Food, glorious food!
Hot sausage and mustard
While we're in the mood
Cold jelly and custard

Oh food
Magical food,
Wonderful food,
Marvellous food,
Fabulous food!

Right then, I think you get the idea now.

This one's all about what I ate last weekend.
At my house.
In my kitchen.
At the table.
With Sophie.
And Agnes.
And a case of red wine.
And some white as well.

So, I'd purchased my meat, and all I had to do then was wait.


Just for a few hours, as I had to salt my pork belly and duck legs before cooking them.

A head of garlic was smashed up, some thyme was sprinkled over, black peppercorns crushed and sea salt mixed in.

Rubbed all over, it will remove water from the flesh, and make it juicier to eat.


Don't ask me how, it just does, that's all you need to know.

But it might be because the salt alters the fibres of the protein in the meat, allowing it to hold onto more moisture, or something like that!

Next time I'll tell you how the universe started as well.

The skin was removed from the pork belly, as I had another use for that later, but the duck leg skin remained in place.

And don't start worrying about all that salt giving me a heart attack, it won't.

Most of it is washed off, and it's done it's job of removing loads of excess water from the meat.

This is how we can make food last longer, think of anchovies, olives and capers.

They are all just salted, and left in their own brine.

Good idea, eh?

And, while on the subject of salt, I've just ordered some Himalayan salt blocks and Persian blue salt crystals to vajazz a couple of new dishes that I'm playing around with.

How gay is that!

The duck legs and pork were cured overnight, washed off and dried.

So the first stage of Friday night's dinner was sorted.

I was going to poach the duck in duck fat to make a classic confit canard, as it's a vital part of a cassoulet, or French baked beans if you prefer.

So, after two or three hours the duck legs should be super soft and melting, in fact a pin or needle should be easily able to go through the flesh, just to make sure.

Which is pretty much all this supper was.


A one pot wonder, full of lovely, rich, warming, fatty, moist,

meaty joy!

It would be perfect for tonight actually, as now I'm stranded in Shottle, with a blizzard kicking off outside, ah well "c'est la vie".

Dried white haricot beans had also been soaked, in water, overnight, and all I had to was simmer them for a couple of hours, just to start the cooking process.

A couple of carrots, onions and herbs go in along the reserved pig skin.

If I could have got my hands on a smoked pork Morteau sausage that would have gone in as well.

Because even though this is a peasant, country style dish, it will still have bags of flavour, and because in Europe they have access to lots of different cured pork produce, just by putting a piece of smoked sausage or ham in will really improve the finished dish.

Try it yourself, you'll see what I mean, if when you're making a tomato sauce you put in a couple of chopped up slices of smoked streaky bacon in with the onions, the finished sauce will taste much richer.

I was shown once, by an Italian chef, I worked with in London, how by getting hold of some beef bones, just roasting them and cooking them very, very slowly with lots of herbs, tinned tomatoes and garlic, in a covered pot, for about ten hours, he would end up with the nicest tasting, rich, beefy tomato sauce ever, and it didn't even have any beef in it!

Some pasta, Parmesan and that sauce, it was all you needed.

Anyway back to my simple dinner dish, the belly is cut up, and is going to be browned off, in some more duck fat, then it was simmered for a couple of hours, again to get it nice and soft, ready for the final cooking process.

It's got to prepared this way as there are too many different cuts of meat, and they all have different cooking times, so perhaps one would be overcooked and some other undercooked.

And, anyway, what else did I have to do?


All different sorts of meats can go into a cassoulet, such as goose, pheasant, lamb or wild boar.

It won't be long before someone tries sneaking some horse or donkey in to it, just to be a bit different!

Those sneaky French eh, but they don't know we've been eating all that exotic stuff for years, at Ikea mainly!

And at The Taj Mahal, down on the A 4567.

I also had a small French "meat" salami that I was going to dice up and cook with the beans.

Now, this a dish from France, so apart from horse, and snails, and frog's legs, they eat tons of onions and garlic.

So that's what I did, chopped up about five sweet white onions and another whole head of garlic was crushed.

This was going to be sweated down, in yet more duck fat, ready for the final assembly.


And remember the piece of pork skin that I cooked with the beans, well I diced that up, nice and small, and it was mixed with breadcrumbs and chopped parsley, ready to be sprinkled over the cassoulet.

All that was left to do now was put it all together.

A big cast iron pot is best for this, so with the onions and garlic nicely soft, a couple of spoons of tomato puree are added, now there is a difference of opinion as to whether this should be added, but I like it in mine, it adds some sweetness to the dish, and it makes it even richer.


With the part cooked beans, confit duck legs, poached pork belly and diced salami it was a nice lazy Friday night dish.

But, with all those soft textures it need a bit of texture, and luckily that's exactly what I had.

When you bake pork skin you get crackling don't you?

Well that's what I had on top of my baked beans, mixed with the herb breadcrumbs, was a delicious, crunchy, pork scratching sort of topping.

Easy, and as I've used some of the cheaper cuts of meat it means tomorrows dinner can be something a little bit more extravagant.

This should do.



A nice bit of sirloin, some of Derbyshire's finest.

Now I managed to blag a few marrow bones as well, and as these are just about my favourite thing to eat in the whole world, I knew exactly what to do with them.

Now it's very fashionable to just roast them as they are and scoop out the marrow, spread it on some toasted sour dough, a pinch of salt and away we go.

And jolly good it is too!

But I wanted to make it easier to eat, so all I did was boil the kettle, and at about three at a time, put the marrow bones in the hot water for about thirty seconds.

This will loosen the marrow and then all you have to do is push it out from the bone.

See, easy.


