Third time lucky (phew)

 I've been having a bad run of cooking this week. The hake mayonnaise was mostly just a recipe choice error (though I did start by trying to work with uncooked potatoes). Then there was a baked salmon parcels thing which tasted sort of okay but reminded me that every time I try baking in parcels it goes completely wrong. Undercooked, this time, which is at least salvageable, but really, when will I learn?

Mood: a bit like this. Not dire. Just... could be better.

So I approached dinner tonight with trepidation. I have tomorrow off, and in the week when I was planning this week's cookery I'd thought why not have some fun with cooking that Thursday? Which is all very well when you've got your mojo working, but very much not at the moment. I've been distracted all week, by various ungood things - to the point on Monday when I forgot there would be announcements about Christmas that I'd been paralysed with worry about the week before. And today, tiers. So much mental churn. So little dab-hand-with-a-roux energy. I hope you're, at least, no worse. If asked what I wanted for dinner earlier, I think a cheese toastie would have been my limit; albeit a glorious Mumbai toastie which I'm never not in the mood for.

But, hurrah - dinner was both good and not too trying. I'd forgotten that my main plan was Some Bird (pheasant breast in this case, thanks to incautious market chatting last week; I am a sucker for small-scale producers), with two sides. They both came out of Ed Smith's On the Side - not, as the cricketier portion of the members may imagine, anything to do with cover drives, but an entire recipe book dedicated to sides (his website is fab, and full of info on online ordering at the moment). I love to read it, but I cook out of it less than many, just because cooking for one isn't always a great time to think about extras. But I do heartily recommend it to those of you who like cookbooks, and anyone cooking for folk with trad tastes, who gets stuck thinking thoughts like "chops again... but with what?"

Today, my 'with what' was: anise almond rice, and a watercress and pickled walnut salad. One soft and aromatic, one fresh and slap-you-round-the-chops. Perfect for a gamey, slightly sweet braise, which is what I eventually made. The rice would be too limp with the stew alone; the salad would clash. Ed S has a point about sides mattering.

For the rice, you need almond milk (ratio 100ml milk to 100g rice), plus a hefty splash of water and a couple of star anise. I'm getting low on my cheap Flying Tiger anise but there are still enough to lavish those around, so I did. 

 

Bring to the boil, simmer for a bit, then turn out and steam, covered. Recipe said 5 mins then 8 mins, but I'd give it slightly longer - I had to reboil as it was just too chalky. But I'm a rice wuss. Then stir in some chopped tarragon and flaked almonds. This was really good - just enough to lift it above boring rice but gentle and far from overpowering. If I ever used almond milk for other things, I'd do it regularly, and I'll still think of it as a good option. Even just doing the tarragon, anise and almonds wouldn't be a waste (I'd say boil the rice in cow's milk but that way lies overflowing pans as I know all too well).

The salad is simple: watercress and about one chopped pickled walnut per person. 

The Walnut, in situ. I love them but jeeeez their image problem is real

 Mix and dress - the dressing is what makes it: a massive glob of Dijon mustard, a couple of teaspoons of pickled walnut liquor (nectar of the gods, more on this next week), some maple syrup (I used honey), a splash of olive oil (I used, uh, cobnut oil... yes I talked to a different small producer at the market. On a different day...). Salt if you like. You want it to be thickly mustardy, rather than a runny job. 

I know. The bottle of Fairy is especially prominent today.

Right then. Sides are sorted now to invent something to do with a pheasant breast. I've messed these up before, they being lean but quite dense so they take a little while to cook but dry easily. I went for a boozy braise. 

Alliums (spring onions today), lightly cooked, then add the meat to brown for a bit. Big glob of butter for this, on account of the dryness factor and not having any dairy to add to the sauce. 

Then turn down very low, add some flour and cook it out. Splash of water, cook that till it's making a sauce, then add lots of Marsala (sherry, madeira, probably red vermouth would be fine), boil it up and cook it a while. Mushrooms would have been ace in this, but I used all mine in the dratted parcel failure. It needed a smidge of seasoning but nothing more. 

You can see why the punchy and the gentle sides went so well with this. And they really did. It's a proper autumn/winter joy plate.

 

Some days, noodling about in the kitchen is a disaster. Today, though, all manner of threes were good.