Truffled tuscan sausages with polenta, braised fennel and gremolata

Walking into the Italian deli near my office in King’s Cross is to be transported to the scene in Goodfellas where they are cooking in prison. The store is run by an Italian version of the most charming version of Arkwright from Open All Hours, who has never failed to be a gracious an inspiring host. He will make you enormous sandwiches cut from whole loaves of ciabatta laced with freshly sliced cured meats and cheeses, moistened with a healthy slick of olive oil; or more conventionally he’ll send you packing with genuinely Italian ingredients and delicacies that will stink your office out for the afternoon, before transporting your family to an Italian holiday when you get home from work.

Inspired by a colleague who had come back with a truffled pecorino, I popped in for some KC Continental magia. My head was almost blown off by the smell of truffle as I walked in. But alas the cheese had sold out. But true to form Arkwrightioni sent me packing with some amazing truffled sausages from Tuscany. These puppies positively wreaked of truffle and almost had all the dogs in our office howling like deranged wolves. There’s something deeply primeval about truffles and I couldn’t wait to cook them.

I thought about making an Italian version of toad in the hole with loads of rosemary and a healthy dose of mushrooms, but decided that would be more suitable in autumn. I also dismissed a truffle sausage and bean stew for similar reasons. And sausage and lentil casserole suffered a similar fate. Instead, I opted to combine my amazing truffled sausages with a slick of polenta, a smear of gremolata and some braised fennel.

Ingredients

6 truffled Tuscan sausages from KC Continental Stores

3 bulbs of fennel

2 large onions

300g of frozen peas

2 glasses of white wine

400ml of chicken stock

200g polenta

50g grated parmesan

3 garlic cloves

100g butter

1 pack of parsley

4 sprig of thyme

Method

Make the gremolata by very finely chopping the parsley. Then douse in olive oil and squeeze in a lemon’s juice and add some of it’s finely grated zest. Season aggressively.

Brown the sausages in a casserole dish and set aside.

Then brown the onions and fennel until golden. Then add the garlic. Then add the wine and let the alcohol bubble off.

Then add the sausages and 100ml of chicken stock. Add the thyme. Allow to simmer until the sausages are cooked through.

Meanwhile make the polenta according the packet instrucions. I used chicken stock rather than water which worked well. And then beat in lots of parmesan and butter.

Add the peas to the casserole. Let them cook through. Season everything.

Then serve with a good dollop of mushroom. And a glass of very cold white wine. We probably should have had a Tuscan white… but instead we had a dry German Riesling which worked very well indeed.

Roast Gurnard with sage and squash

When we were in Salcombe a few years ago we went on a memorable fishing trip where I managed to catch nothing but sand eels whilst the rest of the gang reeled in a whole school of mackerel. A friend called Nick, who could catch a sea bass in a 2 inch puddle, even managed to snare a gurnard much to my shame. But then again he is a fish magnet.

In contrast to my sand eels, and the mercury coloured mackerel bullets, the gurnard seemed exotic and of another world. With big eyes and a red mohican it looked worryingly like the three eyed fish that is found in the river near the nuclear power plant in the Simpsons. Ever since this encounter I’ve been keen to cook one.

My chance belated came the other day. I popped into Moxons on my way home, in search of a modest piece of fish. I was thinking of lemon sole, Arctic char or mackerel, but was seduced by the idea of a large gurnard.

When I inquired how to cook it the fishmonger instantly dictated that I roast it with sage and pumpkin. I could have spent ages thinking about what would have worked well. But sometimes a bit of firm direction works wonders. On a hot summer night you’d probably be better with something more lemony and acidic, but if it’s a bit cooler this is a great way to enhance the earthy and mellow nature of gurnard.

Ingredients

1 large gurnard
½ butternut squash
Handful of sage
Spinach leaves
Salt
Pepper
1 lemon
Olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
Butter

Method

Cut the squash into bit sized chunks. Season with salt and pepper and roast in a medium oven along with the garlic cloves and sage leaves.

Make a garlic and sage butter by adding minced garlic with finely chopped sage leaves.

Prepare the gurnard by slashing the skin, seasoning and studding with sage butter.

After 30 minutes when the squash is getting soft, place your gurnard on top of the squash.

