Have you ever been in the position where you’re so, so hungry that you can’t concentrate on anything? You know? The times when, whatever you try to do, all you can think about is food?  This was the position I found myself on Thursday evening, after eating nothing for the entire day and having the hangover from hell.

Wednesday night had been an interesting experience. Who’d have thought a group of PhD mathematicians could be quite such hardcore drinkers! I mean it isn’t exactly the occupation which makes you think ‘party animal’, is it?

I hadn’t been out drinking in about three months, after deciding that morning tutorials were less painful when I only had my compulsory glass of wine with dinner (and possibly a G&T to aid my creative cooking). However, I was convinced to head of for just the one drink……..

A couple of glasses of dodgy college wine on an empty stomach, while not excessive in themselves, were enough to convince me I could possibly handle another two small glasses. My very persuasive office-mate somehow turned those two small glasses into three large.  After five hours in the pub, I just escaped being dragged off to a late-license bar, then managed a semi-conscious stagger home.  Six hours later, I awakened with little memory of the latter part of the night (especially the half-eaten packs of Chinese food on my floor - how the hell did those get there!?) and realised that I had to get up to teach. Oh. Dear. God.

So after a very, very painful morning tutorial and a day of sitting at my desk, doing no work, shaking a lot and not being able to eat anything, my hangover gently started to subside. However, it was replaced by something almost as bad.

HUNGER MEASURABLE ON THE RICHTER SCALE!

It was like I hadn’t eaten for three weeks! With this sitution of near-starvation, my mind started inventing dishes. Creamy, comforting, fat laden dishes, with lots of meat….. rare, juicy red meat …..(drool) . It didn’t take long before the rumblings in my stomach led me to invent this artery clogger.

This is (lots of) rare fillet steak with a creamy stilton and wild mushroom risotto, crushed walnuts and a port reduction.

The risotto was made as a normal mushroom risotto except I substituted  soaked wild mushrooms. I added the soaking liquid to the stock I used too. At the end, I stirred in a ludicrous amount of stilton (about 100g) and then gently crushed some walnuts in a pestle and mortar before sprinkling them over the top.

I had a little trouble with not gagging as the port reduced. Those damn alchohol fumes! But once all the ethanol had gone, I was happy.

I seared my steak for 1 min 15 per side and let it rest for 5 minutes whilst I served up my risotto, then sliced the meat and arranged that on my plate.

Yes, it IS a lot of steak. What? I told you I was hungry! 

This was exactly what I needed after the pain of Thursday. Risotto is comforting however it is done, but adding great chunks of stilton to it made it even more so.

After eating I curled up into a ball and slept, vowing never to get drunk again. Well, until my next birthday, obviously. Oh, wait. That’s only until Monday. Ah well! :/

I think chicken tikka masala is is a fantastic British (probably) culinary invention. You’ve all heard this story of how it was invented, right? A customer in a restaurant complained that his chicken tikka dish was too dry, so the chef whipped up a tomato and cream based sauce to go with it. I’m not sure how true the story is and, with several restaurants claiming to be the birthplace of the dish, I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened.

Chicken tikka masala is one of Goon’s comfort foods, which is why I ended up making it. On the evening after the cheese fiasco, Goon was feeling a little ill. He put it down to a restuarant he visited the previous night, although I suspect that inhaling gorgonzola fumes on the tube for an hour probably didn’t help all that much.

It is the sort of meal where I already have most of the ingredients I needed. All I had to do, was pop to the Tesco metro and pick up some chicken and some okra to make a  side dish.  

As well as being delicious, this curry is easy to make. The chicken is marinated in a mix of greek yoghurt and spices including cumin, fenugreek, caraway  and turmeric , which gives it a golden colour. I think it is a good idea to add a little lemon as this seems to keep the chicken moist as it cooks. Full recipe to follow soon! The chicken is left in the marinade  for a while (I leave it for at least three hours) and then baked in the oven until it is cooked through.

The sauce is made from tomato, cream, cumin, garam masala, ground coriander seed and a cashew paste made by blending the nuts with cream. I usually blend all the sauce ingredients together to get a totally smooth sauce.  

See, how easy is that? The cooked chicken is just stirred into the sauce and then it is ready to be served with a rice or naan. Goon’s choice on this occasion was a saffron pilau. I fried finely diced onion until it was soft with some cardamoms and cloves, then I stirred in basmati rice, fried for a minute or so, then added a pinch of saffron dissoved in boiling water plus enough water to cook the rice.

It really is a nice comforting meal. This curry is rich and full of flavour but not at all hot. I served it garnished with coriander leaves and had some spicy okra to go with it.

So, with a title like that you are either going to think that

1. I’ve taken the whole alternative meat thing too far and have  cooked up someone’s pet pooch.
2. I’ve found a little known pasta recipe originating from an old coastal region of Croatia.

