Luke Mackay

I just took delivery of a punnet of massive strawberries. Huge. Like baby’s fists they are. Exactly equidistant in girth between a ping pong and tennis ball. Exactly. And biting into one set off a pavlovian reaction about which I had to write.

You see I have an a vivid childhood memory from around 1984 when I was seven. We had just moved from Greenwich (Woolwich really but shhhhh) to Portrush in Co. Antrim. And as such had a massive garden all of a sudden. This, for me was awfully exciting because up until now, outside space consisted of Eaglesfield ‘Recreation’ Ground where you could roll in dog shit and have your head kicked in by a big boy and get struck with a stick by a park keeper in a paddling pool with your winkie out and your pants down. All of a morning.  And in Portrush we had a big strawberry patch.

And one halcyon Summer evening my family and I went to pick strawberries for a communal strawberry feast. And I found the biggest one! There! Peeping out from its leafy shade. The strawberry to end all strawberries. Ripe, and huge and perfect. With trembling hands I plucked it and held it aloft like the Holy Grail, for twas what it was, and the seas parted and the sky fell and the Earth stopped on its axis for me and my mighty strawberry, this crown jewel of strawberries. My new pride. My new joy.

And Mum said just pop it in the basket.

What now? pop it in the basket. What madness was this? My own Mother. The EVIL. The Cruelty. Why? It’s MY strawberry. It’s so beautiful. I love this strawberry more than I love football. Or Pepsi and Shirley. ANYTHING. And you want me to ‘pop it in the basket’. You want me to SHARE my strawberry, to take a chance- a one in five chance that I might not get to eat MY strawberry. This was witchcraft. Some dark power of which I knew not. And I cried and I cried and I screamed and I shouted and I rolled on the floor until they all saw sense. And I ate that strawberry.

If I’m honest it was probably a bit woody, lacking in sweetness and flavour. But that’s not the point. I don’t share food is the point. And even at seven I knew. Spin on the Grifter? Sure have a go. You want to touch my finished Panini football sticker album? Hmmm OK. But be careful. What’s that? Can you borrow my aerobie? Knock yourself out.

MY TANGY TOMS?! Pal, I’ll break your face right now. And if you so much as look at my Caramac I swear to God you’re getting a massive dead leg. Or a noogie.

And not a huge amount has changed. You can have my West Wing box-set, you can borrow my car, as much cash as I can afford. But if you think that you are getting one of MY roast potatoes, then swivel. Step back, walk away and just don’t even try. Because a noogie at your age is embarrassing for you and for me. But that’s what’ll happen. You see if it doesn’t.

You know that feeling when you are washing rancid scallop juice out of your backpack with toilet duck, in the shower?

I know! Annoying, isn’t it?

Well I was doing that this morning, whilst mainlining gaviscon and thinking that was a punchy weekend….

And all I did was host a little dinner party on Saturday night.

Six of my closest friends, some extraordinary booze. Actually the most extraordinary booze you can drink more or less and some nice food. The guests booked their baby sitters and left Barnes for the mean streets of Putney. I did an Ipod playlist and plundered Waitrose. Nice and civilised. So far, so middle class. Roast artichoke heart anyone?

And a few days ago I thought about what I would cook. As a private chef I ask people what they would like to eat. I would say that eight out of ten come up with scallops for starter, beef fillet for main and strawberries for dessert. And I always try and change their mind because I find all of those things a bit dull. A bit DONE. A bit Masterchef circa 2004. A bit pea puree and black pudding.

But my chums are simple coves and I though I would take these ingredients and see if I could do a riff or two of my own without being too ‘cheffy’. And this is what I cooked. My very good pal Tom took the photos because as you know I can’t and won’t.

Scallops with puy lentils, chorizo, lime and coriander

This is easy. Cook the puy lentils until tender but still just nutty, remove casing from four chorizo sausages and finely chop the meat. Fry until crispy. Add to lentils with all the gorgeous smoky oil. Add zest and juice of two limes, salt, pepper and a splash of maple syrup. Sear the scallops and spoon over lentils. Finish with coriander.

