Triathlon Training at The Greyhound, Stockbridge, Hampshire

Food tastes so much more vivid when you feel like you deserve it. We discovered this on our epic cycle trips for lunch which took us to Wild Garlic in Dorset, Bills in Lewes, The Horse Guards Inn in Sussex, The Hole in the Wall in Cambridgeshire and the awful Albany in Thames Ditton. It was a great way of making Cowie’s triathlon training fun for both of us. Circumstances have changed since then, with Cowie’s bike being pinched and now it’s me that’s in training whilst living in Sweden. So in light of this we decided to preface our dinner at The Greyhound in Stockbridge with a cheeky half marathon through the Hampshire countryside.

We arrived in Stockbridge on a glorious late winter’s lunchtime, donned on our running kit and spent the next 110 minutes marvelling at the stunning countryside, whilst gasping for breath. Our time would have been considerably quicker had I not kept on darting into the bushes to look at mushrooms! It’s fair to say that our run acquainted us with the pub’s “terroir”, or whatever the less poncy English equivalent would be. And more importantly left us famished. I was hoping that on our return to the pub that we’d be treated like London Marathon runners – but with the free Lucozade and power gels being switched for pints of ale and pork pies.

The Greyhound is one of the feature pubs in Diana Henry’s Gastropub Cookbook, which from past experience is normally a cast iron recommendation. The menu is pleasingly short and full of hearty options with the odd hint of flair, whilst the wine list offers a far more interesting range of wines than you’d expect. The cosy dining room with soft lighting and nude wooden tables is the perfect balance of rusti-city.



After bingeing on not terribly impressive bread, Cowie’s plump Scottish scallops with Jerusalem artichoke puree, chorizo and sweet potato crisps were very welcome. The superb cooking and beautiful presentation ensured this archetypal modern British starter didn’t slip into cliché territory. Cleverly, the crunch of the sweet potato crisps made the scallops taste even more of themselves. It was a cracking multi-sensory plate of food that drew you in to its warm embrace. The only thing it lacked was a sharp element, but in fairness a glass of Sauvignon Blanc picked up where the food left off.



My soft boiled duck egg croquette with smoked salmon and herb aioli was exactly what my aching muscles were yearning for. I adore duck eggs but unfortunately they have a rather gassy effect on me, which meant that Cowie almost disowned me for ordering them. In fact, this petty act of rebellion made it taste even better. The thin, crisp batter around the soft egg was perfectly executed. The smoked salmon was very good too, without being phenomenal, but the real highlight was the way that these rich elements combined with the peppery salad leaves to elevate this to a higher plane.



Cowie’s venison was beautifully crimson and sauced with a slurry of savoury, rural flavours. The earthy spinach, beetroot and venison tasted like an artist’s impression of the run we had just been on. Good solid stuff.



My tower of pork, crackling, fondant potato, fennel rillette and cider velouté, looked and read a bit like a Gordon Ramsay dish from 2003. Whilst it looked a bit Esher, it tasted of Exmoor. Aside from the name and look, my only criticism was the slightly dry meat and overly salted crackling which felt like it had been hanging around a bit too long. Is it just me being a snob, or are stacks of food a bit naff these days?

Puddings were from the comforting end of the spectrum as you’d hope from a pub. Illicitly creamy rice pudding with rhubarb compote was one of the best I’ve had and Cowie’s pear tatin was decent without being anything to get too excited about.

We dragged our weary bodies up to our sloping, but very comfortable bed and reflected on our well deserved evening of indulgence. Over an excellent breakfast we picked apart our meal from the previous night. We agreed that the food had been very well cooked. But we wondered whether it would have been more interesting had the food reflected the surroundings more. What if Mr. Smidgens from Longstock had smoked the salmon? What if Farmer Geoffrey from Stockbridge had provided the duck eggs? What if the venison had come from the New Forrest? What if the menu had been written in plain English rather than borrowing the occasional fancy expression from French? What if the menu had been studded with a few Hampshire classics? And does any of this even matter?

