Poppycooks' Bacon-y Garlic-y Potato-y

Given TikTok megastar Poppy O'Toole (aka @poppycooks) passion for potatoes I really had to pick a potato recipe from her fab new cookbook Poppy Cooks so here is the recipe she calls Bacon-y Garlic-y Potato-y - which really does what it says on the tin.

Bacon-y Garlic-y Potato-y

Okay. This is my official statement on achieving the perfect potato dish: bacon, garlic and potato are the ménage à trois that is out here changing lives. It’s the modern-day throuple that’s right every time. Unless you’re veggie, that is – in which case, this dish is still a stand-out with just the garlic.

Serves 4

The core

1 recipe quantity of Cheese Sauce (see below)

For the gratin

4 large potatoes, peeled, and sliced into 5mm-thick (2 inch) rounds

1 tsp salt, plus extra to season

200g/7oz smoked bacon lardons

3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

2 rosemary sprigs, leaves picked and roughly chopped

100g/3.oz cheddar, grated

black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/Gas 6.

2. Tip the spuds into a large saucepan and just cover with water. Add the salt and place over a high heat. Bring to the boil, then cook for about 7 minutes, until tender.

3. Drain the potatoes in a colander, then suspend the colander in the potato pan and cover with a clean tea towel for about 5 minutes, until the potatoes have steamed off and dried out a bit.

4. While the spuds are boiling, add the lardons to a cold frying pan and place over a medium heat. Fry for about 6 minutes, until cooked through and golden. Remove the lardons from the pan and set aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper.

5. Tip one third of the spuds into a medium ovenproof dish, spreading them out in an even layer. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle over one third each of the garlic, rosemary, lardons and cheese. Top with a good ladleful of cheese sauce (if it’s been chilling in the fridge, you may need to spread it out a bit) and repeat twice more (potato, garlic etc, cheese, sauce), until the dish is full and you’ve finished with a final sprinkling of cheese. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden and a bit crispy on top. Dig in!

Cheese Sauce

It ends here. No more packet cheese sauces. It is literally so easy to make your own (it’s just the béchamel with cheese in it) and I promise you’ll be able to tell the difference. Forget the powdery texture and the 10,000 unknown ingredients that you just ignore on the packet. You know everything going into this baby, and it’s all good stuff. Good stuff = good sauce.

Serves 4-6 (depending on how you use it)

500ml/2 cups whole milk

50g/2oz butter

70g/2.oz plain flour

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

200g/7oz your choice of cheese, grated (I’d go for cheddar and double Gloucester, but a traditional mornay sauce usually just has gruyère in there)

1. Pour the milk into a medium saucepan and place it over a medium heat for 7 minutes, until warmed through. Set aside.

2. Place a second, smallish saucepan over a low–medium heat. Add the butter and allow it to melt. Then, using a spatula or wooden spoon, gradually beat in the flour, about a tablespoon at a time, until you have a thick paste. You don’t want the paste to start browning – if you’re worried just take the pan off the heat to slow things down a little as you add.

3. Once all the flour is in, cook, stirring, until you have a dough-like consistency and the paste is coming away from the sides of the pan.

4. Little by little, add the warmed milk, making sure you allow the first addition to fully incorporate into the paste before adding more. Keep mixing to avoid lumps – switch to a whisk if you need to.

5. Once all the milk is in and you have a smooth, thick sauce, season with the salt and nutmeg.

6. Now, simply add your cheese and stir to melt in and combine for the perfect cheesy sauce! If you’re not using the sauce straight away, transfer it to an airtight container (leave it to cool before you put the lid on). You can store it for 3 days in the fridge and 3 months in the freezer.

What to drink: I'm not sure how much of a wine dish this is but a Chablis or lightly oaked chardonnay would work pretty well. Or a Belgian-style blonde ale like Leffe.

From Poppy Cooks by Poppy O'Toole published by Bloomsbury at £20.

