The Captain's pick: salade de chèvre chaud

The Captain adores this classic salad of goat cheese, of which there are literally dozens of variants—and he has taken it upon himself to sample them all, plate by plate and menu by menu, every time we are in the French Antilles. Well, someone has to do it...

It's all about the delicious contrasts—the hot creaminess of the goat cheese and the cool crispness of the salad leaves; the tangy savour enhanced by the hint of honey in the dressing.

It was time to treat my guests to a little something extra the other night, and so I introduced their main course with a small plate, just enough to whet their appetites—too large for an amuse-bouche, but certainly smaller than a standard appetiser. 

I chose to serve a riff on the classic salade de chèvre chaud: instead of presenting the cheese on crisp, garlicky rounds of toast, I cut the fresh mild goats cheese into fingers and wrapped each in a sheet of delicate Tunisian brik pastry and scattered each with poppy seeds. Then I slid them into a hot oven to warm the goats cheese into a melting creaminess within the light golden shell. I love brik for its flexible translucent sheets, more easily workable than filo and not needing to be layered with an additional coat of butter or olive oil.

For the dressing, I bruised a large sprig of fresh rosemary until the pine-y aromatics rose to my nose, then chopped it fine and tossed it into a beaker of golden honey. I warmed this gently, and left it to infuse. To layer the rosemary flavour, I repeated this process with some good green extra-virgin olive oil. Then I whisked a dab of Dijon mustard, the rosemary-infused honey and the rosemary-infused olive oil in a bowl till they emulsified nicely. I added a little Spanish sherry vinegar—vinagre de Jeréz—drop by drop until the flavours balanced.

For the salad leaves I chose tender baby spinach leaves to contrast with the slightly bitter frill of frisée (curly endive), a few finely-sliced curls of baby celery and a couple of shavings of fresh red beetroot for sweetness and crunch.

Now I had all my contrasts: the hot cheese, the crisp pastry, the fresh salad, the fragrant and lightly honeyed dressing. The verdict? Well, the plates came back clean (in one case, wiped enthusiastically with a licked finger), and The Captain, having eaten his separately-plated Captain's Tithe, pronounced himself well pleased. 

Dry-roasted short ribs in a pepper'd spice crust

Our kind friends Wanda and James came to our rescue one evening, when we had spent many a long day immersed in cleaning and scrubbing and polishing the boat for the trade show. Like benevolent genii from a fairytale, they whisked us away to their beautiful hilltop aerie, then fed us and watered us and returned us to the boat before we even knew quite how it all came about.

We sat on their patio with the blue evening sky above us, admiring the long golden oblongs of light cast by their open French doors, sipping at glasses of wine while their cat twined itself around our ankles in a furry sinuous welcome. Later, plates of richly savoury food appeared in front of us. Their company and thoughtfulness fed more in us than simply hunger, and we returned to our work the next day with stout hearts and good cheer.

One of the dishes from that night was a sublimely tender pile of ribs, which James had coated in a dry spice rub and slow-roasted for hours.

I usually braise my ribs in some kind or other of spiced and seasoned wine before finishing them off to char them, and that's what I plated out for my charter guests' main course; but I wanted to try out this dry-roasted method too, so I amused myself with a little experimental starter for them.

I crushed a generous handful of colourful mixed peppercorns—black and pink, green and mild white—in the mortar and pestle, along with some coriander seeds and cumin seeds for savour. A couple of fine fat cloves of garlic pounded to a creamy paste with plenty of sea salt, and a little chopped thyme, to bind it all together. Pungent and floral and spicy, this paste was rubbed generously into the flesh of a couple of pounds of beef short ribs, which I slid into the top shelf of the oven while a pan of my braised ribs simmered away below.

Two and a half hours later, I took out the tray. The fat had rendered off, and the spice-crusted meat lay in tender fragments on the bones.

I chose to serve this small 'taste' on cucumber slices for their cool juicy contrast, layered some translucent shavings of our house-made pickled cucumber, and finally topped the stack with fine-sliced red radish to play on the mélange of pepper flavour. This is also my nod to the Roman gourmand Apicius, for whom the piquant duo of pepper (a beloved spice of the ancient world) and vinegar-tart pickle would have been comfortingly familiar.

This pleased me enough to make me think about quantifying the proportions into a proper recipe to post at a later date. I may even have the cheek to try serving this one night to Wanda and James the next time we are off-charter, by way of return of hospitality...