Tag: leek

Lidia Bastianich’s Leek and Ricotta Tart

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Serves: 6 – 8

My father-in-law – also a Rob – and I have a shared passion for classic, old-school, home-cooked Italian.

If you follow my blog, you’ll know I have typed up many of Antonio Carluccio’s recipes, as just one example of the old-school Italian Rob and I enjoy so much.

I helped Rob with a few jobs at the start of the year and as thanks, he gave me Lidia Bastianich’s cookbook, ‘From Our Family Table to Yours’. (If you wanted to know the way to my heart, buy me a cookbook and preferably, one written by Lidia!)

And yes, I have previously typed up many Lidia Bastianich recipes. She is a genius.

Rob suggested I kick off the book by cooking Lidia’s Leek and Ricotta Tart.

To summarise the end-result, Tom, our 13-year old food critic simply said, “this is brilliant”. And he wasn’t wrong.

I love anything with ricotta and the leek is a wonderful addition.

For a long, homely Italian lunch or dinner, kicking-off the meal with this tart would very much set the scene for a special meal ahead.

Divertitevi!

Ingredients

For the dough

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour plus more as needed
1/2 c freshly grated Parmesean
2 tsp sugar
1/2 st salt
1 large egg yolk (save the white for the filling)
7 tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut into bits

For the filling

3 tbsp unsalted butter, plus more for the baking pan
2 large leeks, white and light green parts, halved vertically, sliced 2cm thick
4 spring onions, chopped
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
1 large egg white (yolk used in the dough)
1 c fresh ricotta (I used smooth)
1/2 c freshly grated Parmesean, plus more for sprinkling
1/4 c chopped fresh Italian parsley
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1 large egg, beaten, for an egg wash

Method

  1. For the dough: combine the flour, grated cheese, sugar and salt in a food processor, and pulse to combine. Beat the egg yolk in a spouted measuring cup with 1/3 water.
  2. Scatter the butter pieces over the flour, and pulse until the mixture is lumpy. Drizzle in the egg-yolk mixture, and pulse until the dough comes together, adding a little more water or flour as needed. Move the dough to a floured counter, and knead it a few times to bring it together. Form it into a disk, wrap is plastic wrap, and chill until just firm, about 1 hour.
  3. For the filling: melt the 3 tbsp butter in a medium skillet over a medium heat. Add the leeks, and cook, stirring often, until they’re tender: about 10 minutes. Add the scallions, and continue to cook until they are wilted but the green parts are still green: about 4 minutes. Season with 1/2 tsp salt and several grinds of pepper, and let it cool.
  4. Beat the egg white in a large bowl until foamy. Add the cooled leeks, the ricotta, 1/2 c grated cheese, parsley, and nutmeg. Season with 1/2 tsp salt and stir to combine.
  5. Preheat the oven to 180c with a rack in the bottom third. Butter a large 18cm cake pan. Roll the dough on a piece of baking paper to a circle about 30cm in diameter and lay it in the buttered pan. Add the filling, and spread it to an even layer. Fold the overhanging edges in to make a crust on the edges. Brush the crust with the egg wash, and sprinkle all over with the grated Parmesan.
  6. Bake until the filling is set and deep golden brown and the crust is golden on the edges: 40 – 50 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool. Serve or warm or at room temperature, cut into wedges.

Thomas Straker’s Chicken, Leek and Bacon Pie (TikTok)

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Serves: 6

Nat found this recipe on Instagram and whilst we have been plenty burnt by Instagram and TikTok recipes in the past, just watch the video below and tell me we should/could have moved on?!

Like our signature Snapper Pie from The Boathouse, this pie is a labour of love. Time is your friend here. From roasting the chicken the night before. The gravy reducing for hours. The baked potato mash (will I ever do a mash that isn’t baked potato again?).

And of course, homemade shortcrust which is absolutely essential.

The sum of the parts is extraordinary. This is a signature pie. We almost feel embarrassed to have cooked a chicken pie prior to this one.

The gravy was probably the finest gravy I have ever had. Together with the pie and that incredible crust; and that mash. I am not overstating it. This is 2-hat cooking, a recipe they would never manage to take off the menu. We both agreed, a chicken pie could surely not go further. We’d well and truly found the outer limits of what a chicken pie could be.

It was a rainy Sunday in Autumn in Sydney when we (Nat) cooked this. A decanted 2019 Barolo. And it frankly doesn’t get better.

