Rick Stein’s passion for fresh, well-sourced food has taken him from continent to continent, across magnificent shorelines and to the very best produce the coast has to offer. From Fresh grilled cod with shellfish in garlic butter at the tip of St Ives, to Cured red duck breasts with melon, soy and pickled ginger in Sydney Harbour, this collection of over 130 recipes evokes all the pleasure and flavour associated with the coast.
Chapters are organised by region: healthy salads inspired by the Californian ocean, sumptuous starters fit for French cuisine, modern light lunches such as Japanese sashimi and Moroccan tagines, and main courses using fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, poultry and game from the most fertile coastal regions in the world.
There are recipes for classic treats such as Toad-in-the-hole with porcini mushrooms and onion gravy, staple fish masterpieces such as Poached sea trout with sorrel hollandaise, and recipes for tasty favourites from your treasured holiday destinations: Seafood Paella, Goan Curry, Welsh Cawl and Clam Chowder. All this, plus a delicious range of puddings including Hot bread pudding with armagnac sauce, Lemon Possett and Poached pears with mulberries and mascarpone ice cream.
With brand-new recipes and a fresh design, Coast to Coast contains Rick Stein’s most popular dishes drawn from many years of travelling the culinary globe. Easy to follow and quick to inspire, this cookbook will bring all the flavour of the coast into the comfort of your own home.
Rick Stein’s passion for using good quality local produce and his talent for creating delicious flavour combinations in his books and restaurants have won him a host of awards, accolades and fans. As well as presenting a number of television series, he has published many best-selling cookery books, including French Odyssey, Mediterranean Escapes, Far Eastern Odyssey and Spain.
Rick is a firm supporter of sustainable farming and fishing techniques, which he strives to maintain in Padstow, Cornwall, where he runs four acclaimed restaurants and a seafood cookery school, as well as a delicatessen and patisserie. In 2003 Rick was awarded an OBE for services to West Country tourism. He divides his time between Padstow and Australia, where he opened a restaurant, Rick Stein at Bannister’s, in 2009.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781446415412
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BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
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BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Rick Stein 2008
Rick Stein has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Photographs on pages 6, 12, 54, 70, 71, 96, 138, 168, 191, 206, 238, 239 and 248 by Noel Murphy
First published by BBC Books in 2008
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846076145
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TITLE PAGE
INTRODUCTION
Britain & Ireland
The Padstow deli crab sandwich with parsley, chilli, lemon and rocket
Hugo’s breakfast fishcakes
Creamy chicken and asparagus soup
Pea and ham soup with bacon butties
Oven-dried tomato and thyme tart with Blue Vinny, olive oil and rocket
Cauliflower cheese
John Dory chowder with mussels and cider
Salad of Lancashire cheese with pancetta in balsamic vinegar and chilli beetroot
Poached salmon with cucumber and dill salad
Goujons of lemon sole with parmesan breadcrumbs
Roast chicken with parsley and tarragon, poached Puy lentils and roasted vine tomatoes
North Atlantic prawn pilaf
Smoked haddock and leek tart
Haddock and Cornish Yarg pie with a potato pastry crust
Stein’s classic Cornish steak pasty
Warm salad of pan-fried pheasant breasts with watercress and potatoes