Cook for 10 minutes until the fish is just cooked. Remove from the oven and wilt some spinach in a pan.

Serve the gurnard whole, with the squash and spinach on the side. Squeeze some lemon over the fish and spoon whatever juices are left in the pan over the fish.

Mackerel, Beetroot, Lentil and Egg Salad

A few months ago I found myself arriving at a bizarre Parisian hotel in the middle of what seemed like nowhere for a meeting about biscuits. It was midnight. I was shattered. And the Hotel Mama Shelter flummoxed me so much that I landed up going to the loo in the ladies toilets – only to be ticked off by a couple of outraged lesbians.

After failing to find refuge in my concrete bedroom, lit only by and Obelix and evil Elvis masks, I decided to make a late trip to the bar to regain my sanity.

I whiled away an hour watching the “Medi-arty” hop from table to table, sipping, slurping and flirting in equal measure. The highlight was watching, a bombastically trendy Swedish teenager managed to chat up and bed a fawning American model all in the space of 45 minutes.

During lunch the next day we were served one of the best things I’ve eaten this year. It couldn’t have been a lot more simple. It was just a mound of perfectly cooked and seasoned green lentils, dressed with mustard and crème fraiche and topped with a soft boiled egg and a scattering of tarragon. Its simplicity belied its flavour and moreishness.

I’ve since taken this straightforward approach to lentils and cook this dish whenever we need to conjour a quick supper out of thin air. Add some smoked mackerel and beetroot and you’ve got one of the healthiest, easiest and most delicious suppers imaginable. I suspect it would be even better with some horseradish.

Ingredients for two people:

300g green lentils
2 eggs
Handful of chopped tarragon
3 smoked mackerel fillets
2 sliced beetroots
2 spoons of Dijon mustard
2 spoons of crème fraiche
Salt and pepper
Lemon

Method:

Boil the lentils until tender. Drain. And allow to cool slightly. Mix through the mustard, crème fraiche and most of the chopped tarragon. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Soft boil or poach your eggs.

Throw on some broken up pieces of smoked mackerel and some slices of beetroot and place the soft cooked egg on top. Sprinkle the remaining tarragon on top. Season the egg, squeeze some lemon over the top and serve immediately. Pierce the egg to release the runny yolk and tuck in.

Brunost and Juniper Venison Shank with Spelt

One of the classic ways of cooking with brunost in Scandinavia is to use it to enrich slow cooked game dishes that have been laced with juniper. I first discovered it in Andreas Viestad’s Scandinavian cookbook, Kitchen of Light. The sweetness and unexpected tang help to lift the sauce away from fuggy earthiness and gives the sometimes thin liquor a glossy glow. It’s the Norwegian equivalent of adding some dark chocolate to a Mexican mole.

I picked up a handsome venison shank from Balham Farmers’ Market that would have been just as happy (and a lot more expensive) had I encountered it in Gothenburg. The meat was as dense as lead and spoke of a life of permanent effort and back-breakingly hard work.

It needed to be cooked as slowly as possible – in a way that could cope with the rich flavour of the meat and the tense meat. So I decided to throw mushrooms, red wine, spelt, juniper and onions at the casserole dish and abandoned it for the afternoon whilst it burbled away in the oven. Whilst June isn’t the normal time of year to be writing about venison shank stews – the weather right now is making me feel a bit like hibernating with a lump of brunost.

Ingredients to serve 2

1 large venison shank or 2 small shanks
100g of pearled spelt
100g of dried mushrooms (preferably porcini or morels)
100g of sliced button mushrooms
30g of brunost
A good handful of juniper berries
2 bay leaves
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
400ml of stock to cover (but top up with water as required)
2 glasses of red wine
Salt and pepper

Rehydrate the dried mushrooms and make sure you keep the liquor.

Method:

Roll the venison shank in seasoned flour and then brown in a hot cast iron casserole dish. Remove and then sweat the onion, button mushrooms and garlic until they have taken on some colour and the mushrooms have shed some of their juice. Then add the spelt, rehydrated mushrooms (and their liquor), the juniper berries, bay leaf and venison shank. Cover with red wine and stock until well covered. Then bring to a simmer.

