Category Archives: Serious Dinner Parties

I love Thai food, especially the sort you get served on a hot beach near Phuket with a foot massage for dessert. However, you can’t have it all, and this is a really easy recipe to re-create some of those flavours, if not the glorious delight of toe rubbing. I always keep a large bag of shelled, uncooked prawns in the freezer (Costco does a fantastic deal), because they come in so handy for a dish like this that as virtually all the other ingredients may come from your store cupboard.

So you will need, l piece of lemon grass, peeled and chopped, fresh is best but the bottled stuff is fine  450g/1lb of defrosted or fresh raw prawns that have been de-veined, that means removing that funny black line, which is in fact its digestive tract, and believe me you don’t want to eat what that prawn has been eating!  2 tablespoons of green curry paste, we are really lucky as there is a brilliant Thai food store in Maidenhead, just next to the market where you can buy fresh ingredients and great curry pastes. My favourite is Mae Ploy, they make a variety of flavours which keep in the fridge for ages. However, all supermarkets have a Thai section now and green curry paste is very easy to come by. Of course, you can make your own, but even in Thailand most people buy it! If you would like a recipe, send me a message. You will also need 5 kaffir lime leaves or the zest of two limes.  You can buy fresh kaffir lime leaves and keep them in the freezer and chuck them in straight from it.  It wouldn’t be a Thai dish without fish sauce, it’s funny isn’t it? Like shrimp paste, it’s truly disgusting on its own, but tastes amazing in the curry. Sorry, I digress, you need 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, again most supermarkets have it, if you can’t get it, light soya sauce will do. 2 teaspoons of soft brown sugar and a tin of coconut milk, (splash out calorie-wise and get the whole fat one, the low-fat simply isn’t as creamy and doesn’t have the body). To garnish you need either Thai basil, or fresh english basil finely chopped.

Method: In a  frying pan or a wok, add 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil and over a medium heat, fry the curry paste for a moment, add the lemon grass, kaffir leaves, fish sauce, sugar and coconut, reduce the heat to low and cook for 5 minutes. Now, the brilliant thing about this dish is that if you are cooking for a dinner party, you can do all this in advance and then when you are ready to cook, bring the sauce back to a simmer, add the prawns and cook for 5 minutes, add the basil and then serve with steamed jasmine rice. Simple! I sometimes garnish this with some fried chopped red chillies and chopped cashew nuts, but you don’t have to. This dish also works with chopped chicken breast, too.

To cook your Jasmine rice (Serves 2-4): Rinse 100g of rice under the cold tap until the water runs clear, place in a  saucepan and add 200 mls of cold water. Bring to the boil and then cover with a tight fitting lid and place on the very lowest possible heat for 7 to 10 minutes until the excess water has steamed off. Turn off the heat and leave for a further 5 minutes. For different flavours, add a kaffir lime leaf to the water or replace some of the water with coconut milk or chicken stock. Don’t forget that Jasmine rice is meant to be sticky and is a different consistency to long grain and basmati. Enjoy and try and get someone to give you that foot rub!

Why are those clams so happy? It’s a bit like that Larry bloke, I always wondered why he was so cheerful, too. Anyway, it doesn’t take much to make me happy and the sight of fresh clams on the fish counter at Waitrose brings genuine joy to my heart. It transports me to one of my favourite places in the world, Chez Black in Positano on the Amalfi coast, where they do possibly the best spahetti alla vongole in the world.

I couldn’t claim to recreate that perfection, but buy those beautiful little clams and make this unbelievably simple recipe.  You will need  at least 800g of fresh clams, rinsed thoroughly in cold water and any open ones discarded,( treat them the same as mussels), 1 packet of spaghetti dried or fresh, 2 shallots or 1 small white onion, chopped, 4 cloves of garlic, crushed, 1 tablespoon of olive oil,1 handful of chopped fresh parsley, half a glass of dry white wine, a knob of salted butter.  Some people like to add a little red chilli or even tomato, but I like to keep mine simple.

