Tomato & Fennel Soup

It was getting cold. The sea had leaked through my wholly inadequate aging leather boots and a frustrating hunger was beginning to nibble away at my belly. I was most definitely on the edge of a full-on grump.



The GF was still taking pictures, seemingly keen to fill up the entire 8 googabytes of memory that her camera was capable of.


[photo credit]

‘Can you just get a shot of me taking a picture of this limpet?’ she asked, very sweetly, it must be said. I trudged over and snapped away, well aware that we’d left the car two miles away across decidedly swampy marshland. Lunchtime had been and gone and the kipper I’d eaten for breakfast but a distant memory apart from the occasional fishy burp. Even less pleasant than it sounds.

More photos for her magazine. I poked a few of the tenacious shellfish to pass the time, making a mental note to check HFW’s Fish Book later to see if they were edible (turns out that they are).

‘All done, come on, I’ll take you for something to eat at Badgers Tea House, it’s really good.’

Nod. Ok then. Trudge, trudge, trudge. the kitbag beginning to instil a niggling and deep ache in my shoulders.

The sight of the car was enough to lift the spirits, as was the promise of sandwiches, tea and cakes. But what really blew the fug away was Alfriston itself, a small but perfectly formed village in East Sussex, home to a quirky independent bookshop, numerous eateries and a village store that could have been yanked determinedly out of Edwardian England.

It was disconcertingly close to my own personal Elysium.

By the time we arrived at Badgers it was mid-afternoon and there was no way a sandwich would suffice. Something warm and hearty was required, stat, and the soup of the day seemed like the ideal option, despite the addition of fennel – a flavour I haven’t seen eye-to-eye with since discovering the debilitating effects of Pernod in my early teens.



Two bowls arrived, cauldron like, mine ‘garnished’ with a chunk of bread and a wedge of brie the size of a generous slice of pizza. It was delicious. A slightly jokey, but mostly serious request for the recipe was met with a frustratingly dismissive laugh and the words ‘Ooo, it’ll cost you, it’s top secret I’m afraid.’

The only disappointment of the meal (followed by tea and mince pies) was that this wasn’t mere banter. The recipe really was not forthcoming and there was no hastily scribbled list of ingredients on the back of the (very modest) bill.

But gosh darn it, I think I cracked it and I’ll be a little more open with the knowledge. Here you go. Merry Christmas.

Tomato and Fennel Soup



The fennel here is magical – it offers up none of its medicinal, aniseed qualities, merely backing up and boosting the rest of the flavours to the extent where you’d really notice if it was gone. A bit like a bass guitar. Ideal if, like me, you're not too keen on it of itself.

Makes lots.

Two small carrots, peeled and chooped
Two small onions, diced
A single rib of celery, diced
A fennel bulb, roughly chopped
Three tins of tomatoes
A litre of vegetable stock
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

In the manner of Gordon Ramsay: vegetables, olive oil: fry. Tomatoes. Stock. Simmer. 40 minutes.

Blend. Seasoning. Serve. Tomato and fennel soup with homemade bread and squidgy cheese? Done.

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Nose to Tail Tuesday (N3T) - Lamb Breast

Where last week’s jaunt into the culinary underbelly was nothing short of cerebral, this edition sees us travelling to, well, the underbelly.



Breast of lamb, a cut near identical to pork or beef short ribs, is criminally underused and as a result is almost giveaway cheap. It has featured on these pages before (paired with lamb’s kidneys) but it really is delicious enough to stand-alone.

For the gastronomically minded, it can be used to make lamb ‘bacon’ and it is a cut gaining in popularity amongst top-end chefs - Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 features breast of lamb on his menu.

Whilst I’m not averse to tinkering with high end cooking: dishes that take days, rather than hours, to plate up and consist of a dizzying combination of foams, airs, purées, spheres, mousses, geleés, crisps and other such assorted tom-foolery, sometimes what you really want is hearty and basic.

Lamb and beans is a classic combination throughout France and North Africa. Slow cooked shanks with flageolet beans. Lamb stew with white beans and fresh coriander. Rack of lamb with a bean cassoulet.

Whatever the combination there is something hearty, warming and satisfying about the taste of the meat – now beginning to develop some flavour (I find spring lamb over-rated and lacking in flavour) – and the fulfilling nature of the beans.

Breast of Lamb roasted with onion and spiced chick peas (garbanzo beans)

Although there isn’t an awful lot of meat on this particular cut, it is fatty and the inherent richness should leave you feeling sated without being overly full. As the lamb roasts it will release its moisture into the bed of chickpeas waiting expectantly below. The result is some of the tastiest pulses you will ever chow down.

A single piece of lamb breast should easily serve three-four people, depending on how long it has been since they last ate and whether or not they are the sort of friends happy to be fobbed off with extra pulses and veg instead of meat. Thought not. The recipe below is for two.

