Smoked Haddock with Black Pudding and Bacon

In the Tao of Truckers the best dishes are made with quality ingredients, simple, easy to cook and bloody tasty. This recipe from Sue Lawrence's - A Cook's Tour of Scotland fulfills all of these criteria, with extra bloody tastiness coming from the inclusion of black pudding. Now, prior to cooking it I wouldn't have thought that black pudding and fish would work together. I was wrong.

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Ingredients (enough for 2 people)

• 2 pieces of skinned undyed smoked haddock fillets (approx 200g / 7oz in weight)
• 2 thin slices of black pudding (cut very cold to stop it crumbling)
• 4 rashers of traditionally cured unsmoked back bacon
• Olive oil for drizzling

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Preparation

• Preheat the oven to 230C (450F)
• Put the fish on some greaseproof paper on a baking tray
• Arrange the black pudding slices on the fish
• Wrap the bacon around the fish and black pudding
• Drizzle with Olive Oil
• Cook in the oven for about 15 minutes or until the fish is cooked
• Serve with some good quality bread and a side salad. Pour over the magical juices from the pan.
  

I told you it was simple. I added some cherry tomatoes to the baking tray prior to cooking and added these to the salad. Most excellent.

Guinness Marmite, Irish Sausage and Onion Buttie

Thanks to Jimmy for this recipe, originally posted on the Me Myself & Motörhead blog on St Patrick's day.

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Guinness Marmite, irish sausage and onion buttie, adapted from a Gary Rhodes recipe idea on the Marmite website:

Ingredients

• 4 good quality farm assured British or Irish butcher's sausages- pork, or as an alternative vegetarian sausage
• 1 large onion (note that the quantity used in my variant was 2)
  
• olive oil
• large bread rolls, baps or Scottish fired morning rolls
• Butter for spreading (currently using Lurpak organic here in Victory Mansions)
• Salt & pepper for seasoning
• Guinness marmite or original marmite - quantity to taste - half a tbl spoon

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Preparation

• Grill the sausages under a medium heat, turning occasionally until browned.

• While doing so fry up the sliced onions in the olive oil; heat up the pan with oil first and then add the onions.

• Once the onions are softened in the heat add in a healthy dollop of guinness marmite turning up the heat so as to caramelise the onions/marmite mix and it is nice and sticky.

• Open up the rolls, add to butter to perference.

• Add the sausages complete or sliced along the length to the rolls on one side then spread on the marmite-onion mix on the other roll side and combine.

• To compliment add in some sliced cherry/sweet tomatoes to the sticky onion mix. Serve with a nice hot mug of tea if breakfast or up the ante at lunch with a bottle or two of stout.

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Variations by the Truckers

Sausages - For the sausages I went for some good quality Scottish sausages, courtesy of the greatest purveyor of pork on the planet, Puddledubs. Personally I think our home produced sausages are better than the Irish versions, which can be over high in fat content. Of course Scotland is named after a Celtic tribe from Ireland, who came over in the 5AD or 6AD. By the 11th century they ruled the roost. Scottish Gaelic is therefore an Irish dialect, so by extension, Scottish Sausages are actually Irish. I started by browning the sausages of in a wok, with a splash of olive oil. I then transferred them to a dish in the oven at 200 C.

Onions - The onions were then added to the pan with a knob of butter, and slow cooked, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden. Cooking the onions in the sausage pan added the sausages wonderful flavour to the onions. At this stage I had a slight problem, as Calvin is not a fan of Marmite and even if he was, I had none of the legendary Guinness variety to hand. To circumvent this problematic state of affairs I added about half a cup of beef stock and a third of a bottle of Guiness. To this I crumbled in some Maldon Sea Salt, added some freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of brown sugar. After halving some cherry tomatoes, as per the original recipe, I cooked this mix over a low heat until reduced to a nice gloopy mass. Tea was brewed, bread rolls halved and buttered and the butties assembled. A bit late for St Paddies day, but a nice Easter Sunday morning breakfast.

Nice one Jimmy.

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Good Food Guide Winners 2008

The Japanese restaurant Sake No Hana in Mayfair sounds interesting. Voted the best new London restaurant by The Good Food Guide London it is certainly the most commented. One comment described it as "pure and unadulterated joy for people who understand Japanese Food" while another punter described it as a "temple of cool". It does sound pricey though, with their cheapest glass of wine clocking in at around £30 a glass. So anyone with a few anime DVDs on their shelf and a wallet the size of Manhattan should give it a try.

