Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino (Per Uno)

Quick and easy Italian comfort food at it's best.



It's extremely rare that I end out cooking an evening meal just for myself. Tonight, as it happens has been one of those nights. It's half term week and my family are off staying with relatives or away for work, and there I was, working away and wondering what to eat. For a house that's usually full of people it's a strange place when it's just me. I cook most evenings for all of us, but tonight I needed something quick and something that would fill the void created by an empty house. The last time this happened to me was three and a half years ago (!), and what did I cook? Aglio, olio e peperoncino.

I don't know of anything simpler that packs as much punch as this delightful dish. Ordinary dried spaghetti, good olive oil, garlic, fresh basil, chilli, butter and parmesan. Intensely aromatic, seriously 'peppery' and immensely satisfying.

I checked out the fridge and the pantry before walking to the the shop to pick up the last bits and pieces. Basil: check, garlic: check, chilli: oh yes, still plenty of my chilli bounty in the freezer -  but olive oil, parmesan and spaghetti? No.

Nice and frosty, straight from the freezer

This meal takes as long is it takes to boil spaghetti. Like ten minutes in total if you are organised. I do it like this:

Boil 1.5 litres of water in a kettle and transfer to a large pot with a good dash of salt. Add 100g of spaghetti to the boiling water. Roughly chop 4-5 cloves of garlic and as many chillies as you can handle. Finely grate a decent chunk of parmesan cheese (2-3 tablespoons works for me) and roughly break up a handful of basil leaves.

In a large frying pan, heat up 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and toss in the garlic and chilli. Turn off the heat immediately as you do not want the garlic to brown, you just want it to infuse the hot oil.

When the spaghetti is cooked (it takes only 8 minutes or so), remove it from the water with tongs and toss it into the hot oil. Put the heat back on gently while you stir the garlic, chilli and oil through the spaghetti. Add a dollop of butter, half the parmesan and half the basil, give it a good toss and plate it up. Once on the plate add the rest of the basil and parmesan, crack open a super chilled bottle of white wine and go for it. You won't regret it. I promise.

Perfect Poached Eggs - It's All In the Planning

Whether it's a breakfast treat for overnight guests, a hangover cure or just a naughty little snack, to me the perfect poached egg is where it begins and ends. I measure the quality of a restaurant kitchen by it's poached eggs and always order eggs poached when given the option. It's an anxious moment as more often than not I end out disappointed. They are usually either two hard or worse, have unset whites.

I get annoyed when asked 'how do you like your eggs poached?'. Perfectly of course! A perfect poached egg should have a hot creamy yolk and a fully set white. You can see the difficulty, a few seconds can make all the difference. In order to have a fully set white, the outside edge of the yolk must also be just set, leaving an nice steamy runny centre.

I'm proud of my poached eggs and I think I deserve to be. I've perfected the method over decades and no longer feel anxious when preparing as many as 8 or 10 breakfasts for guests. So today I share with you my little tips and hope you can enjoy the same feeling as I do because, there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of delivering perfect poached eggs.

1. The eggs:

Fresh fresh fresh and organic is all I can say. We eat so few eggs so what is the difference in a few pence per egg when it comes down to it. Always choose the ones from the back of the shelf with the latest use by date. If the egg is not really fresh, the white will go to pieces in the water. Yuck. Some say you shouldn't keep eggs in the fridge (supermarkets don't) but then I don't think it really matters and what are the egg holders in the fridge for anyway?. To be honest, if they are cold there is less risk of overcooking them.

2. The kit:

A ladle (to break the eggs into first) and a saucepan with at least 5cm (2 in) of gently simmering water with a serious dash of vinegar. I normally use white wine vinegar but I had run out so used malt vinegar instead. The only difference is the darker vinegar leaves a slightly coloured residue on the finished egg. Use a slotted spoon to check and remove the eggs. A bit of kitchen paper is useful to remove any last bits of water before they go on to the plate.

3. Preparation:

Timing is what it's all about, so get prepared. Make sure all of the other breakfast ingredients are cooked and ready to serve before you start poaching the eggs. Make sure the plates are hot, and make sure your condiments and garnishes are all ready to go. And don't forget the coffee.

