Tag Archives: sauce

11/12/2024 · 2:24 pm

Roast Turkey and Giblet Gravy

A very bronzed roast Copas turkey: butter is the only way to get this deep, delicious colour.

This blog post complements the recent episode of The British Food History Podcast called Turkey with Tom Copas.

If you feel inspired to order a Copas turkey, you need to get your order in by 16 December to avoid disappointment.

In the episode, we discussed the best way to roast turkey and we concluded that as long as you baste the bird and calculate the cooking time properly, it will be delicious. Tom even says that there’s no need to cover the turkey with bacon. While I agree with him, I do like the crispy bacon and the delicious, perfectly seasoned juices that come from the roasting turkey. My way of roasting turkey is very similar to how I cook a chicken.

What we didn’t discuss is the giblets! Please don’t waste them, they can be turned into lovely rich gravy when combined with the roasting juices. It’s important to get the giblet stock on about 45 minutes before the turkey goes in the oven (or you could prepare it in advance).

If you want to stuff the turkey, I suggest you stuff the neck only because an empty cavity means quicker cooking and a more succulent turkey.

Right, let’s get to it.

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To Roast a Turkey

You don’t have to use bacon if you don’t want to, but butter is essential. It adds richness, helps the bird keep moist and gives the skin a lovely deep brown colour.

1 free-range turkey

250 g salted butter, softened

Freshly ground black pepper

Around 14 rashers of dry-cured streaky bacon (optional)

Stuffing (optional)

Halved or quartered carrots and parsnips (optional; see recipe)

As soon as you get up on Christmas morning, take the turkey out of the fridge, untruss it, and when it’s time to cook the turkey, preheat your oven to 190°C.

Sit the turkey on a board, legs facing towards you, then make a tear in the skin where the breast starts and lift the skin away from the breast. Don’t rush – you don’t want to tear the skin. Put half the butter between the skin and breast and massage it as far back as possible. If you are using stuffing, add this under the skin too and tuck the flap of neck skin underneath. If there’s not much neck skin, don’t worry, it can be secured with a skewer.

Smear the rest of the butter over the outside of the turkey and season with plenty of black pepper, then lay the bacon over, overlapping each rasher only slightly.

Weigh the prepared turkey and calculate the cooking time: 30 minutes per kilo. A 4.5 kilo turkey will take 2 ½ hours. If cooking for more than 3 hours, cover the legs with foil.

Sit the turkey in its roasting tin, place it in the oven, and leave it for a good 45 minutes before doing anything at all. At the 45-minute mark baste the turkey with any juices; make sure to tip any juices in the cavity into the roasting tin.

Baste every 20 minutes or so. When the bacon is very crispy, remove it and set aside.

If you like you can add some carrots and parsnips, peeled and halved or quartered to braise in the juices. It’s best to do this when there are 90 minutes to go – don’t forget to turn the veg over each time you braise.

90 minutes to go, the bacon has been removed and the vegetables added to braise

When the time is up, you can test with a digital probe: 68°C is the temperature you are looking for. Take the turkey, place it on a carving board and cover with foil. It will happily rest for one to two hours.

When it’s time to carve, remove the legs and separate them into thighs and drumsticks. For the breast, I find the easiest way is to remove one side completely and then slice it thickly. These can be arranged on a warm serving plate, surrounded by the crisp bacon. Only cut into the second breast if the first one goes (it keeps better that way for leftover feasts).

I massaged the stuffing quite far into the turkey’s breast skin, protecting the meat and keeping it juicy

To Make Giblet Gravy

Don’t waste or fear the giblets! The giblets are the heart, neck, gizzard and liver.[1] Use your vegetable trimmings from the veg to make the stock: though avoid brassicas like sprouts.

For the stock:

Heart, gizzard and neck

A knob of butter

Leek greens, carrot peelings, and some celery trimmings, or 2 outer stems of celery

2 cloves of garlic, lightly crushed

Herbs: bay leaves, parsley stalks, rosemary or thyme sprig tied with string

175 ml white wine

Cold water

For the gravy

Giblet stock

Pan of turkey juices

1 tbs cornflour

To make the stock, first cut up the giblets into quarters.

In a saucepan, heat the butter until foaming, add the giblets and fry over a medium-high heat until brown – about 5 minutes. Now add the vegetable trimmings, garlic and herbs and wilt them. Cook until they have picked up a tinge of brown, then add the wine. Stir and scrape any nice burnt bits from the bottom. Add water to just cover the contents, put a lid on and bring to a simmer and cook for around 3 hours, then strain through a sieve into a clean pan (or into a tub if you’re making it in advance).

