Of starch and cheese… again (sorry)

I was in a fantastic cheese shop in Paris and saw they were selling tomme fraîche from the Auvergne... so I popped to the organic veg stall in the street market for some potatoes and went home to make Aligot... It's basically cheesy mash, but as made by the gods.
For four people:
1kg floury potatoes (I used red skinned ones)
350g Tomme Fraîche (Elizabeth David says you can substitue very young Lancashire if you're desperate), chopped into little cubes
2-3 cloves of garlic, very finely chopped
250g crème fraîche
150g butter

Boil the potatoes, then peel them and pass through a mouli to get a nice fluffy mash
heat the cream and butter in a large pan until the butter melts
Add the potatoes, garlic and cheese and stir vigourously with a wooden spoon until the mixture goes really elastic.
Enjoy.


Some people eat it with lentils and bits of pig, I had it with some fresh cèpes sliced and fried like schnitzel...
mmmmmm

Madelaine madness....

These are real madelaines that I actually made! Over christmas my madelaines obsession went overboard in that we decided that instead of the might mince pie we would tamper with the classic madelaine recipe and come up with some chistmassy alternatives to have with coffee.

We had Coffee and Cardamon, Candied peel and cinnamon, Allspice, prune, nutmeg, mace, ginger & cinnamon.... other successful flavours were ameretto and dark choc chip 

and fig and walnut. The regular recipe that I use for Madelaines (which I might add does not need embellishment at all, only for Christmas Fun!) is as follows

150g of quality unsalted butter

200g of plain flour

100g of caster sugar

100g of ground almonds

6 free range eggs

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 orange

Mix the butter, sugar and ground almonds together with your hands until a buttery ball, then crack one egg at a time mixing it in with a wooden spoon ... 

you should now have a runny batter.

Sift in the plain flour bit by bit ... if it gets lumpy then take to it with a whisk.

Lastly, finely grate the rind of one orange and together with a teaspoon of baking powder mix into the thickened batter.

Madelaines have there own type of shell like moulds which you can get in tin or silicone form ... the latter will save you alot of time and heartache in the end. You should be able to pick these up from a good cookery shop or cooks department in John Lewis.

Fill up the mould only half way (a heaped teaspoon should do it) and bake at around 170c for about 15-20 minutes. Eat them within an hour to get them at their best!

The mixture should keep in the fridge for a couple of days at home (although make sure its kept in the fridge as there is raw egg involved) They are wonderful warm for breakfast, elevenses, goute...

When I first started making them a couple of years ago I was sure that there was something missing from the batter as a remembered a crunchiness from my childhood ... I eventually came to the conclusion that as I mostly ate madelaines on the beach in the summer holidays or in the car on the way home from the beach, that the crunchiness was probably sand!

Stirring Up the Charles Lamb Figgy Pudding

A bit belated but here are some pictures from the end of November when we made the Charles Lamb Figgy Pudding. As you can see its a real family affair with Claudette, Hobby myself and bear all having a good stir. Sanchia put it all together with a liitle help from a recipe sent from my sisters husband mother?!?.... 

Christine up in Newcastle. Our Secret? ... Soak the figs in quality London Porter for at least 3 days before you even get going on the rest.

Salon of Taste to Tuscany in six drunken days

Last week I went on holiday by mistake. But I’m quite glad about it. It all started in Torino, at the Salon of Taste…
http://www.salonedelgusto.com/eng/pagine/02_i_presidi.lasso?-session=salonedelgusto2008:42F9478B13d38064F4mwtK342406
Salone del gusto was just amazing – an unfathomably huge building brimming over with edible delights. The experience for me was, on the first day, fairly goat based. Soft goat salami (pitina), which might conceivably be the most delicious meat product I’ve ever consumed; more of a cured meatball than a salami really, rolled in maize and smoked over juniper. And Cypriot sun dried goat with sea salt and oregano. Then Violino di Capra. Yes, goat violin. A whole air-dried goat leg which looks like a violin (and is sliced as if playing a violin) but tastes like meaty, salty, aromatic joy.
(Actually, the violino that we purchased was almost tragically lost in a bar later that evening, in what has become known as ‘goat-gate’. Turns out it wasn’t lost, but perhaps our minds were, after tasting quite so many Vermentino).
In other, non-goat news, there was the Lardo. Eating thin slices of cured pig fat is officially not a chore. And then there was the Palermitan spleen bun. Unctuous offal in a bun. Has to be the new burger. A lot of dipping cheese in honey occurred after this point, and interspersing slivers of mullet bottarga with pistachio granita and oysters. It is all a blur.
The gastronomic odyssea next took in Alba’s annual truffle festa, where the main occurrence was a fairly gratuitous inhalation of truffle spores, then to pretty Bra, the headquarters of the slow food movement where Osteria Boccondivino (http://www.boccondivinoslow.it/ita-boccon/storia.htm) cruelly forced me to eat the most ambrosial panna cotta in history. Plates were licked. Involuntary sounds were made. They made me drink some extraordinary Barolo, too. Nightmare. (But go there).

