Over the years I've had an on-off relationship with Sainsbury's. Actually, I tell a lie, scrub out the "on" bit. Back in the mists of time, probably before many of you were born, Sainsbury's had a reputation for quality. There may have even been a hint of smugness in the middle class housewife's "I bought it at Sainsbury's".
I can just about remember the Sainsbury's in Gerrard's Cross High Street, used as a location in Noel Coward's "Brief Encounter"- which says it all (actually, I tell another fib, as it was nearby Beaconsfield High Street, but you will get my drift); an old fashioned shop with a Mock Tudor shop front (circa 1914), with glazed Edwardian tiles, and a meat-counter, where a butcher in white apron and straw boater (or am I imagining this?) sliced out decent bits of ham on one of those stainless steel slicing machines.
So where did it all go wrong? Some might point the long finger of suspicion at Tesco's. In the 70's "Tesco Reject" was a term of mild abuse, doled out by little boys in long shorts and grubby, bloodied knees. Today, in London, if you compare the two flag-ship stores of Sainsbury's (Nine Elms) and Tesco's (The Hoover Building) Tesco's wins hands down. I'm a frequent (if reluctant) shopper at Nine Elms (purely, I admit, out of sheer laziness) and although the staff are hardworking and cheery, they seem to be constantly let down by bad stocking policies; at times, this so-called "Super Store" feels like something out of the good old German Democratic Republic, circa 1968. It's pretty tired and shabby, too. There are plans afoot to replace Nine Elms with a shiny new mega-store; part of the huge re-generation project in the area: so I'm watching this one with interest. Please don't get me wrong on this, I want Sainsbury's to succeed.
There, I've had my say. Which brings me to this fascinating book I discovered at the Artwords Bookshop in the fabulous Broadway Market. It's Jonny Trunk's Own Label, Sainsbury's Design Studio 1962-1977. It's a terrific book and a reminder that packaging of relatively recent years is an often-forgotten or overlooked phenomenon. In this case, I think images work better than words:
I haven't as yet got my head around the idea that Easter is almost upon us. I love Easter; it should be like Christmas, but without the hassle. I've got a thing too about Hot Cross Buns: the combination of creamy butter, sweet rasins and yeasty dough have a Proustian effect, bringing back memories of Easters past- when, at least, it was bright, fresh and almost warm. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. How memory plays tricks.
Hot Cross Buns are one of those traditional dishes whose origins have been lost in the mists of antiquity. The "crosses" were supposedly meant to ward off evil spirits, and the buns, apparently, were banned by the Protestant church for Popery. You eat them on Good Friday.
Mix up half a pint of milk and water, and warm it up to blood heat. Stir in 22g of fresh yeast, let the mixture get frothy and let it stand for ten minutes.
Sieve 450g plain flour, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of mixed spice,a teaspoon of cinnamon, and some grated nutmeg into a mixing bowl. Stir in 50g of caster sugar. Rub in 50g butter with your fingers. Make a well in the flour mix, pour in the yeasty milk, two beaten eggs, and 175g of currants. Mix it all up to make a dough. Use your hands!
Turn the dough onto a floured board, and knead it with your hands until the dough is elastic. Place it in a warm, greased bowl; sprinkle with flour, and cover with a kitchen towel. If you leave it in a warmish place, the dough should rise.
Once it has doubled in size (this might take over an hour), knock it down, and leave it to rise again for another half an hour. Form the dough into smallish buns. Reserve some of the dough, and roll it out flat. Cut the dough into strips, and place on the top of each bun to form a cross. Set them aside to rest for about fifteen minutes.
Bake them in a pre-set oven at 425F (220C). It might be a good plan to place a tin of water at the bottom of the oven to create a steamy atmosphere. After twenty minutes, the buns should be cooked.
Finish the buns off with a sugar glaze. This is just sugar-water which you have boiled rapidly to form a syrup. Once the syrup is thick enough (and very slightly brown), brush it over the buns.
I've got a guilty secret. I like pork scratchings. Until recently, every day on my way home from the Blacking Factory (a quasi-heated, cavernous warehouse found in the scrappy, semi-industrial inner suburbs of North London), I would pull over at a garage on the A40 and buy a packet of Mr Porky's Pork Scratchings. It was sort of addictive. I kept this one quiet from Mrs Aitch, carefully removing the greasy, empty packet from the floor of the car before bounding up the steps to our shiny, Grecian knockered front door.
You see, it's been a sort of secret love affair over the years- I mean with the Pork Scratchings. If you're not British, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Pork Scratchings are off-cuts of pork rind or skin, deep fried in fat, and then sprinkled with salt, flavourings and undoubtably, our old friend monosodium glutamate. They have a dodgy reputation; they're about as classy as a Knees Up Mother Brown at the local dog track. Those on a diet can look away now.
But now and again, you would run into tantalising, if raffish, home-made versions. The Star Tavern in Belgravia (that excellent traditional London pub; the former haunt of the Clermont gambling set and the Great Train Robbers) sold fresh scratchings, cooked to their own recipe, salted and presented in large glass jars, into which you could plunge your grubby mitts. I liked this.
And now, at last, Pork Scratchings can truly come out of the cold. Tom Parker Bowles, Matthew Fort and pig-farmer, Rupert Ponsonby, are the brainchildren behind a new venture: Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling ('Hand Cooked For a Crisper Crunch'). I'm munching on a packet as I write this, it's a sort of manly, substitute breakfast. According to the packet, "it's seasoned with a special blend of ingredients, without a trace of MSG. Unlike other pork scratchings, Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling is made with 100% prime British pork skin from the finest British Pigs".
They are indeed divine, and far less salty than the more ersatz brands. It's also nice to know that British pigs are being turned into scratchings- sorry boys, crackling, rather than Danish beasts. My only sorrow is that currently, they only seem to be available at the usual up-market parade: Harvey Nick's food hall, Fortnum's, the Chatsworth Farm Shop. But you can, at least, buy them online, and in bulk (£57 for 30 bags, if you're wondering). I quite like the idea of a pork scratchings hoard; in this case, there's going to be no need to keep it a secret.
I'm suddenly rather keen on this dish. Mrs Aitch made it for me last night, and it was truly delicous. Who makes Haddock Monte Carlo anymore? I can't think of anyone I know off-hand. But it's one of those classic English dishes which relies on the quality of the ingredients (in this case non-dyed smoked haddock, with the bones removed) and simple flavour combinations. It is, of course, pretty easy to make as well, which helps.
Place two smoked haddock fillets in a pan of milk and water, with a peppercorn and a bayleaf. I think it's important to buy un-dyed haddock, which has a more sophisticated flavour than that bright radio-active yellow version. Poach gently for about fifteen minutes.
Remove the fish, and scrape off the skin.
Place the cooked fish in a buttered oven-proof oval dish and set aside. Pour off the hot milky fish water into a small pan and start reducing furiously, at a high heat. When it has reduced by about half, remove from the heat and stir in a generous helping of single cream.
Slice up some tomatoes and scatter them over the haddock, and check the seasoning, adding sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, if you think it needs it. Pour the creamy sauce all over the fish and tomatoes, and bake the dish in the oven for a further fifteen minutes or so.
Serve with a poached egg on top, and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. That's it. I like my poached eggs to be runny (who doesn't?) and there's that delicious moment when the yellow egg yolk dribbles into the creamy, savoury, tomato-infused sauce. This really is English cooking at its very best.
Not mine, I'm afraid. Franco Lagattolla's. It's the title of a fun book that I bought the other day for the princely sum of £2.50. That's right, £2.50. One of the things I love about second-hand book hunting is the amount of pleasure old books can bring you for say, the price of some awful paper cup of cold take-away coffee, otherwise known as a "Mocha Light Frappucino Blended Beverage- To Go". The coffee's gone in an instant, but the book stays on your shelf, to be poured over again and again; the cover, typography and graphics to be re-admired, the contents to be savoured and used as a spark for new ideas, or more simply, to dispel the gloom of a boring Sunday afternoon. Oh yes, I love old books. They're like trusty friends. And I like, especially, forgotten books from around forty years ago.
I've written about Franco before. As the blurb on the dust jacket of The Recipes That Made A Million says: "What did Michael Caine, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra all have in common? Answer: they all dined at Mario & Franco's superb Italian restaurants in London- the eating success story with the 'beautiful' people in the swinging sixties".
Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro; former waiters at The Mirabelle, first opened the starry La Trattoria Terrazza in Romilly Street, Soho, in 1959. It's hard to believe now, but La Terrazza was the first restaurant in Britain to serve genuine regional dishes from all over Italy. Their story is covered admirably by Alasdair Scott Sutherland in The Spaghetti Tree, Mario and Franco and the Trattoria Revolution, which I would recommend without hesitation.
Here's a recipe I liked the look of from "The Recipes That Made a Million". It's for Pȇches Flambées, otherwise known as Peaches flamed in kirsch. Those of you with pyromaniacal tendencies will appreciate it:
"Peel four firm but ripe peaches. Poach them in plain water and sugar syrup until barely tender. Do not over-cook. Keep them warm.
In a copper pan melt 25g (1oz) of castor sugar and allow it to take on the slightest colour over a low flame. Add the juice of one orange, four tablespoons of the poaching liquor and a string of lemon peel. Dissolve the caramelising sugar, moving it around with the back of a spoon. Now stir in two tablespoons of Melba sauce and add the poached peaches.
Bring up the heat a little and, turing the peaches gently, glaze them in the syrupy sauce. Pour in a large wine glass of kirsch. Prick the peaches so that they absorb some of the flavours. Pull the pan sharply across the fire, and stand well back while the whole lot bursts into beautiful flames".
Melba Sauce, by the way, is just a pureé of rasberry jam, diluted with a little water and simmered for a few minutes, then strained.
A Happy New Year. As a self-confessed contrarian, I've suddenly decided that I rather like January. As much as I adore Christmas, it does go on a bit, doesn't it? An old friend of mine used to display a banner in his drawing room with "Christmas Must Go!" emblazoned across it. I'm beginning to understand what he felt like. Over the years I've also slowly come to the conclusion that what I really enjoy at Christmas is not the ubiquitous Turkey (dry this year, one of those things), but, instead, a succulent self-cooked, honey and mustard glazed ham (recipe from Sarah Raven), served up with home-made potted mushrooms, and chutney.
This year my mother gave me a pot of her very own "Spiced Apple Chutney", and I have to say, hand on heart, this is probably the best chutney I have tasted in a very long while. Perhaps ever. She discovered the recipe in a book on Indian food, but was a bit vague about what exactly the title was- so my apologies to the author for not being able to tell you the exact source. The chutney's almost a vegetarian curry in its own right; I think that might be part of its very considerable appeal. It's also fairly easy on the vinegar, which helps.
Peel, core and slice up 900kg of cooking apples. Put them into a bowl and sprinkle them with sea salt flakes. Set aside. Grate half a head of garlic and half a knob of fresh ginger. Slice up the remaining halves thinly.
Heat up a large pan and add a dash of oil. Fry the ginger and the garlic until slightly golden. Add 2 tablespoons of mustard seed, one teaspoon of fenugreek seed, 15 peppercorns, two teaspoons of powdered cumin, one teaspoon of chilli powder, one teaspoon of tumeric, and 3-4 chopped green chillis (removing the seeds with your knife. Fry gently for a few minutes.
Add the sliced apples, 150ml of cider vinegar, and 110g granulated sugar. Stir and cook slowly for about thirty minutes or so. Cool and decant into sterlised screw-top jars. The chutney needs to mature for a few months before eating.
I really do hope you are tempted to make this. It's a classic chutney and utterly delicious.
Here we come a-wassailing Among the leaves so green; Here we come a-wand'ring So fair to be seen.
REFRAIN: Love and joy come to you, And to you your wassail too; And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year And God send you a Happy New Year.
English Traditional Carol, circa 1850
A few years ago I became fascinated by Wassail. It's a word that gets bandied about at Christmas, but I bet you anything that most people haven't a clue as to what exactly it is or means. And neither did I until I did a bit of good old internet research. Wassail is a traditional mulled punch, drunk at Christmas-time in the Northern and Germanic countries. Wassailing can either mean the singing of carols (at Christmas, the serfs would wassail the Lord and Lady of the Manor), or, as in Gloucestershire, and the other western counties, the wassailing of an apple tree: to ensure a good harvest and drive away the evil spirits. This happens on Twelfth Night. The wassail is served in a wassail cup or bowl.
Every year, I make my own recipe for Mulled Cider, and it's exceedingly good, I tell you. I'm not really a fan of Mulled Wine: it's too heavy, there's too much tannin, it gives you a headache. And then many people get it wrong. Very wrong. They chuck in a bottle of plonk, boil it up, and then add all sorts of other dodgy ingredients, including vodka; and the result is an over-acidic, pungent brew which can leave you with a god-awful hangover.
Mulled Cider is "different", smoother- and in my opinion delicious. There are no rules; but to get the best results, I suggest that you keep it simple. In a large pan, I pour in a decent dryish West Country of Norman organic cider. The stuff that looks like still, dark, pond water. Try and avoid the cheaper, sweeter, fizzy stuff.
Next, I cut an orange in half, and add that. I do the same with a lemon. I add a few spices: a cinnamon stick, a few cloves, ground nutmeg, and a kernel of ginger. All of these would work well. I taste it.
If it's too dry, add a bit of brown sugar. Start warming it up. You do not want to boil it. Keep it simmering at just below boiling point. If you boil it, all the alcohol will vapourise away, defeating the whole point of the thing in the first place. If you're going to serve it in glass mugs, make sure that you put a silver spoon in the mug first. This will prevent the glass from shattering.