Once it is bubbling away, pop on the lid and place in the oven to cook for another 2 hours or so at a low heat. You must check on its progress to make sure it doesn’t dry out as the spelt with absorb a surprising amount of liquid. Top up with stock, red wine or water as you wish.



Once the meat is lethargically giving up its grip on the tendons and bones remove from the oven and drain off the liquid. Strain these luscious juices into a pan and reduce to a condensed slick of brown heaven. Check for seasoning and add more juniper berries. Then when it is getting a bit thicker, add the brunost and whisk like a madman. The sauce should thicken and become a bit fudgy. Taste it as you go and don’t over reduce because the sugars may catch. Keep this warm whilst you attend to your cauliflower cheese.



Strip the tender venison meat from the bone and assemble with the spelt and mushroom stew, topped with the glossy brunost and juniper sauce, alongside the brunost cauliflower cheese and some wilted spinach.

Like still waters, this dish runs deep. The combination of sweet and sour brunost with bitter juniper mixed with the feral depth of the mushrooms and venison make this a dish that a Viking, returning from a day of pillaging, would be very happy to come home to.

Mark Hix’s Vivid Soups

With my mind wondering down a Swedish memory lane, I remembered a couple of vivid soups I made from Mark Hix’s Oyster and Chop House cookbook during the fleeting but magical Gothenburg summer.

The book itself is a beauty to look, charming to fondle, fun to read but frustratingly dilute when it came to the subject of the Chop House part of the idea. Sure, the meat was beautifully photographed and well annotated with interesting commentary and the odd recipe, but where it could have been a seminal T-Bone, it seemed bashed out like a minute steak. If you want a masterclass in meat and generally chop-housery, opt instead for HFW’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Hawksmoor At Home or the Ginger Pig Meatbook. But then again, maybe Hix thought it had been done already.

Rather perversely, Mark Hix’s book comes into its own in the less meaty sections. His chicken livers on toast recipe is a beauty and his fennel salad dressed with orange juice and vinegar is very good too if you ease off on the rape seed oil. And his fish with peas and leaks is delicious.







But, the best two things I’ve cooked from his book are a couple of punchy soups which seem to capture his bold, mischievous and blokey personality to a soupy T.

The first was golden beetroot soup, which captured my attention as it was supposed to, because the golden coloured beetroot was intended to trick your dinner guests. This bright yellow soup looked like butternut squash, or possibly a saffron spiked courgette soup, but tasted earthily of the very essence of beetroot. Arguably even more so than if it was red. I've since sown some golden beetroot seeds and hope to recreate this soup back in London with my own vegetables.

The second was for a horseradish soup which almost blew my head off as I grated the fresh root in my Magimix. Even with a topping of walnut floaters and a dab of goats’ cheese it was explosive.

If you like your soup to be vibrant, exciting and a conversational hand grenade, this one is for you. But if you like your potage to be further towards the potato or broccoli end of the spectrum you may want to give this one a wide birth and go for the golden beetroot version. Soupifying the horseradish only seems to make it even more psychopathically strong – and using golden beets seems to make them even more beetrooty.

Chilled Golden Beetroot Soup:

Ingredients:

400g golden beetroot
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 litre of vegetable stock

Method:

Mark Hix suggests boiling the beetroot. But I much prefer to bake them in salt as they seem to emerge sweeter. Allow to cool and then peel and chop them into chunks.





Sweat the onion in the hot oil in a large saucepan. Once softened, add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. Then add the chopped beetroot and remove from the heat.





Blend it until smooth. Pass it through a sieve to make it super silky.

Chill.

Either serve on its own. Or with some goats' cheese or curd floating on top. Or a swirl of cream. Or if you are feeling a bit Swedish, with some grated horseradish on top.






Horseradish Soup:

Ingredients:

50g butter
1 chopped onion
1 chopped leek
1 tablespoon of flour
1.5 litres of vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
100g grated horseradish
1-2 tablespoons of double cream

Method:

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Sweat the onion and lieek and cook without colouring for a few minutes. Stir in the flour to make a roux and add the stock gradually. Season and simmer for 30 minutes.

Next do the fun part. Grate your horseradish using the grater attachment on your Magimix. Or just do it by hand. The hit of horseradish is one of the most intense experiences I've ever had whilst cooking. So watch out!