I suppose technically those who went for point 1 were a little closer to the truth because what I mean by dalmatian lasagne is this.

Lasagne with an interesting spotted top. Hmmm… maybe its more like a leopard.

Those who saw this emerge from the oven said things like ‘Oh, cool! How’d you get it to do that?’ In reality, I have no idea why it did that. I put it down to a quirk in the design of the electric oven I was using.

If I’d INTENDED the weird spot pattern I’d have been very pleased with myself. But I bet that if I do exactly the same thing the next time and make lasagne with the intention of it being spotty, the blasted thing probably won’t brown at all!

Anyway, spotting aside, this was a mighty good lasagne! It had a slightly spicy filling of pork sausages, tomato and pepper and was topped with a mild cheddar sauce.  I’m fairly sure the idea wasn’t entirely my own. I think that I might have even seen it on someone elses blog, after which it implanted itself in my subconscious until I was stuck with nothing to cook on New Years day. Then I realised that this could be made from things I already had in my cupboard.

Into the  pan went a chopped onion with 2 cloves of crushed garlic a chopped red pepper and loads of oregano with some olive oil. One the veg had softened I added 6 skinned, seeded chopped tomatoes, and about 1/3 bottle red wine and a tablespoon of tomato paste and a dash of tabasco. Then I fried up  6 chopped pork sausages (Tesco finest from the bargain bin ) with another garlic clove and threw that in to the tomato mixture before reducing it until nearly dry.  The topping was a simple milk-based cheddar sauce.

This turned out tobe really tasty and a nice light meal after I’d been sitting around the house all day doing nothing. I just served it with a side salad of mixed leaves with a lemon- olive oil dressing. I think it was really cheap too. Those sausages only cost 40p and most of the other ingredients were vegetables. The red wine was technically not cheap, but it was left-over from a couple of days ago. This is definitely one to make again when  sausages are on offer!

My craving for calves liver didn’t disappear by Saturday morning so I had to go to the only place that would stock it in spite of it being Christmas: Borough Market.

There I was thinking the supermarkets were busy. They were not a patch on the crowds in Borough by Saturday afternoon. Through all the bustle I searched for the liver and something to feed my parents . The liver turned out to be a much easier job that the fish for Mum and Dad. There was a huge slab of it in the ’Ginger Pig’. After  a lot of crowd fighting by one fish stall, I just managed to get hold of enough monkfish to keep the parents happy and then squeezed myelf out of the market.

The calves liver turned out to be remarkable quality. It was from the ‘Ginger Pig’ and was probably the best liver I ever tasted. Like I said I had something indulgent in mind when I bought it.

The liver was soaked in marsala for a while and then pan fried until just pink in the middle. I didn’t make a sauce for it but instead just drizzled some more marsala over it and served it with truffled angel hair pasta. The sauce for this was made of cream enriched with egg yolk and  black truffle oil.

In this meal I also discovered tender stem brocolli. What great stuff! It’s almost like purple sprouting broccoli but you don’t get the problem thet some bits go soggy while the stems are still raw! This time I just steamed it but I think I’ll be trying lots out lots of other ideas with it soon.

Goon is starting to get a bit cross at me because he’s never had calves liver before. I keep saving it for a treat for me when he’s not around.  Oh come on,  who’d want to share calves liver?

When I get a chance and when Gamston Wood have some in stock, I might try this dish out on some ostrich liver. The flavours were simple but it felt really indulgent. I guess that must have been the black truffle pasta!

So during the holiday season, when everyone is away and I’m on my own, what do I do? I find the most expensive treat food I can and cook it in very self indulgent ways! Then I post about it to make everyone feel jealous.

That was the plan anyway. I was hoping that while everyone was away for Christmas, I’d be able to trash the kitchen and make whatever I’d like to eat. Unfortunately the market forces at this time of year made that a bit tricky.

It seems that the only thing that the supermarkets DON’T run out of at Christmas is traditional Christmas food. On the night of the 22nd, there were hundreds of shelves full of turkeys whole salmon, brandy butter and Christmas pudding. The other shelves were empty. Shame. I had great plans for some calves liver.

The one thing I could find was a nice, but rather expensive chunk of fillet steak hidden behind another turkey on  the meat counter. At the very least that it meant one night’s dinner was sorted so I snagged it immediately, to the very vocal annoyance of the woman behind me, and then fought my way to the checkout.

As I waited in the queue I coulnd’t help wondering what is it about Christmas that makes small  children cry all the time. I thought the point of the whole holiday was to make things fun for them, but on the whole they seem way more miserable than usual. At least their wails were doing a good job of drowning out Bono and co. on the shop radio.