If you've got time, decorate the wassail with "Lamb's Wool". This is just bits of peeled apple, simmered in cider until woolly (it "explodes"). The pulp is floated on top of the mulled cider.
I'm quite curious about the food people ate in the Middle Ages. In The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, Heston Blumenthal mentions his fascination with a bizarre 14th century French cookery book,Le Viander de Taillevent, in which a chicken is plucked alive, basted with soya, wheat-germ and dripping- to simulate roasting, coaxed asleep, and then 'brought back to life' at the table.
In case you're wondering, the rather beautiful illustration is from the Duc de Berry's Book of Hours and depicts the month of January. It probably shows the Twelfth Night banquet, as during the Middle Ages the focus of the Christmas festivities tended to be during the Twelve Days of Christmas, and after the Advent Fast.
I've adapted a 15th century English recipe for "Goose in a Garlic and Grape Sauce" which you could easily make at home. I haven't tried it yet, so I've no idea what it tastes like- it could be foul:
You make a stuffing out of garlic cloves, seedless grapes, chopped parsley and salt, and then stick it up a goose. Roast the bird in an oven set at 350༠C (twenty minutes per pound). When you're happy that the goose is cooked, take it out of the oven, and set aside to cool.
Spoon out the cooked stuffing and blend it in a food processor, adding three hard-boiled egg yolks, and half a cup of cider vinegar. Spoon the finished sauce over the goose.
Devil- a culinary term which... first appeared as a noun in the 18th century, and then in the early 19th century as a verb meaning to cook something with fiery hot spices or condiments...The term was presumably adopted because of the connection between the devil and the excessive heat in Hell...Boswell, Dr Johnson's biographer, frequently refers to partaking of a dish of "devilled bones" for supper, which suggests an earlier use...
Oxford Companion to Food
There's something extremely satisfying about "devilled" food. As you know, "to devil" a dish means to add some form of spice, often something like Worcester Sauce or a hot mustard. These days "devilling' is slightly old-fashioned; it has a hint of the 19th century about it, a whiff of a St James's Street club. I happen to love the tangy, slightly sweet, piquant taste of Lea & Perrins (first produced in the English town of Worcester in 1837), and, like the Victorians, will quite happily devil just about anything, including ham, eggs, kidneys and mutton chops.
Here's a recipe for "Gravy à la Diable" from Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and Company:London] 1894:
Required: half a pint of clear brown stock...half an ounce of arrowroot, a tablespoonful of claret, a teaspoonful of French mustard, a dessertspoonful of Worcester sauce, and a little soluble cayenne, with salt to taste, and a few drops of soy. Mix the thickening with the claret, and the rest of the ingredients, and boil for a few minutes. Serve with kidneys, steaks, & etc., or with grilled fish. For a hotter sauce, increase the Worcester sauce, or boil a few capsicum seeds in the gravy."
Arabella Boxer also has a recipe for Devil Sauce from her book of English Food (recently re-published by Penguin in a sumptious new edition), which I've adapted for The Greasy Spoon:
You melt 30g butter, and stir in 1½ tablespoons of flour, ½ teaspoon of English Mustard, and ½ teaspoon of Curry Powder. Cook this, stirring, for one minute. 275ml of milk is added, and 150 ml of double cream (both of which you've previously heated up together), and the sauce is stirred constantly on the heat until it starts to bubble. The sauce is then simmered gently for about eight minutes, until slightly reduced- and the remaining flavourings stirred in: ½ teaspoon of salt, a pinch of cayenne, ½ tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce, ½ tablespoon of Mushroom Ketchup and, last but not least, a dash of our old friend, Tabasco.
This will make a basic sauce, which can then be poured over an ingredient of your choice: grilled or fried chicken, boiled eggs, and game. I think it would also work well with slices of fresh, juicy ham.
For some weird reason, I always think that the British classic, Toad in the Hole, is perfect for a Saturday Lunch. Not Sunday or Monday, or even Thursday for that matter. Saturday. I can't exactly explain why, there's probably a regressive, childhood thing going on there. Toad in the Hole is easy to make. It's filling. It's cheap. It's also delicious. This is Comfort Food at its best.
If you happen to be American, you are probably now wondering how on earth us Brits can eat one of those slimey, knobbly creatures? Sort of less appealing then a French grenouille, I hear you cry. But as much as I am curious to sample one of those tantalising little critters, the 'toad' is, in all probability, English slang for sausage. It's a bit like Welsh Rabbit (which ain't a rabbit), or Scotch Woodcock (which ain't a woodcock, either).
Back to the Toad: Heat your oven to 220C (425F). Get hold of some decent, fat, organic sausages and chuck them into a roasting tin with a few knobs of lard. You could have fun experimenting with different types of sausage. The better your sausage, the better your Toad in the Hole will taste. Cook the sausages in the oven for about ten minutes. My latest sausage discovery has been Sainsbury's Taste the Difference British Pork & Caramelised Red Onion Sausages. These are utterly delicious! Sweet, juicy, slightly spicy, lots of lovely caramelised flavours going on in there.
Meanwhile, mix up the batter. Sieve 4oz (110g) of self raising flour into a bowl, and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Make a hole or a "well" in the centre of the flour, and pour in 5 fluid oz (150ml) of semi-skimmed milk into the hole. Crack in an egg, too. Mix the flour, milk, and egg up very gradually with a wooden spoon. Beat well, and then add the same amount of milk, again. Pour the finished batter over the sausages, and cook them in the oven for a further 45 minutes or so, until the Toad is risen and browned.
The Onion Gravy is a cinch. You slice up some onions, and brown them in a frying pan. If you add a few pinches of sugar and salt, this will help them to caramelise. You want them to get brown and a bit burnt. This is a good thing. Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook in the oniony fat. Once the onions and flour are brown enough, you can deglaze the pan with some stock, water, and perhaps, a slug or two of white wine. Instead of gravy browning (what's that?), I use a few drops of Soy Sauce, which will give the gravy an even richer colour and taste. A teaspoon of redcurrent jelly is not a bad plan, either. Onion Gravy should be thin.
Did you see Nigel Slater's brilliantly nostalgic television programme on old-fashioned sweeties?: Life is Sweets. We got very excited this end. It brought back so many childhood memories: Spangles, Crunchies, Lemon Sherbets, Flying Saucers, Sweet Cigarettes, Jelly Babies, and Liquorice Allsorts. And then there was all that wonderful 70's chocolate advertising: "All because the Lady Loves Milk Tray", "A Finger of Fudge...", "Take a Break, Take a Kit-Kat", "Fry's Turkish Delight...The Taste of Paradise", "Everyone's a Fruit and Nutcase..." Surely, some of the greatest and most effective advertising slogans of all time? These are the ones you remember, far more than some dreary pitch about car insurance. Especially if they star irritating meerkats.
Anyway, in the middle of the programme, there was suddenly a sneaky glimpse of an old Quality Street tin. You know the one- that slightly kitschy, Regency Revival thing with the chocolate nutcracker soldier and the pretty girl wearing a bonnet. And a bow-windowed shop, if I remember rightly- a bit like the Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly. My grandparents used to keep a large tin of Mackintosh's Quality Street, and we were allowed to plunge our grubby little mitts into it when we visited- and sadly, we didn't visit that often.
Quality Street is now owned by Nestles, and is the best selling brand of chocolate in the world. It was invented in 1936 by Mackintosh's of Halifax and was the first box- or tin rather- of chocolates aimed at a mass market.
"Quality Street" was originally a play, written by J.M. Barrie in 1901. Mackintosh then had the bright idea of using the name as a play on "Quality Sweets". Of course, all that Marie Antoinette/Regency/Early Victorian stuff was dead fashionable in the 1930's. It was very much the era of the Dickensian "Coach & Horses" Christmas Card. There was also a film with Katherine Hepburn (1937), capturing the zeitgeist. In 2000, Nestles banished Major Quality and Miss Sweetie from the tin: I am sad about that- the new tin design seems bland and boring in comparison, just like any other ordinary chocolate brand. Bring them back!
I like Bonfire Night, who doesn't? I would dearly love to take part in the revels being held in Lewes tonight, but this time round, I'm stuck in London. And there's a titillating whiff of paganism about the whole proceedings, isn't there?
Bonfire Night, for me, means piping hot thermos flasks; which means soup. I think a Bloody Mary style Tomato Soup- in other words, a soup laced with vodka, would work brilliantly.
It would be possible to make it in various ways; you could, perhaps, roast tomatoes with garlic, celery and onions in a hot oven (keeping the skins intact), and then whizz up the cooked vegetables in a Magimix to form a soft pulp. The pulp would be cooked briefly in butter and olive oil, vegetable or chicken stock added (and perhaps some extra tomato juice and tomato purée for colour), and the soup simmered for ten minutes or so, before adding Tabasco and Lea & Perrins and adjusting the seasoning (celery salt, black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice?). The soup would be strained through a sieve and then laced with vodka and, perhaps, a dash of dry sherry. I would keep it hot- and avoid bringing it to the boil; a bit like the way you might make a mulled wine or cider.
Every year I try and come up with something "devilled" for Hallowe'en. It seems appropriate somehow. A few years ago I wrote about Devilled Quail's Eggs- they were truly, deliciously sinful and I urge you to make some as soon as you can. Devilled Eggs are popular in the Southern States, but I've given them a more refined twist with the use of quail's eggs. Easier to stuff into your mouth, too. They can, of course, be eaten at any time of the year, and I think they would work brilliantly if you were planning to have a Christmas party.
Here's my post from 2010:
I'm writing this as the gloom descends on a Hallowe'en afternoon. I've always been fascinated by Hallowe'en: as a child in England, it was barely celebrated, apart from a few cartoons on the BBC and a spooky tale or so read out aloud at nursery school. I've been reading up on Hallowe'en and according to the Oxford Dictionary of Folklore, it's quite possible that all that pagan stuff about Celtic fire festivals and the like is a fantasy, invented by Sir James Frazer in the "Golden Bough", and that Hallowe'en's origins are, indeed, Christian and Scottish, where it was known as "Nutcrack Night". During the 19th century, Hallowe'en was associated with fortune telling and love divination: young girls would learn who their future husbands would be.
My grandmother taught me how to carve lanterns, but from turnips- rather than pumpkins. Recently, under American influence, Hallowee'en has become much more popular in England. We've just barricaded our front door and battened down the shutters in preparation for the annual onslaught: London street urchins hammering on the door and rattling the letterbox: "'ere, mister! we know you're there!"
Francisco Goya, Witches' Sabbath, 1789
Hallowe'en food should be spicy (especially with the Mexican Day of the Dead just around the corner) and I gather that in the American Deep South, devilled eggs are traditionally served. But I'm not keen on the idea of serving up stuffed chicken's eggs as a canapé. They're too large, and I think would be a bit clumsy, and even slightly Gothic. So I've adapted the idea, but using tiny quail's eggs, instead. This works much better and they were utterly delicious. We scoffed a plate of them this morning.
Place your quails eggs in a pan of cold water, and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat, put back the lid, and let them stand in the hot water for four minutes. Plunge the cooked eggs into a pan of cold water. To shell them, gently roll the eggs on a hard surface, so that the shells crack. You will find that the quail's eggs have a tougher membrane than chicken's eggs, and once you've carefully removed it, you'll find the shell easier to remove. But it's delicate work.
Slice the cooked eggs in half, and spoon out the cooked yolk and place in a mixing bowl. Add a light mayonnaise, a few dashes of Tabasco, a dollop of Dijon mustard, cayenne pepper and celery salt for seasoning. Whisk up the ingredients together until smooth. Using a piping bag, pipe the devilled mixture back into the quails egg halves.
Arrange on a plate, and sprinkle with finely chopped chives.
I've been meaning to have my say about mutton for some time now. Whatever happened to it? My grandparents used to eat roast mutton on a regular basis, ordered from their local butcher in Buckinghamshire. And this was not so long ago. Today, it's almost impossible to get hold of unless you go to a specialist supplier. Inspired by Rick Stein's excellent television programme Food Heroes, I rang up Lidgate's to buy a joint of mutton. Didn't have any. Slightly surprised tone to the voice. I rang Allen's. Same answer. I rang that upmarket butcher in the Wandsworth Bridge Road. Didn't have any, but they could get some in from that bloke down in Tooting. I gave up, and bought a shoulder of lamb instead.
It's not really the same thing. The tastes, flavours and textures are different. I'm very excited by the whole shoulder of Herdwick mutton (on the bone) sold by Yew Tree Farm in the Lake District for £23.00. Yew Tree Farm also happened to have been owned by Beatrix Potter, which adds that extra frission. As they say on their website: "It's ideal for long, slow cooking...Herdwick Mutton is becoming well known amongst the finest chefs in the country as a delicious full flavoured 'melt in the mouth' meat, reminiscent of meat as it used to be."
Beatrix Potter at Hill Top, Cumbria
Under new guidelines from Mutton Renaissance (the campaign launched by HRH The Prince of Wales), mutton must come from a sheep over two years old, and the animals must have a forage based diet- (ie grass, heather and root crops). The Cumbrian sheep roam the fells and live off the heather, which produces a meat of fabulous quality.
And what can be more traditional than poached mutton, served with caper sauce? It's an absolute British classic. Here's how to make it. It's not difficult, and I really do hope that you take the trouble to order a joint from one of those fabulous farms up in the Lake District. You may have to wait up to two to three weeks for delivery to allow for hanging. It's going to be worth it:
Into a large cast iron cooking pot goes the mutton. Have a look at the shoulder of Herdwick mutton on the bone from Yew Tree Farm. Cover the mutton joint with water, and sprinkle it with chopped onions, quartered carrots, a peeled parsnip, some chopped up celery, a bayleaf, a few black peppercorns and a sprig of rosemary. (Incidentally, I see in some recipes that the mutton is soaked overnight to "degorge" before cooking. I haven't done this before- and it would be interesting to see if it makes a difference. I need to experiment).
