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How to cook butternut squash frittata - video

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Mary Lewis, head chef of London's Mount Street Deli, demonstrates how to make butternut squash frittata. It can be eaten warm or served cold with salads after a night in the fridge

Nigel Slater's citrus recipes

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:05:03 GMT

Whether it's roasts or tarts, the easiest way to add some zest to your evening meal is to give it a citrus twist

For someone who is not fond of the colour orange, there is an awful lot of it in my kitchen at the moment: chubby little navels, heavy with juice; tiny blood oranges with ruby and tangerine flesh; knobbly Sevilles, the fruit for marmalade and Caneton à la orange. There are pink grapefruit and the classic white-fleshed I prefer with its kick of sparkling citrus, and some rounded Bergamot lemons whose fragrance has a mysterious spicy edge to it.

I squeeze the occasional orange, mostly one of the blood variety, and swig its juice on a Sunday morning (try half orange, half pomegranate for a real wake-up call), but most citrus fruits in my kitchen end up grated, sliced, stuffed inside a roast duck or a chicken hotpot, simmered into marmalade or peeled and sliced and served in salad. Few are ever eaten as they come, or sliced in half and turned inside out the way my brother used to eat them. I value the fruit for its sharpness, that smack of acidity that it gives, and find its peel useful in lamb stews where it gives a hint of Provence if you include rosemary, red wine and garlic, too.

Orange juice squeezed from the fruit can be thin and metallic or sweet-sharp and vibrant, depending on your oranges. Right now there are some very good fruits around, and I have used them this week in a sort of upside-down tart, where the juice soaked delightfully through the pastry, and a main course involving cooking pieces of duck with slices of both orange and lemon to which I introduced a bit of seasonal warmth with preserved ginger.

I used both legs and breasts of the duck, but rather than cook them as they were, I marinated them with a salt and ginger syrup before adding them to the pot. That way they stayed incredibly juicy and succulent, not something you can always say about this particular meat.

My bracingly bitter Seville oranges will no doubt end up in a late batch of marmalade, a thick one I hope, to make up for last year's rather runny effort. I have started slicing the oranges already.

Duck with ginger and citrus

I have suggested eating this with rice, and in particular nutty brown basmati, but brown lentils could be suitable, too. Depending on what is to follow, I would accompany this with some steamed greens, such as bok choy, choi sum or maybe even sprouting broccoli. A watercress salad would be good, too.

Serves 2
duck legs 2
duck breasts 2
preserved ginger in syrup 6 small knobs
syrup from the ginger jar 6 tbsp
warm water 3 tbsp
sea salt flakes 1 tsp
orange 1
lemon 1
caster sugar a little, optional
steamed brown rice enough for 2

Make four or five slashes, about the width of a finger apart, through the skin of the duck on both breasts and legs. Put them in a plastic bag with 4 tbsp of the ginger syrup, 3 of warm water and 1 tsp of sea salt flakes. Seal the bag, then set aside in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Put a heavy-based pan over a moderate to high heat, place the duck skin-side down (no oil or extra fat is required) and brown lightly, turn and cook the other side. Tip off any excess fat from the pan (you need to leave a little in the pan). Thinly slice the orange and lemon then add them to the pan together with the marinade from the duck. Adjust the heat so the liquid simmers gently, season with pepper and cover with a lid.

Leave the duck to simmer for 20 minutes, keeping the heat low and checking to make sure the fruit is not sticking to the pan. Pour in the remaining ginger syrup, then knobs of preserved ginger. Check the pan juices – they should be nicely sweet, sharp and slightly spicy from the ginger. Adjust them to taste with salt, and, if you wish, a little sugar or orange juice.

Serve the duck, thinly sliced fruits and the cooking juices with the steamed rice.

Blood orange tarts

I wouldn't normally consider anything as juicy as oranges for an upside-down tart, as the copious amount of juice in the fruit will make the pastry wet. Yet that is exactly what happens with blood oranges and we all found the effect rather delicious. Vanilla ice cream is a suitable accompaniment.

Makes 6
blood oranges 4-5, small to medium
puff pastry 175g
butter 50g
golden caster 100g

You will need 6 small baking tins, about 9cm in diameter, 3-4cm in height

Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. On a floured board, roll the pastry out 5mm thick. Using a pastry cutter or a saucer as a template, cut 6 rounds of pastry and set them aside. They should be slightly larger than the top of your baking tins.

Remove the peel from the oranges and trim away the pith. Break into segments, but avoid the temptation to remove the skin from the segments. Put the butter and sugar in a small pan and place over a moderate to high heat. With minimal stirring, let the butter and sugar boil to a rich caramel. Take care the mixture doesn't burn. At the end, it can be stirred to produce an even caramel. Divide it between the 6 tins and set aside on a baking sheet.

Divide the orange segments between the baking tins – each will need 5 or 6, closely packed – then place a disc of pastry on top of each. Push the edges of the pastry down around the fruits with a wooden spoon, remembering how hot the caramel is. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the pastry has risen. It will have shrunk slightly. Remove from the oven and leave to settle for a good 5-10 minutes before turning out. Using a knife, smash any hard caramel on the base of the baking dishes and scatter it over the tarts. It will be a crisp contrast to the syrup-soaked pastry.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/nigelslater for all his recipes in one place

Family life

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:04:02 GMT

Readers' favourite photographs, songs and recipes

Snapshot: Uncle Tommy, our hero

I recently went to the Coriano Ridge war cemetery in Italy to visit my uncle's grave. Thomas Cyril Walter Dabner, my mam's only brother, was killed in 1944, 14 years before I was born. My mam, Betty, died in 1984 and I know she felt his loss to the end. She never had the chance to visit his grave and I wanted to go to pay her family's respects to our hero, the first member of my family to do so.

