And so the year ended with one final meaty fling in the form of a birthday meal for my boyfriend. One last colon-clogging protein punch before our bodies gave in to cravings for nothing but fish, vegetables and miso soup. I expect you could hear my arteries begging me to stop from wherever you were at the time. Or maybe I really wanted to do fish but it was the 29th of December and all the fishermen were at home toasting their toes by an open fire, spending time with their families and generally having a life rather than braving the stormy seas catching fishies for my convenience.

Anyway. The fluster of festivities left me utterly unprepared and before I knew it I found myself in front of the butcher wondering, ‘what would Simon do?’ Simon Hopkinson that is. In my hour of need I turned to my king of British cooking. The pages of his ‘Week In Week Out‘, are so indelibly etched into my memory, that as I cast my eyes over the pieces of meat in front of me, I could hear him sagely whisper, “page 148,  Helen – surely you remember?” At once a stunning vision materialised: red nuggets of beef glistening against the silvery blade of a cleaver.

I used 125g lean sirloin per person (more flavour than fillet), and spiked the fine dice with whatever choice of seasonings took my fancy; chopped capers, cornichons, shallot, parsley, anchovies, Worcestershire sauce and mustard are all strong contenders. An egg yolk is essential for me, adding silky richness. Traditionally the tartare  is heaped onto toasted rye (I didn’t have any) or alongside a pile of frites (didn’t fancy making them) but thinly sliced baguette did the job just fine.

There is a curious excitement about eating entirely raw meat; it feels a little bit naughty – risky, even. Soft nuggets of melty beef are roused to life by piquancy and heat; as much as you dare. The key is not to tip the balance too far. Restraint, as always, is key.

For the main course, fish was obviously out and there was no doubt in my mind that serving a vegetarian course to the boyfriend on his birthday would be nothing short of highly offensive. I roasted a couple of partridges and served them with Simon’s bread sauce and game crumbs; bread crumbs crisped in the partridge roasting juices. Followed by cheese with beetroot chutney and a dark chocolate fudge cake, you could say it was the perfect end to a seasonal binge, and the perfect pre-cursor to a detox. To be  honest though, I’ve never really been into all that dieting malarkey and anyway, I have a feeling it might offend Simon.

Steak Tartare

Simon advises using 125g of either fillet, lean sirloin or rump. I used sirloin in place of fillet as it has so much more flavour. Chill it well then remove any fat and dice very finely, before placing in a well chilled bowl. You can now add your choice of seasonings, or if you are serving it at a dinner party or the like, just set things out on the table and let people add their own. As I said, parsley, capers, cornichons, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, anchovies, shallots and black pepper are all worthy additions. An egg yolk on top is essential in my opinion. Clearly not a dish suitable for the pregnant or vulnerable.

Wow. I’ve really been enjoying my anti-detox. A bit too much methinks. I am a little embarrassed to reveal just how ‘well’ I’ve been eating over the past couple of weeks. There’s me banging on about how my internal diet regulation mechanism is on autopilot and then I come to write this post and find I’ve been talking absolute tosh. Well, whatever. It’s been great. I’ve eaten lots of delicious things, this fruity duck being one of them.

I was left with a bottle of pomegranate molasses after making Ottolenghi’s beautiful squash recipe. A quick flick through Moro East revealed Sam and Sam’s pomegranate marinade, which I used to flavour the duck. I combined it with caramelised endive, sweet pears and some green lentils, then topped everything with an orange-pomegranate dressing – just tangy enough to cut through all that sweet ‘n’ rich goodness.

Here’s what else I’ve been putting away over the last couple of weeks – hands up who’s been scoffing too much bread and meat then?

(Left to right from top)
1. Bresaola sandwich on olive bread.
2. Smoked trout with yoghurt and salsa.
3. LOADS of Copella apple juice.
4. A rubbish pizza from – shock horror – Tesco, onto which I chucked the contents of the fridge.
5. Steamed spring rolls (very badly rolled indeed), containing prawns, vermicelli, chilli, cucumber and Thai basil.
6. Some sticky chicken.
7. Chris’s amazing eggy bread, which I am going to post about – it is divine.
8. Salt beef sandwich from Roast to Go in Borough Market.
9. Celeriac soup.
10. Desperation lunch made from contents of fridge thrown into a wrap.
11. Egg!
12. Chorizo, spinach and sun dried tomato baguette.
13. Baba ganoush and pitta, way too garlicky, I was regretting it for the rest of the day. No,no, no Sun and Doves! Same problem with the salad dressing, by the way. Oh, and you know how I asked you not to put the hummus on there? That’s because it’s way too garlicky.
14. Mixed ‘bean feast’ from the health food shop. It’s actually really tasty, honest.
15. Clementines! You can do no wrong. Well, perhaps the pips could go?
16. Brie, pesto, cherry tomato and red onion on focaccia.
17. Clearly the biggest apple in the world – although you can’t tell from my really badly composed iphone photo.

