Rick Stein’s kedgeree of Arbroath smokies
Many years ago I appeared in a series for Yorkshire Television called Farmhouse Kitchen with Grace Mulligan. I got on very well with her and she taught me a lot about cooking on the box. She also introduced me to Arbroath smokies, which was just as valuable. A true Scottish delicacy, these are small haddock or sometimes whiting that are brined and then heavily smoked on the bone which keeps the fillet moist and sweet.
Serves 4
butter 25g
onion 1 small, chopped
green cardamom pods 2, split open
turmeric powder ¼ tsp
cinnamon stick 2½cm piece
bay leaf 1, very finely shredded
basmati rice 350g
chicken stock or vegetable nage 600ml
eggs 2
Arbroath smokies 450g
flat-leaf parsley 2 tbsp, chopped, plus a few sprigs to garnish
salt and freshly ground pepper
Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onion and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes, until soft but not browned. Add the cardamom pods, turmeric, cinnamon stick and shredded bay leaf and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the rice and stir it around for about 1 minute, until all the grains are thoroughly coated in the spicy butter.
Add the stock and ½ tsp of salt and bring to the boil. Cover the pan with a close-fitting lid, lower the heat and leave it to cook very gently for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, hard-boil the eggs for 8 minutes, then drain. When just cool enough to handle, peel them and cut into small pieces. Flake the Arbroath smokies into small chunky pieces, discarding the skin and bones.
Uncover the rice and gently fork in the fish and chopped eggs. Re-cover and return to the heat for 5 minutes or until the fish has heated through. Then gently stir in the chopped parsley and season with a little more salt and black pepper to taste. Serve garnished with sprigs of parsley.
From Rick Stein’s Seafood Odyssey by Rick Stein (BBC Books, £16.99). Click here to order a copy for £12.99
Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer’s Ashura cereal
Ashura is a traditional Turkish dessert also known as Noah’s Ark pudding. The legend goes that, running low on supplies in the ark, Noah boiled together everything they had – dried wheat, beans, fruit, nuts, spices and honey. The whole store cupboard. The result is a very substantial dessert; a meal in itself, really. We use the same ingredients (minus the beans), but instead of boiling them we roast them to make a great alternative to granola. The puffed wheat keeps it light and is easier on your jaw than crunchy oats. We have served this for breakfast with yogurt, jam and fresh fruit since we opened Honey & Co, but it’s great with just milk or even on its own as an addictive nibble.
Makes a cereal container full of nutty crunchy goodness
vegetable oil (rapeseed or sunflower) 85g/95ml
honey 110g
dark brown soft sugar 110g
table salt 1 tsp
ground cinnamon 1 tsp
ground mahleb seeds ½ tsp
ground cardamom ½ tsp
puffed wheat 1 packet (160g)
pecans 85g, halved
sunflower seeds 40g
pumpkin seeds 50g
sesame seeds 30g
almonds 85g, very roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 190C/gas mark 5 and line a couple of large flat baking trays with baking parchment. Combine the oil, honey and sugar in a medium pan and set on a high heat. Mix well and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to avoid it burning on the base. Put the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Once the honey syrup is bubbling, carefully pour it over the dry ingredients in the bowl. Use a large spoon to stir, turning the contents of the bowl over a few times until everything is well coated with the syrup. Transfer the mixture to the baking trays and flatten it out a little so that there is an even layer of cereal.
Place in the centre of the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Carefully remove one tray at a time and mix the cereal around to make sure everything is getting roasted and crispy. Return the trays to the oven for an additional 5-6 minutes, then remove and leave the ashura to cool entirely on the trays before breaking into large clusters.
Once the cereal is cold, transfer it to an airtight container. This keeps for well over 2 weeks, if you don’t get addicted and eat it all long before then.
From Honey & Co: The Baking Book by Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer (Saltyard Books, £25). Click here to order a copy for £20
Anna Jones’s 10 ways with avocado on toast
To me, avocado on toast is sunny food – it feels right on a summer’s day and brightens up a dreary one. It is a go-to when time is short and cupboards are bare. I often eat it as a hurried breakfast, very simply with some lime, salt and pepper. But these other ways have crept in too.
Since avocado is the star of the show, accept nothing less than soft, yielding, ripe and perfect. Avocados are loaded with good fats and omega 3, like the stuff you find in olive oil, and an artillery of vitamins and minerals. I would struggle to eat without them.
1 Mash an avocado with lemon, salt and pepper. Pile onto toasted sourdough, top with tomatoes. a little balsamic vinegar, a bit of basil and some olive oil.
2 Mash an avocado with lemon juice and pile onto rye bread with a drizzle of honey.
3 Mash an avocado with some lime juice, salt and pepper. Pile onto toasted bread and top with a good sprinkling of chopped, fresh red chilli.
4 Mash an avocado with a little lemon juice. Pile onto hot buttered toast and top with a poached egg and some chilli sauce.
5 Mash an avocado with a little lemon juice. Spread a toasted bagel with a fine slick of cream cheese and top with the mashed avo. Generously grate over lemon zest and sprinkle with lots of black pepper.
6 Mash an avocado with a little lime juice, salt and pepper and stir in a chopped spring onion, a teaspoon of toasted mustard seeds and some chopped coriander. Pile onto hot toast.
7 Mash your avocado with a tiny bit of lemon juice. Top hot toast with a slick of coconut oil, the mashed avo and then some toasted almonds.
