The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Let’s Call it Macaroni

 

 

Mezzotint by Philip Dawe, 1773, in the collection of the British Museum

 

I’m convinced that the best food in the world is governed by simplicity; cooked with skill, precision and care, and presented with honesty. No flamboyant garnishes, superfluous flourishes or cheeky little twists if you please. I’m reminded of the humble- but tantalising- food we enjoyed on honeymoon in Marrakesh (Riad Enija) or the simple comfort food as cooked for Jacqueline Kennedy by her private cook, Marta Sgubin. Clare Latimer’s Comfort Food Cook Book (currently available online for a penny) is excellent on this front and well worth a second look. It’s one of the many reasons I’m a fan of Simon Hopkinson who, in the banal world of celebrity chefdom, alone has the self-confidence to describe himself as a cook, rather than a chef.

 

 

Ian Fleming had similar enthusiasms, which he passed on to our friend, Mister Bond. Old-Maid Bond, is, of course, a pernickety old bore and, presumably, a potential guest-from-hell at the dinner table (everything has to be oh just so, doesn’t it? ) but he does have a point: 

 

“I’ve got a mania for really good smoked salmon”, said Bond. Then he pointed down the menu. “Lamb cutlets. The same vegetables as you as it’s May. Asparagus with Béarnaise sauce sounds wonderful. And perhaps a slice of pineapple...

A waitress appeared and put racks of fresh toast on the table and a silver dish of Jersey butter. As she bent over the table her black skirt brushed Bond’s arm and he looked up into two pert, sparkling eyes...

M smiled at him indulgently. “It’s your funeral” he said. “Now we’d better get on with our dinner. How were the cutlets?”

“Superb” said Bond. “I could cut them with a fork. The best English cooking is the best in the world — particularly at this time of the year...”

From Ian Fleming’s Moonraker, first published by Jonathan Cape, 1955 

 

But these days I’m lucky to be married to a talented cook, who happens to get better and better by every passing minute. Take her version of that old English classic, Macaroni Cheese. It’s currently an obsession. As a child, I can’t remember liking it especially. But cooked in the right way, it’s a miniature work of art: Crispy, slightly browned bites of crunchy pasta. A creamy, nutmeg-laced béchamel sauce. Hits of mustard and savoury crumbly bacon. Salty grilled tomatoes. Chunky black pepper flakes. It’s to die for. 

The history of macaroni, incidentally, is fascinating and worthy of another post in itself. Put very briefly, it’s a dry Italian pasta, cut into hollow tubes which comes in a variety of sizes. Personally, for Macaroni Cheese, I prefer the smaller bite-size pieces, as the pasta crisps up beautifully. Etymologists think that the word derives from the Ancient Greek, μακαρώνεια, which, as you will remember, was a barley broth served to commemorate the dead. During the mid 18th century fashionable aristocratic English fops acquired a taste for the stuff on their Grand Tour and were said, by those in the know, to belong to the “Macaroni Club”. 

Here’s an excellent recipe for Macaroni Cheese, as enjoyed by the Greasy Spoon. It’s similar in many ways to Simon Hopkinson’s version, which is topped by sliced tomatoes but has the welcome addition of fried crispy bacon. The white sauce/grilled tomato/bacon combination is a match made in heaven. I find that a pinch of sea-salt draws out the flavour of the tomatoes in a miraculous way.

 

A Jelly-House Pick-Up, mezzotint published by Carrington Bowles, 1772 

 

Mrs Aitch’s Macaroni Cheese

Preheat the oven to 190 C and then cook the macaroni pasta in salted boiling water, as directed on the packet. (I like the smaller sized macaroni, available from Waitrose).

Next, make a béchamel sauce. You will need a decent amount. Mrs Aitch tells me that many Macaroni Cheeses fail because they don’t have enough sauce. Melt a dollop of butter in a hot pan, drop in a fresh bay leaf, and whisk in a tablespoon or so of white flour to make a roux in the usual way. When it’s cooked, stir in some milk and flavour with a spoonful of Dijon mustard, nutmeg, sea salt flakes and white pepper. Then in goes 200ml Double Cream and some grated cheese (Simon Hopkinson uses Cheddar or Lancashire). Check the consistency. The goal is a thick-ish, silky-smooth white sauce. 

Take an ovenproof dish and pour in the sauce, and then mix in the cooked macaroni. Put to one side.

Fry some bacon bits in a shallow pan until crispy. Mix these into the macaroni. Slice up some tomatoes and lie these overlapping on top of the finished dish. A little bit more sea salt, flaked black pepper and grated parmesan on top of the tomatoes will work wonders.

Stick the dish into the heated oven for about 20 mins or so, until the tomatoes are blistered, and the top is slightly brown and crunchy.

 

Personally, I like to “go easy", as our American cousins might say, on the cheese and prefer more of a classic white sauce. But that’s a matter of opinion. Clare Latimer’s version, incidentally, includes both cheddar and parmesan, diced ham, blanched asparagus tops, breadcrumbs and chopped parsley.

 

 

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There Never Was Such a Ham!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year I cook a Christmas ham. I don’t care what the foodies say, I’m always amazed what you can do (with a bit of preparation and a decent recipe) to improve a bog-standard supermarket gammon. This year I’ve bought an unsmoked boneless gammon from our local Waitrose, (£15.67), but in previous years I used a cheaper gammon from Sainsbury’s and can truthfully, hand on heart, say it lived up to expectations- and this is coming from somebody who was raised on expensive York Ham from Paxton & Whitfield. 

I use a recipe from Sarah Raven’s excellent “Complete Christmas”. The ham is basted with cider towards the end of cooking, which gives it that added je ne sais. By the way, the original recipe is for a largish 4.5 kg bone gammon but normally I use a smaller one.

First, you take a 4.5 kg boned gammon and soak it in cold water overnight. I’m wondering if it might benefit from a longer soaking? Presumably the water helps to wash out salt, any nasty impurities and keeps the ham moist during cooking?

Remove the ham from the water and wrap it up, with a bayleaf or two, in a loose but sealed parcel of aluminium foil. Preheat the oven to 170 °C and place the ham in a large roasting tin with a little water in the bottom. How long to cook it for? Now that’s a good question. Here’s the mathematical formula, which I have to admit to working out on paper with the help of a calculator. Sad, but true. For every 450g of weight, roast it for 30 minutes. My gammon happens to weigh 2.766 kilos, which means, I think, that I would have to roast it for ?  Answers on a postcard please.

Twenty minutes before the end of the cooking time take the ham out of the oven and put it to one side. Increase the oven temperature to 200 °C. Remove the foil from the gammon and with a very sharp knife strip off the rind, leaving an even layer of white fat on the joint. You will improve on this with practice: the first time I attempted it, I managed to remove half the fat, leaving a very patchy layer. But with any luck, your rind should come off pretty easily. Score the fat to make a ‘criss-cross’, diamond shaped pattern.

Mix up four tablespoons of Dijon mustard with 4 tablespoons of soft brown demerara sugar and spread it over the fat with a palatte knife. Push a clove in the middle of each diamond shape, and return the gammon to the roasting tin. Pour over 200ml cider, and put the ham back into the oven for about twenty minutes. Now and again, take the ham out and baste it with the mingled cider juices, until caramelised. The first year I made it, caramelisation didn’t happen- but it was still delicious. Last year, I managed to get a properly glazed finish.

Utterly divine. If I’ve got time, I’m going to be starting mine tomorrow. Perfect for Boxing Day, especially if eaten with my Indian Apple Chutney. I can live off this for weeks. 

  

Ultimate Toad in the Hole with Rich Onion and Cider Gravy

 

 

Photograph: Sam Fraser-Smith, under Creative Commons Licence.

 

I've just been experimenting with that British all-time classic, Toad in the Hole. Jamie Oliver's recipe from Jamie's Great Britain is quite good, but didn't work as well as I had hoped. His batter was excellent- light and puffy, but I wasn't convinced by the gloopy apple and onion sauce or the dried up rosemary. He's keen on de-construction is our Jamie: the sausages are served separately from the Yorkshire pudding. I didn't really see the point of this: isn't the Toad supposed to be in the Hole?  Or is it the Hole in the Toad?

So I've developed my own recipe, tweaking it a bit here and there, simplifying (and I hope refining) it until we get to what I think, might just be a near-perfect Toad in the Hole. The rosemary infused milk gives the dish that extra dimension. Here's how you make it:

Pour 250ml semi-skimmed milk into a jug. Take two fresh rosemary sprigs and pull off the leaves, crumbling and rolling them in your fingers to release the oils. Add the rosemary leaves to the milk and let it infuse for about half an hour.

Strain the milk (discarding the rosemary leaves) and whisk in three eggs, 100g plain flour, a pinch of salt and white pepper to form a light, slightly runny, rosemary scented batter. Set aside.

Take a selection of Cumberland Sausages, place into a roasting pan and toss in olive oil. Cook in a hot oven (240° C) for about ten minutes. When the time's up, take out the pan and pour off most of the fat. Then pour in the batter, so that it surrounds the sausages. Back into the oven goes the pan. Watch it like a hawk (but don't open the door!). After a few minutes the batter will start rising and turning brown. You'll have your own idea when it's ready. The trick is to cook the batter properly, so that it's brown and crispy on top, yet soft in the centre. You dont' want to overdo the sausages either. Sprinkle the remaining rosemary leaves on top. 

I serve this with a rich onion and cider gravy, which you can serve from a separate jug. It's very easy to make. Slice up two white onions very thinly indeed, and fry them in butter on a medium heat until they turn brown and caramelise. Sprinkle a bit of white sugar onto the onions to help. 

I always think that onions need a great deal of cooking, so don't be scared to take your time over this. In goes a tiny splash of Balsamic Vinegar, a decent slug of Cider and 250ml beef stock. Bubble away like mad.

Whisk in a teaspoon of white flour mixed with water and cook on for a bit. This will help to thicken up the gravy.

Finish it off with a shake of Worcestershire Sauce to taste and then whisk in a final knob of butter to create a shiny glaze.  

This will create a rich, very dark brown gravy with a piquant taste. You can of course, alter ingredients to taste, leaving out the balsamic vinegar if you find it too strong. I would also be tempted to add a dash of Soy Sauce for that extra umami kick. Those onions should be well cooked, very, very thin, and the sauce should not be too thick or gloopy. I also quite like the idea of straining off the onion slices- for that extra refinement; just leaving a glossy, dark, rich onion-flavoured gravy. Bisto?  What on earth's that?

 

Le Manoir d'Hasting's Jambon au Cidre

 

 

 

 

Here's a brilliant recipe I discovered in an old 1970's book on French Regional Cookery. Jambon au Cidre. Ham with Cider. It comes from Le Manoir d'Hastings, a hotel found in a 17th century priory in Normandy. It's an old dish. I love the simplicity.

You take a 3 kg ham and soak it in several changes of cold water for 24 hours. You then place it inside a large saucepan and pour in two bottles of cider, or enough to cover the ham. I would try and find a decent Norman cider, rather than using that sparkly, fizzy, sweet stuff. 

The pan is brought slowly to the boil and any scum skimmed off the top. The heat is lowered and the ham simmered very gently until tender. About two and a half hours. 20 minutes per ½ kg. Once done, the ham is left to cool in all that lovely cooking liquor.

And now for the interesting bit. Slice the ham and sauté the slices in a frying pan, in unsalted butter, until they get a little bit of colour. Transfer the cooked slices to a serving dish.