But, there’s not just been too much food passing my lips. Oh no, there’s been drinking too….Brew Dog beer has got to be the beer of the moment – for me anyway and for the guys who introduced me to it. More of that – and the fantabulous Tipped Winter Barbecue (which happened in 2008, included large amounts of Brew Dog and is begging to be blogged), in an upcoming post. Here’s a picture of the little beauties in the meantime.

If you would also like to stick two fingers up to detox, here’s the pomegranate marinade from Moro East, it’s lovely on duck, all that crispy fat. Detox schmeetox. Seriously though, I think I may need to lighten things up..there’s only so much exercise can do, after all….

Pomegranate Molasses Marinade (from Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark)

1 garlic clove, crushed
Juice of 1 pomegranate
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon finely grated onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

- Combine all ingredients except olive oil in a blender and whizz until smooth.
- Toss the meat in this mixture and add the olive oil.
- Marinade from 4 hours to 2 days.

Like many people who do a hefty amount of cooking, I don’t often follow recipes in books (which is not to say I don’t have a massive collection!). Instead, I prefer to use them for inspiration, to check techniques or sometimes just to look at the pretty pictures, quite frankly. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule and Ottolenghi is most definitely one of them. I adored the ‘New Vegetarian‘ series, I now adore the book and I hope that soon I shall adore the restaurant/deli too.

There is a bold simplicity to these recipes, which are based around a set of ’star ingredients’, (listed in the front of the book) – essential flavours in the Ottolenghi repertoire, for example, yoghurt, tahini, sumac and pomegranate molasses. These ingredients I am already in love with, particularly since the release of books such as Moro East and Persia in Peckham.

This roast pumpkin with burnt aubergine and pomegranate molasses is a current favourite. Soft, sweet squash scattered with crunchy toasted seeds and nuts, accompanied by an aubergine sauce which is pure genius. I know I will continue making this sauce for many years to come. The aubergine is charred until wrinkly and often bursting – the smoky flesh then scraped and combined with natural yoghurt, parsley, garlic, lemon juice and that sticky, fragrant molasses. Great sweet and sour flavours and contrasting textures.

The squash didn’t make it onto a plate, I just plonked the sauce in the middle and we ate the whole lot, from the oven dish, on the sofa. The original sauce recipe calls for olive oil but I left it out (Christmas calorie guilt) and it still tastes amazing. In fact, I may even prefer it.

I picked up two more aubergines on the way home yesterday, to make a double batch this afternoon. I will be munching through it while thumbing through the book, trying to decide which of the ten or so earmarked recipes will be next on my hitlist. This is a true pleasure in itself, for the book is a beautiful thing. Glorious pictures of the Ottolenghi establishment/s, platters towered high with lush, vibrant salads, perfectly cooked meats and decadent cakes and pastries.

Glossy pages, beautiful photography and chef magic aside however, I reckon Ottolenghi is the perfect book for the home cook. The recipes are easy to make yet impressive and (at the risk of sounding a bit Jamie O), sexy. There is a sense of generosity, a celebration of ingredients, the flavour of each being clearly discernable – no fussing. The Ottolenghi passion has jumped right from the chefs to the book to the plate to my belly and – I think I may be in love.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Burnt Aubergine and Pomegranate Molasses (from Ottolenghi – The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sammi Tamimi).
(I bought a big bottle of pomegranate molasses in my local Sainsbury’s for £2.50 ish. It is also available in delis and middle Eastern food shops).

1 large butternut squash (I used a small pumpkin)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon sunflower seeds (I didn’t have any)
1 tablespoon black (or white) sesame seeds
1 teaspoon nigella (black onion) seeds
10g sliced almonds
10g basil leaves (I didn’t have any)
Sea salt and black pepper

For the sauce
1 medium aubergine
150g Greek yoghurt, room temp
2 tablespoons olive oil (I left this out)
1.5 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon roughly choppped flatleaf parsley
1 garlic clove, crushed

- Preheat oven to 220C/Gas 7/425F. Cut the squash into wedges, 2-3cm thick. Remove the seeds and arrange in a roasting tray, skin side down. Brush with half the oil and season well. Cook for 25-30 minutes until soft and slightly brown.

- Reduce the oven to 180C/Gas4/350F. Spread the almonds and seeds on a roasting tray and toast for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned. Allow to cool.