Roast rib of beef with Yorkshire puddings and roasties
Grilled salted cod with beer, bacon and cabbage
Raspberry cranachan
Treacle tart with clotted cream ice cream
Blackberry and toasted oatmeal dacquoise
Western Europe
Gravlax (dill-cured salmon)
Soupe au pistou
Classic fish soup with rouille and croûtons
Moules marinière with cream, garlic and parsley
Salade tourangelle
Carbonnade of beef à la flamande
Portuguese barbecued sardines with piri-piri oil
Fore-ribs of beef with béarnaise sauce
Sole Véronique
Baked guinea fowl with garlic beans and smoked sausage
Grilled cod with aïoli and butter beans
Goats’ cheese and thyme soufflé
Garbure béarnaise
Chorizo and butter bean stew with garlic and thyme
Arroz a la banda (saffron rice and squid served with allioli)
Beef Stroganoff with matchstick potatoes
Lamb Champvallon
Lulu’s roast chicken with ginger, pasta, tomatoes and the roasting juices
Braised fillet of turbot with slivers of potato, mushrooms and truffle oil
Coeurs à la crème with raspberries
Beignets soufflés in cinnamon sugar with hot chocolate sauce
Crème brûlée ice cream
Mediterranean & Middle East
Wild mushroom risotto
Monkfish with saffron and roasted red pepper dressing
Moussaka
Grilled red mullet with an aubergine and pesto salad
Beef carpaccio
Warm poached skate with the sunny and aromatic flavours of Morocco
Leek cannelloni with lemon thyme and provolone piccante
Turkish kofta kebabs with minted yoghurt and kohlrabi and carrot salad
Fillets of John Dory with olives, capers and rosemary
Pizza Margherita
Fegato alla Veneziana with parmesan polenta
Roasted salmon on roasted tomatoes with salsa verde
Crab linguine with parsley and chilli
Osso buco with risotto Milanese
Seafood lasagne
Rabbit cacciatora with grilled polenta
Risi e bisi (rice with peas)
Roasted skate wings with chilli beans
Linguine with porcini, garlic and truffle oil
Light fig tarts with crème fraîche
White wine, olive oil and polenta cake with poached peaches
Panna cotta with stewed rhubarb
India
Mackerel recheado with katchumber salad
Coconut chilli prawns with cumin puris
Lamb and potato curry with coconut milk and black mustard seeds
Matar paneer
Sardine and potato curry puffs
Red chilli mackerel with fresh onion chutney
Keralan curry with prawns and kokum
Goan fish curry with coconut milk and okra
Mussel, cockle and clam masala
Rui’s turmeric fish with masala dhal
Mumrez Khan’s lamb and spinach karahi curry, from the Karachi Restaurant
Prawn-stuffed papads
Monkfish vindaloo
Dry-spiced potatoes and cauliflower with fennel seeds
Mussels in pilau rice with a coconut, cucumber and tomato relish
Far East
Green papaya salad
Nigiri sushi
Seafood tempura
Osuimono (clear soup with prawns)
Crab and sweetcorn soup
Hot and sour fish soup
Thai Red Seafood
Nasi goreng with mackerel
Grilled red snapper with portabello mushrooms and spinach
Stir-fried eel in black bean sauce
Singapore seafood noodles
Japanese fishcakes with ginger and spring onions
Crisp Chinese roast pork
Beef rendang with cucumber sambal
Steamed monkfish with wild garlic and ginger
Chinese white-cooked chicken with ginger, spring onion and coriander
Sashimi of salmon, tuna, sea bass and scallops
Vietnamese pho (aromatic beef broth with fillet steak, spring onions and rice noodles)
Mussels with lemongrass, chilli, and kaffir lime leaves
Sri Lankan fish curry
Australia & New Zealand
Crab with rocket, basil and lemon olive oil
Oyster soup with ginger, soy and chilli
Seared escalopes of wild salmon with a warm olive oil, basil and caramelised vinegar dressing
Cured duck breasts with melon, soy and pickled ginger
Grilled spatchcock and sautéed shiitake, oyster and chestnut mushrooms with lemon thyme
Trout with a soy, ginger and chilli glaze with steamed bok choi
Mildly spiced potato curry with cumin, black mustard seeds and coriander, topped with a poached egg