Bacon sausage bread

If you like a bacon sandwich and/or a sausage sandwich what better idea than combining the two in a bread as Niamh Shields has done in her Bacon: The Cookbook. Stroke of genius!

"Bacon is as intrinsic to Irish food culture as potatoes, black pudding and Irish stew" writes Niamh, who blogs as Eat Like a Girl. "Traditionally, an Irish family would have a pig that they would raise for the year. That pig would then provide meat for the following year. In Ireland, a whole pig could be and was cured as bacon so that it could be preserved for longer. This is less typical now, but joints of bacon for boiling and roasting, bacon chops and bacon ribs are still common and Bacon and Cabbage is a core national dish that everyone loves. Bacon is so much more than a rasher, or streaky bacon. Although we love those too.

"This is one of my favourite recipes in the book and you absolutely need to make it. A soft bread dough, butter or lard and egg enriched with a little milk, so like a porky brioche but not as sweet and rich. You can use butter or lard, and if you have some bacon fat to hand, absolutely mix that in.

The bread is made in a more or less typical way, and proved twice. The second time you prove it is after you shape it as a sausage-and-bacon braid. Brushed with egg wash before baking, it gets a lovely bronze sheen.

For special occasions, double up the amounts and shape it into a circle. During the festive season you can fashion a bow of crisp-fried sage leaves and redcurrant berries and you have a Bacon Sausage Bread Wreath.

Bacon Sausage Bread

Makes: 8 slices

For the bread dough:

330g (11½ oz) bread flour

5g salt

100g (3½ oz) room temperature butter or lard

7g (¼ oz) fast-action yeast

3 large eggs

50ml (2fl oz) milk

For the bacon and sausage filling:

15g (½ oz)/1 tbsp butter

1 red onion, finely chopped

400g (14 oz) sausage meat (or the equivalent in sausages with the meat removed from the skins)

1 tbsp fresh sage, finely chopped

6 slices smoked streaky bacon

1 egg for egg wash

sage leaves, to serve (optional – they look great and are very tasty too)

METHOD

1. Start by preparing your bread dough, using either a dough hook or by hand. It is important that your lard or butter is at room temperature, and therefore soft and easy to work with. This makes it much easier to mix.

USING A MIXER WITH A DOUGH HOOK: Put all of the ingredients for the bread dough in your mixing bowl and mix at a low speed until it has formed a dough. If it feels sticky add a little more flour, a tablespoon should do it, but add more if you need to, slowly and mixing well every time. When it is no longer sticky but before it is dry and flaky, it is good. If it feels too dry, add a tablespoon of milk at a time (flours vary so both of these things can happen). Continue to knead with the dough hook for 5–6 minutes until the texture is no longer rough and it has an elastic quality.

BY HAND: the same as above but it takes longer to knead (approximately 10 minutes).

2. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and allow the dough to double in size in the warmest part of your kitchen or in your airing cupboard. This will be faster in the summer and slow in the winter; I usually put it near a radiator in the winter to help push it along. This proving stage usually takes an hour to an hour and a half.

3. Prepare your bacon and sausage filling. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a low heat and gently sauté the finely chopped red onion in it for about 10–15 minutes until soft, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool and combine with the sausage meat and sage and mix well with your hands.

4. When the dough has doubled in size, knock it back by punching the air out of it and allow it to settle for 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl to a floured board and divide into three equal amounts. Roll into sausage shapes roughly twice the length of one of your smoked streaky bacon strips and just as wide. Flatten each log so that the width doubles and lay two strips of bacon on each so that the surface is covered with bacon from top to bottom. Now divide the sausage meat mixture into 3 and place the sausage meat on top of the bacon in a strip. Pull the dough up around the bacon and sausage meat gently and press it closed as best as you can and lay the three strips next to each other. Bread dough can take it, don't worry.

