Lamb loin fillet with caper butter sauce

I'm having some trouble writing coherently today because I have one eye (OK - two eyes) on the news - I'm obsessing somewhat about the US election, and I really, really hope the polls are accurate. The BBC is currently showing helicopter footage of a queue of voters in Virginia - it's so long that a helicopter is the only way they can film it.

Here's a really fantastic lamb dish to serve to someone you're trying to impress. Loin fillets are seared in olive oil and roasted briefly, so they're still lovely and pink in the centre, then served with a butter sauce made dense and salty with shallots, anchovies and capers. The anchovies give amazing savoury depth and richness to the dish and go fabulously with lamb, but when cooked like this they don't taste fishy - in fact, they melt into the sauce so completely that you will be able to serve this to anchovy-haters with no problems.

To serve two, you'll need:

2 lamb loin fillets
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 shallots
4 anchovies
2 teaspoons capers (use tiny ones in wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon cream
100g salted butter
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Fresh basil to garnish

Crush the garlic and rub it all over the lamb with the lemon zest, a little salt and plenty of pepper. Put aside for an hour at room temperature. Preheat the oven to 200° C.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan until it starts to shimmer, and sear the lamb all over in it. The pan must be very hot - you're aiming to brown the lamb to a lovely mahogany colour. Place the whole, seared fillets in a roasting dish and put in the oven for ten minutes.
When the lamb has had ten minutes in the oven, take it out and rest it in its cooking dish in a warm place for another ten minutes while you make the sauce.

While the lamb is resting, make the sauce. Melt the butter in the frying pan (over a lower heat now) and add the finely chopped shallots. Simmer the shallots in the butter for five minutes, then add the anchovies and cook, stirring, until they have melted into the sauce. Still over a low heat, stir in the cream and capers, then use a balloon whisk to beat the lemon juice into the sauce. Start with half the juice and taste as you add more until you have a sauce which is tart and buttery all at once.

Slice the fillets into medallions and arrange on the plate with a drizzle of the sauce and some basil to garnish.

Sweet pepper salad

I've given quantities here for four diners, but you should be aware that this is one of those things that people will ask for seconds and thirds of, so cook a generous amount. This is a lovely sunshine-filled salad, assertively flavoured with garlic, fresh lemon juice, sweetly salty anchovies, and good olive oil.

The peppers are grilled and peeled before the salad is assembled. This makes them much more digestible (many people's stomachs are bothered by the indigestible skins of peppers in quantity), and gives them a wonderfully satiny texture. Allow your peppers to macerate in the fridge overnight (or preferably for two or three days), and you'll find that all the flavours in the dish meld sweetly into a gorgeous golden, silky whole.

To serve four, you'll need:

6 peppers - use a mix of red, yellow and orange
½ a lemon
4 anchovies in oil
3 cloves garlic
8 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Start by cutting each pepper into three or four segments (you'll be able to see the pepper's ribs - just cut along these). Discard the stalk and seeds, and lay the segments out, skin side up, on the grill tray.

Grill the peppers until the skins are brown and blistering. Put all the segments into a plastic freezer bag and knot the top, then leave the bag alone for about twenty minutes. The peppers will steam gently inside the bag, loosening their skins. When the peppers are cool, unseal the bag and start to peel the skins off. You'll find they come away easily. Do this over a bowl to catch any drips of sweet juice.

Cut the peeled segments of pepper into slim strips and put them in the bowl with the juice. Add the garlic, crushed or grated, the chopped anchovies, the lemon juice and the olive oil. Mix well, cover and refrigerate. The peppers will get better and better as they macerate, so feel free to leave them for up to three days - just remove them from the fridge a couple of hours before serving so they can come up to a toothsome room temperature.

Janssons frestelse - Jansson's temptation

I've three Swedish recipes coming up over the next few days, since I'm pretty sure you're getting sick of my endless riffing on Malaysian and Chinese things-with-rice. I've a soft spot for Scandinavian cuisine, which makes a lovely, hearty change when the weather starts to turn towards autumn. Swedish food is characterised by its use of dairy products, fish of all kinds, large game meats like reindeer, and preserved foods. You'll find relatively few vegetables in Scandinavian cookery; the long winters preclude much that is green and leafy.

This potato dish, flavoured with onions and anchovy (which ends up surprisingly mild and creamy), is a traditional part of the Swedish smorgasbord, a buffet where cold and hot foods are served up in several courses. I was lucky enough to try an authentic smorgasbord in a manor house in rural Lincolnshire (I've lived, I tell you) when I was a teenager. The place was run by a Swedish couple, and offered a glorious and fresh spread of cold, cured or smoked fish (no lutefisk as I recall, but if you're putting your own together, lutefisk would be very appropriate) as an opener. Sliced meats, cheese and a cucumber salad came next, followed by a third, hot course of those ubiquitous meatballs, stewed red cabbage, a venison casserole and a lovely, savoury gratin - Janssons frestelse. The restaurant is long gone now, but visits I've made later to Scandinavia have confirmed that what we ate that night was authentic and very well prepared. (The dish pops up in other countries in the region; I've eaten it as Janssonin kiusaus in Finland, and very good it was too.)

