Nigel Slater’s mussels and brussels recipe

The recipe

Scrub 1kg of mussels, discarding any that are chipped or that fail to open when tapped. Cut 150g of smoked streaky bacon into small pieces about 2cm square. Cut 300g of Brussels sprouts into thin slices, about 4 or 5 to each sprout, and wash thoroughly.

Warm a large pan over a high heat, add the still wet mussels and cover tightly with a lid. Let the mussels cook in their own steam for 3 or 4 minutes or until their shells have opened. Remove as soon as they have opened then, when cool enough, pull the mussels from their shells. Reserve the cooking liquor.

Warm 2 tbsp of olive or groundnut oil in a heavy frying pan, then add the bacon and cook for 3 or 4 minutes over a moderate heat, until the fat is just starting to colour.

Peel and finely chop 1 clove of garlic then add to the pan and stir in the sliced sprouts. Let them fry in the oil and bacon fat for 5 or 6 minutes until bright and tender. Then add the shelled mussels and some of the strained juices from the pan.

Leave to bubble briefly then serve immediately. Serves 2.

The trick

I tap each mussel on the side of the sink as I wash them. Any that fail to close immediately are chucked in the bin. It is not a good idea to skip the straining of the mussel cooking liquor. Use a sieve to remove any fine grit or broken shell. This is not a dish that holds well, so eat as soon as possible while the mussels are still plump and juicy.

The twist

Long-stemmed broccoli and even kale are possible contenders to replace the sprouts. Shred into small pieces then stir into the hot bacon.

Roast poppy seed chicken recipes

The chickpeas, cooked inside the chicken, swell deliciously with the fat and juices from the bird as it roasts. You can expect a 2kg chicken to take a can and a half of chickpeas. The remainder, scattered around the bird, will crisp lightly. Mashed until almost smooth with lemon juice and the roasting juices, you end up with a deeply savoury hummus to eat with the chicken and its crunchy, poppy-seed freckled skin.

chickpeas 2 x 400g cans
chicken 1 x 2kg free-range
olive oil 2 tbsp
redcurrant jelly 2 heaped tbsp
white vinegar 1 tbsp
poppy seeds 1 tbsp
lemon juice of 1
flat-leaf parsley 6 sprigs
olive oil

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4.

Drain the chickpeas, then season them with salt and a little pepper. Place the chicken in a roasting tin on its end and spoon the chickpeas inside the bird, letting any overspill fall into the tin. Lay the chicken down, trickle the olive oil over, season, then roast for about 55 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the oven, tip or spoon out all the chickpeas and transfer them to a food processor.

Mix the redcurrant jelly and vinegar in a small pan over a moderate heat, then brush the bird with the mixture, scatter with the poppy seeds and return to the oven for 7-10 minutes.

Pull the leaves from the parsley. Process the chickpeas to a smooth, wet purée with the lemon juice, a few spoons of the pan juices from the chicken and the parsley leaves.

Remove the bird from the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes, then carve into thick pieces and serve, together with the chickpea purée and any juices from the roasting tin.

How to pick the right sauce for your roast dinner

However succulent your centrepiece, what will make each mouthful absolutely worthwhile is the sauce with which you serve it. Each cut of meat has its steadfast sidekick – mint sauce with lamb, apple sauce with pork, horseradish with beef, cranberry with turkey and gravy with, well, anything – but things need not be set in stone. The whole point of a condiment is to enhance the flavour and texture of the main event, and there are so many ways of doing that: it’s possibly where the culinary endeavour is at its most creative. Here are a few subsitutes for those trad, shop-bought jars ...

With pork, you want sweetness combined with something tart to cut through the richness of the meat. Fruit ketchups have, since medieval times, been used to this end, and rhubarb is a particularly inspired choice, bringing a pop of pink to your plate. Richard Turner in his book Hog (Mitchell Beazley) has an excellent recipe for a rhubarb ketchup that combines the pink stems of forced rhubarb with cider vinegar, sugar, fresh ginger, cloves, cinnamon, orange juice and seasoning (see picture, far left).

Much like pork, turkey flesh also sits comfortably with a fruity sharpness. Why not switch your all-American cranberry sauce for a freshly foraged hedgerow jelly? Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall makes his with blackberries, rosehips, haws, sloes, elderberries or rowan berries and an equal measure of crab or cooking apples, to ensure a good set.

If it’s beef you’re having, you’ll want nose-tingling piquancy. Try switching your trad horseradish for wasabi mayonnaise. Darina Allen adds a flourish of parsley as well, for extra freshness.

