Bacon, Lettuce, Asparagus and Tomato Sandwich (The BLAT)

I know that the old 'eat seasonal and local' phrase has become an over-used mantra to some people, and I also know that this philosophy is a difficult one to stick by when you are struggling with a large family and little money. So I choose to use it wisely and with caution when teaching; some people simply cannot follow the foodie idealist way of life and I can sympathise.

However, there are certain products that I feel so strongly about that I almost urge the nation to buy them when they are in season. Products that are in such abundance that you would be a fool to not make the most of their short window of growth.

At the moment asparagus and rhubarb are everywhere and I'm being given both of these vegetables on a regular basis from kind mates and family. I'm cooking with and eating rhubarb almost every other day and there are only so many crumbles a portly gent is allowed to consume in a week. So more rhubarb recipes, both sweet and savoury, will be appearing soon.

The best asparagus is almost at an end and this 'King of the vegetables' should be treated with great respect. My favourite way is to simply roast them in a little olive oil and balsamic and eat with a few shavings of Parmesan, Cheddar or crumbly Lancashire. Another great thing to do is team them up with some quality bacon in a kind of BLT or 'BLAT' which becomes a sandwich to beat all sandwiches. Probably the best sandwich in the world? I would say.

Bacon, Lettuce, Asparagus and Tomato Sandwich (The BLAT)
Feeds 2

4 pieces of thick white bread
8 asparagus spears, trimmed
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
4 tbsp quality mayonnaise
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
8 slices of good smoked bacon
A handful of sun dried tomatoes in olive oil or 2 tomatoes thinly sliced
Lettuce leaves

1 - Pre-heat the oven to GM6/200C. Put the asparagus onto a baking tray and toss in the olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a little seasoning. Roast for 10 minutes.
2 - Grill the bacon until crisp and golden. Reserve on kitchen towel.
3 - Lightly toast the bread.
4 - Mix the mayonnaise with the mustard and spread liberally onto the toasted bread.
5 - Layer the bread with lettuce, hot bacon, asparagus and tomatoes and devour.

Rhubarb and Ginger Ice Cream

I’ve always avoided buying an ice cream maker for one reason only. I reckon that I would make a new ice cream at least once a week and that would do nothing for the old love handles. Unfortunately I’ve found a way of making perfect ice cream that doesn’t involve an expensive ice cream maker.

We have been experimenting with different flavoured ice creams for some time now using the patient method of freezing your ‘custard’ in a sealed container and freezing, remembering to churn the mixture at least every hour to help the ice crystals evenly distribute. Pain staking and easy to forget, you inevitably end up with a solid lump that needs a good 30 minutes of thawing. No good when you have children demanding the fruits of their labour NOW!

Cerys and I took a load of rhubarb from the garden and stewed it in honey and stem ginger, a difficult task when you have a ginger addicted daughter trying to eat whole stems and licking the sticky syrup dribbling down her arms. Once cooled, I could safely hand the reigns over to the little one for stirring in yoghurt and cream before sealing and freezing.

And the magic bit? Blitzing it in a food processor to make the most perfectly smooth rhubarb and ginger ice cream. Don’t forget to reserve some of the pink rhubarb syrup to make your own ‘monkey’s blood’ as we Geordies affectionately call it.

Rhubarb and Ginger Ice Cream

300g rhubarb, cleaned and chopped into chunks
100g honey or sugar
3 stem gingers and a little syrup to taste, roughly chopped
150ml natural yoghurt
100ml double cream

1 – Put the rhubarb, honey or sugar and a little water into a saucepan. Bring to the boil then simmer for 10-15 minutes until the rhubarb has broken up. Allow to cool.
2 – Remove a little of the pink syrup with a tablespoon and reserve. Stir in the stem ginger and syrup.
3 – Put the yoghurt, cream and rhubarb into a large bowl and beat thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Pour into an airtight container and freeze until frozen.
4 – Remove and put into a food processor. Blend until smooth. Scoop into cones and drizzle on the rhubarb syrup.

Pease Pudding

The 23rd April brings what should be the English day of celebration in St George's Day. I often wonder how many of us English people will actually raise a glass to our patron saint as well as get stuck into a good old English meal. Not many I reckon.

