Moules Frites or Moules et Frites is a main dish of mussels and fries originating in Belgium. The title of the dish is French, moules meaning mussels and Frites fries, with the Dutch name for the dish meaning the same. Considered the national dish of Belgium. I love mussels in all manner of ways from just plain simple steamed to turned into a sauce to go with a steak. Moules Frites and cold beer have to be one of my favourite meals. It has to be skinny chips, not chunky chips and alongside a good garlic mayonnaise or aioli. This is my take on a classic.
Ingredients
500g mussels, cleaned and de-bearded
Finely diced shallot
1 tbsp olive oil
2 rashers streaky bacon
small bunch of wild garlic
handful flat leaf parsley
150ml beer, in this I used an IPA
Good dash of cream
Salt & Pepper to season
Instructions
In a pan with a lid heat the olive oil add the diced shallot and chopped up bacon.
Next we saute the onion until it is softened and the bacon coloured.
Chop the wild garlic and add, if you do not have wild garlic 2 cloves of finely diced garlic is fine, stir through until the wild garlic leaves have wilted or the normal garlic is softened. Take the cleaned mussels and add to the pan, pour in the beer and place on the lid.
The cooking of the mussels will only take a few minutes, check and when the mussels are opened they are cooked.
Remove the mussels with a slotted spoon and discard any that remain shut.
Add the cream to the cooking liquid and stir through, spoon the sauce over the mussels and garnish with the chopped parsley.
Serve with skinny chips aka Frites, garlic mayonaise or aioli and a cold beer.
My favourite wild food now in abundance so I thought a post on ways with wild garlic was just the thing. This is not a comprehensive post on the uses of wild garlic but just three simple ways to persevere, ferment and pickle wild garlic. There are many other ways with wild garlic from oils, to freezing, drying and making powders and adding to salt for wild garlic salt.
Wild Garlic Pesto
Wild Garlic Pesto
The first thing I tend to make with wild garlic is pesto, I generally use hazelnuts in mine but in these crazy lockdown days, I could not get any so it was mixed nuts a mix of walnuts, hazel, pecan and almonds.
Ingredients
100g of wild garlic
50g nuts
50g grated Parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Lemon zest and juice to taste.
Method
Thoroughly wash the leaves and roughly chop or tear and place in a blender, pulse to chop, add your grated Parmesan and pulse again this will break down the leaves. Next, it is the nuts, you can toast and deskin them and never bother myself when adding the nuts you will want to have your olive oil on hand as you blitz the nuts add your oil gradually to get the consistency you want. Season with salt and pepper and the lemon zest and juice to taste. I portion mine often into large ice cube trays and freeze, some I place in a jar and the top just covered in olive oil, this will keep in the fridge for several weeks. This goes really well with fish, meat and is great with pasta or spiralized vegetables.
Fermented Wild Garlic
Lacto-fermentation is the process that produces traditional dill pickles, kimchi, and real sauerkraut, among other fermented delights. This simple fermentation process requires nothing more than salt, vegetables, and water—no canning, no fancy equipment. Traditional Lacto-fermentation involves submerging vegetables in a brine solution— salt and water. In stage two of Lacto-fermentation, the Lactobacillus organisms begin converting lactose and other sugars present in the food into lactic acid. This method of preserving foods has gone on for thousands of years.
Ingredients
1 kg wild garlic
1 Tbsp sea salt (not iodised table or cooking salt)
Method
Thoroughly wash the garlic preferably in filtered water as tap water does affect the fermentation process. Roughly chop the leaves and stalks and place in a bowl in layers on each layer sprinkle with salt until all the plant matter is in the bowl and salt. Massage the salt into the leaves until you start to release the waters from the plant, this along with the salt creates the brine, keep going until the leaves are submerged in the juices. Place a plate on top and weigh down and set aside for 24 hours. check occasionally to ensure it is under the water.
Ferment
After 24 hours place into a Kilner type jar or fermentation jar, you need to ensure that the plant matter is submerged during the fermentation process you can do this by using fermentation glass weights that fit your jar or a ziplock bag with water in. Ferment for around a week and then place in the fridge where it will keep for months.
