Back in the saddle: Chicken Pad Thai

It's been quite a while since I last wrote anything on here. Plenty has happened since 2013, and while I've never stopped cooking it's safe to say that there was enough turbulence in my life to blow out the pilot light. I am however so thankful for the people in my life who have never stopped asking me about the blog, or asking for recipes, as you have all helped me gather that little bit of kindling I needed to start writing again.

As ever, exploring a recipe that's loaded with nostalgia feels like a good place to pick up. Thailand has been close to my family ever since we moved to Japan in the early 90's, with distance and cheap holidays making it the perfect winter retreat. Our visits over the subsequent two decades were always colourful, vibrant discoveries of food, culture and personality: falling victim to the hottest meal I have ever encountered (a "thai style" beef glass noodle salad, no less), or staring in gleeful wonder at the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, ushered by the proud kindness of locals who just wanted to share their favourite sights. At the same time, I have also experienced tremendous sadness there, arriving in Bangkok airport on December 26th, 2004 and witnessing the churning tragedy of the tsunami unfold in real time. Or going back to Phuket this year, returning to Thailand for the first time without my mother. My relationship with Thailand both as a place and a cuisine has pretty rich vein of flavours and memories: bittersweet, fiery, refreshing, comforting.

My mum and sister, Koh Samui 2002

Lunch on the beach, Phuket 2016

Now when it comes to the full spectrum of Thai cooking, Pad Thai is both one of the most well-known dishes, and one of the simplest. That's not to suggest that it's not full of flavour or exciting - thankfully it makes a great introduction to using Thai ingredients that aren't too tricky to find or handle. It's also, if I'm honest, a real comfort food for me and easily one of my favourite takeaway choices. When we discovered that our local Thai restaurant (Addies) no longer delivers, I finally had all the reason I needed to try and see if a homemade version was worth a shot. I'm happy to report, it really is. You won't get it perfect the first time, but I guarantee you will see the potential for just how good it can get.

Most of the ingredients that you'll need are relatively easy to find in London, and large supermarkets will cover most of your shopping list. That said, there are a couple that I want to highlight as absolutely crucial:

Tamarind Paste: this is what makes Pad Thai tastes like Pad Thai. The 'sauce' is made up of several common components like fish sauce, soy sauce and lime juice, but this right here is the secret that unlocks the whole thing. Find it, and don't accept any substitutes.

The other thing that makes a world of difference is the noodles. What you're looking for are "thai rice stick noodles", which are also used in Pho and most closely resemble linguine sticks but white and semi-translucent. Don't bother with egg noodles or vermicelli or any of that nonsense if you want the real deal. Easiest to find in any little asian stores or international sections of the big supermarkets.

I did try this recipe with "fresh" pad thai noodles, but I have to say, going with the dried version gave dramatically better results (and is allegedly the purist's approach, should that matter to you).

Side note: Sambal Oelek, as I recently discovered, is basically a malaysian chilli sauce that is packed with flavour and a lovely balanced heat. It's not anywhere near as essential as the two above ingredients (though you can also find it in the same places as the noodles) - any typical chilli sauce that you like can be substituted, it's just my first choice nowadays. I do however think that Pad Thai without heat is a bit of a travesty, truth be told.

Everything else is pretty straightforward and refreshingly simple, so let's get cracking.

For the Pad Thai "sauce":
4 tablespoons thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon tamarind paste
6 tablespoons water

Half a chicken stock cube
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon sambal oelek (1 is mild, 2 is more fun)
5 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon oil

Everything else:

500g chicken thighs (skinless/boneless)

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons soy sauce
350-400g thai rice stick noodles
2 tablespoons oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
3-4 bunch spring onions, chopped (leave some for the garnish)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
300g bean sprouts
a fistful of roasted peanuts, chopped (or more, if you like)
Half a lime, cut into wedges (use the other half for the sauce above)

First thing's first - cut up the chicken thighs into strips, and put them in a bag or container with the cornstarch and soy sauce. Mush them up to get everything coated and leave in the fridge, at longest overnight. This is actually a pretty handy marinade for any kind of asian stir fry when you want to brown the meat and give it a bit of extra flavour.

Grab the rice noodles and dunk them in a bowl of room-temperature water for about 10 minutes or while you're prepping everything else. Soak them until they're almost al-dente, and can wrap around your fingers, then drain.

Pour all of the sauce ingredients into the smallest pan you have, and simmer on low heat - what you're looking for here is for the sugar to dissolve completely, and then adjust to your taste. More chilli, fish sauce or tamarind, as you prefer. No matter what, this should taste pretty exciting already.