Then I cooked this

Fillet of beef with chanterelles, creamed corn and broad beans

This looks crap because I was a bit drunk my now- and I’m not going to tell you how to cook a steak- the interesting thing is the corn- The yellow Jackson Pollack-looking vomity bit. It’s a Thomas Keller recipe that he served with duck. I think it works better with beef. And its quite exciting to make and will make you feel all molecular.

Get five ears of corn. Shuck them (run knife from top to bottom) and put kernels of three in a blender with a splash of water. Put the rest in salted boiling water and cook for a minute and a half. Blitz up the corn for a couple of minutes and pour into a chinoise. catch the resulting liquid- gently push down on pulp to speed process along. Discard pulp. Add liquid to a sauce pan on low/medium heat. Whisk. The starch in the corn with make the liquid thicken substantially. whisk in a hundred grams of cold cubed butter, add the cooked corn and add salt and finely ground white pepper. It is surprisingly delicious.

And then for pud, we had this and I was really quite drunk by now.

Macerated strawberries with black olive caramel, white chocolate and honeycomb ice cream

Macerate the strawberries in balsamic vinegar and icing sugar. Make caramel with sugar, water and glucose. Then blitz up with a handful of olives. Make or buy (I made) white chocolate and roll into a cylinder with cling film and foil. Freeze. Smash up three  crunchie bars (couldn’t be arsed to make honeycomb) and sieve. Roll ice cream tube in honeycomb dust. Cut into portions.

And then we ate a big block of manchego and some quince.

The booze that I alluded to earlier was from 1986- Chateau La lagune, Chateau Palmer and Chateau Montrose. And was a TREAT of the highest order. And cost more than my car. A lot more than my car. And I and everyone else there am incredibly grateful to D for bringing. Oh and some Hungarian Tokay with pud. Which I love.

Then we started doing shots of vodka, smoking stale cigarettes that I found in an old drawer and played musical chairs. With additional prizes for dancing technique between chairs. Seven people in their mid-thirties dancing round a table in a tiny dining room is NOT cool. Drunken charade wrestling is also NOT cool. Waking up the next morning and looking after a small child is definitely not cool. But I didn’t have to do that. Most of my guests did though. Urgh.

I didn’t move off the sofa all day. Literally. Except for the occasional toilet break. People brought me food and I had a remote control. I considered wearing a nappy to make the annoying toilet breaks obselete. And I was grumpy in the extreme. And I couldn’t face dealing with a mollusc juice soaked ruck sack. So I left it in the boot of my car until this morning. Gag.

And the moral of the story is that I am getting too old for this kind of behaviour. And it is very hard to plate up food when you are drunk. And Toilet Duck is a fine agent for stink removal. But thanks for coming guests, it was a brilliant night and I love you all very much even if I did rugby tackle some of you during charades.

I am convinced, said Sydney Smith that character, talents, virtues and qualities are powerfully affected by beef, mutton, pie crust and rich soups.

Indeed Sydney, indeed. And as an estimable man of the eighteenth century cloth, one can only surmise that God and his earthly foot soldiers, given half the chance would all enjoy a nice pie.

And who can blame them. You can’t go wrong with a nice pie.

My favourite pie, on balance is my own concoction -chicken, leek, pancetta and sausage ball pie. Ooh, hold up lets keep it proper, I meant of course good old bacon. Or York ham. Because only a knob would take a pie, that quintessential fare of the British working man and put poncy old pancetta in it. Innit.

So some nice streaky bacon. That’s the stuff.

Just giving a smoky undertone, a salty kick to a soft white blanket of heartily seasoned roux. Moist poached chicken. Soft melting leeks and fatty nobbly balls of sausage. A leaf or two of sage and a golden puffy crust. A bowl of bright green, young broad beans, plucked from their grey casings. And mash- whipped with a wooden spoon, worked in with fridge cold cubes of salted butter and white pepper until you have something ephemeral, something magical and so comforting that it will damn near give you a hug and tell you that, Hey. Its OK. You hang in there buddy. You’re doing just fine. And you know what- it happens to lots of guys. Its never happened before and you’ve had a lot on a work. You’ve been STRESSED. Its really no big deal.  Now come here handsome- you keep that chin up- you hear? Have you been working out?

