Classic Combination: Brandade

A few weeks ago I ate some salt cod croquettes at a Pizza place in Washington, and on the back of this had a few enquiries about how to make 'Brandade' - a classic Provencal dish which is also based around salt cod. I've only eaten it twice, once in France and once at home after I found this great recipe in one of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's books. As he says, it "hit many oral pleasure spots" (!). However, it is a cheat version, as it utilises either smoked cod or smoked haddock - far more appropriate for the home cook. Sometimes you shouldn't be too sanctimonious, I mean, how many of us have got 48 hours to soak their salt cod? It's indulgent - save it for a cold evening in front of the fire with a bottle of white and a loved one.

Smoky Cheaty Brandade by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Serves 4 as a main course, 8 as a starter

Ingredients:
500g smoked cod or haddock, poached for five mins in whole milk then left to cool
500g peeled, boiled potatoes, mashed
Olive Oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Double Cream
Sea Salt & Cracked Black Pepper

Method:
1. Pick over the poached fish, discard any bones.
2. Sweat your garlic in the olive oil, don't let it colour.
3. Pound the fish with the oil and garlic in a pestle and mortar. Or gently blitz in a food processor.
4. Add 2 tablespoons double cream, and the same amount in olive oil. Repeat blitzing/pounding.
5. Transfer to a bowl and combine with the mashed potatoes.
6. Spread into an ovenproof dish, bake for 15 mins at 190 degrees centigrade, or until piping hot.
7. Serve with good, thin toast and a green salad.

Childhood: Steamed Suet Pudding with Bacon and Leeks

Returning home to see the folks is always daunting. The memories of youth are most precious, a captive of years spent doing nothing more than climbing trees, spearing hedges with sharpened sticks, fingers in bowls of cake mix, robinson's lemon barley, rugby in the park and jumpers for goalposts. They are kept safe by the prison bars of adulthood, accessed fleetingly and only when the dark days come calling for a sense of grounding. It's important to keep them intact, for when we are old and grey these will be the memories that inform who, or what we are.

I suppose that your grown-up ambitions are derived from your experience as a child. It can't be a coincidence that very often, people follow their parents into their fields of employment. If you are surrounded by music whilst growing up, it's almost impossible to not develop an aptitude for music yourself. For me, I was (am) lucky to have two parents who could both cook very well. It's a great tragedy that so many children are raised without an understanding of how wonderful food can be - if they did, I'm sure that the current trend toward obesity in the UK would be nullified.

So when I return home, in the back of my mind, I am aware that the childhood memory box is about to be re-opened. There are certain dishes that my parents cook which carry with them a sense of place, a smell, a look and of course, a taste. Steamed puddings are one of those quintessentially British foods, that most other cultures don't understand. It's fairly unique in culinary circles: an dish that is truly British. It utilises a very different ingredient - Suet - and to quote Simon Hopkinson:

"...there is one particular ingredient that will forever be part of traditional British cooking, and that is suet. Apart from being one of the most original forms of lubrication in cooking, this crumbly, white animal fat is also extremely easy to work with......when asked about British cooking, I am often stumped as to what nit really is these days; that tiresome moniker "Modern British" seems to refer to nothing more than something in a sticky jus......[but] freshly grated or chopped suet is the Super League stuff."

A steamed suet pudding, cooked correctly, is a delicious, light, filling dish that can be filled with either sweet or savoury fillings. For dessert, I can think of nothing better than a steamed Apple & Blackberry Pudding with real custard. As a main course, my parents and I would fill the pudding with Bacon trimmings and sauteed leeks. This would then be served with the most delicious onion white sauce with nutmeg, and some green vegetables. When it would arrive at the dinner table, I would watch with awe as the pudding would be carved, like a joint of meat, steaming, juicy. Frankly, fairly sexy but also cheap and honest. And nowadays a direct link to my core, aged seven. A time before any sort of responsibility or awareness of the world. If there is such a thing, it was at time of perfection.