Sliced seared fillet steak salad with pickled chicory
Salad of griddled mackerel with sun-dried tomatoes and fennel seeds
Clams or pipis a la plancha tossed with a garlic and fines herbes mayonnaise
Barbecued butterflied lamb with lemon, garlic and thyme
Jack’s mud crab omelette
Grilled cod with laksa noodles and sambal blachan
Seared scallops with noodles, chilli, garlic and coriander
Marinated tuna with passion-fruit, lime and coriander
Prawns in the shell, cooked on skewers with a split tomato, saffron and currant sauce
Steamed mussels with almonds and parsley
Pavlova with cream and passion-fruit
Black-rice pudding with mango sorbet and coconut milk
Fresh raspberry tart with coconut and hazelnut pastry
The Americas
Cod and lobster chowder
Char-grilled beef tortillas (Tasajo con guacamole y salsa cruda)
Po’ boys
Chicken with coloradito
Stuffed Romano peppers fried in polenta with guajillo chilli sauce
Grilled scallops with a pumpkin seed, serrano chilli and coriander sauce
Broiled haddock fillets with succotash
Huevos rancheros (ranch-style eggs)
Hangtown fry
A feast of mahi-mahi, tortillas and salsa de tomate verde
American corn ‘oysters’ (fritters) with bacon and roasted vine tomatoes
Barbecued shrimp with coleslaw
Fish tacos from Baja California
Ceviche of monkfish with avocado
Strawberry and vanilla shortcake
Buttermilk pancakes with blueberry and lemon butter
Basic Recipes
Aïoli
Allioli
Beef stock
Chicken stock
Clarified butter
Corn tortillas
Dashi
Duck confit
Fish stock
Goan masala paste
Lemon olive oil
Mayonnaise
Pilau rice
Roasted red peppers
Rouille
Sri Lankan curry powder
Steamed rice
Tamarind water
Thai red curry paste
Vinaigrette dressing
Walnut vinaigrette dressing
PREPARATION TECHNIQUES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTES ON THE RECIPES
COPYRIGHT
In 1955, when I was just eight, my father took the whole family, in a pale blue Jaguar Mark VII and a Rover 90, to a hotel called the Carlos V on La Salve beach at Laredo, between Santander and Bilbao, on the north coast of Spain. I don’t remember a great deal about the holiday except that everywhere we went the Spanish were full of awe of the mighty Jaguar, which they called the Haguar. I recall too the presence of many Guardia Civil with their curious black three-corned hats, particularly holding back the crowds at the Battle of the Flowers festival in the town, held every August. There was a military prison at the far end of the very long beach and not much else except the hotel. It had different coloured tiles on each floor: red on the ground, yellow on the first, then green, and finally and most intriguingly blue on the top floor, a source of much satisfaction to myself and my sister Henrietta. We both drank Coca-Cola for the first time – I think we were only allowed one bottle a day – and it came in slightly green-tinted glass bottles, which was completely fabulous to us both. Even more extraordinary was the food, particularly squid, which came in a black ink stew with tomato, olive oil and garlic. I remember that this was the first realisation I had that food abroad was exotically different to what we had at home and I believe that that’s when my ‘wanderlust’ to travel from coast to coast across countries around the world started.
Since then my greatest enthusiasm in life has been finding dishes that change my perception of cooking, that reveal a whole new vista of flavour combinations. I think we all enjoy that. Just like that squid in black ink, I can still remember the first time that I tasted the salty, hot, sweet and sour flavours of Thai cooking – the combination of fish sauce, bird’s eye chillies, palm sugar and lime juice. I just couldn’t believe anything would ever taste so good again.
