Magical Mystery Tour: Pork steaks and sour cream mustard sauce

I love how making up recipes is like a mystery. Or more accurately like piecing together the evidence on a crime scene investigation. That crime scene being my fridge come midweek.

Making a mental note (actimel, fat free yogurts, one egg, the old remains of some pâté, some fast wilting thyme and chives, and three quarters of pot of sour cream) I headed to the Sainsbury's at Clapham Junction in hope. You need a lot of hope when you enter the Sainsbury's at Clapham Junction. As with most train station food shops the amount of raw ingredients is minimal (apparently commuters don't cook), so you can never go in with any preconceived ideas of what you are going to make, as odds on they will only have one of the ingredients. It's the magical mystery tour of dinner making. Cut that with that a queue that snakes down almost every spare inch of space in the shop so you cn't actually get to anything, creating your gourmet midweek meal is facing a big challenge.

First stop: do they have any fresh meat left? Fish: hmm it looks a bit dodgy. Chicken: I'm not inspired. Pork! Pork steaks! Only £3! Ok, pork steaks plus fridge contents equals.... Pork with sour cream white wine mustard sauce. Plus classic side: broccoli and new potato crush. Yum.

So with the pork steaks (you could use chops) and about 3/4 small pot sour cream I add:

Handful of new potatoes
Small bunch of thyme
Small head of broccoli
Wholegrain mustard
White wine
5 or 6 shallots









Pop the potatoes on to boil for 20mins while you chop the shallots. Five or six minutes in put on the pork chops and shallots in a frying pan, slosh over some white wine and add some garlic.

The pork steaks need to cook for about 12 or so minutes (turning ever so often), so after about eight add the sour cream, about 1tbsp of wholegrain mustard and some more white wine. Stick on the broccoli now too.

Mix well and let the sauce simmer away while you add some chopped thyme (the best way, I find, to just get the leaves is to hold the sprig of thyme by the chopped off end (bottom) and run your fingers down it to pull off the leaves).

While the sauce is simmering a little bit, prepare the crush (or get a handy sous-chef, the Boy, to do it for you). Drain potatoes and broccoli and put them in the same pan. Add a dollop (about 1/2tbsp aka one dessert spoon) of wholegrain mustard (can't get enough of the stuff tonight - we used Fortnum and Mason's chilli mustard for a bit of an extra kick), salt and pepper and then crush with a fork or masher. Don't go crazy with the masher mind, this is a crush not a mash. Don't pulp your broccoli. Then serve!

PS. For the pun-lovers (and Peter Andre lovers) out there I wanted to call this post 'Mysterious Grill' but sadly I pan-fried the pork...) And... groan.

V (day) tasty...

Everyone who has ever started a new relationship knows you don’t want to reveal your hand to early on. The Boy and I went on our first date a week before Valentine’s Day and, well, we all know that ol’ V-day kind of forces the issue. Do you feign notcalance and not risk a date that night? Or go forth early on into the arena of competitive coupledom with restaurants set solely with tables for two, sloppy PDAs and opportunistic street vendors offering (will he or won’t he buy one?) single red roses. It’s a minefield – too romantic and it’s too much too soon, too little and does he give a shit?

So the Boy's tactic was to try and cram as many dates as possible between 6th and 14th February to see if I was worth a V-day date. Evidently I was as he invited me round to his for dinner. I took this as a good sign: a) he cooked and b) he cared enough to cook for me. The rest, as they say, is history – oh, and he cooked salmon, potatoes dauphanoise and tiramisu, I brought love hearts, and we even managed to finish the lot before his banished flatmates returned.

Since then Valentine’s Day for us have always revolved around cooking. And the Boy cooking. So this year in the spirit of equality we decided to split it. The Boy: brunch and starter. Moi: main and dessert. I even decided to throw in some canapés for good measure. I. Could. Not. Wait. Especially when the boy announced he was off to Borough Market on Saturday....

Brunch was Polenta and Wild Boar Prosciutto baked eggs, quite appropriately from Borough Market cookbook. Plus champagne. Of course.

1 tsp unsalted butter
4 slices of thin wild boar prosciutto (can use parma ham)
2 eggs
25g Gruyere
1 tbsp double cream
1 sprig tarragon
2tbsp polenta
1 spring onion
25g Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 170. Grease two ramekins with butter and line with prosciutto – make sure it complete covers the ramekin and make a wee lip over the edge. Crack an egg in each, sprinkle with grated Gruyere and drizzle with double cream. Scatter over tarragon leaves and season. Transfer to roasting tin and fill it with enough hot water to come up to halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake until the egg whites are set – about 15min. While the eggs are baking, pour 90ml of water in a small saucepan, season and bring to the boil. Gradually whisk in the polenta. Reduce to simmer until thick and creamy, stirring occasionally – about 5-6min. Once at right consistency stir in butter, Parmesan and chopped spring onion (greens and whites). When eggs are set, remove from oven (carefully!) and divide polenta between two plates. Run sharp knife round edge of ramekin and slide out prosciutto wrapped eggs onto the polenta. Delicious. Of course even more so when you’re not cooking and reclining in bed sipping champagne...