4. Timing:

Use the ladle to 'roll' the egg into the water. As the egg sinks it will plume as the white starts to set and create just the right shape. Now this is where it all gets a bit weird. I don't time poached eggs because there are too many factors involved. For example the temperature of the egg, the number of eggs being cooked and the volume of water. So, I invented the 'wobble test' instead. Pick up the egg with the slotted spoon and gently wobble it. If it looks like a bag of water, it's not ready. If it doesn't wobble at all it's overdone. It should wobble just like a set jelly. With a bit of practice you'll work this out in no time, it's intuitive. This tells you the outside is firm enough to hold it together and the inside is still liquid. It's weird , but it works. Roughly it takes about as long as the toast takes in the toaster, so I always put the toast on immediately after the last egg goes in the pan.

Two eggs is obviously easier than 8 or 10 eggs. When I do a large batch, I use a large pot and remember the order that the eggs went in. When serving, I remove the pot from the stove and continue to check each egg and remove them the moment the pass the wobble test. Everything else must already be plated up or you'll get into a right flap.

5. Make them pretty:

Fresh coriander (cilantro) and fresh chillies are my favourites plus lashings of freshly ground black pepper. I raided my chilli bounty in the freezer and finely chopped a mild red one, a pretty purple one and a little green bomb; super hot and full of flavour. It looks like a pea with a fuse and wow, it really does explode!

So there you have it. That's how simple and stress free it can be.

And last of all, the leading photograph is one of those happy accidents we all hope for. The word 'EGG' on the Emma Bridgewater dinner plate has somehow landed perfectly above the egg itself! It wasn't until I copied the photo on to my laptop that I even noticed. Priceless.

Slow Roasted Leg of Goat

Cooked in a Weber

What's going on here? One minute I'm stressing about having nothing to write about for my January blog, and the next minute I'm on to my second. They're sort of connected too. It was when we were staying with our friends in Herefordshire (see Ben's Curry Chicken Potjie), that I was taken to visit a fabulous local butcher, Legges of Bromyard. They had 2.5kg trays of mixed cuts of young goat for sale. How could I resist. Goat seems impossible to get hold of where I live yet here, 80 miles from home there it was, in abundance.

Our traditional Sunday family meal in the cooler months is a proper English roast dinner. We alternate between lamb, beef, pork and chicken with each family member having their particular favourite. Chicken with stuffing, beef with Yorkshire pud, pork with crackling, and lamb with mint sauce. So now it was to be goat. Our teenage daughter Kitty trembled at the thought (chicken is her favourite) and to be honest I was not looking forward to her asking what we would be having.

Weber chimney starter

My attraction to goat goes back to my time in Perth. I have two good friends there who occasionally satisfied my cravings for 'capretto' as a special treat. One had an outdoor wood fired oven and he would slow roast fist sized pieces in a large tray with garlic and herbs. I remember the smell wafting up the street as I arrived.

So here I was with a 1.2kg piece of goat leg and a bag of lumpwood charcoal. This was a big moment.

Goat is an incredibly lean and healthy meat. It benefits from slow roasting and some form of additional fat. I rubbed it with olive oil, and made a few slits between the muscles and inserted a couple of anchovy fillets and slivers of garlic. I laid it on a bed of rosemary sprigs in a pyrex roasting dish, tossed in a few trimmed heads of garlic and whacked it in the Weber.

I kept a bit of water in the bottom of the dish throughout the cooking time to provide a bit of steam and prevent the garlic and herbs from burning. It needed an extra splash from time to time. I also added a few knobs of butter on top of the meat about half way through.

It had a good hot start and was then left for about 2 1/2 hours with a gradually reducing temperature. Half an hour before the end I wrapped it in foil and removed the juices to add to the gravy which I was making on the hob. The gravy base was made simply with butter, flour and chicken stock.

The meat was tender and made a interesting change to our "English" Sunday roast. A jar of mint sauce on the table had a sufficiently Anglicising effect and really did go well with the meat. Well, Kitty did try it, smiled politely, and then left most of it neatly arranged around the edge of her plate so she could lap up the spuds and the gravy.

The other cuts from the 2 1/2 kg tray went into the freezer and will surface again soon in the form a proper 'curry goat', cooked over an open fire in my potjie, sorry, I don't have one so I'll give it a go in my Kotlich instead. Watch this space!

Ben's Chicken Curry Potjie

I have been so stressed about my January blog. We started the month in Australia, travelled back to the UK, and then reality set in. Work, work, work with so much to catch up on so Fire and Food was to be well and truly parked. Then I was saved. Saved by an invitation to visit to my foodie South African friend Ben in Herefordshire and the promise of a proper traditional potjie curry cooked over an open fire. So here I am, the second last day of January, relieved that I have a story to tell.