Ingredients

For the chicken
1 large free-range chicken
1/3 c extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly cracked pepper
1 large eschalot, peeled
1 lemon, halved
4 garlic, peeled
Two sprigs of rosemary

For the chicken filling
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
250gm streaky bacon, chopped
1 white onion, finely chopped
1 leek, white and green parts thinly sliced
2 garlic, thinly sliced and rubbed well through salt
1/2 bunch of flat-leaf parsley finely chopped
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
Salt and freshly cracked pepper
2 1/2 tsp softened, unsalted butter
1 tbsp plain flour
1/2 c hot chicken stock
1 egg, lightly beaten for egg wash

For the gravy
1/4 c extra virgin olive oil
1 white onion, chopped
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
1 stick of celery, coarsely chopped
Half a bunch of flat-leaf parsley including the stalks
7 peppercorns
A good splash of Madeira (or sherry)

For the shortcrust pastry
1 c plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
115gm cold, unsalted butter cut into cubes
3 tbsp ice water

For the mashed potatoes
5 large, unwashed potatoes
1/2 c cream
80gm unsalted butter
Salt

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 200c. Rinse the chicken and stuff the cavity with the eschalot, lemon, garlic and rosemary. Drizzle over the olive oil and season well. Roast in a roasting pan for 1 1/4 hours or until cooked through, basting occasionally with the oil and juices.
  2. Set aside and allow to cool slightly Remove and discard the skin. Remove all the flesh, chop coarsely and place in a large mixing bowl. Discard the ribs. Combine the bones and remaining chicken and juices and set aside to make the gravy.
  3. In a fresh pan, cook off the bacon until slightly browned and set aside.
  4. In a separate pan, heat the oil over a medium heat and sauté the onion until soft. Add the leeks and continue cooking until softened. Turn down the heat and add the garlic, cooking for a few minutes and finally add the cooked bacon. Take off the heat and stir through the cooked chicken flesh, parsley and mustard. Season with pepper.
  5. In a pan, heat the butter until bubbling. Add the flour, whisking constantly. Slowly pour in the chicken stock, continuing to whisk until you have a thickened mixture. Add to the chicken mixture, stir through and set aside.
  6. For the gravy, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and add the chicken bones and juices, sautéing for a few minutes. Add the the vegetables and the peppercorns, cook until softened and then cover with boiling water and add a few splashes of the Madeira. Reduce the heat, cover and cook down until you’re close to a gravy consistency. Check the seasoning, strain and set aside.
  7. For the shortcrust pastry, put the flour and salt in a food processor. Add the butter and process, cutting the butter into the flour until you have a coarse meal. Add the cold water and process for 30 seconds until you have a soft dough. Remove the dough, shape it into a thick dough, wrap tightly in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Bring to room temperature prior to rolling.
  8. For the mashed potatoes, heat the oven to 180c. Wash the potatoes well and spike all over with a fork. Bake on a baking tray for 1 1/2 hours or until cooked through. Set aside to slightly cool. Peel by hand, removing and setting aside the flesh. Heat the butter in a saucepan and using a ricer, rice the potato flesh, adding it to the butter. Add the cream and season with salt, adding more butter or cream as need-be.
  9. Heat the oven to 220c. Lightly oil your pie tin. Roll out your shortcrust pastry and line the tin. Fill with the chicken mixture. Cover the pie with more shortcrust pastry, sealing well with a fork. Trim the edges and brush all over with the egg wash. Create a small hole in pie to let the steam escape and bake for 30 minutes or until golden.
  10. Send the kids to their rooms. Have a bottle of good red decanted. Serve the pie with the mash and plenty of gravy and goddam, enjoy.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Leek Fritters

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Serves: 4

Before diving into this quite excellent recipe, it has been a few months since my last post.

It is not that we haven’t been cooking and eating well, though, since my last post, Nat and I have welcomed a little baby girl to the family: Avalon.

I can’t blame sleepless nights. Avalon has been an absolute dream and has slept from 7pm to 7am since she was nine weeks old. Though with Christmas, a few trips thrown in and all the rest of the craziness, typing up recipes has taken a back seat.

I have a real backlog of recipes to get through, though now have the joy of typing, looking at the most beautiful sister to Max, Tom and Oliver. This recipe is for Avalon.

I can’t wait to cook with her in the kitchen.

And now to these fritters.