At this point, you want to make sure you've got everything prepped and ready at hand, because over the next few steps you will need to move quickly.

Grab your biggest flat-bottomed pan (or a wok, failing that), and heat 1 tablespoon of oil on high. Toss the garlic in, and 30 seconds later toss in the chicken. Keep it all moving until the chicken has started to brown nicely.

Once the chicken is coloured on both sides, use a slotted spoon/spatula to remove to a plate covered in paper towels and drain off.

Keep the heat high and add your noodles.  Add half of the sauce in smaller amounts at a time, until the noodles feel soft and chewy (this is the bit that unfortunately will take practice until you feel more comfortable with it). You want to soften the noodles, and let them absorb the sauce, without swimming in too much moisture. If things start to clump up a bit, add a little bit of oil to loosen things up.

Clear a little well in the middle of the pan, add a little bit more oil and sizzle the spring onions for 30 seconds before pouring in the egg. Scramble it around the pan quickly, until it's fully cooked through and no liquid remains.

Once the noodles and egg are nicely fried and lightly browned, dump the chicken and beansprouts back in the pan on top of the noodles and add the remaining sauce. Carefully toss everything together so that it's completely coated, and cook for a minute or two more to soften the beansprouts.

Carefully transfer the pad thai into bowls (I find tongs by far the easiest way to do this), and scatter over the remaining spring onions and chopped peanuts. Squeeze a lime wedge over each bowl and dig in! If, like my wife, you are a chilli fiend you can either sprinkle some dried chilli flakes on top or add a bit more Sambal Oelek on the side.

Creamy Tagliatelle with Porcini

Over the Christmas period, I was rustling around my mum's collection of cookbooks and stumbled across this recipe, courtesy of the River Cafe. For anyone familiar with the place, they excel at doing vibrant italian dishes with exceptionally good ingedients and no shortage of skill. That said, I quite deliberately picked this recipe because of its technical simplicity - it's basically pasta with mushrooms. To assume however, that that means it tastes bland or ordinary, would be foolish. I'm not going to suggest even for a second that what I produced is anything near the quality of what you'd get in the restaurant (which is worth a visit even if only to try their ultimate dessert, the Chocolate Nemesis), but it will give any home-cooked pasta dish a run for its money and then some.

The key ingredient here, as you will have noticed from the title, is porcini mushrooms. These little dudes are a staple of rustic italian cuisine, so much so that they even have festivals celebrating it. Called sagras, these gatherings are quintessentially family affairs where towns, villages and communities typically get together to eat and be merry, often soundtracked by some 70's eurovision reject in a tanktop and silly hair. The sagras aren't limited to mushrooms either - steak, cheese, tomatoes, even focaccia get their own sagra. When it comes to food, Italians have a whole lot to celebrate.

Thankfully porcinis, also known as ceps, have become pretty easy to find in the UK now since they can be dried and stored away. You can find them in any italian deli or even Waitrose, and while they can be pricey, they deliver value in flavour. When choosing them, try to get lighter creamy looking ones, and avoid ones that are very dark and crumbly. For the most part a decent pack of porcinis will provide you with enough for a couple of meals, or one seriously packed one.

This recipe throws in a couple of extra little twists in the shape of the chilli and the lemon, which I've increasingly found are hidden stars when it comes to pasta dishes. Particularly when combined with seafood, they create a wonderfully lively combination of flavours. The nice thing of course is that you can adjust the heat to whatever your taste, though I'm a firm believer in even a little bit of spice being a crucial element in this dish.

Creamy Tagliatelle with Porcini Mushrooms
Serves 2

50g butter
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes (this will make it pretty spicy, half it if you don't like heat)
10 leaves fresh sage, rinsed, roughly chopped
35g dried Porcini mushrooms
Rind of 1 lemon, peeled (see my note below)
50ml double cream
sea salt and black pepper
Fresh egg tagliatelle, 4-5 baskets per person
Parmesan, freshly grated
4 ice cubes of veal stock (optional, see my blog post about veal stock)

First off, grab your porcinis and dunk them into 250ml of hot water. Just leave them to soak for about 15 to 20 minutes, occasionally just poking them to make sure all the mushrooms are fully soaking.

Peel the lemon rind with a vegetable peeler. The original recipe says to cut the rind into thin strips, but personally, I found that while that did give a lovely flavour, the texture of the rind eventually interfered too much with the dish for me. Personally, I think zest would work absolutely fine and be far less intrusive.

Drain the porcinis, rinse them quickly under the tap and then roughly chop them up. The soaking liquid is gold dust and packed with flavour, however it will have bits of silt and other stuff in there so strain the liquid through a strainer with a cloth in it. Any cloth or muslin will do. Keep the strained liquid to one side.

