Yesterday I made my 7th notch on the 2009 BBQ bedpost. Not too shoddy considering it’s only spring. Every Brit knows you need to make the most of each glimpse of sunshine – case in point being this very next day as we are dealt a dose of predictable bank holiday gloom. Cloud and drizzle hangs over London, no doubt putting paid to plans of picnics, walks and BBQ’s everywhere. By the end of the summer though, I will have grilled, smoked and charred every ingredient I can think of over a hot kettle of coals. There will be memories of beers that flowed, fingers that got burned and I will probably have gained half a stone.

Our most major BBQ achievement this year has been actually bothering to find out how to use the thing properly. I always wondered why slow cooking joints just didn’t happen until I consulted google when making this lamb. Still, mustn’t get too cocky – there are always lessons to be learned. The moral of the story this week? Don’t forget your drip tray.

You see, this salad was actually just an afterthought addition to the BBQ, the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, out of place with the rest of the menu but delicious nonetheless. The main event was supposed to be these jerk pork ribs, big meaty beasts that had been sucking up that spicy sweet seasoning all night long.

The butcher had sold out of regular ribs so I opted for strips of pork belly with the ribs still attached, figuring that more meat is clearly a good thing. Knowing they would need long cooking I started them in the oven with the intention of finishing them on the BBQ. In my excitement however, I forgot to position the drip tray to catch all the fat and just slapped them right on.

I wandered off for literally a minute before I heard screams from outside and turned to see 2 foot high flames leaping from the Weber. The ribs were sticks of charcoal within 30 seconds. Ruined. In true carnivore fashion though, we picked through the burnt remains for nuggets of meat in the kind of frenzied, primal display that can only take place among good friends. That is why I bring you pasta.

The Fregola Sarda is a toasted Sardinian pasta with an earthy, nutty flavour, made by rubbing with the hands to form crumbs (‘fregare’ apparently means ‘to rub’). It is immensely toothsome and satisfying – a pure carb hit to help me on my way to that extra half stone. I mixed it with some roasted aubergines, peppers and a few stray spears of aspargus.

For the wild garlic, a big thank you must go to The Food Urchin, who has been kindly supplying the food blogging community with a seemingly endless supply of plants from the bottom of his garden. A handful of leaves make fantastic pesto, with none of that raw garlic edge you get when using more than half a clove in the regular variety.

Determined not to let the rib fail get us down, we took inspiration from the flames for dessert – bananas flambéd in rum with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Classic hot and cold and sweet caramelised goodness. The remaining rum went into mojitos, which we enjoyed while sprawled on sofas, cradling our over-stuffed bellies and bickering over a board game. There may even have been dozing at some point. Someone bring me a pipe and slippers.

Fregola Sarda with Roasted Vegetables and Wild Garlic Pesto

1 packet fregola sarda
3 bell peppers (I used two red, 1 yellow)
1 large aubergine
4 spring onions, just the green parts really, sliced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Wild Garlic Pesto

1 handful wild garlic leaves, well washed
50g pine nuts
50g parmesan
Olive oil (about 100ml)
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice

- Preheat the oven to Gas 6/200C
- Cut the peppers into wedges and the aubergine into inch cubes. Spread the peppers and aubergines out on different oven trays then drizzle each with olive oil and season. Roast them for about 30 minutes or until soft and slightly charred. Allow to cool then chop to desired size.
- Cook the fregola sarda according to packet instructions (about 15 minutes in boiling salted water)
- When the pasta is done, drain and mix with the vegetables then add the sliced spring onions.
- Make the pesto by either putting the wild garlic leaves in a blender with the pine nuts or crushing them together in a pestle and mortar (good for stress relief). Then stir through the grated parmesan, lemon juice and some salt and pepper. Taste and adjust as necessary (add more cheese, seasoning, whatever). Stir the pesto through the pasta and serve.