When we re-read the menu it could have been from any fancy pub in the UK – whereas our favourite country pub experiences have had a more obvious and attractive connection with their location; all the meat at Y Polyn was from local farmers and the sea trout was caught by a coracle fisherman; at the Wellington Arms the game is provided by a local huntsman; and at the Kings Arms in Strete all the fish is from the local harbour. The fact that Scotland featured three times on the menu in the form of mussels, scallops and beef and the local area only twice with cheese from the Isle of White and pork from Greenfield farm, isn’t a big deal, but it would have been great to feel like you are eating the best food that the local countryside has to offer. Likewise, there’s something reassuring about seeing offal and slow cooked dishes that turn pigs ears into silken purses, but “loin”, “breast”, “fillet” and “rib-eye” occupied the expensive shallow end of the taste spectrum rather than the powerful deep end of ox-tail, belly, cheeks and trotters that make me want to dive in off the top board.

In short, whilst the food was delicious and we’d recommend it warmly, we didn’t think it quite lived up to the top billing it gets in The Gastropub Cookbook. The food is safer and more restauranty than we were hoping for and lacking that thrilling punch of offal, slow cooked meat, imagination and local soul that are part of the best gastropubs’ DNA.

As we drove back to London we wondered whether Diana Henry’s books, which we’ve loved, are beginning to show their age. The first version is now seven years old and I imagine many of the chefs have moved on – as is the case with The Greyhound – and pubs will have changed hands. And the gastropub movement has evolved dramatically since then. Maybe it’s time for a new edition? If Diana Henry wants a sidekick to help with this arduous task, Cowie and I would love to help!

Chilli con Oxtail

With Gothenburg’s drawn-out winter coming to a welcome end and the sun melting away the iced over canals I find myself looking forward to BBQs, grilled fish and summery salads. But whilst the sun is warm when it’s out the thermometer struggles to get above zero in the shade. Such chilly evenings mean that Stewie Griffin – my slow cooker – has still got a role to play. Although I suspect this Mexican oxtail stew is probably his last outing for many months. And fittingly, he’s gone out with a bang.

Stewie has dealt with many a chilli. As I go to sleep he takes over and nurses his tough, sinewy contents into soft, savoury, spicy, unctuousness. I love waking up to the smell of slow cooked stews. There’s something very reassuring about knowing that you’ve got a delicious week ahead.

I guess you could call this chilli con carne. But I’d like to think it’s a bit more interesting and layered than that. I never use mince and normally use shin, flank, blade or brisket. But this time I managed to get my hands on some Swedish oxtail which turned out to be quite a sensation. I've no idea how authentically Mexican this is, but I do know that I like eating it.

Ingredients

1 whole oxtail – cut into portions by the butcher
4 onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 tins of pinto or black beans
4 cartons of chopped tomatoes
2 dessert spoons of fennel seeds
1 stick of cinnamon
4 dried Chipotle chillies
4 dried New Mexico Red chillies
300ml water
1 beef stock cube
Dark chocolate
2 dessert spoons of smoked paprika
2 tablespoons of sunflower oil
Pepper
Salt

To serve

Avocado
Smoked salt
1 Fresh red chilli
Natural yoghurt or sour cream


Method

Soften the onion in the sunflower oil. Then add the garlic. And then add the paprika. Allow to sweat and then add to the slow cooker. Add some water to the pan to get out all the lovely flavours and add it to the pot.

If you can be arsed, colour the oxtail in a frying pan having dunked the pieces in seasoned flour. If you haven’t got time, don’t worry, and add the oxtail pieces to the slow cooker. Then tip in the chopped tomatoes. Then rinse the beans and add them too. Lob in the dried chillies, fennel seeds, stock cube, water and cinnamon. Turn the slow cooker on and cook on low for 6-7 hours until the meat is soft.

Leave to cool. Then skim off the layer of fat and pick out the oxtail. Remove the meat from the bones. It’s a messy job, but essential. Boil up the bones in some water in order to extract the awesome gelatin from the bones. And then add this back to the mixture along with the meat. Give the bones to a deserving dog and take the cinnamon stick out too.