While most often used as a dip for crudités or a toast topping, a tub of anchoïade will serve a roast handsomely. Turner, in Hog, pairs it with slow-roast pork, but it would do your roast lamb just as proud – lamb and anchovy are, after all, an enduring combo. Follow Clotilde Dusoulier’s simple recipe for this Provençale paste, which combines the anchovies with garlic, red wine vinegar and olive oil.

And lastly, in place of (or, frankly, as well as) the onion gravy – without which most roasts would quite simply be lost – keep your vegetarian tablemates happy with a boat of beurre blanc. This French butter sauce can be a little tricky to make, but Jamie Oliver gives an easy method using a shallot, some dry white wine and white wine vinegar, and a whole lot of butter.

The intriguing bowlful: Cauliflower and yoghurt soup with sunflower seeds, dill and brown butter

Serves 4
80g butter
1 small onion, finely diced
1 whole cauliflower
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp each of freshly toasted, ground cumin and coriander seeds
1 level tbsp cornflour
2 egg yolks
500ml plain whole yoghurt
450ml of the boiling water used to blanch the cauliflower
Juice from ½ lemon
1 small bunch of dill, chopped
50g sunflower seeds, toasted in a dry pan
Chilli flakes, to taste
Salt and black pepper

1 Put 30g butter into a moderately hot pan and heat until it foams. Add the onion, season with a little salt and cook over a moderate heat until soft and sweet – about 10 minutes.

2 Break or cut the cauliflower into small florets and blanch in plenty of boiling water for 3-5 minutes until tender.

3 Add the garlic, spices and blanched cauliflower to the fried onion and continue to cook until soft and nearly all broken down – about 15–20 minutes.

4 Meanwhile, in a bowl, beat the cornflour into the egg yolks, followed by the yoghurt. Set the mixture aside.

5 Turn down the heat under the pan to low and pour in the yoghurt mix, stirring well. You do not want the soup mixture to boil or the yoghurt will curdle.

6 Warm the soup gently for 2–3 minutes. Add some still-hot cauliflower water to thin the soup if necessary. I like to serve this soup fairly thick, almost porridge-like in consistency. Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary.

7 To make the brown butter, melt the remaining 50g butter in a frying pan. Continue to cook the butter until brown sediments begin to form on the bottom of the pan. Scrape at these with a metal spoon and continue until the sediments (curds) are nut brown and the butter is bubbling. Squeeze half a lemon into the hot butter.

8 To serve, pour the soup into bowls and top with the chopped dill, sunflower seeds, chilli flakes to taste and a spoonful of brown butter per bowlful.

Turkish flatbread-style pizza recipes

Serves 2-4 (makes 2)
For the base
160g self-raising flour
150g Greek yoghurt
¼ tsp salt
≈ tsp ground cumin (optional)

For the topping
Red pesto or tomato paste, to spread
Jarred or tinned olives, artichokes, roasted red peppers (or anything else in a jar or tin that takes your fancy)
Chargrilled slices of aubergine, creme fraiche, sour cream, crumbled feta or mozzarella, salami or other cured meat, toasted pine nuts, chopped parsley and basil

1 In a bowl, mix together self-raising flour, yoghurt, cumin and salt. Knead in the bowl until it forms a dough (it should be firm enough to hold together). Split in two equal-sized portions, then roll each out into a thin (but not wafer-thin) disc large enough to fit in your nonstick frying pan.

2 Heat the pan on a medium-high heat then add the rolled out dough. Cook for around 5 minutes on each side, making sure it doesn’t burn (turn down, if necessary). You can add a tiny splash of oil, if needed.

3 Remove from the heat, and place on a large baking tray before adding your toppings of choice.

4 Bake for 5-10 minutes at 200C/400F/gas mark 6 until done.

Do you like salad? You're a fool

Do you like salad? You’re a fool. Not because bacon is better (although, of course, it is) but because salad vegetables are nutrition-lite, resource-guzzling, pseudo-healthy food crimes that enable the overconsumption of blue cheese dressing. If they aren’t bringing foodborne diseases to your table, they are being chucked, soggily, into the bin. Tamar Haspel, the Washington Post’s food columnist, made properly considered and intelligent versions of all these points yesterday, leading us to wonder what life would be like if we, as she suggests, started to think of salad as a resource-hungry luxury, rather than a wholesome staple.

Fresh salad greens aren’t always as fabulous as they might seem. Photograph: Kevin Summers

We have a joke in our house. We ask the five-year-old what his favourite food is. He shouts “SALAD” loud enough to frighten the frisee, we all laugh heartily and then I crack open a bag of Starmix and sprinkle them affectionately on his dinner plate. Do you really love lettuce (a definition that we will extend to include leafy greens that are commonly eaten raw, in salad-style situations)? Would you mourn a shift in its status that led to consumption only on high days and holidays, on a level with the nice smoked salmon, hand-churned butter you can only buy from a unique Swede, and hens’ teeth? If so, I would wager you are in one of the following circumstances.

