Cooking The Books

Boiled Gammon and Pease Pudding

This dish has been in my mind for ages.  I was almost craving it even though I'd never tried it before. 

Boiled gammon is a delight, one that I think is too frequently overlooked in favour of its roast sibling.  I love how juicy it remains and the way it breaks down along the muscle striations.  Add to that the melt in the mouth fat and skin and one shouldn't miss the drier roast version at all.  The pease pudding was an unknown entity though, but split pease cooked in gammon stock had to be good.

Back when I was a child 'Pease pudding hot, pease pudding cold, pease pudding in the pot 9 days old' was known to everyone but having mentioned it to my 16 year old brother the nursery rhyme seems to have disappeared as much as the dish has.  He now knows them both though and the pease pudding got a thumbs up from him.  I was a fan too, the blandness of the pea is lifted by the stock and onion and the final seasoning with black pepper added welcome spice.  Rumour has it you can fry up any leftovers but alas none managed to survive our meal.  Next time I'll make more so I can see if this tastes as good as it sounds.

This recipe serves 4 with lots of gammon leftover.  You can use this and some of the stock to make a pea and ham soup, if not it's obviously a fine sandwich filling.

Boiled Gammon with Pease Pudding

Ingredients

1.6kg joint of gammon
1 onion, halved and peeled
4 sticks of celery, cut into quarter lengths
2 medium carrots, roughly chopped
3 bay leaves
A few black peppercorns

250gr split yellow peas, soaked overnight
1 small onion, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
A small bunch of herbs - thyme, rosemary, bay - or 1/2 ts of dried mixed herbs
25gr of butter

Method

Cover the gammon with cold water and bring to the boil.  Remove the gamon and discard the water.  This gets rid of excess salt as well as any scum from the joint.

Mix the peas, onion, garlic and herbs and wrap into a muslin parcel, twisting and tying securely.

Place the gammon back into the stock pot, add the veg, bay, peppercorns and muslin parcel then cover with water.

Bring to the boil then turn down the heat and simmer for 2 hours before removing the pease pudding and the gammon.  The veg can be discarded and the stock saved for a pea and ham soup.

To finish the pease pudding scrape it from from the muslin, remove the sprigs of herb and place into a bowl then mash with the butter.  Add lots of black pepper and salt to taste.

Slice the gammon quite thickly and serve with the pease pudding and some English mustard.  Winter greens like kale make a nice accompaniment.

A Hearty Broth

When it's cold few things beat a good soup.  Here sweet carrot and swede mix with nutty barley and the earthy lamb. It's pretty similar to scotch broth, just missing a couple of things and upping the barley as that was the ingredient I really fancied.  With said barley it's almost a meal in itself but I wouldn't miss the opportunity of dipping crusty bread into flavoursome stock just because of that.  The lamb adds flavour and texture but omitting it would leave a tasty vegetarian soup too.

Lamb, Winter Vegetable and Barley Broth, serves 4

Ingredients

400gr stewing lamb
125gr barley
250gr swede
1 medium carrot
1 medium onion
1/2 a leek
Vegetable stock, I use the Marigold bouillon powder
2 bay leaves
S&P

Method

Brown the lamb then drain the fat then add stock to cover, simmering for an hour until the lamb is nearly tender. While the lamb is boiling simmer the barley for 15 minutes then drain. 

Remove the lamb, take the meat from the bones and chop into 1cm bits.

Peel the swede and carrots and cut into a 1cm dice.  Chop the onion and leek to the same size.

Add the meat, vegetables and grain to the stock, adding more stock until it's well covered.  Add the bay leaves and lots of black pepper then simmer for an hour, topping up with stock if it looks low, till the barley is swollen and toothsome.

All you need to do now is check the seasoning and tear off a hunk of bread.

The Full English

Lots of folk have asked me if I missed much food from back home whilst I was away and the honest answer is no.  I think the reasons are twofold.  Firstly, whilst not exclusively so, my diet is heavily waited towards asian food when back home and, secondly, there was just so much amazing food on my travels that I was too busy trying new things to miss old.  That's not to say I didn't miss certain things though.  There's really no equivalent to cheese in Asia and, as much as I love them, I didn't always fancy a bowl of noodles or a soup for breakfast. 

