LAMB PITTAS & RED LENTIL HUMMUS

I'm spoiling you with recipes this week! Today's is a Greek inspired recipe, using a variation on a classic middle Eastern ingredient. This is my version of a lamb kebab, where I've replaced chickpeas with red lentils for the hummus (Rennie's handy if lentils make you bloated!). It's a really easy recipe, and one you can double or triple up if you've got a larger group to feed. You can make the hummus and marinate the lamb in advance, then just finish it off when needed by cooking the lamb and plating up.

Red lentil hummus

100g red lentils, rinsed
1 tbsp. tahini
2 crushed cloves of garlic
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp cumin powder
Extra virgin olive oil

Cook the red lentils in water for 20-30 minutes or until soft. Remove from the heat, drain and leave to cool. Once cool, add to the blender with the remaining ingredients and whizz up, adding a little water or more oil, until you reach the desired consistency.

Lamb pitta kebabs
Serves 2

300g lamb neck or leg meat, cut into 3cm cubes
1 tsp cumin powder
1 crushed garlic clove
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp oregano
1 tbsp. olive oil
Salt and pepper

2 pitta breads
Half avocado, sliced
6 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 chilli, thinly sliced,
Parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp. crème fraiche
1 tbsp. hummus, as above

Marinate the lamb chunks in the cumin, garlic, chilli, oregano, olive and salt and pepper for 2-24 hours.

Preheat a large frying pan and when hot, add the lamb chunks and cook for a minute on each side. They should still be a little pink in the middle.

Put the pittas under the grill or in the toaster. When toasted, spread a layer of hummus, topped with crème fraiche, lamb chunks, slices of avocado, cherry tomatoes, chilli and parsley. Drizzle with a little olive oil and they're ready to serve. 

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MY NEXT POP UP - 26th APRIL

Another month, another pop up! I thought I should let you know about my next pop up restaurant, as there are still tickets available, but they do start to sell out around now.

I've got a bumper Spring menu, full of some of my favourite produce for my pop up on Saturday 26th April. The event is at our lovely house in West London, and starts at 7.30pm, and is kind of similar to a dinner party - a large table filled with guests, eating my four course menu, and having a great time. I've had guests from age 11 up to 60+ in the past, from all walks of life, and from all over the world. You can come with a group of friends, in a pair, or on your own, and it's bring your own booze, so you can bring a bottle or 2 of your favourite. I also serve either a welcome cocktail, pudding wine or port to go with the cheese, and there's homemade soft drinks for anyone who wants.

Every component of the food I serve is made from scratch, in my kitchen, with as much as possible being British, seasonal ingredients.

The menu for 26th April is:

 

Hand picked Dorset crab, homemade mayonnaise, remoulade, crusty white bread

 

Slow cooked shoulder of Spring lamb, savoy cabbage, Jersey royal new potatoes, with watercress and wild garlic salsa verde

 

Lemon posset with rhubarb compote and vanilla shortbread biscuits

 

Somerset cheeseboard, tomato chutney and herby salted crackers

 

Coffee/herbal tea served with sticky chocolate balls

If you'd like to come but can't eat or don't like something on the menu, that's fine - when you book there's a comments section where you can mention this. I don't think I've yet done a pop up where I haven't done at least 2 different main courses to cater for everyone's needs.

To find out what my previous guests have thought of the evenings you can see reviews of my last event here or a review written by another of my guests here.

Tickets for my pop up on 26th April are £30 each and can be bought via Grub Club.

And here's a couple of pics of the food my from the last event (although I always forget to take proper photos!)

Crusty white bread:

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DUCKSOUP, SOHO

Last night I ventured into Central London for some dinner with my brother and his wife. We had plans to go and check out the new DubJam restaurant in Covent Garden, but unfortunately Lucy wasn't able to make it in the end, so we didn't want to go there without her. We popped into Flatiron, Polpo and Burger and Lobster, but they all had waits of over an hour, and by that point neither of us could wait that long for food! Luckily though Ducksoup had room for the 2 of us, and I'm so glad we ended up eating there, as neither of us had been before and we absolutely loved the food! Sadly, as we were sitting downstairs, it was quite dark, lit mostly by candle light, so the photos I took are terrible!! But bear with me, I'm sure you'll get the gist, and you should go check it out yourselves anyway as I think their menu is really original and utterly yummy.

Ducksoup's menu consists of small bar menu plates, and larger plates from the kitchen. We decided to share a few things so we could get to try as much as possible.