One: You really like watercress, served in a 90s fashion with seared salmon and blistered roast tomatoes. Simon Hopkinson lives in your house and, thanks to his well-documented perfectionism, insists on plucking the leaves from the long, tough stalks before “service”.

Two: your lettuce-buying habits are limited to the classic English round lettuce, which is available for substantially less than £1, lasts ages in the fridge and is soft and buttery and lovely. You find preparing it to be a soothing, summery ritual, and the leaves are extremely handy when you can’t be bothered to do all the veg with a roast chicken.

Three: you are Darina Allen, and live and teach cookery on an organic farm where a team of gardeners ensure a constant supply of gorgeously fresh and characterful leaves which all taste precisely of themselves; some spicy, some earthy, some delicate. A legion of cookery students gently wash and dry bundles of fresh leaves every day and serve them with lunch in a big wooden salad bowl, carefully dressed with a vinaigrette of your own devising.

The problems that occur when any back garden food is mass-produced and supplied though supermarkets seem to be exacerbated when it comes to salad. Haspel is not the first to point out why fresh salad greens aren’t as fabulous as they might seem: bagged versions have been deconstructed many times over by investigative food writers, including Felicity Lawrence and Joanna Blythman. The major issues are water-hungry production, the means of preparation, washing and packaging, resources used during transport and cold storage and the likelihood that, after all that, some of it is going to end up in the bin. According to sustainability group Wrap, in 2012 lettuce accounted for £270m of avoidable food waste, while leafy salad accounted for £150m. It’s difficult to find anyone with a good word to say about bagged salad, unless they’re a grower or retailer of bagged salad.

Salad leaves are apparently very easy to raise at home, and if salad is going to be a luxury, more of us might consider having a grow under the guidance of an expert such as Dan Pearson. Bought herbs share many of the drawbacks common to salads, and Pip McCormac’s The Herb & Flower Cookbook will see you right for ideas in both the production and eating departments. But if you really couldn’t grow, buy or steal the glacial wedge of iceberg, dark baby spinach or unpleasantly beetroot-flecked bistro salad that constitutes your habitual dalliance with salad greens, would you miss it? What would you serve instead?

Blackcurrant buns recipes

Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin

Eccles cakes of sorts, but with fresh blackcurrants instead of the usual dried fruit filling. You could use puff pastry for these if the mood takes you. The cream-cheese pastry is my version of an idea from the wonderful Dan Lepard.

Makes 6
For the cream-cheese pastry
plain flour 250g
baking powder ½ tsp
butter 75g
full-fat cream cheese 75g
egg 1
beaten egg 1, for brushing

For the filling
blackcurrants 225g
caster sugar 3 tbsp
double cream to serve

Put the flour and baking powder and a good pinch of salt into a large mixing bowl, then add the butter, cut into small dice, and the cream cheese and rub the ingredients together with your fingertips until they resemble coarse, fresh breadcrumbs.

Beat the egg, then fold into the mixture, bringing the dough together and then into a ball with your hands. Wrap in greaseproof paper or clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6.

Toss together the blackcurrants and caster sugar in a mixing bowl. Divide the dough into six and roll each piece out into a thin 16cm disc. Place one of the pieces of pastry on a baking sheet, then spoon a sixth of the blackcurrant and sugar filling in the centre. Brush the rim of the pastry with beaten egg then pull the edges in to the middle and press tightly together to seal. Turn the bun upside down, push it into a neat round and brush with a little more beaten egg. Make three small slashes in the top. Dust with caster sugar.

Continue with the rest of the pastry and currants to make 6 flat buns. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden. Serve warm, not cold, with double cream.

Mitch Tonks: roast red sea bream, artichokes, tomatoes and verdicchio

Selin Kiazim’s marinated aubergine, candied aubergine puree, bitter leaves and smoked almonds: ‘Summer brings the chance to experiment with all that gorgeous seasonal fruit and veg.’ Photograph: Rob White. Food styling: Cara Hobday

Lunches are long in our house. We’ll kick off with a magnum of rosé, and all the wines will be planned in advance – after all, what you drink with a meal is almost as important as the food. A few anchovies, or a crab, or some burrata will be our antipasti, there’ll be some sort of pasta as a middle course – Giorgio’s mullet dish would fit the bill nicely – and for main we’ll share a whole fish. We live right next to the fish market in Brixham, so are lucky to have the pick of the best. We’ll finish with cheese and fruit, then roll into coffee and spirits, with the table thinning out as we hit the sofa one by one, marking the end of another great meal in the company of the people I love most. Serves four.

