The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Too Many Christmas Trees?

 

Steed contemplates the joy of a 1960’s Christmas, “Too Many Christmas Trees”, The Avengers, 1965

 

Fed up with Christmas?  Had enough?  Can’t wait to return to the Blacking Factory?  Does the Counting House call?  Funnily enough, I’m rather fond of this time of year, the ‘in-between’ bit, I mean. The raw, midwinter weather of Boxing Day, with its sporting traditions: hunting, shooting, betting, and the racing on Channel Four. And then the run-up to the New Year; when the Christmas tree’s still up (just!), social media shuts down and your email feed collapses into a meaningless trickle. And you’re left alone. With a fabulous wife and a shoe-munching whippet; a bottle of Veuve yellow label and an old black and white movie. 

London becomes a ghost town: London for Londoners; the deserted streets remind me of old black and white episodes from The Avengers. How I used to love that series!  My all-time favourite episode has to be Too Many Christmas Trees, in which Steed and Mrs Peel spend Christmas at the Gothick country house of a nutcase obsessed with Dickens and Mrs Peel dresses up as a cheeky Oliver Twist. 

Driven by the great god Mammon which everybody, these days, seems to worship without question, the modern focus is on the run-up to Christmas: decorations appear in the London shops while the leaves still cling to the branches of the great planes trees in Berkeley Square.

Historically, of course, the twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas Day and ends on January 5th, the Epiphany (January 6th), or even quite possibly, on January 7th, which as the erudite readership of the Spoon knows, is the date of the Russian Orthodox Christmas. I’ve never worked out in my head which is the right day (I’m counting aloud on my fingers as I type) so please feel free to put me right, those of you prepared to confess to a pedantic streak.

Food at this time of year is also a good thing. After all that turkey, all that goose, the soggy Christmas pudding, the migraine-inducing mulled wine and the sulphurous brussel sprout, Something Light is the order of the day.

I’ve cooked my usual cider and honey glazed Christmas Ham (tweaking a recipe issued by the wonder that is Sarah Raven), and once I’ve finished this post, will start making a traditional Germanic Herring Salad. Mrs Aitch has also discovered Forman’s Smoked Salmon pate on the shelves of our local Waitrose in Nine Elms; outstandingly delicious. I cannot stress how addictive this stuff is. 

 

Tamasin Day-Lewis wrote a fascinating article in the Telegraph about H. Forman & Son, the only surviving East End smokery. The tradition of smoking salmon was brought to London by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Scottish smoked salmon only took off later, following developments in fish farming.

But, sorry Scotland, if you want the Real McCoy, Forman’s smokery is the place to go. Known for its “London Cure”, Forman’s uses dry salt rather than chemical brine and stretches the fish to improve the texture with a drip-dry effect.

And so to their Smoked Salmon Pate: it’s amazingly creamy in texture and has a lovely, savoury taste. I see that they make it with Mascarpone cheese, which, I think adds to the creamy taste. Their superior concoction also includes unsalted butter, natural yoghurt, dill and shallots.

Tamasin Day-Lewis gives a recipe to create something similar for yourself, but to be honest, I am such a fan of Forman’s smoked salmon pate, it might be a good plan to hurry along to your local supermarket (both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s stock it) and bag a tub or two for yourself. While stocks last.

 

 

Hallowe’en Blues

 

 

 Ruth ‘Dusty’ Anderson, 1944

 

I used to enjoy Hallowe’en. Back in the 70’s, the British Hallowe’en was a charming, subtle affair: a ghost story read aloud at nursery school, a spooky cartoon on the BBC perhaps; bobbing for apples (remember that?). In the fading twilight, my now-departed grandmother taught me how to carve little turnip lanterns at the kitchen table. And that was that. No Trick or Treat. I doubt very much if the parents were even aware that it was happening- they had far more important things to worry about: strikes, the collapse of the British Economy, the three day week, inflation, the threat of redundancy: boring grown-up problems like losing your job, going out of business and the threat of nuclear war.

But today, the American Pumpkin Festival is out of control. There are many, many, civilised, indeed lovely, things about America and Americans: their incredible museums, their massive bookshops, the beautifully stocked newsagents, the brown paper bags you get in supermarkets, the films of Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Whit Stillman; Kermit and the Muppets, Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine, Charles Schulz and Peanuts; Monopoly, Tom and Jerry refrigerators, the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, Julianne Moore, the Dry Martini Cocktail, Coca-Cola, shrimp gumbo and chile-con-carne (always served with plain crackers); Frasier and Niles Crane, Orson Welles, Vogue Magazine, the Philadelphia Cricket Club, the Chrysler Building, San Francisco, Manhattan and Georgetown, Washington DC; Bunny Mellon, Patricia Highsmith and Tom Ripley, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, the paintings of Mark Rothko; Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Scarry and Vincent Price.

 

Ellen Drew, 1941

 

But over here we’ve imported all the worst things from America: political correctness and dumbed down celebrity culture, reality television, prancing majorettes and hearty cheerleaders, liposculpture and trout pouts, Country Clubs, checked golfing ‘pants’ and electric buggies; fat people, money belts, Segway portability vehicles, ugly SUVs, Chrysler cars; the musty smell of pumpkin and the sickly taste of cinnamon; food to ‘go’, rather than to ‘takeaway’, multiple television channels of infinite boredom (advertising breaks every fifteen minutes), Easter Parades, white stretch limos, lieutenant pronounced ‘loootenant’, upward inflections at the end of every sentence, Baby Showers and High School Proms; Facebook, Hummers, the Franklin Mint, EuroDisney and Kentucky Fried Chicken; hockey ‘moms’, the bland ’Have a Nice Day!’, ‘Missing You Already!’, the dreadful ‘Save the Date’, scary clown mania; Donald Trump. 

The latest madness is Black Friday. Come the day, British Twitter is now full of ‘Black Friday this’ and 'Black Friday that'. But Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. And may I remind the increasingly hysterical British media that, as yet, we don’t have Thanksgiving here? Thanksgiving is a specifically American (and Canadian) celebration, which, commemorates, I gather, the landing of a container’s worth of persecuted English Non-Conformists on Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts in the early 17th century. It’s a bit like asking the Americans to celebrate the execution of Guido Fawkes. And why should they do that? 

So it’s with great regret that I am going to have to add the American Hallowe’en to the index. Come the 31st, the mean streets of SW8 are full of threatening, marauding gangs of masked, acned youths and their pushy, earnest parents demanding sweeties- sorry Honey, ‘candy’. Which is one of the reasons we barricade the front door, turn off the lights and pretend that we’ve gone to Positano for the week.

I try very hard not to rant, I really do; I know it’s horribly unattractive (especially as I reach the zenith of Late Youth); but these days I spend about a quarter of my time shouting at the computer and television screen. Over the last ten years, the world has gone barmy.

 

Betty Grable: How to Marry a Pumpkin?

 

Historically, of course, this is all nonsense, and Hallowe’en is a worthy example of a Scottish, Irish or Northern English tradition exported to the American states, jiggled about a bit and then sold back to us. In the same way that Seattle re-imagined the Italian Coffee House, Chicago the Neapolitan pizza and San Francisco Chinese Chow Mein.

And in that tradition here’s my version of an American style Black Bean Soup, very suitable for the chill days of late October, with Mexican hints suitable for the Day of the Dead festival on November 2nd. The sort of dish they might serve up at Jo Allen’s in Exeter Street:  

You can either use tinned black beans or dried beans which you need to soak overnight in cold water. In a pan, cook some chopped smoked bacon in butter for a few minutes. Next, stir in a chopped onion, chopped carrot, and two crushed cloves of garlic. It might also be a good plan to throw in a finely chopped green chilli. One of those fiendishly hot small ones. I'll leave that up to you.

Next, you need to add cumin. If you've got time, you can dry-roast some cumin seeds in a hot frying pan, and then when they're popping, take them out and crush them in a pestle and mortar. Otherwise you could use powdered cumin. Add the cumin to the pan, and stir in. Cook for a few moments. Tip in the black beans, some chicken stock, and a liberal dash of my favourite Tabasco Sauce. I like the green, slightly milder stuff.

Simmer on a very low heat with the lid on for about an hour and a half. You want the soup to be thick and velvety. The black beans should thicken everything up. Serve with sour cream, and chopped chives. A spicy Mexican Salsa might be a good plan too.

 

 

Brown Windsor Soup

 

 

Don’t think I’ve had a Brown Windsor Soup for a very, very long time. Trying to remember and my mind’s drawing a blank. It has a reputation. I’m thinking back to the late 1940’s or 50’s: deserted hotel restaurants; threadbare, rancid carpets, elderly waiters in ill-fitting, egg-stained tailcoats, chipped porcelain, grapefruit halves topped with a tinned glacé cherry, a wine glass of ‘chilled’ tomato juice masquerading as a first course; a slice of tinned gammon with a pineapple ‘garnish’. I’m crooking my little finger as I type. 

If you’re interested in food history, there’s quite a bit of academic stuff on the history and origins of the Brown Windsor Soup: you can read all about it here. But despite its dubious past, the Brown Windsor Soup might be a good thing to serve to your friends on a damp Autumn day, especially now that the days are drawing in. Made well, it’s a surprisingly rich and smooth soup- if you buy beef and fresh, well-grown vegetables. There’s an excellent version in Mark Hix’s British Food: 

Braising Steak is cut into small pieces and fried in a saucepan, along with chopped vegetables, such as onions, carrots and leeks, until browned. Flour and butter are added to the hot pan and stirred into the mix to form a roux, and cooked for a few minutes. In goes, tomato puree, crushed garlic, a few thyme sprigs, a bay leaf and beef stock and the soup is stirred and simmered for two hours until the meat is tender.

The soup is then whizzed up in a hand blender until smooth and passed through a sieve into a clean pan, reduced a bit (to thicken it up and concentrate the flavour), seasoned with a few pinches of sea-salt flakes and black pepper and finished off with a spoonful or two of dry sherry. That’s it.

 

Noël Coward's Oeufs Vaudoise

 

 

 

"Make the required quantity of scrambled eggs in the usual way but instead of using a small amount of milk use French Vermouth and at the last moment add a few shrimps, about 8 or 10 per person.

Before serving top with thinly shaved almonds. This recipe can either be a breakfast or supper dish."

 

From "Celebrity Cooking For You", Andre Deutsch, 1961.

 

 

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.

 

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?

 

 

 

 

Richard Olney's "Fennel à la Grecque"

 

 

 

Following my recent post on the American food writer, Richard Olney, I'm having fun getting back into his books. I've got The French Menu Cookbook and Simple French Food- but have yet to read his autobiography, Reflexions; Ten Vineyard Lunches or Provence, The Beautiful Cookbook. He's a sophisticated cook, and there would be much to learn if you took the plunge and decided to go through The French Menu Cookbook bit by bit.