To make the sauce, déglacez the pan with six tablespoons of Cider Vinegar, add 250ml of the reserved cooking liquor and reduce over a brisk flame until syrupy. Taste, and season with salt and white pepper, if needed. Whisk in a knob of unsalted butter, which will give your sauce a nice glaze. Pour over the ham slices, garnish with finely chopped flat leaf parsley and serve.

  

Rook Pie

 

 

 

I'm back. And itching to write about all things rook. Yup, the good old Corvus frugilegus. I've always had a thing about that very particular sound rooks make; it's very English: a croaking, cawing noise so typical of a raw morning in February or March. Thinking about it, it's up there with other comforting sounds: the peal of church bells on a Sunday morning, the thwack of a tennis racket on a hot June day, children playing on an echoing tarmac ground, the buzz of a light aircraft on a lazy Saturday afternoon, the distinctive grumble of a London Taxi on a wet, foggy evening in November.

In English folklore, rooks build their nests- the rookery- near places where money is to be found, which is why I am very keen indeed for Mr and Mrs Rook to come and build their nest in the tiny back garden of our London hovel.

Did you know that the glorious 12th of May is traditionally, rook shooting day? According to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Cookbook: 

In Victorian times, this used to be considered a suitable sport for boys and young ladies, who would traditionally gather on 12th May, with their specially made rook rifles, for a little genteel sport.

 

 

Shades of Gormenghast. Now my wife, Mrs Aitch, claims to have been fed Rook Pie on a regular basis as a child by her grandmother's cook. Does this fill you with horror? Four and Twenty Black Birds, baked in the Pie? No reason why it should, as I gather that the breast of young rooks ("the branchers") tastes very similar- if not better- than pigeon, and, apparently, has a "delicate gamey flavour". Mr Conran, if rumours are to be believed, has even put it on the menu at one of his "fashionable London restaurants". 

Here's Mrs Beeton's recipe for Rook Pie, taken from the 1936 edition:

6 young rooks

¾ lb. of rump steak

¼ lb. of butter or good dripping

½ pint of stock

salt and pepper

pastry

Skin the birds, without plucking them by cutting the skin near the thighs, and drawing it over the body and head. Draw the birds in the usual manner, remove the necks and backs, and split the birds down the breast. Arrange them in a deep pie dish, cover each breast with strips of steak, season well with salt and pepper, intersperse small pieces of stock as will three-quarter fill the dish.

Cover with pastry and bake from ½ to 2 hours, for the first ½ hour in a hot oven to make the pastry rise, and afterwards more slowly to allow the birds, etc., to become thoroughly cooked.

When the pie is three-quarters baked, brush it over with yolk of egg to glaze the crust, and before serving, pour in throught the hold on the top, the remainder of the stock.

Time- To bake, from 1½ to 2 hours. Sufficient for 5 or 6 people.

 

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.

 

Butter Beans with Bacon, Chili and Red Pepper

 

 

 

Here's another simple after-work supper thing  I invented last night. I'll say it myself, this was utterly delicious and I would make it again without hesitation. It's vaguely Southern in influence- but more about that in another post.

Chop up a handful of shallots and sweat them in butter and oil. Next, add chopped up bacon bits. I'm currently rather keen on the slightly tacky American bacon, Oscar Mayer, produced by that sinister corporation, Kraft- it's the sort of bacon you get in diners. I'm sure it's been chemically dried, cured, or treated in some way, as it's guaranteed to go crispy every time you can cook it. You can almost eat it raw too, a bit like cured ham.

Add some finely diced red peppers and a minced red chili or two to the mix. Next, drain a tin of butter beans and add to the pan. If you can be bothered to cook fresh butter beans before hand, so much the better- but I do find that tinned (and pre-cooked) beans and pulses are really almost as good as the dried version, if not, to be frank, the same. Isn't it a case of the Emperor's New Clothes here?

Add a nugget of butter, warm through, and set aside. Make a simple dressing: a teaspoon of white sugar, a splash of sherry or white wine vinegar and lots of lovely groundnut oil, sea salt and white pepper. Spoon the dressing over the bean mixture and garnish with finely chopped spring onions and flat-leafed parsley.

Check the seasoning. I sprinkled over a teaspoon of my latest discovery; a dried sweet smoked paprika, thyme and garlic mix which you can buy in small plastic tubs from the dreaded Sainsbury's. These flavours work brilliantly together. Another thing I can eat raw, in Neanderthal fashion straight from the container; it's finger lickin' divine.

I thought this dish was especially good. The sweetness of the red peppers, dressing and chili contrast nicely with the buttery beans and the crunchy, raw, but finely chopped spring onions and the salty, smoky bacon. You could, of course, serve it cold, but I think your guests might prefer it if it was gently warmed through.

 

Prawn and Leek Rice Salad with Fennel

 

 

In the spirit of creativity and experimention, I've come up with this idea for a simple, but I hope, delicious rice salad. It would be briliant for a summer buffet, or served as a side dish. I know it's not exactly summer yet- or even really spring: as I write I'm looking out on to a cold, wet and miserable London Saturday morning.

I was playing around with flavour combinations the other day, and discovered that prawn and leeks make an excellent match when combined with the aniseedy tastes of fennel. Here's how to make it:

Chop up some leeks (giviing them a rinse and removing the tougher outer skin bits first) and sweat them gently in a saucepan with some butter. It's probably going to work best if the leeks are chopped up into small pieces. I also find that leeks go brown very quickly, so you need to watch these like a hawk. Try and keep that lovely, fresh verdant green colour. You could of course parboil the leeks first (plunging them very quickly into boiling water and rinsing off under a freezing cold tap) which should help to set the colour. 

Into the hot pan goes some fennel seeds and then some good quality prawns. I used smallish frozen prawns, which, of course, are pre-cooked, so just need heating through after they have been defrosted. Check the seasoning and add sea salt and black pepper. Set to one side.

Boil rice in the usual way. I used Uncle Ben's Long Grain rice, which has had the starch removed, and won't go mushy. This is a good thing. Combine the rinsed rice with the leeks, prawn and fennel seeds. Mix in a simple vinagrette (a third olive oil, groundnut oil, a splash of wine or cider vinegar or lemon juice could be just the ticket) and serve cold. A garnish ('orrible word!) of chopped dill would work well with the fish and fennel.

 

 

Haddock Monte Carlo

 

 

 

I'm suddenly rather keen on this dish. Mrs Aitch made it for me last night, and it was truly delicous. Who makes Haddock Monte Carlo anymore?  I can't think of anyone I know off-hand. But it's one of those classic English dishes which relies on the quality of the ingredients (in this case non-dyed smoked haddock, with the bones removed) and simple flavour combinations. It is, of course, pretty easy to make as well, which helps.

Place two smoked haddock fillets in a pan of milk and water, with a peppercorn and a bayleaf. I think it's important to buy un-dyed haddock, which has a more sophisticated flavour than that bright radio-active yellow version. Poach gently for about fifteen minutes.

Remove the fish, and scrape off the skin.

Place the cooked fish in a buttered oven-proof oval dish and set aside. Pour off the hot milky fish water into a small pan and start reducing furiously, at a high heat. When it has reduced by about half, remove from the heat and stir in a generous helping of single cream.

Slice up some tomatoes and scatter them over the haddock, and check the seasoning, adding sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, if you think it needs it. Pour the creamy sauce all over the fish and tomatoes, and bake the dish in the oven for a further fifteen minutes or so.

Serve with a poached egg on top, and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. That's it. I like my poached eggs to be runny (who doesn't?) and there's that delicious moment when the yellow egg yolk dribbles into the creamy, savoury, tomato-infused sauce. This really is English cooking at its very best.

 

La Trattoria Terrazza

 

 

        Mr Jagger samples the delights of the Positano Room, 1966

 

More about La Trattoria Terrazza, the most fashionable restaurant in Swinging Sixties London. Yesterday I spent a snowy afternoon re-reading The Spaghetti Tree- and what an entertaining story it is! Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro opened La Trattoria Terrazza in 1959. It very quickly became the fashionable haunt of artists, writers, models, film directors, actors, photographers and society hangers-on. In 1962, the London Daily Sketch ran a feature which noted that on one certain night, between 6.30 and midnight, the following people ate at La Terrazza: Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Caron, Danny Kaye, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Laurence Harvey, Sammy Davis Jnr, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton. They forgot to include Ari Onnassis. This is astonishing when you discover just how small La Terrazza actually was at that time. Len Deighton, immortalised the restaurant in his spy novel, The Ipcress File: 'In London with a beautiful girl,' Deighton wrote in 1961, 'you must show her to Mario at La Terrazza.'

 

I'm trying to work out exactly why La Terrazza was so successful, and I think, after much thought, there are at least two reasons. The innovative food, and Mario's considerable charm. The initial interior of La Terrazza, sounds, frankly, pretty naff: a kitsch mural of Vesuvius, framed by bunches of plastic grapes and hanging wicker work chianti bottles- nothing out of the ordinary there; but the food, obviously, by the standards of the day, was.

A quick glance at a 1967 menu shows that Franco and Mario were offering: fritto misto mare (fried octopus), rognoncini con funghi al barolo (sautéed calves kidneys/mushrooms/red wine sauce), salsiccie fresche con spinaci (Italian sausage on spinach, tossed in olive oil and garlic), and cervella di vitello alla monteverde (calves brain sautéed in special batter). Of course, nowadays, any decent Italian restaurant worth its salt might sell such dishes, but back then, after fourteen years of deprivation and rationing, this was exciting, new and different (rationing in Britain, unbelievably, only ended in 1954, a mere five years before La Terrazza opened).

And I forgot to mention that Franco and Mario introduced informality to the restaurant scene. Until then, fashionable restaurants, such as Le Caprice, were grand, carpeted institutions where a coat and tie were de rigeur, where waiters wore starched shirt fronts and funeral black tail-coats, where the dishes of Escoffier were served "silver service"- an elaborate ritual which involved waiters spooning out food from silver tureens at the table.

Instead, the charming waiters at Le Terrazza wore hooped Neapolitan fisherman's jerseys (I bet you anything they flirted away like crazy), the food was brought straight to the table, piping hot; staff and clientele were on first name terms, and any pretence at a dress code was abandoned- Tony Snowdon was admitted wearing his trademark polo-neck; from that day, they never looked back. In many ways this was the birth of the modern restaurant we have today.

And then in 1960, the cartoonist and designer, Enzo Apicella, re-designed the downstairs space to create the Positano Room: a cool, white, spare space; a modernist re-interpretation of the rustic. In came green-tiled floors, roughly plastered white walls, multi-coloured down-light spots over each table, arched ceilings, modernist rush-seated armchairs, and rustic lobster pots. Apicella went on to re-design many famous restaurants, including San Lorenzo and the Pizza Express chain. 

 

               Enzo Apicella in the Positano Room, 1960

Here's the recipe for La Terraza's most popular signature dish Petto di Pollo Sorpresa, taken from Franco Lagattolla's The Recipes That Made a Million. Based on Chicken Kiev, it has the addition of parmesan and parsley, giving it that certain Italian something:

"First, have your butcher cut and skin four tender breasts of young chicken,leaving the wing-tip bone. Carefully, without breaking the flesh, flatten them with a flat-sided mallet-cleaver, very, very thinly. 

