Bear with me because I know the title of this post is ridiculous. I was supposed to be going for dinner this evening, and not just any dinner – a CRAB dinner. I have been denied that opportunity thanks to a bathroom emergency and I don’t mean anything to do with me (ew), I mean an emergency which has had a plumber in there with an angle grinder for the past hour and counting. As I write this he is swearing because the job is proving so difficult and I’m too scared to go in there so I’m sitting here, telling you about this fish and its sauce instead.

This all started with a bottle of wine that had gone a bit wonky. We have lots of bits of wine hanging about in this house because of Donald’s job, which is – wait for it – in wine. He’s a sommelier/consultant/winemaker/general wine dude and you can see how that leads to lots of samples and other bits being thrown our way. Hard life, poor us, etc. Some of it gets oxidised in the bottle which means it goes a bit ‘off’ and tastes all sorts of wrong like someone just peed in it. I imagine.

To me, these flavours have a lot in common with natural wine but I guess that’s a rant for another day. I’ve drunk a lot of natural wine in my time because lots of my mates are wine people and Donald is, well, Donald. I am also obviously curious when it comes to these things. I have run the full spectrum from actually quite enjoying natural wine to absolutely f*cking hating the stuff and right now I’m closer to the latter end of the spectrum. This may change again, who knows. At the moment I like a glass of something that’s had a shit load of stuff added in to stabilise it and make it taste better and I have made my peace with that, thanks very much.

Anyway, we couldn’t help but wonder (*Carrie Bradshaw moment*) whether these ‘orrible oxidised bits of wine might be useful in cooking, somehow. That was when Donald hit upon the idea of the sauce. It tasted too grim to drink but some of those qualities we don’t like in the glass might actually be nice in a sauce, we reckoned. On its own, the wine tastes stale but in the pan, it turns to a sort of intense sherried nuttiness, especially with a load of butter lobbed in because… BUTTER.

We grilled the fish whole on the barbecue because I obviously like to realise my full barbecue potential whenever possible (#bestself #goals) and it was brilliant. We had a tomato salad alongside, which is something we eat with practically every meal in summer and then potatoes because something needs to be mashed into the sauce (and eaten cold the next day). About the potatoes: they’re covered in an expert-level amount of garlic and all the herbs. Give the potatoes, and the people, what they want.

Barbecued Plaice with an Oxidised Wine and Caper Sauce

1 large plaice
3 shallots, very finely chopped
100g butter
2 large glasses of Kalin Cellars 1995 Chardonnay that was opened one month earlier and then left in a fridge (or, y’know, whatever you have)
2 tablespoons capers, washed then roughly chopped
Olive oil

Heat a barbecue for direct grilling. Pat the fish dry, rub it with a bit of olive oil, season and place (LOL) into one of those barbecue fish cages. It’ll only need around 5 minutes each side as it’s a flat fish.

To make the sauce, melt the butter and gently soften the shallots. Add the wine, whisk it to emulsify it a bit then reduce by half. Add the capers.

When the fish is done, pour some of the sauce over and serve the rest on the side.

This is the third of four recipes I created in partnership with Vitamix and Great British Chefs. 

Yeah I know, you’re shocked. Look, I’ve never been much of a baker. Baking is so different from other types of cooking; the first is very exacting and results in lots of sweet things while the others result in dinner. I have no objections to baking on health grounds, you understand (I think that’s very clear from the content of this site) but I just don’t have a sweet tooth in the same way I am greedy for, say, a wodge of freshly churned butter, glistening with sea salt crystals, spread over crusty white bread. A friend once said to me, ‘Helen, you don’t have a sweet tooth, you have a fat tooth.’ Cheers, pal.

Savoury baking, I do. See my billboard-famous chicken pie or my cavolo nero and white cheese börek (I could eat that forever) but sweet stuff? Well, I’ve mastered the basics but FFS do not ask me to knock up a batch of canelés or macarons anytime soon because you are barking up the wrong croquembouche.

Anyway, I was required to make something with nuts for my third recipe in partnership with Vitamix, the wonder blender that busts its blades through just about anything (previous recipes were chipotle and coffee rubbed short ribs and sorrel fettuccine with brown shrimp sauce) and I’m proud of these, actually.

I’m proud of them because firstly, they worked and secondly, I managed to conquer something I’ve never been too good at, which is making caramel. For years my mum kept a saucepan that I’d destroyed while trying to make the salted stuff, shiny remains welded to the bottom, an unwelcome varnish. Well, ha! In your face, sugar. I am your master now.

These are as good as they look, by the way. Make sure you’re not left alone with more than two.