Olive oil
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced fine
1 white onion, peeled and finely sliced
8 small artichokes, cleaned and taken down to the heart
4 very ripe tomatoes
300ml dry white wine (verdicchio for preference)
Salt and pepper
2 x 700-900g red sea bream, scaled and gutted
2 lemons

Pour a few glugs of olive oil into a roasting tin, heat on the hob, then add the garlic and onion, and cook for a few minutes, until softened. Add the artichokes and tomatoes, and cook gently for two or three minutes, then pour in the wine, boil off the alcohol, taste and season accordingly.

Lay the fish on top of the veg and roast in a hot oven (220C/425F/gas mark 7) for 35 minutes. Transfer the fish to a serving platter, and stir the vegetables – they should be nicely browned by now. Season and squeeze over lemon juice to taste. Stir to mix: the sauce should be quite thick and emulsified; if not, add a splash of water. Spoon the sauce and veg around the fish and serve.

• Mitch Tonks is chef/co-owner of The Seahorse in Dartmouth, Devon, and the Rockfish restaurants. His latest book, The Seahorse, co-written with Mat Prowse, is published by Absolute Press at £25. To order a copy for £20, go to bookshop.theguardian.com.

Fiona Beckett’s wine matches If you’re using verdicchio in a recipe, you might want to lay in an extra bottle to drink with it. The Classico dei Castelli di Jesi 2014 (£8, Asda, and often on promotion; 12.5% abv) is a reliable favourite. Morrisons does a good one, too. And if you want to go down Mitch’s route of starting with a magnum of rosé, your best bet is Majestic: at £19.99, the Côteaux d’Aix en Provence 2014 (12.5% abv) is the best deal.

Is booze at breakfast the best way to start the day?

The sight of Barack Obama downing a pint at his pre-G7 summit Alpine breakfast on Sunday was surprising and cheering in equal measure. Drinking early in the day doesn’t usually come with such official approbation. We tend to think of morning drinks in extremes – a bloody mary or swift half to provide a much-needed quick fix after a long night, or perhaps bubbles for special occasion breakfasts. However, in many parts of the world, booze at breakfast is seen as a perfectly normal way to start the day.
The weisswurst frühstück Obama was enjoying is a beery Bavarian stalwart: boiled sausages with mustard, freshly baked pretzels and a cold weissbier, the operative word here being cold. Alcohol in the morning must be fresh and zippy. A bit of fizz, something dry, a hint of sweetness, a sharp kick – as drinks writer Henry Jeffreys puts it, “it’s the pick-me-up that makes you mellow”. Beer or ale for breakfast is not uncommon in the rest of northern Europe, particularly in Belgium – and even, until as late as the 1980s, in England, where breweries would give free drinks to their workers. While this was probably to counter pilfering, it also continued a long tradition of brewers enjoying a hearty brew to start the day, harking back to the “liquid bread” of 16th-century friars. It would seem there is more to an early-morning pint than just hair of the dog.
Around the Mediterranean, you’ll often see older patrons having a caffè corretto, the espresso quite literally “corrected” with a shot of something stronger: grappa, sambuca or brandy. It is a habit Mitch Tonks and Mat Prowse adopted at a fish market in Spain 15 years ago; they call it their morning fire. The grappa is sometimes substituted with armagnac, Fernet-Branca or whatever other local spirit the two chefs encounter on their travels. “It takes the body by surprise,” writes Tonks in his new cookbook, The Seahorse. “We have found that in this moment of lightness and clarity we have made our best decisions.” Which makes the Seahorse restaurant staff living proof that drinking in the day might not actually render working minds as useless as you’d think. It’s all about being restrained: “The trick is to have just one glass,” says Tonks, “otherwise the surprise is spoiled.”
London wine bar Vinoteca has just opened a Kings Cross branch, the first to serve breakfast. “You don’t have to not drink wine early in the day,” counsels co-owner Brett Woonton. Woonton and his partner, Charlie Young, focused on bottles that would work best with breakfast, plumping for lightness and freshness over full-bodied heft; drinks that would be accessible and approachable. So they have got a pink moscato, the sweet, fruity fizz of which sits handsomely with a plate of pancakes; a slightly frizzante, dry red bonarda that cuts judiciously through the richness of a meaty breakfast; and a German riesling to pair with fresh fruit or muesli.
For Woonton, a good breakfast wine should be the oenological equivalent of an early-morning swim: invigorating and enlivening. And that is a strategy tried and tested in Sicily. Food writer Rachel Roddy, the author of Five Quarters, says her partner’s grandfather, a Sicilian farmer, “drank a litre of white with his breakfast of bread and caponata every single morning at six”. That would be followed by a whole lemon, eaten like an apple, before he left the house. “He also drank a litre for lunch,” she continues “and never drank water. He was tiny, without fat, as strong as a horse and he lived until 95.”
The thought of all that wine, particularly without water, is a terrifying prospect, but there may well be something in it in moderation. Breakfast, it is becoming increasingly clear, is the meal of the day – maybe a celebratory tipple should become a mainstay on the menu.