Place a 50g conical-shaped piece of well-chilled butter, which has been mixed with finely chopped garlic and parsley, a teaspoon of grated parmesan cheese, salt and milled black pepper, in the centre of each piece of chicken.

Roll them up tightly leaving the bone exposed rather like a handle. Seal in the butter by pressing the edges very firmly. Roll the chicken breasts in flour, dip into seasoned beaten egg and then carefully cover with breadcrumbs.

Deep fry the chicken breasts in hot oil until they are cooked and golden outside with the now melted savoury butter bursting to be released."

 

A Medieval Recipe for Christmas

 

 

 

I'm quite curious about the food people ate in the Middle Ages. In The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, Heston Blumenthal mentions his fascination with a bizarre 14th century French cookery book, Le Viander de Taillevent, in which a chicken is plucked alive, basted with soya, wheat-germ and dripping- to simulate roasting, coaxed asleep, and then 'brought back to life' at the table.

In case you're wondering, the rather beautiful illustration is from the Duc de Berry's Book of Hours and depicts the month of January. It probably shows the Twelfth Night banquet, as during the Middle Ages the focus of the Christmas festivities tended to be during the Twelve Days of Christmas, and after the Advent Fast.

I've adapted a 15th century English recipe for "Goose in a Garlic and Grape Sauce" which you could easily make at home. I haven't tried it yet, so I've no idea what it tastes like- it could be foul:

You make a stuffing out of garlic cloves, seedless grapes, chopped parsley and salt, and then stick it up a goose. Roast the bird in an oven set at 350༠C (twenty minutes per pound). When you're happy that the goose is cooked, take it out of the oven, and set aside to cool.

Spoon out the cooked stuffing and blend it in a food processor, adding three hard-boiled egg yolks, and half a cup of cider vinegar. Spoon the finished sauce over the goose.

 

Saturday Lunch Toad in the Hole (with Onion Gravy)

 

 

 

For some weird reason, I always think that the British classic, Toad in the Hole, is perfect for a Saturday Lunch. Not Sunday or Monday, or even Thursday for that matter. Saturday. I can't exactly explain why, there's probably a regressive, childhood thing going on there. Toad in the Hole is easy to make. It's filling. It's cheap. It's also delicious. This is Comfort Food at its best.

If you happen to be American, you are probably now wondering how on earth us Brits can eat one of those slimey, knobbly creatures? Sort of less appealing then a French grenouille, I hear you cry. But as much as I am curious to sample one of those tantalising little critters, the 'toad' is, in all probability, English slang for sausage. It's a bit like Welsh Rabbit (which ain't a rabbit), or Scotch Woodcock (which ain't a woodcock, either).

Back to the Toad: Heat your oven to 220C (425F). Get hold of some decent, fat, organic sausages and chuck them into a roasting tin with a few knobs of lard. You could have fun experimenting with different types of sausage. The better your sausage, the better your Toad in the Hole will taste. Cook the sausages in the oven for about ten minutes. My latest sausage discovery has been Sainsbury's Taste the Difference British Pork & Caramelised Red Onion Sausages. These are utterly delicious! Sweet, juicy, slightly spicy, lots of lovely caramelised flavours going on in there.

Meanwhile, mix up the batter. Sieve 4oz (110g) of self raising flour into a bowl, and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Make a hole or a "well" in the centre of the flour, and pour in 5 fluid oz (150ml) of semi-skimmed milk into the hole. Crack in an egg, too. Mix the flour, milk, and egg up very gradually with a wooden spoon.  Beat well, and then add the same amount of milk, again. Pour the finished batter over the sausages, and cook them in the oven for a further 45 minutes or so, until the Toad is risen and browned.

The Onion Gravy is a cinch. You slice up some onions, and brown them in a frying pan. If you add a few pinches of sugar and salt, this will help them to caramelise. You want them to get brown and a bit burnt. This is a good thing. Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook in the oniony fat. Once the onions and flour are brown enough, you can deglaze the pan with some stock, water, and perhaps, a slug or two of white wine. Instead of gravy browning (what's that?), I use a few drops of Soy Sauce, which will give the gravy an even richer colour and taste. A teaspoon of redcurrent jelly is not a bad plan, either. Onion Gravy should be thin.

 

 

 

 

Poached Mutton with Caper Sauce

 

 

 

 

I've been meaning to have my say about mutton for some time now. Whatever happened to it? My grandparents used to eat roast mutton on a regular basis, ordered from their local butcher in Buckinghamshire. And this was not so long ago. Today, it's almost impossible to get hold of unless you go to a specialist supplier. Inspired by Rick Stein's excellent television programme Food Heroes, I rang up Lidgate's to buy a joint of mutton. Didn't have any. Slightly surprised tone to the voice. I rang Allen's. Same answer. I rang that upmarket butcher in the Wandsworth Bridge Road. Didn't have any, but they could get some in from that bloke down in Tooting. I gave up, and bought a shoulder of lamb instead.

It's not really the same thing. The tastes, flavours and textures are different. I'm very excited by the whole shoulder of Herdwick mutton (on the bone) sold by Yew Tree Farm in the Lake District for £23.00. Yew Tree Farm also happened to have been owned by Beatrix Potter, which adds that extra frission. As they say on their website: "It's ideal for long, slow cooking...Herdwick Mutton is becoming well known amongst the finest chefs in the country as a delicious full flavoured 'melt in the mouth' meat, reminiscent of meat as it used to be." 

 

Beatrix Potter at Hill Top, Cumbria

 

Under new guidelines from Mutton Renaissance (the campaign launched by HRH The Prince of Wales), mutton must come from a sheep over two years old, and the animals must have a forage based diet- (ie grass, heather and root crops). The Cumbrian sheep roam the fells and live off the heather, which produces a meat of fabulous quality.

And what can be more traditional than poached mutton, served with caper sauce? It's an absolute British classic. Here's how to make it. It's not difficult, and I really do hope that you take the trouble to order a joint from one of those fabulous farms up in the Lake District. You may have to wait up to two to three weeks for delivery to allow for hanging. It's going to be worth it:

Into a large cast iron cooking pot goes the mutton. Have a look at the shoulder of Herdwick mutton on the bone from Yew Tree Farm. Cover the mutton joint with water, and sprinkle it with chopped onions, quartered carrots, a peeled parsnip, some chopped up celery, a bayleaf, a few black peppercorns and a sprig of rosemary. (Incidentally, I see in some recipes that the mutton is soaked overnight to "degorge" before cooking. I haven't done this before- and it would be interesting to see if it makes a difference. I need to experiment).

Bring the pot to a very slow boil, skimming off the scum as it rises. Turn the heat down, and poach very slowly for about two hours or so- or until you think the mutton is done. I like my mutton to be soft, juicy; a meat that melts in the mouth- mutton has more fat than lamb; you will need to watch the cooking time carefully. You do not want to overcook it. When I tried this recipe with lamb, although it tasted all right, I overcooked it and it ended up a bit on the dry side. No, mutton's the thing for this one.

Remove the mutton from the pan, and allow it to rest. Now's the time to make the caper sauce. It's pretty easy. In a separate smaller pan, make a roux. That's means stirring in white flour into some melted butter, and cooking it gently, stirring as you go, until you end up with a smooth golden coloured flour and butter paste. It's very important that you let the paste cook for a bit, otherwise you will end up wtih undercooked, raw floury tastes. Gradually stir in a bit of stock from the mutton. Keep stirring away. Add a splash of milk. Then a bit more of the stock, then a bit more of the milk- until you have a creamy, béchamel type sauce.

The sauce is finished off with a handful of capers. Check the seasoning, and add sea salt and white pepper to taste. I see that some recipes use cream, rather than milk, for the caper sauce; and of course, you could easily try this out if you prefer. Personally, I think this might be too rich, but as always, it's up to you.

 

Roast Pheasant with Juniper Pear Butter

 

 

Our new cooker (A Smeg A4-8, if you're interested) is arriving today. Any time between ten and two (I had to pay extra to ensure delivery).  And so that Grand Day when I can actually start cooking again is drawing closer. I'm having fun reading food porn, just before hitting the pillow, fantasising about all the new goodies we're going to be sampling in a few weeks time.

And now that autumn is here, I'm also thinking about pheasants. People don't eat enough of them, in my opinion. It's very much a country food, I think, and townies, for some bizarre reason, can't cope. But for me, pheasant is very much the taste of Autumn, with its dark meat and gamey flavours. Coming across the shot is very much part of the charm, too. But pheasant does need to be cooked properly. Part of the problem, I think, is the tendency for the meat to dry out and become stringy. But more about this in a minute. 

Although the season starts on October 1st, in practice, very few pheasants are shot before the end of October- and the size and quality of the birds can be poor in this month. Early November is probably a good time to buy your pheasant. The season ends on February 1st. A hen is going to be better for roasting than a cock. What you're after, ideally, is a young-ish hen bird. Bought in early November. Already plucked. You can of course, pluck the bird yourself, or at least try to, but I find, to be honest, that it's not really worth the bother (unless you happen to shoot) when you can buy one professionally plucked from a decent butcher.

One of the most intriguing recipes for pheasant comes from Nathalie Hambro, the author of the Glenfiddich award winning Particular Delights, republished recently by Grub Street. I really like Nathalie Hambro's innovative take on food. She's not frightened of experimenting with different flavours and combinations; usally it works, sometimes, I think her recipes are a trifle weird- but that's all part of the fun and it's refreshingly original, especially if what you're seeking is a taste sensation.

 

 

Her recipe for Pheasant with Juniper Pear Butter is going to be one of the first things I'm planning to make when we finally get the new kitchen up and running. She's had the brilliant idea to use a chicken brick to cook the pheasant in. This is a stroke of genius. You' will remember the Chicken Brick. I think they were either re-invented or re-introduced by Terence Conran. Desparately trendy back in the early 70's, they've now almost become a bit of a joke- the sort of thing Islingtonites with scrubbed pine tables, William Morris wallpaper and hippy children dressed in Clothkits would want for Christmas.

But chicken bricks are a good thing: the moisture (or steam) coming off the meat is trapped within the brick, and circulates in the hot air, which, in effect, steams the meat as it roasts, thus keeping in the moisture. Perfect for lean game.

I've had a quick look online, and it's amazing how affordable pheasant is. Lidgate (the rather grand butchers in Holland Park I'm fond of) are selling their birds for £6.75. Allen's of Mayfair are selling theirs for £7.00. The Wild Meat Company are asking a very reasonable £4.95. And I expect that you could probably find even cheaper birds at local butchers out in the sticks.

Soak the chicken brick in cold water for about ten minutes. The clay in the brick will absorb the water.

Take your plucked pheasant, and wash it thoroughly. Peel a pear, and push it into the cavity of the pheasant. This will also help the pheasant to remain moist. Season the pheasant with salt and pepper. Crush some juniper berries, and rub them all over the pheasant. Sauté the prepared bird in a pan with some butter and oil, for about six minutes, so that it is lightly browned all over. The oil will help to stop the butter from burning.

Line the bottom of the chicken brick with tin foil, and put in the pheasant with its juices. Replace the top of the chicken brick, and bake in a preheated oven at 240℃ for an hour.

Now for the juniper butter: Finely chop up some shallots, and garlic. Melt some butter in a pan, and add the garlic, shallots, and the crushed juniper berries you've got left over from the pheasant. Simmer gently for about twenty minutes.

Take off the heat, and add the juice of two lemons. Season with sea salt and white pepper, and sprinkle with freshly chopped chives. Serve slices of the cooked pheasant with a small helping of the pear (in effect a stuffing), and the juniper butter sauce.

