Prawncrackers

Ok, last meal of my eG Foodblog week. One of the most memorable dishes of the year was salmon scotch quail eggs. We had it at Paul Ainsworth's No6 restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall. So i had a go at recreating today, i was going to do it on Thursday but I'm glad I saved it for today. It's quite fiddly and you just never know how it's going to turn out, especially with the added pressure of cooking something for the first time for a dinner party. Eight quail eggs were cooked for two minutes to ensure a runny yolk. Only six of them survived peeling intact. I hand chopped 250g of fresh salmon and seasoned with dill, parsley, salt and white pepper I wasn't really sure how many eggs that would make and in the end it was five. Now I've done it you don't have to guess. The balls were floured, egged and breadcrumbed. Luckily i had some old brown sourdough which was perfect, as everyone knows you must eat salmon with brown bread. They were quickly deep-fried and served on top of sliced cucumber and a curried mayo. The results were pretty reminiscent of what we ate on holiday and my wife declared it a success. This is a good example of modern British cooking: The wild duck i bought yesterday was prepared so that the crown could be roasted on it's own. The legs and the rest of the carcass was used to make a curried stock with fried onions, garlic, ginger, tomato, garam masala, cassia bark, cardamom, coriander, cumin, turmeric, chilli & salt. The stock was strained and then used to make a Cashew & Saffron gravy (inspired by local restaurant Lasan). Toasted cashew, fried onion, saffron, and yoghurt are blitzed together till smooth and added to the stock and cooked out for 15 mins. The duck crown was seasoned with a little garam masala, coriander, cinnamon & salt and started in a frying pan with some butter before roasting in the oven for 15 mins. After a good rest it was served up with some pilau rice (with peas), and the cashew saffron gravy. The meat was nice evenly pink and tasted really good, nicely complimented by the creamy korma like sauce. Only one piece of shot found too, wild duck is so delicious it's a wonder why more people don't eat it. It's cheap (£3) and quick to cook: To finish, a real treat - something baked by my wife! Yes she was allowed in the kitchen today to bake Aunt Amélie Smooth Chocolate Cake recipe she found. It was so rich, a real chocoholic's delight, it needed the ice-cream to balance: Edited to add: Apologies guys, my finger slipped and I posted without writing anything at first!

Hey I'm not done yet, one final push today before the panda can put it's paws up! One of my local food heroes is Fenky Janes Caribbean Bakery. They call themselves a bakery on their business cards but really they only do one thing - curry patties. I thought I liked Jamaican curry patties until a friend of a friend brought some of these to a bbq party this summer, they are another level of deliciousness. Usually the pastry for patties is a yellowed chalky crumbly affair that isn't very good and takes away from the filling. But these have proper light flaky pastry and are the perfect savoury package. So i've been a regular pilgrim to their place in Hockley. I buy them by the dozen from a rather unpromising hatch in an industrial unit. They a have all kinds of fillings, my favourites are the Ackee Saltfish and Original Mutton. Today as a lunchtime snack, i had a mutton one:

Surely rendang is good all year round?! I cut my ung choi in half and cook the stems first otherwise the leaves will disintegrate by the time the stems are done. They are quite a new vegetable for me, I like the crunchy freshness of them,

Yay the ImageGullet uploader is back up and running now, thanks Erin and Chris for fixing it. For posterity here are last nights pics:

