Just before I wrote my last little whinge about renting in London, I had just spent a day flathunting in Putney. I saw some painfully dire places. costing around £1,000 per month for really horrible dingy studios. Around two days later, when I was about to give up, we finally found a decent place, costing just short of £800. So I put down the holding deposit. Three weeks later the estate agents phoned. The Landlady had cancelled the deal. Apparently she’d decided to move back to London and wanted the flat back. B*tch. A week earlier and things would have been so much easier

So there I was, £500 poorer, until the agents returned my deposit, looking for a place to live in the most heavy season for letting. Further flat hunting in that area proved futile because I needed a place for the 20th of August and it was already the 7th: far too late to be looking, apparently.  I seriously considered going down to Putney in person to give my former landlady a big slap.

Turning my hunt to Hammersmith, I was given more promising news. In a fairly well known agency I was told “We’ve got two places. A studio with separate kitchen for £960 per month and a one bed flat for £1040.” I squirmed at hearing the prices but in spite of my better judgement, agreed to have a look.

The studio turned out to be very small and poky and situated in a basement. It was the kind of place I would end up sharing with a family of mice. ”No way,” I thought ”not for almost a grand.”  

The one bed flat looked much more promising. It was still being done up but it had a nice big bedroom and certainly had a decent view over some greenery. There was just one thing that confused me.

“So where’s the kitchen?” The agent shuffled uncomfortably. It appeared that he wasn’t expecting me to ask this. “I DID only ask for self contained properties with seperate kitchens” I reminded him.
“This does have a seperate kitchen” I looked around. 
“Where?”

He pointed to the back corner of the room where two flimsy partitions had been put up. “Just there.”
“THAT’S A KITCHEN?!” He nodded. I scratched my head in disbelief. “I thought it was a toilet cubicle! Or a boiler cupboard!” I opened the door. “WHAT’S THIS? IT’S TWO FOOT SQUARE!  In front of me was a tiny cubicle, not even the size of my arm span containing a two ring electric hob and a sink.  “This is NOT a kitchen! There’s nowhere to store any food.”
“Well, technically its separated from the rest of the flat and contains a hob and a sink. That makes it a separate kitchen.”
“Separated from the flat? It’s separated from the rest of the flat by TWO PIECES OF CARDBOARD!”
“It’s enough, I’m afraid” “I poked and prodded the walls. Nope, no cupboards hidden here.”What the hell do people DO with places like this?!” “Well, there’s enough space to heat up a tin of something” he suggested helpfully.
I gawped for a few seconds then came to my senses. “Right, well….thanksverymuchI’llbegoingnow!”

I left very, very quickly.

Now this was by no means the worst flat I saw, although it possibly was the worst value for money. Apparantly, if you live in London and want to live in a single person’s/couple’s accomodation, you DO NOT COOK.

That is unless, like me, you are very persistant. After much searching I did find a reasonable studio with a big kitchen and a gas hob that cost considerably less then the two places I mentioned in this post. Apparantly I was lucky. It had been on the market for around 6 hours. It took me roughly 5 minutes to put down a holding deposit.

Of course, agents’ flat descriptions never give you a true indication of what a place is going to be like so, if any of you find yourself in my position, I have written a brief guide to finding a decent one person flat in London.

First Some Vocabulary

• Studio Flat: A single room with a sofa bed/pull down bed. 
• Small studio: Really, you’re just going to have the bed.
• Spacious studio: You can possibly fit in a T.V and sofa.
• Self contained: you get a shower, toilet and ‘cooking’ facilities to yourself, you lucky devil!
• Open plan kitchen: One wall of the studio has had a sink and a hob fitted with a couple of cupboards and a mini-fridge. 
• Kitchenette: You have a two ring electric hob and a sink. No kitchen cupboards or washing machine.
• Seperate Kitchenette. One of the corners of the room jutted out, so the landlord has put up a partition and shoved the hob and sink in there.
• Close to all local amenities: There’s a small convenience store/Costcutter withing 10 minutes walk.
• Good transport links: You are guaranteed that at least one bus stops less than 5 minutes away.
• Close to tube: Your location has increased your rent by approximately £200 per month.

