End Game London, Part Two

We give you three more meals from Borough Market to Drury Lane.  For our fish dinner, we settled on filet of John Dory (also known as St Peter fish because of the spot on both sides).

  We decided on a simple bonne femme type sauce, with ordinary mushrooms.  This required us to make a stock, so we requested the head and the skeleton from the fish, purchased at Applebee's fish shop.

With the trimmings and some herbs and onions, we made a fish stock:

Meanwhile, still looking for the perfect peas (which are only available to St John, we believe), we shelled some young English peas for the vegetable:

Sauteed some mushrooms,

Then we poached the beautiful filets

in a combination of stock and wine. for about 7-8 minutes.

For the sauce, we boiled down some fish stock, combined it with egg yolk and cream, and warmed on the stove top, then folded in the mushrooms.  The golden color comes from the egg yolks, and so does the thickness of the sauce.  On the side, Jersey royals, of course, and peas, and served with a chilled bottle of Nautilus, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

Sunday night, after a movie, was for lamb neck.  We'd been seeing this dish on various menus, most recently at Great Queen Street, and we'd also seen them at the Ginger Pig, so we looked into recipes.  Did it need long slow cooking à la osso bucco?  Or was it quickly roasted, like pork tenderloin?  There may be several different cuts, but what was on offer at Ginger Pig was the quick kind.  We also saw some beautiful fresh beans at the Turnips stall at the market, and grabbed them too for their novelty and loveliness.

Inside, they look like this.  They are borlotti beans from Italy, but they are very similar to cranberry beans.  Why doesn't anyone grow these for our farmer's market?

But the main event was the lamb.  (These are Yorkshire-raised heritage breeds, mind you, but they don't name the breed. Another stall would have sold us Herdwick lamb neck from the Lake District, but we are loyal to the Ginger Pig.)  Here is the basic cut.

We then marinated it for awhile in rosemary (shown above), garlic, and olive oil.

Then it will be stuffed and roasted in a hot oven.  For the stuffing, the marinating herbs and garlic, plus breadcrumbs.  Here is how you make bread crumbs by hand.

Then make the mixture:

Next, split the neck filet, not cutting all the way through:

Stuff the filet with the bread crumb mixture.

And tie it together.

Brown it in the Le Creuset pot, on all sides, slowly until brown and crispy.

Then place in a hot oven for about 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the beans by cooking them for about 25 minutes in chicken stock (or water), with some garlic and thyme.
Then, have a glass of wine and watch the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition on BBC.  Our favorite was the Ukrainian, Andrei Bondarenko, who had won the Song Prize the night before (as did Bryn Terfel in 1989). Here he is singing the aria from "Eugene Onegin," "Ia vas liubliu."

He didn't win.  A terrible miscarriage of musical justice.  But he will be singing at Glyndebourne and he's only 24!
Meanwhile, back to the dinner.  Take the beans, dress them with some oil and vinegar and some sliced spring onions.

Remove the neck filet from the oven, and let it rest a bit while you admire it.

Then slice it...

And serve, with the beans and Italian asparagus (Puglia) on the side. (The English asparagus season is Done.)  Garnish with a little warmed Damson plum jam, for that sweet English taste.  An excellent cut.  Let's hope we can find it at a farmer's market near us.

One more meal to report, but first some scenes from the neighborhood. This is the Grand Lodge of the Masons, just around the corner, on Great Queen Street.

And here is one of our two favorite coffee shops, Store Street Espresso, on Store Street (of course), between Gower Street and Tottenham Court Road.  It's very minimalist, the art has recently changed, and they make a fine espresso macchiato.

R is always happy to stop here on his way to work or after a seminar at Cemmap.

One final meal to report, one that was a long time in the making.  One of the specialties of St John, we'd heard about but never tasted, was Jersey royal potatoes with melted Stinking Bishop cheese.  We had the potatoes; we bought a wedge of Stinking Bishop a couple of weeks ago. (It gets its name from the perry, which is cider made from pears, used to wash the rind; the pear variety is called Stinking Bishop.)  Unfortunately, the Stinking Bishop got eaten before we could make a meal of it.  We planned to get another wedge, but the very solicitous server at Neal's Yard (we shared comments on meals at St John; for his anniversary, they made a half of pig's head, cooked sous-vide, then confited it, then grilled).  He recommended, for melting, a slightly less runny Irish cheese, Ardrahan, since the Stinking Bishop was already pretty runny. (Ardrahan also makes Lullaby Milk: check it out.)  Of course, we agreed.
For the cheese dish, then, following a blog post allegedly based on St John, we decorated the Ardrahan cheese with some sprigs of rosemary.

Then bake in a 200 degree C. oven for about 15 minutes until it's softened and somewhat melted.

Meanwhile, boil the Jersey royals, and then smash them a little with the potato masher.

Serve separately at the table, spooning the cheese over the potatoes.  We also made a side dish of lentils, because we had them to use up, with some vinaigrette and bacon.

And that is our London cooking adventure.

Beyond cooking this week, we watched the hilarious new Francois Ozon film with Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, Potiche, "unadulterated fun."