Add the grated horseradish to the soup and simmer for 5 or 10 minutes. Take off the heat and then blend until smooth. Pass it through a sieve for extra smoothness.

Check for seasoning add the cream, heat up and serve.

Liver with Brunost Cauliflower Cheese

Brunost (AKA Gjetost or Gudbrandsdalsost) is an amazing substance. It’s a Norwegian cheese that is typically made by mixing goat’s whey with goat’s cream and reducing it down until you get a dense, fudgy, sweet and savoury caremlised cheese that’s really hard to pin down. All Norwegians have a block or tube of it in their fridge which they eat on crackers and other snacks. It was considered healthy because of the high iron content, but it has since been downgraded to a health risk because of the high fat content.

It packs more calories than any other cheese, leaving even the mighty Parmesan in its wake. It’s like a cheesy Daim bar that has a powerful tang.

I first encountered it in Gothenburg when the 6 foot blond Swedish girl with an Irish accent on the cheese counter in the local market gave me a nibble of it and explained that people often lob a bit into the pan juices when they cook a steak or game to make a rich gravy. I gave it a pass at the time, but half a year later had a sudden hankering to try it out.

I asked a few Scandi friends who pointed me in the direction of a few recipes that suggest mixing a small amount with meat juices when cooking steak, elk, moose or venison. I figured that a nice piece of calf’s liver would be just as good and decided to accompany it with a rich Norwegian take on cauliflower cheese that was spiked with fudgy brunost.

Brunost Cauliflower Cheese

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower
1 knob of butter
1 tablespoon of flour
100g of gruyere
30g of brunost
150ml of stock or white wine
150ml of milk
Salt and pepper

Method:

Basically, make cauliflower cheese as you normally would by blanching some cauliflower and then smothering in a cheesy, béchamel based sauce, topped with grated brunost.

I like to mix the milk half and half with stock and find that gruyere is an ideal cheese. But what makes this special is the addition of brunost which gives the cauliflower cheese a sweet and sour kick that works brilliantly with the liver.



Simply grate the brunost over the cauliflower cheese and add a few lumps as well as you see fit. Season with salt and pepper and then throw it in the oven for 20 minutes until golden brown.

Then season the liver with salt and pepper, dust with flour and then sear in a very hot pan for a few minutes until the outside is browned and the inside is still pink. Allow to rest somewhere warm and in the meantime deglaze the pan with a spash of red wine. Then whisk in a knob of brunost and reduce until you have a thick, fudgy gravy. Taste as you go and adjust the seasoning.



Serve the liver adorned with brunost sauce and flanked by cauliflower cheese and spinach. For wine pairings for brunost dishes, check out Snooth, but you might be better with beer.

Hake a la Washing Machine

When our washing machine broke down, Cowie was spinning with rage, whilst I grinned to myself and said a quiet prayer to the Gods of domestic appliances, that it might be in a cookable state. I figured that if we had to buy a replacement, my lifelong ambition to cook in a washing machine would be within my grasp.

The engineer’s report indicated that the machine was in a fully functioning state, except that the drum just wouldn’t spin, so he advised us to get a replacement. I figured that this is the dream situation. I checked the internet to see if anyone had done anything like this before and discovered some Americans had, quite brilliantly, attempted to cook scrambled eggs inside whoopee cushions, with highly questionable results. I’ll leave you to ponder what talcum powder-cum-rubbery scrambled eggs would taste like.

When we’ve cooked in lateral ways in the past, we’ve found a sure-fire technique is to improvise a sous vide bag by using a Baco bag and simply throw in a fillet of fish along with some flavours before doing up the bag with an aggressive knot. This approach was a great success when we cooked a fillet of salmon with soy, ginger, chilli and garlic in the dishwasher and the bath.

I popped into Moxon’s on my way home and had one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had in a long time. As I was perusing the selection of fish looking for some hake, one of the fishmongers inquired what I was looking for. Rather absentmindedly, I explained that I was looking for the ideal fish to cook in the washing machine. Silence descended before the boss intervened and asked his colleague to see if they had any hake behind the counter. Luckily they did and I was sent on my way with the fishmongers wondering whether they should call the asylum.

