This week’s cookbook was James Mackenzie, On the Menu. James is the chef and owner of The Pipe and Glass Inn. A Michelin-starred pub near Beverly in Yorkshire. A place where we have very much wanted to visit but haven’t made it there yet. We didn’t cook much from the book but what we did was great. We did a butterflied and blackened leg of lamb, served with a rather lovely light salad of leaves, chives, spring onions, radish, mint and a sweetened vinegar dressing. To accompany the lamb was a fabulous gooseberry relish. The challenge here was that there were no gooseberries in season to make the relish, so we improvised. We used a rather lovely gooseberry extra preserve and some onion, vinegar and green peppercorns. Cooked in the barbecue and eaten outside, the lamb was lovely.
The other recipe of this week was James’ rather confidently named “The Perfect Yorkie”. I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect Yorkshire pudding recipe for several years. I have been pleased with a recipe from the Ginger Pig in the Borough market cookbook. However, James’ recipe has some interesting concepts that I may incorporate to build a combination of the two recipes. The temperature was only 180C. The two central moulds in the 12-hole cupcake tray used to bake them are left empty to give a better circulation of heat around the puddings. Combined with a lot of egg (proportionally) and seasoning at the last minute before adding to the tins gave some highly impressive puddings that rose really well. It was lovely to use a cookbook that is lovely to read (organised by ingredient: Cow, Pig, Sheep, Fish, Shellfish, Poultry & Game, Veg Patch, Afters) but that we’ve not really cooked from at all before and finding a few great recipes for us to do again.