Really good local dishes tell me more about the thoughts, habits and enthusiasms of a foreign country than museum visits or a walk round a famous cathedral. More than that, finding out what dishes people hold dear is, in my opinion, the best way of getting to know them. When I have such conversations, I experience a sort of thrill of recognition. This is a realisation that you have so much in common with people who speak entirely unfamiliar languages and have quite a different history. One of the most enjoyable experiences for me on this subject was meeting the Japanese Ambassador to London, Mr Yoshi Nogami. A few years ago I cooked a gratin of Cornish crab with spinach at a banquet celebrating the investiture of the, then, new Lord Mayor of the City of London, David Brewer. Like me, David comes from Cornwall and wanted something local. He introduced me to Ambassador Nogami, pointing out that while a great admirer of my TV programmes, the Ambassador thought I had one or two lessons to learn about the finer points of sushi and sashimi. He’d seen a programme where I joined a mackerel fishing trip out of Padstow and had filleted and sliced the fish on board and served it on some sushi rice to the slightly astonished group of dads and small boys. He had enjoyed the film, but said that in Japan they never use raw mackerel, it’s always cured. I was a bit embarrassed, but soon got over it when he said he’d already been to Padstow and thoroughly enjoyed the fish soup at my restaurant, but what he really liked was our fish and chips. It turned out that he spent a lot of his free weekends travelling around the British Isles finding places that served the best Lancashire hot pot, steak and kidney pies and, most importantly, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding because, as he pointed out, we don’t do roasts in Japan, we don’t have the ovens. I went to Japan and learnt how to make good sushi and sashimi, both recipes of which are in the book, but more importantly to me, I discovered how essential good food is in Japanese life and how incredibly respectful they are of seasonality and how they have an almost religious sense of the importance of eating certain foods at certain times of the year. It’s not going too far to say that my series of conversations with him made me realise that the appreciation of good food is endlessly subtle and rewarding.
Ever since that first trip to Spain, my enthusiasm for finding good food and thereby discovering so much about people from other countries has continued unabated and all the chapters in this book reflect that. The fish curries of southern India were another sort of right of passage for me. I remember in the late 80s the editors of The Good Food Guide used to pontificate quite sternly about sticking to one’s roots in food, keeping menus regional, keeping one’s respect for local dishes. They argued that poor copies of other countries’ foods on a British restaurant menu were an indication of our feelings of inferiority about our own cooking. I did my best to cook British but, when I started going to Goa and eating dishes like the Mussel, cockle and clam masala here, or the Mackerel recheado here I began to wonder. I think it was probably the Monkfish vindaloo here which I had at Bagga beach which did it. It came with slightly charred naan bread perfumed with garlic and warm from the tandoor oven, chunky slices of cucumber much more bitter than our own, sprinkled with lime juice and coriander and a salad of beautifully sweet tomatoes with thinly sliced sharp onions and spiced with chilli and cumin and a trace of sourness from palm vinegar. That was it. I could not prevent myself from bringing them home and putting them on the menu in Padstow. My chef friend in Goa, Rui, had introduced me to the taste of real vindaloo, rather than the absurdly hot and over-spiced version you often get in Britain. Each time I went to Goa he sent me home with a big pot of home-made vindaloo paste, which always leaked into my luggage. It was the taste of those pastes in conjunction with the recipes which he gave to me for vindaloo and other fish curry bases that led me to think that if I could get the dishes right and indeed produce a really good version of them, what was so wrong with putting them on my own menu alongside grilled Dover sole, cod in parsley sauce, gulls eggs with celery salt and prawn cocktails? Looking back, of course, I shouldn’t have worried about those food guide writers, but at the time I wanted to be recognised and felt I’d have to hide my own enthusiasms. One of the few pluses of getting older is you tend to do what you want and not care what other people think.
These days the menus of most restaurants in the UK will have dishes from all over the world. It’s the same in countries like Holland, Denmark and Germany; the eclectic style prevails. Part of the reason for this is that we don’t need the rather substantial food that our forbears ate as fuel dishes and look to cuisines from hotter climates which tend to be lighter and simpler in their cooking. This would include countries like Spain, and all the countries around the Mediterranean, not to mention further afield: India, South-east Asia, Japan and China. The other reason for the mixing of dishes is that everyone travels, and styles of cooking from far away are no longer too unfamiliar to be ordered. It’s the same in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand; all have this predilection for potpourri menus. On this subject, I recall a conversation with an Australian couple in my restaurant a few years ago, where they explained that they had come to live in the Home Counties, and complained how boring English food was when compared to Australian. I said that if they were talking about traditional Australian food, which I took to mean the cooking brought over from Britain and the only food available when I first went there in the mid 60s, I would speak up in favour of the British version any day. What they were actually referring to was the food of the more recent immigrants to Australia: Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Thai, Lebanese and many more. The same is now true of the larger cities in the UK. London has cooking from most of the countries in the world. The fact is, these days my enthusiasm for travelling from one coast to another in different countries is reflected in the food we all love to eat in this country. At some point you have to say it’s all British food. When you consider that in a recent survey two of the most popular foods were spaghetti Bolognese and curry, it has to be accepted that this is true.