Simon Hopkinson’s ‘Week In Week Out‘ is a strong contender for the title of ‘my favourite cookbook ever’. He makes use of so many beloved ingredients, with recipes that make my heart skip a beat and my thighs quiver in fear every time I look at them. A book for the calorie counter it ain’t. Nor the vegetarian. The squeamish can also forget it, as Simon is a huge advocate of nose to tail eating. All these qualities combine to form a sumptuously photographed, mouth-wateringly carnivorous (there’s also a lot of fish) and very British cook book.

The book begins with this salad, showcasing one of my favourite smoked beasties – the eel. I love that rich, oily texture, which works well with crisp, streaky bacon and a sinful beurre blanc. This is the first time I’ve attempted this sauce at home and I was surprised at how easy it was although again, not for the faint hearted.

As I’ve been growing in confidence with wine tasting recently, I wanted to have a go at matching some wine with the eel. I chose a wine (an Austrian Grüner Veltliner), based on a vague memory of a Twitter conversation with Dan from Bibendum. I also asked the man in the shop, just to keep all bases covered and he agreed enthusiastically so I went ahead and bought it.

It turned out that Grüner was an excellent match for the eel – quite a bit of acidity to cut through the richness of the salad, notes of peach and grapefruit with a peppery finish. I also thought I detected a bit of floweryness (that’s an acceptable wine description, surely?) on the nose. There, I said it. My first blogged attempt at wine tasting. Now I nervously anticipate your comments.

I may lack confidence with the wine, but I will boldly say that you should make this salad. It is smoky, soft, crispy and buttery and immensely good for you (mostly psychologically). And, dare I say it, your experience may be further enhanced should you pair it with a glass of Grüner Veltliner.

Rowley Leigh’s Smoked Eel and Bacon Salad (serves 4)
(from ‘Week in Week Out’ by Simon Hopkinson)

1 small salad frisee (the inside, yellow bits). I used curly endive
A squeeze of lemon juice and a tiny splash of light olive oil to dress the above
Salt and pepper
200g smoked eel fillets, sliced very lengthways as thinly as possible
8 rashers of smoked, streaky bacon, grilled until crisp
1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped chives

For the beurre blanc
2 shallots, very finely chopped
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons white wine
4 tablespoons water
250g very cold, fine quality unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Salt and freshly ground white pepper

- Make the beurre blanc: using a small stainless steel or enamelled pan, combine shallots, vinegar, wine and water. Reduce over a very moderate heat until almost no liquid is left. Then, reduce the heat to as low as possible and add the butter one chunk at a time (using a small whisk), until it is all incorporated. It should look like light, slightly jellied custard. Season and keep somewhere warm (but not actually on the heat).
- Separate frisee into thin leaves and dress with the lemon juice, oil and seasoning. Arrange evenly on the plate as a base for the salad.
- Arrange the eel strips on top, the bacon bits around the edge and then spoon the beurre blanc ‘in and around’. Garnish with the chopped chives.

Is it just me, or does anyone else spend their time in the pub this way? Debating important and potentially life-changing conundrums such as – ‘pork or beef?’ (if you could only eat one for the rest of your life), ‘tomato ketchup or brown sauce?’ (in a bacon sandwich, naturally) and now this – the probability of turning out a decent, oven-baked scotch egg*. Instinct says it can’t be done, but then I started wondering – maybe we should be giving the baking a chance? Just how well could they really hold up against traditionally fried counterparts? There’s only one way to find out for a geek like me.

I used a recipe from Paganum’s food blog, fitting because they also supplied the meat (me gushing about them here) and followed the basic gist, swapping parsley for sage and employing a cheeky little clingfilm method for the assembly.

Lay out a meaty bed for your hard-boiled egg on a piece of clingfilm.

Plonk the egg in the middle.

Gather up the sides and squish the meat around the egg.

And, they are ready for a good egging and crumbing…

…like so. Except, FAIL #1: I didn’t have enough oil for deep frying and so had to shallow fry and cross my fingers instead. They looked great, an excellent golden colour, so I carefully spooned them out to let the excess oil drain off.

Then an excruciating wait (at least three minutes), before I finally gave in and cut one open. Only to find…raw sausagemeat – oops. I made the sausage layer too thick, leaving it still uncooked in places. Either that, or the shallow frying method failed me. Probably a bit of both (FAIL #2).

