Cod, prawn and pumpkin laksa

There has been a lot of bowl food going down in our flat recently – plenty of stews, soups and curries packed with deep, fragrant spices traditional to countries much closer to the equator yet, thankfully, abundant on Brixton market*.  A few gratings of galangal and some lime leaves, a heaped spoon of harissa and some smoked paprika, or a big pinch of garam massala and some tumeric and one is momentarily removed from this relentless cold greyness and plonked somewhere slightly more temperate. A simple supper really can have transformative powers.

I’ve made Nigel Slater’s pumpkin laksa so many times now I know it off by heart and I used it as the base for this dish but with a few added extras: generous helpings of cod loin and tiger prawns, lime leaves, galangal, spring onions and green beans just because they took my eye at the market and I fancied it.

Get the annoying job of peeling and cubing the pumpkin out of the way first (or feel free to use butternut squash if you prefer). Steam the pumpkin over a pan of boiling water until it reaches your preferred level of tenderness. Add a handful of chopped green beans to the steamer for the last 2 minutes then set everything aside. To make the spice paste, blend a thumb of peeled ginger, a finger of galangal, 4 peeled garlic cloves, 2 lemongrass stalks, a handful of coriander (leaves, stalks and roots), 2 lime leaves (you can buy these in big bags and they keep really well in the freezer), 2 small red chillies and a tablespoon of sesame oil until you have a coarse paste. Add a few drops of water if it looks too dry.

Heat a glug of groundnut oil in a wok or high-sided pan, add 2-3 finely sliced spring onions and the spice paste and fry gently for a few minutes. Pour in 300ml of vegetable stock and a tin of coconut milk, bring slowly to the boil, stir and simmer.  In another pan cook some dried noodles in boiling water until soft then drain, refresh and set aside with the pumpkin. Roughly cut 2 cod loins (from a sustainable source of course) into large chunks ready for the pan. After 20-30 minutes of simmering add the juice of a lime, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce and 1 of soy sauce to the broth – have a taste and add more soy if under seasoned.  Now throw the noodles, pumpkin and cod into the pan and give it all a good stir and heat until the cod is opaque and cooked through. At the very last minute add some raw tiger prawns. As soon as the prawns have turned pink, ladle the laksa into deep bowls, top with coriander, squeeze over some lime and slurp it up greedily with chopsticks and a spoon.

* For amazing deals on spices, vegetables, tinned beans and middle eastern sundries go to Nour Cash and Carry on Electric Avenue. For all your oriental needs try Wing Tai a little further up towards the station – it can be pricey but there’s an amazing choice of noodles, sauces, pastes and other curiousities and the pak choi, galangal and lemongrass in the fridge is always wonderfully fresh and potent.

Rosie

Mother’s bread and butter

Whenever I talk to my mum about Salad Club she does one of two things: the first is to arch her eyebrow, smirk a little and close the conversation fairly promptly. The second is similar, but verbal: when I flatter something culinary of hers, she’ll casually state that she hasn’t got a recipe for it, that she – ’shrug’, ‘bouff’ – made it up. She’s not even French, but there’s something wildly, irritatingly Gallic about it as if to say, ‘daughter, you learned it here first.’ Which, in some senses, is true, others definitely not.

So when I offered to take over the kitchen at Christmas in order to give her a break, she seemed to accept keenly. As the day approached, however, I guess a sense of needing to be involved (read ‘competitive’) snuck up on her and she calmly stated that she’d be making a panettone bread and butter pudding for which, of course, there wasn’t a recipe. While I peeled, boiled and creamed the parsnips and then gutted, buttered and roasted 5 pheasants, she just pulled apart some panettone shreds and whisked up a custard in some ramekins. Total job? About 10 minutes. I have to hand it to her – this is the simplest, most fuss-free bread n butta pudding I’ve ever seen, and the easiest way to get rid of that stale panettone you’ve doubtless still got hanging around in the back of the cupboard. What’s more, it’s flexible – you could try it with dried fruit, chocolate, spices, or replacing with hot cross buns.

Serves 4 (you’ll need 4 ramekins)

Preheat the oven to 170ºC. Tear your panettone into thick slices, then rip roughly into cubes. Squash the cubes into the bottom of each ramekin and spread a little butter on top. Gently beat 3 cups of double cream, 2 egg yolks, 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar and the seeds from one vanilla pod together in a bowl and pour into a non stick saucepan. Heat gently over the lowest heat for about 15 minutes until the custard has thickened enough to cover the back of a wooden spoon. Pour an even amount of the custard into each ramekin, put the little puds on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling on top. Resist the temptation to eat them straight away (I was impatient – burning my tongue twice) and allow the ramekins to cool for 5 minutes. If you’re looking for a coronary bypass, serve with double cream and a glass or two of pudding wine. Mum’s the word.