They are superb.

Chosen and cooked by Nat as part of a bigger Yotam feast, they are so tasty and so soft. Add the sauce and serve alongside this Yotam Ottolenghi Char-grilled Asparagus, and you’ve got an absolutely wonderful weekend meal on your hands.

Ingredients

3 leeks (450gm in total, trimmed weight)
5 shallots, finely chopped
150ml olive oil
1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and sliced
25gm parsley (leaves and fine stalks), finely chopped
3/4 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 free-range egg white
120gm self-raising flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 egg
150ml milk
55gm unsalted butter, melted

Sauce*

100gm Greek yoghurt
100gm sour cream
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
20gm parsley leaves, chopped
30gm coriander leaves, chopped

Method

  1. Start by making the sauce. Blitz all the ingredients together in a food processor until a uniform green. Set aside for later.
  2. Cut the leeks into 2cm thick slices; rinse and drain dry. Sauté the leeks and shallots in a pan with half the oil on medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until soft. Transfer to a large bowl and add chilli, parsley, spices, sugar and salt. Allow to cool down.
  3. Whisk the egg white to soft peaks and fold it into the vegetables. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, whole egg, milk and butter to form a batter. Gently mix it into the egg white and vegetable mixture.
  4. Put 2 tbsp of the remaining oil in a large frying pan and place over medium heat. Spoon about half of the vegetable mixture into the pan to make four large fritters. Fry them for 2 – 3 minutes on each side, or until golden crisp. Remove to kitchen paper and keep warm. Continue making the fritters, adding more oil as needed. You should end up with about eight large fritters. Serve warm, with the sauce on the side or drizzled over.

* Substitute a squeeze of lemon or lime juice if you just don’t have the time for the sauce.

Neil Perry’s Chicken and Leek Pie

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 4 – 6

I have written many times about my love of pies.

Though I have never typed up a chicken pie. Not because I haven’t cooked them and don’t necessarily love the very best of them: though I have never cooked one of the very best of them.

Until now.

Weeks into Sydney’s lockdown and it’s Father’s Day and knowing that both my father and my father-in-law love a pie as much as I do, I had to do a compassionate food run.

I needed a down-the-line, bloody good chicken pie.

Something that was honest and simple. To be served with a mash* and peas.

A celebration.

This is just that pie. Thanks Neil Perry as usual.

You can’t go wrong with leek slowly cooked in butter, though it is the thinly sliced chicken breast that wins here.

And smoked bacon.

Line your pie dish with pastry and then cover all with pastry and make it even more svelte.

It’s simple and that’s the point.

Happy Father’s Day.

(I have slightly adapted the recipe.)

Ingredients

30gm butter
2 small leeks, white part only, thinly sliced
6 rashers smoked bacon, chopped
3 chicken breast fillets, cut into thin strips
300ml cream
2 egg yolks
Salt and pepper
Sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, lightly beaten, for glazing

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a medium-low heat and cook the leeks until very sold and lightly golden, stirring occasionally. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
  2. Add the bacon to the pan and cook until lightly browned, remove and set aside. Add the chicken to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes until lightly browned, remove from pan and drain on paper towels.
  3. Wipe out the pan with paper towels. Return the leeks, bacon and chicken to the pan. Add the combined cream and yolks, stir over a low heat for 2 minutes and then season with salt and pepper, to taste, Transfer to a bowl to cool.
  4. Preheat the oven to 210C. And make a pie. You known how to do this right? Egg wash, prick the pastry to allow the steam to escape and bake for 30 minutes until the top is puffed and golden brown.
  5. Happy Father’s Day ladies. And gents.

* Use a ricer, plenty of butter and milk, well seasoned: and then add a finely chopped golden shallot.

Gary Rhodes’ Puff Pastry Scrambled Eggs and Leeks with Ham Crème Fraîche

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Serves: 4

Many years ago – like 25 – my mother and I would watch Gary Rhodes and his British cooking show.

Rhodes, Gary (crop).jpg
A wonderful guy, a brilliant chef.

He was not only an incredibly talented chef, though came across as a lovely, calm and collected guy.

Sadly, he died prematurely in 2019 though I remember the tributes at the time from people such as Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver. One quote from the time from Michelin star chef Tom Kerridge described Rhodes as “one of the greatest British chefs who almost single handedly put British food on the world stage”.

My goodness.