5. Join the three strips of dough together at the top and pinch them together so that they all originate in the same place. Tuck the ends underneath what will become your loaf, and again, press them firmly underneath, without squashing the top, aiming to hide the messy bits and secure the braid. Braid the three strips by pulling the outside strand over the centre one, and repeating with the other side until you have a braid. These look best if done a little tightly. Join the ends as neatly as you can, and tuck underneath, just as you did the start. Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and allow to sit at room temperature while you preheat the oven.

6. Preheat the oven to 200°C/180° Fan (400°F). Beat the egg and gently brush the surface of the braided bread with it. Bake your bread for approximately 25 minutes until golden brown. Best eaten warm and the leftovers (if any!) make a terrific French toast.

What to drink: Got to be a good strong cup of breakfast tea IMO!

All content copyright Niamh Shields from Bacon the Cookbook

Sticky chicken tulips, prunes, smoked bacon, toasted pecans and star anise

There was so much interest when I posted this pairing from 67 Pall Mall's new book Wine and Food in my Match of the Week slot recently that I had to follow up the the recipe from chef Marcus Verberne.

Master Sommelier Ronan Sayburn who collaborated with Marcus on the book introduces the recipe.

Madeira is one of the most wonderfully complex wines you will ever taste, but it’s often left to the end of the meal, or served with cheese. We wanted to do something different with it. This sticky chicken dish works very well, as the intense flavours in the Madeira need to be paired with punchy ingredients. It’s a fun bar snack or pre-dinner nibble.

The sticky glaze is infused with the most prominent flavours present in aged Madeira, such as smoky bacon, prunes, honey and nuts, with the complementary spices of star anise and cinnamon. This is the perfect example of what we endeavour to achieve at the Club: to create dishes to match the flavour notes of a certain wine, resulting in a memorable synergy between the two.

Sticky chicken tulips, prunes, smoked bacon, toasted pecans and star anise

Serves 4 as an appetiser

16 chicken wing ‘drumsticks’, ordered from the butcher

600ml chicken stock

8 star anise

2.5cm cinnamon stick

50g pitted prunes

40g pecans

1 tbsp honey

4 smoked pancetta rashers, finely chopped

2 tbsp groundnut oil

80ml Madeira

1 tbsp soft brown sugar

Salt

To prepare the chicken tulips, using the heel of a heavy cook’s knife, assertively chop the small knuckle off the end of each wing drumstick to reveal the bone. Pull back the flesh from the drumsticks, turning it inside out to reveal the bone in its entirety.

Place the chicken tulips into a small saucepan and cover with the stock. Add the star anise and cinnamon and season well with salt. Over a medium heat, bring to the boil, skimming off any impurities that collect on the surface with a ladle. Once it is boiling, drop in the prunes and remove from the heat. Allow to cool and infuse for 30–40 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 170°C.

Place the pecans on a small oven tray and toast for 5 minutes or so. Remove the tray from the oven, drizzle over the honey and mix, coating the nuts in the honey, then return to the oven for a final 2–3 minutes. Remove from the oven, mix them again, then allow to cool.

Once the stock has cooled, strain the chicken through a sieve over a bowl to collect the cooking liquor. Remove and discard the star anise and cinnamon; they have done their job.

Place the chicken tulips on kitchen paper to dry. Chop the softened prunes very finely to create a paste.

To finish the chicken, preheat a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.

Fry the chicken tulips and pancetta in the groundnut oil until the pancetta is crispy. Deglaze the pan with the Madeira and add the brown sugar and prune paste. Toss the tulips in the pan to coat, then pour in 150ml of the reserved stock. Stirring regularly, reduce the stock to a sticky caramelised glaze, with a consistency that coats the chicken. Place the tulips on a serving platter and coat with the glaze.

Roughly chop the honey-roasted pecans and sprinkle them over the top.

Serve with a finger bowl and plenty of napkins.

What to drink;
Ronan suggests:
Sercial, Blandy’s Vintage Madeira
Sercial, D’Oliveiras Vintage
Verdelho Terrantez, Blandy’s