Culinary Cure for the Common Cold

Well ok, that might be a bit of an overclaim but what I'm about to share certainly made me feel better when I had a blocked nose and a hacking cough yesterday. It's a type of noodle soup inspired by some of the delicious Ramens and other noodle soups I've eaten in New York. So before I give you my self-created recipe, which I have to say worked a treat, I want to give you some recommendations on Ramen in New York.

By no means has my pursuit of fine Ramen been exhaustive, mainly because there are two places very close to my apartment that make such truly delicious Ramen that I haven't felt the need to look further afield.

The first is the Momofuku Noodle Bar - they do good Ramen, not spectacular, but good. What makes it special is that you can get your apetite going  with one of their soy sauce eggs (somehow infused and cooked in soy sauce and then sprinkled with salt and crispy onions - delicious!) and a jar of their home-made pickles. Then accompany your Ramen with an order of their steamed pork buns whch are unparalleled naughty little bready pillows filled with sticky barbecued belly pork. Mmmmmm.

The second, I think, is superior Ramen. Whereas Momofuku puts a poached egg in their Ramen, Kambi Ramen puts a soy-boiled egg in theirs which is much tastier.

I also have an emotional link to Kambi which I think makes theirs taste even better. When I first moved to New York, in the depths of winter, I was jobless, so would go for long walks around the city just to look around. On one of these days it had started snowing hard, I was inappropriately dressed, my fingers were numb, it was dark outside, I'd sold my family into slavery for one piece of coal.....you get the picture. Anyhoo, I stumbled across Kambi, this warm, cosily lit steamy den of amazing aromas and the Ramen was exactly what I needed. I mean, if I had explained to some kind of fairy godmother the sensations I wished a meal could provide for me at that moment, she couldn't have done better than Kambi's Ramen. A very long winded way of saying, I may be somewhat biased but I still think their Ramen is amazing.

But enough of that, what I constructed last night was not quite a Ramen but not far off and it took less than half an hour to throw together. It's low in fat and calories yet filling, warming and great if you have a cold:

(Serves 2 with enormous appetites or 4 for a light meal)

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of Olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (very good for colds as is fresh ginger so if you fancy grating a 2 inch piece and mixing it with the garlic that's not a bad plan!)

250g sliced mushrooms (shitake if you can get them, but regular button mushrooms will do if not)

2 large chicken breasts cut into short strips

2 tablespoons of sushi vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 vegetable stock cubes

2 litres of boiling water

1 large carrot peeled and cut into matchsticks

1 large handful of broccoli florets

2 small bok choy chopped

1 finely chopped spring onion

1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes

2 packs of straight-to-wok or fresh noodles - udon or soba are best (you could use dried egg or rice noodles but if you do, adjust cooking time accordingly)

1. Fry the garlic, mushrooms and chicken in the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat until it starts to brown.

2. Add the soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar and continue to cook over a medium-high heat until the liquid has evaporated, then turn off the heat and set to one side.

3. Crumble the stock cubes in a big soup pan and pour over the boiling water - stir until the stock cubes have dissolved completely.

4. Add the carrots and cook for 2 mins.

5. Add the broccoli and cook for a further 2 mins.

6. Add the chilli flakes, remaining vinegar and the noodles and cook for a further two mins.

7. Add the bok choy, cooked chicken and mushrooms and cook for a further minute.

8. Sprinkle with spring onions, stir and serve.

And finally, marvel at the miraculous disappearance of your cold-induced-self-pity (I did anyway).

Mushrooming Mary

Last week my old school friend Mary posted on her Facebook status that she was heading into the woods at the weekend to go mushrooming. We're not sixteen anymore, so I hoped she didn't mean the magic kind, but with Mad Mazza you never know. Mary was a favourite boozing partner of my youth - the girl whose idea it was to get boxed wine for a bus trips to the 6th form social, because then you could inflate the empty bag inside as a pillow for the journey home. A legend. Well, it must be a sign of our age as it turns out that wild as she used to be, Mary's mushrooming mission was nothing to do with hallucinogens. In fact, she was in the pursuit of some flavourful beauties to cook with, and she knows an awful lot more about the different varieties than I probably ever will. So, this week I am sharing a recipe of my own creation for wild mushroom linguine and dedicating it to Mary. As luck would have it, it also includes white wine (though I wouldn't necessarily advocate the boxed kind) so I hope she likes it.

