Saturday evening is my favourite day to cook.  The Child is having a bath with Daddy, I can take my time, open a bottle of wine and get creative. My duck legs today were one of the best yet, the sauce I’ve managed to produce though- outstanding. It was the kind of sauce I was licking off the spoon thinking- fuck yeah. 🙂  And also, as Christmas this year will be at ours, with Mum, Mariusz, Julia and Ron arriving, the plan was to roast a whole duck.  But those legs today made me think that maybe doing it the way I did today, 4 legs ( the Banks men don’t do duck!!!!) instead of the whole bird might be a better idea.  All the recipes I looked at hint at the risk of legs being tough while breasts succulent, if one screws up the timing.  This meal today made me wonder and most likely it will just be 4 perfect, stress free legs.

So, the best idea is to season the meat generously a couple of hours in advance, get that salt working, pepper too and some herb pepper and cumin too. Brown the meat nicely, transfer to a saucepan, while in the duck fat quickly sweat some shallots, leeks, carrots and garlic.  A handful of dried porcini mushrooms. And add to the legs. A glass of red wine in, mine today was one of my absolute favourites, Catena’s Malbec.  Then chicken stock, a couple of bay leaves, lid on and roughly 1,5 hour, till the meat is lovely and tender.

I took the meat out and blitzed all the sauce ingredients into a thick, velvety, luxury gravy, that hardly needed any seasoning. Maybe just a little butter and a sprinkle of pepper. I was really proud of myself. Duck is rapidly becoming my favourite meat.  On the picture it might not look the part, but I finished the sauce with a teaspoon. That good!

I’m so doing it again!!

I fancied noodles last night. Ken Hom was in Saturday Kitchen recently, making some chicken and telling the viewers that back in his restaurant days the Chinese chefs would serve chicken breast to the Europeans and the thighs to the Chinese customers. Well, for me it is always a thigh, unless I’m making chicken kievs. So much more flavour in a thigh! So it was only natural to go with Ken’s recipe.  The putrid shrimp paste has not made appearance in my pantry since that awful prawn dish, but that was a one off, there’s no doubt this boy knows his Chinese.

2  chopped boneless thighs sat in the marinade made of 2 tsps of soy sauce, same amount of Shaoxing rice wine, 1 tsp of sesame oil, 1/2 tsp of salt, quite a lot, and the same of white pepper.

Noodles cooked and drained sat drizzled with sesame oil, while I quickly stir fried the chicken, then removed it and threw 3 minced garlic cloves into the wok. Quite a lot of lovely, crunchy mange tout, chopped spring onion, noodles into that. Then a nice little sauce- exact same ingredients like for the marinade, plus a tsp of sugar and some extra sesame oil, just because I adore it. Chicken back in, a good toss of the wok and that was that.

The white pepper that I hardly ever use in my cooking was a revelation here. As was the rice wine. This is getting done again fairly soon!

I made it slightly different last night, inspired by a photo of a pizza in Florence I saw on the internet, with Ponte Vecchio in the background. It made me squeak that it’s only early October and we’re not going to Italy for months, but my pizza this evening was one of the best. The stuffed crust had nothing to do with it, though, maybe just the looks?!

I made it all the usual way, but wrapped up some mozzarella in the edges. What it needed instead was a stronger cheese, medium cheddar maybe, but the mild, modest mozzarella got lost and could hardly be tasted. So I just spread the tomato sauce, chopped mozzarella on top, parmesan and I baked it so plain. Once out of the oven, prosciutto di San Danielle went on, a touch ( ok, a bit more than a touch) of truffle salsa and a drizzle of truffle sauce. For me – food heaven. Florek said I’ve overdone  truffle flavour, but CAN YOU ACTUALLY OVERDO TRUFFLE FLAVOUR?????…..

Vanilla panna cotta with strawberry compote to finish with. Simple, sweet, indulgent.

Cauliflower used to be my food hell when I was a child.  I remember my Mum having to mash it into tiniest pieces not to be spotted on the surface of the soup, otherwise I would not go anywhere near it. Cooked pieces of cauliflower as a side dish made me sick just looking at it.  But that was a long time ago. Now I am a huge fan of cauli. Particularly love it as a side to meats, feed lots of it to my family and this lunch time gave them a soup, the recipe from latest Good Food.

A shallot fried on olive oil, small cauli cut in florets in, 3 small spuds,chicken stock, lid on and it cooked for about 12-15 minutes.  In the meantime I chopped some chorizo and some sourdough and quickly panfried it with a little bit of garlic.

When the cauliflower was nice and soft, I blitzed it all into a creamy goodness, improved the greyish colour with a splash of double cream, seasoned generously, added some chopped parsley and that was that. Izzie scoffed down a bowl of it minus chorizo, we enjoyed the whole lot. Yum.

Wiola and Marcin brought me 2 bags of fruit the other day from Wiola’s boss’s orchard. Lots of pink, juicy apples and some delicious plums, less than 3 kg of those.  It took me 2 days to decide to try and make  a plum preserve, similar to what my Mum’s been making for years.  Jars have been ordered, Mum has been consulted and yesterday I made a start.  Chopped and deprived of stones, they went into the pan with a splash of water.

