beer chicken patties

what do you do with left-over [collapsed] beer chicken? you make beer chicken patties, of course!!

on the night that o made the collapsed beer chicken we carved slices of it and ate it with a gravy made of beer and pan drippings thickened with a little bit of flour. a couple of days later i stripped the chicken of its remaining meat. with the help of my trusty food processor i processed the chicken with a slice of bread, a dollop of mustard and grated cheddar cheese and an egg. i shaped the mixture into thick patties and shallow fried them until the outside was brown and crusty. o and i ate them with toasted four grain bread with a trickle of the left over gravy.

m's version of kedgeree

the first time i ate kedgeree was at my friend emma's place in twenty o two. we were spending the weekend with her mum in southampton. i instantly took to it. what's not to like about rice boiled in curried broth, thick flakes of smoked fish and wedges of hard boiled egg. 

the name of the dish 'kedgeree' sounded oddly familiar. this is because in pakistan we often eat 'kichari', a dish made of rice and lentils. in my house it was usually cooked when someone had an upset tummy. this bland and soothing dish of lentils and rice served with some natural yoghurt helped calm tummies in turmoil. sometimes we'd eat it as comfort food. there is some dispute about the history of kedgeree as some say that kedgeree is an anglo-indian version of this sub-continental comfort food, whereas some say that the scots brought it to india. i personally see the affinity between the dishes but find that kedgeree is a more flavoursome version of 'kichari', and with the addition of cream can be quite a rich comfort food (that's how it is served at the albion caff at the boundary). 

the one i made at home for o and i included fresh haddock poached in white wine with a bay leaf and a few pepper corns. i used the poaching liquid to boil the rice in, adding a hint of turmeric and curry powder to the rice. when it was cooked i added the flaked fish and lots of chopped dill and a little bit of creme fraiche to give it a creamy texture. i topped it with half a boiled egg each.

o really enjoyed it. i made the kedgeree from the memory of its taste but am including sophie girgson's recipe which is quite close to how i made it. i will definitely try adding smoked haddock next time as i can imagine it gives it added flavour. 

sea salted chocolate chip cookies

this is a variation on david lebovitz's 'salted butter chocolate chip cookie'

here is what you need

115 grams of unsalted butter at room temperature

110 grams of demerara sugar 

100 grams golden sugar 

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

100 grams white flour

100 grams wholewheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon flaky sea salt

200 gram dark chocolate bar broken into chunks

1 cup hazelnuts half of which should be blitzed and half should be whole

zest of an orange

blackberry pancakes with apricot brandy and lemon syrup

all stacked up and ready to be eaten

there is nothing i love more than a weekend brunch that extends itself late into the early evening. that is exactly what a, o and i did this weekend. i made a stack of american pancakes with blackberries and an apricot brandy and lemon syrup. 

when i was little pancakes were how my mum used to make me eat eggs. i was one of those children who didn't like eggs (or more correctly the yolks). i hated boiled and fried eggs with a vengeance and remember many a ride to school where mum would glower at me for not finishing my breakfast. then, like all mothers she discovered the perfect way to make me eat eggs by disguising them in pancakes. luckily for her both my brother and i took to pancakes like a duck to water. i loved them sprinkled with powdered sugar and orange juice and thick smears of honey too. there was something charming about plain granulated sugar as well. the pancakes of my childhood were the traditional british ones that are thicker than a crepe but thinner than leavened ones. 

my dad on the other hand likes what we call 'american pancakes' which are slightly raised and most often syrupy. every so often i make these are home. they are like spongy discs coloured brown by the griddle in uneven patches. they aren't delicate like traditional british pancakes and their sponginess demands syrupy sweetness. i like adding a little bit of wholemeal flour to give them density and a more wholesome flavour. and this weekend i added blackberries to the mix. i used the recipe i put up last week  reducing the wholemeal flour to a quarter cup as i found a half a cup meant they don't rise as well.

i made a syrup with two tablespoons of apricot brandy, the juice and zest of a lemon, roughly four and a half tablespoons of sugar and six tablespoons of water. the sugar depends on how tart the lemon is. let the syrup come to a gentle simmer to dissolve the sugar. while i made the pancakes a and o popped open a bottle of prosecco. it had a mild sparkle to it with a peachy floral note and was the perfect accompaniment to the pancakes.

if i can so, i think this is the most perfect batch of pancakes that i have ever made. my mum said they looked like the ones that we had in bisbee, arizona which was a real compliment as those were some seriously good pancakes. they were buckwheat blueberries pancakes so heavily drenched with butter that we didn't work up an appetite until dinner.

whole-wheat pancakes with maple syrup

eva

n came over on sunday afternoon bearing a bottle of champagne, fresh orange juice and a gorgeous orchid plant. the naming of our new edition [yes, i like naming my plants] was a rather difficult affair. o had wanted to name her after his newfound incidental heroin 'veena malik' who had been the cause of much discussion both in news and print media in pakistan. she has became a cause célèbre in a country that is fast losing its grip on rationality, tolerance and plurality. but as much as i admire veena for taking on the mullahs i wasn't pleased with naming my orchid after her. so after a relentess campaign which involved enlisting the support of a friend and my sister-in-law the orchid has now been named eva.