And some tips…

1. Start approximately 4 weeks before your proposed move in date. Any earlier and your offers are likely to be rejected because you can’t move in soon enough. Any later and all the places have gone.
2. Don’t bother looking online. The market moves so fast that the listings are constantly out of date. Get down to where you want to move and talk to the agents in person.
3. Well known and respected estate agents rarely give you any bullsh*t. The little independant ones are a lottery. 
4. If a place seems inexpensive but is near a tube station, be prepared for it to be rubbish.
5. If the place has just been put up for rent by someone who used to live there, don’t be too suprised if they decide to move back in or sell it instead. Things are far more stable if the property has been let before.

And, yes of course I do have some food for you… comfort food of the highest order from my point of view. I was still budgeting when I took this flat, but after having such a grueling day, Dad, who’d been looking at flats with me gave me £10 to treat myself and Goon. He’s very sweet like that. So I popped down to Borough the next day to try out a recipe I’d had in mind for ages.

Sirloin Steak with Sauteed Girolles and Watercress Pureé (outline recipe, adapted from Ramsay’s ‘A Chef for All Seasons’)

• 1 sirloin steak
• 100g watercress
• 25g spinach leaves
• 15ml double cream 
• 100g girolles mushrooms, halved if large
• handful flatleaf parsley, finely chopped
• 1 fat clove of garlic, minced
• olive oil

Make the puree by boiling the watercress in well salted water for about 5 minutes. Add the spinach leaves and wait until they have wilted completely. Drain and squeeze as much water out as possible. Process the leaves with the cream until you have a very smooth paste. You can add more cream if you like to make it into a sauce.

Brush the steak with olive oil on all sides, season and cook to your liking. 

Sautee the girolles with the garlic in olive oil until soft, stir in the parsley, cook for about another minute.

Serve the steak with the mushrooms and watercress puree. We had some steamed broccolli as a side dish.

***********************

As you might tell from the ridiculous close up of this dish, I found this ridiculously hard to present well. Why? Because the sauce was GREEN. I don’t mean the nice dark forest green that Mr Ramsay somehow managed to produce for his book but bright, bright green. When Goon decided he wanted to have his sauce as a pouring sauce and I added more cream, it was positively luminous.  

Despite being a little ‘colourful’ this was a nice relatively simple way to serve steak. The sauteéd girolles were gorgeous and the pureé was good, full of flavour from the peppery watercress but with the  the spinach coming through with almost equal strength. Providing you process it for long enough, the pureé will have the perfect texture:absolutely silky smooth.

So in short, I certainly recommend this in terms of flavour but it possibly isn’t one to try for a dinner party.

These steaks are from Farmer Sharpe’s in Borough Market. They turned out to be a bit less expensive than those from my usual butcher and had a noticeably different flavour and texture. These Galloway cattle give a very ‘beefy’ steak (if that makes any sense) with a strong flavour that reminded me a little of buffalo. I recommend trying them out if you get a chance. 

On Thursday evening I was a little bored. I’d spent the day avoiding correcting my thesis and starting, but somehow not finishing, several posts for this blog. For the first time in weeks, I decided to surf around the other blogs and, as usual, my first port of call was Trig Brooks’ site. After a few minutes of reading the posts my eye was caught by the seasonal food item of the week, towards the bottom of the side bar.

Fifteen minutes later I realised I was still staring and drooling.

There is definitely something about rare venison that makes it impossible to resist. it’s more than just the fantastic flavour. I think it’s the association with the cold winter months and the inevitable comfort that game dinners bring. Plus rare venison has such a beautiful colour and the slices of meat topped with a few sprigs of rosemary look delicious.

These thoughts all coincided with the arrival of a message from Goon over the internet saying something along the lines of “PLEASE SAVE ME! I NEED MEAT!”  Goon had gone to visit his parents for Christmas and apparently they don’t eat as much meat as we do*. He was missing the 250g steaks that I regularly cook for him. I had little sympathy as I’d just spent Christmas with my vegetarian and practically teetotal parents (more on that soon) but I thought Goon’s imminent return to London was an even better excuse to go get us a big chunk of deer meat.

Luckily for me, despite it being that awkward time between Christmas and New Year, the Borough Website informed me that the market would be open that Friday. And so I went down there to fetch my venison. I also got a couple of duck breasts, a haggis and a rather nice black pudding. During the walk home from Borough, my mind was boggling with potential ways of cooking my deer. Eventually it settled on this rather neat idea which uses something that can ALWAYS be found in the ‘Living To Eat’ household: good quality gin.