When it’s time to make the gravy, get the stock nice and hot. When the turkey is cooked and is resting on its board, pour the hot stock into the roasting tin and scrape off all the nice treacly burnt bits, then tip the whole thing back into your saucepan. Skim away most of the buttery juices.[2] Bring to a simmer and then add the cornflour which has been first slaked in a little cold water. Stir and simmer unlidded for 10 minutes.

Check the seasoning, though usually I find that the bacon and the salted butter from roasting the turkey have done it for me. Pour the gravy into a jug. You can pass it through a sieve, but I never do. Easy!

[1] Use the liver for the stuffing, or fry it and eat it on toast. You could devil it – recipe for devilling livers can be found here.

[2] But don’t throw the fat away, it can be used for frying vegetables for sauces or soup.

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12/04/2023 · 11:42 am

To Make Butter Sauce (aka Good Melted Butter)

If you leaf through English cookery books of the 18th and 19th centuries, you will see much mention of ‘melted butter’ or ‘good melted butter’, such as this one, a recipe for egg sauce from Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769)[1]:

You would be completely forgiven if you took those words literally, however, what Elizabeth is referring to is butter sauce, ‘or’, as one-time chef to Queen Victoria Charles Elmé Francatelli put it, ‘as it is absurdly called, melted butter’.[2] It achieved this misleading moniker simply because of its ubiquity. In fact, it was so ubiquitous that Mrs Raffald doesn’t even include a recipe for it. Luckily for us, Hannah Glasse does in Art of Cookery[3]:

Used freely across three centuries, it became known as the ‘one sauce’ of England. The recipe, at least in its constituents, doesn’t really change: it is essentially a thin roux made with flour and water (or stock), enriched with melting cubes of butter, essentially a beurre blanc stabilised with flour – very useful for a sauce that was potentially left standing on a dining table for an hour. Jane Grigson likened it to a hollandaise thickened with flour instead of egg yolks.[4] It can certainly be used in place of either. Butter sauce forms the basis of several other sauces, it can be sharpened with lemon juice, enriched with cream, or flavoured with herbs. Sometimes it is flavoured with shellfish, and even gooseberries if it is to be served with mackerel.

Like many of our common foods, they are mistreated, corners are cut and fillers are added. As Francatelli observed, ‘it is too generally left to assistants to prepare as an insignificant manner; the rest is therefore seldom satisfactory.’[5] Indeed, my first meeting with it was back in the 1980s in the form of a boil-in-the-bag frozen cod steak in butter sauce. I certainly enjoyed it at the time, but upon making a ‘proper’ one decades later for my Neil Cooks Grigson blog,[6] I immediately saw that the sauce I had consumed as a child was a shadow of its former self. Writing in English Food at a time when the hold nouvelle cuisine had on the restaurant scene was beginning to wane, Jane Grigson hoped we might return to this sauce and appreciate it again.[7] We didn’t, but perhaps now is the time?

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My recipe, below, is adapted from Jane Grigson’s, which in turn, is adapted from Francatelli’s, so it has quite the pedigree. The only significant change I have made is to reduce the amount of flour. I’ve tinkered with amounts so that a full 250g pack of butter is used; no messing about with weights (and there is something quite satisfying about using a whole block of butter). Don’t let any memories of bad school meals put you off, and don’t let the amount of butter put you off either, it’s a surprisingly light and delicate sauce.

It’s simple to prepare, as long as you don’t let the diced butter become hot enough it melts fully. I love this sauce served with steamed vegetables such as asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli, leeks or new potatoes, as well as simple poached eggs, sole or salmon. If you have some poaching liquid or stock, it can replace the water used in the recipe.

I’ve provided some simple, classic variations below should you fancy trying them.

Serves 4 to 6:

250g very cold unsalted butter, diced

2 level tsp plain flour

120ml hot water

Salt

Ground black pepper

Pinch nutmeg and mace (optional)

Squeeze lemon juice

2 tbs cream (optional)

Put around one-third of the butter in a saucepan over a medium-low heat and allow it to melt, then stir in the flour with a wooden spoon, or better a small whisk, and allow to cook gently for a couple of minutes – on no account let it brown. If the flour fries and clumps a little, don’t worry. Now mix in the hot water by degrees, only adding more when the water in the pan has fully mixed into the flour and butter. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and mace, if using. Allow to gently simmer for 6 or 7 minutes over a low heat. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool for 2 minutes.

