The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Terence Conran's Scotch Broth

 

 

 

I've got mixed feelings about old Sir Terence. I still can't make up my mind about the rather empty, sparse Design Museum; loathed Mezzo (a formulaic joint for raucous Essex Girls up for a Night on the Town) and Quaglino's, although back in 1993 an exciting place for a liaison dangereuse, became a shadow of its former self. Conran's take-over of Heals, the famous furniture shop in the Tottenham Court Road, was also iffy, I think. I seem to remember that half of the amazing Art Deco convex (or is it converse?) shop windows were ripped out, a commerical decision, I'm sure (difficult to display stock), but not exactly a reassuring move from one of Britain's leading design gurus. And a half-hearted act, too.

And I've never been entirely convinced by the conranisation of his classic redbrick Georgian house in Berkshire either, as featured in the Sunday colour supplements and the old House and Gardens lying around at the bottom of my wardrobe. Not that I don't like it, it's all very lovely, but...but... it's as if the history of the house- the very essence of what the house is all about- no longer exists.

And then along comes the marvellous Boundary, a grown-up, civilised restaurant of the old school serving Anglo-French food with mâitre d's in pin-stripe trousers; a recent-ish enterprise located in the modish East End, a stone's throw from the former haunt of Jack the Ripper. It's all very confusing.

  

 

But then maybe I am missing the point. How exciting Conran must have seemed in the late 50's and early 60's! The man has had a huge and massive influence on post-war British culture. And for the better. If you wind back in time to the late 50's and 60's, Conran's sophisticated designs must have seemed like a breath of fresh air in a world of smog, lukewarm Brown Windsor Soup and grimy flock wallpaper.

For the young, aspirational couple, strapped for cash, newly in love with the colour supplement lifestyle as championed by Elizabeth David, Arabella Boxer and Robert Carrier; and attempting to convert a shabby tenement block back into an elegant and fashionable town house, the affordable but stylish Habitat catalogue must have come as a godsend. Especially as everything was paid for by the newly launched Barclaycard. It's bizarre now to think of a society where credit cards didn't exist, but until 1966 that was exactly the state of the union.

And the middle classes were travelling for the first time on a regular basis, to civilised places like France, Spain and Italy. Habitat led the charge, re-creating (successfully, I think) the imagined ambiance of a French ironmongers, with kitchen utensils piled high on scrubbed pine tables, white painted brick walls, terracotta chicken bricks, Cornishware, red enamel oil lamps, Victorian scales in iron, and colourful posters of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Belle Epoque. Classless too. Conran was more interested in the Quaker simplicity of the downstairs scullery than in the Great Exhibition fripperies of the upstairs Drawing Room.

 

 

And I had forgotten about Terence and Vicki Conran's recent cookbook, Classic Conran. This is a fantastic book, very much along the lines of our he-who-can-do-no-wrong-foodie-god, Simon Hopkinson, but with a practical edge, more suited to domestic cooks with less time to spare.

There's an emphasis on the classics of Anglo-French cookery, simple dishes made with good ingredients and cooked properly: kedgeree (they use the preferable curried pilaf Grigson method); Jambon Persillée, Eton Mess, Soup à l' Oignon, Poached Chicken with Tarragon Sauce, Chocolate Mousse, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Entrecôte Béarnaise, Roast Grouse, Toulouse Sausages with Lentils, Braised Oxtail, Leeks Viniagrette, Irish Soda Bread. This is Greasy Spoon food. This is what The Greasy Spoon is all about. The book's so darned good it's currently got pride of place in my top ten "cookbooks of all time" list.

I came across the Conran recipe for that old classic, Scotch Broth. I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in London it's cold and wet with that English dampness that chills you to the bone. The Greasy Spoon herb garden is sodden. My tarragon plant seems to have vanished and I've lost hope. And this weather is making me hungry, very hungry. Ravenous in fact.

I've got a craving for Scotch Broth. It's a British Classic. I used to hoard this in my tuck box at school. Tins of Baxter's "Scotch Broth". Or was it "Cock-a-Leekie"? There are numerous recipes on the net, many seem to be similar, some are identical. All seem to agree on the following ingredients: carrots, a turnip or two, onions, celery, leek, pre-soaked dried peas, cabbage (or kale) and pearl barley.

