Char siu

Char siu, usually translated as barbecue pork, is a tasty addition to a meal and sometimes I just have char sui and rice with some pickles. Just to mix it up a bit the pickles are either kimchee or sauerkraut.

It's dead easy to do. The trick is the marinade and glaze. Here's the ingredients for the marinade. The brown powder is five spice and it's what makes the pork taste Chinese. The predominant flavour is star anise. Sechuan pepper is next and whatever the other 3 spices are they are mainly drowned out by the other 2. You can put some minced garlic in if you like. I find most of the garlic flavour disappears in the cooking though.

I never measure but if you do equal quantities of wine*, vinegar** and soy sauce and about half quantity of sesame oil***. A good dollop of honey will give the sweetness but don't overdo it or it will burn. (the gin just happens to be there but chuck some in if you want, it probably won't do any harm)


Pork fillet is best for this and it just happened to be 1/3 off in Waitrose today. The bit I'm using is about 3 quids worth. I warm the marinade to disolve the honey and put the meat into the warm marinade because it soaks in quicker. 1 hour is almost enough with warm marinade, 2 would be better and a minimum if the marinade is cold. Turn it often and make sure all the pork gets a good dose.

Take the meat out and drain it well. The best way to cook it is hanging in the oven. My oven isn't tall enough so I've halved it. It's difficult to see but it's hung by poking it through the shelf and passing a metal barbecue skewer through it. 190 is a good temperature in my oven. Let it cook for 10 minutes or until the marinade is starting to dry out, Take it out and roll the hot meat in the marinade. Put it back in the oven. Repeat. When you put it back in this time turn it so the bottom is at the top to even out the cooking. Keep an eye on it and roll in the marinade again if it starts to dry out. In total it needs about 40 minutes at 190. It should still have a bit of a spring in it when you start it cooling. If it's hard you have probably overcooked it. It will be fine, just not as juicy. Try to do better next time.


Take a couple of tablespoons of the left over marinade and mix in 2 teaspoons of sugar and a tablespoon of extra sesame oil to make a glaze and brush or spoon it over the meat while it is still hot. Some of you will be squeamish because the marinade has been in contact with the raw meat. I'm not. Make up some fresh if you want to.

Cool it on a rack, it's much easier to slice when it is completely cold and slicing it hot means it can dry out. All you need to do then is eat it.

I'm adding some of this to a lahksa tonight so I've done fairly manly slices. for eating with rice I'd probably have gone with 2mm slices.

I prefer to eat mine cold. If you go to a proper Chinese restaurant you need to ask them not to reheat it if you are not Chinese, they will assume that as a white ghost you eat your meat hot. It doesn't taste the same reheated. Likewise crispy pork. The texture and flavour is all wrong when it is reheated IMO. (the end bit and a couple of slices might be missing from this picture. Well I had to try it didn't I?

*really this should be shaosing cooking wine but I didn't have that but happened to have a cheap pinot grigio. Cider works just as well.


** if you want to be authentic go for chinese red vinegar. Or add a few drops of red colouring. The stuff you get in Chinatown is bright red.

***there's no substitute for the pure sesame oil. Make sure it says pure.

Rack of mutton

The first weekend of the month is the farmers' market in Walton-on-Thames and I go a bit mad and splurge on some local produce.

Today the mutton caught my eye. I decided the half leg at £18 was a bit much just for me so I got  rack of rack, a much more reasonable portion of meat.

Mutton can be a little chewy if not treated right, cooked long and slow, so I decided to slow roast it with some root vegetables (also from the market.) So here is the the meat:

And here are the Prepped Vegetables. Half A Swede, Some Carrots And An Onion. To These I Have Added Some Rosemary And A Few Sprigs Of Rosemary from The Garden. 

I'm going to do the roasting in two stages. Long (2 hours) at 180c completely sealed in foil and a quick blast at 220 for the meat just before serving. The veg will be blitzed to make a sort of compote to go with the yorkshires that  I am going to cook with it.

A shout out for mussels and clams

I am lucky to be fairly close to a good fish stall on Kingston Market. He usually has a fair selection of fishy and gamey goodness to choose from.

Top of the popularity stakes for me recently has been his shellfish. A kilo of mussels or a half kilo of clams have been a fiver this winter, apart from during the winter storms I have been able to find them most weekends.

