Moussaka: loving comfort for summer

We've had some crazy weather this year. Winter was one of the most wintery imaginable and spring was a scorcher. We even had a barbecue on Easter Monday when we spent a wonderful day in the garden. Summer, not surprisingly, has so far been a mixed bag. On some of the more dismal days I've yearned for classic comfort food and we've had casseroles and shepherds pie (and Simon Hopkinson's baked pasta with porcini), but this week I particularly fancied moussaka.

I have very close friends (including a godson) in Athens who I've been thinking about a lot lately and, over the years, they've treated me to some magnificent Greek home cooking. 

As well as amazing seafood and salads, memorable meals have included little pies filled with courgettes and dill and, of course, moussaka. It's the kind of dish the older mothers cook for the younger generation to enjoy after a day at work. As is customary in hot climates, dishes like this are served warmish (even tepid). I find moussaka a bit oily at this temperature and much prefer it hot. Until this week I hadn't realised quite how much work went into this dish – it took me about at two hours of hands-on cooking! In Greece, I'm sure they're much more nifty, but, even so, moussaka is a real labour of love.

I used a recipe from the Leith's Cookery Bible which tasted very similar to moussakas lovingly prepared by Xeni, my godson's grandmother. I doubled the amount of sauce and tweaked the recipe accordingly. 

Moussaka 

(serves 4)

olive oil

675g lean lamb, minced

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, crushed

3 tomatoes (I used 3 tablespoons of chopped tinned tomatoes)

150ml dry white wine

150ml pint water

salt and freshly ground black pepper

a handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped

a pinch of grated nutmeg

1 medium aubergine

2 large potatoes, peeled

15g dried breadcrumbs

30g butter

30g plain flour

1 bay leaf

600ml milk

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp double cream

110g Cheddar cheese, grated

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan and brown the meat in it. Tip off any excess fat. Put the meat in a bowl. Add the onions and garlic to the pan. Cook, stirring for 5 minutes. Return the meat to the pan. If you're using fresh tomatoes, dip them in boiling water for 10 minutes, peel, chop and add to the meat. Or spoon in the tinned tomatoes. Add the wine, water, salt, pepper, parsley and nutmeg and cook over a low heat, stirring often, for 30 minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated.

Preheat the oven to 170°C/Gas Mark 3. Cut the aubergine into thin slices, salt lightly and leave for about 30 minutes for some of the juice to drain out. Rinse and dry well on a cloth. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until just tender. Cool and slice.

Heat a little more oil in a frying pan and fry each slice of aubergine on both sides until well browned, but not burnt. Put the aubergine slices in the bottom of a large casserole (or oven-proof dish). Sprinkle on the breadcrumbs. Now tip in half the meat mixture. Put half the sliced potato in next, seasoning with salt and pepper, then the remaining meat, and then the rest of the potato.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour, add the bay leaf and then the milk, and stir constantly until it comes to the boil. Season with salt and pepper and leave simmering while you mix the egg yolks and cream in a bowl. 

Pour the sauce on to the egg yolks and cream, stirring all the time. Add half the cheese. Pour the sauce over the casserole. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top.

Cook in the preheated oven for 1 hour, then test with a skewer; the whole mass should be soft. The top should be browned too, but if not, finish off under the grill.

Wine

While any number of Greek wines would have been ideal (notably juicy ripe reds from Nemea or their modern, elegant rosés), we didn't have any to hand. However, our bottle of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Côtes du Rhône Villages 2010 (produced for them by Chapoutier, £6.79) hit the spot perfectly with its supple, ripe, peppery fruit and balanced acidity. 

Simon Hopkinson's baked pasta with porcini

Last Friday a new cookery series started on BBC1, without much fanfare and rather anonymously titled The Good Cook. On closer inspection, this was the TV debut of Simon Hopkinson. Although Hopkinson was a notable chef (at Hilaire in South Kensington, before working for Terence Conran at Bibendum), he is widely regarded as one of our greatest cookery writers with his books Roast Chicken and Other Stories and Second Helpings of Roast Chicken.

