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  November 2007
   
  The wee beast is turning into quite a dab hand in the kitchen. The other day he rustled up some squash and amaretti gnocchi, with sage butter, he's just soooooo advanced.
 

This is Simon Hopkinson's version of Margaret Costa's lemon curd pudding. It is, essentially, a steamed pudding, with layers of bread spread with butter and lemon curd, immersed in an eggy lemon custard. To be honest, I think next time I will just spoon the lemon curd over the pudding rather than put it into it, since the texture of the curd is lost once cooked, and the custard is sweetened, got lemon in it, and is of course eggy, much like lemon curd. Draped in cream and lemon curd it really was divine.
   
 

These are Amandes clams, very pretty indeed. I shucked them, with some blood garnish (first time ever). I made some buttery bread crumbs, and since |I lack Pernod, I infused the butter with a spoke of star anise A clove of finely chopped garlic and some parsley, sprinkled on each clam which I balanced rather nicely in a cake tray, (the ones that have indentations), and grilled till golden. Served with French fries.

Jane Grigson suggests trying them raw, and in fact they were more tender this way than cooked, as well as tasting fantatsic.
   
More oatcakes, I just can't stop........
   
I had bought a kilo or so of cubed pork with the intention of making a raised pork pie. I had great ambitions to make it raised in the proper manner. Jane Grigson in Good Things suggests using 2lb jam jars, but I only had my flask and a jar full of pickled onions. Either way it was a complete disaster, the hot water crust pastry just slid down the sides. Maybe there was too much fat (7oz to 1lb flour), or I should have let the pastry cool more. Anyway, I was too impatient, so just lined a cake tin as shown.
 

 

 

  I had been planning to do two pies, one with anchovies and sage as the flavouring and one with pheasant and dried plums. In the end, I went for the sage, anchovy and pheasant. The pheasant I de-breasted and cooked that night in a chicken brick with quince. The breast I cut in half to achieve two flat pieces. I minced the pork coarsely, with 4oz fatty bacon and mulched with 5 anchovy fillets, cut up, 1/2 tsp quatre epices (clove/ nutmeg/ cinnamon/ black pepper), and some sage leaves, cut finely. As shown below, the pheasant I sandwiched between layers of pork. The pie baked for about two and a half hours, until the juices welling up at the sides were deeply caramilesed. Oh the joy. I left the pie a few days and then poured in some jelly, from a previously cooked whole beef shin, no pigs trotters to hand. The best pie I have ever made.

   
 

 

As a pre-festive season practice roast, I got hold of Wark farms last of last years frozen goose with the intention of feeding Ged who missed out on the downunder goose extravaganza. This time the goose to feeder ratio was even more obscene, being 1:3. A quick trawl through the recipe books didn't give me any new paradigms to explore, but the Polish cookbook did give me an idea for using caraway. I made a stuffing by mincing the giblets, including liver and heart with a sweated onion and some breadcrumbs, and some caraway seeds. To counter the Kate Moss goose problem, I lined the inside of the cavity on the side of the breast meat and roasted it upside down initially, finishing off the breast skin by turning it breast up for the last 20mins or so. My pal Oli stuffs his turkey just via the neck, inserting it between the skin and the meat. This may be a future direction to head, though it would alter the pleasing sleekness of the roasted carcass. Hum.

Roast tatties and cabbage with carrots, and a very fine gravy. Ged brought some Fontainfredda Barolo,  that's the kind of guest I like.
   
 
   
No pigs were harmed in this demonstration