(Serves 4)

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons of olive oil or truffle oil if you're feeling flash

2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 large red onion, cut in half then sliced horizontally so you get long ribbons when the slices break up

500g of mixed mushrooms, chopped - go for the craziest ones you can find in the supermarket but try and include some porcinis if you can as they have fabulous flavour

2 tablespoons plain flour

2 large glasses nice white wine

1 jar of wild mushroom antipasto, drained (this is optional but really adds to the flavour if you can get it)

1 small tub of creme fraiche (or double cream if you want to really push the boat out)

Linguine

Fresh grated parmesan to serve

1. Fry the onions and garlic in the oil over a medium heat until they begin to soften but not colour, and while you do that get your linguine (follow the pack instructions) cooking in a pan of salted boiling water

2. Add in the mushrooms and cook them until they start to brown ever so slightly

3. Sprinkle over the flour and stir in thoroughly, then add the wine a little splash at a time, stirring it in as you go to avoid lumps

4. Add in the drained mushroom antipasto

5. Simmer gently and continue stirring constantly until the alcohol from the wine and any vinegar from the antipasto has completely evaporated - you can tell this by giving it a good sniff - if it smells boozey, keep it cooking a bit longer (otherwise your creme fraiche / cream will curdle when you add it).

6. Stir in the creme fraiche/ cream and bring back to a simmer

7. Drain your linguine and add it to the mushroom sauce

8. Mix it all up and serve it with a healthy sprinkle of freshly grated parmesan and a piece of garlic bread if you can manage it.

The Secrets Of My Lasagne

A couple of months ago a friend of mine and I got drunkenly talking about Lasagne. I can't pretend that there wasn't a bit of bravado sprinkled into the conversation and as the wine poured we decided the question of who made the best Lasagne needed to be resolved. With a 'Lasagne-Off'. Our husbands would be 'blind-tasters', marriages would be on the line if they chose incorrectly, but a decision had to be made as to whose was better.

It all seemed like a great idea, because ultimately, it just meant us getting together on weekend and eating loads of Lasagne.

The trouble is, when you like having boozey wine-filled evenings with your friends and they like doing that too, chances are, they like doing that with other people as well.

Drunken conversations about Lasagne spread like wild fire and it became 'The Annual International Lasagne-Off' with two fully Italian Americans participating using 'Grandma's secret recipe' and even a Latino entry with a crazy Columbian twist on the dish. The competition was much more fierce and the stakes much higher. But I couldn't back out - I had to put my pasta where my mouth was and compete. So just for your delight, here's the recipe for my entry. My Lasagne has been a much guarded secret until now and has a few contraversial ingredients. I can't say it's not a bit of a faff to make. It is. But it's a labour of love and worth every minute. Don't forget to fuel the chef with an inspirational amount of good red wine, and it'll all go swimmingly. This recipe feeds 8 a good hearty portion.

Start with the bolognese. If you can make this the night before and just leave it maturing in the fridge overnight, even better. But I'll give you all the ingredients up front for your shopping list!

Ingredients

For the Bolognese:

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  
• 3 cloves of fresh garlic very finely chopped
  
• 2 medium red onions diced
  
• 1 large stick of celery very finely diced
• 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
  
• 2lbs (1 kilo) of minced meat. Don't cut corners here, either get the butcher to give you sirloin steak and mince it up for you or do it yourself, but you don't want crappy mince. I like to make mine out of 3/4 steak and 1/4 veal just for a bit more depth but that isn't compulsory.
• 1lb (500g) of fresh good quality beef tomatoes - you know the nobbly weird looking ones that taste delicious? Don't use crap tomatoes - the quality of the tomatoes that you use and the quality of the meat are the difference between an amazing Lasagne and a lame one. If you can't find beef tomatoes go for some nice organic vine-ripened ones or something. Basically they should taste amazing and sweet raw as they are. If you use rubbish tomatoes you'll end up with a sour bolognese and have to start faffing around adding ketchup and sugar and all sorts at the end.
• 2 tins of good quality chopped tomatoes - again go for good quality here, if you can get fire-roasted tomatoes or tinned cherry tomatoes even better.
• A handful of chopped fresh Oregano (or 2 tablespoons of dried if you must)
  
• 4 tablespoons of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 a bottle of red wine (drink the other half as you go)
  
• 2 Tablespoons of tomato puree
• 1 beef stock cube or 2 tablespoons of Bisto gravy granules
  

For the Bechamel:

• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 4 tablespoons of plain flour
• 2 pints (1 litre) of full fat milk (use semi-skimmed if you have to but really, as my dad would say, "you may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb" i.e. this is not a diet foodstuff so you might as well make it in all its fattening glory and enjoy it!)
• 2 large handfuls of grated mature cheddar 
• 1 large handful of grated mozzarella

For the rest:

• 1 large aubergine
• Olive oil
• Salt
• 1 packet of regular dried lasagna sheets (don't pre-cook them)
  
• 2 large handfuls of fresh basil leaves (in this instance, no, dried won't do)
• 1 large fresh mozzarella ball
• 1 large handful grated mature cheddar
• 1 large handful grated mozzarella
• 1 large handful fresh grated Parmesan

NOW THE INSTRUCTIONS:

For the bolognese:

Fry the onion, garlic and celery in the oil over a low-medium heat in a big monster frying pan (one with a lid please). You don't want them to brown - just to turn translucent. Once they have softened nicely, add the balsamic vinegar and keep it cooking until it no longer smells strongly of vinegar - you want it all to go nice and sticky but not taste acidic.

