Recipes

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Marinade:

Combine the all the ingredients and whisk to disperse the ginger puree.
Add a stick of lemon grass, cut in half, and then split lengthwise. 

Cut the mushrooms into 1” petals, pour the marinade over them and marinate for 3 hours. Tip: You can do this in a sealable freezer bag and squeeze out all the air to maximise contact between the marinade and the mushrooms.

Rice seasoning:

Mix 3 tbsp of white rice vinegar with 2 tbsp of sugar.

Sushi rice:

Put the rice in a pan and wash it in running water a few until the water runs clear. Soak the rice in water for 30 minutes. Bring to the boil with the lid on, then turn down the heat and continue simmering on low with the lid on for 12-15 mins. Let it cool down for 30 minutes, then spoon the sushi seasoning over the rice and mix carefully with a spatula.

In the meantime, pour 2 tbsp rice bran oil into a hot pan. Add the mushrooms and the marinade to the pan and fry down to a glaze.

Place a nori sheet onto a sushi rolling mat, spread the seasoned rice thinly onto a nori sheet, add the fried mushrooms, and roll tightly.  

Cut into individual rolls and serve with wasabi paste, soy sauce and pickled ginger.

Fry the mushrooms in about 60 g of olive oil or butter with a garlic clove split in half lengthwise, season with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook until done.  Add 1 glass of red wine, a bay leaf and 3 fresh sage leaves and continue cooking until completely reduced. Set aside. Remove the garlic if you so desire.

Pour about 50g of olive oil into a pan and fry a large finely chopped onion on a medium heat until golden brown. Be patient.  Take care not to under-cook the onion; we don't want the taste of raw onion in our risotto.  Set these aside, too.

Have a simmering pot with 1.5-2L of mushroom stock ready.

Add 300g of Arborio rice to a wide casserole and dry toast the rice for a few minutes while stirring, then add a cold glass of white wine and stir until the wine has been absorbed and all the alcohol has evaporated. Add a ladle of hot mushroom stock and stir (ideally with a balloon whisk, but a wooden spoon is perfectly fine) and let the rice absorb some stock.  Add the onions and the mushrooms, and continue gradually ladling hot mushroom stock into the rice under constant stirring as required until the risotto is cooked and most of the stock has been absorbed.  The constant stirring is important to release the starch and produce a creamy risotto. The final texture of the risotto should not be a dry stodgy slop, but should still have a bit of fluidity to it: the Italians call this all'onda - like a wave!

Take the casserole off the heat, add a knob of butter and let it sit for a few minutes before serving with a sprinkle of Parmesan.

Fry the chopped garlic in 50 g of olive oil for a minute. Add the chopped mushrooms, the thyme leaves from 4 sprigs, and cook the mushrooms down until done.   Add the red wine and reduce to a glaze on a low heat.

Dissolve 1 pepper Boursin in 120ml milk. Pour this over the mushrooms and cook on a low heat for 5-7 mins so that the sauce takes on a bit of colour.

Turn off the heat, sprinkle more fresh thyme leaves and cover the sauce with a lid while you cook the tagliatelle in salted water.

Drain the tagliatelle, toss them in the sauce with a couple of spoons of cooking water, serve and sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan.

First prepare the filling. 

Fry a large clove of garlic, halved length wise, with 6 fresh sage leaves in olive oil or butter for 3 minutes.  Add 250g of oyster mushrooms, season well with salt and a couple of cracks of the pepper mill and cook until done, then pour in 100ml of white wine and reduce.  Transfer everything to a food processor, add 70g of cooked (and peeled) chestnuts, 2-3 fresh sage leaves, 150g of ricotta and a pinch of nutmeg, and blitz everything into a medium paste (think tuna mayo for consistency) and set aside.

Fresh pasta:

mix 300g semolina , a pinch of salt and 150g water and kneed, until smooth, into a firm but elastic dough. Easy.  Cover it so it doesn't dry and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Roll out the dough into 2mm thin sheets, and if you have one, place half a sheet on a ravioli mould abundantly dusted with flour. Add the desired amount of filling (suggest about 1/2 teaspoon) into each well, then cover and seal with the other half of the dough sheet before crimping the ravioli by rolling a rolling pin over the mould.  Turn over the mould and remove the ravioli; use a pastry wheel to them separate into individual parcels. if you don't have a ravioli mould, simply lay out a sheet of pasta dough onto a well dusted work surface, pipe the filling nuggets onto their intended places, then cover with the top sheet of pasta taking great care to exclude as much air as possible.  Use a pastry wheel to cut out individual ravioli.  

The dressing:

Fry 4-6 fresh sage leaves in 80g of butter (preferably, but you can use olive oil, too) for a few minutes then add the finely crushed bread sticks (put them in a freezer bag and crush with a rolling pin) and fry for a further 2 minutes. Optionally you can then add 4 chopped dried figs and cook fro an additional minute or two.

Cook the ravioli in plenty of generously salted water for 5 minutes, fish them out with a slotted spoon and place them in the frying pan with the dressing. Swirl gently to coat ravioli, serve with a sprinkle of freshly grated Grana Padano.

 An adapted Jamie Oliver recipe

The Salsa:

You can of course use store bought salsa; there's nothing wrong with that and it is more than adequate , but for this recipe we will be making our own using the following steps:

put all the ingredients in a blender and blitz to the desired consistency! Set aside for later.

The Patties:

Cook the mushrooms well in 30 g of olive oil with two chopped garlic cloves and the leaves from 3-4 sprigs of thyme, until fairly dry and a little crispy around the edges.  

In a food processor, blend the bread, red onion, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and cooked mushrooms into a coarse paste.  Add the drained black beans and blend further.  

Make individual patties, and dust them with ground coriander seeds before cooking them in a pre-heated oven at 190º for 30 minutes.  Put a slice of halloumi on the burgers 5 minutes before taking them out of the oven

Assemble the burgers with the salsa, slices of ripe mango and ripe avocado and a little apricot and mango chutney.  A few drops of chipotle Tabasco will add depth.