Ellie

Chicken, chorizo and white bean casserole

There have been a lot of stews, casseroles and curries cooking in my kitchen recently. I have to admit that salad has not featured very heavily during the cold snap*. After trudging home in the sludge, all I’ve been craving is rich and spicy bowl food, complete with meat and carbs, to satisfy my bottomless hunger and give my insides a good warming. This dish was inspired by Ellie’s chorizo and barley stew. I just can’t get enough of the subtle heat and depth released when chorizo, red wine and tinned tomatoes meet.

I prefer to use chicken on the bone for this casserole, it makes for messy eating but that’s part of the fun.  Find your largest frying pan or hob-safe casserole dish and warm a slug of olive oil. Fry the chicken (legs, breasts, thighs or a mixture) skin side down over a high heat until the skin has crisped, turn and cook the other side until lightly browned. Remove and set aside. Turn the heat down to minimum and add a little more oil, a chopped onion, a finely sliced fennel bulb, 2 finely sliced garlic cloves and some chorizo (diced or sliced and how much is up to you really). Be patient and let everything soften and turn red with the oil from the chorizo. Then pour in a glass of red wine and scrape at the bottom of the pan to release the sticky tasty bits left behind by the chicken. Add a tin of tomatoes (plum or chopped), 500ml of chicken stock, a can of canellini or butter beans, a bay leaf or two, salt, pepper and the chicken. Leave to simmer with the lid off until the sauce has thickened (about 30-40 minutes).

Put some potatoes on to boil in salted water for 10 minutes and turn the grill on high. Slide two or three whole peppers (I used red and yellow) as close to the grill as possible. Let them burn on one side, then turn them over and let the other side burn too. By burning the peppers you give them a wonderful smokiness and soft smooth texture. When cool enough to touch, peel the burnt skin away, discard the seeds, and roughly chop the flesh before throwing into the stew. Drain the potatoes and cut into whatever size you prefer to find in a casserole – this is quite a personal choice I find! Just before you serve the stew, stir in the potatoes and a generous squeeze of lime. Serve with coriander, natural yogurt and a glass of red.

*The snow has melted now so tonight it’s time to get back on the salads… I have squid, broccoli, chicory and radishes in mind.  Watch this space.

Leftover Christmas ham and 3 cheese macaroni

We ♥ Leftovers

When I ordered the Christmas ham from John at Smithfield’s Butchers I specifically asked for ‘a small one’, to which he replied ‘no problem, love’… I suppose a 9kg leg of gammon may have been considered petite in the court of Henry VIII but we were rather taken aback by the sheer volume of meat before us. The huge gammon leg was in addition to the guinea fowl within a duck John had lovingly de-boned, covered in bacon and squashed into a heaving cardboard box with a few packets of chestnuts, some sausage meat for stuffing, a bag of surplus pheasant legs and wings for the stock pot and around 40 delicious merguez sausages for my birthday feast the following evening.

On the peaceful journey home through the city, awash with novelty hats and tipsy suits, I began to fantasise about the potential leftover recipes this 9kg ham would present once Christmas was out of the way. Don’t get me wrong, Raph jerked that ham expertly and it was the star of Christmas, but from boxing day onwards, that little piggy was mine!  Ham and cheese is a classic combo, it goes without saying. Cheese and macaroni are made for eachother. This all makes perfect sense. Believe me when I say this was, by far, the best macaroni cheese I have ever made. Looking at the photo makes me long for more but the ham is long gone – every morsel to a loving home; some greedily devoured in a creamy pasta sauce, some loaded with mustard, chutney and slaw in doorstop sandwiches, some shredded thinly into boxing day’s bubble and squeak – every meal a testament to the power of a leftover.