Sticky Pecan Buns Recipe

For the dough

450g strong white flour
50g golden caster sugar
125g unsalted butter
7g dried yeast
120ml milk (lukewarm)
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
For the filling
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
100g light muscovado sugar
150g pecan nuts
60g unsalted butter, melted

For the topping

80g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
100g light muscovado sugar
45g butter, room temperature, cut into pieces
60ml double cream
1 pinch of salt

You will also need

Vitamix Pro750 fitted with 2.0l low profile container
2 x 12 hole muffin tins

To make the dough, add the flour, salt, sugar and butter to a Vitamix container and select Variable 5. Pulse the ingredients to a rubble consistency, using the tamper to mix equally. Add the yeast and eggs and turn the Vitamix to Variable 1.

Press start, remove the plug and slowly pour in the warm milk. Pour in a slash at a time until the dough begins to come together – you may not need all the milk.

Tip the dough out onto a floured surface, using a spatula to scrape it all out. The dough is quite a soft and sticky so flour your hands well. Knead the dough for 10–15 minutes until soft and springy. Remove to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

To make the topping, heat the sugar over medium heat, stirring constantly. The sugar will clump and eventually melt into pools of brown liquid as you continue to stir. Be careful not to burn it.

Once completely melted, add the butter (it will bubble furiously, so take care). Stir the butter in until completely melted. Very slowly drizzle in the cream (this will also splutter!). Allow the mixture to boil for 1 minute (it will rise up), remove from the heat and add salt. Set aside to cool.

To make the filling, add the nuts, sugar and cinnamon to the Vitamix container, select Variable 5 and pulse until you have a fine crumb consistency.

Knock back the dough and divide it into pieces, rolling them out into 3 rectangles approx. 20x30cm in size. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle over the nut mixture. Roll each up from one of the long ends and cut each into 8 pieces.

Divide the pecans for the topping between the holes of two 12 hole muffin tins. Divide the caramel between them, then add the buns. Cover lightly with cling film and set aside for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

Bake the buns for 30 minutes until golden brown. Turn out while still warm onto a wire rack and allow to cool before eating.

Salt baking is something people usually do with fish, which has never made a huge amount of sense to me. Whenever I’ve eaten salt baked fish it’s been overcooked because the successful cooking of fish is so dependent on timing; if the thing is covered in a rock hard salt dungeon, you can’t look at it or prod the flesh to see if it’s done.

This is something I’ve experienced in some fairly high falutin’ restaurants, FYI, like the fish restaurant that everyone seems to love apart from me: One O One in Knightsbridge (boring, stuffy, quiet, in Knightsbridge). I ordered a salt baked seabass to share with someone else and it arrived on a shiny trolley, the waiter behind brandishing pick and hammer. Yeah, it’s dramatic when the crust is cracked and the steam and accompanying piscine waft rises but the fish within was mush. It’s always seabass, too, that seems to suffer this treatment. This is a fish that turns to texture of wet cushion stuffing if you so much as whisper you’re going to cook it.

So I’d never considered using the salt crust technique on anything else but then one day we needed a new way to cook lamb. It occurred to me that this might just work on something that actually likes long, slow cooking and can take a fair bit of salt. 

Now I don’t want to be an insufferable tw*t but this may be the best slow cooked lamb in the world. The point of the crust, of course, is that it seals everything inside, so what you end up with is a leg of lamb which is, yes, salty but really pleasantly so. This is meat that’s basically been bathing in its own fat inside a super hot salt cavern.

None of the flavour is going anywhere so I thought I’d take advantage of that fact by adding in some herbs, and not the usual rosemary or thyme but loads of soft herbs like parsley, dill and mint. And I mean loads. The result is that the herbs season deep into the flesh. You could also smear it with loads of crushed garlic, of course, which I’m a bit surprised we didn’t do to be honest. We must’ve had a garlic-heavy side dish. It’s the only explanation.

See? So much better than incarcerating poor fishes and you could put loads of different flavours in there. I’m thinking a rub made with smoky chillies (pretty much thinking that all the time right now), or a spice paste, heavy with cumin. Steamy.

Leg of Lamb Cooked in a Salt Crust Recipe

We ate it with these broad beans which were lovely but you could give green vegetables like courgettes or Tenderstem broccoli the same treatment.

1 x 2.2kg leg of lamb, bone in
1.5kg salt, a mix of coarse and fine sea salt (50/50)
4 egg whites
A large bunch each of dill, mint and parsley, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Set a pan large enough to hold the lamb over a medium and brown the lamb all over.