Put a pan of water on to boil for your pasta. Grab the butter and some olive oil and melt it over medium flame until the foaming settles down.

Lower the heat a little bit and throw in the garlic, sage and chilli. Keep it moving and cook for about 5 minutes or so until it starts to colour.

Throw in the porcini mushrooms and saute them for several minutes until any liquid has evaporated and they're nicely softened.

Add the soaking liquid, and simmer until nearly all the liquid has been re-absorbed by the mushrooms. Now, if you read my last blog post, you might have some lovely veal stock ice cubes stored up in the freezer. This right here is a perfect time to whip them out and drop them straight into the pan.

Again, let the whole thing simmer for a few minutes until it's reduced. You're looking for a lovely dark sauce just nestling around the mushrooms. Once you're happy with it, throw in the cream and the lemon. Again, let it reduce until you get a lovely creamy consistency, as below:

Season the sauce to taste, and reduce the heat to lowest possible setting. Cook the tagliatelle in heavily salted water for 1 minute less than suggested by the packaging (this is a habit of mine), unless it's fresh pasta in which case it's only 3-4 minutes anyway. Reserve some pasta water in a cup or jug (always do this with any pasta sauce), and drain the pasta. Toss it into the sauce, turning it to get every ribbon nicely coated in the sauce. The sauce will often thicken, so add a little pasta water to keep it from getting too claggy. You should be left with a perfectly creamy consistency on the sauce and everything nicely covered.

Get the pasta into warm bowls (tongs are perfect for this), and sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan and cracked black pepper. Tuck in.

The Revelation of Veal Stock

Veal stock is one of those things that I used to read about and just think "god that all sounds like hard work."

I'd see it in cookbooks, hear about it on Heston's cooking shows, and generally encounter it on websites that seemed to assume you had all the time in the world to bother with things like this. And at no point did I appreciate why they were all raving about it.

(C) Michael Ruhlman

Then, at the end of last year I had some time free over the christmas holidays and decided to just give it a try, because hey, who doesn't like roasting animal bones for fun? My girlfriend often comments on how obsessed I get with little projects, and this was no different: I read through a bunch of different recipes and blogs to get the gist of the process, and more importantly, understand just why veal bones is seen as the valhalla of stocks. I started with Michael Ruhlman's recipe (pictured right), then adjusted for some of the tips in Anthony Bourdain's recipe, and then just generally listened to tips from various internet resources. As long as you get the general steps right, the rest you can adjust to make your life easier.

It's important to stress right at the beginning that what veal stock brings to the table is quite subtle. It is not suddenly going to transform a sorry, limp sauce into something restaurant-quality. It's not a crutch or some wonder-cure for all occasions. What it does do, however, is add a lovely texture and depth to an already decent sauce, and provide that extra little element that will make your sauces taste even better. It can propel a decent pasta ragu into something that reminds you of a restaurant meal. It will make your own sauces surprise you. If that's something you're even remotely curious about, then read on.

First off: getting the bones. This is not as difficult as you might think. I went to my local butchers, and they were selling frozen veal bones for £2 per kilo. Now every butchers is different, so here are a couple of tips:

• If you can get the butcher to chop up the bones for you, ask them to cut them into 3" slices, for stock. Veal bones are often bigger than this, and the knuckle bone, which is the best for stock, is very big so try to get the butcher to cut them down to size for you. If the bones are frozen, like my butchers, they probably won't be able to do this, but don't worry about it - big bones are ok, smaller ones are just more convenient.
• If you have the space in the freezer, get a lot of bones. It's much easier to keep them at home rather than go back and forth everytime you make the stock. And once you've made it, you will almost definitely want to do it again.
• If you get frozen bones make sure they are completely defrosted before you start cooking.

Next thing is getting a big enough pot. To make stock you need to have a couple of inches of water over the bones, and if you've got larger bones this can be a bit of a problem. Ideally, you want a tall 10-litre stock pot or something similar, and you can find these for fairly cheap online as long as you only want to use them for making stock or soups. In my case, I just used my biggest le creuset casserole pot, which holds about 8 litres. You'll also need a strainer, a clean cloth, and a second pot.