Here's Richard Olney's recipe for "Fennel à la Grecque", taken from The French Menu Cookbook. It will serve from four to six people. He's got it down as a "Simple Autumn recipe", although in England it might be just as suitable for the Summer. In these harsher Northern climes, Autumn usually makes me think of squashes, mushrooms, pheasant, game, chutneys. Bonfire smoke, fog, red poppies.

 

 

 

In a saucepan you assemble: 750g fennel (outer stalks removed, halved or quartered from top to bottom), 5 tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of two lemons, one onion (finely sliced into rings), 2 cloves of garlic (lightly crushed), 8 to 10 coriander seeds, a pinch of fennel seeds, a bouquet garni, and salt.

Pour over boiling water to cover, and simmer, covered until the fennel is tender. Arrange the fennel in a deep serving dish, pour over the contents of the saucepan, and leave to cool. Serve cold, and sprinkle with finely chopped flat leafed parsley.

The brilliant thing about this very easy recipe is that you can you use the formula to cook other vegetables in a similar manner. Olney suggests using as an alternative: artichoke hearts, baby onions, celery hearts split in two, or cauliflower florets.

 

The Perfect Prawn Cocktail

 

 

 

 

 

"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.

Omelette Baveuse

 

I've got a thing about omelettes at the moment. The "runny" variety, as made in France. I'm not sure if I'm a bona fide Francophile (I veer between a wild enthusiasm and an Anglican suspicion), but I do think that, apart from the Euro, there are many things that the French get right, and omelettes are most certainly one of them. 

This is classic, Sunday night food: you take a non-stick, lightly oiled heavy saucepan, and heat it on a medium flame. Three eggs are beaten up with a dollop of crème fraîche, a pinch of salt and a pinch of white pepper. Add a knob of butter to the hot pan, turning the heat down to low. Swirl the butter around the pan as it froths.

In goes the egg mixture. Shaking the pan as you work, draw the runny mixture into the centre of the pan with a spatula or a fork. As the omelette cooks, the liquid egg will fill in the empty spaces. Carry on shaking the pan to make sure the edges don't stick.

I like my omelette to be soft- and that is indeed the aim of the Baveuse. To serve, fold over the omelette from both sides towards the middle and turn out on to a plate.

That's how to make a classic omelette. The secret is to use a lowish heat, work with speed, and keep it runny. Once you've mastered the technique you can start experimenting with fillings- chopped tomatoes, bacon, herbs and of course, cheese.

Incidentally, I'm currently experimenting with grated cheese and a dash of cognac; both added to the egg mixture before the beating stage. I like the sophisticated combination of cognac and eggs, although I appreicate that this is not going to be everybody's cup of tea.

There's also the question of when to add the salt. In researching this post, I found a video on Youtube featuring a certain Mr Gordon Ramsay teaching Joan Collins how to make an omelette. There was a scary frisson between the two of them, the "bat's squeak of sexuality", as Evelyn Waugh put it so brilliantly in Brideshead. Gordon reckons that if you add salt to the egg mixture it will turn the omelette "a bit grey". I'm definitely not convinced by this- and bet my bottom dollar that in a blind tasting (or indeed viewing) he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

 

 

If you're interested in classic recipes and how to get them just so, may I recommend to you Felicity Cloake's Perfect- 68 Recipes for Every Cook's Repertoire. Ms Cloake writes a column for "The Guardian". The book does exactly what it says on the tin. 

 

 

 

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It's a wild world

 

 

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...

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Rum Butter Shrimp

 

 

Oh Jiminy Cricket, this is truly delicious! You get hold of some raw, peeled shrimp (as it's a Southern dish, I'm not going to call them prawns), season them with salt and pepper, and fry them briefly in butter, until they turn pink. Personally, I like mine slightly underdone, and the moment they turn, I call it a day. Using a slotted spoon, you take the cooked shrimp out of the pan, leaving the butter behind.

Next, you add a further dollop of butter to the hot pan, let it bubble and in the meantime chop up some fresh tarragon leaves (picked off the stalk) with some spring onions (otherwise known as scallions). Cook these very briefly in the butter.

Deglaze the pan with a slosh of rum (I used Mount Gay- alas, recently re-branded into some awful corporate bottle, but the rum's still the same), flambé to burn off the alcohol, and toss the shrimp back into the pan with the sauce. Bubble for a minute or so, check the seasoning and serve.

The interesting combination of shrimp, butter, rum and tarragon is fabulous.

 

 

Avocado and Tomato Ice with Horseradish

 

 

Cordon Bleu Cookery Course, 1970

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.

 

Scallop Mousse with Butter and Chive Sauce

 

 

 

This is an excellent recipe, and it works. It's based on a Raymond Blanc dish from his book Cooking for Friends. I first made it for The Girl when we were steppin' out; now she's Mrs Aitch, so I obviously did something right. It's for four people.

First, you need to pre-heat your oven to 330F (160C), Gas mark 3.

Take 150 g of fresh scallops and remove the orangey coral bit. Put these to one side. Purée the scallops in a food processor for two minutes (that's quite a long time, but it's needed to make sure the mixture turns very, very smooth), and then add a single egg yolk, salt and cayenne pepper. Mix, until all the ingredients are incorporated. 

Next, take the bowl of your Magimix (with the purée inside) and stick it in the deep freeze for 15 minutes: this will help to stop the mixture separating when you add cream. When the time's up, take out the bowl and put it back onto the Magimix. Set the motor to medium speed, and slowly pour in 200ml of whipping cream- in a thin stream. Taste and season again, if you think it needs it. 

The mousse is going to be cooked in oven-proof porcelain ramekin dishes, and then turned out. I used a set of 80's Villeroy & Boch ramekins that I happened to have lying around in the cupboard. They were too deep, in my 'umble opinion, as the result was too much mousse on the plate. Maybe tastes have changed?  For a decent First Course, I think less is probably more, and I would recommend either using those shallow ramekins or reasonably small moulds instead: you're not cooking the main event.

Smear the insides of your ramekins with butter, and then fill 'em up with the mousse mixture. Place the ramekins inside a roasting tin, and pour in boiling water, so that it comes up to two-thirds of the ramekin dishes. Cover the tray loosely with some tin-foil and stick it in the pre-heated oven. It's going to take 15 minutes to cook.

In the meantime, you need to make your sauce. Melt 15g unsalted butter in a small pan and sweat a chopped up shallot or two, a few finely chopped button mushrooms and the coral from the scallops. After a few minutes, add a slug of Noilly Prat or Martini Extra Dry Vermouth. Turn up the heat and boil quickly, to reduce by half. Add a few tablespoons of water and two tablespoons of whipping cream. Push the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing down hard to extract as much as the fishy mushroomy juice as possible, into a clean pan.

Next, on a very low heat, gradually whisk 1/2 oz of diced butter into the sauce, so that it forms an emulsion. Taste, season with salt and white pepper, and whisk in a few drops of lemon juice.

Take the ramekins out of the oven. You'll find that the mousses will turn out very easily, as long as you run a knife around the edges of the ramekins. Place the mousse on the centre of the plate, and spoon over the butter sauce. You can either add chopped chives to the sauce at the end of the cooking stage, or when the sauce is on the plate.

A quick note about the chives: don't make the mistake I made of adding far too many chopped chives- it will turn your sauce a muddy green colour. You want your sauce to be a butter yellow. I would recommend that you add the finely chopped chives in small amounts, or even add the chives in tiny piles to the hot butter sauce when it's already on the plate. My other mistake was to swamp the delicate mousse with the rich butter sauce, so that it came up to the very edge of the plate. I would suggest that you go easy on the sauce, and just spoon it over the mousse in a modest way.

Once you've mastered the technique of mousse-making (and the Blanc method as described above is a good one), you can start thinking of other ingredients. I'm considering the idea of a Smoked Haddock Mousse with an Anchovy and Butter sauce. Obviously, you would need to add anchovy essence in very small quantities, otherwise the whole thing would be far too salty. There might be a cleverer way of adding the flavour of the anchovy? Maybe Smoked Haddock Mousse with a Butter and Parsley Sauce might be a better idea? Time to get my thinking cap on. Any suggestions? 

Eggs Drumkilbo

 

 

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.

 

Wild Garlic Risotto

 

 

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?

 

 

 

Avocado Bering

 

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.

 

 

Wild Garlic

 

 

 

We've just come back from an invigorating five day trip to South Cornwall. It was warm enough to enjoy a simple lunch al fresco at the ever-wonderful Tresanton Hotel in St Mawes. The slightly Agatha Christie-ish ambience of the upper terrace (with its ocean-liner metal railings, sea views and steamship loungers) remains unchanged: fans of "Peril at End House" (first published in 1932) will know what I'm talking about.

 

 

On Monday we dropped in at Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow and enjoyed an intensely flavoured bouillabaisse (Cornish style) with crutons, red pepper aioli and grated cheese; roasted Hake (served in a piping hot earthenware dish with puy lentils) and a pretty concoction of lobster and crab wrapped up in puff pastry and served with a pinkish lobster sauce.

The Seafood Restaurant at Padstow has to be one of my all-time favourite restaurants and, in my 'umble opinion Master Copperfield, remains consistently excellent. The discreet service is of the highest professional standard: raise your eyebrow and in an instant there will be a helpful waiter at your side; tables are spacious and the atmosphere is relaxed. The food is unpretentious and utterly delicious.  I can't recommend the place enough.

I've always had a thing about Cornwall- as a child, we used to spend our summer holidays at the charming sea-side town of St Mawes. It really is the most romantic destination: 

 

The mysterious St Michael's Mount.

 

Caerhays Castle: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..."

 

The Cornish lanes and hedgerows are full of wild flowers, (including violet coloured wild orchids) and at this time of the year, daffodils. A thought occured to me on our drive home over Salisbury Plain and past Stonehenge: the verges of Wiltshire's main roads are barren; and in the case of South Buckinghamshire, I regret to report, littered. Does an enlightened Cornish county council have an active policy to encourage wild flowers?  Or is it that in counties such as Wiltshire and Oxfordshire, with large-scale and mechanised farming, wild flowers are killed by the spillover from intensive crop spraying?

It's the time of year to pick and use wild garlic (Allium ursinum). It can be found in damp woodlands and hedgerows, and gives off an evocative, garlicky smell which can't be missed. I love its subtle taste. Funnily enough, unlike the standard variety in which you use the bulb, with wild garlic you eat the green leaves. In London we have to buy it from specialist shops, the superior supermarkets (such as Wholefoods) or your local farmer's market.