Thomas enlisted in the Durham light infantry in 1939, part of the ill-fated 11th Durham light infantry, which, despite being poorly equipped and lacking essential training, put up strong resistance during the British Expeditionary Force campaign in France during 1940, using rifles to snipe at the oncoming German panzer commanders.

Thomas was, like hundreds of others, captured. He was forced to drive a lorry of wounded British soldiers between two panzers that were escorting them. During the night, Thomas made a dash for freedom, turning his lorry off the main road and making good his escape, despite heavy German retaliatory fire. He delivered the wounded men into the safe hands of the Royal Army Medical Corps before completing his journey back to England via the Dunkirk beaches.

Thomas Dabner was awarded the military Medal for his actions that day, 21 May 1940. Back in England, he remained with the 11th Durham light infantry and as part of the 49th ("Polar Bear") division, spent 15 months in Iceland where this photograph was taken.

On his return, Thomas was promoted to corporal and transferred to the 16th Durham light infantry.

Later, and promoted to sergeant, Thomas, took his place alongside the rest of the 16th Durham light infantry as they stormed ashore in the footsteps of the Hampshire brigade at Salerno on 9 September 1943.

On 12 September the following year, 4457133 Sgt Thomas Cyril Wallace Dabner MM, aged 25, was killed in action near Gemmano in Italy.

The cemetery is in a beautiful setting and immaculately kept. Thanks to the internet, I knew the exact location of his grave and found it easily. I felt very emotional and shed quite a few tears. My sisters had given me an angel to place in the soil, poppy bulbs to plant and some British Legion poppy crosses. Once I'd completed this, I stood for a while, thinking of my mam and the pain she must have gone through in losing her only brother, and how I wish I'd asked more questions about him when she was alive. I said a prayer, and read the inscription on his grave – "He gave his tomorrow for our today."

Thank you, Uncle Tommy, although we never met you, your family will never forget you. Tina Hutchinson

Playlist: Time out with my brother

Time Out by Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck's Take Five from the album Time Out is one of the eternal jazz greats. But on a cold winter's day some time around 1960 in rural Somerset, it was somewhat off the radar.

In fact it was more under the door than off the radar. Because under the door was where I first heard it. It was swinging from under my brother Kit's chipped cream bedroom door, from a place strictly off limits. Kit was an art student and I was six years younger. The gap when you're those ages – especially in taste terms – is huge.

On Friday nights or Saturday mornings, my brother would unpack the goodies he'd bought in the week when he'd been at art college. Where did he get the money for this stuff, I wondered? Out of the bag, along with his dirty socks, came the Woodbines, a Françoise Sagan or Bob Dylan (droning and more droning). This week, it was the record with crazy modern art for its cover: Time Out.

New to grown-up cultural toys, I was a bit wide-eyed. Kit played the aloof elder brother. I had to sneak into his room and play Time Out secretly. The door always ajar, one ear listening to the music, the other for his feet on the stairs. I had to be careful not to scratch Brubeck, keeping him shiny black without trace of a thumb print.

If music can be happy, Time Out was it. If music can be playful, Time Out played you along. It made you tap your feet. Its charm was its whole point. I'd no idea what it meant – this music made me feel free. Kathy's Waltz was one of its tracks. A waltz? Did I like waltzes? Crazy! All I knew was that Brubeck and his sidekicks were the kind of people I'd like to hang out with one day.

I don't even know what Kit's musical taste is now – what matters is how Time Out threw me head first into jazz. Oh, so much better, so much more sophisticated, than Eddie Cochran or Elvis! For that I'll always be indebted to Kit.

When I hear Take Five and Time Out today, the music takes me straight back to that scuffed door at the top of our landing. More important is how Brubeck still hits the spot, just like he did then. Still the epitome of cool. Time Out was the first. It was the best.

Nick Durston

We love to eat: Butter chocolate sandwich

Ingredients

Two slices white bread

Butter

Your favourite chocolate bar

Take two slices of white bread, butter them thickly, put in a whole bar of chocolate, squidge together and enter choccy heaven.

Fry's Chocolate vending machines – what memories they bring when I see one in the railway museum. An excited small boy decked out in best white shorts and shirt waiting with Mum, Auntie and Teddy my dog on Bromley South station waiting for the mighty steam train that would take us to Margate. There, standing by the wall was a green iron machine resplendent with ornate cast lettering promising a bar of chocolate for a penny.

I had a penny; in fact I had my shilling pocket money in pennies, all 12 burning a hole in my pocket. The drawer for a coin was at eye height. I placed a penny in the tray and with a great heave forced the slide into the machine. I waited; nothing came. Mum called, "Alan, the train is coming.Quick, here."

I put my hand up the chute looking for my precious bar. It was empty, there was no chocolate and my penny was gone. I began to cry. The train roared into the station with a loud hiss of steam, smoke billowing, cries of the guard, porters running. Auntie dragged me away from the machine, much to my disgust and howls of disappointment. I was pushed into the carriage where I told Teddy how the machine was a cheat and had stolen my precious money. Mum tried to explain that, one day, rationing and the war would end and Fry's chocolate would be in every machine and shop.

When rationing did end, I bought my chocolate and had the special treat, which even now I sneak when no one is looking – a chocolate buttered sandwich. Don't tell the wife, though, she'll bang on about cholesterol. But I reckon a little bit of what you fancy does you good. Go on, try it.

Alan Moser-Bardouleau

We'd love to hear your stories

We will pay £25 for every Letter to, Playlist, Snapshot or We love to eat we publish. Write to Family Life, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or email family@guardian.co.uk. Please include your address and phone number

Wines of the week: David Williams

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:05:46 GMT

A reliable red from Sainsbury's, a Spanish highlight from Virgin Wines and a delicious chardonnay from The Vintner

Château David Bordeaux Supérieur, France 2010 (£6.49, Sainsbury's)
The 2010 vintage was a very good one for Bordeaux and for the top few dozen producers it meant huge prices. But the region isn't all about status symbols for the super-rich; most producers operate in a much humbler sphere, as is the case with this reliable red fixture of the Sainsbury's range. With its succulent blackcurrant fruit and crunchy texture, this is classic claret for enjoying with today's roast.