Crank the oven up to 200ºC. Boil 350-400g of macaroni for about 7-8 minutes, until just cooked but al dente. Meanwhile, pour 1 litre of milk (I used semi skimmed) into a saucepan with 2 bay leaves and a halved onion and bring to the boil over a low heat. As soon as the milk reaches the boil, turn it off. In another pan, melt 50g butter and stir in the same amount of plain flour to make a paste. Gradually pour in the infused milk, whisk until smooth and leave to simmer gently until the sauce thickens. Now time for the cheese which I never bother to measure – the aim here is extreme cheesiness so just be generous and go for it! The ghost of Christmas leftovers left me with mature cheddar, comté and gruyere so that’s what was grated into the pan. I think hard, nutty cheese works well but there’s nothing stopping you from adding something borrowed or something blue if you like. Roughly shred as much ham as you think appropriate and add it to the pan. Finally, cheese and ham’s good friend mustard; a tablespoon of grain and a teaspoon of Dijon, a generous grinding of black pepper and a pinch of salt if necessary (check first as sometimes the cheese can provide enough salt on its own).  Stir the macaroni into the sauce and then tip everything into a large gratin dish / baking tray*.  Grate any extra bits of cheese you have knocking around on top (parmesan or pecorino is good here) and bake for forty minutes.  Serve with a crisp clean green salad and a few glasses of leftover red wine, naturally.

* A tip from Mr Slater: resist the temptation to smooth the top – the bits that stick up will become amazingly crisp and chewy in the oven. Here’s another photo just for fun:

Rosie

New adventures in Shoreditch and a special Brixton Sunday

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! Apologies for the lack of recent posts. We return after a much needed Christmas hiatus with lots of big news. Ellie has moved into her beautiful new flat, Rosie is engaged and expecting a baby in June, plans for a Salad Club cookbook are storming ahead and the 2010 secret supper diary will soon be announced. 2009 was a big one and it looks like 2010 could be even bigger!

December was an exciting month for Salad Club. We packed up our crockery boxes, folded up our tables and chairs, and hit the road to embark upon a new chapter of secret suppers, taking place in some eclectic new locations across London. First stop Shoreditch, and the beautiful home of our talented friends Justine Bell and Greg Keegan of BEET fame. Surrounded by Bell & Keegan’s bespoke furniture and bathed in the light of their bare filament hanging bulbs, 26 of our loyal followers were treated to a 4 course Italian feast, with second helpings all round. Plates were licked clean, much wine was quaffed and Christmas was well and truly underway – Salad Club style.

The following Sunday, we took over the kitchen at The No.1 Village Bakeries, in the shelter of Brixton’s covered market, for our last meal of the year – a long and lazy Sunday lunch for 30. We opened up the shop, tied up our aprons, turned up the reggae and delighted in having our own cafe for the day. As usual, our guests were charming and cheerful – some started the afternoon as strangers and ended up as friends, swapping numbers and sharing cigarettes well into the evening. The atmosphere was wonderful and we enjoyed every, calm minute – even when the sink overflowed at our feet!

Salad Club's Lazy Sunday at No.1 Village Bakeries

Our stomachs are definitely larger than last time we spoke so we’re hoping to post some recipes that will fill the cave-like proportions of your greed until it eases slowly into Spring (which we realise is still some way off). We’ve been baking, roasting and mulling for some weeks now so be sure to keep an eye on the blog for recipes to warm your bones and fend off this cold snap. All that’s left to say is that we’re now semi-mobile and always on the look-out for new locations, kitchens and dens to cook in, so please do drop us a line if you know of anywhere you think we could do well in. Whether it’s your home kitchen, a friend’s warehouse or a colleague’s studio space, email us and we’ll get chatting – we’d love your help! Here’s to a storming 2010 for one and all.

Rosie & Ellie

Love Tart

This probably should be called Love Tart on account of it being lent to us by Rosie Lovell and being universally adored at the last 2 secret suppers we’ve had. Rosie knew it from her school dinners as Gypsy Tart and we’ve labelled ours as Muscovado Tart with a healthy dollop of crème fraîche and a homemade berry coulis.

There have been campaigns for the release of its recipe amongst our guests, and I’ve noticed Bex our waitress hanging back in the kitchen longer than normal to get going on some seconds. So here it is. Run wild! (Just don’t eat the whole thing.)

Heat the oven to 200°C. In a large bowl, briskly whisk together 300g of muscovado sugar with a tin of evaporated milk for up to 15 minutes – don’t scrimp on this as it aerates the mixture. Leave to stand while you roll the pastry – this was a happy accident I discovered the second time I made it and which actually resulted in a stickier, toffier pudding.