Just really comforting basically. Thanks MASH. You’re the best.

And now, I tell you, thats a hell of a meal. Thats what I want to get my laughing gear round on a moist chilly August evening in SW15.

I like the word moist. Also Mid-Wiffery. Pronounced Mid Whiff-ery. With heavy emphasis on the Wh.

Note from editor. Self edit Luke. Self edit. You don’t have an editor.

So here is a promise, and it is one that I have made before: If you cook a pie for someone, they will like you more. I don’t care if its you son, your husband, your too good for you girlfriend, your old granny or the illicit shag three doors down. Cook a pie tomorrow, watch someone you love break the crust and as that steam bathes their face in savoury goodness, as they shovel forkful after forkful down, they will wonder what they did to deserve you and your lovely pie.

For my non-pancetta pie. I use frozen puff pastry. And do you know what, if you don’t or if you look down at me in any way, then you are reading the wrong blog. I am a chef and I can’t make puff pastry as good as the frozen stuff. Also I have a life and better things to do. Life is too short for making puff pastry. And wrapping presents. But that might be just me. I HATE wrapping presents.

I am also not keen on writing  gram by gram, step by step recipes…… Just have a stab. There is literally nothing bad that can come of it. No sage? use rosemary. No bacon. Don’t worry about it. Lumpy roux? Whisk it more.

So this is how I make my pie.

Buy the best whole chicken that you can afford. Whilst at the meat counter purchase some excellent streaky bacon and some nice butchers sausages with a good high meat content.

Take the skin off your chicken- just pull it off. Wash your hands,grab a sharp knife, get stuck in, hack away and just pull off all that skin. Put skin aside for later. Cover your now naked chicken with cold water, chuck in a carrot, a leek, an onion, maybe a bay leaf or two. Bring to boil and simmer gently for about an hour.

Meanwhile. Slice a couple of leeks, an onion and 4 cloves of garlic. sweat in butter on low heat until soft and tender . Cut your bacon (lets say 200g) into batons and squeeze the meat from your sausages (lets say 4 sausages). Discard the now prophylactic-like skins somewhere that will not cause embarrassment. Form sausage meat into balls. About the size of a tiny elephant or a massive ant.

Now! This bit is important. In a little oil, fry the sausage balls and the bacon batons in a BIG pan- big enough to eventually contain all of your pie filling. When they are all nicely browned and golden, remove from pan, but do not discard fat or sticky bits. Take your chicken skin, liberally salt it and chop it up with a sharp knife into small squares. Add this to the bacon/sausage fat and fry until really crispy. Remove and add to your bacon and sausage.

Now add half a pack of butter to your fat. What a great sentence. The ghost of Jennifer Patterson lives on in me. When it has melted, over a gentle heat start adding plain flour. And gently whisk, amalgamating the flour, the crispy bits and the fats. Keep adding the flour until the mixture is too stiff to whisk and then cook until it starts to smell biscuty. Now add milk, slowly whilst whisking. Keep going until it has the consistency of double cream.

Now its an assembley job. In with the leeks and onion. bacon bits, crispy skin and sausage balls. Remove your chicken from it’s stock and take the meat off the bones. chop to whatever size you like and add to your mixture. Add some chopped up sage leaves and lots of salt and pepper. If it looks too thick you can loosen with some chicken stock.

And thats your pie filling- pour it into a pie dish, cover with puff, egg wash , prick and chuck in the oven at 210 for 35 minutes.

Use the stock for soup or similiar.

For me cooking is all about the crispy bits. Never waste them, deglaze, use the same pan, whatever. But I never want to come round and see soggy crispy bits in your dirty dish water.

