Kyk, cake!

Since the arrival of my son and heir, aka Wriggly McSqueal, The Milk Bandit, The Limpet, Wurmpie, DJ Hiccup, Die Klein Kak, time to attend to personal matters has evaporated in a haze of 2AM nappy changes and Daddy Epaulettes (regurgitated milk stains on the shoulders of all my shirts). If you'll excuse the mangled metaphor. Anyhoo, we still needs victualling and there have been a procession of (much welcome) well wishers to visit His Lordship and his gibbering parental units. I made this cake for an afternoon tea last week.

Orange, almond and rosemary polenta cake

In a large bowl, stir 200g sugar and ¾ cup olive oil (veg oil will do just as well, you etiolated, hairless non-Mediterranean you). Add 3 beaten eggs and 150g each of polenta and powdered almonds. Add 1 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix well. Now add the zest and juice of 1 orange, 1 tsp finely chopped rosemary and 150g slivered almonds, or toasted and roughly chopped hazelnuts (rub most of the skins off, please).

Spoon the mixture into a non-stick loaf tin, its base lined with a piece of baking paper.

Bake for 30 minutes at 180°C and a further 20-30 minutes at 160°C, testing with a skewer after 45 minutes until said skewer can be introduced into the orange depths and comes out clean.

Meanwhile, make a little syrup to drizzle over the hot cake. In a small saucepan, heat the juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange and 2 tbl honey and reduce for 5 minutes until it becomes a thin syrup.

When you remove the cake from the oven, prick some holes in the top with the skewer (think of something hateful while you do this, it helps to lessen the angst generated by butchering your creation). Pour the syrup slowly over the cake, aiming for those holes.

Allow the cake to cool completely before removing it from the tin. It will keep well for at least a week in the fridge, and will get better after a day.

I served this with some home-made lemon curd and Greek yoghurt.

Chicken Little

Mrs FreshAirInspector is heavily pregnant. So pregnant that her stomach is a force of nature. She sends ants and the more timid mammals scurrying, sky darkening above them, as she sweeps around town. Birds dip towards her, and then wheel screeching and affronted back into the sky. I think I could staple two muumuus together and they might just fit.

We've been entertaining at home. Better to let Mohammed come to the mountain. I haven't once been called upon to make anchovy ice-cream or liver fridge tart during the pregnancy. What a wasted opportunity.

I served this last week. I thought the contrasting flavours and textures worked a treat. The salad is from my food hero, Yotam Ottolenghi, and can be found here. I substituted celeriac for swede and dried cranberries for pomegranate seeds and maple syrup for sugar, but you get the idea. The mash is a mixture of potato and jerusalem artichoke. Simmer until soft, push through a ricer and then blend with butter, a little single cream or milk to loosten, and chopped parsley.

The chicken is a perfect party dish – it can be prepared in advance and then finished on the hob in under 10 minutes. It is not a greasy dish, regardless of the sheer quantity of fat involved. In fact, every time I make this I end up with a larger supply of fat, so I must be rendering some out of the chicken itself.

Confit chicken with shichimi and chives

This dish uses bone-in, skin-on chicken legs (i.e. drumsticks and thighs in one piece). Allow one per person. You will need a large volume of duck or pork fat – around 1 litre. In Hungary, this is easy and cheap to obtain, as it is used extensively in cooking. I use a mixture of both. This can be reused a number of times. Instructions to follow.

First, you need to brine your chicken. In a dish large enough to accommodate your chicken pieces, mix 8 cups of lukewarm water and 1 cup each of sugar and coarse salt. Add the chicken and allow to brine for 2-3 hours. Fish out of the brine and pat dry. Discard the brine.

Place the chicken as tightly as possible into an oven-proof, hob-proof casserole. Top up and cover with the fat, which you have warmed to a liquid in another saucepan. Insert 100g of smoked salt pork and a couple of star anise. Bring to a slow boil and then transfer to an oven pre-heated to 150°C. Cook for approximately 2 hours. Clear liquor should run from the chicken if a skewer is inserted. It looks pretty unappetising and etiolated at this point – bear with me. You can chill the chicken in the fat for up to 1 week if you wish.

When you wish to serve this, heat the fat on the hob until liquid. Remove the chicken legs and drain the fat off. Now heat a dry non-stick frying pan to medium high, and add the chicken. Don't crowd the pan – you may need to do this in batches. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes on either side until the skin has crisped and browned, and the meat is heated through. Sprinkle with shichimi* and some finely chopped chives or spring onions.

