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Portobello and prosciutto open sandwich

A quick and dirty supper dish: with the help of a food processor, this one will only take you half an hour to make. I’ve set fat Portobello mushrooms, roasted with a garlic and herb butter and covered with crisp crumbs, on top of sweet slices of brioche, with a few paper-thin slices of prosciutto draped over the top. Easy as anything, and cooking mushrooms like this really brings out their curious meatiness.

I’ve used panko breadcrumbs, which are gorgeously malty and crisp, to add some crunch to the mushrooms while soaking up some of the herby, buttery juices. If you can’t find any, just use some crumbs you’ve whizzed up from stale slices of bread in the food processor.

Look to serve each diner two open sandwiches. For each sandwich, you’ll need:

1 plump Portobello mushroom
1 clove garlic
1 small handful (15g) parsley
1 small handful (15g) chives
1 small handful (15g) oregano
30g salted butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon Japanese panko breadcrumbs
1 thick slice brioche (make sure you get a variety without vanilla essence)
2 slices prosciutto
Salt and pepper
Dijon mustard to spread

Preheat the oven to 200°C .

Put the herbs, garlic, butter and lemon juice in the bowl of the food processor and whizz until everything is chopped and blended with the butter. Place the mushrooms, gill side up, in a baking tray, and dollop the herb butter mixture evenly on them. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with the panko crumbs, and roast for 20 minutes.

Toast the brioche and spread each slice with a little Dijon mustard. Lay a roast mushroom on top, drizzling over some of the pan juices, and top with two paper-thin slices of prosciutto. This is oddly delicious with a very cold glass of Pinot Gris.

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Chicken with morels

Rummaging in my kitchen cupboards last week, I had a very pleasant surprise – I found a pot of dried morel mushrooms which I’d bought last year and forgotten about. Morels are an utterly delicious mushroom, with a honeycomb-textured cap and a subtle and delicate flavour, much less musky than some other wild mushrooms. They can be very expensive, but it’s worth shopping around: I found mine in a shop in Nice last year, where they were cheaper than they are in the UK.

The morel season is short, so you’re most likely to be able to find them dried. (If you see them fresh anywhere, snap them up; a fresh morel is a thing of wonder.) Some people out there take morels very seriously – The Great Morel is just one of a number of websites dedicated to this fabulous little fungus, and is well worth a browse.

I chose to make a chicken dish to show my morels off to their best advantage. You don’t require any complicated spicing here -with the crème fraîche and white wine in the sauce, the morels make this a velvety-rich dish with exceptional flavour. To serve two, you’ll need:

2 plump chicken breasts, with skins
8 large dried morel mushrooms
3 shallots
2 fat cloves garlic
1 glass white wine
100ml water
5 tablespoons home-made chicken stock
3 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche
Juice of half a lemon
1 handful fresh chervil
2 heaped tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

Soak the dried morels in 100ml of freshly boiled water for half an hour. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on fresh morels, skip this step, and replace the soaking liquid later in the recipe with chicken stock. (If your morels are not as large as those in the picture above, feel free to use a few more.) Dice the shallots and chop the garlic.

Melt the butter and olive oil in a sauté pan, and heat over a medium flame until the butter starts to bubble. Slide the chicken breasts in, skin side down, and cook for about seven minutes, until the skin is golden. Turn the chicken over and add the diced shallots and the garlic to the oil in the pan. Move the shallots and garlic around in the pan with a spatula until the shallots are turning translucent, then add the morels, reserving their soaking liquid, and continue to sauté for two minutes.

Pour the mushrooms’ soaking liquid (being careful to avoid any gritty bits at the bottom of the bowl) and the wine around the chicken with five tablespoons of home-made chicken stock. The sauce in the pan should simmer – allow it to bubble down and evaporate until you have less than a third of the volume of liquid that you started with. Stir in the crème fraîche and simmer for another minute. The sauce should be glossy. Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with the chervil and serve with mashed potatoes, which you can use to mop up the gorgeous sauce, and a green vegetable.

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Steak and wild mushroom pie

pieAstute readers will notice that recently I’ve been obsessing somewhat about puff pastry. This should be your last puff pastry recipe for a bit – use a roll from the supermarket chiller cabinet or make your own using the recipe for curry puffs.

