Vintage Cheddar And Parmesan Leeks

If you're lucky enough to have a garden, you may be fortunate enough to pull a couple of fat leeks out of the ground for this delicious recipe, as they're in peak condition at this time of year. If not, you'll just have to rely on the local bearded grocer like me.

It goes very well with roast pork and crackling as I knocked up for a meal last Sunday, with apple sauce, steamed kale, roast spuds and other trimmings. In fact, it's not often that a side dish takes centre stage, but it certainly gave the pork leg a run for its money, and if anything was almost as popular as the crackling. It doesn't require a lot of cheese, but the cheddar you use should be as full-flavoured and vintage as you can find.

2 large leeks
25g butter
25g plain white flour
350ml milk
250ml water
2 tsps wholegrain mustard
Few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
Salt and white pepper
3 tbsps breadcrumbs
50g vintage cheddar, grated
25g parmesan, grated
2 tsps fish sauce

Cut the leeks lengthways into four (keeping them attached at the root) then wash well in a tub of water to remove any grit and mud. Slice the leeks into inch-wide pieces. Boil 250ml of water in a saucepan, add a little salt, and then the leeks.

Stir well, then cover the pot over a medium heat for 30 seconds. Stir again, then cover for another 30 seconds. Do this for a total of five minutes - the leeks should have reduced in size by about a half. Remove the leeks and remaining water (which will have turned a pale green).

In the same (dry) pan, melt the butter and then add the flour. Take off the heat, and stir well with a wooden spoon to make a blonde paste (roux). Return to the heat and add the still-hot liquor from the leeks. Once the water is absorbed, add the milk, a little at a time, using a whisk to break down the lumps.

Once you have a thick sauce, add the mustard and fish sauce. Then add the grated cheese, stirring until you have a smooth sauce again. Check the seasoning, adding salt and white pepper to taste.

Add the leeks to the sauce and simmer for two minutes. Transfer to an oven dish, top with breadcrumbs and a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce, then cook in a pre-heated oven at 170C for 20-30 minutes until the top if golden.

Clam Chowder - Level 2 NVQ Diploma in Hospitality

Week one of my cooking apprenticeship certainly had a ‘surf and turf’ flavour to it. On the morning we made beef olives, we also knocked up another classic from the attic – clam chowder. Well, the chowder base anyway. We needed gallons of the stuff for a seafood festival that weekend. The soup would be finished off on the day and served in hollowed-out crusty rolls for £4 a pop.

Because we were making the base a few days in advance, our tutor told us not to add the bacon and to use powdered fish stock rather than fresh, to help it keep longer. The bacon, clams and cream would be added on the day.

I’ve always been a big fan of chowder and have wanted to travel to America’s blustery Atlantic coast ever since I read Moby Dick, when Ishmael and Queequeg feast at the Try Pots, a rough inn famed for its chowder “plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt”.

As always, I can’t find much agreement about clam chowder’s history among the many food boffins. Some posit it may derive from ‘chaudrée’ – a thick fish soup from France’s Charente-Maritime region. The variant, chowda, is believed to have originated in Newfoundland when fishermen would throw part of the day’s catch into a large pot for supper.

Not that it really matters, of course, because there is even less agreement about how to cook the dish. Indeed in 1939, as war was breaking out in Europe, politicians in Maine were fussing over the far more pressing issue of drafting legislation to make it illegal to add tomatoes to their traditional, cream-thickened chowder.

The type we made on our snappily-titled Level 2 NVQ Diploma in Hospitality (7132) course was definitely of the New England camp – a tasty base of potatoes, onions, peppers, carrots and bacon. Although I’m sure many purists would turn their noses up at carrots and peppers, and insist the only break from the calico broth should be pink cubes of bacon.

Flour added to the sweated vegetables

Again, some people use biscuits as a thickening rather than flour. But we used the latter. The lesson came with a short aside about using roux (equal amounts of flour and fat) to thicken sauces. For a ‘white roux’ - for use in white sauces - you fry the flour and fat over a low heat for five minutes, for a ‘blonde roux’ – the base for veloute (velvety) sauces – you cook the flour out for 10 minutes, and for a ‘brown roux’ – for gravies etc. – you could it for 20 minutes.

