“It was the hardest decision of my life, like getting divorced,” he said in a recent interview with Restaurant magazine.

See http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/?page=articles&ID=204528 for more details.

“Fuck him”, said Ramsay. “Hes a sniveling little shit anyway”.

(P.S. For the hard of thinking, the last comment was made up. Please don’t press charges.)

I was speaking to my good friend Luke the other day, moaning to him about how much hard work my return to university is turning out to be, and how I never seem to have any time to cook anymore. I miss good, home cooked food! As you can see, Luke has managed to get into the kitchen. I would kill for a Sunday roast right now, stacked high with all the trimmings and, of course, Yorkshire puds!

Luke’s Yorkies

Hi PF@H’ers. Jon’s given me the opportunity to make a return visit to PF@H following the enormously successful and popular potted duck. In fact, that’s not strictly true; I was in fact recently planning a Sunday lunch of roast beef with all the trimmings, and of course you can’t do this without Yorkshire puds.

Whilst growing up, Sunday roast was an event, something that brought the whole family together, and we often had friends and guests around too.  Now I’ve got a family of my own, it is a tradition I am keen to maintain, and so a mastery of the Yorkshire pudding is something of a must. Of course you could compromise and choose the frozen cardboard frisbees that are available these days, however part of the love that goes into the preparation of a roast, and the flavour, texture and knobbly notchy shapes you get from home made yorkshires make the extra effort well worthwhile.

This is, I admit, my first serious attempt at Yorkshire puddings. I am sure in the dim and distant past I have cooked them, however don’t really remember how they went. For some reason we rarely have beef as the roast of choice, probably as I’ve mastered the crackling on roast pork (thanks to Nigel Slater). Anyway, today we had a large joint of silverside, and I needed a recipe for Yorkshires. I turned therefore to the trusty PF@H – no self respecting book about pub food would be complete without it – and indeed it is there in the basics section at the back.

There isn’t really that much to making yorkshires; just a couple of things to make sure of, and they should come out fine: chill the batter before using, and make sure that the tin is hot before you pour the mixture in.

First the (simple) ingredients: Flour, eggs, milk and some salt

Mix together in a blender

Then chill for an hour or so. Once you’re ready to cook, get your oven nice and hot, and put your Yorkshire (muffin) tin in with a little oil (or preferably beef dripping) in each mould. Once it’s very hot too, take it out the oven and pour in the batter, about 3/4 full in each mould.

Pop it back in the oven for about 25 minutes. During the cooking they should rise nicely:

Try to resist the urge to open the oven…

And the finished articles should look something like this:

They were of course served with the roast beef, roast potatoes and veg, with a good dollop of horseradish. Oh, and a Californian red. I was pleased with the outcome; they rose nicely, were fluffy and light and maintained their shape well when they were removed from the oven. Next time however, I would probably go a little heavier on the salt (close your ears doc!) maybe a teaspoon instead of the 1/2 tsp I put in.

I’ll look forward to reading Jon’s blog post on the roast beef when it arrives too!

Bye for now,

Luke.

]]> http://ramsayspubfoodathome.com/lukes-yorkshire-puddings/feed/ 3 http://ramsayspubfoodathome.com/manchester-tart/ http://ramsayspubfoodathome.com/manchester-tart/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:48:33 +0000 Jon http://ramsayspubfoodathome.com/?p=1130 Hi there PF@H’ers. I hope you are all well. Apologies for the gaps between posts right now, by new life in Madrid is hectic, hectic, hectic. It had been so long since I studied for my first degree, I think I had forgotten just how school can overtake your life, leaving little time for quaint little hobbies like cook-through blogging. When I’m not on campus or reading at home for the next day’s lectures, I am out and about networking with my new classmates. They call it networking here. It’s what we used to call “going on the piss” when I was back in London. Anyway, so it was I found myself with an invite to my new buddy Akhmed’s 30^th birthday bash.

Akhmed decided to host a “bring a dish” party at his flat, with each guest bringing a plate of something authentic from their home country. “OK”, thought me. A great chance for me to knock up something from my copy of Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food. I guess I could have chosen any of the 100 or so recipes I still have left to cook, but this one for Manchester Tart just seemed to jump out at me.