I was delighted to finally see Hopkinson on the box as, on a personal level, his understated manner has always appealed to me. It is filmed in his West London flat which I recognised from an interview by Lynn Barber that the Observer Food Monthly published a few years ago. Despite some slightly jarring slow-motion sequences, it is a delightful programme. It covers quite a lot of ground in 30 minutes, including five recipes and whistle-stop visits to Italy for porcini mushrooms and Collioure in France for anchovies; I'd have preferred 45 minutes or even an hour in his interesting and relaxing company. (As my husband had been putting our daughter to bed while I was watching it, I happily sat through it again with him as we'd recorded it.) He is open and personable, reminding me of another great natural cook, Nigel Slater. He could be his slightly more reserved uncle or older brother.

On Saturday evening I cooked one of the recipes from the programme, following the recipe on the BBC website for baked pappardelle with pancetta and porcini. I used penne instead of pappardelle and doubled the quantities as I (wrongly) thought there wouldn't be enough for us. It was a bit involved, using several pans and taking longer than we thought, but the results were delectable.

Baked pasta with porcini
(serves 3–4)
1 litre whole milk
40g dried porcini mushrooms
80g butter
50g plain flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper
200g pasta (ideally pappardelle, but penne worked well)
100g pancetta (we used a pack of cubetti, rather than sliced rashers)
10 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5.

Warm the milk in a large pan until it just starts to simmer. Add the dried porcini and remove from the heat. Allow infuse for 10 minutes while you wash the pan. Strain the milk through a sieve into a bowl, using the back of a ladle to extract all the liquid. Set the mushrooms aside.

Make the sauce by melting the butter in the large pan, then stir in the flour and continue stirring over a low heat for 3 minutes. Pour the porcini-infused milk onto roux in the pan and whisk vigorously until smooth. Continue cooking over a low heat for about 10 minutes until the sauce thickens and starts to bubble. (This was quite tiring.) Lightly season with salt and pepper and set aside (I kept stirring it to stop a skin forming or you could cover the surface with clingfilm).

Meanwhile, cook the pasta and lightly fry the pancetta in a small pan (Hopkinson uses thinner slices pancetta which probably wouldn't require this step). Drain the pasta and combine well with the sauce, pancetta and porcini.

Butter an oven-proof dish and pour in the pasta mix. Sprinkle grated Parmesan over the top – plenty as we did, or reserve some for serving – and bake for 30–40 minutes until golden-brown and bubbling around the edges. Serve piping hot. We had ours with rocket, a deliciously tangy contrast to the rich pasta.

Wine
Earlier in the week I'd been to a fascinating tasting of Mediterranean wines at Theatre of Wine. I was tempted to buy a couple of the wines and I thought one of them, Volubilia Gris 2010 (Domaine de la Zouina, £8.50), a delicately coloured Moroccan rosé would be interesting with the rich, creamy, earthy pasta. This rather chic wine has a fresh, poised structure, aromatic red fruit with hints of exotic spices which, to be honest, would go with any number of dishes. It would also make a mouthwatering apéritif.

Sweets for my sweet

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Busy, satisfying and a bit sticky. On Saturday, just after spending three days in Burgundy, I was helping out at my daughter's school summer fête, manning a stall selling jars of sweets to raise funds. We'd collected used jam jars from other parents which we filled with sweets and decorated with gingham fabric. Even if we say so ourselves, they looked pretty tempting!

Some sweets had been bought, such as chocolate eclairs and jelly strawberries, but others I'd made at home: smoked salt tablet, rocky road, chocolate fruit and nut clusters, peppermint creams and honeycomb. It turns out I love making sweets – I'm becoming a dab-hand with my sugar thermometer – as long as I can give most of them away. My self-control is a work in progress. Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book (BBC Books) includes some useful recipes, as does Indulgence: Petits Fours, A Fine Selection of Sweet Treats (Murdoch Books), but here are a couple of recipes.

Peppermint creams
My good friend, Mrs M, recently shared a recipe for peppermint creams. She uses egg white, combined with peppermint essence and sifted icing sugar to make a malleable dough. As I was making mine in advance, I decided, after a bit of online research, to use water instead of egg white. I kneaded together the ingredients, starting with the sugar and 2 teaspoons peppermint essence, adding enough water to make it smooth and pliable. You can shape them by hand, but I rolled out the dough to a thickness of about 5mm on a surface dusted with more icing sugar and used a small shot glass to cut out the mints. Leave them to dry out on a cooking tray covered with greaseproof paper. The dough goes a long way. A 500g pack of sugar yields about 60 mints if you keep gathering up the offcuts, kneading and re-rolling. I didn't dip my mints in dark chocolate as per Mrs M, but almost certainly will next time.

