Weekly Recipes

Both an ode and a farewell to Christmas and all the oranges and clementines you will have eaten. This dessert will definitely put a smile on your face; the emotive combination of familiarity and nostalgia is even greater when mixed with sugar, dairy and alcohol, as here! You will, of course, have a pack of mince pies left from Christmas, or you may pick some up on special offer (alternatively substitute the mince pies with 250gr carrot cake or gingerbread). This recipe looks a bit more “cheffy” than the usual homework I give you, but to make the parfait, you...

This marinade would be delicious with any of the beef available from LMDC, though perhaps particularly with the entrecote or cote de boeuf: something with a bit more fat in it. The chicken thighs and Basque pork too. Bulgogi is a Korean dish, traditionally prepared with strips of beef flash-fried then rolled in the sauce, though it also works brilliantly as a marinade and glaze on a larger cut of meat. It would feel like a real shame to cut the cote de boeuf into thin strips! There is something so satisfying not just about eating large joints or steaks,...

To brine or not to brine? I would always recommend brining a large bird. We always use a plain salt solution of 5% salinity, so for 6 litres of water, that would be 300g salt for example. It permeates the meat in a way that seasoning on the outside simply cannot achieve. People always worry when you start talking about such high amounts of salt, forgetting that I am not asking you to drink the brine! Trust me…..I have done this before; I actually do so on a daily basis! A regular chicken needs 2 hrs in brine, a large...

A soup may not excite on paper; it is nothing new. A good soup, however, is a thing of beauty: a bowlful of comforting warmth with depth and a purity of flavour that encapsulates the ingredient…..whether a clear broth or something heartier and velvety. It was at my time at Le Manoir au Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire that I realised how good a soup could be, and a great deal of that was due to fast cooking: keeping the ingredient fresh and capturing that flavour, rather than hours of simmering to a dull shadow of itself. People may romanticise that...