Nevermind about ImageGullet, I can still describe tonight's meal and post a link to my Picasa webalbum for you look at instead. My wife is not great at handling spicy food so I don't usually cook very spicy stuff for us to eat. However I am a latent chilli fiend and I when I do eat hot food I like it really hot. It's probably why i have so many hot condiments from all over the world. So I can pep up my plate without killing her tastebuds. That's why when the cat's away the mice will play... One of my absolute favourite dishes is rendang. My version is based on the one in Cradle of Flavour, and like all dishes of this nature has evolved to become my own. I've done it with many different cuts of lamb and beef and the best results have been with ox cheeks. So yesterday I pulled some of the last batch out of the freezer to have tonight. It's funny I love eating rendang so much that I like to build a meal around it and invite my mates round to share the joy! I took a nice piece of pork leg out of the freezer too that I butchered especially to make Twice-cooked pork and I had some prawns. My Thai chilli plant was calling out to be harvested so yes, i thought, i can make some Prawn Pad Krapow (chillies and holy basil) too. Alas when I went to get some holy basil from the Asian mini-market today i was told that all Thai basil imports had been stopped at customs, just basil, bizarre! Disappointing, but after a quick rethink I picked up some long red chillies and shallots to experiment with making a prawn sambal. I picked up some Ung Choi (water spinach) too. Now, i have rating system for my friends based on the amount of chilli heat they can handle. Kinda like the chilli pepper score you get with Indian takeaway menus. My two mates tonight are a one and a two. I'm a three and ask the waiter for little something extra from the chef. So in the interest of fair play I decided to go for an honest one a half on the heat rating tonight! Starting with the prawn dish I make the sambal paste. I had an idea of what i wanted; a balance of hot, sweet, rich and fragrant notes. I blitzed up some fresh and soaked dry red chillies, ginger, garlic, galangal, lemongrass, shallots and toasted belachan in readiness for action. Then I start preparing the twice cooked pork, which is actually cooked three times. First is poaching for 10 minutes which helps to set the meat up so that it can be sliced thinly. Second the slices need to be browned in my wok on a medium heat to get them slightly crispy and set aside. The third time I make the sauce with a little garlic, ginger, lots of chilli bean paste, black beans, shaosing, sugar, soy, scallions and toss the pork slices in this glorious concoction. In the meantime, in a small pan, curry leaves have been frying in a little oil before the sambal paste is cooked out thoroughly - a good dollop of the thick cap off the top of a can of coconut cream is added to help it along (the rest is used for coconut rice). Sugar is added to taste before the prawns are put into the pan and coated in the sambal. Working quickly now, the pork is plated up from the wok. The wok's cleaned, and heated up again, a swirl of oil is added then a couple slices of ginger, crushed garlic and dried chillis. The water spinach is stir fried quickly in this aromatic oil, a splash of fish sauce and plated. The wok doesn't need to be cleaned this time, it's still hot too, so when the sambal prawns are tipped in they sizzle into life immediately. The prawns don't take long and are plated next. I ask one of my mates to heat the rendang up in the microwave whilst this is all happening so that's the last one to dish up dressed with a quick chiffonade of lime leaves. Oh and the salted duck eggs make a reappearance tonight too. The Thai chillis from the plant are simply sliced and soaked in soy for dipping. I love cooking and eating this type of spicy pan-Asian meal. As long as the balance is there between the dishes, it makes for wonderful eating. The rendang was once again favourite tonight, I love seeing people's eyes light up when they try it for the first time. The prawns were good for a first attempt, next time i'll omit the coconut and use tamarind instead. Twice-cooked pork is twice-cooked pork and is so much better with this leg cut of meat. The Sichuan restaurants that i've been to all use pork belly but I like my version better! Please have look at my photos on Picasa for illustrations.

Peter, microwaves are only good for heating up leftovers in my kitchen. Does anyone use one to actually cook with? Grace, I usually crave variety but if i were to nominate a regular go-to meal it would be rice, steamed fish (bass, bream or sole) and veg. Sadly, i can't seem to upload any photos to ImageGullet at the moment. Anyone else having this problem?

This morning I went to Harborne market on the recommendation of fellow egulleter Nickloman and also to meet each other for the first time. Harborne is one of the nicer parts of the city and one that i don't visit often enough. But now I've know there a decent market once a month and that there's also a terrific fellow and his partner Hannah I will have to visit more often. It was great to chat with them and to share the enthusiasm we have for good food. Hope to meet up with you guys again soon: At the market we found some nice looking wild duck, which i'll cook tomorrow and I couldn't resist another samosa or two. We tried the ones made with scotch bonnets. I thought it was cute that the Indian lady had to test out our palates with a sample first to see if we could handle the heat. They were really good, freshly fried and so crunchy. A good spicy precursor for what i'm cooking tonight:

I would hope that with their reputation they would make their own mushy peas, they make their own tartare sauce after all. It's the best i've ever tasted, i may ask for the recipe next time i'm there - definitely heavy on the tarragon/tarragon vinegar but there's something else too, maybe lime? Yes there is a noticeable beefy flavour with everything that fried in it, it's so good. Looking good Anna, I'm all for adapting recipes. That batter recipe is so versatile, use it with canned pears for a quick pear frangi tart, it's really good. I moved house last year Bruce, my last kitchen was really tiny but it was good for developing a really tidy organised cooking style. My current kitchen is twice the size so feels luxurious to me but probably still small compared to your massive US houses: The usual integrated stuff - dishwasher, fridge/freezer, electric oven and gas hob. My hob has five burners which includes a largish central wok burner. It's in it's typical state in the photo, quite tidy as you can see. There's only one way to sharpen quality steel and that's with waterstones: Form left to right: coarse diasharp diamond stone, minosharp combi 1000/8000, Japanese natural blue Aoto (around 3000 grit), amakusa toishi stone (400 grit). On top is an F dick combi steel and nagura stone which is particularly nice used with the Aoto. I'm not too retentive about sharpening my stuff, there are some knife nuts out there who like to achieve edge nirvana but that's not me. I probably have a sharpening session once a month, if that. After all I'm only a home cook and not producing massive amounts of labour intensive food. Well apart from this week!