And now you know how to do this you can you use it with so many things, it's very good stirred into a saffron risotto with grated Parmesan, or breadcrumbed and deep fried it's a good garnish for a braised beef cheek dish along with some spinach, or as I intend to use it this summer with some scallops, Jersey Royals and caviar.

On a long, crisp butter puff pastry tart.

That is, of course, if summer ever arrives, but anyway back to my bone marrow.

Luckily for me I had everything I needed to make my life complete.

Shallots, capers, some herbs,anchovies, gherkins and all the other condiments required for my steak tartare, now I won't bore you with how to make a perfect tartare, and anyway, it's quite a personal thing, depending on how you like it, maybe with extra Tabasco, or with no anchovies, or whatever you like really.

Once I had it sitting by Lake Geneva where it was prepared, correctly in my opinion, at the table, where the maitre d' could ask me if I wanted extra capers, or less shallots.

Although I just left it to him and it was superb!

But mine was pretty good too!

Some sour dough was sliced and toasted, the cold steak tartare was spooned on top, and then a slice of hot bone marrow to finish off.

A sprinkle of smoked salt and we were done.

I still needed something to go with the rest of the beef though, and as it was still snowing outside I wanted something nice and rich, and as I've never really got the idea of serving mashed potatoes with steak, I   decided to do a macaroni cheese.

This is also great with dark, sticky, red wine based dishes, like a slowly braised haunch of venison with lots of black peppercorns and bacon, and left overnight in a very low oven.

Actually now I think about it, hopefully there might be just one more weekend of snow, so I can try that one out!

This was the end of my road last week, but as you can see, Sophie and myself were never really in any danger of going hungry.

So, a quick cheese sauce was made, it's easy, all you need to do is boil up some milk and cream, chuck in a load of grated cheese, whisk it up, and then thicken it with some cornflour.

Much easier that doing a roux and it works really well.

Mustard and garlic can be added if you want to liven it up a bit, but I didn't as I'd had enough garlic the night before and I knew that the next nights dinner was also going to pretty garlicky.

The steak was cooked in the usual way, plenty of salt and pepper, nice hot pan blah, blah, blah, you know by now don't you.

As you can see it's been well rested, and carved into nice fat slices.

The macaroni has been baked, warm sour dough is ready for the tartare, I quickly cooked some spinach and I dressed some chicory and radishes in a mustard dressing.

We do sometimes have something heathy!

So, there you are, Saturday night steak at my house.

Easy, and pretty damn good as I remember!

And now on to our Sunday roast.

This is a prototype of a dish I'm planning to do for Sophie's birthday a few weeks time, and as it's such an important day, I'm taking personal control of the entire menu.

And, that, of course, means lots of testing, and eating!

And I can't wait to start the cocktail and punch development!

So a half shoulder of lamb was sorted, but this time i actually wanted the blade end, so I could whip off the neck fillet, and serve that nice and pink, while the rest was cooking in the oven.

I peeled loads of garlic, added some salt, and crushed it to a paste, then the same amount of peeled, grated ginger was mixed in.

Along with some other, top secret, well actually I've forgotten what they were, Indian spices, this marinade was rubbed into the lamb shoulder.

I'm sure some yoghurt was in there somewhere as well.

I sliced loads on onions and these were cooked down, in lots of ghee, until they were starting to blacken around the edges, tinned chopped tomatoes and red chilli powder were also involved, as I wanted to end up with a really dark, rich sauce.

The marinaded lamb shoulder was placed on top of this, then I covered it with a lid, and into the oven it went.

The neck fillet was coated in more red chilli powder, cumin and various other delights, and that would then be ready to be pan fried a bit later.

I boned out some skinned chicken thighs and diced them up.

This was going to be for the biryani.

I wanted to have a pop at this as it's something I could do a bit in advance, and even though I just sealed the pot with pastry, if I do end up cooking it I will cover the whole pot with some raw bread dough, so it will be a bit like a pie!

And I'll mix in some onion seeds and cracked pepper to give the bread a bit of a boost!

So I fried off the chicken with some finely chopped onions, more garlic and ginger paste was added and then about twenty different spices, and also some chopped up Indian pickles.

This was a great idea, as it gives the dish a nice salty and spicy kick, more yoghurt was stirred in at the end, not much though, this should be a dry curry.

Basmati rice was cooked in water that had been flavoured with cloves, turmeric, cassia bark and green cardamon pods. I made sure the rice was just a little bit under cooked, as it was going to finished in the oven.

With the chicken curry on the bottom the fragrant rice was spread over the top, lid on, a bit of egg wash, and a strip of pastry was stuck around the edge.

This is so nothing escapes, and when the dish is presented, and cracked open, all of those mouthwatering aromas can be enjoyed at the table.

The lamb neck fillet is carved, and I made a little salad with some cucumbers, tomatoes and red onions, and I know it's a bit naughty, but I got some asparagus and stir fried that with a bit of lemon and garlic, although in fairness, it was a trail for the party remember.

And it was Ok, but by then English will be bang in season so I'm going to do something with that, and it will be spot on!

A couple of chapatis and naan bread were warmed up, and that's it.

Sunday night dinner, all with Sophie in mind!

Although we have loads more things to taste and try, but, some how I think we'll get there in the end!




Right that's it!

A brilliant weekend, doing what I love most, cooking, eating, dancing and being snowed in with Sophie!

And now, finally it's over.

TB, BW and SAB, and everyone else who was part of the E.L.B.M.C for the last five years, it's been mental!

Nearly had a couple of heart attacks over the last half decade, but we always got there, so thank you all for making it all so much fun!

Tonights musical delight - High by the Lighthouse Family, Francois K vocal 12" mix, parts 1 & 2.