One for the fluffy bunnies.....

A heartwarming, deepdown, soul hugger of a little soup. One for cold days, one for rain streaked windows. One for wind, and wet. Cook for someone you love. It's that kind of soup.

Puy lentil soup, straight out of the North of Italy. This one is lifted and slightly adapted from Giorgio Locatelli (the pheasant ravioli video is fantastic), and his Made in Italy (free recipes at this link) book. A damned fine read, filled with dodgy measures, and irrepressible vitality. Food as Art.

This is a soup I make entirely by eye. Quantites will be artistic. Tasting is the thing.

For the lentils. Using dried puy lentils (I find a generous helping of circe 250g gives enough for three people), bring them, unsalted, to the boil, and simmer for 45 minutes.



For your soffrito, the base of the soup, you will need one large carrot, finely diced. One medium to large onion, similarly cut. two sticks of celery pulled as freshly from the earth as you can. Or in my cases, heroically hacked from the shelves of Dunnes. Sliced. Two or three bay leaves. Pick up a plant and go fresh with them. They underpin the entire taste of the thing. They give that generous and giving warmth of taste so lacking without the pancetta. Two sprigs of rosemary. Butter. Oil. Heat the oil, and gently sweat the vegetables, stirring in the herbs. You want to soften and sweeten them, with no salt or pepper. At this stage their beauty is nothing other than themselves. I take about 15-20 minutes for this stage. (The omnivorous amonsgt us could add some cubed pancetta here, for a heavenly fix).

After 45 minutes, your lentils should be nearly out of water. Add them (with the water if you wish) to the soffrito, and pop in some warm water, and two peeled, lightly crushed hefty, glorious and ample cloves of garlic. More if they are not ample.

Add salt (if you are not using pancetta), and black pepper, and a dollop of extra virgin olive oil. The salt is, I think, essential at this stage, allowing each flavour to interpenetrate. Simmer gently, adding water if necessary, for a good twenty minutes. More if you can, stirring, and tasting. At the end, season to taste, and blitz to your desired texture, adjusting thickness as you please - as you can probably see, I adore a generopusly gloopy bowl of earthy deliciousness. Sprinkle with chopped Rosemary for the scent. Drizzle with a little olive oil to lift. Eh voila.

A thing of beauty, and a joy for dinner.

In search of perfection.

Ish.

Thinking more and more about the theory and thought behind how I cook.

This perfection thing is tricky. Thinking about the difference between a good commercial kitchen, and a talented home chef is perhaps useful.

Lets put aside the more obvious things. Dedicated staff, equipment. Budget. Prep chefs. These are all limitations that the home chef has to overcome.

Repetition. I'm guessing a starter chef in a busy restaurant will cook up, say, Moules marinieres more times in two services than an average home chef will in a year.

Repetition, and the necessity for consistency, several hundred times over. The same, dish, exactly each time. Physical memory I guess. And that precise knowledge of how exactly everything should be. Prep mapped down to seconds to act in concert with several other stations working to plate simultaneously. Everything has to be exactly just so. A chef standing at the pass whose job is to throw anything not exactly just so back to your station. Night after night after night.

Just being in a place where people are repeating the same dish, and finishing to a high level, over and over. Their repetition imprints on you, if you have time to watch. After three hundred times watching, and a couple of smart questions, you can probably plate something similar yourself.

Cooking in a team, with shared expertise. Even a small kitchen has a pastry and dessert chef, a prep chef, and often people with particular expertise. One cook makes up the bread every day. Another specialises in seafood. One more has a background in French or Spanish cooking. Another has experience with butchering meat. The kitchen is a walking, talking, sweating swearing, collective Larousse. And someone, somewhere will have the answer to your question. In every honest cookbook I can remember, chefs talk about either a formative kitchen, or a formative group of colleagues with whom they ate , slept, dreamt, talked, fucked and cooked food. Shared expertise, and shared inspiration. Fergus Henderson and Giorgio Locatelli knocking around London after hours resurrecting the art of offal in their heads.

I think the only answer for the home chef is a something like the San Sebastian Sociedade Gastronómicas (Txokos) - private dining clubs where members (normally men) cook up elaborate lunches for one another. There is a similar, though much smaller movement happening in the UK. A bunch of like-minded people sharing expertise, ideas, facilities, and palates to develop their skills in a wonderful environment. A tough thing to introduce though. San Sebastian has food as central to it's culture, and the clubs have been running for generations. And, unlike other places, groups of friends are likely to share that interest. It's about the best way I can think of for a home chef to replicate the kind of competitiveness, and constructive/destructive criticism that forms the core of a kitchen education.

Amongst the best chefs, there's also a....precision, and a depth of knowledge, that lots of home chefs don't posess. Protein strings. I know for a fact I could fill a book with my ignorance on the issue. But excellent chefs understand cooking, often, at the chemical level. How exactly heat works. Whats happening when eggs bind a recipe. Oxidation. The physics of cream. Or simple enough sounding ideas like never have more than one layer of meat browning in a pan. The temperature olive oil smokes at, and what to do with that information - let your mushrooms hit the pan just before. Keep your griddle pan as hot. Let meat rest for as long as it cooks. Never shuggle or move fillet fish in a pan. How to pick out a poultry oyster. And which part of the chicken liver really is the bile sac? It all looks an off colour to me. I've been mangling chicken livers for years with that one. What exactly is happening at any given moment with the glutens in my pasta dough.