Next, add the meat and keep stirring and moving it around so the meat doesn't cook in big lumps and so that it is all nicely browned. Add everything else except the gravy granules, stir it up, put the lid on almost completely (just leave about an inch gap) and simmer it for a good hour and a half. Stir it periodically to make sure it's not sticking and don't forget about it!!

Stir in the gravy granules thoroughly and set aside, preferably over night.

The aubergines:

While the bolognese is bubbling away, slice the aubergine lengthways into 1cm thick slices. Lay them all out on a tray and sprinkle generously with salt, then turn them over and sprinkle this side too. Don't be shy with the salt - this isn't for flavour, you're going to wash it off, it's to draw out the bitter juices from the aubergine so they taste sweet. Leave them covered in the salt for about 20 mins. When you come back it should look like they've been 'sweating'. Rinse off all the salt and juices under the tap and then pat them dry with paper towel. Put them on a baking sheet with a good generous coat of olive oil and roast them in a medium oven (about 160 C or 350 F) until they go soft and start to brown a little. Remove them and set aside.

The fresh mozzarella:

Slice the mozzarella ball into 1cm thick slices like the aubergine.

To make the bechamel cheese sauce:

Melt the butter in a saucepan (don't use non-stick) over a low heat, add in the flour and stir it with a metal balloon whisk until it has made a thick even paste. Continue to stir it and heat it on a low heat for two minutes. Next add the milk a splash at a time and stir with the whisk until completely smooth each time (this is how you avoid lumps) then continue to stir over the low heat until the sauce thickens nicely to the consistency of a good creamy pasta sauce. Add in the cheese and stir until this has melted and combined with the sauce.

To assemble:

1 layer bolognese; 1 layer uncooked lasagne sheets; 1 layer bechamel sauce; 1 layer torn basil leaves; 1 layer bolognese; 1 layer uncooked lasagne sheets; 1 layer bechamel sauce; 1 layer sliced roasted aubergine; 1 layer bolognese; 1 layer uncooked lasagne sheets; 1 layer bechamel sauce; sprinkle with the remaining 3 types of grated cheese.

Cook in a 180 C (400 F) oven for about an hour or until the top looks nice and bubbly and brown and delicious.

P.S. I got  a very respectable 3rd place in a very unscientific and drunken judging system :)

Boston Pork and Beans - How to make perfect comfort food

So, it's a boiling hot day outside but it's September and my internal British calendar tells me it's time for cozy jumpers, hot tea, endless days of cold drizzle and therefore comfort food. Since I have a long holiday weekend this weekend for Labour Day, which pretty much is to celebrate union workers' right to strike, it seems somewhat fitting that I'm about to share with you a recipe that is lazy and makes the oven do all the work so you can lounge around!
I'd read a few recipes for Boston Baked Beans that looked pretty tasty but when I first set out to make it last autumn I was struggling with the aisles of American supermarkets so I had to glue some recipes together and use a bit of improvisation. It worked out rather nicely so I'm sticking with this version.
And fear not, if you are following this from the UK, the ingredients are not American only - lucky for you all ingredients are available both sides of the pond.

Now without further ado - the ingredients:

• Either one large or two smaller smoked ham hocks - totalling about 1.5 lbs (600/700g or so) in weight. Ask your butcher for these and if he doesn't have them you want smoked bacon on the bone if you can, or failing that a slab of smoked bacon with the rind still on (not in slices) that you can cut into chunks about 2 inches square. but really, getting it on the bone is way better.
• 1 lb (500g) of dry pinto beans which have a deliciously buttery flavour - soak these puppies in about 6-8 cups of water overnight.
• About 10 small red or white pearl onions - soak these in water for about an hour and they'll be easier to peel.
• 3 or 4 tablespoons of Molasses (in the US) or Lyle's Treacle (in the UK)
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
• 2 heaped tablespoons of dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce (many recipes add some type of mustard instead but I'm not such a fan and found this added enough spice to make up for the lack of mustard)

So now, the instructions (complete with pictures and everything).
1. As I said, you need to soak the beans overnight, so give them a good rinse then just cover them in about 6-8 cups of water from the tap and leave them there.  The next day, put the onions into a bowl of cold water to soak, then drain the beans, give them a good rinse and chuck them into a good giant casserole with about 2 litres of water, bring them up to a good boil then simmer with the lid on for an hour while you peel the onions. When you've done that, they'll look like this:

2. Next, stir all the other ingredients into the beans (including the onions)

and stick the pork hocks (or bacon if you really couldn't get the meat on the bone) down into the mixture.









