Roast pheasant

Roasted pheasant recipe

Judging by the rate the company where I work peddles grouse, partridges and venison to various posh restaurants, London's appetite for game shows no signs of abating. Inspired by observing the fringes of this celebration of ecologically clean gastronomy, I delved into the latest English edition of La Rousse Gastronomique. Here is what wise Frenchmen say.

Truss and bard a young pheasant, brush with melted butter and season with salt and pepper. Roast in a preheated oven at 240 degrees for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of the bird, busting 2 or 3 times. Fry some croutons until golden brown. Untruss the pheasant and remove the barding fat. Place it on top of the croutons and keep warm. Deglaze the roasting pan with a liittle poultry stock and serve this gravy separately. To make it an ultimate treat, the pheasant can be stuffed with truffles before roasting and the croutons can be spread with a small amount of forcemeat with the minced liver of the pheasant. (Source: La Rousse Gastronomique, Hamlyn: London, 2009)

Photos will follow when I get around to implementing this recipe in my kitchen. Please bear with!

Roasted quail recipe (caille rôti)

hese days quails are farmed but in fact they are game. A quick sniff will confirm this: quail meat is heavier and chewier than your chicken or turkey. That is why I treat them as game, that is cook with

1. Crush a handful of juniper berries and add with freshly ground black pepper and sea salt to red wine.
   
   
2. Using a sharp knife, make incisions in each quail from the inside without piercing the skin.
   
   
3. Soak the quails in the marinade making sure that it goes into the incisions. Let stay overnight in the fridge.
   
   
4. Take out the quails out of the fridge at least one hour before cooking to get them back to the room temperature and allow the excessive marinade to drip off.
   
   
5. Heat the oven to 220 degrees. Pat the quails dry with paper towels. Warm some butter and mix with a small amount of honey, salt and pepper. Baste the quails with the mixture and place them on the oven grid.
   
   
6. Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200 degrees. In the meantime sweat some chopped shallots in butter and add the marinade, allow to reduce to half.
   
   
7. Serve with sautéed wild mushrooms and double-cooked potatoes. Use the reduccion as sauce.
   

Duck magret salad recipe (Salade de magret de canard)

If I have to choose between travelling to Israel and eating a salad made from ducks force-fed on corn, I go for the latter. Defo much less cruelty supported.

1. Pat a magret dry and wallow it in a mix of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
   
   
2. Heat a frying pan on medium high heat
   

Je vous remerci pour notre pain quotidienne: springbok steaks & cresson veloute

The mind boggles just thinking about how far our food travels. For a few pieces of meat to come from South Africa to London and then end up on a dinner table in Amsterdam, we must be forever grateful for being able to enjoy such luxury.

Knowing that Floyd would hardly have juniper berries in his cupboard, I brought those from London too. They are the best to make sauce for probably any kind of game meat.

The cresson veloute is my homage to the wonderful family of French soups so rarelyy cooked outside La Belle France (from my experience an

Juniper sauce: on top of the game

There is nothing like the resiny bouquet of juniper sauce to complement the rich flavour of game. When served on top of reindeer steaks, it reminds me of my childhood in Arctic Russia where we had both reindeer and juniper, but no one was sophisticated enough to combine the two in one dish.

That does not stop me from enjoying this lovely combination now. It sounds fancy but in fact is very easy to whip up.

Once you've fried your game steaks or what you have (I use clarified butter for that), leave the juices on the pan, add a tablespoonful of juniper berries, a liberal dash of freshly ground black pepper and half a glass of red wine. Reduce it on low fire until trickly. Serve your game meat with the sauce on top and two sides: one starchy (e.g. baked potatoes) and one crunchy (e.g., steamed haricot beans). A green salad with a simple Italian dressing can be good but this time I served a veloute with grilled parmigiano bread.

Jambalaya in November: un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide

aving lived 7 years with a Southerner, you would think I must have had jambalaya more than half a thousand times. Far from that, it is my first time ever I laid my spoon and fork on one.

America's answer to paella, jambalaya combines West African cooking methods with the ingredients of the New World. I am too lazy to post the recipe, you can find it in one of the following books.

When Yanks are in town, it's time to get cracking!

t has already become a tradition: when Floyd comes to visit me in London, we always have a surf and turf dinner. For those unfamiliar with the American ideas of luxury food, it is steak and lobster served on one plate. On the Stateside, it is usually the most expensive entry on the menu ordered on special occasions, like when you really want to impress your date.