Whilst we don comedy 'Guinness' hats for St Patrick's Day and have a 'wee dram' of the single malt stuff for St Andrew's Day, we all seem to forget our heritage when it comes to our special day.

Can we please bring it back oh folk of England? Can we please just retain some heritage and tradition and remember where we come from for one day of the year? I don't mean rampage down the street with faces painted destroying all in your way - we have enough of that around International footy day. I mean have some food and drink with your loved ones, feel positive about your heritage and be proud to be English for a change. I'm all for a multi-culturist society, love it in fact. But we should not be afraid to be proud to be English. Perhaps a bit of pride and a positive outlook is the key to this damned recession eh?

I'll be celebrating with some local food, pease pudding to be precise. I'm getting into making large batches of our most famed Geordie split pea concoction and freezing it for rainy days. I'll be simmering a load of split peas in a muslin bag along with a ham hock before toasting some stottie cakes, another one of our traditional foods, smearing liberally in English mustard and making the best ham and pease pudding butties in town. 

You will have a load of local traditional dishes where you come from. As we don't seem to have one dish that describes our wonderfully diverse food in England, it's time to look local and knock one up for you and your family. Enjoy it and tell the world that it's okay to be English.

Pease Pudding

250g yellow split peas
1 ham hock
1 onion
1 carrot
2 sticks of celery
2 bay leaves
A handful of fresh thyme
5 black peppercorns
Water

1 - Place the yellow split peas into a muslin cloth and tie securely. Place them along with the rest of the ingredients into a stock pan.
2 - Cover with water, bring to the boil then simmer for 2 and a half hours.
3 - Drain the split peas then mash with a fork or blend depending on how smooth or rough you like them.
4 - Serve spread thickly in buttered thick bread, slithers of ham hock and English mustard.

Spiced Pumpkin and Whisky Bread Pudding

The last time I visited London to attempt to win something I failed miserably at the final hurdle. MasterChef has been discussed a lot in the 2 years since that fateful day, probably too much for my comfort, and I’ve been working my socks off to try to make some form of living from the world of food ever since.

It hasn’t been easy and I haven’t exactly followed the natural conventional route that I thought I would take such as working in restaurants and training to be a professional chef. Instead I take great pleasure from trying to help people to cook and eat better in my work with Expo Chef. And I’ve also found that I adore writing about food, expressing my natural love for the subject and best of all, writing recipes for fun and trying them out on my friends and family.

Last month I received a call from my favourite publication, Observer Food Monthly, to tell me that I had won an award. I had to stop my car and ring them back such was the shock. One of my recipes was chosen by the likes of Nigel Slater, Jay Rayner and Tom Parker-Bowles to win one of their new categories in the annual OFM awards as best reader’s recipe.

I've just returned from a fantastic awards ceremony where a large amount of my food heroes were present. I tried my best to look cool in their company and realised that I didn’t need to when Alex James shouted at me, ‘That was a f***ing great pudding David’. They are as down to earth as us man! I even found time to feel like the elder statesman and offer a little advice to the MasterChef boys who were all there. Not that they will need my advice as I know they are going to do special things.

Seriously though, for little old me to receive praise from our finest food writer, Mr Nigel Slater, means more to me than I can explain. As for getting a kiss and a cuddle from Mariella Frostrup - these are things that dreams are made of. As I explained in garbled and excited fashion to Jay Rayner, in a scene reminiscent of Alan Partridge in which he proclaimed to the Geordie hotel porter, ‘That was just noise’, I’ve only ever won one award and that was as player of the season for Newcastle Hibs in the 1992 South Tyneside 4th division. So I’ve hardly broken down doors.


