Milly Mossop

Chicken, leek and red pepper risotto in 22 simple steps

I just want to post this recipe (can't really call it a recipe, I made it up as I went along - when does a recipe become a recipe? Discuss. See, every now and then a whiff of that English degree sails tantalisingly past my nose... I can almost smell it...But back to food) - oh yes, so I just want to post this before I forget because, if you'll excuse my French arrogance, it was fucking tasty.

1. Pot roast a chicken with lots of thyme (I also stuck a halved lemon up its bottom, poured on some stock made with a Knorr chicken stock cube - didn't have any white wine or would have used that - smeared butter on its breast and scattered it with onion, leek and root veg. The lucky bird.
2. Eat almost as much of the chicken as you'd like but not actually as much as you'd really like because you need to keep about half the breast meat and all the stuff on the back (poke around between the bones, get it all out) - put this under lock and key / in the fridge, depending on your level of resistance to temptation until the next day
3. Meanwhile make the stock, cover the chicken carcass in its cooking pot with water, add some more thyme, pepper corns, leek ends, droopy carrots / whatever's lying around etc (I'm sure you  know how to make stock) - bring to boil, simmer for a couple of hours, strain into big jug / bowl, leave to cool overnight and put into fridge in morning (do not ask boyfriend to put into fridge in morning. He will forget.)
4. Next day, just as you're about to leave the office instigate the mother of all email debates amongst foodie colleagues about the merit of parmesan cheese and white wine in a risotto. My dilemma - making a cheap and tasy supper of Sunday leftover's without the two ingredients that make it taste really yummy but will together cost £10 from the nearest food shop, which happens to be M&S. Leave colleagues to disagree (Ed says cheese unimportant, Nik says I'll die without it but could substitute white wine vinegar for white wine, Dom says funnily enough his girlfriend is making him pancetta and mushroom risotto tonight. I think to myself 'I bet Dom's girlfriend isn't kicking off a fuss in her office about how to make a risotto' and then think 'probably because she knows exactly what she's doing and has all the right ingredients'. Give up, start to walk home.
5. Half way home on South Lambeth Road, remember Tony's Italian Deli... Pop in, big cheery (if sweaty from walking in synthetic clothing) smile "hello! Do you have any parmesan cheese?" Tony looks at me like I am mental and walks to great big, glass fronted fridge full of cheese. "How much you want?" "Ohhh just a bit, 100g?" (thinking 'fuck! how much is 100g? I've only got £40 on me!') Tony slices off a modest amount and says "Is £1.60 ok?" I feel so relieved I decide to really go for it and ask Tony if I can substitute white wine vinegar for white wine in a risotto. Again he looks at me rather warily and after a little bit of that shop keeper / customer banter that I'm really crap at (if the world were a stage then I would not be asked to play a regular, normal customer) we agree that I should go for a half bottle of Frascati at £3.40. Having implied that I don't want a full bottle because I'd then have to drink it all, I now realise Tony thinks I am a struggling alcoholic. With an interpersonal skills deficit. I weigh up pros and cons of sailing out with a cheery "ciao!" (as I have seen other customers do), gurn my thanks, turn around, walk into another customer and exit stage Stockwell.
6. Home sweet (paint smelling) home - discover exciting veg box on doorstep (yes I know there's a credit crunch but it tastes ten times better than supermarket plastic and forces you to eat veg. Not that I've ever had to be forced to eat anything in my life). Inside awaits, amongst other delights, a lush leek and a juicy red pepper. Take this upstairs to kitchen (which is meant to be downstairs by now but that's another story)
7. Chop yesterday's leftover chicken into little bits and put aside
8. Slice onion, 2-3 garlic clooves and a leek, put to one side
9. Oh almost forgot, get stock from fridge, scrape fatty crust from top, tip remainder into a pan and heat on the hob
10. Heat olive oil and butter in a deep saucepan / casserole dish and chop juicy red pepper
11. Cook onions, garlic, leek and then pepper in the oil & butter for a few minutes - oh and add some thyme leaves as well
12. On a whim add about half a teaspoon, or a little more - whatever you fancy really - each of ground turmeric and paprika, and then a pinch of dried chilli flakes or something similar
13. Keep stirring til it's lovely and soft and orangeish
14. Add arborio / risotto rice (about 300g I think), stir til rice is coated in oil and transluscent
15. Then add a glass of white wine, stir until absorbed
16. Forgot to mention, you should have Radio 4 on, particularly if they're broadcasting Just a Minute. That Sue Perkins is so funny. Hollyoaks, I have learnt, is no good for making risotto because something attention grabbing, like an abandoned son killing his long lost brother's boyfriend who used to be a priest, will happen and before you know it you've been sat on the sofa for ten minutes neglecting your risotto - far from the constant stirring insisted upon by  Valentino Harris. No, risotto making requires the radio. Not the television. If you time it right you might even catch The Archers.
17. Now add the stock, ladle by ladle, stirring (see above) continuously until you're happy with the texture - this always takes me at least half an hour, although most recipes say about 20 minutes
18. Finally (almost) stir in a knob of butter and a handful of (cheap from the local deli) parmesan cheese, put the lid on the pot and leave for 2 minutes whilst you bark at boyfriend and switch from Radio 4 to Corrie (remember, radio for risotto making, telly for risotto eating)
19. Finally, finally, spoon onto warm plates and then (this is the bit that I think could earn my first Michelin star) drizzle with Belazu Argan oil ('a unique oil with a mildly toasted, nutty flavour'), sprinkle on a bit more grated parmesan, a grind of black pepper and tuck in.
20. Go back for seconds
21. Go back for thirds
22. Feel fat but happy