Mix the egg whites with the salt to make a sort of paste. Make a bed of this on the bottom of the roasting tin and lay the lamb on top, then cover with the herbs and the rest of the salt paste.

Roast for 2.5 to 3 hours or until a thermometer reads at least 65C.

I am bracing myself for the comeback on this one because everyone (or at least, everyone in the UK) has an opinion on what makes the perfect fish finger sandwich. Does it need ketchup, mayo or fancy pants tartare? Should the bread be toasted or soft? Surely you agree that it must be white. Should the fish fingers be home made or from the beardy man box? These are all important questions.

I had my own views and they were strong but you know what? Every time I made a fish finger sandwich it didn’t quite hit the spot. It didn’t blow my mind and that bothered me because as y’all know I pride myself on my sandwich-making abilities.

And then it happened. I experienced an education in saucing that led to other improvements and before I knew it there it was, right in my mouth – the perfect fish finger sandwich. What did I change? You won’t believe it, guys. You may want to get one hand ready to clamp your jaw shut because I’m about to tell you that the answer is to use both a mayonnaise-based sauce AND ketchup.

I know. You are reeling. The reason it works is because the ketchup offers something I was always missing in the fish finger sandwich: sweetness. People tend to go OTT on the acidity, I find, adding lemon juice, capers, vinegar et al but let me tell you once more – double-sauce is where it’s at. All credit for this discovery must go my pal and fellow sandwich fancier, Gavin.

This led to a complete re-thinking of all the elements, and no matter which way I tried it, those old orange friends from Bird’s Eye no longer made the grade. I will always love you strange, uniform cod sticks but once I upgraded to these (frankly excellent, say so myself) homemade versions I didn’t look back.

There are many reasons why these fish fingers are so good. Firstly, the fish is salted for half an hour before coating to firm up the texture, so what you get is really satisfying flakes of well-seasoned fish, not mushiness. The crumb is also important and its made from panko and cayenne pepper, so super crisp with just a tiny bit of warmth. We also added a titchy pinch of MSG because we like to live on the edge in this house. That’s totally optional, just as long as you know that being scared of MSG is pointless.

So, there you have it: the perfect fish finger sandwich. There is one problem with it, actually, and that is the fact that it has ruined regular fish finger sandwiches for me, forever. I’ll never be able to enjoy a hastily slapped together hangover special again. Maybe.

The Perfect Fish Finger Sandwich Recipe

This makes 4 sandwiches but is easily cut in half.

270g cod (2 fillets)
270g haddock (2 fillets)
15g Maldon or other good sea salt
120g panko breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon MSG (optional but fun)
Plain flour, for dredging
2 eggs, lightly whisked

8 slices white bread (I use a white loaf from my local bakery, The Hill – you need something soft and white that won’t fall apart too easily but equally you don’t want a hardcore sourdough)
6 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 tablespoons chopped sweet pickled gherkins
Ketchup
Shredded iceberg lettuce
A few drops malt vinegar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Cut the fillets in half lengthways (or whichever way works for the shape of your bread).

Coat them with the salt, cover and leave for 30 minutes in the fridge. After this time, wash the salt off the filets and pat dry with paper towel.

Mix the panko, paprika, cayenne and MSG (if using).

Spread one plate with a little flour, put the eggs in a shallow bowl and spread the crumbs on another plate. Dip the fish first into flour, then egg, then crumbs. Arrange on a baking sheet and cook for 20 minutes, turning halfway through.

To assemble each sandwich, spread one piece of bread with ketchup. Mix the mayo and gherkins and spread some on the other piece. Top with lettuce then fish fingers. Close the sandwich and taste. Add a few drops malt vinegar if you feel it needs it.

This is the second of four recipes I created in partnership with Vitamix and Great British Chefs (that means they paid me to write ’em). 

I’ve been trying to think of something to say about these beef ribs other than that they taste really good and I can’t, really, because it’s Friday and my brain is frazzled. What do British people do when they don’t know what to say? They talk about the weather. So I’m going to say that these are perfect for the barbecue now it’s cooled down a bit, and we can all contemplate actually standing in front of a metal bucket full of hot coals. I’m very glad to see the back of that heat, quite frankly, and until we get air con you can keep your 30 degrees + thanks very much. There, that’ll do, won’t it?

Oh yes, I should say that this is a fantastic rub made by whizzing coffee beans and chipotle chillies together in the Vitamix. The idea here, apart from the fact that it tastes brilliant, is to show you that the Vitamix will blend up pretty much anything, including those notoriously hard to grind beanz.