Dust a clean surface with icing sugar and roll out a sheet of shortcrust pastry. Sprinkle again with icing sugar and roll to the thickness of a pound coin, or just larger than the diameter of your tart tin. Lay the pastry over the tin, pressing it into the corners and slicing off the overhang with a sharp knife. Bake for 5-10 minutes or until the edges are golden. Remove from the oven and whisk up the mixture again quickly. Pour it into the pastry case. It doesn’t matter if you pour to cover the top of the pastry which may have slipped down the sides of the tin. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes or until the surface has darkened a little but is still tacky. Set aside to set and cool.

To make the coulis, bring half a cup of water and a teaspoon of sugar to the boil, stirring as it heats and dissolves. Add a glug of creme de cassis and remove from the heat. Add the syrup to a bowl of mixed berries (supermarkets tend to sell very good value boxes of frozen ones if you’re on a budget or out of season) and blend with a hand blender. Finish with the juice of half a lime to kick it up a bit – this is pretty vital if you’re serving with a sweet tart.

Cut a slice of tart onto a small plate and serve with a generous drizle of coulis and a dollop of crème fraîche.

Ellie

A bit on the side

Sometimes, when people arrive for a secret supper and they’re first through the door, the best way to welcome them is to get something on the table pretty pronto. They should of course be thanked – celebrated, even – for having survived the trials of our waiting list and for turning up at a stranger’s door on what is invariably, these days, a cold night. And while these aren’t exactly hot, they do go a long way towards breaking the inevitable ice of settling in at the table with a first drink. Having voulunteered to take the helm at Christmas this year, these may well be on the menu for a pre-supper starter with my family. They scale up easily if you’re cooking for large numbers, and are beautiful to look at.

Cut a baguette into thin widthway slices and grill on both sides until golden. Spread generously with ricotta, top with fine, fine slices of serrano ham, torn basil and a little drizzle of homemade fig vinegar if you’re lucky enough to have it. Mine was a gift from my godmother and it’s so good I can nearly drink it. If you don’t have anything along its lines, try a shot of balsamic, a squeeze of lemon and a spoon of maple syrup whisked up in a mug. Keep mixing until you have a sticky- sweet/tart combination that’s mellowed by the basil on the bruschetta. We replaced the serrano with halved figs for an elegant vegetarian alternative:

Ellie

A warm potato salad for a sunny winter’s day

Before the deluge set in that evening, Saturday was one of those beautifully bright and crisp winter’s days – the type of day that always makes me feel dramatic and optimistic. I woke up stupidly early, threw open the curtains and decided I would go to the shops, make gingerbread (recipe coming soon), walk the dog, read the papers, make lunch and visit a friend all before helping Ellie move Salad Club’s apparatus from her flat that afternoon. It’s amazing what you can achieve without a hangover.

With my long list of tasks mounting up, lunch needed to be speedy.  The sunshine made me crave some fresh, summery flavours, yet the bracing chill called for warmth. A spatchcocked poussin covered in salt, pepper, chopped red chilli and a squeeze of lemon went into the oven to roast at 190ºC for 45 minutes. A healthy portion of new potatoes then went on to boil in salted water – small ones left whole and larger ones chopped into halves or quarters. I hate biting into a starchy, underdone potato so I always prefer to overcook them slightly until they’re forgiving and fluffy. As the potatoes boiled I made the dressing. I’m not a huge fan of potato salads drenched in mayonnaise. In fact, the only mayonnaise based potato salad I like is made by our friend Francis – he does an amazing dressing with mayo, mustard and caramelised red onions which I can never recreate. I’ll leave him to the white stuff and stick to this version – a light, fragrant dressing which works brilliantly both hot and cold.

With a pestle and mortar, pound together a handful of chopped mint leaves, some big flakes of sea salt and a light glug of olive oil into a paste. Scrape the paste into whatever bowl you plan to serve the salad in. Add the juice of a lemon, some finely chopped spring onions, lots of pepper, a bit more salt, another glug of olive oil and mix together.  Chop some more mint and a handful of parsley ready to throw in at the last minute. After the potatoes have been boiling for about 25 minutes, chuck some sugar snaps into the water with them and cover.  After about 3 minutes drain everything in a colander, shake gently and then tip into the bowl with the dressing. Toss everything together carefully, throw in the remaining herbs and serve steaming with the poussin, a dollop of chutney, or whatever else you fancy. A perfect warming lunch enjoyed in the shadows of a rare sunny day in November.

Rosie

One pot chorizo and barley stew

My first go at this was made up from one of our secret suppers’ leftovers – the rich juices of roasted peppers, a handful of olive stones and half a pack of pot barley – but it’s just as easy with a few simple ingredients and can be made in one pot.