I'm going to make a creamy and simple risotto, flavoured with my favourite wild garlic. If I chop up the leaves small enough, I'm hoping that this will make the risotto turn a pale light green colour.

Mrs Kennedy's Green Risotto

 

 

I bought an entertaining second-hand book the other day. For a few pounds on abebooks.co.uk. It's called (hilariously) "Cooking for Madam". Marta Scubin was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's private cook, and her book tells the story of her career with Mrs Onassis, and shares the secrets of their Fifth Avenue kitchen.

Now I've currently got a thing about simplicity in food. Classic dishes cooked well, with attention to detail and using the correct techniques. Arranged artistically on the plate. The right size of helping too; veering on the belt-tightening side of restraint, and avoiding the vulgarity of excess. Mrs Onassis appears to have been very keen on this sort of food. Simple dishes such as "Roast Loin of Veal with Morel Mousse", "Pear Sorbet", "Tarragon Chicken", "Mousseline Sauce" and "Mussel Salad". I like the sound of the last one. It's a plain green salad, with mussels removed from the shell, and served with a saffron flavoured creamy vinaigrette and an empty mussel shell or two for decoration.

 

 

I'm also enjoying her "Green Risotto". It's a simple risotto flavoured with puréed spinach. The latter turns it a lovely, vivid green colour.

You heat some olive oil in heavy saucepan and sauté some chopped onions. Next, you add about 1½ cups of arborio rice and let the rice grains coat themselves in the hot oil. I'm sure you all know how to make proper risotto: add a splash of white wine to the rice and let it evaporate. Ladle in the steaming hot stock bit by bit, until the rice absorbs the liquid; stirring and beating away at it like mad so that the rice releases the starch. Carry on stirring until the rice is cooked.

The trick is to get the rice al dente (ie slightly firm) yet bound in a starchy, creamy sauce. It will take about twenty-five minutes. Then it's time to add the spinach. 

In her book, Marta puts ten fresh wet spinach leaves into a blender and whizzes them up into a paste. Having tried it myself, I'm not sure about this method. What you end up with is thousands of very tiny uncooked spinach particles suspended in water, and your risotto will end up flecked with green. Instead, try steaming your spinach leaves briefly before-hand, and then when you come to whizz them up, they should make a much smoother purée. If necessary, add a bit of water to the mix.

Stir the green spinach purée into the risotto, and serve with shavings of parmesan cheese.

 

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

 

 

We served this soup to our lucky guests on New Year's Eve. Jersualem Artichokes are currently in season. 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 taste.

And there's something else about Jerusalem Artichokes you need to know: apparently they 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 made the soup. It was velvety smooth; and utterly delicious:  Chop up some an onion or two and fry gently in butter and oil with some chopped celery. In the meantime, take your 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 to give the soup a slightly smokey flavour, 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.

Anton Mosimann's Courgette and Thyme Risotto

 

 

 

We've just got back from a quick sojourn around the Italian Lakes; Lugano to be more precise, on the Italian-Swiss border. If you've never been there, I would urge you to go- the area is of course, stunningly beautiful, the food is excellent, and the place is relatively easy to get to, being only an hour or so's drive away from Milan.

 

Lake Como amused me. We had pistacchio gelati, sitting out on the terrace of the excellent Villa d'Este, watching playboys zooming around in Riva speed boats (all varnish and chrome), and flying boats taking off from the lake. It was very Talented Mr Ripley- a throwback to the 1950's. I gather George Clooney lives in the Villa Oleandra nearby. I also got to drive a Lancia again for the first time in twenty years. A trip down memory lane this was, as the car I first learnt to drive was my grandfather's highly unsuitable 1969 Lancia Flavia: all fuel injection and retro teak dashboard with an interesting array of coloured knobs and satsifying buttons to fiddle with. Anyway. Risotto.

I've got a theory that the Italians keep back the best risotto rice for themselves. Has anyone else noticed this? A year or two ago, we bought some arborio rice from a little shop in a backwater in Venice, and my god, it tasted so much more authentic than the imported stuff you buy from Sainsbury's. Having said that, I've discovered that Tesco sell an excellent arborio rice under their own name which seems to give very genuine, top notch results, and I would recommend this without reservation.

One of the best risotto recipes I've come across is in Anton Mosimann's "Cooking with Mosimann".  Remember old Anton?  He was that Swiss chap with the moustache, who elevated precision to a fine art, and had something to do with nouvelle cuisine back in the 1980's. You don't seem him on television much these days, and I assume he's gone into semi-retirement, which is a great shame, as I've been re-visiting his books and finding his recipes to be comparatively straightforward by today's standards and of course, as you would expect, technically excellent. Here's his recipe for a simple risotto cooked with courgettes and thyme. The addition of turmeric thickens it up and turns it an interesting, yellow colour, although I would be tempted, by way of experiment, to substitute the turmeric with a few saffron threads instead.

Melt 25g of butter in a hot pan. Chop up a small onion into fine pieces and cook it in the butter with a sprig or so of fresh thyme. Cook until soft, but not brown. Stir in 200g of arborio rice with a decent pinch of turmeric, and make sure the rice is coated in the hot butter. Again, do not brown. Pour in 150ml of steaming hot vegetable or chicken stock. Stir like crazy. The rice will release starch. Starch is what makes the risotto creamy. Over a medium heat, carry on adding 250ml of hot stock in small quantities, until the rice has absorbed it. You know how to do this, I don't really need to tell you: add a bit of stock, stir until most of the stock has been absorbed, add a bit of stock, stir.

As you're stirring, mix in 250g of courgettes, cut into small diced cubes. I tend to cut up my vegetables for this sort of thing into fairly small dice, as I think, visually at least, it looks neater, and it will take less time to cook. It's important not to overcook the rice. The Italians like their risotto rice to be reasonably firm, yet bound in a creamy, fairly sloppy sauce. This is the great art: firm rice, wet sauce; and it's not especially easy to get right the first time you make it.

Just before you reckon the rice to be ready, pour in 50ml of dry white wine. This will stop the cooking. Stir in a knob of butter, check the seasoning, and serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

 

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The Best Mushroom Risotto

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Clear Gazpacho

 

 

 

Clear Gazpacho is one of my favourite summer recipes. It's very easy to make, though slightly time consuming- but could be made in advance and then assembled at the last minute. It uses similar ingredients to a traditional gazpacho soup, but, instead, has as a base a mouth watering, flavour infused, clear, tomato "consommé".

Take a largish quantity of ripe red tomatoes and blitz them in your mixer with some sea salt. The riper the better, as the salt helps to draw out the juices. Next, line a sieve with muslin or coffee filter paper, and fill it up with the tomato pulp, placing a large bowl underneath. Stick it in the 'fridge and let the "tomato water" drip slowly into the bowl. When I'm in the mood, I sometimes add some crushed mint leaves to the pulp as well.

The next morning you'll have a bowl full of an amazingly clear, rose-coloured, light but flavour-rich, tomato stock. The first time I made it, I was amazed. Add a bit more salt to it, if it needs it.

Pour the cold tomato water into bowls. Garnish with thinly sliced radishes, cubed avocado, sliced baby tomatoes, crispy apple cut into tiny batons, red chili cut into wafer thin julienne, red, yellow and green peppers, courgettes, and chopped basil. The secret is to try and cut the ingredients into the smallest shapes you possibly can: these can include batons, diamonds, cubes and thin strips, as the mood takes you. If they're small enough, they should float on top of the soup with ease. Serve it chilled. That's it.

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Maryland Crab Cakes

 

 

This is one of the all-time great American recipes, comfort food at it's best; and it's relatively easy to make too. Traditionally, the Blue Crab from the Chesapeake Bay area is the one to go for, but I have to accept, reluctantly, that living this side of the pond, other varieties of crab will have to do.

Die-hards might also want to add Old Bay Seasoning, which is an American herb and spice mix. As we don't seem to be able to get it here (maybe I should try the excellent Wholefoods in Kensington High Street?), I've substituted my very own, very similar spice mixture which will have to do for the time being.

Back to the crab cakes. Take some juicy crab meat and put it into a mixing bowl. Add a cup of mayonnaise, a tablespoon of mustard powder (its got to be Colman's), a beaten egg, a teaspoon of Lea & Perrins, the juice of a lemon, and some chopped parsley. Combine everything together. 

Now for The Greasy Spoon's very own "Old Bay Seasoning" recipe. Grind up some celery salt, mustard seed, cinammon, powdered ginger, peppercorns, and a bayleaf until you have a reasonably fine powder. Add a teaspoonful to the crab mixture.

Next you need to add some breadcrumbs. Instead of crumbling up a slice of bread, I find it easier to use about seven crushed Saltine Crackers, and I have a feeling that this could be more authentic. Put the crackers into a plastic bag, and then bash them with a hammer. Add the crumbs to the mixture and then chill it for about two hours in the 'fridge.

To cook, drop each crab cake into some hot oil (say, in a wok), and fry until they are golden brown. Serve with the classic American Tomato and Horseradish Ketchup. Utterly delicious, and very appropriate, I think, for a hot Saturday afternoon in June or July.

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Hollandaise Sauce

 

 

 

I'm sure you all know how to make Hollandaise Sauce. You'll need it to make Omelette Arnold Bennett.  If you've forgotten, here's how: Melt 225g (8oz) of butter in a pan. In the meantime, liquidize two egg yolks with the juice of one lemon and season with white pepper. When the butter is hot, turn the liquidizer on full blast, and slowly pour in the butter.

That's it. Make sure it's served hot, and that it doesn't get too thick. Nothing worse than luke-warm and gloopy Hollandaise Sauce. And it's perfect, of course, with English Asparagus- not long to wait now..

Omelette Arnold Bennett

 

 

 

Hands up who saw that Sophie Dahl cookery television programme the other day?  Now, I'm an avid follower of Roald (who's Harry Potter?) and his extended family; and since the age of six I've been a huge fan of anything and everything Dahl-esque: transatlantic peaches, Gypsy caravans, Patricia Neal's cheekbones, chocolate factories, Quentin Blake's illustrations, and All Things Unexpected. 

In the programme, the delicious Miss Dahl (hang on, shouldn't she be the delicious Mrs Cullum?) rustled up a few bits and bobs in a retro-looking kitchen, and let us into a few charmingly girly secrets. And that was about it. Nothing more. Safe television, bland.

She looks great (amazingly like her grandmother) and her food looks good, but crikey o' reilly, I look back on the enthusiasm of the early Keith Floyd or the ravings of a certain Mrs Cradock with genuine nostalgia, and for the days when old pros like Anton Mosimann or Albert Roux stood in some boring, brightly-lit studio somewhere, with a set of sparkling saucepans and a brand new gas stove and just showed us how it was done properly.