The surf part comes in the shape of a lobster tail, to make eating easy. For the sake of a more picturesque display, I like a whole creature, for which you will need special utensils. Other accompaniments include corns on the cob (classic American!), dill and butter dip, Italian salad and potato wedges.

Now the choice of wine is always a bit of a doozie, as you are having red meat and seafood in one helping. I guess the inventors of surf'n'turf were not from the stock who would have seen that as a problem, so I adopt their easy approach too: I just pick whatever wine I fancy at the moment, never minding the convention. Chilean Sauvignon Blanc from the Coquimbo Valley is well-balanced, as you would expect it from a Chilean, citrusy and utterly quaffable.

Whitstable oysters: Britain's best

They say that what goes around, comes around. That's true, but every time the game level is up.

Marine cornucopia: assiette de fruits de mer

t is my birthday, that is why I will write about my single most favourite dish. No it is not sushi, but its European equivalent, the French assiette de fruits de mer, seafood platter.



I discovered its pleasures on my first trips to Normandy. Unlike in Holland, where I lived then, the French do not feel compelled to deep-fry every bit of taste out of fish and seafood. Half is consumed raw or blanched. No heavy sauces are used so that one can enjoy the gentle fragrance of the gifts of the deep brine.


First year I would just go to France and order it in a restaurant, granted Amsterdam is just a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the French border. As my French improved and I learnt the names of seafood I started arranging my own platters, put them on ice and take them back home. You can by a ready-made one for 20 euros on Auchan but it takes the fun out of it.

If you are too intimidated to do your groceries at a French market (I used to be), go to the poissonnier section in Auchan and pick

• a lobster,
  
• a crab,
  
• a box of oysters,
  
• then shrimp,
• bulots (whelks) and amandes (cockles, aka poor man's oyster) half a kilo each,
  
• perhaps some crevettes grises (brown shrimp) and bigourneaux (periwinkles) if you like those (I do!)

Then get some lemons, baguettes, mayonnaise and a couple bottles of Muscadet or cidre brut and you have a slap-up seafood dîner for two. Drive on to a scenic location for an additional aesthetic kick.

Time to get cracking: American boiled lobster

obsters are the ultimate luxury food, just one notch below caviar. Or, at least, when they are served in restaurants at overinflated prices.

This day and age, however, even Lidl carries lobsters as standard fare, eight quid a pop. Seven if you wait for a sale. At the same price, it may not be as satisfying as a Tesco grilled chicken, a family-size bag of crisps and a gallon of generic Cola for dinner but, hey, there's no perfection in this world!

Frozen lobster is not exactly quite like fresh Maine lobster but it is a very good and honest approximation, especially if you consider the price difference. The Dutch in me can't help getting micro-orgasms just thinking that I pay thirty quid less for the same pleasure as some hedge fund manager in a posh Chelsea eatery. That's how socialism corrupts you.

Celebrity chefs keep coming up with more and more convoluted and far-fetched ways of cooking lobster to please the jaded gourmet but I prefer the good old American boiling. Why interfere with the sweet succulence of God's created crustacean when you only need too accentuate it with melted butter and, perhaps, some dry white wine?

The recipe? Boil, melt, crack, eat, be grateful!

P.S. In our age of luxuries becoming commodities, there is probably only one way to tell a real culinary aesthete from a casual supermarket hound. You can only claim to be true blue-blood food connoisseur, if you have the right utensils to eat fancy food in your kitchen drawer.

French cheese platter: the taste of adult life (assiette de fromages)

oo much sweet can be too much. That's why the French invented the assiette de fromages. It is a grown-up way to finish dinners: not with some puerile sugar-laden confection but something decadently smelly, as if showing that pleasure still could be found somewhere close to repulsion.

It is also one of the few classy, luxury pleasures that vegetarians can indulge in. In my vegetarian days, I would have rewarded myself for my well-intentioned suffering through soya steaks, Tofurkey and fishless sushi with a glass of nice wine and a cheese platter.

Tonight cheeses from three different regions had a nice get-together on my plate: Burgundian Chaource, Bleu d'Auvergne, and Tommette de Savoie. They all are very different.

Chaource tastes like Brie made from goat's milk although with just a hint of sharpness as it is, in fact, made from cow's milk. It is pristinely white and could be very well from the Loire Valley. But it isn't.

