Sometimes dishes come about unexpectedly. I’d blackened some aubergines with the intention of making baba ghanoush. But then after peeling the skin and scooping out the smoky soft flesh, I didn’t get around to it and left it in the fridge. Getting back late one night and fancying some noodles, I thought of the brilliant Sichuanese aubergines from A Wong, and that I could make a noodle sauce.

I warmed some chilli oil and sesame oil with crushed szechuan peppercorns, stirred in some black bean sauce, and then tossed in the aubergine flesh. I then adjusted the seasoning with a splash of red vinegar. When this was ready, I cooked the noodles, and tossed them into the sauce, adding sesame seeds and sliced spring onions on top.

It’s a great combination of flavours – the sesame and aubergine combination is common to baba ghanoush and this dish, but the spice and heat take it in a new direction.

Sanlucar de Barrameda is a small town in the south west of Spain, where the Guadalquivir river meets the Atlantic ocean. It’s one point of the “Sherry Triangle” – the three towns (Jerez and Puerto de Santa Maria are the others) which each produce sherry, and which mark the borders of the area where the palomino fino and pedro ximinez sherry grapes must be grown.

The town produces the manzanilla style of dry sherry – coincidentally my favourite, and the perfect pairing for the all the amazing seafood you can eat here. Sanlucar is famous for prawns, and has a protected indication for its famous langostinos. There are plenty of good places to eat, but the best for us was a café called La Plaza in the covered market, right next to Bodegas Hidalgo, producers of La Gitana.

First you go shopping in the market, and then the bar will take your meat, fish and vegetables and cook them up for €3/kilo. The market has half a dozen fish stalls, with piles of shellfish and fish.

We went for lunch two days running. Great things we had included chipirones – the tiny squid pictured above. These are often deep fried, but they cook on the plancha (hot plate grill) perfectly. Acedias are like a small plaice and were sweet and delicious. On day two we had clams, which were cooked with wine and garlic.

And of course the prawns. The first day we had the Sanlucar langostinos. 

The second day we samples a few different types – shown in the photo at the top of this post.

You can also select vegetables to be grilled as well – we picked courgettes, peppers and asparagus.

They also sometimes have a few dishes they’ve selected. On the second day we were offered a tomato salad with lots of salt and olive oil.

The crew are also really friendly. It’s got to be the best value lunch in the whole town – not only was everything cooked well, but the team do an amazing job of keeping track of everyone’s shopping and spacing the dishes out. 

This combines some of my favourite things into a really fun meal for sharing where everyone gets to put their own flatbread together.

First the flatbreads – using the recipe from the Mission Street Food book.

You mix 4 cups of plain flour with a cup of fine cornmeal, a cup of buttermilk and a cup of boiling water. Mix it, adding more flour if necessary to get a dough which isn’t too sticky. Rest it for it at least an hour. Divide it into 24 balls and dust with flour. Roll them out into a circle, and spread generously with tempered butter (butter which you’ve whisked over a gentle heat until it has the consistency of melted chocolate – the idea is that once it reaches this stage, it will maintain that consistency as it cools, allowing you to spread it on the flatbreads when it’s at room temperature).

Roll the circles into a cigar shape, and coil that up like the ones on the right of the photo above. When you’ve done all of them, flour each coil, flatten with your hand and roll into a circle. You can stack them on squares of baking parchment until you’re ready to cook, which should be just before you serve them. Sear them on a very hot cast iron pan or griddle which you’ve wiped with a little groundnut oil or lard.

For the crispy pork belly, follow the instructions on this post from RecipeTin Eats. It involves pricking the skin hundreds of times without piercing through to the fat, and then creating a foil wrapper for the pork belly which comes up over the sides, so you can cover the top with rock salt. After roasting, you finish under the grill to get puffy, crispy crackling – which is perfect for a flatbread like this where you don’t want the crackling to be too hard or chewy.

The peanut soy sauce is easy and delicious. Roast peanuts in a low oven (say 130ºC) shaking the tin a few times, until just beyond golden brown. Allow to cool. Blend them with soy sauce and a little palm sugar, or Japanese mirin if you have it. Add water to taste until you have a spoonable consistency.

Other good things to serve alongside – sliced radish for some crunch, coriander, your favourite chilli sauce. Fun, delicious, moreish and each person can customise theirs exactly as they wish.

It’s asparagus season in England, and although you can get purple sprouting broccoli for much of the year, it’s really a winter vegetable and the stall at the market where I got this said it was the last of the season. So this is a kind of crossover vegetable dish, with a sauce inspired by a dish of pea mousse with morels and soy beans in a ginger dashi at Five Leaves in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago.
The broccoli and asparagus were steamed separately for a few minutes, stopping the cooking and plunging into cold water while still crunchy and just short of being done. The sauce was made by simmering a few slices of root ginger in a cupful of vegetable dashi. Taste regularly and fish out the ginger when it tastes right – you want it to be subtly warming rather than fiery and strong. Add in a thinly sliced leek, and if you have it, some ramps or wild garlic. Simmer for a few minutes until cooked. Whisk in a thick slice of butter, and then when you’re ready to serve, add the asparagus and broccoli and warm through in the sauce.
You could enjoy a bowl of this with some bread as a lunch or supper dish, or have it alongside some grilled lamb or chicken as we did.