Manchester tart is all about school dinners. I can remember it being served up by the dinner ladies at my old junior school – it was always one of my favourite puds. It’s a bit of strange recipe for a cookbook by a Michelin starred chef such as Gordon Ramsay. And I’m not convinced I have ever seen it served in a British pub. Though I suppose there are those niche drinking dens in London that cater for gentlemen with a certain type of school teacher fetish. Perhaps it pops up there?

I awoke from my Saturday afternoon siesta rather later than planned, so I had to put the tart together in an awful rush. That, and getting to grips with my new Panasonic Lumix camera, perhaps explains some of the less than stellar photography (sorry!). Here’s the first snap of the ingredients. You can see eggs, milk, cream, butter,  caster and icing sugars, desiccated coconut, bananas, raspberry jam and vanilla pods.

To start off, I had to tackle my kitchen nemesis. I could almost hear Gordon admonishing me. “Its only f**king pastry you big girl. Get stuck in”. Hmm, easy for him to say. But, perhaps because I was so rushed that I didn’t have time to worry about it, the pastry making actually went pretty well. It was the usual drill. I piled my food processor high with butter and sugar and whizzed to combine. Then an egg and another whizz. And then the flour and a final quick whizz until the dough came together. I gently kneaded the dough for a while and then shaped it into a flat disc, wrapped it in cling film and popped it into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Half an hour was just long enough for me to grab a quick shower and pick up some beer for the party. When I got back from the shops, I took the dough out of the fridge and rolled it out to about the thickness of a pound coin (or I suppose

about two one-euro coins back-to-back is more appropriate). I lined the tart tin and then added baking paper and some dried beans before “blind baking” the tart for 20 minutes.

OK, next job – pastry cream. I added milk, cream and a little sugar into a pan over a low heat. I split open a vanilla pod and added the seeds and the pod into the mixture and slowly brought the whole lot up to a simmer. I loved the smell of fresh vanilla as the creamy milk gently warmed through.

Meanwhile, I beat together egg yolks and sugar until smooth. I then whisked in 40g of cornflour, a bit at a time, keeping the mixture smooth.

Once the creamy milk was at the boil, I took it off the heat and slowly trickled it onto the eggy mix, whisking all the time until I had a nice runny custard.

Next, I used a sieve to strain out the vanilla pod and added the mixture back into the pan and onto the heat.

The heat under the pan must be very gentle – if it gets too hot the mixture will curdle. Not good. I kept stirring and slowly, slowly the pastry cream began to get nice and thick and smooth. It’s thick enough when you can draw a line across the bottom of the pan with a spoon.

By now, the pastry case was out of the oven and cooling. While that happened, I whipped together more cream with some icing sugar. As soon as it began to stiffen, I folded it through the pastry cream and gently combined the two.

Now to assemble the tart. First I spread the base of the pastry case with raspberry jam before layering on slices of banana, which I had previously chopped and tossed in lemon juice.

I then spread over the pastry cream mixture to fill the tart. There was a fair bit left over, but that quickly disappeared into the chef. Yum!!!

For the last job, I quickly toasted some desiccated coconut in a dry pan before mixing in a bowl with caster sugar. Finally, I sprinkled the sweetend coconut over the top of the tart, tucked it under my arm and headed out of the door towards the party. I was late!

So, how did it go down? Well, I wouldn’t say the tart was something I was overly proud of – it was hardly a gourmet recipe. The taste was very much school dinners, and I guess that was ok. The  “bring a dish” party was fab though. There are people from over 90 different countries on my course here in Madrid, so the range of food and drink on show was pretty amazing. And, once the Manchester tart finally got to the table, it certainly didn’t hang around too long. But then maybe that’s students for you…..

Pinchos are traditionally seen in the north of the country, in particular the Basque region, and consist of a thin slice of bread on top of which can sit anything from a simple slice of jamon to, at the better places, some fantastically imaginative and delicious gourmet creations. The ones are Sagetxe are particularly good.

No wonder my fellow Madrilenos never seem to get too drunk, there is always a tasty snack close to hand. What a fantastic way to stay sober! If only we had something like this back in London. So many times at home, I would leave work for the pub and survive the whole evening on nothing more than a couple of bags of Walker’s crisps. Urgh.