Bring the pot to a very slow boil, skimming off the scum as it rises. Turn the heat down, and poach very slowly for about two hours or so- or until you think the mutton is done. I like my mutton to be soft, juicy; a meat that melts in the mouth- mutton has more fat than lamb; you will need to watch the cooking time carefully. You do not want to overcook it. When I tried this recipe with lamb, although it tasted all right, I overcooked it and it ended up a bit on the dry side. No, mutton's the thing for this one.
Remove the mutton from the pan, and allow it to rest. Now's the time to make the caper sauce. It's pretty easy. In a separate smaller pan, make a roux. That's means stirring in white flour into some melted butter, and cooking it gently, stirring as you go, until you end up with a smooth golden coloured flour and butter paste. It's very important that you let the paste cook for a bit, otherwise you will end up wtih undercooked, raw floury tastes. Gradually stir in a bit of stock from the mutton. Keep stirring away. Add a splash of milk. Then a bit more of the stock, then a bit more of the milk- until you have a creamy, béchamel type sauce.
The sauce is finished off with a handful of capers. Check the seasoning, and add sea salt and white pepper to taste. I see that some recipes use cream, rather than milk, for the caper sauce; and of course, you could easily try this out if you prefer. Personally, I think this might be too rich, but as always, it's up to you.
Our new cooker (A Smeg A4-8, if you're interested) is arriving today. Any time between ten and two (I had to pay extra to ensure delivery). And so that Grand Day when I can actually start cooking again is drawing closer. I'm having fun reading food porn, just before hitting the pillow, fantasising about all the new goodies we're going to be sampling in a few weeks time.
And now that autumn is here, I'm also thinking about pheasants. People don't eat enough of them, in my opinion. It's very much a country food, I think, and townies, for some bizarre reason, can't cope. But for me, pheasant is very much the taste of Autumn, with its dark meat and gamey flavours. Coming across the shot is very much part of the charm, too. But pheasant does need to be cooked properly. Part of the problem, I think, is the tendency for the meat to dry out and become stringy. But more about this in a minute.
Although the season starts on October 1st, in practice, very few pheasants are shot before the end of October- and the size and quality of the birds can be poor in this month. Early November is probably a good time to buy your pheasant. The season ends on February 1st. A hen is going to be better for roasting than a cock. What you're after, ideally, is a young-ish hen bird. Bought in early November. Already plucked. You can of course, pluck the bird yourself, or at least try to, but I find, to be honest, that it's not really worth the bother (unless you happen to shoot) when you can buy one professionally plucked from a decent butcher.
One of the most intriguing recipes for pheasant comes from Nathalie Hambro, the author of the Glenfiddich award winning Particular Delights, republished recently by Grub Street. I really like Nathalie Hambro's innovative take on food. She's not frightened of experimenting with different flavours and combinations; usally it works, sometimes, I think her recipes are a trifle weird- but that's all part of the fun and it's refreshingly original, especially if what you're seeking is a taste sensation.
Her recipe for Pheasant with Juniper Pear Butter is going to be one of the first things I'm planning to make when we finally get the new kitchen up and running. She's had the brilliant idea to use a chicken brick to cook the pheasant in. This is a stroke of genius. You' will remember the Chicken Brick. I think they were either re-invented or re-introduced by Terence Conran. Desparately trendy back in the early 70's, they've now almost become a bit of a joke- the sort of thing Islingtonites with scrubbed pine tables, William Morris wallpaper and hippy children dressed in Clothkits would want for Christmas.
But chicken bricks are a good thing: the moisture (or steam) coming off the meat is trapped within the brick, and circulates in the hot air, which, in effect, steams the meat as it roasts, thus keeping in the moisture. Perfect for lean game.
I've had a quick look online, and it's amazing how affordable pheasant is. Lidgate (the rather grand butchers in Holland Park I'm fond of) are selling their birds for £6.75. Allen's of Mayfair are selling theirs for £7.00. The Wild Meat Company are asking a very reasonable £4.95. And I expect that you could probably find even cheaper birds at local butchers out in the sticks.
Soak the chicken brick in cold water for about ten minutes. The clay in the brick will absorb the water.
Take your plucked pheasant, and wash it thoroughly. Peel a pear, and push it into the cavity of the pheasant. This will also help the pheasant to remain moist. Season the pheasant with salt and pepper. Crush somejuniper berries, and rub them all over the pheasant. Sauté the prepared bird in a pan with some butter and oil, for about six minutes, so that it is lightly browned all over. The oil will help to stop the butter from burning.
Line the bottom of the chicken brick with tin foil, and put in the pheasant with its juices. Replace the top of the chicken brick, and bake in a preheated oven at 240℃ for an hour.
Now for the juniper butter: Finely chop up some shallots, and garlic. Melt some butter in a pan, and add the garlic, shallots, and the crushed juniper berries you've got left over from the pheasant. Simmer gently for about twenty minutes.
Take off the heat, and add the juice of two lemons. Season with sea salt and white pepper, and sprinkle with freshly chopped chives. Serve slices of the cooked pheasant with a small helping of the pear (in effect a stuffing), and the juniper butter sauce.
I think this might work well if you were to serve it with pearl barley. Maybe pearl barley cooked with a bit of stock, lemon juice and thyme? The piney, gin-ish, juniper flavours go beautifully with the sweet fruitiness of the pear, and the autumnal, woody gamey flavours of the pheasant. Oh god, I'm salivating as I write.
We are still without a kitchen. I'm not blaming the builders, who have been superb and worked like navvies, but our renovations have turned out to be a more ambitious enterprise than we had originally envisaged. The entire floor base has had to be broken up with a pneumatic drill, revealing a sort of packed down clay surface; pipes relayed, walls rebuilt, chimneybreasts knocked back, French windows inserted, everything re-wired. Gutted. They're nailing down re-claimed 1920's floorboards as I write.
It's been chaos, acidic builder's dust choking everywhere and everything (my dried-up hands breaking out into an unpleasant rash), books piled up high at crazy angles, cardboard boxes stacked here and there- an open invitation to trip, both of us trying hard not get grumpy. But it's been difficult.
And that constant drilling noise, from early morning to dusk. But the worst thing of all: No cooker. Yup, nothing to eat except micro-waved food, and sardines straight from the tin. Neanderthal. God, I'm utterly sick of micro-waved food. Initially, it wasn't too bad, and we could sort of cope with "Taste the Difference" packet chicken in black bean sauce. But after several months of this (has it been longer?) and all those supermarkety, ready-to-go, microwavey instant things have blurred into one awful, bland, salt-rich, monosodium glutamate lovin' nightmare.
Talking of which, I'm beginning to dream about food. Properly cooked food. Fresh food. I had a lovely fantasy sequence the other night which involved, amongst other things, the making of a New England Chowder. Fresh crab, little diced carrots, potatoes, onions, chopped flat-leaf parsley. Creamy. Rich. Thick. Intense, deep fishy, sea-side flavours. And I've started to have an obssession with chicken broth. Can't stop thinking about it.
A very kind friend learnt of this, and lent me us a nifty little camping stove, powered by a Calor Gas canister. I managed to make an excellent chicken soup or broth from it, which I served up to Mrs Aitch who was running a temperature. Cooked on the floor, in the ruins of our former kitchen. Next to a Cement Mixer. It was one of most delicious things I've ever tasted for a long, long time: take away decent, properly cooked food for a few months, and Mein Gott, you will start to really appreciate the crucial role food plays in the quality of life. It's terribly important.
Anyway, this is how I made my very simple, but completely beguiling chicken broth. I managed to find a large pan (about the only thing not in storage), rinsed off the dust with the garden tap outside, and into this I placed a very ordinary, ersatz, non-organic supermarket chicken. A whole one. Price: Five Pounds. By the way, for those of you who are sniffy about supermarket chicken, please take into account that in this particular case the poor beast did not die in vain, in the way that it might have done if it had been served up, say, by the Good Colonel Sanders.
I topped up the pan with water, so that it covered the chicken. Into the pan went: a few leeks (roughly chopped), a parsnip or two for extra sweetness (again, roughly chopped), a few peppercorns, a few onions (roughly chopped), a stick of celery (snapped in two) a few parsley stalks, a sprig of thyme, and a few baby carrots (chopped up into chunks).
The pan was brought to a slow simmer on a lowish to medium heat, and I scraped off the scum from the top as it did so. I kept on scraping off the scum as it bubbled up to the surface. The stew was then simmered slowly at a low heat, until the chicken started to break up, and a rich stock was formed. From memory, this took about an hour and a half. About twenty minutes beforehand, I had sliced up some further baby carrots into rounds and added them to the broth- for decoration. Taste, and add sea salt if you feel it needs it.
To serve, I ladled out the clearish chicken broth into a soup bowl, leaving all the bits and pieces behind in the pan. With a fork, I rescued some of the white chicken meat I found floating around in the pan, and tore it up into bite-sized pieces or strips. These were placed in the middle of the bowl, and the cooked baby carrot slices scattered around them. The broth was finished off with finely chopped flat leafed parsley.
It's a pretty and delicate looking dish, which also happens to be cheap to make; and if you're clever and bother to skim off the scum as it cooks, you should get a reasonably clear broth or consommé. This will amaze and impress your friends and neighbours.
The Veeraswamy (99-101 Regent Street, London W1) is said to to be the oldest Indian restaurant in Britain. It was founded in 1926 by Edward Palmer, a retired Indian army officer. Palmer is an interesting character. From an Anglo-Indian family, his grandfather founded a Hyderabad banking house in the 18th century, and his grandmother was Indian. His great grandmother was the Princess Begum Fyze Baksh. Palmer's company E. P. Veerasawmy & Co. (note the slightly different spelling) ran the Indian foods section at the British Empire exhibiton in 1924, selling spices, chutneys and curry pastes to the British public- this must have seemed deeply exotic at the time.
In 1936 he published "Indian Cookery: For Use in All Countries". This is a rare book in first edition, and difficult to find, but I see that a paperback edition, published by Mayflower in 1972, is readily available, and there are various other fun editions you can get your teeth into:
In 1930, The Veerasawmy was taken over by the Conservative MP, Sir William Steward. The restaurant was popular with all the usual Society suspects of the day: Edward, Prince of Wales, Mrs Simpson, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin. And it's still there (although you will find the decor much changed), managed by the owners of Chutney Mary, and the brilliant and highly affordable chain, Masala Zone- which I would recommend without hesitation.
I'm interested in Anglo-Indian food. Like so many other people in this country, I have (or have had) relations who lived in India. My great uncle, from memory, had been in the Indian Army. One of my all-time favourite dishes is kedgeree- that savoury Anglo-Indian confection of rice, smoked fish, chopped eggs and "curry" flavourings. Piccallili (which I wrote about yesterday) is another example. It's sort of in the blood. There are some who will say that Anglo-Indian food is not authentic; a bastardised version of the real McCoy. This may or may not be the case, but it exists (if slightly out of fashion) and for me, that's as real as it gets.
I've built up a modest collection of books on the topic:
David Burton, "The Raj at Table", Faber, 1994
Jennifer Brennan, "Curries & Bugles", Harper Collins, 1990
Lizzie Collingham, "Curry, A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors", Random House, 2006
Rhona Aitken, The Memsahib's Cookbook, Piatkus Books, 1993
Pat Chapman's "The Taste of The Raj", Hodder & Stoughton, 1997
There's a recipe for Piccalilli in the Waitrose Autumn booklet which caught my eye. They've called it "Piccalilli With A Punch". I like the idea, but they haven't got it quite right. Waitrose suggest you use butternut squash (not that authentic in my opinion), and their photograph shows very large (too large) chunks of vegetables sitting on a watery sauce (which, I think, should be much thicker). Still.
Piccalilli is one of those slightly weird British "delicacies"- if that's the right description; I'm not sure that it is. Bright yellow in colour, and potently acidic; utterly out of fashion too, evoking the world of Austerity Britain: all the glamour of Dad's allotment, prize marrow competitions, Brown Windsor soup, late dusty Summers and musty pigeon lofts.
I spent a few minutes researching its history on the internet. Apparently, the first known Piccalilli recipe was created by a Mrs Raffald in 1772, when it was also known as "English Chow Chow". That sounded about right. It had to be connected in some way with Eighteenth Century India didn't it? I'm assuming that the rather odd sounding name is just a play on the word, pickle.
Anyway, here's The Greasy Spoon's recipe for making your very own piccalilli. You can, of course, use any late summer vegetables you happen to have lying around, but I do think that piccalilli should include cauliflower in some shape or form; butternut squash just strikes me as too American for what is a very British pickle. Carrot and courgettes would be good, too.
First prepare the vegetables: I like them to be chopped up into reasonably small, bite-size chunks. Break up a small cauliflower into small florets, peel a cucumber, de-seed it, and chop it into small cubes. Finely chop up two onions. Chop up a few peeled carrots into small to medium size dice. Dice up a courgette into similar size chunks.
Place the vegetables in a bowl, sprinkle them with salt, and leave to stand overnight. The salt will draw out lots of water and help to keep the vegetables crisp. Pour off the water, rinse the vegetables with cold water, and pat them dry.
