Wham Bam, Thank you Razor Clam…

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Mister North and I took a family holiday to Barcelona with our mum a few years ago to celebrate my thirtieth birthday and despite having a wobble about my new decade, I managed to mark the day in style with copious amounts of cava and some stunning food. The discovery of the weekend were razor clams at lunch at La Boqueria. Looking like old fashioned cutthroat razors, the only danger we were in from these handsome molluscs was overeating! Steamed until tender, they are soft, juicy and utterly delicious with chorizo. I lost count of how many times we ordered them, so imagine my glee when I found a bundle of these beauties in Brixton Market this week…
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Bloodlust: six black puddings and a beer for breakfast…

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Ever since some bright spark had the idea to stuff intestines with coagulated animal blood, flavourings and other assorted filler ingredients, humans have been making the most of their livestock’s leftover bits, enjoying the results greatly. As a result almost every culture has some kind of black pudding tradition. Miss South and I have been enjoying black pudding in various forms for some time, and as our appreciation and fascination with blood sausage has grown, we’ve idly contemplated a sanguine side-by-side comparison of various favourites. So we finally did it, pitting six of the best we could track down next to each other. But before you read about that, I should make a confession.

I didn’t like black pudding as a kid. Not at all. Miss South and I had it once at the house of a family friend (both it and white pudding, another traditional Irish favourite) and it put me off for a long time. To be honest, I don’t think it was the taste or texture as much as the knowledge at the back of my mind of what it was made from. I wasn’t especially squeamish but it was just too ‘bloody offal’ to contemplate, nevermind enjoy eating. Besides, it wasn’t a family favourite so we had little exposure to black pudding: indeed our mum thinks our modern love of the black pudding is very very wrong, and she’s rarely judgemental about food. So I start this post knowing black pudding can be divisive and disgusting for many folk.
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Pork chops and spring gems

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After the harsh winter (thankfully an ever-more distant memory now we’re firmly into May) the recent bout of superb spring weather has brought welcome warmth and cheer in more than one way. Spring heralds two of our favourite fresh British delights: wild garlic, and asparagus. We’ve already written about both on several occasions, but with seasonal goodies this great, I’m not ashamed to sing their praises a little more. They provided the perfect partnership to prime Pennine pork last month.
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A Crab Hand…

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Some of my happiest childhood memories involve trying to avoid the pincers of crabs, both on long lazy fishing trips in Norway with a bit of string and some bait and a beloved plastic toy one that I used to attack my Sindy dolls with when playing Killer Sea Creatures of an afternoon. However, I don’t have any great memories of cooking or eating crabs apart from burning myself on a soft shell number at Little Lamb last year, so when a crustacean caught my eye in Brixton Village at the weekend, I decided I had to rectify that and kill my own dinner for the first time.
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Grapefruit, Pimm’s and Mint Sorbet

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I’ve been living in England for the last ten years, and yet I still wouldn’t consider myself at all English. The Veda-loving Norn Irish in me remains predominant and I haven’t kicked my spud obsession at all, but other tastes from this green and pleasant land have filtered through to become well loved and often craved. Buttered crumpets, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, lashings of proper gravy, potted shrimp all make me very happy indeed. But my favourite English flavour is Pimm’s…

Just perfect on a warm and sunny afternoon, dappled with refreshing cucumber, mint, strawberries and borage flowers, a jug of Pimm’s has replaced my previous refresher of gin and grapefruit juice as the taste of summer. Knowing the weather for the Royal Weather wouldn’t be just as glorious for sitting out as the previous glorious Easter weekend, I decided to bring some sunshine back to my life and toast the nuptials with a recipe for a Grapefruit, Pimm’s and mint sorbet and combine my favourite sunny flavours in a style suitable for an 11am start.

I have had this recipe knocking around for years, copied carefully into my handwritten recipe book from a magazine or paper, but with no evidence remaining of where it came from, but a major reason why I recently bought my ice cream maker. And I was delighted to see that it was worth the wait!

Buying the machine was the faffiest bit of the whole recipe really. Simply dissolve 100g of caster sugar in 150ml Pimm’s, around 300 ml of fresh grapefruit juice (this is around 3 large fruit) and 125ml of water. Cool the syrup in the fridge, adding in around 10 finely chopped leaves of mint. Then simply pop it all in the machine, adding a well whipped egg white and churn for around 30 minutes until you have a pale golden sorbet the texture of snow. Serve immediately or freeze until needed. It scoops perfectly from the freezer without needing to be thawed at all.

Super refreshing, the sorbet has a lovely sweet taste of Pimm’s on first taste, before you get a gorgeously tangy and incredibly refreshing grapefruit hit that works just beautifully with that quintessentially English of tastes. The mint comes through as a aftertaste, marrying the grapefruit and Pimm’s perfectly. Cleansing, refreshing and with a subtle kick from the Pimm’s, this is the most grown up way to cool down this summer. Bottoms up!