Mouclade of Scottish Mussels, Saffron & Curry.

Mouclade is a classic french dish from the west coast port town of La Rochelle in the region of Poitou Charentes; made from many ingredients that have always been found within throwing distance of the trading port.

Classically it's served in the style a huge bowl of mussels in the shell with a rustic sauce, I have changed it a little bit so you don't have to fiddle about with your hands pulling muscles apart, which keeps the dish very clean.

 Recipe

1kg mussels in the shell
300ml Pineau des Charentes wine
6 shallots
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1 sprig of thyme
100g butter
2 clove of garlic
1 tbl curry powder
1g saffron
100ml milk
1000ml cream
5g chive
5g dill


Heat up a heavy bottom pan until it is smoking hot, throw in your mussels and wine and place a lid on top for 1 minute,  this will steam the mussels open. Once ready strain into a sieve and keep the liquid. Pick the mussel meat and discard the shells.

For the sauce you need to sweat down the shallot, garlic & thyme in the butter for 2 minutes, in the same heavy bottom pan, add your coriander seed, curry & saffron and cook out for another 2 minutes. Add the liquid you collected from steaming the mussels and reduce by half, this will give you a nice fresh shellfish stock from the mussels & sweet wine. Add the cream, bring to the boil and let simmer for 5 minutes.

Once ready, blend with a hand blender and pass through a fine sieve to make sure you have no little bits in your sauce.

To assemble the dish, place your mussel meat into the sauce and heat up, do not boil tho as the mussels will become chewy. Once warm place into the centre of the bowl. Add a little milk to the sauce and foam with hand blender and pour sauce into the bowl. Garnish with a little chopped chive & some fresh dill. Classically its garnished with chopped parsley but I prefer our way.

Its a simple dish made elegantly that can be done in no time at all.

@TheChefsLarder

Common Sorrel

Common Sorrel (Rumex Acetosa) is growing all over the countryside at the moment. Its mostly found between May - July. It can be used for anything from sauce's, salad & soups, to granita's, tea & even a garnish for cocktails. It has a sourness to it along the same lines as kiwi or wild strawberries which is the oxalic acid within the plant. It can be found on the edge of marsh land, meadows, fields and hedgerows throughout the UK, Europe & Northern America. 

We LOVE this stuff. 

Sorrel Granita:

100g Sorrel

500ml water

75g sugar

3 limes

Bring the water & sugar to the boil then take off the heat and chill. Add the juice of 3 limes and place in the blender with the sorrel. Blend for 30 seconds then pass the liquid through the sieve to make sure no bits make it through.

Place in the freezer for 12 hours or until your ready to use. Scrape it with a fork to make an ice dust and serve straight away. This is a great palette cleanser.

@thechefslarder 

Piccalilli

This classic condiment goes swimmingly with pork, any pork at all but we love to have it with a little pork pie, a ham hough terrine or even just in a ham sandwich.

Brine:

1500ml water

150g salt

Veg:

300g cauliflower

225g Silverskin onions

175g cornichons

150g diced celeriac

115g diced green pepper

Pickle:

600ml malt vinegar

200g sugar

1tbl turmeric

2tsp ground ginger

1tsp 5 spice

25g cornflour

1tbl dijon mustard

1. Bring the water & the salt to the boil and take it off the heat and chill. While your doing this dice all your veg. Once the liquid is cold place the veg into it and leave to brine for 12 hours in the fridge.

2. Place the vinegar, sugar, turmeric, ginger and 5 spice into a pan and bring to the boil and cook out for 2 or 3 minutes. Mix the cornflour with a dash of water and pour into the vinegar mix and stir in. Cook this for at least a minute until it thickens up then take off the heat and cool. Once cold then add in dijon mustard.

3. Once the 12 hours are up, strain the veg from the brine and mix with cold pickle mix and store in a sterile jar for up to 4 weeks in the fridge.

A simple classic that really shouldn't be bought! 