The fillet steak turned out to be an excellent treat for one. I made it into thai chilli beef with deep fried basil and served it with coconut-lime rice and stir fried pak-choi with mushrooms and garlic.

This was a nice simple dinner to make after the stress of trying to find the ingredients. I got a tablespoon of fish sauce, a tablespoon of water, one large crushed garlic clove, 1 cubic inch of crushed ginger and a level tablespoon of sugar and mixed the lot to form a marinade for my beef. I cut the beef into strips and tossed it in the marinade.

Just under an hour later, I  deep fried about 10 large basil leaves until crispy and left them to drain on some kitchen paper. In preparation for the rice, I set some lime leaves simmering in diluted coconut milk (half a can, or 200ml of milk, plus half as much water. Then I went to sort out the beef.

I fried half a chopped red bell pepper with half a finely diced onion, another crushed garlic clove, 1 cubic inch of crushed ginger, 1 red chopped chilli and a bruised lemon grass stalk. When these had softened, I added the beef and stir fried until it was cooked on the outside. Then I took it off the heat.

I added two handfuls of rice to the simmering coconut milk, and while it was cooking stir fried the vegetables with some sesame oil. At the end I just served the rice alongside the beef topped with the basil leaves and some chilli oil. I had the vegetable stir fry on the side.

Maybe it is something to do with the food I brought up on, but I find the combination of coconut milk and strong chilli incredibly soothing. Combine that with the meltingly tender fillet steak and the great flavour of the fried basil and it make for an almost perfect meal for a quiet night in. For me anyway.

There were supposed to be four posts on my treats but I was so hungry when I had the last one I forgot to photo it . More on the other two soon, plus, when Dad gives me the photos I can tell you about the meal I cooked for him and Mum.

Why, why, WHY do I get myself into things like this? Goon’s brother came to visit for the weekend and Goon wanted to show off the high class life style he lives down here in London. Naturally, my cooking had to feature as it makes up about 50% of his diet now. So, what did I say? I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll cook a three course meal.” 

It’s true I like to impress, but that was just dumb.For a start I didn’t get to Goon’s until 7pm. Not good as I hadn’t done any prep work. I started by making the dessert, my alchoholic cherry cheesecake,  as it needed a long time to chill. The base was simply crushed digestive biscuits soaked with amaretto and set with butter . While that was in the freezer, I whipped together some cream cheese, marscapone and double cream for the middle and added some lemon juice and zest. Then I made the topping with black cherries simmered in their own juices with some sugar and a good slug of cherry brandy.

After assembling that and leaving it chilling in the fridge I moved onto the main: ostrich ‘wellington’. My ostrich had been marinating in a mixture of apricot brandy and orange juice. I coated it lightly with a duck and port pate, wrapped it in some rather haphazard rosemary crepes  (the weighing scales had gone walkabout so I had to guess quantities) and wrapped it all in puff pastry.

And yes, I had the practially blue bit in the middle.  

Finally it was time to make the starter, just in time for everyone to arrive. This was seared scallops with ‘champagne’ (or cava) risotto and truffle oil. No major hiccups here, despite this being the first time I cooked scallops. The only problem was I had forgotten to buy any nice looking salad so I had to borrow some iceberg leaves.

Goon and the others turned up at about 10:30pm, so dinner was very late. I was fairly pleased with all of it. I think that there might have been better risottos to make than a champagne flavoured one but I thought the title sounded impressive. The ostrich Wellington was great. I didn’t expect it all to be eaten but it was devoured pretty quickly.

So quickly that it got half eaten before I could get proper shots. Here is a slice with somenew potatoes beans and a port reduction. I think Simon (Goon’s brother) enjoyed it and that was the main point.

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.

Looks like this could become a regular feature.

Goon rather enjoyed making our tuna steaks the other day and so he wanted another turn at cooking. I suggested that he use up the other half of the uber-slab of salmon he bought last weekend.

Goon hasn’t really got the hang of thinking up things to do with food. He can follow recipes now, but unless someone tells him exactly what to do, he feels a little bit lost. This caused a bit of a problem as he couldn’t find any easy salmon recipes he liked online. He said he might just grill it and boil some new potatoes but I thought he wouldn’t learn much from doing that.

So I had a bit of a think and came up with this for Goon to try: pasta with dill, white wine and creme fraiche topped with the grilled salmon drizzled with some olive oil and a dressed side salad. 

It turned out to be a good learning experience for Goon. For a start he found out that creme fraiche comes in tubs which are too small for anything useful. We had to bulk out the sauce with some single cream.