Lamb breast, about 500g in weight.
An unwaxed lemon
Oregano (dried or fresh, finely chopped – as much as you want)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Zest the lemon and juice half of it into a bowl. Add the same amount of olive oil, the oregano and season with salt and pepper. Slash the top of the lamb and rub the mixture into it.

For the chickpeas

One tin of chick peas, drained and rinsed
One large white onion, finely diced
One large red onion, roughly chopped
Two cloves of garlic, finely chopped
A teaspoon of smoked paprika
Salt and Pepper
Four or five sprigs of fresh oregano
A splash of olive oil

Mix all the above together and tip into a roasting tray (large enough to hold the lamb).

Get a ridged griddle pan screamingly hot (leave it on there for five minutes before you even think of cooking on it. Seriously. These things take an age to get hot).



Sear the lamb for four-five minutes until it has some good colour on one side. Flip and cook for another couple of minutes. Place the lamb on top of the chickpeas and roast in a moderately hot oven (c. 150 degrees C) for about an hour and a half. Give the tray a shake a couple of times during cooking.

Lift the lamb onto a cutting board and leave it to rest whilst you are plating up. Pile a heap of baby spinach leaves into the middle of a plate, top with the roasted chickpeas and hunks of meat that you have delicately carved/hacked mercilessly from the bones.



Ideally, serve in front of episodes of the West Wing with a crisp white wine for company.

Feel free to gnaw away at the meat still clinging to the ribs. I did. ‘You are such a shameless carnivore,’ said the GF. If I had been in a position to answer, I wouldn’t have been able to deny it.

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Friday Nibbles - Sausages

Damned tasty, infinitely versatile, globally and culturally diverse, not to mention inherently comedic (used to full effect by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis in Blackadder, see below) – you just have to love the sausage.

[Whizz forward to the five-minute mark if you’re short on time. Sausage? SAUSAGE?! Genius]



As a species we have probably been making sausages for as long as we’ve been roasting meat over the flames. Once appetites had been sated with charred primary cuts, it was found that meat could be preserved in a variety of ways: Drying, smoking, curing or grinding up and packing into lengths of intestine.

As such, sausages are believed to be some of the oldest prepared foods in existence.

Techniques may have improved in the intervening millennia but the principle remains the same: sausages are about economising and preserving – and finding a tasty way of doing it, to boot.

There are so many varieties and variations that it would be foolhardy to attempt to discuss them all within the meagre confines of a Friday Nibble. Perhaps a book is in order? Hmmmm. Alternatively, for a slightly shorter take on the subject, see this list of the top ten sausages, according to Askmen.com



Think about the difference between a dark, fragrantly spiced black pudding and the smoky notes of a frankfurter, or the paprika hit of a morsel of fried chorizo compared to the delicate flavour of a Bavarian Weisswurst and you start to get the idea.

In Britain, sausages are virtually a national dish. During the war the meagre amounts of meat were padded out with rusk and water, which then boiled inside the casing before the steam burst through in a mini-explosion. This led to them being christened ‘bangers’ – a moniker that has stuck.

The somewhat ambiguous ingredients list present on many sausages has given them some bad press recently with unscrupulous manufacturers bending the rules as far as possible in order to make a cheap product. But there are some seriously gourmet sausages out there and is well worth spending a few extra pence to enjoy the very best.

Sometimes they are best fried or grilled and sandwiched between two slices of bread or wedged into a steaming pile of buttery mash, topped with sticky onion gravy. But to assume that is all they are good for is to do them a great disservice.



For many culinary cultures, a variation on the classic sausage and beans is a virtual staple. It is cheap, it is tasty, it is nutritious, it makes the most of the local produce and is incredibly easy to cook. I particularly like the Umbrian version made with boar sausages and dark Italian lentils.

But my favourite take on this dish has to be cassoulet, a meal I spend a great deal of time talking about, writing about, cooking and eating.

This dish from southern France, like many versions of the combination, is hearty and cheap, what many might refer to as ‘peasant food’. Far from being a derisory and patronising term, for me ‘peasant food’ conjures up images of tasty meals that offer the best possible flavour of an area. Peasant food is something to be embraced and enjoyed.



I’ve made many different versions of cassoulet, every one of them different but each enjoyable in their own right. This one, whilst it may lack the confit duck and pork belly, is simple, rustic and cheap. Slow food at its finest.

