Be The Jam

Having sworn for some time that I'd buckle down and start writing up recipes for my so-called cookbook, I came up with the drunken idea last week to dedicate one evening a week to "request cooking". By this I mean that one of my housemates or guests gets to nominate what they'd like to eat that week - or name an ingredient or a theme or somesuch - and I'll write up the results; I'll also be doing the nominating some of the time ... My intention is to rely less on my favourite cookbooks and branch out into, well, just making things up as I go. And maybe stealing a few ideas from the internet, natch.

I was planning to kick off with some sort of fish curry and I couldn't resist looking for inspiration in Nigel Slater's Appetite. (This wonderful book is probably the best "starter" cookbook for an enthusiastic amateur: the recipes are unpretentious and largely straightforward to follow; plus pretty much every one I've tried has been delicious.) Anyway, I started thumbing through the fish chapter and the first recipe was a very simple scallop dish. So the fish curry idea went out the window almost immediately - and my subconscious started thinking about sherry!

The recipe below is basically "according to Slater", though I've added some soft North African spicing instead of fresh parsley. (The spices came from Oxfam's harissa spice mill: a blend of dried chilli, sea salt, caraway, cumin, coriander, garlic and mint.) The scallops should be served with good brown bread to mop up the buttery juices. Tio Pepe [fino] from Gonzalez Byass was a good partner to this course; I think a manzanilla would be a little too tangy - though eminently drinkable whilst cooking, of course ;~D

Even with the bread (and salad), this dish isn't particularly filling - and since it's also very easy to prepare, I figured I could spend some time making a dessert as well. (I don't cook enough sweet things.) Again, the recipe is from Slater with some minor modifications: in this case, the addition of ground ginger and saffron. I wanted to drink Noe from Gonzalez Byass with this but was out of luck; I went for the Lustau Rich Old Oloroso instead, which is a marvellous sherry, though a sweeter wine would perhaps have worked better.

Both recipes served five.

North African Scallops w/ Simple Salad

• 25 small scallops (corals removed)
• 3 or 4 tsp freshly-ground harissa spices
• approx. 75g unsalted French butter
• 2 medium-sized cloves of strong garlic (crushed or grated)
• 150g salad leaves (e.g. rocket, watercress and spinach)
• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp ume seasoning
• 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Coat the scallops with the spices. Melt half of the butter in a large skillet on a high heat. Once it starts to colour, throw in the scallops and cook for two or three minutes. Turn and cook for another minute or two, then remove to warmed plates. Throw out the brown butter and add the other half of the butter to the pan (still on a high heat). As it froths, add the crushed garlic and swirl it around for about thirty seconds. Pour over the scallops and serve.

For the salad, shake the ume, olive oil, sherry vinegar and lemon juice together and use to dress the leaves. Simple!

Ginger & Citrus Sponge Pudding w/ Whipped Chilli Vodka Cream

• 100g unsalted French butter (at room temperature)
• 175g organic unrefined demerara cane sugar
• 2tsp ground ginger
• zest and juice of 1 large orange
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 3 large duck eggs
• 40g plain flour
• 400 ml milk
• 10-12 strands of saffron
• 550 ml Jersey double cream
• approx. 100ml chilli vodka

Soak the saffron strands in the milk. Cream together the butter, sugar and ground ginger until light and fluffy. If you can't be bothered to put this much effort in, use a food processor - or accept that the pudding won't rise as much as it might otherwise (though it will still taste great). Zest the orange and lemon and set aside, along with the juice from both.

Separate the duck eggs: set aside the whites and add the yolks to the creamed mixture. Don't worry if it curdles! Add the flour and milk alternately until the mixture has the consistency of a batter. (This is also more easily done in a food processor.) Stir in the citrus zest and juice.

Beat the eggs whites until stiff - definitely in a food processor! - then fold these carefully into the batter. Pour into a large oven-proof bowl and stand in a roasting tray half-filled with hot water. Bake at 180^C for about an hour until golden and spongy, then allow to cool for five minutes before serving with the whipped cream.

The chilli vodka should be made in advance. For this batch, five small Thai red chillies were sliced open and put in a half-full bottle of Reyka vodka. After four or five days, the vodka was strained - and nicely spicy! Some of this vodka was then whipped with the cream until thick and gloopy.