I rarely come across fresh anchovies, so when I spotted some in a local fishmonger (Moxon’s in East Dulwich), I greedily snapped up three big handfuls, cheap as chips at £2.something for the lot. Being an anchovy obsessive, the thought of eating them in a new way was almost a bit much for me; I couldn’t get home fast enough. “You can cook them just like whitebait” the fishmonger advised. “Really?” I countered, “their heads look a bit big to eat.” I think we must have had our wires crossed somewhere because every recipe I looked at told me to remove the heads and gut them. In the end, I turned to that fount of all food knowledge, The Larousse Gastronomique and it didn’t let me down, providing  clear instructions on how to clean and fry my most favourite of fishes. We were off.

The obvious accompaniment to the anchovies would be tartare sauce, but I’d picked up a jar of preserved limes recently at one of my best-loved local stores – Khan’s in Peckham. The sign above the shop never fails to make me smile: “walk in and see the variety”. Thing is, Khan really ain’t kidding. If he sells beans then he sells every kind of bean you can think of. Same with oils, halloumi style cheeses and, to my sheer delight, pickles. So many different kinds of pickles. I had to check myself and make a pact to buy only one pickle a month, otherwise things could get very out of hand. As you move towards the back of the store though, aside from meeting with every kind of dried pulse imaginable, things start to get a bit weird. I’ve never been right back there and I’m not sure if I might get swallowed up, into some kind of Peckham Narnia. One day, one day.

Anyway, the limes. They basically taste like the lime pickle you would eat with a curry, but milder and without the heavy spicing, so I decided to use them in place of lemon juice or other acidity in my mayo. I also chucked in a birds-eye chilli from the garden, a good fat clove of garlic and some parsley found lying around looking a bit sorry for itself. A bit of elbow grease and light chopping later, and a fine dipping sauce was created.

The anchovies were beheaded and gutted before being gently wiped clean. The Larousse instructs not to wash the anchovies, as their flesh is very delicate; I found this to be very sound advice. They were then dipped in milk followed by seasoned flour and fried until golden brown. We piled them high on plates, squeezed a generous amount of lemon on top and dunked and dipped into the spicy lime mayo. They didn’t last long. Crispy yet large enough to retain a bit of soft flesh inside, they were like whitebait but ten times better, what with being anchovies and all. We devoured the lot in minutes and I’m actively seeking out my next fix.

I now have a large jar of limes of course which I’ve been steadily working my way through. I’ve had success with a piquant dressing for halloumi mixed with some chilli and mint and I’ve plans for a stuffed mackerel this weekend which will incorporate them also. After all, I need to get through the jar just so I can justify buying my next pickle.

Deep Fried Anchovies

First, prepare your anchovies by cutting off their heads and removing the guts. It is easiest to remove the guts with your fingers. Do not try to do this under the tap as the flesh of the anchovy is very delicate, and will break. Chris also had some success twisting the head off, in which case the guts tend to come out at the same time. Just get in there and give it a go I say. If they need further cleaning, give them a little wipe.

Begin heating some oil for deep frying. Tip some plain flour onto a plate and season generously with salt and pepper (fresh anchovies are not as salty as the canned ones) and also have a bowl of milk to hand. Dip each anchovy first into the milk then roll in the seasoned flour. Deep fry, in small batches and drain on kitchen paper. Pile high and serve with the spicy mayo.

Spicy, Preserved Lime Mayo

Take two egg yolks and a fat garlic clove crushed with a pinch of salt. Mix these together in a bowl. Next take about 250-300ml oil of your choice (I often use light olive oil (it needs to be light) but I sometimes also use groundnut, as it is flavourless) and begin adding this to the yolk mixture, a few drops at a time, whisking each few drops in until they are fully incorporated before adding the next. Then, once the mayonnaise starts to get a bit thicker, start adding the oil a little bit faster, whisking all the time. Keep adding oil to the desired thickness (if you think my mayo looks a bit thin in the above picture then you are right, I ran out of oil).

If the mayonnaise splits, take a fresh egg yolk (in a fresh bowl) and begin adding the split mixture to it, a little at a time, as you did with the oil. This should bring it back.

Stir in some chopped parsley, chilli, 1 finely diced pickled lime and black pepper and add more salt if necessary. You could just use some lime or lemon juice or something like white wine vinegar if you do not have the pickled lime.

As soon as the first asparagus appears I jump on it and consume as much as possible during the short 8 week season. It’s partly the delicate flavour which I find slightly addictive, partly the firm texture and the way it goes SO well with ingredients like ham, egg and cheese – but I’m sure my fascination owes a lot to novelty. I know that once the season is over, I can’t eat these delicious spears again until next year. Have you ever tried out of season, imported aspragus? It’s a load of rubbish. Asparagus from Peru? What?!

