Tag: food and drink

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, there’s nothing much less christmassy than a barbecue, and it would take more than marinading some pork in sweet sherry, Cointreau, soy and mixed spice to change that. But that’s what I’m calling it.

This is a theoretical recipe. I made some mackerel pate and was eating it with raw fennel salad. I think it would be worth actually incorporating them into one dish, but I haven’t tried it yet.

The normal mackerel pate recipe is just smoked mackerel blended with enough creme fraiche to make a pate consistency, and lemon juice and parsley for flavour. Because it’s such a strong flavour, you could probably add really quite a lot of raw fennel. Quite coarsely chopped, I think, for a bit of crunch and a rustic quality.

Iced tea is a habit I picked up in Japan. Not the revolting canned stuff with added sugar and lemon they sell in this country – just chilled tea. It works quite well to put some tea leaves in a jug of water and leave it in the fridge for a few hours. You end up with a very light tea – scented water, really. It’s the perfect soft drink for grown-ups. I’ve been using things like oolong, green tea, and jasmine tea, but I daresay you could use any tea. Or indeed something like rooibos. I wonder if herbal things would work. I might try verveine (lemon verbena).

Flatbreads cooked on the barbecue worked OK, though it might be easier to just do them in a frying pan or under the grill. A simple sauce for fish: juice of one lemon and a little olive oil blended with a bunch of tarragon.

A stew with chicken and beans. There’s nothing very original here but it worked well, so I thought I’d write it down:

Soften some finely-sliced onion (I used a banana shallot and a smallish red onion) with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic.

Just before it starts browning, a couple of chopped tomatoes cooked with it. Put the onions and toms into a casserole.

Get two chicken legs, divided into thighs and drumsticks. Season them and brown them in the same pan. Put the chicken into the casserole and deglaze the pan with white wine.

Add a tin of canellini beans, a pot of fresh chicken stock, a generous quantity of fresh thyme (don’t need to chop it), a bay leaf, and some parsley stalks. And some salt and half a teaspoon of West Indian chilli sauce.

Bring to a simmer and cook in the oven at 160C for 2h 30m. You don’t want it to be too wet but obviously make sure it doesn’t dry out and burn.

Serve with some chopped parsely for colour.