Pam, as far as I know the batter is exactly the same as frangipane. Shhh, I won't tell the good folk of Bakewell in Derbyshire that their secret is out if you don't! Birmingham is right in the middle of the country, you'll struggle to get further from the coast if you tried. You would think a wasteland for our nation's most famous dish - Fish n' Chips. The places you'd assume have England's number one chippy would be Whitby or Cromer or somewhere in Cornwall, not landlocked Brum. But we do, we have officially Englands number one chippy in 2010 - The Great British Eatery. It's fantastic, the incredibly savoury smell of the beef fat that hits you when you enter the shop is almost overwhelming. Why beef dripping? Well as the sign simply says, it just tastes so much better. The batter fries up so much crispier too: So today has been a no cook day but i'll be back in the kitchen tomorrow. The wife is meeting up with some friends tomorrow night so the opportunity is there to cook a spicier meal. I've taken a couple of things out of the freezer and my buddies are ready for some lip-tingling dishes.

Do you think that looks like tea? Does one side look hotter than the other in a Heston Fat Duck style? A serious molecular gastronome that's for sure. But then why put orange or lemon zest in it, nah must be a cocktail, oh I don't know!

Being Derbyshire born and bred I thought it high time I made a Bakewell tart. I would post a photo but I'd want to be sure you are sitting down when you see it! I couldn't find the base to my 9 inch round tart tin so I made it in a rectangular tart tin and then committed a cardinal sin - I used the only jam I had on hand - blueberry !!!!!!!!!!!! Anna, i'm always sat down when i'm on the forum so let's have a look at your blueberry tart please. I second this request -- PLEASE. Here you go, this is a photo i took earlier in the year. Left is Shun Cleaver, Right is a Leung Tim Heavy Cleaver made in Kowloon. From top to Bottom is Nenox Parer, Hiro Itou Parer, Global Flexible Boning, Carter HG WHite Steel 160mm Funayuki, Takeda AS 210mm Gyuto, Hiro Itou 240mm Gyuto, Korin Ginsanko Deba, Masamoto KS series 270mm Yanagi, Hiromoto 270mm Gingami Sujihiki. Not in picture is my latest 180mm Misono western deba aka the lobster killer: We're off out tonight to catch a movie. We didn't fancy eating the leftovers, it was mostly veg anyway so I think we'll have some Fish and Chips instead. Will report back later.

The pack of 18 quail eggs was only £2 at the wholesale market and i only boiled 10 of them them up last night just a a nibble, with a fleur de sel/celery salt dip. I did have a special a plan for them but changed my mind last minute, I still have 8 left and there may still be time to execute it on Sunday... watch this space!

Thanks for all the positive comments folks. Back to work today and even though I'm still feel full from last night i've managed to eat four samosas this morning and for lunch! It's traditional around here to them bring in for a birthday or other special occassions. As we are such a big department this morning there were two rounds of full size veggie samosas, and then for lunch there were mini-meat-samosas available. SO I had a couple of them with a little salad and a slice of watermelon. It's game season at the moment and i love cooking with game birds. I think it's very typically English. Unfortunately I've run out of birds in my freezer and haven't been able to stock up recently. Hopefully Harborne market tomorrow will rectify that and I'll be able to cook some up maybe on Sunday. I don't tend to cook other typically English food very often, faggots, hot pot, roasts, stews etc, very substantial stick to your ribs kind of stuff. Sometimes as a treat for my wife as she likes all that kind of stuff but i'm never really too bothered with it. That piece of pork was really good. You can tell when you buy it whether you need to do anything special to the skin. In this case just by the dry parched feel of it I knew it would crisp up no problem. I did leave it overnight uncovered in the frige whilst it was marinating just to help it along though. When i pulled it out of the oven I thought is was pretty crispy but just to gild the lily a little I put it under the grill for a couple of minutes. That's why you can see the bubbling on the crackling. Looking back it was probably unnecessary and spoilt perfectly smooth mahoganied skin. I second this request -- PLEASE. Will do when I get home tonight, I'll have to get the wider angled lens out! They are the rolling looped ties, I get a much tighter roll that way. I think they are much easier than all those individual ties. I'll have to dig out a video of the technique, once you learn it there's no going back. Btw, I'm defnitely taking a break today from cooking - Panda needs a rest. Gonna eat the leftovers from last night and relax a little. So please fire away with any more food related questions as I'll be able to answer them more fully today.