For the cheese, when the craving just got too much, I'd normally grab a pizza as they seem to have got everywhere.  Whilst not the cheesiest of cheese it seemed to do the trick for another few weeks.  Somethings are just too sacred though and I wasn't going to lower myself to a fry up whilst abroad.  I knew that whilst it may look superficially the same the bread would be sweet and the sausages and bacon not reminiscent of the real thing - the Full English's name is far to good to be lowered to that level.  It didn't take long back at home before I had one though.


The Full English is one of the world's great meals - fact.  It's got meat, veg (and fruit I guess in the tomato) and carbs and, more importantly, bags of flavour.  Like any hearty breakfast if done right it should take you past lunch and through to dinner.  The constituent parts aren't set in stone but what you see before you is pretty much my ideal combination but more important than the combination is the quality of the individual items.  I think cooking's the least important, you can fry or grill; poach, fry or scramble; even, if you must, hard yolk over runny.  I tend to take a mixed approach, using both the grill and a frying pan.

With bacon I think the combination of fat and lots of salt from the curing means even low quality bacon is a fairly tasty thing.  Why have fairly tasty when you can have sublime though?  For me this means dry cured smoked bacon. Curing this way stops all that excess water from the brine (especially brine pumped stuff) meaning that when you cook it you're not left with a pan full of white gunk and the cooked bacon is the same size as the raw bit that entered the pan.  The best bacon also has the rind attached, not that I leave it on whilst cooking as it curls up taking the meat with it.  Snipped off and cooked till crispy it makes the delightfully chewy, salty curls that grace the bottom left of my plate.

Sticking with the pig the lower class sausage isn't as bearable as cheap bacon.  Whilst I think some filler is an essential part of a decent British banger there's no need for loads of it and especially no need to accompany it with mechanically recovered meat that leaves a paste-like filling devoid of any texture.  Some of the supermarkets turn out a decent flavoured filling but their insistence on the use of collagen skins (it's all about uniformity for them) just doesn't cut it with me.  It has to be natural skins and for that I think you have to go to the butcher (please correct me if I'm wrong).  I think one has to have a traditional flavour too, I've nothing against new combinations of flavours in sausages and love some of the foreign affairs - like chorizo and merguez - but they've no place on a fry up.  Here we want to see Cumberland, Lincolnshire or a simple pure pork affair.

As mentioned previously the egg is far more open to interpretation.  I'm a fried man normally but I wouldn't turn my nose up at poached or scrambled.  Obviously do the chicken and yourself a favour though and stick to free range.

Black pudding is a contentious one for many, the base of blood putting lots off.  Ingredients aside when done well it's a delight though.  Soft, peppery filling and toothsome cubes of back fat.  I choose to grill it, thinking it has enough calories in it already without any oil.

A full English is hardly a health food affair but that doesn't mean we can't get a few vitamins in there and the tomato and mushroom help in this department.  Some people baulk at the roadside cafe inspired tinned tomatoes on a fry up but I don't mind them.  Ideally you want a plump, ripe real tomato, grilled till just soft and seasoned with salt and pepper.  Now we get them all year round, fresh from a green house and gas ripened with a lot of fresh tomatoes, as the narrator in the marvellous Food Inc says "it's not a tomato, it's the idea of a tomato".  If that's your other option then I don't think a plum tomato, grown in the sun and plucked when ripe before being tinned, is too much of a hardship - just drain it well first.  Here I took the idea of a tomato though and hoped the grilling would impart some sweetness.  The mushrooms were plain white ones, quartered and fried, but a whole field mushroom, liberally buttered and given the same grill treatment as the tomatoes is as good if not better.