- For the sauce, either put the aubergine directly onto a gas hob flame, turning occasionally, for 10-15 minutes, until the skin is dried and cracked and the aubergine smells smoky. You can also do this by putting the aubergine under a hot grill. The aubergine often bursts I find, but this is fine. Just be careful not to lose that flesh! It needs to be very soft inside.

- Scoop the flesh from the aubergine and discard the skin. Drain the flesh in a colander for ten minutes, then chop roughly and combine with the yoghurt, oil, pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, garlic, parsley and season.

- Arrange the squash on a plate, scatter over the seeds and nuts and serve the dressing alongside. Scatter over the basil and serve.

Doesn’t that stew look comforting? And wouldn’t it feel even more so if it was easy on the wallet? Well, get ready for a big old hug on the inside, because (award-winning) food writer Fiona Beckett has just released her new book, ‘The Frugal Cook‘ and very well timed it is too. As a long-time reader of Fiona’s blog, I was keen to see how her ideas had come together, to share them with you and, importantly, to cook something from the book and tell you about it.

Many of us may be watching those pennies right now but the message here is one we would do well to keep in mind even in times of greater prosperity, the reason being this – there’s some damn good eatin’ to be had in those cheaper cuts, leftovers and general all-round stretching. Who can argue with the idea of squeezing every last drop of flavour out of your ingredients?

Fiona offers guidance for cooking cheaper cuts of meat, like the ’scrag-end’ of lamb called for in this stew recipe (that’s neck chops to you and me). Given the right treatment, these unassuming chunks of meat can add real depth of flavour to a dish. Here for example, they are first simmered to make a stock before being de-boned and the meat added back to the pot.

You get all the unctuousness from the fat and bone marrow and, cooked together with some one-pot friendly veggies such as leeks, carrot and potato, you end up with something truly warming and flavourful (for the next two days, to feed two hungry people). I replaced parsley with mint and thyme with rosemary as those are the herbs I had to hand – you could similarly substitute vegetables (I added some mushrooms that were threatening to grow fungus of their own) and the next day we even threw in some dumplings. How fantastically old school.

Not all the recipes are time consuming slow-bubblers, of course and I have some earmarked already – warm cauliflower, egg and anchovy salad among them. Fiona says she loves anchovies and so do I. It also pleases me to find she loves ingredients such as prunes, kidneys, and rabbit – it seems we have a lot in common. There is one small thing we disagree on though and that’s the vegetable delivery box. Fiona says they don’t work for her (fair enough) while I, on the other hand, couldn’t live without mine and have absolutely no problem ripping through it. Just proves great minds can’t always think alike! That, and the whole ‘portion control’ section. She’s right though, you shouldn’t all be as greedy as me. Not being as greedy as me will definitely save you money.

Other top tips for slashing your food bill can be found in sections addressing sourcing, stretching, foraging, bargaining, storing, disposing and more – Fiona’s covered the lot. People, parents, friends – if there is a student in your life this seriously must be a Christmas gift no-brainer? Eating well while keeping food costs down (when all they do is keep rising) is a skill, and one which Fiona has clearly mastered. That aside, there is another important point here I think – that of returning to a way of eating somewhat lost over the years. Sourcing carefully, cutting down on food waste, using up leftovers and, as a result, thinking a little more creatively, all makes for meals which are not only rewarding for the soul (and the stomach) but for the wallet as well.

The Frugal Cook is available from Amazon
Fiona also writes www.beyondbakedbeans.com (for more advice on how to manage your food costs).

This is probably the best salad I have ever made. It’s so fruity, so crunchy, sweet, salty, soft and fragrant all at the same time that I’ve ditched any thoughts of modesty and am just going to shout it out there. Here’s how it happened. I was honoured to win the first ever Cookthink Root Source challenge way back in January with my recipe for Celeriac Soup with Parsley Oil and Lancashire Cheese Toasts. Just thinking about that recipe takes me right back to winter which is apparently where we are headed this weekend in the UK (again). As a prize for winning the challenge, I have received a cook book (and a Cookthink T-shirt!) called Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden by Jeanne Kelley.

The book focuses on simple, fresh flavours. The recipes certainly aren’t challenging but are more akin to the way we like to eat everyday, uncomplicated and delicious, celebrating seasonal ingredients. I wanted to feature a recipe from the book and was drawn to these ‘Salty-Sweet-Spicy Almonds’ but, as per usual, I couldn’t just make a recipe and leave it alone, the reading of the recipe started my mind wandering in different directions which is the last thing I need right now with exams looming (any information in might squeeze information out, ok?). I wanted to incorporate the almonds into a dish rather than eating them as a cocktail snack as Jeanne suggests. So, while the sun persists, so do I with this jewel flecked farro salad. This is perfect for a barbecue side dish and most definitely for the lunchbox, which is partly what I had in mind. Salads like these keep well for a few days in the fridge and are bursting with contrasting flavours meaning your tastbuds don’t get tired.

