bacon

How to make pancetta

November 17, 2010

I’ve skirted around the edges of this recipe for a while now. It’s not really a recipe, as such…it’s more of a chemistry experiment that involves taking something a bit bland and mediocre, adding some other stuff to it and miraculously transforming it into something that’s way better than the sum of its parts. It’s [...]

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Pheasant ballotine, stuffed with pork, prunes and pistachios

February 3, 2010

“My father was standing on the edge of the clearing with the moonlight streaming down all over him and a great bunch of pheasants in each hand. His face was bright, his eyes big and bright and wonderful, and he was staring around him like a child who has just discovered that the whole world [...]

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Keith Floyd’s Beef Bourgignon

September 29, 2009

The passing of Keith Floyd earlier this month caused me to dig out one of his old cookbooks, Floyd on France, a cornerstone of the Floyd canon and packed full of traditional French recipes described and executed with typical flair. Beef Bourgignon, caught my eye. It is, as Floyd puts it ‘a splendid stew (that) [...]

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How to make a pork pie

June 11, 2009

I feel like I’ve mastered a mysterious, secret art. I made a pork pie, and it was easy. More than that, it tasted astounding. Here’s how. Start with the pastry. The pastry is unusual as it’s made with hot water. It seems to go against everything you know about making pastry, but it does work. [...]

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Home-made bacon

November 23, 2008

Bacon is very easy to make. In its simplest form, it’s just the application of salt to pork, with some waiting around involved. My bacon isn’t much more complicated than this, and is based on the method from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s encyclopedic River Cottage Cookbook . Find a piece of pork belly, as big as you [...]

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chicken breasts saltimbocca style (saltimbocca di petti di pollo)

October 13, 2008

This recipe comes to me via a convoluted path. It’s a Marcella Hazan recipe, posted on Thursday Night Smackdown by Claudia, the blogger behind Cook Eat FRET. Wherever it came from, it’s a magnificent recipe. This is really just an old Italian way of cooking a chicken breast stuffed with some pancetta and sage, but [...]

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