Cheesy Three-Root Bake

If you're a fellow potato fan you'll absolutely love this warming recipe from Jenny Linford's new book Potatoes.

As she rightly points out "Cheese and potatoes are one of those simple but satisfying combinations. "

"This homely dish makes an excellent mid-week supper. Serve it on its own for a vegetarian meal or accompany it with grilled/broiled bacon or sausages."

SERVES 4

500 g/171/2 oz. waxy potatoes, peeled

2 carrots, peeled

200g/7 oz. celeriac/celery root, peeled and cut into chunks

30g/2 tablespoons butter

1 leek, washed and chopped

2 tablespoons plain/all-purpose flour

300ml/11/4 cups milk

100g/1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the potatoes, carrots and celeriac/celery root in boiling, salted water until tender; drain. Slice the potatoes, carrots and celeriac/celery root.

Preheat the oven to 200C (400F) Gas 6.

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan. Add in the leek and fry gently over a low heat, stirring, until softened. Mix in the flour and fry, stirring, for 2 minutes. Gradually mix in the milk, stirring as you do so.

Bring to the boil, stirring, so that it thickens into a white sauce. Stir in 75 g/3/4 cup of the cheese until melted and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Place the root vegetables in an ovenproof baking dish. Pour over the cheese sauce and mix gently, so that the vegetables are coated.

Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and the breadcrumbs.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes until golden brown. Serve at once.

What to drink: I'd probably go for a glass of dry white wine with this like an unoaked chardonnay or chenin blanc but cider would work well too.

This recipe is extracted from Jenny LInford's book Potatoes which is published by Ryland Peters & Small at £14.99. Photograph ©Clare Winfield,

Polish spiced Christmas cookies

Even if you don't normally bake it's worth taking the time at Christmas and what could be more perfect than this Polish spiced Christmas cookie recipe from Ren Behan's lovely book Wild Honey & Rye

I first met Ren years ago when she came along to a writing workshop I was giving at a blogger's conference and it's great to see how she's gone from strength to strength. Do visit her lovely website renbehan.com

POLISH SPICED CHRISTMAS COOKIES (PIERNICZKI ÅšWIÄ„TECZNE)

These Christmas cookies very quickly became the most popular recipe on my website when I first posted them in November 2011, just a year into starting my food blog. Since then, I’ve loved receiving emails and photos of the cookies that friends and readers have made for their own trees, or to give as gifts ahead of Christmas. Instead of making the icing to decorate the cookies, you could buy writing icing. Since I use wild honey and rye (flour) in my cookies, the title of my book was hidden within this recipe – long before I knew it!

Makes about 24 cookies, depending on the size of cutters used

115g/4oz/½ cup unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

115g/4oz/generous ½ cup soft dark brown sugar

8 tbsp runny honey

450g/1lb/scant 4 cups plain (all-purpose) flour or rye flour, plus extra for dusting

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tbsp mixed spice

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 egg

To decorate

150g/5½oz/generous 1¼ cups icing (confectioners’) sugar, sifted

1 egg white

1 tbsp water

food colouring (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6. Lightly grease three large baking sheets with butter.

Put the butter, brown sugar and honey in a small saucepan over a gentle heat. Stir only until the butter has melted. Set to one side.

In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients together, mix well, add the egg and mix again. Pour the melted butter mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until the dough starts to come together.

Tip the mixture out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead to form a ball. If the mixture is too crumbly, add a tablespoon of water at a time and knead again until it comes together. Roll out the dough to about 3mm/1⁄8in thick. Cut out shapes using cookie cutters and carefully lift the cookies onto the baking sheets; leave about 1–2cm/¾in around each cookie – they don’t spread too much. Bake the cookies for 7–8 minutes per batch, until golden.

While the cookies are baking, make the icing by stirring together the icing sugar, egg white and water. If you like, divide the icing into different bowls and add a little food colouring to one or more bowls. Mix together really well until you have a thick paste that will pour evenly off a spoon. Fill a piping bag fitted with a fine nozzle with the icing and set to one side.

When the cookies are baked, they will still be a bit soft. Using a palette knife, carefully lift them onto a wire rack and leave to cool. If you are decorating the cookies for the tree, use a chopstick to make a small hole in the top of each cookie as soon as they come out of the oven, but be careful not to break the top off the cookie by pressing too hard.

Once cooled, decorate your cookies with the icing. Store in a tin for up to 2 weeks, as they will soften. If used as Christmas tree decorations, they can be left on the tree for the season.

Extracted from Wild Honey & Rye: Modern Polish Recipes by Ren Behan published by Pavilion at £20. Image credit Yuki Sugiura (cropped to fit from the original)

Quality Chop's legendary confit potatoes

It's not often you go to a restaurant just for the potatoes but The Quality Chop House's confit potatoes are off the scale - crisp on the outside, meltingly delicious within. Fortunately for those of you who don't live in or near London chef Shaun Searley shared the recipe in his book The Quality Chop House which came out last year. (I also have my eye on the beef fat Hispi Cabbage!)

Confit Potatoes

Our confit potatoes have become rather legendary. They are the only dish we haven’t once taken off the menu since their happy conception in spring 2013. We’d just opened the restaurant and needed to find something to serve with the chops. Shaun was adamant that QCH didn’t need chips – next thing you know we’d have squeezy ketchup on the tables – but we obviously needed something indulgent, and probably potato-based. We started making layered potatoes and after much trial and error and refrying leftovers, Shaun landed on these crispy golden nuggets.