I figured that hake steaks would work well because the bones would support the structure and help them to cook evenly. Also, hake’s firm flesh lends itself to this long and slow cooking method. Rather than the Asian approach, used in the bath and dishwasher, I thought a combination of fennel and saffron would make for an exotic change.





When it came to the big night we popped the fish in a Baco bag along with some fennel seeds, salt, pepper, a dash of olive oil and a few strands of saffron and then set the washing machine on a 90’C cycle.

The machine gushed with water and then started to fill up, with the little parcel gently bobbing in the hot water bath. We sat and watched as the drum thankfully refused to spin and the fish gently cooked. It's an odd sensation having your food locked away without being able to prod or check it.



An hour or so later, the door clicked and we were left with perfectly cooked fish, that delicately flaked with a pearly gloss that held together like an MI5 officer under enemy questioning. The only down side was that because I’d put two fillets in the same bag, one of the steaks had slightly distorted into a strange shape. So if you are doing this, use separate bags.

I made a quick dressing by heating the juices that collected in the bag with a touch of cream and a squeeze of lemon and then made a salad with mint and fennel. The salad showed off the pearly white flesh and saffron hued surface whilst the fennel and mint added some crunch and freshness.





I couldn’t believe how well this crazy little project turned out. I was worried that the fish would be overcooked or uncooked. I was really concerned it would just taste of washing powder. And I wasn’t sure if the drum would kick in and start spinning at random. But none of these things happened and it not only worked perfectly, but it cooked the hake better than I have ever managed using conventional methods!

So when you hear the death rattle from your washing machine, embrace it and send it off to white goods heaven with a decent final meal.

Squash + Quiche = Squiche

We hosted a big dinner party for Cowie’s birthday recently which involved us catering for 22 people. We decided on the menu about a month beforehand which had to balance taste, generosity and budget. A large joint of meat was an option, but with this number of people it would have been hard to have cooked it just right and have fun ourselves. So we opted instead, to have some X rated fun with the sausage maker.

My first batch of what I had termed Somerset Sausages, involved mustard, cider and sage. I thought they gave the mighty Cumberland Sausage a run for its money, but Cowie thought they smelled of sick. So we jettisoned the unfortunate sage and dialed up the thyme and added some chunks of apple and a slosh of cider brandy. The result was a rich, herby, apply taste of Somerset. All we had to do now was to make enough sausages for 22 people. Gulp.

And for our starter we popped down to Mere Fish Farm to collect a dozen trout which we planned to smoke over apple wood chips and serve with a horseradish crème fraiche sauce, slices of cooked beetroot and a handful of local watercress.

With the meat and fish courses sorted we sat down and smugly gulped down some coffee. But something felt wrong. Oh God. We’ve forgotten about our vegetarian friends! Having gone to so much effort with the starter and main course we had to cook them something on a par – at least in terms of effort – but hopefully from a taste point of view as well.

The punning side of my brain kicked in as it often does in times of crisis. How about we serve a pastry-less veggie strewn quiche inside a squash and called it a squiche? Bingo.

The dinner party went brilliantly and we have subsequently made a squiche for a midweek supper together which is detailed below.

Ingredients

1 squash – Butternut, Crown Prince or any other firm textured but creamy medium sized squash
5 eggs
150g of rehydrated wild mushrooms
2 garlic cloves
1 roasted courgette
1 flamed red pepper
100g goats’ cheese
100ml cream
50g mixed chops nuts
Tarragon
Salt and pepper

Method

Cut the squash in half and scoop out the brains. Smear with olive oil and sprinkle with chopped nuts and pop a garlic clove, still in its skin, into each squash half. Season. Roast for 40 minutes until the flesh is cooked but well before it starts to lose its structural integrity.



Then make the quiche mixture as you would do normally and feel free to meddle this combination of flavours. Roast the courgette in smallish pieces and blacken the pepper over a flame before peeling the charred skin off and cutting into small pieces. Then beat the eggs and add the cream. Then mix in the tarragon, vegetables and rehydrated wild mushrooms. Add a splash or two of the mushroom liquor which will add some woody depth. Then plop in goats’ cheese in chunks and give it all a good mix.





