March 2007

[ Up ]	Japonica
	March 2007

Game over, well, it is now	We were at Crathes castle yesterday which has an old ice house that allegedly would have ice lasting upto three years. I wonder if they ate game out of season? Thanks to the wonders of modern refrigeration technology, feathered friends have featured heavily in the last couple of weeks. Of course, we are not really into spring, well, not up here, so it still feels justifiable. However, the passing seasons did give me that extra impetus to rid the freezer.
	Talk about coals to Newcastle, bizarrely I finally got my grouse from Kenny's 'Elite Meats' in Lincoln. This is a superb butchers, one of, if not my favourite. As well as selling game, he does fantastic pork pies, Lincolnshire sausages, and chine (pork shoulder ham with parsley 'seams'). It's almost enough to make you move back home. They were quite big, and the breast keel bone was pretty rigid, once defrosted, suggesting an older bird, I should have checked with Kenny. I was thinking of stewing them, but instead plumped for just de-legging them, and roasting them as shown with a strip of back fat across them. I found it difficult to veer totally from the classic grouse accompaniments of game chips, fried breadcrumbs and bread sauce. Instead I made celeriac and potato rosti, bread sauce, watercress with some rowan jelly as a condiment. Though very good, the grouse didn't quite hit the peaks of those previously eaten, though following on from the woodcock was maybe unfair?
	Next up was mallard, or wild duck.

Fennel Forays	I love fennel, the seeds and the bulb. I remember hating it as a kid when mum put some in a salad, the aniseed bullet stuck in my mind for years. There's not a lot out there on suggestions for the bulb, in salad (??) and roasting/ bbq'ing fish on fennel sticks. It certainly has an affinity for fish, and we had bought some good slabs of cod roe from a fish van. No potatoes at home, so rice??? Rice, rice, what to do? Kedgeree, with cods roe, why not. I sweated an onion and the fennel bulb with a large knob of butter. To this I added roasted and ground a tiny amount of fennel seed, cumin and mustard. Then a bit of cayenne and turmeric. The rice was already cooked with some peas, and the cods roe I lightly fried. Oh yes, a soft boiled egg was the crowning glory.
	The next pairing was again, fennel and cods roe, but more straightforward, just sliced and put on a pizza base, a good splatter of olive oil, yum.
	Blimey, it's a recipe....
Suet crust 3oz suet 6oz plain flour 2tsp baking powder Filling 500g beef, cubed 4 grouse legs 2 woodcock wings woodcock stock, 400ml 1/2pt hoppy beer (Badger Original ale) small onion	I had kept the grouse legs and woodcock wings as a device for flavouring a meaty long cook, a stew, pie or pudding. A raised pork and grouse pie would be good, though the tiny legs would make a hazardous mouthful and it would be tricky/ pointless de-boning exercise. Anyway, I don't have any decent pork at the moment, having to source that from Wark farm, 30miles away. I did have a pound of boiling beef from George though, which was fantastically marbled and had lot of connective tissue in it, needing said boil to produce a gelatinous jus. My efforts to buy a pudding bowl have been fruitless, so I had to use a Mackie's ice cream container, annoyingly just too small. Freeze the suet and cut it thinly, it will produce a 'finely grated' result. Mix in with flour, baking powder and bring together with cold water as you would shortcrust pastry. Knead briefly. Line the bowl with 2/3 of this. Put half the beef in the bottom, then put the onion, sliced. Grouse legs next and woodcock bits if available, then more beef. Reduce the beer and stock to 100ml or so, pour this over the meat. Make a lid from the last 1/3 of suet crust, and seal. tie over some muslin cloth, (or silicone elastic band), and steam for 3, 4 or even 5 hours, who knows. I served boiled potatoes and carrots with this, and a bit of mustard. The dogs b@ll@cks.
Fry High	Simon has a recipe for goujons of sole, very 70's, though with an Asian dipping sauce, very nineties? I had some lemon sole in the freezer, and we needed fish. I couldn't be arsed with a dipping sauce, much to the chagrin of Shona, I just wanted to fill my face with an unhealthy crunch. I did elect to deep fry in oil, not beef fat though. I cut four lemon sole fillets, skin on, obliquely, to get finger size pieces. A shake of cayenne and a finely chopped garlic bulb smeared over them all. You need a factory processing line of flour, egg white (good use of spare in freezer), and medium/ fine stale breadcrumbs. Lightly dust in the flour, a coating of egg white, breadcrumbs and fry high. Done in a jiffy. I had salted some cucumber, washed and sprinkled with rice vinegar, on lettuce. Maybe a cucumber dip would be good? Basmati rice cooked with saffron, and washed down with Sainsbury's own Muscadet. Just a moment of perfection.