The girl likes cooking, I have no doubt about that, but I don't detect a genuine obsession for food there- she's the star and the food is almost incidental. And I doubt it's her fault. I can just see it. Some thrusting young television exec takes her out to lunch at Sketch, or somewhere like that, and there's lots of exciting talk: "The New Nigella"..."You'll be huge, darling" (as if she already isn't- or wasn't)..."massive book sales", and so on, and so on. And who can blame her for taking the bait?  I would. You would. My Cat would.

The trouble is that, currently, the British Broadcasting Corporation is one gigantic yawn when it comes to food. And I have a solution: may I suggest that the BBC clears all its food programmes off the schedules for a year (bit of a problem there, I admit, as this accounts for nearly all their programming, and I can see a queue at the Shepherds Bush unemployment office of hairy bikers, voluptious Belgravia housewives, fat ladies, bald masterchefs, and pock-marked prima donnas), and then after, say, a year of food abstinence, commissions one new food programme of intelligence, content, integrity and dare I say it, quirkiness?  And one programme only.

There. I've had my little rant.  And I've gone off on a tangent too, as this post was supposed to be about Omelette Arnold Bennett, which the supermodel showed us how to cook. It was an inspired choice, as Omelette Arnold Bennett is delicious, and thinking about it, I'm amazed that I haven't covered it before. It's very much a Greasy Spoon type dish. Here's how I make it (this will make two omelettes) and you'll need to make up some Béchamel and Hollandaise sauce before hand.  If I haven't written about these two sauces before, by golly, I'm just about to over the next few posts.

Poach 150g skinned haddock fillets in a mixture of milk and water. I would recommend using undyed haddock, rather than the yellow dyed stuff.

A fool proof cooking method is as follows: put the fish into cold water, bring it to the boil, put on the saucepan lid, and then turn off the heat. The fish will sit in the hot water and cook slowly, to taste. When you're happy with it, take the haddock out of the pan, drain and flake up the fish. I like my fish to be very slightly under-done. 

Whisk up six eggs, add half the flaked haddock and season to taste. Heat an omelette pan, add a knob of butter and swirl it around. Add enough egg mixture to cover the pan, and stir immediately, tipping the pan quickly, to allow the runny egg mixture to fill the gaps. Work like a navvie, without pause. Knowing how to make an omelette is an art, something you will need to practise. Mrs Aitch is extremely good at it; I am not. Once the omelette has lightly set, slide it out on to a plate.

Mix a cup of Béchamel Sauce with three tablespoons of Hollandaise Sauce. Add the remaining smoked haddock flakes and fold in a largish tablespoon of whipped double cream. Cover the omelette with this mixture, sprinkle with some freshly grated Parmesan Cheese and bake under a hot grill until glazed.

And who was Arnold Bennett?  It's amusing how celebrity and transience go together like tea and biscuits or Jekyll and Hyde. Back in the 1920's Bennett was a famous man of letters, and a director of The Savoy Hotel to boot; where the famed omelette was invented for him.  As Andy Warhol said: "in the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes".

 

Scrambled Eggs Revisited

 

 

 

We had the usual lazy Sunday: lots of lounging around on sofas; newspapers sprawled all over the floor, Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" on the television- that sort of thing. There was a short article in one of the colour supplements (was it "The Sunday Times", or even the dreaded "Stella"?) about scrambled eggs. Which set me thinking: what is the best way to make the perfect scrambled eggs?

Back in the 80's, I had an interesting plate of scrambled eggs at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. This was a breakfast affair- we had all been to some charity ball at the Dorchester, and drifted in to the Hilton at seven o' clock in the morning, feeling shattered. The scrambled eggs were bright yellow in colour. And I really mean bright yellow.

Now I'm sure that The Hilton use some sort of rare organic hen's egg (the shell no doubt mottled in a delicate Eton Blue); and I would hate to imply that their chefs took short cuts in any shape or form (this was the 1980's after all); but I have to state that the long finger of suspicion pointed to the remote possibility that they had used yellow food dye in the cooking process. Quelle Horreur.

 

Up until now, I've made scrambled eggs in the Escoffier tradition, and I wrote about this on The Greasy Spoon a year or two back:

"Break eight good eggs into a mixing bowl. Blend them very very gently with a fork. You do not want to beat them. You do not add water or milk. That's what Irish cooks did in the 1950's. You don't want to add salt at this stage, either, as it makes the eggs watery.  Not good.

I think it was the restauranteur, Marcel Boulestin, who suggested that Escoffier also rubbed garlic onto his fork to add a bit of flavour to the eggs. I'll have to check up on that one- I may be wrong.

Anyway, heat up a small copper pan. Add a knob of unsalted butter. Pour in the eggs, crank down the heat, and start to cook them at an extremely low temperature. In a professional kitchen they would probably use a "bain-marie". That means placing the smaller pan over a larger pan full of simmering boiling water.

As I've got a job of sorts to hold down, and have limited time, I don't do this; but I can only stress that for it to work, you need to set your heat to the lowest possible setting. Stir slowly with a wooden spoon from the middle, so that the egg sets in creamy curds.

This is a real art. You don't want the egg to stick to the pan, yet at the same time, you want the egg to set. When the eggs are almost ready, stir in some cream. Quickly remove the eggs from the heat. They will carry on cooking in the pan. Now you can stir in some more butter to taste, and season with salt, pepper, and if you're in the mood, chopped chives."

But we can improve on this. Elizabeth David came up with a brainwave. She deleted an egg white. So if you're using say, four eggs- use four egg yolks but only three egg whites. This will make your scrambled eggs yellow. No need for food dye. And that's how you make the Perfect Scrambled Egg.

 

Smoked Eel with Creamed Horseradish Sauce

 

 

Racking my brains for an appropriate Christmas Lunch or Boxing Day first course, I've come up with the idea of giving 'em Smoked Eel, served with a Creamed Horseradish Sauce. For some reason, this seems to me to be a suitable choice, and I think the subtle smokiness of the eel will balance all the richness and over-stuffing to follow.

If you've never had smoked eel, forget all the "cor blimey, Guv, jellied eel" nonsense. Smoked eel tastes entirely different, and with a properly made horseradish sauce, might even prove to be a sophisticated option.

It's not especially cheap, I have to admit. We've just ordered our smoked eel from the excellent Brown and Forrest, and an 8oz pack of smoked eel fillets (hot smoked over beech and apple) costs £14.00. You will need about 2oz per person.

We're going to serve it with slices of lemon and creamed horseradish sauce. I'm basing this on Simon Hopkinson's version:

First you need to make a horseradish concentrate. Peel a horseradish root and grate it finely across the base of the root. You will need 200g of the stuff.

Next, put the grated horseradish into a food processor. Add five tablespoons of water, two teaspoons of Maldon Salt, one and a half tablespoons of caster sugar, two and a half tablespoons of lemon juice, and two and a half tablespoons of white wine vinegar. Purée the ingredients until smooth. You will be able to keep the horseradish concentrate in a Kilner jar for up to two weeks.

When you want to make the creamed horseradish sauce, it's simplicity itself. Take four tablespoons of the horseradish concentrate you've made earlier, and whisk it into 200ml of double cream, adding a little bit more sugar and salt, to taste.

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Minestrone Soup

 

Strangely, I don't think I've written about Minestrone Soup before. I'm not going to patronise you with a description; this is a dish we've all had time and time again, and of course you know how to make your own version at a drop of a hat.

I happen to think that the number one all-time recipe for Minestrone Soup comes from Arrigo Cipriani's The Harry's Bar Cookbook. His slightly refined version includes asparagus, and leaves out the pasta. When I'm cooking it, I like to dice up the vegetables into small pieces; I think it improves the look of the finished dish.

Here's how to make it, courtesy of Mr Arrigo Cipriani. (It will serve six people):

Heat up two tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy pan, and melt in a tablespoon of butter. Add a diced medium sized onion, and sauté over a medium heat until well browned. 

Now it's time to add the vegetables: a diced celery rib (peeled), two thinly sliced leeks (white part only), a large tomato (cored and diced), two small diced zucchini, a small wedge of Savoy cabbage (shredded and chopped), a medium potato (peeled and cut into small dice), a medium sized carrot (peeled and diced), and six asparagus spears (cut into slices). Throw in a bayleaf, and season with sea salt and black pepper. Cook on a medium heat and stir for about fifteen minutes.

Add two litres of stock (chicken or vegetable, I'll leave that one up to you), and ⅓ cup of tomato sauce. If you don't want to make your own, you could always use tomato purée. Bring the soup to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, for fifteen minutes.

Remove the bayleaf, stir in a tablespoon of butter, and check the seasoning. Serve very hot with grated parmesan cheese.

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Caesar Salad

 

Caesar Salad is one of those classic dishes that has been over-tweaked, bastardised, and generally ruined by self-indulgent chefs over the years. The best Caesar Salad is the original Caesar Salad.

It was invented by Caesar Cardini in 1924. Cardini was a chef working at the Hotel Comerical in Tijuana- the Mexican town a few miles from the Californian border. During Prohibition, large parties of Americans used to cross the border in search of booze. The story goes that Cardini created the salad when a large party of hungry Americans turned up for the Fourth of July celebrations. He had run out of food, so made do with what he had left over.

 

Julia Child, the great food writer, apparently telephoned Cardini's daughter to get the authentic recipe- and came up with this. And who are we to argue with either of them?

First, you need two small heads of Romaine lettuce, preferably organic. Tear the lettuce into large shreds. Add two coddled eggs. Coddling is a technique where you only boil the eggs in their shell for one minute, so that you end up with a runny yolk. Add half a teaspoon of sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper; the juice of two lemons, ten drops of Lea & Perrins' Worcestershire Sauce, half a cup of fresh grated Parmesan cheese, and half a cup of garlic oil. Garlic oil is just a good quality Virgin or Extra Virgin olive oil, infused by some garlic cloves for a day or so.

Toss the salad, so that the ingredients combine with the runny egg yolk, and lettuce leaves are well coated. Finish off the dish with some freshly prepared croutons. This is just deep-fried bread- cut into cubes. For some reason, slightly stale bread makes better croutons. You've probably noticed that I haven't added anchovies to my Caesar Salad. I have a strong hunch that the original recipe didn't include them, and I've tried to keep it authentic.

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The Humble Cabbage

 

 

With the nights drawing in, and winter just around the corner, there's nothing more welcoming than a humble, everyday cabbage. Cabbage is one of those vegetables which everyone thinks they know how to cook, but in fact, is actually quite hard to get right.