A Spanish feast in Springtime

Spring in Spain is a season of abundance: juicy artichokes, fresh green peas, wonderfully robust asparagus and, of course, bright, leafy spinach – a staple in many Spanish dishes. My mum used to whip up a fresh mayonesa to go with our artichokes and we would all sit round the table in silence as we tucked in, engrossed in our ritual of pulling off leaf after leaf to dunk in the creamy dip. And after the green, comes fish. Whole baked turbot is extravagant, but it’s a perfect dish with which to gather friends round the table for a feast.

Whole baked turbot with onions, lemon and caper salsa

All recipes serve 6
turbot 1 x 2kg or 2 x 1kg, trimmed and gutted by your fishmonger
olive oil a good drizzle
For the salsa:
sweet onion 1
lemon juice of 1
capers 2 tbsp, drained and rinsed
parsley a handful, finely chopped
lemon thyme 2 tbsp
extra-virgin olive oil 4-5 tbsp
Heat the oven to 200C. Place the turbot(s) in a large roasting tin and drizzle with oil. Season well and roast for 20 minutes for a 1kg turbot or 30-35 minutes for a 2kg turbot, until just cooked. Insert a knife into the thickest part of the meat near the bones and if it comes away from the bones easily it is cooked.
To make the salsa, very finely slice the sweet onion and place in a bowl with the lemon juice, capers, herbs and olive oil. Season to taste.
Once the turbot is cooked, you can either pop it under the grill to crisp the skin or remove the skin.

Spring leaves with curd cheese

Spring leaves with curd cheese. Photograph: Jean Cazals/Observer

full-fat milk 1 litre
cloves 3
black peppercorns 10
lemons juice of 1 or 2
baby salad leaves
extra-virgin olive oil to drizzle
squeeze of lemon juice
To make the cheese, heat the milk with the cloves, peppercorns and a pinch of salt in a saucepan over a medium heat. When it starts to bubble, around 98C, remove from the heat. Don’t let it boil. Add the juice of one lemon and stir. Stand for 10 minutes until the curds have separated from the whey. If you need to you can add a little more lemon juice, a tablespoon at a time.
Line a colander with muslin, add the curds and whey and strain into a bowl. Leave for 30 minutes, squeezing gently to remove most of the liquid from the cheese. Leave to cool then scoop into a container and chill until needed.
Toss the salad leaves with the olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice and crumble the cheese all over. Season with sea salt and pepper and serve.

Artichokes and broad bean estofado with jamón ibérico and mint

Artichokes and broad bean estofado with jamón ibérico and mint. Photograph: Jean Cazals/Observer

baby artichokes 12
lemon 1
olive oil 100ml
banana shallots 2
garlic 3 cloves
broad beans 400g, fresh
jamón ibérico 100g
mint 2 tbsp, fresh, chopped
Trim the baby artichokes, removing any tough outer leaves, and cut in half. Place in a bowl of water and squeeze in the juice of half the lemon.
Heat a little of the oil in a deep frying pan. Finely slice and fry the shallots until softened then add the garlic and fry for a little longer. Drain the artichokes and add to the pan with the broad beans. Season well and add the rest of the olive oil, the juice of the other half a lemon and just enough water to cover.
Put on a lid and simmer for 20 minutes until tender. Remove the lid. Finely slice the jamón and stir through with the mint. Serve warm.

Almond and pear cake, slow-roasted rhubarb and Pedro Ximenez ice cream

Almond and pear cake, slow roast rhubarb and Pedro Ximenez ice cream. Photograph: Jean Cazals/Observer

