Author: Dennis Franklin
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Rough Cut Kitchen – Notes from the Calanques
We spent today in the limestone country of the Calanques National Park outside Marseille, and it is impossible not to think about food when you walk through a landscape like this. The Mediterranean landscape has a particular harshness to it. White limestone cliffs. Thin dusty soils. Dry wind. Salt air. Everything is sun-bleached and water…
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Travelling in Provence
For the next couple of weeks, Rough Cut Kitchen is turning into a bit of a travel food diary. I’m currently in the south of France and, as you’d expect, the food culture here is impossible to ignore. Yesterday was Avignon. Today, Marseille. We’re now based in Aix-en-Provence for a few days while I wander…
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Getting the Sauce Right
Most of the time, what separates something average from something worth eating is the sauce. It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need a bit of attention. Rushing it, or treating it as an afterthought, is where things usually fall apart. The flavour doesn’t develop, and the whole dish ends up feeling flat.…
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Beef Satay-Style Curry
There was rump steak in the fridge that needed using, along with green beans that wouldn’t hold much longer. Onions, garlic and ginger were already there. A jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. Coconut milk on hand. The Malaysian curry powder from earlier. Enough to build something solid without going anywhere else. This wasn’t…
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Pork Medallions with Gravy and Garden Vegetables
There were pork medallions to use, but more importantly there was a container of roast chicken gravy sitting in the fridge from earlier in the week. That’s not something to throw away. It’s already done work. It just needs a way back in. There were also beans still coming through, potatoes on hand, and the…
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Lamb Backstrap with Eggplant and Tomato
This started with a lamb backstrap and a fridge that needed clearing out. There was still eggplant from earlier in the week, already turned into escabeche, along with a run of heritage tomatoes that all came in together — different colours, all ripe at once — and some spring onions that needed using. Enough there…
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End of Season Eggplant – Berenjenas en Escabeche
There comes a point toward the end of the season where the eggplants are still coming, but you can tell they’re not going to get much better. They’re smaller, sometimes a bit tougher, and you’ve usually got more than you planned for. But they still need to be used. Leaving them on the plant isn’t…
Rough Cut Kitchen 