When you're ready to make the piccalilli, get hold of a large preserving pan and pour in about 500ml of cider vinegar. Add 250g of sugar and the following spices: a dollop of Colman's English mustard, turmeric, ground ginger, ground cumin, black mustard seeds, chili flakes, nutmeg, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
Warm it through until the sugar dissolves, add the vegetables and then bring the mixture to the boil. Season with chunky black pepper, reduce the heat and simmer away for about ten minutes. It's unlikely that you'll need to add any more salt, as you've already used it at the beginning of the recipe. The turmeric and mustard will turn the mixture a bright yellow colour.
Finally, thicken up the piccalilli with some cornflour: in a separate bowl add some of the cooking liquid to a tablespoon or so of cornflower and whisk it up until it forms a paste. Reduce the heat and slowly mix this paste into the piccalilli. Simmer for a further five minutes (until the cornflour is cooked properly) and then decant into sterilised jars.
It will need to mature in a dark cupboard for about a month before use. Excellent with cold beef and oily fish such as mackerel and herring, and perfect for Christmas if you start thinking about making it now.
I stopped off yesterday at a garage on the Western Avenue and bought an M & S Tomato, Egg & Salad Cream Sandwich. It was delicious: a guilty, if slightly tacky, pleasure; the substitution of Salad Cream for Mayonnaise a masterstroke. The vinegary taste of the Salad Cream worked beautifully with the egg, salted tomato and brown bread.
Making your own version would be easy enough: I would suggest that you spread the Salad Cream onto slices of brown bread; adding a layer of sliced tomatoes (removing the skin by immersing the tomatoes in boiling water for a minute or so, and discarding the pips), and a further layer of chopped hard-boiled eggs. Season with salt and white pepper, remove the crusts and cut into rectangles or fingers.
Salad Cream was invented in 1925 by our old friend, H. J. Heinz & Co; apparently the first brand developed exclusively for the British market. Oh yes, it's a very British thing, is Salad Cream. There's also a Crosse & Blackwell version. I can't honestly tell you which one is better.
There was also a rather scary radioactive substance called "Sandwich Spread"- which I haven't tasted for about twenty five years. I think I will probably leave it at that.
Talking of which, The Greasy Spoon Kitchen is still out of action, and as I write, the vibrations of a pneumatic drill are reverberating around the house. It's like hearing Gog or Magog undergoing treatment in the dentist's chair. Today, a load-bearing wall is being demolished. We're sick of micro-waved food. Initially, it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. This morning I'm not so sure. It's so bland. I appreciate that it is very affordable, but how on earth can people live on this stuff day in day out?
And now for something completely different. I'm never entirely sure about tomato ketchup. Not the classic stuff in bottles, that sauce made by Heinz- but the various recipes you come across telling you a) how to make it and b) how much better it is than the shop version.
It's the same thing with several famous and established classic brands. Is fresh corn-off-the-cob really that much better than Jolly Green Giant niblet sweetcorn in the tin? I remember the Roux brothers admitting on camera that they most certainly used tinned sweetcorn ("it is a good quality product"). Are home-made baked beans really that much better than the Heinz version? Isn't it a case of the Emperors' New Clothes?
The more I think about it, there's a group of food brands and products which are, frankly, sacrosanct. Many of them were dreamt up in the Victorian, Edwardian or early 20th century periods. It's partly do to with childhood nostalgia, it's partly to do with the packaging. It may have something to do with the taste. Like old friends, they've just got that je ne sais quoi, they never let you down. The following, in my opinion, are members of this august club: Heinz Baked Beans, Kit-Kat, Mars Bars, Heinz Tomato Soup, Jolly Green Giant Sweetcorn, Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce, Schweppes Tonic Water, Hellman's Mayonnaise, Colman's Mustard, Marmite, Coca-Cola, Jaffa Cakes, H.P. Sauce, Tabasco, Angostura Bitters, Cadbury's plain chocolate digestives, Pimm's, J & B Rare blended whisky, Bournville dark chocolate, Camp coffee.
Do you notice how most of these brands have more-or-less never changed the general style of the package design, although there may well have been very subtle changes to the overall packaging over the decades? Tamper with the classics at your peril! I'm not at all happy with what Heinz have done to our very own Lea & Perrins. They've simplified the label, and introduced nasty thick funeral black borders. Mr Lea and Mr Perrin, I think, have disappeared too. Having said that, the last time I was at the supermarket, I saw a shelf newly stacked with bottles of the old design, so it looks possible that the re-branding has failed, and Heinz have been forced to revert to the original packaging.
Another disaster (from my point of view, I have no idea if they have increased sales or not) is what the Kraft corporation have done to the classic Terry's All Gold, first produced in 1932. It's now a completely different product, split into two separate boxes, one for plain and one for milk chocolate. The fondants taste different. And where's the barrel of rum?
Anyway. Back to the Tomato Ketchup. If you feel like running against the grain, here's Lindsey Bareham's recipe for fresh tomato sauce, from her excellent Big Red Book of Tomatoes, published by Grub Street:
Cut 350g tomatoes in half lengthways, then grate the tomatoes with the cut side facing the grater. Discard the skins and season with salt, pepper, a tablespoon of vinegar and a crushed clove of garlic. Beat in four tablespoons of olive oil, and shred basil over the top.
Rex Whistler (1905-1944), "Self-Portrait", 1940, National Army Museum
One of my favourite biographies of the 1980's is Laurence Whistler's The Laughter and The Urn, an affectionate portrait of his brother, the artist and illustrator, Rex Whistler. Rex was killed in July 1944 as the Guards Armoured Division attempted to break out of the salient at Caen. His languid self-portrait, painted in 1940, is now in the possession of the National Army Museum. He's sitting on the edge of the balcony of one of those Nash stucco terraces in Regent's Park, self-aware in his new uniform of the Welsh Guards; Sam Browne belt unbuckled, cocktail tray and paint brushes at the ready.
Rex Whistler died at far too young an age. He is remembered now for his charming, delightful, whimsical if frivolous, illustrations (Beverley Nichol'sDown the Garden Path, immediately comes to mind); he was after all, a friend of Stephen Tennant and a Bright Young Thing, but his later work shows the promise of greater things. Here's his portrait of Sargeant Isaacs, Welsh Guards:
Rex Whistler (1905-1944) "The Master Cook", Sergeant Isaacs of the Welsh Guards, 1940 or 1941.
Rex Whistler (1905-1944), "Caroline Paget", circa 1938
In 1926, The Tate Gallery commissioned Whistler to redecorate the murals of their then refreshment room, now the Rex Whistler Restaurant at Tate Britain (the restaurant is currently closed for re-fururbishment until 2013).
With quirky wit, Rex called his murals The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats: "a hunting party is formed, including a princess and her maid, a prince, a colonel, a captain, a pantry boy and the son of an impoverished nobleman. At the start of the mural they are seen leaving a palace and riding across the countryside, spearing sturgeon, hunting for truffles and other delicacies. The hunters encounter wild and mythical beasts on their journey through the mountains and forests including a leopard and a unicorn".
Rex Whistler (1905-1944), "The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats", Tate Gallery, London, 1927
Yesterday I mentioned my "cook books to save in the event of a fire shelf". I've got another one to add (this is growing by the day). It's The Tate Cookbook, by Paul King and Michael Driver, published by The Tate Gallery in 1996. It might just be still available new, otherwise you should easily be able to track one down through amazon or abebooks. I really love it. Published in an elegant format, with a terrific dust-jacket by William Strang ("Bank Holiday", painted in 1912) it's generously illustrated with food-related paintings and drawings by the likes of William Nicholson, Vanessa Bell, Elisabeth Blackadder, William Scott, Duncan Grant, Stanley Spencer and Walter Sickert.
Inside, there's a selection of relatively simple, elegant (like "iconic", a much over-used word, but I'm going to use it again without hesitation in this case), recipes with a British, even Nursery twist: buttered crab, venison pâté en croûte with Cumberland Sauce, poached pears with stilton walnut quennelles, omelette arnold bennett, breast of pheasant with pâté croutons and Madeira sauce, whisky and coffee ice cream, brioche and butter pudding, lemon soufflé. All this is similar, in some ways, to the 1920s' and 30's recipes inArabella Boxer's Book of English Food.
William Strang (1859-1921), "Bank Holiday", 1912, dust-jacket design for The Tate Cookbook
I've always admired Jacqueline Kennedy's taste, especially in antiques, pictures and books. The Sotheby's catalogue (The Estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, April 23-26, 1996) was a revelation; proving that she had an excellent, understated eye (from memory as the catalogue's currently in storage) for: old master drawings, charming hand-coloured Regency and Biedermeier prints, John Singer Sargent sketches, creamware Corinthian candlesticks, Louis XVI furniture, natural history engravings by Audubon. Everything was slightly tatty, too. I liked that: her books had been well thumbed, and well-read; the antithesis of the immaculate coffee table books you see piled up in interior design magazines.
To be honest, initially I thought the book was going to be a bit of a joke. Cringy title. A slightly embarrasing buy, not quite at the brown paper bag stage, but you will get the drift. How wrong I was! It was a terrific buy, and it's now got pride of place on that shelf of cookery books I'd rescue if the house caught fire (which is more than likely with the full-scale renovations currently in progress); alongside The Harry's Bar Cookbook, The Prawn Cocktail Years, Lindsey Bareham's Just One Pot and Arabella Boxer's English Food.
Martha Sgubin cooks the sort of food I know I'd love if- and when- we ever get round to employing a private chef. Simple but relatively sophisticated; unpretentious, Anglo-American with a French and Italian influence. Honest food cooked extremely well- and with style. Flicking through at random, we have: Mussel Salad, Shepherd's Pie, Frozen Lemon Soufflé, Pear Sorbet, Green Risotto, Tarragon Chicken, Warm Lobster Salad with Basil Viniagrette, Truffle Soup and Strawberry Shortcake.
I now have something shocking to admit to you. I have declared this house "A Mashed Potato Free Zone". For some reason, I loathe mashed potato. It's weird, I know. I can quite happily tuck into waxy new potatoes; sautéed potatoes are good, chips are divine. But mashed potato is the Mark of the Beast. It may be something to do with the floury texture. It may be something to do with school (antique Irish cooks at Dotheboy's Hall, fags dangling from their pursed lips, blue nylon housecoats) or those robotic alien creatures which peddled instant mashed potatoes for Cadbury's back in the 70's. Mash Get Smash. But for today only, I'm going to lift my ban, and actually recommend a dish which includes the evil substance. I'm quite happy to serve this up to our guests. Just bear in mind that I won't touch it. But if it's good enough for Mrs Onassis...
Here's the recipe for Jackie Kennedy's Shepherd's Pie, as cooked by Martha Sgubin, and adapted by The Greasy Spoon:
4 cups chopped cooked lamb or roast beef (the meat must be rare)
2 large cloves of garlic
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon of fresh rosemary leaves
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, divided
3 Tablespoons flour
1 cup beef stock
Salt and Pepper
4 cups mashed potatoes
Preheat your oven to 350°. Combine the lamb, garlic, onion and rosemary and put them through a meat grinder twice. It does need to be a meat grinder.
Melt six tablespoons of the butter in a large pan, and stir in the flour. Stir constantly on a low heat to form a roux. You'll need to do this for a few minutes so that the flour cooks.
Add the ground lamb mixture and stir it in. Add sea salt flakes and pepper to taste. Pour the combined mixture into an oven-proof oval casserole dish. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top. Make sure the lamb mixture is completey covered and that the potato is spread evenly, touching the rim of the dish. Take a fork and rake a design across the potato. Long grooves across the width could be a good plan. Dot with butter. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes until the filling is hot and the potato has browned.
Cooking For Madam, Recipes and Reminiscences from the Home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Marta Sgubin (and Nancy Nicholas), published by Scribner, New York, 1998.
We spent yesterday evening watching Julien Temple's brilliant film, London: The Modern Babylon: a slightly surreal scrapbook of London images, beautifully edited, thought-provoking and at times, moving. It's a more than a worthy addition to the growing backlist of London documentaries, which include Norman Cohen's The London Nobody Knows (1969) and Patrick Keiller's London (1994). Julien Temple has caught the zeitgeist: with the success of the Olympics, London's suddenly very much the place to be at the moment; there's a positive vibe in the air. With all its chaos.
All this coincides with the re-publication in paperback of photographer Clive Boursnell's Old Covent Garden; an evocative collection of images taken during the 1960s' and 70's, before the fruit, vegetable and flower market was relocated to the brutalist wasteland of Nine Elms. I can just about remember the old market as a child- we must have driven past it on the way to the theatre. Newspapers lying on the cobbles, cartons of rancid fruit, Victorian green painted barrows, the smell of sulphuric, rotting cabbage. To think that the bowler hatted bureaucrats had plans to drive a motorway right through the middle of it! Can you imagine?
Alfred Hitchcock set one of his last films, Frenzy, there, two years before the market closed. I'm also a huge fan of Cecil Beaton's romanticised designs for My Fair Lady.
The excellent Peak of Chic blog left an interesting comment on my recent post on Pink Gin. She wondered if she could buy Plymouth Gin in America? I expect she can, but I have a feeling that it's going to be more readily available from specialist shops.
Plymouth Gin was the traditional gin of choice as used by the Royal Navy, and traditionally, Pink Gin was made with Plymouth, rather than London Dry gin. I read somewhere that originally, back in the 19th century, Plymouth Gin did taste considerably different from today's London Dry (it was sweeter and more aromatic); and it was also the gin of choice for Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book, first published in 1930.
