In praise of smoked eel

One of the most delicious things I ate over the last week or so was also one of the simplest. At Moore Wilson's I found pieces of smoked eel, and they were remarkably cheap - just under $14 a kilo. The piece I bought was about $5.
           I think the low price probably reflects the amount of work you need to do to use this delicacy - carefully pulling out all the long bones (pliers are a help), then removing all the little backbones and the skin. But once you've done that, it's plain sailing. I found this recipe online, and chose it because I had the pink peppercorns, the dill and the horseradish, and I liked the idea of combining those ingredients with the eel.

Smoked eel pate
250g smoked eel, with skin and bones removed
1 tsp pink peppercorns, crushed
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1Tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
2 Tbsp commercial horseradish cream
75g unsalted butter, softened
2 Tbsp cream cheese
salt and freshly ground pepper

Flake the eel into the bowl of a food processor. Add the peppercorns, lemon juice, dill and horseradish cream, then process to form a rough textured paste. Then add the butter and cream cheese and process again to form smooth pate.

Check seasoning and add to taste if necessary (use white pepper if you want to avoid the tiny specks of black pepper, but I don't think this matters.) Shape neatly (it will set to become very firm) and chill in fridge till set.

To serve, take out about 15 minutes ahead of time. Make thin slices of dry toast, or use crackers. (I used Vogel's very thinly sliced bread - it's a bit hard to get, but it makes lovely toast to go with the pate.)

I served the eel pate alongside guacamole as a starter. I didn't realise it was going to set so firmly, or I would have probably made it into a neat shape for slicing, rather than putting it in a bowl. But it tasted the same and it looked very pretty. The horseradish gives it a subtle kick, and the pink peppercorns add a delicate fennel-like flavour.

The afterlife of a smoked chicken

I love smoked chicken, but I tend to buy it only when I want to feed other people. Last weekend our book group had its Christmas pot-luck lunch, and smoked chicken came into my mind. A big salad, I thought, with my garden lettuce, beans, asparagus, red pepper, mango and smoked chicken, with mayonnaise on the side. Lovely colours, lovely flavours. And lo! It appeared - and was quickly devoured.
      But even though there were eight of us, and a smoked chicken looks quite small, I had enough chicken left over for my dinner that night and I still hadn't eaten it all. So the next day I pulled all the remaining flesh off the bones and cooked up the carcass with an onion, parsley and some juniper berries to make a delicious smoky flavoured stock. I left it in the fridge overnight, then transformed it into a spaghetti sauce for a quick dinner.
        It was very good, but a little too liquid. I had deliberately cooked extra spaghetti, so I put the leftover portion into the sauce, still in its pot, and put the whole thing in the fridge.
         Next night I got it out for a second dinner. The pasta seemed to have absorbed most of the sauce. I heated it up in the microwave and it was absolutely superb.

Smoked chicken and mushroom sauce for pasta

For the stock
1 smoked chicken carcass
1 onion
Parsley sprigs or one large stalk with leaves (preferably flat-leaved)
6 juniper berries
1 chicken stock cube
Bring 3 cups water to boil. Add chicken carcass, quartered onion, juniper berries and parsley. Boil gently for about 30 minutes. Watch it and if the liquid is getting low, add more boiling water. Check seasoning. Strain off stock and leave in fridge overnight. Skim off fat.

Spaghetti or fettucine
Required amount for 2-3 servings

(I find 75g is enough for one serving, but you may want more)

Cook in boiling salted water till al dente. Drain and keep warm in the hot pan while you make the sauce.

For the sauce
(Enough for 2-3 servings)
20g butter
20g plain flour
50ml dry white wine
200-250ml stock
Juice of half a lemon
4 button mushrooms, thinly sliced
About 200g leftover smoked chicken, cut into small pieces if necessary
Melt butter in small heavy based pan. Off the heat, stir in flour rapidly to avoid lumps. Cook over gentle heat for 2 minutes, storing constantly. Off the heat, stir in half the stock. If you can be bothered, heat the wine to reduce it a little then add to sauce. (I must admit, I just put it in - the sky didn't fall and it tasted fine.) Return to gentle heat and stir until it thickens. Add the lemon juice, the thinly sliced mushrooms and a little more stock and cook, stirring, until the mushrooms soften a little and it reaches the thickness you want. (If you would like to try the  overnight pasta method, it should be quite runny.)
    Stir in the leftover chicken and heat it through. Check seasoning. You probably won't need more salt as the smoked chicken is quite salty, but you can grind in some black or white pepper if you like.

You can eat the sauce over the pasta immediately, or you can try keeping the sauce quite thin, putting the cooked pasta in it and keeping it till the next night, then reheating it. Magnifico.