Bleu d'Auvergne is, perhaps, the least aggressive of all blue cheeses. It tastes as if it didn't want to be one. Its mild, creamy and not at all as salty as, say, Rocquefort.

Tommette de Savoie is hard and nutty. You would be if you came from the mountains too. It smells funny because water is scarce in the Alps but it makes good for that in the taste department. I have never seen it on sale outside France. The hardy montagnard just won't take to travelling!

Russian salmon roe sandwich (бутерброд с красной икрой)

ussians who have a very good (affluent) life are said to have "enough money to put butter and ikra on your bread". Ikra can means both salmon roe or caviar. I can't have caviar too often, but thanks to visiting friends and family I have a steady source of salmon roe. It used to be one of the most sought-after delicacies in the USSR's product deficit economy. Along with black "Volga" sedans and smoked salami, it was a status symbol of the Soviet nomenklatura. My parents did not belong to the number, so my Dad had to go to great lengths to make sure we would have some on the table at least for the New Year's. I still remember how wonderful these fishy drops of goodness tasted, a rare, very special treat.

These days ikra is a frequent guest on the tables of the Russian middle class. It is not cheap but if you want some you can just buy it in the supermarket. Mom and Dad are retired now and their cat Musya is very fond of it. We like to laugh now that in the olden days the Communists must have eaten it all up so that nobody else would have it.

I upgraded the traditonal Russian salmon roe sandwich by halving the butter amount and using it to grill the bread. I find the contrast of the crunchy crust and unctuous roe is highly delectable.

Unagidon (うなぎ丼): Japanese summer survival tool

apanese summer is relentless, especially in the cities. The concrete jungle absorbs the sun heat while millions of air-conditioners pump out typhoons of hot area into the streets. It is in fact so bad that it is a national custom to send "midsummer heat fatigue" (natsubate) greeting cards inquiring how others are managing.

Unagi-don (うなぎ丼), grilled eel fillets served on top of hot rice, is supposed to provide strength to withstand the exhausting heat. There is even a special day, Doyou no Ushi no Hi, when its consumption is deemed especially beneficial.

Whether a commercial gimmick or Oriental wisdom, unagi-don is a superbly delicious dish. In fact, I enjoy it even more in winter. I cook it the Kansai way: cutting the eel's belly and basting the grilling fillets with tare made of sake, mirin and shoyu. Unlike epicurean Kansai merchants, stuck-up Edo (Tokyo) samurais hated that practice as it reminded them of seppuku (commonly and incorrectly known as harakiri).

The recipe is really simple:

1. If you have a whole eel: cut off the head, gut it, cut it in 6-7 cm pieces and removed the spine. Don't worry about the small bones.
2. Mix shoyu, mirin and sake half a cup each. Marinate the filets for at least an hour.
3. Grill the filets, regularly turning them over and basting with the marinade. Depending on your grill it takes up to 20-30 minutes. Alternatively, use a grill skillet.
   
4. Serve on top of freshly cooked Japanese rice. For the authentic taste only use short-grained japonica, long-grained jasmin and basmati just won't taste right.
   

Japanese sake or beer goes well with unagi-don. Dry white wine might be good as well but I find it a sacrilege and never even try but why should it stop you?

One of my favourite Japanese songs. Technically it is Okinawa-flavoured but it won't clash with the taste of unagi-don.

Venison sausages with juniper sauce

cooked the venison sausages I bought at the Southwark Slow Food Festival the best way I know how: with juniper sauce. It is a variation of the classic bourguignonne for game dishes. Juniper berries give that foresty, coniferous fragrance that goes well with the powerful flavour of venison, boar or pheasant. Potatoes boiled in jackets are there just to soak in the juices and aid the enjoyment of two major flavours.

Wild boar medallions, sauce bourguignonne

Wild boar medallions with classic bourguignonne sauce, stir-fried potatoes and grilled vegetables.

I enhance the basic sauce with some Asian savvy: shiitake instead of white champignons gives it a more powerful mushroom fragrance.

Sunkissed Côte de Roussillon made a lovely accompaniment for the viande de sanglier (somehow this sounds better in French).

Scallops baked in shells with cream and crumbs Breton style

Cocquille Saint-Jacques à la bretonne - are a luxury starter.

The recipe is very straightforward: oven-baked scallops on shells in bechamel with bread crumbs on top.

Alsatian Rieslings are very different from their German cousins: they are crisp, dry with berry or fruit overtones that are never perfumy. I bought this bottle straight from the producer in Riquewihr.