unsalted butter 150g, softened
caster sugar 125g
free-range eggs 2, medium-sized
ground almonds 150g
baking powder 1 tsp
plain flour 2 tbsp
pears 2, ripe but firm
demerara sugar 2 tbsp
rhubarb 800g
caster sugar 150g
whole milk 300ml
vanilla pod 1
free-range eggs 6 yolks
caster sugar 175g
double cream 600ml
Pedro Ximénez sherry 120ml
Make the ice cream. Heat the milk with the vanilla pod – split in half and seeds scraped out – until almost boiling. Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar until really thick and fluffy. Pour in hot milk and stir well then strain back into a clean pan.
Cook over a medium-low heat until you have a thick custard. Remove from the heat, cool slightly and then add the cream and cool completely. Once cold, stir in the sherry and churn in an ice-cream maker until solid. Scoop into a tub and freeze. If you don’t have a machine, cool and freeze the mix until it starts to become solid, then whisk with an electric hand whisk and re-freeze. Repeat 3-4 times then freeze overnight.
Heat the oven to 140C. Cut the rhubarb into lengths and place in a roasting tin. Scatter with caster sugar and pour over 80ml of water. Cover with foil and roast for an hour until tender but still holding its shape. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the juices.
Increase the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating together, then fold in the almonds, baking powder and flour. Spoon into the cake tin. Peel and core the pears and cut into wedges. Place all around the cake, pushing in a little but not completely. Sprinkle with the demerara sugar. Bake until risen and golden – about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack. Slice the cake into wedges and serve with the roasted rhubarb and a scoop of the PX ice cream.

Jack Monroe’s tom kha gai soup recipe

I first had this delicious, spicy coconut soup on a pavement outside a pub in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Thai food has become popular in pubs over the last few years; on a recent adventure up north I found more pubs offering Thai cuisine than hotpots. I had my second taste of tom kha gai in a boozer in Bolton. Then a bowl at Thai street food place Jane-Tira in Soho sealed the deal – I decided it was time I made my own.
Soft, sweet, spicy and satisfying, it has become a work lunch staple, simmering away behind me on the hob as I write at my kitchen table. I’ll add a pile of shredded chicken if there is a carcass left from the weekend, but more often than not I’ll do without. I use ginger in place of hard-to-find galangal, and lemongrass paste to speed things up – it is easy enough to make, and freezes well or keeps in the fridge for around a week.
(Serves 3-4 for lunch)
2 stalks lemongrass, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for lemongrass paste
10g fresh ginger root, minced
2 fat cloves of garlic, minced
100g spring onions, finely sliced
400g mushrooms, sliced
1 small red chilli, deseeded and sliced
Zest and juice of a lime
1 tbsp light soy sauce
400ml coconut milk
700ml chicken or vegetable stock
A small handful of coriander
Put the lemongrass pieces into a blender with oil and blitz until you have a smooth paste.
Heat the oil on medium with two teaspoons of the lemongrass paste, the ginger and garlic.
Add the onions, mushrooms, and chilli. Cook on a low, slow heat for a few minutes to soften the onions and take the raw edge off the garlic.
Add the lime juice, soy sauce, coconut milk and stock – you may not want all the stock, so taste as you go.
Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for a further 15 minutes to let the flavours infuse.
Serve garnished with coriander and lime zest.

Don't tip it, dip it: delicious beetroot hummus and cavolo nero dips made from 'food waste'

Several years ago, Tristram Stuart’s food waste campaign (now called Feedback) asked me to create a pop-up banquet using surplus food. They wanted me to cater for no fewer than 200 covers. I was shocked that Feedback thought it possible to feed so many people on surplus ingredients, but was up for the challenge.
I needn’t have worried. In the lead-up, I was inundated with edible donations of remarkable quality: organic vegetables (end-of-life produce donated by a national box scheme), kilos of gherkins (made from a glut of cucumbers saved at an allotment), and fish by-catch (fish caught outside of a fisherman’s quota, which they are usually forced, by law, to throw back into the sea to die). I was astonished to learn that such high-grade food was being wasted.
In time, this revelation led to the launch of my seasonal tapas restaurant, Poco, in Bristol. I am obsessive about never wasting food, and at Poco we employ steadfast green policies, recycling and composting more than 95% of our waste.
Supermarkets are terrible culprits. As a skint art student, I remember looking through supermarket bins in the hope of a free meal, where the likes of tuna sandwiches with expired best-before dates and perfectly good apples (save for the unidentifiable bin juice coating them) languished sadly, spoilt by supermarkets keen to restock their shelves with newer, glossier-looking goods.