Sure thing, you're not the first person to ask me for my recipe for Bakewell tart! I've got the method already written down somewhere... It's my favourite cake and the only proper dessert that I know how to make without reading a recipe. The following is for a 9inch shallow tin: I'm sure you know how to make a sweet short pastry but just in case - take 200g plain flour and 100g cold diced butter, use a mixer or rub in by hand. Add 40g sugar then one egg beaten well with a pinch of salt. Form the dough and chill. Roll out and blind bake for 25-30 mins in a 180C oven. Spread a layer of jam (your choice but anything but strawberry is sacrilege!) onto the pastry case in readiness for the batter. Make the batter by creaming 120g sugar with 120g soft butter, then add 120g ground almonds, 2 eggs & 1 yolk, 1/2 tsp of almond essence and mix well. Incorporate 40g of plain flour at the end. Pour the batter into the pastry case and add some flaked alomnds. Bake for around 50mins at 180C. I think the reason why I remember this recipe so easily is the 120/120/120 ratio of sugar/butter/almond. I liked it warmed a little with a dollop of ice-cream. Good luck with it.

The first time i came across egullet I was looking for information on sourdough bread, what made me stay was the knife maintenance tutorial. I used to bake a loaf of sourdough every week, it became quite a routine, feeding the starter and making sure it was okay. I did it for about a year until my starter died after I left it out whilst I was on holiday, I haven't baked bread since. To be honest with you though my sourdough was never that good and at the end the starter was getting very vinegary. But I baked a loaf today, a spelt loaf using quick yeast and it was very nice. It's been a quite low impact day cooking wise - a lot of pottering around because tonight's guests weren't due till 8pm. In fact they came a little early so they nibbled on the bread, some quail eggs and the Berkswell cheese whilst i finished preparing the starter of razor clam linguine. Everyone loved the cheese, it's very reminiscent of Manchego, delicious. The bread came in handy to mop up the sweet briny juices from the pan: The pork was rolled and roasted for about 3.5 hrs at 170C, the crackling was spectacular. I served it with roast potatoes, grilled chicory and cavalo nero sautéed with my own pancetta: (Tonight's knife is my most treasured Itou 240mm Gyuto with stag horn handle) Oh and a bakewell tart too, with clotted cream ice-cream.

Lunch today was the leftovers from last night, chicken and veg. Just microwaved and eaten standing up! Tonight's main of course was always going to be Porchetta style belly pork because I thought I had a nice slab of pork stashed somewhere. But when I looked in the freezer on Tuesday and couldn't find it I remembered I'd actually used it to make pancetta. So yesterday I had to take an unplanned trip to my butcher in Berkswell. Having called ahead alreay I knew he had some available. Berkswell Traditional Farmstead Meats is a wonderful little operation, it really doesn't compromise on the quality of their meat. I've had all sorts of rare-breed pigs from here, Old SPots, Berkshires and Tamworth being the most readily available. Today the belly is from a Tamworth, you can tell by the ginger hair! I also picked up some Berkswell cheese Nickloman and will try some later today. The shop also had some White Park Beef, a massive wing rib, it was mightily impressive looking piece of meat, deep deep crimson and surprisingly well marbled for UK beef. Having never heard of that breed before I enquired about it, Phil the butcher said that it was Britain's oldest native breed and that he only gets it once a year. I looked at it and looked at it again but it was an odd cut, kinda fore-end of the rib almost becoming blade. The shape of it you would roast but as one side you would roast slow and the other fast - it was just too odd. If it was nice fore-end i think I would have snaffled it up and we'd be having beef tonight! I got a couple of freebies too, some pork back fat for salami making and a beef marrowbone. It's makes me laugh that marrow fat is so trendy and people will pay good money in a restaurant for what has always been a giveaway. I trim the belly up yesterday and marinated the flesh side with garlic, fennel, lemon zest, bay, rosemary, sage, evoo and s&p ready for roasting today: (My sweet little Nenox parer in pic)

David, you'll have to take a ticket and join the back of line like everyone else Yes, two lobsters and noodles just barely made it onto the that 12" plate. I couldn't really do anything with the presentation, i think i may need a bigger plate for such occasions. I did cut the legs off though but left the heads in as i like to suck on those. The meaty tail bits and claws were offered to my guests first of course.

I was definitely in my comfort zone with that meal, i've cooked it many times because we love eating all those dishes. I'm off to sleep now so see you in the morning for some more Cooking with Panda!