I think this might work well if you were to serve it with pearl barley. Maybe pearl barley cooked with a bit of stock, lemon juice and thyme?  The piney, gin-ish, juniper flavours go beautifully with the sweet fruitiness of the pear, and the autumnal, woody gamey flavours of the pheasant. Oh god, I'm salivating as I write.

 

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.

 

Austerity Chicken Broth

 

 

 

We are still without a kitchen. I'm not blaming the builders, who have been superb and worked like navvies, but our renovations have turned out to be a more ambitious enterprise than we had originally envisaged. The entire floor base has had to be broken up with a pneumatic drill, revealing a sort of packed down clay surface; pipes relayed, walls rebuilt, chimneybreasts knocked back, French windows inserted, everything re-wired. Gutted. They're nailing down re-claimed 1920's floorboards as I write.

It's been chaos, acidic builder's dust choking everywhere and everything (my dried-up hands breaking out into an unpleasant rash), books piled up high at crazy angles, cardboard boxes stacked here and there- an open invitation to trip, both of us trying hard not get grumpy. But it's been difficult.

And that constant drilling noise, from early morning to dusk. But the worst thing of all: No cooker. Yup, nothing to eat except micro-waved food, and sardines straight from the tin. Neanderthal. God, I'm utterly sick of micro-waved food. Initially, it wasn't too bad, and we could sort of cope with "Taste the Difference" packet chicken in black bean sauce. But after several months of this (has it been longer?) and all those supermarkety, ready-to-go, microwavey instant things have blurred into one awful, bland, salt-rich, monosodium glutamate lovin' nightmare.

Talking of which, I'm beginning to dream about food. Properly cooked food. Fresh food. I had a lovely fantasy sequence the other night which involved, amongst other things, the making of a New England Chowder. Fresh crab, little diced carrots, potatoes, onions, chopped flat-leaf parsley. Creamy. Rich. Thick. Intense, deep fishy, sea-side flavours. And I've started to have an obssession with chicken broth. Can't stop thinking about it.

A very kind friend learnt of this, and lent me us a nifty little camping stove, powered by a Calor Gas canister. I managed to make an excellent chicken soup or broth from it, which I served up to Mrs Aitch who was running a temperature. Cooked on the floor, in the ruins of our former kitchen. Next to a Cement Mixer. It was one of most delicious things I've ever tasted for a long, long time: take away decent, properly cooked food for a few months, and Mein Gott, you will start to really appreciate the crucial role food plays in the quality of life. It's terribly important.

Anyway, this is how I made my very simple, but completely beguiling chicken broth. I managed to find a large pan (about the only thing not in storage), rinsed off the dust with the garden tap outside, and into this I placed a very ordinary, ersatz, non-organic supermarket chicken. A whole one. Price: Five Pounds. By the way, for those of you who are sniffy about supermarket chicken, please take into account that in this particular case the poor beast did not die in vain, in the way that it might have done if it had been served up, say, by the Good Colonel Sanders.

 

I topped up the pan with water, so that it covered the chicken. Into the pan went: a few leeks (roughly chopped), a parsnip or two for extra sweetness (again, roughly chopped), a few peppercorns, a few onions (roughly chopped), a stick of celery (snapped in two) a few parsley stalks, a sprig of thyme, and a few baby carrots (chopped up into chunks). 

The pan was brought to a slow simmer on a lowish to medium heat, and I scraped off the scum from the top as it did so. I kept on scraping off the scum as it bubbled up to the surface. The stew was then simmered slowly at a low heat, until the chicken started to break up, and a rich stock was formed. From memory, this took about an hour and a half. About twenty minutes beforehand, I had sliced up some further baby carrots into rounds and added them to the broth- for decoration. Taste, and add sea salt if you feel it needs it.

To serve, I ladled out the clearish chicken broth into a soup bowl, leaving all the bits and pieces behind in the pan. With a fork, I rescued some of the white chicken meat I found floating around in the pan, and tore it up into bite-sized pieces or strips. These were placed in the middle of the bowl, and the cooked baby carrot slices scattered around them. The broth was finished off with finely chopped flat leafed parsley.

It's a pretty and delicate looking dish, which also happens to be cheap to make; and if you're clever and bother to skim off the scum as it cooks, you should get a reasonably clear broth or consommé. This will amaze and impress your friends and neighbours.

 

Jackie Kennedy's Shepherd's Pie

 

 

That famous photograph, Ron Galella in pursuit

 

I've always admired Jacqueline Kennedy's taste, especially in antiques, pictures and books. The Sotheby's catalogue (The Estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, April 23-26, 1996) was a revelation; proving that she had an excellent, understated eye (from memory as the catalogue's currently in storage) for: old master drawings, charming hand-coloured Regency and Biedermeier prints, John Singer Sargent sketches, creamware Corinthian candlesticks, Louis XVI furniture, natural history engravings by Audubon. Everything was slightly tatty, too. I liked that: her books had been well thumbed, and well-read; the antithesis of the immaculate coffee table books you see piled up in interior design magazines.

 

 

 

Then trawling the internet one day, I came across "Cooking for Madam, Recipes & Reminiscences from the Home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis", by Martha Sgubin (with Nancy Nicholas). Martha Sgubin was Mrs Onassis's cook, or private chef. 

To be honest, initially I thought the book was going to be a bit of a joke. Cringy title. A slightly embarrasing buy, not quite at the brown paper bag stage, but you will get the drift. How wrong I was!  It was a terrific buy, and it's now got pride of place on that shelf of cookery books I'd rescue if the house caught fire (which is more than likely with the full-scale renovations currently in progress); alongside The Harry's Bar Cookbook, The Prawn Cocktail Years, Lindsey Bareham's Just One Pot and Arabella Boxer's English Food.

Martha Sgubin cooks the sort of food I know I'd love if- and when- we ever get round to employing a private chef. Simple but relatively sophisticated; unpretentious, Anglo-American with a French and Italian influence. Honest food cooked extremely well- and with style. Flicking through at random, we have: Mussel Salad, Shepherd's Pie, Frozen Lemon Soufflé, Pear Sorbet, Green Risotto, Tarragon Chicken, Warm Lobster Salad with Basil Viniagrette, Truffle Soup and Strawberry Shortcake.

I now have something shocking to admit to you. I have declared this house "A Mashed Potato Free Zone". For some reason, I loathe mashed potato. It's weird, I know. I can quite happily tuck into waxy new potatoes; sautéed potatoes are good, chips are divine. But mashed potato is the Mark of the Beast. It may be something to do with the floury texture. It may be something to do with school (antique Irish cooks at Dotheboy's Hall, fags dangling from their pursed lips, blue nylon housecoats) or those robotic alien creatures which peddled instant mashed potatoes for Cadbury's back in the 70's. Mash Get Smash. But for today only, I'm going to lift my ban, and actually recommend a dish which includes the evil substance. I'm quite happy to serve this up to our guests. Just bear in mind that I won't touch it. But if it's good enough for Mrs Onassis...

Here's the recipe for Jackie Kennedy's Shepherd's Pie, as cooked by Martha Sgubin, and adapted by The Greasy Spoon:

 

 

 

4 cups chopped cooked lamb or roast beef (the meat must be rare)

2 large cloves of garlic

1 large onion, chopped

1 teaspoon of fresh rosemary leaves

8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, divided

3 Tablespoons flour

1 cup beef stock

Salt and Pepper

4 cups mashed potatoes

 

Preheat your oven to 350°. Combine the lamb, garlic, onion and rosemary and put them through a meat grinder twice. It does need to be a meat grinder.

Melt six tablespoons of the butter in a large pan, and stir in the flour. Stir constantly on a low heat to form a roux. You'll need to do this for a few minutes so that the flour cooks.

Add the ground lamb mixture and stir it in. Add sea salt flakes and pepper to taste. Pour the combined mixture into an oven-proof oval casserole dish. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top. Make sure the lamb mixture is completey covered and that the potato is spread evenly, touching the rim of the dish. Take a fork and rake a design across the potato. Long grooves across the width could be a good plan. Dot with butter. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes until the filling is hot and the potato has browned.

 

 

Cooking For Madam, Recipes and Reminiscences from the Home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Marta Sgubin (and Nancy Nicholas), published by Scribner, New York, 1998.

 

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Baby Artichokes Barigoule

 

 

This is an elegant, French, summery stew we're currently enjoying; quite similar in some ways to the artichoke stews you find in Rome. I was inspired by Rowley Leigh's recent feature in the Financial Times magazine. It was about the food of Marseille and included several excellent recipes, including a genuine bouillabaisse. Researching artichauts à a barigoule, I discovered many different versions. Some included mushrooms, others carrots; most had garlic. My recipe is similar to Rowley Leighs', but I've added garlic and chopped parsley.

Take some fresh baby artichokes, and cut the tops off- just above the heart. Snap off the stems, trimming away the outer green bits so that you end up with a nice, rounded vegetable. Immediately dip the baby artichokes into a mixture of white wine vinegar and water to preserve the colour.

Cut a sweet white onion in half, and slice thinly. Add a dash of olive oil to a hot pan, and start cooking the sliced onion until it wilts. Add a generous handful of bacon lardons, and let them fry. Peel and slice some baby carrots, and add them to the pan. For variety, I sliced the carrot in two different ways: directly across to create roundels, and in half, lengthways, once the root had been removed. Add a teaspoon or so of crushed garlic.

Drain the artichokes and place them in the pan. Top up with white wine and water, until the artichokes are covered. Add a few sprigs of thyme, a teaspoon of white sugar and bring to the boil. Crank down the heat and stew very slowly with the lid on.

I reckon forty five minutes at a very low heat should be about right. Check the seasoning, adding sea salt and white pepper if you feel it needs it, and remove the thyme stalks. It's almost like a soup. Serve in a deep bowl, and sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley. If you're feeling in a peasanty mood, you can mop up the stew with hunks of French bread. 

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Constance Spry's Original Coronation Chicken

 

 Cecil Beaton, 1952

With Her Majesty The Queen's Diamond Jubilee- and River Pageant- just around the corner, I thought it appropriate to turn our thoughts to Coronation Chicken. I admit that I like it. It's slightly bland, perhaps even a trifle unfashionable, but the original Constance Spry recipe is, undoubtably, a classic; far better than the ubiquitous, bog-standard chicken, mayonnaise and curry powder versions you will have come across. It actually tastes of something, too. It's going to be worth making that special effort:

 

Constance Spry's Original Coronation Chicken

Ingredients (Serves 8):

2.3kg (5lb) chicken

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 small, finely chopped onion

1 tbsp curry paste

1 tbsp tomato purée

100ml red wine

1 bay leaf

1/2 lemon juice

4 finely chopped apricot halves

300ml (1/2 pint) Mayonnaise

100ml (4 fl oz) whipping cream

Salt and pepper

Watercress to garnish

 

Instructions:

1)  Skin the chicken and cut into small pieces and grill it until cooked.

2)  In a small saucepan, heat the oil, add the onion and cook for about three minutes, until softened.

3)  Add the curry paste, tomato purée, wine, bay leaf and lemon juice.

4)  Simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes until well reduced.

5)  Strain and leave to cool.

6)  Purée the chopped apricot halves in a blender or food processor or through a sieve.

7)  Beat the cooled sauce into the mayonnaise with the apricot purée.