The sparse posting for the last few months was due to too much travel and having to study for some professional exams. That’s all over, and getting back into the kitchen it’s simple food I’ve been craving.

This is one of those dishes which you can make and then enjoy throughout the next few days. Wilted spinach is well drained, then stirred with a sauce made of 3 parts miso paste, 1 part mirin and 1 part ground sesame seeds. Simple and delicious.

I’m a big fan of most type of clam, but too often razor clams are served with bits of sand still in them. It’s a shame, as it’s easy to avoid if you cook them with care and prep them before serving.

Razor clams will be alive when you buy them, and probably be poking out of their shells. Rinse them thoroughly under running water, and then cook in a pan with a little boiling water for 3-4 minutes. Let them cool a little, while in a separate pan you melt some butter, toss in a chopped spring onion, a little chopped flat leaf parsley, lemon zest, a small squeeze of lemon juice and a handful of peeled brown shrimp.

For each razor clam, trim off the white foot, and then locate and remove the blackish looking sack – this is where the last bits of sand may be. You’ll be left with a long tube. Check that there’s no black gunk still in is, and if there is, clean it out. Chop the clam, arrange it in the shell, and then spoon over the shrimp butter.

This is a great flavour combination for spring rolls – as you crack open the crispy pastry you get a waft of aromatic black pepper. They’re also really easy to make.

For about 15 spring rolls: About 250g of crab meat, equal parts white meat and brown meat; one individual sized pack of mung bean noodles; a big handful of bean sprouts; a two inch piece of daikon / mooli; spring roll pastry; kampot black pepper and salt.

Soak the mung bean noodles until soft and drain thoroughly. Julienne the daikon into matchstick-sized strips. Bring a small pan of water to the boil and cook the beansprouts for about two minutes. Add in the daikon and take off the heat. Allow to cool for a minute and then drain. Turn the noodles onto a board and chop up into small lengths.

Mix the crab meats together, and add in noodles and the vegetables. You probably won’t need to use all of the noodles, as you want to end up with something which has the consistency of the mix pictured below. Add in ground kampot black pepper to taste – and it really is delicious with a good hit of pepper. Finally add a pinch or two of salt and check the taste.

Then you have the make the rolls. Start by taking a sheet and angling it so one corner is pointing towards you. Add a spoonful of filling.

Fold the corner closest to you over the filling and make one turn over.

Fold in one side.

Then fold over the other side and roll it up.

When you have the top corner showing, as above, wet a finger and run it along the edges, then finish rolling it, allowing the wet edges to seal. You can do all of this in advance. 

The spring rolls can be shallow fried, in 5mm of oil, turning a few times to get them evenly crisped all over.

Serve with soy sauce, black vinegar, or for a really delicious version, serve with XO sauce.

London finally has decent Mexican food – I haven’t yet been to Tacos El Pastor, but just before Christmas had an excellent meal at Breddo’s Tacos.

One of the dishes was queso fundido – a dish of melted cheese studded with chorizo. With some leftover lamb after Christmas, we made some ourselves. It’s really easy, and perfect on a cold winter’s day.

If you want a version with chorizo, break up a cooking chorizo sausage, and fry it until cooked and showing some colour. If you have some leftover roast meat you can skip this step. In place of meat, you could use some softened sautéed onion.

Grate 8oz of hard cheese, such as cheddar, and toss it with two teaspoons of plain flour. Heat a quarter cup of lager in the pan, and when it’s warm, add a handful of the cheese and stir. Keep adding the cheese and stirring until it’s all melted. Stir the meat in and you’re ready to serve. It reheats well, so you can make in advance. 

Serve with tortilla chips, or as we did with warm flatbreads.

If you’re in London, Breddos is highly recommended. They’re unquestionably the best tortillas I’ve had this side of the Atlantic, making some find tacos (pictured below):

This was inspired by two restaurant dishes eaten within a couple of days of each other. The first was a second visit this year to Tuome in New York’s East Village. It was a highlight of the year, particularly for the sharing main courses. On each visit we had the “Pig Out for Two” (pork belly, two sauces, and a dish of noodles in peanut sauce). On this recent visit, there was also slow-cooked lamb served with lettuce cups. It tasted great, but it also showed how lettuce cups are a great way of serving a dish for several to share.

The second inspiration was the dim sum at A Wong. I’ve visited in the evening many times, but this was the first lunch time visit. It’s even better than the evenings – great dumplings and a standout dish of green bean fritters. There was also a wonton served in an intensely savoury red vinegar sauce. 