So, they go in the oven with the baked eggs anyway, which basically ruins the experiment. In the interests of all being right and good however, here’s the results.

As you can see, the oven baked egg looks anaemic in comparison to the fried and it doesn’t have the same calibre of ‘crust’. That said, those baked eggs are pretty damn crispy anyway (I turned them during cooking) – still immensely satisfying. And inside?

The baked is on the right in this picture and I can honestly say, no difference whatsoever within the crumb – both as perfectly juicy and delicious as the other. So all things considered, there ain’t much between them but you’re going to go for the fried, right? Right. Because the golden crunch is important dammit! All of which means that here we have yet another example of why you don’t bother making a low fat version of a high fat snack. It’s never going to be the same, you’re missing the point.

And so what advice can I actually pass on after all that fuss? Don’t eat three scotch eggs all to yourself, that’s what. Not all in the space of an hour anyway. The after effects are not desirable and include nausea, guilt and an extra inch on the waistline. On the upside, the taste and texture is out of this world – a totally different experience to those supermarket fakes – yucky egg mayonnaise inside grey, textureless flesh (God knows what that’s made from), and don’t forget the suspiciously hued crumb.

Next time, I’ll either stick with the frying or try misting the baked eggs with oil to brown them up more. I’ll also be having another bash at making home made salad cream to go with them, although I won’t be using this recipe, which needed so much adjustment on my part, it’s too complicated to pass on.

In the meantime, Chris has made some pork and apple ’sausages’ with the leftover meat, which will later be transformed (I am told), into a toad in the hole, with onion gravy.  Considering Chris’s gift for making perfect Yorkshire puddings, this is a very exciting prospect for my tummy – not to mention perfectly suited to the unusual winter weather!

* Yes I realise all three of those examples involve pork.

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.

So there we were, me with trowel in hand, Chris brandishing the half a grow bag with the potato plant sprouting forth – putting it down on the table as if we were about to chop it’s head off or something. We cut through the grow bag and start pushing fingers into the earth, searching for potatoes – keep searching, keeeep searching…..

It turns out our first mighty strong potato plant managed to produce all of five (ish) potatoes, poor thing! With hindsight I think it would have produced more had we left it another couple of weeks after the flowers died. Still, I must say – the flavour of those few potatoes was fantastic!! We savoured every bite – all two of them.

So, I was a bit cocky about the potatoes – but they looked so healthy! Anyway, we have another plant so there is still hope for the crop. I used Anya potatoes for this salad in the end – they have a nice waxy texture – and mixed our measly offerings in too. You can see one of them on the left of the picture above. Fight for it?

The flavours in this salad are wonderfully punchy – salty, umami-packed salami (umami-salami, umami-salami), finely shredded spring onions and that salsa verde. It’s a nice peppery variation with the watercress that’s around right now – and just think of all those extra vitamins! Oh, go on – think about them…

When we get around to digging up that other plant (aka, pulling it out of the grow bag) – I’ll take some pictures so that you can all have a good laugh admire our bountiful harvest!

New Potatoes, Crispy Salami & Watercress Salsa Verde

New potatoes
Salami Slices (I used German), cut into strips
3 spring onions, finely shredded

For the salsa verde

50g watercress
2 cloves garlic
10 anchovy fillets (the brown, salty kind)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Juice of 1/2 small lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
1 small handful capers
1 small handful cornichons (baby gherkins)
1 small handful each basil leaves, parsley leaves and mint leaves
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard

- Cook the potatoes until just tender, drain and set aside in a serving dish.
- Add the salami slices to a hot, dry pan and cook until crispy. Drain on kitchen paper.
- Add the garlic, watercress, herbs, anchovies, cornichons and capers to a blender and pulse to a coarse paste. You can do this by hand if you like, or with a pestle and mortar. Add the lemon juice and/or mustard to loosen if necessary so you can blend it properly. Decant into a bowl and add any remaining wet ingredients, loosening it with the oil to the desired consistency. I left mine quite paste-like this time.
- Add some salsa verde to the potatoes, mix in the salami and sprinkle over the onions.