*****

Loin of Venison with a Fruity Gin Sauce, Blackberries and Apple and Celeriac Mash 

Ingredients (for two people who like their meat)

• 500g venison loin
• 2 teaspoons rosemary leaves, very finely chopped
• 8-10 juniper berries, finely ground
• 2 teaspoons coarsley ground black pepper
• 3 medium/large mashing potatoes ( I used Vivaldi), peeled and cut into small cubes
• the same volume of celeriac peeled and cut into small cubes
• 1 large bramley cooking apple, peeled and cut into small cubes
• 1 heaped tablepoon finely chopped parsley
• A splash of single cream ( around 50ml)
• 100ml game stock (chicken stock would do)
• large splash gin (about 75ml)
• splash of cassis (50ml)
• a sprig of rosemary plus extra to garnish
• 1 teapoons raspberry or red wine vinegar
• 10 blackberries, cut in half plus a few whole ones to garnish

Method

1. Preheat your oven to gas mark 6. 
2. Coat the venison sparsely with the ground pepper, juniper and chopped rosemary. Get a frying pan very hot and sear the meat on all sides, reserving any liquid that comes off for the sauce.
3. Transfer the venison to a roasting tin and place in the oven for 10-12 minutes for rare meat.
4. Once the venison is cooked, remove from the oven, wrap in foil and rest for 15 minutes or until ready to serve. Again, any pan juices will enrich the sauce, so keep hold of them.
5. While the venison is in the oven, take the cubes of apple, celeriac and potato and place in a pan. Cover with water and bring to the boil.
6. Once the vegetables are tender (after around 15 minutes) drain thoroughly and then mash with the cream and the chopped parsley, making sure you get the vegetables evenly mixed.
7. In a small saucepan, bring the stock to a bubble, then add the gin, cassis, sprig of rosemary and the blackberries. Pour in the pan juices from the venison and allow the mixture to reduce to a thick syrup. Stir in the vinegar, taste, adjust seasoning, then strain off the solids.
8. To serve, slice the venison on the diagonal and arrange around a mound of mash. Drizzle the sauce over the meat and decorate with blackberries and sprigs of rosemary

*****

I was very impresed by this meal. The flavours were great and the venison was perfectly done. I think some lightly cooked savoy cabbage would have been a better accopaniment than the asparagus that we decided to have, but apparently Goon had been fed more cabbage than he thought was possible over the previous week and really couldn’t bear to have any more.

The only problem with the meal was a few woody bits of celeriac in the mash. Since I have only cooked celeriac once before I’m not sure if this was because I didn’t peel it adequately or because that is how celeriac always turns out. So, if anyone can give me advice on how to improve my mashed celeriac, I’d appreciate it.

*This isn’t saying much. We both eat far too much meat.

Our new flat has some good points and some bad points.

There are a few teething problems. We still need to have our washing machine repaired and the central heating is broken, but the only real annoyance is the journey to work. When I decided to take the flat, I looked at a map and thought the walk to school looked  reasonable. It was only a touch longer than my previous walk into college. However, nobody told me about The Hill.

Most people may call it Highgate Hill, but i think of it as Highgate Mountain. It makes up little more than ten percent of my journey but takes about a quarter of the time. On my first morning I stopped, astounded just after Archway station as I faced the 35 degree incline in front of me. The first thing our Head Master said to me after I staggered into the common room that morning was “Are you alright? You look like someone who’s just come up The Hill!” 

I’m seriously considering getting a skateboard to speed up the journey home. 

On the plus side, the flat is conveniently placed so I can walk to Borough Market within 40 minutes (or bus it there in fifteen). In the case of that journey, there’s no crazy hill to slow me down. So, while i miss Kensington Whole Foods, my foodie cravings are satisfied by the Borough stalls, which is where I got myself some of Farmer Sharpe’s mutton neck.

It might seem  a bit silly to be buying slow-cook meats when I’ve got so little time in the evenings, but the advantage of this cut is that you can leave it in the oven for a few hours while you get other things done. In fact, to make good use of some mutton neck, all you need is a root vegetable or two, some herbs and some pearl barley.

