The Friday 5 #85

In praise of duck and declassified Bordeaux, a fantastic whisky bargain and two really tasty storecupboard recipes.

After prattling on about how I’m cutting back this month it’s been a massive week of feasting with the epic St John vignerons’ lunch (it’s described as a vignerons’ lunch for a reason) and a wonderful wine dinner at one of my favourite London restaurants Bocca di Lupo. 

OK I have been doing my #givingupstockingup challenge, as advertised, in between but those two meals could have kept me going for several days. 

I promised you the recipes I’d made so wanted to make one available to you all - an adaptation of one in my book, The Frugal Cook. (The other’s for paid subscribers ‘cos they get extra perks, including my wine recs. Fair enough?)

If you’d like access to everything I write you can sign up for as little as £4.50 a month which is worth doing now as my monthly sub goes up to £5 as of the beginning of February. And if you’re on the £4.50 rate that’s what you keep paying!

Wholewheat spaghetti with stilton, onion and walnuts

I really like chopped walnuts instead of grated parmesan to top this dish. You could also use pangrattato (fried breadcrumbs)

Serves 1-2 depending on appetite and what else you’re eating

15g butter or 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

25g walnuts, roughly chopped

100g wholewheat or ordinary spaghetti - or a short pasta shape if that’s what you’ve got

40g Stilton or other blue cheese, crumbled

3 heaped tbsp chopped parsley

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the butter or oil (butter browns better) tip in the onion and fry over a low heat for about 10 minutes until the onion is browning nicely. Toast the walnuts in a dry pan over a low heat to crisp them up. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta for the time recommended on the packet. Once it’s done, ladle out some of the cooking water and drain the pasta. Add about 3 tbsp of the cooking water to the onion then tip in the crumbled cheese and stir until it’s melted. Add the pasta and the parsley, toss together, adding a little extra pasta water to loosen if you think it needs it and season generously with black pepper. (Shouldn’t need much salt.) Spoon into a warm bowl and top with the chopped walnuts.  

There’s not much in the way of wine bargains to report although my fine wine Friday pick this week is a bargain if you consider its provenance …

#finewinefriday: St John Déclassifié Pauillac 2018

This was the star bottle for me at the St John vignerons lunch. Declassified, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, means that the wine doesn’t qualify for the official appellation for some reason, in this instance the appellation being an unnamed Bordeaux first growth. There are only 5 - Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Latour and Margaux - so take your pick. (They’d have to kill me if I told you.)

Anyway it’s from the 2018 vintage and fabulously smooth, lush and velvety which explains why I felt justified in spending £44 a bottle - way over my normal wine budget - on it (but only bought 3 bottles instead of six). It would make a fabulous birthday present for any Bordeaux fan.

By the way St John is embarking on a residency at Fortnum & Mason while its kitchen is being refurb’d. It runs from February 6th-25th and they’re doing breakfast, lunch and supper. (I particularly fancy breakfast which includes seed cake and a glass of madeira. Very Fergus.)

Cheap wine - and whisky - bargains

By contrast there’s not much to report on on the supermarket wine front. I think they’re saving themselves for V Day next month. Waitrose is about the best with a cheap and cheerful citrussy white called Pecorino which is on offer at £5.99 and Laurent Miquel’s richly textured Nocturnes Viognier down to £7.99.

In terms of reds I like the Côtes-du-Rhône-ish Esprit de Trois Pierres Costières de Nîmes which is on offer at £7.49 while malbec fans should find the Trivento Malbec hits the spot at the same price

What you SHOULD track down, given it’s Burns Night next week, are offers on whisky so it’s a good chance to replenish your stocks after Christmas. Again at Waitrose there’s the very decent Shackleton blended malt down £11 at £20 which is a real steal. (It’s £38.25 currently at The Whisky Exchange!)

Why I struggle to love lentils

I have to say that - dal apart - I’m never got that excited about lentils. Veggies and vegans will be horrified but always feel it needs a bit of pork to set them off like the cotechino and lentils (above) I had at my new local, 1 York Place in Clifton the other day.

Cotechino, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a large rough-textured pork sausage that is served with lentils in Italy at this time of year. Your local Italian deli should have one or you can buy it online from Swaledale butchers.

I do also like a red lentil soup which I made this week to use up a rather elderly pack of lentils, adding chorizo for extra oomph. The recipe’s below

You need a fried oyster pancake in your life

I was so intrigued by Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop’s description of the fried oyster pancakes she tried in Chinatown the other day that I made a detour on Wednesday to try one. And they were delicious - hot, crunchy and stuffed with prawns, oysters, pork, beansprouts and greens - more like a fritter than a pancake. Just 4.50 to take out (there’s no seating). It’s the small pink-painted building at one end of Newport Place next to baospotlondon. A good option if you don’t want a big meal but something more interesting than a sandwich. 

Why don’t we eat more duck? 

There were so many brilliant dishes at the ‘A to Z di Vini Divini’ dinner at Bocca di Lupo this week its hard to pick a highlight but the one I thought you could most easily recreate at home was the L’Anatra con Le Mele - baked duck with apples and chestnuts. You can find the recipe in the booklet that accompanies the promotion which is on sale on the Bocca di Lupo website with part of the proceeds going to the charity Magic Breakfast.

And if you want to try the dishes and pairings yourself Bocca di Lupo is offering them either individually or as a set menu until the end of January.

Where on earth do you buy duck though these days? There’s really not much around, certainly in smaller supermarkets and even the birds in the bigger stores look unappetisingly pallid and fatty. So it’s well worth buying one from your butcher or an online meat supplier.

Creedy Carver does a range of appetising looking duck boxes, again partly in aid of charity and I know that Pipers Farm - also in Devon - does them too.

Our next tastings

We’ve got a date and a theme for the February tasting (Tuesday February 13th, Wine and Chocolate) so 1 thought it might be helpful to fix a date for the March tasting so you can get that in the diary too.

I’m away the week beginning the 11th which I know was a problem for a couple of you too so am going for Tuesday March 19th with the subject of lesser known Spanish wines (though we can also have a bit of chat about Easter food pairings). Hope that works for you too. Let me know.

In the meantime keep warm and well wrapped up!

Fi x

Red lentil and chorizo soup

This is an infinitely flexible storecupboard recipe - you can substitute the a leek for the onion, or a red pepper for the carrot, leave out the celery or, indeed the chorizo and make it veggie. The only thing you really need is the lentils though, hell, you could probably make it with a can or jar of white beans.

Serves 3-4

4 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 large or 2 smaller carrots, roughly chopped

1 stick of celery, finely sliced (optional. I know some people hate celery)

1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 - 1 1/2 tsp sweet pimento

1/2 can of chopped tomatoes or 4 fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped and 1 tbsp tomato paste.

100g red lentils

500ml vegetable, chicken or ham stock

75g-100g diced chorizo

1 large handful of flat leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat 3 tbsp of the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and cook for a couple of minutes then add the carrot and celery if using, season lightly and cook over a gentle heat until the vegetables have started to soften. Add the crushed garlic and pimento (the larger quantity if you’re not using chorizo) and cook for a couple of minutes more. Add the, chopped tomatoes, lentils and stock and bring to the boil, turn down and simmer for about 20-25 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Meanwhile fry the diced chorizo in the remaining spoonful of oil until lightly browned. Semi-liquidise the soup with a hand-held blender or pass half the soup through a liquidiser or food processor and return to the pan. Add the parsley, reheat, season generously with freshly ground black pepper and spoon into bowls. Spoon over the chorizo and drizzle over a little of the spicy oil.