8)  Whip the cream to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture.

9)  Season, adding a little extra lemon juice if necessary.

10)  Fold in the chicken pieces, garnish with watercress and serve.

 

 

I've got another bit of good news: I've started another blog. It's called The Education of a Gardener, a title nicked unashamedly from the great landscape architect, Russell Page. It's a sort of diary or scrapbook about my efforts to transform a tiny, dingy London backyard into a garden. It's going to be a very different blog from The Greasy Spoon. Simpler, less cluttered. I'm really not worried about how many people can be bothered to read it; it's going to be more of a personal diary, a chart of my progress; my struggle to turn a depressing, shady backyard into a something that I can call truly, a garden.

 

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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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Chinese Chicken in a Black Bean Sauce

 

Last night I dreamt again of Chicken in a Black Bean Sauce. Nothing special, just the ordinary, slighty tacky dish you get delivered from a Chinese takeaway, the sort of thing you might eat with chopsticks in front of the television, straight from the tin-foil carton. Strips of chicken, bound in a starchy, slightly piquant, peppery black sauce, stir fried with crunchy green peppers. Always crunchy green peppers.

As with Indian food in this country, I expect that Chicken in a Black Bean Sauce is about as authentic as a pizza cooked with pineapple; not of course that I am recommending you add pineapple to your pizza; that would be a heresy. But just sometimes, there's something comforting about re-creating simple, bastardised dishes: I think they've become modern classics in their own right.

Researching the recipe, I found all sorts of versions on the net. Some were spicier than others; one even used grated orange and ginger. I've come up with a simple, relatively authentic recipe you can easily make at home, although I admit that I have no idea if this is exactly how your local Chinese take-away makes it. Please feel free to add your own twists. You'll see that I have deliberately avoided using that pre-made black bean sauce you can buy in a tin. You can buy packets of fermented black beans (soy beans which have been dried and fermented in salt and spices) and from Chinese grocery shops. We're lucky enough to live relatively close to London's China Town. If you don't, I think you can buy these on the net. Incidentally, they're a different thing from the black beans used in Mexican or Caribbean cooking, which you can buy tinned from supermarkets. Here's how you make Chicken in a Black Bean Sauce:

First, you will need to make up your own black bean sauce mixture. In a bowl, combine the following ingredients: two heaped tablespoons of Chinese fermented black beans (rinsed and mashed), two cloves of minced garlic, one tablespoon of dark soy sauce, one teaspoon of Chinese oyster sauce (from the bottle), one teaspoon of sugar, two teaspoons of cornstarch, 1/2 cup of chicken stock, and a dash of rice wine or sherry. Put to one side.

Heat up your wok over a medium heat, and add a dash of toasted sesame oil. Warm for about thirty seconds. Add a teaspoon or so of minced garlic and your home-made black bean sauce. Cook, stirring for thirty seconds.

Add some chicken (which you've previously cut into thin strips) and cook through. If the sauce gets too thick (or there's not enough of it) add some more chicken stock or water. Cook, stirring occasionally so that the sauce doesn't stick to the wok.

When the chicken's almost cooked, add diced onion, sliced spring onions, green pepper (cut up into chunks), a further generous dash of soy sauce (this will help to turn the sauce a darker colour) and lots of fresh black pepper. Cook quickly (so that the vegetables are still crunchy) and serve. Steamed rice would be just the ticket.

 

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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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Lazy Spinach and Prawn Biryani

 

 

I'm going to deviate from the path with this one. Normally on The Greasy Spoon, I try to cover classic food and get to the bottom of authentic recipes. Hand up, I admit that the recipe I'm about to give you ain't a proper biryani- it's undoubtably a bastardised version, but so juicy, quick and delicious, I couldn't resist posting it. It's based on a recipe from allrecipes.co.uk, but I've unashamedly changed it in various ways.

What is a biryani?  I'm afraid many people in Britain just assume it's "Indian"- whatever that means. The story of the biryani, however, is far more complex. It originated in Persia, the name coming from the Persian word beryā(n) (بریان) which means "fried" or "roasted" and was brought to South East Asia by spice traders. It's a popular dish in India (many different versions), Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, The Middle East (including Iran and Iraq), Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

It's a combination of rice, spices, vegetables, fish eggs and meat. For an authentic biryani, the rice and curried sauce should be cooked separately, and then combined together at the end in layers, forming a contrast between the lightly spiced rice, and the intense flavours of the sauce, meat or vegetables. It's similar in a way to our very own kedgeree- which, of course, has its roots in the British Raj.

My "after-work" version is more of an Anglicised pilaf, I suppose. You could of course tweak it to become a proper biryani- by steaming basmati rice (with the lid on) and cooking this separately, creating some sort of a spicy sauce, and then combining it all together before serving. Fried crunchy, sliced onions would be an authentic and delicious garnish.

 

His Highness The Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, GBE

 

Heat up a saucepan and add a dash of cooking oil. Add a thinly sliced onion, a sliced red chilli, and a knob of fresh ginger, (peeled and chopped). Cook on a medium heat for a few minutes until soft.

Now it' time for the spices. You're going to use cumin, coriander, turmeric and nutmeg. I would suggest that you buy the cumin and coriander as seeds, and then grind them up in a pestle and mortar until they become a fine powder. A tablespoon or so should be fine. I'm afraid that the turmeric came from the jar (about a teaspoon). The nutmeg was grated directly into the saucepan: I've got a little nutmeg grater which my mother-in-law (Gawd bless 'er) gave me for Christmas. Cook on a lowish heat for a few more minutes, so that the spices are cooked properly. The aim is to cook the spices, but not to burn them.

Stir in 225g of Uncle Ben's Long Grain Rice. This cheat's rice has had the starch removed, and so won't go mushy in the cooking. It's excellent for pilafs, in my opinion. If you were planning to use Basmati rice, you would need to rinse it first, and then "steam" on a low heat for about ten minutes with the lid on.

Stir in a tin of chopped tomatoes, and top up with hot fish stock. Add a pinch of sugar, and a pinch of salt. By the way, further cheating at this stage, as I added a dollop of Umami paste, the mysterious "fifth taste sensation" (a sort of cross between anchovies and tomatoes in flavour). Simmer the biryani on a low to medium heat, until the rice has cooked. If you think it needs it, top it up with boiling water now and again.

When the rice is cooked, stir in two packets of plebby prawns (these are those pre-cooked tiny, shrimp-like pink things you can buy in the supermarket). Take the birayni off the heat, and stir in a packet of spinach. You'll find that it wilts easily in the heat. Finish the dish off with a generous helpings of chopped fresh coriander.

If you want to research biraynis further, have a look at this video in which master chef Padma Lakshmi cooks a Royal Biryani for two hundred children in Hyderabad.

 

 

There never was such a goose!

 

 

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. It's tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), "they hadn't ate it all at last!"

 

This Christmas, as there's only going to be four of us, we've decided to have a shot at goose, rather than turkey. I'm looking forward to this immensely: there's just something terribly Dickensian and Christmasy about our old friend the goose, isn't there?

 

Up until the 1890's, most people in England didn't eat turkey because it was too expensive. That's why it's such a big deal when Ebeneezer Scrooge orders the massive prize turkey for the Cratchits, who normally would be huddled round their scrappy little goose come Christmas Day.

Coming to think of it, I've got a slight problem with all of this. Scrooge sends the prize turkey round to the Cratchits on Christmas morning. By the time it's been ordered, delivered to Camden Town from Clerkenwell, stuffed, and roasted at the local baker's shop, it's going to be way past the Cratchits' bedtime, and poor old Bob's got to be up the next day at the crack of dawn to toil away in Scrooge's counting house. Heigh ho.

But which one is better? The goose or the turkey? I like turkey, I do. But it has a tendency to become dry and stringy, and by Boxing Day most sane people are fed up with it; even when it's turned into our notorious Boxing Day Turkey Curry.

There's no doubt that a fresh turkey is preferable to a frozen one. If you do have a frozen one, for God's sake make sure that it's thawed properly, otherwise you could find yourself into serious trouble. If you can, try and get the gamey tasting English Black Norfolk, or the American Bronze variety. And some more advice if you'll allow me: stuff the bird at the last minute, rather than the night before.

The immediate problem with goose is that there just isn't going to be enough meat on the thing. If you've got lots of friends and family coming round, then some of them are going to go hungry. It tastes delicious, and has a rich and gamey flavour, but there's also going to be lots of fat. I'm fine with that, but there will inevitably be some poor souls out there who'll run for the hills. Paul Levy also reckons that the goose is really at its prime come Michaelmas (ie September) rather than December.

So my advice on this one: if there are just a few of you- go for goose, and sit back and enjoy the rich and subtle flavours; if you've got a horde coming round, go for turkey, but try and get a properly reared and decent variety, and cook it with care. I know this is expensive, but as it's only once a year, I think it's going to be a good investment.

 

Alastair Sim with The Ghost of Christmas Present, A Christmas Carol, 1951

 

The Ivy's Hamburger

 

 

Rummaging through some old newspaper cuttings from the '90's, I found this old photograph of the famous Ivy restaurant (founded 1917), with a super-imposed photograph of Charles Laughton in the 1933 picture, "The Private Life of Henry VIII".

This is how The Ivy used to be- the favourite playground of the luvvies of the silver screen: Larry, Vivien, Noel, Ivor and Sexy Rexy. I love the wood panelling, the Tudorbeathen leaden lattice windows and the naff neo-classical statues. How I would give my teeth (what's left of 'em) to go back in time and enter those hallowed portals!

 

In 1990, Caprice Holdings "restored" and relaunched the restaurant; supposedly to its "former glory". I've got mixed feelings about the new Ivy. By then the restaurant, it is true, had become a shadow of its former self, semi-derelict, and in desperate need of a makeover; but the 1990's re-incarnation was, with hindsight, a bit Footballer's Wives, (to be fair, a reflection of the then fashionable age of one Mr Anthony Blair and the cringe-inducing Cool Britannia); service was impeccable, but the whole place lacked the elan and dash of its previous incarnation. 

 

Back in the 90's (as with Terence Conran's "Quaglino's"), it was extremely difficult to get a table; these days, I gather, it's an easier ticket, and reservations can be booked on a few weeks notice. 

If you're still interested, A.A. Gill's The Ivy, The Restaurant and its Recipes is the definitive guide. I've already covered The Ivy's Chicken Masala (which is included in A.A. Gill's book)- an excellent and delicious dish, which has the slightly unusual trait of being thickened with chopped aubergine.

Here's A.A. Gill's take on the Ivy's Hamburger. I've always had a slight problem with my own home-made hamburgers: I make a delicious mix, but then add too much liquid (or too much beaten egg), so that when it comes to the "pan-frying" bit, the meat crumbles, and doesn't hold together. This is the official Ivy version. Admittedly, it's pretty basic, but I think it's worth publishing online:

Mix up a good quality minced beef, and mould into balls or patties. Put the burgers into the 'fridge to set. Whisk together tomato ketchup with American mustard (French's mustard would be ideal) to make the sauce.

Lightly toast some baps, and keep them warm. Cook the burgers on a griddle or a smoking hot pan (not under a grlll, as this could boil the meat). 

Serve the burgers in the warm baps with slices of red onion, gherkin, beef tomato and the Ivy hambuger sauce.