There seems to be a general assumption amongst the cognescenti that cabbage should be cooked to a crunchy texture; well, Up to a Point, Lord Copper: quite often this just means that the cabbage is undercooked- and you'll encounter this in Gastro Pubs up and down the kingdom. 

On the other hand, I have nausea-inducing memories of the cabbage as served up to us at Dotheboy's Hall: this involved boiling water, a kitchen timer set to four and a half hours, the colour yellow, and a terrifying smell reminiscent of the Slough Gasworks. In the world of cabbage, you just can't win.

There are two methods of cooking cabbage. With the "fast-cook" method you slice up your cabbage and plunge it into rapidly boiling salted water. When it's cooked (difficult one to get right, that- you want it crunchy, yet not too crunchy), take it out of the pan and drain it in ice-cold water. This will help to set the colour green. Throw it into a small pan, warm it in butter and season to taste. Make sure that all the water has drained off properly. As I'm impatient (and also greedy), I have a tendency to do this in a rush (a "bull in a china shop", as my piano tutor used to say) and end up with nasty pools of water floating around on the plate.

The second method is the "slow-cook" or braising method, as favoured by the French (and The Greasy Spoon's grandmother). Yes, the cabbage will go yellow, and it will smell of sulphur, but if it's cooked very, very slowly, this might (just about) be a good thing. Simon Hopkinson, in his excellent book Roast Chicken and Other Stories, mentions John Tovey's recipe in which the cabbage is braised very slowly in butter, white wine and juniper berries. This sounds like the sort of dish they serve in Alsace, and my instincts tell me that a Reisling or Gewürztraminer would be just the ticket.

 

I've also found an old-fashioned French recipe for "Cabbage Soup with Diced Bacon". Chop up a green cabbage into small pieces and rinse it in vinegar and water. You then fry some chopped garlic in butter, and add diced bacon. After a few minutes add the cabbage and pour in some chicken stock. Simmer the soup very slowly for up to an hour. Serve in earthenware tureens with croutons sprinkled on the top.

If you're going to use the "slow-cook" method, a heat diffuser might be a good plan. This is a simple device which you place directly on top of the gas hob, and spreads the heat.  It will allow you to cook food at a snail's pace.

Aziz of Marrakech's Courgette Soup

 

 

More on things Moroccan. The food at the Riad Enija was excellent. The owner, Björn (a former architect with UNESCO) reckoned that his chef, Aziz, might be one of the best chefs in all Marrakech. This could be true. The food, although simple, was delicious.  

We signed up for the Riad's cookery "course" (in effect, more of a cookery demonstration) and watched as he prepared a smooth melon and ginger soup, followed by a tajine, cooked with baby okra which we had bought at the spice and vegetable market in the Mellah (the walled Jewish quarter) that morning.

 

 

One of the first dishes we sampled at the Riad was Aziz's courgette soup. I'm not sure if it was especially Moroccan, but who cares?- it was exceedingly good. Smooth, piping hot, creamy- with dollops of taste, and a nice, clear, fresh green colour to boot. I persuaded him to give me the precise recipe. Here it is, courtesy of Aziz of Marrakech:

You take a large pot, and into that you put: a kilo of chopped baby courgettes (zucchini), two crushed garlic cloves, a sliced white onion, parsley, 20g butter, and a dash of a decent salt. You pour in 1 ½ litres of water, and simmer for half an hour on the stove.

Afte

r the time is up, take it off the heat and pulse the liquid with a blender until it is smooth. Taste and if needed, add more seasoning, including 

pepper.

 

Aziz showed us a jar of those mixed coloured peppers in red, green and "white" and gave us the thumbs up sign- or Moroccan equivilent; he seemed, for some reason, to have an aversion to black pepper.

 

Strain it through a sieve and serve hot.

 

 

Jellied Eels Revisited

 

 

I first wrote about jellied eels back in 2007, when we had a look at Tubby Isaac's famous East End eel stall. I've still got mixed feelings about jellied eels. I want to like 'em, and I'm almost at the point of becoming an aficinado, but if the truth be told, given half the chance I would sooner plump for a decent oyster on the shell, or a lovely cut of smoked eel with horseradish sauce.

Back in the good old days of muffin men and dancing chimney sweeps, eels were the staple diet of the London poor. The Thames Estuary is full of the critters, and as the Thames is now so much cleaner than it was say, forty years ago, eels are coming back in force.

 

I suspect the best way to enjoy jellied eels is to cook them yourself. A few months ago, I had a bowl of jellied eels as a first course (from memory, I think it was at Jack's Place in Battersea); and I don't remember them being especially good (not that I want to denigrate Jack's in any way; a splendid institution and long may it thrive!).

I've trawled through several very old-fashioned Mrs Beeton type cook-books on your behalf, and come up with a definitive recipe:

First, catch some eels. Chop them into 2 inch thick pieces, and plunge them into a large pan of boiling water with a generous dash of sea salt. Take them off the boil, and let them stand for five minutes.

Next, take a pan or dish, and throw in the eels. Pour in a pint of water (so that the eels are covered), and add three tablespoons of malt vinegar, a squeeze of lemon juice, some thinly sliced onions, carrots and celery, a bayleaf, a few peppercorns, sea salt, chopped parsley, and nutmeg.

Bring to the boil, reduce and simmer for twenty minutes, until the eels are tender. Remove the cooked eels and place them in a deep serving dish or bowl. Strain the 'liquor' over the eels, and when cool, bung it into the 'fridge. Eels are naturally gelatinous, so the liquid should set. If it doesn't, be prepared to add some liquid gelatine to the mix. According to one book, the chopped parsley gives "the jelly the traditional hint of green, like the sea". What a nice idea.

Serve the jellied eels with chili vinegar.

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Crispy Squid

 

 

I'm fortunate enough (or unlucky enough, depending on your point of view) to work next door to the new Westfield Shopping Centre in darkest Shepherd's Bush. For those of you who don't know about it, this is a spanking brand new Shopping Mall built on American lines, and apparently, the largest shopping complex in Europe.  I'm sure you'll get the picture: squeaky clean chain shops, giggly teenage girls hanging out in pairs, bland post-modern architecture, bored looking Security Guards talking into mobiles. Escalator Heaven.

It's a useful place to get a quick lunch, and I've been to that fast-food Chinese place on the first floor a few times. They cook an excellent, crispy squid, which they serve with black pepper, salt, and thinly sliced chili; along with a further chili dipping sauce. It's delicious and given me a quite a taste for the thing. It would make an excellent Chinese influenced canapé, and I think, would work well with a Dry Martini. It needs to be served very hot, and very crispy. The following recipe is based on Rose Prince's version in the Daily Telegraph:

Use fresh squid. Cut them open lengthways and remove the insides including the hard quill. With a pair of scissors cut away the tentacles and any hard, boney bits. Dry the squid with paper towels, and then score one side of the squid with a sharp knife to make a lattice pattern. Cut the squid into bite sized pieces.

Heat up some groundnut oil in a wok. Groundnut (or peanut) oil is excellent because it has a high smoking point. Carefully drop a tiny globule of water into the hot oil. If it sizzles, you will know that it is ready.

Dip the squid into some flour, and fry in small batches for two minutes. If you overcrowd the wok this will lower the temperature, and stop the squid from frying properly. Remove the crispy squid and let them cool down in a paper-lined sieve or colander.

When the time comes for you to eat them, reheat the oil and re-fry the squid for 3-4 minutes, or until they are a pale golden brown.

Serve them with fine salt, freshly ground black pepper, strips of red and green chili and a chili dipping sauce.

 

Soufflé Heaven

 

 

I'm amused by soufflés. There's just something terribly camp about them, isn't there?  I'm not exactly sure what it is: the acute accent on the e? Or the high drama of 'The Rise", perhaps? The fact that the Table has to wait for the Soufflé, rather than the Soufflé having to wait for the Table- giving you the chance to fuss dramatically around the kitchen, and then to have queeny hysterics when your soufflé collapses. 

Control Freaks love them, too. There's all that stuff about the right temperature, the correct way to beat the egg whites, the proper way to do this, the proper way to do that. So I was quite happy to leave this one to The Girl, who came up with a fabulous aromatic soufflé, flavoured with tarragon.

I will go as far as saying that I think her soufflé was the best one I've ever had.  Tarragon, as you will remember, has an intense aniseedy, licoriquey, Pernod-y taste, and is considered by le gratin to go extremely well with poultry. It worked well with the cheese in the soufflé, and gave the dish a punchy, herbal flavour. If you like tarragon, you're going to love it. Not that I want to patronise you in any way; I am aware that most subscribers to The Greasy Spoon have probably made more soufflés, than I've had hot dinners:

First you need to turn on you oven. It's really important that you get your oven really hot (200C) as this sudden heat is what makes ths soufflé rise. Get hold of a soufflé dish, and smear the inside with the greasy bit of a butter wrapper. 

Next, it's time to make a roux. You'll remember how to do this. Flour cooked in a large knob of butter, stirred until smooth, and then turned into a sloppy kind of sauce with the addition of milk. Keep the pan on a gentle heat and stir or whisk like crazy, until all the lumps have been removed.

Remove from the heat, and let the white sauce cool down a bit (you don't want the eggs to cook as yet). Whisk in three egg yolks, add a dollop of mustard, grate in some Gruyère cheese, and throw in a good handful of tarragon leaves. Season with salt, pepper and lots of grated nutmeg.

Whisk up three egg whites until they're stiff. It's very important not to get any fat in the mixing bowl (ie egg yolk) as this will prevent the egg whites thickening up. The mixing bowl needs to be extremely clean. Finally, mix the egg white into the cheesy, herby, white sauce, using gentle hand movements. Use a metal spoon.

That's about it. The soufflé mixture, not surprisingly, goes into the soufflé dish, and the dish goes into the hot oven. Half an hour later it should be ready. If it hasn't risen properly, you can blame me, this blog, the cat's mother, and the world in general. Nothing like throwing a tantrum to clear the air, is there?

Potted Crayfish in Tomato Consommé

 

 

I've had computer angst: I had written what I thought was a rather erudite and witty post about my attempt to try out my new recipe, Potted Crayfish in Tomato Consommé, on my future mother-in-law; and my computer went up the creek. Apologies.

I'm not going to re-write the article, that would be too complicated (it included a philosophical aside on the bucolic delights of crayfishing in Wiltshire, worthy of The Compleat Angler, itself); but I am going to tell you how to make my potted crayfish recipe in the comfort of your own kitchens.  The recipe worked well, although as I suspected, my spicy red pepper sauce was far too powerful for the delicate tomato jelly, and the dish would be more suitable for a summer's evening in the garden, than a miserable, cold and wet January.

