Potato boulangère

There are few totally new recipes but sometimes just thinking of one in a different way as Joe Woodhouse has done with his gorgeously crispy potato boulangère in his inspiring new book Your Daily Veg takes them to another level.

Joe writes: I used to make this with the potatoes cut into slices and all laid out flat, which works just fine. But standing the potato slices up gives a brilliant crunchy element on top, while the bottom half steams and softens, going wonderfully creamy.

When slicing the potato, a mandolin is great but by hand is fine; what’s important is to slice them as evenly as possible.

SERVES 6

– 150g (5½oz) unsalted butter

– 3 onions, finely sliced

– 4 garlic cloves, finely sliced

– 3 thyme sprigs, leaves picked

– 1.25kg (2lb 12oz) floury potatoes, such as Maris Piper or Desirée, peeled and finely sliced

– 300ml (10fl oz) vegetable stock

– sea salt flakes and black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F), Gas Mark 4.

2. Melt half the butter in a large pan that will hold all of the ingredients over medium heat and add the onions, garlic and thyme leaves. Cook gently for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the potato slices to coat well with the buttery onions. Season well with salt and pepper.

3. In a 30 × 20cm (12 × 8 inch) baking dish, roughly stack the potatoes upright along the length of the dish. Their edges should point upwards like a roughly shuffled pack of cards and they should sit snugly.

Pour over the vegetable stock and dot the remaining butter evenly over the top of the potatoes.

4. Roast the potatoes in the oven for 50–60 minutes. As they cook they will become creamy and tender underneath and the top edges will crisp. If browning too much on top, cover loosely with foil until tender.

5. Once done, remove from the oven and allow to sit for a few minutes before serving.

What to drink: You're perhaps unlikely to pair a wine with the potatoes alone but they'd be an ideal accompaniment for roast lamb or beef so match whatever meat you're serving with it or, if you're keeping it veggie take account of what you've got on the side.

Extracted from Your Daily Veg by Joe Woodhouse, published by Kyle at £22. Photograph © Joe Woodhouse.

James Martin's chocolate and hazelnut choux buns

I love the idea of a whole book devoted to butter, surely one of the most underrated and maligned ingredients, so congrats to TV chef James Martin for pulling it off. There are so many recipes that appeal to me but this indulgent take on profiteroles has a real wow factor.

James writes: "The idea of choux pastry is simple – four ingredients brought together for either sweet or savoury dishes. It is important to dice the butter into a cold pan with the water first and bring to the boil, then immediately add the flour. Failing to do this will alter the recipe, the quantity of water needed and the finished choux pastry.

It is even more important to always use good-quality flour. It may sound ridiculous to some people, but flour as cheap as 9 pence a kilo is not food, as I have found out on many a TV show when a recipe that I have made all my life fails to work as it should. It is generally the quality of the flour that is the root cause."

CHOCOLATE AND HAZELNUT CHOUX BUNS

SERVES 8

FOR THE CHOUX

200ml water

85g butter

115g plain flour

15g sugar

pinch of salt

3 eggs

FOR THE FILLING

450ml double cream, whipped

150g hazelnut and chocolate spread

FOR THE CARAMEL

200g caster sugar

100g toasted hazelnuts, chopped

Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan)/400°F/gas 6. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Heat the water and butter in a saucepan until the butter has melted. Bring to the boil, then immediately beat in the flour, sugar and salt until the mixture is smooth. Continue to cook for 2–3 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the mixture to a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the mixture is smooth and glossy. Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.

Once cool, spoon eight 12cm pastry buns onto the lined baking tray. Bake for 30 minutes until golden and crispy, then remove from oven and leave to cool.

Whisk together the cream and hazelnut and chocolate spread.

Split each choux bun in half and fill with the chocolate and hazelnut cream.

Put the sugar in a pan over a medium heat; do not stir but carefully swirl in the pan until the sugar is brown and caramelised. This should take about 3–4 minutes. Swirl in the hazelnuts. Dip each bun in carefully in the caramel to serve.

What to drink: Try a young vin santo like this one I recommended the other week or a moscatel

From BUTTER: Comforting, delicious, versatile, over 130 recipes celebrating butter by James Martin (Quadrille) Photography: John Carey

Dublin coddle

If you're wondering what to prepare to celebrate St Patrick's Day, Coddle could be the answer. Here's the version from J P McMahon's magnificent new The Irish Cookbook.

JP writes: "Coddle, or Dublin coddle to be more precise, is a dish made up of leftover sausages and bacon. Traditionally, the sausages and bacon were cut up and combined with onions and potatoes and left to stew in a light broth. Though often unappetizing to look at, the dish was made famous by several Irish writers, from Jonathan Swift to James Joyce and Seán O’Casey.

Modern versions include barley and carrots. It is essentially a dish that grew out of poverty and famine and then migrated into the working-class areas of Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century to become a dish of central importance to the people who lived there. Often it contained a drop of Guinness (or it was eaten with plenty of pints and soda bread).