Although English recipes tend to use anchovies, spiced and preserved sprats (ansjovis in Swedish - you can see where the confusion came about) are usually used in this dish in Sweden. You can't find these fat, oily little preserved fish for love or money in the UK, so a really good preserved anchovy is your best bet. Sainsbury's do some absolutely glorious (and rather expensive) large anchovies preserved in oil with chillies in their world food section. These anchovies are very mild (you can eat them unaccompanied with your fingers, and they're not too salty, just very, very tasty), and work very well here. Otherwise, any good French brand will do. It's important that your anchovies are good quality ones, which will tend to have a softer, less fierce flavour - I know anchovy-haters who have been converted by this dish.

Stop press - I have been informed by a reader that Swedish ansjovis are, in fact, available at Ikea, of all places. Buy some next time you pop in for some shelving. Their Swedish meatballs are also fantastic.

I chose King Edward potatoes for their flavour and their ability to absorb the cream. This isn't totally authentic - you're more likely to find a more waxy potato in this dish in Sweden (I've even had it with new potatoes). I personally find that a floury potato works better for my own tastes, but you should feel free to experiment - if you want a waxier potato in the UK, Vivaldi would be excellent, as would Kestrel.

To make Janssons frestelse as a side dish for four to five people, you'll need:

4 large potatoes (I used King Edwards)
1 large sweet onion
10 anchovies preserved in oil
1 pint double cream
½ pint milk (you may need a little less)
1 handful breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
2 large tablespoons salted butter

Preheat the oven to 225° C (475° F). Slice the potatoes thinly and make a layer of slices in a fish-scale pattern in a 2 pint gratin dish. (Some recipes call for potatoes cut in matchsticks; others for grated potatoes; others for thin slices. It doesn't make any difference to the flavour, and you're likely to find thin slices more manageable.) Slice the onion thinly and place a layer of slices on top of the potatoes, seasoning with pepper as you layer. You won't need any salt; there is plenty of that in the anchovies. Lay out half the anchovies on top of the onions. Cover with a layer of potatoes, a layer of onions, more anchovies and a final potato layer. Pour over the cream, and sprinkle the top with the breadcrumbs mixed with the (totally inauthentic, so leave if out if you like) parmesan. Dot the surface with softened butter.

Bake in the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes. The cream will have been absorbed into the potatoes and some will also have evaporated - top the dish up with some milk. Continue to cook for another 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and the breadcrumbs are crisp.

Pasta with anchovy crumbs and gremolata

A great no-money recipe for the end of the month, when all the money has gone on beer and skittles. You probably have all these ingredients in the storecupboard already. This is a fiercely savoury dish, where the contrasting textures of crisply fried anchovy breadcrumbs and the soft pasta come together to make something really special.

Gremolata is a bit like a salsa verde - a finely-chopped Italian mixture of herbs, lemon zest and something sharp like capers. It's delicious with meats, and I love it with this pasta, where its freshness lifts the richness of the crumbs and infused oil.

It's important that you choose a good, well-flavoured olive oil for this recipe. Although it is tempting to use the oil you fried the crumbs in for infusing the garlic and chilli, it's best to use fresh extra-virgin olive oil instead. The heat that the breadcrumbs oil is subject to over the cooking period will change its flavour slightly, and you'll find you achieve a much fresher, more aromatic flavour from the infusing oil if you use a fresh batch and only allow it to warm gently.

To serve two you'll need:

2 slices white bread
8 anchovy fillets
4 fat cloves garlic
4 dried chillies
1 small handful parsley
1 small handful basil
Zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons capers
2 servings of your favourite pasta
Parmesan cheese to taste
Salt and pepper
Plenty of olive oil

Put the bread in the food processor and whizz until you've got coarse breadcrumbs. In a large frying pan, fry the anchovies in about half a centimetre of olive oil until they 'melt' and come to pieces. Add the breadcrumbs to the pan, stir them well to combine them with the anchovies, and add more olive oil to the pan until the breadcrumbs are just covered. (Don't worry; we'll be draining this oil later.) At this point, the contents of the pan will look like a wet mess. Turn the heat to medium and leave, stirring every minute or so: gradually the wet mess will turn into golden, crisp, anchovy flavoured crumbs (10-15 minutes). Turn the oil and breadcrumbs into a sieve and leave the sieve over a bowl for ten minutes for as much oil to drain out as possible.

