An extra hour for sausages

After a busy secret supper on Saturday and a late night’s prep on Friday, Sunday morning called for a sit down and some sausages before heading to Ellie’s for the big clean. I was reminded of the clocks going back by the sombre Radio 4 news beeps pronouncing the ungodly hour of 8am! Once over the initial shock, I embraced the stolen hour and set about making the perfect sausage sandwich…

Roughly slice a red onion and throw into a hot pan with a glug of olive oil. Add the sausages and leave everything to cook gently on a medium heat. As Nigel Slater insists, never rush a sausage. If you have any tomatoes lying around slice up the big ones and throw them in or add cherry tomatoes whole with a few sprigs of thyme. Have a cup of tea and read the papers for about 20-30 minutes while everything softens and sweetens.

Put some pita bread in the toaster. I always get Holy Land pita at Nour cash and carry on Electric Avenue (4 bags for £1) and you can get it in most Middle Eastern shops and some delis. It’s so much tastier and cheaper than the thick, starchy pitas you get in supermarkets – stock up your freezer.

Finally, open the pita with care (a toasted bread pouch full of air can be hotter than the sun) and stuff the sausages, tomatoes, onions and pan juices inside. Serve with tomato chilli jam and a pot of tea while you finish the papers. The ideal way to spend that extra hour.

Rosie

Beach hut brunch

Yesterday’s cool, bright weather had me in a yellow beach hut on the South coast making scotch eggs by candle light. Limited to a small gas oven, a packet of real cheap bangers and half a dozen eggs in a bag from the beach cafe, we kept with the 1950s spirit of things and rolled up our sleeves to delve up to our elbows in sausage meat. The back room kitchen feel of the whole process had us in stitches. This is cooking at its least glamorous and most romantic – in this hut, food is about delicious and indulgent basics: too much brie, much more butter and a handful of sweet clementines. Every meal is a table picnic where greasy pâté knives cut through cheese, tea brews in bowls and boiled eggs are spooned onto half-toasted cuts of white bread. It lacks etiquette, but it’s my all time favourite weekend by the sea. There’s a pub in Mayfair that makes the most exquisite scotch eggs fresh every day, and which sell out about an hour after they hit the bar. Their velvety insides and crisp, warm breadcrumbs make for the perfect combination with a pint of dark ale and are the far superior cousin of the petrol station variety.

Makes 4 scotch eggs.

Semi hard boil 4 eggs in water for 4 minutes from cold. Preheat the oven to 150°C and squeeze the sausage meat of 8 bangers from their skins onto a clingfilm covered flat surface. Combine together with your hands and roll out flat with a dry rolling pin or large knife to cover an even surface about the size of an A4 sheet of paper. Crumble the crusts and centre of 2 slices of stale bread with your fingertips – brown or white will do. If it’s still fresh, toast it first to dry it out. Cut the sausage meat into 4 strips widthways (each a little wider than egg width), remove the eggs from the heat and replace with cold water. Once cool, carfeully shell them and lay across the middle of the sausage strip. The egg will be tender and still has some cooking to do, so be gentle. Working from the bottom of the strip upwards, peel it away from the clingfilm and wrap it around the egg, binding together to join on all sides. Try to keep an oval or circular shape. Transfer to plate of breadcrumbs and roll to coat evenly. Place gently on a baking tray and bake for up to 20 minutes, turning occasionally to darken the breadcrumbs and ensure even cooking. [We actually tried frying them first as we’d heard something about industrial scale scotch eggs being deep fried. Without a deep fat fryer, we started a little kitchen fire in the pan (remember the hut was made of wood) and with only olive oil at hand, couldn’t heat it sufficiently to stop the breadcrumbs from just soaking it all up. So we finshed them off in the oven, which is probably the best place for most people to put them, and which will help dry them out a bit when using cheaper sausage meat.

They’re not the most beautiful things in the world, but I love their handmade look – there’s something quite Renaissance about a sausage wrapped egg. If Henry VIII had a picnic, he’d have these, I reckon. Next time we’re going to try some variations with quail’s eggs, venison sausage and chorizo – watch this space.

Ellie

A bit scrambled

After a ’sociable’ evening at the restaurant, the only thing fit to prepare Ellie and I for the big clean is a good egg (or two). Sometimes fried, occasionally boiled but most often scrambled until light and fluffy, with a few choice additions conveniently left in the fridge from the night before.