Honeycomb
This was much more dramatic and like a school science experiment. Firstly grease a 20 x 30cm baking tray and line with greaseproof paper. Place 325g caster sugar, 2 tablespoons honey, 80ml liquid glucose and 80ml water in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Over a low heat, dissolved the sugar, stirring well with a wooden spoon, increase the heat to medium and bring to the boil. Once it is bubbling away, remove the spoon and leave to boil until it reaches 150°C/300°F (hard crack stage). This takes 8 to 10 minutes and the colour will darken to an amber tone. Once the caramel is ready, you need to quickly stir in 1 tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda. Pour the foamy caramel into the prepared baking tray and leave to set. Cut into pieces or break into shards. Honeycomb can, of course, be dipped in chocolate (I prefer to use 70% dark chocolate). Sprinkling it over ice cream wouldn't be too bad either.

Gewürztraminer: a tart with a heart

A few days ago I had an interesting experience with a wine. It was a bit like reluctantly meeting up with an old acquaintance. My husband had recently bought a bottle of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Alsace Gewürztraminer and I'd been putting off opening it for fear of it being too overwhelming and cloying. When I first started drinking wine I loved Gewürz, with its distinctive exotic personality; I also wore Yves Saint Laurent's Opium for a while, perhaps for similar reasons. As the years have gone by, it's as though Gewürz has become the antithesis of what I'm looking for in wine; I shy away from overly ripe, alcoholic wines. Another problem is that in recent years sugar levels in Alsacien wines have increased considerably and their labelling often fails to acknowledge this. Combined with Gewürz's low acidity, the results can be too flabby. 

Anyway, late last week I was cooking a spicy Thai inspired stir fry with prawns, plenty of fresh ginger, garlic, fish sauce, chilli, lime and coriander. It seemed the obvious choice for the Gewürz. We opened the wine and my first few sips reminded me just what a tarty tasting wine it is. This example (from the Cave de Turkheim and the 2009 vintage) ticked all the boxes: heady boudoir rose petal perfume, lychee fruit, Turkish Delight, slightly honied and off dry, with a faint touch of spice on the finish. Full on, unsubtle stuff and tasting like a cliché. 

However, as dinner continued, I felt increasingly happy to be back in Gewürz's familiar company. Although I prefer drier, more restrained examples like those produced by Trimbach and Blanck, this was, nevertheless, an unexpectedly enjoyable wine. Its opulent, voluptuous structure was a seductive foil to the spicy, tangy food, creating the effect of a deconstructed Thai curry, tempering the heat in the same way as coconut milk. Ideally, I'd like more mouth-cleansing freshness in a wine, but this had just enough to stop it tasting too cloying. The back label suggests that it would also be good served as an apéritif. I think it's too big and overwhelming for this, although possibly with some spicy nibbles like wasabi peas.

I'm now grateful that my husband picked up a bottle that I'd have passed over. It was good to spend some time again with a sassy and big-hearted old friend with such an enormous personality. 

Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Gewürztraminer 2009

Price: £7.29

Photo by Ralph Steiner: Gypsy Rose Lee and her girls, 1950.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

It's been just over a month since our meal at Dinner and since then I've enjoyed observing (especially on Twitter) what a magnet this restaurant has become, but also how very much people seem to enjoy it. It seems to be a rare example of somewhere living up to the hype. I found it easy to make the booking online (albeit for 9.30pm), but I did make an effort to do this just before the key reviews came out. A number of years ago I ate at the Fat Duck (loved the bacon and egg ice cream) and at the Riverside Brasserie in Bray Marina (another Heston project in the early Noughties and where I first had his triple cooked chips), but I haven't made it to the Hind's Head. I was, of course, absolutely delighted to hear that Britain's most exciting chef was opening a restaurant in London, headed by Ashley Palmer-Watts, allowing us to enjoying his food without trekking out to Berkshire.

Trying to keep the excitement levels under control, we arrived at the restaurant on a buzzy Friday evening and were struck by the calm, friendly welcome. We were steered to the bar where we ordered glasses of Grüner Veltliner before almost immediately being shown to our table. Having done my homework, I had a good idea of what I wanted to order. My husband was happy to go along with these choices, so we ordered the already fabled Meat Fruit and Broth of Lamb for starters. Our main courses were Black Foot Pork Chop and Sirloin of Black Angus, with a side dish of buttered carrots with caraway. Tipsy Cake and Brown Bread Ice Cream were what we settled on for dessert.