Now start beating into the sauce 3 or 4 cubes of butter so that they slowly melt and amalgamate into the sauce. Only when the cubes have disappeared, should you add more. Once you have done this a couple of times, the sauce will cool and the cubes won’t melt so easily, so put the pan over the lowest heat possible, and then continue to add more.

When the butter is used up, add a small squeeze of lemon, stir and check for seasoning. If you like, add cream.

Serve the sauce in a warm jug, or pour over vegetables or fish.

Variations:

Parsley sauce: add a tbs of finely chopped parsley. Eat with some delicately poached cod and stick two fingers up to Captain Birdseye.

Caper sauce: add a tbs of capers, whole or chopped. If you like, season with a little wine vinegar instead of lemon juice. A more piquant sauce to eat with richer foods: skate, brains and poached lamb or mutton.

Egg sauce: make the sauce as above, but when it is ready add the mashed yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs and then the whites finely diced. Traditionally this is eaten with salt cod and parsnips in Lent.

Shrimp sauce (possibly the most delicious variation). Use a good handful of cooked brown shrimp in their shells (if you can get them) or small prawns. Remove the shells, and boil them in the water to make a rich stock. Use this instead of water. When the sauce is ready, stir in the shelled prawns or shrimps. This is delicious poured over poached turbot. You can also make this sauce with crab or lobster.

Notes

[1] Raffald, E. (1769) The Experienced English Housekeeper. First Edit. J. Harrop. Available at: https://archive.org/details/experiencedengl01raffgoog

[2] Francatelli, C. E. (1888) Francatelli’s Modern Cook. 26th edn. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Francatelli_s_Modern_Cook/ww5Yg0hT5eQC?hl=en&gbpv=0

[3] Glasse, H. (1747) The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Prospect Books. The image is taken from the 1763 edition, but the recipe is unchanged from the original 1747 edition.

[4]Grigson, J. (1992) English Food. Third Edit. Penguin.

[5] Francatelli (1888)

[6] Buttery, N. (2011) #272 Melted Butter, Neil Cooks Grigson. Available at: http://neilcooksgrigson.com/2011/02/06/272-melted-butter/

[7] Grigson (1992). Though I have referenced the third edition, Jane made this point in the second edition, which was published in the 1980s

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03/08/2022 · 10:48 am

Mutton Chops

This post has been written in a collaboration with Swaledale Online Butchers, ‘a strictly whole-carcass, nose-to-tail butchers based in Yorkshire.’ Their meat is of the highest quality, and they supply to some of the best restaurants in the country.

I was contacted by Swaledale Butchers recently to write some traditional recipes using their excellent meat. Swaledale is an online butcher who share exactly the same ethos as I do: championing all cuts of meat, not just the prime ones, so when they asked me to choose a couple of items to cook at home, I jumped at the chance.

I decided to choose mutton, a meat that many folk think is tough and not worth eating. They couldn’t be more wrong! Eating mutton over lamb is no different to eating beef over veal. A longer life gives the meat more flavour, but it is certainly not tough. To prove my point I chose two very different cuts one requiring slow cooking, the other a quick cook: shoulder and chops. I’ll deal with the shoulder in a future post soon. Today it’s all about tender mutton chops.

A 19th century chap sporting a fine set of mutton chops

Breaded Mutton Cutlets with Lemon Butter Sauce

Mutton chops were a very popular food, grilled or fried and served with a strong tasting sauce or gravy. Devilled mutton chops are very good – indeed if you fancy a go at that, I have an excellent devil sauce recipe here. My recipe for breaded chops couldn’t be more different though; it’s an excellent summery dish that’s especially useful for people who, like me, don’t have a barbecue but really enjoy eating al fresco.

The chops may be breaded and fried, and the sauce somewhat buttery, but it’s surprisingly light; using chicken stock over beef or mutton stock, as one might usually expect. For the aromatics, I eschew rosemary and mint completely and go instead for zesty marjoram and grassy parsley.

Feel free to trim the chops into cutlets, but I always think you’re losing a lot of the meat, and these chops from Swaledale have such soft fat, it really would be a crime to cut it off. Because it is a rather quick cook, you may want to trim the small amount of rind, but it is really not a necessity.