Mutton Neck and Pearl Barley Stew

Serves 2 generously

• 400g mutton neck, cut into bite sized cubes
• 1 carrot, sliced
• 1 medium parsnip, sliced into rounds
• 1 small leek, thinly sliced
• 2 large cloves garlic, minced
• 2 handfuls pearl barley
• 2 sprigs of rosemary
• leaves from 2 sprigs thyme
• 150ml lamb or vegetable stock
• 100ml dry white wine
• mashed potato to serve

1. Preheat your oven to gas mark 3.  
2. Get a frying pan really hot and brown the cubes of meat. Transfer to a casserole dish.
3. Turn the heat down and gently fry the leeks and garlic until they are soft. Add these to the casserole.
4. Soften the parsnips and carrot in the pan for a couple of minutes and add these to the casserole with the herbs and barley. Cover everything in the casserole dish with the stock and wine, stir the mixture to evenly distribute the ingredients, cover the casserole dish and place it in the oven for two and a half  to three hours, stirring the mixture occasionally. 
5. Serve with mashed potato and cabbage.

 ***

Can you believe it? I wrote a recipe which only involved five steps!

This was my first attempt at what I’d call ‘proper cooking’ since I started at Highgate. Everything else in that first week had been rushed pasta jobs and take-aways. It was really good to finally have some decent food inside me again.

This was proper comfort food. After three hours, the meat will literally melt in your mouth.  The pearl barley absorbs  the juices of the casserole so you end up with a very thick gravy, which has taken on the wonderfully rich flavour of the mutton.  Mashed potato is the perfect accopaniment to this, mixed up with the barley and delicious gravy from the casserole.

Some people find mutton a little fatty, but this can be partially overcome by cooking this as a stew on the stovetop and skimming off the fat as it rises to the surface. Although this dish takes a long time to cook, it requires no attention so you can get on with other things as it sits in the oven. Lucky for me, as I had a fair bit of marking to do that day!

This will probably become a regular appearance on our dinner table this winter. if you can get your hands on some mutton or lamb neck, it is well worth a try. 

Many of you who are resident in the Midlands and the South of England will recall a Friday not long ago when it rained very, very heavily all day. With such weather (which happened to catch me umbrella-less as I was wandering around Borough) it wasn’t too suprising that I was encouraged to buy and cook some proper cold weather food. And so this was born.

Even though it is late July, here in the UK it is still casserole weather. This particular one is made from wild boar, rum and orange and was inspired by this recipe (last one on the page) for a roasting joint. I’ve adapted it to suit little pieces of slow cooking meat.

Wild Boar, Rum and Orange Casserole

(plenty for two when  served with mashed potato and perhaps a green vegetable)

• 400g diced casseroling wild boar.
• zest and most of the juice of 1 orange
• large sprig of rosemary
• 1 tablespoon thyme, chopped
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2 small cloves garlic, minced
• handful of pancetta (optional- we had some spare, so I used it)
• 4 small tomatoes, peeled  and chopped
• 1 medium carrot chopped
• substantial splash of rum ( I used a dark navy rum because we happened to already have some, but any would do really)
• a large glass of white wine
• vegetable stock to cover the meat in your casserole dish

Brown the boar in a hot frying pan. Transfer to a casserole dish.

Fry the onion, carrot, herbs and garlic gently in a little butter in the pan until the onion is soft and the carrot partly cooked. Add the pancetta and cook it through.

Add this mixture to the casserole along with the tomato and grate in the orange zest. Season with salt and pepper

Cover the meat with white wine and stock and place the casserole in the oven. Cook this, covered, for about 1.5 hours at 140C, then remove the lid, add a generous splash of rum and cook for a further 30 minutes. By this point the boar should be tender.

If the gravy isnot thick enough, pour it off into a saucepan and let it boil vigourously until it reaches the desired consistency, then return it to the casserole.

Taste the dish and add the orange juice (and maybe more rum) to taste  Serve over mashed potato.

***

This has been my favourite way to have wild boar so far. In the past, I’vefound it hard to balance the ‘nuttiness’ of the meat, but this casserole solved that problem. I think that letting the boar cook in white wine is what did the trick.

Goon really liked the dish but he said it reminded him of school dinners. Obviously, this really worried me for a second, but it turns out what he meant was ‘he’s not had a stew with carrots in since he stopped having school dinners.’

Slow cooking really seems to be the best way of preparing boar. The frying steaks are expensive and no amount of tenderising seems to do them much good.  This casseroling boar cost me a mere £3 for just over 400g. I do seem to be getting a small discount for  being a regular customer at Sillfield Farm, but you’d still pay less than £4 for that amount. It’s a very good deal!

So, if your local farmers market has boar in stock, I thoroughly recommend trying it. It has a fantastic flavour and is excellent value for money.