I find it deeply upsetting that supermarkets believe they have a right to lock away and destroy food that is perfectly fit for human consumption, especially when food poverty is such an extensive local and global issue. Through food waste campaigns such as Feeding the 5000, an international event that feeds 5,000 people using food that would otherwise be wasted, and Food Cycle’s community cafes, large-scale food retailers have been forced to address their food waste issues more publicly. Working directly with both large and small food producers to save their surplus was enlightening and helped me to realise how we can all have a dramatic effect on the food system through where we shop and how we value our food.
Before cooking banquets with “rubbish”, I worked with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at River Cottage in Dorset, where I was taught to care about the quality and provenance of ingredients above all else. Hugh would scold us every time a non-seasonal vegetable entered the kitchen and, with meat, we had to be able to recite, like Rain Man, the exact breed, farm and age of the animal. I gained a strong understanding of butchery and the patience to cook seasonally.
Some mornings I’d arrive at work to be confronted by the medieval scene of a whole deer hanging by tendon hooks in a freezing barn. I’d spend the morning butchering and organising it into cuts for the week’s menus, and none of it was wasted. I use relatively little meat in my cooking now, but that training in nose-to-tail cooking at River Cottage has changed the way I cook irreversibly.
The nose-to-tail philosophy refers to eating the whole animal – complete consumption: nose, tail and absolutely everything in between. In my own cooking, I’ve extended this to encompass all food, celebrating the whole ingredient – a practice I have come to describe as “root-to-fruit”. This saves both food and money, and in turn, enables you to buy better quality, higher welfare ingredients. My leftover lemon rind tart is a classic example of where I put this ethos to use at Poco; another being my beetroot “hummus”, served with beet-top crisps. The often-discarded leaves and stalks of a beetroot are full of nutrients and flavour, and make a brilliant accompaniment to the dip. This vibrant purple dip sits beautifully alongside my cavolo nero pesto, which utilises the tough stalks of the vegetable (also often thrown away) and, for extra texture, can be fortified with bread that’s going stale. Together, they are magically moreish.
Beetroot ‘hummus’ with beet-top crisps
If you can’t find beets with the tops on, make the crisps using kale or chard.
For the hummus
350-400g of whole beetroots, washed
¼ lemon, juiced
4 tbsp thick live yoghurt
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and crushed
Salt and black pepper, to taste
For the crisps
1 bunch (about 500g) beetroot leaves, ruby chard, or kale
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt, to taste
1 Put the beetroots into a small saucepan and cover with plenty of water. Bring to the boil and reduce the heat. Simmer for 50 minutes, then drain and leave until cool. Rub off the skin and remove the rough tops. Put the tops aside for the crisps.
2 Quarter the cooked beetroots and put them in a blender. Add the lemon juice, yoghurt, olive oil, garlic and cumin seeds. Blend to a smooth puree and season to taste. Allow to cool.
3 Meanwhile, make the beetroot crisps with the tops you cut off. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Drizzle the beetroot leaves with honey and oil, then sprinkle with salt. Massage the dressing into each leaf.
4 Spread the leaves out on baking trays and put into the oven for 15 minutes. 5 Separate the leaves and remove any that are already crispy. Return the rest to the oven for another 5 minutes. Check, and repeat if necessary.
6 Serve the cooled hummus dressed with olive oil, the beetroot crisps for dipping and seasonal crudites. Store the hummus in the fridge.
Tom Hunt washing cavolo nero in a warehouse.
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‘Cooking from root-to-fruit saves food, money and enables you to buy better ingredients’ … Tom Hunt. Photograph: Elena Heatherwick/Guardian
Cavolo nero and walnut dip

Makes 500g
250g cavolo nero (or green kale)
120ml extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 small garlic clove, peeled
2 tbsp thick live yoghurt
50g strong hard goat’s cheese, diced
50g walnuts
20g stale bread, torn into pieces (optional)
Salt and black pepper, to taste
1 Place the blanched leaves and stalks in a blender with the rest of the ingredients, except the walnuts.
2 Blend to a rough puree, stir in the crushed walnuts and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Real street food: Tuaran mee noodles