So there you go. A bit of self-indulgence but hey, these things come very rarely in my life. So I’m more than happy – I’m positively delirious – and although I am realistic enough to know that this award pales into insignificance in this increasingly glitzy world of food, it will sit on my mantelpiece gathering dust here in sunny East Boldon until such time comes where my wife relegates it to the bottom draw. Thanks for listening. Oh, and here’s the recipe…

Spiced Pumpkin and Whisky Bread Pudding
Serves 6

100g raisins
3 tbsp whisky
3 tbsp hot water

For the sauce
100g muscovado sugar
25g butter
1 tbsp golden treacle

For the pudding
1 whole egg and 3 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
100g pumpkin, cubed, steamed until soft then puréed
250ml double cream
50ml milk
Half tsp ground cinnamon
A few grates of fresh nutmeg
Half tsp ground ginger
1 vanilla pod, split and seeded
Approximately half of a stale white baguette cut into cubes

1 - Pre-heat the oven to GM2, 150 degrees C.
2 - Soak the raisins in the whisky and hot water until plump. You may want to do this overnight, entirely up to you. Drain.
3 - To make the sauce, heat the muscovado sugar, treacle and butter in a pan until melted then pour equal measures into 6 buttered ramekins.
4 - In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until pale. Pour in the cream, milk, purée, spices and vanilla pod and whisk until thoroughly combined. Stir in the bread cubes and leave for 10 minutes to soak.
5 - Place the ramekins into a deep baking tray and pour in boiling water until it comes half way up the sides. Fill the ramekins with a few cubes of bread and the custard mixture.
6 - Place on the middle shelf of the oven and cook for approximately 1 hour or until the custard is firm. If the top starts to colour too quickly, cover loosely with foil.
7 - Remove from the oven and leave to rest for a few minutes. Then run a knife around and turn out onto a plate. Serve with créme fraiche, yoghurt or whipped cream.

White Turnips with Hazelnuts, Thyme and Lemon

Here's a little amusing task for you. Get a turnip and a swede then walk up to random people in the street and ask them if they know which one is which. You will probably get a lot of strange looks, certainly people running away from you and most likely the possibility of being arrested. But when you do get answers, the chances are that an awful lot of people will get it completely wrong.

I grew up thinking a swede was a turnip and vice versa. Despite mashed swede (the orange stuff) always being either on the Sunday dinner or crudely chopped into tiny cubes and boiled to smithereens on the school dinners, a little part of my tiny mind still could not distinguish which was which. And judging by the tests I have done when I'm in a 'Is it a swede or a turnip?' mood, the British public have the same problem.

In these days of food obsession and the fact that I have a responsibility to teach people about food in my everyday job, it is a culinary stumbling block I have had to get right. Swedes are the larger orange fleshed variety and called 'neeps' up in bonny Scotland. Turnips are generally the smaller white fleshed variety with a light purple tinge to their skin. Got that?

I managed to get some British baby white turnips this week which was surprising for this time of the year. But no complaints as these small, sweet and delicate vegetables are a true treat that with the right attention can be transformed into a complete dish on their own. My turnips are given royal treatment with the addition of roasted hazelnuts, thyme and lemon and just a hint of garlic to allow the vegetable's natural pepper heat to shine through. If you get some with their luscious green tops complete, wilt them in the pan as you are finishing them off to give you the complete dish. If you can't be bothered to cook them, a few thin slices added to a salad adds a welcome crunch and heat.

So get your swedes and your turnips the right way around. Both are quite the most amazing vegetable in their own right and certainly vegetables that should be promoted to higher status on the British dinner plate. Of course, I could be wrong and I could be right.

White Turnips with Hazelnuts, Thyme and Lemon
Feeds 2 as a lunch or 4 as a side dish

6 baby white turnips
2 handfuls of whole hazelnuts
25g butter
1 small clove of garlic, sliced thin
A handful of fresh thyme, leaves stripped from the stalks and roughly chopped
The juice of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper

1 - Cut off any leaves from the turnips and roughly chop and set aside. You can leave the skins on small white turnips but if you prefer, peel and cut into medium chunks. Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the turnips. Boil for 5 minutes - you want a bit of bite to them - then drain and set aside.
2 - Bash your hazelnuts up into pieces, not too small. Heat up a frying pan and add the hazelnuts. Gently toss them until toasted but be careful as they will burn easily.
3 - Add the butter to the pan and melt. Add the garlic and thyme along with the cooked turnips and gently toss until coated. Squeeze in the lemon juice, grate in some black pepper and taste for seasoning. If you have the leaves left, toss them in and cook for a few seconds until wilted.

