'Easy As' Pie

There is something slightly decadent about a pie that belies their inherent simplicity.

Well, most pies.



I’ve had many a miserable midweek football match warmed by a steaming meat and potato number at halftime and to call these a luxury would be akin to describing X Factor as a singing competition.

But pastry can work wonders. It can turn a stew from sustenance into a centrepiece or even make the most cackhanded of bakers look like a master practitioner: Crème patissiere plus puff pastry equals ‘millefeuille’ – a dessert so impressive that it is near impossible to pronounce, let alone eat.



As a result I’ve taken to keeping a slab of ready made pastry in the freezer for those occasions when potatoes, rice or pasta just won’t cut it and my Northern roots are whispering that sweetest of words down my lughole: pie. Pie. Pie.

This little creation is light enough not to raise the blood pressure but also satisfying, cheap and downright delicious.

Cheese, onion and ham pie

Serves four, or two with enough left over for an enviable lunch the following day.

Half a slab of ready-made puff pastry (save the other half for Eccles cakes – coming soon)
6-8 white onions, depending on their size
3-4 slices cured ham (prosciutto, Serrano – anything of that ilk)
two or three handfuls of young leaf spinach
Pesto
Any cheese that melts and as much of it as you like
An egg, beaten

Chop/slice/dice the onions any which way you wish but be sure to leave them in fairly big pieces. Cook them slowly in olive oil until they begin to brown. This should take 20-30 minutes, don’t rush it or they will go from crunchy to burnt in a matter of minutes without passing through that delicious sweet stage. Stir them occasionally.



Whilst the onions are cooking, cut the pastry into two squares (so two quarters of the original block) and roll them out to two equal sized rectangles – about 8 x 12 inches. Put one on a suitably sized baking sheet and layer on the ham, making sure to leave a border of about a finger’s width round the outside. Top with a few dollops of pesto.



Once the onions are cooked, stir in the spinach to wilt it down and spoon the whole lot over the ham. Grate or slice the cheese and sprinkle over the onions. Brush the border with beaten egg, lay the second pastry sheet over the top and press it into place round the edges. Brush the top with more egg and cook for 25-30 minutes. Eat as soon as it comes out of the oven. Mouth burns are inevitable.



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The Ultimate Comfort Food: Gnocchi

If it’s comfort food you are after, there are few better options than gnocchi.



These little pillows of deliciousness deliver satisfaction in ways that a mound of pasta could only dream of. They have a dense chewiness and a slightly sticky texture that holds onto whatever sauce they are coated in making each one a ferocious nugget of flavour.

They almost invite you into the bowl like tiny carbohydrate Sirens, their sweet song beckoning you further and further to the bottom of the pile until you inevitably collapse in a misty fug as the last one makes its way down your throat.

Cue belly rubbing, sighs of satisfaction and the inability to move as 90% of your body’s blood rushes to your stomach as it begins fighting its way through the wheat/potato onslaught that has just descended.



The only option is to sit very still, sip the final inch of red wine that was sitting innocently in the bottle – a chianti would suit nicely – and fall into a merry doze on the sofa as mindless brain candy plays its way across your television screen. Happiness descends. Winter isn’t that bad after all.

Potato Gnocchi with tomato, chilli and oregano

Like bread baking, the secret to successful gnocchi is instinctive. Play around with the dough and I guarantee you will just ‘know’ when it’s ready. Not too sticky, not too dense and easy to roll. Make the sauce whilst the gnocchi are resting in the fridge.

Precise measurements rarely work for this type of cooking, it’s better to think in terms of ratios and various flours and potatoes behave very differently. As such there is no recipe here, merely a rough method.

Bake a large potato for an hour or so until the insides are light, steaming and fluffier than Paris Hilton’s bedspread. Scoop out the innards and let it cool in a bowl.

Weigh out how much potato you have and add 20% by weight of plain flour (example, for the dunces, if you have 200g potato, use 40g plain flour). Keep some aside for dusting and rolling.

Add an egg (roughly one egg per two potatoes)) and some salt. Mix well with your hands and knead into a pliable dough. If it’s too sticky just work more flour into it but go easy.