To store the fat, discard the bacon and anise. Allow to cool slightly – a chicken jelly will form at the bottom of the dish. Skim the fat off and refrigerate. Chill the fat closest to the jelly and you can peel this away from the jelly. That jelly is liquid gold. Freeze it in small portions and use it to enrich sauces.

*A note on shichimi: Shichimi is Japanese seven-spice powder. You can find it in a good Asian supermarket. It is a mixture of coarsely ground red chilli pepper(the main ingredient) , Sichuan pepper, roasted orange peel, black and white sesame seed, hemp seed, ginger and nori. It is seriously delicious and imparts a nice piquancy to this dish.

The Walk Home

I leave the warm room,
dough dried to a pleasing rime on my hands.

The street is slick and dark
the rain the distant clack of a typewriter pool.

Past the empty Pilvax
(a waiter hunched forlorn)
and the police tape, cast into mud.

A grey dog approaches, ears pinned back.
edging past red-painted MURDR
his tongue lolls, he smiles and shows his teeth.

Up the stairs, two-at-a-time.
The light is on.
I must have left it on.

Heart Food

Look at that. Not for too long, mind – you may go blind. A glistening lump of indeterminate protein nudging a pool of saffron-coloured spackle. It can't be helped. This dish is not a looker. Tasty, though.

Last week, in an attempt to shake off a grippe-induced lassitude, I cycled across the beautiful Szabadsag bridge and around Gellert, the part of Buda overshadowed by the citadella angel. I discovered a Syrian butcher/deli on Karinthy Frigyes ut, and came over all breathy, like an opera singer hoving into view of cake, at the vittles on display: lamb, butchered into recognisable cuts. Legs, shoulders, heart, testicles, tongues - not just flesh as victim of industrial accident. The friendly man behind the counter scolded me when I asked for a kilo of hearts, quite rightly asking me to nominate a precise number so that he wouldn't have to take a knife to one.

Heart, brain, eye, testicle – food that suffuses the eater with the life-force of the eaten. It sparks the paleomammalian brain, conferring courage, wisdom, fecundity or foresight.

Braised, stuffed lamb heart

Allow one heart per person. The following recipe serves 4. I served this on a root vegetable mash, good for mopping up the limpid sauce. Stuffing a heart can be a messy endeavour. I use a sausage gun, but a piping bag will do the trick too.

Clean the hearts, washing out any dried blood and trimming off excess fat, taking care not to puncture the heart wall if possible.

To make the stuffing, sweat 2 finely chopped onions in 30g butter for 10 minutes in a large non-stick frying pan, stirring occasionally. Add 250g finely chopped button mushrooms – you're making a duxelle, so you need to chop very finely, then use a rocking motion with your big knife to mince further. Add the mushrooms to the pan, and turn the heat to medium. No need to add any liquid or oil to the pan – you need to cook the mushrooms for 10 to 15 minutes until they give up their water and reduce in size. Now add 2 crushed garlic cloves, 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme, ½ cup fine breadcrumbs from a stale loaf, ½ tsp chilli flakes and season to taste. Cook for 3 minutes and remove from the heat.

When cool, spoon the stuffing into your piping receptacle and inject the stuffing into the heart tubes. Wrap the hearts in streaky bacon – 1 or 2 slices per heart – and truss with butcher's twine (or skewer with a toothpick if you wish). Place the hearts into a small casserole dish so they fit snugly. Pour over 150ml brown beer and cook, covered with foil, in the oven at 180ºC for 2 hours, by which time the hearts should be tender and yielding. Uncover for the last half hour of cooking to colour the meat. Serve over your choice of starch with a good spoonful of the cooking liquor.

Winter salad

This is comp week for the big investment banks, where the rich get filthy and the merely comfortable get an extra pillow to prop against their back. Or as my cousin, who works for a non-revenue-generating division of the Great Satan, puts it:" tomorrow is the day when my lamentably un-obscene, non-Daily-Mail enraging bonus is announced ."

This time of the year, stories designed to get the common man het up circulate in the papers, such as that of the BarCap traders who lunched to the tune of 44,000 ocean going squid back in 2002, guzzling Ch. Petrus and foie gras with grim abandon.

In the minted world of the beautifully becoiffed, excess usually entails covering expensive stuff in gold leaf, or stuffing your second most expensive ingredient into your most expensive one. Elsewhere, back in the real world, a celebratory banquet is marked by multiple dishes, or the use of many ingredients: a wedding biryani, a royal tajine, or a roast baron of beef with all the trimmings.

This salad is a celebration of contrasts: chewy, pillowy, crunchy, and flavours: tart, sweet, earthy.

Mebos again. I love this ingredient. They have a wonderful sweet/sour flavour due to the pickling process they undergo. When cooked, they melt and soften into the dish and impart an agreeable tanginess.