Serves 2

80 g breadcrumbs made from stale bread (gluten-free bread works very well here, by the way)

Zest 1 lemon, grated

2 tsp finely chopped parsley

1 tsp finely chopped marjoram (oregano, thyme or savory are good substitutes)

Salt and pepper

4 mutton chops, cut around 1 ½ inches/4 cm thick.

1 egg, beaten

30 g lard or dripping

2 level tsp plain flour or corn flour

300 ml chicken stock

50 g butter, diced and chilled

A squeeze of lemon juice

Mix the breadcrumbs, lemon zest and herbs, season with salt and pepper and spread the mixture out onto a plate. Coat each chop in egg, then coat in the breadcrumbs, tapping away excess. Set aside.

Melt the lard or dripping in a heavy based frying pan over a medium heat. Once hot, add the chops. It’s important to leave them be for the first two or three minutes, lest you lose the breadcrumb coating. After four minutes turn them over and cook the other side, basting the chops every now and again. After 8 minutes they will be ready, remove and place on kitchen paper and put them in a warm oven to keep them crisp.

Now make the sauce. In the same frying pan, turn up the heat to medium-high (don’t worry about any dark brown breadcrumbs, we’ll deal with those soon) sprinkle the flour and stir with a wooden spoon so that the flour absorbs any stray fat, then pour in the stock by degrees, making sure there are few lumps. Bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of minutes to cook out the flour, then take off the heat and whisk in the cubed butter two or three cubes at a time. Add a squeeze of lemon juice. Taste and check for seasoning, adding more lemon, salt or pepper as required. Pass through a sieve and straight into a sauceboat.

Serve the cutlets and the sauce with steamed new potatoes, mushrooms fried in butter and a rocket salad.

Beautifully soft and tender mutton chops.

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29/04/2022 · 4:56 pm

Blue Cheese Ice Cream with Poached Pears

As I promised in my last post, I have a second cheese recipe for you that uses a traditionally-made British cheese. Harvey & Brockless sent me a whole loads of excellent cheeses and other goodies, and tucked in there was probably my favourite British blue cheese, Isle of Wight Blue:

‘Established in 2006 by mother and son Julie and Richard Hodgson, Isle of Wight Cheese Co. flagship blue is soft and creamy with a bluey green natural rind and blue veins.’

Beautiful Isle of Wight Blue (pic: Harvey & Brockless)

It’s strong, yet mellow and very creamy. Nothing like a Stilton at all (I love a good Stilton too, of course).

This is exactly the sort of cheese Professor Peter J. Atkins and I were talking about in my podcast episode about the British cheese industry, and how there is a resurgence in traditional styles and methods: softer cheeses made in small batches in small farms – before the behemoth that is Cheddar came along!

This cheese, because of its blue cheese flavour, low acidity and smooth consistency, is perfect to make into an ice cream. Cheese ice creams used to be popular, hitting a peak in the Regency period: indeed, the Prince Regent himself tucked into Parmesan cheese ice cream. My ice cream, like Prince George’s, is sweetened, but it is not over-sweet. It’s very simple to make – a case of mixing soft cheese into some cream and sugar. A curdy, hard or crumbly cheese would not work here.

I’ve combined it with a dessert classic: pears poached in red wine. There’s a recipe in Forme of Cury for it, so it really does have quite the vintage. The poaching wine is sweet and spiced and is reduced to a delicious, tart and slightly fiery spooning sauce. On the side: a nice digestive biscuit.

This is a well tried-and-tested recipe: it’s popped up on restaurant and pop-up restaurant menus in the past, but I originally made it as part of The Telegraph Fabulous Foodie competition all the way back in 2015. It was judged by none less than Xanthe Clay, John Gregory Smith and Jeremy Dixon and it took me to the grand final. So if you are still unsure as to whether you’ll like it, take it from them, not me, that it is good!

Give it a go, you won’t be sorry. Also, see below for an excellent way of using up left over ice cream and sauce.

Serves 4 to 6

For the ice cream:

1 x 225 g round of Isle of Wight Blue at room temperature

450 g double cream

1 ½ tbs icing sugar

In a bowl, break up the cheese as best you can and beat into it one third of the cream. You won’t be able to blend it in perfectly, but a little texture is no bad thing.

Sift the icing sugar with the reminder of the cream in a second bowl and whip until just slightly floppy, then fold into the cheese.