Cassoulet
Six good quality pork sausages, Toulouse if you can get them
500g of dried haricot beans
Four large onions, two finely chopped
Two bay leaves
Two cloves of garlic
50g of goose or chicken fat
Two tins of plum tomatoes, drained and the tomatoes blitzed in a food processor
500ml of pork stock
A large, heavy bottomed casserole
Salt and pepper

Soak the beans overnight. Drain them, tip them into a large pan and cover with cold water. Add two of the onions, peeled and quartered through the stem so they stay together. Tuck the bay leaves into the mass of beans (a great tip for getting flavour into all orts of pulses)and then simmer for about an hour until cooked. Don’t add any salt until the beans are almost done – about fifteen minutes to go – or they will toughen up. Drain the beans and discard the onions and bay leaves. They've done their work.



Spoon half the goose or chicken fat into the casserole and put on a high heat. Brown the sasuages on all sides, but don’t cook them, then place on a waiting plate. Turn down the heat and gently fry off the onion in the remaining fat. When the onion is cooked add the garlic, return the sausages to the pan and add the tomatoes. Season generously with salt and pepper.

Tip in almost all the beans and mix them in. Save a few handfuls for the top. Layer these on the top of the sausage and bean mix (see photo above) and put into a warm oven (about 150) for an hour.

After an hour the top layer should be crunchy. Stir this into the mix and poke seven or eight holes in the top of the cassoulet all the way to the bottom of the pan. The wrong end of a wooden spoon is ideal for this. Pour the stock into the holes and over the top of the dish. Return to the oven for a further hour.

Let it cool for ten minutes, serve with a ballsy red wine and eat far too much. Delicious.

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Beetroot, Ginger & Chocolate Risotto

You learn something new every day, or so the saying goes. Did you know, for example, that the first meal that was eaten on the moon by Armstrong and Aldrin was a roast turkey dinner with all the trimmings (freeze dried, one would assume)?

Or that sperm swim faster after they have been exposed to caffeine?

Or that the largest beetroot ever grown was over 18 feet in length?

Or that it is near impossible to take a good photo of a risotto? Especially a risotto that I promised you good people a couple of weeks ago (you'd thought I'd forgotten, hadn't you?)

It’s true – no matter how appealing it may look on the plate, in photographic form it will almost always take on the appearance of lumpy aardvark vomit.

You could gild it with gold leaf, adorn it with asparagus and top it with truffles but under the lights and through a lens it will still look about as appealing as a jock strap salad.

We tried. We really did. But even the best photo we got wouldn’t have looked out of place in a crime scene report. So you’ll have to make do with this representation instead. And the best thing about beetroot risotto is the colour anyway. So sit back, use your imagination and take note. Recipe below.



It’s hard to write a definitive recipe for risotto. There are so many variations (rice absorbency, stock quality, stirring capacity) that I hesitate to make any assertions for fear I will end up with angry emails and comments.

Instead, use this as a platform, a launch pad, or a mere eyebrow-raiser. All I will say is that it is certainly worth trying and that there is true deliciousness hidden behind the vaguely bizarre veneer of the combination of ingredients.


The Ingredients – should serve four

Olive oil or butter (about 25g)
A pinch of bicarbonate of soda
A small onion, or three/four shallots finely chopped
Two cloves of garlic, finely chopped
A teaspoon of grated ginger
Four or five small beetroot, roasted in the skins (in a sealed foil package for about an hour), peeled and diced into teeny, tiny pieces.
Risotto rice (Arborio, carnaroli, vialone nano) – about 250g
A small glass of white wine or white vermouth
Chicken or vegetable Stock (impossible to say how much you will need but most likely about a litre), in a pan on a gentle heat.
The darkest dark chocolate you can find, preferably 70%+ cocoa solids

The method
You all know how to make risotto, right? You’re going to find this incredibly patronising if you are talked through each step in the manner of a sports teacher humiliating the fat kid aren’t you? Oh well, here goes:

Put the onion and garlic in a large, heavy bottomed pan along with the olive oil or butter. Turn on the heat (low – see here for why) and add the bicarb (this helps soften the onion and bring out the flavours. I learnt why here). Fry gently for 10 minutes, or until you have a delicious pulpy mass of onion and garlic. Add the ginger and stir.

Crank up the heat. Pour in the rice, stir and cook off for about a minute to start it toasting. Add the wine or vermouth. It should sizzle and give off a fairly potent steam of near pure alcohol. Stir again (can you see a theme developing?). Tip in the beetroot. Admire the colour. Go on, you know you want to. Stir.

The stock (which is in a pan on a gentle heat, right?) can now be ladled in bit by bit. Stir. Stir some more. When almost all the stock has been absorbed add another ladle full. Stir. Keep stirring.

Repeat the above until the rice is cooked – usually about forty minutes. By this point your arm will aching and you should have worked up a considerable appetite with all that stirring.

Spoon onto a plate, grate the chocolate over the top. Admire the colour once more and eat.

One final point – risotto should be soft, it should spread evenly and slowly over the plate like a slew of molten lava running down a volcano. You shouldn’t be able to slice it.

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