Preheat the oven to 150. Gently heat your cuts of good quality chorizo in a heavy-bottomed pot until the edges curl and darken and have released some of their red oil into the pan. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add to the pan a glug of olive oil, a finely diced onion, a bay leaf, half a very finely diced carrot, half a sliced red chilli and 2 or 3 cloves of crushed garlic. Stir and soften until translucent over a medium heat and then pour in a large glass of red wine and a few branches of fresh thyme. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes. Roughly chop a couple of red and yellow peppers* and add to the pot with a tin of plum tomatoes, which are best strained and pummeled through the hands to release their flavour. Small cherry tomatoes or pitted black olives are good added here too. Return the chorizo to the pot and stir in a couple of handfuls of pot barley, making sure it’s stirred well and submerged in liquid (add a little water if need be). Cover and place on the middle shelf of the oven for up to an hour, making sure the barley has swollen to plump kernels.

Serve with a crumbling of feta and the rest of the bottle of red.

*Alternatively, roast the peppers beforehand in the oven and conserve the roasting tin juices for the pot – the longer they cook, the more juice or stock you’ll have. I also went through the slightly fussy but experimentally exciting process of boiling off the clinging flesh of black olives from their stones in the hope of adding more flavour. You needn’t do this but I was out of olives because they went to our guests.

Ellie

Our friends Electric

Menu for Saturday 7th November

Last Saturday was a poignant evening for us as the lights went up – and down – for the last time on a secret supper at Ellie’s rare flat in the beating heart of Brixton. As always, the restaurant was filled with the chuckles of happy strangers and the kitchen with the familiar smells of spiced pork and pumpkin. The menu featured some of our most popular dishes from past suppers and was finished off with a delicious gypsy tart, recipe courtesy of the lovely Rosie Lovell. Plates were licked clean and after many bottles of wine and perhaps a few too many cigarettes, our last batch of guests were sent out into the Brixton night, happy to have been a part of it and leaving us to sit in the humble restaurant we built from scratch to feel proud of our efforts. The early morning clean up was a buoyant affair, both of us in high spirits after a successful night and full of anticipation of what’s to come.

With the cleaning finished in record time we set off on a Sunday amble through Brixton. First stop, the rather pricey and lacklustre farmers’ market on Pope’s Road, picking up some sugar-based sustenance to deliver at No 1 Village Bakeries in an effort to energise Rosie and Raf for the epic clean up*.  Then for the papers and some gin in a trusty dark corner at the Effra. Leaving Ellie, Tom, the papers and the gin in said corner, I set off to walk the dog and make good of our leftovers:

Pig farmer’s pie

Fry a chopped onion and a couple of cloves of crushed garlic until soft. Add your leftover shredded pork shoulder to the frying pan (this recipe would be great with leftover lamb shoulder too, I suspect). Pour in a tin or two of plum tomatoes, a glug each of red wine, Worcestershire sauce and balsamic vinegar and poke a sprig of rosemary into the mix before leaving to simmer on a gentle heat. Feel free to add anything else you might usually add to a shepherd’s pie – I was just working with what I had in the cupboard! Meanwhile peel a large sweet potato, a large white potato and half a butternut squash (or whatever starchy roots you have that need using up) and boil in salted water for about 10 minutes. Turn the pork mixture up high until it reduces and thickens slightly then pour into a baking dish. Mash your roots with some salt and butter and pile on top. Grate over some parmesan or cheddar or, again, any cheese in your fridge that needs eating, and slide into a hot oven until the top is golden brown and bubbling – I turned to grill for the last 5 minutes to get it really crisp. Et voila – a delicious Sunday supper made entirely from leftovers, guzzled and enjoyed as only winter food can be.         

Lovely leftovers

We’ve had such a fantastic year and looking back at everything that’s happened since this little blog was born in April makes us smile and shake our heads in disbelief. Thank you to everyone who follows our culinary ramblings here and to those who have waited patiently for a seat at the restaurant for months. It has been such a pleasure to meet and feed so many of you and we look forward to meeting many more of you in the new year.  So, as Ellie settles into her new Brixton home of slightly smaller proportions, Salad Club will be evolving into a more portable venture.  We have plenty of excited things lined up for 2010 so be sure to keep up!

* watch this space for news on a special Salad Club Sunday coming up at the No 1 Village Bakeries in December.