Warm chickpea, butternut, mushroom and mebos salad

Enough for 4 people. We ate this with some roast chicken thighs that had been marinated in garlic, lemon, olive oil, a splash of white wine, red onion, sumac and ground allspice. Dried apricots can be substituted for mebos: allow 1 handful in this recipe.

In the morning, soak a heaped cup of chickpeas in enough water to cover generously. Allow 1 ½ hours to cook: place in a small lidded saucepan covered with 2cm fresh, unsalted water. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes, and then turn the heat down to a simmer, covered. Check every now and then to ensure they don't cook dry. Taste for doneness after 90 minutes – they may need longer. Once they have finished cooking, drain the water and toss with 1 tsp olive oil and a small splash of white wine if you have anything open. Add a grind of salt and leave lidded until needed.

Whilst you're waiting for your chicks to hatch, peel and de-seed a medium sized butternut and chop into 2cm cubes. Toss with olive oil,1 tsp thyme and seasoning and cook in an oven preheated to 180°C until the cubes have coloured and softened, around 25 minutes.

Whilst you're waiting for your butt, sweat 1 leek, sliced into ½cm rounds,in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat in a little olive oil until they are softened. Don't allow them to colour, please. Remove the leeks and set aside. Now (without adding any more oil), turn the heat to medium low and add 250g sliced brown mushrooms. Cook slowly, turning every now and then, until the mushrooms darken and give up their juice. Turn the heat up a touch, add the leeks, a good sprinkle of chilli flakes, 2 finely chopped mebos, a handful of toasted hazelnuts (dry fry until they start to colour and smell nutty, then allow to cool a little and rub together in your big hairy paws to remove some of the skins, before chopping them in half) a little chicken stock or wine to loosten, and seasoning. Add the chickpeas and butternut and a handful of something green: rocket, baby spinach, sorrel or watercress. Allow to wilt slightly, and remove from the pan into a serving dish.

Lastly, make a little vinaigrette: 1 tsp dijon mustard, 1 tsp honey, 1 tbl olive oil, and a little water (I had orange blossom water to hand). Stir well to emulsify and then stir into the salad. Taste for seasoning, and be generous with the black pepper.

Did I say lastly? What an incorrigible tease. Fry a small handful of fresh sage leaves in a little vegetable oil until crisp. Scatter over the salad just before serving.

Bone With a Hole

During and after the war, a time of la cucina povera, the Italian peasantry of the north were sustained by polenta, those of the mezzogiorno by chestnuts, and those of the south by da fishes. Peasant cooking, the transformation of humble ingredients, is deeply satisfying and easy on the wallet. Unfortunately, fickle fashion means that veal shank, like once-cheap lobster and oyster, is now a rare treat.

Ossobuco: it's vealy, vealy good, as Basil Fawlty would say. Risotto alla milanese is the traditional accompaniment to Ossobuco in bianco, but I think it works just as well with farro or pearl barley risotto, which transforms this into a comforting, earthy dish.

Ossobuco in bianco with pearl barley risotto and gremolata

First, prepare your Ossobuco. I did this a day in advance. You may need more than one piece of meat each, depending on the size. Dust each piece with a mixture of flour, salt, pepper and a little dry English mustard powder. In a casserole dish large enough to take a single layer of meat, melt a little butter and oil on medium heat and brown the meat on each side. Remove the meat to a plate, and then sweat one finely chopped onion and two ditto celery stalks (all ingredients to follow are per 2 servings), stirring regularly, until soft. Add one crushed garlic clove and four chopped salted anchovies in oil. Cook for a minute and then add 1/3 bottle of white wine. Bring to the boil and reduce by half. Add the meat to the pan in a single layer. Cover with greaseproof paper and a lid (or foil), and cook in a slow oven (150°C) for 2 ½ hours.

To make the risotto, soak 200g barley in water for a couple of hours. Drain, and then place in a saucepan covered with fresh water. Simmer for half an hour, or until tender and toothsome. Meanwhile, sweat 3 chopped spring onions and in a little butter. Add some halved or quartered chestnut mushrooms and a little chopped thyme and cook on a gentle heat until the mushrooms give up their liquid. Turn up the heat and add a good splash of white wine or vermouth. Allow to reduce, and then add this to the drained barley, along with ½ tsp ground cinnamon and half a preserved lemon. Season to taste and add a glug of olive oil.

To serve, make a gremolata: 1 finely chopped garlic clove, the zest of 1 lemon and a handful of flat leaf parsley. Sprinkle over the dish.

Mmmvelopes™

Bacon flavoured evelopes. Take that, email. By the good people at J&D's.