All those years ago, my mother bought his two books and we cooked a number of his dishes. Just wonderful, wonderful French cooking.

Twently years later, I am telling Nat about Mr Rhodes and the wonderful books I used to cook from, long out of print of course.

Unbenowst to me, Nat tracks them down in a second hand book store (this is the sort of person Nat is!) and we are back in business.

Five weeks into lockdown in Sydney, Nat and I agreed we needed a break. Home schooling, work, renovating an apartment for sale, endless activities to entertain the kids, endless loops around the park to keep sane, we needed some time for ourselves.

So we took Wednesday off. I lit the outdoor firepit and put the Champagne on ice.

And served this decadent dish as the first course.

My lordy it is fine. Absolute dinner party material.

I said to Nat it reminded me of the food I ate in Chartres (France) many years back. Delicate, so tasty, so bloody good.

Update from my mother. This is me on the far right in Chartres. Haven’t changed a bit.

To say that we had the best afternoon since lockdown would be an understatement. And I can assure you that this starter (along with a cold Champagne) was a strong contributing reason for it!

Ingredients

225gm puff pastry
Flour for dusting
50gm butter plus two large knobs for cooking
5 eggs
1 large or 2 small leeks
3 or 4 thick slices of leg ham
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
6 tbsp vegetable stock
3 tbsp crème fraîche
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Champagne for serving!

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180c.
  2. Cut 2 10cm x 10cm squares of puff pastry and then cut them diagonally in half to make four triangles. Beat one of the eggs and use to brush the pastries, and bake in the over for 20 – 25 minutes until risen and golden brown. Remove the tray from the oven and set the pastries to one side.
  3. Split the leeks in half lengthways, removing the outer layer. Finely slice the halves, washing off any grit in a colander. Leave the leek slices to drain.
  4. To make the ham crème fraîche, cut the ham into a 5mm dice and set aside. Heat the white wine vinegar in a saucepan. Once almost all evaporated, add the stock and simmer until reduced by a third. Whisk in the crème fraîch, followed by the measured butter. Season.
  5. Cut through the pastries, separated the risen lid from the base. Keep the pastry tops and bases warm.
  6. Melt a knob of butter in a large saucepan and once bubbling, add the leeks. Cook on a medium heat, stirring from time to time to ensure an even cooking, for 5 – 7 minutes, until very tender.
  7. Whilst the leeks are cooking, add the remaining eggs to the one used as an egg wash, beating with a fork to emulsify. In another saucepan, melt the remaining knob of butter and once bubbling, add the eggs. Season. As they cook, turn the eggs with a spoon reasonably vigorously, capturing every corner of the pan. When they have reached a very soft, scrambled consistency, remove the pan from the heat. This leaves you with just a minute to ‘build’ the rest of the dish while the scrambled egg thickens.
  8. Add the ham to the sauce, warming it through. Place the pastry bases on warm plates and spoon the cooked leeks loosely on top of each. Turn the scrambled eggs just once more, then spoon on top of the leeks and drizzle the ham crème fraîche around and over. Finish by placing the pastry lids on top.

Pork and Leek Sausages

Pork and Leek Sausages

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Makes: 20 sausages

There certainly are a lot of corners to the Internet and sausagemaking.org is definitely one of them.

A very friendly, passionate one.

The forums aren’t updated particularly regularly, though enough that when I visit there are new recipes. And when one is added, there is plenty of advice.

Like the use of rusk in sausages. Where apparently, all pros use it.

Not as a wartime filler, though as a necessary accompaniment to any good sausage. Moisture retention and all that. You can buy rusk from the supermarket in biscuit form and food process it to dust.

Experience has also told me that pork sausages made from pork shoulder alone are not moist enough and you must add fat. 20% of the meat weight: so 1kg pork shoulder, 200gm pork fat which any good butcher can provide. (Or cut it from a pork belly.)

Adding rusk and the fat to these sausages was the revelation.

We are officially butchers.

And wow, aren’t these pork and leek sausages a great way to reach that distinction.

Ingredients

1kg pork shoulder
200gm pork fat
200gm leek
125gm rusk
125ml water
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp sage (dried)
1/2 tsp ginger (we used fresh, though powdered is fine of course)

Method

  1. Cut the pork and pork fat into 3cm pieces.
  2. Cut the leek into 1cm cylinders and slowly cook in olive oil and some salt until soft.
  3. Combine the ingredients, mince and stuff into sausage casings.