So you've got the bones and you've got the pot? One last thing then: do this on a rainy day when you don't need to leave the house. It doesn't require a lot of attention, but it takes around 10 hours to do, so pick a sunday when you're lounging around the house and you're good to go. On to the recipe:

Sunday Roasted Veal Stock

1 kilo of veal bones, cut into smaller pieces if possible
Sunflower / Vegetable oil
Tomato Puree
1 white onion, medium diced
2 carrots, medium diced
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
Black peppercorns, lightly crushed
Bunch of fresh parsley, coarsely chopped
Couple sprigs of fresh thyme
A whole lot of water

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Lightly oil all the veal bones and place them in a baking tray/roasting pan large enough so that they're not too crowded. Roast them for 30-45 minutes, turning once, until they are a lovely golden brown colour. Make sure not to burn them!!

Take the bones out of the oven, and smear tomato puree all over them (a silicon spatula is great for this). Shove the bones back in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the tomato puree starts caramelizing and getting darker.

When they're ready and smell amazing, transfer the bones to your big pot. Chuck in the rest of the ingredients, and then cover with water. You want to make sure the bones are covered with at least a couple inches or so of COLD water, more if possible. Never, ever used hot water when making a stock as this will cause the stock to turn cloudy. Cold water ensures that all the fatty proteins forming in your lovely stock will rise to the top and be easier to skim off.

Heat the stock on a medium flame until it starts to simmer - do NOT boil your stock, ever. Again, this will make it fatty and cloudy, which we don't want! Once it's simmering, reduce the heat to the lowest possible flame, and let it reduce for 8 to 10 hours. Check on it every 45 minutes or so and skim off the fat and bits that have floated to the surface. Keep skimming, keep reducing.

Once you're ready, remove the bones, vegetables, and any other ingredients that are in there. Get a second pot and put a strainer with a cloth in it, like so:

Strain the stock as many times as you can stand - the more the better. I strained mine twice. At this point, you should be left with a lovely clean stock, something like this:

At this stage, you have a couple of options. You can cool the stock down and store it in the freezer for later use, or you can reduce it even more. I did both. I took a litre or so and separated into containers for use in bigger sauces:

The rest, I decided to reduce even further, towards something called demi-glace. This is basically just a fancy name for heavily reduced veal stock, combined with a reduction of red wine and shallots. I had a bottle of wine left open that we weren't going to drink, so I reduced the whole lot by half, and then added the remaining veal stock. I then simmered that for another hour or so, until it was lovely and dark and rich. I then strained that again to filter out any elements from the wine, cooled it, and poured it into ice cube trays:

This is a fantastic trick, from Julia Child I believe. You can pop out the ice cubes into a freezer/ziploc bag, and then whenever you're making a sauce, you can chuck in a couple of cubes of lovely veal stock to strengthen it. I now use this in several recipes, in fact the next recipe I'm writing up for you features it.

So after all that effort, you're probably still asking: why??? Well it's tricky to explain without tasting it for yourself, but essentially the gelatin from the veal bones gives an amazing velvety texture to sauces that flours or other thickening agents just can't match. The flavour from the bones and aromatics also fill in the blanks in a sauce, just making the whole thing stronger overall. If you've ever made a sauce that just seems to lack that final 'oomph', that bit of body that soothes the soul, then veal stock will help you on your way. It absolutely excels in any mushroom sauce, gravies, pasta ragu, or even just a quick dijon sauce for some roast chicken. It's pretty versatile, and a wonderfully handy thing to have in the kitchen. Make it once, and see for yourself.

Six Things I learned in 2012

It's been just over ten months since I last wrote a blog post on here. As I write this, I wonder what got in the way. It's not like I've stopped cooking, or studying, or obsessing over food, and I certainly haven't stopped eating. I think, more than anything, I fell into the trap of feeling like I needed to have something to say in order to write (which I suppose is nonetheless a good mindset to have occasionally). Combined with the endemic tendency of our generation to just be so busy, it seemed like there was never any time to sit down and muster some thoughts on a particular recipe or discovery.

Thankfully, this is now the time of year for reflection, and a merciful breath from the toils of everyday hubbub. I figure what better way to do that than to look at some of the things that I've learned this year food-wise.

Low and slow wins the race

This is something that I had always associated with Barbecue, and in particular Texas BBQ, as that was the first place I heard it. There, it is the key to sumptuous ribs, brisket and pulled pork that make you want to take a private moment with your meal, away from prying eyes. And it always felt woven into the character of Austin, where there's no need to rush, no need to hurry things along when a slower pace grants such delicious rewards. If you've read my post about overnight pulled pork, then you'll already have seen this philosophy put to good use. And it can honestly be applied to any roast, as long as you have the right meat for it. Stews and pasta sauces are also perfect candidates for this approach, where patience and gentle simmering work alchemic wonders on simple, basic ingredients. Where it has been a real revelation though, is when I started applying it to other areas.