Leave to mature and then spoon some of the, now very solid, mixture into a pan and heat it up. Squirt in some tomato sauce (secret ingredient), add a square of dark chocolate, ample seasoning and add some finely chopped fresh red chilli. Heat it through and if it is a bit too liquid reduce it over a high heat stirring regularly. Serve with some brown rice, a sliced avocado and either some sour cream or some natural yoghurt. Sprinkle with smoked salt and tuck in.





It's a rich, smoky, spicy dish with layers of heat from the 3 types of chilli. The chipotles give it a smoky tang whilst the Mexico Reds add some fruitiness and the fresh chillies give it an abrupt kick. Brown rice, yoghurt and avocado make it pretty healthy.

One of the great things about making vats of delicious slow cooked food is the fun of transforming it into different meals over the days that follow. The mixture is also great in tortillas alongside avocado and sour cream, would make a sensationally rich filling for a pie, would be knockout as a filling for a Mexican sandwich called a torta and with the sun starting to emerge would make a mind blowing topping for a burger.

Plaice stuffed with smoked salmon, horseradish and dill

I was dead set on buying some artic char from the fishmonger for dinner. But when I saw that plaice (or rödspätta in Swedish) was a quarter of the price the decision to spend £2.50 rather than a tenner was an easy one to make.

So out went my idea of gorging on artic char with a horseradish crust and instead I was left with a large flatfish and a desire to do something more interesting than just smother it in butter and bake it with white wine and dill. My search for interesting Swedish plaice recipes yielded a handful of recipes couldn’t have been more dull, so I turned instead to an idea that I spotted on Jamie Oliver’s website. He suggests stuffing flat fish with prawns, parsley, lemon and onions. I didn’t fancy the recipe, but I loved the technique. So I switched things around and stuffed my plaice with a Swedish combination of smoked salmon, freshly grated horseradish and dill – all mixed together with plenty of butter, pepper and lemon zest. It’s cheap, super tasty and looks rather fancy for plain old plaice.

Serves 1

Ingredients

1 good sized plaice
100g of chopped up smoked salmon (trimmings are fine)
An inch of horseradish, grated
40g butter
1 lemon
2 sprigs of dill
Glass of white wine
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

With a very sharp knife slice the plaice along the central bone from just below the head to the tail on the upper side. Carefully slice along the bone so that the fillets flab backwards to reveal a cavity. If this seems complicated watch this.

Mix the butter, horseradish, smoked salmon, dill, pepper, salt and lemon zest. Form it into a ball and stuff it into the cavity. Lay the fish in an oiled baking dish and pour in a slug of white wine. Season with salt and pepper and scatter in a few cloves of garlic and wedges of lemon. Cook in a very hot oven for 4 minutes and then baste the fish with the juices. Cook for a further 4 minutes and then, if done, serve as it is or with some plain boiled potatoes and guzzle a nice glass of Grüner or Sauvignon Blanc.

The horseradish, smoked salmon and dill proved to be a punch stuffing which really livened the plaice up. Having tried it once, it’s a technique I’m keen to repeat with some other innovative stuffings. I imagine chipotle butter might be fun.

Chicken Livers on Toast with Lingonberry Jelly

Good food needn’t be fancy. It doesn’t have to be expensive. And a quickie can be as satisfying as a three hour gastronomic romp. Chicken livers are one of the cheapest morsels of protein available and are every bit as tasty as the rest of the chicken so long as you’re not eating them on a daily basis. At roughly a tenth of the cost of a chicken breast they’re amazing value that I am keen to take advantage of more often.

Apart from chicken liver pate, the only other recipe that has caught my attention has been Mark Hix’s chicken livers on toast – which only just qualifies as a recipe rather than a composition. But it’s bloody tasty. Especially if you go a bit off piste add a dollop of still warm super-rapido-lingonberry-jelly.

Ingredients

Handful of chicken livers, cleaned and roughly chopped
50g butter
1 big shallot or half an onion
1 small clove of garlic
Salt and pepper
Sourdough for toasting (I used a couple of slices of a great walnut sourdough)
Cress
Handful of frozen or fresh lingonberries
100ml water
Dollop of honey

Method

Bring the water to the boil and add the berries. When they have simmered and softened pass them through a sieve to remove the skins and pips. Then return to the pan and reduce to a syrup and add the honey as necessary to temper the tartness. It’s best to do this stage before you start with the livers. It doesn’t take long but it gives the syrup time to cool and jelly-ify.