A few months ago, my Dad brought me a few bargains from Borders. Among them was a £3 book on Mexican Cookery. Whilst I’m always up for trying new cuisines, I thought that this particular one was a bit out of my reach. The book described a lot of ingredients I’d never heard of before. For a start, it mentioned more types of chilli than I knew existed, strange vegetables like sliced cactus leaf paddles and a few cheeses I didn’t think I could find.

The book lay unused on my shelf for months. Then, two weeks ago, I was reading the BBC food boards when I saw that Charlotte (from Great Big Vegetable Challenge) had been looking for some cactus and had been pointed in the direction of an interesting company called Cool Chile, which imports a lot of Mexican ingredients and storecupboard items.

The next Friday I visited their stall at Borough Market, hoping to get my hands on the most common items mentioned in my book: tomatillos, corn tortillas and nopales (cactus paddles). The very helpful gentleman running the stall sold me the last two, but he didn’t stock the tomatillos at Borough. Apparently no one bought them. I couldn’t help wondering why.

However, he did point me in the direction of Cool Chile’s Taqueria, which happens to be reasonably close to where I live. So the next morning, I set off, eager to get my hands on the elusive ingredient. I was in for a bit of a shock. This was the can of tomatillos I found.

I don’t think that picture does it justice. I think this one puts things in perspective.

Apparently tomatillos are only imported into Britain in cans about twice the size of my head! No wonder they weren’t sellingfast at Borough. These things weigh around 3 kg. Still, I was determined to have my tomatillos, so I bought them anyway. Then the shop assistant told me they didn’t have any carrier bags.

So I walked the three miles back to my flat with my tomatillos cradled in my arms like an oversized baby, getting some very strange reactions from passers by. A few people pointed and laughed. Someone even tried hitting on me. Apparently the thing to do if you’re single and really desperate in London, is walk around with a large can of tomatillos. You’ll attract Goldhawk Road weirdos by the dozen.  By the time I got back home, my arms really ached and my throat was a bit sore from yelling at the weirdos to get lost.

The irony is that I still haven’t used the tomatillos. For my first attempt at Mexican cookery, I fancied beef enchiladas and, from what I saw in books and online, tomatillo wasn’t the best accompaniment. I’m saving them now for chicken and tomatillo burritos.

So, what did I make for my first Mexican style meal? Well, beef enchiladas like I said,

a salsa made from mango, finely diced white onion, lime juice, lime zest, green chilles and coriander leaf,

nopales and red pepper salad,

and sweet corn with fried onions and cream.

It was an interesting meal to make. Each particular dish was easy in itself but co-ordinating the lot was a bit challenging. I started early by making the beef.  I sweated off one finely diced onion with 2 cloves of garlic and 3 chopped green birds eye chillies. Then I added 500g of chopped braising steak and browned it. I put the lot in a casserole dish with a about a level tablespoon of  ground cumin, ground coriander, dried oregano and paprika,  then covered the meat with beef stock, added salt and pepper and let it braise slowly at 130C for about 5 hours. While it was in the oven, I made the the creamed corn and let my tinned nopales soak in fresh water to remove the salt from them.

After that I took the beef out of the oven, poured off most of the liquid and shredded the beef. It had picked up the flavours from the spices very well so I didn’t add any more. I just put a dollop in the middle of each of my 8 corn tortillas and rolled them up into enchiladas. These went into a baking dish and were topped with sour cream and grated mild cheddar (as a substitute for Monterey Jack) and baked until the cheese bubbled.

While the enchiladas cooked I quickly assembled the salad and salsa. The salsa was literally just the ingredients mentioned above, mixed together in a bowl. The salad was made from grilled, skinned and sliced red pepper, thinly sliced red onion and the nopales slices in a dressing made from a chile and garlic oil and white wine vinegar. The nopales had an interesting flavour that’s hard to describe. They were very slightly bitter and quite leafy but had a bit of a salty tang from being pickled. Their texture was like cooked runner beans. We liked them a lot.

I’d have liked to submit the tomatillos to Weekend Herb Blogging this week, but since I haven’t yet cooked with them, I’ll have to talk about the nopales instead. Nopales are the paddles of the prickly pear cactus. Over here they are sold pickled in brine. Apparently these things are full of vitamins and fibre, which is very useful as they are very tasty too!

For more information on nopales, see the Wikipedia entry.