Take salmon fillets, for example. We eat a lot of salmon at home, and try our best to mix fish in at least once a week among everything else. For the longest time, I'd simply chucked it in the oven and gotten on with the other stuff. Then I saw a comment online that suggested bringing the temperature right down, and cooking it low and slow. Combined with a simple homemade soy & honey marinade, it was a complete transformation from previous versions. Succulent, juicy, and delicately tender, it felt like we were eating a completely different meal.

Another good example is eggs. I am a total sucker for scrambled eggs, and grew up with them done a particular way (splash of milk, whizzed around in a pan for a few minutes and then served immediately). And when it comes to breakfast, often times you don't want to hang around too long. But if you ever have the time, try doing your scrambled eggs nice and slow, on low heat, with care and attention - those are probably not words you'd typically associate with Gordon Ramsay, but this I actually got this recipe from him. Trust me, once you've had scrambled eggs this way, it'll be virtually impossible to go back.

At the end of the day, there is a time and a place for slow cooking, and of course we don't always have the luxury to faff around when you've just gotten home and you want to eat your own face. But take some time occasionally, a rainy day or a weekend, and give it a go - you won't be disappointed.

A great burger is not hard to find

My no.1 burger. Seek it out.

If there was one area in which food in London excelled this year, it was burgers. All over town, exquisite works of meatcraft have emerged, honed and refined into sumptuous fistfuls of americana, big and small. Arguably the whole burger revival was sparked years ago by GBK in London, but has now matured into a heavyweight competition between real artisans across the city. Now, with a little bit of research (and some handy guidance from the savants at Burgerac), you can find burgers in town that will literally make you emit whale noises and stay awake at night with cravings. Here then, are my four favourite burgers consumed this year:

1. The Dead Hippie @ Meatliquor. It's greasy, messy, cheesy, and quite simply the most perfect burger you'll get outside of America. Like a meat hug from Jesus.
2. Cheeseburger @ Honest Burger (Soho). Their fries deserve special mention, they are absolutely spectacular.
3. The Piggie Burger @ Bar Boulud. Very fancy location, decent cocktails, and if you can stomach the bill then the piggie burger is a beautifully compact fistful of beef and pulled pork.
4. The Cheeseburger @ The Admiral Codrington. Gorgeous and elegantly crafted, almost a shame that you have to ruin it by shoving it in your face. Order the pork crackling starter.

If you've never had or heard of any of the above, do yourself a favour and pop into any of them (the bottom two are more expensive): they're all relatively central and easy to find, although queues for the first two in the evenings can be fierce. Any of them for lunch will set you well on course for the rest of the day with a stupid grin on your face.

Know your temperatures

I can never consistently cook a steak exactly the way I want it. I have huge admiration for the guys at places like the Hawksmoor, who deliver a perfectly cooked slab of meat to order, every single time. The type of cut, the thickness of the meat, the kind of pan, all of these things factor into how long and how fiercely you fire your meat. And up until recently the art of getting a steak right seemed like a mystical ritual of touch, timing and instinct, a skill honed with years of practice and experience.

Then I got a digital thermometer. Thank you, Heston.

Want a perfectly rare steak? Take it out at 45 degrees C. Medium rare? 50 degrees.

Perfect poached egg? Get your water to 80 degrees C.

Want your pulled pork to fall apart perfectly? Wait until it hits 93 degrees C inside.

Basically, if you know the temperature you're looking for, and you have a digital thermometer, it takes away 90% of the guesswork. Don't get me wrong, you'll still have to do all the other stuff right, but the value of knowing exactly when something is good to go cannot be understated. It will give you certainty when you just can't be sure otherwise.

Stock is not just for professionals

This one may seem obvious, particularly to the mothers out there who have been doing this for years. But for us young whippets (haha), stock always seemed like, well, a bit like hard work, and I never really appreciated why it was worth the effort. When I was little I used to see my mum boiling giant vats of yellow liquid filled with chicken carcasses and figured it was some macabre yugoslav thing where they boil animal bones for fun. And they always looked like taxidermy fishtanks, with bones and cartilage and vegetables floating around, steaming away. I'd hear chefs constantly talking about it in their cookbooks and tv shows, and figure that was just something you do in a restaurant. I never really got it. Until now.