Fry the shallot and garlic until soft. Then season the chopped and cleaned livers with plenty of salt and pepper and then fry in the butter for around 4–5 minutes until they are still pink but cooked.

Remove from the pan and then attack with your best cook’s knife until the mixture is finely chopped. Then taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary. Keep the livers warm whilst you make your toast.

Butter the toast and dollop the mixture on top. Sprinkle over some cress and dress with the lingonberry syrup which will probably have turned to a runny jelly by now. Grind over some pepper and sprinkle over some smoked salt and tuck in.





This recipe came from Mark Hix’s Oyster and Chop House book, which I will be taking inspiration from for a few posts in the near future. The lovely people at Quadrille sent it to me a while ago.

I’m keen to experiment with chicken livers and move beyond smearing them on toast, so if you’ve got any great ideas which don’t involve making it into a pate please let me know! If they are Scandinavian recipes you get a special mystery prize.

De-vine Kåldolmar

Since moving to Gothenburg I’ve tried to learn about Swedish culture and language through the medium of food. It seems to be the best way to uncover the truths about what makes this country tick. The more you read and eat the more you encounter the paradoxes and culinary riddles that slice through Swedish culture. My latest lesson involves 18th century battles, a town named Bender, a king called Karl and the Swedification of the classic Turkish dish of stuffed vine leaves into cabbagey kåldolmar.

The story of kåldolmar dates back to the early 1700s and offers a glimpse of Sweden’s once mighty past and tetchy relationship with its bellicose northern European neighbours. Apparently, King Karl XII, after losing the decisive Battle of Poltava in 1709 to Russia and their Polish and Norwegian allies, went into exile in a Turkish town called Bender. Whilst he was there, living off the generosity of his Ottoman allies, he spied on their warships and returned home to Sweden several years later with blueprints for a rejuvenated navy and more importantly a taste for dolmas.



Battle of Poltava (1709) painted by Denis Martens the Younger in 1726

The linguists amongst you will know that “dolma” means “stuffed thing” in Turkish which highlights the versatility of this dish. You’ll find different varieties of dolma across the old Ottoman Empire with fillings ranging from ground meat, to aubergine, courgette, peppers and rice, but typically the shell is a vine leaf. It’s hard to know which particularly style of dolma was Karl’s favourite, but from my experience of Swedes I’d guess that it was at the meatier end of the spectrum.



Dolmas from Norwichnuts on Flickr

In the chillier climes of Sweden, vine leaves were hard to come by, but Karl and his followers still hankered after the exotic taste of dolmas. So being the creative and practical nation that they are, the Swedes adapted the dish to use cabbage instead of vine leaves as a sturdy casing for the minced pork. They also switched carbs away from the rice you’ll find inside dolmas and now serve these meaty parcels with boiled potatoes, gravy and lingonberry jelly. For a decent recipe for classic Swedish Kåldolmar look no further than Annes Food.

One of my frustrations since moving across the North Sea is that the trend for smuggling enchanting tastes back from the Middle East, started by King Karl, doesn’t seem to have continued, despite the large and vibrant Middle Eastern population in Sweden. Fine, you can get donner kebab on your pizza, and plenty of curious spies in your meatballs, but so far, I haven’t found anywhere that expertly grills spiced meat over charcoals like Antepliler in Manor Park or any of the middle eastern delights you’ll find on the Edgware Road or Yottam Ottolenghi’s delis and books. Where’s the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi version of Tayyabs in Gothenburg?

One of the most interesting recipes in the Nordic Diet cookbook sees the classic, meaty, kåldolmar given a healthy, fishy update. Trina Hahnneman kicks out the pork and replaces it with plaice, mustard, leeks and courgettes.

I gave them a twist of my own and have found the process of wrapping fish in blanched cabbage to be a very therapeutic process. The technique is pretty simple and is the basis for a wide range of healthy and delicious variations.



