Fennel Sausage, Tomato & Basil Spaghetti

You have been at work all day. You come home to more shit that needs sorting. It's done, but now you're starving, you need some food. It's already 8pm. This dish is the one. It is going to become a repertoire staple you cook forever. It's quick to make and eat, but it also uses only a splash of red wine meaning there is an excuse to open a bottle and finish the rest. If you could graph a difficult day, this dish (and the wine) is the tiny positive incline at the end of the timeline.

Ingredients:

Quality Toulouse sausages - 6

Onion - 1/2, finely chopped

Extra virgin - 2tbsp

Fennel seeds - 1 tsp

Garlic - 2 cloves, roughly chopped

Passata - 350ml

Red wine - a good splash

Red wine vinegar - a splash

Sugar - a couple of pinches

Crushed red chilli - 1/2 tsp

Basil - 1 small bunch, stems chopped finely, leaved roughly torn

Parmesan - 75g, grated

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Spaghetti - 120g

Method:

Boil the kettle and get a big pot of salted water on to boil. Fry the onion, garlic, chilli and fennel in the oil for 5 mins until the onion is soft. Skin the sausages and pinch the meat into the pan - fry until cooked. Deglaze with the vinegar and wine, then in with the passata and sugar. Get your pasta in to cook - follow the packet instructions. 

Reduce the tomato sauce by 1/3 and taste. Correct the seasoning, sugar and vinegar to your taste. Toss in the basil stalks and cook for a few mins more. Finish with fresh basil, in with the cooked pasta and a little of the pasta water if the sauce is too dry. Mix well, finish with parmesan - lots of it. Eat, drink, sleep. Tomorrow is another day (smiley face).

Pork Pie

These are incredibly easy to make, very forgiving and way beyond any shop bought pie in terms of flavour. Pork pies fall into two camps on both the meat and pastry front. Some 'cured' pork pies have pink fillings after cooking due to the addition of saltpetre or other anti-oxidant agents. Mine are more natural and will go greyish - it is what pork does after mincing and cooking, why add chemicals? With regards pastry, many commercial offerings will have soft flabby spongy casings. Not these - the pastry will be firm and crisp and will stay that way for several days uncovered in the fridge. So its a case of pink and flabby vs natural and firm folks......I'll leave you to make your choice. 

Pork pies should have jelly. No matter how full you fill the cases, the meat will shrink during cooking and the jelly is added to fill the resulting void. I'm not a massive fan of meat stock jelly so I went for the option of melting down some crabapple jelly and using this instead. I am sure it would work really well but in a rush to photograph and eat, I didn't let my pies cool and the jelly ran out when I cut them - dumb ass!  It did however get me thinking that any sort of fruit or wine jelly would work well - redcurrant, medlar, dessert wine with added gelatine.... I'll describe what I did here but feel free to experiment. For four individual pies:

Ingredients:

Pork belly or shoulder - 400g after trimming rind and gristle 

Spring Onions - 4

Sage - 1 small bunch

Nutmeg - 1/4 of a nutmeg, grated

Salt & black pepper

Lard - 150g

Plain Flour - 300g

Water - 150ml

Crab Apple Jelly - 50g

Method:

Set your oven to 200c. Put the pork, spring onions, sage, nutmeg, 1tsp salt and 1tsp pepper into the bowl of a food processor and blitz to a rough mince. Bring the water and lard to the boil, add a good pinch of salt, then add to the flour. Using a spatula bring together to an oily pastry and when cool enough to handle, form into a ball with your hands.

Divide the dough into 6 balls, then push 1 ball into the bottom of a small, individual 125ml dariol mould or cupcake tin, or what ever you have that will make a decent sized pork pie). Squeeze the pastry up the sides of the mould to just above the rim making sure there are no holes and the pastry is roughly an even thickness all over. Repeat three more times resulting in 4 pastry cases. Divide the meat mix into 4 balls and stuff each into the pastry cases pushing down well but taking care not to split the pastry. Divide the remaining two pastry balls in half and use to make lids - squeeze out a rough circle and place on top of the pies. Crimp the lids with your fingers, cut a large steam hole in the top of each lid and bake for 50 mins to 1 hour. To check they are cooked, inset a fine knife through the steam hole into the centre of the pie. Leave for 5 seconds then touch the knife point to your lips. If it is very hot then the pies are cooked, if only warm cook for another 15 mins.