I’ve realised that it is the contrasts in textures and flavours that are the making of a good dish. A perfect illustation of this was bestowed upon myself and Chris last night when we ate dinner at The Bermondsey Kitchen. We had both heard good things about it and so finally decided to visit. The place itself is informal, bright and airy and the service excellent. Overall, the food was good, not amazing or anything, but good. I had a charcuterie plate to start which I was relieved to find was not a towering pile of meat (sure to clog up your tubes and appetite in the space of 10 minutes) and included lomo, a Spanish cured pork fillet I’ve never eaten before but will now be searching out – somthing tells me Brindisa will have it! Chris ordered rilletes (no surprise to me nor to his family if they read this). They were excellent, really quite coarse in texture (pork) with big flavour. My main dish was delicious, plaice with blood orange butter and baby fennel. That blood orange butter was genius although I was sceptical about the seasonality issue with the oranges until Chris pointed out that the odd few still keep turning up in the veg box. “The seasons aren’t set in stone!”

The big disappointment was Chris’s main, roast pork belly with mashed potato and courgettes. The portion was massive which I feel is absolutely not the way to go with pork belly. The best belly we ever ate was in Franklin’s, our favourite local restaurant, perfectly crispy and just the right size. The Bermondsey version was vulgar and the fat was, well, not that crispy. The mashed potato was bland and so were the courgettes, he didn’t even eat more than half. The point I’ve been rambling towards all this time is that the dish didn’t contain any contrasts. These are all middle of the road flavours, there is nothing dancing around your mouth, cutting through, playing off, enhancing. Some herbs, citrus, hell anything would have improved things, it was like it came from a different chef.

Anyway, back to the salad.There is a lot of confusion over the whole spelt/farro issue – are they the same or aren’t they? Kalyn wrote about this recently and concluded that they are not. I commented on Kalyn’s post saying that a spelt seller at The Real Food Festival had told me they are one and the same but apparently this is a common misconception. I am going with Kalyn on this one as I know she’s done the research. Whatever it is, I dressed it with an orange and raspberry vinegar dressing that is so fruity it just lifts the whole dish and brings all the flavours to life. It is one of my best dressings ever. The nuts work brilliantly too, I’m so glad I tried them this way. They are fragrant with fennel seeds and hot with crushed chillies. The sticky sugar coating gives them a fantastic crunch. Tangy feta, sweet almonds, salty olives, fruity dressing. Cookthink – in sending me the book, you set me on the path to this salad and for that, I thank you deeply.

Jewelled Farro Salad with Almonds and Orange-Raspberry Vinegar Dressing

250g farro
6 spring onions, sliced
40g dried cranberries, soaked in water for 30-60 minutes
10-15 kalamata olives, sliced in half
2 pomegranates, seeds removed (make sure there is no pith)
200g feta cheese
1 small bunch mint, leaves picked and finely sliced
1 small bunch flat leaf parsley, leaves picked and left whole
15-20 almonds (see below)
1 quantity orange-raspberry vinegar dressing (below)

- Cook the farro according to packet instructions, drain and set aside to cool.
- Make the almonds and dressing (below).
- In a large bowl, mix the farro, onions, cranberries, pomegranate seeds and crumble in most of the feta.
- Add the almonds and the dressing and stir to combine. Add the herbs and mix again.
- Transfer to a serving plate and crumble over the remaining feta to serve.

Salty-Sweet-Spicy Almonds (from Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes by Jeanne Kelley)
This is the full recipe. I only used about 15-20 almonds in the salad

1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
2 cups raw almonds

Preheat the oven to 325F (170C/Gas3)
Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with non-stick cooking spray (I just wiped a film of oil over it)

- Mix sugar, fennel seeds, salt and red pepper flakes in a bowl. Add the almonds and 2 tablespoons water and stir to coat everything. Pour onto the foil and spread out in one layer.
- Bake until the sugar melts (about 5 minutes), then stir and return to the oven for 17 minutes more, stirring every now and again until golden brown.
- Remove from oven and separate with a fork. Leave to cool.

Orange-Raspberry Vinegar Dressing

Juice of one orange
1 tablespoon raspberry vinegar
1/2 to 1 clove garlic (depending on taste)
Salt and pepper
Extra virgin olive oil

- Crush the garlic in a pestle and mortar with the salt.
- Add some black pepper, the orange juice and vinegar and mix well.
- Add a couple of tablespoons olive oil (or to taste) and whisk to emulsify.

Edit: This is an entry for Margot’s Wholesome Lunchbox Event over at Coffee and Vanilla