8 Mash your avocado with a little lemon juice, pile onto toast, then top with a few thin slices of banana and a sprinkling of cinnamon.
9 Mash a ripe avocado with a little lemon juice, pile onto toast, and top with chopped pistachios, some toasted sesame seeds and a little honey and cinnamon.
10 Whiz some basil with a little olive oil. Mash an avocado with a little lemon juice and pile onto hot toast, crumble over some feta and pour over the basil oil.
From A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones (Fourth Estate, £25). Click here to order a copy for £20
Justin Gellatly’s pikelets
Originally from the West Midlands, these are like a flat crumpet but a little heavier (and you don’t need crumpet rings).
Makes 10-12
full fat milk 360ml
caster sugar ½ tsp
fresh yeast 14g, crumbled
strong white bread flour 125g
plain flour 125g
fine sea salt 1½ tsp
sunflower oil 3-5 tbsp
Warm the milk and sugar together in a medium saucepan until just warm (blood heat), then whisk in the yeast until dissolved.
Sift the flours into a large bowl and add the salt, the milk mixture and 1 tablespoon of sunflower oil. Whisk together until you have a smooth, thick batter mixture. Cover loosely with a cloth or clingfilm and leave somewhere warm to prove for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
You will need to cook the pikelets in three batches. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into a large, heavy-based frying pan on a medium heat. When hot, pour in 3-4 separate ladlefuls of batter, leaving a little space between them as they spread out when cooking. Turn the heat right down and fry for 3 minutes on each side, until golden brown.
Remove the pikelets from the oil with a spatula and place them on kitchen paper to drain. Continue with the remaining two batches, using more oil as necessary. Serve warm, with butter and jam or honey.
From Bread, Cake, Doughnut, Pudding by Justin Gellatly (Fig Tree, £25). Click here to order a copy for £20
Simon Hopkinson’s Full English
Cooking “The Full English” is all about preparation, timing and coordination, so get out of bed earlier than you might think. In my kitchen, a best breakfast will be the following: the freshest eggs, smoked streaky bacon, sausages/black pudding (but never both), fried bread, tomatoes and mushrooms. If you like, a slippery handful of three halved lamb’s kidneys, grilled, will add style, and a dish of small, cut-up fried potatoes (remember those that were always served with the old British Rail breakfast of long ago?) may be much appreciated by serious trencher folk, but these are entirely a matter for the cook.
Crucially, however, the making of toast, the provision of butter and marmalade and the brewing of coffee is not your job, but that of one’s partner/wife/husband/helpful guest. So, make this quite clear at the outset. And the cook must absolutely not have help at the stove; this is a one-person endeavour, or there will be shouting and pans flung.
Always sausages first, so arrange six on a lightly greased baking tray; if you take the black pudding option, cut 6 thick slices from a fatty-flecked British one (do not go down the French boudin noir route, as they are far too sweet, here) and similarly arrange. At the same time, lay out 6 medium-sized dark-gilled flat mushrooms (gills uppermost) and 3 large tomatoes, halved horizontally, onto a similar baking tray.
Liberally season both tomatoes and mushrooms and brush with oil. Put to cook in a hot oven (200C/gas mark 6) and do not touch for at least 20 minutes.
Be fully aware that these three unconnected ingredients really need to COOK: the sausages need to brown and splutter a bit, the mushrooms will release their juices (they can’t help it) and then soak them back, vaguely browning themselves in the process and, importantly, shrinking to intensely flavoured disks. Furthermore, the tomatoes need to almost collapse to emerge properly cooked; how many inept, supposedly “grilled” tomatoes has one collected from the hotel breakfast buffet to find that they are, weirdly, just warm and uncooked?
For me, there is nothing more delicious than a properly cooked tomato releasing its juices into a slice of fried bread, once nudged with the back of a fork. However, that fried bread needs much attention, too, to be ready for such sweet dousings. So, now is the time to quietly allow some fatty streaky bacon to fry (allow three thin slices per person), in batches, using a large frying pan.
Allow each batch to quietly crisp, transfer to a flat oven tray lined with a triple fold of kitchen paper, decant the rendered fat onto a large plate and continue. Once all the bacon is cooked transfer the laden tray to the oven (remove the paper), turn off the heat and keep it warm with the sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms which will hopefully, by now, be fully cooked. Whew!
For the fried bread, cut six thick slices from a small white loaf and cut off the crusts. Return the frying pan to a low heat and then thickly brush each slice of bread with bacon fat and gently fry on each side until a very special gilded crust is achieved; believe me, this will be the very best fried bread you have ever tasted. Store in the waning oven heat, loosely stacked on top of the tray of bacon. Put six plates to warm through in the oven, too.
And, finally, to the eggs. Poached eggs are right out, here, for these perfectly oval ova may only lounge upon buttered toast, all alone – and my chosen last supper, as it happens. So no, here, the eggs must be either simply fried or scrambled; to furnish you with my thoughts and details of how I prefer to assemble the latter could, quite possibly, take the space of another article all its own, so do as you do with your scramblings…
As to the fried egg, I only suggest that it is cooked ever so quietly in murmuring best butter, regularly basted with the same, until the deep golden yolk acquires the palest, almost blue-ish opaque membrane. And, finally, have all six hot plates fully garnished with all the other ingredients, before you begin to cook the eggs; a fried egg left to languish is a sad egg, to be sure.
Simon Hopkinson is a cookery writer and chef; simonhopkinson.tv