Warm the crabapple jelly in a pan to melt then carefully spoon into the holes in the tops of the pies until they can be filled no more. You may need to re-open the holes after baking as they sometime close up a little. When the pies have cooled, refrigerate to set the jelly then de-mould. If the pies refuse to come out of the tins, this is probably due to the fat setting. Put the whole tray back in the oven for no more that a minute and the fat should melt and the pies release. In the pub we use a blow torch to release all kinds of things like this from chocolate mousse to pannacotta and of course pork pies - top tip mate.

Middle Eastern Duck Salad of Purple Potatoes, Radish, Orange & Pomegranate

There are some really exciting ingredients about at the moment, pomegranates for one and I found some purple salad potatoes in my local greengrocer - who knew these existed!  They taste slightly like a chestnut/potato cross, but not a great deal different to the more usual salad potatoes.  They do however look cool and I am a sucker for something pretty. And on that note my pregnant wife demanded duck for tea....so racking my brains I came up with this unusual take on a middle eastern, wintery salad. 

If you haven't used sumac before, its is a deep red, sour citrus flavoured spice that works well with fatty meats such as duck and pork. It is widely available so give it a whirl. Serves 2 generously:

Ingredients:

Duck Breast - 2

Sumac - 1 tsp

Orange - 1

Pomegranate - 1

Honey - 2 tbsp

Rose Water - 2 tsp

Red wine vinegar - 1 tbsp

Extra virgin - 3 tbsp

Cumin seed - 2 tsp

Spring onions - 3, finely sliced

Radish - 8, finely sliced

Watercress & rocket salad mix - 50g

Fresh coriander - 50g, stems finely chopped, leaves a bit rougher chopped

Purple potatoes or another quality salad potato such as charlotte or pink fir apple - 200g

Method:

Gently scrub then boil your pots (in their skins in salted water until a knife is easily inserted with little resistance. Score the duck breast skin, season well with salt, pepper and the sumac. Place skin side down in a cold and dry non-stick frying pan and place on a medium heat. Allow the duck to slowly fry, rendering the fat out of the skin to leave it crispy and golden. This should take about 12 mins so adjust the heat accordingly and drain the pain of fat when necessary.

While the spuds and duck are cooking, zest the orange then segment following the technique shown here: http://freshcatering.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-supreme-segment-orange.html. Don't throw away the pithy core, squeeze the last of the juice into a bowl....then chuck it.

Cut the pomegranate in half, turn cut side down in the palm of your hand and with splayed fingers, gently beat the skin of the pomegranate with a heavy spoon to release the seeds into a bowl you have cunningly placed underneath. Discard the empty skin and any membrane that has fallen into the bowl. Add the orange segments, the spring onion and the radish to the bowl.

Toast the cumin seeds in a dry pan, then roughly crush in a pestle and mortar. Mix the cumin with the honey, rose water, the juice from the orange, the vinegar and the oil. Season really well with pepper and salt. Mix the dressing with the vegetables in the bowl and allow to marinade for 5 mins - the viniagrette may split and look thin, don't worry. When the spuds are cooked, drain and cut into quarters and add to the vegetable and viniagrette mix - the warm potatoes will suck up the flavour and excess juice from the bowl so mix well with your hands and leave for 10 mins to infuse.

Back to the duck - when it has had 12 mins on the skin side and is golden and crispy, flip onto the flesh side and turn off the heat. Allow the duck breast to rest in the pan for 10 mins - this should cook it to a blushing pink depending on the size of your breasts (this sexual innuendo was not lost on me by the way).

To plate, use the coriander like a salad leaf with the rocket and watercress. Pile onto a large plate, top with the vegetable mix and then the thinly sliced duck breast. Finish with a sprinkle of sliced spring onion, pomegranate and more chopped coriander.