Smoked Mackerel Kåldolmar with Pototto (Potato Risotto)

Inspired by Marcus Sameulsson's excellent Aquavit cookbook and Trina Hahnemann's Nordic Diet

Serves 2

4 cabbage leaves
4 smoked mackerel fillets
Dijon mustard
400 grams of waxy potatoes – diced into 8mm cubes
Vegetable stock
Horseradish
Dill
1 onion
Olive oil
Butter
2 glasses of white wine
Salt and pepper

Blanch four cabbage leaves in salted water and refresh in running cold water. Allow to cool and then remove the tough stem which acts as a structural spine. This will make the leaves more foldable.

Place a mackerel fillet in the centre of each leaf and smear with a dollop of mustard and anoint with lemon zest and ground black pepper. Then wrap them up like you would with a burrito. For guidance take a look at Cheryl Marie’s blog.

Finely dice the onion and sweat in olive oil. Then add in the 8mm cubes of potato. Add a glass of white wine and then ladle in stock and stir, as you would do with a risotto. It won’t take very long to cook so keep an eye on it. Add some thyme or tarragon as you go depending on what’s to hand and what you feel like. Beat in some butter at the end and keep warm.

Place the cabbage parcels in a baking dish and pour in a glass of white wine. Cook for 10 minutes. And then serve on top of a bed of posotto with plenty of seasoning, a sprinkling of grated horseradish and a scattering of dill.



Fish parcel wrapped in cabbage from Trina Hahnneman’s Nordic Diet

Serves 2

4 cabbage leaves
400g of white fish fillets
1 courgette
1 leek
1 red pepper
Olive oil
Lemon zest
Salt and pepper
1 glass of white wine

Blanch and refresh the cabbage leaves in the same manner as the first recipe. Place a 100g piece of fish in each parcel and then add a spoonful of diced courgette, red pepper and leek. Then add a dab of butter, a dusting of lemon zest and plenty of seasoning. Then wrap them up and place them in a baking dish with a glug of olive oil and a glass of white wine.



Bake for 12 minutes until the fish is just done and serve. I partnered it with fregola, roast peppers and tomatoes which gave a sweet, red counterpoint to the savoury greens.



It works just as well with minced fish and langoustine tails. When I next have a load of langoustine or crayfish, I’ll formalise it into a recipe. Roll on "Kåldolmens dag" which celebrates the Cabbage Roll on 30 November.

Salt Roast Beetroot with Orange and Ginger Sauce

My beetroot fetish is getting out of control. Like an alcoholic slipping a slug of vodka into his orange juice at breakfast time and a dash of whisky into his coffee on the way to work, I’ve found beetroot weedling its way into burgers, meatball, salads, gnocchi and souffles recently. When I wake up with beetroot ice cream slathered over my chest I’ll know it’s got the better of me.

One of my favourite discoveries since moving to Sweden has been a very stylish cookery book called Aquavit by a Swede called Marcus Samuelsson with an Ethiopian background who now lives and cooks in New York. It’s full of imaginative ideas that set the mind thumping and photographs that make you want to tear off the page and serve it for supper. His recipe for roasted beets in an orange and ginger sauce set off my beetroot radar and wouldn’t let me go until I had cooked it.



Roasted Beets in Orange-Ginger Sauce – from Aquavit cookbook review on Amazon.

Serves 4 to 6

“Roasting beets on a bed of salt keeps them moist and flavorful (you can do the same with baked potatoes). Garlic roasts alongside the beets, then the soft garlic pulp is added to a tangy citrus sauce flavored with traditional Swedish seasonings.

Ingredients

About 2 cups coarse salt
8 medium beets, trimmed and scrubbed
2 heads garlic
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 cup Chicken Stock
1 tablespoon honey
1 3-inch piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped
4 cardamom pods
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

2. Spread a layer of coarse salt on a small baking sheet and place the beets and garlic on it. Roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the beets are fork-tender and the garlic is soft enough to squeeze out of the skin; the garlic may be done before the beets. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly.

3. Meanwhile, combine the orange juice, stock, honey, ginger, and cardamom in a medium saucepan, bring to a simmer, and simmer for about 30 minutes, until reduced by half. Strain the sauce into a saucepan and set aside.