What with the slicing, layering and overnight chilling, these are something of a labour of love – but they’re worth it. Do use Maris Pipers: they have the perfect sugar-starch-water content to prevent collapse while cooking.

SERVES 6

1kg Maris Piper potatoes

125g duck fat

1 tbsp salt

oil, for frying

Maldon salt, to taste

mustard dressing (see below)

Preheat the oven to 120°C and line a standard 1.7l terrine mould with baking parchment.

Peel and wash the potatoes, then use a mandoline to slice them as thinly as possible. In a large bowl, toss the slices thoroughly with the duck fat and salt. Layer the potatoes in the mould, one slice at a time, until you’ve built up multiple tiers. Once you’ve used up all the potato, cover the top with baking parchment and cook for about 3 hours until the potatoes are completely tender. Place a small baking tray or plate on top of the baking parchment covering the potatoes, along with a few heavy weights (we find tins work well) and leave to cool, then refrigerate overnight to compress.

The next day, remove from the tray and cut the potato into 3x3cm pieces.

Heat enough oil for deep-fat frying to 190°C, either in a deep fryer or a heavy-based saucepan. Fry the pieces for about 4 minutes until croissant-gold. Sprinkle over some Maldon salt, drizzle with mustard dressing and eat immediately.

Mustard Dressing

This may look fairly prosaic but it’s completely crucial in our kitchen. No confit potato leaves the pass until it has been dressed in this, so if you want yours to be the real deal you will need this dressing too. (Though you won't probably need quite this much! FB)

425g Dijon mustard

Juice of ½ lemon

½ tsp cider vinegar

375ml vegetable oil

Mix the mustard, lemon juice and vinegar in a large bowl, then whisk in the vegetable oil until emulsified. Store in squeezy bottles in the fridge until you’re ready to use.

What to drink: You're probably going to serve these wonders with something - most probably a steak or chops so your wine choice is most likely to be dictated by that - most probably red. But if you were serving them on their own - and why not? - I'd be tempted by a glass (or two) of champagne

This recipe is from THE QUALITY CHOP HOUSE: Modern Recipes and Stories from a London Classic by William Lander, Daniel Morgenthau & Shaun Searley (Quadrille, £30) Photography: Andrew Montgomery

Sticky chicken tulips, prunes, smoked bacon, toasted pecans and star anise

There was so much interest when I posted this pairing from 67 Pall Mall's new book Wine and Food in my Match of the Week slot recently that I had to follow up the the recipe from chef Marcus Verberne.

Master Sommelier Ronan Sayburn who collaborated with Marcus on the book introduces the recipe.

Madeira is one of the most wonderfully complex wines you will ever taste, but it’s often left to the end of the meal, or served with cheese. We wanted to do something different with it. This sticky chicken dish works very well, as the intense flavours in the Madeira need to be paired with punchy ingredients. It’s a fun bar snack or pre-dinner nibble.

The sticky glaze is infused with the most prominent flavours present in aged Madeira, such as smoky bacon, prunes, honey and nuts, with the complementary spices of star anise and cinnamon. This is the perfect example of what we endeavour to achieve at the Club: to create dishes to match the flavour notes of a certain wine, resulting in a memorable synergy between the two.

Sticky chicken tulips, prunes, smoked bacon, toasted pecans and star anise

Serves 4 as an appetiser

16 chicken wing ‘drumsticks’, ordered from the butcher

600ml chicken stock

8 star anise

2.5cm cinnamon stick

50g pitted prunes

40g pecans

1 tbsp honey

4 smoked pancetta rashers, finely chopped

2 tbsp groundnut oil

80ml Madeira

1 tbsp soft brown sugar

Salt

To prepare the chicken tulips, using the heel of a heavy cook’s knife, assertively chop the small knuckle off the end of each wing drumstick to reveal the bone. Pull back the flesh from the drumsticks, turning it inside out to reveal the bone in its entirety.

Place the chicken tulips into a small saucepan and cover with the stock. Add the star anise and cinnamon and season well with salt. Over a medium heat, bring to the boil, skimming off any impurities that collect on the surface with a ladle. Once it is boiling, drop in the prunes and remove from the heat. Allow to cool and infuse for 30–40 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 170°C.

Place the pecans on a small oven tray and toast for 5 minutes or so. Remove the tray from the oven, drizzle over the honey and mix, coating the nuts in the honey, then return to the oven for a final 2–3 minutes. Remove from the oven, mix them again, then allow to cool.

Once the stock has cooled, strain the chicken through a sieve over a bowl to collect the cooking liquor. Remove and discard the star anise and cinnamon; they have done their job.

Place the chicken tulips on kitchen paper to dry. Chop the softened prunes very finely to create a paste.

To finish the chicken, preheat a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.

Fry the chicken tulips and pancetta in the groundnut oil until the pancetta is crispy. Deglaze the pan with the Madeira and add the brown sugar and prune paste. Toss the tulips in the pan to coat, then pour in 150ml of the reserved stock. Stirring regularly, reduce the stock to a sticky caramelised glaze, with a consistency that coats the chicken. Place the tulips on a serving platter and coat with the glaze.

Roughly chop the honey-roasted pecans and sprinkle them over the top.

Serve with a finger bowl and plenty of napkins.

What to drink;
Ronan suggests:
Sercial, Blandy’s Vintage Madeira
Sercial, D’Oliveiras Vintage
Verdelho Terrantez, Blandy’s