Since starting The Greasy Spoon (was it really over five years ago?), I've developed an interest in package design- especially for spirit brands. I've noticed that Plymouth Gin have updated their bottle and label. I really like their new design. They've used their historical archives as inspiration, gone back to the "curves" and reinstated the friar on their label- for this I applaud them; ditching their more rectangular, modernist bottle in the process. Many brands seem to have gone for this style in very recent years; no doubt to try and appeal to a younger, cocktail bar clientele. I'm not entirely convinced.
I really dislike the recent re-packaging of Mount Gay "Eclipse" rum. They've got "rid" of their charming old-fashioned bottle (reminiscent of the 50's Captain's Cabin, pirates, treasure maps, Robert Louis Stevenson and the romance of the Caribbean) and replaced it with a bland, perceivedly trendy, cocktail bar thing. Honestly, it could now be a bottle of Amaretto.
Mount Gay "Eclipse" rum- the old design, on sale until very recently
"A gin and tonic says a lot about you as a person. It is more than just a drink, it is an attitude of mind. It goes with a prawn cocktail, a grilled Dover sole, Melba toast and Black Forest gâteau." Nico Ladenis, My Gastronomy, 1987
It's weird not having a kitchen; or at least, one we can use. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we're having our kitchen completely re-built. It's now at the "shell" stage; interesting scraps of Victorian wallpaper have emerged. There's builder's dust everywhere, and we're living a hand-to-mouth existence upstairs.
But this made me think. How difficult is it to come up with original and interesting recipes that don't actually need any cooking? Obviously, you could go down the salad route- which would would be fine, up to a point Lord Copper. But it could get pretty darn boring after a few days. Ceviche could be more interesting. The famous Mexican dish in which raw fish gets "cooked" in citrus juices and chili. No stove involved. This could be an interesting idea for a book? "Gourmet Food without a Cooker". Has anyone written one yet?
Another suggestion on this theme is the ubiquitous Prawn Cocktail. I have no shame in holding up my hand and championing this dish. It's a classic. Everybody secretly loves it. According to Australian Gourmet Traveller: "in 1959, a dish consisting of shrimp with a dollop of cocktail sauce, served in a sundae glass, was popularised by Las Vegas’s Hotel Nevada (now the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino), which coined the term “original shrimp cocktail”. It was served for fifty cents, and this price has increased only twice in the intervening years".
Here's how I make it: The first step is to create a Marie-Rose Sauce. A spoonful of tomato ketchup, a few drops of Tabasco, a drop or two of Lea & Perrins, and a squeeze of lemon juice are added to a mayonnaise base. You can alter the flavourings to suit your taste. Salt and white pepper might be a good idea too. I like it to have a slight kick. Cooked prawns are then placed in a small glass or tumbler (quite possibily on a bed of designer lettuce) and the Marie Rose sauce poured on top. I'm rather anti garnishes at the moment. Simplicity is a good thing, so I would probably serve it as it is. If the ingredients are good, the dish will shine.
Now for a bizarre twist on the classic Marie Rose Sauce. While trawling the internet, I found a recipe for something called "Sauce Liberal" from none other than our old mucker, The Duchess of Windsor (aka Mrs Wallis Simpson). You make the Marie Rose sauce in the usual way- but finish it off by mixing in "liberal" slugs of neat gin. I gather that this went down rather well at the Windsors' sybaritic villa off the Bois de Bologne.
The Windsor villa in the Bois de Bologne: the spiritual home of "Sauce Liberal"
This worried me. Okay, I didn't exactly have a sleepless night over it, but I reckoned that the bitter taste of the warm gin would ruin an otherwise excellent sauce. So, as an experiment, I boiled up some gin in a pan, until all the alcoholic vapours had burnt off, then added the reduced spirit to the sauce. It worked! The juniper flavours came through, and it gave the sauce a subtle twist.
The Greasy Spoon Kitchen, as taken this afternoon. The plastic bin horror in the front corner will have to go.
Sir William Nicholson (1872-1949), Study for Breakfast at Chartwell II, Sir Winston Churchill and Clementine Ogilvy Hozier, Lady Churchill, in the Dining Room at Chartwell, with their cat, Tango, The National Trust
I had an unashamedly teary afternoon yesterday watching Richard Attenborough's poignant film, Young Winston, (1972). It's shown in an edited version on minor television channels from time to time, which is a pity- as it is a marvellous film. Terrific (no, outstanding performances) from Anne Bancroft as Jennie Churchill and Robert Shaw as Lord Randolph. Simon Ward's also superb as the young thruster, and there's lots of Elgar.
Which reminded me of Sir William Nicholson's charming Study for Breakfast at Chartwell, painted just before the outbreak of the Second World War, at the time of Churchill's Wilderness Years. Those of you who have visited Chartwell will probably recognise the rather stylish 1930's dining room. Their little marmalade cat, Tango, is sitting on the table next to Clemmie. I was pleased to see this, as this is just the sort of behaviour we get from our beloved, but utterly pesky, Burmese brown, Oskie.
I'm firmly of the opinion that a proper English Breakfast is one of our greatest contributions to civilisation. Taken sitting at a shiny mahogany table; with the bright morning light streaming in through the windows, bouncing off the polished silver. Starched white linen napkins, silver toast racks, little pots for the hot, tangy English mustard. Chafing dishes on the sideboard. Kedgeree, kippers, grilled sausages, devilled kidneys, toast, Seville orange marmalade, grilled bacon, grilled tomatoes, eggs both poached and scrambled, smoked haddock, porridge, Earl Grey tea, black coffee.
Oh, how I love youtube. It's that serendipity thing going on. You've got an hour or so to spare, and just through random coincidence and one thing leading to another, you discover infinite numbers of new sub-cultures you didn't even know existed. And that's how I came across Chef Harpal. I have no idea if he's a huge culinary star in India, Australia, Singapore- or wherever. But what I do know is that his take on Rogan Josh is extremely delicious- and for those of you with that certain chili kick, this is going to be right up your street. Incidentally, there's no tomato or tomato sauce in it whatsoever. All the red 'fiery' bit comes from the chili.
If you've got the time and inclination, have a look at his video, as posted below. If you haven't, here's my version of Chef Harpal's Rogan Josh:
In hot oil, you fry: a cinammon stick, a few cloves, a bayleaf, a few black cardamoms, and a kilogram of thinly sliced onions. Cook until the onions are beginning to turn slightly brown. Add a tablespoon of garlic paste, and then a tablespoon of ginger paste. Take a shoulder of lamb, and cut it up into chunks. Fry until evenly coloured and the lamb is soft. Add water or stock, and a generous dash of sea salt. Cover and cook for about twenty five minutes.
Mix up a decent tablespoon or so of chili powder with water, to form a loose, liquidy paste. This is one of Chef Harpal's nifty tricks. It helps to release the oils and bind the chili to the sauce. Don't add the chili powder as it is. Throw in a teaspoon of crushed fennel seeds and a teaspoon of crushed, powdered ginger. Let them cook for a few minutes and then turn down the heat and mix in about half a cup of whisked yoghurt. Simmer until the lamb is tender.
Gooseberries are the most English of fruit, although for some reason it's becoming incredibly hard to find any for sale here in London. The season is just about coming to an end. I had been meaning to make Gooseberry Gin for ages, but, typically, had never got around to it until last weekend, when I managed to track down a packet of frozen gooseberries from the wonderfully helpful Wholefoods in Kensington High Street.
Gooseberry Gin is a flavoured, gin-based liqueur, made in a similar way to the much-loved, traditional Winter tipple, Sloe Gin. I find that freezing the fruit helps to break them down- which, as you want the sugars and juices to be released- is a good thing.
Making the gin was straightforward. I bought a standard large bottle of Sainsbury's home-brand gin (actually distilled by Greenall's, so it's more than all right). I smashed up the thawed green gooseberries with a wooden mallet and filled an empty glass bottle (an ex-olive oil bottle with one of those plastic swing corks) with the gooseberries- about half way up. I poured granulated white sugar into the bottle- about a third way up. I topped up the bottle with the Sainsbury's gin, and finished it off with a few teaspoons of concentrated organic Belvoir Elderflower Cordial. I shook it up. The gin turned a lovely light greeney-grey Eau de Nil colour. I need to carry on shaking the bottle every day for about two weeks, and then it's going into the dark, cool(ish) cellar for six months or so.
I've had a sneaky taste already, and it's looking good. Very floral, very grassy, masses of tart grapefruit, similar in a way to those lovely grassy, summery tastes you get in a decent Sauvignon Blanc. I think it's going to be excellent as a summer liqueur in its own right, or perhaps, as an alternative to the standard gin and tonic. I like the idea of offering guests a Gooseberry Gin & Tonic.
The photograph comes from an inspirational Scottish deli called Demijohn in Edinburgh. This sort of thing really turns me on. It looks a bit like an apothecary in a monastary. Love the white painted brick walls. The only thing lacking is chanted plain song in the background. They sell all manner of home-made liqueurs, steeped vinegars, balsamics, whiskies, scented oils- the lot.
Two new cookery books hot off the presses: Polpo, a Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts) by Russell Norman, and a reprint of Arabella Boxer's English Food in hardback.
One of the things I find exciting about this country is our excellence in book design. And what a beautiful thing is Russell Norman's Polpo. The design and typography are exquisite; Bloomsbury have done something clever with the spine (it's just the edges of the paper, sewn- if that makes sense), so that the book lies completely flat when open. The paper is creamy and smooth. The typeface is elegant. The photography is evocative. The book even smells right.
For those of you more interested in the food, Polpo is based on the recipes used in Russell Norman's successful London restaurants. I've got a thing about Venetian food. Not that awful trat stuff you get near St Marks' Square, but the genuine, regional cooking you'll find in out of the way restaurants like the wonderful Corte Sconta or in standup working men's bars tucked away down sinister alleyways. We're talking about Warm Squid Salad with Cavolo Nero and Chickpeas, Broad Bean, Mint & Ricotta Bruschette, Grilled Fennel & White Anchovy Skewers, Chopped Chicken Liver Crostini. Polpo, a Venetian Cookbook of Sorts is published by Bloomsbury and is priced at twenty five pounds.
Another recent publication which caught my eye is a reprint of Arabella Boxer's classic Book of English Food (published by Fig Tree/Penguin in hardback, and priced at £20). It's another sumptuous effort of high quality, with a fabulous Art Nouveau dustjacket, sumptious creamy paper and a decent typeface. The book was first published back in 1991. I've got a Penguin paperback edition, which I seem to remember cost me an arm and a leg second hand. Lady Arabella's book is a terrific read, and covers Country House and restaurant food of the 1920's and 30's. It's a gem.
With Her Majesty The Queen's Diamond Jubilee- and River Pageant- just around the corner, I thought it appropriate to turn our thoughts to Coronation Chicken. I admit that I like it. It's slightly bland, perhaps even a trifle unfashionable, but the originalConstance Spry recipe is, undoubtably, a classic; far better than the ubiquitous, bog-standard chicken, mayonnaise and curry powder versions you will have come across. It actually tastes of something, too. It's going to be worth making that special effort:
Constance Spry's Original Coronation Chicken
Ingredients (Serves 8):
2.3kg (5lb) chicken
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small, finely chopped onion
1 tbsp curry paste
1 tbsp tomato purée
100ml red wine
1 bay leaf
1/2 lemon juice
4 finely chopped apricot halves
300ml (1/2 pint) Mayonnaise
100ml (4 fl oz) whipping cream
Salt and pepper
Watercress to garnish
Instructions:
1) Skin the chicken and cut into small pieces and grill it until cooked.
2) In a small saucepan, heat the oil, add the onion and cook for about three minutes, until softened.
3) Add the curry paste, tomato purée, wine, bay leaf and lemon juice.
4) Simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes until well reduced.
5) Strain and leave to cool.
6) Purée the chopped apricot halves in a blender or food processor or through a sieve.
7) Beat the cooled sauce into the mayonnaise with the apricot purée.
8) Whip the cream to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture.
9) Season, adding a little extra lemon juice if necessary.
10) Fold in the chicken pieces, garnish with watercress and serve.
I've got another bit of good news: I've started another blog. It's called The Education of a Gardener, a title nicked unashamedly from the great landscape architect, Russell Page. It's a sort of diary or scrapbook about my efforts to transform a tiny, dingy London backyard into a garden. It's going to be a very different blog from The Greasy Spoon. Simpler, less cluttered. I'm really not worried about how many people can be bothered to read it; it's going to be more of a personal diary, a chart of my progress; my struggle to turn a depressing, shady backyard into a something that I can call truly, a garden.
The New Piccadilly Cafe, London- alas, very recently closed down
Oh Crikey, who remembers Heinz's London Grill? Baked Beans, Pork Sausage, Bacon and Nuggets of Kidney all bound up in the famous Tomato Sauce. In a green tin with the legendary Heinz label. And, apparently, there was "West End Grill" too; with mushrooms in it, rather than the kidneys. I'm assuming that Heinz suddenly woke up to the reality that many buyers out there weren't that keen on the noble kidney. Or maybe it was the other way round, and West End Grill came before the London Grill?
It might be a chicken and egg situation here. There's something slightly rakish about the word(s) "The West End", conjuring up images of The Stork Club, Dancing Girls, the neon lights of Piccadilly Circus, languid lunches in Charlotte Street, pea-souper fogs, Stephen Ward's cream Jaguar XK120, green-painted coffee stalls in the early hours of the morning: After The Ball is Over. I suppose Heinz were hoping that some of this sophisticated imagery would rub off on to their creations.
But as Sir John Betjeman once wrote (with apologies to Slough):
"Come, bombs and blow to smithereens Those air-conditioned, bright canteens, Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, Tinned minds, tinned breath...