Remove the garlic cloves and pour the quiche mixture into the squash halves. You may need to find a way of balancing the squashes so they don’t topple over and cause chaos.
Season and cook in a medium oven for 30 minutes. The egg mixture should be firm to the touch but have some springiness to it. Serve whole or in slices with a watercress salad and lentils.





So if you are struggling for ideas of what to cook a vegetarian friend, or even are wondering how to cut back on meat whist still eating something interesting, give the squiche a bash. You could give it an exotic Moroccan twist by using cumin, chilli and a scattering of nuts… or keep it more simple and let the squash speak for itself along with some complimentary ingredients from the Flavour Thesaurus.

Watercress Pesto with Fireplace Cooked T-Bone Steak and Polenta Chips

We spent an idyllic week in September eating fresh figs, amazing cheese and indecent prosciutto in Italy’s Le Marche region. Our swish villa came with a communal veggie patch which generously yielded the tastiest tomatoes that have ever entered my mouth – they made the extortionately priced Swedish tomatoes I’ve tried to avoid for the last year and a half taste of gravel by comparison. Mini aubergines, sweet little peppers and not so sweet chillies were there for us to tuck into as well.



But best of all was an orchard full of cherries, damsons, and most thrillingly, fig trees. Ripe, sticky, swollen figs seemed to make it into every meal: wrapped in prosciutto, baked with honey and doused in goats’ curd – each one, more delicious than the last. Fresh eggs from the very free range chickens kept our coats nice and glossy and super thin pizza from the wood fired oven was spectacular. It was a rustically gastronomic week of cooking for ourselves that featured a classic caponata and back to back evenings of chargrilled turbot on one night and barbecued sea bass the next – all served with the freshest salads imaginable.



If you are looking for an idyllic and quiet spot for a relaxing Italian break, look no further than Casal dei Fichi where Ian and Bob will look after you like rock stars and even hook you up with gastronomic events where you can make your own olive oil or go truffle hunting.

When we went back to Cowie’s parents’ house in Somerset, we wanted to continue our Italian adventure, but with local produce. We visited Kimbers' excellent Farm Shop where a fabulous T-Bone steak gave me the eye from the chiller cabinet. When you find yourself flirting with a piece of meat, you know it’s going to be good.

We then went to John Hurd’s Watercress farm in nearby Hill Deverill. They don’t normally deal with walk in customers and tend to sell their organic watercress direct to Waitrose by the lorry load. But Simon Hurd, very kindly, gave us a tour of the farm and told us all about the ins and outs of watercress farming. It was great to meet such a passionate chap, who was so knowledgeable and proud about his produce. I loved the fact he sprays his watercress with garlic solution which keeps the bugs at bay and that the peppery mustard oil taste is nature’s way of protecting itself from being eaten. Amazingly it contains more calcium than milk and more Vitamin C than oranges.

We left with a box of watercress, Simon’s infectious enthusiasm coursing through our veins and a recipe booklet that was full of fun suggestions, including the idea of making watercress pesto which sounded like the ideal accompaniment to our steak.

We kept things simple and decided to cook the Kimbers' T-Bone steak over the fire place and to serve it with polenta chips and an emerald green watercress pesto - as a way of rekindling our Italian memories.

Steak ingredients:

T Bone steak
Olive oil
Rock salt and pepper

Watercress pesto ingredients adapted from John Hurd’s recipe book:

1 bag of watercress
1 clove of garlic
1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts
1 tablespoon of toasted walnuts
50-75ml olive oil
50g finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese
Sea salt and black pepper

Method:



Make the watercress peso first. In a large bowl, blitz the watercress with a hand blender, then add the toasted nuts and garlic and blend them too. Add the olive oil and continue to blend into a luscious green paste. Add salt and pepper and then the parmesan. Mix together and taste for seasoning. Pour into a sterilised jar and store in the fridge until you need it.



For the polenta chips, simply make some polenta following the on pack instructions and let it cook until it has formed a creamy sludge. At this stage mix through some chopped rosemary. Pour this into a baking tray and allow to cool and set. When this has happened cut the polenta into chip sized chunks, douse in seasoning and olive oil and roast in a hot oven until crispy.