The smell the plums gave out while cooking was fantastic. I fried them gently for about 4-5 hours yesterday, stirring often to avoid any burning, then restarted the process this morning, another 4 hours, till massively reduced, thick, darkened and making hot lava sounds. Towards the end of the cooking I sweetened it to taste. Kept on adding and kept on tasting, careful, as did not want to end up with too sweet preserve or worse- a sour one that I’d not enjoy eating.

And so, 2 hours after the postie delivered the jars, this is what I had on the island;

The jars were filled with 3 cm space from the top while preserve was hot, turned upside down and left to cool in this position. 4 jars of preserve from nearly 3 kg of plums. A very good start though, I’d say!

This year we have super hot summer, nearly 2 months of heat. It’s also the first year of my growing tomatoes, which struggle in the small greenhouse in 45 degrees plus.  As I’m a beginner, notes are being taken for things to be improved next year. First of all, much bigger pots will be purchased. Each one of my toms is standing in a 5 litre pot and needs to be watered up to twice a day. Not ideal, there will be bigger pots next year. And Florek is working on a computer controlled( obviously!:-/) watering system, so that we woudn’t have to ask people to water them, when we’re on holidays, like Jon did in June.

My dad in law argued a couple of weeks ago, what is the point of growing the tomatoes, if there’s plenty of them in a supermarket. Well, an hour ago I’ve brought 2 good handfuls of cherry tomatoes from greenhouse; they have super hard skins, but underneath….candy. Sweet, warm from the sun, bursting in the mouth goodness.

We eat lots of them served the simple way we tried in Italy- roughly chopped, sprinkled with chopped shallot-generously, seasoned with salt and pepper and drowned with good Italian olive oil. Once eaten, what’s left on the plate is a pool of tomato juice and olive oil, sponged off with crusty bread- food heaven. Next year- onwards with homegrown tomatoes and other veggies. 🙂

Found in Waitrose magazine last night. I flipped through it, as I happened to finish reading my book and ended up showered  and with nothing to read at 9pm.  There were at least 3 good ideas how to use up lovely summer veg, so I rushed to Waitrose this afternoon and stocked up on some luxury items ( vanilla bean paste, thick and sweet Belazu balsamic vinegar, a bottle of Gruner Veltliner, pine nuts) and some raspberries, veggies and stuff.

Risotto that emerged took some more time to make, as tomatoes and courgettes needed to be roasted first, about 30 minutes with olive oil and seasoning, skins taken off the toms and then mixed in with the hot chicken stock. Also, I normally just sweat a shallot, this time apart from it also a carrot went in and a garlic love, I can’t say it made a tremendous difference to the taste. Arborio rice in, then usual story of wine and stock, not too much wine though, as I made The Child eat the risotto too today. Towards the end the roasted courgettes added, parmesan, lime zest ( the last of the Amalfi coast lemon I had) and basil and a few fresh green peas – a nod towards The Child.

One of the best risottos to date, the lime zest is genius.

I still have a slight sting of chili on my palate after destroying 3 of them. I accidentally ordered a piece of smoked cod fillet, it was to be fresh. I had different idea as to what to make with it, but as it turned out to be smoked, I went with fishcakes.

I’ve not cooked anything special from Mary Berry’s cookbook I’ve bought a few weeks ago, but while looking through it I found that Mary recommends poaching fish for fishcakes (I normally pan fried it), in milk, no less, with a couple of bay leaves and peppercorns. I threw some shrimps in too, poached alongside the cod. Cooked and mashed the potatoes, added the flaked fish and chopped prawns, chucked in a good handful of fresh coriander, some chili, thinly sliced shallot and seasoned it all well.  After a few hours in the fridge I shaped the fishcakes, tossed them in flour, egg and then breadcrumbs, panfried and served with spicy mayo, green salad and a glass of cold pinot gris.  To the enjoyment of my meal added the third installment of Helen Fields’ crime thrillers, “Perfect Death”.  Perfect meal. Fab fishcakes, the smoky fish is the way to go.

Florek being away, I dined on what I fancied without looking back at  what his fowl preferences were. 🙂   I shared my roast chicken thighs with Dustin, that was all. The thighs were from Waitrose, the dressing consisted of 2 anchovies fillets mashed with a garlic clove, a splash of olive oil, a good handful of parmesan. A tsp of mayo and half that of mustard, lots of black pepper. A squeeze of lemon juice.

Croutons were made 2 hours before, romaine lettuce roughly chopped. Chicken added, well tossed with the dressing. Extra parmesan on top, shaved.

During my short working period at Ramsay’s Plane Food I served a lot of these, I remember having to ask people how they felt about anchovies. Having made my own dressing this evening I can’t imagine not having them in. So much rich and delicious flavour!

Destroyed the lot with a glass of Chilean cab sav. Splendid. 🙂