I’m just someone with an enthusiasm for food and a curiosity that’s sent me sniffing around all over the place looking for lovely dishes in all corners of the globe. I think that with the ease and relative cheapness of travel and the enormous amount of information easy to get hold of on the internet, most of us will continue to gain a greater awareness of what’s going on all over the world. I was recently in Germany, where my father’s family came from, and talking to a cousin, now in her late 60s, about her memories of the Second World War. The overwhelming impression I got from her was a sense of Germany’s isolation from the rest of the world that went back to the end of the First World War, when the country was left almost as a punishment to recover itself, a policy which led to the rise of Hitler. As soon as the Second World War ended, her father sent her away all over the world, including a trip to our farm in Oxfordshire. He did the same with all his children, so keen was he for them to learn about the world out there and impress on them the need to be outward-looking, trying in a family way, to avoid what had happened before.
I feel that celebrating great food from all over the world is a very effective way of communicating with people everywhere. From the comforting star anise fragrance of the broth and texture of the rice noodles in a Vietnamese pho (see here) to the pleasure of crisp, early summer vegetables in a Salade tourangelle (see here); from that most perfect of sweets, the soft crust of a perfectly turned out Pavlova with cream and passion-fruit (see here) from Australia, to a thick fillet of Grilled salted cod with beer bacon and cabbage (see here) from a pub in Suffolk enjoying food from everywhere is how we can best get on with each other on this overcrowded planet.
When I was making a TV programme set in France called Rick Stein’s French Odyssey, a few years ago, I began to realise to my surprise that a lot of French regional food was no better or worse than our own. I was thinking particularly about cassoulet, the haricot bean, pork, duck confit and Toulouse sausage stew. I thought it like our own Lancashire hot pot. The difference is that the French are very good at selling what they produce. They are also good at packaging what they make. Whether it be in pretty jars with lids topped with rustic paper and hand-written labels or fresh from the boulangerie in blackened baking trays, they have an ability to turn any local food into a cause for celebration. We don’t seem so clever at that and yet we have great regional food, which at long last is being recognised, not only in farmers’ markets and farm shops but even supermarkets now sell plenty of local food. I was scanning a menu at a new chop house in the City of London the other day and thought how attractive a menu of all British and Irish food could look: chops, roasts, oysters, cockles and laver bread, champ and Irish stew – my mouth was watering.
I’ve tried in this chapter to pull together not so much the classics but dishes that mean a lot to me as good examples of our own cooking. Some are my own, many of the others I picked up on journeys around Britain and Ireland, notably whilst making two series of Food Heroes. In these programmes, I sought out small producers of excellent quality food who in many cases were not making great money out of what they were doing but were fired with a sense of purpose. One of them I revisited only yesterday – Great Keiro Farm where Nigel and Jax Buse grow the asparagus that we use in our restaurants in Padstow. It looks over the Camel Estuary at St Minver, but the asparagus fields are actually in Trebetherick and are still owned by the Betjeman family and were originally rented to them by Sir John Betjeman himself. Standing there in the beds, helping myself frequently to bites of raw asparagus which taste more like peas until cooked, with the red flag of the 13th green at St Enedoc golf course and the idiosyncratically stunted spire of St Enedoc Church beyond, in mid-May when everything was green and mild around, with Jax complaining about the predation of the asparagus from the many rabbits around, I was filled with a warm feeling of pleasure in great local produce yet again. You might like to try the Chicken and creamy asparagus soup here.