Whilst I stick to the decent stuff for all the preceding ingredients when it comes to fried bread it's all about the cheap white sliced.  I'm not sure what it is about it - maybe the thin, uniform thickness - but it fries up so much better than a slice cut from a loaf.  If you've been lucky enough to secure rinded bacon then your ideal step here is to fry the rinds till crisp and then fry the bread in the rendered fat, giving it a lovely smoked bacon flavour.  Your first slice of bread will soak it all up, leaving you needing oil for the rest, but there has to be some perks for the chef - no?

Asia - The Best of the Best

Well that's it for my travels.  It's been an amazing experience and I'm far from happy to be back in England.  Most of the trip's food was great, and low points were still pretty damn good, but there were definitely some winners and losers so I'd thought I'd put them down for posterity.  I've decided to rate the countries as far as their food goes and then give my favourite dishes too.  I was thinking of ranking the latter too but after weeks of thinking about it I still can't really decide an order.  As such whilst the countries are from best to worst the dishes are just my ten favourites in no particular order.

Country Competition

1) China

There's no doubt in my mind on this one, whilst some lower places were a bit harder to decide.  It's a tad unfair too as China's bigger than the rest of the countries put together.  Unfair or not though it wins, there's just so much variety, from the familiar to the unexpected, hardly a day went by without something amazing being eaten.  Even after two months there I feel I need another six months to finish exploring.

2) Vietnam

Whilst it may not have the breadth of China's food Vietnam excelled in freshness of flavour and throwing up lots of surprises.  The combination of salty fish sauce and sour lime juice is perfect for my palate and it's in everything.  The popularity of Vietnamese food in the UK deserves to be as popular as it is in my little bit of East London.

3) Malaysia

Where Malaysia excels is with its meeting of cultures.  The three big ethnic groups - Malay, Chinese and Indian - all contribute to a breadth of cuisine way beyond what should be expected from a country that size.

4) Thailand

My first couple of weeks in Thailand were a big let down when it came to food.  I was expecting big things from it but the country is so developed from a tourist point of view that I think if you stick to the usual destinations - Chiang Mai and southern islands - you're rewarded with pretty generic, low grade food that's made not to offend Westerners over anything else.

I finished the trip with a few days in Bangkok though, where I made a big effort to eat on the street and away from tourist locations, and I was rewarded with the interesting food I'd been searching for - fiery, sour soups and curries, fermented crab salads and bags of fried pork and sticky rice. Whilst not doing enough to lift Thailand from fourth place it definitely saved my opinion of it.

5) Indonesia

Like Thailand, Indonesia suffered by my staying on a pretty touristy beach were the restaurants consisted of the places that happened to be on the beach when it started getting popular, rather than people who could actually cook.

A couple of days on mopeds and another in Banda Aceh threw up some decent dishes though that left me hungry to learn more.  Luckily I bought a cook book there, I just need to learn Indonesian/Malay now so I can read it.

6) Cambodia

Cambodia - particularly Phnom Penh and Siem Reap - is currently suffering from too many expats and tourists which have led to too many expensive and Westerner friendly restaurants. 

Kep and Battambang did throw up some nice street food but not enough to save it from the wooden spoon.

Dishes

1) Pan Mee (Malaysia)

Whilst this list is in no particular order if I had to give a first place it would be this.  Freshly made noodles, minced pork and crispy fried anchovies form the base this amazing dish with some chili sauce and - if you're lucky - a softly poached egg finishing the dry version and some stock completing the soup.

Hopefully a trip around the oriental supermarkets of London will throw up the required ikan bilis (dried anchovies) so I can attempt to mimic this at home.

2) Pork Mee (Malaysia)

Such a simple combination of ingredients - noodles, pig, stock and maybe an egg - yet so good.  Obviously the stock needs to be a flavoursome one and your pork can't be that insipid, overly lean stuff you buy in the supermarket over here but as long as your ingredients are good quality this dish is a winner.

3) Thai Sausages (Thailand)

Thailand may have managed a measly 4th place in the country competition but these were a winner.  Strong flavours and interesting additions like rice & rice noodles caused a soured flavour to develop.