Come afternoon and a trip to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose later, canapés are served. Always love a canap me. Blini’s with homemade guacamole and smoked salmon or crème fraiche and salmon caviar. Pretentious, moi?

The Boy’s work was done with escabèche of red mullet (courtesy of Gordon Ramsay's Passion for Seafood) washed down with a very easy-going Alsace Riesling.

Having agonised all Friday (good ol’ four day week) about what to cook, I finally settled on Cod, wrapped in thin slices of crispy potato, crab mash and lobster bisque sauce, served with sapphire, which in all the excitement I forgot to dish up. Ooops.

The cod was wrapped earlier on – potato slices (done with a veg peeler) were pan fried to just short of crisping then wrapped, a few to each fillet, around the fish before heading back into the fridge. The mash simply was fished up with a dressed crab, some cream and lemon juice. The lobster sauce was actually a bit of a cheat – a can of lobster bisque soup pouring in over a sautéd chopped onion and chilli, good slug of brandy, tbsp tomato puree simmered then add couple of diced tomatoes and some chive. Pan fried the potato wrapped cod and serve.

Dessert has never been my fortay so I went for presentation over expertise – Tia Maria and chocolate creams served in cocktail glasses. Which are pretty much just chocolate and cream, oh, and of course Tia Maria.

50g dark chocolate
150ml double cream (plus some more for whipping)
2 tbsp Tia Maria
Cocoa powder (I went for Green & Blacks all round on the chocolate)

Mix cream and Tia Maria in saucepan and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and pour over chocolate (broken in a bowl)

Stir until chocolate melts

Divide between the glasses and cool slightly

Mix some more cream with Tia Maria until slightly thickened and spoon over chocolate mix. Put in the fridge to set (while you cook the main...)

To serve, appropriately, cut a heart in a card and dust with cocoa. Mine was more of a dollop than a dust. According to the boy I should have used a sieve...

Serve with amoretti biscuits... I should have made my own, oh well, maybe next year.

Ooo part twooo: Ostrich

Moving on to the oo-travaganza round two and it was yet another new meat to our kitchen: ostrich. Now I’ve heard great things about this strange bird and it’s more and more in vogue in recent years, but still I had no idea what to expect: is it a bird, no it can’t fly, is it red meat, no it’s ostrich! And a riot of flavours to go along with it: bring it on! (My mother would be proud, once fussy eater reformed).
Serves 2
For the marinade:
Garlic clove crushed
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
½ preserved lemon, flesh only chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
Pinch saffron threads
1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme

2 x 200g ostrich fillets
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
6 small parsnips
For the sauce:
125ml red wine
250ml chicken stock
75g pomegranate seeds
60g fresh raspberries
2tbsp Grenadine (we skipped this)
1 tbsp butter

Plus:
Green pea and artichoke mash
(Fry ½ onion and 2 crushed garlic cloves in butter, add 250g green peas, 250g canned artichoke hearts. Cook for 10mins. Add 125ml coconut cream, simmer for 20 mins, season, blend)
Herbed sweet potato mash
(Boil 500kg cubed sweet potato. Fry 1 crushed garlic clove then add ½ tsp oregano, ½ tbsp thyme, ½ tbsp coriander, ½ tbsp tarrogan, cook til fragrant. Mix in sweet potato, add 150ml milk, simmer for 10, season then mash, mash, mash.)
Garlic potato mash – normal mash with lots of lovely roasted garlic. Remember its ok as long you both eat it. Nice and wiffy.
It’s probably easiest to make these three first and then re-heat a bit.

For the ostrich – mix marinade ingredients and let the ostrich soak it up for 2 hours or so.
Heat butter, brown sugar and lemon juice in saucepan, til melted and dissolved. Bursh over parsnips and pop them in the oven at 200 degrees for 30mins, brush regularly with butter and sugar.
Take ostrich out the marinade and heat marinade over high heat until sizzling, add the wine and stock and reduce. Lower heat to add your fruit and cook for 5 mins. Let it cool down a bit before giving it a whiz in the blender. Strain with a fine sieve into a new saucepan and reduce for a further 5 and then cover to keep warm.
Fry the ostrich to taste – we had ours beautifully rare and tender.

On the plate, here’s the tricky bit for the full fine service look, top with each of the mashes in turn, in flavour, white, orange, green and steady hand arrange parsnips around the stack. Pour sauce around the base and voila. It’s very moor-ish (sorry). ‘Specially that green mash…