The last time I tried to break down a large joint of meat was utter carnage.

Hence Knife Skills, and the Elements of Cooking. And after that McGee.

At the moment my cooking flows, re technique, from a sense I have picked up. I cook from experience, optimism, the occasional slavishly dedictated reproduction of a new recipe, and variations on a theme. Change one thing and note the difference. Change the next. In a rudimentary and limited sense, trying to replicate the repetition of a working kitchen.

I'd like to understand whats happening in my pans and pots at that fundamental level that means you can see it all happening in advance in your head. So I can understand what I smell. It's a lack I can't really even begin to describe really. I just know, however, that I see something very different happening on my stovetop to whatever it is that Heston Blumenthal sees. I can't even begin to think about food in that depth, to understand it so profoundly. And I'd like to.

It's the next stage for me. That and cooking outside Italy.

Feels like winter. Chocolate and chickpeas then.

First off...

thirty steps to chocolate connoisseurship, from the Guardian. Scroll down about a third of the way to hit the thirty steps.

I cooked up a wintry chickpea soup today, to cope with the terrible weather. This one is taken from "Made in Italy", and adapted slightly to my pantry.

To make the base, you'll need, a chopped stalk of celery, a sprig of Rosemary, some sage leaves, 2 bay leaves, and about 250g of chickpeas. If dried, soak them overnight and drain, if canned, wash thoroughly before use. 4 cloves of garlic, crushed.

Put everything in a pot, cover with about twice the amount of water as chickpeas, splash in a little olive oil, and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes. Fish out the herbs, remove the chickpeas, and reserve the cooking water. There's no need to add salt at present.

Next, you will need about 150g of chopped pancetta (you can use streaky bacon if you are stuck, I used my home cured bacon), another stalk of finely chopped celery, and two finely chopped onions - 1 red. Heat up a skillet, add some extra-virgin olive oil, and gently fry off all of the above until they are soft. Should take 5-10 minutes. Add about two thirds of the chickpeas to this mix, and blitz them in a food processor until they are finely ground. Add the reserved cooking water to get the consistency you need - I added about 200ml to get a fairly thick soup.

To finish - fry off some small cubes of pancetta until golden brown. Chop up some rosemary and sage. Reheat the soup mix, and taste and adjust for seasoning. It should be quite salty already, from the pancetta. and plate it. Sprinkle with the cubed pancetta, the reserved chickpeas, and the herbs. Generously drizzle with olive oil. Grind some pepper. Serve with a plain bread, and olive oil on the side.

An authentic taste of Northern Italy, and a soup hearty enough to ward off the winter chill. Food for the soul, eh?

Sorry about the formatting. I have learned to hate blogger.

And thanks to Laura over at eat drink live. Check out her well formatted and photographed soup for a fantastic borlotti bean recipe.

Giorgio Locatelli

Over on the right hand side of this raggedly designed webpage, in the links section, is a link to Giorgio Locatelli's webcasts for the UK Observer. They ran a series of 6 podcasts, with Locatelli talking his way through classic Italian recipes as he cooked them, live, with an Observer reporter chatting away happily to him in his kitchen.

For the record, we've got him working his way through bagna cauda, artichoke salad, monkfish with walnut and capers, steamed hake with parsley and garlic, veal with artichoke and potatoes, and spaghetti with tuna meatballs.

The sense of conviviality he talks about as centrally important in his life, cooking, and restaurants, shines through as he enthuses about the food he is cooking. Its a contagious entusiasm, sparkling with a warmth and intelligence that translates perfectly onto the plate.

Each podcast is available for download, with an accompanying recipe sheet, and its worth it to listen to a relaxed master at work, narrating each dish, its origins, its ingredients, and his thoughts on preparation, origin and ingredients, wrapping up each recipe with anecdotes about Italy, and London, and weaving food so naturally into life thats its as much a pleasure to listen as it is to taste. He's the best Italian chef in London at the moment, and seems almost entirely himself in the kitchen. I'd heartily recommend him. And the podcasts are just perfect.

Lorraine over at Italian Foodies has just posted his broccoli soup recipe from Made in Italy, and is a fan. AA Gill gave him the only five star rating he has given to date, as testament to both his food, and principled ethos in terms of food and staff.

Finally. Four words. Swedish chef. Pure genius.

Not to mention.....

Kim-chi restaurant

To the left is one of four starters from Dublins Kim Chi Restaurant. Located at the top of Parnell street, and recommended to me as an authentic taste of Korean cuisine, we chose it as a late night venue for a fond farewell to a work colleague.

The starter pictured is the rainbow roll, Korean style sushi comprising eel, prawn, salmon and tuna sushi rolls, with a dab of wasabi, and soy sauce on the side. The tastes cut through our drunken palates, cleanly, and crisply. The unexpected and gently building heat of wasabi combining terrifically with the pleasant purity of the sushi tastes.