4) Tian Shui Mian (China)

Thick, chewy wheat noodles bathed in sweet, sticky, salty, spicy, numbing sauce all served at room temperature.  Strange but beyond good.

5) Chinese Hamburger

Braised pork belly chopped and in a pitta-like bread.  Nothing more needs to be said.

6) Sichuan Crescent Dumplings (China)

These had always grabbed my attention in Fuchsia Dunlop's books and the real thing didn't disappoint.  The meat filling may be a plain one but when you start pairing them with red oil or seaweed and mushroom they're transformed.

7) Baozi (everywhere)

I'm sure most people have had Char Sui Bao - soft white steamed buns filled with barbecued pork - but the bun/bao doesn't need to stop here.  Laos, Thailand and Cambodia did a filling revolving around minced pork, shredded wood ear mushroom and a hardboiled egg, frequently a quail's egg, that was very good.  As was frequently the case China excelled though - minced pork with salty dried shrimp; pork and spring onion; shredded mushroom; spiced  potato; pork, shrimp and quail's egg to name a few.  So good that even though I ate them more than any other food I never had them long enough to photo and blog.

8) Mi Fen (China)

The simple things are often the best.  Rice noodles with crunchy preserved vegetables, a variety of chili and as much stock as you want.  Truly a delight.

9) Banh Mi Op La (Vietnam)

Fried egg, luncheon meat and beef, a bathing of stock mingling with the runny egg yolk and soaking in to a crisp baguette.  Shouldn't be too hard to mimic at home.

10) Com Tam (Vietnam)

With barbecued pork chop, pork terrine, pork skin and rice all pepped up with the salty, chili-laden nuoc cham this was always going to be a winner and that's before you've added a bowl of soup and a 30p price tag.

Fermented Crab

Fermented seafood products are nothing new, the march of the Romans across large swathes of the globe wasn't done on an empty stomach and near everything they ate was finished with garum, a sauce made from the fermented guts of various fish.  Still today they make their way down many an in-the-dark gullet via Worcestershire Sauce.  In less covert form I imagine many have seasoned a tom yum with fish sauce or used the dark, salty, odious shrimp paste when making a Thai curry paste.

It was these routes that opened my eyes to the SE Asian love of such things but it's not until you get here, eat at a few local establishments and visit a few markets, that you realise just how much they love them.  A market stall doesn't just sell shrimp paste, it sells 10 different kinds, all varying in shade.  Fish sauce in Vietnam comes in many grades and made from different fish.  Prahok in Cambodia, a fermented freshwater fish, brings a tear to the eye with its smell yet it makes it into the frying pan and onto the table from dusk through dawn.  One of the most interesting fermented products I've seen is the crab though.  I'd seen them in markets across the region, seen a youtube recipe for papaya salad that used them (which I admit wasn't too appealing) but up until recently I'd never had the guts to give them a proper test.

In the Lumpini night bazaar in Bangkok recently though I noticed a jar on a stall and decided to move on from voyeur, making the move with a papaya salad, mirroring my youtube learnings.  To prepare the salad she simply made the dressing as normal with her pestle and mortar and once the palm sugar, lime juice, chillies and fish sauce were combined she broke a couple of crabs in her hands and added them too.  They took a few crushing blows before the papaya, carrot and tomato joined them for a stir and it was served.

You may be wondering how raw, fermented crab tastes?  If you were then the answer was surprisingly good, and surprisingly crab like.  I guess I was expecting something more intense, something more removed from the original through the fermentation process, and whilst it definitely was a lot stronger in flavour there was no mistaking that sweet crab taste underneath.  As it was still reasonably whole I had to place a leg or two in my mouth and bite down, crushing the shell.  This caused the salty, sweet and rather raw crab meat to squirt out the end where I really enjoyed it.  The spent shells were then spat out, whether you're meant to swallow or not I don't know.  The body wasn't such a pleasant taste, the darker meat seeming to taste pretty rough after a good salting and fermentation.  The legs were an all round nice eat though and certainly far superior to the aforementioned prahok in Cambodia.