4. When the beets are cool enough to handle, peel them and cut them into 1/2-inch dice. Put in a medium bowl. Separate the garlic cloves, squeeze the garlic pulp out of the skins, and add to the bowl.

5. Reheat the sauce over low heat, stirring a few times, and pour the sauce over the beets. Garnish with the tarragon and serve.”





I roasted some chicken legs along side the beetroot and boiled some cracked wheat to add some ballast. It was healthy, tasty, creative and slaked my beetroot thirst for another day. The tangy orange and ginger sauce is incredibly moreish and would be a great complement to a pork chop or duck breast. And having discovered roasting beets on a bed of salt from Marcus Samuelsson, I've not cooked beetroot any other way since. It keeps them moist, full of flavour and stops them losing their colour.

Swaesar Salad™

One of the reasons Brits get on so well with Gothenburgers is a shared love of the risible pun. Folk from Gothenburg will chortle with rosy cheeks and mischievous grins when they slip a cheeky double entendre into a punishing business meeting. It’s one of Gothenburg’s defining characteristics and sets it apart (so I am told by locals) from the rest of straight laced Sweden.

Whenever cartoons call for a comic character they always have a Gothenburg accent, whilst the posh protagonist tends to be from Stockholm and the rural dim wit inevitably hails from southern Sweden’s farming region. It seems like every country has their own version of the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman joke.

Another of Gothenburg’s defining characteristics is a love of herring which is called “sill” on the West Coast and “strömming” on Stockholm’s East Coast. So it’s quite fitting that one evening after a long day at work I had the “sill-y” idea of creating a Gothenburg version of the Caesar salad which switched the increasingly overfished anchovy with plentiful herring. To my glee it worked far better than I had imagined and I’ve got a feeling that you could bottle this stuff and sell it up and down the West Coast to pun loving Swedes. So here is my Swedish Caesar Salad – AKA The Swaesar Salad™. I adapted a herring themed caesar salad recipe on Canada’s Food Network website.

Ingredients

Dressing

2 table spoons of minced pickled herring without the liquid
2 cloves of garlic
2 egg yolks
Juice from half a lemon
100ml of sunflower oil
50g of hard Swedish ewe’s cheese – like Pecorino
Salt
Pepper

Salad

1 Iceberg lettuce
100g of lardons
100g of böckling (hot smoked herring which isn’t unlike kippers or more accurately bloaters)
2 slices of pumpernickel cut into small squares
Swedish sheep’s cheese or alternatively Pecorino or Parmesan

Method

Begin by whisking the egg yolks with the garlic, herring and lemon. Then add the salt and pepper. Then, as if making mayonnaise pour in the oil, in a thin, slow stream. Whisk as you go until it thickens. Taste for seasoning. It will be quite salty from the herring so don’t go mad on the white stuff. Plus you are going to add salty bacon and cheese. Put the dressing in the fridge and then when you are feeling hungry assemble your salad.

To do this cut the flappy leaves away from the lettuce and concentrate on the crunchy leaves in the centre. Give them a wash and then fry your lardons in a heavy bottomed pan along with the cubes of pumpernickel. This won’t take very long. The chocolaty brown bread will add some sweetness and crunch to the salad and give it a much more interesting flavour than the normal white bread croutons.

Dress the leaves with the Swaesar™ sauce in a large bowl and then grate the hard sheep’s cheese on top. If you can’t find a suitable Swedish cheese then Parmesan or Pecorino will do. Add the lardons, pumpernickel and chunks of bokling and tuck in.

It’s not very Swedish to speak about yourself let alone your own achievements, but I’m very proud to say that this is one of my favourite creations to date. The sauce tasted authentically like Caesar dressing but with a noticeable Swedish flavour of subtle herring which arguably makes it even more savoury than the classic dish. The pumpernickel along with the lardons does a great job of giving the dish a sweeter note that stands up to the more savoury aspect. The böckling’s smokiness then gives the whole plate an extra level of sophistication.

Pollock Yassa – A Blast of West African Sunshine in Icy Gothenburg

The weather in Sweden right now is about as grizzly as a vagabond bear. The snow has temporarily melted leaving behind a palimpsest of grit, dark ice and illicit glimpses of pavement. In many ways I prefer Gothenburg when it’s properly cold rather than just in this manky in-between phase. Bleak conditions whip up cravings for warm memories.