Method: Cook the spaghetti according to the instructions and whilst it’s boiling, place the olive oil, chopped shallots and crushed garlic in a heavy bottomed pan over a medium heat and cook until soft, but not brown, add the white wine and bring to the boil. Add the clams and keep the heat high, place a lid on the pan and cook for 4 to 5 minutes shaking occasionally. Add the parsley, the drained cooked spaghetti and stir in the butter. Season with black pepper and salt to taste, the clams can be quite salty so do taste  first.  Pour yourself a glass of wine and relax, this makes a lovely supper or is a good starter or rustic main course for a dinner party.

It’s magic because it’s so easy and it is does make you feel great in a lovely, comfort eating sort of way, but probably no hallucinations, which is a good thing.  Making a fantastic risotto is all about the arm muscles, basically you have to stir and stir or you won’t get that lovely creamy texture.  I always keep risotto rice (Arborio is my favourite) and dried mushrooms in my store cupboard, because it means you always have an instant, lovely supper available when the fridge is looking woeful and there’s just a mouldy bit of cheddar and a few pathetic, withered vegetables that are so far gone, you don’t even know what they are. There’s always a bottle of fizz though, after all you have to have some standards!  To serve 2 to 3 for supper or 4 as a dinner party starter, you will need:

• Knob of butter
• 300g risotto rice
• Wild mushrooms, any kind you like, I used fresh shiitake, you can use dried ones that have been soaked
• 1 litre of stock (chicken or vegetable) – you can make with a stock cube or have ready-made, if you want it to be really fancy, make it with half dry white wine, made in a saucepan
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon plus a  few saffron strands (optional)
• Bunch of spring onions, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons of grated parmesan
• A few shaves of parmesan for decoration
• I also added some fresh tomberries – (have you ever seen them before, aren’t they sweet? They are about the size of blueberries, for comparison in the picture, below, I put them next to a cherry tomato) You can substitute with cherry tomatoes, but they are optional
• Chopped parsley or fresh basil – depending on whether you added tomatoes or not

Method

Place the stock, zest and juice of the lemon and the saffron in a saucepan and bring to the boil, then place on a low simmer. 

In a large non-stick saucepan gently cook onion and garlic in the butter  until soft, but not brown. 

Add mushrooms and simmer gently for about 5 minutes until they are soft. 

Add the rice to the onion and mushroom mixture and stir thoroughly.

Add a ladle full of hot stock and stir constantly, when all the stock has been absorbed, add the next one, repeat this method until you have used all the stock, this process will take you at least  20 to 30 mins .Taste and if the rice tastes chalky and not creamy, keep stirring and add a little more water.   Finally, add the parmesan cheese.

 At this point I added the tomberries, but this is optional.  Because of the tomatoes, I added fresh basil, but parsley is good, too.  Garnish with some parmesan and serve!  If you are cooking for a dinner party, you can at least cook the onions and mushrooms in advance and then heat up the stock and start adding the rice, to save time.  

The added bonus of this dish is not only does it taste great, but it stops you getting bingo wings.

Happy weekend everyone!

Well, it’s not really dancing, but I do a little dance for joy when I cook belly of pork. It is one of my most favourite things to cook and to eat. Yes, I know it’s fatty, so I only do it sometimes, but oh, oh, oh I love that crackling and tender pork.

It’s so simple all you need is

• A handful of fresh sage, stalks discarded
• 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• grated zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lemon
• Pork belly

1. Preheat the oven 220C/200C Fan oven, gas mark 7.
2. Either put the herbs, garlic, lemon juice and zest in a blender or Roughly chop the sage then, using a pestle and mortar, grind with the garlic and lemon juice and zest and seasoning to make a thick paste.
3. With a sharp knife, make incisions into the flesh and rub the paste into the incisions and over the flesh, taking care to avoid the skin.
4. Transfer to a roasting tray, dry the skin and season it with a little salt
5. Roast for 20 minutes then reduce the oven to 170C or 150C for a fan oven/ gas mark 3 for a further 2 hours until the pork is thoroughly cooked and the juices run clear.
6.  Leave to rest for 5 minutes then if the crackling is not crisp enough, place under a hot grill until it puffs up and goes crispy

1. If I am cooking this for a dinner party, I drain off the excess fat, add some diced cooking apple to the pan juices and cook for a couple of minutes, then I de-glaze the pan with cider or white wine and add single cream just before serving

 

I just love a nice fat belly – when it’s pork anyway!