Good things to eat [Volume 10]: A Cornwall special

I didn't get round to visiting Cornwall until I'd passed thirty. I really shouldn't have left it so long.

Last summer I was on the north coast, in and around Newquay. Thereabouts the coastline is expansive; great sandy beaches, craggy cliffs, crashing waves and dunes. I loved it.

This year I was on the south coast, in and around the Fal estuary. Only 20 miles or so away, but completely different. Here everything is estuarine, muddy creeks snaking between low hills and little boats put-putting between tiny, secluded pebbly beaches. Sailing country, not surfing. Different but equally wonderful.

That's my ode to Cornwall done. You really should go. Now what about the food? If I could give you one piece of advice about eating in this part of the world, it's this: eat whatever you can drag alive from the sea.

The highlight, in both eating and 'cooking an agressive live creature for tea' terms was the crab. I'll own up, we didn't catch these ourselves, they were bought from a fisherman straight from his boat. Two rather large and not very happy spider crabs to be precise.

They were dormant while sat in the bucket (I think the fisherman said to keep them upside down to stop them getting frisky) but livened up no end as soon as they were removed.

It's only at this point you realise why they're called spider crabs, look at the length of those legs!

After a bit of a wrestle the crabs lost and were duly dispatched. They were pretty big so needed around half an hour on a rolling boil to cook through, and them came the tricky bit. Extracting all the juicy morsels of flesh from the body, claws and all of those legs was time consuming but very much worth it. A nutcracker came in handy.

I can't think of any imaginative words to describe their flavour, it was just fresh, sweet, crabby and utterly delicious. We did nothing more with it than eat it scooped up in a lettuce leaf or on butttered brown bread. Divine. It was surprisingly plentiful too, the pair giving up enough meat for eight people.

Out of the same estuary came tiny little shrimps, like the ones that usually end up potted. We did catch these, thought I can't claim the credit (that goes to AS's Aunty). They were almost as lovely as the crab, and in the same sort of way, just beautifully sweet and fresh. They're so tiny that removing the shells is nigh on impossible, but pulling off the heads and just crunching away at the rest worked just fine. I also finally developed a liking for the Chinese habit of sucking the goo out of the heads. Yum.

Still on the seafood front we ate some fat fillets of ling one evening. I'd not eaten this fish before but I'd definitely look out for it again. Before cooking it looked similar to a large cod loin, and the taste wasn't a million miles away either, though I thought it was a little more delicate texture and flavour-wise. Simply baked with lemon and herbs it was very enjoyable.

After an afternoon stroll into St Mawes I couldn't resist having crab again, this time a sandwich in the pub. It wasn't bad, but our crab won by a mile. The meat was fresh and sweet, but there wasn't a great deal of it for the price (£9.50) and it hadn't been picked very carefully (I counted three pieces of shell).

We didn't survive on seafood alone, and it's at this point I should thank my girlfriend's (that's AS in case you were wondering) relatives for their hospitality, and for their brilliant cooking. Except for the pub sandwich and my dubious contribution in manhandling a crab everything in this post is their work. Thanks everyone!

Puddings were no afterthought. For three evenings in a row dessert was a celebration of British fruit. For someone who loves our native fruits as much as I do, this was a very good thing. There was a dream of a brioche summer pudding, resplendent and crimson, and a mouth-puckeringly tart gooseberry crumble.

And then there was this, a rhubarb meringue roulade. Think rhubarb fool crossed with pavlova. Add extra cream, then eat far too much of it far too quickly on account of its deliciousness.

I've talked about lunch and tea, but not breakfast. There was more fruit, with yoghurt and granola, but you don't want to hear about that, you want breakfast meat.

Ta da! The best way to cook an enormous fry-up for loads of people is outdoors, in a huge paella pan. Eggs were squeezed in the gaps and the whole lot served from the pan as a centrepiece to the table. 

So there you have it. I can't think of many finer days than one that includes both black pudding and summer pudding, sunshine, crabmeat, and the sea. Go to Cornwall.

English Muffins

I don't bake very often because I can't usually be bothered following recipes, mistakenly thinking it's too much like hard work. I always forget that whilst a recipe may be involved it often needs only 3 or 4 ingredients and little effort. Cooking Staffordshire oatcakes the other week reminded me how simple and rewarding it can be to mix up a batch of dough or batter, and if everything goes to plan how delicious the results.

With these thoughts in mind, and a cupboard full of yeast and flour it was only a matter of time before I got the mixing bowl out again. It had to be muffins. I love English muffins, simply toasted with butter, or butter and cheese, or butter and jam, or in a home-made version of the McMuffin. The McMuffin is a great idea, just executed badly. Sausage meat of dubious quality and an egg cooked solid. No-one in their right mind chooses a solid yolked egg. I like to make my own version with proper sausages and a runny egg, and it always goes down a treat.

I used Delia's recipe for my muffins. I won't recreate it here because I only changed one thing from the original. I forgot that I didn't have any strong white bread flour, so I used strong wholemeal instead. It worked just fine although I think white is probably better for muffins.

The method couldn't be simpler. Mix your dough, knead it, then leave it prove. This is the dough, kneaded but unproven.

Here it is after proving. It's twice the size as in the last picture, honest.

Then you can roll it out and cut it into muffins, then leave it prove again.

After the second prove they are cooked on both sides in a greased pan. Greased with lard, says Delia.

Leave to cool, then split and toast whenever you want one.

I split one straight from the pan, toasted it and buttered it. Lovely. It's all about the texture with muffins, that crisp, slightly chewy crust on the outside and the soft, yeasty inside that's just airy enough to soak up the butter.

The pièce de résistance was the breakfast muffin. I've been craving black pudding for a while so used this in place of the sausage. A toasted, buttered muffin, Bury black pudding, a runny egg and a squirt of ketchup. I fried the egg in the cutter used for the muffins to get that neat and tidy 'McMuffin' effect. Imagine a world where McDonalds served runny eggs and black pudding!