This week, Weekend Herb Blogging is hosted by Anna from Anna’s Cool Finds. Head over there to see the round up on Monday. 

The problem I’ve found with being a foodie is that, the more you cook, the more sensitive you become about your cooking and the more particular you become about what you eat. At least this is true of me. I’ve discovered that there’s a part of me that can be quite a ridiculous snob. My ‘inner chef,’ as it were, seems to have developed the temperament of a certain sitcom character from the early 90s. *  

Last Saturday, flatmate Mike and his girlfriend, Christina, arrived at home while Goon and I were tucking into our dinner.

“What’s that you’re having?” he asked, “Steak and chips?”**

A perfectly reasonable question given what he saw, I’m sure you’ll agree. But for some reason the small voice of my inner chef in the back of my mind greatly objected to this description of our food.

“Steak and chips! STEAK AND CHIPS?! This is a venison fillet au poivre with a damson wine reduction and HOME MADE maris piper chips!” it screamed silently at me.

Fortunately my conscious mind recognised how utterly daft this statement was and  managed to keep my inner chef under control. Not many people have encountered this side of me. This is probably for the best. It’s outbursts have been reserved for Goon, (when he gets the shopping list wrong), my parents (whenever I go into their kitchen) and the manager of a particularly rubbish and expensive gastropub.

If my inner chef starts escaping on a regular basis, I might need to seek psychiatric help.

The venison fillet au poivre came about after I learnt about the origins of Steak Diane. Apparently the dish was originally made with venison and was named after the Greek goddess of hunting. I’d only ever seen the dish made with beef so I wondered if I could adapt the modern recipe to suit the rich flavours of deer. 

But, when I got home, I remembered that I’d finished the last of our cognac (the key ingredient in the Steak Diane sauce) on the day we moved flats***, so I needed a new plan.  I had a flash of inspiration and decided to make a reduction of the damson wine I had bought the previous morning on my trip to Borough Market. When the wine reduced, it turned out to be sweeter and more fruity than most red wine reductions but not quite as rich and syrupy as port. It was a perfect balance for the venison! The only problem was I needed to reduce about half a bottle to get enough sauce for the steaks. 

Apart from the chips, this meal was very easy to make. First I took about a tablespoon of back peppercorns and cracked them using a pestle and mortar. Then I crushed a clove of garlic and mix it with about two tablespoons of olive oil. I used the oil to coat the steaks and pressed the cracked peppercorns into the steak so the steak was lightly coated with the peppercorns.  The steaks were left covered for about an hour.

In the mean time I made the chips. I think maris piper potatoes are great for this. They have the best texture.  

I peeled six medium sized maris piper potatoes (which made a few too many chips, but we still ate them) and cut them into inch thick chips. I brought a pot of salted water to the boil and placed the chips in it. Once the water came back to the boil, I let it bubble for five minutes then drained the chips well. Since I don’t have a deep fat fryer, I had to cook my chips on the hob. I got a saucepan of sunflower oil hot then deep fried the chips until they were golden brown in batches of 8 at a time. It only took a minute or two for each batch to cook.  

As each batch finished cooking, I drained them on kitchen towel. Then, when they were all done, I seasoned them with salt, pepper and garlic granules.

Of course, we had our venison rare. The steaks went into a hot frying pan for just over a minute per side (basically just long enough for the outside to be properly cooked) and then were wrapped in foil and left to stand for about 8 minutes. As the steaks were standing, I literally just let half a bottle of the damson wine bubble until it was concentrated and slightly syrupy. I did’t feel the need to use any herbs with it, the flavour of the reduced wine was perfect on its own. 

It would have been totally successful if Goon hadn’t objected to the steak being peppered. Personally, I liked the combination of pungent peppercorns, rich meat and sweet wine sauce. The flavours were fantastic together.

We had our steak and chips venison fillet au poivre and home made maris piper chips with a rocket salad, coated in a simple dressing made from olive oil, rasperry vinegar and a touch of balsamic. I’d say it was a notch above your average steak and chips, but probably not enough to merit the daft fancy name my inner chef gave it!

* Or perhaps a certain currently successful real celebrity chef. 

** Please note that when you imagine Mike talking, it must be with a very strong Coventry accent. It’s not the same otherwise. 