Fermented wild garlic
Fermented wild garlic buds
This is, without doubt, the easiest of all you simply take garlic buds a sterile jar and a 2% brine. Weigh out your garlic buds, make a 2% brine solution so for example if you had 100g of garlic buds you would brine with 2g of salt to 100g of water to cover the buds. When I do mine I slice red onion and place on top of the buds these act as the weight that keeps the buds below the brine solution. You can pickle the buds as well, simply make up your favourite pickling mix and cover the buds another simple way to preserve your Ramsons.
Spring has definitely sprung, wild garlic in abundance and the nettle tops we all hated as kids, so time to make wild garlic and nettle risotto. There is no mistaking wild garlic or Ramsons to give them their other name. Swathes of the spear-shaped leaf carpet the floor of damp woodlands giving way to the white star-shaped flowers. The unmistakable smell of it can be smelt many yards away as you approach. Allium ursinum, known as wild garlic, ramsons, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek or bear’s garlic. A bulbous perennial flowering plant in the amaryllis family Amaryllidaceae. It is a wild relative of the onion, native to Europe and Asia, where it grows in moist woodland.
Wild garlic
Going with the wild garlic for the risotto was nettles. We all know what a nettle looks like and all have memories as a child of being stung by them. Urtica dioica, often known as common nettle, stinging nettle or nettle leaf, or just a nettle or stinger. It is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the family Urticaceae. Full of vitamins A, C and some B vitamins. Fresh nettles contain (per 100g) 670 mg potassium, 590 mg calcium, 18 mcg chromium, 270 mcg copper, 86 mg magnesium, and 4.4 mg iron.
Young nettles
For the wild garlic and nettle risotto I used the following.
Ingredients
Large handful wild garlic.
Small handful of young nettle tops, picked and chopped wearing gloves.
1 Shallot
2 handfuls of risotto rice
Large knob of butter
Fresh ground black pepper
150 ml white wine
500 ml stock ( I used vegetable stock )
Half a cup of frozen peas
Parmesan cheese ( a good finely grated amount your choice I never weigh )
Method
Finely dice the shallot and chop the wild garlic and nettles (wear gloves unless you like the sting sensation). Melt the butter and add the shallot and saute until soft and translucent but not coloured. Add the wild garlic and nettles and saute until tender, add the rice and stir to cover with the butter and toast lightly. Pour in the wine and cook off until almost evaporated. A ladle at a time add the simmering stock and stir well, as each ladle of stock is absorbed add another until the rice is cooked through, around 12-15 minutes in general but as with all cooking taste as you go along and adjust seasonings. When the rice is cooked through remove from the heat and add the grated parmesan and another knob of butter and allow to stand. This will result in a rich, unctuous and creamy risotto. To go with my wild garlic and nettle risotto I had pan-fried sea bream with crispy skin, parsley, wild garlic and caper butter finished it off, dressed with a wild garlic flower.
Using leftovers and store cupboard basics, these homemade baked beans with a steak bavette hash made a great midweek meal. I used a tin of cannellini beans for this but you could use any beans though I don’t like broad beans done this way. If using dried beans I tend to soak overnight. To go with the beans I used up a leftover steak bavette and potatoes to make a steak hash of sorts. You could easily make the beans vegetarian by omitting the bacon I used in the recipe.
Ingredients
One 400g can of cannellini beans
Two rashers smoked streaky bacon
One tbsp olive oil
One onion finely diced
Clove of garilc crushed
One tsp smoked paprika your choice whether hot or sweet I like the piquant.
Salt and pepper to season ( easy on the salt because of the bacon)
Few sprigs of thyme
A good dash of Worcester sauce
200g of passata.