Freeze it in an ice cream churn if you have one. Alternatively, place in a tub, pop in the freezer and beat it with a small whisk every 20 to 30 minutes or so until it becomes too difficult; at that point you are done, and it can be left in the freezer until required. If you don’t want to freeze it, you can whip the cream a little more and use it like clotted cream.

For the pears:

4 to 6 unripe conference pears

500 ml red wine

100 g caster sugar

1 cinnamon stick

2 long peppers (or ¼ tsp black peppercorns)

¼ tsp ground ginger

Peel the pears, leaving the stalks intact. Slice the bottom so that the pear is able to stand up sturdily. If you have one, use a melon baller to remove the core from beneath.

Bruise the cinnamon stick and long pepper (or crack the peppercorns) and place in a pan with the wine and sugar. Put over a medium-low heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved, add the pears.

Bring to a simmer and cover the pan, turn down the heat and poach until tender. This will take around 20 minutes. The pears won’t be completely submerged, so to ensure an even colouring from the wine, turn them half way through cooking.

Remove the pears and set aside. They can be stored in the fridge for up to four days.

Now make the syrup: turn up the heat and bring the wine to the boil and let it reduce by around three-quarters or more, until viscous. Pour into a jug or jar and allow to cool.

To serve:

Remove the ice cream from the fridge around half an hour before you want to serve. Place a pear in the centre of a plate – it may need another trim at the bottom if it’s been in the fridge a day or two – and carefully spoon a couple of teaspoons of the syrup over the tip of the pear.

Place a biscuit next to the pear – I used a homemade digestive (post coming soon), but a hob-nob would also work very well – and place a scoop or quenelle of ice cream on top the biscuit.

Leftovers: there will probably be leftover ice cream and syrup, the latter of which keeps for weeks. Treat yourself to a very grown-up ice cream cookie sandwich using digestives instead of cookies, cheese ice cream instead of vanilla, and red wine syrup in place of raspberry sauce.

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20/12/2021 · 7:30 am

Rum Butter & Brandy Butter

This post complements the episode ‘Christmas Special 2021: Christmas Pudding’ on The British Food History Podcast.

I used to believe that brandy butter – that infamous accompaniment to Christmas pudding and mince pies – was far too rich and sweet, and always preferred custard. I made a traditional Christmas pudding from a 19th century recipe and because it wasn’t as rich as modern day puds, I found the buttery sauce complemented the dessert perfectly – though I still prefer the rum butter.

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12/07/2019 · 7:23 pm

A Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

Last post I wrote about the delicious gooseberry. Since I wrote it, I have seen them in quite a few shops, including Morrison’s, so I am feeling good about the gooseberry’s culinary future.

You’d think after all these years, I’d be better at taking photographs!

It is important to remember that gooseberries can be served with meat and fish in rather the same way as tart Bramley apples are: oily fish such as mackerel is the classic pairing, but I have found recipes that match it with chicken, goose, pork and mutton or lamb. Sauces and stuffings are made with the small new tart berries, with just a little sugar. The simplest sauce being made from halved berries, chopped mint and sugar. The ingredients are mixed, covered and left to macerate for several hours. Delicious with barbequed mackerel or herring, and the fact it isn’t cooked means the gooseberries retain their vibrant green colour.

I mentioned that in France it is known as the mackerel currant, because it is only ever really served with the oily fish, and even then, it’s considered particular only to Normandy. It did start life as an English dish, but as there was much communication between England and Normandy during the mediaeval period, it’s no surprise that they picked up some tips from the English during centuries of toing and froing.

I’ve taken elements from three different recipes to come up with mine: Jane Grigson’s English Food (1992), Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families (1847) and Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book (1604). Talent borrows, genius steals and all that. Many of the ingredients are optional, so if you want a cleaner tasting sauce, omit the cream and maybe the butter too. If you are interested, there’s also a great recipe for a gooseberry stuffing for mackerel on my other blog.

It’s a delicious combination – simply grilled mackerel and the tart sauce, and maybe a green salad on the side. It’s telling you that summer is here! This pairing is largely forgotten now, but look in some older British cookery books and you’ll see it crop up again and again.

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Young, green, small gooseberries are required for recipes that are served with savoury food – the later, large sweet ones are best used in desserts (recipes for those coming soon).