*** Well, it have been a nuisance to carry it all the way to my flat, right?

After our last experiment in wild boar, I was keen to try and find a different cut of the meat which had all the flavour of the steaks  but none of the dryness. Slow cooked spare rib chops seemed to be the way to go and I was pleasantly suprised to find these were a third of the price of the steaks and only cost £3.20 for two reasonably sized chops at Borough Market.

I intended to braise them in a sauce slowly for two hours to get them tender. The problem was which sauce to use. I knew the orange, juniper and red wine combination had worked well before but I wanted to experiment more with the flavours of this meat before I started repeating old ideas.

When I’m trying out a new ingredient for the first time, I usually turn to the internet for guidance. Unfortunately the problem with ‘unusual’ foods is that not many people have tried them and good recipes are few and far between. Even something like wild boar, which has been eaten for centuries yields few useful results simply because it isn’t all that popular now.

The only recipe that caught my eye, one for boar chops with mustard, honey and apricot was a broken link . Well, at least I had an idea of what to try. I sent Goon out shopping for some apricot jam, dijon mustard and accompaniments for our meal.

I made a mixture of about 25% dijon mustard, 25% wholegrain mustard and 50% apricot jam.  On tasting this I decided it was sweet enough without any honey, so I just put the chops in a baking dish with some rosemary then poured over the glaze. The chops went in the oven for two hours at gas mark 3 while I made some potatoes dauphinoise.

It seems we found exactly what we were looking for in these chops. The meat melted in the mouth but had just as much flavour as the steaks. I’m really confused as to why these were cheaper than the steaks, which were verging on chewy even when tenderised and lightly cooked. Could it just be the extra cooking time?

The only thing that went wrong for this dish was the presentation. Thinking carefully about the visual aesthetics as well as the flavours, I decided that red cabbage with juniper would be the best accompaniment. I instructed Goon to get either this, savoy cabbage or another green vegetable of his choice if he couldn’t find any. Goon came back with white cabbage. So both accompaniments to this dish were rather pallid and the plate as a whole was not very photo worthy.

But here is a picture of the cooked glazed chop anyway.  

This is what happens when a alcoholic pyromaniac like myself gets in  the kitchen.

I’d picked up these steaks at Borough market because I hadn’t had boar in ages. I remember the first time I tried this meat very clearly. I was in an Italian restaurant  (Casa Vallée) in Leamington, with James, and my starter was a creamy, truffled wild boar pasta dish. It was delicious and I made myself a similar dish several times after that.

This time I wanted something different so went for a dish that was a bit more traditional. I marinated the boar in red wine, orange juice, juniper, rosemary and thyme then flambéed it in gin.

Well, actually, Goon flambéed it in gin. With my hair the way it is, I was going nowhere near those flames in case I ended up bald! He was having immense fun with it too. It seems that a bit of my evil side has rubbed off on Goon because he used the burning pork to play a mean trick on the blonde flatmate. It went something like this…

Blonde flatmate enters kitchen while Goon is holding the flaming pan, staring absent-mindedly out the window,

BLONDE FLATMATE: Oh my days!
GOON: Uh?
BLONDE FLATMATE: THE PAN!
GOON: Huh?

(a fairly long pause follows as Goon thinks)

GOON: Oh my God! It’s on FIRE!!! HELP!!!!
BLONDE FLATMATE:OH MY DAYS! EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! 

 (She runs out of the flat still screaming)

It’s a good thing she’s too daft to call the fire brigade, or we’d have been in real trouble!

While Goon was enjoying the blue flames I made a vaguely traditional sauce to go with the boar. I took some red wine and reduced it with orange peel  and rosemary then added some redcurrant jelly at the end. I discovered that I prefer Tesco redcurrant jelly to the Ocean Spray one, which I had bought before. The Ocean Spray jelly has quite a high sugar content and can easily make a dish too sweet.

So the boar was served with the sauce, some new potatoes and buttered spinach with nutmeg. I have to say that the flavour of the boar was just perfect. It was subtley orangey and loaded with juniper. I adore juniper so I was really happy. The texture, however, needed work. I think I should have tenderised the steaks. I’m sure I shouldn’t have cooked them any less (mine were slightly pink in the center)  but they were on the chewy side in places.  

Next time, I try boar I’m going to go for the spare rib chops. I think that these slow cooked with similar juniper and orange flavours will be really gorgeous. If anyone can give me tips on how to better deal with wild boar steaks, please let me know!

If I hadn’t been there to witness it, I probably wouldn’t believe this story was true.