Method
Heat the oil and add the chopped bacon rashers, onion and garlic, cook through until the onion is translucent and the bacon renders its fat. Add the paprika and stir through. Pour in the drained beans and stir well to cover with the paprika infused bacon fat. Add the Passat, Worcestershire sauce and thyme. Season with salt and pepper, simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes until the beans are cooked through. These are great on sourdough toast for breakfast or lunch. I had a steak bavette leftover along with some potatoes, I heated some butter sauteed off an onion, garlic and chilli, cut the steak up and added to the pan along with some chestnut mushrooms, heated the steak through and added the diced potatoes, added some fresh rosemary and thyme and crisped the potatoes. Some fresh chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice finished the dish.
Steak Bavette with Chimichurri Sauce, my favourite cut of steak is the steak bavette in this post I am doing a simple but classic way of cooking bavette or flank. The Bavette steak is a French name for the Flank steak of a cow. Flank is a steak cut that is sourced from the underbelly of the cow and is generally quite long and flat. It is known to be very rich in flavour and relatively loose – almost crumbling – in texture when cooked right.
Steak Bavette
To go with the steak bavette I made a chimichurri sauce. Chimichurri is an uncooked sauce used both in cooking and as a table condiment for grilled meat. It originated in the countryside of Argentina and Uruguay and comes in a green and a red version. It is made of finely chopped parsley, minced garlic, olive oil, oregano and red wine vinegar. To make the sauce the ingredients are.
Ingredients:
Handfull of chopped parsley
2 cloves of finely sliced garlic
1 green chilli finely sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Good pinch of oregano
Pinch of salt and fresh ground black pepper.
You can make the sauce in advance to allow the flavours to enhance.
In the video, you can see how I cook the steak bavette. Follow the instructions and you will have one of the best steaks you can get for a fraction of the price of other cuts but with far more flavour. The secret when cooking this cut is a hot pan, cook it hard and fast the only way to have the bavette is rare, and to rest for as long as you cook, rest on a board or warm plate but not in the pan where the residual heat will continue cooking the steak.
Another curry that is not truly authentic, Chicken Jalfrezi is well up there on the UK curry house favourites list. It is not listed in any of the books I have by Indian chefs. The name in rough translation from Bengali means Jhal meaning hot and frezi meaning stir fry. Jalfrezi is found on every takeaway and restaurant menu. Green chillis, bell peppers and tomatoes, it can be as hot as you like it depends on how many and how you use the fresh green chillis. This is my take on the classic chicken jalfrezi.
Ingredients
6 long green chillies
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 tbsp ghee or olive oil
6 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 tsp ground turmeric
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp caster sugar
good pinch of flaked sea salt
1 tbsp garam masala
200ml cold water
2 tbsp low-fat natural yoghurt
3 onions, 2 finely chopped and one in chunks
1 green pepper, deseeded and cut into roughly 3cm chunks
2 tomatoes, quartered
Method
Finely chop 4 of the chillies – deseed a couple or all of them first if you don’t like very spicy food. Split the other 2 chillies from stalk to tip on 1 side without opening or removing the seeds. Cut the chicken thighs into bite-size chunks.
Heat a tablespoon of the oil in a large, fairly deep, non-stick frying pan (or wok) over high heat. Add the garlic, the finely chopped onion chopped chillies, chopped tomatoes, cumin, garam masala, turmeric, sugar and salt, then stir-fry for 3–4 minutes until the vegetables soften. Don’t let the garlic or spices burn or they will add a bitter flavour to the sauce.
Next, add the chicken pieces and whole chillies and cook for 3 minutes, turning the chicken regularly. Pour over the 200ml of water, stir in the yoghurt and reduce the heat only slightly – you want the sauce to simmer. Cook for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally until the chicken is tender and cooked through and the sauce has reduced by about a third. The yoghurt may separate, to begin with, but will disappear into the sauce.
While the chicken is cooking, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a clean pan and stir-fry the remaining onion and pepper over high heat for 3–4 minutes until lightly browned. Add the quartered tomatoes and fry for 2–3 minutes more, stirring until the vegetables are just tender. Mix the cornflour with the tablespoon of water to form a smooth paste.