La salade lyonnaise véritable

I had three salades lyonnaises in Lyon. They were all a little different. When I got back I looked for the recipe online, and found at least a dozen different versions, all claiming to be la salade lyonnaise veritable. I remember reading how Julia Child had great difficulty establishing which recipes were the correct ones for various French classic dishes. She doesn't include a recipe for salade lyonnaise. Elizabeth David does, but it's totally different from any of the versions I found, or ate, since it consists solely of a collection of little dishes of various bits of animals.
             Some basic ingredients do emerge, and these match what I ate in Lyon. First, some kind of slightly bitter salad greens - in earlier times it used to be dandelion, known in French as pissenlit or "wet-the-bed", but today it's frisée (also called curly endive or chicory endive) and/or French endive itself (also called chicory). We bought glorious great discs of frisée when we were staying in the Loire Valley. I'd already taken leaves out of the centre of this one when I remembered to take its photo.

It can have shallots and garlic, too, though opinions vary. Next come bacon, croutons, and a poached egg (though some recipes prefer soft-boiled or even hard-boiled egg). Finally, a sharp mustardy dressing.

Here's an adapted translation of a French recipe which seemed to me to be the closest to the salade lyonnaise I enjoyed most in Lyon. The French use soup spoons as a measure rather than dessert spoons or tablespoons.

La salade lyonnaise véritable
(Serves four)
1 large bowl of washed salad leaves - frisée, endive, dandelion
4 very fresh eggs
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 soup spoon of olive oil for cooking
200g bacon (this should be lardons, thin square sticks of fatty smoked bacon, but these are very hard to get in New Zealand. The best substitute is a thick piece of smoky bacon cut into small dice.)
4 dry slices of good white bread (e.g. sourdough or a French country loaf) crusts removed, cut into dice for croutons 
1 soup spoon of Dijon mustard
2 soup spoons of good quality red wine vinegar
5 soup spoons of extra virgin olive oil
black pepper
fresh bread to serve on the side

Gently heat the first measure of olive oil in a frying pan. Cook the garlic and shallots until soft. Remove from pan. Cook the bacon gently until crisp. Remove the bacon and add the bread. Toss and fry gently until golden brown on each side.
Make the dressing: whisk together the mustard and vinegar, then slowly add the second measure of oil, whisking steadily to make a creamy dressing. Add the pepper.
Some recipes recommend adding the vinegar and mustard to the pan with the garlic and shallots before adding the second measure of oil. Or you can add the garlic and shallots to the mixed dressing, or simply add them to the salad leaves.
Toss the dressing with the salad. (You may not need to use it all, so add it little by little until there is just enough to coat the leaves very lightly.) Scatter over the bacon and croutons. Divide the salad between four plates.
Quickly poach the eggs, making sure the yolks are still runny, and drain them carefully. Place one egg on top of each pile of salad. Serve with fresh bread.

I made this for an American friend using iceberg lettuce, as I knew she wouldn't like the bitter greens - and I don't think even Moore Wilson has frisée (though I'll check). I made do with ordinary bacon, and as I didn't have the right kind of fresh bread I added more croutons than usual, . As I'd made them with my friend Ali's home-made foccaccia, they were delicious.

Time to make that Christmas pudding...

Amazingly it's Christmas pudding time again. It's galloped up on me very suddenly because I was away for so long. But it looks as if I'll have a goodly gathering of friends this year, for the first proper Christmas dinner here since Harvey died, and I want everything to be as it should. (I did make a pudding last year too, but that was to take to my sister's in Auckland.)
             So today I hunted through the pantry for the ingredients and filled in the gaps with a quick trip to the brilliantly well stocked dairy over the road (I didn't need much, I like going there, and it was much quicker than walking or even driving to the supermarket). I made a daring decision to replace half the raisins with "craisins", dried cranberries, just for a change. Now it's all mixed and sitting in its bowl to stand overnight, ready for steaming tomorrow.

           The pudding featured in the terrific review by Susette Goldsmith in the Listener on 26 October, so I have to quote it: 

"Sandwiched between are tales from Auckland, Albania, London, New Caledonia, France and Wellington, as rich and complex as her Christmas pudding (one of 24 chapter-related recipes included)."

You can also find the recipe on my blog here.

I know I have posted much on here lately - it's taken me a while to get back into the swing of cooking. But next week I'll write about one of the nicest dishes I ate in France, the celebrated salade Lyonnaise.

English cheese and New Zealand reviews

I've been in England since 12 October. Several friends have asked how I'm finding the food after France. I have to say that, as I've been staying with friends, I've been relishing home-cooked breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Bacon! Mashed potatoes!  And tonight, smoked trout and mackerel! In Cheshire my lovely hosts produced many good things, including a glorious board of entirely English cheeses - Leicester, Cheddar, English Brie, Stilton... all of them excellent.

