The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Toast Water

  

Toast Water? Really? Or more accurately 'Toast- and- Water’, as Isabella Beeton put it. Like coddled egg, it’s one of those slightly fragile Victorian recipes intended, presumably, for invalids- and back in the dark days of Queen Victoria’s reign, there were plenty of those, including, ultimately poor old Mrs Beeton herself.

Surprisingly it actually tastes rather good. I’ve just made a jug of the stuff. The water takes on an attractive pale golden colour, and includes (as other bloggers have discovered) pleasing hints of nutty caramel, yeast and- wait for it- toast. 

 

To MAKE TOAST- AND- WATER

Ingredients- A slice of bread, 1 quart of boiling water

Mode- Cut a slice from a stale loaf (a piece of hard crust is better than anything else for the purpose), toast it of a nice brown on every side, but do not allow it to burn or blacken. Put it into a jug, pour the boiling water over it, cover it closely and let it remain until cold. When strained, it will be ready for use. Toast- and- Water should always be made a short time before it is required, to enable it to get cold: if drunk in a tepid or lukewarm state, it is an exceedingly disagreeable beverage. If, as is sometimes the case, this drink is wanted in a hurry, put the toasted bread into a jug, and only just cover it with the boiling water; when this is cool, cold water may be added in proportion required- the toast- and- water strained, it will then be ready for use, and is more expeditiously prepared than by the above method.

(From Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, 1861) 

 

Monet’s Stuffed Onions

 

 

I enjoyed the Painting the Modern Garden exhibition at the Royal Academy- especially the last few rooms featuring a series of water lily paintings by Monet.

Monet’s a hero. He enjoyed an envious and civilised existence, thinking about it, not unlike the sybaritic life of Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripliad, Mr Kipling beard excepted: the luscious gardens at Giverny, the love of good food, the stable of interesting motor cars: Renaults, Panhards and a Bonnet-Zédel. And when the Germans invaded France in 1940, Monet stayed behind. Defiant to the last. A true artist.

 

 

Claire Joyes’s Monet’s Cookery Notebooks was one of my recent junk shop finds, and it comes with my recommendation.

 

 

I’m going to be making Charlotte Lysès’s Stuffed Onions this weekend. For Mrs Aitch- she doesn’t know yet. A test to see if she reads my blog.

 

 

How to make it? You slice the top off of a large white onion, and cook it in boiling water (with the lid on) for half an hour and then leave to cool. Then you scoop out the inside and fill with a stuffing made from chopped chicken liver, chopped chives, dried mixed herbs, 75g grated Gruyere cheese, mashed cooked egg yolk and egg white. Then it’s more grated cheese on top, and into the oven at 180°C for half an hour. Can’t wait.

On a completely different tack. Social Media. It’s love and hate, isn’t it? If any of you are on Instagram, you will find me lurking there at luke_honey. I like Instagram, in many ways I think it’s far better than either the dreaded Facebook or Twitter. Twitter, useful as it is, reminds me, sometimes, of a nightmarish media cocktail party, where everybody’s talking at you (rather than with you) all at the same time, like a Luvvie Tower of Babel. I signed up for Instagram yonks ago, when it first started, but stupidly allowed my account to lie dormant for far too long. Now back in action.