As much as we'd have loved to spoil ourselves, we selected a good value bottle of Côtes du Rhône 2008 from Roger Sabon to go with the main courses and inquired about something to partner the Meat Fruit as we still had some Grüner left. A glass of Vouvray les Argiles 2009 by Chidaine was suggested which turned out to be a bit too dry and mineral for the dish, despite its elegance and verve.

As the food is served, you realise how the deceptive the menu is, almost to the point of being dead-pan. There is also a lot of tantalising historical information about the dishes and the original source materials, with practically a bibliography on the reverse of the menu. We've kept ours as it is fascinating.

The Meat Fruit (c 1500, mandarin, chicken liver parfait and grilled bread) is a remarkable dish. Slice into this 'mandarin' and the rich, satiny parfait is revealed beneath a fine orange flavoured jelly. So clever. The sourdough toast that accompanied it was perfect. Fabulous.

My husband's Broth of Lamb (c 1730, slow cooked hen's egg, celery, radish, turnip and sweetbreads) was a revelation.

I find myself using descriptions I'd otherwise use for fine wine for this dish. On the palate it was light, subtle and quite springlike, with fresh, lifted flavours, especially of the celery and radish. However, on the finish (once you'd swallowed) the flavour of the broth itself took over – long and complex, with a delicious savoury intensity that went on and on. The textures were amazing: there were small deep-fried breaded nuggets of sweetbread and a slow-cooked egg, decadently gelatinous, as well as the crunchy vegetables. We asked how long the egg had been cooked for – one hour at 61°C in the broth, apparently. It was wonderful.

When main courses were served (which we were planning on sharing), the Black Foot Pork Chop (c 1860, pointy cabbage, Robert sauce) was placed in front of my husband and I had the Sirloin of Black Angus (c 1830, mushroom ketchup, red wine jus and triple cooked chips).

My husband was bowled over by the chop (my preference, if I'm honest) and I thought the sirloin was another remarkable, deeply satisfying dish and absolutely packed with flavour. Indeed, too much flavour (especially the powerful mushroom ketchup and the red wine jus) to be able to taste the chop properly. High praise, though, from hubby who described it one of the best dishes he'd ever eaten.

However, the sirloin was a dream-come-true for meat lovers, as it was finished off with three pieces of bone marrow, topped with toasted crumbs. Another amazing combination of flavours and textures. Even the carrots were spectacularly good, beautifully scented with caraway and the chips were, of course, superb. By this point we both felt that this was jaw-droppingly good food (although I wish I'd tasted the chop before the steak). The Côtes du Rhône stood up admirably to this onslaught – its vibrant, youthful spicy fruit, complex underlying minerality and sleek, supple tannins ideal for our hunks of meat.

We moved on to desserts – Tipsy Cake (c 1810, spit roast pineapple) and Brown Bread Ice Cream (c 1830, salted butter caramel, malted yeast syrup). We'd already caught site of the pineapples twirling sedately on the magnificent spit in the kitchen, with spiral grooves cut into them, looking like something from a grand country house kitchen. The result was delicious – luscious, juicy fruit with a dark caramelised exterior. The cake was a bit baba-like, but with a tighter texture. It had a crunchy sugar coating and was doused with boozy light caramel sauce. Overall, the dish was beautifully balanced – the richness firmly kept in check by the pineapple's acidity.

The Brown Bread Ice Cream was yet another unexpectedly good dish that seemed to comprise of caramel in different forms. The ice cream sat on a fudgy base, with chewy chunks of salted caramel (with a savoury complexity), crunchy pieces of toasted oatmeal and little pieces of diced apple. Again, exciting flavours and textures were conjured up using surprisingly commonplace ingredients. This was cooking of the highest order.

We shared a glass of Szamarodni Tokaj 2006 by Szepsy (the sommelier's recommendation – she explained that she used to work at Nobu in Budapest). This complimented both desserts nicely, although we'd have been just as happy with the much less extravagantly priced Pacherenc du Vic Bilh by Brumont.

We had a little 'freebie' of white chocolate ganache with a caraway biscuit for dunking. The Tokaj was particularly good with this and helped stand up to what was pretty much fudge in a cup, like dulce de leche. I found it a bit too rich at this point in the evening (but still managed to polish it off).

