For those who might like to spend some time enjoying an indulgent meal for two this month, we thought we would share the recipes that came part of our Valentine's meal kit & produce boxes - carefully curated by SSAW Collective and Shrub Provisions. When buying your ingredients, we encourage you to support your local farmer's market and/or vegetable supplier, looking out for ethically sourced products wherever possible. That way, you are supporting businesses that are passionately pushing for progressive change.
We'd love to see any pictures and hear any feedback you might have. We hope that these recipes will be ones that you’ll end up repeating time and time again. When cooking, we really recommend giving yourself plenty of time to enjoy the process. Here are some guideline cooking times and a suggested cooking order:
Roast beetroots, (2 hours to roast) Potato and onion boulangère, (1 ½ hours to bake) Crostini (10 minutes)
Rhubarb Ice box cake, (30 minutes to prepare. It’s great to do this ahead, and then to let it sit in your fridge) Mustard dressing (5 minutes)
Sirloin Steak, (20-25 minutes, including resting time) Oyster Mushroom steak (5 minutes)
Oyster mushroom sauce (5 minutes)
Burrata with anchovies and crostini
Mangalitza Saucisson
E5 Stockette loaf (or a sourdough bread of your choice)
Organic Rapeseed oil
Burrata
Ortiz anchovies
Saucisson
Preheated oven 160°C.
Cut into the stockette loaf to create 4 thin slices of bread, about 2 mm thick. Drizzle with rapeseed oil and salt and bake for 10-15 minutes. Reserve the rest of the bread for your breakfast tomorrow.
Plate the burrata, tearing open so that the middle oozes out. Drizzle some rapeseed oil on top and if using, garnish with anchovies, with the crostini on the side. Season with salt and pepper.
Cut the Mangalitza saucisson at an angle, about 3mm thick, and enjoy as an accompaniment.
Beetroot, pickled radicchio, goat’s curd and walnut
300g - 350g beetroots, washed
a handful of cracked walnuts
A handful watercress
A handful of pickled radicchio (recipe below)
2 tablespoons of goats curd
Salt and pepper
Dressing
1 tablespoon of dijon mustard
1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
4 tablespoons of rapeseed oil
Preheated oven 160°C.
Wrap the beetroots in tin foil. Make sure there are no gaps for steam to escape. Place in the preheated oven and cook for 1 ½ - 2 hours, until tender. You can test this by piercing with a butter knife; there should be no resistance.
Crack the walnuts and toast in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Make sure you set a timer and check regularly. If you don’t have a nutcracker, place the nuts on a chopping board. Put a saucepan on top and apply some pressure, forcing them to crack open.
For the dressing, mix together the mustard and vinegar. Once combined, whisk in the rapeseed oil and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
When the beetroots are cool enough to touch, remove the skin by pushing it off with your thumb and forefinger. Well cooked beetroots skin will willingly slip away. Cut into 4mm wedges.
Leave the beetroot to sit in a bowl with a tablespoon each of radicchio pickling liquor and the mustard dressing. Mix well. This is a good time to take your goats curd out the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature.
Wash the watercress and allow it to dry. Put some aside to accompany the main course.
Just before eating, dress a handful of it with about a tablespoon of the mustard dressing.
Add the pickled radicchio leaves to the beetroot, mix once before placing on the plate with the goats curd. Garnish with the dressed watercress and toasted walnuts.
Pickled radicchio
Pickled radicchio keeps for up to a month in your fridge.
Makes 5 x 250g jars
1 head of round headed radicchio, such as Palla Rossa Verona
1 tsp fine salt
490ml white wine vinegar, preferably chardonnay
40ml sherry vinegar, preferably Valdespino
240g unrefined organic sugar
1 tsp of salt
6 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 tsp of coriander seeds
Cut the base of the radicchio off and separate the individual leaves. Cut the larger leaves into two pieces. Place in a large bowl with a 1 tsp of fine salt. Meanwhile place the vinegars, sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and the aromatics into a saucepan. Bring to the boil over a medium heat. Using a wooden spoon, give it a good stir to encourage the sugar to dissolve. Once it has come up to the boil turn off the heat and allow to cool completely. The sugar should have completely dissolved.
Whilst waiting for the pickle to cool, sterilise the jars you wish to store the radicchio in.