First, you need to make a so-called tomato consommé. Buy some ripe, red tomatoes (the riper the better), and smash them up in the Magimix with a handful of sea salt. I used Maldon's smoked sea salt. Get hold of a sieve, and line it with muslin of coffee filter paper. Fill it up with the tomato pulp, and let the tomatoes drip into a bowl which you've placed underneath. It's probably best to leave it in the 'fridge overnight. In the morning, the bowl will be full of a lovely, crystal clear, rose-scented, intensely flavoured tomato stock.

Next, pack some ramekin dishes with crayfish.  I bought wild crayfish tails from my local supermarket. Okay, they're in a plastic packet, and produced by Joe Lyons (of Corner House fame), but they're surprisingly good: much sweeter and juicier than their prawn cousins. Cut up four gelatine leaves into small pieces, and soak them in about three tablespoons of cold fish stock and lemon juice. Next, melt them very carefully in a bain-marie, making sure they don't boil. When the liquid gelatine is hot and runny, pour it directly into the tomato stock, and whisk the mixture up very thoroughly with a whisk. If there is any fish juice left over from the crayfish packet, add this too.

Finally, pour the tomato consommé over the crayfish, to cover. Now it's time to discuss the spice factor. I tried making a spicy red pepper sauce to drizzle on top of the crayfish, and it didn't work. The flavours were just too strong. But I'm still obsessed with the idea that a touch of spice will work well with this dish- the tomato and crayfish combo is a bit Louisianan, isn't it?  I'm going to add a dash of Tabasco to the tomato consommé at the mixing stage, and see how that works. Just a drop or two. That's all.

Put the ramekins in the 'fridge, and they should set in an hour or so. Oh- and here's a useful tip- take them out of the 'fridge about an hour before you want to serve them. This will help to get rid of that slightly metallic gelatine taste. I think that's about it; though it might need some sort of garnish on top. How about roasted red peppers, with their skins removed, and chopped up into very small pieces, or even better, sliced into julienne ?

Smoked Haddock Chowder

 

 

January: cold, wet, dark, gloomy, and depressing; financially embarassing, too. No folks, it ain't my favourite month, and to combat all this, I need gutsy, unpretentious, winter food, as I'm sure you do as well.

Chowder is a classic American East Coast dish, usually a creamy soup enriched with salt pork fatback and traditionally thickened with crushed saltine crackers or corn. I've no doubt that each State or city have their own way of making it. Massachusetts will say this, Rhode Island will say that. Manhatten adds tomatoes, while in Maine, apparently, this is/was illegal. Here's my Limey take on it. I think smoked haddock (one of my all-time favourite fishes) works well. If Americans want to bombard me with abusive chowder emails- that's fine- please do; go ahead.  All I know is that it works, and I like it.

First, cook the smoked haddock. Try and buy a smoked, undyed fillet. The bright yellow fillets you see in the supermarket have been artificially dyed with all sorts of nasty chemicals. Undyed smoked haddock is a lovely, light cream colour. It's more expensive. but worth the extra cost, as the taste is far more subtle. In effect, the smoked haddock has already been cooked, so it will need very little poaching. Place it in a pan with a decent amount of water, to which you have added a bayleaf, a carrot, a small onion and one or two peppercorns. Bring it to the boil, turn off the heat and put the lid on the pan.

Next, in a large pan sauté some chopped salt pork or pancetta in unsalted butter. Add some finely chopped celery and onion or shallots. Pour in the poaching water from the haddock, and add some potatoes, which you've previously skinned and chopped up into smallish cubes. When the potatoes are almost cooked (which won't take that long), add milk and cream, and then the smoked haddock which you've broken up into large flakes.

Check the seasoning: chunky black pepper would be good, and it may or may not need sea salt, depending on how salty the haddock is. Add some fresh thyme and simmer the chowder gently for ten minutes. Serve with crackers.

All about Kedgeree...

 

 

 

Being English (and a bit Scottish too, if I go back far enough), I reckon I'm a bit of an expert on Kedgeree. I hope you won't find this arrogant, it's not supposed to be; but I'm sure that us Anglo-Saxons are the only people who make this dish, and I'm all for spreading the word. In truth, I'm an unashamed, fully signed-up, kedgeree anorak.

Last year, I wrote a post about kedgeree, and it you're interested in the history of the dish and its Anglo-Indian origins, please click on the link and have a good read. Kedgeree is made out of three key ingredients: rice, fish and eggs. Traditionally, it's served either as a breakfast dish (silver chafing dishes, shooting breakfasts and all that), or for supper.  I think it might also be good as a first course.

I'm sure that the first time I ever had kedgeree was at my uncle and aunts' place down in the Sussex countryside. This was the classic, Cromwellian, no-nonsense version; beloved of Empire and wary of excess: long grain rice, hard-boiled eggs, dyed smoked haddock, salt and pepper perhaps, with just a smidgin of curry powder. No cream, no lemon juice, no parsley; possibly re-heated or served cold as left-overs. Thrifty. Practical. Children should be seen and not heard.

Now zoom forward in time to the 1980's, and you have the cheffy, slightly effete, London interpretations of Michael Smith, Anton Mosimann, and Gary Rhodes- who had the bright idea of binding smoked eel in a creamy, Escoffier style Sauce Indienne.

Personally, I favour the Jane Grigson method (my own recipe based on her version in English Food): an onion is sliced up  and sautéed in a mixture of oil and butter. Curry paste, nutmeg, crushed coriander seeds and a pinch of saffron are stirred in and cooked for a few moments. Next, long grain or basmati rice is stirred into the spicy butter and allowed to turn translucent. Fish stock (left over from cooking the haddock) is then poured in, and allowed to cook until there's no water left. Finally you stir in flaked undyed smoked haddock, sliced softly boiled eggs, a cup or so of cooked wild rice, cream and butter, and generous amounts of chopped parsley. The dish is finished off with a squeeze of lemon juice, sea salt, black pepper and a pinch of Cayenne Pepper, and served with a Mango Chutney on the side. 

Rice

Basmati might be an appropriate choice here, with it's nod to the Imperial origins of the dish. However,  I normally recommend Uncle Ben's Long Grain Rice, as the starch has been removed, and you will end up with a cleaner result. In my idleness, I once tried to make kedgeree from a rice which I hadn't rinsed properly and the result was a nasty, starchy mush. Avoid that. I'm also keen on adding a cup or so of cooked wild rice to the finished mix; but bear in mind that wild rice will need at least half an hour (and probably a great deal longer) to cook properly- you'll know when it's cooked properly, as the grain splits and you will be able to see the whitish insides.

Onions and Peas?

Yes, in my opinion.  Believe it or not, reasonably authentic to the original Indian version. I like to sauté a sliced or chopped onion with the rice.  If I'm in the mood, I sometimes stir in some cooked peas with the smoked haddock.

Spices

I like kedgeree to have a bit of a kick. Partly because I'm a closet spice merchant, but also because I think the dish needs it. Avoid the bland. Don't forget kedgeree's Anglo-Indian origins: I reckon it needs a bit o' spice to make it authentic. I would recommend using a teaspoon or so of decent curry paste, rather than a curry powder, lots of nutmeg, crushed coriander seeds, and possibly a pinch of saffron- though I don't like the dish to turn bright yellow- too much like that radio-active 'pilau' rice you get fobbed off with down at your local Taj Mahal. A creamy, very light yellow colour, speckled with the green of the chopped parlsey, is the goal.

 

Fish

In theory, it should be undyed smoked haddock (not the cheaper yellow stuff), but in practice you can use any fish: cod, smoked eel, halibut or salmon. 1970's recipes often recommend tinned salmon- but I'm not convinced by that one, and I suspect if you're a bona fide foodie, you won't either. Smoked fish, in my opinion works well, as it tends to hold together a bit better; and of course, that oily smoked taste is no bad thing either. Place your fish fillet in some seasoned water, bring to the boil and turn off the heat, putting a lid back on the pan. Let the fish sit in the hot water- and about ten to fifteen minutes later it will be perfectly cooked. Use the fishy water as a stock, and pour it over the sautéed rice and spices.  In effect, you're making a pilaf.

 

Eggs

Free Range. Organic. I prefer them to be softly boiled. It's a very satisfying moment when you slice them open, and the hot, runny, yellow egg yolk runs out.

 

Cream?

Yes, definitely.  I always stir in a dollop of single cream, and add a knob of unsalted butter, too. It helps to keep your kedgeree moist, and that's no bad thing. Finish off the kedgeree with a squeeze of lemon juice- that works wonders, too. Another crucial question: do you make the kedgeree first, and then bind it in a creamy, curried sauce à la Gary Rhodes, or do you cook the rice in curried stock à la Jane Grigson?  An unresolved  dilemma, worthy of many sleepless nights.

 

Garnish

Lots of chopped parsley, please.  Coriander would work well, too. I like a pinch of Cayenne Pepper, though I accept that this might rot the old taste buds. Mango Chutney, however, works brilliantly with kedgeree, and brings out the lovely smoky, salty, sweet and sour flavours of this wonderful and classic dish.

Still awake?

 

 

Italian Walnut Sauce

 

 

The Girl's asked me to re-create an Italian dish she had the other day at some restaurant in Chelsea. It's Gnocchi with Walnut Sauce. The gnocchi's pretty straightforward- like you, I've often made it before: riced potatoes held together with eggs and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper and then fashioned into tiny 'lumps', and simmered in boiling water until the gnocchi float. The walnut sauce however, is more unusual.

For some reason, I've got this idea that walnut sauce should be a bright green. Elizabeth David's version (salsa di noci) is exactly that. She recommends pounding up softened walnuts, parsley and salt in a pestle and mortar, until they form a paste. Next, you mix in some butter, and then stir in breadcrumbs and oil, until the paste thickens. You finish off the sauce with some milk or cream. I'm guessing that (like a mayonnaise) this sauce will split if you heat it up?  Maybe you might get away with warming it gently? Dunno.

I've trawled the net, and discovered that most of the walnut sauce recipes out there in cyberspace are variations on this method: walnuts ground up into some sort of paste, and then bound in oil. I'm going to try the Elizabeth David method, and report back.

Over and out.

Ragù Bolognese

 

 

This in-between period between Christmas and the New Year is always a bit weird. You're still got the holiday spirit, but have, more than likely, returned to the Kafkaesque slog of the Blacking Factory. Here in The Big Smoke, it's cold and frosty, and I'm in the mood for some hearty, warming food. An authentic Ragù Bolognese would be just the ticket.