One dish that never ceases to bring me comfort is Poulet Yassa, which I first had on a scorching hot day in a ramshackle restaurant in Accra. The memory of the sticky-sweet-sour, onion, lemon and mustard sauce that coated the charred chicken flesh makes my stomach smile just thinking about it. It’s the polar opposite to the taste of Gothenburg’s wintry blues.

Poulet Yassa apparently originates from the Portuguese region of Senegal, Casamance, and can be found on menus and plates across Africa from The Republic of Congo to the Gold Coast. It supposedly hails form either Portuguese or French colonialists who used the acidic lemon juice to tenderize the tough local chicken flesh and the Dijon mustard to counteract the sharpness. It offers a welcome sweet and sour tang in contrast to some of the more savoury dishes you encounter West Africa.

I decided to experiment with pollock rather than chicken and was very pleased with the results. The flavour of the sauce is gargantuan, so pollock comes into its own. And rather than rice, I thought some bulgur wheat would give the dish a more Swedish feel. The recipe below is adapted from the Congo Cookbook which is without question one of my favourite recipe websites. If you have a moment, I encourage you to lose yourself in the astounding collection of stories and recipes. But don't blame me if you stumble across some dishes requiring hippo or elephant meat.

Ingredients

1 piece of pollock
2 onions roughly chopped
Juice of 3 lemons
2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
1 dessert spoon of honey
1 dessert spoon of fish stock
2 cloves of garlic
Splash of cider vinegar
Salt
Red chilli minced
Bulgur wheat
Sunflower or groundnut oil

Method

Sauté the onions slowly until they softened. Add the minced garlic and chilli once the onions have turned translucent. Sweat for a bit and then add the mustard, fish stock and juice of 3 lemons.

Heat and stir until it thickens and resembles a sauce. Add the honey, salt and cider vinegar to taste. You are looking for a sweet, sour, spicy amalgam that makes your mouth come alive.

Boil the bulgur wheat and take the sauce off the heat. Season the fish skin and sear flesh side up in a very hot pan. Once the skin has crisped up turn the heat down and add the sauce to the pan. Cook the fish in the yassa sauce until the fish is on the verge of being done. Then slosh it all on a plate and tuck in with a bottle of Star Lager. Bliss.



All it was missing was a side order of chilli fried plantain otherwise known as kelly welly. You can also add olives and switch the fish for either chicken thighs or some fatty pork.

Nordic Beetroot Burgers with Goats’ Cheese and Walnut Salad

I’ve developed a bit of a beetroot fetish since moving to Sweden. I find it’s always on my shopping list and seems to leave its scarlet mark on almost every dish I cook. I love the muddy flavour and mellow sweetness and would be very sad if there was ever a world shortage of beetroot. One of the reasons I like it so much now is that I used to hate it when I was younger. I’ve got bitter-sweet memories of hating the overly pickled taste of my grandmother’s beetroot but loved the fact that it came, covered in sandy soil, from their kitchen garden. Now, whenever I eat beetroot I remember my grandparents and their staggering vegetable patch and hanker after having one of my own one day.

Veggie burgers have a very bad press. They normally fall apart and taste more of old oil than of anything pleasant. It strikes me as a shame to mush up lots of lovely vegetables and then muddy the fresh flavours in search of the juicy glory of a really meaty burger. But the beauty of beetroot burgers is that they are singularly focused on one vegetable that responds very well to being “burgered up”. I guess it’s a combination of their vivid flavour and colour, but also the fact that beetroot’s starches caramelise nicely when seared, much like meat does.

This recipe for the burgers is from Trina Hahnemann, but without any ghastly rapeseed oil and rather than a barley salad is paired with a goats’ cheese and walnut salad instead. My only question is what are the mystery seeds in the photo from the book at the top of this post because they don’t appear in the recipe?