This results in a smoky, sweet and spicy bark that’s different enough to make people ask you for the recipe. You could easily serve these as tacos with sour cream, some pink pickled onions, hot sauce, black beans and so on. Think something hot, something creamy, something spicy, something crunchy and fragrant, then yer meat = TOP TACO.

Coffee and Chipotle Rubbed Barbecue Short Ribs Recipe

1 rack of beef short ribs
2 tablespoons coffee beans
1 handful of dried chipotle chillies
1 tbsp of dark brown sugar
1 tbsp of salt
2 teaspoons cumin seeds

Add the coffee beans, chillies and cumin seeds to the Vitamix and pulse on Variable 5 until you have a medium to coarse spice rub consistency

Rub the paste all over the ribs and leave to marinate 24 hours (this is an important length of time, do not reduce it because it will affect the final texture and moisture of meat)

When ready to cook, remove the tough membrane from the ribs (the meat-side, not the bone-side), and cook at around 105°C on offset heat in a barbecue or smoker. The length of time will depend on the thickness of the ribs and could take 5–8 hours.

I am writing this on a coach wedged between a backpack, a suitcase and I’ll admit it, a bag of Dominique Ansel pastries. Have you ever noticed, as you get older, how much more crap you need to carry around with you? It’s not even like I have kids. The basic amount of stuff I need to get by each day is growing and growing until eventually, I’ll be a one-woman band but with notebooks, Apple products and keys hanging off me instead of instruments.

I constantly feel like I’m playing catch up, which is how I found myself stirring the custard for this ice cream at midnight, alone, cats snoring gently in the corner. Maybe everyone else has their ducks in a row, their laundry done and their inbox cleared. If that’s the case, I hate you. You don’t deserve ice cream and you probably wouldn’t eat it anyway since you started eating clean and Instagramming smoothie bowls.

I collapsed into bed, custard in the fridge, only to rise at 6 am to churn it because when I want peach iced tea ice cream I’m darn well gonna have it, even if it does mean losing out on sleep. The ups and downs of working for yourself. There’s no off button, no respite, no chilling in a hammock with one leg hanging off the side, idly swishing your coral painted toes through the sand.

You could eat this ice cream while doing that, though. It would make a great downtime treat, or perhaps more of a reward. A reward for hanging in there, spinning those plates, trying to cling onto your sanity.

Peach Iced Tea Ice Cream

150ml strong English breakfast tea
150ml full-fat milk
150ml single cream
150ml double cream
3 egg yolks
110g caster sugar
500g peaches

Put the tea, single cream and milk into a pan and bring to a simmer, then whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until they thicken and pale. Remove the milk mixture from the heat, then whisk it into the egg mix, adding a little bit at a time.

Put the whole lot back into a clean pan on a gentle heat and add the cream. Stir this in an S motion until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon (around 80C if you have a thermometer). Don’t let it get hotter because the eggs will start to cook. Set it aside to cool with a dampened circle of greaseproof paper on the top, to stop a skin forming. Chill this in the fridge until completely cold, or leave overnight.

Peel the peaches and remove the stones then chop the flesh roughly and pulse in a blender until roughly pureed.

Churn in an ice cream maker, adding the peach puree towards the end of churning.

I have so many recipes to share with you but London is currently experiencing a heat wave and I’m finding it hard not to just flop onto the cool kitchen tiles with the cats. Nobody wants to cook anyway, right? Yeah, yeah, so 30 degrees doesn’t seem that extreme but there’s something about the fuggy London heat that clings to your skin like a special kind of grime. It’s oppressive.

I’ve always wondered, when visiting places like Borneo or Vietnam, why they have such an extreme approach to indoor temperature control and it’s because they genuinely like to freeze in between bouts of professional sweating. I heard a story the other day about someone who grew up in Dubai and they had to carry around a jumper when it was 45 degrees outside so they wouldn’t become Mr. Frosty if sat inside for more than half an hour. That’s ridiculous.

Some people claim to like the heat, of course. Good for them. I say it’s just not natural for a human to be exposed to these conditions. In Malaysia, I asked someone if they were born able to bear the heat or if they built up resistance over time and their answer was: neither. People living in very hot countries don’t enjoy it either. They just have to get on with it.

If all this sounds like a bitch and a moan about the good weather then I’m sorry to tell you that’s exactly what it is. Give me 25 degrees and a gentle wind and I’m a happy woman. That’s perfect weather for a BBQ, say, or sitting in the park with an ice cream. It becomes more about Vitamin D and less about survival.

Tomorrow, this weather is due to break and it’s then that I will share with you a recipe for ice cream because I’m doing this on my terms now, weather. I’m taking back control.