 

 

Beef Stroganoff

 

 

 

Remember Beef Stroganoff?  Many moons ago, my mother had a fledgling enterprise selling pre-cooked dinner party food to local housewives who couldn't be bothered to cook. Dishes were rustled up ahead of time, frozen, and then delivered to her clients in our rusting Lancia. I suspect there was quite a bit of fibbing going on, and the naughty dinner party hostesses would pretend that they had cooked it themselves. It was all very Stepford. From memory, Beef Stroganoff was one of the best-sellers on her menu. Strips of filet beef, cooked briefly, and bound in a mustardy sauce.

What exactly is Beef Stroganoff?  That's a very good question. In the authoritative The Prawn Cocktail Years, Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham reckon that the origins of the dish are suspect, and about as Russian as I am Chinese. My own guess was that it might have had something to do with that fascinating post-Revolutionary period in America, when Hollywood was awash with dubious Russian counts and every exile worth their salt was cousin to the Tsar. Wikipedia, however, is a mine of information on the subject, pin-pointing the birth of the dish to Elena Molokhovet's classic Russian cookbook of 1861: "Beef à la Stroganov with mustard, a simple concoction of fried beef cubes in a mustard and sour cream sauce". Stroganoff also appears in the 1938 edition of Larousse Gastronomique, but with the addition of onions and the option of tomato paste.

Here's my recipe for a classic Beef Stroganoff. I'm of the opinion that you need to cook the beef very quickly; the steak needs to be tender, rather than chewey. It's not really a stew. This should make enough for about four people.

You take 600g or so of filet steak, and cut it into slivers. The meat is seasoned and fried very quickly in a hot frying pan, until it's browned, but still relatively rare. Don't crowd the pan, otherwise the beef will stew, rather than fry; for the best results it could be a good idea to fry the meat a few pieces at a time. Take out the browned meat, and set aside on a plate.

Add a knob of butter to the pan, and cook some finely sliced onions until golden. Take them out of the pan and set them aside. Add a further knob of butter to the pan and add 350g of sliced button or baby mushrooms. Once cooked through, remove and add to the onions.

Turn down the heat, and carefully spoon 400ml of soured cream into the pan. Mix in a generous dollop of French mustard, and a small spoonful of tomato paste for colouring. Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham add paprika at the mushroom stage (cooking the spice in the hot butter for a minute or so), and there's nothing wrong with that. But The Greasy Spoon version is, perhaps, the more authentic and I don't think the dish should be too spicy. Is it possible to make a virtue of the bland?

Warm the sauce through, and combine the cooked mushrooms and onions back into the pan. Simmer the Stroganoff very gently for around ten minutes. I really do prefer the beef to be rare- but I understand that this is very much a matter of personal taste.

To finish off the dish, check the seasoning, and stir in generous amounts of freshly chopped dill and a squeeze of lemon juice. You serve it with plain rice.

 

From left to right: Maria, Alexandra, Alexei, Tatiana, Nicholas II, Olga, Anastasia, 1911

Céleri rémoulade

 

 

 

You may have had céleri rémoulade in France- it's that ubiquitous (but delicious) salad dish you'll find in charcuteries up and down the land; frankly, not dissimilar to the American coleslaw. The "celeri" bit is shredded celery root. The "remoulade" is a mustard-flavoured mayonnaise or dressing.

Celery root is also called celeriac. They're those knobbly, bulbous, earthy things which look a bit like large turnips. Making céleri rémoulade is straightforward enough:

Take a large, sharp knife and slice off the brown, knobbly skin. You'll find that the celeriac turns yellow with exposure to air, so you will need to work relatively quickly. Cut the celeriac into large chunks and then shred it in your food processor. I've finally mastered the art of working mine, and like to shred things very thinly, so that you end up with delicate, tiny strands. It's very satisfying for some reason.

Dump the shredded celeriac into a bowl, and immediately mix in some fresh lemon juice and sea salt. This will stop the celeriac from turning yellow, in effect, keeping it white in colour.

Now for a bit of conjecture. How to make the rémoulade dressing? Some recipes call for a simple mayonnaise, seasoned with salt and pepper, and flavoured with a large dollop of Dijon mustard. And that's what I used the last time I made céleri rémoulade (adding a tablespoon of boiling water to the mayonnaise to lighten the colour and give it a lift). But to be completely honest, even then I found my home-made mayonnaise to be too rich, too thick, even slightly cloying in taste, swamping the subtle taste of the celeriac.

In his excellent blog, Living the life in Saint-Aignan, Ken Broadhurst suggests that to achieve that genuinely authentic charcuterie taste, half the dressing should be made from the mustard-mayonnaise and the other half from crème fraiche. This might well be the solution.

I've also noted that Julia Child used an eggless mayonnaise, by slowly dripping boiling water into a dollop of warm mustard (so that it forms an emulsion), and then adding the oil (in the usual way) bit by bit, finishing it off with a tablespoon or so of white vinegar, and a seasoning of white pepper and salt. This eggless "mayonnaise" is then mixed in with the shredded celeriac, with chopped parsley and sour cream added to taste. I like the idea of this version.

By the way, I found that the céleri rémoulade improves if left over-night to marinate in the 'fridge. The lemon, salt, and mustard helps to "cook" the celeriac and removes that raw taste.

Waldorf Salad

 

 

 

"You're the Top! You're a Waldorf Salad!"

Hands up who doesn't love a Waldorf Salad? Named after the Waldorf Hotel in New York, it's supposed to have been invented in the 1890's. By the maitre d'hotel, Oscar Tschirky- who also laid claim to that tantalising breakfast dish, Eggs Benedict. The original Waldorf Hotel was on the site of what is now the Empire State Building, and demolished in 1929.

 

Anyway, it's a simple old thing, and easily made from a combination of sliced celery, diced apples (I leave the skin on), walnuts, and raisins.

You bind the salad with mayonnaise (or just possibly a simple dressing) and serve it on a bed of peppery lettuce leaves, as the whim takes you. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

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.

 

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?

 

 

 

Tom Ripley's Venetian Lemon Chicken

 

 

I bought an amusing little book yesterday. It's called Recipe for Murder: Frightfully Good Food Inspired by Fiction by Estérelle Payany. The blurb on the back says: "Allow yourself to be lured into the kitchen by the great gourmet-villains of popular literature, from Lady Macbeth to Dr. Jekyll, to the Marquis de Sade and Hannibal Lecter". It's enormous fun, and there are lots of stylish illustrations by Jean-François Martin in the manner of Richard Hamilton.

I like the look of Count Dracula's "Paprika Hendl" and Fantomas' "Truffled Eggs without Truffles". But the recipe that immediately leapt out of the page was "Tom Ripley's Venetian Lemon Chicken". I'm a massive fan of Patricia Highsmith's "Ripliade"- the five crime novels published between 1955 and 1991, featuring the cultured and sophisticated Mr Ripley- the reluctant con-man, murderer and art fraudster.

 

I made this dish last night and the results were fabulous. A worthy candidate for "The Best of The Greasy Spoon" - when (and if) I ever publish it.

You take a chicken breast and beat it out flat to form an escallop. You fry the escallop in hot olive oil until it is cooked on each side, flipping it over in the process, which should take a minute or so on each side.

The fried chicken is then removed and put to one side. You chop up half a large red onion into dice and sweat it in the oil (with the heat turned down to low) until translucent. The juice of two large lemons, the zest of half a lemon, and a tablespoon or so of honey are added.

You return the fried chicken to the pan, and cook it gently in the tangy sauce for about five minutes. Finally, fresh thyme leaves are sprinkled over the sauce (making sure that the leaves are pulled off the woody stalks), and the dish is seasoned with salt and pepper, in the time honoured tradition.

It's a remarkably pretty dish: rose-pink in colour (from the red onions); studded with the fresh green of the thyme, and it has a deep citrusy taste; healthy too: just fresh lemon juice and honey. No stock, no cream; fast cooking. Ideal for a quick summer lunch al fresco.

Incidentally, I've got no idea if this is indeed a genuine Venetian recipe (I couldn't find anything similar in any of the books I've got on Venetian food), or actually features in any of the Ripley books; although I have a vague memory of Tom eating this in the last few pages of "The Talented Mr Ripley". An excuse to re-read the entire Ripley series over the coming summer.

 

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.

 

The Mexican Day of the Dead

 

 

I think I first became aware of the Mexican Day of the Dead after reading Malcolm Lowry's novel, "Under the Volcano". There was also a film with Albert Finney and the She-Who-Can-Do-No-Wrong Jacqueline Bisset, in which Finney plays a drunken British diplomat.

 

Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead on November 2nd. It's an extraordinary festival: families pray for the souls of the departed, and death is celebrated with dancing, sugar skulls, flowers, colourful altars and carnival.

I love authentic Mexican food, and it's only recently that the proper thing has begun to arrive in London. Up until now, we've had to put up with Tex-Mex restaurants (as beloved by students and the disenfranchised); the sort of places where they make you wear silly hats and pour Margaritas down your throat; not the same deal at all. Incidentally, I once had a fantastic chivichangas (fried burritos) at a drive-in gas station in San Diego, a few miles from the Mexican border. You paid a dollar or so through a grill, and then a few minutes later a tanned hairy hand appeared through a hole in a wall with your hot food. Fast Food in the best sense.

 

 

We're going to cook something Mexican tonight. I like Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz's book "The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking". "Fish in Almond and Coriander Sauce" (Pescado en Salsa de Almendra Verde) is on the menu. 

First, you simmer some non-oily white fish (cod?) in stock. Normally, I would place the fish in the cold water or fish stock, and then bring to the boil. Once it's simmering, I immediately turn off the heat and put on the lid, and then leave the fish to "cook" in the hot water for about five to ten minutes. You'll find this is an excellent way to cook fish, and will give you perfect results every time.

 

Remove the fish, and set aside. Pour the hot fish stock into a jug. In a small frying pan, heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil, and fry a clove of garlic with a slice of white bread, until the bread is golden on both sides. Remove the garlic and chop up the fried bread, coarsely. In your food processor, whizz up the chopped fried bread, 50g (2oz) finely ground almonds, two jalapeno chillies (de-seeded and chopped) and half a cup of fresh chopped coriander leaves; and then thin it out with the reserved stock. Heat, check the seasoning and pour over the fish. Serve with rice.

I've got no idea what this is going to be like, but it sounds interesting, and the cooking techniques are relatively simple.

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Sunday, Bloody Sunday

 

 

 

I've always found Sundays slightly depressing.  I'm not sure exactly why this is.  It might be a school thing; the hanging around waiting for Monday morning, the hanging around waiting for hotel bars to open.  I'll explain.  In the early 1980's it was still illegal to buy a drink on a Sunday, until I think, half past twelve, and on the occasions when my parents or grandparents took me out from boarding school, there was much driving around the sodden, empty Gloucestershire countryside- killing time.  Surreal.

Joseph Losey captures the mood brilliantly in his 1967 film "Accident".  There's a wonderful sequence in which Dirk Bogarde, playing a frustrated Oxford don on the verge of a mid-life crisis, hosts a languid Sunday lunch party, which degenerates into late afternoon, drunken stupor, revealing jealousies and half-concealed rivalries.  Late August with wasps.

 

And there's all that Dickensy, tea and crumpets stuff on television.  "The Antiques Roadshow", The BBC Tea-Time Period Drama (though I am currently loving "Downton Abbey" on ITV).  It's all a bit mumsy, knowing and slightly gloomy isn't it?  No, I don't like Sundays, and prefer the promise of a Friday evening or the zip of a breezy Saturday morning.