The other Good Food Guide Winners this year were : -

• Best value for money: Tom Ilic, Battersea

• Best budget Restaurant: Viet Grill, Shoredich

• Best gastropub: Carpenter's Arms, Hammersmith

• Best set menu: Wild Honey, Mayfair

• Best vegetarian: Mana, Primrose Hill

• Best for breakfast: Roast, London Bridge

• Best wine list: The Square, Mayfair

• Best fish restaurant: One-O-One, Knitsbridge

• Best up-and-coming: Tristan Mason, formerly of Orrery, Marylebone

Medium Curry Gravy

Pat Chapman's currys work like lego, where you build and store complex building blocks that you can quickly combine to make a tasty curry on the fly. Not a technique for someone who does the occasional Tikka Masala, once in a blue moon, but more of a way of life. Restaurants use similar principles, but on a much larger scale.

So putting a few bricks together brings us to this recipe for Medium Curry Gravy. A veritable Princes Leia in your Lego Star Wars set. "Help me Obi-Wan Pat Chapman, you're my only hope".

Ingredients (makes enough for a meal for about 4 people)

• 2 tbsp Curry Powder (use either Pat's Curry Masala or the ground spice version, curry powder, the last time I made this, I used the former).
• 2 tbsp Ghee
• 50g (2 oz) Garlic Cloves chopped
• 250 g Spannish Onions, chopped
• 4 Canned Plum Tomatoes, drained
• 200 ml (7 floz) Water
• 2 tbsp Green Pepper, finely chopped
• Aromatic Salt to taste (you could just use normal salt instead, but as the aromatic version is so easy to make, you'd be barking mad to do so)
  

Preparation

• Add some water to the curry powder to make a paste.
• Heat the ghee in a wok or large frying pan till hot.
• Add the paste and fry for a minute or two.
• Add the garlic and stir fry for a minute or until golden brown.
• Add the Onions, mix in and fry until caramelised.
• Add the tomatoes and Water.
• Take off the heat and puree to a consistency in a blender.
• Return to the pan.
• Add the green pepper.
• Cook on a low heat for another 10 minutes. The gravy should turn to the dark side, and thicken.
• Add the aromatic salt to taste.

Now you've put those pieces together, it's on to building that Death Star. Stay tuned. You can't stop the signal.

This gravy can be frozen, in a conventional freezer should Carbonite not be available. I'd recommend making enough for 2 or 3 meals at once (apply a suitable multiplier to the ingredients) and always keeping some available on standby for future Bantha Fodder, or when you're eating solo.

Curry Masala

A mix of pre-ground spices courtesy of Pat Chapman's The New Curry Bible: The Ultimate Modern Curry House Recipe Book (Curry Club)

Masala means, mix of spices, so curry Masala is a mix of spices used to make a curry.

An alternative blend to the home roast spice method I got from another bible, Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible, this one is a useful one if you are in a hurry or don't want the grind of the other.

Ingredients

• 60g Ground Coriander
• 30g Cumin
• 20g Fenugreek
• 25g Gram Flour (besan)
• 25g Garlic Powder
• 20g Paprika
• 20g Tumeric
• 20g Garam Masala
• 5g Bay Leaf
• 5g Asofetida
• 5g Ginger
• 5g Chilli Powder
• 5g English Mustard Powder
• 5g Black Pepper
• 5g Cinnamon

Preparation

• Mix well and store in an airtight container in a cool dark place.

Wow, that's some array of spices, but a tasty one.

Aromatic Salt

Years ago, I used to make a Chinese Spiced salt mix, that made for some tasty dishes. This is an Indian equivalent that enhances any curry, when used instead of ordinary salt. What's more, it's easy to make.

Ingredients

• 100g (3 1/2 oz) Maldon Sea Salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground allspice
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preparation (easy peasy, lemon squeezy)

• Grind in small batches with a mortar and pestle.
• Store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place.
  

Garam Masala

The spice blend Garam Masala means 'warm spice' and is used in both Indian and Pakistani cooking. Other variants can be found in countries such as Trinidad and Guyana, where local spices have been added to the blend. As the name implies only spices that heat the body, black cardamon, black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin and green cardamon should be used to make it. As these are expensive, however, this can be cut with cheaper spices, such as coriander.

Shop bought Garam Masala doesn't keep as well as home made and is less potent. In view of this additional potency you should therefore use less of the home ground variety than it's mass produced weaker cousin.

Garam Masala is often added to a dish at the end of the cooking process, when the full aroma isn't lost and it can add a wonderful fragrance to your dish.

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Ingredients

• 1 tbsp Cardamom Seeds
• 1 tsp Black Peppercorns
• 1 tsp Whole Cloves
• 1 tsp Cumin Seeds
• 1/3 a nutmeg
• 2-3 inch (5 - 7 1/2 cm) piece of Cinnamon Stick

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Preparation

• Grind the spices in batches as finely as possible. The Cinnamon stick is a beast to grind so I'd recommend using a heavy cleaver to chop it finely before you attempt to grind it. This is especially true if you are using a mortar and pestle. For the other spices you can also use the cleaver to take out some of the grunt work. First crush them under the flat of the blade, then rock the blade back and forth over the spices to roughly chop them.
  

• Store in an airtight jar, in a cool dark place. A badger sett would be ideal, but watch out for the badger!

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