Broad Beans with Yoghurt and Smoky Chilli Butter

This is a lovely thing to eat with lamb, as we did (recipe coming soon), or on its own with bread for swooshing through that sauce. The yoghurt is very cooling (yes, COOLING) and the butter is great because it’s butter and it’s infused with ground up smoky chilli. It’s essential that you use a whole chilli here – one of those Mexican ones with a complex flavour, not, say smoked paprika.

This also works best with small, sweet beans.

500g broad beans in their pods
50g butter
1 smoky chilli e.g. Poblano, Ancho (Chipotle would be a bit much)
Yoghurt

Pod the beans and cook them. Pop them from their tough husks. Allow to cool.

Melt butter. Grind the chilli. Add to the butter.

Spread yoghurt on a plate, top with beans and the butter. Serve.

I rarely get around to sharing the off-the-cuff recipes I cook day to day. Look, writing a blog is a lot of hard work; I know it might seem like I just sit down and bash out a few hundred words and take a quick snap and, yeah, ok, that’s sort of what happens but let me tell you that doing it for a solid ten years takes a fair bit of organisation.

Making things look appetising is a concern, of course, because no-one wants to see a photo of brown stew taken with flash at 9 pm on a Formica countertop, so that means pictures are off limits once natural daylight has waned. If you want to share a recipe, then you need to write down exactly what you used and what you did, either at the time or very shortly afterwards because trust me, you definitely won’t remember. All this before you’ve even considered whether or not the end result is worth sharing.

Nowadays, most recipes I cook work the first time around (that’s a benefit of years of messing stuff up, so I’ve earned my stripes) but for all the necessary elements to come together without any planning, well, it just doesn’t happen too often. Sometimes my camera is out of battery, or I have people round and don’t want to be in food blogger mode. Perhaps I just can’t be bothered (I KNOW).

Anyway, the point is I’m going to try and share more of these ‘everyday’ recipes and before you say, ‘OMG no-one eats like this every day’ let me say that, yeah, sometimes I just make a sandwich or a boiled egg but actually, quite often we do bash out a batch of tacos of a lunchtime and what of it? I’m not trying to show off here – I eat for a living. This is just what I do.

So. This lunch was completely unexpected – I was on my way home when I got a call from the BBQ Hotline which went something along the lines of, ‘I have a few hours I didn’t expect to have – let’s grill’ to which I replied, ‘pass dem tongs’ and the result was these tacos.

We rushed up to Flock and Herd butchers in Peckham, bought a fine hunk o’ rump and rubbed it down with ground Pasilla and chilli de Arbol, blitzed cumin and coriander seeds. We grilled fat wedges of pineapple until blackened, chopped them up to reveal their juiciness and dusted them with Tajin – an excellent dried lime and chilli dust that is everywhere on tables in California and Mexico (do not fret – you can buy it online). We oiled and blistered spring onions, purchased scary-red Mexican Habanero hot sauce (mucho authentico), then stamped out some corn tacos, cooking them on a hot plate on the grill.

It’s the grilled pineapple that makes these so good – the sweet fruit alongside the lime, grilled steak and searing bite of the Habanero is a killer combination (see also: grapefruit and mango). We ate the lot between us, alongside several cold beers and afterwards, snoozed on the sofa. The perfect, impromptu Saturday lunch.

BBQ Steak and Pineapple Tacos

1 x 600g rump steak
1 Pasilla chilli
2 Chilli de Arbol
1 tablespoons coriander seeds
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon sea salt

6 spring onions
1 pineapple
Tajin seasoning
Coriander, to serve
Habanero hot sauce, to serve
Shredded white cabbage dressed with a splash of good white wine vinegar and salt and scrunched with your hands, to serve (totally optional and just for a bit of crunch)

10 tacos – you can either buy these – corn tacos are available now online and in shops, or you can make them. We made them but we didn’t write down quantities and it’s not helpful to say ‘add water until the mixture feels right’. Recipes are abundant online – here is one on Kitchn and another on BBC Food.

Light your BBQ.

Grind the chillies and spices and mix with the salt. Rub all over the steak.

Peel the pineapple and cut into quarters lengthways. Remove the core then cut each quarter into long wedges. Grill this on the BBQ (as it is), then chop.

Trim the spring onions then rub them with a little oil. Season with salt and grill whole until charred. Chop.

Dust any excess rub off the steak then grill it to your liking on the BBQ. We like it medium rare as you can see. This is going to take around 8 minutes on the BBQ, flipping every minute or so.

Pile it all into tacos. This isn’t rocket science. Ice cold beers on the side work very nicely.