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Watercress & Garlic Velouté with Poached Egg, Black Pudding & Wild Garlic Flowers

This time of year is about all the great green wild foods we have popping up everywhere we look. We've already shown you how to make Wild Garlic Pesto, so today we're going to make a swanky soup with stuff we can find on the local river bank. Remember tho, you shouldn't be out foraging unless you know exactly what your looking for but luckily for you we've chosen two of the easiest to find & cook with.

Velouté is french for velvet, all puree soups should have this velvet texture. We've kept this recipe simple but tasty, its a posh soup but without the fuss.

Recipe:

6 shallots
3 clove garlic
50g butter
1 peeled potato
500ml nage
100g watercress
20g wild garlic
100ml milk
1 egg
50g black pudding
Olive oil
Wild garlic flowers
Salt

Slice and sauté the shallot in the butter with a little splash of oil and salt until soft then add the garlic and cook out for another 5 minutes on a low heat. Chop the potato into small chunks and add to the shallot along with the nage & another pinch of salt. 

Cook until soft, roughly 10 minutes then add the watercress and wild garlic. Place into the blender and blend until smooth.

 The liquid will be bright green and you'll need to refresh it to keep it bright green. You do this by pouring it into a tub thats submerged in a bath of ice water. This will cool the liquid quickly and keep the vivid colour, if not then it will go grey in colour rapidly.

Poach your egg in some  vinegar water and grill your black pudding and place them into your bowl. Heat up your velouté, add a little milk and foam with a hand held stick blender  pour into the bowl, add a little olive oil and garnish with some wild garlic flowers.

@TheChefsLarder

@ChefTemple

Scallops

My love for scallops goes beyond words, but I'll try my best. As a kid I grew up on the coast, you could touch it from where I played and on a daily basis we used to collect various shellfish from the beach. We would find Lobsters & mussels and my all time favourite, Scallops. You didn't get many of them unless you walked out a few metres into the water but what we did get never last very long as we'd munch them down as soon as we could get them open. The plump sweet juicy scallop literally fills your mouth with joy and excitement, especially when they're so fresh they're still snapping when you collect them.

 For this little dish we're going to do Scottish scallops with pork & apple. 

First you want to source a good scallop form your local fish monger. Try to get hand dived scallops, they're a little more expensive but you're paying for a diver to collect them by hand and preserve the sea floor rather than buying trawled scallops from boats that destroy everything they touch, so that extra few pence really goes a long way. Plus the scallop is cleaner and undamaged. As you can see from the open scallop the skirt and meat is intact rather than full of mud and smashed to bits. You fish monger will open them for you and take the skirt & roe off for you if you feel you cannot do it yourself or if you can you can always try this.. 

A hand dived scallop

Prepped Scallop

For the Pork, we confit a belly in duck fat with a handful mirepoix (thats a posh a chefy word for carrots, onion & celery) over night at 85*c in the oven. You need to make sure the pork is fully covered in the fat so it doesn't dry out. Once you've got the meat lovely and tender we drain it off from the fat and place it into a KitchenAid with seasoning and the veg then paddle it until you have a course looking rillette. Place it into a grease proof lined tray and place another tray on top to compress the meat. Almost like a terrine. Once set, cut into slices and leave in the fridge. 

If it's time you're lacking, black pudding goes very nicely as an alternative.

The dish is also served with diced apple and an apple puree. Cut your apple up in small cubes. With the leftover trimmings just throw them into a pan with a little butter and cook until soft then puree them in a blender. For the diced apple, we placed them into a vacpac bag with a little lemon juice and water bathe them at 65*c for 5 minutes and refresh them in cold water. This is just to cook them slightly without it breaking down all the crunch. This can be done easily with a pan and careful clingfilming.

To finish the dish off you need to season you scallops and pan fry them in a hot pan for a minute each side, once ready squeeze a little lemon juice on top. At the same time in a separate pan you'll need to crisp up the pork belly until its golden brown. Place the belly on the plate and top with the scallops, add a few cubes of apple, some warm puree and a little frizze leaf lettuce. We serve a little shellfish jus on the side just to give a little depth of flavour.

This is great for a starter at a dinner party or you can make smaller one's and use them as little canapés. Either way, your bound to impress with this dish.

@TheChefsLarder

@ChefTemple