Breakfast in the restaurant

Parmesan and sage scrambled eggs on sourdough toast
Allow 2 eggs per person and crack them into a bowl. Whisk or fork roughly and add some pepper but no salt at this point – it can make your scrambles tough and watery. Melt a generous knob of butter in a saucepan on the smallest hob set to the lowest heat. When the butter is bubbling, throw in 2-3 sage leaves and let the butter infuse off the heat for a minute or two while you put your bread in the toaster / under the grill. Return the pan to the hob and throw in the eggs, a generous grating of parmesan and a slosh of single or double cream. Let the eggs do their thing and only give them a gentle stir every now and then. Resist the temptation to turn the heat up… slow and steady wins the race! Just before you reach your desired egg consistency, add a small pinch of salt (make it a big one if you’re not including the parmesan) and remove from the heat while you butter your bread. Your eggs should be spot on by now so serve them up, grind some black pepper and dig in. The washing up has never been so easy.

Rosie       

Supper news

Saturday saw us embark on yet another secret supper journey which, we have to admit, was slightly more stressful than usual. Ellie managed to cut herself and come over all queer whilst being filmed by German TV channel ZDF – luckily Tash was on hand with blue plasters and the producer cheerfully volunteered to finish chopping the mint. Rather than holding things together for the team, I was busy spilling meat juices on the floor, burning my fingers and the bread for the bruschetta (several times) and generally swearing a lot. By the time the guests arrived, which was suddenly and seemingly unannounced, our inner perfectionists were feeling somewhat rattled.

Regardless, the dining room was alive. Yet more wonderful guests brought the restaurant to life with their laughter, enthusiasm and glass clinking. Friend, neighbour and founder of the lovely Saltoun Supper Club, Arno, jumped up from his table to give us both a hug and kindly blamed the moon for all earlier calamities whilst lovely guests Mary Rose and Phillip celebrated a 31st birthday, gifted with a bottle of wine by a table of 6 from the Independent.

We were tired and exhilarated as each course was carefully plated up and whisked out to the hungry, grateful mob beyond the living room door. With the last dollop of crème fraîche lustily scraped from every plate and the macchiato froth licked from every lip, it was time for digestion to begin. In a proper restaurant this would be the time to ask for the bill before stumbling out into the cold with bleary eyes and a full tummy, but at Salad Club it’s the moment we take off our aprons and meet the people who make every burn, cut and spill worthwhile. Cigarettes are sparked, more corks are popped and chairs are pulled up to strangers’ tables for friendly conversations and exchanges.

The trust that we’ve put into our customers – to come, to be nice, to contribute – and the trust they in turn have placed in us – to be here (!), to cook a great meal, to host – is what makes this work. Here are 17 strangers in the sitting room, most of them drunk, all of them happy and content. None of them has ever put us out or smashed anything up or started an ugly row with their neighbour. No, these are good people who like the same things as we do – good food, good atmosphere. As long as we can keep them coming Salad Club will survive. We feel it’s a bit of London that makes living in this city worthwhile.

The morning after:

A cold day’s curry

I think, finally, we have admitted there is no going back to the hazy, mango-juicy days of Summer when supper involved reaching in to the back of the fridge for a slab of feta and some cool, dilled radishes. Not that there were many of those; I think I can recall a handfull. No – late summer is edging past us, soon to be obscured by fat root vegetables and a palm of pulses.

It was on Sunday night, 2 days into a cold and knowing that it would last, that I hauled myself over to the hob and brewed up a curry. The cold has lasted all week, and though I’m only just coming through the gluey stages of recovery, I still have one more bowl to finish of this mammoth stomach-warmer. The combination of Autumn’s warm turnip with the sweet, hot spices and coconut milk is just the thing to start a new season on. Its robust ingredients means it will last in the fridge for a few days as well, and develop in intensity as it does so.

Add to a large, steel-bottomed pan a table spoon or two of peanut or vegetable oil and sweat a large, finely chopped white onion, throwing in a scattering of coriander seeds, mustard seeds and shelled cardamon seeds. Keep the heat on low. Add a medium stick of cinnamon and stir to coat, allowing the spices to release their flavours. Peel and dice 2 medium turnips and one medium potato. Add to the pot with half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a generous teaspoon of cumin, 2 gloves of crushed garlic and a finely sliced thumb of ginger. Stir well to coat for 5 minutes. Spoon a cup of tomato passata or puree into the mix along with a fresh cut red chilli, a tin of coconut milk and turn the heat up to soften the root veg. Remove the cinnamon stick and discard. Allow everything to simmer, partly covered, for up to an hour – stirring occasionally to unstick veg from the bottom – and turn in a can of drained chick peas for the last 10 minutes. I always add an extra knob of fresh, fine cut ginger right at the end, as it lifts the heat again. Taste for heat, and add more cayenne or ginger, or anything else for that matter, depending on what you want. Stir in a good pinch of salt flakes and serve straight from the hob on basmati rice with mango chutney and strained yoghurt, and a good palmful of fresh coriander.