Then, via a tiny Ligurian beach holiday within a holiday (lasting 2 hours and a lot of onion foccacia) final destination, San Pancrazio was reached:
www.corzanoepaterno.it
This place is something of a paradise on earth where abounds endless chianti, beauty, pecorino and generosity. And lamb smoked over rosemary in a fireplace, a stone pizza oven in which dough was obedient, poached eggs with shaved truffles, and a little trattoria where they tried really hard to destroy me with truffles and porcini, but I’m a fighter so I survived to tell this tale. Go there, too.

The Family Hobby-Limon recently returned from a trip visiting Pippa and her patner Pascal at their home in Sablet in the southern Rhone near Avignon. Hopspitable hosts to the end we were shown the best of the area at the best time of year ..vandange(the grape harvest).
Our first port of call was to the Domaine de Piaugier run by Jean Mark and Sophie Autran. The vineyards have been in Jean Marks family for generations and his father still helps out at busy periods. They primarily grow Grenache but also a little Syrah, Carignan, Cinsault and Counoire. Pippa helped out a couple of years ago so I won't go into to much detail as she can add to this with more details of the style and content of there wines!
However I did take some lovely photos so here you are!

Rillette Love

I’ve had a soft spot for rillettes for some time now, ever since my father and I purchased a glut of the goose variety from humble Intermarche in Maurs la Jolie and ate them on a misty picnic off the bonnet of the 2CV, (next to an impressive castle, which frankly just compounded my view that I’m destined to stalk the tapestried corridors of one of those beauties, imperiously ordering suckling pigs from my beleaguered chefs, after making a splendid aristocratic marriage).
Until yesterday, I’d never actually made my own rillettes, but they were so fabulous that I might now do it on a weekly basis. Rillettes are one of those lovely French things, which vary slightly from region to region but always hold true to the basic principles of cooking meat really slowly with salt and fat. Nutritionist’s dream, I say. Apparently, the rillettes of Tours and Anjou are referred to as ‘brown jam’, a fact which convinced me yesterday of their acceptability as a breakfast food - I was essentially eating toast and jam with my coffee. Mine were of Rabbit, which brings me to the other trend of my week: strangely alliterative foodstuffs.
It all began with rabbit rillettes, but before I knew it, radicchio, rosemary and red wine risotto appeared with some smoked pork belly, (psychedelic food, but it looked so pretty) and crab and cockle chowder transformed some crab stock from the freezer into joy in a bowl. I’m going to try extra hard to vary my consonants next week, it is becoming ridiculous.

Bastille action and the Whitstable oyster glut

Last weekend was a good’un for eating. The Charles Lamb celebrated Quatorze juillet in grand style on the nearest Saturday, douze juillet. Bunting traversed Elia st, Petanque pitches flanked the pub, Ricard and Rosé abounded.
And then there was our fabulous menu Français, which, apart from using most of London’s stocks of garlic and goose fat, was in our opinion a triumph. It featured Le Grand aioli, a village tradition in Provence in which you eat a lot of things dipped into a massive pot of aioli. Yum. Elizabeth David says that aioli is ‘affectionately’ referred to as the ‘Butter of Provence’ – as far as I’m concerned, butter and Provence in the same phrase can only be a happy thing. I was most delighted to be told by a French customer that it was as good as the aioli that her Grandmere in Avignon makes at Christmas. This is probably high praise, at least I like to think so...The secret? One garlic clove to one egg yolk. (Put the picture up Camille!).
Elsewhere on the menu were merguez sausages in buckwheat gallettes, Basque fish stew, Coquilles St Jacques (we really do love the 1970's) and Camille’s famed cassoulet, which suffice it to say, did not last long. The making of the cassoulet was truly a sight to behold - Camille was quite literally up to her elbows in goose fat, there is probably still a vague aroma following her around. Pig skin, garlic peel and slicks of poultry fat filled the entire kitchen, but it was all worth it for the elusive cassoulet smell…
Sunday morning welcomed me with a special Ricard hangover, but nonetheless I duly set out for my friend’s birthday day trip to Whitstable. Scorching day actually, and after knocking back 9 amazing oysters and a large bottle of cider on the beach, only a snooze would do. The day was rounded off with masses of Champagne, crab sandwiches and potted shrimp. No one could argue with that.