But spare the bald young clerks who add The profits of the stinking cad; It's not their fault that they are mad, They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know The birdsong from the radio, It's not their fault they often go To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars In various bogus-Tudor bars And daren't look up and see the stars But belch instead..."
I'm currently reading Matthew Sweet's The West End Front, The Wartime Secrets of London's Grand Hotels. It's a terrific book: the blurb on the back reads: "A Lost World of Scandal, Intrigue and Fortitude...The Ritz, The Savoy, Dorchester and Claridge's- during the Second World War, each was a kind of Casablanca. Their bedrooms, hallways and grillrooms teemed with Spies, Con-Artists, Deposed Royals and the exiled governments of Europe..."
In 1941, the Food (Restrictions on Meals in Establishments) order came into force. All restaurants were required to offer a three course dinner or lunch for no more than five shillings a head, although luxury foods (such as lobster, caviar and oysters) could still be supplied with a surcharge. Young officers, home on leave, could take their girls to The Ritz, Dorchester or Savoy for a very reasonable sum; and as a result, these hotel restaurants became extremely buzzy places indeed.
I've always been fond of The Savoy, ever since my father took me there at the age of eighteen (or was it twenty one?) to savour my first Dry Martini at the American Bar, as mixed by the legendary Peter Dorelli. Remember that back in the 60's and early 70's my father used to handle the advertising for the Booth's Gin account, so he was rather up on this sort of thing.
The Savoy Hotel, incidentally, has very recently been completely re-vamped in a multi-million pound make-over by the Canadian group, Fairmont. I've no time for this: the reproduction paintings are truly dreadful- an insult to your intelligence; it probably never occured to the re-vampers that actually, this or that painting is really rather famous, and as it's currently in the so-and-so museum or gallery, the Savoy Hotel version is obviously not going to be the real-thing. And anyone with an eye is going to realise immediately that the textures and colours are all wrong, wrong, wrong.
Let's move on, before I start shouting at my computer screen (this seems to be happening more and more as I get older, it's a horribly unattractive trait, I do realise). So I've pulled out of my bookcase Anton Edelmann's The Savoy Cookbook, a worthy thing published by Pavilion. I like the sound of their "Marmite and Cream Cheese Sandwiches":
You take four slices of thin white bread (Waitrose stock this), and then spread two slices with Marmite very sparsley. You spread the cream cheese (ie Philadelphia) on the other two slices of bread, and then combine the two pieces of bread. The crusts are cut off, and each sandwich cut into three equal fingers.
Note the curious fact that The Savoy cut their sandwiches into fingers, not triangles. I've rabbited on about this before- it's one of the Great Truths of Life.
It's wild garlic time. We get ours from the Pimlico Road Farmer's Market on Pimlico Green. £1.50 a bunch. I like this time of the year; when the boredom and horror of steely grey Feburary suddenly turns into the promise of a raw Spring. The Boat Race...The Grand National...Easter...Daffodils...Chocolate Eggs...Hot Cross Buns. And the whiff of raw garlic in the hedgerows. A few years ago, I was driving along a lane in South Oxfordshire and suddenly, there it was- a distinctive whiff of garlic coming from the grassy verge.
I'm very keen on a simple risotto made from English wild garlic. You'll find that the taste of wild garlic is much more subtle than the standard stuff, so dismiss any worries about any overpowering garlicky tastes. By the way, the look of wild garlic is a bit different too: it comes in the form of slightly limp, green leaves (not entirely unlike spinach) and you use these chopped leaves, rather than the bulb. You'll find that the wild garlic will keep if you stick it into a vase of water. I've just posted two helpful videos on The Greasy Spoon page on Facebook: they'll tell you all about wild garlic; how to find it and how to use it.
Here's how I make a delicious wild garlic risotto: I chop up a small onion and sauté it in hot butter, before adding Carnaroli rice (allowing the rice to soak up the hot butter). Ladle in a small quantity of hot, steaming vegetable stock and stir like mad, until the rice has absorbed the stock.
Carry on ladelling in the hot stock until the Carnaroli rice is ready: this is the art of risotto making. You want the rice grains to remain firm (with a "bite") yet, at the same time, to be bound up in a creamy, starchy, slightly soupy liquid. It might take about half an hour to make it properly. I find that it always takes longer to make than recipe books suggest.
And do beat the rice like mad- as this releases the starch from the grains. I'm currently in favour of Carnaroli rice: I find that this makes a slightly creamier risotto, although of course, arborio rice would be fine too.
Anyway, back to the recipe. About ten minutes from the end, I add the chopped up wild garlic. Wild garlic has a very subtle taste, so I would recommend that you add quite a bit of the stuff: the risotto can certainly take it. I was also keen on the idea of turning the risotto a green colour- this will happen if you add enough. Check the seasoning and when you reckon the risotto's ready, add a small dash of white wine. This will stop the risotto from cooking.
Finish it off with a small helping of grated Parmesan- or indeed, a British cheese. This is Anglo-Italian food at its best.
And last, and certainly not least, I have started writing for The Dabbler. Some of you may know this site- it's an excellent (and slightly quirky) Culture Blog, well worth subscribing too. I was amazed to discover that I had won a Dabbler prize- a bottle of Ten Year Old Single Malt Glengoyne Whisky...
I'm going to deviate from the path with this one. Normally on The Greasy Spoon, I try to cover classic food and get to the bottom of authentic recipes. Hand up, I admit that the recipe I'm about to give you ain't a proper biryani- it's undoubtably a bastardised version, but so juicy, quick and delicious, I couldn't resist posting it. It's based on a recipe from allrecipes.co.uk, but I've unashamedly changed it in various ways.
What is a biryani? I'm afraid many people in Britain just assume it's "Indian"- whatever that means. The story of the biryani, however, is far more complex. It originated in Persia, the name coming from the Persian word beryā(n) (بریان) which means "fried" or "roasted" and was brought to South East Asia by spice traders. It's a popular dish in India (many different versions), Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, The Middle East (including Iran and Iraq), Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
It's a combination of rice, spices, vegetables, fish eggs and meat. For an authentic biryani, the rice and curried sauce should be cooked separately, and then combined together at the end in layers, forming a contrast between the lightly spiced rice, and the intense flavours of the sauce, meat or vegetables. It's similar in a way to our very own kedgeree- which, of course, has its roots in the British Raj.
My "after-work" version is more of an Anglicised pilaf, I suppose. You could of course tweak it to become a proper biryani- by steaming basmati rice (with the lid on) and cooking this separately, creating some sort of a spicy sauce, and then combining it all together before serving. Fried crunchy, sliced onions would be an authentic and delicious garnish.
His Highness The Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, GBE
Heat up a saucepan and add a dash of cooking oil. Add a thinly sliced onion, a sliced red chilli, and a knob of fresh ginger, (peeled and chopped). Cook on a medium heat for a few minutes until soft.
Now it' time for the spices. You're going to use cumin, coriander, turmeric and nutmeg. I would suggest that you buy the cumin and coriander as seeds, and then grind them up in a pestle and mortar until they become a fine powder. A tablespoon or so should be fine. I'm afraid that the turmeric came from the jar (about a teaspoon). The nutmeg was grated directly into the saucepan: I've got a little nutmeg grater which my mother-in-law (Gawd bless 'er) gave me for Christmas. Cook on a lowish heat for a few more minutes, so that the spices are cooked properly. The aim is to cook the spices, but not to burn them.
Stir in 225g of Uncle Ben's Long Grain Rice. This cheat's rice has had the starch removed, and so won't go mushy in the cooking. It's excellent for pilafs, in my opinion. If you were planning to use Basmati rice, you would need to rinse it first, and then "steam" on a low heat for about ten minutes with the lid on.
Stir in a tin of chopped tomatoes, and top up with hot fish stock. Add a pinch of sugar, and a pinch of salt. By the way, further cheating at this stage, as I added a dollop of Umami paste, the mysterious "fifth taste sensation" (a sort of cross between anchovies and tomatoes in flavour). Simmer the biryani on a low to medium heat, until the rice has cooked. If you think it needs it, top it up with boiling water now and again.
When the rice is cooked, stir in two packets of plebby prawns (these are those pre-cooked tiny, shrimp-like pink things you can buy in the supermarket). Take the birayni off the heat, and stir in a packet of spinach. You'll find that it wilts easily in the heat. Finish the dish off with a generous helpings of chopped fresh coriander.
If you want to research biraynis further, have a look at this video in which master chef Padma Lakshmi cooks a Royal Biryani for two hundred children in Hyderabad.
Currently the routine gin of choice in The Greasy Spoon Residence. It's a classic no-nonsense gin in the London Dry manner: crisp and clean, with juniper and citrusy tastes. I've discovered that it makes a fabulous G & T when mixed with Fever Tree Naturally Light Tonic. A subtle, light and deliciously clean drink, especially when mixed with a slice of lime.
Founded in 1761, G & J Greenall is one of the older distilleries, which also happens to make the perfectably drinkable and reasonably priced Sainsbury's own brand gin. They also distill Bombay Sapphire. Personally, I find Bombay Sapphire a bit too sickly and floral for my taste; originally aimed at the 80's cocktail crowd- the sort of people who added cherries to their drinks, wore Hawaiian Shirts with Ray-Ban wayfarers and approved of cocktail umbrellas.
Greenall's have very recently redesigned their packaging, presumably aiming the brand at a younger market. Gin's suddenly hip again! But of course! Gin never went away, did it? This time round, I like the clean lines of their new look, and the rather Forties looking- and very British- typeface.
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. It's tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), "they hadn't ate it all at last!"
This Christmas, as there's only going to be four of us, we've decided to have a shot at goose, rather than turkey. I'm looking forward to this immensely: there's just something terribly Dickensian and Christmasy about our old friend the goose, isn't there?
Up until the 1890's, most people in England didn't eat turkey because it was too expensive. That's why it's such a big deal when Ebeneezer Scrooge orders the massive prize turkey for the Cratchits, who normally would be huddled round their scrappy little goose come Christmas Day.
Coming to think of it, I've got a slight problem with all of this. Scrooge sends the prize turkey round to the Cratchits on Christmas morning. By the time it's been ordered, delivered to Camden Town from Clerkenwell, stuffed, and roasted at the local baker's shop, it's going to be way past the Cratchits' bedtime, and poor old Bob's got to be up the next day at the crack of dawn to toil away in Scrooge's counting house. Heigh ho.
But which one is better? The goose or the turkey? I like turkey, I do. But it has a tendency to become dry and stringy, and by Boxing Day most sane people are fed up with it; even when it's turned into our notorious Boxing Day Turkey Curry.
There's no doubt that a fresh turkey is preferable to a frozen one. If you do have a frozen one, for God's sake make sure that it's thawed properly, otherwise you could find yourself into serious trouble. If you can, try and get the gamey tasting English Black Norfolk, or the American Bronze variety. And some more advice if you'll allow me: stuff the bird at the last minute, rather than the night before.
The immediate problem with goose is that there just isn't going to be enough meat on the thing. If you've got lots of friends and family coming round, then some of them are going to go hungry. It tastes delicious, and has a rich and gamey flavour, but there's also going to be lots of fat. I'm fine with that, but there will inevitably be some poor souls out there who'll run for the hills. Paul Levy also reckons that the goose is really at its prime come Michaelmas (ie September) rather than December.
So my advice on this one: if there are just a few of you- go for goose, and sit back and enjoy the rich and subtle flavours; if you've got a horde coming round, go for turkey, but try and get a properly reared and decent variety, and cook it with care. I know this is expensive, but as it's only once a year, I think it's going to be a good investment.
Alastair Sim with The Ghost of Christmas Present, A Christmas Carol, 1951
Rummaging through some old newspaper cuttings from the '90's, I found this old photograph of the famous Ivy restaurant (founded 1917), with a super-imposed photograph of Charles Laughton in the 1933 picture, "The Private Life of Henry VIII".
This is how The Ivy used to be- the favourite playground of the luvvies of the silver screen: Larry, Vivien, Noel, Ivor and Sexy Rexy. I love the wood panelling, the Tudorbeathen leaden lattice windows and the naff neo-classical statues. How I would give my teeth (what's left of 'em) to go back in time and enter those hallowed portals!
In 1990, Caprice Holdings "restored" and relaunched the restaurant; supposedly to its "former glory". I've got mixed feelings about the new Ivy. By then the restaurant, it is true, had become a shadow of its former self, semi-derelict, and in desperate need of a makeover; but the 1990's re-incarnation was, with hindsight, a bit Footballer's Wives, (to be fair, a reflection of the then fashionable age of one Mr Anthony Blair and the cringe-inducing Cool Britannia); service was impeccable, but the whole place lacked the elan and dash of its previous incarnation.
Back in the 90's (as with Terence Conran's "Quaglino's"), it was extremely difficult to get a table; these days, I gather, it's an easier ticket, and reservations can be booked on a few weeks notice.
If you're still interested, A.A. Gill's The Ivy, The Restaurant and its Recipes is the definitive guide. I've already covered The Ivy's Chicken Masala (which is included in A.A. Gill's book)- an excellent and delicious dish, which has the slightly unusual trait of being thickened with chopped aubergine.
Here's A.A. Gill's take on the Ivy's Hamburger. I've always had a slight problem with my own home-made hamburgers: I make a delicious mix, but then add too much liquid (or too much beaten egg), so that when it comes to the "pan-frying" bit, the meat crumbles, and doesn't hold together. This is the official Ivy version. Admittedly, it's pretty basic, but I think it's worth publishing online:
Mix up a good quality minced beef, and mould into balls or patties. Put the burgers into the 'fridge to set. Whisk together tomato ketchup with American mustard (French's mustard would be ideal) to make the sauce.