We started with a plate of capocollo, which is cured pork shoulder, and tasted like it was seasoned with black pepper and juniper. It had the perfect balance of meat and fat, and just melted in the mouth, leaving it's wonderful flavour lingering:

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HOMEMADE LAMB SHISH / HUMMUS

Despite my attempts at vaguely healthy and responsible eating, there may have been occasions, after a few pints at the pub, that I've ducked into the local kebab shop for a lamb shish on the way home, normally at around 2am! I don't do this often, in fact probably only about once a year, but I've still done it. The alcohol normally fuels the hunger, but I do actually really like the taste of lamb shish! So here's my recipe for those naughty kebabs, which you can now make at home (although maybe not at 2am after the pub!)

I can't promise that this version is massively healthier than the kebab shop's, but at least you know exactly what's gone into this one! The thing that makes homemade kebabs super tasty is the marinade, so you'll want to get your lamb out of the fridge, ready to marinate a couple of hours before cooking.

Serves 2

For the lamb:

250g diced leg of lamb (I get mine from the excellent Wyndham House butcher in Chiswick)

1 tsp coriander seeds

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp ezapote (Mexican herb)

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp coriander leaf

1 tsp dried chilli flakes (I didn't use these in mine, but would've done if I wasn't sharing with the chilli-allergy one!)

2 cloves garlic, crushed
Squeeze of lemon juice

Large glug of olive oil

Black pepper

For the hummus:

130g tinned chickpeas (one of the mini tins)

1 tbsp tahini paste

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp water, more if needed

Pinch of sea salt

Black pepper

1 tsp cumin powder

For the garlic sauce:

2 tbsp natural yoghurt

1 tsp mayonnaise (I cheated and used shop bought, which I don't normally do, but it actually works best in this sauce)

1 large clove garlic, crushed

Squeeze of lemon juice

Half tsp salt

Everything else:

Flour wraps

Salad leaves

Pickled red cabbage

Sliced tomatoes

Jalapenos

Get things started by getting your lamb in the marinade. Heat a dry frying pan over a medium heat and add the coriander and cumin seeds, toasting for a minute or so until you can smell the aromas - be careful not to burn them though as they turn very fast. Tip the toasted spices into a pestle and mortar and grind into a powder. Add the paprika, ezapote, oregano, coriander leaf, chilli flakes, crushed garlic and black pepper. Pour this into a dish with the olive oil and lemon juice, and mix it all together. Toss the lamb pieces in the marinade and put the bowl back in the fridge until you're nearly ready to cook.

Ideally you want to leave your lamb to marinate for at least 2 hours, so give it the time it needs to absorb all those delicious flavours. After a couple of hours, remove the lamb from the fridge and leave it on the side, to allow it to come to room temperature. Whilst that's happening you can make your hummus, and garlic sauce.

You do really need some sort of blender to make the hummus. I use my magimix, but anything with a blade and motor will be fine. Stick the chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, water, salt, pepper and cumin into the blender and whizz for a couple of minutes, until it's really quite smooth. Taste the mixture at this point, and adjust the lemon/salt/cumin ratios to your liking. If it's a bit gluey, add some more water, a little at a time. Put to one side.

To make the garlic sauce, simply combine the mayo and yoghurt, crush the garlic into the mix and stir in the lemon and salt. Taste, and add more garlic/lemon/salt if needed.

I like to layer up the wraps at this point, before the lamb is cooked, so that once the lamb's ready you can just add that, and eat the kebab nice and warm. A stripe of hummus and a stripe of garlic sauce, with salad leaves, tomatoes, pickled cabbage and some jalapenos.

Then on with the lamb. Heat a large, wide frying pan over a medium to high heat, and once hot, add the lamb pieces. I start at the edges and place in a circle so that once all the lamb is in the pan I can start turning the cooked pieces over. My chunks were around 2.5cm square, and I cooked them for a couple of minutes each side, to leave them tender and a little pink in the middle.

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GLOBAL GASTRONOMY / CINNAMON KITCHEN

This post is so embarrassingly late, I don't know where to start with the excuses! My photos are also dark, but I promise it's worth a read!

In November (the 3rd to be precise), I was kindly invited to a wonderful feast, provided by top chefs at Vivek Singh's restaurant, The Cinnamon Kitchen, near Liverpool Street. It was the most wonderful evening, and was put on in aid of Action Against Hunger's Global Gastronomy campaign.

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MY FAVORITE BUTCHERS....

I love cooking and eating meat. When I got with the boy, he claimed to be a vegetarian, but a few meat meals cooked by me soon changed that, much to my family's relief (my brother declared that he liked him a lot more now that he knew he wasn't a proper veggie!) That being said, we don't eat meat everyday, as I think it should be a treat, not a staple of our diet. I am also very strict about where the meat we eat comes from. It HAS to be free-range, and ideally organic, although I'm less strict about that, as the regulations to become organic certified are so difficult for farmers to comply with, and often beyond the control of an individual farm.