Melanzane alla Parmigiana

Or 'aubergine baked with parmesan' if your Italian's as rubbish at mine.

We had a party last week, originally it was going to be a BBQ but then it occured to me that, with all of Friday to play with, it made sense for me to play with food in the afternoon rather than try and coordinate cooking on a BBQ, drinking and saying hello to people in the evening. It also occured to me that we don't have a BBQ.

Anyway, the best thing I made (not that the competition of hot dogs and jerk chicken in pitta pockets was that strong really) was from a recipe in Taste Italia magazine (really good, get it cheap from this site ).

Ingredients to feed 6
1 medium or 2 smaller aubergines (at least 500g total in weight)
sea salt
500g mozzeralla ( Waitrose are very helpfully doing 2 4 1 on 250g pack at the mo)
1 large egg
150-200g plain flour
extra-virgin olive oil
500 ml basic tomato sauce (there's a special recipe for this elsewhere but just heat up 2 tins of plum tomatoes with some garlic and 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar - you're meant to sieve and process it as well but I didn't bother and I'm sure it doesn't affect the taste)
150g freshly grated parmesan
1 tsp dried basil (I used mixed herds, was fine)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
handful of fresh basil leaves

Ok, so peel the aubergine and widthways in 1cm slices. Stack the slices in a colander, sprinkling each layer with lots of salt - put a plate on top, weighed down with a tin of tomatoes and leave for 1 hour.

Then rinse the salt off the aubergine and dry them with paper towels.

Grate the mozzarella on the large holes of a grater or, if like me you don't actually own a proper cheese grater (hey, I've just moved house) just sort of half cut with a knife and half tear with your hands into little strips.  Put to one side.

Put the flour in one bowl, the egg beaten with 2 tablespoons of water in another bowl, and heat olive oil in a frying pan to a depth of 1 cm.

Take each slice of aubergine, dip roughly in the flour, then the egg (you'd think the egg first, right? But no, definitely the flour first) and fry in the oil until golden brown on each side - takes a few minutes. It's easier to tell when it's over-done than under-done so if in doubt, keep going a few seconds more. Rest the fried aubergines on paper towels on a cake stand / grill tray.

By the time you've done this your hands will be caked in a floury, eggy glue and you'll have spent longer in the kitchen than you expect to, but don't give up now, the hard bit's over.