In the Conran version you simmer a neck of lamb for an hour or two until tender, leave overnight, skim off the fat, breaking up the meat into small pieces and then cook gently with the vegetables and lamb stock for a further hour, adding the cabbage towards the end. The soup is finished off with a garnish of chopped parsley. The BBC version is very similar but leaves out the lamb. Marguerite Patten's version in her Classic British Dishes, is almost identical in method to the Conran's except she refines it by blanching the barley in boiling water, which, apparently 'whitens' the barley and 'gives it a better texture'.

I'll leave you to experiment. Bon Courage.

 

Seville Orange Gin

 

 

 

Mrs Aitch is making marmalade- as I write this. She makes it every year, and there's this terrific wait for the Seville oranges to arrive in England. Some years they arrive early, other years they arrive late. But January's the month for Seville oranges. If you're interested in her original recipe, here's the link. It works every time and makes an extremely professional tasting marmalade- I gather the secret is all about the quality of the pectin in the oranges and getting to the right temperature to release it. It sounds scientific.

This time I thought I'd have a shot at making Seville Orange Gin. It's a lovely old-fashioned drink, and apparently, a favourite of HRH The Prince of Wales. I've never made it before, so I've trawled the web and come across several recipes. They're all very similar- and pretty simple.

I can't hand-on-heart tell you if this recipe is any good, as I'm literally just about to make it. What I have learnt with Sloe Gin and Gooseberry Gin, is that it's often a good idea to go easy on the sugar, and if anything, deliberately add less sugar than the recipe demands. If your gin is too bitter in taste, it's an easy matter to add more sugar to taste. But if your gin is too sweet- there's nothing you can do about it, apart from chucking the whole thing down the sink.

 

5 Seville oranges

a litre bottle of gin

4 oz caster sugar

2 cloves

 

Peel the Seville oranges, carefully removing the zest from the pith – the pith is bitter and you need to get rid of it. Cut the orange peel into strips.

In a large sterilized demijohn combine the gin, sugar, orange peel and two cloves. Seal and keep in a dark cupboard for three months. Turn (or shake) the container every few days to make sure that the sugar dissolves.

After three months you strain the orange gin and, using a funnel, pour off the strained alcohol into sterilized bottles and seal. Ideally, you need to leave the orange gin for a year or two to mature and mellow over time.

 

How to Make Haggis and Influence People

 

 

 

Not that the readers of The Greasy Spoon need any reminding:

 

Lady Login's Traditional Haggis (1856)

 

1 cleaned sheep or lamb's paunch

2 lb (900g) dry oatmeal

1 lb (450g) Lamb's liver, boiled and minced

1 lamb's heart, boiled and minced

1 lamb's lights boiled and minced

1 large finely chopped onion

½ teaspoon each: cayenne pepper, ground allspice, salt and pepper

1 pint (600 ml) stock

See that the paunch is well cleaned, then soak it in salt and water for about two hours, take out and let it dry. Put the oatmeal on a baking tray in a low oven and let it dry out and crisp up a little.

Then cook the liver, heart (trimmed) and lights in salted water to cover and cook for about 1½ hours. Strain, but reserve the stock, and chop the meats up finely, or mince. Mix all ingredients (except the paunch) together and season well. Then add the stock. Put into the cleaned paunch (fill to about half) and sew up loosely, but securely.

Have ready a large pot of boiling water mixed with the rest of the liver stock, prick the haggis all over with a small knitting needle to prevent bursting, then cook in the water and stock, at a slow simmer uncovered, but keep up water level, for about three hours. Serves about sixteen.

Jack Kennedy's New England Fish Chowder

 

 

The John F Kennedy Archives recently released a recipe for JFK's favourite fish chowder. It's a rather touching story. In 1961 a disabled girl called Lynn Jennings wrote to the President asking 'what he liked to eat'. The president's special assistant wrote back, thanking Lynn for her 'nice letter' and enclosing the typed out recipe (below) and a photograph of the president. Kennedy, apparently, was terribly greedy and liked to wolf down this chowder in enormous quantities.

 

 

NEW ENGLAND FISH CHOWDER

 

2 pounds haddock                    

2 ounces salt pork, diced

2 onions, sliced

4 large potatoes, diced

1 cup chopped celery

1 bay leaf, crumbled

1 quart milk

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

 

Simmer haddock in 2 cups water for 15 minutes. Drain. Reserve broth. Remove bones from fish. Saute diced pork until crisp, remove and set aside. Saute onions in pork fat until golden brown. Add fish, potatoes, celery, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Pour in fish broth plus enough boiling water to make 3 cups of liquid. Simmer for 30 minutes. Add milk and butter and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve chowder sprinked with pork dice. Serves 6. 