It was an extraordinarily good meal, fairly priced given the quality, at about £100 per head (though watch those wines!). The restaurant felt relaxed and well in its stride and not at all self-conscious. Highly recommended.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park
66 Knightsbridge
London SW1X 7LA
Tel 020 7201 3833
http://www.dinnerbyheston.com/

Sourdough bread: cooking doesn't get more satisfying than this

I've been a keen cook for longer than I care to admit, as I started baking cakes on Sunday afternoons from the age of about seven. Personally, I've always found it very satisfying. I guess it taps into something quite profound. We eat to live, so I strongly believe that cooking is an important life skill; I also consider it an expression of love. It is also a wonderful way to unwind after a stressful day. When I hear people blithely admit to not being able to cook, I feel they are missing out on one of life's great pleasures. There is something soulful and primal about cooking and I like to think it helps foster a healthy relationship with food.

Since I started regularly baking bread earlier this year, my satisfaction levels have reached new heights. And, for me, baking sourdough bread is the most profoundly satisfying cooking imaginable. Creating your own starter is exciting enough, but there is something startlingly satisfying about making such a fundamental foodstuff. You can't believe that you have created such a wondrous thing! And merely from flour, water and salt. The fact that it makes you feel like a magician is probably a sad reflection of our modern food buying habits and the industrialisation of food.

Here is how I bake a sourdough loaf. They all come out a bit different as, sometimes, I don't let them prove sufficiently, but I'm working on my patience. A sourdough loaf takes about a day – but please don't be put off by this. There isn't much work involved, just the initial mixing together and the odd light knead, but, as you are using natural yeasts, time is the key factor as they take much longer to ferment or rise than commercial yeasts. This is why sourdough bread tastes so much better.

Sourdough bread (based on 'white leaven bread' from The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard)

200g white leaven at 18°C
325g cold water at 16°C
500g strong white flour
1 and a half teaspoons good sea salt crushed in a pestle and mortar
vegetable oil
semolina for dusting the baking tray

You will also need a clean, damp tea towel, a second clean tea towel, a large baking tray, a craft knife or Stanley knife, a small water spray bottle.
Optional, but helpful: a scraper, a flour dredger, a basket for proving the dough.

1. Before you start it's worth preparing a surface in your kitchen as your dedicated 'kneading surface'.

2. In a large bowl weigh out and mix together the ingredients, except the oil and semolina. This is best done with your right hand (if you're right-handed), squeezing it through your fingers to get rid of any lumps of flour. Use your left hand to scrape the dough off your right hand as the dough is very sticky. Cover the bowl with the damp cloth and leave for 10 minutes. Wash your hands.

3. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on your lightly floured 'kneading surface'. I keep my flour dredger handy to prevent the dough from getting too sticky to move around. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds (about 12 quarter turns). Try to keep the dough as sticky as you can bear, otherwise it will end up more dense and less likely to have the distinctive open, bubbly texture. Shape into a ball and leave covered on the surface while you clean out the bowl and lightly oil it.

4. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, place in the bowl and leave covered for 10 minutes.

5. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 30 minutes. (The proving periods gradually get longer and you can get on with other things in the meantime.)

6. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 1 hour.

7. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 1 hour.

8. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 2 hours.

9. Prepare your dry clean cloth by rubbing generous amounts of flour into one side of it. You'll need plenty of flour to stop the dough from sticking. Floured side up, use it to line a bowl or, ideally, a proving basket (I use a cheap plastic one with a 30cm diameter – see below). Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds, shape into a ball and, seam side upwards place into the cloth-lined bowl or basket. Either fold the cloth over the dough or cover it with your damp cloth and leave for 5 hours or for as long it takes to almost double in height. This obviously depends on the weather and how warm it is in your kitchen.

10. Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7. Dust the baking tray with semolina. Upturn your loaf onto the tray. With the craft knife, cut a four line grid shape or a circle into the surface of the loaf. Before putting it in the oven, spray the surface with water. Be generous with the water and also spray into the oven. The moisture helps the loaf to rise.

11. Bake the loaf for about 45–50 minutes. Check to see whether is has cooked by knocking on the bottom – it should sound hollow. Allow to cool on a wire rack. As this makes a large loaf, it's worth cutting it in two, wrapping one half in plenty of clingfilm and freezing it for another time. I do like to prolong the satisfaction!