These two meals inspired this dish of slow-cooked venison shank, in a savoury vinegar-laden sauce, served with a roast garlic sour cream, with lettuce cups. Venison shanks are sustainable and really cheap – look out for them at a farmers market. These came from South Downs Venison at the Marylebone Farmers Market.

Slow-Cooked Venison Shank

For six people: three venison shanks, three cups of shaoxing wine, five star anise, a teaspoon of sichuan pepper, vegetable oil, two sliced onions.

Soften the onions in the oil, lift them all out and put them in a casserole dish. Brown the shanks, add them to the casserole dish. Add all other ingredients, and top up with water so that the top inch or so of the shanks are exposed. Cover and simmer on a low heat, or cook in a low oven, for about three hours. Turn the shanks a couple of times. You want the meat to be really soft and falling off the bone, with a few crispy bits on the meat that’s been exposed above the liquid. Strain and reserve the liquid and keep the shanks warm.

Roasted Garlic Sour Cream

You can roast a head of garlic in tinfoil, but as it keeps so well, it’s often worth roasting three or four heads. In the winter this is often the best way of incorporating garlic into dishes, as last season’s fresh garlic gets less fragrant and more bitter the longer it is stored. 

I cut the tops off so the cloves are exposed, put them in a small cast iron pan and pour over olive oil to come two-thirds of the way up the cloves. Cover with baking parchment and tightly wrap with foil. Bake at 180ºC for an hour to ninety minutes, until the cloves are soft. Drain them upside down on a rack, and when cool, extract the cloves. Strain and reserve the oil. Use some to cover the cloves and they’ll last for weeks in the fridge, and use the oil for things like stir frying.

For the garlic sour cream, start by squashing 4-5 cloves for 200ml of sour cream. Blend and add salt to taste. Add more garlic if you want.

Savoury Red Vinegar Sauce

In a small pan, take three cloves of the roasted garlic and squash in a couple of tablespoons of garlic oil over a low heat, stirring until you have a paste. Add 50ml of light soy sauce, 25ml of red vinegar and 50ml of the cooking liquid from the venison. Check the flavour and adjust with more vinegar, soy or stock until you have a balance that you like.

Coriander Sauce

Blend coriander (cilantro) leaf with a little rice wine vinegar and oil to make a vivid bright green sauce. You don’t need much of this – a couple of good spoonfuls is enough.

To serve the dish:

Take three heads of little gem lettuce, discard any limp outer leaves and separate into individual leaves until you get to the core and leaves which are too small to make a cup. We also served some fermented red onion alongside it. You could have a dish of sliced spring onions if you can’t find these.

Using two forks, shred the meat from the shanks and add to a warm serving platter. There will be a few bits of connective tissue and ligaments, so take these out as you do.

Pour the hot sauce over the meat, and drizzle over the coriander sauce. Serve alongside the garlic sour cream. Invite your guests to make their own cups, balancing meat and sour cream as they wish. It’s a fun way of feeding a big group, allowing everyone to each as much or as little as they want.

There are a few stages to this, but you can pick and choose which to do. The parsley shallot oil really sets it off brilliantly, and is based on shallot oil, which is a great thing to have in the kitchen. It’s really a by-product of making crispy shallots.

Crispy shallots and shallot oil:

These are great – on rice, on a salad – anywhere you need some crunch to make good textural contrast. To make it, slice shallots finely on a mandoline and sauté in an inch of oil. You want the oil to be 275ºF / 135ºC when you put the onions in, and then turn the heat down. It should take 10-20 minutes, or maybe longer, for then to get to a deep golden colour. Remove with a slotted spoon into a large sieve and then spread on kitchen paper to cool. The picture above shows them at this stage – they darken a bit after you take them out, so use that to judge when they’re done. Strain and cool the oil and this is your shallot oil. The shallots can be stored in an airtight container, but after a couple of days will lose their crunch. The oil is good for a few weeks if stored in a cool place.

Parsley shallot oil:

Really easy: blitz the leaves of flat-leaf parsley with shallot oil and add salt to taste. Parsley oil and other versions of sauce verte are fresh and add zing to a dish. This is a mix of fresh and deeply savoury. It will last a couple of days, but it’s really best made fresh each time.

Squash soup:

For four decent portions you’ll need: three small kabocha squash, or one large one, a leek, a small celeriac, some vegetable stock. 

Half the squash and scrape out the seeds. Steam the squash until soft and allow to cool a little. Sauté the leek in olive oil until soft. While you’re doing this, scrape out the flesh of the squash. Add this to the leek with cubed celeriac and the vegetable stock. Cook until the celeriac is soft, and then partially puree with a stick blender. Adjust the seasoning.

To make the croutons, cut some old bread into cubes, and add to a hot pan with olive oil and salt. Sprinkle with a little smoked paprika.

Serve the soup with a drizzle of the shallot oil all over the top, and serve more in a bowl on the table so people can add more as they eat.