I’ve been lovingly gazing at the new quiche dish since I bought it, patiently waiting for the asparagus to appear. I bought the dish a few weeks ago in a charity shop, for a few pounds. Bargain. I buy a lot of my dishes in charity shops actually – you have to be in the mood though, it’s quite a skill rummaging through all the stuff you (really) don’t want just to find that diamond in the rough. I have the whole process down to a fine art now. It’s akin to the Londoner travelling mentality, which, if you are not familiar, involves every man and woman for themselves. Well, we’re not all like that of course, but there is an element of it in every Londoner – you know it’s true! It’s just that some of us can still manage to turn the corners of our mouths upwards into a SMILE and others have fogotten the art. Some of us can also manage to be polite and considerate, but now I’m sounding preachy so I’m going to stop.

So, quiche. I used pancetta in this one, together with some melting Gruyere, sautéed shallots and vibrant radish and pea shoots. Everything is held together with an unctuous dairy mix and finished with a fine grating of fabulous pecorino, a gift from a friend recently back from Italy. This pecorino is strong and studded with peppercorns.
I wanted something to cut through the richness of the quiche and thought this might be a good time to make my entry for Pixie and Rosie’s new event, ‘Putting Up‘. My entry is basically a variation on a previous pickle recipe that I loved so much I couldn’t wait to make again. I’ve just adapted it to the season. So, here we have a courgette, radish and kohlrabi pickle. It’s slightly mustardy and sweet-sour with cider vinegar and a touch of sugar. Its like a variation on Italian pickled veggies. It gave me an excuse to break out the Kilner jars again after last years chutney and pickled onions. I also used a good pinch of the ‘long peppers’ I bought at The Real Food Festival, crushed in the pestle and mortar but you can easily leave them out.

They have a sour taste and are quite different to a regular black peppercorn, fragrant and strong. I’ve mentioned before that they are catkins, isn’t that cool? The pickle will keep for months in the fridge – at least I think it will but I don’t anticipate it lasting that long.

Courgette, Radish and Kohlrabi Pickle

600ml cider vinegar
100g sugar
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
1.5 teaspoons black mustard seeds
1.5 tablespoons salt

20 red radishes
3 medium courgettes
2 small kohlrabi
1 very small onion
1 small sprig of dill, finely chopped

2 regular kilner-type jars or alternatives, sterilised (to sterilise your jars, wash them in hot soapy water and then rinse under very hot water. Put into a preheated oven (140C/275F/Gas 1 – minus any rubber seals – for 10 minutes).

- Cut all the vegetables into strips by hand, with a julienne peeler or using a grater.
- Put the veg in a large bowl, add the salt and cover with cold water. Stir to dissolve the salt and leave for around an hour or so. Drain the veg and pat them dry.
- Put the dill, vinegar, sugar, mustard and mustard seed into a saucepan and gently heat to a simmer. Let simmer for a few minutes and then cool until warm.
- Pour the liquid over the vegetables then decant everything into jars. Refrigerate.

Spring Quiche

Short crust pastry (I used ready-rolled, shocking! And I can’t remember how much I used, it was enough to line a 10″ quiche dish – sorry)
150g pancetta, cubed
13 asparagus spears, trimmed (hold at each end, bend gently until they snap, discard the woody end)
2 largeish shallots, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
A small handful of radish shoots and the same of pea shoots. You could substitute any leafy shoots here, or peas.
A small handful of chives, chopped
150ml milk
150ml double cream
3 large eggs
100g Gruyere cheese, grated
A grating of parmesan (optional)

A 10″ quiche or flan dish

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4

- Roll out the pastry to cover the dish and carefully line it, patching up any holes, even the smallest, really well.
- Line the pastry with baking paper or foil and fill with baking beans, uncooked pulses or uncooked rice.
- Cook, middle shelf for 15 minutes. Remove, take out the paper and baking beans and prick all over the bottom with a fork. Cook 10 minutes more and allow to cool while you make the filling. turn the oven up to 190C/375F/Gas 5.
- Fry the shallots with the pancetta in a dry pan for a few minutes. Add the garlic for 30 seconds or so to soften, be careful not to burn.
- Mix the milk, cream, eggs and chives together with some black pepper (no salt, the pancetta is salty).
- Add the pancetta and shallot mixture to the pastry case and spread evenly. Sprinkle the shoots on top and then the cheese. Pour over the egg mix and arrange the asparagus on top, pushing down slightly to nestle them in. Grate some parmesan over if using.
- Cook, middle shelf for 30-35 minutes until golden brown and just set in the centre.

Phew! Ok so there’s been a few problems here at Food Stories HQ. If you visited this site in the past few days then you would have found well, nothing actually. Things went badly wrong and help had to be called in. Anyway, as you can see we are back up and running and there’s been a few improvements along the way. I even chucked in a little modification for you lovely people – you can now click on the header to go to the home page instead of that silly little ‘home’ button. I bet you’re excited…….

So lets get right back into it shall we? I’ve been hankering after a veggie burger for ages now and itching to try Heidi’s ‘ultimate‘ version where she cunningly uses the burgers themselves in place of the bun. I was all set up to try this but realised that with all my fillings, I likely wouldn’t be able to pick it up. I’m a girl that likes to hold my burger so you can fork off if you think I’m using cutlery.

