Call my Agent...
SPATCHCOCK CHICKEN ROASTED OVER BOULANGERE POTATOES - £8.50
CHERMOULA MARINATED HAKE, ROAST NEW POTATOES, TOMATOES - £9.50
MIXED GREEN BEAN SALAD, FRENCH DRESSING - £4.00
GRAND VEGETABLE BIRIYANI - £6.50
ORANGE & POMEGRANATE CAKE, CRÈME FRAICHE - £5.00
My top ‘Netflix’ tip this week is ‘Call my Agent’. We’re into series 4 and it‘s compulsive watching. It’s French, with subtitles, and all the better for it. It’s funny, stupendously funny and so French, it transports you directly to Paris, where it’s filmed, and for me, transports me right back to the eighties, Paris Fashion Week and trips to Paris 4 times a year for the men’s and women’s collections, presented at La Bourse and Les Jardin des Tuileries. February, March, September and October we would drive down to Portsmouth in a big old Volvo estate, roof rack heaving like a Delhi delivery bicycle and board a ferry for Cherbourg. It was like going on holiday, well it was our holiday in those days, we worked 360 days a year, the days off were when we were ill. Plus ca change there then.
We stayed in the cheapest hotel we could find down by the Port de Versailles, I remember it was about £12 per night. Still we were only in it 3 hours a night to sleep, the rest of the time we worked and partied with the designer fashion set, eating and drinking in the hottest restaurants in town. Don’t get me started, champagne sabre, etc, etc.
I was reminiscing all things French with a Francophile chum a few weeks ago, she has a sister in the South and visits regularly. She was describing a popular peasant dish, aren’t they the best, where a spatchcock chicken is roast directly on the bars of an oven shelf, not in a pan. Then, directly underneath the chicken is a pan of potatoes, roasting at the same time. All the lovely juice and fat from the chicken drains into and mixes with the potatoes, creating something sublime. A lovely, messy way of cooking which somehow brings out the child in me. I always had a love of mud pies, who didn’t.
My grandma, who worked in service as a cook in a big family house in Blackpool for many years in the twenties, had taught my dad a similar version using pork belly, which sits directly on top of a pan of potatoes and onions, with a bit of chicken stock mixed in. Naturally all that amazing melted fat and goodness that oozes out of a belly of pork, ends up in the potatoes, it tastes like heaven. Plus you don’t have to spend half a day cleaning the oven.
So this week I’ve had loads of fun working out how to recreate something of a hybrid, Bread and Flowers, finish at home version. We tested it on one of our loyal customers and it proved a great success, so here it is for you; ‘Spatchcock poussin roasted over boulangère potatoes.’
We’ve done a fishy version as well, actually it’s an old Claudia Roden recipe from her book ‘Arabesque’. Layers of roasted potatoes and tomatoes, which arrives cooked, alongside a lovely slab of fresh hake, marinated in fresh coriander, garlic, ground cumin, paprika, chilli, olive oil and lemon juice, which you just take out of the bag, pop on the potato, tomato mix and bake in the oven.
I’ve made a real treat for any vegans, ergo vegetarians out there, it’s a Grand Vegetable Biriyani from Meera Sodha’s ‘Fresh India’. This book was totally written for vegan/vegetarians. My darling, vegan daughter, chomped through this dish with gusto. I love the layering of ingredients, textures and flavours, it’s full of surprises, in a good way.
I’ve blanched all the green beans and provided a lovely French dressing if you would like to eat them as a salad. Alternatively, put some olive oil and sliced garlic in a pan, get it hot, then throw in the greens and just turn them over until they get to a temperature you would like to eat them at, warm would be my suggestion, not hot.
We’re finishing with the amazing orange and pomegranate cake, made by my wonderful pastry chef, Karen, full of almonds and orange and pomegranate molasses and sprinkled with seeds into the bargain. A little dollop of crème fraiche helps it along too.