One of the most enjoyable learnings this year came from trying to make stock myself. It's not the most complicated or exciting thing you'll ever do, it does take time and it does require a fair bit of attention. The payoff, however, is one that can genuinely improve a typical sauce or meal, giving it a whole extra dimension that's almost impossible to get any other way. There's something deliciously medieval to me about roasting bones and then simmering them in gallons of water, reducing and skimming until you're left with a beautifully golden broth. My next blog post is going to be about my experience making veal broth in particular, but for now take my word for it: stock isn't something that requires a professional kitchen or a crew of staff, far from it. The next time you have a roast chicken left over, or you're at the butchers (ask them for veal or beef bones, they're surprisingly cheap), try making a bit of stock yourself. The processes are generally all pretty similar, and the next time you do a nice pasta ragu or gravy or stew, you'll have something special to add.

Rest, rest, rest

Arguably, this one could also seem obvious to some. Resting meat is one of those other things you constantly hear about, yet many people don't pay heed to. I would usually try to do it, although I wouldn't quite know why (like boiling water before adding pasta to it). Without going into the science behind it, basically when you cook any meat the heat you apply makes the proteins in the meat contract and tighten up, squeezing the moisture towards the center of the meat, as well as outwards into the pan. This is why when you sear a piece of meat, you'll hear it sizzle - that's water evaporating. There is a great article that goes into more detail about why resting's important at The Food Lab.

The reason I mention resting is because this year I started applying it properly, and in conjunction with a drying rack, it actually made a world of difference. Understanding the reason for resting is one thing, doing it properly is another. I always used to rest steaks on a plate under loose foil, and after a few minutes I'd come back to find the steak sitting in a pool of its own juices. The trick instead, is to make sure the steak is raised, so that it's not just stewing and getting soggy. You can use any kind of grill or rack on top of a plate, but it helps enormously.

Doing this for all sorts of meats will improve them. Chicken, lamb steaks, roasts, even the salmon I mentioned earlier. A general rule is to rest something for half as long as you've cooked it for, but it honestly varies depending on what it is, and what you've done to it. You should rest a steak for about five minutes even if you only cooked it for six, whereas I rest a pulled pork joint for two hours after cooking it for twelve. So it's tough to give you a consistent rule you can apply, only that you should always give the thing you're about to eat a bit of time to recover before you dig in.

An exceptional meal is worth ten average ones

This one is less about cooking, and all about eating. As you can probably guess, I enjoy the odd meal out. And as someone who eats out a lot in London, I'm always on the lookout for good bargains and little discoveries (like Orchid, our local vietnamese, or Addie's, an amazing thai place that looks like a hair salon). That said, every year I manage to have one or two truly incredible meals. And this year, I had a meal that was in every possible way, perfect. I literally couldn't tell you a single thing that you could improve. For our two year anniversary, we went to Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

Now there are hundreds of reviews of the restaurant that can sum up far more eloquently than I what makes the place incredible. The thing that really stuck with me was the lasting impression and memory that you take away from the table, and how that was worth so much more than just the bill. When you consider that this unbelievable meal was the equivalent cost of let's say five average meals, it makes you think - why not do it more often? I mean, obviously you're not going to drop that kind of cash on a regular basis unless you are totally rolling in it, but I think meals and experiences like that should be tried by everyone, if for no other reason than because you'll get to enjoy something that goes beyond what's on your plate. Perhaps that's me giving in to my inner foodie (and helped in no small part by the emotional enrichment of the occasion), but whether it's at Dinner, or the River Cafe, or even just a lusciously indulgent meal with friends at the Hawksmoor, a really great meal is the one that stays with you months, not hours, later.

But Dan, I hear you say, you can have a great meal at a hole in the wall, at a gastropub? Why fork out for something so expensive? Again, this has been covered a great many times by much better writers than I, but I think what it really comes down to is a) the service and b) the quality of what you're consuming. The first thing you notice in a really good joint is how the service is almost ethereal, completely hands off, while being constantly attentive. The really big one for me here, is knowing when not to interrupt a conversation. I don't think there's anything more simple, yet significant, to good service. Butting into a discussion between friends to constantly ask if everything is ok is such a surefire way to annoy people, and it smacks of laziness posing as concern. If the table's enjoying themselves, stay the hell away. In a really great restaurant, they will never interrupt you, and you will barely know they are there.

Side note: At one of the best meals I've ever had, at Perry's in Austin, Texas, the waiter was so good he refilled our glasses without us ever actually seeing him do it. That was one hell of a bill though, come to think of it.

