Home Cooking

The rate of our experimentation has slowed down, but it's a rare meal that we have duplicated (pork chops, lamb chops being exceptions), compared to our normal repertoire at home. (On the other hand, we have eliminated certain staple dishes from our London regime, such as homemade pasta, pizza, and anything on the barbecue; and chicken is a rare visitor to White Hall.)
But we are still visiting the market each weekend we are home, and looking for new things to try.  Before the Rome trip, we went to the Marylebone market on Sunday, and bought a sea bass, a rack of lamb, and a free range chicken (there is no other kind, of course).  There was a huge line at the fish monger, because some woman (to her husband's great annoyance) kept buying and buying and buying.  While I made the rounds of the greens stalls, and collected some more delicious Braeburn apples, R finally purchased this nice sea bass, specially filleted for us.  Because we also bought some lovely fresh baby sorrel leaves at the market, we decided to adapt our salmon in sorrel sauce recipe for the bass.  On Gordon Ramsay's instructions, we scored the skin like this:

The idea is to have the cooking liquids soak into the flesh, I guess, but the technique seemed to allow the skin to stick to the pan in pieces, making not such an attractive finish.  I'm sure it would have been much better in our copper pan than in the orange Le Creuset.

Meanwhile, we melted the sorrel in a little butter in another pan, and watched it turn from bright green to something a little swampier in color.

Add some cream and butter, maybe a little lemon, and pour over the fish, served along with some boiled new potatoes.  Wild sea bass in sorrel sauce.  Aesthetics aside, the fish was very well cooked and firm and tasty.  The sorrel kind of disappears from view, but it imparted its green and lemony flavor.

For our rack of lamb, we had bought a small one from another butcher at Marylebone farmers' market, Maris Piper potatoes for mashing, and a bag of spinach again from Izzard's greens.  We coated the lamb with some mustard, parsley, and bread crumbs, and sauteed in the pot:

Timing remains difficult for us: the oven has a mind of its own, and so we are still tending to undercook things.  Here, though, is the browned side of the final result, which although a little too rare, was bloody delicious.

And we bought a chicken too!  Time for another old standby, chicken in garlic sauce, which requires garlic, of course, wine vinegar,  tomatoes (canned plum tomatoes from Waitrose), cream (Gloucester cream or creme fraiche from Neal's Yard), "traditionally" served with basmati rice.  Here's our little chicken dish in the pot.  The sauce has a nice color, don't you think?  It was certainly delicious.

Meanwhile, off to Rome we went, and returned, and had just three days between our return and our next trip to the continent, to Toulouse.   The perfect antidote to all that Roman cooking was a simple cheese plate and a nice salad.  The salad consisted of greens (mache) and some blood oranges, which are routinely available here and very tasty.

And the cheese plate.

From upper left, clockwise:  Robiola, a creamy cow's, sheep's, goat's milk blend we bought at the Latticini Micocci on Via Collina in Rome (near our hotel, and according the the Michelin guide, "a paradise for cheese-lovers");  Stichelton, the bleu cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy; Innes Log, Neal's Yard's favorite goat cheese, with the moldy rind, some spiced plum chutney, and finally the pecorino from "Micocci on Via Collina."  Served with slices of Poilane bread, just peeking in at the top of the photo.

And then it was off to Toulouse, the land of ducks, duck fat, duck liver, and the Canal du Midi. Stay tuned for the next post.