250 g gooseberries, topped and tailed

50 ml water

50 ml white wine, or a dash of cider vinegar

50 g sugar, or to taste

good pinch of ground ginger

salt and pepper

a knob of butter (optional)

2 to 3 tbs double cream (optional)

Put the gooseberries, water, wine or vinegar and sugar in a saucepan and cook until the gooseberries go pale in colour and start to become very soft, crushing them against the side of your pan with a wooden spoon. Season with salt and pepper.

If you want a very smooth sauce with no seeds or pulp, whizz the whole thing in a blender and pass through a sieve. I like to leave mine with some texture, but it’s up to you. If you did pass it through a sieve put it in a clean pan and put it over a medium heat.

Smooth or pulpy, beat in your butter with whisk or spoon until it becomes glossy, then add the cream.

Add more sugar if you like – remember it isn’t supposed to be sweet like apple sauce.

Serve alongside grilled or fried mackerel, but also pork, chicken or goose.

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26/10/2015 · 9:47 pm

Fifth Course: Rich Pigeon Faggot with Mustard Sauce

Here’s the penultimate course of the Dinner Party Through Time and it brings us up to the Second World War. The recipe is not actually from the 1940s, but I thought it represented two very different aspects of food culture during this time. A normal faggot is a mixture of pork or lamb offal and offcuts wrapped in a little caul fat and baked. They are of course a national dish and, quite rightly, should be celebrated.

During WWII, meat was rationed, and families could spend up to just one shilling and tuppence on meat per person per week, which got you a little over a pound of meat each. Offal, however, was not rationed so housewives would supplement the ‘proper’ meat with offcuts. This meant that dishes such as faggots were eaten more often.

churchill war room

In contrast to this, Winston Churchill ate opulently in his war room, putting away course after course of delicious, rich and very expensive food and booze. Here’s a typical lunch menu:

Native Oysters

Petite Marmite

Roast Venison with Mushrooms

Ice Cream with Raspberries

Stilton, Apples, Grapes & Walnuts

…and to drink:

Pol Roger Champagne

Chardonnay

Claret

Port

Cognac

Don’t forget the coffee and cigars, of course.

He did not hide the fact he was living in this way, indeed people thought the man who was overseeing the war should be living in this way. I doubt that would happen today.

Anyway, I digress.

I thought making a very cheap and basic meal into something rich and indulgent would highlight these two diets perfectly.

It’s a very complicated affair, but it benefits from the fact that you can make it ahead of time and can freeze them – in fact the freezing process helps tenderise the rich pigeon filling.

I can’t pretend it’s my own recipe; it’s adapted from Gary Rhodes’ excellent New British Classics.

Unfortunately, no one took a photograph of them, so here’s a picture of a woodpigeon from the RSPB website:

woodpigeon_rsbp

This recipe makes 24 to 30 faggots.

For the faggots themselves:

6 pigeons

1.8 litres pigeon stock (see below)

2 chicken breasts

350g belly pork

150g back fat

150g chicken livers

2 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp thyme leaves, chopped

90ml brandy

120ml Madeira

2 egg whites, beaten

200ml double cream

Pigeon reduction (see below)

Salt and pepper

Caul fat, soaked overnight in salted water

Vegetable oil or lard for frying

Well ahead of time, remove the breasts from the pigeons (or ask your butcher to do it). Use the carcasses to make the pigeon stock (see below). Reduce around 400ml of the stock by three-quarters to use in the pigeon reduction (see even further below).

Coarsely mince the pigeon breasts, chicken breasts, pork, back fat and chicken livers twice.

Heat the shallots, garlic and thyme in a small saucepan along with the brandy and Madeira and boil down until almost dry. Mix this into the meat along with the egg whites, cream and pigeon reduction. Season with salt and pepper and refrigerate.

Unfurl your caul fat and spread it on a chopping board, cutting it into approximate six by six centimetre squares. Take tablespoons of the faggot mixture and roll into balls and wrap each one up in a square of caul fat. Pat each one dry and fry in oil or lard to seal them and give them a nice golden colour. Arrange them in a flameproof tin or pan.

Warm the remainder of the stock and pour it over the faggots. Simmer them very gently in the stock for about 15 minutes and let them cool in the stock then freeze.

When you want to eat the faggots, defrost them and warm them up in the oven. Serve them up with the mustard sauce (again, see below) and some steamed cabbage and some mashed potato.