As far as the quality is concerned, I think it's both the food itself and the craftsmanship that goes into it. Neither can really truly stand on it's own, and the great restaurants excel in both of these areas. Again, I'm stating the obvious here, but all I'm trying to say is that even if you only do it once, skip a few average meals, put some cash in a piggy bank, and go and have a truly spectacular meal next year. Find somewhere that really excites you, save up for it, and allow yourself to have a really memorable dining experience. When a meal is greater than the sum of its parts, that's when you really kindle a love for food and experiences it can create. For me, next year I'd like to try Le Gavroche or The Ledbury, we'll just have to see how many meals I can skip before then ;)

Until then, enjoy a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Crispy Toffee Oatmeal Cookies

So last night, we had a sudden cold-snap-snowstorm here in London. Aside from bringing the entire city screeching to a halt at the sight of six inches of snow, it gave us the opportunity to stay tucked indoors today. With the Superbowl later this evening, and the relentless eating and drinking that comes with it, after lunch we decided to grab some supplies and whip up a batch of lovely oatmeal cookies.

There are few things that make a home smell better than freshly baking cookies. It can be a frozen wasteland outside, in fact it's probably nicer if it is, but staring into a warm oven and watching little golden nuggets of cookie dough melt into bubbling medallions still fills me with glee. It's like being a kid and watching your mum bake all over again. And man, the first bite of a still-warm, slightly crispy, gloriously chewy cookie? Pure bliss.

These cookies are about as simple as it gets - very few exotic ingredients, all easily sourced at a decent-sized supermarket. It comes courtesy of my fellow goons over at Something Awful, and will deliver some incredible cookies no matter whether you're a seasoned baker or a total novice. Surprisingly, despite the ingredients they're not actually that sweet either. This is a bit of a double-edged sword - they're not sickly, but then you end up being able to eat three of them pretty quickly. The temptation to tear into them as soon as they're out of the oven is enormous, but give them some time to rest and then go to town.

Crispy Oatmeal Toffee Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup AP flour
1 tsp cinnamon
2 cups quick oats
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
225g dairy toffee pieces, chopped finely

Cream the sugar and butter together until light and silky. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

Chop up the toffee as finely as you can. If you get the toffee pieces that I did, when you chop them up they will shatter and send bits everywhere. I found it really handy to roll up a dish cloth around the outside of the chopping board to help catch the shards of toffee that fly away. 

Add the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and fold until combined. Stir in the toffee and oats. Give it a proper go here, as the oats and toffee will make it seem like it's very dry but it will combine nicely.

Drop by the spoonful 2” or so apart on a greased pan. If you've got some baking paper, this will make it a lot easier to remove them as these cookies are very sticky when they're warm.

Cook for 8-10 minutes at 190C. Let cool on the pan for 2 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely. Once they're cooled completely, share with your loved ones (but only if you really love them).

Lasagne: A New Year's Tradition

Last year on New Year's Day, my girlfriend decided to learn how to cook. Rather, she decided to get me to teach her how to cook.  She had never really been taught by anyone, whereas I had had two foodie parents constantly passing their wisdom down to me from an early age, so it was a nice idea for me to try and pass some of that knowledge on to her. To start with, I figured we'd begin with something that's relatively simple to make, but covers a wide range of different skills. And seeing how at that stage she didn't know how to dice an onion, we had our work cut out for us. The great thing about a lasagne is that it covers so many basic skills that you use on a regular basis: preparing veg, browning meat, making a good ragu, making a roux, and then layering it all together. She seemed a bit skeptical at first, but once I broke the whole thing down into small tasks, it felt like far less daunting an endeavour.

I'll be honest with you right now. It took us hours.

But it would be unfair to lump that entirely at the feet of my better looking half. No, lasagne is one of those dishes that can take you all day if you let it. The trick is to split it in half: the sauce and the construction, and it suddenly becomes much, much simpler.

Last year's model

As coincidence would have it, we never made lasagne again in 2011. I know, you're probably thinking you know why that was the case. But when New Year's Day 2012 was suddenly on the horizon, we were actually excited to revisit our new little tradition, because hey, who doesn't like lasagne? This time, we made the ragu the day before, and then on New Year's Day we built it. Not only did it take a fraction of the time, but I am hugely, hugely proud to report that my girlfriend's skills in the kitchen had improved immeasurably over the course of the year. Her knife skills still scare the living hell out of me, but there was no comparison at all in terms of her confidence and mobility around the kitchen and it was honestly a lot of fun having something akin to a sous-chef that can read your mind. It actually makes my life so much easier because when those moments come where you only have two hands, she is always in the right place at the right time to offer another pair (except when she's hungover, in which case I am on my own). And in the case of this particular blog post, she even took some of the photos (I was covered in cheese at the time), so this was in every possible sense a joint effort.