We also had (pictured right) a starter of blocks of rice, daubed with wasabi, and a butterflied prawn, topped with roast, shredded sweet potato, with a side of pickled ginger and wasabi. The prawn had quite an amazing texture, fleshy and firm, and an unusually intact taste. The shredded sweet potato was addictively sweet, and the ginger the perfect side to cleanse the palate for another uncomplicated taste of simplicity.

This starter was a similar dish, but without the sweet potato, and topped with eel and salmon, to be dipped in soy sauce, and wasabi, and followed by a slice of pickled ginger to cleanse the palate. A fantastic introduction, accompanied by complimentary soup in small cups. And the aesthetic effect of these finely balanced, well put together, quite minimalist plates was startling.

As we moved on to main courses, I entirely lost track of what we ordered. It was, after all, a farewell party. For my own main, I ordered the Bulgogi, a beef dish marinated in soy sauce, pear puree, sesame oil, and a host of other ingredients, and served with a side of freshly washed lettuce, still wet, some boiled rice, and some fermented soybean paste.

The trick is to spoon the beef mix into the leaf, then some rice, and finally spoon over some paste, and wrap the concoction up in the fresh leaf, then eat. Quite an interesting and divine leaf, each flavour distinct and somewhat separate, but working together fantastically to counterpoint one another. And the freshly washed leaf brought a texture and fresh taste that was absolutely perfect.

We also had a 7 shot bottle of sake, warm, and two other starters, for the princely sum of €115, including tip. An amazing price for a truly memorable meal. The service was exemplary, with staff genuinely happy, it seemed to our beer soaked selves, to explain any queries we had about authenticity, recommendations, and pronunciation. Tables have buzzers to summon service, and food arrived in perfectly staggered stages. An amazing price for what I am told is an authentic taste of Korean cuisine.

Add to this the general ambience, where, on Parnell street, the melting pot of Dublin, the bar and restaurant was populated by pleasantly drunken Koreans, Irish, Poles, Germans, co-existing quite happily in a chilled out, beer fueled slow and comfortable gorge, and you have a truly memorable experience, which restored my optimism in both our culinary scene, and Irelands current experiment with multicultural identity.

On the downside, the restaurant is tiny, and is part of a larger and noisier bar, which also shares the seating space, so the ambience is distinctly informal. That was fine for our crowd, but it is not a fine dining venue. The seating is quite cramped, and again utterly informal, closer to bar seating than restaurant, and the tables are far too small to easily support the massive amounts of food the kitchen will effortlessly usher out and into your life.

These are not really complaints, though, just qualifications. It is an informal place. Pick up some beers, soak in the food, the tastes, the smiles, and the sounds - it also triples as a music venues - and feel rejuvenated. Its good for the soul. I may well become a regular.

Kimchi (also known as the Hop House). At the top of Parnell street. Enter and enjoy. (sorry, no phone number - they appear to be unlisted.)

Made in Italy

"It is true that man does not live on bread alone;
he must eat something with it"

Pellegrino Artusi

I just picked up a copy of Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli. The quote is taken from the antipasti section. And it gives an authentic taste of Locatelli's take on food, and on life.

The main bulk of the book is a collection of stories, techniques, anecdotes and culinary thoughts, which are interspersed with recipes.

The formal recipe writing and instruction is clear, well thought out, and detailed. And the techniques he covers, for making bread, pesto, fresh pasta, are clear and detailed. The pasta description is the best I've yet read, on how to use a machine to press perfect pasta.

His perfectionist nature comes across quite well.

He pays the same attention to detail in his instructions that he expects a good chef to pay in their recipes. And the instructions have the feeling of being born of use and experience. Its restaurant quality food made perfectly accessible to the home cook, with the added twist of excellence that can only come from a Michelin starred chef. I have had more revelatory moments, in this book alone, about Italian dishes, both the classics, and the effortlessly perfect re-interpretations Locatelli provides.

The description about how he makes what must be the most perfect pesto outside Liguria is frankly stunning.

It is, for me, so far, the book of Italian cuisine. More informative about basic techique than the Silver Spoon. More broadly ranging than any of Carluccios books.

The bulk of the book, though, is anecdote. Around which recipes, techniques, and the almost inbuilt understanding of food in Italian life, are wrapped. About his grandmothers kitchen, and garden, about the family restaurant, about his families home garden, his travels and experiences in France and London, all tinged with a genuine and inherited love for his topic. The stories are wrapped around food, around recipes, around tastes and experiences. The ingredients punctuate the books stories. The ingredients are the very stuff of the book. They are the rhythm of the story, and the thing to which all Locatellis stories, recipes, tastes and feelings return.

Locatelli writes in such an unassuming fashion. The brash ego of some food writers is largely absent. Instead, he writes with genuine affection and gratitude about the people, the food, the

ingredients, and the experiences that seem to have all fed into the sense of conviviality with which he infuses his food, his writing, his chefs and his restaurant.

For 30 euros, it's a snip. Any lover of Italian food simply must have it.