Once the liquor is cool, remove the salting radicchio from the bowl and place into the pickled liquor. Discard any excess liquid that has been drawn out. Mix the leaves with the cool pickling liquor. Cover with a sheet of greaseproof paper. Then place a few plates or something heavy, like a pestle and mortar on top. The radicchio often kicks out more at this stage liquid, so let it sit at room temperature like this for 1 hour before removing the weight and jarring.
Pack the radicchio into the jars, making sure it is completely submerged by liquor. Fasten the lid and store in your fridge.
Potato and onion boulangère
This recipe takes up to 1 ½ to cook. It can also be made ahead of time and reheated, so be sure to start it at least 2 hours before you wish to eat. We used a 24cm x 15cm ovenproof dish for our potatoes, if you don’t have this, try a loaf tin, or an ovenproof frying pan. If you are making this to accompany a steak, take the steak out of the fridge when you start so that it can come up to room temp before cooking.
70g unsalted butter
2 golden skin onions, finely sliced
2 x bay leaves
400g waxy potatoes, peeled and finely sliced
Preheated oven 160°C.
Over a moderate sized flame melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan, for which you have a lid. Add the sliced onions and bay leaves and a good grind of black pepper and salt. Once you’ve given them a good stir and the contents is well combined, adjust the temperature to as low as it will go. Place the lid on top. Check every now and again that they’re not catching on the base of the pan. Slowly let the onions sweat down for 15 minutes until they are soft.
Wash and peel the potatoes and thinly slice. The ideal thickness is a couple of millimeters. A mandolin or kitchen aid does a great job at this, but it is also easy to do by hand.
Once your potatoes are sliced, add them to the saucepan. Thoroughly toss everything together, so that each slice is nicely coated in butter. Season well and pour into a small oven dish, or loaf tin.
Using your hands, a palette knife or a large metal spoon, firmly smooth the mixture down making sure there aren’t any big gaps.
Cover the top with tin foil, secure the sides carefully to prevent steam escaping and set a timer for 45 minutes.
Once the timer goes off, do the skewer test - remembering if there is resistance, it means you are not quite there. Once the potatoes give way, remove the foil and increase the heat to 200°C, cook for 5-10 minutes to get the top crisp and golden.
Remove from the oven and leave the door open to allow the temperature to drop ready for resting your steak inside. Set the temperature to 50°C.
Sirloin steak
Take the steak out of the fridge at least an hour before cooking. As the cooking of the steak is very time sensitive we encourage you to work together on this part, set timers and take turns being one another’s sous chefs, those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves!
A splash of rapeseed oil
450g Sirloin steak
Salt and pepper
A knob of unsalted butter (approximately 15g)
Place a large frying pan over the highest heat you can (put your extractor fan on!). Season the steak with a generous splash of oil and salt. Only add the salt just before cooking so that moisture is not drawn out. Before cooking the steak, have a feel. If you hold your hand outstretched, the texture of the steak should be the same as the fleshy part of your hand, between the thumb and forefinger, quite firm to touch.
Put in the hot pan cooking for 2.5 minutes on each side for a rare steak, try not to touch before flipping so that you get a good caramelisation on each side. As the steak begins to cook, the texture changes. To test this you can touch your thumb and forefinger together to create an ‘o’ shape. Now touch the same fleshy part of your hand as you did earlier. The flesh will have become soft and squishy, the same as the steak as it starts to cook. We recommend serving a Sirloin rare, so we want to catch the steak at this point, when the fibres have relaxed, before they start to tense up again. If you like your steak more well done, you can cook for another minute on each side.
After cooking for 2.5 minutes on each side, turn the steak onto its side and reduce the heat to render the fat for 2 minutes until golden. Now, (making sure the pan has cooled a little) add a knob of butter. Pretend your in a professional kitchen, angle the pan towards you, and using a dessert spoon ostentatiously baste the steak for 30 seconds on each side, noticing the glissing colour the butter gives to the meat
Remove the steak from the pan and place in the 50°C oven on a resting tray (you can use a baking tray or even a plate).
Let the steak rest for 15 minutes. This is the most important part as it allows the juices to redistribute and the fibres to set and relax, making your steak tender.