For the pigeon stock

2 tbs sunflower oil or lard

6 pigeon carcasses

2 onions, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

4 sticks celery, sliced

4 mushrooms, sliced

500ml of red wine or port

2 cloves of garlic

2 sprigs of thyme

10 juniper berries

5 tomatoes

Black peppercorns

Beef bones

Beef skirt

I’ve already written about how to make stock, so have a look at this post for some general hints and tips. Don’t worry, if you don’t have exactly the right amount or variety of stock veg. I often use bags of veg trimmings I sequester in my freezer exactly for this sort of thing.

Fry the pigeon carcasses in the oil until very well browned, then turn down the heat and add the onions, carrots, celery and mushrooms. Cook these until they are softened and browned. Tip the whole lot into your stockpot, deglazing the frying pan with a splash of the red wine or port. Add the remainder of the wine or port with all of the other ingredients plus enough water to cover.

Bring slowly to a bare simmer, keep the pot covered and on your smallest hob on the lowest heat and let it tick away for three hours. Strain, skim and reduce to a volume of 1.8 litres.

For the pigeon reduction:

2 good sprigs of thyme

4 juniper berries, crushed

1 garlic clove, chopped

120ml brandy

120ml port

the reduced pigeon stock

Place all of the ingredients except the reduced stock in a pan and reduce the liquid by three-quarters. Strain through a sieve and add the stock. Cool and keep in the fridge until needed.

For the mustard butter sauce

200g chilled, cubed butter

a small onion, sliced

2 bay leaves

1 star anise

12 black peppercorns

4 cardamom pods, cracked open

4 tbs white wine vinegar

8 tbs white wine

360ml chicken stock

4 tbs cream

salt and white pepper

2 tsp English mustard

Take a knobsworth of butter and gently cooked the onion and herbs and spices gently for around five minutes.

Now, lots of reducing: add the white wine vinegar, turn up the heat, and reduce by three-quarters. Next, add the wine and reduce by three-quarters. Finally add the stock and reduce that by three-quarters too.

Turn the heat down low, stir in the cream and whisk in the remainder of the butter a few pieces at a time. Season with salt and white pepper, strain and stir in the mustard. Pour into a warmed sauce boat or jug.

 

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10/07/2015 · 9:54 pm

First Course: Tudor Salmon en Croute

tudor fisherman

The second dish in my Dinner Party Through Time menu, and we have moved along a couple of hundred years to Tudor Britain.

This is a recipe that is inspired by the Tudor love of combining fish with candied sweetmeats. Large medieval banquets had to contain dishes with lots of spice; after all how else could you display your vast wealth other than to use that exciting spice, sugar? When first brought to Europe from India, sugar was considered a spice and therefore medicinal. It lost its rank as a spice once it gained popularity as a more general addition to the dinner table; albeit a giant banqueting table.

The addition of the salmon, then, you might feel was also a mark of an ostentatious lord. It is not the case, back in the day, before such things as pollution and overfishing, streams were teeming with fish like salmon. In fact they were so common on the River Mersey that people used to feed them to their pigs! The same, of course, goes for oysters too, and yet we can now buy a pound of sugar for 30 pence. How times have changed.

This dish is very attractive: a lovely fish wrapped neatly in pastry with some sweet spice, fruit and nuts, plus a nice piquant herb sauce. It’s pretty easy to make to boot, as long as you have good shortcrust pastry. This was so good, that it became the main course at my last pop-up restaurant.

tudor salmon 3

Yours Truly, with the fish

This recipe is actually from Jane Grigson, who did the tricky bit for us and worked out a recipe. It comes from her book English Food and I suggest you buy a copy (see the other blog about that!). The only real difference I’ve made is to multiply up the amounts; I used a whole salmon, rather than just a piece as in the book.

You will need:

1 salmon, filleted, skin on or off

250g butter, softened

8 knobs of preserved ginger, chopped

1-2 tbs of the ginger syrup

2 heaped tbs raisins or currants

2 heaped tbs slivered almonds

salt and pepper

shortcrust pastry (see method)

beaten egg

For the herb sauce:

4 shallots, very finely chopped

2 tsp parsley, finely chopped

2 tsp of chervil or tarragon, or a mixture, finely chopped

125g butter

2 tsp plain flour

600ml double cream

2 tsp English mustard

salt and pepper

4 egg yolks

juice ½ lemon

Beat the softened butter with the preserved ginger, raisins and almonds. Sweeten with the syrup as you see fit. Use half of the mixture to sandwich the two pieces of salmon together and then spread the remaining half over the top piece. Season with salt and pepper.