While the crumbs are cooking, prepare the infused oil by crushing the garlic and frying it gently in a little olive oil until it releases its scent (about thirty seconds). Remove from the heat and add half a wine glass of extra-virgin olive oil to the pan. Bash the chillies in a mortar and pestle until they are flaked and add them to the oil. Return the pan to the heat and warm the oil gently, then leave it in a warm place to infuse until the pasta is ready to be served.

To prepare the gremolata, chop the herbs finely, and mix with the lemon zest and chopped capers in a small bowl. This is one of the rare occasions where I prefer capers preserved in a briny vinegar to the salted kind - use whatever you have to hand.

Cook the pasta as usual, drain and return to the pan you cooked it in. Pour over the garlic and chilli oil, then spoon into serving bowls. Dress generously with the crumbs and gremolata, check for seasoning, and serve with lots of parmesan cheese to grate over.

Anchovy and olive palmiers, tapenade

These little party biscuits are incredibly easy to make - they employ what's fast becoming one of my favourite modern conveniences, the refrigerated roll of puff pastry. There's a particular charm in the way that no matter how squashed-looking they are when you put them in the oven, the magic in the pastry means that they'll rearrange themselves into perfect rounded swirls (representing palm trees, hence the name) once the pastry starts to cook, without you having to exercise any particular artistic talent.

I like to make my own tapenade for these (I like it full of zip and garlic), but you can use a good shop-bought one if you like. Try experimenting with other ingredients; these palmiers are really excellent with sun-dried tomato paste, with pesto and with pounded artichoke hearts.

To make enough for nibbles for six, you'll need:

Tapenade
100g stoned black olives in oil (Try to find something that's not too salty in a flavourful marinade. I like Waitrose's Spanish Couchillo olives.)
Zest of 1 lemon
4 fat cloves of garlic
3 tablespoons salted capers, well-rinsed
8 anchovies in olive oil
1 fresh red chilli
2 tablespoons olive oil

Pastry
1 pack puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 200° C. Put all the tapenade ingredients in a food processor and blitz until smooth enough to spread.

Lay out the rectangle of puff pastry with the long end facing you, and spread the tapenade all over the surface. (If you have any tapenade left over, try it on some toast as a snack - it's delicious.) Roll up the side nearest you halfway towards the other side, then roll up the other side towards you to meet it. Using a very sharp knife, cut the rolled pastry into slices about half a centimetre thick.

Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and lay out the little pastry swirls, leaving enough room for the pastry to rise and puff. Bake for 20 minutes until crisp and golden, swapping the trays over halfway through. Serve warm with cold drinks.

Pissaladiere - French onion tart

We're going to the Côte d'Azur later in September, where we've rented a big manor house with a gaggle of friends. I'm looking forward to the cooking - I've missed French market and supermarket produce since Dr Weasel and I left Paris to live in the UK again a few years ago.

I thought I'd cook some Provencale recipes before we leave, just so I feel properly prepared. There is nothing more Provencale than Pissaladiere.

Pissaladiere is a delicious, sharply savoury little tart made from crisp puff pastry, onions cooked until they are sweet and glossy, anchovies and olives. A traditional Pissaladiere would use a preserved fish paste called pissala rather than the anchovies. I did not have an empty Kilner jar and a few pounds of tiny salted fish, so this little tart employs some very delicious Provencale anchovies I found in Waitrose, marinaded in garlic and herbs.

To serve one person (double the recipe to serve two, but I shall be posting another tart for the other half of the puff pastry tomorrow which you might want to serve alongside this), you'll need:

3 onions
½ sheet puff pastry from the supermarket chiller cabinet
1 large knob butter
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Anchovies to taste
15 olives (preserved in oil, not salt)
10 salted capers, rinsed

Slice the onions thinly and saute them in the butter over a low heat until they release their sugar and turn golden and sweet (about half an hour). Don't salt them; you'll get all the salt you need from the other toppings.

Use a sharp knife to cut the rectangle of pastry in half. Set one half aside for tomorrow's recipe. With the knife, score a line a centimetre from each edge of the pastry rectangle, so you end up with a smaller rectangle drawn inside it. The centimetre at the edges will be the puffy sides of the tart. Use a fork to make little holes in the inner rectangle. This will stop the part of the tart with the filling from rising.

Spread the soft, golden onions inside the inner rectangle. Lay the anchovies in a diamond pattern over them (you can slice them in half lengthways and use fewer for a less strong flavour; these particular anchovies were quite mild and mellow, so I left the fillets whole) and scatter over the thyme, capers and olives. I used a mixture of black, purple and green olives. Bake in a tray on a sheet of greaseproof paper at 200° C for 20-25 minutes, until the edges are golden and puffy, and the base is crisp.

This tart is delicious hot or cold. Try having one cold at a picnic, or making tiny Pissaladieres for a starter when you have a dinner party.