I just love all things South African, and a Cape Malay curry with great friends after a manic week of work was just too good to be true. We legged it from Oxfordshire as soon as school finished to miss the traffic and arrived in time to enjoy Bringsty Common at dusk. Bringsty Common itself is a delight. Over 200 acres of hills with just a few dozen rural homes scattered about. A perfect setting for a South African family in need of open space.

The moment we arrived I could smell the curry spices in the kitchen. The fire for the potjie had not yet been lit so there was plenty of time to enjoy the whole experience.

You might not associate South Africa with curry, but there is a huge Malay influence going back several centuries from when enslaved Javanese from modern day Indonesia were transported to the country by the Dutch East India Company. There remains a Cape Malay ethnic group and their food culture has become an integral part of South African cuisine.

A potjie (pronounced poit-kee) is a three legged cast iron pot for cooking over an open fire. Ben had his sitting on a purpose made ring in the base of his Weber.

Ingredients: (serves 6)

- 8-10 Chicken legs and thighs
- Two large onions, finely sliced
- Large piece of fresh ginger, grated
- 2-3 large cloves of garlic, crushed
- 2 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
- 1 handful of chopped potatoes
- 1 handful of chopped carrots
- 1 tbsp garam masala (for the dry rub)
- 1 tbsp medium curry powder (for the dry rub)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp whole fennel seeds
- 1 tsp whole mustard seeds
- 2 tsp whole cumin seeds
- 1 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 star anise
- 1 piece of cinnamon bark
- 1 tbsp hot curry powder
- 1 extra tsp of garam masala

Method:

Coat the chicken pieces in the dry rub spices for at least a few hours before cooking. Get the pot nice and hot before browning the chicken pieces in the olive oil. Once browned remove the chicken pieces and cover them with foil. Add the onions, ginger, garlic and remaining spices to the pot and stir to mix in all the bits left in the pot from browning the chicken.

Once the onions are soft return the chicken pieces to the pot, add the tinned tomatoes and stir until it starts to simmer. Finally add the potatoes and carrots, put the lid on and let it be for an hour or so. The fire needs to be just hot enough to keep it at a gentle simmer.

Bobotie

By the time this baby came to the table it was sensational. Intensely aromatic and full of flavour. Ben served it up with rice, a refreshing cucumber salad, and rotis. A dish of traditional South African bobotie also graced the table. I've not had anything like it before, a rich meaty, fruity dish topped with a savoury custard and baked in the oven. We had some of it cold on toast the following morning. What a treat.

After the meal, the girls donned their pinnies and slashed 'a few' damsons in preparation for Tersia's mega batch of damson jam.

Thank you again Ben and Tersia, it was a meal to remember.

Sunrise at Bringsty Common

Thai Green Chicken Curry Kebabs

A BEACH SHACK BARBECUE. Yanchep, Western Australia

We have just returned from a glorious day and night staying with dear dear friends on our trip to Perth for the festive season. They've rented one of the last standing old beach shacks for a week or so in Yanchep, about an hour north of Perth.

We arrived in time for lunch, spent the afternoon lazing about in the shack and on the beach before Ian and I went to the local shops to gather some bits for the sunset barbecue. We returned with a pile of chicken breasts, some Thai green curry paste, spring onions, a tin of coconut cream, some skewers, veggies and other bits and bobs.

The barbecue menu consisted of the chicken kebabs, mixed veg kebabs, grilled sweetcorn and barbecued papadums (yes you can barbecue papadums). An array of salads and other delights made up the buffet style meal for eight hungry mouths.

THAI GREEN CHICKEN CURRY KEBABS

Ingredients:

- 8 medium chicken breasts, cut into 2-3cm cubes
- 1 small jar of green chicken curry paste
- 1 tin of coconut cream
- 1 bunch of spring onions, cut into 2-3 cm lengths

Method:

Spoon off the thick cream from the tin of coconut leaving the clear liquid behind. Don't shake the tin before you open it otherwise the cream won't stay separated. Add the coconut cream, diced chicken and curry paste to a large bowl and marinate for at least one hour. The longer the better. While the chicken is marinating, pre-soak the bamboo skewers in water to help prevent them burning on the barbecue.