Mas Oller Blau, Empordà, Spain (£10.99, Virgin Wines, virginwines.co.uk)
From an up-and-coming producer in one of Spain's smaller wine regions – Empordà in Catalonia – this is a real highlight of the Virgin Wines range. A blend of garnacha (known in France as grenache) with syrah and cabernet sauvignon, it has a glossy, supple texture and vivid black and red berry fruit tinged with liquorice and spice. A great example of modern Spanish winemaking.

Moret-Nominé Rully, Burgundy, France 2009 (£18, The Vintner, thevintner.com)
The Rully appellation in the Côte Chalonnaise is not one of Burgundy's grandest names, but in the hands of the right producer it provides some terrific white wines at more accessible prices. David Moret, who makes wines from across the region, is one such person, and this is a delicious chardonnay, with nuts, oatmeal, spice and apple, and a characteristically Burgundian fine balance between acidity and richness.

The hidden messages in menus

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:30:00 GMT

Some restaurant menus can tell the diner as much about themselves as what's for dinner

Restaurateurs and those who advise them have long argued that people read menus in predictable ways. The received wisdom holds that a diner will start on the right-hand side of a menu, a little way above the middle, before zooming up to the top right-hand corner. Then he'll jump backwards to the top left and down the left-hand page, then finally fill in the gaps in the bottom-right and the middle.

Not so, apparently. New research from San Francisco State university claims to overturn this notion. Once they had hooked people's heads up to computers, presented them with menus and studied their eye movements, the researchers found that participants read menus sequentially from left to right, like books. (In part, this confirms Gallup research (pdf) from 1987.)

The findings could have important implications for menu design and the way we order in restaurants. Restaurateurs might need to rethink placing their showcase items at the top-right of their menu or just below it. The menu from Keith McNally's majestic New York brasserie Balthazar, deconstructed in this paper a couple of years ago, proudly places "Le Bar à Huîtres" at the top-right of the page, with its high-margin plateaux de fruits de mer at $70 and $115 and half a lobster at $23. (It also sticks a prawn cocktail there for $15: this might look expensive in isolation but seems almost cheap beside such expensive dishes.)

Menu design is a complex and opaque business. A menu reflects the spirit of a restaurant, its beliefs, presumptions and pretensions. Typeface, style and structure communicate the values. A cleverly pitched menu can make a diner who chooses the lowest-priced item feel like a cheapskate and the one who orders the most expensive feel like a sophisticate. And most good menus – except in the flashiest, show-off places – cleverly insinuate a notion of value for money that the place itself might not deliver. The menu is the shop window for the kitchen, of course, and thus one of the most effective and consistently reliable means of getting money from the customers. Restaurateurs have developed a number of tricks and tropes with it.

Boxes draw the customer's eye, highlighting whatever is inside them. If something is in a box on a menu, it's a reasonable bet that the restaurant makes a decent profit on that dish – or at least that the kitchen is particularly proud of the product. Pound signs and zeroes are mostly out nowadays – "£15.00" looks much more money-focused and expensive than the nakedly trendy "15", and "£9.99" seems horrible compared to "9.50" or even "9.95". Few customers understand restaurant economics enough to do anything more than guess at the margins on specific dishes, but they are sensitive to contrast. So almost all menus bundle expensive items with cheaper ones: more specifically, they price some items relatively highly for what they are and list them next to the most expensive items of all, like the prawn cocktail above.

Consider the menu of The Delaunay (pdf), the latest place from Corbin and King, which opened a few months ago near Covent Garden. It's a great restaurant, and this is a masterclass in serious menu design. A full half-dozen boxes highlight the things they want you to order: from low-cost, high-profit items such as chicken noodle soup at £6.75, cheese at £9.75 or a banana split at £7.75 (avoid this one, if you go: it's ridiculously oversweet). Also boxed are beluga caviar at £235 and various wieners (teehee), these being showcase or signature dishes deemed worthy of special prominence.

Way down at the bottom-left of the menu, hidden under the caviar box, are the sandwiches, including a chicken panino at £6.75. The placing tells you everything you need to know: these are low-rate, unimpressive dishes, and you'd be forgiven if you felt a bit cheap ordering them, especially in such a grand setting. (Here we see how a menu can deliver prejudices that a waiter never could.) The Delaunay's salads include a dish of "winter beetroots and honeyed goat's curd". This comes in two sizes, a small for £7.75 and a large for £11.50. They don't tell you how much bigger the large one is, and in fact they probably expect you to choose the small version, which looks cheap next to its sibling but would be expensive in isolation.

"Salzburg soufflé" for two at £16 ("8.00 per person" on the menu, because some people will forget to double up) is the most expensive pudding and carries a 20-minute wait: it's aimed at couples, who tend to care less about price than others. For who wants to look cheap on a date? The Delaunay's menu, progressing from soups to coupes, is obviously designed to be read from left to right. Corbin and King, two of the most gifted restaurateurs this country has ever produced, seem to have understood intuitively what the recent research from San Francisco has confirmed.

Nigel Slater's classic fettucine Alfredo recipe

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:05:05 GMT

One of Italy's creamiest, dreamiest dishes

As simple a supper as you could imagine, one for midweek and a virtually bare cupboard, fettuccine Alfredo originally came from the kitchen of Alfredo di Lelio. Not especially popular in Italy, it is nevertheless one of the world's best-known pasta dishes.