The chapter is full of favourites. There’s fish cakes and a classic recipe for Cornish pasties and perhaps the most popular dish of lemon sole we serve at the restaurant, Goujons of lemon sole with parmesan breadcrumbs (see here). I suspect too that there’s universal affection from all British people for Cauliflower cheese (see here) and Treacle tart with clotted cream ice cream (see here). These are the sorts of dishes that I would proudly point out as examples of why British food is often underrated.
If crab came out of its shell in lovely firm pieces like lobster, I wouldn’t be surprised if it fetched more money, because I often think it’s got a better flavour. Fortunately, it’s not enormously expensive and it’s really good in sandwiches. This is a great favourite at our deli. I can’t resist mayonnaise with crab – it’s one of my favourite combinations. I’ve also added a little chilli and some rocket, parsley and sea salt. Although I’ve specified slices of wholemeal bread with the recipe, it’s also very special in a baguette.
MAKES 6
12 thin slices of wholemeal bread (each weighing about 40 g/1½ oz)
75 g (3 oz) butter, softened
5 tablespoons mayonnaise (here)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½–1 red chilli, depending on heat, seeded and finely chopped
500 g (1¼ lb) fresh hand-picked white crab meat
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
50 g (2 oz) rocket
Sea salt
Butter the slices of bread and put them to one side.
Put the mayonnaise (see here) into a small bowl and stir in the lemon juice and chilli. Put the crab meat and parsley into another bowl and lightly stir through the mayonnaise mixture. Season to taste with a little salt.
Put 4 slices of the bread, buttered sides up, on a board and spoon over the crab mixture. Cover with a generous layer of the rocket leaves and then top with the remaining slices of bread. Cut each sandwich diagonally into halves or quarters and serve at once.
I was once asked to rename this recipe but couldn’t possibly because it’s Hugo’s. He runs a brilliant guesthouse just outside Padstow called Woodlands, where he cooks special breakfasts.
SERVES 4
400 g (14 oz) floury main-crop potatoes, such as Desirée, peeled (350 g/12 oz prepared weight) and cut into large chunks
300 g (10-oz) fillet of white fish, such as pollack, gurnard, cod or haddock, cut into small chunks
225 ml (8 fl oz) full-cream milk
1 pared strip of lemon zest
1 bay leaf
40 g (1½ oz) butter
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
A handful of curly-leaf parsley leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon lemon juice
25 g (1 oz) plain flour
1 large egg, beaten 100 g (4 oz) fresh white breadcrumbs
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Soured cream and chives, to serve
Cook the potatoes in boiling, salted water for 20 minutes or until tender. Drain well, tip back into the pan and mash until smooth. Set aside.
Meanwhile, put the fish, milk, lemon zest, bay leaf and some black pepper into a pan. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer for 4 minutes or until the fish has just cooked through. Remove and discard the bay leaf and lemon zest, lift the fish on to a plate and reserve the poaching milk. Remove and discard any skin and bones from the fish and leave the fillet to cool slightly.
Melt 15 g (½ oz) of the butter in a medium-sized saucepan, add the olive oil and onion and cook gently for 6–7 minutes, until soft and translucent but not brown. Add the mashed potatoes, allow them to warm through slightly; then add the fish, parsley, lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of the poaching milk and mix together well. The mixture should be neither dry nor so wet that it is difficult to handle. Leave to cool.
Meanwhile, season the flour with some salt and pepper and sprinkle it on to the work surface. Put the egg into a shallow dish and the breadcrumbs into another. Using slightly wet hands, form the mixture in the flour into 8 small fish cakes, which are about 1 cm (½ inch) thick. Dip them into the beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs, put on to a baking tray and chill them for 1 hour (or better still overnight) in the fridge.
Melt the remaining butter and a teaspoon of olive oil in a large, non-stick frying pan, add the fish cakes and fry them gently for about 5 minutes on each side until golden. Serve with some soured cream and chives on the side.
