Tiny Birds and Four-legged Animals

We have been just amazed at the variety of small birds that are available at Borough Market and even in our Waitrose supermarket.  Guinea fowl as an alternative to chicken seems to be widely available.  At the Market, we have had a hard time choosing among pheasant, quail, pigeon, wood pigeon, ducks, grouse, and partridge.

We decided to go for a partridge last weekend, or in fact two, because they're small (and not too angry, either).  We recalled that a normal method for partridge is on a bed of cabbage, which is in season, so we picked up another Savoy cabbage as well. (Other ideas seem to include pears, as in the 12 days of Christmas.)  However, when we came back to the flat and searched for recipes, the one that caught our eye was partridge with leeks and prune sauce braised in cider. We browned some bacon, then sauteed leeks in its fat.  Then we added some cider and boiled it away, followed by some stock and prunes.  Then we removed them, and browned the partridge in the bacon fat. Finally we oven-braised the partridge with the leeks and prunes, for about 15 minutes (which was 5 minutes too long).  We removed the partridges, added double cream which we boiled down a bit. Next we fried some bread crumbs and toasted chopped hazelnuts, with some sage.  The birds were cut apart, and served on the bed of leeks with the sauce on top.  Maybe a little overdone, but tasty all the same! (Served with a dish of Kenyan green beans on the side.)

 For Sunday dinner, we decided to do the English thing and have roast lamb.  Our various cooking advice sites and books claimed that lamb shoulder makes a much tastier and tender roast than leg, so we picked a shoulder out of the case at the Ginger Pig, receiving some advice from the butcher about how to prepare it. (Slow cooking in a low oven.)  In the end, we adapted a recipe from Jamie Oliver, scoring and salting the lamb, and placing it in our casserole.

(The whole shoulder comes with a piece of the front leg attached; we had to cut it off to fit in the pot.) Rub it all over olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then roast covered in a medium oven for about 3-4 hours.  It smelled great all afternoon.  When the lamb was done, it had thrown off quite a bit of liquid, which we saved for a sauce; then cut the lamb apart easily:

For the accompaniment, we did mashed potatoes and celeriac, plus more leeks, with a parsley sauce on the side.  Super delicious!

The Borough Market also has a number of sellers of fresh pasta, so we sampled the tortelloni made by one of them on Monday night.  This was stuffed with a pumpkin ricotta mixture:  it was very fluffy and well-seasoned, and the pasta cooked up quickly and nicely.  We topped it with some butter, fried sage, and parmesan cheese, and served a salad on the side.  (Tune in below for more vegetables, and next week for even more.)

But what to do with that cabbage that we had initially bought for the partridge?  Cabbage soup, courtesy of a recipe from Jane Grigson.  Cut up cabbage, leeks, carrots,  saute them a bit in duck fat (but of course),  and then add some water, lamb stock if you have it (we have it!), and cook for a couple of hours. Add some chopped potatoes toward the end, and then warm up the leftover lamb in the soup.  Finally, it should be topped with a crouton with grated gruyere, and popped under the broiler.  Our gruyere left something to be desired, and we have not yet figured out the broiler except that if you leave the oven on very high for a long time, it will set off the smoke alarm.  The soup was especially welcome given the dip in the temperatures we have had.

(Note this is the blue casserole!)  This is also excellent for weekend lunches, but the remainder will be going into our capacious freezer for a return on another cold day.

There are many things that we cannot make ourselves, and we treated ourselves to outstanding sushi on Wednesday at Sushi of Shiori, a tiny mom and pop place (8 seats) on a street that is otherwise devoted to Indian vegetarian restaurants and Indian confectioneries.  We had the tasting menu and it was outstanding!  Some grilled octopus to start, then miso soup, then a razor clam that had been marinated and seasoned.  Then a plate of sashimi, amazing scallops and salmon and tuna. Then a plate of sushi: they don't want you to dip the sushi, so they provide a little brush to put the soy sauce on top of the fish. The rice must stay without sauce.  There was still more! A wrapped in bamboo leaves steamed smoked eel on highly seasoned rice: yum! And the feature of the season, a wagyu beef slice on sushi rice. Every bite of every dish was exquisite.  Dessert was homemade ice cream: we selected black sesame seed, which was awesome, and chestnut, which was delicious but much more subtle.
We had one more meal out this week. After hearing Mauricio Pollini play Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier at Royal Festival Hall, we had a late dinner at a new brasserie in town, Les Deux Salons, an offshoot of Arbutus: both feature meat from the less familiar parts of the animals, and they do them very well: R had andouilette from Troyes (the waiter has to ask if you know what you're getting into: have you had this before?) and I had a very tender pork belly in lentils and greens.

It's a good thing that we can walk to so many places we go, and that we do! (We did take the bus to the Royal Academy of Arts this morning just to see if we could, but the bus journey calculated by google maps takes only 4 minutes less than walking.  It is great to be so central!)