For rolling out the gnocchi, I find the easiest way is to divide the dough in two and roll until it becomes unmanageably long. Divide again and continue rolling, repeating the process until your dough sausage is about as thick as a plumber’s forefinger. Split into half inch sized pieces and place on a floured tray. Cover with a damp towel and refrigerate.

For the sauce, heat a generous sluice of olive oil in a frying pan, add a clove of garlic, gently biffed with the side of a knife (leave it whole so you can fish it out later) and a finely chopped chilli, heat dependent on your preference. Allow the two to flavour the oil then pour in some passata. Season with salt, pepper and oregano and allow to bubble away for 15 minutes.



Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and drop in the gnocchi. Rather helpfully they will rise to the surface when cooked so you can easily fish them out with a slotted spoon straight into the waiting sauce. Stir, serve, eat and sleep.



Oh, and keep those potato skins…(recipe to follow).

Five hour steak

The perfectly cooked steak is the holy grail of many chefs and home cooks.



For me a steak is a treat, a rare (no pun intended) but glorious treat. As a result if I cut into one that is overdone the disappointment can easily ruin the entire meal and the next thirty minutes will be spent in a deep sulk that only time and some well-cooked chips can offset.

The happy inverse of that is slicing through a piece of beef that is cooked to the ideal doneness – a quivering pink throughout with a crisp, charred and heavily seasoned exterior. Oh, the sheer delight.

I can think of few other gustatory pleasures that can measure up to a perfectly cooked steak.



Fillet, for so long the posterboy of the steak world, doesn’t quite measure up for me.

It may be tender but its leanness is also its Achilles’ heel. For the fat is where the flavour is and a muscle that has done no work (its position in the anatomy of the cow ensures this is the case) hasn’t enough depth for the truly discerning steak lover.

Instead I prefer a muscle that has worked, one that has led a life of hardship and built up a rich marbling and intense flavour as a result. Give me an onglet or bavette to work my teeth into over a chateaubriand any day of the week.

The problem with these cuts is they can be a little too tough. Served beyond rare they turn into slabs of meat that could resole a rudeboy’s Doc Martens. Even cooked momentarily, with a brief kiss of a searingly hot frying pan, the presence of connective tissue and sinew can offer a mandible workout of intense proportions.

Enter the water bath – a way of cooking meat to perfection. Every. Single. Time.

High end restaurants have long known about the benefits of cooking sous vide. Four or five years ago I ate a piece of lamb at Midsummer House, a two-star restaurant in Cambridge. It was delightfully tender and so flavourful I can still recall it now. I couldn’t quite believe it when I was told it had cooked for six hours. How was it still so pink inside? And uniformly so?

Thomas Keller is such a convert that he has written an entire book about the method. More top shelf gastro porn from the author of The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon.

I’d looked into buying the kit (called immersion circulators) to achieve the results at home but they were bulky and astronomically expensive – designed for commercial kitchens rather than the shoebox I have at home.

But then a couple of weeks ago I was sent one aimed at home cooks from these guys. It’s small, easy to use and delivers results you would expect in top restaurants.

And as someone who delights in the science of cooking and the potential of gastronomic experimentation, it is fast becoming my new favourite toy.

For beef junkies, skirt steak is the ideal cut. It’s incredibly tasty and bargain basement cheap. Cooked right it’s a joy to eat but its window of deliciousness is small. In other words, the perfect guinea pig for my first forays into sous vide.



Each piece was well seasoned with black pepper and sea salt then placed into a plastic zip-lock bag. Apparently sous-vide means ‘under vacuum’ so enter the vacuum cleaner. I sucked out as much air as I could then quickly sealed the top before dropping the whole lot into a stockpot full of water at 52 degrees.

Why 52? 50-60 degrees is the temperature window at which the meat proteins co-agulate, or cook. Pick a point between these two magic numbers and your steak will be between rare and medium rare and gloriously juicy.

And there it remained for five hours, bobbing up and down and gradually turning an unappetising shade of grey-brown before being removed and shocked in an ice bath to stop the cooking process.