Dried wild mushrooms are great. A small handful, especially when simmered for a long time with the meat as in this dish, will infuse the whole pie with a wonderful rich, earthy fragrance. I’ve also used some fresh mushrooms here to bulk out the pie and to add some texture. Try different kinds of mushroom when you make this – my dried mushrooms were cepes, summer boletes and girolles, while I chose lovely firm little Crimini mushrooms (a bit like button mushrooms, but a darker chestnut colour) to add at the end.

pie crustA note on the pastry decoration – a pastry rose on top of a pie is, in Lincolnshire, where my Great Grandma lived, a visual cue to remind you in the larder that it’s a meat pie, and not a fruit pie. Just make a small pastry spiral for the centre and glue on some petals around the outside with some beaten egg.

To serve two (heartily) you’ll need:

1 lb stewing steak, diced
8 shallots, quartered
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon flour
1 small handful dried mushrooms
1 punnet fresh mushrooms
Juice of ½ a lemon
1 wine glass vermouth
½ pint good stock
Salt and pepper
Olive oil and butter to fry
Puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

Set the dried mushrooms to soak in ½ a pint of freshly boiled water.

Brown the steak in batches in the olive oil, and remove to a plate. Set aside. Sauté the shallots in the same oil with two cloves of sliced garlic until they are soft, with brown edges. Return the meat to the pan with a tablespoon of flour and stir well. Add the mushrooms and their soaking liquid. Pour over the vermouth and the stock, and simmer with no lid on a low heat for an hour or so, until the sauce is thick and reduced.

Sauté the chopped fresh mushrooms in butter with another clove of garlic in a separate pan. When they give up their juices, add the lemon juice, and continue to cook until nearly all the liquid is gone. Stir into the reduced meat and mushroom pan, and season the whole mixture to taste.

Transfer the mixture to a pie dish and top with pastry. Cut a hole in the centre to allow the steam to escape, and decorate with a rose, glazing with the beaten egg. Bake the pie at 200° C for 25 minutes, until brown and glossy.

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Shooter’s sandwich

I first came across this recipe on the Two Fat Ladies’ television show a decade or so ago. Their version of a shooter’s sandwich was very plain – just a steak, salt, pepper and two Portobello mushrooms inside a hollow loaf of bread. My recipe for this perfect picnic food is a bit more exciting, with more steak, more mushrooms, plenty of garlic, fresh herbs, some sauteed wild mushrooms and a generous spiking of vermouth. It’s delicious, and it looks so fantastic when you slice into it that your fellow picnickers will be speechless first with awe and later because it’s very hard to talk through a mouthful of mushrooms and meat.

The sandwich looks complex, but it’s very easy to prepare. The secret is in the long pressing it receives between two chopping boards. To make enough for four (alongside other picnic nibbles) you’ll need:

1 loaf white bread
2 sirloin steaks, a bit shorter than the loaf
4 Portobello mushrooms
1 handful dried mushrooms
4 cloves garlic
1 handful fresh herbs (I used parsley, marjoram, chives and thyme)
½ wineglass vermouth (I used Noilly Prat)
Olive oil
Butter

Cover the dried mushrooms (I used a mixture of porcini, shitake and oyster mushrooms) with boiling water and set aside. Slice one end off the loaf and hollow out the middle, setting the soft crumb to one side.

Saute the steaks, seasoned with pepper but without salt, for two minutes per side in the olive oil. Remove to a plate. It is important that your steaks are rare so that they give up their moisture to the sandwich when pressed.

Reduce the heat and melt one knob of butter in the pan with the olive oil from the steaks. Saute the Portobello mushrooms with two smashed cloves of garlic until the mushrooms are soft and starting to release their juices. Transfer to the plate with the steaks.

Melt the other knob of butter in the same pan, and drain the dried mushrooms, reserving their liquid. Saute the dried mushrooms with two more smashed cloves of garlic for about five minutes, then add half the soaking liquid and the vermouth. Simmer until all this liquid is reduced to a few tablespoons of glossy syrup.

Season the steaks and mushrooms with plenty of salt and some more pepper. Build layers of steak, Portobello mushrooms, wild mushrooms and herbs inside the loaf until you have used everything up – if any cracks appear in the loaf, patch with the crumb you reserved. Pour any juices from the plate into the sandwich with the liquid from the pan. Wipe the cut end of the loaf in any remaining pan juices and put it back on the loaf. Wrap the whole thing in three layers of greaseproof paper and tie up tightly with string.

Place the loaf on a chopping board so the steaks are lying horizontally. Place another chopping board on top of the loaf and weight it down – I used two large, cast-iron pans and both sets of weights from the scales. Leave the sandwich (no need to refrigerate) for five hours.

Serve the sandwich by simply slicing through the whole stuffed loaf with a breadknife. The steaks will be juicy, the pressed mushrooms silky, and the whole thing full of concentrated flavour. If it’s too late in the year for picnics, don’t worry; just serve with some hot sauteed potatoes for a filling supper. Make a martini with some more of the vermouth if you feel that way inclined, and enjoy.

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Chicken with fairy ring mushrooms

Waitrose usually carries at least one seasonal wild mushroom, with several on the shelves in the autumn. At the moment, it’ s mousseron mushrooms, usually called the fairy ring mushroom in the UK. (Not by Waitrose, though – perhaps mousseron sounds more tasty.) The fairy ring is a tender, round-capped, yellow fungus with a subtle but delicious flavour. It’s the mushroom you see growing in circles in lawns, and you can pick your own – but do be careful to check any mushrooms you pick in the wild in a good mushroom identification book. I’d recommend Peter Jordan’s Mushroom Picker’s Foolproof Field Guide.

Thyme, garlic and the slight tang of crème fraîche are gorgeous with these little mushrooms. They’re pretty tiny and shrink down further on cooking, so to eat them as an accompaniment you’ll need a few boxes of them. To make them go as far as you can, you can use the mushrooms to make a sauce. Like this, they’re wonderful with chicken. I was only able to find chicken without skin, so I wrapped pancetta around it to add a little fat and to keep the moisture in. If you’ve got good chicken breasts with skin on, you can leave the pancetta out if you like; just brown the skin well when you saute.

To serve two, you’ll need:

2 plump chicken breasts
6 slices pancetta
1 punnet fairy ring (mousseron) mushrooms
4 shallots, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
A few sprigs of thyme
Butter for sauteeing
Salt and pepper

Place a sprig of thyme on each chicken breast, and wrap pancetta around the breast, holding the thyme in place. You shouldn’t need to secure it; as the pancetta cooks, it will stop being flexible enough to unroll. Saute gently for about eight minutes per side, until the pancetta is golden-brown.

While you saute the chicken, melt some butter in another small pan and soften the shallots and garlic. When the shallots are transluscent, add the mushrooms and a sprig of thyme. Saute, keeping everything on the move, until the mushrooms are cooked and soft.

Add the crème fraîche to the mushroom pan, stir briskly until everything is amalgamated, and season. Put a pool of the mushroom sauce on each plate and place the cooked chicken on top. I served this with mashed potatoes, and a green salad with a sharp dressing.

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Whole sirloin of beef with prosciutto, porcini and herbs

Christmas dinner for twelve people is a tricky one. Several of the people present admitted that they didn’t like turkey, some had moral issues around the consumption of ducks (no, I don’t get it either) and no goose this large was going to cook without being dry. Was any bird outside the Emperor Penguin going to be big and festive enough? Would those who had been to see March of the Penguins forgive me? Were dead, French-trimmed penguins readily available in Cambridgeshire?

Eventually I decided that this was unlikely, and remembered that cows come in handy, family-sized joints. I ran straight to Waitrose and ordered a whole sirloin of beef – at £60, this works out as surprisingly good value when you realise it will easily serve twelve with ample leftovers.

Cambridge boasts an excellent Italian delicatessen in Balzano’s at 204 Cherry Hinton Road (01223 246168). I spent a further £25 on 40 large, paper-thin slices of prosciutto, and £15 on ten small, Italian packs of porcini (cepes). I love Balzano’s. It’s a short walk from my work, and they sell every antipasto you can think of: huge jars of artichoke hearts in olive oil, enormous Kilner jars of anchovies, tubs of fresh pesto, roast vegetables and tiny capers. They also stock excellent Italian preserved goods: Barilla pastas and sauces, tins of traditional fennel sauces, nut and chocolate confections and a healthy line in fascinating little biscuits.

Having bought Balzano’s out of Panforte di Siena and the oddly German (but still welcome) packs of lebkuchen, I carted my treasure home, refrigerated it all until Christmas day, then drove it to my parents’ house first thing in the morning and got cooking. Mum and Dad’s house made sense in that they have twelve chairs to my six, a large table to my small one, an Aga and a conventional oven, as well as four gas hobs and two Aga ones. Mr Weasel and his family followed on later, wisely keeping out of my harried way.

I rolled out two sheets of greaseproof paper large enough to wrap the sirloin in, and laid the ham in a thick, unbroken layer on top of it. I soaked the mushrooms for half an hour in hot water from the kettle, and, keeping the soaking water aside, fried them in quarter of a pat of butter with a bulb of chopped garlic until the liquid had evaporated, leaving them glossy, then added the juice of a lemon and a glass of Marsala. When this had bubbled away as well, I spread the nearly dry mushrooms and garlic on the ham, reserving a small handful, and covered them with a thick layer of of chopped tarragon, parsley and sage. I placed the raw sirloin on top of the layered prosciutto, mushrooms and herbs, and used the greaseproof paper to wrap it in them, Swiss-roll style, folding ham over the ends and tying the whole bundle tightly. I put it in a large roasting dish, with another bulb of whole, unpeeled cloves of garlic tucked in around it.

These photographs, incidentally, are the reason you’re reading this a week and a half after Christmas. I remembered all the meat but forgot my camera, and had to use my Dad’s. The bits of handshaking which meant the pictures from his camera would end up on my computer ended up rather more complicated than they needed to be . . . still, they’re here now, so read on.

A beef sirloin will cook amazingly fast, even one of this size. Mine needed an hour and a half in the top (roasting) oven of the Aga, which runs at around 190c. The best way to tell how yours is doing is to use a meat thermometer, stabbed into the middle of the joint before you start to cook. Keep an eye on the thermometer from 45 minutes into the cooking time. When the needle reaches ‘rare’, take the joint out and rest it on a serving dish for ten minutes.

I deglazed the juices and sticky deposits in the pan to make an intense, rich gravy with the mushroom stock, the reserved mushrooms, half a pint of Marigold vegetable stock, another two glasses of Marsala and half a pint of crème fraîche, all simmered until reduced and silky.

I served the beef with King Edward potatoes roasted in goose fat, Brussels sprouts (steamed and served with roast chestnuts), petits pois a l’étoufée (peas cooked in a light vegetable stock with lettuce, butter and spring onions) and Yorkshire puddings, cooked in muffin tins.

After a starter of gravadlax, with a homemade dill sauce and foie gras with quince jelly, we launched upon the main course. And a happy silence fell on the chattering table, which is the best Christmas compliment I could have had. I’m already looking forward to next year, when perhaps I will get my hands on that penguin.

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Crostini al funghi – mushrooms on toast for grown-ups

Mushrooms on toast is a noble and ancient English nursery tea. When I was tiny, I read Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit and loved it dearly; Little Grey Rabbit would peel the pinky-beige satin skins off field mushrooms and stroke them before cooking them on her stove. In love with the bunny, I developed a fascination with mushrooms.

I’m grown up now. I can’t eat mushrooms on toast without being all post-ironic about it. In this form, though, kiddies’ mushrooms on toast becomes elevated to a dinner party amuse bouche; a gorgeous, silky, creamy, rich cloud of mushrooms on crisp slices of grilled ciabatta.

I still eat it for tea. What the hell; I’m posh.

To serve three for a grown-up nursery supper, you’ll need:

1 large knob of butter
1 punnet small chestnut mushrooms, sliced thin
1 punnet shitake mushrooms, sliced thin
4 shallots, chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small handful (palmful, really) dried porcini mushrooms, soaked
A glug of Marsala
1/4 pint cream
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 large handful chopped parsley
Salt and pepper
1 ciabatta

Melt the butter over a medium heat in a non-stick pan until it’s bubbling gently, and turn the fresh mushrooms, shallots and garlic into it. Saute, stirring frequently, until they soften and give up their juices. Add the soaked porcini, and continue to saute until all the juices have evaporated.

Add the Marsala (about a shot-glass full) and simmer until it’s all evaporated and the alcohol has burned off. Add the cream, cayenne pepper and mustard, and stir in the lemon juice, tasting all the time (you might want to use more or less than half a lemon). Simmer until the mixture bubbles and thickens, stir in the parsley off the heat, and season to taste.

While you cook the mushrooms, slice a ciabatta diagonally into ten, and toast the slices until crisp. Pile the mushrooms on the ciabatta slices, and serve immediately. Little Grey Rabbit was missing a trick.

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Babi chin – Braised pork with soy beans

Tonight, I feel like something Malaysian. Wandering around Tesco, I realise it’s my lucky day; one of my favourite cuts of meat in Chinese and Malaysian terms is pork belly, which is full of flavour (and full of fat – but where do you think that flavour comes from?), and which becomes sticky and rich when braised for a long time. (It also makes a wonderful, crackling roast, which I hope to explore in a later post.) Pork belly is not a remotely popular thing in the UK, and, absurdly, this very tasty cut is only £1.50 for 160 grams. I look around at the grim women pushing joyless trolleys full of chicken nuggets and frozen pizzas, and think unrepeatably uppity thoughts. There is nothing like a Friday evening spent simmering things that smell nice, and feeling smug.

This dish uses cinnamon, which you may think of as a dessert spice. Try it with the meat in this recipe; you’ll add it at the beginning, in a paste with the onions and garlic, where it becomes beautifully aromatic. You’ll also need some black bean and garlic sauce, which is available in Chinese supermarkets, and a good five-spice powder.

Proper five-spice powder contains Szechuan peppercorns (not really a pepper, but a dried berry), star anise, cloves, fennel and more cinnamon. A good source in Cambridge is Daily Bread, a wholefood warehouse where they grind their own spices. They sell spices in containers of different sizes; little plastic bags, jam jars and enormous great sacks. (It’s a pretty inexpensive way to buy spices; if you’re in the area, give them a try. They are Christians of a slightly maniacal bent, but hey; the spices are good.)

Babi chin is another dark and rich recipe, and good for warming you from within. You’ll need the following:

1 medium onion
5 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon dark soya sauce
1 glass Shaoxing rice wine
3 tablespoons (half a jar) garlic black bean sauce (see photo)
2 teaspoons five spice powder
1 lb pork belly (with skin), sliced into bite-sized cubes
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, sliced into coins
6 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked
5 spring onions, whole
Water (to cover)
1 tablespoon groundnut oil

Chop the onion and garlic as fine as possible in a blender with the cinnamon. Heat the oil and fry the onion, garlic and cinnamon mixture until golden. Add the black bean sauce, the soya sauce, the five spice powder and sugar, and stir fry for two more minutes.

Add the pork and ginger, with a glass of rice wine and enough water to barely cover it with the sauce ingredients. Stir well to mix and increase the heat under the wok to high. Boil the sauce briskly until it is thick and reduced (about fifteen minutes). Add more water (about a pint) and bring to a simmer.

Add the soaked mushrooms and the spring onions. Lower the heat under the wok, cover it and simmer, stirring occasionally until the pork is meltingly tender (aim to be able to cut it without a knife). If you feel the sauce is too thick, add a little more water. Serve with rice.

This is beautiful, glossy, and syrupy. If I were in Malaysia, I’d have put some sugar cane in there with the pork. Sadly, I’m in Cambridgeshire. Sugar cane is not really considered a commodity over here. I need a holiday somewhere where interesting things grow.

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Mushroom risotto

It’s cold. It’s windy. When these conditions prevail, our bodies are programmed to do something rather special. They are programmed to crave stodge.

One organism, the mushroom, does better than we do in the cold, leafy months. The supermarket shelves are overflowing with punnets upon punnets of mushrooms, and they’re quite reasonably priced. On top of this, almost everybody I know seems to have a cold at the moment, and I think some garlic, said to have a mild antibiotic effect, is in order. Stodge, mushrooms and garlic. This is a perfect excuse for some mushroom risotto.

Carnaroli is my favourite risotto rice. It’s a fat, short grain which will absorb more than its own weight in stock, and cooks to a fluffy, swollen, creamy risotto. If you can find carnaroli rice, do try using it instead of arborio, which is more often sold as a risotto rice in supermarkets.

For six people, I use:

500g fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 small handful dried cepes (porcini), soaked, the soaking water reserved
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
1 large handful parsley, chopped
1/2 a teaspoon cayenne pepper
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 pints of stock
5 shallots, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
400g carnaroli rice
1 glass marsala
2 tablespoons creme fraiche
4 heaped tablespoons grated parmesan
3 large knobs of butter
Olive oil
Seasoning

I used shitake mushrooms (meaty, robust little beasts which keep a good, toothsome texture; they don’t melt to a slime) and oyster mushrooms (less good, honestly, but still pretty darn nice). I don’t wash them, but wipe them instead with kitchen towel so that they don’t absorb unwanted water. I fried all the mushrooms (including the cepes) with two of the cloves of garlic and half the thyme in a mixture of butter and olive oil, and when they were cooked, stirred in the parsley, squeezed over the lemon and sprinkled over a little salt and some cayenne pepper.

While the mushrooms were frying, I made the risotto base. The celery, shallots, the rest of the garlic and the rest of the thyme were sauteed in oil and butter, and when soft the rice was added, and then fried gently, without changing colour, for a couple of minutes until transluscent.

I added the marsala, and stirred until it was all absorbed. Then I added the soaking liquid from the cepes and stirred until that was all absorbed. The two pints of stock were then added a ladle at a time, each time stirring and stirring until all the liquid had gone before adding another ladle.

After about twenty minutes, the liquid was all absorbed, and the rice creamy and tender. I stirred in the mushrooms, cheese and creme fraiche. Serve this quickly, while it’s still hot and moist. I have managed to convert at least one mushroom-hater with this risotto – try it yourself, and open your arms and welcome winter.