A Day at Cooks Illustrated

Location: Boston, MA

The other day I visited the offices of Cooks Illustrated magazine, easily the best, most comprehensive journal about food on the market. It's difficult to get hold of the in the UK, but in the US has a circulation of around a million copies. I was introduced to Cooks Illustrated by my friend Orlando, owner of Le Manoir de Raynaudes, and formerly editor of BBC Good Food. So, even though I'm ideologically opposed to nepotism (though not naive enough to believe that in practice, it's not how the world works) Orlando managed to help me get a visit to the holy shrine of food experimentation, 'America's Test Kitchen'.

The kitchen is located on the premises where Cooks Illustrated and its sister publication 'Cooks Country" is produced. The unassuming, first floor premises is also the hub for the production of books as well as a TV programme that airs on the American networks. It's America's most watched cookery show on public television, which is impressive, so altogether the place is a hive of activity and the volume of literature produced quite astounding. With a million loyal followers, it's safe to say that Cooks Illustrated is doing something right, and when over lunch I quizzed the executive editor, he was candid about the whole thing. "Look" he said "it's revolutionary. We don't take adverts, we only talk about food, and we make sure the recipes always work." He had the look of a man who couldn't believe how stupid the competition was. True, I thought, the recipes do always work, and how many times have you tried to follow a recipe from a so called food magazine that makes little sense, that is inaccurate in its measurements, or falls apart the moment you don't have the requisite baking tin?

The reliability of the recipes is down to the rigour with which they test them. It's an exhaustive process, that I can't really go into here (arrogantly I assume competitors might be reading, ha!) but lets just say it takes forever. No stone is left unturned and no creme brulee left unburned by a variety of grills and blow-torches - that's the other thing, not only are recipes tested, but a variety of equipment with which to cook the recipe is also tested. The quest is utterly infectious, but it's not necessarily for perfection, as that ridiculous Heston Blumenthal undertook on his recent TV show, but a perfect recipe for home cooks. Test cooks buzz around, and like ants are always purposeful. In fact, if you try to imagine a large colony of ants wearing chef whites (bear with me) and waving tiny little knives that their legs could hold, you have an idea of the intensity of activity that I walked into. And they're not any old Tom who can hold a ladel: these are all trained chefs, many of whom have worked at fine restaurants. They're like zealots, ruthlessly purging any inaccuracies in their recipes, before writing the whole lot down in Cooks Illustrated style. When you read the articles, it seems so serene - "I've occasionally wondered why this happens to that, and so I decided to try and find out." - but believe me the effort that goes into getting answers belies the calm cool exterior of the publication.

I left feeling utterly galvanised. If you were to work somewhere like Cooks Illustrated, not only would you develop technically, as a cook, but your writing would also become tighter and you'd develop a masochistic desire for answers. It would be an experience like little else and would teach you to think outside the box, perhaps even develop new techniques that haven't been tried before. Buy Cooks Illustrated - they ship overseas and you can sign up on-line. You won't be disappointed.

Classic Combination: Spaghetti Bolognese

As I mentioned the other day, regular(ish), short, recipe bulletins on classic dishes. At the moment I'm all over the pasta, so here is another classic Italian dish that done properly can't be beaten. How often though, is it done badly?

This is taken from Marcella Hazan, the doyenne of Italian cookery. Enjoy. And yes, it really does say simmer for three hours. Trust me, it's worth it. And if you're concerned about the time remember, it's time, but it's not your time. You don't actually have to stand there for three hours!!! I'm not going to insult you by telling you how to cook pasta. One other thing - my apologies (to British readers) - but this recipe is in American measurements.