Lightly toast some baps, and keep them warm. Cook the burgers on a griddle or a smoking hot pan (not under a grlll, as this could boil the meat).
Serve the burgers in the warm baps with slices of red onion, gherkin, beef tomato and the Ivy hambuger sauce.
The new Greasy Spoon forum/page on Facebook seems to be going well, with readers beginning to post up their own stuff on it: ideas, comments and food photographs. You can join in the fun at: The Greasy Spoon on Facebook.
I've posted up a link on the Facebook page to a delicious and gutsy sounding recipe by Helen Graves: "Ham Hock and White Bean Soup with a Green Sauce". I'm going to try it out on The Girl tomorrow evening.
Ham Hock, also known as Pork Knuckle, is the joint or shank where the Pig's leg meets the foot. Ham comes from the back part of the pig. As you might expect, there's quite a bit of tendon, fat, and skin going on down there, and the hock needs to be stewed for a long period of time to cope with it all. Despite that, if properly cooked, a flavoursome pork knuckle is a noble old thing indeed, and a worthy champion of German, East European and American Southern Cooking. It also makes a fabulous terrine.
Have a look at the two charts I've posted up. I like the slightly retro graphics; the sort of thing you see posted up in old-fashioned butcher shops. The top chart shows British cuts, the chart at the bottom, American cuts. If you look closely, you will see that they are slightly different.
Believe it or not, it's time to make your Christmas Pudding. Here in London, Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier. The television advertising spree has begun, and suddenly our screens are full of earnest, eager types wrapped up in noddy hats and woolly scarves, grinning kiddywinks, and beaming Old Dears. Teflon snowflakes are having a field day. The lights have gone up in Sloane Square too, yet the leaves are still on the trees. Look, I love Christmas, please don't get me wrong: I'm no Scrooge; but often the expectation is, truthfully, more enjoyable than the actual event itself. But London is particularly pretty in those two weeks leading up to Christmas, and I can't think of a better place in the world to be at this time.
Right now is the time to start making your Christmas Pudding; and if anything it may even be a bit on the late side. Traditionally, the Christmas Pudding was made on "Stir-Up Sunday", which was the last Sunday before Advent, (about four to five weeks before Christmas Day), but in our family we used to make it as early as late October. I love Christmas Pudding. The way your spoon plunges into the moist (you hope!), rich, fruity mass; and the contrast with the smooth, rich, alchohol infusedbrandy butter.
Here is my tried and tested recipe for Christmas Pudding. It's based on our age-old family recipe (which I suspect was nicked from Cordon Bleu), but I've "improved" it with the addition of Guinness and Black Treacle. It went down extremely well with my brother-in-law, who gobbled down the lot, and apparently, declared it "one of the best Christmas Puddings he had ever tasted"; in fact- "never was there such a pudding". Incidentally, as an experiment last year, I added Scotch Whisky instead of the traditional brandy- and it sort of worked, although the resulting smoky taste was not really that appropriate. So back to good old Cognac it is.
Here's the recipe:
Stir up all the following ingredients in a pudding basin:
350g Mixed fruit and peel (this means crystallised peel, dried apricots, currants, saltanas, raisins, grated lemon rind, and grated orange rind)
50g Chopped glacé cherries
25g Flaked almonds
50g Dried suet (you can't get the proper stuff anymore- the EU has made it illegal)
35g White breadcrumbs
35g Plain flour
70g Moist dark brown sugar
50gGrated apple
A dash of mixed spice and grated nutmeg. Some weirdos add carrot- but very sensibly, I leave this one out.
Once you've stirred all the ingredients together, mix in the following ingredients:
Two beaten eggs
The juice of half a lemon and half an orange
Two tablespoons of a dark stout (ie Guinness)
A tablespoon of black treacle
A dash of decent Cognac (ie Brandy or Armagnac)
Stir it up like mad. Now's the time to add the mixture to a basin. Recently, I've had this thing about those old-fashioned ball-shaped puddings- the ones you see in the Victorian illustrations of Phiz and in Walt Disney. A few years ago, I managed to track down a ball-shaped pudding mould from Divertimenti in the Fulham Road, and used that- but a traditional ceramic pudding basin is just dandy.
Smear the inside of the basin with butter. This will stop the pudding sticking to the side. Pour in the mixture. Top off with a piece of buttered greaseproof paper, ideally cut down to fit. Finally, place a cloth over the basin, and tie it off at the top with a bit of string.
Steam it for five to six hours. This means getting hold of a large pan, filling it about a quarter full with water and bringing it to the boil. Place the pudding in the middle of the pan, and put the lid on. The steam will rise up within the pan, and cook the pudding. Once it's cooked, leave it in a cool place with a piece of tin foil on top. It will mature in the run-up to Christmas. On the great day itself, you will need to steam it for a further three hours.
Remember Beef Stroganoff? Many moons ago, my mother had a fledgling enterprise selling pre-cooked dinner party food to local housewives who couldn't be bothered to cook. Dishes were rustled up ahead of time, frozen, and then delivered to her clients in our rusting Lancia. I suspect there was quite a bit of fibbing going on, and the naughty dinner party hostesses would pretend that they had cooked it themselves. It was all very Stepford. From memory, Beef Stroganoff was one of the best-sellers on her menu. Strips of filet beef, cooked briefly, and bound in a mustardy sauce.
What exactly is Beef Stroganoff? That's a very good question. In the authoritative The Prawn Cocktail Years, Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham reckon that the origins of the dish are suspect, and about as Russian as I am Chinese. My own guess was that it might have had something to do with that fascinating post-Revolutionary period in America, when Hollywood was awash with dubious Russian counts and every exile worth their salt was cousin to the Tsar. Wikipedia, however, is a mine of information on the subject, pin-pointing the birth of the dish to Elena Molokhovet's classic Russian cookbook of 1861: "Beef à la Stroganov with mustard, a simple concoction of fried beef cubes in a mustard and sour cream sauce". Stroganoff also appears in the 1938 edition of Larousse Gastronomique, but with the addition of onions and the option of tomato paste.
Here's my recipe for a classic Beef Stroganoff. I'm of the opinion that you need to cook the beef very quickly; the steak needs to be tender, rather than chewey. It's not really a stew. This should make enough for about four people.
You take 600g or so of filet steak, and cut it into slivers. The meat is seasoned and fried very quickly in a hot frying pan, until it's browned, but still relatively rare. Don't crowd the pan, otherwise the beef will stew, rather than fry; for the best results it could be a good idea to fry the meat a few pieces at a time. Take out the browned meat, and set aside on a plate.
Add a knob of butter to the pan, and cook some finely sliced onions until golden. Take them out of the pan and set them aside. Add a further knob of butter to the pan and add 350g of sliced button or baby mushrooms. Once cooked through, remove and add to the onions.
Turn down the heat, and carefully spoon 400ml of soured cream into the pan. Mix in a generous dollop of French mustard, and a small spoonful of tomato paste for colouring. Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham add paprika at the mushroom stage (cooking the spice in the hot butter for a minute or so), and there's nothing wrong with that. But The Greasy Spoon version is, perhaps, the more authentic and I don't think the dish should be too spicy. Is it possible to make a virtue of the bland?
Warm the sauce through, and combine the cooked mushrooms and onions back into the pan. Simmer the Stroganoff very gently for around ten minutes. I really do prefer the beef to be rare- but I understand that this is very much a matter of personal taste.
To finish off the dish, check the seasoning, and stir in generous amounts of freshly chopped dill and a squeeze of lemon juice. You serve it with plain rice.
From left to right: Maria, Alexandra, Alexei, Tatiana, Nicholas II, Olga, Anastasia, 1911
With Hallowe'en today, and Guy Fawkes Night and the Mexican Day of the Dead just around the corner; this time of year calls for a certain type of food: it needs to be warming, probably spicy too (with a nod to Mexico and all things "devilled"); I also like the idea of small, easily made tapas-style dishes and canapés. Perfect to serve up to any friends who drop by for Bonfire Night drinks.
About three years ago, I covered Devilled Kidneys on The Greasy Spoon. I cannot stress how surprisingly delicious these are- utterly wicked. I had the bright idea this morning of serving them as canapés; although bear in mind that you'll need to cut up the kidneys into small, bite-sized pieces and cook them extremely briefly.
First you heat up a bit of oil in a hot pan. Cut your lamb's kidney's into quarters, first trimming away the whitish core, and any white stringy bits. Chop the quarters up into smallish dice. Drop the chopped kidneys into the pan, and sauté them very briefly. Add a dash of dry sherry, bubble it away, and then add a further dash of cider vinegar.
Stir in a spoonful of redcurrant jelly, and allow it to melt. Add a generous slug of Worcestershire sauce, a dollop of yellow English mustard (Colman's is ideal), and ground black pepper.
Season with a decent pinch of sea salt, and mix in a spoonful of so of double cream. Bubble away quickly until glossy.
To serve: take a slice of bread and cut into bite-size crutons or squares (I like them to be reasonably small). Fry in a shallow pan with groundnut oil until golden brown. Spoon the devilled kidneys onto each cruton. Arrange on a plate, season with cayenne pepper and sprinkle over chopped parsley or chives.
Go on, be a devil- you'll love 'em.
Incidentally, the rather haunting photograph at the top of the page is taken from Ossian Clark's "Haunted Air- a collection of anonymous Hallowe'en Photographs from America, c.1875 - 1955", published by Jonathan Cape in 2010. Ossian Clark has collected hundreds of vintage snaps found in flea-markets, car boot sales, junk shops and the like. I haven't bought this book yet, but I'm intrigued. What I've seen so far seems strangely moving (the lives of ordinary suburban and working class American families- now forgotten but captured in time), surreal, weird, and genuinely frightening.
This has been a recent discovery: it's Innis & Gunn beer from East Lothian, Scotland. It's got an especially scrumptious taste- butterscotch, toffee, hints of vanilla, caramel. Despite the Victorian style label, the brand was only established as recently as 2003, and the "unique" brewing process was discovered by accident.
The beer is brewed at Dunbar, East Lothian, before being matured in American White Oak Bourbon barrels for thirty days, and then for a further forty seven days in a marrying tun. There's also a limited edition beer, matured in Navy Rum barrels.
I've always had a thing about late summer. It's fun to try and pin-point the exact time summer changes into autumn. Often, it's around September 10th or so; marked by a whiff of bonfire smoke, a sudden chill in the air, or the blustery gales of the September equinox. Mind you, here in London, it feels like autumn started in June, and I'm writing this looking out onto a grey, damp and slightly foggy street.
It's also the last chance saloon for summer food, or at least, food with summery pretensions. Here's my recipe for a delicious Tomato Ice. If you think that it reeks of 1970's dinner party food, you would be utterly correct, as I've based it on a recipe from No. 69 of the Cordon Blue Cookery Course, published by Purnell as a part-work in 1970; but with the addition of grated horseradish which I think would work well with it, and the hot flavour of horseradish can be an excellent combination with the intense, sweet taste of the tomato. It's a pretty dish, and I like the colour of the tomato ice. Canadian, apparently.
You tip two tins of plum tomatoes into a pan, and then add two teaspoons of salt, a generous pinch of white pepper, four tablespoons of golden caster sugar, the zest and juice of two lemons, and a generous helping of freshly grated horseradish, and stir until the mixture comes to the boiling point, pushing the tomato pulp against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon to help it break down. Add three sprigs of fresh mint, cover the pan and allow to simmer for five to ten minutes. Rub the contents of the pan through a sieve, making sure that you extract all the juices. Add a few drops of Tabasco to taste. You should now be looking at a bowl full of a lovely red-coloured, very thin juice.
Chill this mixture in a deep freeze, and mash it up with a fork just before it starts to set. Return to the deep freeze, and repeat the process, and again, until you have formed a smooth ice in the sorbet manner. You could, of course, acheive the same effect in an ice-cream machine.
To serve, cut an avocado in half (I like the hass variety with the knobbly green skin; slightly nutty in taste), rub the exposed flesh with lemon juice (to stop it turning brown) and fill the cavity with a generous scoop of the Tomato Ice. To make the avocado stand upright on the plate, turn over the half, and slice off a thin wedge, so that it makes a base.
The important thing to remember is to flavour the tomato ice reasonably well, as the freezing process can often kill off the stronger tastes. Some out there might garnish it with mint, but I'm currently bored of garnishes, and think simplicity is often the best way forward. I like the idea of updating these classic, unfashionable recipes to more modern tastes; simplifying them if necessary, and presenting them cleanly, discarding those outrageous garnishes of yesteryear. That, at least, is the goal.
By the way, a tip: when you're grating a fresh horseradish root, make sure you grate it across the grain (rather than downwards). We keep a horseradish root in the deep freeze, and find that it keeps for ages; providing us with "fresh" horseradish whenever the mood takes us.
I like Hertfordshire. If you don't know England, this is an understated county of meagre size, found to the north of the London suburbs. Here the urban sprawl gives way to a rolling landscape: golden wheatfields, red-brick shuttered cottage ornées, church spires and tarred clapboard barns. Very Biedermeier. It reminds me in a way of the Belgian countryside around Waterloo; of Benjamin Pollock's re-imagining of the battlefield for the tuppence coloured sheets of the Victorian Toy Theatre. Or so I so imagine, conveniently forgetting the brave new world of Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City, where the post-war architects reinvented the English market town for the nuclear age, and bowler hatted bureaucrats dabbled in the dark art of social engineering.
It was at Hatfield, sitting beneath the branches of an oak tree in the autumn of 1558, that Elizabeth Tudor first learnt she was Queen of England; the famous oak now felled, a victim of the all-pervasive tyranny of Health and Safety.