This is the first of 4 recipes I created in partnership with Vitamix and Great British Chefs (that means they paid me to write ’em). 

I used to have a *cough* slightly unhealthy relationship with pasta. I love all carbs, truth be told, but pasta, well, that’s right up there with the foods that make me completely lose control. I would boast of my ability to consume enough for four people, which makes me shudder now when I think about it – what was it with that phase where we boasted about gluttony? It was definitely a thing on Twitter, like a f*cked up competition to show who liked food the most. I guess we just grew out of it.

Now don’t get me wrong, the actual recommended portion size for pasta is just ridiculous. When I first started properly exercising I decided to measure out the portion that was recommended on the packet and, after re-reading it several times and looking for noughts I might have missed, stood back, pointed at it and laughed out loud. It’s basically the size of my hand, which is, I dunno, a regular sized hand really – the point here is that it was significantly smaller than any portion of pasta I’d ever eaten. Depressing.

This pasta is green, though, which means it’s healthier and you can eat as much as you like. Really, that’s a genuine grown-up science fact. I added lemony sorrel to the dough which you make by wanging everything into the Vitamix. The shrimps, of course, love a bit of lemon and this is such a cheerful, highly seasonal dish. Make it while you can before both sorrel and shrimp are gone.

Sorrel Fettuccine with Brown Shrimp Sauce

This serves two people, I SUPPOSE.

Pasta dough

1 egg yolk
2 handfuls of sorrel leaves
150g of 00 flour
1 egg
1 pinch of salt

Brown shrimp sauce

100g of brown shrimp
3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
40g of butter
1 red chilli, finely sliced
parsley, chopped
1 lemon, juice and zest
salt

To begin, place the egg and egg yolk in the Vitamix, add the sorrel leaves and secure the lid. Select Variable 1, switch the machine to Start and slowly increase the speed to Variable 10. Once leaves have broken down into a purée, stop the machine and add the flour and salt. Pulse on Variable 8 until the dough starts to come together.

Remove the lid, scrape down the sides and add a little more flour if the dough looks too wet. Pulse a few times more then empty out onto a clean, floured work surface

Knead the dough for 3–4 minutes until the dough becomes elastic and the shape bounces back when you prod it with your thumb. Wrap in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes

Once the dough has rested, roll out using a rolling pin (or using a pasta machine if you have one) until it’s 1–2mm thick (it’s easier to handle if you do this in 2 batches)

Cut the pasta into fettuccine strips – around 6mm wide. Make sure the pasta is dusted in flour so it doesn’t all stick together. Place a pan of salted water over a high heat and bring to the boil

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a pan and add the garlic and chilli, cooking until softened. Add the shrimps and warm through gently

Cook the pasta in the boiling water – it will only take 2–3 minutes to cook, cooking in batches if necessary to avoid overcrowding the pan

Add lemon juice, chopped parsley and seasoning to the shrimps, drain the pasta and combine with the sauce. Serve warm with a sprinkling of lemon zest

I was all geared up to tell you about a pie recipe I’ve been working on; a pie recipe that is, frankly, cursed. I’ve just made it for the third time and I’m still not happy. A friend said to me, ‘Why bother?’ Yeah, not sure. Maybe I need closure.

So, here’s a recipe for an excellent chicken dish I made today because I have a head cold and need comfort.

It was definitely worth the effort; even the part where I decided to cook the orzo in the same pan, which necessitated standing over it for ten minutes, adding chicken stock and stirring, like making risotto. There was no way the accumulated fat and sticky brown bits were going to waste and anyway, stirring results in a creamy texture. Maximum comfort achieved.

I used butter to fry the chicken because I am sick and that is allowed. I can basically do anything I like. The pasta soaks it up, along with the chicken fat, released from its crisp, bubbled skin. A friend at the gym gave me the wild garlic as she has tons in her garden, and thankfully I’d whizzed it into a pesto yesterday because getting the blender out is annoying for a perfectly well person, let alone me. It’s not even like it lives at the back of a cupboard but there’s something about washing the individual parts, the blade, the little bits that get stuck in the rubber seal… NO.

It’s perfect on top of this dish, a bright splash of spring flavour that can find the taste buds despite everything. It’s a foil for the rich pasta and a cheering green – flowers added for extra gaiety. I ate it in bed, naturally, the cats reaching a tentative paw forwards every now and then, hoping for a scrap of meat. We all curled up afterwards and fell asleep.

Chicken Thighs with Orzo and Wild Garlic Pesto

4 large, skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs
25g butter
175g orzo
1 shallot, finely diced
450ml chicken stock, hot

Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6

Heat a cast iron skillet or other oven proof dish on the hob over a medium heat and add the butter. When melted, season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper, then add them to the pan skin side down and cook until deep golden brown, about 5-8 minutes.