And what do people always serve you for a late Sunday afternoon lunch?   Roast chicken.  Without fail.  And there's another thing I'm not keen on.  You get invited for Sunday lunch; it's served up at about three in the afternoon.  The result?  Further hanging around as you become reaquainted with the gin bottle, and then a frustrating drive through a traffic-jam back to your dark and cold hovel very late in the evening.  I was once invited to a lunch party in Wiltshire.  Lunch wasn't served until about half past three in the afternoon; and ravenous, I went for a walk, and in desperation started eyeing up some rather juicy looking free-range chickens running around in a field.

So why not give the ubiquitous chicken and gravy a miss, and serve up a succulent, crispy roast duck with tangy orange sauce instead?  A breath of fresh air.

This is the way I roast duck.  As a method, it's a good one, and works.

Preheat your oven to 230C/450F/Gas mark 8. Prick a dressed duck all over and wipe the skin, so that it's dry.  Rub salt and pepper over it, and sprinkle some of the salt and pepper into the cavity. Place the duck on a wire rack, and then put the rack within a baking tray.  This will enable hot air to circulate underneath the duck, and most importantly will let you catch the duck fat as it drips off; and there's going to be quite a bit of fat.

Roast in the oven for twenty minutes, and then turn the temperature down to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.  Roast for a further forty minutes, or until you think it is ready.  The skin should be crispy, and the meat succulent.  As the duck roasts, you will find that the tray underneath will fill up with hot fat.  It's most important that you should remove this at regular intervals, otherwise the fat will start to smoke, and you'll think that your oven's on fire.

The orange sauce is easy.  I pour orange juice into a smallish pan, add a bit of chicken stock, a dash of white balsamic vinegar, about two tablespoons of honey, grated orange zest and star anise.  Heat and let it bubble away for a minute or so.  Next add a generous slug of Grand Marnier and reduce the sauce by about half on a high heat.  To thicken up the sauce, mix up a teaspoon of arrowroot with water to form a slurry and stir it in.  Whisk in a knob of butter, which will give the sauce a nice glaze.  Remove the star anise before serving.  The sauce should be reasonably thin.

 

 

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Irish Stew Revisited

 

 

 

There's a sudden nip in the air, and with October just around the corner, I think Irish Stew could be just the ticket. 

Traditionally, Irish Stew consists of just lamb or mutton, onions, potatoes and water. Purists will tell you that carrots should not be added, but I was having a chat with an Irish friend about this recently, and she insisted that she includes carrots in her version. The secret with Irish Stew (as with any stew), is to cook it for a long time at a low temperature. You want the meat to break down, and the potato to disintegrate slightly- so that it thickens up the sauce.

Take a neck of lamb, and chop it up into chunks. Neck of lamb has to be one of my all-time favourite cuts. It's cheap, and cooks beautifully, becoming soft enough, after an hour or so of slowish cooking, to cut with a fork.

Brown the lamb in a pan with a knob of unsalted butter and a teaspoon of oil. The oil will help to stop the pan burning. Transfer the browned lamb to a casserole dish. 

Next sauté some sliced onions in the butter, and once they've cooked add them to the casserole. Peel some carrots, and slice them into quarters, lengthways. Add them to the casserole- on top of the onions. The aim is to build up your vegetables in layers. Add another layer of onions. Finally, add some peeled potatoes, which you have chopped into quarters, lengthways. Season with sea salt and ground black pepper.

Now pour in some stock (ideally lamb stock if you have it, other meat stocks will be fine) and add a sprig of thyme. Cook the casserole in a low to medium oven, until the lamb is tender and on the point of breaking down. You want the potatoes and carrots to remain intact, but yet at the same time, to become slightly soft around the edges. On a low heat this could take up to two hours, so check the stew from time to time.

When you reckon its done, take the casserole out of the oven, and have a look at it. There's a strong chance that you will have a thin sauce, so I would suggest that you thicken it up: spoon out the meat and vegetables and reserve. Pour the sauce through a sieve into a clean pan and mix in a beurre manié (flour and butter mixed into a ball), until the sauce is smooth and velvety. Bubble away for a few minutes. The sauce will thicken.

Pour it back over the lamb and vegetables. Check the seasoning, and add more salt and pepper if it's needed. Finally, serve with generous handfuls of chopped parsley.

Simple, but utterly wholesome and surprisingly satisfying.  Don't stint on the parsley: it can take it.

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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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Marinated Haddock with Prawns, Dill and Spring Onions

 

 

 

This recipe comes from Nathalie Hambro's "Simple Fare" (1986), one of the more interesting cook books in my collection. As well as being a fashion designer, and an all-round style guru, Nathalie Hambro is one of the most innovative and inspiring cookery writers out there, and if you are looking for fresh ideas I whole-heartedly recommend her books. Most of them, I think, are out of print but can be bought easily from amazon.co.uk, or abebooks.co.uk. I like this recipe for its Baltic, or Nordic, overtones, and it's very easily made with the simplest of ingredients. In concept, it's very similar to Gravlax.

 

 

 

Line a dish with tin foil. Spread some fresh dill over the foil, and season with sugar, Maldon salt, and black pepper. Next, place a fresh smoked haddock fillet over the dill. Normally I would use undyed haddock, but for this recipe I've found that the dyed yellow haddock works better. The Haddock needs to be as fresh as you can get it.

Cover the fish with more dill, sugar, sea salt and pepper. It's best to use more sugar than salt, and to go easy with the pepper. Sprinkle some large peeled prawns on top. Wrap the whole thing up tightly with the tin foil, and stick it into the 'fridge, with a weight on top, for at least twenty four hours- preferably longer.

When it's ready, slice the haddock into long, thin pieces. It's a bit like Japanese sushumi. Arrange in a serving dish with the prawns. 

Finally, take some spring onions, and cut them in four lengthways. Soak them in a bowl of ice-cold water- after a few minutes the green tops will start to curl up; this looks impressive. Zero effort. Take them out, drain them; and stick them in with the marinated haddock and the rest of the prawns.

Tartiflette

 

The ski-ing season's upon us, and chalet food makes me think of Tartiflette. Tartiflette's a French dish from the Savoie region, which originated in the Aravis valley, the home of Reblochon cheese. Curiously, it was invented as late as the 1980's in an attempt to boost sales, and then heavily promoted by the relevant trade unions to increase employment in the area. 

This is how you make it: First fry some chopped smoked bacon, and sliced onions for about five minutes in your favourite pan. If you've got some goose fat, use that.

Next, slice up some waxy potatoes, and arrange them in a bottom of a dish, which you've previously greased with the goose fat. It might also be a good plan to rub half a garlic clove over the dish as well- this will give the Tartiflette a subtle garlicky flavour, without killing off all the other flavours in the dish. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper, and then cover them with the cooked bacon and onions. 

Add a layer of Reblochon cheese which you have cut into small cubes. It would be worth you while to track down some authentic Reblochon- as this gives the dish its authentic edge. Try you local deli, and see if they stock it. If they don't it's always worth making a fuss- in the nicest possible way of course, and they may be able to get some in for you. 

Finally, it's a simple matter of adding another layer of sliced potatoes, some more cheese, and finishing off the thing with a carton of double cream, unsalted butter and more salt and pepper. Bake in the oven for over an hour, until the cheesy cream topping goes brown and crusty.

 

 

New Year's Day Chili

 

 

I think there's nothing better than tucking into a satisfying and hearty bowl of cowboy chili on a raw New Year's Day. It just seems so right. After all that Christmas over-indulgence, you want something simple, yet, if you're greedy like me, a limp bit of lettuce ain't going to pass muster. You're also probably feeling a trifle frazzled after the New Year's Eve revels.

Regrettably, Chili con carne is often nothing more than stewed mince, kidney beans and a bit of chili powder. Here's my idea for a more sophisticated version:

Sauté some chopped onions, garlic and chopped red chilis in oil and butter.  Stir in some good chili powder, oregano, cumin, and paprika. Now add the beef (or pork); or a combination of the two. You can either chop the meat into chunks, or put it through a mincer (if you've got one). Cook for a bit until the meat is sealed and coloured.

Next, add some stock, beer (the Mexican beer, Corona, is excellent), and a splash of Tabasco. Let the chili simmer slowly at a low heat, until the meat is cooked. You want the sauce to be reasonably thick. When the meat is nearly done, add some tomato purée, or even better, sun-dried tomato paste, and grate in some bitter chocolate- the sort of quality chocolate (high in cocoa solids) you can buy in delis and specialist shops. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Finally, stir in some cooked beans (Kidney, Haricot, or Black Beans are fine, I'm not really that fussed). Serve with some grated cheese on top, sour cream, and saltine crackers.

To all the readers of The Greasy Spoon: A Very Happy New Year!

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Goose

 

 

"There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), "they hadn't ate it all at last"."

There's something terribly Dickensian and Christmasy about our old friend the goose, isn't there? Up until the 1890's most people in England didn't eat turkey, because it was so incredibly expensive. That's why it's such a big deal when Ebeneezer Scrooge buys a massive turkey for the Cratchit family, who would normally be huddled round their scrappy little goose come Christmas Day. 

But which one is better? The goose or the turkey? I like turkey, I do. But it has a tendency to become dry and stringy, and by Boxing Day most sane people are fed up with it; even when it's turned into our famed Boxing Day Turkey Curry. There is no doubt that a fresh turkey is preferable to a frozen one. If you have a frozen one, for god's sake make sure that it has thawed properly, otherwise you and your family could get yourselves into serious trouble. If you can, try and get the gamey tasting English Black Norfolk, or the American Bronze variety.

 And some more advice: stuff the bird at the last minute, rather than the night before. The immediate problem with goose is that there just isn't going to be enough meat on the thing. If you've got lots of friends and family coming round, then some of them are going to go hungry. It tastes delicious, and has a rich and gamey flavour, but there's also going to be lots of fat. I'm fine with that, but there will be some poor souls out there who will want to run for the hills. 

Paul Levy also reckons that the goose is really at its prime come Michaelmas (ie September) rather than December. So my advice on this one: if there are just a few of you- go for goose, and sit back and enjoy the rich and subtle flavours; if you've got a horde coming round, go for turkey, but try and get a properly reared and decent variety, and cook it with care. I know this is expensive, but as it's only once a year, I think it's going to be a good investment. Joy to the World!

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Fondue

 

 

Back in the late 1960's, our Swiss au pair brought back a funky fondue set. I remember it well: a beaten copper affair, raised on a nifty wrought iron stand.

I happen to think that the best fondues use authentic cheese recipes. Recently, however, a bad, mad, and dangerous tendency has crept in for sickly, over rich chocolate fondues with cake, strawberries, sweeties, and the like. Please avoid them at all costs.

Here's how to make a genuine Swiss cheese fondue: grate ½ llb of Swiss cheese (Emmenthaler is ideal), and ½ llb of Gruyère into a pan. Start melting the cheese on a medium heat. It's important not to boil the cheese, over-stir it, or let it get cold. All these things will encourage separation and stringing.

Carefully stir in two tablespoons of flour or cornstarch. Again, the flour will help to prevent separation. Add a tablespoon of dry mustard.

When the cheese, flour and mustard have melted down, add a cup of dry white wine, a generous dash of Kirsch, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some grated nutmeg. That's it.