Ellie

Two by two

The restaurant

Two secret Saturday suppers in a row has left us both tired and enthused at once. Throwing in a hoot of a photo shoot with Company magazine in our allotment (see the November issue, out in October), full time jobs, prepping, clearing and plans for expansion means that Salad Club is in full swing, and ever ready to crank it up a gear come the Autumn. I am personally looking forward to making batches of soups, chutneys and dhals to keep me going through the busy busy periods of September and October and will be trying out all sorts of spiced and roasted roots and pulses. Fresh coriander, ginger and chilli will be my special guests.

Just to keep you in the loop, Saturday’s diners enjoyed the following menu, some of which was tweaked from the previous supper:

Spiced pumpkin and ginger soup with sourdough bread

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Warm fennel, olive and feta salad with toasted pine nuts and capers

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Slow roasted jerk pork shoulder with black rice and pecan salad

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Vanilla panna cotta* with raspberry coulis

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Coffee

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* Some of these were perfect, others rather moomin-like. It totally depends on how long you bathe the cups or ramekins in warm water for in order to release them from the mould. A quick dip is best, then place a small plate over the top of the cup, turn upright onto a table and allow the pudding to slip its way out. If it needs encouraging, slide a teaspoon up the inside of the glass or ramekin to pull the panna cotta slightly away from the edge and then quickly return it to the plate. They will lose some height once they’re free, so don’t be alarmed.

Panna cotta with raspberry coulis – serves 14

Soak 10 leaves of gelatine in a little water until floppy. Combine 1l half or full fat milk and 1l double cream in a large pan with 100g of sugar along with the scraped out seeds and stems of 2 vanilla pods. Bring to a simmer. Wring any excess water from the gelatine, add to the pan and remove from the heat, stirring until dissolved. Remove the vanilla pods and discard. In order to separate any clumps of seeds and pod husks from the liquid, strain through a fine sieve and pour into ramekins or taller cups – we used smooth plastic picnic cups – and refrigerate overnight.

For the coulis, put 100g of sugar and 100ml of water into a pan with a splash of cassis liqueur and bring the edges to a fine-bubbled boil. Turn the heat right down and stir to dissolve the sugar. Take the pan off the heat, add 250g of raspberries and whizz with a hand blender until smooth. Some people at this point will want to sieve out the seeds, but we much prefer texture – it’s up to you. Taste for sugar at this point and add a spoon or so only if necessary, though the intention here is to have something a little tart to cut through the cream. Stir in another 250g of raspberries and allow to cool, drizzling when ready around the panna cotta from a spoon. [See above for panna cotta turning out tips]. For any leftovers, turn the syrupy fruit into a tupperware container and freeze into sorbet.

Ellie

Shallotment tart

We harvested a very healthy bunch of shallots last week and I decided to blow them all in one fell swoop, so as to make the most of their sweetness and flavour. However, as I rolled up my sleeves and began to peel away their reluctant skins, I soon remembered why I rarely cook shallots en masse. Half an hour later, my bounty lay naked and resplendent on the chopping board—some tiny enough to leave whole and others chopped in half. I melted a generous knob of butter in a small saucepan, threw in the shallots, a dash of balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar, covered and left on the lowest possible heat for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. I will not go into the pastry making process —it was long and not entirely successful, the end result resembling a fragile over-sized biscuit rather than a sturdy sheet of shortcrust pastry. If you are confident in your skills as a pâtissier then roll on, if not, then by all means buy the ready made version…

Roll your shortcrust pastry into a shape you find pleasing (I went for a rectangle) and slide it onto a sheet of lightly floured greaseproof paper on a baking tray. Slide into the oven heated to 200ºC for about 10 minutes until lightly browned. By the time you’ve messed around with your pastry your shallots should be beautifully soft, sweet and slightly caramelised. Tip the shallots onto the pastry and spread them out roughly, tear over some fresh sage leaves (you can fry these in butter first to intensify the flavour), crumble on some feta and finally a few gratings of parmesan—make sure you get the parmesan right to the edges as this results in a tasty cheesy crust (in my case a cheesy biscuit).  Put the tart in the oven for about 10 minutes and serve warm with a peppery green salad and a good dollop of tomato chilli jam. I realise this isn’t the healthiest recipe on the blog so be sure to share it!