The recipe

Boil 250g of dried fettuccine in deep, heavily salted water until al dente. Put 250ml of double cream in a saucepan with a thick slice of butter and warm over a gentle heat. Grate in a little nutmeg. Stir in a good 100g of grated Parmesan, a generous amount of black pepper, then tip in the lightly drained pasta. Toss gently and serve with more Parmesan if you wish. Serves 2 generously.

The trick

To keep the sauce a perfect texture, add a couple of tablespoons of the pasta cooking water to the cream. Take care when seasoning – you have salt in the pasta water and salty cheese, so go easy. Cook the pasta until it is just short of how firm you want it to be. It will go on cooking slightly after draining and tossing with the warm sauce. Use freshly grated nutmeg, it is much more subtle than the ready-ground variety.

The twist

The dish is perfect as it is. Twist the recipe too much and you have got something other than Alfredo. But he is unlikely to be turning in his grave if you introduce the wider pappardelle instead, or serve the dish as a side for steak or gammon.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/nigelslater for all his recipes in one place

Allspice recipes | Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:59:43 GMT

This is one spice that really lives up to its name. So why on Earth don't we make more use of it?

Allspice is the ironically named spice. Though not in the Alanis Morissette sense of the word "ironic", which she uses as a synonym for "quite annoying", which is, ironically, quite annoying. No, the irony of allspice is that it really is incredibly useful and versatile, with the qualities of a complex assembly of other spices, with notes of bay, citrus, mace, clove, cinnamon, black pepper… and yet we hardly ever use it.

Well, if you've got some lingering in the cupboard, get it out now (or get some in), for few flavourings segue so easily between sweet and savoury, and make such an intriguing, complex contribution. Used alone or in a blend, allspice can do great things.

Also known as Jamaica pepper (and also pimento), allspice brings with it a true breath of the West Indies – it's the backbone of jerk seasoning, the defining touch in rice and peas, and even used to flavour a fiery, rum-based liqueur called pimento dram. It is also found in many Latin American and Middle Eastern dishes, as well as in the cupboards of cake- and biscuit-bakers the world over.

Allspice is not to be confused with proprietary blends labelled "mixed spice" – those are generally designed for sweet baking. Rarely is allspice part of the blend, perhaps because of its intense pepperiness, yet that heat can be very welcome in a sweet batter or dough, just as ginger can (see the sumptuous cake recipe).

I love the look and feel of allspice's fat, round, brown berries. They vary in size – some as small as a coriander seed, some as large as a pea – but all are easily crushed to release the multi-layered flavour. Just broken open like this, then captured in a little square of muslin, they are wonderful simmered in a chutney, soup or curry, or even in the fruit cooking for a marmalade or jam. The crushed berries can also be added to marinades. Alternatively, grind them to a fine powder, which is ideal if you want just a pinch for a rice dish or biscuit dough.

While writing this, I nipped to the larder to crack a couple of berries and inspire myself with that heady aroma, but I've used so much of late that I've run out. Ironic, wouldn't you say? Or at least quite annoying.

Sardine escabeche with allspice

An escabeche is a dish of richly spiced, lightly pickled fish, and it's delicious made with oily fish. If you can't get sardines, small, whole mackerel or large mackerel fillets are an excellent alternative. Serves six.

12 large sardines, descaled and gutted
Olive oil

For the dry spice mix
1 tbsp allspice berries
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
Black pepper
1 rounded tsp fine salt
1 rounded tsp sugar

For the marinade
A few allspice berries
1 pinch dried chilli flakes
1 red onion, peeled and finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
2 bay leaves
125ml white wine
75ml cider vinegar

In a heavy frying pan over medium heat, lightly toast the allspice, cumin and coriander, tossing often, until fragrant. Tip on to a plate to cool. Transfer to a spice grinder or mortar, add the pepper, salt and sugar, and grind to a coarse powder.

Rinse the sardines and pat dry with kitchen paper. Put the spice mix on a plate and dust the fish in it, making sure they're evenly covered; shake off the excess. Put the pan back on a medium heat and add a tablespoon of oil. Fry the fish in batches, adding oil as necessary, for three to four minutes, until coloured all over, then transfer the fish to a deep dish. Add a little more oil to the pan. Roughly crush the allspice berries for the marinade and add to the pan with the chilli, onion, garlic and bay. Cook for a few minutes until the onion is soft, pour in the wine and vinegar, and simmer for three to four minutes. Tip the hot marinade over the fish – they should be completely covered – leave to cool, then chill for at least six hours and up to two days. Escabeche is best served at room temperature, so take it out of the fridge a few hours beforehand. Serve with flatbreads, pittas or toasted sourdough and a simple salad.

Jerk chicken

This classic West Indian dish is a real winner. You can also use the paste as a seasoning for pork, fish and even vegetables such as aubergines. It will keep for two weeks if covered and refrigerated. These quantities make about 250g paste.

1 chicken, jointed (or about 1.5kg on-the-bone chicken pieces)
1 small handful coriander leaves and some lime wedges, to serve

For the jerk seasoning
4 tbsp allspice berries
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cloves
6 garlic cloves, peeled
4 spring onions, white and pale green part only, chopped
1 small bunch coriander, tough stalks removed
4 Scotch bonnet chillies, cored and deseeded
1 small thumb fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2 tbsp light muscovado sugar
3 tbsp vegetable oil

For the rice and peas
200g basmati rice
410g tin kidney beans
400g tin coconut milk
1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and chopped
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tsp ground allspice

In a spice mill or mortar, grind the allspice, coriander and peppercorns until fine. Tip into a blender or food processor with the other jerk ingredients and blend to a smooth paste. Turn the chicken pieces in the paste so they're well coated, cover and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before cooking.

Soak the rice in cold water for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Line a roasting tin with baking parchment and lightly brush the paper with vegetable oil. Lay in the chicken in a single layer and roast for half an hour, turning occasionally, so it browns all over.

