9 July - Opus in Birmingham

We were in Birmingham for the weekend, so a very quick bit of online searching threw up a restaurant called Opus. From the website and online menu, it looked good and it didn't disappoint. Nice place, nice atmosphere, professional but friendly staff. I had asparagus with poached egg and hollandaise to start; a bit boring I know, but I'd ordered venison for my main so wanted something light. The venison when it arrived was a tad peppery again, but really nice and pink. It was served with what was described as a "spring bean cassoulet". Now to me a cassoulet is a slow-cooked, stewy affair with pulses - what arrived was a mix of fairly crunchy spring veg! The whole thing was very nice, but just not the rich stewy sort of dish I'd expected. Any slight sense of disappointment though was completely forgotten with the pudding - possibly the best I've ever had!! I haven't got much of a sweet tooth, so I was in heaven with what I can only describe as a distinctly savoury dessert ... goats curd mousse scattered with a sprinkling of something like granola (think plain cheesecake with a hint of goats cheese in the background) with gooseberries (wonderfully tart!) and elegant little cubes of elderflower jelly (melt-in-the-mouth!) ... just perfect! I'm already contemplating trying to make a goats cheese and gooseberry cheesecake.

19 June - braised lamb shanks and gooseberry & apple crumble

I went to the supermarket yesterday with a rather vague "meat" written on my shopping list for today's dinner and I came home with a couple of lamb shanks. I knew I wanted to slow cook them, so I turned to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and found a recipe for braised lamb shanks with mustard. I browned the meat gently on the hob in a little oil, then added a couple of sliced onions, 3 peeled and squashed cloves of garlic, 3 bays leaves, some rosemary, 250ml stock and 250ml red wine. When it all came to the boil, I covered the whole thing with foil and a lid and popped it in the oven at 150C for a couple of hours. Halfway through I turned the meat over and added a good dollop of wholegrain mustard. It came out lovely and tender and went nicely with some simple boiled potatoes, green beans and spring greens. There was rather a lot of meat, so I pulled a few bits off before I put it on the plates, to keep for lunch one day in the week.

To use up the rest of the gooseberries while they're nice and fresh, I mixed them with some apple to make a crumble. My usual crumble mix is, again, based on a Nigel Slater recipe. I whizz together 90g plain flour with 65g cold butter in a mixer, then add 3tbsp caster sugar, 3tbsp ground almonds and a few chopped hazelnuts. I put the gooseberries and apple (one big Bramley) in a dish, sprinkle over a tbsp sugar, then tip on the crumble mix and cook the whole thing for about half an hour. Even with custard, the gooseberries still had a nice, tangy kick!

17 June - pork with gooseberry sauce

I got a box of gooseberries in today's organic vegbox; small, pinky-green and face-pullingly sharp! I ordered them on a bit of a whim when I was choosing this week's box contents and I wasn't quite sure what I planned to do with them. I rather fancied them as an accompaniment to something savoury, perhaps pork, rather in the vein of apple sauce. I found a recipe for gooseberry sauce to go with savoury dishes on the Riverford website, then I came across a recipe from another food blogger (Girl Interrupted Eating) for pork with gooseberry and sage sauce. I went for a combination of the two as below:

Gooseberry sauce: I put c. 150 g gooseberries, a tablespoon of sugar, a small knob of butter, a splash of water and some chopped sage into a small saucepan and heated it gently until the berries were starting to burst and collapse, but a few were still just keeping their shape. Because the gooseberries were quite pink in colour, the sauce came out a fairly nice yellowy-pinky colour, not the nasty green snot colour my fellow blogger found!

When I tasted the resulting sauce, I not only pulled an incredible face but did a little dance at the exquisite sharpness! I was a bit cautious about dolloping a big blob onto our pork chops, but somehow the sweetness of the caramelised pork managed to balance out the tartess of the gooseberries wonderfully and made a really top combination served with some simple new potatoes and summer greens. Definitely one I'd recommend and to try again.