Ingredients:

For the beetroot burgers:

500g red beetroot, grated
100ml porridge oats
3 eggs
1 shallot, very finely chopped
4 tbsp finely chopped dill
2 tbsp finely chopped thyme
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tbsp vegetable oil, for frying
Crème fraiche and dill dollop

For the salad:

Mixed leaf salad including beetroot tops
Goats’ cheese
Toasted walnuts
Honey, mustard, olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dress

Method:

Peel the beetroot and then finely grate. If you have a Magimix I’d suggest you use it as it saves a lot of time.

Mix the grated beetroot with the eggs, porridge oats, herbs, seasoning and shallots. Get your hands dirty and work it all together. Then chill in the fridge for an hour or so. This is important as it allows the mixture to mingle and means that the burgers have more structural integrity.



Form the burgers into patties and fry until they are crisp on the outside and then finish in the oven for 20 minutes.



Assemble the salad, and whisk up the dressing whilst the burgers are cooking through and serve with a dollop of dill crème fraiche.



I’ve got a feeling they would also work well as “beet-balls” but I’m not sure yet what sauce to slosh on top of them. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know.

Delicious. Healthy. And different. Well done, again, to The Nordic Diet.

This post is part of little series dedicated to The Nordic Diet cookbook which was sent to me by Quadrille.

Chicken with Baked Rhubarb and Cucumber and Radish Salad

I love the way rhubarb unfurls out of the spring soil to display a Mateus flushed shard of swollen stem and tough, poisonous leaves. I love the ritual of forcing rhubarb in darkened conditions to beat your neighbours to serving the first rhubarb of the season. I think back longingly of my grandmother’s hit or miss rhubarb fool that was always delicious, if a little stringy. And will almost always order a rhubarb dessert if I see it on the menu. Unfortunately, we don’t eat much rhubarb as a family because the acid gives us all joint ache. But it’s worth the discomfort.

Up until now I’d not thought too much about rhubarb (shocking I know). But the more I read, the more interesting it becomes. For starters who knew that rhubarb is actually a vegetable and is in the Rheum family and is therefore closely related to sorrel? Or that in America it is legally a fruit because a judge said so in 1947? Or that it originated in Asia and has only been cultivated in the western world for the last two or three hundred years? Or that the roots can be dried and used as a tonic to cure constipation and circulatory issues? Or, more importantly, that this enigmatic stem is amazing with chicken?

Trina Hahnemann’s recipe for “chicken with baked rhubarb and cucumber -radish salad” immediately stood out from her Nordic Diet cookbook, partly because of the stunning photograph but more significantly because of its weirdness.



But when you think about it, the idea makes a lot of sense. Chicken is great with lemon and other acid driven accompaniments, so long as it is balanced by something sweet to take the tartness away.

Ingredients

Chicken legs
2 stalks of rhubarb
A few spoons of honey (she uses raw sugar – but I prefer honey)
Salt
Pepper
1 Cucumber
10 Radishes
Yoghurt (preferably goats’)
1 clove of garlic
Chopped mint

Method

Season the chicken legs and roast for 30 minutes. Meanwhile chop the rhubarb into 2 inch long batons and lightly coat in honey. After 30 minutes add the rhubarb and cook for a further 15 minutes.

To make the salad finely slice the radishes and de-seed, then finely slice the cucumber. Mix with just enough yoghurt, a finely minced clove of garlic and the chopped mint. Season.

Serve the chicken with the salad and garnish with a sprig of mint. It’s a great way to use up a glut of rhubarb in late spring or as a way of causing a bit of Steingarten-esque debate about the differences between fruit and vegetables. I think it is a fantastic idea and am looking forward to experimenting further. I wonder what a rhubarb-ified version of honey lemon chicken would be like?

Further reading

Other rhubarb chicken recipes on Rhubarb Compendium including roast chicken stuffed with rhubarb and the psychopathically named chicken smothered in rhubarb

Rhubarb as an accompaniment to fish in the Independent

Mackerel with roasted rhubarb from Nigel Slater

Savoury recipes for rhubarb on Chowhound

Jeffrey Steingarten’s Man Who Ate Everything (including a spellbinding chapter called Ripeness is All about the differences between fruit and vegetables)

Trina Hahnemann’s – The Nordic Diet on Amazon

The science of rhubarb poisoning

This post is part of little series dedicated to The Nordic Diet cookbook which was sent to me by Quadrille.