125ml vegetable oil

125g plain flour

125g diced smoked bacon

2 large onions, cut into brunoise

2 large carrots, cut into brunoise

2 large sticks celery, cut into 1cm dice

2 large yellow peppers, cut into 1cm dice

5 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 large potatoes, cut into 1cm dice

2.5 litres fish stock

200ml double cream

2kg carpet clams

In a large saucepan, heat the oil and sweat the onions, potatoes, celery, carrots, bacon, garlic and peppers over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Once soft, but not coloured, add the flour and cook out for five minutes, stirring all the time.

Heat the stock and add a ladleful at a time to the roux, making sure the liquid is fully dissolved until adding the next batch. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season to taste. This can then be cooled and left covered in the fridge for a couple of days until you are ready to use it.

The finished chowder base

Wash the clams well and discard any that are open or broken. For my money, the best in the UK are the small carpet clams you get in Portland, Dorset – called palourde in France and almeja in Spain. Put them in a covered pan over a medium heat and cook until they are open – this should take only a minute or two.

Add the cream to the chowder base and the poached clams and serve with plenty of crusty bread. Garnish with finely chopped chives and black pepper. Some people also whisk in 125g of butter to give a good glaze to the bowl, but then some people eat butter the thickness of bread.

Masterchef: 'I’ll Stick My Face In It'

“So, Lennie, tell me about your passion for cooking...” the researcher from the Masterchef show began.

She asked me pretty much the same questions I’d filled in on the application form. I tried to remember what I’d written. The more I listened to her gushing about the programme, the more I realised it was all a con. From her voice, she genuinely seemed to think Masterchef was offering people a chance to, as both Egg and Toad liked to say, “embark on an absolute, life-changing journey”.

There were no details about the prize cooking job, of course, just lots about what sort of contestants they were looking for. She wanted to know whether I’d worked full-time as a professional chef before, if I had received an NVQ catering qualification or similar in the past ten years, and whether I had the required level of enthusiasm, drive, love of food, and desire, to change my life.

At one point, she asked if I had ever been convicted of a “serious crime”. I kept quiet about that. If it came out later, I’d bring up Egg’s conviction for football hooliganism.

I began drifting off, listening to the spiel. She had the same irritating, husky, mee-jar voice as the show’s narrator...

“After 15 years in prison, Lennie is desperate for a life in food. In his heat, he blew the judges away with his chicken vindaloo."

“I’ll quite happily stick my face in it,” says Egg.

“But sometimes he gives himself too much to do, and more often than not, it tastes better than it looks...”

The bitch, I thought.

Then I wondered whether I’d said the word out loud. But the researcher was still talking.

“So the next stage is a casting day,” she gushed. “You may get invited along for that. But we’ll be interviewing about 8,000 people across the country and only choose 100 for the show...”

I had a one in 80 chance. I needed to get a job.

I went for a walk, and passed a catering agency advertising cooking jobs for £6 an hour. They didn’t ask whether I had any experience. Once I’d filled out a few forms, a short, fat, cocky man with a goatee (think Ricky Gervais locked in a Frey Bentos factory for two weeks), threw a few questions at me. The interview was over in seconds.

“How do you make a béchamel sauce?”

“First you infuse the milk…”

“Infuse?”

“Yeah, boil the milk with bay leaves, peppercorns, and you can use an onion…”

He waved me on irritably.

“Then melt some butter in a pan, stir in some flour to make a roux…then slowly whisk in…”

“Yeah, yeah fine.”

All he wanted to know was whether I knew how to make a fucking lasagne.

He phoned the next morning, but I was in bed. By the time I phoned back, the job was gone. But I didn’t want to work as a dinner lady anyway.

A week later I got an email from Masterchef, saying they were “very impressed by my application” and invited me for a casting day at the Brunei Gallery in London. It said:

“Please bring along a sample of your cooking for our judges to taste. You only need to bring one dish. The team will be tasting lots of food so it does not need to be a big portion. It can be sweet or savoury and must be cold or something that can be eaten/tasted cold. We will take into account that the food is cold and has had to travel. Please note there are NO REHEATING FACILITIES and there will be minimal preparation time/facilities but you will have to plate and serve your dish.

“The auditions will be filmed for broadcast so we want you looking and feeling your best. Please avoid wearing white or cream, any logos and steer clear of thin stripes, small spots or geometric patterns. Remember we want your personality to shine through so make sure you feel happy and comfortable as possible….

“Due to the large number of applicants we will be unable to contact unsuccessful applicants.”

I sat there thinking about what dish to go for, and whether I had any clean shirts, let alone any that weren’t striped.

It’d have to be something that could sit happily in a humid Tube carriage half-way across London. Looking back on it now, I still don’t know why I went for sushi.