Meanwhile, drain the rice and rinse until the water runs clear. Tip into a measuring jug, make a note of the level, then tip into a bowl. Drain the liquid from the kidney beans into the jug and add the coconut milk: the liquid needs to be one and a half times the volume of the rice, so pour some away or add water, as necessary. Pour into a pan and bring to a boil. Add the rice, spring onion, thyme, garlic, allspice and a good pinch of salt, and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add the beans and simmer, covered, for five minutes, until the rice is done. Drain, and serve hot with the chicken. Garnish with the coriander and lime.

Orange, ginger and allspice cake

A wonderful winter tea-time treat, packed with warm, spicy, aromatic flavours. Or serve it still warm from the oven, with cream, as a pud. Makes one 23cm cake.

180g self-raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground allspice
180g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
180g caster sugar
3 eggs
60g stem ginger, chopped
Juice of 1 orange
Finely grated zest of 2 oranges

For the syrup
Juice of 1 orange
Juice of ½ lemon
3 tbsp syrup from the ginger jar
1 pinch ground allspice
2 tbsp demerara sugar

Grease a 23cm-diameter loose-bottomed cake tin, line with baking parchment and butter the parchment. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Sift the flour, ginger, baking powder and allspice into a bowl. In a stand mixer or with a hand-held mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. (If it looks as if it's going to curdle, add a tablespoon of flour with the last egg.) Gently fold in the rest of the flour, then stir in the stem ginger, orange juice and orange zest.

Spoon into the tin, smooth the top and bake for 25-30 minutes, until risen and golden, and a skewer comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, make the syrup. In a small pan, combine the orange juice, lemon juice, ginger syrup and pinch of allspice. Warm through and let it steam gently for five minutes. When you take the cake out of the oven, prick it all over with a skewer and trickle the syrup over the top. Sprinkle with the demerara sugar, leave to cool in the tin for about 20 minutes, then remove and leave on a rack to cool completely.

• Visit the new River Cottage Canteen & Deli in Plymouth – river.cottage.net for details.

Performance dining: just a stage?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:15:00 GMT

Is a little performance and spectacle a welcome addition to restaurant dining, or just a pain in the neck?

It's not often that I take my seat at a restaurant out of breath and disoriented but the Secret Restaurant prides itself on the punter's total immersion into the setting - on the night I visited, that was Vienna, 1946. Having whispered a password in a Frenchman's ear and been led a scrambling chase through tunnels, over duckboards and up flight after flight of freezing stairs, the diner finally finds themselves in a candlelit loft. A collaboration between the well-loved Secret Cinema and St John, Fergus Henderson's nose-to-tail eatery, guests are sworn to secrecy on the exact location and the film being shown, but it's an unforgettable experience.

Characters from the film surround you and, if you're very lucky (or unlucky, depending on your eagerness to get involved) dance with you, hug you, massage you, drink with you and talk to you. Fergus Henderson's food is astonishing at St John, where the dining room is designed to enhance the experience of eating it. The Secret Restaurant is a great idea, and the candlelit room is full of nice touches - its piano, single malt Auchentoshan whisky and early Soviet artworks all add to the experience of the meal, but the sallow flower-sellers, drunken generals and police charging between the tables don't do it for me. Sat at the table, I felt awkwardly immobile and unable to engage with the show or concentrate on the food and company.

The Medieval Banquet in London does not have to labour under the same expectations of high quality food, and to be honest any distraction from it is welcome. A "medieval" menu of vegetable soup, cold meats, roasted chicken and a fruit tart for tourists and office parties has been churned out nightly here for nearly 40 years. The basement that serves as the stage for this production is hot, sticky and overflowing with manufactured gaiety as "serving wenches" perform badly choreographed dances and cover saccharine songs over a crackling PA. A table of sales department lads on an office night try to get them to sit on their laps as a waiter asks me if I'd like to try on a tabard. I politely decline.

The Americans have an even greater flair for performance food than the venerable Banquet. Las Vegas's notorious Heart Attack Grill sees scantily-clad "nurses" taking "prescriptions" from "patients" for single, double, triple or quadruple bypass burgers - 8,000 of your best heart-stopping calories. If the patient finishes a quadruple bypass, they're placed in a wheelchair and conveyed to their car by a nurse. Owned by "Doctor" Jon Basso and cynically combining food, sex and theatre, the Heart Attack Grill has understandably faced fierce criticism, but the "patients" keep coming back - maybe because they receive free burgers once they pass the 350lb mark as part of the "HAG Diet Plan".

Meanwhile, visitors to Romania can treat themselves to a visit to the Count Dracula Club, where a Dracula impersonator prowls the labyrinthine restaurant reciting tired lines from Bram Stoker's classic and even, according to one diner, actually biting the punters' necks. I know the place is meant to be horror-themed, but I can't be the only person repelled by the idea of being bitten on the neck while trying to eat dinner.

Audience participation has long been the bane of my cultural life. I loathe pantomime, can't stand magic shows and always sit at the back during comedy routines. It even makes me feel a bit uncomfortable when musicians try to get me clapping along. A good meal, like a great band or piece of theatre, is an experience in its own right, whether it's the simplest salad with great company and beautiful surroundings or the high art of the Fat Duck or the lamented El Bulli. The idea that a meal needs this extra theatrical, "fun" side is misguided.

Is audience participation ever acceptable at the dinner table? Should the entertainment come solely from the food and company or do you like to be part of a performance as you eat?

