This evening’s food was a bit by way of an experiment. We’d bought some ready-prepared ravioli (mushroom and ricotta, as you ask) and I decided we would have it with a tomato sauce, but ended up experimenting. So what I ended up with was …

Tomato, Olive and Port Sauce

I used …
medium Red Onion, finely chopped
3 clove Garlic, finely chopped
a few small Cherry Tomatoes, halved
small can Chopped Tomatoes (or more chopped fresh tomatoes)
2 tablespoons Tomato Paste
12 Black Olives, chopped
half wineglass of Port

Roughly what I did …
Sauté the onion and garlic in some (olive) oil until the onion is just beginning to brown.
Now throw in the fresh tomatoes and olives and sauté for another couple of minutes.
Add a couple of egg-cups of port and cook for a further couple of minutes.
Now add the tinned tomatoes if you’re using them, if not just let the fresh tomatoes cook down.
Season with a small pinch of salt and a generous amount of black pepper.
Let the whole lot cook for a few minutes to thicken and reduce; add more port if it gets too jam-like.
Towards the end add another couple of egg-cups of port and the tomato paste; the result should be nether jam-like nor too liquid but somewhere in between.

I ended up with a deep red, very robust, sauce which was quite tasty but rather too robust for the ravioli, but stood up well to a hearty Sicilian red wine. It would go well with braised rabbit, or pheasant, or maybe lamb. And it would work well with blackberries in place of port, when it would be especially good with rabbit (rabbit and blackberries is a favourite here!).

Experiments don’t always work, or at least not the way one thinks they might. But nonetheless this was an experiment worth doing, and worth eating!

Following on from the Tangy Duck Salad, I put together another of our summer favourites: Alcoholic Summer Fruit Salad. This is another really simple, but surprisingly impressive recipe. In the case of yesterday I did it to use the first of the blackberries from our garden.

Alcoholic Summer Fruit Salad

You can do this with almost any mix of summer fruits you like, but you’ll want three or four different fruits for best effect. Choose from nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, blackcurrants, loganberries, gooseberries. (Avoid orange, apple, banana, melon, kiwi, grapes. This isn’t a cheap hotel!)

You’ll want one small nectarine or peach per person, and similar quantities of each other fruit you’re using. I guarantee this will disappear like snow in summer, so don’t worry about making too much – but if you do have any left over it goes well on your breakfast cereal.

Put the berries in a salad bowl – halve or quarter any large strawberries or gooseberries.
If using cherries, stone and halve them. Add to the berries.
Stone the peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums and cut them into bite-sized pieces; add to the berries.

Add a few mint leaves or some lavender leaves if you wish – yes lavender really does work OK!
Optionally sprinkle with a couple of teaspoons of sugar.
Now add a small wine glass of liqueur of your choice. (Port works well, as do amaretto, peach schnapps, apricot brandy and cherry brandy – the choice is yours.)
Mix gently but well.

Lightly chill while you eat the preceding courses.
Serve plain, or with cream, and maybe a meringue nest.

(If you want a non-alcoholic version, use good fruit juice – apple or mango are good – instead of liqueur.)

A couple of very simple, but worthwhile interlopes into the kitchen today. Here’s the first.

Tangy Duck Salad

Actually you could do lots of things with this duck (either hot or cold), but we chose to make it into our trademark “all in one” salad.

You’ll need, for the duck …
1 duck breast per person
Tomato ketchup
Brown sauce (HP Sauce or equivalent)
Worcester Sauce

And for the salad …
Pasta (enough for each person, cooked and cooled), we used linguine
Tomatoes
1 small Onion
3-4 cloves Garlic
Can Kidney Beans
1 Fennel (or other salad ingredients of your choice; crisp lettuce would work well)

You need to start the day before, by cutting the duck breasts, crosswise, into 5mm slices. Put them in a plastic box with a large slug of tomato ketchup, brown sauce and Worc. Sauce. Mix well and leave in the fridge to marinade overnight.

On the next day, pan fry the duck (+ marinade) in a very small amount of oil until done (maybe 5 minutes). You might want to strain off most of the liquid halfway through so the duck has a chance to get nicely sticky. Set the duck aside and leave to cool. You should end up with slightly sticky and tangy, almost sweet and sour, duck.

When mealtime approaches, halve the duck pieces and mix together with the pasta; thinly sliced onion, tomato, fennel etc.; drained beans; and chopped garlic. Season lightly with salt and pepper and dress with white wine vinegar and olive oil (you can mix this together as dressing if you wish, but I never bother). Serve with a robust white wine.

Enjoy!

(You could do lots of variants on the marinade, maybe by including lemon juice, lime juice, soy sauce or even a dash of chilli.)

I concocted this one today to go with our roast chicken. And it was good, so I thought I should share it.
You will need:
Good bread – I used a mean half an olive ficelle and an olive roll, but ¼-⅓ a large loaf or ½ a small loaf is fine.
2 medium onions
1 lemon (the fresher the better)
6 cloves of garlic (more or less according to taste)
3-4 tbsp olive oil
Good handful of olives of your choice, stoned & roughly chopped – I used a dozen Nocellara olives;
3 tbsp tomato paste
Good dash Worc. Sauce
salt & pepper
hot water
This is what you do:

1. Peel the onions and cut each into 8. Wash the lemon, remove the stalk and cut that also into 8 (yes the whole lemon!). Peel the garlic.
2. Put onions, lemon and garlic in the food processor and blitz until fine. Tip this out into a mixing bowl.
3. Cut/break the bread into pieces and blitz that in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. Add this to the onion mix.
4. Add all the other ingredients (except the water) and mix well.
5. Carefully add hot water and keep mixing – be careful not to make the mix too wet; it should stick together and hold its shape.
6. Make into balls (this should make 8-10 large stuffing balls), place in a greased dish or tray and cook in the oven with your chicken until golden brown and just beginning to crisp (probably 40 minutes or so).
7. Serve alongside your roast chicken (or it would work well with pork or any other bird).

We overcooked ours slightly but they were still excellent and I liked the extra crispiness – they came out rather like onion bhaji: crisp, tangy, lemony and oniony. The cold ones will make super stuffing sandwiches! Yum!