Attributed to William Scrotes (fl. 1537-1554), The Princess Elizabeth, circa 1546, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle
We had a relaxed Sunday to kill in Hertfordshire, and decided to try the Fox and Hounds at Hunsdon for a light and late lunch. It's about an hour's drive from the Big Smoke. The Fox and Hounds describes itself on its website as "one of the most romantic restaurants in the South East". Well.
As a gastropub, The Fox and Hounds is pleasant enough: it's been Farrow and Balled, with a ubiquitous, slightly anti-septic, re-jigged saloon, now de rigueur of the Home Counties canteen: box framed modern prints, open brickwork, scrubbed tables and a separate "dining room", leading off a corridor framed with photo-copied reviews by the likes of city sophisticates such as Tom Parker Bowles.
Personally, I miss the days when pubs were pubs; when public bars sported cracked daguerreotypes, worn brasses, dart boards, Landseer engravings, nicotine stained ceilings, dusty oak settles and a sleeping tortoiseshell cat, accompanied with nothing more than the tick-tock of a longcase clock. Where a steak and kidney pie would be served in a ceramic pudding basin.
The Fox and Hounds was more or less empty apart from two pink-skinned, bald headed gentlemen in tight England t-shirts who gave us filthy looks as we dithered over where to sit. Actually, I tell a lie. They weren't dressed like that, but they could have been, so I trust you'll get the picture. But this is all beside the point. The food was excellent. Really, utterly lip smackingly good, and the service was charming. Which helps.
I had the "Lamb's Sweetbreads in a Curried Sauce". The sweetbreads were perfectly cooked: crisp and caramelised on the outside, soft inside, and served in a piping hot black iron skillet with fresh, slightly undercooked green peas and a creamy, aromatic curry sauce. Mrs Aitch's "Calf’s Liver Persillade & Duck Fat Potato Cake" was a briliant choice on her part, the liver beautifully cooked, with the parsley and garlic "melting" (her words) over the generous helping of offal beneath.
My plaice was a trifle undercooked for my liking (maybe that's a personal choice?) but served with lovely crunchy salty samphire. Bread was, presumably, home-made and genuinely delicious. The bar was stocked with interesting local ales from Adnam's and the Red Squrirrel brewery at Hertford. Service was friendly, welcoming and efficient.
Witchfinder General (1968), Tigon British Film Productions, directed by Michael Reeves
Architecturally, Hunsdon village is slightly enigmatic. I hadn't realised that the East Anglian vernacular extended so far to the west. The white-painted clapboard cottages, lattice windows, and timber framed houses are more typical of the flat counties of Suffolk and Essex; reminiscent of the locations used in Michael Reeve's "Witchfinder General". There's even a painted village sign over-looking the immaculate Green; the only thing missing was the village pillory.
The Fox and Hounds, Hunsdon, Ware, Hertfordshire, SG12 8NH (01279 843999)
When was the last time you enjoyed a helping of marrow? That's exactly what I'm talking about- the ever so 'umble, green-skinned English marrow, and it's currently in season. Right now. As a vegetable it's more or less disappeared from our plates; usurped by the courgette- the once trendy, now ubiquitous "zucchini" (the darling of the gastropub and aspirational bistro) and the various squashes and pumpkins of the American East Coast: the autumnal butternut squash (now beloved of the British supermarkets) immediately springs to mind.
But there's something attractively nostalgic, and unpretentious about the common marrow isn't there? The whiff of Dad's allotment, the village fete, garden potting, vintage Dandelion Wine '53, musty pigeon-racing sheds, home-made piccalilli, and crushing up the laburnum pods to get rid of the nagging missus. I'm sure my grandmother used to serve it up in an early Victorian Mason's Ironstone tureen. The marrow- you understand- not crushed laburnum. It's all so incredibly English.
I love marrow, its subtle watery taste and all the summery assocations that go with it. I heard Allegra McEvedy (of Leon fame) singing its praises on the radio a few days ago; and she's absolutely right. Not only is it nutritious, it's also extremely cheap, and, amazingly, still available at the dreaded Sainsbury's- although you'll find that Waitrose doesn't stock it. Far too upmarket.
In my last post I wrote about an excellent marrow dish I enjoyed at the Canton Arms. I went back there a day or so ago and had it yet again. This time round I've now worked out more or less exactly how it was made. I'm calling it "Gratin of English Marrow with Cannellini Beans and Rocket Pesto". An Italian take on an English classic.
First, you need to make a simple Tuscan style white bean stew. Chop up some shallots and sweat them in olive oil and butter until soft. Crush a clove of garlic and cook for a few mintues. Add the cannellini beans (I admit to using tinned) and vegetable stock, and simmer gently for an hour or so (or until the stew is reasonably thick and starchy) with a bayleaf and a few chopped up small tomatoes. If you're using uncooked beans, you'll need to soak them overnight in cold water, and then cook them for a longer time; quite possibly for up to two hours.
When the time's up remove a few spoonfuls of the beans, and purée them into a paste along with a tablespoon or so of the cooking liquid. Add this purée back into the pot: this will help to thicken up the stew. Check the seasoning and remove the bayleaf.
In the meantime, cut the marrow into large chunks, keeping the green skin on, but spooning out all the seeds and stuff you'll find in the middle bit of the vegetable. Steam the marrow until tender.
To assemble the dish: take an oven-proof gratin dish and ladle in the cooked bean stew. Add the cooked marrow to the dish, making sure that it's well covered by the stew. Sprinkle the top with white breadcrumbs, and dot with rocket pesto. This might be a combination of rocket leaves (sans the stalks), garlic, parmesan, walnuts, olive oil, sea salt and black pepper, which you've previously whizzed up in your Magimix or food processor.
Check the seasoning and flash the gratin under a very hot grill. Serve it piping hot straight from the dish. I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but sometimes it makes an enjoyable change to ditch the meat and eat something like this. It's an excellent dish.
I'm a massive fan of Simon Hopkinson and I was thrilled to learn that he's got a new book out; although I couldn't find any news about the publication date. It's a tie-in for his new television series. This is really good news: the current crop of so-called "celebrity" chefs are, in my opinion, dire (with the notable exception of one Nigel Slater). Can't wait.
Last week's Royal Wedding was terrific fun, and here in London we've all had a ball. Hats off to the Middleton family who handled the whole thing brilliantly. Can you imagine walking down that aisle in front of an estimated two billion people? Our Kate looked fantastic, and I have to admit to shedding a manly tear to Parry's beautiful anthem "I Was Glad"- it always gets to me for some reason. A good day for the country, I think.
I was interested in Anton Mosimann's unpretentious menu for the reception at Buck House afterwards. It struck just the right note- as with the wedding, showing just the right amount of understatement (not including, of course, poor Princess Beatrice's bizarre alien fascinator) and included: Cornish Crab Salad on Lemon Blini, pressed Duck Terrine with Fruit chutney, miniature watercress and asparagus tart, quails eggs with celery salt, Scottish langoustines with Lemon Mayonnaise, Bubble & Squeak with Confit Shoulder of Lamb, Smoked Haddock fishcake with Pea Guacmole, Rubarb Financier and Blood Orange Pâté de Fruit. The champagne was Pol Roger NV Brut Reserve. This is Modern British food at its best.
The Middletons stayed at the excellent and discreet Goring Hotel (not far from our hovel, I have to admit) and I was amused to see that they have the nerve to serve Eggs Drumkilbo on their menu. Eggs Drumkilbo was a favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Gawd bless 'er), and has recently been described by the food critic, Giles Coren, as "so awful it's almost good". It's a splendid old thing, with Lord knows how many flavours going on in there; completely over-the-top and utterly unfashionable. It was served at previous royal weddings. Here's how you make it:
Eggs Drumkilbo
1 lobster 225 gm (8 oz raw prawns) 8 good tomatoes 8 hardboiled eggs fresh mayonnaise a little tomato purée anchovy essence Worcestershire sauce Tabasco sauce Salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons aspic powder white wine or water
Cook the lobster and prawns. When cooled and shelled, dice the flesh of both. Dip the tomatoes into boiling water for half a minute, then skin and de-seed them. Dice the flesh and add to the lobster and prawns. Remove the whites from two of the eggs and discard and discard. Dice all the yolks and the rest of the whites, and add to the mixture. Mix all the ingredients with sufficient mayonnaise, flavoured with tomato purée, anchovy essence, Worcestershire and Tabasco to taste, to produce a good, fairly stiffish consistency. Check the seasoning.
Dissolve the aspic in a little boiling white wine or water, but do not let it actually boil. Stir into the mayonnaise mixture, making sure it is evenly distributed. Pour into a rinsed mould, or a pretty glass dish if you don’t want to unmould. Chill until well set.
Unmould or not, and serve as a first course with brown bread and butter or fingers of mustard and cress sandwiches.
On Saturday I made a deliciously simple Wild Garlic Risotto. The Girl managed to track down some wild garlic (also known as Ramsons) from the Pimlico Green Farmer's Market. If you live in the country, you might be able to find some growing in woodlands. They're currently in season.
I'm very keen on "simple food done well"- it's becoming a mantra. This fitted the bill perfectly.
I chopped up a small onion and sautéed it in hot butter. Next, I added Carnaroli rice and let the rice soak up the hot butter. I ladelled in a small quantity of hot, steaming vegetable stock and stirred like mad, until the rice had absorbed the stock. Then, I carried on ladelling in the hot stock until the Carnaroli rice was "ready".
This is the art of risotto making. You want the rice grains to remain firm (with a "bite") yet, at the same time, to be bound up in a creamy, starchy, slightly soupy liquid. If you make it properly, this might take about half an hour. Beat the rice like mad- as this releases the starch from the grains.
I'm currently in favour of Carnaroli rice: I find that this makes a slightly creamier risotto, although of course, arborio rice would be fine too.
We're off to Venice in a few days time, and no doubt we'll bring back some proper Italian risotto rice to add to the larder. I've got a theory that the Italians keep back the best rice for themselves, and fob off the rest of Europe with lesser brands.
Anyway, back to the Wild Garlic Risotto. About ten minutes from the end, add the chopped up Wild Garlic. It comes in the form of slightly limp, green leaves (not entirely unlike spinach) and you use these chopped leaves, rather than the bulb. Unlike the standard variety, Wild Garlic has a very subtle taste, so I would recommend that you add quite a bit of the stuff: the risotto can certainly take it. I was also keen on the idea of turning the risotto a green colour- this will happen if you add enough. Check the seasoning and when you reckon the risotto's ready, add a small dash of white wine. This will stop the risotto from cooking.
I served the risotto with some fried shallots- for extra crunch, but The Girl pointed out that the dish didn't need it- and she was absolutely right, as I have to admit, she often is. I would recommend that you more or less leave the risotto as it is, but top it off with a small helping of grated Parmesan- or indeed, a British cheese. Why not?
Recently the poor cauliflower seems to have come under quite a bit of bad press. First there was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall announcing to the world that he doesn't like the stuff; and then there's the worrying fact that recent sales of the vegetable have slumped by 35%.
Well, I do like it. And I'm also a fan of the fascinating Romaine or Romanesco variety, as pictured above. Even if the rest of the world isn't- because it looks like a UFO, or a sinister organism from John Wyndham's "Day of The Triffids".
My dear old grandmother used to cook cauliflower in the traditional English way- and this is how I prefer to serve it:
The cauliflower is not broken up into florets, but steamed whole (for about 20 minutes, or so, until done), drained well and then served in a porcelain tureen (with a lid), and coated with a traditional white (or cheese) sauce, with a subtle seasoning of nutmeg and black pepper. I haven't seen cauliflower served like this for a long, long time.
The other, more popular way, is for the cooked cauliflower to be broken up into florets, and served in a dish, with a cheese sauce and breadcrumbs, and flashed under the grill for a minute or so, until brown.
Raw cauliflower's got a peppery, crunchy taste. It's not so great when it's over-cooked, so make sure, if anything, that you under- rather than over- cook it.
I've had great fun re-discovering the Roux Brothers' old 1980's television series on youtube: Roux Brothers. For anyone wanting to learn the techniques of classic French cookery, this is the series for you: no background music, no trendy hand-held camera shots, or an emphasis on style over content; this is television aimed at viewers who have an attention span longer than three minutes, and just want to learn how to cook properly.
That's exactly right- it's just two middle aged chefs, both at the top of their game, Albert (he's the fat one from Le Gavroche) and Michel (he's the thin one from the Waterside Inn at Bray) standing in a badly lit (by today's standards) studio and talking directly to camera. And Mein Gott, in just a few minutes you can learn infinitely more from those two, than from any of the over-produced cheffy programmes I've seen on television recently.
I liked Albert's "Avocado Bering". You take an avocado pear (I think the hass variety with the knobbly skin tastes the best) and slice it in half. You brush the exposed flesh with lemon juice to stop it going black. You slice a small wedge off the bottom of the avocado, so that it stands up straight on the plate.
Next you mix up some fresh crab meat with a rose-marie sauce made from mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, Lea & Perrins, Tabasco, salt and pepper and a spoonful of cognac. You spoon the crabmeat and sauce into the cavity of the avocado, and then spoon further unadulterated rose-marie sauce over the crabmeat and sauce. More sauce on top of the crabmeat and sauce combination, if that makes sense.
Albert garnished it with half a black olive so that it ended up looking a bit like a nipple- but if you've read my previous post, you'll know all about my current feelings on garnishes, and I would recommend that you avoid this. Avocado Bering! Incredibly old-fashioned (even then; back in the 1980's), very simple, relatively unsophisticated- and strangely satisfying.
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