Whilst your steak is resting make the oyster mushroom sauce.
Oyster mushroom sauce
200g oyster mushrooms
250ml chicken stock
2 tablespoons of double cream
1 dessert spoon of finely chopped chives
First finely chop the chives as small as you can, this is always a good knife skills test!
Bring the chicken stock up to the boil and let it cook for a few minutes.
Place the whole mushroom into the pan, gill side down. You can use the cooking fat from the steak pan to cook them in, (unless the fat has caught and smells burnt). If this is the case, clean the pan. Cook over a medium heat until caramelised about 4 - 5 minutes, then turn and cook for another 2 minutes. Once golden, remove from the pan.
Add the chicken stock back into the same pan with two tablespoons of double cream. Check the oven tray and add any juices from the resting meat. Reduce the sauce to double cream consistency. Give it a good stir before tasting the seasoning.
Take the steak out the oven and slice against the grain. The slices should be about 1 cm thick. If any juice comes out it can be added back into the sauce. Plate the steak with the oyster mushroom on top, and pour over your sauce. Garnish with the finely chopped chives.
Oyster Mushroom steak (V)
Oyster mushroom
Rapeseed oil
Butter
First finely chop the chives as small as you can, this is always a good knife skills test!
Place your pan on a low to medium heat and allow it to heat up before adding a splash of rapeseed oil. Season the mushroom and add to the pan, gill side down. Cook until golden and caramelised (about 4 - 5 minutes), then turn and cook the other side for another two minutes. Remove from the pan and add the mushroom stock and two tablespoons of double cream. Reduce the sauce to double cream consistency. Give it a good stir before tasting the seasoning.
Serve your mushroom steak on a plate and pour over the sauce. Garnish with chives.
Pam’s rhubarb icebox cake
The "icebox" cake originated around the time that refrigeration became mainstream in America, and housewives utilized it as a tool to fashion a quick "cake" using readily available commercial ingredients - store-bought wafers/biscuits, whipped cream, and fruit or jams. Once layered and allowed to rest, it became sliceable like a cake. Here, we suggest making it in the spirit of a parfait, layering it in a glass, and eating it with a spoon.
You'll want to find a small dish (glass is ideal, so you can see the beautiful layers), or two glasses to put this together, and start it as your first item to prep, so that everything can mingle together for a few hours until dessert time.
We included Pam’s spiced honey einkorn biscuits to use in our boxes, so we’d recommend using the best quality ginger biscuits, or honey biscuits you can find - or better still, home-made!
Rhubarb compote
200g rhubarb
50-60g honey
pinch of salt
splash of water
Yogurt cream
100g yogurt
175g double cream
20g honey, or more to taste
Rinse and dry the rhubarb stalks, and slice into 1/2" pieces. In a small saucepan, combine all the above ingredients and bring to a slow simmer, stirring occasionally with a spatula. Cook until the rhubarb has broken down, is glossy and the compote is slightly thickened. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the yogurt, double cream and honey until you have soft peak consistency. . Set aside in a cool spot.
To assemble, line the bottom of your chosen vessel, with a layer of biscuits. Spoon on a layer of the whipped yogurt cream, about equal in thickness to the biscuit layer. Next add a thin layer of rhubarb compote. Repeat until your vessel is nearly full. Finish with a decorative layer of rhubarb. Allow to chill in your 'icebox' until dessert time.
Save any remaining rhubarb compote for breakfast the following day.
Dippy eggs and soldiers
2 or 4 eggs, depending on how hungry you both are!
2 or 4 slices of bread, toasted and buttered
Butter
Salt and pepper
Place a medium pan of water on to boil. When boiling carefully add the eggs. Put a timer on for 4 ½ minutes. Meanwhile toast the bread. Liberally (!) add some butter, before cutting into soldiers. When the timer goes off, place the egg into its egg cup and onto the plates, with a pile of soldiers on the side.
You can enjoy your dippy eggs with a bowl of yoghurt and the leftover rhubarb compote on the side too!
Recipes by Lulu Cox, Katja Tausig & Pam Yung.
Photographs by A F Webb
Recommended suppliers
Neal's Yard Dairy
La Latteria
Shrub Provisions
E5 Bakehouse
Brindisa
Luckington Farm
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