So, I thought I'd put together a list for you of my favorite UK butchers/meat suppliers. Most of the list are London based, as that's where I am, but there's a couple in there from further afield, and the majority of them also do deliveries.

The list is not in any order of preference - I really like all these butchers.

LONDON:

Wyndham House Butchers

Wyndham House are my local butcher of choice. They have various branches in London; Borough Market (poultry only), Fulham Road and Chiswick High St, which both stock their full range of beef, lamb, pork, poultry, cheeses and pickles and biscuits. As it's close to me, I visit the Chiswick branch most often, and feel like a kid in a sweet shop in there. Not only do they have all the cuts of meat my heart desires, but they make fantastic sausages and burgers that they sell as well. Add to that their fine selection of cheese and it's almost a one stop shop for my food needs!

I am lucky enough to live within delivery distance of Chiswick's Wyndham House, and as long as the order is over £10 then delivery is free. You really can't get better than that!

Wyndham House in Chiswick are at 229 Chiswick High Road. For details of their other branches, go to www.wyndham-house.com.

The Ginger Pig

The Ginger Pig have 5 branches in London; Shepherds Bush, Marylebone, London Bridge, Hackney and Waterloo. All the meat they sell comes from their own farms in Yorkshire. Their London outlets sell beef, pork and lamb, and they do an excellent range of handmade sausages, in flavours like prune and brandy, sage and onion and the more traditional Cumberland. Their handmade pies are also worth sampling!

The Ginger Pig run butchery classes at their Marylebone branch, where for £135 per person you can spend an evening, or Sunday afternoon, learning about how to butcher an animal, how to cook the various cuts, and where the meat comes from. The butchery courses also include a meal, cooked from the meat you've butchered, as well as a very generous piece of meat to take away with you. I think it's great value for what it includes, and you can pick which animal you'd like to do the course on.

For more info on the butchery courses, and details of where to find their shops, visit www.thegingerpig.co.uk. The Ginger Pig do not do deliveries themselves, but they are part of www.hubbub.co.uk - who will collect all your shopping from your local high street and deliver it to your front door!

Allen's of Mayfair

Allen's are based on Mount St in Mayfair, and although it's been a couple of years since I visited their store in person, I can spend hours browsing their website, and particularly their really good value boxes of meat. http://www.allensofmayfair.co.uk/products/selection-boxes. They deliver across London and stock a whole range of raw and smoked meats. Allen's of Mayfair also do butchery courses, for £150, and must be booked with a voucher, that you can purchase online or in store.

Chiswick Farmers Market

Chiswick Farmers Market takes place every Sunday morning from 10am til 2pm, and is on Market Drive, W4 2PX, near Hogarth roundabout. It's a funny little setting for such a great market - tacked on to the side of the market is a Masonian bar...!! But they've got some fantastic produce on sale at the market, and it's definitely worth a visit. They've got beef, lamb and pork from March House Farm - http://www.marchhousefarm.co.uk/, raw, organic milk and cream from Hook and Son - http://hookandson.co.uk/, and poultry from Paul's Poultry.

Details of how to find the market are at http://www.thefoodmarketchiswick.com/.

J Parsons (The Cookery)

J Parsons are on Stoke Newington High Street, and stock all the regular meat you'd expect to find in a good butcher, plus various smoked meats and condiments as well. When I lived in the area I would always go to J Parsons for good value, free range shoulders of lamb. J Parsons are at 113 Stoke Newington High Street.

OUTSIDE LONDON:

Colleton Red Ruby Devon

These are not really butchers as such, but more producers from whom you can order your beef for delivery. Simon and Grania Phillips rear Red Ruby Devon beef on their North Devon farm, where the cows are reared naturally and the meat is then hung for 3 weeks before being sold. They have animals ready throughout the year, and if you email them, then they will let you know when they have meat for sale. You can buy a quarter box (100lbs) or an eighth box (50 lbs), and it costs £4.40 per lb. A standard box contains fillet and rump steaks, sirloin, topside, silverside and rib for roasting, brisket, forequarter and roasting joint for pot roasts, and mince, shank, braising and stewing steak. So if you've got a big freezer, it's a great investment to make! Especially if you have a family to feed.  They also do a smaller BBQ box. Their beef is some of the best I've ever tried.

For contact/ordering details, recipes and more information about their happy cows, go to www.colletonredrubydevon.co.uk.