In my limited common sense, I’d decided to take Goon with me to Borough market in the hope he would like the cool stuff there and perhaps even buy something other than ostrich for a change. I was also hoping to teach him where all the stalls were so I could send him shopping one Friday lunchtime.

But Goon wasn’t as impressed as I hoped he would be. He followed me around but didn’t pay much attention. He had some fun prodding some headless rabbits by the Furness game stall but lost interest after a few minutes.

I didn’t complain too much at his apathy. It was useful to have him there. It turns out that being accompanied by a 6ft 5 tall Goon, who is dressed like a hit man, makes the crowds get out of your way VERY quickly, which is a rather useful thing in Borough on a Saturday afternoon.

After I’d done my shopping I asked Goon if there was anything else he wanted to see, He shrugged and grunted. I took that as a no. So I said, “Ok then, I’ll just go have a quick look at the cheese then we’ll go get lunch.”

I didn’t get the response I expected.

“Huh? Cheese? Where’s the cheese?” I pointed towards the other side of the market.Two seconds later, Goon was gone.

I tried to follow, but without Goon’s ’dangerous’ look, I was stuck, moving at a snails pace with the rest of the crowd.

Fifteen minutes later I found him standing behind the counter of an Italian cheese stall. I wondered why the farmers had taken him back there. I was not happy when I found out. One of the farmers was gesticulating enthusiastically around a large cheese, looking very, very smug.

“…and then you cut it in half again…. and wrap this bit up very tightly….” he paused as I joined them behind the table.  ”You a friend of his? I hope you like Gorgonzola.” My heart sank.

“Oh, no. Please tell me he hasn’t!” 
“Your friend here has bought this.”
“Oh my God. How big IS that?”
“Oh, about twelve kilos or so - I’ll weigh it up in a second.”

I couldn’t believe it. Goon had been out of my sight for fifteen minutes and he already managed to buy twelve kilos of one what was possibly the stinkiest blue cheese in the world. My stomach turned as I thought of the tube ride home.

The farmer heaved the cheese onto the weighing scales, which clearly were not designed for something of that size. “Well, that comes to… £98.43.” My jaw hit the floor. “Tell you what, give me £100 to make it easy and I’ll give you this goats cheese and throw in two of these too. He handed me a bag of what what appeared to be a buffalo milk cheese.

Goon nodded enthusiastically for a second then looked confused. He turned to me and said “Can I borrow £20?”

Cheeky bastard.

On the way home, Goon was being very protective of his cheese.

I don’t know why. Who in the world would try to steal 12kg of gorgonzola from a leather-clad giant?

The cheese was so stinky that, even though both Goon and I live in Hammersmith, I got the sudden urge to leave the train at Green Park, a good four miles away from my destination.

When I eventually got back to Goon’s and he opened the door, I was actually overwhelmed by the stench of cheese. Without a garage or a cellar, Goon had decided to store the gorgonzola in his living room.

 As I’m sure you can guess, the other residents weren’t best pleased. Fortunately it turned out that the cheese wasn’t going to be there for much longer as Goon was going to give it to his dad as a birthday present.

So Goon’s poor father is probably at this moment carrying a twelve kilo cheese on the train from London to Leeds. I suppose the upside is he’ll get a carriage to himself!

Only an emergency because there turned out to be considerably less rabbit than there should have been.

I bought the rabbit from Furness Fish and Game at Borough. This was a mistake in itself as the next day I found a Manor Farm stall at Notting Hill market and they sell them for nearly a  pound less! Usually Furness are fine but this time it was a bit different. I got the rabbit to make something similar to this for myself and Goon.

I had told Goon to put the rabbit in to slow braise while I was still in the office. Then I met up with him and his friends briefly at the pub before heading over to cook. He was still out when I got back. I pulled the casserole dish out of the oven. At first I wondered how Goon had managed to fit the rabbit into such a small container. Then I realised. This rabbit must have been a very sad rabbit as it only had two legs.

So quick improvisation was needed. I decided to stick with the idea of a creamy sauce with mustard and mushrooms but added some left-over turkey to make up for the lost rabbit. The result was actually very tasty.

The sauce was made with cream, mustard a bit of white wine, rosemary and thyme. Sliced mushrooms, cooked bacon, turkey and rabbit were added and then the sauce was tossed with tagliatelle.

The meal was good… but just wait until I get back to Borough… someone will get an earfull.