one that trumps it.
Continuing my weekly look at a store cupboard essential, a true hero of the kitchen, this week we turn our eyes (pun intended) to the potato.
The potato is a relative newcomer to the everyday western diet. It arrived in Europe from the New World sometime in the 16th century (1536, to be exact), at about the same time as tobacco. I think that there is a wonderful irony that the two items that have caused the most significant amount of damage to the health of those of us in the developed world – chips (by which I mean French fries, which are, of course, Belgian) and tobacco – both arrived at the same time from the Americas.
This starchy, tuberous crop quickly became popular throughout Europe and went some way to replacing bread as the staple, especially in Ireland, a reliance they discovered to their cost in 1845 when blight wiped out the vast majority of the crop leading to huge famine and, ultimately, a mass exodus to the United States.
Although most people would struggle to name ten, there are over 5,000 varieties of potato, most of which are native to the Andean region of South America. There are probably almost as many ways to prepare and eat the vegetable as well, which is what makes them ideal for keeping in the store cupboard.
There are few foods as comforting as the potato, especially when paired with butter, cream or cheese. There is something so warming and satisfying about this particular carbohydrate that can’t quite be matched by pasta or rice.
They are also wonderfully seasonal. There are few foods as evocative of the differing seasons than the different types of potato. Waxy new potatoes, gently boiled and drizzled with olive oil, a little lemon juice and some finely chopped parsley is a great accompaniment to a barbecued or grilled food. Cool autumn nights can be warmed by fish pie or a heaving plate of mashed potato with sausages and sticky, rich onion gravy. A simple baked potato, topped with butter and melting gooey cheese is an perfect, and easy, winter meal and the first Jersey Royals are a sure sign that spring is in full bloom.
And then there is the chip. As far as simplicity goes, this is about as basic as it gets. A fried potato. But somewhere between that slightly chewy, slightly crispy exterior and the fluffy warm inside, lies a perfect food moment. A little sea salt, perhaps a splodge of ketchup or mayonnaise is all the gilding that is needed. The first chip should be a little too hot, so that it causes a rush of steam from within and has to be eaten with the lips open, pulling in a little air to cool the hot chip within. From there it is simple culinary bliss.
No, aren’t that good for you. Yes, they have little nutritional value but whether they are eaten in the heady midst of summer in the beer garden of your local pub, or shovelled in late night in a post imbibing, alcohol fuelled frenzy, the chip is always, always as close as it is possible to get to perfection.
And, for the record, for the purposes of this post I did both cook, and eat, a small portion of chips at ten thirty in the morning. The sacrifices I make in the pursuit of epicurean experimentation and culinary musings are staggering…
I'm Alex Rushmer: writer, chef and Masterchef 2010 finalist. Welcome to my little corner of the Web. Why not get a cup of tea, snuggle down and make yourself at home?