You then dip in hunks of fresh white bread into the cheese sauce. Traditionally, if you loose your bread in the cheese, you're supposed to pay a forfeit. Having seen The Stepford Wives, I can imagine the sort of saucy things our parents got up to forty years ago, though I stress that in our family, the forfeit was always a bottle of Kirsch.

 

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Coca-Cola Ham

 

 

Last Christmas or so, I wrote a post about a slightly weird recipe: "Ham Glazed in Coca-Cola". It's still one of my most popular posts, and as I'm currently getting increased hits (no doubt because of Thanksgiving) I'm going to give you the recipe again.

It doesn't sound that great, does it? However, as Coke is really just a very sugary, brown and fizzy syrup, there's no reason why it shouldn't work nicely with a lovely, juicy ham. And the recipe's an old favourite from the American Deep South, too. So, here's how you make it:

Put in a medium sized gammon into a large pan. Add a peeled onion (for flavour), and then pour in a litre of coca-cola. Bring to the boil, put the lid back on, and turn down the heat. Let the ham braise in the liquid for  2 ½ hours.

Take the gammon out of the pan, and let it rest. Remove the skin and preheat your oven to 210˚C. In the meantime, mix up a glaze from 100g breadcrumbs, 100g brown muscovado sugar, two tablespoons of French Dijon Mustard, and a tablespoon of Colman's Mustard Powder. Stir in a spoonful or so of coca-cola to the mixture, and then slap it onto the gammon. 

Roast the gammon in the hot oven for about ten minutes, or until the glaze has cooked.

 

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Cajun Duck Gumbo with Smoked Sausage and Shrimps

 

 

Yesterday an old friend came over to our new house for dinner. I decided to make a Cajun duck gumbo. Or at least, I thought I did, as the resulting effort, although relatively appetising, tasted nothing like the genuine dish. So I did some research:

Gumbo is a stew or soup popular in Louisiana and the Southern States of America. It's probably got okra in it, and most importantly, the "holy trinity" of diced onions, green peppers and celery. It's also thickened at the beginning by a roux. Now, this is not just any old roux. There's a whole sub-culture of check-shirted, bearded roux experts out there, ready to tell you at a drop of a hat that your roux isn't dark enough, and that you should have stirred it one hundred and one times anti-clockwise, and in slow-motion.

Forget your namby-pamby Cordon Bleu type rouxs made with a bit of butter and a genteel sprinkling of flour, these Cajun rouxs are macho affairs, made by heating cups of oil to a high temperature in old tin pans, and then stirring in cups of flour, until the liquid roux turns a mahogany colour, or even in some cases almost black. If you've got time, have a look at this excellent website, the Southern Gumbo Trail- which will tell you how to make authentic "Cajun Napalm".

Here's my recipe for Cajun Duck Gumbo:

Heat a heavy pan until it's smokin' hot. Pour in a cup of oil. Let it get hot, then turn down the heat to a low flame. Gradually whisk in a cup and a half of white flour, whisking it the whole time to make sure it doesn't burn. If you cook the roux on too high a heat, not only might it burn, but the oil might separate from the flour. Keep on whisking. I think it's important to have more flour than oil: you want the roux to be slightly sloppy, but you don't want an oil-slick.

You will see that as the flour cooks, the colour will start to turn brown. Keep on stirring. Your goal is to end up with a dark brown, nutty flavoured roux with the consistency of a thick chocolate sauce. Which hasn't burnt. This might take up to half and hour to achieve, but you will end up with an extremely worthy base for your gumbo. Oh and by the way, it's not called "Cajun Napalm" for nothing. Be extremely careful: if you splash a bit of the roux on your skin, it's going to hurt. As I write this, I'm suffering from some darn nasty burns on my fingers, which I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Now it's time to add the "holy trinity" of diced green peppers, onions and celery. Stir it in, and sauté for around five minutes. Add some chopped garlic. Stir. Throw in some chopped up okra. Turn the heat up, and stir the okra in until it's cooked properly, and become less "stringy" and gelatinous. The okra will thicken up the mixture almost immediately. You will see tiny "strings", looking a bit like miniscule white optic fibres. You need to cook the okra until these strings disappear.

Next, add shrimps (prawns), sliced smoked sausage and small chunks of duck. Keep on stirring as it cooks. After about another ten minutes or so, pour in some stock. I used a lovely clear duck stock which I had made by using a very low heat, and then skimming off the scum as it rose to the surface.

Simmer gently for about twenty minutes until the gumbo thickens up. Season to taste and add a generous slug of Tabasco and a teaspoon or so of Cayenne Pepper. Finish off the dish with some chopped parsley, and serve it on a bowl of steamed rice. The gumbo should be a dark brown colour, and that agonising half hour or so of roux stirring will give a complex, deep hickory flavour to the dish.

Chicken Curry in the English Style

 

I'm a huge fan of genuine Indian food, believe me. The sort of street food served by restaurants such as the excellent Masala Zone. But I'm also fond of our own bastardised British versions too- as peddled by the Cordon Bleu Cookery Academy, circa 1959. Here's my own recipe for a delicious and simple chicken curry. Most Indians worth their salt will turn their noses up at it, but I find it strangely satisfying; and it's extremely easy to make too.

First, you need to sweat some chopped onions, celery and garlic in oil. Next add some apple chopped into chunks. Stir in a tablespoon of curry paste, and some turmeric. Cook this for a few minutes. In the meantime, season some de-boned chicken thighs with salt and pepper, and dust them with some flour. Add these to the pan. Cook for several minutes, until the chicken begins to colour. Now add some chicken stock (preferably home made, otherwise Marigold reduced-salt bouillon is just the ticket), and simmer for about ten to fifteen minutes.

Next, pour in some coconut milk. Simmer for about half an hour until the chicken is cooked. You should end up with a thickish sauce. Add a teaspoon of redcurrent jelly (yes, redcurrent jelly).

Serve with chopped coriander. Instead of plain rice, try my Lemon Rice instead. This is just ordinary rinsed Basmati Rice, which has been cooked in a bit of stock, lemon juice, lemon zest, and a few cardamom pods.

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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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Pheasant Casserole

 

Here's a post I wrote last year about pheasant casserole. It's nostalgic, comfort food at its best, evocative of the English Countryside in autumn:

Pheasant Casserole! I can't think of anything more suitable for a cold November. I once had it at a Sunday lunch party, served with a jug of foamy Black Velvet- and this worked surprisingly well. If you don't know anyone who shoots, pheasant are amazingly cheap to buy, either from your local butcher or decent supermarket such as Waitrose.

Believe me, I've plucked a few pheasants in my time, and I have to say that I'm not sure that it's worth the hassle, when you can a) get the butcher to pluck them for you (and do a much better job) or b) buy them from the shops, ready plucked, for a few quid.

Here's my family recipe for pheasant casserole (from The ABC of Tried and Tested Recipes), which I've adapted slightly from the original version.

Take a large cock pheasant and fry it in butter and oil, until lightly browned. Add a dash of cognac, and flambé it quickly until the flames die down. Remove the pheasant and put it into a casserole.

In the same pan, fry some chopped bacon, diced celery and carrots cut into batons.  Add two tablespoons of flour, and cook. After a few minutes pour in half a bottle of red wine (I suggest using a Burgundy or a Rhone) and top up with some chicken or game stock.

Bring to the boil, and simmer gently so that the alcohol burns off. Pour it over the pheasant in the casserole and add 50g button mushrooms and 175g button or baby onions.

Cook in a moderate oven for just over an hour. Pheasant has a tendency to get dry and stringy very quickly, so I've cut down the cooking time. I'm sure you'll get the drift: you want lots of sauce, and you need to make sure that you don't over cook the pheasant.

When you reckon the pheasant is ready, take the casserole out of the oven and let it cool down. Lift out the pheasant and carve it up: cut the legs and wings off and carve the breasts. Place the carved meat in a flat casserole dish with the sliced breasts in the centre, surrounded by the legs and the wings. Place the vegetables, mushrooms and onions over the pheasant.

Strain off the sauce through a sieve into a small sauce pan-  this will get rid of all the nasty bits and pieces. Add two teaspoons of redcurrant jelly to the sauce and chuck in some crushed juniper berries. I'm currently crazy about juniper (which, of course, is used to flavour gin).  It has a rich, pine-nut, woodlandly sort of  taste and works beautifully with game. Check the seasoning. When the sauce is at the right consistency, pour it back over the pheasant.

Serve the casserole with parsnip chips.

Toad in the Hole with Onion Gravy

 

 

Mein Gott, this one takes me back: Toad in the Hole is perfect fodder for a Saturday Lunch. I feel strongly that there are certain dishes that are best suited to particular days of the week; and for some weird reason Toad means Saturday lunch. Not Sunday or Tuesday, or even Friday for that matter. Saturday. 

Incidentally, as much as I am curious to sample one of those tantalising little critters, the 'toad' is some sort of English slang for sausage. It's a bit like Welsh Rabbit (which ain't a rabbit), or Scotch Woodcock (which ain't a woodcock, either).

Back to the Toad: Heat your oven to 220C (425F). Get hold of some decent, fat, organic sausages and chuck them into a roasting tin with a few knobs of lard. You could have fun experimenting with different types of sausage.  The better your sausage, the better your Toad in the Hole will taste. Cook the sausages in the oven for about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, mix up the batter. Sieve 4oz (110g) of self raising flour into a bowl, and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Make a hole or a "well" in the centre of the flour, and pour in 5 fluid oz (150ml) of semi-skimmed milk into the hole. Crack in an egg, too. Mix the flour, milk, and egg up very gradually with a wooden spoon.  Beat well, and then add the same amount of milk, again. Pour the finished batter over the sausages, and cook them in the oven for a further 45 minutes or so, until the Toad is risen and browned.

The Onion Gravy is a cinch. You slice up some onions, and brown them in a frying pan. If you add a few pinches of sugar and salt, this will help them to caramelise. You want them to get brown and a bit burnt. This is a good thing. Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook in the oniony fat. Once the onions and flour are brown enough, you can deglaze the pan with some stock, water, and perhaps, a slug or two of white wine. Instead of gravy browning (what's that?), I use a few drops of Soy Sauce, which will give the gravy an even richer colour and taste. A teaspoon of redcurrent jelly is not a bad plan, either. Onion Gravy should be thin.

Fondue

 

 

Back in the late 1960's, our Swiss au pair brought back a funky fondue set. I remember it well: a beaten copper affair, raised on a nifty wrought iron stand.

In my opinion, the best fondues use the authentic cheese recipes; but a bad, mad, and dangerous tendency has crept in for sickly, over rich chocolate fondues with cake, strawberries, and the like. Avoid them at all costs.

Here's how to make a genuine Swiss cheese fondue: Grate ½ pound of a Swiss cheese such as an Emmenthaler, and ½ pound of Gruyere into a pan. Start melting the cheese on a medium heat. It's important not to boil the cheese, over-stir it, or let it get cold. All these things will encourage separation and stringing.

Carefully stir in two tablespoons of flour or cornstarch. Again, the flour will help to prevent separation. Add a tablespoon of dry mustard.

When the cheese, flour and mustard have melted down, add a cup of dry white wine, a dash of Kirsch, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some grated nutmeg.

That's it. You then dip in hunks of fresh white bread into the cheese sauce. Traditionally, if you loose your bread in the cheese, you are supposed to pay a forfeit. Having seen Bryan Forbes' original version of The Stepford Wives, I can imagine the sort of things our parents got up to forty years ago, although I stress that in our family, the forfeit was always a bottle of Kirsch.