Perhaps some creative landlord could come up with some British inspired pinchos, I am sure they would go down a bomb with tipsy punters.  They needn’t be overly fancy (although a mini yorkshire pudding, with a slice of rare roast beef and a dollop of homemade horseradish sat in the middle, would be perfect). Almost anything would be better than another bag of cheese’n’onion….

Anyway, three cheers to Sagaretxe. Keep up the good work!

This would be my second attempt at one of Gordon’s tart recipes, and as the first one, an asparagus and spring onion tart, was so utterly delicious, I had pretty high hopes for how this one would turn out. Despite being in Spain and away from readily available, traditional British ingredients, I do plan on trying to keep this blog as authentic as possible. As such, I was particularly pleased to find some nice quality (read expensive) Scottish smoked salmon in the supermarket’s chiller cabinet (although it turned out to be a discovery I would later regret). You can see the salmon below, along with the other ingredients of watercress, crème fraiche, lemons, eggs, flour and butter.

I started things off by making up the pastry. Up until now, I have been fairly lucky with my Ramsay’s pub food pastry attempts. I have to admit to you that this is far from the norm. I have a pretty awful track record with pastry, and usually resort to buying the pre-made stuff from the shops. Still, after my last few attempts had gone so well, I felt like I had nothing to fear.

I added plain flour and a pinch of salt to my blender along with some chopped up cubes of butter. After a quick whizz the ingredients had come together to resemble coarse breadcrumbs.

I emptied the contents of blender into a large bowl and added in a few tablespoons of cold water and slowly brought the mixture together. After lightly needed the dough into a smooth ball, I wrapped it up in clingfilm and left it to rest in the fridge to firm up. So far, so good.

After half an hour, I took the dough from the fridge and attempted to roll it out. It should end up roughly the thickness of a one pound coin and large enough to line a large tart tin. I say attempted, because this is where it all started to go a bit wrong. My first pass at rolling out the dough ended up with the pastry stuck firmly to the work surface (dough too wet, not enough flour on the countertop?). So I had to quickly scramble the dough back together and try again. I had a bit better luck the second time around, but my pastry still ended up a rather sad looking patchwork of fixes and plugs.

A little disheartened, I lined the tart base with baking paper and dried beans and popped into the oven to bake ‘blind’ for about 20 minutes.

After blind baking, its best to remove the paper and the beans and give the pastry case another 5 minutes of oven time until the base is properly cooked.

Once baked, you can use a sharp knife to trim around the edge of the tart case to tidy up the overhanging edges and at the same time brush the pastry with a little egg white.

Now for the filling. First of all, I grated the zest of a couple of lemons into a large mixing bowl.

Into this, I added three large eggs, crème fraiche and lemon juice before lightly beating the mixture and seasoning well with salt and pepper.

To assemble the tart, I first spread out the watercress leaves evenly over the base of the pastry case.  Next, I roughly tore up the smoked salmon into smaller pieces and scattered this on top.

Finally, I poured on the egg and crème fraiche mixture until it reached just below the rim of the tart.

And that was it. All that was left was for me to pop the tart back into the oven to bake for 45 minutes, until the filing had set and the top had gone a nice golden colour. It came out of the oven looking pretty good.

After leaving it to cool for ten minutes, I served a generous slice of the tart for supper, along with a few sprinklings of left over watercress. What do you think? Well, maybe it didn’t look as pretty as the picture in the cookbook, but I was fairly pleased with how it had turned out. At least my mish-mash of pastry was well hidden by the scrummy looking, creamy filling.

However, to be honest, I was a little disappointed with the tart’s taste. The Scottish smoke salmon was incredibly strong, its flavour really overpowered the other ingredients. Not that the tart was unpleasant (I love smoked salmon!), I just felt that overall the flavours of the dish were somewhat out of balance. I’m sure you could use a more gently smoked salmon instead but, while that would help, I cant help feeling that this tart recipe doesn’t quite hit the heights of the earlier asparagus and spring onion one. If you find yourself poking through the cookbook wondering which tart to make, I would have to recommend that you try the asparagus one instead.

So, my first Madrid recipe wasn’t quite the smashing success I was hoping for, but still, onwards and upwards! Coming up over the next few posts: some thoughts on Spanish pinchos, an old school dinner favourite and a Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food Extra recipe. Stay tuned!