Now all you do is take a large ceramic / casserole type dish, ladle a thick layer of tomato sauce on the bottom, then a layer of aubergine, then a generous sprinkle of parmesan, more tomato sauce, a handful of mozzarella, a sprinkle of dried basil and black pepper and continue thus until you reach the top. (So that's, tomato, aubergine, parmesan, tomato, mozzarella, herbs, tomato, aubergine, parmesan, tomato, mozzarella, herbs - got it?) Finish with a thick layer of the tom sauce and finally a generous dose of parmesan.

Baked uncovered in a 220ish oven (our oven claims to only go up to 180 and that did the job) for 45 minutes. Then sprinkle with fresh basil, Mmmmm...

Great thing about this dish is that the recipe says it can be eaten hot but best served at room temperature, so you can make it at any point in the day and then just leave it to cool to room temp.

Another great thing is that it's clearly vegetarian but a few of my friends were convinced it had chicken in, mistaking the crudely torn mozzarella for bland supermarket chicken. Which means you can invite herbivores and carnivores over for supper and keep both happy (just keep track of your lies, if you make up different stories about what's in the dish to different guests).

Anyway, I was very flattered by the compliments this dish received but really have to pass them on to Nancy Harmon Jenkins, author of Flavours of Puglia and contributor to Taste Italia. I just followed easy peasy instructions. (I say this largely for the benefit of Dionne, who I work with, who thinks she can't cook - seriously, if I can do this, any man, woman or beast can!)

Bon appetite!

Leek and stilton quiche

• Switch off brain, read Moo’s wildly enthusiastic email about a Sunday picnic on Clapham Common that she ended with “I will make a giant tabouleh!” and reply “and I will make a giant quiche!”, for no other reason than quiche is a little bit evocative of squid when you type it (in my mind anyway)
• Remember you’ve never made a quiche before and turn quickly to the ever helpful BBC Food website, search for quiche and tick the vegetarian box (thinking of Benny the Veggie who tends to get a rough deal when we go to steak houses and Barcelona and places). Find this recipe for leek and stilton quiche
• Put aside Saturday afternoon for quiche making, take advantage of car collecting trip to Northcote Road (where Lola & Jimbo live) to purchase 10 inch quiche dish (with removable bottom!) from posh cooking shop. Also buy a fantastic steak & Guinness pie from A Dove and Son the brilliant butchers, whilst Lola chats to the butcher about important local stuff. (NB, pie isn’t strictly required to make quiche, but it made a delicious supper with bobby beans and Cyprus new potatoes from the Balham farmers’ market, where I also got 2lb of leeks from, thinking 1lb of leek shanks (the white bits) surely requires 2 lb of complete leeks. I was right. Go me.)
• Get back to Balham just in time to put a bet on Botha Na for the Grand National, having stupidly believed the ‘psychic’ who called the Scott Mills (cos Chris is on holiday) breakfast show on Friday to say Botha Na would win
• Make quiche exactly as per recipe. Don’t worry when the chopped leeks fill a massive pot and you can’t fathom how they’re going to fit in the pastry base; when you cook them, they’ll wilt and shrink like willies in the Arctic
• Once it’s baked and cooled, fill with pride at how utterly amazing it looks. Transfer to plate, wrap in cling film, and leave to bring to picnic tomorrow, having no idea how it’s going to taste…

