There are the family classics that evoke childhood memories and newer dishes that have marked more recent personal milestones — along with stories that celebrate his favourite ingredients, food memories and family cooking moments.
Stein these days splits his time between Padstow, London and Australia, where he also has two seafood restaurants by the sea in Mollymook, and Port Stephens, New South Wales.
THE BOOK
This is an extract from Rick Stein at Home by Rick Stein. BBC Books, RRP $60
Vietnamese poached chicken salad with mint and coriander
What appeals to me about this salad is the combination of lightly poached chicken, bean sprouts, spring onions and herbs with roasted chopped nuts and sesame seeds, and the slightly gloopy fish sauce, lime juice and chilli dressing.
Serves 8-1 0 as a first course
Serves 4 as a main course
50g root ginger, peeled and sliced
4 small skinless, boneless, free-range chicken breasts
½ large cucumber
8 spring onions, trimmed, halved and shredded
150g fresh bean sprouts
Small handful mint, leaves torn into small pieces
Small handful fresh coriander sprigs
1 tbsp sesame seeds, lightly toasted
60g roasted, salted peanuts, finely chopped
4 Tbsp Thai fish sauce
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp light soft brown sugar
½ tsp cornflour
1 medium-hot red chilli, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Method
Put the ginger into a large, shallow pan with a litre of water and bring to the boil. Add the chicken breasts and leave them to simmer for 5-6 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the chicken to cool in the liquid.
For the dressing, put the Thai fish sauce, vinegar, lime juice and sugar into a small pan and bring to the boil. Mix the cornflour with a teaspoon of water, stir this into the pan and simmer gently for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and leave to cool, then stir in the red chilli and garlic.
For the salad, peel the cucumber, cut it in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. Cut the flesh into 5cm-long matchsticks and add them to a large bowl with the spring onions, bean sprouts, mint and coriander, then toss together.
Lift the chicken breasts out of the poaching liquid and pull them into long chunky strips. Add these to the salad bowl and mix gently. Serve the salad with the dressing drizzled over the top and scattered with sesame seeds and chopped peanuts.
TIP: When peeling ginger, use the bowl end of a teaspoon to scrape the skin off. It’s much easier than using a peeler.
Vodka lemon drizzle pancakes with blackberry compote
There is, I have to confess, no need to put the vodka in the blackberry compote that accompanies these, but it does add to the sense of occasion. The reality is that the director Matt Bennett asked me to come up with a recipe using vodka after a filmed visit to a potato farm and vodka distillery, Colewith Farm, near St Austell, for my Cornish TV series. It was actually a celebration of autumn blackberries, too.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
Blackberry compote
250g fresh (or frozen) blackberries
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1-2 Tbsp caster sugar (depending on sweetness of berries)
Pancakes
125g plain flour
Pinch salt
1 egg, beaten
300ml milk
1 Tbsp sunflower oil, plus extra for cooking
Vodka lemon drizzle
4 Tbsp caster sugar
4 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
2-3 Tbsp vodka
To serve
Clotted cream or vanilla ice cream
Method
First make the batter. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the egg together with a little milk until the mixture is the consistency of thick cream, add the tablespoon of oil and beat in the remaining milk. Set the batter aside for a few minutes while you make the compote.
Put the blackberries, lemon juice and sugar in a pan. Heat gently until the berries start to soften and release some of their juice and the sugar dissolves. Stir gently until you have a syrupy mixture but the berries are still holding their shape.
Take the pan off the heat and set aside.
Heat a 20-23cm non-stick frying pan and swirl in a little oil, then pour out any excess. The pan should be just coated.
Pour in enough batter to coat the bottom of the pan evenly and place over a medium heat. After about a minute or so, loosen the edges and flip the pancake to cook the other side. Repeat to cook the rest, placing each one on a warm plate and covering with a clean tea towel to keep warm.
Mix together the sugar, lemon juice and vodka.
To serve, drizzle each pancake with the vodka mixture, roll it up and spoon over some compote. Serve with cream or ice cream.
Cornish briam
The thought behind this recipe was to come up with a dish that uses all the vegetables currently grown by the farmers who supply our restaurants in late August — things like carrots, courgettes, broccoli and new potatoes. Ross Geach, at Trerethern Farm, also known as Padstow Kitchen Garden, grows wonderful vegetables on his land overlooking the Camel estuary. The view alone makes you feel the vegetables will taste really special, which indeed they do. I cooked this for a sequence in my Rick Stein’s Cornwall series, having remembered a lovely slow-cooked vegetable dish called briam from the island of Corfu, and it works a treat. As our local vegetables don’t perhaps have the intense sweetness of Mediterranean produce, I added some chilli and feta to give it a bit more oomph.
Serves 6-8
150ml olive oil, plus extra for greasing
500g waxy new potatoes, peeled, cut lengthways into 5mm slices
400g carrots, peeled or scrubbed and sliced lengthways
2 large courgettes (about 400g) sliced lengthways
1 large onion, peeled and sliced
5-6 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
300g tenderstem broccoli
4 large tomatoes (or 6 medium),thickly sliced
1 red or green finger chilli, sliced
Handful flatleaf parsley, chopped
A few thyme sprigs, leaves stripped from the woody stalks
200ml passata
100g feta cheese, crumbled
Salt and black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 190degC/Fan 170degC. Grease a roasting tin or a shallow, lidded casserole dish with oil. Spread the potato slices in a single layer and season well with salt and pepper.
Layer the carrots on top, then the courgettes, then the onion and garlic, seasoning each layer with plenty of salt and pepper.
Scatter over the broccoli and cover it with tomato slices.
Add the chilli, herbs and a final sprinkling of salt and pepper. Pour over the passata and the olive oil.
Cover the roasting tin tightly with foil or put a tight-fitting lid on the dish and place in the oven for about 1Πhours.
Sprinkle over the crumbled feta and return the tin to the oven, uncovered, for a further 15-20 minutes.
Serve as a side or main with crusty bread or rice.
TIP: You can use any late summer vegetables you have for this dish.