Kipper Kedgeree

It is a much used statement but I have to agree, breakfast is undoubtedly the most important meal of the day. I can't argue with my stomach, and it is this organ that dominates the way that I think each day, an organ that demands food on waking. I've heard of people say that they don't or can't eat breakfast and I always eye these people with suspicion. How on earth do you focus for the day on an empty stomach?

Even worse are people who shove anything down their necks in order to appease hunger. I won't even begin to tell you some of the foods that I know the children that I teach are given each day; heart breaking is not strong enough an expression. We also have the rise of the modern Western breakfast with sugary cereals that disintegrate into some soft slurry in a bowl at the mere splash of milk. My daughter knows what they are and I would be a liar if I said that I did not cave in to her demands for this artificially formed 'cereal' every now and again.

What ever happened to an imaginative start to the day? Time is often against us first thing in the morning but I do believe that you should put at least one day of the week aside to put a bit of effort into your breakfast. We all know about the classic and not to be messed with English breakfast. Muffins with crisped bacon, poached egg and hollandaise sauce takes some beating as does a pile of American pancakes, smokey bacon and a drizzle of sweet maple syrup. Porridge is my daily choice which I mix up with cinnamon, sultanas, mashed banana and honey. It sustains and energises the body and keeps you full for most of the morning.

Last words go out to a much misunderstood and classic Anglo-Indian breakfast of kedgeree, a highly spiced rice, fish and egg breakfast that is a doddle to make and one that is primed for experimenting with. Traditionally used with smoked haddock, I like to use some of our brilliant North East kippers; not too salty and just the right kick of smokiness. And with one eye on frugal times, it is also a great way of using up left over rice. This is a meal that also works for lunch or dinner which makes it even more adaptable.

So be inspired and be a little more resourceful and creative at breakfast time. It might make those dark winter mornings a little happier and I can guarantee that your body will be all the more grateful to you. Good morning my friends.

Kipper Kedgeree
Feeds 4

4 eggs, boiled for 5 minutes then left to cool in cold water
200g basmati rice, cooked and drained
4 kippers
50g butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
A pinch of cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper
A handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped
1 lemon, quartered

Pork, Root and Cider Casserole

A brisk walk along Seaburn beach near Sunderland on any day of the year can have its moments but in mid-January, the wind whistles up your trouser leg and mocks your private parts. It's cold up north.

Nothing beats getting wrapped up in your best woollies and driving against the wind on a beach. It clears the cobwebs, fills your lungs with clean sea air and if you can stretch it out for a few hours, the sea air makes you ravenous meaning you can stuff your face once finished.

A sustaining casserole is always a welcome plate after a cold winter walk, especially a slow cooked one that you can set off before a walk then polish off on your return. Pork cooked with roots and cider makes for a sweet and satisfying plate of food, the roots natural sweetness teased out with the addition of a drop of honey. The meat falls apart with each mouthful; it is as easy to eat as it is to make.

So walk out to winter and make the most of it, as well as remembering to sustain yourself afterwards with a simple and reviving casserole such as this.

Pork, Root and Cider Casserole
Feeds 4

3 shallots, finely sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 swede, peeled and chopped into chunks
1 celeriac, peeled and chopped into chunks
4 large carrots, peeled and chopped into chunks
4 juniper berries, squashed
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp dried sage
1 tbsp plain flour
200ml dry cider
300ml hot vegetable stock
1 tbsp honey
4 pork leg steaks
A handful of fresh sage, roughly chopped
Salt and pepper

1 - Pre-heat the oven to 160C/Fan 140C/GM4.
2 - Heat the olive oil in a large casserole dish and add the shallots. Cook for 5 minutes without colouring.
3 - Add the root vegetables, juniper berries, dried sage and bay leaves. Combine for 1 minute before stirring in the flour.
4 - Pour in the cider and stock and bring to the boil. Stir in the honey, place the pork steaks on top then cover and place into the oven. Cook for 2 hours, checking every 30 minutes to ensure it isn't boiling dry.
5 – Stir in the sage then taste for seasoning and serve with boiled or mashed potatoes and seasonal greens.