It is said that the housewives would prepare the coddle during the day and it would sit on the stove until the men returned home from the pub. The word itself is derived from the verb ‘to coddle’ or ‘to cook’ (from French caulder). With its associations of poverty, it is surprising to find ‘authentic’ recipes, especially given the status of the dish as being made with whatever leftovers were to hand (as in pig’s trotters/feet, pork ribs, etc.). Some associate it with the Catholic Church’s insistence of abstaining from meat on a Friday.

Coddle was a way of using up the bacon and sausages on a Thursday. In this recipe, I fry the ingredients before covering them with the stock, but traditionally they were just layered and simmered until cooked.

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking: 1 hour

Serves: 8

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 tablespoons rapeseed (canola) oil, plus extra if needed
• 500 g sausages, cut into pieces if preferred
• 500 g streaky (regular) bacon, cut into pieces
• 500 g onions, sliced
• 2 tablespoons chopped thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 1 kg (9 medium) potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 4 tablespoons chopped parsley
• freshly ground black pepper

METHOD:

Warm the oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Add the sausages and bacon and fry for about 10 minutes until they have a nice colour. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside.

Add the sliced onions to the pan and a little more oil if necessary. Reduce the heat and fry for about 10 minutes so that the onions caramelize slowly.

When the onions have a nice colour, return the sausages and bacon to the pan and add the thyme and bay leaves. Cover with the chicken stock (broth) and return to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and add the potatoes. Cook for about 30 minutes.

Add the chopped parsley and plenty of black pepper and serve.

What to drink: Personally I'd go for a stout like the wonderful Gibney's stout I wrote about the other day but a glass of cider wouldn't go amiss either. And Irish food and wine writer Tom Doorley suggests a riesling kabinett which sounds spot on too.

Extracted from The Irish Cook Book by J P McMahon published by Phaidon at £35.

Pizza by any other name

What to eat on a Sunday night when you've been out for the day and everyone suddenly wants supper? Rosie Sykes addresses just this issue in her delightful Sunday Night Book which was published in 2017.

It's full of short, easy but tempting recipes to rustle up from ingredients you're likely to have readily to hand or can pick up without too much effort from a small supermarket. This is one of my favourites.

Rosie writes: "What I’ve done here is turn a pizza on its head: this is basically a slightly sloppier version of the tomato sauce you might spread over a pizza base, spiked with some tasty morsels from the fridge, then topped with mozzarella and chunks of bread and baked. Couldn’t be easier, and it needs little in the way of accompaniment – although a green salad is always good. Feel free to pick and choose what to add to the tomato sauce, depending on what leftovers you have."

For 4

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

6 rashers streaky bacon

2 red onions, sliced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2 sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped from stems

400g (14oz) stale bread, torn into chunks

250g (9oz) mushrooms, sliced

half a 280g (10oz) jar roasted red peppers, drained and torn into bite-sized pieces

1 x 400g (14oz) tin of tomatoes

1 bay leaf

175g (6oz) mozzarella

few sprigs of basil (optional)

sea salt and black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6.

Heat a generous splash of olive oil in a large heavy-based saucepan (with a lid) over a medium heat. Using scissors, snip the bacon into chunky lardon-like pieces straight into the hot oil, then let it sizzle and release its fat. As soon as the baconhas browned a little, lift it out with a slotted spoon and set aside. Throw the onions into the pan with a pinch of salt and stir to coat in the bacon fat. Add asplash more oil if they don’t look shiny, then turn the heat down to low and cook gently for about 7 minutes, or until soft but not brown.

Meanwhile, make the topping. In a large bowl, mix the garlic and thyme leaves with any remaining olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Throw in the stale bread and toss to coat in the oily mixture. Season generously with black pepper – and maybe a pinch of salt, depending what kind of bread you are using.

When the onions are soft and sweet, turn the heat up to medium and add the mushrooms, along with another sprinkling of salt. Keep the pan moving while the mushrooms cook – this should take about 3–4 minutes. Next, add the peppers, return the bacon and, after a brief stir, add the tomatoes and bay leaf.

Bring the lot up to the boil and simmer vigorously for about 5 minutes to let everything get to know each other and for the sauce to reduce a little.

Season with salt and pepper to taste, then pour into a baking dish about 20cm x 15cm (8in x 6in) and shake gently to level, so that it completely covers the base of the dish. Tear the mozzarella – and the basil, if using – into bite-sized pieces and distribute evenly over the tomato sauce. Scatter the bread over the top, making sure everything is covered, then bake in the oven for 15 minutes until golden, crisp and bubbling. Serve straight away.

What to drink: Given this is a leftovers dish I'm tempted to say whatever wine you have leftover from the previous night but in case the contents of your bottle have a habit of mysteriously disappearing a simple Sicilian or Southern Italian red - like a nero d'avola - would hit the spot perfectly. Nothing fancy. FB

From THE SUNDAY NIGHT BOOK: 52 short recipes to make the weekend feel longer by Rosie Sykes (Quadrille, £12.99) Photography: Patricia Niven