If you've never prepared them before, it can be a bit daunting. Tales of salmonella, botulism and all sorts of nasty thing go around. In fact if you follow the rules, it's probably less risky than eating chicken.

So what are the rules:

• Get them from a fishmonger, they will have been well flushed with clean water. They are filter feeders and if they are in water with bad things in it they will tend to concentrate them because that's their food. Mussels in particular are shallow water beasts and the polution mainly affects the shallows. Clams tend to live in deeper, cooler water.
• Make sure they are alive before you start to cook them. This means they must be closed. Any that won't close up if you give them a tap with a knife handle should be discarded. It means they are dead and could be starting to decompose.
• Remove as much of the debris from the shells as you can by scraping. There is no telling what is lurking in the wormcasts and barnacles.
• For mussels remove the beard. This is its attachment to the rocks or ropes that they grow on.
• Throw away any with broken shells. Again, they may well be dead or dying.

Wow, so how many are left out of a dozen when you've thinned them out. Well, as I say, I have a good fishmonger and even then I check them out before I buy them looking for dryness and open shells. On average I throw away up to 10 out of a kilo of mussels. When it gets over 5 I have a moan. Clams seem to respond better to being out of water, sealing themselves and mostly they are all alive.

OK so I've got a pile of nice healthy live mussels, washed and scraped. How are they cooked. Basically they are steamed. The base that you use to make the sauce is up to you but here are a few of my favourites:

• White wine or cider, onions, garlic, cream is optional but don't put it in until after the mussels have cooked
• Tomato (passata), garlic and chilli (that's what is in the picture at the top)
• Butter and garlic simples

The sauce is prepared first and when it is nicely boiling the mussels tipped in a covered. Don't overdo the liquid, the mussels will make a bit. It takes about 10 minutes for them to open and cook. Beware overcooking. Have a look at then the flesh should have firmed up and lost any sliminess. Thats it. Pile them on pasta or eat with some bread.

I treat clams a little more gently. Just butter and garlic and olive oil in a big frying pan. When the garlic is softened chuck in the clams and toss them for a couple of minutes until they have opened. The very best thing to have them with is spaghetti and lots of black pepper.

By far the best way to eat shellfish in the shell is to get your hands in there and pick them up. If you want to be a bit french you can use and empty pair of shells to pick them up and pick the flesh out.

Enloy!

Pigs cheeks

 These are pig's cheeks. Currently in Waitrose they are 6.99 a kilo so not expensive as meat goes. Still more expensive than they used to be but people are realising how good they are. I'm not sure what to compare the texture to. It's sticky, I can't think of any other way to describe it. There is just under half kilo there. Three quids worth. For me they are best deep fried. They can also be salted, baked and glazed.

 That's for another day perhaps. Today I'm going to do them deep fried with sage and onion. First of all you have to get the egg to stick to the meat. A good coating of flour does this. These were juicy enough to take the flour without any other moisture. If they were drier I'd have run them under the tap. As you can see I'm using stuffing mix to coat them. If they were sold as seasoned breadcrumbs they'd sell other than at Christmas.

 So here's a beaten egg and some stuffing mix ready to do the coating. Nothing clever there.

Oh I should have said before get your deep fat fryer warmed up. 170 is about right. Too hot and you will explode the coating off the meat. Not hot enough and the internal water will not boil giving the fat the opportunity to enter the meat.

 Coat each piece in the egg, then the stuffing mix. Make sure the egg coats all the meat, it is going to seal it while it is frying. Don't overload the fryer, you will drop the temperature too much. I do 3 at a time letting the temperature recover before adding the next one. They need to just brown. That's about 10 minutes.

 Meanwhile get the oven warm. This will finish the cooking. 130 is fine.

 This is what they look like straight out of the fryer. I let them drain a but before I put them in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes. Cook them on a rack, If they sit in their juices they will have a soggy bottom. Turn them at half time.

You could eat them now but I'm having mine cold tomorrow with a hearty potato and onion hash. These are fantastic picnic food too. You can also slice and pan fry them and serve them as a starter with a poncey salad. You don't have to tell your guests where they came from until they have complimented you on your culinary expertise...