When the chicken is cooked, stir in the cornflour mixture and simmer for a few seconds until the sauce thickens, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat, add the hot stir-fried vegetables and toss together lightly. Serve immediately. And just in case you were wondering – don’t eat the whole chillies!
Is a curry without a Naan Bread even a curry to us in the west, be it a plain naan, garlic and coriander, keema or Peshwari, though to me Peshwari is like eating cake with savoury and not my thing. Fluffy warm bread to dip in your sauce and mop up the gravy, yes I call the sauce with the curry gravy. Though traditionally made in the tandoor oven and even I don’t have one of those though the wood oven is an excellent substitute getting to very similar heats, the naan bread can be made at home and this is the recipe and method I use.
Ingredients
(Makes 6-8)
1.5 tsp fast-action yeast
1 tsp sugar
150ml warm water
300g strong white bread flour, plus extra to dust
1 tsp salt
5 tbsp natural yoghurt
2 tbsp melted ghee or butter, plus extra to brush
A little vegetable oil, to grease
1 tsp nigella (black onion), sesame or poppy seeds (optional)
Method
Put the yeast, sugar and two tablespoons of warm water in a bowl and stir well. Leave until it begins to froth.
Put the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Stir the yoghurt into the yeast mixture, then make a well in the middle of the flour and pour it in, plus the melted ghee. Mix, then gradually stir in the water to make a soft, sticky mixture that is just firm enough to call a dough, but not at all dry. Tip out on a lightly floured surface and knead for about five minutes until smooth and a little less sticky, then put in a large, lightly oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover and leave in a draught-free place (the airing cupboard, or an unlit oven) until doubled in size: roughly 90–120 minutes.
Tip the dough back out on to the lightly floured surface and knock the air out, then divide into eight balls (or six if you have a particularly large frying pan). Meanwhile, heat a non-stick frying pan over a very high heat for five minutes and put the oven on low. Prepare the melted ghee and any seeds to garnish.
Flatten one of the balls and prod or roll it into a flat circle, slightly thicker around the edge. Pick it up by the top to stretch it slightly into a teardrop shape, then put it in the hot pan. When it starts to bubble, turn it over and cook until the other side is browned in patches. Turn it back over and cook until there are no doughy bits remaining.
Brush with melted ghee and sprinkle with seeds, if using, and put in the oven to keep warm while you make the other bread.
Yes I occasionally cook vegetarian food and it is often Indian, this Aloo Gobi being one of my favourites. Cauliflower (gobi) is so versatile and takes on spice and flavour really well. My choice of potatoes (aloo) is a baby new potato diced up roughly or a good waxy potato such as charlotte or anyas that holds its shape and doesn’t go to mash. Every area will have there own spice mix or garam masala so will have differing background flavours and heat. This is my take on Aloo Gobi.
Ingredients
Serves 4
4 tbsp neutral oil 1 tsp cumin seeds ½ tsp nigella seeds 350g waxy potatoes, cut into rough 2.5cm dice 1 medium cauliflower, cut into florets and chunks of stalk slightly larger than the potato 1 yellow onion, finely sliced 4 garlic cloves, crushed 1 tbsp grated ginger 1 tin of plum tomatoes, roughly chopped, or 5 chopped fresh tomatoes and 1 tbsp tomato puree 2 tsp coriander seeds, toasted in a dry pan and ground ½-1 tsp medium chilli powder ½ tsp turmeric 2-4 small green chillies, slit along their length Good pinch of salt 1 tbsp methi (dried fenugreek leaves) 1 tsp garam masala Juice of ½ a lime Small bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
Method
Heat the oil in a wide, lidded pan over a medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the cumin and nigella seeds and cook for a few seconds util they pop, then add the potatoes and sauté until golden. Scoop out with a slotted spoon and repeat with the cauliflower, then scoop this out into a separate bowl.
Turn the heat down to medium-low, add a little more oil if necessary, and add the onion. Cook until soft and golden but not brown, then stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for a couple of minutes. Tip in the tomatoes, ground coriander, chilli and turmeric and cook, stirring regularly, until the oil begins to pool around the side of the pan.