Spaghetti Bolognese Ragu
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 tbs Vegetable Oil
4 tbs Butter
1/2 cup Onion, diced
2/3 cup Carrot, diced
2/3 cup Celery, diced
3/4 lbs Beef Mince
1 cup whole milk
1 cup white wine
1 - 2 cups tinned tomatoes, good quality
Nutmeg
Sea Salt and Cracked Black Pepper

Method:
1. Add oil and 3 tbs butter to a deep pan on a medium heat. Add onion, soften. Now add the celery and carrot, soften.
2. Add beef mince. Season well, and break up with a fork. Brown.
3. Add a pinch of nutmeg plus your milk. Let this evaporate.
4. Now add your wine. Let that evaporate too.
5. Once that has happened, add your tomatoes. At this point, simmer on the gentlest of heats - so that you literally only get a bubble ever ten seconds or so - for about three hours. At the end of cooking almost all the liquid should have evaporated. You will now have the most delicious, rich and tender ragu.

Ray's Hell Burger

Location: 1713 Wilson Bvd, Arlington, VA

I have eaten yet another incredible burger, this time at Ray's Hell Burger, located in Arlington, just across the historic Potomac River. It was along this river that many settlements were founded by the British when America was the 'New World' waiting to be explored. Or exploited, depending on which way you look at it. Little evidence of history here now though - just the drone-numbing hum-drum of office workers, ties and briefcases and the same shops that you find decimating any developed city in the world. Very high on efficiency, but exceedingly low on charm. Thank God the workers have some relief at lunch time. Rather than going for the "low-carb, low-fat, low-taste" option, when I visited Ray's there was a pleasingly long queue of customers clutching minutes from meetings, spreadsheets, statistics and a Ray's burger menu printed on a single side of A4. Guess which was getting more attention. That was charming, as was the six year old boy to my left who was trying to get his chops around a burger that, I kid you not, was bigger than his head. I christened the contest "Child vs Burger", Round One: Pickles. He provided me with much entertainment.

Then my burger arrived and I became decidedly un-smug. It was absolutely ridiculous. It was immense, and the contest took a nasty turn in which "Child vs Burger" became "Edward vs the Behemoth", a challenge in which I faced odds as insurmountable as a man facing a Himalayan trek equipped with only a pair of flip-flops and a ham sandwich. The six year old was now pointing and giggling, as was his mother - creasing over with laughter whilst trying to stop her cognac sauteed mushrooms from disappearing down her cleavage. Then as I tried to pick up the burger Sean, my eating companion, did that thing where you laugh and drink at the same time, resulting in liquid hurtling out of your nostrils. I dropped the meat and the size of it caused the tables to wobble, the pictures to rattle on the walls and the lights to flicker in an alarming 'end of the world' fashion.

And to think that I'd ordered the seemingly harmless "Soul Burger Number One" which is comprised of ten ounce beef pattie, smoked bacon, Swiss cheese, cognac sauteed mushrooms (not the ones down the cleavage) and grilled red onions, all encased in a toasted brioche bun. I started to think that perhaps I'd asked for something else entirely (this seems to happen frequently in America - divided by a common language), but all the requisite parts suggested it was indeed a "Soul Burger". It could have been worse, I thought as I slipped on the first step of the Himalayas in my flip-flops - I could have ordered the "Burger of Seville" that included seared Foie Gras, cognac sauteed mushrooms, Bordelaise sauce and truffle oil.

Thankfully, the first bite cured all. I'm not sure how they do it, but burgers in America are almost universally juicy and flavoursome. This was seasoned perfectly to bring out the taste of the beef, and amazingly, I just kept on eating. Somehow, and this is all the more bizarre considering that there was a Brioche bun involved, the whole thing was actually light, in that, I could have eaten another one. Then, and this is something I've never experienced before, I got burger drunk - Sean and I simply ate and ate without saying a word to one another. I actually felt giddy, and memories of drinking cheap cider in the park circa 1995 came flooding back to me. Six year old boy had his chin on his chest for the duration to which I triumphantly grinned at him. So as you can gather, Ray's is certainly worth visiting, if only to try and get burger drunk as I managed to. There are a myriad of options available, from plain old cheese and ketchup to roasted bone marrow with persillade. But make sure you take a friend. You may need him to carry you home. Staggering. Shouting "I luuuuurve you...", like a good friday night at the local.