Oxenpark Farm, Devon

Another Devon farm who supply fantastic meat is Oxenpark Farm. They are a small farm, found just over the Somerset/Devon border, where they rear hardy native breeds of cows, sheep and pigs, as naturally as an animal can be reared. Although they don't have certification, they farm organically, and you can really taste it in the delicious meat they produce.

I recently had a delivery of 2kg beef topside, 2kg of mince and 2kg of braising steak from them, as well as some of their homemade salami, and some trotters and hocks. Including delivery it only came to £75. For a price list, contact the farm at www.oxenparkfarm.com. You can order various size meat boxes from them, or half an animal. They also sell local honey and some delicious looking preserves - I'm going to be ordering their primrose and muscadet jelly and chilli jam made with victoria plums next time, to play about with in recipes. 

Lush's Butchers, Somerset

The local butcher near the village where I grew up had something of a reputation for their fine produce. Lush's in Castle Cary sold locally bred, well cared for meat, and was sure to have a queue out the door pretty much every Saturday morning. However, they have recently closed down, much to many people's dismay. It's not all bad news though. They have announced that they will be opening a farm shop close to where they were based in Castle Cary. They'll soon be opening their farm shop doors at the farm where you turn off the A37, towards Babcary, which isn't far from Podimore roundabout on the A303. 

With such easy access to really well reared and cared for meat, there really is no excuse to be buying wet-aged, vacuum packed meat from supermarkets anymore. 

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SMOKEY BARBECUE SAUCE

Barbecue sauce goes well with lots of meals. We eat it with this pulled pork recipe, but it's equally as lovely with chicken, prawns or anything straight off the barbecue. It will also keep for a couple of weeks in your fridge, so the recipe below makes enough for more than 1 meal.

Don't let the list of ingredients put you off. This is a one pot sauce and not at all complicated. If you don't have mushroom ketchup, add extra Worcestershire sauce. And if you don't have any tomato passata, you can use ketchup, but if you do this, you need to halve the amount of sugar you use.

2 tbsp butter
1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
1 tbsp fennel seeds
200ml rice vinegar
150ml red wine vinegar
600ml tomato passata
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp mushroom ketchup
70g brown sugar
1 tbsp honey
2 bay leaves
Sprig of thyme
1 tbsp english mustard
1 heaped tsp paprika
Salt
Lots of pepper

Heat the butter in a medium sized saucepan, over a medium to low heat. Chop the onion and garlic and add to the pan. They don't need to be chopped with any care, as the whole lot will be blended at the end.

Cook the onion and garlic gently until they become translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the fennel seed and fry for 2 more minutes, stirring as you go. Now add the vinegars, tomato passata, Worcestershire sauce, mushroom ketchup, sugar, honey, herbs, mustard, paprika, salt and lots of pepper, and bring up to a simmer.

Stir regularly and leave simmering for around 30 minutes, or until the liquid has reduced by half and starts to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 5-10 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves, and blend the sauce. Serve cold with whatever you like, and enjoy!

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THE PRIORY, TETBURY - A LOVELY LOCAL

Tucked away in sleepy Tetbury is a real gem of a gastropub. The Priory prides itself on sourcing ALL it's food (flour, oil and salamis included) from within a 30 mile distance from the pub: http://www.theprioryinn.co.uk/other/suppliers.aspx.

I have eaten food from The Priory three times now. The first two times we got their pizzas to take away. The thin base and plentiful toppings made for a delicious pizza, that tasted even better knowing that the food to make it had only travelled such a small distance. This is so refreshing in an industry that sends prawns caught off Scotland to China, to be deshelled and packeted, and then back to us to be eaten in the UK.

On my most recent visit to Tetbury I was treated to a meal in The Priory's main restaurant. Unfortunately I was only hungry enough for a main course so missed out on the starters, although I would have chosen either the rillettes of confit duck and rare breed pork with sticky red onion compote and toasted home made bread (£5.95) or the delicious sounding Upton Smokery salmon with a watercress salad, beetroot relish and toasted wood-oven bread (£6.95).

I had high expectations for our mains at The Priory, and was not disappointed. I chose the venison with braised red cabbage, mashed potatoes and pear and red wine jus from the specials board. The portion was huge, a massive hunk of beautifully cooked venison. My boyfriend had lamb shank which just fell off the bone and melted in the mouth.

The Priory are, and rightly should be, proud of the origins of their food, but that's not all that is good there. The staff are super friendly and it almost felt like we had our very own personal waitress with the level of attention we received. I have heard reports of slow service, but we tended to well and our food was prompt. Prices are reasonable as well.

I will definitely be going back here in the summer - their menu changes seasonally and I can't wait to see what they have in store!

To book in at The Priory call 01666 502251. They also offer a B&B service.

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