Add the potatoes back in along with the fresh chillies and salt, bring to a simmer, turn down the heat, cover and cook for five minutes. Add the cauliflower and a good splash of water, cover and cook until both are tender, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick, and adding more water if necessary.
Take off the heat, stir in the methi and garam masala and leave for 10 minutes, then stir in the lime juice and fresh coriander before serving – Usmani recommends pairing it with “plain basmati, naan, paratha or brioche buns, and a pickle or chutney”.
I had a pork chop with mash earlier in the week and had another chop in the fridge, a look in the fridge and an excess of sauerkraut, so an easy choice pork chop with sauerkraut. A dish is common in the south of Germany where they consume a lot of pork and sauerkraut.
I have 3 or 4 large Kilner jars of sauerkraut that I had made for people prior to lock down that is now in the fridge. The fermentation process is drastically reduced when put into the fridge. Sat alongside the sauerkraut are other fermented foods including dill pickles and kimchi. For this dish, it was just sauerkraut that I would be using.
I trimmed the excess fat off the chop and retained it to make crackling with.
In an ovenproof dish, I placed about a cup of sauerkraut, a chopped leek, a large finely sliced onion, half a cup of pearl barley and a chopped up apple. Season with pepper and paprika and added some stock. No need for salt as the sauerkraut has enough saltiness.
placed the chop on top and covered with foil and placed in a preheated oven at 170c (fan) 340f gas mark 3. Cooking time is roughly an hour or until the chop is not pink in the centre. During the cooking, the pearl barley absorbs the sauerkraut juice, stock and the smokey paprika.
Spoon out the pearl barley, sauerkraut and veg, place the chop on top and add some of the cooking juices.
A simple rustic yet nutritious meal pork chop and sauerkraut with pearl barley, a dark German rye is the perfect side dish to go with this.
Pork chop with Sauerkraut
A simple midweek dish taking minutes to prepare before placing in the oven, a cold German beer would have gone well with this, Warsteiner, Bittburger etc.
The argument over the best burger bun could go on forever, we see brioche everywhere these days though I find many far too sweet and better suited to a bread and butter pudding than a burger bun, we have the sesame seed buns, the bog-standard store-bought white buns that turn to mush and fall apart as soon as a burger touches them. A few years back when I did a charity BBQ I was lucky to have all the bread donated by world champion baker Alex Gooch, among the bread types were potato rolls for the burgers that I would be doing at the BBQ, they were also used for the pulled pork and beef.
These are my take on those rolls, I experimented and made a few different variations but these proved to be the best burger buns.
Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour
200g mashed potato
10g yeast
10g sea salt
20g sugar
2 eggs (one for glaze)
100g butter
150ml of warm milk
Instructions
Make the mashed potato, use a potato ricer to get the smoothest possible mashed potato.
In a large mixing bowl add the flour, 175g of your mashed potato, the yeast and warm water, milk, one egg and your salt. Start mixing together and add the softened butter.
If you have a stand mixer knead using the dough hook on slow speed for around 8 minutes, of course, you can knead by hand a perfect arm workout and releases any frustration you have.
Once kneaded set aside in a covered bowl for roughly one hour or doubled in size.
After proving knock back your dough and divide into 8 even-sized rolls, if you have OCD or are just anal about them being the same size weigh them out to get them all the same size. Roll and place on a parchment-lined baking tray cover and do a second proving of around 45 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 200c, 400f or gas mark 6. In the base of your oven add an ovenproof bowl or tray and add cold water or ice cubes, this forms the steam that commercial ovens have to create the perfect crust on your bread. Place the buns in the centre of the preheated oven. After fifteen minutes using the egg, you kept for glaze and a tablespoon of milk, beat the egg and add the milk to create an egg wash, remove the buns from the oven and brush over the egg wash mix, return to the oven for a further 12-15 minutes until the buns are golden brown on top.
The best burger bun to go with the perfect burgers recipe posted earlier. Enjoy and don’t forget to leave a comment and share.
