Something else with which to stock your larder

Like the dreaded mint leaf on desserts, nasturtium leaves are the bane of my forays into social media cookery. The seed pods however...

If you’ve followed me here throughout this last year, I’d like to think that you may have tried some of the different ideas that I’ve presented to you. If you have, then unless you’ve eaten everything, you must still have a few interesting things put away in your cupboard. Hopefully not banished to the back between the ubiquitous pots of stale paprika and the omni present herbes de Provence that everyone has lurking, but pride of place perhaps. Things that you might actually use.

There have been many recipes here. Many of them are free to read, others not.

It has always been my intention to write freely here once a week for you and I shall continue always to do that. Though there are all sorts of interesting things tucked away behind my paywall in the weekly paid posts and ever growing archive of my words.

My recipes, the old fashioned way

In no particular order there have been recipes and ideas for deeply purple, pickled radicchios, black fig vinegar, blushed the shade of Rouge Allure. There has been lacto-fermentation, salted pomelo rinds and preserved bergamot oranges, woodsmoked local trout fillets, and various uses for gloopy sourdough discard, making seed biscuits, grissini and crackers. There have been techniques for curing fish, preparing artichokes as the Romans do, making ricotta from fresh milk, and a three-star michelin tip of how to press buttered shallots into a resting caramelised Côte de Boeuf. I have shared my recipe for fougasse style, green olive bread sticks, there have been different flavoured salts, think celeriac, damson, blackberry and pomelo and some strangely flavoured oils. A use for hairy courgette leaves made an appearance in early summer, how to make a braised artichoke aioli, and how you might make an very fine elderflower vinegar. There have been foraged cordials, both meadowsweet and green fig leaf, and a roast chicken technique for boned out and dry brined legs flavoured with lemon zest and marjoram, pressed with a weight while roasting, that currently has well over one thousand likes on Instagram.

I’ve explained how you might use rose petals and a way to use young wood from a blackcurrant bush along with its pungent leaves. I’ve dipped into sauce-making for you, though there is a great deal more to write on that subject. I’ve pickled chanterelles and beef steak mushrooms for you and showed you my approach to a summer tomato tarte tatin. There has been hot smoked lamb shoulder, rubbed with a spicy and sweet dry rub before committing it to the smoker, I’ve braised short ribs of beef and showed you a way to use hard green figs preserved in honey and cinnamon. Oak leaves have been a peculiar addition to my recipe for pickled green tomatoes as an interesting way to keep the pickles crunchy. A homage has also been paid to Adolphe Dugléré, and his creation of the Pommes Anna.

Various crusty bread recipes, a persimmon vinegar, and a pheasant consommé, more pickled bits and pieces and a recipe for a classical lobster bisque. Then last week I showed you how I make muscovado-cured streaky bacon.

A good start if I’m honest. I didn’t think I’d get this far.

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An announcement of sorts

In the coming weeks, I am planning to begin the serialisation of ‘The Cookbook I sort of once wrote.’ I’ll let you know more when I’m clearer as to how I shall do this. At the moment this will likely be one chapter every month, perhaps more. It will be behind my paywall as this is only fair, and yes I know that I was accused of not being forthcoming with recipes and sharing skills by a reader last week, but you wouldn’t expect a plumber to come and change the pipes under your sink for free, or commission an artist to paint a portrait of your dog for no payment.

So there are many exciting things to come.

And this coming week I shall continue with Part Two of my bacon recipe for you. Part One was last week’s free newsletter and the next stage will be in the coming days, but in the meantime as I mentioned in the header to this piece, nasturtium seed pods are rather fascinating, unlike this fixation with the leaves that seemingly the whole of IG has.

Nasturtium seed pods

I like nasturtium leaves, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve seen far too many people use them in endlessly boring ways, as it seems to be a school of thought that every dish on Instagram must have two or three placed in an orderly manner on absolutely anything you might care to think of.

Some people cut them into perfect circles with metal cutters, don’t you know.

Fancy.

Once on a photo shoot in a smart restaurant where I worked on pastry, we had plated all of our desserts for a photographer to shoot, to be used for a magazine feature. I’d briefly left the room to get something and while I was away the photographer had asked a waiter to bring him some mint and had enlisted the help of a terrified young commis, to redecorate all of of our work with mint sprigs because he liked to see mint in his pictures and it was his shoot anyway. The commis was visibly upset at the very idea of bastardising someone elses menu with unnecessary and highly contentious garnishes, fearing not only the wrath of the Head Chef but knowing full well that when I came back and saw what he’d done, most likely all hell would break loose.

It’s not that I don’t like mint. I do. I just don’t believe it has a place on a dessert.

Much like nasturtium leaves for the sake of it on everything.

Anyway.

If like me you are a pickle deviant, that when it comes to preserving and scoffing mostly anything salted and left in aromatic vinegar for a while, then today is a day to be thankful for

Here is a recipe for capers. Nasturtium seed capers to be precise.

Find your seed pods

Go to wherever you find nasturtiums growing, and avoid the temptation to harvest the leaves.

If you look inside the low hanging stalks of the bushes you will see little clusters of seed pods. They are unmistakable. There are lots of them and they grow in the lower parts of the bushes, (at least they do in our raised beds), the huge plants trailing over towards the ground yield the most.

It is low down that I find the best ones to pick, so gather as many as you can, but only the green ones please, then take them back to your kitchen.

How to make them

You’ll need to rinse them, then place them in a glass jug of brine made of fifty grams of salt to five hundred millimetres of water for twenty four hours.

When the day has passed, wash them off in a colander, and prepare a pickling mixture.

Rinsed

If you were to take a pint of cider vinegar, a few peppercorns, a bay leaf, a sprinkle of mustard seeds and four or five crushed juniper berries, then added all of this to a saucepan with a teaspoon of salt and simmered it gently for five or so minutes.

Then if you were to put the rinsed capers into a jar and pour over the pickling liquid, then seal the jars tightly, leaving them upside down for a day before turning them up the right way around and forgetting about them for a month, then that would be marvellous.

You would then have little jars of nasturtium capers that you could spoon over anything that took your fancy. How lovely.

Part Two of my bacon recipe for you in the next few days, depending on how cured it is when I check it tomorrow. For the smoking I need to go and chip some branches from of our apple wood stores, but the chipper’s gears have given up, announcing their death by spluttering fire from the engine, so cut by hand it will have to be.

Until bacon time, later this week,

William