Roast partridge

• visit my Granny in Northumberland and allow her to empty the ends of her Winter freezer into your handbag: a brace of locally shot partridge, a bag of broad beans and 2 bags of runner beans frozen the day they were picked from her prolific vegetable patch (I managed to get a couple of Cadbury cream eggs as well, but they're not strictly needed for this recipe)
• transfer ingredients to London via the Sunday 17.33 from Alnmouth and place in fridge in Balham to finish defrosting
• next night, pick up a poussin (£2.54 from Waitrose, cheaper than chicken!) to ensure there's enough meat for 3 hungry hunters, and a few potatoes, mindful of the carrots already at home, oh and some unsmoked streaky bacon
• plonk the partridge and poussin into a roasting dish. Lay rashers of bacon over the partridge, brush the poussain with something oily (not hair lacquer) and season
• during the next hour, boil and mash the spuds, boil and drain the beans and carrots, remove birds from oven and rest under foil to keep warm (if you're not blessed with a hostess trolley) and make gravy with the juices, stirring in sprinkles of flour, stock and red or white wine, whichever's open (we had a lovely Rioja from Oddbins) all whilst trying to keep up with Tracy Barlow's trial outcome in Corrie
• serve, and marvel over the delights of partridge on a Monday night in Balham
• put carcasses in big pot, leave for tomorrow with instructions for Maccie B to procure an onion, a carrot, 10 pepper corns and bunch of parsley, boil under enough water to cover the bones for one hour, sieve, and place cooled liquid in fridge ready to make a tasty soup with later
• make mental note to send thank you card to Granny for the delicious partridge and beans

What to feed your hungover

Sushi, sushi and more sushi.

Or at least that's what I'd normally say. Today however, the Salad Factory had run out of the big sushi packs, and only had medium and small ones left. I don't do medium and I certainly don't do small.

So on a whim I picked up a chorizo and chick pea salad (ok so it wasn't that whimsical, I'm addicted to chorizo) and boy is it good!

Of course as much water and green tea as you can physically drink is crucial as well.

And I read somewhere (Metro, embarrassingly) that the optimum hangover breakfast, if you've got time on a school day, is eggs on wholemeal toast.

I was in the Old Sergeant last night, having 'we're not roomies anymore' drinks with Molly and discussing how fantastic our boyfriends (and new roomies) are. For about 5 minutes, then we moved on to important things like, er, like...hell, I really can't remember! Obviously very important though.

Bye bye Molly! Thank you for being the best roomie ever and such a good friend! xx

Greek stuffed peppers

• Chance upon the Greek cuisine calendar you bought your boyfriend's mum last August in Corfu that he then lost, and turn to February, depicted by an alluring photo of a voluptuous stuffed green pepper leaning coquettishly on a buxom tomato, also stuffed
• Upon realising there's no eggs in the kitchen for breakfast, skip to Sainsbury's to get some and whilst you're at it pick up: 3 glossy green peppers, 3 big beef tomatoes, an onion, long grain rice, flat leaf parsley, carton of sieved tomatoes / something similar, some nice salad stuff (and if you don't already have them in your cupboard, olive oil and garlic)
• 90 minutes before you want to eat (by this point I'd been back to my flat to pack my life up into a few bags and moved it into Mozz's, which involved lots of bending, stretching and heavy lifting, and I was hungry)...
• ...chop the onion and 2 cloves of garlic as finely as you can, put in a little bowl. Finely chop the parsley too and put that in a separate little bowl
• Get a boy with a degree in engineering to slice the hats off the tomatoes and peppers, ideally leaving them hanging on a hinge of skin but this is tricky, and scoop all the flesh out (I'm not kidding about the engineering degree, this requires a scientific mind). Put the tomato pulp to one side, chuck all the pepper crap out. Arrange the tomatoes and peppers on a baking tray and preheat the oven (about 190)
• Put the onion / garlic in a medium deepish frying pan with 1/4 cup of oil, turn the heat up, move it all around idly with a wooden spoon for a bit, not long, then add 6 spoons (just a regular spoon that you eat cornflakes with) of rice. Once that's gone translucent, add the tomato pulp, and a few twists of salt, pepper, and indeed a teaspoon of sugar. Then add the chopped parsley, and 1/2 cup of water and let it bubble away
• When almost all the water has evaporated, so the mixture's like a moist risotto, half fill each of the tomatoes and peppers with it. The pepper hats may have come detatched by now, I pinned them back in place with a cocktail stick
• Dilute half a cup of carton-tomato-stuff with some water (or you can just use tomato juice as the calendar told me to do, I didn't want to buy juice because the rest of it wouldn't get drunk and that would bug me) and add 1/4 cup of olive oil to that, then pour it into the baking tray, like a little red, oily swamp that the vegetables are growing from
• Whack in the oven for an hour, whilst you watch Coronation St and make a salad (I used up sun dried tomatoes and olives with a strong herby base, cucumber and avocado which worked well)
• Incidentally, these quantities serve 3. You might think you'll still be hungry, after all it's just a pepper, a tomato and a bit of rice, and plan to finish off with half a sherry raspberry trifle. But take heed: you won't need the trifle. If you eat it on principle, you'll only regret it (trust me)
• Serve on plates. Eat. Leave trifle alone