Japanese food: use your noodle

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Cold noodles are a source of great rivalry and pride in Japan. Jamie Lafferty slurps down 36 bowls and rustles up some soba of his own

• As featured in our Tokyo city guide

Few countries are as passionate and proud of their food as Japan. Each of its 47 prefectures is fiercely tribalistic about one dish or another, and noodles are particularly contentious. In Shikoku they argue about who produces the best udon (fat, chewy wheat-flour noodles), while on Kyushu ramen (slobbery Chinese-style wheat noodles) is the most popular. When it comes to soba (slippery, often cold, buckwheat noodles) almost every prefecture in northern Honshu claims to be its authoritative home.

As an uninitiated gaijin (foreigner), it's impossible for me to say which is the best, but this much I know: eating soba is never more fun than in Iwate – specifically, when ordering the unfortunately named wanko soba.

There are several theories about the origins of wanko soba, but one of the most likely is that a gluttonous feudal lord dropped in unexpectedly on some local peasants. Without much in the pantry, they sheepishly offered cold, plain soba noodles, fully expecting the lord to fly into a rage. But he loved them, asking for more and more and piling up small bowls as he wolfed the food down.

Today, that greedy spirit is alive and well: the aim of wanko soba is to eat as many small bowls of soba as possible – and you don't need to be a visiting lord to do it. It's very particular to Iwate (wanko means bowl in the local dialect), but even within the prefecture there are regional differences. Those wishing to give it a go in the capital, Morioka, have a waiter standing over them, serving more and more noodles until they submit.

But it was further south, in the historic town of Hiraizumi that I gave the dish a try. At Bashokan, 12 bowls are served at a time – you can order up to 24 for ¥1850 (£16) and take a dozen extra free on top of those. For cold noodles, it's not cheap. The noodles are plain but they are served with dashi sauce for dipping, wasabi to liven things up a bit, and dried seaweed to push to one side. All of this is supposed to make the endless repetition a little easier on the palate.

When I gingerly left the table, I could feel several miles of noodles wiggling and jiggling inside me. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that the Japanese regard soba as the healthiest of all their noodles, though forcing down 36 bowls probably took them well out of that bracket. My total was pitiful: depending on who you listen to, the record stands between 250 and 500 bowls. Perhaps, if it hadn't cost so much, I'd have managed a few more bowls, but I was never in danger of reaching three figures.

A few weeks later, hundreds of miles south in Kumamoto prefecture, I tried making soba. It was much more physically demanding than I'd expected: the process is still done by hand and the noodles have to be cut individually. With beads of sweat dripping off my nose and into the mixture, I began to understand why soba is not only considered the healthiest choice of noodle in Japan, but also why the manual labour drives the cost up. My final product was highly irregular in shape, but the taste, thankfully, was just about the same. I'm almost certain of that.

• Jamie Lafferty is a travel writer who ordinarily blogs at idoneaholiday.blogspot.com and tweets at @megaheid. He travelled to Japan as part of the Travel Volunteer Project.

For more information go to the Japan National Tourism Organisation's website: jnto.go.jp/eng

Dill and potato bread recipe, plus potato farls | Dan Lepard

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:59:10 GMT

Want your crumb to stay soft and moist for longer after baking? Then add some potato to the dough

The writer and cook Rose Prince, author of the excellent Kitchenella (Fourth Estate, £26), has for the past few years been baking bread for friends each weekend. Starting on a Friday afternoon, the sourdough is mixed, then shaped in the evening and baked the following morning.

Rose's children are involved in the whole production, too, from start to finish. As Rose writes, "If baking is to come back into domestic kitchens… it has to be practical" and involving the family in this way makes it eminently so. As does adapting a recipe so it fits the time you have, and so the bread stays soft enough to eat for many days.

Using sourdough helps stop the crumb going stale too quickly, but other ingredients have a similar effect. Potatoes, say, be they grated raw or cooked to a soft fluff, hold moisture in the dough, which means the crumb stays soft for longer after baking. However, the dough you make will depend to some extent on whether you use raw or cooked spuds. Cooked potato has an accelerating effect on yeast, because it is more easily fermentable, so mash makes yeast dough rise faster; while grated raw potato allows a slower and more flavourful rise. But raw potato needs more cooking time, so the brief heat a potato farl gets on the griddle means that cooked potato works best in that dough.

Dill and potato bread

This loaf has the most curious aroma once it's baked, almost that of sizzling butter and very unlike that of fresh dill. You can tweak the recipe in various ways: we used ale for the liquid one week, and milk the next; replacing a quarter of the flour with spelt or wholemeal is good, too. This toasts very well and stays soft for days.

275ml warm water
1 teaspoon fast-action yeast
1 big handful chopped fresh dill
350g potatoes, washed but unpeeled
50ml olive oil, plus extra for kneading
550g strong white flour, plus a little extra for shaping
Just under 3 tsp salt

Pour the warm water into a bowl and stir in the yeast and dill. Grate the potatoes, mix into the bowl and stir in the oil, flour and salt. Mix well, leave for 10 minutes, then lightly oil a worktop and knead the dough for eight to 10 seconds only. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave for 90 minutes. Dust the worktop with flour, shape the dough into a ball, then place it seam-side down on a baking tray lined with nonstick paper. Cover and leave to rise for an hour.

Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7, dust the loaf with flour, slash a crisscross into it and bake for 45 minutes.

Potato farls

The texture of these potato cakes is a bit like gnocchi – that is, slightly dense and sticky, but delicious. Using double the flour and a teaspoon of baking powder, with some milk to keep the dough soft, will give them a lighter but less typical texture. Either way tastes good, especially with fried bacon, eggs or black pudding.

550g potatoes, peeled
25g unsalted butter
1 tsp salt
About 100g plain flour, plus extra for rolling

Boil the potatoes in unsalted water until tender, then drain well and, while still warm, mash with the butter. Add the salt and flour, and gently mix to a soft dough, using more flour or adding a little milk, depending on how much moisture the potatoes have. Taste a little to check the salt.