Season the steak handsomely with rock salt. A Brazilian friend (hey Marco) taught me to coat the meat extravagantly with salt when cooking it over a flame. It helps to form a crust and guarantees an amazingly tasty steak - just make sure you bash the salt off before serving. Grind over some pepper and get your fire nice and hot. We decided to cook the steak over Cowie’s open fireplace which has the benefit of getting super hot, and a built in extractor fan, otherwise known as a chimney.



Once the flames have died down, simply grill the meat over the coals until rare on the fillet side and medium rare on the sirloin side and leave to rest.

Carve the steak so you get a nice piece of sirloin and fillet and serve with watercress pesto, polenta chips and a watercress salad. The watercress pesto has a strong, peppery tang that marries perfectly with the bloody steak.

A "Fungathlon" Brunch: AKA Wild Mushrooms on Toast

We’ve all got traits that drive our other halves nuts. Some people leave the toilet seat up. Others are terrible washer-uppers. Some fail to ever take the bins out. Others fart in their sleep. Some snore. But the thing I do that drives Cowie nuts is to regard a run in the countryside as an opportunity to go mushroom foraging.

I’d like to think that I’ve invented a new sport called “Fungathlon” – where you have to complete a half marathon and also forage for mushrooms en-route. So when we were in the final stages of preparation for our Olympic Triathlon at Hever Castle and Cowie planned a 14 mile run for us around the gloriously undulating Longleat Estate, I saw it as a chance for some energetic foraging.

Cowie always sends me a map of our intended route to get my approval in the days before we go for a long run. I normally look at the hills and wince and then agree. But what she hasn’t realised until now is that I always check to see if we run through any woods. And if we don’t, I tend to suggest an alternative route that is more likely to yield mushrooms.

Within 50 metres of setting off we’d stumbled across a bank of chanterelles nestling in the undergrowth. Cowie ran on as I picked and inspected them. I wasn’t sure whether I should collect them and take them with me or whether I should just put down a marker so I could find them later. Common sense got the better of me and I spent the next mile catching up with Cowie who had forged on ahead.

As we ran, I dreaded someone else finding my stash of golden chanterelles. I was wracked with fear that a mushroom thief might strike. It spurred me on to run faster. Then after 10 miles, I spotted what looked like a cep winking at me from under some birch trees. Without thinking twice I vaulted a barbed wire fence and went foraging. Again, Cowie zoomed off, muttering something about “bloody mushrooms”.

As she ran off into the distance, I inspected what I thought was a cep. But I soon realised that it wasn’t quite the noble Karl Johan Svamp, but I had a strong suspicion it was an edible bolete of some sort. I quickly searched the surrounding area and found 4 or 5 more specimens, which I collected up and hid under a tree next to a discarded can of Coke with the hope that I’d be able to return later to pick them up.

I jumped back over the fence and sprinted down the hill to catch up with Cowie who was by now almost out of sight. It stuck me that this is actually an advanced form of interval training and in fact is the kind of thing they should recommend in Triathlon World magazine.

For the last 4 miles my head spun as I thought about what to cook with our haul of shrooms. I concocted mushroom and cider pates, mushroom ragus with polenta and mushroom soups in my mind as we closed in on the Bath Arms. I barely even noticed when we finished and was simply excited about picking up our mushrooms before any fungal bandit struck. We drove home via the mushroom drop zones and collected our haul which sat on my lap in the car with a reassuring covering of moss, twigs and excitable woodlouse.





We got home and, whilst Cowie showered, I checked the internet and my mushroom books to identify our collection and to check they were edible. It turned out that I was right about the chanterelles and that the boletes were in fact Birch Boletes which whilst not the very best, are regarded as being a tasty, if a little slimy.

By the time Cowie had returned from her shower I had cooked up my favourite mushroom brunch of the year. I simply sautéed the mushrooms and served them on sourdough toast from At the Chapel, in Bruton, and topped them with an egg yolk from Cowie’s hens which cooked in the residual heat of the mushrooms. And accompanied this with some invigorating watercress from John Hurd’s watercress farm which is just up the road.









It couldn’t have been more local. And it couldn’t have tasted any better. It was the most perfect brunch you could ever imagine. And left me beaming with delight for the rest of the day. It’s not often that you can combine fitness training, mushroom foraging and feasting all in one morning.