Now I'm in London for the first time since 1995. Today my friend Sandra took me to the cafe at the top of the National Portrait Gallery for breakfast. There's a stunning view over nearby London, including the lovely wreathed dome of the National Gallery. I eschewed eggs Benedict, etc in favour of nursery food: two boiled free-range eggs with a generous pile of toast soldiers drizzled with Marmite, and a pot of proper loose-leaf tea. Bliss. On Thursday I'm going to have dinner with a friend at another venerable London institution, the Spaghetti House in Goodge Street. What will life serve up next, I wonder? Meanwhile the New Zealand Listener has published what I consider to be an excellent review of my food memoir in the 17 October issue. Very satisfying!

The joy of a flat white and Kiwi chat in Lyon

On a long trip like this, especially when you're on your own, there will inevitably be a low point where you just want to hide in your room. Mine struck  early this morning. Then I opened Facebook and found a message from Rosamund Morris James. With her French husband, she runs Cafe Mokxa - La Boîte au Cafe, a Kiwi coffee shop in Lyon with properly roasted coffee. Mary Evans had posted me about her. So here she was, inviting me to come in this morning when she'd be there. I googled her location and saw it wasn't far from the metro stop I mastered yesterday, and it was on the way to Croix Rousse, the Hill of Work - silk weaving in particular - which had seen brutally repressed revolts for a minimum wage. I wanted to go there to see the museum. So I instantly felt better, got myself organised and trotted off, looking forward hugely to a Kiwi chat and hoping desperately that they would have flat whites.

       And there she was, with a warm welcome and her perfectly trained baristas turning out the finest coffee in Lyon. It's not just me saying that - the cafe is already well known and has been getting rave reviews. Now they're planning to open their own bakery as well. I had a wonderful time talking to her - and yes, having not one but two flat whites. With ferns on top.

See for yourself at http://www.cafemokxa.com

Luscious Lyon

After two and a half weeks I'm still a little bemused by French food. I understand the conventions, and have a reasonable grasp of the complexities of what you can eat where and when. But what I hadn't reckoned on is the Lyonnaise determination to ensure that there is not just enough food, there is too much food ( well for me, anyway). Up until now I've always been confident that French restaurant " formules" worked perfectly well because the helpings were small, so you go for that appealingly affordable three- course option. Not any more. The helpings in Lyon are enormous. I am having to learn to leave some, no matter how delicious. I had resolved to have small dinners but tonight I ended up over in Old Lyon, the world heritage listed  area of largely Renaissance buildings on the further bank of the Saone - I'd just been on an excellent guided walk there. 

It's filled with restaurants all claiming to be "veritable bouchon Lyonnaise" , renowned for low-priced menus of Lyon classics. So I decided I had to stay there for dinner, as it would be my only chance - it's too far to go back to at night from the hotel. 

    But where to go? I did what the French do - wandered round reading all the menus. One caught my fancy, Les Paves de Saint Jean. It looked cheerful and well-tended ( in Lyon red checked tablecloths don't mean " tourist trap" as they do in most cities) and  offered a three-course "Menu Bouchon" for 15 euro, considerably less than I'd been paying over near my hotel in Presqu'ile. But most importantly, I could see how to put together a dinner of homely Lyonnaise classics I would really like, without going near tripe, etc. And they had fillettes of decent wine - 250 ml, two glasses - for 6 euro. 

     It was only 6 pm, too early for dinner - they don't start serving till 7 - but the patron heard me asking the waitress and called out that for me, they could manage 6.30. So I sat happily in the warm light evening with water while the staff had their dinner. Then came the food. First, a Salade Lyonnaise - very like a Caesar salad but without the anchovies or Parmesan - it has a delicious tangy dressing all its own. I had been dreaming of poached eggs, and it comes with one.

Then the local sausage, with a lovely rich sauce (i tasted cloves in it, I think) and plain steamed potatoes, exactly what I wanted. 

There was, as usual in Lyon, far too much, and I did manage to leave some, assuring the staff that it was tres bon but just un peu trop ( sorry, blogger doesn't do accents on the iPad) - especially as I wanted to leave room for dessert. They were all maison (made on the premises) and I was ushered in to look at them all, under their big glass cloche or in the fridge, and choose. The praline tart was said to be tres typique, so I had that. A luscious texture, very sweet but satisfying. 

This time I didn't mind taking photos. I told them I was a food writer from New Zealand ("Ah" said the waitress, " i thought i could hear a little accent", which i took as a compliment). Then i took two more outside. While I was having dinner, a steady stream of French customers arrived. I've made a few foolish decisions about food in France, but tonight everything was perfect.