Side Dish

The window in which to pick artichokes is very short. They go from being young, tender and a joy to prepare to a stringy and tough time-waster, which makes absolute sense considering they are a thistle. This recipe is based on a French preparation – à la Barigoule – which is essentially a preserve cooked in wine, vinegar and oil with the addition of bacon or mushrooms. It’s a very subtle preserve – not quite a pickle – and it can be served as almost a dish on its own.

I treat sea urchins as you would an oyster. One or two portions at the beginning of a meal is one of the best ways to begin an evening. The warm buttered toast is a lovely complement.

When done with consideration, cooking can be a great way to show the oyster’s flavour. In winter, especially, oysters tend to have more of a muscle, and rock oysters can be treated almost like clams to show this off. This recipe uses smoked oysters in a Chinese-style chicken broth that riffs on the meatiness of the oyster. Next to this is one of my favourite things of all time – buttered cabbage and turnip – which gives it a bass note.

Keeping vegetables whole and intact for as long as you can yields similar benefits to meat on the bone, but for me cooking in a self-sealing dome of salt – or clay and hay – is the pinnacle. In this recipe I serve the celeriac with mustard cream and salmon roe, but it is really adaptable. It would sit well with sautéed livers, for instance.

I think it’s probably relevant to talk about the weather. Summer’s here and the sunshine is a good excuse for mussels. These mussels are in a green chilli paste that I first started using on octopus in the restaurant. I’ve adjusted the recipe, deleting some of the salt and adding mussel juice. I tend to marinate the mussels on the day, but they can be marinated overnight to take on a slightly pickled quality.

It was some of Charles Fourier’s wilder notions that created the fodder for my banquet menu. In my research I found lovely stories about old hens, his love of a funny little cake called a mirliton, and his much discussed notion to re-engineer the Earth’s climate in order to change the sea from an unpalatable brine to lemonade. And hence this appetiser or entree of cured kingfish. Salt and sugar in the cure, sprinkling a little on the fish afterwards to give a little crunch, the coldness of the fish’s flesh, the slight hint of lemon and a little garnish of mint. Pure, simple and redolent of a sea of lemonade.