One of the reasons why the French Label Rouge chickens are best for Chicken rice is you always get big plug of chicken fat in the cavity. Trust the French to know that this is a vital cooking ingredient, you will never find it in a chicken processed in the UK. Once it's rendered down with some excess skin (cooks treats) I slowly brown some shallots as the base for my chicken rice. That's why everyone who eats it loves my version of this classic: (Knife spotters: tonight's knives - Global flexible boning, Murray Carter HG White Steel Funayuki and my brand new Misono Western Deba) Preparing the turbot I can tell the freshness by the quality of the guts, in particular the liver looked good enough to eat raw (I didn't). The chicken was simmered for 15mins then immersed with the heat off for another 45mins and hung for a couple of hours. At the last minute the lobsters were dispatched, cut into pieces, sprinkled with cornflour, deep-fried, set-aside then stir-fried with Scallion and Ginger, chicken stock etc and served on a bed of soft egg noodles. Sorry I couldn't get more action shots but the cooking frenzy was upon me! The second course was the chicken rice with chilli and ginger-scallion sauces. Turbot steamed for 13 minutes, I think this was everyone's favourite dish of the night. It was as predicted so fresh, the liver peeking below the garnish was sublime and all mine. Another cooks treat just for me. The last dish was Water Spinach with King Crab in Oyster Sauce. Luckily I remembered I had some frozen cooked king crab and it was a good opportunity to use it. Oh and some salted duck eggs. I forgot to photo the rice this time but you know all what savoury chicken rice looks like! My guests did well, not only did they bring sticky toffee pudding but they brough the best sticky toffee pudding I've ever eaten. We had it with vanilla ice-cream and raspberries, fantastic meal all round, very satisfied indeed:

Objection noted Fat Guy! It also depends on how much egg you use but you don't get the big lumps of egg with this method unless you use a lot

It's a grilled cheese in name only as it's never grilled. I use a pan with a little butter and olive oil. When the butter's melted I put the sandwich in one half of the pan so one side of the sandwich is covered in butter. I immediately and carefully flip the sandwich over to the other half of the pan so the other side is covered with butter too. Then it's just a of case of pressing the bread down with a spatula till it's "grilled" on one side then flipping again and grilling the other side. I've bent many a spatula with my grilled cheeses!

For a midday snack today i had a grilled cheese sandwich made with sourdough bread, crumbly mature cheddar and my own chorizo: (knife in shot is my Itou parer)

I've changed my mind about a thousand times about the menu for today and tomorrow. I've decided that there's too much a la minute cooking if I include razor clams in black bean sauce today so i'm saving them for tomorrow. Lobsters I 'm going to stir fry in my nice big wok with scallions and ginger, classic Cantonese style and serve them over soft noodles as a first course. The second course is chicken rice, steamed turbot and veg. Hopefully my guests will remember to bring dessert. Today is officially a study day so I'm actually doing some right now. Dinner is planned for 6:30, what time do you think I should start cooking?

Birmingham Wholesale Market is the biggest in the country, it probably is the ugliest too: Even at 7 in the morning a lot of the trading has been done and it's just the odd shopper like me in there: Chatting to the more jolly fish merchants today (they do exist) it's as i feared, the bad weather has limited today's choice little. Especially disappointed that there were no native lobsters but the Canadian ones look good and lively. No native razor clams either, which are usually the size of Churchhill cigars, the ones today are from the Med and are little smaller - more panatella! Massive prawns though, Madagascan, £49 a box!! Not today mate. I was particularly impressed with the huge halibut in the yellow bin, it must have been 150lb! They were selling it's brother cut up in tranches to order. You know I've only just thought about it but has anyone tried Halibut liver? I wonder if that fish has been gutted... There were some interesting items in the poultry section, I have my eye on one of these for xmas: In the end, this was my early morning haul. Yup, couldn't resist the lobsters and the razors. The turbot was spankingly fresh and had more slime on it than I've ever seen (always a good sign). Even though I was planning a seafood meal tonight, my wife last night requested Chicken rice too, so when I saw my favourite Label Rouge chickens there today I knew I had to make some. Oh and I picked up some quail eggs for a dish I'm thinking about tomorrow:

Okay, please. Just shoot me now. I know i know, it's not good stuff but I'll make it up to you today by brewing my own! There are Whole Foods shops here in the UK but the only ones i've seen are in London. The impression I get of the way Whole Foods is marketed is that they are a cut above the average, is that right? If that's the case then the closest thing we would be a cross between a Selfridges/Harrods food hall and Waitrose. If I want high-quality produce here in Brum then I shop around, fish at the market, meat at my trusted butcher, veg from the farm shop or the Asian grocers is usually better than the supermarkets. But then i think our supermarket veg is pretty good in general: I have a garage and a thermometer and my fingers crossed: