Have a look at what I managed to get my hands on a few weeks ago.

In Derbyshire!

Bonkers!!

See my hands were still shaking when I got back from Morrisons, my local shop in Belper.

Whats that then?

Kholrabi.

Khol what?

Kholrabi.

That was my conversation with the checkout girl, who was as shocked as I was to see all this queer gear, in Derby, in November, 2012.

So, anyway, after last times lamb debacle up at Highfield House, I thought I'd play safe and get a fat bit of pig.

It's belly to be precise.

Scored, rubbed with salt and oil, it was ready to go into a nice hot oven for an hour and a half, and all of that lovely fat will keep it beautifully moist as well, an added bonus.

All I had to do then was roast some  root vegetables, slam that pork in the oven, and it would be a perfect winter Sunday night supper.

Beetroot was next up, and the best way of cooking it is just to wrap it in some foil, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and some thyme, baked for an hour, its a dead simple way of preparing it.

All you need to do then is peel it, while it's still warm is the easiest way to do it, your fingers get a bit pink, but that's alright as its such a brilliant veg, and by the time you've spent scrubbing the potatoes they will be clean again anyway!

So, they can be put to one side, and all the other garnishes can be sorted.

This was a stroll in the park.

The khol was just peeled, cut into batons and blanched, along with some peppery breakfast radishes, baby onions and runner beans.

All procured from my local corner shop!

That's how we do it at the restaurant, everything is prepared, ready for a final saute, a bit of fresh butter, some herbs and its ready.

The washed potatoes were left unpeeled, but sliced very finely, brushed with melted butter, more thyme and baked in the oven.

It's great to put in some cheese and garlic but I wanted this dinner to be a bit lighter.

The beetroot was just sprinkled with some red wine vinegar, Maldon salt and olive oil, and served on the side, because if you saute with all the other veg it will bleed into it and make it go a bit of a strange colour.

Some spinach was picked and washed, and as that only takes about thirty seconds to cook I knew tonights dinner was in the bag!

I don't think I could have prepared a lazier Sunday dinner!

And, I got a feeling it might be a little bit good for me as well, what a result!

Although all that crackling might have lowered its super healthy life prolonging properties.

Anyway, sod that, it was far too good to leave.

So, there you are, the easiest, laziest, colourful Sunday dinner ever.

And as it was all so bonkers I'd thought I go back next week and have some more.

So I did.

And this was what I got, and I didn't even have a drink before!

But this time I was too scared to go to the checkout so I went to one of those stupid self service ones.

Big mistake!

Trying to type in kerela and weighting 30g of curry leaves, on a packed Sunday afternoon was real pressure, and as usual, no one knew the correct code, so it took ages.

I think I might be barred next time I cause such a commotion.

But it wasn't all my fault, if they want to start selling all this amazing produce maybe, just maybe, someone should programme their rubbish computers!

God, I'll need a holiday after all this stress!

So, as always, pushing on and getting it done, I knew exactly what I was going to do with the kerela, or bitter melon, as it's also known.

It needed to be de seeded, salted for half an hour and then cooked in simmering water until just tender.


I was then going to make a garlicy, sweet sauce to finish cooking the kerela in, adding some tamarind water, cane sugar, chillies, cumin and the shredded curry leaves.


It needed to be cooked down, nice and slowly, until thick and sticky, perfect to go with little rolled lamb kebabs I had knocked up.

These are easy, minced lamb with crushed ginger and garlic, red chilli powder, mint sauce, yes just mint sauce from a jar, plenty of salt and that's it.

But you need to work the protein to make sure they stick together when you cook them, so into the kitchen aid they went.

First time I've used it actually, and it worked a treat.

So, now I had time to chop up a chicken, get a handful of those little thin green chillies, a massive amount of coriander, more ginger and garlic paste, and some turmeric, and my green chilli chicken fry was almost ready.

This ones a doddle, all you need to do is marinade the chicken for an hour or two, I've used the skinless breasts, get a pan red hot, and stir fry for ten minutes, until it's nice and dark and caramelised.

With the legs, I just boned them out, mixed ground Kashmiri chillies with lemon juice, cumin, garam massala, more ginger and garlic, and the tikka was ready to be cooked.

See how relaxed things are in my kitchen on a Sunday afternoon!


So all I have to do now is make sure every pan is hot enough to set off all the fire alarms, scare the cat and smoke out the house and I know I'm in business.

Some chapati's and naan breads are warmed up, a salad is tossed and thats it, we are off!

Lamb and kerela were up first, and I thought it was great, the tikka and salad were spot on but my favourite was the green chilli chicken fry.

Bloody hot though, and I was quite full after all that.

So another stress free Sunday lunch, courtesy of me, thank you very much!


Right, now time for a bit of history, and how everyone else is right, and I was wrong.

And I'm very,very sorry!

For those of you who bothered to read the last one, I was going to talk about how Bonfire night inspired this years pheasant dish, up at East Lodge (three AA rosettes 2012)!

And it did, well sort of.

Sausage rolls and toffee apples.

I think that these two things are often eaten, on Bonfire night, in a field, in the rain, going ooohhhh and aaaarrrrrhhhh, watching fireworks and waving sparklers.

I think.

And as I love sausages, and rolls, I wondered if we could make some pheasant and bacon sausage meat, wrap it in pastry, roll it up and cook it.

Turns out we could!

I wanted a nice rich pastry so we used half butter and half lard, minced the pheasant leg meat with lardo, smoked streaky bacon, herbs and marinated it in Madeira.

But I knew if all we did then was wrap it in the pastry, when we cooked it, all the juice would leak out, making the pastry base soggy.

And I didn't want a soggy botty!

So we needed some rusks, not those ones that babies eat, but rusk for putting into sausage meat.

It's basically dried breadcrumbs, blended to a fine powder, and it keeps the juices in the sausage, although you don't want to add too much as it will make the sausage taste bland, and heavy in texture.

The sausage meat just needed to be rested, the pastry rolled out, and that was first bit of the garnish taken care of.

We, pretty much, always serve some potatoes with our main courses, and so we need to have something we can part prepare in advance, so come service, when its all kicking off, we're not waiting for different potato garnishes to cook.



I was going to serve fondant potatoes with the pheasant, but I wanted a crisper texture, although fondants are a great garnish for loads of things, especially if you if do them like I do, and that's just using loads of butter, a pinch of salt and a splash of water.

The water stops the butter burning, cooked for about five, yes, five hours, they are brilliant.

So when you see all those guys on Masterchef trying to do one in an hour, you know they won't be anywhere near as buttery and soft as they should.

To be honest I could just eat a plateful of them on their own!

So a classic pommes Anna was made, with clarified butter and salt, nothing else. Cooked and then pressed overnight all we have to do is colour it on the plancha when the dish is called away.

We still needed to sort out the apple garnish, so I used Bramley apples, as I wanted their tartness to cut through the rich pheasant leg sausage roll, and I planned to make a really smooth, sweet, bright orange pumpkin puree as well so everything was going to be all sweet and sour, and as Halloween was just over I thought it would be nice to use up some pumpkins.

A parfait was made with the pheasant livers, some chicken liver, loads of butter and some reduced Port.

Cooking the breasts at 56 o c for thirty minutes ensures that they don't dry out, quickly seared on the plancha, to give them some colour and we're nearly there.

Batons of salsify and some tiny Brussels sprouts were going to be the garnish, so they are sauteed with some thyme leaves, and a light white poultry stock is foamed up with a touch of double cream and a dash of aged Sherry vinegar.

And that's it, a nice simple Bonfire night dish, using great Derbyshire game, all inspired by some mad blokes who tried blowing up Parliament!

And it is also a prototype for this years festive delight at East Lodge.

Shame they're not around today, most of the current M.P's need a large rocket up their backsides!

So, now we can move on to why, on most Sunday's Beeson had to endure me banging on about why cranberry sauce is wrong with turkey, but how I was massively wrong, and I'm sorry.

I can't remember exactly where it happened.



It might have been on the beach.

Or when I was enjoying a mid morning Bloody Mary by the pool.

Or a refreshing mid afternoon Cosmopolitan.

Or a pre dinner gin and tonic.

Or a tequila "three ways" as a nightcap.

Or having deep fried lobster tacos.

And then going back the next night, to order eight more as they were so good!

Or having the most delicious burger ever at Cancun airport.









All I know is, it happened.

Turkeys.
America.
Cranberries.
America.

Do you get it?

Same as pork and apples over here.

So I realised its perfectly fine to serve cranberry sauce with turkey.

So I did.

Roast turkey, cranberry sauce, 2012, Bradley style.

It just a good, old fashioned, traditional Christmas turkey dinner, just made a bit better!

Breast of turkey, water bather and then seared.
Turkey leg, minced with bacon, rusk, herbs, baked at 60 o c, pressed and pan fried.
Bread sauce cream gel.
Cranberry and Port gel.
Sage and onion stuffing.
Roasted potatoes.
Parsnip puree.
Grilled bacon.
Saute of honey glazed root vegetables and sprouts.
Turkey gravy.

So there you are, because of my relaxing on a Mexican beach, cranberries are always welcome in my kitchen!



Looks alright too, for a simple December dinner.


Just a couple more now, as I'm trying to get all this done because over the next few days it's going to go mental with all the new tasting menus, and I 'm going to have to CONCENTRATE!

Here's some beef "a la Bourguignon", that we are serving this winter.

Just a posh beef stew really.

Beef cheeks are marinated in red wine and then braised for twenty four hours, again in the bath.

The normal garnishes are all present and correct, smoked bacon, button mushrooms, baby glazed onions, red wine sauce, and served with a bowl of buttery mashed potatoes, and a couple of bits of grilled beef marrow.





Just in case its not rich enough!

All the elements are there, just like my roasted turkey, but all I have done it present them in a slightly more modern way, and because there are only a few things on the plate we have to make sure everything is perfect, like the red wine sauce is super shiny and rich, the creamed potatoes are incredibly buttery and smooth, the cheek is nicely glazed and the baby onions and mushrooms are spot on and all the same size.

See we don't spend all day discussing what car I'm getting next, and why German sports cars are superior to Japanese ones.

And, finally a couple of late Autumn desserts we have been enjoying this year.

I've heard of some chef's that do these two dishes all mixed up together, but I'm going to keep them apart.

I love rice pudding, absolutely, hot or cold, don't mind either.

But there was no way I was going to serve just rice pudding, I wanted more textures and a bit of sharpness as well.

I mean, can you imagine, a big mound of beautiful, creamy, soft rice pudding?

It's great on it's own but I thought about adding some caramelised rice, as a little garnish, mixed with some baked granola, that's also had some rum soaked raisins and poached dried apricots chopped into it.

The puffed rice is great to have around anyway, all you need to do is boil sugar to 121 oc then add the puffed rice, stir it around the pan until the sugar goes sort of sandy around the rice.
Tip it out and then, over a low heat, in a clean pan, stir the rice until it starts to caramelise.
It will turn a beautiful dark brown and end up all crunchy, tip it out onto some baking parchment, eat about half of it, and then start again!

So we've got super soft creamy chilled rice pudding and a little crunchy puffed rice garnish.

A jug of cold,vanilla packed, creme Anglaise is also served, warm blackberries, blackberry puree and sorbet are then added.


And, then, the best thing to serve with blackberries.

Apples!

My mum loves apple fritters, but no one seems to bother doing them anymore, so I thought I'd bring them back.

A batter is made with plain flour, whipped egg whites, a little yeast and sugar.

Cox's apples are marinated in a rum stock syrup, dusted with corn flour, dipped in the batter and deep fried in red hot oil, left for a few minutes, drained and then rolled in caster sugar.

So we have really hot, sweet and sharp apple fritters, nice fruity blackberries, ambroisal rice pudding, a little puffed rice and nut granola and a jug of custard.                                                                              

It's come off the menu now, but we are still serving loads of these.

A good, old fashioned Christmas pudding, brandy sauce and some brandy poured over the top.

See, I can leave some things alone!

And, then, finally, just in case some people have not eaten enough, a few dainty mince pies.

I've heard, that some people in Derbyshire can eat over four hundred in December!

That's pushing on!

Some other people might think they are too small, but then again they probably don't even know the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon.

The teaspoon is on the left, by the way.

It's used to stir tea.

And coffee.

So there you are, a festive delight from The Amber Valley.

Ok, I'm exhausted now, I've been sitting down, for four hours, writing this.

On a chair.

Drinking wine, and eating peanuts.

Listening to music.

Bloody knackered, I am!

I'll tell you all about my bacon jam next time.

And the outcome of the ongoing car discussions in Shottle.

Recommended music tonight -

Driving home for Christmas (in my new car), by Chris Rea.