I had to take over making the sauce in the end. Goon nearly tried to make it by stirring creme fraiche into the pasta and then adding half a bottle of wine. I explained that it was difficult to mix the wine and cream together after they’d been added to the pasta. Goon seemed to understand this,  but when I also explained the concept of reducing a sauce to give it more flavour, Goon got scared and ran away to hide in his room. He came back when I agreed to handle the sauce and he tried grilling the salmon.

The salmon worked out fine in the end but I had to stop Goon from taking it out from under the grill too early. He was bothered by the fact the skin was smoking slightly as it browned and kept turning the heat off. We nearly ended up eating raw salmon, which would be fine as I like sashimi, but I got the feeling we weren’t really dealing with sushi grade fish.

Right at the end we found out that Goon had forgotten to buy salad , so we ended up having a side of salted, buttered spinach with our meal.  It wasn’t bad for such an easy thing to make. I think it would have been even better with something a bit tangy added to the pasta. I thought chopped gherkins at first but they’d be a bit overpowering. Capers maybe? 

I think Goon is improving. What shall I get him to try next?

Well, what do you expect in a place where the most frequently cooked meal is pasta with Tesco value stir in sauce?

I should have known better. When I was asked to cook a Sri Lankan style curry in the Latymer Court kitchen, it should have been obvious that I’d also have to provide the necessary equipment. But in my mind, every kitchen comes with a pestle and mortar and at least four decent sized pans that aren’t covered in rust.

So cooking the curry turned out to be a LOT more difficult than expected. The pan problem was easily sorted out by cooking two things at a time and using the oven to keep things warm. The spice grinding problem was a little more tricky.

Freshly ground roasted spices are the most important ingredient in a Sri Lankan curry. They’re what makes the flavour so distinctive and without them I think there’s little point in bothering. So the lack of pestle and mortar was causing me some serious issues. I went to use the blender but, in the shock of being used for the first time in 8 years, it immediately blew a fuse.

We ended up resorting to making Goon grind the spices with a wooden spoon and a ceramic breakfast bowl. Needless to say, the curry powder was a little more chunky than usual but at least the flavour was still good.

The next problem was stopping the ingredients from walking away. The Latymer Court kitchen is small and cluttered and, to make it worse, someone had obviously been tidying when I wasn’t looking. My coriander vanished without a trace and never reappeared.

So the lamb curry was on the chunky side and the breadfruit curry was a bit plain from the lack of coriander. Luckily breadfruit is fantastic on its own because of its amazing gooey texture which made it one of my favourite treats as a child. 

At least I can say that the mung-atta kiribath went without hitches.

I’m sure I’ve posted about this before but possibly back in the days when absolutely no one read my blog. Kiribath is a traditional Sri Lankan dish of rice cooked in coconut milk. This coconut makes the rice sticky so it can be formed into a ‘cake’ and cut into pieces to serve,  It can be made sweet or savoury and has lots of variations. My favourite way to have it is with loads of garlic and black pepper added. I also add mung beans to give a more interesting texture.

So, we got there in the end and had Sri Lankan style lamb curry with mung-atta kiribath and curried breadfruit. Here is the sri lankan lamb curry recipe.

It seems that, to a lot of people nowadays, pigeon is a weird thing to eat. I certainly got a very funny look when MJ enquired about what I’d be cooking yesterday. But during Victorian times and before, this meat was very popular. It has a very intense game flavour and I would even say that it tastes a little bit like liver.

Perhaps this would be a way to introduce squeamish people to that kind of flavour without them being freaked out by eating organs!

Since the flavour of this meat is so gamey, when I decided to make a risotto with it I wanted other strong flavours too. I decided I’d have meaty porcini mushrooms, bacon, rosemary and a fruity Italian red wine.

Actually, the wine wasn’t Italian in the end. It was on the Italian shelf of Tesco’s wine section and half price so I picked it up without paying much attention to it. Yes, I know, I’m a cheapskate student.  I was rather suprised when I got home and found the wine was actually French. Luckily it still was quite fruity, so it turned out to be perfectly good for the risotto.  

Pigeon is one of those meats that tend to dry out quickly and so I cooked it by briefly searing thin slices of breast. Then I kept it warm, away from the hob, whilst I made the risotto and stirred the meat back in at the end.

It tasted delicious but the sad thing about this meal is that I can’t see how to present it well.

Cooked pigeon is kind of a grey-purple colour and the wine made the risotto a reddish brown. ot really an attractive colour combination. It’s a shame as the flavours in this dish are fantastic. Hmm… you can’t really see the pigeon in that picture so I better post this one too.

So, now you can see it is a very dark meat- darker in fact than that photo really lets on. 

Despite the fact that it is in good supply and not that popular, pigeon is still very expensive! Each pigeon breast costs £1 and I think you’d need three to feed an average person. Damn me for being addicted to Borough Market. 

Here is the Wood Pigeon and Red Wine Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Bacon recipe.