Flour a worktop and roll the dough to a disc just over 1cm thick, or to a width that will fit in your frying pan or griddle. Cut the dough in quarters, called "farls", and place these on the dry hot pan and cook for three to four minutes on each side, adjusting the heat so they're brown and crisp but not burnt when you flip them.

danlepard.com/guardian

Butternut squash frittata recipe

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Fresh, nourishing and fast, this dish makes a great quick supper

Serves 2 generously as a main course or makes 6 portions to share for a picnic.

½ butternut squash
¼ bunch sage, shredded
200g goat's cheese (or feta)
10 eggs

Preheat the oven to 180C. Peel and dice the squash into 1cm chunks.

Preheat a medium-sized, oven-proof non-stick pan on the hob, add a little oil and add the squash, stirring until it goes a golden colour all over.

Add the sage and then pour over enough of the egg mix to half fill the pan.

Stir gently, then add the rest of the eggs. Scatter nuggets of the goats' cheese and place the pan in the oven for about 10 minutes.

Check the frittata; the middle should be very slightly runny. Leave to cool for about 5 minutes before serving.

This dish can be served warm or refrigerated overnight and served cold with salads. It also makes an ideal for vegetarian option for picnics.

Char-grilled sprouting broccoli with sweet tahini recipe, plus gingery fish balls in miso soup | Yotam Ottolenghi

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:59:06 GMT

A salad to convert even the most tahini-sceptic, plus a stonking fish ball noodle soup

Char-grilled sprouting broccoli with sweet tahini (V)

This salad is loved even by those who claim not to like tahini. Serves four.

550g purple-sprouting broccoli
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper
40g tahini paste
1½ tsp honey
2 tsp lemon juice
1 small garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1 tsp each black and white sesame seeds, toasted (or just 2 tsp white)

Trim any big leaves off the broccoli and cut off the woody base of the stems. Blanch for three minutes in boiling, salted water until al dente, refresh, drain and leave to dry.

Toss the broccoli in the oil, a teaspoon of salt and a large pinch of pepper, then cook on a very hot ridged griddle pan for two minutes on each side, until slightly charred and smoky. Set aside to cool.

Whisk the tahini, honey, lemon juice, garlic and a pinch of salt, and slowly start to add water half a tablespoon at a time. At first, the sauce will look as if it has split, but it will soon come back together. Add just enough water to make the sauce the consistency of honey – around three tablespoons in total. Arrange the broccoli on a platter, drizzle with sauce and scatter with sesame seeds. Serve at room temperature.

Gingery fish balls in miso soup

Miso makes a soup loaded with flavour that saves you the hassle of making stock. Serving the soup with just the noodles is a perfectly decent option, but if you're not vegetarian, I urge you to try the fish balls, too. They have the most charming, bouncy texture and taste fishy in the best sense of the word. Use fresh or frozen lime leaves – you'll find them in any decent south-east Asian grocer – as they have more flavour than the dried ones you get in supermarkets. You can prepare everything in advance and then put the soup together in 10 minutes. Serves four.

150g white fish fillets
150g prawns, peeled and deveined
1 tsp fish sauce
½ red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
1 small egg, lightly beaten (you'll need only half of it for this dish)
1½ tbsp corn flour
75g french beans, trimmed and very thinly sliced
1 spring onion, thinly sliced
10g chopped coriander, leaves and stems
4 lime leaves
Salt and white pepper
100g soba noodles

For the miso soup
1 litre water
50g white miso paste
4 tbsp light soy sauce
5g ginger, julienned
1½ tsp rice-wine vinegar
15g picked coriander leaves
1 spring onion, thinly sliced
10g Thai basil leaves
Sesame oil

Put the fish in a food processor and pulse until roughly chopped – don't overprocess or it will go gluey. Tip into a bowl, then pulse the prawns and add to the fish bowl with the fish sauce, chilli, ginger, half a beaten egg, corn flour, beans, spring onion and coriander. Shred the lime leaves and add, too. Add a quarter-teaspoon each of salt and white pepper, and mix well. With your hands, roll into 16 balls the size of ping-pong balls.

Blanch the noodles in boiling, salted water until al dente – about five minutes – drain and refresh. Put the water, miso and soy in a medium pan, bring to a boil and set aside.

To serve, return the soup to a boil, reduce the heat and add the fish balls, one at a time, and ginger. Simmer gently for five minutes, until the fish balls are just cooked. Add the rice vinegar, coriander, spring onion, basil and a couple of drops of sesame oil. Divide the noodles between four bowls, top each with four fish balls, pour over the hot soup and serve. 

• Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.

Tesco trials new packaging to reduce food waste

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:00:12 GMT

Supermarket hopes newly developed packaging will keep tomatoes and avocados fresh for longer

Tesco is the latest supermarket to trial new packaging that will keep fruit and vegetables fresher, in a bid to reduce food waste.

It will become the first retailer to see how the packaging performs in prolonging the freshness of tomatoes and avocados – produce that triggers the highest wastage in the food industry. Tesco estimates the new packaging could lead to a potential saving of 1.6m packs of tomatoes and 350,000 packs of avocados every year. If successful, it could be rolled out across 80% of the varieties of tomato it sells.

The packaging contains a strip that absorbs ethylene, the hormone that causes fruit to ripen and then turn mouldy. The strip was developed in the UK by It's Fresh Ltd, which says it is 100 times more effective than any similar existing materials.

Initial trials further down the supply chain have been a success and suggest the device could be used across a wide range of fruit and vegetables. There will be no added cost to shoppers, according to Tesco.

Tesco ambient salad and avocado technologist Steve Deeble said: "The packaging is a major breakthrough in the fight to combat food waste and could save the fresh produce industry tens of millions of pounds each year. But it would also mean that shoppers will be able to keep fruit and vegetables for longer without feeling pressured to eat them within days of buying them."