So on to the lasagne itself. Aside from the occasional madman claiming lasagne is actually English and people putting crazy things like butternut squash into it, lasagne is a pretty widely recognised recipe. It's the ultimate comfort food, a multi-layered duvet of meat, pasta and cheese, all baked into a luscious, crispy, gooey sandwich of awesome. In hindsight, I think it's actually the perfect meal for new year's day, when you basically don't want to see or do anything, just eat and mong out on the sofa. It's like Christmas but without all the drama (if you're lucky).

Whenever I start putting together a recipe, I like to do a bit of research to see what ideas people have for little twists or variants on dishes. Most great chefs will always keep a couple of secrets to themselves, but thanks to the wonder of the internet there are pretty good odds that nearly everything that has been tried in a recipe is now documented somewhere on a digital napkin. There are all sorts of interesting additions, from spinach and fennel to cinnamon and pork belly. I would consider myself a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to lasagne, and I already have my recipe for Winter Sausage Ragu which I based this off of, so it was really the white sauce I was curious about. Normally I would whip up a bechamel sauce from scratch, but I came across a couple of people who swore by ricotta cheese, mixed with egg and a couple of other cheeses. You can probably guess by now that I'm not one of those people to turn down an opportunity to use three cheeses when one would probably do, so this was a perfect way to add a new element to the dish. And while the ragu is based off of italian sausages, I added beef and pork mince to really kick things up a notch. Diets be damned.

Our New Year's Day Lasagne

Ingredients:

This is what you want when you're ready to build!

Six Italian sausages, skins removed
250g lean beef mince (or veal, if you're feeling fancy)
250g pork mince
1 onion, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 pint of milk
2-3 cups of red wine
2 tins of plum Tomatoes
500ml passata
3 tablespoons tomato puree
450ml chicken stock
2 tablespoons white sugar
A handful of chopped fresh basil
A handful of chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
450g mozzarella cheese, freshly grated (don't buy the pre-grated stuff, it's practically fake)
600g ricotta cheese
1 cup of freshly grated parmesan
1 egg
Lasagne pasa sheets

These ingredients will make more ragu than you probably need for an entire lasagne, so either keep it in the fridge for another meal, or freeze it and whip it out for an awesome bolognese on a rainy day.

First thing's first, grab the biggest saucepan you've got and brown the sausages until they are totally cooked through. Remove the sausage meat and keep in a large bowl. Then brown the beef and pork mince together in the same pan, again until browned and cooked through. Remove the meat and leave in the same bowl as the sausage meat. Now gently fry the onion and garlic in the same pan, adding a little bit of olive oil if it's needed. Once the onions have sweated off nicely and the garlic is covered, add all of the meat back in. Now add in a pinch of nutmeg and pour in a cup or two of milk, enough so that it just comes up to the top of the meat. Simmer the milk gently until nearly all of it has cooked off, then add the red wine. Do the same with the red wine, and cook it off until nearly all the liquid has evaporated.

 

Now add the chicken stock, passata, plum tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar, fennel seeds, basil, parsley, oregano and salt. Mix everything together, bring it to a gentle boil and then turn the heat down to the lowest setting. If the sauce occasionally bubbles you're on target, if it's spitting violently then it's too hot. Leave it uncovered for 3 hours or so, checking on it every half hour or so to give it a stir. You want the sauce to reduce to a luscious, rich consistency, and adjust the seasoning to taste. Keep tasting it, and eventually it'll be perfect.

Once the sauce is done, you can either store it, or go straight on to building the lasagne. Personally, I think there's some weird voodoo that makes ragu taste better the day after you cook it, so I keep it in the fridge for a day. When you're ready to build your lasagne, soak 10-12 lasagne pasta sheets in hot water. While the pasta is soaking, mix the ricotta cheese with one egg, the nutmeg and chopped parsley until nice and smooth. Set your oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F. Grate the mozzarella into one bowl, the parmesan into another, and have the meat sauce warmed up and ready to go. Now you're ready to build this beast.

Spread two or three cups of meat sauce into a baking dish. Drain the lasagne sheets, and cover the meat sauce with a layer of pasta. Spread half of the ricotta cheese mixture on top of the pasta sheets, then sprinkle a third of the mozzarella and parmesan. Spread another couple of cups of meat sauce on top of the cheese, then cover with another layer of pasta sheets. Spread the rest of the ricotta cheese over the pasta sheets, and sprinkle with some more mozzarella and parmesan. Now finally spread over the rest of the meat sauce to cover the whole thing, and top with any remaining cheese. 

Cover the baking dish tightly with tinfoil, and bake in the oven for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove the foil and bake for another 25 minutes. Once the surface is golden and bubbling with molten cheese, take it out and let it rest for five minutes or so. Cut yourself a big slice, grab some lightly dressed salad, and tuck in.