At which point, it will look something like this:

Whack a lid on it and put it in the oven at 140C (285 F in the US) and leave it there for 3 hours.




3. Take the lid off and turn the temperature up to 160C (320F), strip the meat from the bones with a knife and fork - it should just fall away. Return it to the oven for another hour and fifteen mins until it's all gone deliciously sticky (keep checking on it and stirring it to make sure the top doesn't burn and you get the caramelised deliciousness all the way through.

That's it - serve it with hot granary bread or on a jacket potato - absolutely yummy.

Highlights of New Orleans

This weekend was my first trip to the Southern part of the United States. I'd decided on an impulsive trip to New Orleans and booked it on a whim a few weeks ago. My impression of what New Orleans would be like was a wonderful mental collage of garish Mardi Gras costumes; Moulin-Rouge-style prostitutes in the bars of old Western movies; dark Jazz bars filled with smoke and potent cocktails; big grand plantation homes; Voodoo; the paddle boats from the opening credits of Huckleberry Finn and heady combinations of seafood with cajun spices and cream mixing into gluttonous French-influenced Creolean deliciousness...mmmmm.

I wasn't disappointed.

OK, so the Moulin-Rouge-style (rather glamourous) prostitutes of my imagination are somewhat less romantic in real life and modernisation hasn't been kind - they're now hollywood-shaved lapdancers leaving nothing to the imagination as they hang out of the Bourbon-Street sex-show clubs with an array of wonderfully explicit photography of the live karma-sutra displays available within. But apart from that, nothing else was a let-down.

Spectacular shrimp:

Lunch was the Barbecue Shrimp at Mr B's Bistro. They're on the bar menu as well as the restaurant one meaning that pretty much any time of the day you can indulge in this spicy buttery marvel. These shrimp (or tiger prawns as I would probably call them) have never been near a barbecue, and the sauce is nothing like the sticky stuff (still delicious but only in its rightful place) that is more at home on a rack of pork ribs. Oh no, this was a completely different symphony of butter, lots of butter, cajun spices and other herbs, with the prawns pan-fried in masses of this thick, soupy goodness that you simply cannot resist dipping first a guilty finger and then slice after slice of their fresh, still warm, French baguette into. I can't recommend it enough - those prawns alone were worth the price of flights from New York. At some point in this blog I am going to attempt to recreate this deliciousness and will share my efforts (and the recipe) with you when I do. And by the way, if you choose to find out more by visiting their site I take no responsibility for any trouble you might get into for the ridiculous Jazz-based-jingle that will blast from your computer as a result.

Cafe Du Monde is worth all the hype:

Even after the calorie-fest of buttery shrimp, we had been told by a tonne of different sources not to miss out on having Beignets (square french doughnuts) and Cafe Au Lait with Chicory at Cafe Du Monde.  The menu is very brief you can only have Cafe Au Lait and Beignets, but it's perfectly executed and really cheap -  a complete bargain for the sweet, warm, crispy, fatty confection of joy piled high with icing sugar that shortly afterwards covers the stone tiles beneath your table.

Excellent brunch

On two days we went for brunch, once at Stanley on one side of Jackson Square where we enjoyed a particularly excellent soft shell crab Po' Boy and then once to Cafe Pontalba where we had their 'Crab Cakes Benedict' which was amazing. Perfectly executed eggs Benedict with a lightly cajun spiced Hollandaise sitting on top of two fresh home-made crab cakes packed full of white crab meat (not potato cakes with a light sprinkling of crab meat like you get in some places). The 'Crab Cakes Benedict' would be great if having people over for lunch or also great just serving one crab cake with one poached egg as a starter so I'm going to do my best to recreate this recipe too. If I serve it followed by Barbecue Shrimp I'm pretty sure my guests will suffer instant coronary arrest, but they would die very happy people so I think I'll give it a try.

The finale

Finally, we had booked ourselves in to Restaurant Stella. We opted for the tasting menu which was delicious but they seem to introduce one too many flavours into each course. The spiced shrimp and brie risotto didn't need mushrooms in it as well and the fabulous chocolate cake dessert didn't need the 'hot buttered pink lemonade' sauce it was sitting in. However, the sommelier was heavy handed with the size of the wine pairings which is always nice and the menu was adventurous and still very enjoyable. I won't be trying to recreate any of those courses but if you find yourself in New Orleans it's worth checking out.

This weekend is Labour Day so it's a long weekend and I feel like cooking, possibly a good Minestrone or perhaps an excellent Boston Baked Beans recipe I adapted last winter. Whichever I choose - I'll share, so I hope you'll enjoy :)