Rosie

We’re back!

Hello/Hola/Bonjour,

We’re back from our jaunts abroad with notebooks full of recipes and ideas ready to share with you. Do watch this space.

We are also donning dark sunglasses on account of our faces gracing the pages of this week’s Grazia. No need to buy your own copy:

In other news… We look forward to hosting a special Carnival warm-up secret supper this Saturday and we’re quietly proud of the menu which emulates and tweaks some of the punchy Caribbean flavours we’ve enjoyed in Brixton. Our private suppers are taking off and we’re welcoming bookings for the festive period where we can bring the Salad Club experience to your home — serving up a hearty and flavorsome Christmas feast with neither sprout nor turkey in sight.  Finally, the hunt is on for somewhere to call Salad Club HQ so if you know anyone with desk space for 2 and a modest kitchen where we could try out new recipes – please do get in touch.

We’ve loved the summer but bring on the Autumn!

Rosie & Ellie

Work it

A word in your ear regarding tossing. As I lay on the hot grass at Leon founder Henry Dimbleby’s barbeque at this year’s Big Chill, I was reminded of the importance of tossing a good salad. Whoever Henry’s accomplice was knew a thing about it too. I lay there, rather indolently waiting for my food and eyeing down the coils of black pudding charring on the grill, while Mr A quartered plum tomatoes and avocadoes into a stack-a-box of lamb’s lettuce. Impressed by the rustic proficiency of his task, I was mesmerized by his squeezing of lemons and grinding of flaked salt into the box. And then he started tossing! He performed a kind of half crouch over the plastic box on the grass, ritually moving round it at intervals and plunging half way up his forearm into it to churn, lift, delve, turn and cover the salad, hands and wrists directly groping the quarters of tomato and pulverized avocado. More salt, more lemons. Another good plunge and delve. The difference was palpable – the salt and lemon juice pulled out all the flavours and made a simple salad an exquisite one, doused in its own juices. Watching this guy encouraging the flavours in his hands made for a surprising, gratifying and memorable festival moment and reminded me of Salad Club’s beginning days at Rosie’s kitchen table after a blindingly tiring session at soca aerobics and the ability only to toss a good salad. Thank you to Leon for reminding me of the need to toss like there’s no tomorrow (and for being hands down the best fast food joint in the country).

In case we haven’t mentioned it before, and unless otherwise stated, the recipes printed on our blog all deserve a hearty, effortful toss. Not necessarily up to the elbows, though it depends how many you’re feeding.

It turns out the black pudding wasn’t pure evil either. Watch this space for some recipes involving clotted pigs’ blood.

Ellie

The day has come

I’ve never allowed myself to eat anchovies until yesterday, when I thumbed a copy of River Café Cook Book Easy and dared myself to buy a jar of those hairy, slippery fillets.  It is to Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray that I owe my wholly unexpected volte-face, which is manifested here in their delightfully easy and deceptively tasteful green bean salad. Without the anchovies (which I must enforce are cut very, very finely) the whole affair would doubtless be lacking.

I took my salad on a probationary outing to a friend’s for supper where, by coincidence, he matched it with a fresh parpadelle with chilli, capers and anchovies. I think most ‘chovy-haters would repulse at the speed with which my conversion has occurred (literally overnight) but trust me, friends, I now find myself trying to slip them in to everything.

Plunge a big handful of topped/tailed green beans into salted, boiling water until softened. Squeeze half a lemon into a bowl, add a glug of olive oil, a couple of teaspoons of capers and a small handful of pitted black olives. Ruth and Rose specify Nicoise, but I always use whichever olives I prefer at my local deli, so this is very much up to you. It happened that mine had a perfectly suited citrus marinade. Finely slice as many anchovy fillets as you can bear, probably 4 or 5*, into small and unrecognisable parts, and stir well into the bowl of vinaigrette. Drain and refresh the beans in cold water and tip immediately into the bowl, dousing the beans well. Tear a few basil leaves over the salad and eat immediately.

*Oiled tend to be more readily available. If using salted, soak in cold water for some time before use. None of this appeals to me at the moment, since I am only new.

Ellie