I'm not talking about that awful tinned stuff; that thin, processed sauce you boiled up in your student days. No, I'm writing about the authentic, slowly cooked, rich and dark sauce, served in Bologna with lasagne verdi.  It's okay, of course, to serve it with any type of pasta, I'm not that fussy. Here's one way of making it:

Chop up some onions and fry them in a mixture of butter and oil in your favourite pan. When the onions are soft, add some crushed garlic. Add a diced carrot and some thinly sliced celery. Chop up some streaky bacon, and fry this with the onions, garlic, carrot and celery. So far so good. Transfer the onions, garlic, bacon, carrot and celery to your casserole dish.

Now start frying some minced pork in the frying pan. Use the oil and butter left over from the onions and bacon. If you need to, add a bit more butter or oil to stop the pork burning. Here's a useful tip: rather than stirring the mince around, it's a better idea to let it brown in lumps. If you stir it about, you run the risk that the meat will start to poach, rather than fry.

Transfer the pork to the casserole. Fry some minced beef, and transfer to the casserole. Next, chop up some chicken livers into small pieces, fry them very briefly, and transfer them to the casserole pot.

Tip in a tin of plum tomatoes, a good dollop of tomato purée, and half a bottle of red wine (though strangely, white wine is probably more authentic). Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and some finely chopped basil.

Cook the ragù on the lowest heat you can manage, for up to four hours. You will need to check it now and again, to make sure it doesn't burn.  

According to the great Elizabeth David in her seminal work, Italian Food: "some Bolognese cooks add at least 1 cupful of cream or milk to the sauce, which makes it smoother".  Who am I to argue with that?

Foie Gras

I had forgotten how crazy I am about Foie Gras.  The Girl and I have been beetling around Paris over the weekend, and it was an opportunity to re-visit old haunts.  We were staying in the 7eme- very close to the fabulous Bon Marché food market (La Grande Epicerie) and department store- which I would urge you to visit next time you're there.  It's a massive supermarket, filled with every conceivable food you can possibly think of, albeit with a French slant, naturellement.  For some reason, I'm a big fan of terrines, and when I'm in France I always seem to end up ordering the stuff, time after time. I like the way the French serve foie gras: a simple slab of terrine, with a small ramekin or tot-glass of chutney or onion confit.

First stop was at Le Petit Prince de Paris (of vodka sorbet fame)- a popular, local restaurant in the Rue Lanneau, up near the Sorbonne. I like the place, it's good value, and inside is decorated with mirrors, candles, and slightly campy antiques. The food is excellent in a relaxed sort of way, and the service is friendly. I had the terrine de foie gras.  It came with the obligatory confit, and a glass of cranberries. The bitter-sweetness of the cranberries was a perfect counter-foil to the richness of the foie-gras. Incidentally, the French seem to have a current obsession with square plates.  What's this all about? I find it slightly pretentious, also off-putting and not very practical: your knife and fork has a tendency to scrape along the side of the plate rather too often.  A bit like someone dragging their spikey finger nails down a blackboard. Anyway, back to the foie gras.

On Saturday night, I had the same thing all over again, but this time flavoured with vanilla.  I adore vanilla- and that's worthy of a separate post at a later date. But, strangely enough, the best foie gras of the lot was at a tiny bistro in Le Marais, Chez Pierro.  This is just a tiny brick-walled room with a few tables, a studenty yet discriminating clientele, and a young and enthusiastic staff. You didn't get much foie gras, only a few chunks with some delicious nutty bread, and seved with a pot of home-made mango and ginger chutney, but Mon Dieu, it was formidable.

By the way, you may already have noticed: I've added some fun, inter-active things to The Greasy Spoon. I'm conducting a Marmite poll.  Please vote.  Once you've pressed the button and cast your vote you will see a map of the world which tracks the distribution of Marmite haters and Marmite lovers around the globe.  All utterly pointless of course, unless you're a shareholder in the Marmite Corporation of the United Kingdom.  Much more useful is the "Answer Tips" application. Double-click any word on The Greasy Spoon, and you will be taken to a detailed encyclopedic link, which might be especially useful if I've gone off on some bizarre tangent.

Gravlax

 

Gravlax is the Scandinavian way of pickling Salmon.  In Norway, it's called Gravet Laks. In Iceland, Graflax, and in Denmark, Gravad Laks. This means, literally, "Grave Salmon", and refers to the Medieval practice of curing the raw fish by burying it in the sand above the level of the high tide. It's probably the perfect first course for the Christmas season. I like it's simplicity- and it's fun to make too. I've based this method of making it on a Jane Grigson recipe mentioned in Paul Levy's The Feast of Christmas.

You start off with a tail piece of salmon, weighing approximately 1 kg. Get your fishmonger to slice it in half, lengthways, and to remove the backbone, so that you end up with two slices of fish. Remove the remaining 'pin bones' with a pair of tweezers. Gravlax is usually made with the skin of the fish left on, but if you prefer, you can remove it.

Next, you need to mix up 'The Cure". Combine the following ingredients in a bowl: one heaped tablespoon of sea salt, one tablespoon of brown sugar, one teaspoon of crushed black peppercorns, and one tablespoon of cognac, schnapps or vodka.

Take some tin foil, and lie it down, flat. Spread some of the cure onto the foil. Lie one of the salmon pieces down onto the foil. Spread more of the cure onto the upper side of the salmon. Next, sprinkle lots of fresh, chopped dill on top of the salmon. Take the second piece of salmon, spread it with the cure, and place it directly on top of the first piece of salmon, so that you end up with a sort of salmon sandwich, with the dill and cure mixture filling up the middle. Does that make sense?

 

 

Fold over the tin foil, and crunch it tightly around the salmon pieces, so that it forms a package. Lie this in a shallow dish, and press some weights down on top of it.  I use some heavy iron weights from my grandmother's old-fashioned scales I've got lying around in my kitchen. Keep the salmon in a cool place for up to five days, turning the fish over once or twice. You'll find that juices from the fish will run out and mix with the cure and the dill. In effect, you're curing the salmon.

To serve the Gravlax, take it out of the tin foil, drain away the juices, and slice it thinly. I like it with dark rye bread and Dill Sauce.

You make Dill Sauce in a similar way to mayonnaise. Crack an egg yolk into a bowl, and mix in a dollop of French Dijon mustard and a tablespoon of white sugar. Whisk, and start to add Grapeseed Oil, drop by drop- as you would with a mayonnaise. The emulsion will thicken. Keep going until you're happy with the consistency. I like it thick. Flavour the sauce with two tablespoons of white wine vinegar, and season with salt and pepper. Finish it off by mixing in a decent amount of fresh, chopped dill. It's best if you remove the dill stalks, and then chop the feathery bits of the dill plant finely.

Roman Artichoke Stew

 

 

 

A few weeks ago, we had dinner at the Taverna Flavia in Rome. Back in the 50's and 60's, this was the favourite haunt of the stars and starlets of the Cinecitta Film Studios.  Framed black and white photographs of the likes of Richard Burton, Gregory Peck, Anouk Aimée, Sophia Loren and Frederico Fellini look down on you as you tuck into your Salata Elizabetha (named after - trumpet fanfare- Elizabeth Taylor). Sadly, it's all a bit shabby now: the waiters were a trifle weird (certainly over-familiar) and we left the place with the distinct impression that it was a restaurant trading heavily on its past glamour. But the food was good: simple, unpretentious and well cooked. We ordered their Carciofi alla Romana; otherwise known as Roman Stewed Artichokes. They were completely delicious.

 

 

This is how you make them: First, beg, buy or steal some Globe Artichokes. You will need to get hold of the larger, green Italian variety which are tender enough to be eaten whole. Having said that, they're still tough old things and hard to cut. You will need to prepare them carefully before cooking. Remove the tough outer leaves with an extremely sharp knife. Once that's done, trim the stalk down to about an inch. Go back to the remaining leaves and cut the tips off.  Drop the artichokes into cold water to which a good quantity of lemon juice has been added. Finally, cut the artichoke lengthways and scoop out the core with a spoon.

Place the artichokes into a large, heavy pan and cover them with olive oil. Add a few peeled garlic cloves and some bay leaves. Grate in a generous amount of lemon zest and juice. Heat the pan slowly; cover and start to stew the artichokes very slowly. 

Your mission today (should you decide to accept) is to stew them, rather than fry them. The lemon juice will help here, but keep the heat turned down.  The artichokes should take about 30 -40 minutes to cook properly. Serve them with a further squeeze of lemon juice, chopped marjoram, sea salt and chunky black pepper.

 

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The Fabulous Snaffles Mousse

 

 

I've recently been reading up on an old 70's cult favourite, the Snaffles Mousse. For those in the know, Snaffles was a fashionable basement restaurant in Dublin and the Snaffles Mousse was the signature dish of its proprietor, Nicholas Tinné.

Hilariously, Snaffles Mousse is nothing more than a mixture of Philadelphia cheese and Campbell's consommé soup- but it tastes like a sophisticated and creamy smoked fish mousse. Well, Up to a point, Lord Copper. There's also quite a bit about it on the internet, including a new interpretation by none other than Simon Hopkinson. Simon Hopkinson (co-author of The Prawn Cocktail Years) is currently my number one culinary hero and what he says and does, in my eyes can do no wrong.

Here's my take on the fabulous Snaffles Mousse. It's based on Nicholas Tinné's original recipe (as published in The Good Food Guide Dinner Party Book (published 1971), but includes Simon Hopkinson's refinements and if I may make so bold Master Copperfield, one or two of my own tweaks as well:

Take a leaf of gelatine and soak it in cold water until it's soft. Open up a tin of beef consommé soup (I fear Campbell's is no longer with us in Perfidious Albion, so use Baxter's) and heat up about two tablespoons of the stuff in a small pan. Once the consommé is hot (but not boiling), lift the gelatine out of the water, give it a squeeze to get rid of the excess water and chuck it into the hot consommé. Swirl it together to melt the gelatine and set aside to cool down.

Pour the remaining consommé into a liquidizer and add 300g (that's a pack!) of Extra Light Philadelphia cheese, two teaspoons of curry paste, a crushed garlic clove, the juice of a lemon and the remaining hot consommé/gelatine mix. I used two teaspoons of Patak's Madras paste. It was far too strong. Simon Hopkinson used Patak's Tikka paste which should be milder, but I would suggest that you go easy on the curry paste- you are not making a curry mousse, rather a mousse with a hint of curry, if you get my drift.

Check the seasoning and then whizz it all together until smooth. The longer you blitz it, the smoother it will be. Strain it through a sieve. This will help to get rid of the uncooked bits from the curry paste. Pour it into a bowl and then whisk it like mad, and by hand, until frothy. This will help to lighten it up. Pour it into ramekin dishes and bung it in the 'fridge.