On the skewers, start with a piece of chicken, then spring onion, then chicken and so on, finishing with a piece of chicken to hold it together. It takes a while, but I find it quite therapeutic. It was a good opportunity to have a chat

Grill the kebabs for about 5-7 minutes each side until they are charred just nicely on both sides. Chicken breast cooks quickly and will dry out if overcooked. Should you choose to use chicken thigh instead, it needs to cook more gently for a lot longer.

The left over liquid from the coconut cream did not go to waste. I poured it over some ice with a teaspoon of sugar and a generous measure of vodka. It made two surprisingly good beachy digestifs!

The sunset was beautiful and after our meal we just sat out and gazed at the stars in the southern sky. We watched the moon set beyond the horizon and retired to an incredibly peaceful sleep. A big thanks to Linda and Ian for sharing their holiday shack with us and for their wonderful company and conversation.

A Balinese Beach Barbeque

Our five days in Bali en route to visiting family in Perth for Christmas was bound to present plenty of firefoodie fascinations. I'd read about the famous beach barbecues at Jimbaran Bay and was dying to get closer to some real traditional open fire cooking. This Indonesian island delivered in abundance.

One evening we set out to try one and Suara, our driver (and now great friend) dropped us off at a place simply called 'JBS'. The tables were arranged on the sand facing the sun set and we selected seafood from tanks which was then weighed, cleaned and grilled over charcoal to order. We made one big mistake however, we got there after sunset, so we missed that bit, and by then the selection of seafood was fairly limited.

One largish baramundi, a small crayfish and four giant prawns hit the scales before being passed on to the cooks for grilling. We returned to our table in the sand, had a few drinks and enjoyed the live entertainment.

The seafood was seasoned with traditional Balinese spices and grilled to perfection. It was served simply with steamed rice, steamed vegetables and some soy/spicy sauces on the side. The four of us devoured the lot in no time.



For an island where things generally cost very little, somehow this was one of the most expensive meals we had. Mainly because it is frequented by tourists, so next time, and there will be a next time because Bali is amazing, we will hunt out the places where the locals eat.

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, White Wine and Honey

It's that time of the year, not even December yet and I'm noticing that my 'Perfect Christmas Turkey in the Weber' article is starting to receive visits. Forward planning, I like it.

It's a traditional Sunday roast tonight at the firefoodie household so I visited my favourite farm shop on the way home from Luca's rugby match. Foxbury Farm, near Burford in Oxfordshire, one of the best local farm shops around here. We had already decided on pork so I chose a portion of boned shoulder and had the butcher score the skin nicely so we would have loads of delicious crackling. The fresh produce section had some lovely locally grown brussels sprouts, our first dose of brussels for the year. It was here that I also found some great local streaky bacon.

This recipe is a variation on a Delia Smith Christmas recipe and can be made with any sweet white wine, smoked or unsmoked bacon and good fresh sprouts. A white marsala wine is sweet enough to not need the honey, but I only had a dry white so I tried a small amount of honey to give a nice glaze and add that extra bit of sugar.

The pork shoulder, of course, was cooked in the Weber (keeps the hot smoky bit out of the kitchen) and the rest of the meal was cooked indoors. In addition to the sprouts, I served mixed roasted root vegetable (potatoes, swede and parsnip), and steamed carrots. I also made a simple stuffing (cooked separately) with fresh sage, more bacon, minced onion and fresh breadcrumbs.

Serves four:

- 600g brussels sprouts, trimmed and washed
- 200g streaky bacon, finely chopped
- 25g butter
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 small glass of white wine
- 1 dessert spoon of clear honey
- Salt and pepper

Method:

Steam the sprouts until they are about half cooked, that is still firm when tested with a fork. Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a pan in melted butter and olive oil until the bacon is nice and crispy. Don't worry about all those bits that stick, the wine will sort it out when it deglazes the pan. Add the par cooked sprouts and then add the wine in small splashes so the sprouts aren't drowned in it. Keep the heat high and as the liquid evaporates, add more, a little at a time. Put a lid on for a few minutes to steam them a bit more and then add the honey and toss them about before serving.

I will remember this night by the broken handle on my Weber. It was a bit tricky getting the lid off and on, but then I've had it for over ten years. Not impossible, just tricky. I'm not going to get rid of it, I am going to fix the handle. I am going to fix the handle...