Deeble said if the trials were a success "we could start rolling out the packaging by Easter".

Last month, Marks & Spencer launched the packaging for all its strawberries.

Trials in M&S stores showed a minimum wastage saving of 4% – which during the peak strawberry season would equate to 40,000 packs, or about 800,000 strawberries. M&S says it is committed to reducing waste as part of its programme to be the world's most sustainable retailer, and hopes to extend the packaging to all berries.

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So what is M&S's toasted pizza like?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Marks & Spencer's new toasted pizza may not be a culinary delight, but it's bound to be popping up in student kitchens across the land

As snackers go, I lack flair. If I'm feeling peckish, I'll have a banana, some dry cereal or a few raisins. Under few circumstances do I have toast, and never do I top it with cheese. If needs must, I eat my bread raw and butterless.

Today, then, I've gone nuclear. It's mid-afternoon, and I'm snacking on a toasted pizza. That's right: a pizza that I shoved in a toaster for three minutes, and then ate.

Cheese sarnies used to be the student's snack of choice. Then it was pot noodles. Will the toasted pizza be next? It has certainly got off to a good start. The £2 pizza is a recent Marks & Spencer invention, and the first three stores I try have already sold out. It doesn't taste bad. A bit bland, perhaps – the two I eat consist of cheese and tomato smeared across a 5in pizza base – but nicer than many takeaways. And, weightwatchers, it's only 190 calories.

Thing is, though, it's all a bit fiddly. You have to plop the pizza in a special brown bag, which keeps the cheese from dripping all over your toaster. Getting it in isn't the hard bit; it's when the melted cheese sticks to the bag's innards.

And then there's the sneaking suspicion that this is the culinary version of the emperor's new jeans. There's only one thing separating this from the standard cheese toastie, and that's tomato.

Restaurant review: Viajante

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:08:02 GMT

Sometimes it's a fine line between bold cooking and food that doesn't work – and sometimes it's not such a fine line

Patriot Square, Bethnal Green, London E2 (020 7871 0461). Meal for two, with wine and service, gulp, £200

The problem with surprises is that not all of them are nice. A pink macaroon flavoured with Iberico ham served as a petit four is a complete surprise. It's definitely not a nice one. When you are left thinking: "I wish that had been lemon or raspberry or anything other than this", something is up. Sure, I can admire the technique by which all that hammy flavour is slipped into one of those sweet crisp meringue almond confections. That doesn't make it more pleasant to eat. Equally a tiny chocolate roulade with a sweet cream flavoured with ceps served as a dessert is eye-achingly clever. But that doesn't make either one pleasant to eat. When you find yourself reaching for the word "challenging" to describe your dinner and wanting to shout: "Who put all the bloody mushrooms in my pudding?", it's time to get your coat.

It is a shame our meal at Nuno Mendes's restaurant Viajante ended this way. Portuguese-born Mendes is an interesting chef: dark-eyed, intense, uncompromising, eager. A few years ago he attempted to bring his brand of playful modernism to a Hoxton pub. They advertised it as "fine dining in trainers". Few wanted his version of fine dining – curious flavour combinations, lots of sous-vide, liquids dehydrated unto clammy powders – regardless of their footwear. The pub dumped that menu, and Mendes moved on, eventually surfacing amid the grandeur of the former Bethnal Green Town Hall. Here, from an open kitchen, he serves "surprise" tasting menus of six or nine courses to gently hushed dining rooms.

It's not cheap. It's not on nodding terms with cheap. It couldn't even send cheap a postcard. Six courses is £65, and we could find nothing on the wine list below £30; a Marlborough Sauvignon that Majestic would flog me for £7.99 was listed at £32. For this money you get glorious moments and intriguing moments and moments that make you sigh and roll your eyes and want to stick a fork in the back of your hand.

At its best Viajante – it means "the traveller" – is very good indeed. Thai Explosion II may be a stupid name for a canapé, but this rich mousse of confited chicken flavoured with lemon grass, sandwiched between squares of crisp chicken skin and a coconut tuile, was a "blimey" moment. Crunchy biscuits of toasted amaranth smoked over hay with a wood sorrel purée were dense and musky. There were very good breads with a killer quenelle of smoked butter crusted with walnuts. There was a slippery bit of squid with the most extraordinary jellified texture despite having been chargrilled. Of the more substantial dishes the most pleasing was some crisp-skinned but rare trout with bright orange roe and an acidulated julienne of crunchy vegetables. There was a perfectly cooked piece of lobster with leek and milk skin – Mendes likes fiddling with milk – and a curiously traditional dish of cod with parsley and potatoes which was soft and gentle and soothing.

Other things were less successful. Telling us that parsnips have been treated like meat doesn't make them meat, even when you serve them with smears of truffle and onion and squishy beads of vinegary tapioca. It just makes for a brown starchy plateful that looks like it's ready for the dishwasher before you've got started. Planks of pigeon breast cooked sous-vide had that gelatinous texture which, whatever the reality, made it feel uncooked. And when they grandly presented the Viajante olive, and it turned out to be something like a kumquat stuffed with cream cheese wrapped in an olive green gel (it could have been all of these things, or none of them whatsoever), you could hear my eyeballs rolling back in my head. And then came those odd desserts.

In its eagerness to be so very now and forward thinking, the food at Viajante manages at times to feel curiously dated; it recalls the first flush of Hestomania, when even he has moved on and is now cooking up big platefuls of heartiness at Dinner.

Modern techniques are great. They're brilliant. If you want to cook my steak by banging it round the Large Hadron Collider, be my guest. Dehydrate my pig cheeks. Spherify my nuts. But only do so if the result tastes nicer. At Viajante deliciousness is too often forced to give way to cleverness. And that really is the biggest surprise of all.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place