Easy pork kebabs

Ingredients
500g / 1lb pack of cubed pork (about 3 quid from Sainsbury's)
Olive oil
1 garlic clove
2 lemons
Bunch of rosemary
A few cherry tomatoes
2 peppers, red and / or green
6 pitta breads
Tub of Greek yoghurt
Big bowl of salad (if Maccie B ate cheese I'd do a Greek salad, with cucumber, tomatoes, black olives and feta cheese. As it was there was stuff in the fridge to use up anyway; baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, a limp but satisfying nonetheless cucumber, some peppers and stuff)
Salad dressing - olive oil, balsamic vingegar, lemon juice, rock salt / whatever really

Method

• Take day off work (I used an infected cyst on my bottom, but you can use whatever's handy)
• After lunchtime Neighbours, go to Sainsbury's thinking it'll be quiet because everyone's at work, soon realise that not everyone works. Buy ingredients as above.
• Marinade pork in olive oil, lemon juice, crushed garlic, lots of chopped rosemary, salt and pepper. Cover, put in fridge
• Return to trying to figure out how blogs are supposed to work, occasionally worrying about bottom
• Wait for The Actor to return from rehearsals, hungry
• Leave it as long as you can and when he starts reminding you that you don't pay rent here, traipse to the kitchen, decorate some wooden skewers with marinated pork, slices of pepper and cherry tomatoes, place under the grill
• Put the pitta bread in the oven under the grill to warm
• Make salad
• Turn kebabs, brushing with leftover marinade, on a medium heat they should take 15 minutes
• Serve. Marvel at difference in eating style of Maccie B who spends longer assembling his pitta sandwich than eating it, and Mozz, who ignores the salad, pitta and yoghurt completely, eats his meat skewers in under two minutes and returns to work (work incidentally is 8 feet behind me at the table that we never eat at)
• Pretend to be excited about Battlestar Galactica starting at 9.00 whilst secretly glad of a whole hour of peace and quiet

Things to do with a Chorizo sausage

Remember a while ago I mentioned a recipe Portuguese chorizo and bean stew that I made and loved? Well, opening an old notepad just now I came across a recipe I invented myself, Macaroni Chorize. It's like Macaroni Cheese but without any cheese (apart from grated on top with breadcrumbs for the final grilling) and the sauce instead is made from:

Good Chorizo sausage, sliced (I used to get mine from Madrid airport til I disovered they're 1/3 the price from Barcelona food market, or presumably any Spanish food market. If you haven't got time to go to Spain, even as far as an airport, then Waitrose will do).
Black olives
Crushed chillies
Peppers, chopped
Fresh Rosemary, chopped
Red onions / shallots
Leeks
Passata / plum tomatoes / jar of tomatoey type sauce

So all you do is make a stew type sauce in a saucepan with the above ingredients, or any that you fancy, stir it into the cooked macaroni, sprinkle some cheese and bread crumbs, and I think I sprinkled some garlic salt on top as well, grill for a bit and there you have it: Macaroni Chorize.

Or, this is Molly's recipe, so you might want to prioritise it (she trained at Pru Leith and I reckon could teach Pru a thing or two herself now) - Chorizo & Roasted Vegetables:

Take your chorizo as before, sliced. Add to a roasting dish with a variety of sliced peppers, courgettes, olives, potatoes, cherry and / or vine tomatoes, aubergine, sweet potato; add garlic cloves and salt, pepper / paprika and a lashing of olive oil, whack in the oven for an hour or so, serve with bread, salad or rice, await plaudits.