Make a pie for some friends soon and see if they don’t love you for it.

I am a greedy pig. A great big greedy piggy. I really love eating too much stuff than I strictly should.

And I get mouth boredom a lot too. Mouth boredom is when you have had, for example, a massive roast dinner at three thirty on a Sunday afternoon and still, despite your stuffed gut, crave a dopiaza at nine. You’re not hungry per se but the thought of chilli, ginger and coriander dancing a jig on your tonsils is too divine to ignore.

And speaking of which….(crowbar? what crowbar?)

……I went for lunch by myself at a newish Bombay style cafe called Dishoom on St Martin’s Lane near Covent Garden.

I eat out by myself quite a lot. For several reasons. Firstly I have a job that affords me time off when others are working and secondly, I like it. I love it in fact. Is it too far to say I prefer it? No. I prefer eating out alone to eating out in the company of others.

Good God, that’s a thing to say. I am going to die in a bed-sit. Where I will lie in my own putrefying filth until the neighbours complain about the smell. And will then get scraped up off the lino and whacked through a municipal crematorium in a chip board coffin. Ahh dear… poor  ‘eats alone man’. Passers by will nod sagely as the black smoke plumes into the cloudy sky. He ate alone and he died alone. Tut tut. Such a shame. They needed a crane to move the body out you know….

I’m er.. only joking. I am um.. very sociable. And the scenario above will NEVER happen. You hear me. NEVER….But I do love eating alone- you can order what you like, you can people watch, you can read a paper, a book or do whatever you damn well like. What you should not do is whip out a branded BBC note book and pen in the vain attempt of looking like a proper food critic. Tick. Years ago. But I was an arse, finding my way in the world, years ago. And running the BBC staff canteen. Ha! Idiot!

Anyway. Dishoon is near Covent Garden Tube station. Which as a rule is not somewhere I frequent unless I absolutely have too. Strange, presumably mentally impaired men and women in top hats, painted silver, standing on a box…..and wait for it…. not moving. Now that’s magic…. I saw Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House last year and I ended up in Road House (awful Jeremy Kyle of Night Clubs) on a blind date a few years ago. Which is an interesting anthropomorphic example of how eclectic is, a. Covent Garden and b. My love life. Both evenings, interestingly, ended poorly. But for different reasons.

For goodness sake man, Dishoom. OK. It’s very good but not brilliant. I like the room, it is relaxing and pleasant in both appearance and ambiance. The staff are well-drilled courteous and professional. And there are lots of things on the menu that I wanted to eat. So I did.

But not before I had ordered a chilli pomegranate Martini. By myself. At lunch time. That, people is how to eat alone with confidence. With my St. Martini, I had some unbearably moreish ‘Cafe Crisps’- the spicing upon which I see is being debated by online foodies across London. It was a bit tangy and a bit spicy. And red. And possibly contained crack cocaine. Then calamari that was good- especially the crispy tentacles. The main carapace seemed less inclined to crisp up, but was flavourful and zingy. The lamb chops were OK. But in all honesty not as good as the ones at Lahore Karahi in Tooting that I blogged about in May last year- at a third of the price. The black daal lacked complexity but was tasty. A simple pinch of salt would have worked wonders. The garlic naan was the best I’ve ever had.

And then I asked for the bill. But instead of asking for the bill I said ‘And actually, I’ll just try the Murgh Malai too and a Thums Up please.’

A Thums Up is ‘Coke- Bombay style’ and instantly transported me back, not to the days of the Raj but the Soda Stream in the pantry of my parents old house. Murgh Malai is charred and spiced chicken which was nice enough but improved immeasurably with my own addition of tamarind dipping sauce.

And then I asked for the bill again. And it was £36.50. Which is a lot for one person on a tuesday lunch time. That’s not Dishooms fault- they are incredibly inexpensive for what and where they are. Its my fault for ordering enough food for two people. All of which I scoffed and then licked the bowls out. Because I am a greedy pig.

And am now going to the gym.