Turn them over so the skin is facing up and put the pan in the oven for 15 minutes (this time may vary depending on the size of your thighs). Remove from the oven and set aside on a plate.

Add the shallot over a medium heat and cook, stirring, for a minute or so. Add the orzo and stir to coat it. Add the chicken stock a splash at a time, stirring until all the liquid is absorbed before adding the next splash. Once the orzo is just soft, add back the chicken thighs.
Allow to reheat for a few minutes, leaving the orzo undisturbed so it goes crisp on the bottom of the pan. Top with the wild garlic pesto (or serve on the side).

Wild Garlic Pesto

200g wild garlic, washed and dried thoroughly
100g Parmesan, grated
100g pine nuts, toasted in a dry pan until golden
Lemon juice
Olive oil

Blanch the wild garlic leaves in boiling water for 30 seconds, drain and squeeze out as much water as possible.

Put the wild garlic leaves in a blender with the Parmesan and pine nuts. Transfer to a bowl and add enough olive oil to make a sauce. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.

I want to be able to look back on my life as one long series of crab dinners. Tasty little weirdos. I’m never happier than when working over a crab and I think that if I had to choose the absolute best way of eating one, it would be simply steamed and served with a baguette (not a sourdough mouth-ripper, a nice soft white job, handmade by someone) and plenty of just-whisked mayonnaise. That’s it. That’s heaven right there providing, of course, you’ve remembered the chilled white wine.

Looking back, I can remember many excellent crab feasts, including a lesson in cooking Singapore chilli crab at Rick Stein’s seafood school in Padstow where a group of mates and I got the willies before putting a skewer through their heads (you must, it’s the most humane way of doing things), then plastered ourselves in the rich sauce, flinging bits of hairy pink leg through the air as we ate, our fingers stained orange.

There was a stir fry of small mud crabs in Borneo, one of my first meals there, and it was so good we started eating and immediately ordered another plate. There was something feral about it, something fusty and borderline illegal. Brilliant.

I remember two marvellous crab sandwiches in San Diego, both sparkly-fresh, rammed with crab meat, the bread so soft it felt like coming home. Sandwich nirvana. I get dreamy-eyed for steamed crabs eaten overlooking the beach in Jersey, for endless crab buffets in Sweden and for cracked beauts on ice in London’s Wright Bros. (can’t beat the Spitalfields branch in my opinion – they also do an insanely good chocolate mousse).

Anyway, the weird thing is, there are hardly any crab recipes on this blog, WTAF?! So, I’ve decided to rectify that once and for all. Over the next couple of months, I’m gonna be hitting that crab hard. This is the first instalment my friends and I swear it’s one of the best Crabby Things you can make. Hot crab dip is very much a Southern American thang but my version is a sort of mashup – a bit British, a bit Maryland with the Old Bay Seasoning, a bit deep South with the cream cheese. It’s rich, but I’ve used less cheese than other recipes and ramped up the crab flavour by using the brown meat, which literally no other person seems to do, ever. Mishtake.

Hot Crab Dip Recipe

1 banana shallot (or 2 smaller ones), finely diced
2 large cloves of garlic
50g butter
1 dressed crab
140g cream cheese
1 lemon
1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning (you can buy it on Amazon)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
50g breadcrumbs
Parsley, to garnish (optional)
Bread, to serve (or crackers)

Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3

Melt the butter and gently soften the shallots and garlic for a minute or two. Whisk in the cream cheese. Remove from the heat and add the crab (white and brown meat), the Old Bay and cayenne and the juice of 1/2-1 whole lemon (I needed all of it in the end). Mix in the breadcrumbs. Taste and add some pepper (I used white) and salt if you need it, but you probably won’t since the main ingredient of Old Bay is celery salt.

Transfer to an oven proof dish and bake for 10-15 mins or until warmed all the way through. Garnish with parsley, if using and serve with bread or crackers. SO GOOD.

People get worked up about bánh mi, don’t they? All spittle-mouthed and red around their Pob-like cheeks. A major point of contention is the bread because the bánh mi is a product of French colonial rule in Vietnam, when the baguette was adopted but made lighter, somehow, with a famous, crackly crust and aerated crumb. People argue about how this baguette is made.

Some say lightness comes from the use of rice flour, but many argue this is rubbish because hardly any Vietnamese recipes contain rice flour and those that do never work. Also there’s the question of humidity, with many claiming the bread gets its texture due to high atmospheric humidity (and goodness knows it IS humid there, I have frizzy hair photos to prove it) but really, it’s more likely down to humidity levels in the oven during baking.

