It's becoming more comfortable

By the end of our second week in London, we've begun to figure out the limitations and possibilities of the stove, the oven, and our kitchen equipment.  We have augmented our batterie de cuisine with the essentials.  We have enough butter.  So this Saturday's trip to Borough Market proceeded with more of a plan; we even had some recipes in mind to prepare if we could get the right ingredients.

Since we are spending so much time in the kitchen (our washer and dryer are also located there), we should share our view.  (It is also the view from the living room, which is next door to the kitchen. Our two bedrooms overlook the square, although the "view" is obscured by the building's ballustrade.)

The tower block in the distance is Centre Point, home in the 1960s to some famous squatting.

But on to the food!

Fish was on our mind... the fishmongers at Borough Market don't all set up their stalls right at 8, so we wandered around looking to see what was available.  There was a small vendor advertising he was selling his own catch, from Dorset.  Mussels were especially good, he said; but he wouldn't recommend the plaice (although he was selling it).  We eventually settled on a dover sole from Applebee's, and asked for it to be filleted.   Then we bought some fresh girolles mushrooms, for a garnish, and some fresh chervil, an herb that is hardly ever available in our markets.

The menu was quite simple: we would saute the sole in our orange Le Creuset pot, which is fast becoming our go-to pot in the kitchen.  Using the Canadian cooking method (10 minutes per inch), we sauteed them just a bit, and they turned out firm and delicious.

We topped them with some sauteed girolles, sprinkled the chervil on top, and served with steamed potatoes, and a green salad with some fresh vine tomatoes.  Very elegant and very simple!  And perfect with a bottle of dry white wine.  (The wine situation is requiring more research!  We are not as enthusiastic about Oddbins' as about some of our other suppliers in the neighborhood.)

Our next night's meal would require more advance preparation, but for lunch, it was time for a simple meal of leftover guinea fowl made into a soup, and three excellent cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy:

These are from left to right a mild goat cheese, Dorstone; Montgomery cheddar, their stalwart; and Stichelton, which is a blue cheese similar to Stilton but made in the traditional way that Stilton no longer is.  It's been produced for just a few years now by a couple of guys who had been affiliated with Neal's Yard.  They claim the name Stichelton goes back to the 13th century, but if you take "Sti-lton" and add "Che" you get the new cheese!  It's very delicious.  Lunch on Sunday was cheese, soup, and fruit. Perfecto!

For Sunday dinner, we had decided to make beef cheeks, a cut of meat that's become very popular in restaurant circles, but one that is impossible to find in ordinary grocery stores or even meat markets (like tongue and other odd meats -- offal).  We had seen them at the Ginger Pig the week before, so we decided that this would be our slow-cooked weekend meal.   We adapted a recipe from Thomas Keller's French Laundry cookbook.  He presents his cheeks along with the tongue, but we decided to stick with our three cheeks.  First, they were marinated for about 24 hours in leeks, fennel, carrots, garlic, endives, parsley, onion, peppercorns, and a bottle of red wine.

The next day, we braised the cheeks on the stove top for a couple of hours, jumping up every few minutes when the steam from the covered pot hissed onto the hot stove.  We were still very nervous about the heat being too high and the liquid boiling away.
Once the cheeks were done, we set them aside and went to see a movie! (Henry's Crime.)
Then we came back and finished everything:  the cheeks were reheated, then removed from the marinade.  We threw away (sad) the vegetables, and boiled down the braising liquid.  Meanwhile, we prepared a pot of Savoy cabbage, which have been lovely at the market.  Following Jane Grigson, we sliced it, steamed it for a few minutes in about 2 centimeters of water (we used the oval blue Le Creuset), and then drained and simmered in lots and lots of butter.  The color stayed nice and bright and the cabbage was still crisp and delicious.

Then we made the sauce for the beef cheeks, again following Keller:  we grated a few tablespoons of fresh horseradish, added it to some whipped double cream, and squeezed in a bit of lemon juice.
The last step, to slice the cheeks:

The picture doesn't really do them justice; they were firm and yet tender, with the taste of tongue, but with their own texture.  Scrumptious.  Then we put everything together, including some boiled down braising liquid, for the dining table:

This was a super meal the first time, and made terrific leftovers a few nights later. (We made fresh horseradish cream; and the cabbage was not quite so green, but still tasty.)

Browsing for recipes, we came across a macaroni and cheese using Stichelton cheese, from Gordon Ramsay's F-Word show.  It also required girolles -- how convenient, since we had bought plenty at the market.  And wandering through the Covent Garden neighborhood on our way back from seeing an exhibit of Cezanne's card players at the Courtauld Institute, we came across this pasta from Carluccio, called gigli del gargano all'uovo.

whose shape almost mimics that of the girolles:

The rest is simple. Just saute the mushrooms and some shallots; then melt some butter with cream, add two-thirds of the crumbled Stichelton and about a half cup of Parmesan cheese.  Stir in the mushrooms.  Meanwhile, cook the noodles until they are almost tender.  Combine everything in the casserole, top with the rest of the Stichelton and another quarter cup of Parmeson cheese.  Bake for 15 minutes, let rest for another 5, and buon appetito!

And there was still more in our refrigerator!!! We had also bought 4 Toulouse style sausages from the Ginger Pig.  Most of the recipes we consulted suggested that this was the basic sausage for cassoulet.  We didn't have any of the other ingredients, though, like beans, and confit of duck, and all the rest. What to do?   There seemed to be a classic recipe, from the southwest, for lentils and sausages.  The sausages on the ipad even looked just like ours!  And we already had French le Puy type lentils in our larder.

Lentil and Toulouse Sausage Casserole
Serves 6
300 g green lentils
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions chopped
2 fennel chopped
2 cloves of garlic peeled and chopped
3 sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
1 cup canned chopped tomatoes (or fresh if you have them)
200 ml red wine
6 sausages
large bunch of Italian parsley

1. Heat the oven to 200 C.
2. Heat olive oil in a casserole dish, add the onion, fennel (or celery) and garlic and saute for 5 minutes. Add the thyme leaves stripped from the stalks, bay leaf, tomatoes, mix together, and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile saute the sausages on all sides, making sure your exhaust fan is working properly.
4. Remove the onion mixture from the heat, add lentils and red wine, and then pour in enough water to cover. Place the sausages on top, cover with a lid and cook in the oven for 30 minutes.
5. Stir in the parsley just before serving.

We often make a dish of lentils and Italian sausage from Jamie Oliver's Italian cook book.  There the lentils are cooked separately, dressed with vinegar and oil; the sausages are roasted in the oven; a separate tomato sauce is made, and everything is served with some broccoli raab on the side.  So now we have two great lentil and sausage recipes.  (The toulouse sausages come with or without garlic -- these were without.  They are more coarsely ground than regular sausage, and have a great texture in a dish like this.  You can learn more about sausage from the Ginger Pig themselves!)

And that was our week of cooking!  We had a couple of meals out, at Cigala, a neighborhood Spanish restaurant that we always think will be better than it is, and which first caught our eye as a set in the Mike Hodges film, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.  In the film, Charlotte Rampling owns the restaurant.  In real life, I think it is Mike Hodges' brother.  On Friday, we had an economical Indian vegetarian meal at Ravi Shankar, and then went to see the new Peter Weir film, The Way Back.  We felt guilty to be well nourished for that one, but we learned a lot about even more innovative adventures in cuisine: grubs, tree bark, and rattlesnake (tastes like chicken).   And a batterie de cuisine that makes ours look like it came from l'Escoffier.