 

 

 

 

I like the way Jackie's reading a pristine copy of "Portrait of a President" in the famous LIFE photograph below. Nothing like a subtle plug, is there?

 

 

 

 

Mr and Mrs Croque Monsieur

 

 

 

I'm a great believer in doing simple things well. This is far better than doing complicated things badly. The Croque Monsieur is a case in point. I've very recently eaten one (or more accurately, a Croque Madame) at Boulestin, and my God, it was good: perfectly fried brioche, creamy Emmental (or Gruyère) cheese, Béchamel Sauce, salty juicy ham and a fried egg. It's a fabulous classic- very much the sort of thing The Greasy Spoon approves of- and champions.

 

 

Not that you've forgotten, the "Monsieur" is essentially a fried cheese and ham sandwich, and the "Madame" is more of the same, except it's topped with a fried egg. The egg is supposed to look like a fashionable woman's hat (knowing the French, isn't there a far more obvious explanation?), and according to Wikipedia (so it must be true) only dates back to around 1960. In Normandy the "Madame" is known as a croque-à-cheval. The strange thing is that experts think that the "Mister" only made its first appearance on a Parisian cafe menu in 1910. The earliest mention seems to have been in Marcel Proust's "A Remembrance of Things Past", published in 1918.

 

 

But how to make the perfect Croque Monsieur?  I turned to Dining with Proust, a luxurious coffee-table book published in 1992. Splendid book, but no recipe. There was another book, "Dining with Marcel Proust", but I haven't- as yet- got it and it's currently on my amazon wish list.

 

 

I had better luck with the New Larousse Gastronomique: 

Cut slices from a fresh or stale loaf. Spread with butter on one side, and lay a thin slice of Gruyère cheese on top, with a slice of lean ham on top of that. Close the sandwich and fry until golden in clarified butter.

 

 

Ginette Mathiot's I Know How To Cook says:

Cut the (stale) bread into thin, evenly shaped slices. Spread all the slices with some of the butter and sprinkle with the cheese. Put a piece of ham on half the bread slices. Cover each one with a buttered slice. Tie together with kitchen string. Melt the remaining butter in a frying pan over a moderate heat. Add the croque-monsieurs and brown for 4 minutes on each side. Remove the string and serve.

 

But how did Boulestin make theirs? The bread tasted very similar to a brioche and I suspect that this was fried in butter very carefully- to avoid burning. I'm not exactly sure what cheese they used, but it may well have been Emmental- which had been grated into a creamy Béchamel sauce. Personally, I'm keen on the "Mrs". I like the way you cut into the fried egg, and the soft, runny yolk oozes over the fried bread.

 

Collecting Books on Indian Cookery

 

 

 

One of the greatest pleasures of life, I think, is spending a happy Sunday afternoon, or so, re-arranging your books. It's a simple pleasure- as often the best pleasures are- and it gives you a chance to take stock, throw-out (or give away) those books you've lost interest in, and re-discover old friends. If our house ever burnt down (God Forbid!) it would be the books I would miss most- more, I think than the furniture, paintings, silver, Chinese porcelain, mezzotints, clocks, tin-plate clockwork toys, rocking horses, looking glasses, globes and all those other nick-nacks you've either inherited or accumulated over the years.

 

 

Anyway. I discovered that I'd built up an accidental collection of books on Indian Food, especially Anglo-Indian food as it was back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In recent years the British have adopted "curry" as a national dish. We're an odd lot (a difficult people, I think sometimes); it's strange that we've adopted curry considering we've been lampooned in the past for our bland culinery tastes. But then, historically, the British have always been adapatable; compromise is a fine art.

 

 

So I'm posting up their covers to inspire you. All these books should be available from amazon or second-hand from AbeBooks. Maybe you could start your own collection?  British cookery would be another great area to think about, as would the food of the American Deep South.

 

 

 

 

 

Twelfth Night

 

 

 

I'm glad Christmas is over. I can't believe I'm writing this, as in the past I've rather prided myself on being a Christmas type, identifying (bizarrely to those that know me) with Scrooge's jolly hearted, blind man's bluff-playing, back-slapping nephew in Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'. Quite out of character. A strange fantasy. But this year Christmas was, frankly, a bit of a nightmare.