I used chickpeas for the burger body but I wanted to give it a slight Asian slant and use some of my beloved soy beans too. I seasoned it with soy instead of salt, a sprinkling of chilli flakes, added a finely chopped red onion, some coriander and lemon zest. They were delicious.

The key to lifting a burger from great to super-great though, is all in the accompaniments. I like something piquant in my burger, but craved something a bit more exciting than the ever-reliable gherkin. Yet another kohlrabi arrived in the veg box this week that begged to be prepared differently. The inspiration came from a conversation with a Vietnamese friend who told me that her mum pickles it. I combined it with some perky fresh radishes and steeped the veggies in a mixture of cider vinegar, sugar, wholegrain mustard and a touch of salt. I’m now actively seeking out kohlrabi and radishes rather than waiting for them to come to me – it’s that good. Perfect in the burger too but it’s also going to be great with fish and cheese. I had some other lovely bits and bobs lying around, leftover from previous meals – chicory, avocado and purple sprouting broccoli. Everything went in. You could obviously just throw in whatever floats your boat.

Veggie Burgers (makes 6)

1 small red onion, finely chopped
140g soy beans, cooked and drained
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1-2 eggs, beaten (you may not need all of the beaten eggs)
The crumbs from one large slice of bread
A sprinkling of chilli flakes, to taste
1 small bunch coriander, chopped
Zest of 2 (unwaxed) lemons
A dash of soy sauce
Black pepper
Oil, for frying
Polenta, for crusting the cakes

- Pulse the soy beans and chickpeas in a blender until it looks like really lumpy houmous. Put the mix in a large bowl and add everything except the eggs. Mix well.
- Beat the eggs with lots of black pepper and add enough to make it firm enough to shape into 6 burgers. Spread the polenta on a plate and pat each burger into it until each is well covered. Put the burgers on an oiled baking sheet and chill in the fridge for half an hour (or longer).
- Shallow fry the burgers until golden brown and crispy on both sides.

Radish and Kohlrabi Pickle

1 medium kohlrabi, cut into strips (julienne if you fancy!)
Around 20 small radishes, cut into strips as best you can
1 small onion, finely sliced
10 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 garlic clove, crushed

- Heat the vinegar, sugar, salt and mustard and garlic in a pan until the sugar is dissolved.
- Pour over the veggies and let steep for 2 hours or more.

When a celeriac crossed my path this week I immediately thought about this bread recipe. Whatever you think about Delia, she has given us some great recipes and this is one of them. Her celeriac and Lancashire cheese bread is so easy to make and so delicious that it just doesn’t make any sense. You mix everything together in a bowl, then fashion it as roughly as you like into a sort of ‘splodge’, bake it for a while and when you open the oven something magical has happened.

We are moving house soon and baking fresh bread seems such a treat when we are so busy. An assembly job is the order of the day and we come up with this uber-ploughman’s. Chris headed off to the local deli where he picked up some Stilton, cooked ham and some Cornish Yarg, which we used in the bread in place of the Lancashire cheese that Delia suggests.

The Yarg is really beautiful to look at with the nettles encasing the rind and the taste is mild and creamy at first with a tanginess at the end. We crumbled the cheese into the bread mixture, nettles and all, and it was perfect. A word of warning though, don’t be tempted to increase the amount of celeriac even a little bit, as this makes the dough too wet and the bread will not cook properly.

We started the day with a double bacon and egg sandwich; a full day of British eating, in honour of our dreams (now shattered!) of rugby world cup victory. We even opened the first jar of fruity chutney that I made a couple of weeks back (recipe here). I made the chutney exactly as described except I needed to simmer mine for an extra hour to get the right consistency. The chutney is quite sweet but nicely so and is really improved after a couple of weeks sitting in the cupboard, becoming much richer and spicier.

We assembled everything on my virgin chopping board (from the Cheltenham Kitchener, possibly my favourite shop in my hometown) along with some oak leaf lettuce dressed in a mustard vinaigrette and some pickles (I like Garner’s).

I have made a batch of pickled onions this year (a present for my Dad) but I’m a little worried about the results as I found I needed twice as much vinegar as the guidelines called for. I’ve never made them before and I had no idea of the commitment involved. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the process (apart from the peeling), I just wasn’t expecting it. Let me warn you now, the smell of onions is very difficult to remove from your hands, even several days later! It is also important to know that the boiling vinegar not only produces an aggressive, soporific odour, it actually removes oxygen from the air and so you need to make sure the kitchen is well ventilated. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t be collapsing on the floor, clutching your throat and coughing, but you do need to open the windows.

In the excitement, we forgot to add the last of the summer tomatoes that have been ripening (very slowly) on the windowsill for the past few weeks. Some steamed or roasted beetroot would also have been perfect. I think the Ploughman’s lunch may actually be one of my favourite all time meals, an English version of an antipasti, meze or even tapas. I also have a slight obsession with food on wooden boards. It just seems more of an event. We actually managed to polish off all the food you see on that board, washing everything down with a glass or two or three of cider.