Everybody should have an asparagus soup in their repertoire. There’s so much flavour in the stalks, including the fibrous ends that most people chop off and discard, and I think it’s a shame to waste good food if you can find a way not to. I blanch the tips and add them to this soup, made creamy and slightly tart with crème fraîche.
SERVES 8
1 small chicken, weighing about 1¼ kg (2¾ lb)
The other ingredients for making chicken stock (here)
200 g (7 oz) bunch thin asparagus
75 g (3 oz) butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
100 g (4 oz) thinly sliced leek
100 g (4 oz) fennel, chopped
50 g (2 oz) plain flour
200 ml (7 fl oz) crème fraîche
Sea salt and freshly ground white pepper
Remove the breasts from the chicken, skin and set them to one side. Use the remaining chicken carcass and the legs to make the stock (see here).
Bring the stock to the boil, add the chicken breasts, cover and leave to simmer gently for 15 minutes. Lift the chicken out on to a plate, cover and leave until cool enough to handle. Meanwhile, measure how much stock you have left. You want 2¼ litres (4 pints) so, if you have less, top it up with a little water or extra chicken stock. If you have slightly more, boil it until it is reduced to the required amount. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, tear it into fine shreds. Cover with cling film and set aside with the stock.
For the soup, cut 2½ cm (1 inch) off the tips of the asparagus and set to one side. Roughly chop the remainder. Melt the butter in a clean pan, add the onion, leek, fennel and asparagus stalks and cook gently for 10 minutes, until soft but not browned. Stir in the flour, then gradually stir in the reserved chicken stock and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes until the vegetables are very tender.
Meanwhile, drop the asparagus tips into a small pan of boiling, salted water and cook for 2 minutes. Drain, refresh under cold water, and set aside.
Remove the soup from the heat and leave to cool slightly. Then liquidise in batches until smooth, and pass through a sieve into a clean pan. Bring back to a simmer and then stir in the crème fraîche, shredded chicken and asparagus tips and season to taste with salt and some freshly ground white pepper. Serve with some crusty fresh bread.
As an accompaniment, a bacon buttie is a zillion times better than putting chips with everything as they do in most pubs in Great Britain. I mean, who really wants soup with chips?
SERVES 4
75 g (3 oz) butter
225 g (8 oz) onions, chopped
25 g (1 oz) plain flour
900 g (2 lb) fresh or frozen peas
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
FOR THE HAM STOCK:
450 g (1-lb) piece of smoked gammon, or 1 small smoked ham hock
1 large onion
2 large carrots
3 celery sticks, sliced
3 bay leaves
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
A pinch of crushed dried chillies
2 litres (3½ pints) water
FOR THE BACON BUTTIES:
8 slices of medium-thick white bread
A little salted butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon canola or sunflower oil
8 slices rindless smoked back bacon
For the ham stock, put all the ingredients into a pan, and bring to the boil, skimming off the scum as it rises to the surface. Lower the heat and leave to simmer for 1 hour. Strain, discarding the vegetables but reserving the piece of gammon. You want 1½ litres (2½ pints) of stock so, if you have slightly more, return to a clean pan and simmer until reduced to the required amount.
For the soup, melt the butter in a pan, add the onions, and cook gently for about 10 minutes, until soft but not browned. Stir in the flour and cook gently for 1 minute, then gradually add the stock and bring to the boil. Add the peas, bring back to the boil and simmer for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, skin the piece of gammon and chop the meat into small pieces. Remove the soup from the heat and leave to cool slightly. Then blend in a liquidiser, in batches if necessary, until smooth. Pour back into the pan and stir in the gammon and some seasoning to taste. Place the soup over a low heat and leave to reheat gently.
For the bacon butties, lightly butter the slices of bread. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan, add the bacon rashers and fry over a medium-high heat until the edges are just turning golden. Push the bacon to the side of the pan and briefly dunk the buttered side of 4 slices of the bread in the bacon fat. Cover these slices of bread with the rashers of bacon, cover with the second slices of bread and cut in half–not into triangles! Spoon the soup into warmed soup plates and serve with the bacon butties.
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