People are laughing at me because I’ve decided I like soup. For years I’ve been very picky about hot bowls of liquid masquerading as meals letting only those involving noodles, wontons or chunky bits into my life. It’s a texture thing; I can’t stand anything that’s devoid of chew or crunch and there’s only so much bread one can justify eating in a single sitting. I say this as a professional-level carb-consumer.

Recently I’ve relaxed the rules a little but still require plenty of vegetables and garnish to keep my soups from the dreaded one-note drab fest. This soup was originally destined to remain a stock but evolved over a couple of days into a rich, meaty number with a warming background heat from the scotch bonnet chillies. People asked for the recipe after watching me make it on Instagram Stories, so here it is.

I quick-pickled some red onions because I thought the soup would want something to cut the richness. It didn’t. The crispy okra is important, however, adding a bright, fresh flavour and of course, another all-important texture. It’s going to be a long winter filled with warming bowlfuls in this house. Yeah I know, you’re all doing it already. Maybe I can tackle another traditionally shunned one-texture food next? Polenta perhaps. Or mashed potato that isn’t 70% butter.

Oxtail Soup with Scotch Bonnet, Potatoes and Crispy Okra Recipe

This soup is a bit of a time investment but you will be rewarded. You need to start it the day before you want to eat it as oxtail is very fatty and leaving it overnight in the fridge means you can easily remove the fat which sets on top. I also used a pressure cooker to cook the oxtail which makes the process faster but you could simmer the stew for 3 hours until tender. This makes around 6 servings.

1 oxtail (around 9 pieces – ask your butcher to chop it for you)
2 litres good beef stock
500ml Guinness
1 carrot, finely diced
2 stalks celery, finely diced
1 large onion, finely diced
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 scotch bonnet chillies, split but left whole
1 thumb ginger, peeled and sliced thickly
8 stalks thyme
4 waxy potatoes, diced
A good handful chard or other sturdy greens, sliced
Around 10 okra, sliced
Flour and oil, for frying the oxtail

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a frying pan or skillet. Toss the oxtail in seasoned flour and brown it really well in a pan. A lot of fat will come out which you may need to drain off as you fry. Set aside.

Remove all but a tablespoon of the fat from the pan and fry the onion, carrot and celery until soft and starting to colour golden. You want to get them nice and soft as this forms a sweet base for the soup. Add the garlic and fry for a minute or so.

Add the mixture to a pressure cooker along with the beef stock, Guinness, chillies, thyme, ginger and some salt and pepper. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until the oxtail is very soft. Cool, cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove from the fridge and take the layer of fat off the top. Pull the meat off the oxtail and add back to the soup. Pick out any pieces you don’t want like thyme stalks and the whole bonnets (you could leave the chillies in if that’s your thing!) then reheat the soup.

Add the diced potatoes. Fry the okra slices in a couple of tablespoons of oil until crisp and drain on kitchen paper. When the potatoes are cooked, add the chard and bring back to the boil. Check seasoning and serve, garnished with the okra.

I often enjoy popping my rose-tinted glasses on and having a look back at the food I grew up with in the 80’s. Perhaps many of you have stories about grannies and apron strings but what I have is memories of things that came in boxes marked Findus or Bird’s Eye. Fond memories. In the wake of the horsemeat scandal I was delighted to trot down memory lane and revisit the Findus Crispy Pancake, which I filled with 100% horse and coated in crumb the colour of cheesy Wotsits. Yesterday, it was the turn of boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce.

I expect many of you remember this delicacy of cod and sauce ready combined inside a flappy plastic bag, which your mum simply plopped into the water and served up 15 minutes later with peas and mashed potato. It was a personal favourite of mine and so we decided to have a bash at recreating it, with some more modern-day high falutin changes, natch.

I’m a big fan of Farmdrop, which is why I had these hake fillets in the fridge, but also why I didn’t have any wild garlic, since it had failed to arrive from their supplier. I thought it would be so lovely in the sauce that I became a touch obsessed with finding some, spending two hours traipsing around local woodland with no luck; in the end, I bought some in Borough Market for the very reasonable price of ten million pounds per kilo.

It’s very simple this recipe. Just make the sauce, cool it a bit and whack it in sandwich bags with the fish. Is it ok to cook things in sandwich bags? Apparently. I wanted to do this recipe so I didn’t ask too many questions. It’s basically like sous vide except sous vide fish is gross and slimy so we just poached it at a slightly higher temperature (using a thermometer). You could, of course, poach it separately or fry and serve with the sauce but really, you’d be letting the team down.

The mash is lumpy yes, thanks for asking. The reason for this is because we poshed it up by doing half spud, half salsify, and the latter broke our crappy potato ricer (because I bought it in Khan’s). What you see there, then, is lovely smooth mash with chopped salsify in it. We also forgot the peas.

All in all, a resounding success.

Hake with Parsley & Wild Garlic Sauce (in the style of Bird’s Eye)

This is actually incredibly delicious and there’s no reason at all for you to stuff up your mash or forget the peas. 

2 hake fillets (sorry, didn’t weigh them)
1 small onion finely chopped
2 bay leaves
5 black peppercorns
550 ml milk
30g butter
40g flour
Small handful parsley, chopped
Small handful wild garlic, chopped
The heaviest duty zip lock freezer bags you can find
You’ll also need a thermometer

Bring the milk to the boil with the onions, bay and peppercorns, then turn off and leave for 10 minutes. Strain.

In a clean saucepan, melt the butter, then add the flour to the pan, stirring constantly until it’s combined into a light brown paste. Slowly add the milk bit by bit, stirring until each addition is incorporated in the sauce. The sauce should coat the spoon, leaving a clean area for a second on the base of the pan after swiping with a spatula.

Cover with cling film, laying the film directly on the surface of the sauce. Leave to cool a bit.

When cool (you just don’t want it too hot), add the parsley and wild garlic and season to taste (it’ll take quite a bit of salt as it’s rich and creamy).

Put one hake fillet in each bag then spoon in the sauce. Bring a large pan of water up to about 40C, then push the open bags gently into the water allowing the water pressure to force the air out of the bags, once the surface of the water is just over the zip lock line, seal the bag. Bring the water up to about 56C and cook on the lowest heat for 15 mins. When ours were done the water was about 64C, so the fish was cooked through and still super moist.

Serve with mash, peas and a heavy dose of nostaglia.