Chamberi is, I guess, a little like Madrid’s version of my of old Fitzrovia neighbourhood in London. It’s poshie, but not too poshie (just rather nice). It’s trendy, but at the same time the residents are made up of a decent mix of ages. It’s central and within walking distance of most places but without being right in the hustle and bustle of the city centre. And, most importantly, it is definitely a little foodie. The few blocks around my flat are chock-a-block with gastro-bars, restaurants, tapas joints, delis and a huge indoor market. I love it!

The Spanish seem to eat out an awful lot. In fact, finding a flat with a real kitchen with an oven, four ring hob, fridge and freezer was pretty hard. Most one bedroom places just come with a microwave, which obviously wouldn’t do! Anyway, my new kitchen isn’t quite up to the luxury of my old one in London, but it will definitely do, and it is way better than what I had to cope with in Monaco.

So, what about pub food? Well, of course, the city is stuffed to the gills with the stuff. Spanish style, every bar seems to offer at least a small choice of tapas or pinchos.

In fact, there is a Spanish saying that goes “no sangre sin corpe”, or “no blood without flesh”. The Spaniards always, always like to eat something while they drink. Pub food paradise, no?

As for my own cooking, I have been busy learning the Spanish words for various herbs, spices and other common ingredients I will need for my Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food Project. I have found the food court at the local El Corte Ingles a great source of international ingredients and my local Chinese bazaar (pound shop to you and me) is full of cheapo kitchen gadgets that will get me through the year. So no more excuses, it’s time to cook! I started off with a smoked salmon and watercress tart (post to follow). Hopefully the first of muchos Great British Pub Food in Madrid.

Hasta la proxima, amigos!

With a relatively simple dish like this, where one or two components are the stars of the show, it really pays to spend a little more on sourcing good quality ingredients. In the huge Monaco Carrefour (which I have genuinely come to appreciate) I was able to find some fantastic mussels from the bay of Mont Saint Michel, on the Normandy coast.  The mussels from Mont Saint Michel can boast of being the first seafood product to be designated the French Appellation of Controlled Origin (AOC) status, and once you taste the sweet, creamy meat you can understand why.

The quality of the mussels can be attributed to the large tidal range in the bay, with up to a 14 meter difference between the high and low tides. These large differences in sea levels expose thousands of hectares of sand at low tide and the constant refreshing of the salt water means that the area is the perfect environment for the mussels to thrive in.

To go along with the Normandy mussels, I was also able to find a nice bottle of artesian Normandy cider. Cider from that region is, quite simply, some of the best in the world (see my post pears poached in perry for another recipe that uses Normandy’s famous booze). Needless to say, I had pretty high expectations for how this dish was going to turn out. Below, you can see both the mussels and the cider together with the other ingredients of smoked streaky bacon, garlic, fresh thyme, parsley and olive oil.

To start with, I gave the mussels a scrub under some cold running water, making sure to remove any beards that were still attached to the shells. At this stage, throw away any of your mussels that are open and that don’t close when given a gentle tap – they are bad, and, believe me, food poisoning from bad mussels is not something you want.

As soon as I was ready to get cooking, I sloshed a good glug of the olive oil into a big, heavy saucepan. Once it was hot, I added in the streaky bacon, which I had previously cut into thick, rough and ready chunks.

I kept the bacon pieces moving around the pan and after about 5 minutes they had released most of their fat and begun to turn a nice shade of golden brown.

I then added in a half dozen garlic cloves (unpeeled but lightly crushed) and a few springs of the thyme, letting these fry off for another minute of so.

Next, I tipped in all of the mussels and a small glass of the cider (which left plenty over for me to polish off…). I took a quick picture before covering them with a tight fitting lid and giving the pan a gentle shake from side to side.

After about 4 minutes of steaming, the mussels had opened up. I took the pan off the heat and added in a few grinds of black pepper. At this stage, take care to remove any of the shells that have not opened (again, they are most likely to be bad).

That was pretty much it. I sprinkled over some chopped parsley and served the mussels in the hot cooking pot along with some good crunchy French bread and a cold glass of the Normandy cider.

Fantastic! I took a first mussel using my fingers, and then used that empty shell as tweezers to pick my way through the rest of the pot, fighting with the lawyer over each delicious morsel. They really did taste divine. The rendered bacon fat combined with the dry cider and the moule juice to enhance the sweet yet savoury flavour of the Mont Saint Michel mussels. An absolute delight and so easy to make. It really is one to try yourself!