What is the dish?
Tuaran mee is a Nanyang-Chinese fried “egg noodle” hawker dish from Tuaran in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. It most commonly refers to the fried version, but it is also used to identify egg noodles that are made in Tuaran. A typical plate consists of fresh egg noodles, an egg, char siu, pork egg roll, and choy sum.
What’s the history?
According to a famous heritage vendor, Tuaran mee in its modern form began to replace the traditional ‘knife-cut’ noodles sometime in the late 1970s. With the introduction of noodle machines, the strands became thinner and more uniform. Up until the mid-1980s, fried noodles in Sabah were simply called “Chao Men” in the Hakka dialect. This began to gradually change, as the Hakka people outside the area started labeling the fried noodles in Tuaran “Tao-Ah-Lan Men,” or Tuaran mee. This was so that locals could differentiate it from noodles from other towns like Beaufort, Tamparuli and Sandakan. So the name Tuaran Mee is the result of this retro name-calling that went viral, and it has stuck for more than 30 years!
What does it taste like?
A good plate of fried Tuaran mee should be fragrant, very eggy, delicately springy, savoury, wavy and slightly smoky from the charring of the hot wok. The aftertaste should pleasantly confuse you with an unexpected hit of egg umami. It should also be incredibly moreish; you’ll be sliently eating until you find yourself picking up the remaining bits on your plate, giving up only when your chopsticks skills fail you. Fatty pork makes it taste even better!
How is it served?
It is plated directly from wok-to-dish, then topped with your protein of choice. Tuaran mee tastes best eaten hot, and it goes really well with chilli sauce. Some shops will fry and fold the proteins into the noodles to incorporate the flavours together.
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Anything extra?
You can choose from a variety or combination of pork, beef, chicken, and/or seafood. Just make sure you tell the waiter what you want, or you’ll get the shop’s default signature plate with an egg, char siu and the local pork egg roll called Choon Ken. If you’re the adventurous type, try having it with a dash of Lihing (yellow rice wine) for that sweet twist of alcohol!
Why should someone try it?
It’s delicious! Strand-for-strand sans sauce, it is quite possibly the most flavourful egg noodles on earth. You can’t find this outside of Sabah, except for an odd shop in Kuala Lumpur. In the olden days, local food lovers would travel from near and far to Tuaran to have some of this eggy goodness. It’s more convenient now, as Tuaran Mee is quite accessible in the capital city of Kota Kinabalu. So if you’re in town, it’s a must-try!
What’s the bill?
Pretty inexpensive. A plate costs between RM6.50 - RM9.00 (£1.10-£1.60), depending on the topping and combo of your choice.
Where can you get it?
In Tuaran town, Lok Kyun, Tai Fatt, and Tuaran Mee Restoran are quite popular. In Kota Kinabalu, the favorites are Seng Hing Sinsuran, Sin Fatt Hing in Likas, and Tuaran Mee Restoran in Inanam.
Can you make it at home?
Technically yes, but it’s a challenging dish to make (see below). To get the flavours right, you’ll need to have access to or make the freshest Tuaran-style egg noodles yourself. Then you’ll need to use the right utensils, roaring high heat, and ninja cooking skills. We’re talking an impeccable sense of timing, and the dexterity to respond correctly in the rapid distribution of heat. That’s if you want your end product to taste like authentic Tuaran Mee. Failing any of that, your creation will just be “Wannabe Tuaran Mee,” or worse, “Just Not Tuaran Mee”.
What does this dish say about your home city?
It shows that Sabahans are a harmonious bunch, and that we are quite happy to hold on to our heritage while we cross-pollinate our ideas to create something just a tad bit different or better. The dish came into existence out of the collective input of three generations of peoples with Hakka, Hainanese, Hokkien, Fuchow, Cantonese, and Kadazan-Dusun ancestry. It’s fusion history on a plate, and everything we love about Nanyang Borneo.
And finally ... how to make ‘almost’ Tuaran Mee
To learn more about the authentic cuisine of this region, check out Jackie Miao’s website Jackie.my. And if you want to have a go at recreating Tuaran Mee – not easy! – here is a recipe developed and tested by our food editor, Eve O’Sullivan. By adding an extra egg to the noodles and frying in a very hot wok until crispy, you can hope to get a sense of how good the real thing tastes. You will need to prepare the pork the night before, or swap it out for prawns or chicken.
Serves 2
3 tbsp vegetable oil
300g fresh thin Hong Kong or wonton egg noodles
2 eggs, beaten
2 pak choi, roughly chopped
Soy sauce
Ground black pepper
Chilli sauce, to serve
For the char siu pork
300g pork fillet medallions (not lean)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp soy sauce
½ tsp chilli flakes
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tsp yellow bean sauce (optional)
1 To make the pork, put the meat in a shallow dish, then mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour over the meat. Cover, then leave to marinate for at least 4-6 hours, or preferably overnight.
2 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4, remove the meat from the marinade (reserving it for basting) then put in a roasting tin. Brush liberally with the marinade, then roast for 10-12 minutes, checking halfway through and brushing with more marinade. Keep warm while you assemble the noodles.
3 Heat the vegetable oil in a wok until almost smoking, then throw in the noodles – you are looking to crisp them at this stage, as opposed to fully cooking them. Move around the pan to avoid too much sticking, then once parts of the noodles have turned crispy (around a minute), remove from the pan.
4 Add the pak choi to the hot wok, then cook until almost wilted (no more than a minute) and remove from the pan. Next, add the beaten eggs, and when almost cooked, throw the noodles back in. After a minute or two, return the pak choi to the pan with some soy sauce and black pepper, then add the pork and a drizzle of marinade. Serve immediately.
Jackie Miao is currently working on a book of authentic recipes from her hometown. For more information, visit her website Jackie.my