Herring fillets rolled in eggs and buckwheat, then shallow-fried and eaten with a good, piquant sauce. It is essential to buy very fresh herring. Herring roes are also good prepared like this.
Serves 4
200g/7oz buckwheat groats
4 large or 8 small herring fillets
1-2 eggs, lightly beaten
sunflower oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the sauce:
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
300ml/½ pint light olive or sunflower oil
lemon juice, to taste
3 hardboiled egg whites, chopped (see Kitchen Note below)
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed, squeezed and chopped
5 cornichons (baby gherkins), chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
leaves from 1 sprig of parsley, chopped
leaves from 2 sprigs of tarragon, chopped
leaves from 2 sprigs of chervil, chopped (if available)
First make the sauce. Put the egg yolks in a bowl with the mustard, then gradually whisk in the oil bit by bit until you have a thick emulsion. Add the remaining sauce ingredients, taste and add a pinch of fine sea salt if necessary. Set to one side.
Season the groats with salt and pepper. Dip the herring fillets in the beaten egg, then roll them in the buckwheat groats. Pour enough oil into a heavy-bottomed frying pan to cover the base well. Heat the oil and fry the herrings over a medium to high heat for about 2 minutes on each side, until the groats are golden and the fish is firm. Eat hot, with the sauce.
Kitchen note | |
Grate the hardboiled egg yolks over the braised chicory, to make a richer dish. |
Buffalo Milk Yoghurt with Lavender Honey and Pear Salad
There has been an invasion, a friendly one, that has won the hearts and minds of food lovers everywhere. Buffalo roam the English fields – but not the entire countryside, thank goodness. They like to wallow to cool their muscles and, while it is a cute sight to see their ears and nostrils poking above the water in rivers and shallow ponds, it is a terrible job for the herdsmen to winch them out of their happy, wet haven and milk them.
Milking is the best possible use for them. Their meat is almost fatless, which makes it attractive to some, but I’d rather eat native beef with its marbling of fat, and on other days, buffalo yoghurt and cheese. Buffalo milk is a little volatile – it needs to be very fresh when made into yoghurt or fresh cheese, or it will have an overripe flavour that can be off-putting. I am not a milk drinker, so turn it into a rich, creamy, white-as-chalk yoghurt and serve it with flower honey and ripe pears – a healthy breakfast, but I would not be at all ashamed to put it on the table as a hurried pudding after lunch. There’s no need, if you are short of time, to arrange it on plates as in the recipe below. Instead, just let everyone d-i-y. The yoghurt can go, ice cold, into a large earthenware bowl with a ladle, the honey on the table and a bowl of pears.
Buying buffalo milk
Higher Alham Farm, near Shepton Mallet, produces milk, yoghurt and an excellent, not quite authentic, organic buffalo cheese to eat fresh with salads. Its products are available at Pimlico, Notting Hill, Stoke Newington and Archway farmers’ markets in London. Mail order is available for a minimum quantity: www.buffalo-organics.co.uk; tel: 01749 880221.
Buffalo Milk Yoghurt with Lavender Honey and Pear Salad
To make the yoghurt, you will need four 250ml/9fl oz jars, spotlessly clean, and a warm place such as an airing cupboard. Automatic yoghurt makers are available from Lakeland Ltd (www.lakeland.co.uk; tel: 015394 88100).
You can, of course, buy the yoghurt, or use a good whole dairy milk brand that you are devoted to, but …
Serves 8
1 litre/1¾ pints fresh buffalo milk
4 tablespoons live yoghurt
For the lavender honey and pear salad:
6 Cornice pears, peeled, quartered and sliced
juice of ½ lemon
2 heaped tablespoons lavender honey
a few lavender buds, if available
Warm the milk to boiling point, then leave it to cool to just above blood temperature – about 38°C/100°F. Stir in the live yoghurt and put it into jars. Seal and put in a warm place (about 29°C/84°F) for about 6 hours, until set.
Put the pears into a bowl, squeeze over the lemon juice, then pour over the honey. Gently stir, or turn the pears over so they get a good coating of the honey, which will thin as you do this. Add a little pinch of lavender buds. Eat the yoghurt with the pear salad spooned over.
Cauliflower with Lancashire Cheese
Leftovers
Crisped Cauliflower with Breadcrumbs and Garlic
I am an admirer of cauliflower but I am not sure about anyone else. It was astonishing to hear from a farmer, standing with him in a giant cauliflower patch near Preston, that the British are colour sensitive about the vegetable. Unless it is spotlessly white, no one will buy it. On the day of my visit to this mecca of cauli growing, the sun was out and the cauliflowers were swiftly turning yellow. The farmer told me he would grub the whole lot into the ground: it wasn’t just the supermarkets who would be reluctant to buy them, the shoppers wouldn’t touch them.
On that basis, I think we need some recipes for this vegetable that, when fresh, is less sulphurous, less aggressive, more … poetic than a cabbage. Mark Twain was right when he said that a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education.
Cauliflower with Lancashire Cheese
The cheese sauce for this dish is a basic that you can pour over other leafy vegetables to make a filling supper – try it with Swiss chard, Brussels sprouts, curly kale, spinach, lettuce hearts and beetroot tops.
Serves 4–6
1 large cauliflower, broken into chunks (use the leaves if they look fresh, slicing them into thin strips)