Oysters are one of those foods, like olives or kippers, that I can’t believe anyone really likes the first time that they try them. But try them often enough and, although they may not have you falling in love with your dining companion (despite the myth), I’m pretty sure that soon enough most people will fall in love with an oyster’s fresh, briny taste. As the French poet Leon-Paul Fargue wrote, it is “like kissing the sea on the lips”.

Any London pub worth its “gastro” tag will inevitably offer a plate of oysters as part of their menu. As in Gordon’s cookbook, they are usually served simply, open on the half shell alongside a sharp, vinegary sauce.  There are a whole variety of oysters to choose from, but for this recipe I went with some medium sized Fin de Claires, which are grown off the French Atlantic coast. Any oyster type will do for the recipe, but as both England and the States have some fantastic native varieties, do try to stick to local if you can.

You can see the oysters below along with the other two ingredients of shallots and good quality wine vinegar and the all important oyster knife!

To start with, I finely chopped a couple of shallots and mixed them together in a small bowl along with a few good glugs of the wine vinegar.

I set the bowl aside to infuse for an hour while I got on with the prep for the next recipe of mussels and bacon. When I was ready to serve the oysters, I spread out some ice onto a large plate and got on with the not insignificant task of opening up each shell. Shucking oysters is a little bit tricky and takes some getting used to before you are regularly able to pop open a shell with the minimum of fuss and without spilling too much of the salty liquid inside, crumbling too much of the outer shell into the edible flesh, or taking a big gouge out of your hand with the tip of the blade.

In my left hand I wrapped a clean tea towel to help with grip and to serve as some protection should I slip with the knife. A special oyster knife, or shucker, is recommended as regular knifes can be too thin and the blade twists too easily. To open an oyster, I held it in my towelled hand with the curved side facing down so that, when opened, the deep shell would retain as much as the inner liquid as possible. Using the shucker, I wedged the tip in between the two shell halves, as close to the hinge as possible.

With a little force, I pushed the tip of the blade through the small crack between the shells.

Once the knife was in, I twisted it in a circular motion, as you would a screwdriver or a doorknob. The oyster should literally “pop” open.

Once the seal between the two shells was broken, it was then a relatively easy task to run the knife around to cut away the muscle holding the two halves together and remove the upper shell.

And that was it. I set the successfully shucked oyster onto the ice and repeated, more or less successfully, for the rest. You can see the full platter below, served alongside the shallot vinegar and a cold bottle of fizz. A great start to the end of Monaco life!

Much more about Madrid in later posts, but first I want to say a quick goodbye to my old home of London. I came back from Monaco to spend a few days in the UK to say goodbye to friends. I made the most of my time there to indulge in my favourite London activity – the pubs!

First up was a rare treat. My buddy Luke, who is currently working at the houses of parliament, met me for lunch and took me for a pint in the “strangers bar”, which is a pub-like bar actually inside the parliament buildings.  It was great to sit and drink a beer where the likes of Winston Churchill had supped before me.  After a pint there I took a stroll around the area where I stumbled upon a great pub that I had never been to before. This is something that can happen all the time in London and is one of the things I love so much about the city. Anyway, The Speaker in Westminster is a pub very much of the old school.

As the beer posters on the wall state – “No music, no fruit machines, no television. Just good beer, food and a place for conversation”.  Says it all really, Heaven!

The following evening I had my “farewell to London” drinks with a bunch of friends at The Market Porter, a fantastic pub right on the doorstep of the foodie Borough Market. I love hanging out there, the place is a beer mecca – they usually have on around twelve different beers sourced from small, unusual craft breweries from all over the British Isles. On a Friday night it’s packed to the rafters and the fun spills out onto the street alongside the market. The crowd is a mixture of all ages and the atmosphere is a lot of fun.

And to top things off, right next door to the pub is the market stall of Mrs. Kings pork pies.

Pork pies have to be the ultimate pub snack, and there is no doubting that Mrs Kings’ pies are the ultimate pork pies. They are the perfect combination of rich, tasty pork, firm crunchy pastry and sweet jelly. Naturally, a recipe for pork pies can be found in Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub food, but I know that my own efforts wont come close to matching Mrs. King’s!

A happy night of pork pies, great beer and friends. London I will miss you!