Once it has set, take it out, and cover the top with a layer of prawns. Finish the dish off with a layer of mock caviar. I've ditched the standard over-salty stuff and now use Onuga herring roe. This has a subtle, delicious and smoky taste and I would throughly recommend it. As a further refinement, I'm interested in using Campbell's chicken consommé (rather than beef)- I have a hunch that this would make an even lighter, creamier mousse; but I seem to remember hearing that Campbells' is no longer available over here. If any reader can enlighten me on this one, I would be most grateful.

Clear Gazpacho

Clear Gazpacho is one of my favourite summer recipes. It's very easy to make, though slightly time consuming- but could be made in advance and then assembled at the last minute.

It uses similar ingredients to a traditional gazpacho soup, but, instead, has as a base a mouth watering, flavour infused, clear, tomato "consommé".

Take a largish quantity of ripe red tomatoes and blitz them in your mixer with some sea salt. The riper the better, as the salt helps to draw out the juices. Next, line a sieve with muslin or coffee filter paper, and fill it up with the tomato pulp, placing a large bowl underneath. Stick it in the 'fridge and let the "tomato water" drip slowly into the bowl. When I'm in the mood, I sometimes add some crushed mint leaves to the pulp as well.

The next morning you'll have a bowl full of an amazingly clear, rose-coloured, light but flavour-rich, tomato stock. The first time I made it, I was amazed. Add a bit more salt to it, if it needs it.

Pour the cold tomato water into bowls. Garnish with thinly sliced radishes, cubed avocado, sliced baby tomatoes, apple cut into tiny batons, red chili cut into wafer thin julienne, red, yellow and green peppers, courgettes, and chopped basil.

The secret is to try and cut the ingredients into the smallest shapes you possibly can: these can include batons, diamonds, cubes and thin strips, as the mood takes you. If they're small enough, they should float on top of the soup with ease. Serve it chilled.

That's it.

English Asparagus

 

 

In England, asparagus is in season at this time of year. I'm a firm believer in eating fruit and vegetables in season. Okay, I know that asparagus is shipped in from Spain all the year round; but who wants to eat asparagus in November, or for that matter, strawberries at Christmas?

I used to pick asparagus in a pick-your-own operation in Oxfordshire. It's a strange looking plant, but picking is easy; you just snap the stalk off at the base.

Cooking them is simplicity itself, I think the best way is to steam them until tender- there is no need to boil them; as you run the risk of the asparagus going mushy. Serve them with melted butter, sea salt and a squeeze of lemon juice. Hollandaise Sauce works well, too.

And forget knives and forks; asparagus should be eaten with your fingers. Pick up the stalks, dip them in the butter, or the sauce, and eat them. The woody base can be discarded on a side plate. It's perfect food for an early English summer.

Potted Shrimps

 

 

Hand held up high, I think that potted shrimps are, perhaps, one of the best traditonal British dishes of all time. Recently, I ordered some at the downstairs bar below Bibendum in the Fulham Road. They were completely delicious, buttery, flavoured with nutmeg and served with simple brown bread. By shrimps, I mean those small brownish Morecambe Bay shrimps, rather than the large Oriental variety.

Melt some unsalted butter with mace, cayenne pepper, paprika and some grated nutmeg in a small pan. Add the peeled brown shrimps and cook them very briefly in the butter at a low heat, ideally adding any juices left over from the shrimps. Squeeze in a generous amount of lemon juice.

Season with salt and pepper and divide the mixture into ramekin dishes. Let them set in the fridge and then top them off with some unclarified butter. The butter will act as a seal. When they're ready to serve, spoon out the potted shrimps and spread them on slices of brown bread.

It's best if they're served at room temperature, so that the slightly spicy butter goes soft. Perfect for this time of year or for picnics.

Crab and Sweetcorn Soup

 

 

When I'm in the mood, it's fun to try and work out how Indian and Chinese restaurants make their time honoured favourite dishes. I'm not talking here about authentic regional cuisine, but more about those bastardised dishes we're used to back here in Blighty. You know the sort of things I'm talking about: Chicken Korma, Won Ton Soup, Meat Madras, Sweet and Sour Pork Balls. It's comfort food of a sort, and I think there's a place for it.

I've come up with a way to make Crab and Sweetcorn Soup. It tastes almost exactly like the stuff you get in Chinatown, so I'm pleased with the results. Talking of which, I once caught a waiter hiding behind a curtain sprinkling on some MSG straight from the packet before he served it- my version, I stress, does not include this.

Here's how you do it: Flake up some white crabmeat into chunks. I bet my bottom dollar the Chinatown establishments use the tinned variety; tinned crabmeat ain't that bad, in my opinion, but obviously, if you can get hold of the realy McCoy, so much the better. Chop up some root ginger into fine pieces, and mix it in with the crabmeat. Beat up two egg whites until they are frothy, and then add a tablespoon or so of cornflour, and some milk. Beat until smooth, so that you end up with a creamy liquid. Mix this in with the crabmeat and the ginger.

In a reasonably sized pan, bring some stock to the boil. I reckon that the Chinese restaurants make an Oriental style stock out of ginger, spring onions and the like; but for my version I used a light chicken stock. Add a tin of sweetcorn. Again, I've worked out that they probably use creamed sweetcorn, which is not readily available in British supermarkets (I could rant all day about how understocked our supermarkets are compared to other countries), so I just "crushed" the sweetcorn in the Magimix.

Stir in the crabmeat and ginger mixture, and simmer briefly. The cornflour will act as a thickening agent. Check the seasoning, and add a dash of sherry, or rice wine. Make sure the alcohol is burnt off, and finish off the dish with a a garnish of chopped spring onions.

Stara Polska

 

 

Last night, I was taken to a new Polish restaurant in Marylebone- close to St Christopher's Place. It's called Old Poland, otherwise known as "Stara Polska".

It was a funny, ramshackled sort of a place, with stuffed squirrels in glass cases, and uninvitingly hard wooden benches. But the food was rather good- I reckon that the couple who run the place had probably just arrived off the boat, so the food seemed genuinely authentic; I hope they do well.

I had a delicious White Borscht soup. I've never had this before, assuming wrongly that all borschts were made from beetroot, and therefore pink in colour. Apparently, Polish White Borscht is a traditional Easter Dish. It was sour in taste (with a hint of horseradish?), with garlic, slices of sausage, and sliced hard boiled eggs. I've trawled the net looking for an authentic recipe, but so far haven't found one.

As I've got a hard day ahead of me at the Blacking Factory, I'm going to have to put this one on hold for the time being, and report back later. If anyone out there in cyberspace can send me a decent recipe for this, please do, and I'll post it up on The Greasy Spoon.

Over and Out.

 

Welsh Potato and Leek Cakes with Mint

 

 

Last Saturday, the 1st March, was St David's Day; St David being, of course, the patron saint of Wales. We have a rather quirky tradition over here, in which anyone with Welsh connexions stuffs a leek into their buttonhole: The Prince of Wales was being interviewed on television last night, and I noticed that instead of a leek, he was wearing a nifty Welsh Onion (or scallion) in the buttonhole of his Anderson & Shepherd suit. 

Anyway, on with the food: Here's a Welsh themed recipe for you. How about some potato and leek cakes? They're simple to make, and would go brilliantly with Welsh lamb (you want it pink), and a glass of something red and juicy, like a Rhone, or a Beaujolais.

First, peel some potatoes, and let them stand in salted water, so that some of the starch drains out. Take out the potatoes, and pat them dry with kitchen paper. Next, shred them in a Magimix, or similar machine. Pat them dry again. As we are going to fry them, you want to remove as much water as possible. If they're watery, they'll boil, rather than fry- and you don't want that.

Chop up some leeks or some Welsh Onions into thin slices. In a mixing bowl, combine the potato shreds with the leeks, and season with lots of sea salt and black pepper. Add some chopped fresh mint leaves, discarding the stalks. Using your hands, form the mixture into patties or small cakes. Chuck a knob of unsalted butter into a hot non-stick frying pan, and add a splash of olive oil. Fry the cakes quickly on both sides, until they are golden brown. Eat.

Shirred Eggs with Scallops

 

 

Working as I do in the antiques and auction business, I'm often lucky enough to pick up interesting bargains. The latest acquisition to my modest cookery library is a copy of the Bestway Cookery Gift Book, circa 1938. It's a smallish, slightly stained volume, which has the added plus of having once been part of the Anton Mosimann Collection. If you see any similar books from the 1930's, I would urge you to buy them, as cook-books from this period are becoming increasingly hard to track down.

I had a look to see if there were any recipes which I could post on The Greasy Spoon. Tastes change, and I reckoned that dishes like Gooseberry Custard, and Monday Pudding, wouldn't go down that well in today's world of sun-dried tomatoes, and properly cooked squid-ink risotto.

However, I found a simple recipe for Shirred Eggs with Scallops, which I think, would make an excellent first course. I've adapted it slightly.

Take some fresh, medium-sized scallops, cut them into quarters, and flash-fry them in a pan. They will need very little cooking. Put the scallops into a ramekin dish. Next, make a white sauce in the usual way. Remember, that's butter, flour, and then milk, and a bit of nutmeg. Pour the white sauce over the scallops, and then break a fresh egg onto the top. Season with salt and pepper and add a knob of unsalted butter. Bake in a medium oven, until the eggs are set; and then decorate with some chopped parsley. Ideally, you want the egg yolks to remain soft, and slightly runny.

Prawn Cocktail

 

 

Well, I had to write about the ubiquitous Prawn Cocktail sooner or later, didn't I? In America, this is called Shrimp Cocktail, and in any event, the American version seems to consist of prawns with a spicy, red coloured dipping sauce. In Britain, we bind the prawns in a bland pink mayonnaise, which is known as a Marie Rose sauce.

Actually, I'm rather fond of it, and the secret is to get the sauce as smooth as you possibly can. I made it yesterday, but substituted crayfish tails for the prawns. They were rather sweet, and delicious, and it worked out well.

Here's how I made the Marie Rose sauce: First, I put a dollop of French Dijon Mustard, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some salt into the Magimix. Next, I added two egg yolks, and whizzed the ingredients together. Then I poured in some grapeseed oil very slowly- in a thin stream- until the eggs and oil combined to form an emulsion.

If you use a blender or processor to make mayonnaise, you'll find that it can get too thick, so I'll let you into a trade secret. Add a tablespoon of boiling water. This has a miraculous effect. It lightens up the mayonnaise, making it whiter in colour, and smoother and lighter on the tongue.

Next, add several tablespoons of Heinz Tomato Ketchup, a splash of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, a few drops of Tabasco, and a further squeeze of the old lemon juice. Hey Presto! You've now got a pink Marie Rose Sauce.

Bind the prawns (or shrimps, or crayfish tails) in the sauce, and serve in a glass with some lettuce, and a wedge of lemon.

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.

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.

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