A frying pan was heated to ‘scorching’ and a small drizzle of cooking oil – enough to cover the bottom – was poured in. Whilst it was coming up to temperature, the steak was seasoned again then cooked on either side for about a minute until a generously dark colour covered each side.



After a five minute rest on a warmed plate it was time to cut and see if experiment one had worked:



What surprised me most was the uniformity of the cooking. The meat was at the rarer end of medium rare all the way through. There was no gradation towards a pinker centre but the same colour throughout, aside from the dark brown crunch of the exterior.

The flavour was assuredly beefy, intense and unmistakably steak like. The outside crisp, rich and earthy and the interior almost sweetly bovine and wonderfully soft. Whilst the meat could have been slightly tenderer – which could be achieved over a longer cooking period – it offered enough resistance to be satisfyingly chewy.

It was, easily, one of the best pieces of meat I’ve ever tasted. From now on, for me, there is only one way to cook steak. Now, I wonder if pork belly will work…?

Ten minute Tartiflette

Everyone loves leftovers.



From a rare beef sandwich that brings memories of yesterday’s roast flooding back to a slice of cold pizza, picked out of the box amidst the empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays, leftovers can be a culinary experience worth savouring. Not to mention a winning hangover cure.

As a result, most nights I try and cook a little too much for dinner. Lunch often consists of a bowl of reheated pasta, liberally dosed with ketchup and extra cheese or a steaming plate of freshly microwaved noodles.

But, for me, it is potatoes that top the leftover tree. That hit of carbohydrate is just what I need as a late, second, breakfast or early lunch. Boil, roast or mash a few extra and your midday meal the following day is sorted: sautéed with a fried egg, dipped into pungent aioli or even squashed into cakes and fried, they are darn near perfect.

The absolute best way to use up leftover spuds, however, is to make a speedy tartiflette. Potatoes, bacon and cheese? That’s three boxes ticked and a guarantor of a very happy lunchtime indeed.

Dice a few rashers of bacon and fry in a little oil. Meanwhile, finely chop a couple of shallots or a small onion. Once the bacon has started to crisp up, turn down the heat and add the onion. Fry a few more minutes until it’s softened.



Add a handful of cooked potatoes to the pan and allow to heat through. If you get a few crisp edges then all the better. Top with a generous amount of soft cheese – camembert, brie, reblochon – and grill until the top of the cheese starts to bubble and the underneath has melted into a gooey sauce, slathering the bacon and potatoes in its cheesy goodness.



Eat immediately. And feel no shame if you squirt some ketchup on the side, it’s not like anyone’s looking.

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Where food comes from...

Recently this food related story caught my eye.

In order to teach children about the realities of food production (carrots come covered in earth, potatoes don’t grow chip shaped on trees – that sort of thing), a school in Kent set up a smallholding complete with vegetable patch and livestock.

Meat production is something that has become so sanitised and the end product so far removed from the realities of raising and killing an animal that I applaud the efforts of the head teacher in her attempts to make her pupils aware of where meat actually comes from.

It was made clear from the very beginning of the project that Marcus the sheep would be slaughtered and the meat sold off to pay for some piglets (not only are the kids learning about husbandry but also rudimentary economics. Brilliant).

As the slaughter date grew closer, a group of parents decided to launch a campaign to save Marcus. Despite support from tabloid fave Paul O’Grady, they were (rightly) unsuccessful in their attempts and the sheep met his inevitable fate a couple of days ago.

Cue outrage. The headmistress has been labelled a murderer and one parent, whose daughter, in the most delicious of ironies is called Liberty (Liberty?! Armando Ianucci couldn’t come up with a better tale), is threatening to sue the local education authority for alleged distress suffered by her daughter.

It is a sad, sad state of affairs when we have become so far removed from the realities of eating meat that some people, despite being willing to consume it, are in denial about the consequences of it.

If you eat meat then something has to have its throat cut, that is just the way it is. Well done to the headteacher for implementing this and I can only hope that more schools follow her lead. And that the only form of compensation offered is a rosemary studded leg of lamb.