Now you are ready to encase the beast in pastry. I used a batch made of 800g flour and 400g of fat (200g each lard and butter), 2 eggs and a little water, but you might need more or less, depending upon the size of your salmon. Roll out a third of the pastry into a shape larger than the fish and place it on top. Trim around it, leaving a two centimetre gap.

Next, roll out the rest and carefully place it over the fish, trimming the pastry away so there is a one centimetre gap between it and the lower layer. Brush with beaten egg all around the edges, and fold and crimp the pastry all the way around; rather like a huge pasty. Use the trimmings for decoration. There were a few small cracks in my pastry, but I hid them most cleverly with some pastry leaves that I placed here and there. I must say, I was quite impressed with my effort.

Make two or three slashes on the top so that steam can escape and bake for around 45 minutes at 220⁰C (425⁰F). To tell that it is done use a temperature probe; if the centre is around 50⁰C it’s ready to come out. As the fish rests, it will increase in temperature.

tudor salmon 1

As it rests, you can get on with the sauce. Gently fry the shallots and herbs in butter. When the shallots have softened, stir in the flour, then the cream (reserving a little for later). Simmer for around 10 minutes, then season with salt, pepper and mustard. Whisk the egg yolks with the reserved cream, turn down the heat in the pan and pour in. The sauce will thicken as the yolks start to cook – do not let the sauce boil, or your yolks will scramble. If it seems on the thick side, add a little water. Finally, lift the whole thing by adding a good squeeze of lemon juice.

The rested salmon can now by sliced up. The best way I find to do this sort of operation is to use a serrated knife. Slice the untidy end off, but keep it pressed up against the rest of the fish as you make more slices. Don’t take away any slices until you are finished cutting, otherwise everything will crumble and collapse.

The best thing to eat with this, I would say, is a green bitter vegetable such as broccoli or kale.

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25/06/2012 · 8:50 pm

The Duck Press

The duck press was invented in France during the 1800s by a chef called Mechenet to make what is one of the most extravagant and macabre dishes ever created: Caneton de Rouen à la Presse, also known as Duck in Blood Sauce. It was popularised by Chef Frèdèric who was head chef at the famous restaurant La Tour d’Argent where it became the signature dish. It is reckoned over a million were served there. What is particularly impressive is that the dish was made at the table in front of the guests.

At La Tour d’Argent you are given a card

telling you the ‘number of your duck’

The dish became very popular in Britain during that famously excessive (and thankfully brief) period of history, the Edwardian Era. London’s high society went to huge efforts to appear sophisticated; French cuisine has always been associated with sophistication and the dish Caneton de Rouen à la Presse was one of the best. The Savoy in the 1900s, which then had the formidable chef Escoffier at the helm, regularly served it.

Escoffier

To make the dish you first of all need a duck press which a large metal press usually made of bronze. It contains a spout low down on the press itself so that the blood and bone marrow can be collected easily and it stands on two our four heavy feet so that the whole thing remains stable; you don’t want to cover some count in blood goo unless you can really help it. Some of them have webbed duck feet. If you want to buy a duck press though it will set you back around £1000.

Once you have procured your press you need to prepare your duck. The best for this recipe would be a Rouen duckling, but a mallard would be a good substitute. First of all kill your duck by strangulation so that the blood remains inside the tissues than pluck it. Next day remove the innards, keeping aside the heart and liver, and roast it on the very highest setting on the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Liquidise the bird’s liver and heart. This is the point where the press and the duck are wheeled to the dining table for the guests to watch.

Remove the legs and set them aside for later, then remove the breast meat cutting it thinly and keeping it warm and covered on a serving dish with a cloche. Push and shove the carcass in the press to extract the blood and bone marrow from the bird, collecting it in a jug placed beneath the spout.

Make a sauce by gently warming the blood with the liquidised liver, some duck or veal stock and some brandy or cognac. Lastly, whisk in a good knob of butter to thicken the sauce and make it glossy. Pour the sauce over the sliced duck breast. Serve with a green salad.

The legs are usually taken away and grilled to be served up during the next course.

So there you have it; a simple and affordable family meal. I have to say, I am a lover of rare meats and I don’t find this sort of food scary at all and it is being served in some restaurants today. If I make my millions, I’ll buy a press and get you all round for dinner.

I found this YouTube video of one being used, but if you’re squeamish, you’re best not looking, I’d say.

For more duck history and recipes, click upon this very link.

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