I say this as someone who isn’t a baker, so what the hell do I know anyway? I also didn’t eat any bánh mi when I was in Vietnam, because a) I was only there for 24 hours, and b) I was at the wrong end of the country (it’s a Southern thing) and my guide told me the bánh mi in Hanoi are ‘all shit and just for tourists, so don’t bother’.

What I do know about bánh mi, is that they’re a lesson in the perfect sandwich. There’s something crunchy, something soft, something pickled, something creamy or fatty… there’s heat and herbs and it’s all brilliant, providing you don’t expect it to blow your mind, in which case it will definitely blow your mind. In any case, it’s just a freakin’ sandwich. Here are three bánh mi experiences I can remember as I write this:

Best Bánh Mi Experience: Banh Mi Hoi An in Hackney. This place sells some of the best bánh mi in London and trust me, I have put the work in. Get the pork special or whatever it’s actually called. You’ll know when you get there. There isn’t really any seating and it’s cramped (unless it goes downstairs? I can’t remember) so be prepared for a takeaway situation.

Worst Bánh Mi Experience: Somewhere in the Vietnamese bit of Melbourne. Someone told me about this incredible bánh mi I just had to have so I did another ‘mad sandwich dash before the airport’ thing and by sheer brutal bad luck got a taxi driver who was total clown shoes. He got lost three times and chucked me out on a massive freeway after we had a disagreement. Anyway, I found it, ordered it, ate it, and it was shit. Then I couldn’t get a taxi back because it was a weird area and so I had to walk for two miles and got vicious sunburn.

Best ‘Bad but Good’ Bánh Mi Experience: Viet Café, Camberwell. You just know I go back for this all the time and I don’t even care who knows. The bánh mi is objectively Not Good with its pappy, part-baked baguette, overcooked pucks of ‘chicken satay’ and – wait for it – sweet chilli sauce but damn, does it hit the spot. The sweet chilli sauce makes the whole thing work, it’s sweet-hot gloopiness both lubing the dry chicken and bringing its own special brushstroke of filth.

Arguments aside, the bánh mi is quite simple, really, and anyway, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to make a good sandwich. I made this as backup when a mate came around for lunch and I was recipe testing something else I knew wasn’t going work (but had to be done that way anyway for completeness) and he liked it, so I made it again, but better. This would be fantastic with fresh turmeric which is usually available EVEN IN MORRISSON’S in south London but did they have it this time? Of course they didn’t. Still, that makes the recipe a bit more accessible, I guess. Just use the ingredients you have to hand, guys; that’s what the Vietnamese did.

Turmeric Fish Banh Mi

This makes 3 sandwiches, or I guess one massive baguette which you could portion up. You want to find a light baguette for this, so leave sourdough out of it, because that won’t work at all (if you’re local, I bought these at Ayre’s Bakery in Nunhead). Also, it’s best if you cut the veg into thin sticks by hand – I have used a fancy julienne peeler in the past and it makes the strips too thin so they just flop in the pickling liquid and lose their crunch.

For the pickled vegetables

1 large carrot, cut into thin sticks
1/4 daikon, cut into thin sticks
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons caster sugar
Large pinch salt

Dissolve the sugar and salt in the vinegar over heat and pour over the vegetables in a shallow dish. Leave while you make everything else, stirring occasionally.

For the fish

300g firm white fish, cubed (I used haddock). Don’t be an arse – make sure it’s sustainably sourced.
1-inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated (grating leaves behind the nasty fibrous bits)
3-5 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed (yup, much more towards the 5 end of the scale myself)
2 tablespoons fish sauce (I used Three Crabs brand)
Zest of 1 lime
2 teaspoons turmeric powder

Mix the ginger, garlic, fish sauce, turmeric and lime zest and smother all over the fish. Leave for 20 minutes or so. Brush off any excess marinade, thread onto skewers then cook under a moderate grill for a few minutes each side (this depends on the size of your chunks, obviously).

For the sandwiches

3 small, soft, white ‘torpedo’ baguettes
1/2 cucumber, deseeded and cut into long strips
1 red chilli, finely sliced
Coriander leaves
Mint leaves
Mayonnaise

Assemble by splitting the baguettes and pulling out some of the crumb (yes, I forgot), spreading with mayo, adding pickled veg, herbs, chilli, cucumber. Add the fish by putting the whole skewer into the sandwich, clutching the bread, then removing the skewer. You may want a squeeze of lime juice, but see how you go.