The Kitchen Diaries

A pot-roast

bird and a

new cheese

On grey January days we must make our own fun. Today is a flat day that only seems to come to life when I go shopping, returning with bags of Italian lemons complete with their bottle-green leaves, craggy lumps of Crockhamdale and snow-white Ticklemore cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy and a cheap pheasant from Borough Market. There’s only two to feed, so a pheasant does nicely here. People get down about this time of year, but even today there were fat little partridges, clementines heavy with juice, and bunches of narcissi to cheer us up. There is good stuff if you are prepared to go and find it.

A pot-roast pheasant with celery and sage

The pheasant’s lack of fat means that we need to find ways of keeping its flesh moist during cooking. The time-honoured way is to wrap the bird in fatty bacon. Fine. But I don’t always want the intrusion of that particular flavour. Another way is to let the pheasant cook in its own steam. In other words, a pot roast. What you get is plenty of juicy meat that tastes of itself and plenty of clear, savoury juices.

a pheasant – plump and oven-ready

butter – 2 thick slices (80g)

garlic – 4 large, juicy cloves

celery – 3 large stalks and a few leaves

new potatoes – 12 smallish

sage – 6 decent-sized leaves

white vermouth such as Noilly Prat – 250ml

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Wipe the pheasant and remove any stray feathers, then season it thoroughly with salt and pepper.

Melt half the butter in a deep casserole, one to which you have a lid. You want it hot enough to brown the bird but not so hot that it burns too quickly. Put the bird in the hot butter, letting it colour heartily on all sides. When the skin is a rich gold, remove the bird, pour away the butter and wipe the pan with kitchen paper (the trick is to wipe away any burned butter but to leave any sticky goo stuck to the pan).

Whilst the bird is colouring in the butter, you can peel the garlic, trim the celery and cut it into short (2cm) lengths, wash the potatoes and either halve them or slice them thickly, depending on their size.

Melt the remaining butter in the pan and add the potatoes, letting them colour lightly. Then introduce the garlic, celery pieces and the sage and celery leaves and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the vermouth, bring to the boil, letting it bubble for a minute or two, then return the bird and any escaped juices to the pan. Cover with a lid and transfer to the oven for thirty-five to forty minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven, take off the lid and gently split the bird's legs away from its body, nicking the skin with a knife as you go. Return the bird, legs akimbo and without the lid, to the oven for five minutes.

Remove the legs, then remove each breast in one piece. Put a leg and a breast on each of two warm plates, then divide up the potatoes, celery and their juices.

Enough for 2

January 29

A hot salad

from the

leftovers

and a clear,

aromatic

soup

There are a few slices of pheasant left, scraps actually. They will do two for supper with some hot onion chutney I found in the cupboard and a plate of boiled potatoes, sliced and fried in hot olive oil. At the last minute I decide to toss the cold cuts with the hot fried potatoes, a couple of spoonfuls of the chutney and a bunch of watercress. It looks a bit of a jumble on the plate, but eats well enough.

A clear, hot mussel soup

The point is that this is a clean-tasting broth, hot and aromatic. If you wish to add fish sauce or even soy sauce, then do, but I suspect the recipe will lose its pure, simple flavours. The coriander is essential.

mussels in their shells – 1kg

light chicken or vegetable stock – 800ml

a small, hot, red chilli

the juice of 2 limes

a little sea salt and sugar

a handful of coriander leaves

Scrub the mussels thoroughly, tug out any of the fibrous ‘beards’ that may be hanging from their shells and discard any that are broken or open. I always squeeze each mussel hard, pushing the shells together tightly to check they have some life in them. Any that refuse to close when squeezed or tapped on the side of the sink, or any that seem light for their size, should be discarded.

Tip the mussels into a large, heavy pot over a high flame and add a splash of water. Cover them tightly with a lid and let them steam for a minute or two, till their shells are just open and the mussels are quivering and juicy. Remove them from the heat the second they are ready.

Bring the stock to the boil. Cut the chilli in half, remove its seeds and chop the flesh very finely, then put it in with the stock, together with the lime juice, a pinch of salt and the same of sugar. Turn the stock down to a simmer.

Remove the mussels from their cooking liquor, pull the flesh from the shells and drop it into the pan of stock, with a little of the mussel juices. Roughly chop the coriander leaves and stir them into the hot soup.

Enough for 2

January 30

A sausage

hotpot and

a citrus tart

The air is again clear and cold, and there are paper-white narcissi in a bowl on the table, filling the kitchen with their gentle, vanilla smell. Winter at its purest. This is the sort of day on which I like to bake – a cake, a pie, a tart perhaps. I enjoy making pastry, though rarely do, each time adding as much butter as I dare, just to see how crisp and fragile I can get the crust. Today I want something fresh, with a clean bite to it, a dessert to make everyone smack their lips. I decide on a lime custard tart in the style of a tarte au citron. The lime zest cuts through the cool air. The warm smell of baking pastry wafts into the rest of the house. Heaven. Half way through baking, I check the tart’s progress, only to find the pastry case empty and the citrus filling forming a lemon-coloured pool on the baking sheet. I pile the whole damn failure into a basin (and later eat it in secret after everyone has gone home) and start again. This time I make absolutely certain the pastry case has not the faintest hole or crack in it before I pour in the filling.

Sausages with salami and lentils

A rough-edged casserole that gives the impression of having been cooked for hours but is pretty much ready to eat in forty-five minutes. You could put it in the oven if you prefer, in which case you should let it cook for about an hour at moderate heat. This is the sort of food I like to put on the table at Saturday lunch, with a bowl of rocket salad by the side. Then you can swoosh the salad leaves around your plate to mop up the last bits of tomatoey lentil sauce.

onions – 2 medium

olive oil – 2 tablespoons