First I enjoyed a dose of genuine, old-fashioned influenza. Of the 1918 variety. Or was it Victorian Scarlet Fever? This wasn't Man Flu, this was the real McCoy, with delerium, high temperatures, rapid weight-loss and other unpleasant and unmentionable side effects. Had me in bed for two weeks.

Then, the moment that one was over, our beloved, pesky little sixteen year old Burmese cat, Oskie, decided the time was right to fall seriously ill. Multiple organ failures, infections, you name it- she had it. On a drip, and in the Belgravia animal hospital, the poor beast had more medication than you and I've had hot dinners. You know its time to get worried when the nice vet starts talking in a low voice and throwing around euphanisms ("we need to make a 'decision' very soon".) The whole thing was utterly, completely traumatic. We were devasted- as only those who have animals will understand. And then Oskie developed further complications- cat 'flu possibly picked up in the animal hospital. A few days before the monstrous hordes descended en masse, to sample our bread sauce, christmas pudding and Turkey Surprise. Anyway, the family has now gone, The Cat has made a miraculous  recovery (O Hallelujah!) and the decorations have come down, as tradition dictates. Peace and Harmony reign. Almost.

 

 

I like January, especially if you've got a beautiful red amaryillus about to burst into flower. And then there's Twelfth Night, which sadly, these days, is barely recognised. It marks, of course, The Epiphany- the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the date when the Three Wise Men finally made it to the stable. But should Twelfth Night fall on the night of the 5th January or the 6th?  Historically, it was a time for merry-making and anarchy. A Twelfth Night Cake (containing a bean and a pea) was baked and a King and Queen of the Night's Festivities crowned. Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' was written to be performed as a Twelfth Night entertainment, though the first recorded performance was in front of Queen Elizabteth in the Middle Temple Hall at Candlemas, February 2nd, 1602.

 

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to artichokes. Jerusalem artichokes. January's vegetable is without any shadow of doubt, this noble ingredient. They're nothing to with artichokes by the way: bizarrely, they're actually the tuber of a species of sunflower, Helianthus tuberosus; winter root vegetables. They look a bit like small, knobbly potatoes, with a pinkish coloured skin, and were grown by the Native American Indians long before the arrival of the European settlers. I love their subtle, slightly earthy, smokey, velvety taste. But why Jerusalem?  It's possible that it's an English corruption of the Italian word Girasola, meaning 'sunflower'. Gerard's 'Herball' of 1636 describes it as such.

 

 

And there's something else it's essential to know: Jerusalem artichokes make you "windy"- whatever that means. Every time some television chef mentions Jerusalem artichokes on screen, they suddenly "come over" all coy (the otherwise excellent Nigel Slater was a recent culprit), it's slightly bugging; my theory is that if you cook them well enough, you shouldn't have any problems.

Here's how I make an excellent Jersualem Artichoke Soup, which I would recommend without hesitation. Probably one of my all-time favourite soups. It's velvety smooth; and utterly delicious:  

Chop up an onion or two and fry gently in butter and oil with some chopped celery. In the meantime, take a decent amount of Jerusalem Artichokes and using a peeler, remove the skin. You might find it easier to cut off the knobbly bits first. Plunge the peeled artichokes into a bowl of cold water into which you've given a good squeeze of lemon. This will stop your artichokes turning grey. You'll find that they start changing colour very quickly if you don't.

Chop the artichokes into small pieces, and add them to the hot pan. Stew them gently with the onions and the celery for about fifteen minutes. When they're soft, pour in some stock (I used an excellent, slightly salty ham stock), and simmer for a further twenty or so minutes.

When the artichoke pieces are cooked (ie soft), transfer the contents of the pan (the artichokes and the hot liquid) to your magimix or blender, and puree the mixture until smooth. The soup will be a creamy-white colour.

Push through a sieve into a clean pan (this will help to make the soup velvety-smooth), check the seasoning (I used an oak-smoked salt from Waitrose which helps to bring out the slightly smokey flavours, lots of freshly grated nutmeg and some white pepper) adding a decent squeeze of lemon juice, and stir in several tablespoons of double cream to taste. Stir carefully and simmer gently for a few more minutes until hot enough.

Serve with crisp croutons and garnish with fresh dill.